51–60 of 108 posts
"Look, personally I'm all for smoking bans, so don't attack me, I just want to point out those studies that show that statistically, people in no-smoking areas have almost the same amount of respiratory symptoms as people in the regular areas. Maybe the real issue is our outdated idea of 'clean air'..."
That was a great article, or maybe it was just a lot of gibberish that failed to say much of anything.
The article reveals that the broader debate is more gibberish and less settled than we tend to think.
Things are changing too quickly, technologically at an unprecedented speed and as a consequence socially in unpredictable ways. We've gone from only having the TV and newspapers, to computers, smartphones, social networks, now actual machines you can talk to like they were humans, in like 30 years total. Quantifying the psychological and sociological effect of it all is nigh impossible. Everyone just does whatever seems like a good idea and hopes for the best, and of course there's no shortage of those talking out of their ass because there is no data yet to prove or disprove any real guidelines to anything.
A meteoric rise on anxiety is a completely rational response to that imo, with climate change looming above as a cherry on top.
I feel like the same article could have written 30 years ago about smoking. "Look, personally I'm all for smoking bans, so don't attack me, I just want to point out those studies that show that statistically, people in no-smoking areas have almost the same amount of respiratory symptoms as people in the regular areas. Maybe the real issue is our outdated idea of 'clean air'..."
Not smoking works, but maybe people need more freedom to hurt themselves. I’d support that if society didn’t have to pay their bills later on.
I feel like the same article could have written 30 years ago about smoking. "Look, personally I'm all for smoking bans, so don't attack me, I just want to point out those studies that show that statistically, people in no-smoking areas have almost the same amount of respiratory symptoms as people in the regular areas. Maybe the real issue is our outdated idea of 'clean air'..."
If the respiratory symptom you’re talking about is lung cancer then the rate of that has dropped by hundreds of thousands. Not smoking works, but maybe people need more freedom to hurt themselves. I’d support that if society didn’t have to pay their bills later on.
I believe social media and phone use could have a similar dynamic - like the kids said themselves, it's more a "collective action" than an individual problem.
That was what I was trying to get at with that analogy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article reveals that the broader debate is more gibberish and less settled than we tend to think.
I think that in and of itself shows the broader problem: nobody knows what the fuck is going on anymore. Things are changing too quickly, technologically at an unprecedented speed and as a consequence socially in unpredictable ways. We've gone from only having the TV and newspapers, to computers, smartphones, social networks, now actual machines you can talk to like they were humans, in like 30 years total. Quantifyi…
One observation I made when I was a teacher was that the more we did to help students (as a cohort) with their mental health, the worse it became. My theory is that teenagers are experimenting with different identities, so when you give them a seminar on anxiety and depression, some of them try those on for size. Moral of the story: trying to pre-emptively solve a problem can cause the problem or cause a different pr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same happens in the USA all the time. Don't let media impressions fill you.
Walking or riding my bike to school was certainly not an option. I know very few people (no one?) for which those were options. It was difficult to visit my friends as well so I spent a lot of time alone.
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Shortchanging? Do you have any idea what a "typical" middle class lifestyle was like in the 1960s? (Not the romanticized one). Do you think they were eating organic avocados? Life and technology and healthcare and many other things are objectively better in many, many ways.
Maybe not organic avocados but more likely to be eating produce from your own backyard garden. That was done for cost reasons back then but today local and seasonal produce is a staple of high end restaurants.
It is somewhat sad that things have gradually become more un-tinkerable. What used to be a bunch of large components over a large circuit board, or maybe even a mechanical system is now a tiny chip with literally no way to tell anything about it when you disassemble it.
On the other hand, there's far, far more resources for dedicated tinkering these days. $5 microcontrollers and electronics kits 20 years ago? Not a thing. Internet guides you can follow to master it all? Good luck with books that are too hard for you to start reading without a mentor or a school. Learning tinkering has never been easier, but people's motivation for it has never been lower either.