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>I only read stories to my kids that have good old-fashioned happy endings. A crisis occurs and the heroes overcome it by finding new knowledge and bravery. On

>I only read stories to my kids that have good old-fashioned happy endings. A crisis occurs and the heroes overcome it by finding new knowledge and bravery. Only? Why? (Pure curiousity, no judgement.)

roceasta 9y ago
Parents in general don't read pessimistic literature to young children. (Nor would you I think!) So it is perverse and demoralising for society that adult sci-fi has been so consistently pessimistic for the past three decades. It engenders despair and nihilism imo.
slededit 9y ago
It's important to distill a sense of agency in children. That they can control at least some aspects of their future. In my opinion one of societies current ailes is that we underestimate the amount of agency individuals have in society.
- mmirate 9y ago
  Underestimated? These "underestimations" seem very accurate to me, and without a 300-million-person hive-mind, I can't imagine anything different. Any single person who isn't a politician, intelligence agent, etc., is meaningless today, and no single cause is capable of rallying enough popular support to have any impact in the first-past-the-post polls.
  - slededit 9y ago
    You don't need an election to make your own way in life.
    - mmirate 9y ago
      Well, there aren't any more unsolved problems that aren't touched by politics (n.b. this wasn't the case back when CS was a new field and better algorithms were being discovered left and right), and it's no easier to get into a royal family than to get the right person elected.
      - slededit 9y ago
        With respect I think that's a very myopic view. I don't think one should build their life around "problems" regardless but if you choose to do so there are two revolutions happening simultaneously. Self driving vehicles were Sci Fi just a few years ago, and Bitcoin is changing how we think of currency.
        mmirate 9y ago
        If the SEC performs a particular action, Bitcoin can be deep-sixed, at least domestically, and since the US likes to export its laws (cf. copyright), probably worldwide in time. Self-driving vehicles' practicality as a mass product, iirc, is currently dependent on not-yet-achieved processor hardware (ops per second, ops per watt, etc.) and battery energy density, without which they have insufficient visual-processing capabilities and range, respectively. (Yes, those are hardware problems not political problems; still, not being an engineer in either of those fields I've no more agency over them than over political problems.) Even after that, they will still be dependent on having not too many regulatory bottlenecks (cf. what the FAA has done to avionics for the past few decades) or legally-mandated misfeatures (cf. Cory Doctorow's Car Wars).

roceasta 9y ago

Parents in general don't read pessimistic literature to young children. (Nor would you I think!) So it is perverse and demoralising for society that adult sci-fi has been so consistently pessimistic for the past three decades. It engenders despair and nihilism imo.

slededit 9y ago

It's important to distill a sense of agency in children. That they can control at least some aspects of their future. In my opinion one of societies current ailes is that we underestimate the amount of agency individuals have in society.

mmirate 9y ago
Underestimated? These "underestimations" seem very accurate to me, and without a 300-million-person hive-mind, I can't imagine anything different. Any single person who isn't a politician, intelligence agent, etc., is meaningless today, and no single cause is capable of rallying enough popular support to have any impact in the first-past-the-post polls.
- slededit 9y ago
  You don't need an election to make your own way in life.
  - mmirate 9y ago
    Well, there aren't any more unsolved problems that aren't touched by politics (n.b. this wasn't the case back when CS was a new field and better algorithms were being discovered left and right), and it's no easier to get into a royal family than to get the right person elected.
    - slededit 9y ago
      With respect I think that's a very myopic view. I don't think one should build their life around "problems" regardless but if you choose to do so there are two revolutions happening simultaneously. Self driving vehicles were Sci Fi just a few years ago, and Bitcoin is changing how we think of currency.
      - mmirate 9y ago
        If the SEC performs a particular action, Bitcoin can be deep-sixed, at least domestically, and since the US likes to export its laws (cf. copyright), probably worldwide in time. Self-driving vehicles' practicality as a mass product, iirc, is currently dependent on not-yet-achieved processor hardware (ops per second, ops per watt, etc.) and battery energy density, without which they have insufficient visual-processing capabilities and range, respectively. (Yes, those are hardware problems not political problems; still, not being an engineer in either of those fields I've no more agency over them than over political problems.) Even after that, they will still be dependent on having not too many regulatory bottlenecks (cf. what the FAA has done to avionics for the past few decades) or legally-mandated misfeatures (cf. Cory Doctorow's Car Wars).