Of course no one cares. How do you think we ended up with all the things we have today?
The Who Cares Era
591–600 of 765 posts
Re: The Who Cares Era
#592So, I'm living in a Buddhist Monastery. This article basically details why.
In Buddhism, we talk sometimes talk about how apathy is the "near enemy" of equanimity. That is, equanimity is good and apathy is bad, but sometimes apathy looks like equanimity.
I was a software engineer for several years, and what was hardest for me was this exact "who cares" attitude. I wanted to do good work, but that was not the culture.
Now I seek the extinguishment of suffering. No one here says "who cares" here about this work. It's deeply refreshing. I feel very lucky to be here.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#593The 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…
I'm nearing forty and I have a sneaky suspicion it's a weird cultural thing. A bit like the Romans lamenting the fall of their culture right at the start of their golden age and they never stopped doing that. Always looking back saying shit sucks now and how in the old days everything centered on competence and morality. Men were actual men back then. That sort of thing. Some parts of it might have made a tad kind of…
I appreciate this nuanced take, thanks for writing it.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#594Earlier 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…
The problem isn't just laziness or corporate greed, though those play a role. It's the result of a financial system that has spent years prioritizing short-term profits over lasting value. When success is measured by clicks, quarterly earnings, and engagement metrics rather than quality or truth, the natural outcome is a flood of cheap, disposable content. The AI-generated newspaper supplement isn't an exception, it'…
In a nutshell, money is the root of our evil. I bet there are some 19th century books about this.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#595I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…
I'll add one: New house construction. There are now multiple building inspectors who are making ad revenue on youtube by showing how bad the standard of construction is.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#596I was just kvetching about this to my partner over breakfast. Not exactly, but a parallel observation, that a lot of people are just kind of shit at their jobs. The utility tech who turned my tiny gas leak into a larger gas leak and left. The buildings around me that take the better part of a decade to build (really? A parking garage takes six years?) Cops who have decided it's their job to do as little as possible.…
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…
And one of the cut corners is not letting bad employees go, because hiring costs money and they might be struggling just to stay in business.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#597Re: The Who Cares Era
#598The 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…
I wonder, how do you decide to care about something?
For me, the metric is one of empathy: would I want someone else to suffer through what I just suffered through? No? Do I have any influence over that outcome?
The Serenity Prayer is very real to me. So is "be the change you want to see in the world"
Re: The Who Cares Era
#599The 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…
I'm in my 60s and think the future is here. I remember writing for my college admissions essay about at some point computer intelligence would overtake biological and here we are, pretty much. I guess weird and terrifying but also with possibilities for abundance and immortality. Should be interesting at any rate.
YES! I am in my mid twenties and I have only seen unimaginable technological progress from the early 2000’s to now. From the small white Panasonic television in my childhood kitchen and having to reboot my family desktop computer when zoo tycoon froze it, to playing massive multiplayer games like runescape and Roblox with real people, that was incredible!, to seeing an iPhone for the first time, the higs boson being confirmed, gravitational waves, electric cars becoming a real thing, how you can go nearly anywhere in the world and touch your phone to pay without cash, or use google maps to figure out when and where to go anywhere no matter where you are, to ChatGPT and LLM’s, which can alchemize all of our human knowledge to approximately/exact answers to questions that have never been asked before.
The future has been a lot more interesting than people are giving it credit for, atleast my brief slice of it so far.
Re: The Who Cares Era
#600So, I'm living in a Buddhist Monastery. This article basically details why. In Buddhism, we talk sometimes talk about how apathy is the "near enemy" of equanimity. That is, equanimity is good and apathy is bad, but sometimes apathy looks like equanimity. I was a software engineer for several years, and what was hardest for me was this exact "who cares" attitude. I wanted to do good work, but that was not the culture.…
Honest question: why visit HN from a monastery?