It helps extrapolate the already present dystopian things the tech industry is doing.
Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
141–150 of 186 posts
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm. One thing I have noticed, and something that I discuss with my wife relatively frequently (she notices it as well), is that when I engage with "new" people in something like a professional context, the initial contact indeed often starts as "rough", not rarely unfriendly, even. And that's not just the first sentence, it's through the first few minutes or so. But when I persist in being nice, and having an "I kno…
Makes me wonder… Are most of us kind but have to hide our kindness beneath a rough veneer due to the grumpy hostile antagonistic people who perhaps only make up some of the population? But yes I agree with what that other guy said. It wasn’t always this way was it? I also feel like around 2015 people became more hostile and meaner to each other in general. I used to think it was my imagination but now I’m seeing this…
Around 2014 'kindness is weakness' became part of the social fabric so we all put on tough fronts to not be identified as targets.
Big-city people were always like this. The internet brought big-city culture to every corner of the planet. Now everyone has to act like a New Yorker.
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember an article, I think by Neal Stephenson, that described the change in the attitude of SF over the years. Things like 20000 leagues under the sea, off on a comet etc. were optimistic, adventurous and generally upbeat. Even the Asimov books were more about world building than doomsaying. There's quite a bit of dystopian pessimistic stuff that's in the market now and perhaps it's just because it's what sells o…
There's the whole 'solarpunk' genre of fiction that I'd say is more optimistic. Epitomised by stuff like Becky Chamber's books 'A Psalm for the Wild Built' and 'A Prayer for the Crown Shy' (which are both excellent by the way).
Thank you for the recommendation. I haven't read much solarpunk. Cyberpunk is too dystopian for me. Steampunk, I like the aesthetic but I don't think I've read much literature in that genre except the difference engine.
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#144Cyberpunk is now a well known aesthetic, Cyberprep[0] not so much, yet
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#145It's not that Black Mirror is bad. It's that, as the article points out, we don't have a fictional vision of the future to use as a goal. The author mentions Jill Lapore's 2017 article in the New Yorker, which is sort of a survey paper of dystopian fiction from that period.[1] No alternatives are presented. For most of human history, the big problem was making enough stuff. There just wasn't any way to make enough st…
>we don't have a fictional vision of the future to use as a goal. yes we do, it's called The Culture by Iain M Banks. It's a series of books, and it's not easy-web-novels reading, so in the grand scheme of things is pretty niche
Yeah, The Culture, where the real powers are AI. Very niche, just as Yudkowski...
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#146"Absent is the plot twist of Pandora’s box that made it philosophically useful: the box also contained hope and opportunity that new knowledge brings." Yes, add that and it might be something interesting but sure not the Black Mirror I want to watch. I mean it is called Black Mirror for a reason. And it is not even true. Take the episode "San Junipro" for example? Isn't there some hope and opportunity in it? And yet,…
I dunno about you, but I don't care about a computer program that believes it's me living on after I die. You can wrap it with all the feel good trappings you want, that set of bits is not you. If anything, living a life in a way that you put off doing the fun things until the after life, spiritual or digital, sounds awful.
>computer program that believes it's me
So, a computer program can believe?
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
>we don't have a fictional vision of the future to use as a goal. yes we do, it's called The Culture by Iain M Banks. It's a series of books, and it's not easy-web-novels reading, so in the grand scheme of things is pretty niche
Yeah, The Culture, where the real powers are AI. Very niche, just as Yudkowski...
you can always split away from the Culture and go on without the Minds, if you so desire.
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#148Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…
The part I don't like about it is that the premise is too often: "Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology." For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there woul…
> […] and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology."
Which is basically how most technologies appear{s,ed} in society: without prior thought / discussion.
There's certainly a lot of talk while it's being rolled out, but rarely prior.
> For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there would not be people sneaking into warehouses.
People do crime because they think† they can get away with it, because if you knew that you'd probably get caught why would you do it in the first place? How many people purposefully do crime in order to get caught?
In your specific example people will think they've figured out a way to get past the automated system. (Not even getting into the fact that in some jurisdictions it's illegal to set traps, e.g., Canada Criminal Code §247.)
† When they think at all, and it's not just a heat / spur-of-the-moment action (often when drunk).
Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#149Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…
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Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology This is precisely why I love Black Mirror. Despite the warnings, we're allowing companies to build killer robot and are running a large scale experiment to b…
We always have moved forward technologically despite doomers. They were there for first person shooter games, the Internet in general, dating apps, etc. That’s not to say those things didn’t have significant downsides. They do. But it took years to get there and they weren’t an overnight surprise, like they seem to be in the Black Mirror episodes I saw. Imagine what a few Black Mirror episodes would look like if they…
That's a very simplistic and deficient way of stating a half-truth. The dangers of technology and their ethical implications have historically been a serious consideration in the way we regulate a lot of stuff, from TikTok to nuclear development.
You are also biased in the way you only see what came to be and ignore what did not.