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The Who Cares Era

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Re: The Who Cares Era

#441

Post by zh3 »

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.

But you can. Out of the (limited) choices, vote for whoever you think is most in tune with how you'd like the world to be.

If almost no-one votes because they think it won't change anything, the few people who do care enough to vote get to say who's elected.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#442

Post by Night_Thastus »

smokel wrote: post #396
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…

> 500 years ago, what were people worried about? It wasn't so much different from our time. Read "Don Quixote" [1] and be amazed. Whether the updates you read are actually playing out live, or happening in a book doesn't make much of a difference, unless you are actually influencing events. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote

I think there is a difference in the shear density and speed of information. With modern news and social media apps, information can be pushed into someone in a way that just wasn't possible that long ago.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#443

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #211
lelandbatey wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being an economic powerhouse or not isn't required for the idea to be a reasonable and workable one. But given the high levels of dysfunction/conflict that led to the breakup of the country, I doubt they'd meet whatever bar you set for "economic powerhouse".

> the high levels of dysfunction/conflict Doesn't sound like Yugoslavia had a successful model.

[deleted]

Re: The Who Cares Era

#444

Post by leptons »

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…

>15 years ago, the world was in awe that stuxnet, a cyber attack, had impacted the real world. I was in cyber at the time, and the idea that day to day lives of normal people would be impacted in the real world was like Hollywood fiction: unthinkable.

Stuxnet did not impact any "normal people" at all. It was very explicitly targeted at the Iran nuclear program. I'd bet that most "normal people" have never even heard of "stuxnet" or know if it had any impact at all in their lives. I know plenty of "normal" people and I'd be hard pressed to find a single one of them that even know what stuxnet was. Outside of people very interested in computers and cyber attacks, very few people could tell you what stuxnet was.

Maybe if Iran had been able to create a nuclear bomb, and maybe if they had actually tried to use it (which would be extremely foolish and would destroy Iran) then maybe the hypothetical non-existence of stuxnet would have impacted some lives, but that's a big IF. Most people have no clue at all.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#445

Post by jmye »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #292
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…

Yes, and also there's no sense of proportion as we are being asked to care about every single possible thing. There's only one volume setting for everything: 11. It's exhausting.

So… turn it off. Social media is 99% of the firehose, and people adamantly refuse to do anything about it.

There’s no reason anyone needs the minute-by-minute Twitter-esque “information” feed, just like 24-hour news stations are a laughably idiotic waste of time and attention. There’s no reason “you” need to spend hours refreshing and obsessing about where your 6th-degree ‘friend’ is on vacation, or their promotion, or their new car or whatever.

Turn shit off.

Or drown, I guess.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#446

Post by intalentive »

WalterBright wrote: post #214
layer8 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no contradiction between stocks going up and things being mediocre due to focus on short-term profits.

Looks like a contradiction to me. If you're sacrificing the long term for the short term, your stock isn't going up.

Buybacks sacrifice long term investment for short term stock price gains.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#447

Post by chasd00 »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #355
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 thi…

A clever trick by BigOutrage was labeling people choosing not to engage as part of the enemy de jour. now, not having enough information and choosing to not participate in the debate puts you firmly in their bad guy territory.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#448

Post by groby_b »

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…

Let's be clear, it's not just the age of tech.

It's been normalized to offload things to the recipients, because it reduces cost. Be it self-checkout, be it governments and large corporate entities doing the absolute minimum and asking you to jump through endless hoops to achieve something.

We're shaving off costs everywhere, without eliminating the need to do that work. And so it travels down to the leaf nodes, to individuals. Who cares, quarterly results are up, OpEx is down, good times.

Tech has enabled some of these things, but ultimately it's the fetishization of Taylorism that got us here. If you can't measure it, it's not worth doing, and not doing it saves money, which you can measure.

This has now spread all the ways to individuals. The commons, always a resource in a precarious position, is now the place for everybody to proudly defecate on. Throwing away litter, listening to music without headphones, rudely shouldering people away - all of it is accepted, because heaven forbid the individual sacrifices for the group. It is, after all, not a thing that has positive impact for themselves.

I don't know what will break us out of it, but yes, caring is missing because we've eliminated non-egocentric things from the rewards function we think we should apply.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#450

Post by bowsamic »

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…

> caring capacity feels like a biological limit

I agree with that. At some point you just give up because there's literally nothing left for you to give. I've learnt to be very selective with what I choose to care about

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