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The Who Cares Era

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Re: The Who Cares Era

#351

Post by _DeadFred_ »

ambicapter wrote: post #58
safety1st wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's inflation. And I don't just mean Covid era inflation. Inflation has been an on-again, off-again problem since the collapse of Bretton Woods. It's because of inflation that slowly and subtly, everything gets shittier all the time. It encourages businesses to cut corners, shave costs, and find cheap labor overseas. It encourages you to not give a fuck about your job because you haven't had a raise in 5 yea…

I’m doubtful because things always got a little worse all the time even before money existed. It’s the natural state of nature; erosion. Cleaning up after yourself and maintaining your space is a virtue for that very reason. Seems like that virtue is, itself, is in a state of disrepair (which implies an obvious course of action).

It really didn't always get worse for a while (at least in the US). McDonalds went from just a burger/rare treat to affordable, to so affordable we had to pass laws to limit how much food they gave out. Homes grew in size, stopped having shared bedrooms/bathrooms. Everyone started having dishwashers/microwaves in their kitchens. Clothes purchases moved from planned to spur of the moment. 27 inch TVs stopped being the norm. (I know this one is cliche, we'd rather decent lives than fancier circuses to distract, but at the time it was a 'wow the future is here' moment, big TVs only existed in rich friends homes, and they were HORRIBLE because they upscaled content designed for 27 inch TVs). Exercise clubs went from only for the rich tennis clubs to affordable gyms. Kids got their OWN computers. Meanwhile, quality was improving everywhere. Shoes, oh my god did shoes get better. Clothing quality got better to the point people in the 80s routinely just started wearing silk (SILK!!! can you believe it?) shirts. Sheet thread counts actually became a thing, holy moley the luxury. Computers went from Commodore 64s to modern wonders. Foods people ate at home/out got fancier, with all kinds of new discoveries.

My entire life up until 2008, almost everything around was getting better/cheaper. Yesterday at the store I wanted ice cream. I walked the aisle. Half the brands can no longer call themselves 'ice cream' legally. None of it felt like food to me. There is boutiques super expensive 'ice cream', but there used to be buckets of family friends priced 'ice cream' not whatever slop they sell now for the masses. Every single 'old school' brand I'm familiar with was a hollowed out corpse living off the name but selling trash that I don't consider fit (and remember, this is the junk food, already not really fit, segment).

Re: The Who Cares Era

#352

Post by mdavid626 »

Brace yourself — it’ll get only worse. The geene is out of the bottle and not possible to put it back. Software engineering will become everything, but engineering.

I consider myself as someone who cares and takes pride in creating software. I barely can take working in the industry anymore… It’s time to become a goose farmer.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#353

Post by alabastervlog »

gilbetron wrote: post #347

The future is gone. I'm in my 50s, and for nearly all of that time I thought, dreamt, and worked towards a future that I read about, researched, talked to others about, and consumed media about. But over the past several years I realize it is gone. I thought maybe it was just my age, but it seems like the world is doing the same, so maybe not my age. Another thread mentions that no one talks about "life in the 22nd c…

> Even companies don't really talk about the future anymore, just vague AI thoughts (and often crazy negative ones, witness the CEOs talking about the white collar bloodbath coming).

The currently-ascendant business and political leaders pushing some mix of millenarian wankery and a conspiratorial mindset with all the finesse of 3rd-rate carnival barkers while stealing everything in sight definitely has me pretty down on, like, anything mattering.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#354

Post by numb7rs »

cafard wrote: post #326
icelancer wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is a good point, but the average person is unlikely to hear about a skirmish on a different continent, and then know they should start stocking up on tinned food and bottled water. The problem is with the volume of information. It's impossible to take all of it in, so you need to pick and choose, and stay within your own limits. Some people might have the capacity read a whole newspaper's worth a day, others can only manage the local headlines.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#355

Post by bakuninsbart »

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…

My initial reaction was to be rather dismissive as to AI being the thing to care about, but rather the rise of fascism and authoritarianism across the West - rather clearly proving your point. I do truly believe that AI will be bad for some people (myself included to a degree), but it is far less dangerous than the political shift we are feeling.

But it is true that we are supposed to feel strongly about a myriad things. And possibly more damaging, we are supposed to be a dozen things as well - rich, career-minded, pretty, athletic, spiritually centered, vegan, environmentally-conscious, politically educated, a model partner, there-for-our-children, well-travelled, financially responsible, and so much more... Each of these points is individually good, but social pressure mainly enforced through social media is turning the good life into a sort of whack-a-mole challenge people get burnt out on.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#357

Post by porridgeraisin »

greenavocado wrote: post #283
InvisibleUp wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s Blackstone that’s investing in single-family homes, not BlackRock. They also only own 0.06% of US single-family housing stock. Easy mistake to make. Also, there was absolutely inflation before Bretton Woods, and significantly worse inflation at that. See, for example, the hyperinflation during Weimar Germany which led to WWII. Or the nearly 10% deflation in the US during the Great Depression, which just exacerba…

The Weimar hyperinflation wasn't caused by gold's limitations - it was the inevitable result of political cowardice and monetary arson. After WWI, Germany made the fatal decision to abandon gold convertibility and fund reparations through the printing press, transforming the mark from 4.2 to $1 in 1914 to 4.2 trillion to $1 by 1923. This wasn't some unavoidable monetary phenomenon but a deliberate policy choice to av…

Can't remember the last time I agreed with every sentence in an HN comment.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#358

Post by dowager_dan99 »

WalterBright wrote: post #157
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…

> it's all due to the focus on short-term financial results I've heard that my whole life. If that were generally true, company stocks would be going steadily downwards.

are you discounting the supply of new companies that continually replace the decliners? What's happening to those the previously existed for 50+years? Will we ever see a new company last 100+ years?

Re: The Who Cares Era

#359

Post by lolinder »

david-gpu wrote: post #337
icelancer wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, it's not that we don't care, or that it doesn't affect us directly, it's the complete lack of agency that makes us disinterested. Why focus our attention on the million things that we can do nothing about, when we could focus instead on the very few things where we can make a difference? There are plenty of people out there who live their lives rarely watching the news, or browsing social media, and it is reall…

The argument is rarely that their lives are worse, it's that they're somehow making other people's lives worse by not paying attention to X, Y, or Z injustice. But even that argument doesn't really hold water.

I know people who are so incapacitated by their anger, frustration, and sadness about the Gaza war that they spiral into depression and are incapable of making any impact on the world directly around them. In their own words, they say that they have a hard time seeing how anything they do locally really matters when such terrible things are happening elsewhere. Their excessive amount of care about things outside of their control has actively hampered their ability to care about things that they actually can influence.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#360

Post by cloudpushers »

Totally. This isn’t just an AI issue, it’s a reflection of a larger shift where speed and cost-efficiency matter more than accuracy or intent. AI just amplifies the effects. When every step of the process is driven by “good enough,” you end up with work that no one really stands behind beyond a seed round.
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