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You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

geohot.github.io

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Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#231

Post by swed420 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #87
vaughands wrote: post #8

This post seems to be haphazardly proposing that big tech will inevitably make everyone's lives miserable. And by working for them, you are enabling this. It offers no constructive alternative and the author (yes, I know who he is) seems to have no issue with Google hosting their email. It's hard to take this too seriously (even if there is some legitimate worry here)

> This post seems to be haphazardly proposing that big tech will inevitably make everyone's lives miserable. Except that’s already happening. Through social media being engineered to be additive, advertising and user data collection being used to manipulate voters, AI bosses proudly claiming they’re putting people out of work, and games companies paying on the weak with loot boxes and other massively overpriced in ga…

Relevant for those who missed it

https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media/

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#233

Post by wickedsight »

pharrington wrote: post #212
wickedsight wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His alternative of not working for big tech is literally the only way out of this. This won't actually work though. The only reason we even have this discussion is because we're rich enough that pure survival isn't even really in our instinct anymore. Most of us haven't experienced actual hardship for years and we live in luxury. There are plenty people in the world who are smart and poor and living tough lives, wh…

If you're working in big tech and you truly believe you are spoiled, then why not quit that job and let the migrant improve their living situation, while you live in the luxury you already have?

I don’t work in big tech. Wish I was, would be a pretty big improvement in my salary. Still think I’m very spoiled compared to about 90% of the world, probably more than that.

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#234

Post by camgunz »

IshKebab wrote: post #209
camgunz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think the political situation is a teensy bit worse now?

We were talking about big tech, not global politics.

There's a clear connection between tech (social media, loneliness epidemic, etc) and political decline.

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#235

Post by [deleted] »

scoofy wrote: post #228
HotGarbage wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big tech is making everyone's life miserable: social media, advertising, surveillance. By working for them you are enabling this.

>> Big tech is making everyone's life miserable > Sent from my iPhone. But seriously, this is a political problem, not a technological problem. The harms of technology are like the harms of the food industry or the gambling industry. Those of us who care, know these things can be bad for society, and we regulate them. Our society doesn’t care, we literally just legalized sports gambling, and the leagues have embraced…

[deleted]

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#236

Post by xeckr »

teiferer wrote: post #77
HotGarbage wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big tech is making everyone's life miserable: social media, advertising, surveillance. By working for them you are enabling this.

> Big tech is making everyone's life miserable: I understand that sentiment, but it's very one-sided. I enjoy having the worlds knowledge at my fingertips. I enjoy being able to video-call my family from anywhere in the world at any time. I enjoy never being lost cause I always have a map showing where I am. I enjoy having group chats with all my different social groups, big and small. I enjoy being able to easily wo…

>I enjoy having the worlds knowledge at my fingertips. I enjoy being able to video-call my family from anywhere in the world at any time. I enjoy never being lost cause I always have a map showing where I am. I enjoy having group chats with all my different social groups, big and small.

>None of the above was possible just 20 years ago.

I also enjoy having those things, but we had all of them 15 years ago. Since then we got... algorithmic feeds?

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#237

Post by awakeasleep »

CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #82

I think it's pretty clear that if automation gets to the point where machines can do the difficult tasks, like repairing a sewer or managing a farm, then the entire human workforce is no longer needed. It's difficult to see where it might head that doesn't lead to population collapse and some form of dystopia.

It will only be a dystopia to people like us. It will be a near post scarcity utopia to our betters!

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#238

Post by esotericwarfare »

mlrtime wrote: post #194
fnoef wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed an interesting pattern. People who “made it” usually by working high paying jobs for the neofeudal lords, suddenly gain moral compass and tell the rest of us to not work for said neofeudal lords, because “money is not important”, and apparently you can buy a place to live or food to feed your family simply by having principles.

Probably not a popular opinion but this is why capitalism works. We all work to compete for what is best for US and our Family, not what someone tells us to work on because they think they know whats better, they don't.

Read this one: http://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2021/06/23/pieces...

>Capitalism is so rigged it isn’t fun anymore.

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#239

Post by tatersolid »

flowerthoughts wrote: post #204
hnlmorg wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of the above was possible just 20 years ago. Most of those things were actually possible. In many cases they weren’t as convenient, but as a child of the 80s I can tell you that life wasn’t like the dark ages before we all got smart phones. In any case, I don’t think anyone here is arguing against technological progress. What we’re saying is that big tech has been too powerful, and too unregulated, for far too…

As a child of the 80s, who lived 20 miles away from a city, I can tell you that my life was pretty much dark ages before I understood that driving was not just something parents did; I could also do that. And that there were people with similar interests as me at the end of that drive! Took 18 years.

I grew up in a rural township 50 miles from a major city in the 1980s. We were never isolated and there were in fact a diverse set of peers my own age with interests and heritage all across the spectrum. Yes there were a few racists or religious zealots but 99% of the folks got along just fine.

My own lasting impression is that this is the “American experience” that is not dead nor impossible to recreate in 2026. We just all need to learn to be decent Americans again.

Re: You have three minutes to escape the perpetual underclass

#240

Post by roenxi »

lurk2 wrote: post #165
roenxi wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mass market handcrafts are no longer a viable means of subsistence anywhere in the West. Mass market handicrafts have never been a viable means of subsistence anywhere, ever, if we benchmark against what I think a reasonable lifestyle looks like. That is why we stopped doing things that way. Nevertheless mass market handicrafts are still a theoretical option. It hasn't become a worse option over time, it is in fact…

> Mass market handicrafts have never been a viable means of subsistence anywhere, ever, if we benchmark against what I think a reasonable lifestyle looks like. There were plenty of craftsmen who lived lifestyles that were acceptable for the time periods they were living in. From around 1400, to around the early 1900s, European settlements consisting of more than a few hundred people would have had blacksmiths, cobble…

> The idea that a medieval peasant would be envious of our standard of living is doing nothing to further the point you are trying to make.

It is a fair chunk of the point I'm making - you still have the option of living like a medieval peasant if that is important to you. The option never went away. It is still on the table. People could have kept doing what they did before and maintained the lifestyle that they were used to. It is more that people choose not to do that and I've been saying a variant of that in every comment in this thread so far. The only people who chose to do it that way wouldn't have if they'd had any alternatives because the lifestyle it enabled was terrible.

Having better options available doesn't mean the old option isn't available, more that someone'd need to be either a bit stupid or very motivated to live a particular lifestyle to choose it. it has been a lousy option that led to a mean existence for all of human history. It still does. But in absolute terms, it would be a better option in the modern economy than the ancient one.

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