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The Who Cares Era

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Re: The Who Cares Era

#321

Post by pmg101 »

deadbabe wrote: post #125
palmotea wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There's a culture of indifference, an embrace of mediocrity. I don't think it's new, but I do think perhaps AI has given the lazy and prideless an even lower energy route to... I'm not sure. What is the goal? > I think pride in work has declined a lot (at least in the US) because so many large employers have shown that they aren't even willing to pretend to care about their employees. It's difficult to take pride…

Unfortunately it’s becoming more obvious that “short-term” is all we really have in this world. There is no long term. So why plan for long term? Life is a series of short-term wins until you finally die. Same with companies. Things change so fast now that you could be crushing it one year and going out of business the next. It’s not like old days where you could setup a blacksmithing shop and have business for gener…

Not sure why you get down voted for this.

Seems self evident that increasing pace of change of society tilts the rational strategy towards short-term over long-term gain.

Do people disagree that the pace of change is increasing? Do people disagree that short termism is rationally appropriate in a highly changeable situation? Long term planning requires a stable backdrop. I agree with you.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#322

Post by WalterBright »

saubeidl wrote: post #238
WalterBright wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Or would you prefer working dawn to dusk picking bugs off of your crops, with the constant spectre of crop failure and famine? Do you prefer living in a mud hut to a house with air conditioning, central heat, hot and cold running water, electric lighting and flush toilets? All courtesy of economic powerhouses. Maybe you'd prefer spending your free time spinning thread with your spinning wheel, making cloth, and…

Do you think that was the lifestyle in Yugoslavia? And their heyday was half a century ago at this point. You're presenting a false dichotomy. Nobody's gonna live in a mud hut using a spinning wheel just because workers run companies.

Why did 20 million people over the last 4 years sneak into America? How many Americans left for Yugoslavia?

Re: The Who Cares Era

#323

Post by ryandrake »

WalterBright wrote: post #315
ryandrake wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false dichotomy: Either your country is an "economic powerhouse", or you're living in a mud hut, with nothing in between. A country can be a good, decent place to live, where people's basic needs are taken care of, with opportunities for modest life improvements for those who want them, without being an economic powerhouse (and all of the bad that comes with that).

Yugoslavia's economy doesn't sound so successful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Socialist_Feder... High unemployment, billions in US foreign aid, etc.

I didn't see any mud huts in that article.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#324

Post by AnimalMuppet »

I think that the problem may be that people no longer believe in a future worth having.

If society is going to fall apart anyway, because of nuclear war/climate change/Trump/demographic collapse/soil depletion/microplastics/forever chemicals/peak oil/whatever, why should I care about trying to build a future? It won't come anyway. Why should I care about the quality of my work? Why should I care about having kids? Marriage, even? Why should I care about anything? "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (bad advice in any era, but seductive to those fighting against apathy).

Re: The Who Cares Era

#325

Post by biophysboy »

wiseowise wrote: post #234
biophysboy wrote: post #35

I think people right now are way too willing to surrender their own judgment. AI is an example of this, but there are many others: restaurant ratings, movie metascores, political polls, college rankings, engagement metrics, etc. These kinds of data should be a part of decision making, but not all of it. Otherwise, you get this passive, "who cares" mentality that the author describes.

What do you base your decision on if not data?

I have no problem with people using data per se; I dislike people using data blindly, without thinking about the collection/analysis methods, personal preferences, etc.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#326

Post by cafard »

icelancer wrote: post #313
Night_Thastus wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not that the dudes don't care, it's that the dudes have 15 other things expected of them, which weren't expected 15 years ago and caring capacity feels like a biological limit I genuinely think this is a factor in some ways. 500 years ago, what were people worried about? Their immediate concerns, those of family, and neighbors. Realistically, there was no way to get caught up in the minute-by-minute concerns of…

People are expected to care about things they have zero control over and have ~zero impact on their lives or their family's lives. It's ridiculous. I get a ton of crap for not reading the news or caring about stuff happening 3500 miles away that I can't do anything about.

An archduke shot in Bosnia, or an incident near a bridge in northern China?

Re: The Who Cares Era

#327

Post by phkahler »

alabastervlog wrote: post #258
Night_Thastus wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not that the dudes don't care, it's that the dudes have 15 other things expected of them, which weren't expected 15 years ago and caring capacity feels like a biological limit I genuinely think this is a factor in some ways. 500 years ago, what were people worried about? Their immediate concerns, those of family, and neighbors. Realistically, there was no way to get caught up in the minute-by-minute concerns of…

I think a lot of harm has been caused by "automation" actually meaning "distributing parts of the same tasks among a bunch of people". As far as I can tell that's one of the main outcomes of "efficiencies" from computerization of offices, among other places: they mostly just made it feasible to carve up the job of e.g. secretary among everybody , adding to the number of things and processes each worker has to underst…

>> they mostly just made it feasible to carve up the job of e.g. secretary among everybody, adding to the number of things and processes each worker has to understand and deal with.

A previous generations old guy told me about this. He worked in the defense industry 50 years ago. You know, they had secretaries or admins that would handle all sorts of things for the engineers. Then the government changed the way they did contracts and companies couldn't bill for "overhead" any more. So the engineers (who bill to the project) had to start handling all those other things themselves and most of the support staff went away.

It's not that hard to handle any one thing, but if you do get the chance to work somewhere with a person that can "just handle that for you" it's really kind of amazing how much mental energy that frees up for your main tasks.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#328

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

1dom wrote: post #149

I read the title and it triggered something I've been thinking a lot lately: there's too much for everyone to care about right now. Article didn't really touch on it directly, but: > something that sounded like every other thing: some dude talking to some other dude about apps that some third dude would half-listen-to at 2x speed while texting a fourth dude about plans for later. It's not that the dudes don't care, i…

> the age of tech we are living in now is not the one any of us thought we were working to create

The emergence of the smartphone and The Internet (as a cultural phenomenon) was such an exciting time.

I came of age during the dawn of the smartphone (graduated right as the iPhone was released) and watched all of these nascent markets emerge, connecting people in exciting and novel ways.

Seemed like it went downhill so fast.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#329

Post by chrisco255 »

XorNot wrote: post #239
chrisco255 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I asked Reddit and TeamBlind how to best deal with this kind of situation > a lot of them, 99% of the answers go along these lines "Who the fuck cares man > So, that was my wake up call Let me get this right, you discovered your team was mediocre, you then asked the clinically cynical folks at Reddit for advice, people you don't even know and people who certainly don't know you, and the conclusion you walked away w…

But that's the same answer? Like, the answer you're giving is still a WTFC answer - it's just "leave". The things that are broken at that company, which are the things people keep reacting to in this thread as "why is service X so bad?"... they're going to stay broken. It's still not caring.

That's not WTFC. The WTFC peeps were telling them to collect a check and not bother caring.

If you care enough to leave, you actually do care about the quality of your work. No, you can't fix other people, but you can change your environment.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#330

Post by saubeidl »

WalterBright wrote: post #322
saubeidl wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that was the lifestyle in Yugoslavia? And their heyday was half a century ago at this point. You're presenting a false dichotomy. Nobody's gonna live in a mud hut using a spinning wheel just because workers run companies.

Why did 20 million people over the last 4 years sneak into America? How many Americans left for Yugoslavia?

How many Yugoslavs left for America?
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