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The Who Cares Era

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Re: The Who Cares Era

#571

Post by babyent »

testing22321 wrote: post #469
babyent wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just filter out those kinds of people? I filter out people like that because A. They’re not on the same level B. I won’t hire them and I wouldn’t work with them C. They serve no purpose to me in my life because I don’t even want to hang out with them

Because you have to deal with them anytime you want to get anything done - planning and approval offices, tax departments, construction crews, contractors and on and on. Life in the outside world means relying on a ton of people doing their jobs decently.

True, and oh man I can relate so much to that.

Ugh..

Re: The Who Cares Era

#572

Post by TeMPOraL »

rexpop wrote: post #332
softfalcon wrote: post #253

The hardest thing to do in life is to care. It's easy to not care, anything bad can happen and you can blissfully wash your hands of it. You don't care, so it doesn't matter. I remember being a teenager, my defense against anything bad that happened to me was, "I don't care" with a snide attitude. I was lying, I did care, but I built up a mindset that not caring about anything made me stronger. As an adult, I know th…

Thucydides of Athens quotes Pericles as having used a specific term for citizens who were not interested in public affairs, the community, or issues beyond their own private lives: idiotes (ἰδιώτης).

Did the Ancients ever figure out what to do when it's near-impossible to be interested enough in public affairs to gain an accurate understanding of things, and even if one manages that, it's pretty much impossible to meaningfully act on that understanding?

It's one thing when "public affairs" and affairs of your local community are one and the same. But modern democracies seem to be actively preventing citizens from being actually informed about anything, and the granularity of elections ensures people's opinions (ill-informed or otherwise) are uncorrelated with end results.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#573

Post by TeMPOraL »

asadotzler wrote: post #413
Vrondi wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody talks about "life in the 22nd century" in the way they talked about "life in the 21st century" in recent decades, because for the past 24 years we've been at the _beginning_ of a century. Once we get halfway through the 21st century, the talk about "life in the 22nd century" will really ramp up.

You apparently never learned about the 1939 New York World's Fair's "The World of Tomorrow" expo. That didn't wait for the century half way point. How about the 1900 Paris Expo and the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, which both also featured predictions and prototypes of future technologies that got everyone from workers to sci-fi writers focused on flying cars and moving sidewalks. Hardly anyone on this site has any sens…

I've heard of those - and while I never really dug into details of what was presented or why, I believe I got the overall vibe of those expos - and that vibe is, sadly, missing today.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#574

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #176
sp0rk wrote: post #66

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 in…

“ 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.” Exactly. Companies and wealthy people have cancelled the social contract a long time ago and have decided to go for profit at any cost. It’s hard to be excited about work when you know that you get raises below inflation rate while the comp…

In software specifically, we're now at year two+ where the entirety of investment and innovation is in literally replacing people.

We have CEOs and prominent figureheads making openly hostile statements about replacing their software workforce with LLMs, and coming out with bold proclamations about whatever models are going to be better than whatever title of developer in $TIME.

How there can be any loyalty or long-term thinking from employees at all in such circumstances is beyond me.

I can't even think of an analogous scenario at any time in my life. Open worker hostility.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#575

Post by maximus-decimus »

bloomingeek wrote: post #99

It's the dumbing down of society, but the worst of it is concerning the average "Joe and Jane" in America. Why is it the worst, because they are a huge voting block. I'm a high school grad who had no desire to go to college, but I've always had a love of reading and usually questioned everything. I made a living in the trades and have very little complaints. I worked with hundreds of people, both young and old, and n…

My mother is 70 years old and has never bothered to learn how to change the volume of the tv using a controller. My father was recently in the hospital and she had to learn how to put gas in her car.

I love her, but it's truly mind boggling how little she cares about learning stuff.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#576

Post by THroaway225 »

b112 wrote: post #40
saltwatercowboy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK real wages stagnated directly in line with the 2008 financial crisis [1]. Enough has been written about 'too big to fail' that I don't need to rehash it, but ascribing guilt to the workers of a chronically underpaid and historically innovative nation doesn't feel right. [1] Office of National Statistics via BBC: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/2560/cpsprodpb/13FD8/p...

Wage stagnation always happens at the start of any economic downturn. However, once over and the economy resumes, typically the stagnation ends, and wages jump. The massive, huge cynic in me says, people make less because all they do is stare at their phones. Yes, I know, I'm overstating things a bit. But the other day I noticed the approx 20 year old garbage collector, was staring at his phone the whole time. I am n…

people are addicted to their phones, its true, and its becoming so normalized that having any interest in talking to people you dont already know is considered antisocial

Re: The Who Cares Era

#577

Post by dttze »

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?

Ah yes, taking the last 4 years post pandemic, in the midst of massive climate change, and in a near world war and then comparing it to 60+ years ago in the height of the Cold War and US global dominance.

