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On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

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Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#31

Post by grunder_advice »

lazide wrote: post #15
grunder_advice wrote: post #9

Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy. It seems to me that the biggest contributor to this is the vulnerability of the electorate. It seems to me that it has become possible to hijack the minds of individuals with sustained propaganda campaigns. You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That b…

It’s always been the case (people getting hi jacked with propaganda campaigns!) The difference now is how targeted, specific, and external said campaigns can be - for cheap. Previously, if you started to send the anti-every-other-group propaganda to each individual, you’d be clearly identifiable, it would be more visible (flyers, leaflets, etc.) and consequences could be aimed in your direction. What is going on now…

Thanks for making this point. I 100% agree. I think previously the way politics worked, there was an element of people keeping each other in check. Now everyone can become as radicalized as their individual limits allow them to become because they live in a personally crafted narrative.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#32

Post by fedeb95 »

dash2 wrote: post #24

I predict that in 25 years (or 50 or 100): - human society will be even richer, more prosperous and more technologically advanced - people will still be desperately worrying that this is a time of crisis and collapse Let's see.

if not in 25, in 26.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#33

Post by gizajob »

9dev wrote: post #5
gizajob wrote: post #3

[flagged]

These are questions worth posing. Everyone working in tech right now plays a part in a lot of horrors haunting the world right now, and all of us are partly guilty. If your answer to this is, "I don't care about the environment, everyone's right to privacy, psychological effects of social media use, or any of those other adverse effects as long as I get a good salary"—that's a valid answer for sure, if you aren't bot…

I mean “begging the question” in the traditional philosophical sense – assuming the conclusion (societal collapse) as part of the premises. Not the more common vernacular usage which has come to mean “asking questions”.

Plus the sky wasn’t falling in the last few times I checked.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#34

Post by seu »

I studied computer science and worked in and around software for a good 20+ years. Then I slowly started realizing how apolitical almost everyone around me in software was. I was fortunate to have had other influences and interests beyond CS, but it seemed like others didn't think much about society or politics, beyond how "great" everything could be made with tech. I started gravitating out of the software bubble. First, I decided not to work for any company that is directly responsible for things like fossil fuel or finances. Then, away from anything that had to do with incentivizing irresponsible consumption. After a while I realized that it was extremely hard to find any job doing software that was not detrimental in general to the people or the planet. It's sad, but most people don't think about the global consequences of their jobs, or don't want to think much about it. These days I only work in tech-related projects when it's about supporting social organizations get their (digital) shit together, moving to open source alternatives or understanding how to deal with things like LLM/AIs. It is ethically almost impossible for me to work again for 99% of software companies.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#35

Post by roenxi »

I enjoy a good whine about how it is all going wrong as much as the next person, but this is a piece of academic arrogance. He's way outside his area of specialisation and his advice seems to be either trivial or bad.

If we just go through the suggestions he makes (slide 35 of 34) - some things that jump out is that life has always been "fucked up" for all of history for pretty much everyone. It isn't a pretence that things are normal, for everyone outside a fairly well off privileged class of professionals that is what normal looks like. The anti-innovation points are not being intellectually honest about the vast improvements in quality and quantity of life that have been driven by innovation. And the "pretence of disinterested scholarship" is a just a too controversial. People are allowed - in a moral sense - to figure out what is true without having their motivations cross examined and having to preconceive every possible implication of their work. Truth is a worthy goal in and of itself.

And for heavens sake, getting arrested or heading to the mountains is just crazy advice. That isn't what he did, he got a good job and spent his time teaching people. I'd watch what he does, not what he says on that one.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#36

Post by lazide »

grunder_advice wrote: post #31
lazide wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s always been the case (people getting hi jacked with propaganda campaigns!) The difference now is how targeted, specific, and external said campaigns can be - for cheap. Previously, if you started to send the anti-every-other-group propaganda to each individual, you’d be clearly identifiable, it would be more visible (flyers, leaflets, etc.) and consequences could be aimed in your direction. What is going on now…

Thanks for making this point. I 100% agree. I think previously the way politics worked, there was an element of people keeping each other in check. Now everyone can become as radicalized as their individual limits allow them to become because they live in a personally crafted narrative.

Yes, and not just politics - also day to day life. People would naturally average out with others around them, emotionally.

Not that previously there weren’t real issues (including, quite literally Nazi’s), but it previously required a whole society to go through something like a wide scale traumatic event (like post-WW1 massive external payments, hyperinflation, and associated social problems!) to get the momentum going.

Of course, then it was super dangerous because you had most of a society on the same page and working together. :s

Here, it seems like it’s mostly chaos and navel gazing, with small scale specific targeting of high profile areas, for ratings. At least so far.

The Overton window is shifting, and I’m not looking forward to where it is going so far.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#37

Post by lljk_kennedy »

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #14
grunder_advice wrote: post #9

Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy. It seems to me that the biggest contributor to this is the vulnerability of the electorate. It seems to me that it has become possible to hijack the minds of individuals with sustained propaganda campaigns. You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That b…

IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc. And this all creates a hug…

Failure of the markets, and capitalism in general. Surely if the markets worked properly there would be ample housing due to demand?

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#38

Post by grunder_advice »

mikkupikku wrote: post #19
grunder_advice wrote: post #9

Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy. It seems to me that the biggest contributor to this is the vulnerability of the electorate. It seems to me that it has become possible to hijack the minds of individuals with sustained propaganda campaigns. You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That b…

Even if everybody agreed on the basic facts (which is only possible if they're all drinking from the same well, eg impossible if the press is free) there would still be huge disagreement on what political course of action to take in response to those agreed upon facts, because different people have different values. Take your global warming example, and suppose we have a magic wand to make everybody agree that it's h…

I don't discount that people have different values and interests. I said that propaganda compounds on those divisions. I think aligning values is also something that is actionable, but that's another topic altogether. My general feeling is that our democracies would be much healthier without embellished fake new narratives about what is happening around us, irrespective of how different our values might be.

For example, let's take global warming as an example. The embellished fake news narrative is that any action at all to reduce our carbon footprint will bring about complete economic collapse, and that global warming is fake news anyway and extreme weather has a completely intangible effect on the life of people living today.

Both of those are false embellished fake news narratives that build upon real concerns. It's true that we should keep the economic health of the nation in frame when we discuss measures. It's true that we might to some extent insure ourselves against natural distastes. But the fake news narrative is the embellishment of these concerns.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#39

Post by grunder_advice »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #29
mikkupikku wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if everybody agreed on the basic facts (which is only possible if they're all drinking from the same well, eg impossible if the press is free) there would still be huge disagreement on what political course of action to take in response to those agreed upon facts, because different people have different values. Take your global warming example, and suppose we have a magic wand to make everybody agree that it's h…

Apart from facts and values, people differ in their ability to predict the outcome of policy choices.

Exactly. Most propaganda is about embellishment and fear mongering that completely destroys the ability of the individual to accurately access the topic at hand.

Re: On Being a Human Being in the Time of Collapse (2022) [pdf]

#40

Post by barishnamazov »

seu wrote: post #34

I studied computer science and worked in and around software for a good 20+ years. Then I slowly started realizing how apolitical almost everyone around me in software was. I was fortunate to have had other influences and interests beyond CS, but it seemed like others didn't think much about society or politics, beyond how "great" everything could be made with tech. I started gravitating out of the software bubble. F…

I have worked in software for much less than 20 years, yet I have quickly realized the same. There has been many occasions in many different settings that I have brought up a society-related problem and it simply got ignored in the conversation.
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