The world has always been complicated.
Go back 10,000 years.
You can’t control the weather. You don’t know what will poison you. You’re always worried about food and safety.
We've made the world too complicated
341–350 of 496 posts
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#342HN will suggest we solve this complication problem with yet another layer of technology. This sort of complication like a ratchet; it only goes one way. I am with the author here, but so many people love this complicated world. If they could be more packed in, more distracted, have even greater abundance most people would choose that option every time. For individuals, all you can choose to do is simplify your home l…
every solution engineers a greater problem. Solving horse poop with cars -> Climate change
No, the solution usually creates a caste of citizens unaware that they would not even exist without it,vehemently protesting against the solutions because of sideeffects.
Take the imperialism of old: people did not do this because beeing evil is fun. They did this because beeing exponential in a linear world produces conflict anyway and to dim the lights elsewhere allowed you to keep the civilizations lights on in the heartland longer.
People fought wars for fertilizer. Now you have hippies protesting against fertilizer made with harber bosch, who would kill each other as some north korean stunted growth dwarfs in imperial wars if they would get their wish.
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grab a coin right now, try to call the result. If you fail, your child dies before age 10. That was REALITY in the XII century. If you like that better by all means, contact a therapist as soon as possible.
>Grab a coin right now, try to call the result. If you fail, your child dies before age 10. And today's reality is that the child would not die, but with a similar chance (may be not right now but in the near future) will have some disease that would make the child's and the families life hell until they run out of resources...and then child dies anyway.... Do you like that better?
You think *half of children* are going to have life-ending diseases that will "make the child's and the families life hell until they run out of resources"???
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#344People have been saying this since the dawn of civilization. What is always overlooked is survival is complicated.
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#345This reminds me of the central ideas in Adam Curtis's Hypernormalization[1]. I feel the pressure of the complexity, too, but attempting to oversimplify complex things has consequences. "Politicians, financiers and technological utopians, rather than face up to the real complexities of the world, retreated. Instead, they constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang on to power. And as this fake world gr…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_c2qqA-6Y
Trying to watch, I have never had a youTube video with such a poor experience. Every 20 seconds there is a 2-5 second buffering. extremely painful.
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#346I think this feeling of everything being too complex is a natural consequence of work that is done for long-term abstract ends, rather than immediate and local ones. At least I think it is for me. Working remotely for an international software company is great for its lifestyle flexibility, but sometimes I just want to be a baker, chef, bike repairman, etc. that solves an immediate problem for a real person standing…
If this is the case, maybe the solution is to understand more about the impact of one's work on the service being sold to customers. I find that having people reliant on my work to do something important, however abstract, scratches the itch on feeling useful. If a company is unable to connect the positive customer impact of an employee's work (and seeing that they're increasing the happiness/decreasing the unhappine…
Large companies break down the work into small pieces, many teams, many layers of abstraction. As a developer, I actually enjoyed doing some customer support calls with users, to connect with how they use the software, and what’s not working for them. Almost no large workplace will offer you this option.
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#347HN will suggest we solve this complication problem with yet another layer of technology. This sort of complication like a ratchet; it only goes one way. I am with the author here, but so many people love this complicated world. If they could be more packed in, more distracted, have even greater abundance most people would choose that option every time. For individuals, all you can choose to do is simplify your home l…
every solution engineers a greater problem. Solving horse poop with cars -> Climate change
It is a bit like saying that by reducing child mortality to almost zero, we created a huge problem with Alzheimer's.
Not exactly wrong, but an extremely pessimistic perspective which ignores all the positives of the process.
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess the issue is that, on average, our society looks more like Phillip Morris or Meta than it looks like a school or an hospital. And, most of all, the people our society promotes to steer itself tend to be the kind that thrives at Meta rather than in a school.
To be more precise, the late stage capitalism phase we are in has designed itself around destroying anything that contributes to society. Nothing can exist without making a profit. If there is something that is useful, our system makes sure it will be exploited for maximum profit which will in turn destroy that very things.
The people leading this society right now sincerely believe that empathy is the fundamental weakness of our civilization, and introspection is something to be avoided as much as possible. I believe our state of affairs stems from those two propositions.
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Grab a coin right now, try to call the result. If you fail, your child dies before age 10. And today's reality is that the child would not die, but with a similar chance (may be not right now but in the near future) will have some disease that would make the child's and the families life hell until they run out of resources...and then child dies anyway.... Do you like that better?
You think *half of children* are going to have life-ending diseases that will "make the child's and the families life hell until they run out of resources"???
I think we are on that trajectory, yes.
And a huge contributor is the perception that it is OK, because we have advanced medical procedures for them...for who can afford them.
So capitalism/consumerism makes them sick (indiscriminately) and then sells them cure (when they can). Progress!
Re: We've made the world too complicated
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be more precise, the late stage capitalism phase we are in has designed itself around destroying anything that contributes to society. Nothing can exist without making a profit. If there is something that is useful, our system makes sure it will be exploited for maximum profit which will in turn destroy that very things.
The people leading this society right now sincerely believe that empathy is the fundamental weakness of our civilization, and introspection is something to be avoided as much as possible. I believe our state of affairs stems from those two propositions.
And much of our society believes those two things. You see it every day watching people interact in public with a sense of extreme entitlement. Toxic individualism.