You should change your name to Walter Dim.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#578

Post by TeMPOraL »

e-topy wrote: post #294
sam-cop-vimes wrote: post #120

It comes down to what is "popular" culture. When I was young, society presented mostly people with intellectual achievements as role models which spurred a generation to strive. Hard work, humility, respect for others were actively inculcated into the growing generation. Children had few external influences other than their immediate circle of family, friends, neighbours and the school community. Now we have reality…

> I read somewhere that every augmentation is also an amputation. Progress in tech means we are constantly lobotomising a majority of the population. Just thought about something: There are a few sides to this. There is innovation that just makes things easier but doesn't amputate, like typing machines vs word (took me a while to come up with an example, essentially just evolution). Then there are things that are so…

> typing machines vs word

That actually had substantial negative consequences that still go mostly unrecognized. MS Word was an improvement over typewriters - such a big improvement, in fact, that it allowed people to do things they previously wouldn't, including things they'd pay other people to do. This is actually a bigger deal than it sounds.

In short, office productivity tools allowed people to do things they'd otherwise delegate to others. You could write memos and reports yourself, instead of asking your secretary. You could manage your calendar and tasks yourself, instead of having someone else do it for you. You could design your own presentations quickly, instead of asking graphics department for help. And so on, and so on.

What happened then, all those specialized departments got downsized; you now have to write your own memos and manage your own calendar, because there are no secretaries around to do it for you. Same for graphics, same for communication, same for expense reporting, etc. Specialized roles disappeared, and along with them the salaries they commanded - but the work they did did not go away. Instead, it got spread out and distributed among everyone else, in tiny pieces - tiny enough, to not be visible in the books; also tiny enough to not benefit from specialization of labor.

Now apply this pattern to all other categories of software, especially anything that lets you do yourself the things you'd pay others to do before.

And then people are surprised why actual productivity gains didn't follow expectations at scale, despite all the computerization. That's because a chunk of expectations are just an accounting trick. Money saved on salaries gets counted; costs of the same work being less efficient and added to everyone else's workload (including non-linear effect of reducing focus) are not counted.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#579

Post by holtkam2 »

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…

No one on this site or on earth has any idea what the next 5, 10, or 30 years will bring. They will likely bring a world which is so radically different from today it's incomprehensible. But that doesn't mean strictly worse.

Consider that with such extreme randomness the future has an unknown probability of introducing enormous improvement in daily life, for you specifically and for society in general. Are you pricing in the odds that within your lifetime, humanity could find a cure for aging? What are the odds that democracy makes a huge comeback, driving authoritarianism down across the world, even in China and North Korea? Nonzero, to be sure. Have you priced that in as well?

Don't over-focus on the things that you'll miss about the past, or the negatives aspects of the future which you expect will come. They may, but if they do, they'll likely be bundled with incomprehensibly good things, and the net effect may be quite, or even extraordinarily, positive.

Re: The Who Cares Era

#580

Post by try_the_bass »

acureau wrote: post #560
try_the_bass wrote: post #339

I don't think I agree with this. As someone who has cared deeply about sometimes esoteric things, I've found that caring is actually the shortest path to being _hated_, mostly by other people who care about the same things but for different reasons. The best thing I did for my own sanity was to stop caring so much. But this is still the case. One of the things I care the most about is having a consistent moral framew…

I am the kind of person who is very inconsistent. My opinions and identity are fluid, often I learn something new or see something from a different perspective and my framework gets adjusted. So I've come to understand that I don't have a framework. I have a constantly changing state. There are people such as yourself who live by rigid guidelines, there are people such as myself who live by morphing guidelines, and t…

But I don't live by rigid rules, as a general rule. I have a rigid moral framework, perhaps, but that doesn't mean my opinions and identity aren't fluid, as well.

My first rule for myself is that I must always acknowledge that I could be wrong. This demands that my opinions remain fluid, because it's not possible for me to be right about everything I think I think I'm right about.

So I think you're wrong, and I think you're making a huge number of assumptions based off of very little concrete evidence.

The negativity stems from seeing the current world of social media, in which people constantly put forth strong moral statements, full of black-and-white thinking and absolute statements--and summarily contradicting the very moral frameworks they purport to uphold in the process of doing so.

And then seeing the hundreds (or thousands, or even millions!) of people agreeing with them, all not sparing a single thought for whether or not they're being internally consistent.

The social world is frothing with righteous hypocrites, and the most frustrating are those who claim to stand for inclusion, positivity, and the denouncement of hatred, while simultaneously being quickest to hate when faced with disagreement.

So, no, I'm not convinced that people "just want to get along". More and more, I think people just want to be "right", without any regard for the truth of the matter.

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