161–170 of 489 posts
Many young women feel like they’re failures because they can’t meet the unrealistic expectations society has of them to be successful, beautiful and nurturing. Many young men feel like they’re failures because they can’t meet society’s expectations success, attractiveness and fatherhood. Society has always had winners and losers, the global nature of things makes people more aware of higher standards and the threat t…
- Climate change is slowly creeping up on us and corporations keep on trucking along with an endless growth mindset, not caring about the consequences of what is essentially a cancer
- Somehow I lucked out and ended up turning my favourite hobby into a job that pays really well, but something feels empty. I don't feel like I'm working any harder than people in lower paying jobs. I don't feel like I'm providing more value. It kind of makes me sick how bad income inequality seems to be getting. People around me in tech jobs seem to constantly want more, while I'm perfectly happy with what I have.
- Social media is crippling social interactions. It's taking away a deeper form of connection and replacing it with something more surface level, while also warping people's perceptions of reality.
- Most forms of social media make you feel like crap (with how it's designed to manipulate dopamine levels), but disconnecting can make you feel socially isolated.
- We seem to have a lot less trust in institutions like the government, organized religion, and capitalism having access to information that previous generations didn't have - and because of this we have fewer places to find hope.
- It feels like people on both the left & right are increasingly behaving more like fascists and it's kind of terrifying. I always feel like I have to guard myself from "saying the wrong thing" and that makes me feel like I'm being less myself.
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What is the modern replacement for religion? Growing up I felt like I had this huge tight-knit community via the mormon church. I've since left mormonism and don't think I'll ever find a replacement for the community I had in the church.
There won't be an exact replacement because the circumstances that led to the community cannot (or rather, should not) be replicated. For the sake of the survival of the planet/species, I also don't think any institution based around magical thinking should fill the gap. Keep in mind that high-demand religions require a huge investment of time and money. Devoting even just a fraction of those resources to hobbies, ar…
I know this won’t be a popular point, but I think we have nearly all of human history as evidence that “magical believing” societies survive more effectively than not. At any time literally any tribe could have chosen to believe in nothing. It’s almost impossible to think that no tribe tried it. Heck. It’s the default state until you make up a deity!
And yet… the overwhelming majority of societies were based on “magical” thinking.
Inversely, it’s possible there could be a hard scientific truth that we discover and kills us all (“information hazard” by Nick Bostrom is a good survey… think nuclear bombs etc)
It’s a really interesting mental experiment. Is truth best defined by repeatable experimentation (Manhattan project) or by human thriving (including magical thinking).
Aside: Reinforcement Learning theory hardcore leans (implicitly) on the latter.
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In my experience, college is when that transition happens: - freshman year, start off supported and end with a job - sophomore year, housing is dorms but otherwise on your own - junior and senior year, apartments with roommates and supporting yourself
What era is this? Certainly it's not the last 20-25 years. I don't remember being able to afford anything until after I graduated and was fortunate enough to have parents that let me live in the basement while I got on my feet. My college jobs were barely enough to feed me, pay the interest on my loans, and pay my parents a pittance for my chunk of the power bill. Maybe it's easier for these kids to get a programming…
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> For example, name something of real political consequence that it is acceptable to disagree about. "What is the most impactful way to ensure that everyone has sufficient clean water and nutritious food to survive? Would approach X or approach Y or approach Z save more lives? What other alternatives should we be considering? What are the tradeoffs and risks here? How can we hedge our bets to protect against those tr…
The political talking points are unfortunately not that sophisticated. It’s largely about how twitter is run by a cabal of SJWs silencing the freedom to post Hunter Biden’s dick pics or fantasies about the liberals who will throw a tantrum if you say their pronouns wrong.
This is generally a good tell that someone isn't willing to engage with the other side at all, and instead intentionally reduces a story about powerful organizations communicating strategies with each other (I'm not passing judgement here on if those activities were wise or should be allowed), and instead reduces it to a revenge porn story.
There's a much more interesting story there about how technologists should build systems that inevitably get the Eye of Sauron put upon them. It's not about Hunter's penis unless you want it to be.
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Sorry if it’s a bit much. I’m finishing a PhD sortof on the topic and I’m really passionate about it.
Seems like we need a united cause. Surviving heat death seems like one whose target can improve quality of life as a byproduct.
We may need a new good to run towards, not just an evil to run away from.
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I agree. In our modern societies we have more means of communication than ever, yet we’re also more lonely than ever before. Urbanization has also disrupted people’s social lives very much. Raising children is hard when your parents live far away and all your friends are too busy to help, even with state-funded childcare. Different generations used to live together and help each other. Underpaid nurses and nannies ar…
>In our modern societies we have more means of communication than ever, yet we’re also more lonely than ever before. I really wonder if most people are just worthlessly incompetent at forms of communication other than face-to-face interactions. The narrative is that the covid lockdowns made people more socially isolated, and to some extent I don't disagree, but the narrative goes on to paint an image of "noone to see…
Literally zero of my Discord contacts would ever respond to a video call let alone a voice call let alone an invite to a common voice chat. Nobody uses Skype anymore. I don’t know what age group you’re in, but it sure sounds like the “happy go lucky, internet has only ever been socially profitable for me” 35-50 yo range.
> Fucking social media swamps you in the presence of others.
Fucking social media swamps you in the “impression” you are in the presence of others while leaving you in a tiny little jail cell where you can’t interact with any of the pretty pictures hurrying across the barred window of your cell.
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In my experience, college is when that transition happens: - freshman year, start off supported and end with a job - sophomore year, housing is dorms but otherwise on your own - junior and senior year, apartments with roommates and supporting yourself
What era is this? Certainly it's not the last 20-25 years. I don't remember being able to afford anything until after I graduated and was fortunate enough to have parents that let me live in the basement while I got on my feet. My college jobs were barely enough to feed me, pay the interest on my loans, and pay my parents a pittance for my chunk of the power bill. Maybe it's easier for these kids to get a programming…
Young adults are only internalizing the deeply stressful and hopeless times we live in: soaring prices, low wages, typical milestones of adult life - cars and houses, for example - harder to reach, etc. Life has been hard even for people who have an established career, let alone for the ones who have to start from the beginning. I find it incredible that this is never cited in this kind of article, but then I remembe…