Commoditization of human behavior
Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
151–160 of 387 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#152The biggest societal altering impacts may be in terms of dating and reproduction. This has major cultural consequences. * There’s more than 1 reason for this, but approach patterns have changed. Men approaching women in real life is now rarer than it was in favor of online meeting through Apps. * Many relationships now happen based on online dating. In a sense, a series of algorithms are already dictating human repro…
Average men should seek average women and the reverse should be true. There are a lot more variables than just looks. I don’t think dating apps are necessarily the problem here but the skewed expectations that were enforced through media: actors, models, etc.
I had a roommate who confessed to me he had never been in a relationship. He was 30, average looking or around that and it turned out he was rejecting any average looking girls while constantly being rejected by very good looking girls, way out of his league. He had no experience, seemed desperate etc but would not lower the bar at all.. I was getting the feeling that he was self sabotaging somehow. Not sure how it eventually turned out, we lost touch a while ago, but I surely hope he stoped obsessing over looks and just got into some relationship and took it from there.
Personality is underrated these days. I found myself attracted quite often to people’s personalities such that I am totally blinded to what they looke like. And personality can be worked on throughout ones lifetime, looks are pretty much genetics. And working out has at some point of diminishing returns. I’ve seen guys who try to better looks by building some muscle but often don’t know when to stop.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It doesn't lead to free exchange of ideas and values, it has created polarized societies Technology created polarized society? Before internet search, we were better educated and understood each other better?
Newspapers were at least, historically at least in the 20th century, were expected to inform and keep a separation between opinion and news. They clearly had a political slant, but they couldn't just ignore facts that they found inconvenient, or only mention them in hit pieces meant to discredit them. Exceptions to this, like Yellow Journalism and Hearst's use of his papers for personal and political ends were at lea…
The difficulty is, it's often very difficult to find news from an organization who isn't "like Breitbart or RawStory", to some extent.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#154Everyone is oblivious to their surroundings. Whether it’s because they’re looking down at their smartphone or listening to a podcast or music on their AirPods, people aren’t paying attention to what’s happening around them, and they are walking out into streets without looking for cars, assuming no one is coming. I bike most places, and the number of pedestrians (and other bicyclists!) who can’t hear my bike bell is…
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Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#155[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#156The platform economics of streaming services incentivizes musicians to release a larger quantity of short, catchier singles that work well in playlists, instead of putting out a sonically diverse album.
This. Erosion of quality in any kind of art. It's cheaper to do 3d movies than animate. It's easier to sell simpler ideas than a complicated story with a deeper meaning. You also see this in music with stuff like autotune.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#157Internet usage starts with users querying information they want, and services learning/adapting to deliver information in a format/context based on their activity. This has created some stellar search tools, a personalized network of services and communities available to people, and made the internet a paradise for new content from all over the world. Despite that all the information in the world is available to us,…
Wanting information to be free forced companies to rely on advertising and to spy on us.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#158For me, tech has turned into a crutch when I don't know what to do. I've caught myself in the middle of automatic behavior and it's a bit scary - opening Reddit or HN, closing it because I've already read everything on the front page, then opening it again a few seconds later without even thinking about it. I wonder what I would be doing without it. Creating art? Going out? I'd have to do something. It's something I…
I can easily spend 3+ hours a day on HN. I've banned myself 3 times. Started again recently to look for jobs. Time spent here is climbing. Will probably have to ban myself again soon. This account is greggman2 because one helpful way of banning myself is to set my noprocrast on and my minaway to some giant number and then set umatrix to block
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#159I have a small device in my pocket that provides access to nearly the sum total of human knowledge. I use it to get into pointless arguments with people I don't know and look at pictures of cats. (I wish I could claim that as original but it is something I read on the Internet. Between cats. :-/ )
Lol, I've been telling my kids for years, "I hold in my hand the accumulated knowledge of mankind."
Well, you hold access to it, not the knowledge itself.
Re: Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed?
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Property is theft anyway.
This perspective is interesting. Explain