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> How do we properly incentivize progress and innovation? There is no progress or innovation without qualifiers. > safest, most prosperous And most depressed

by musage 9y ago

> How do we properly incentivize progress and innovation? There is no progress or innovation without qualifiers. > safest, most prosperous And most depressed, most suicidal, most alienated, most amok running, most hysterical, most sophistry laden, most marketing raped, most mass produced, most polluted times ever. Millionaires today are poorer than paupers, artists today are more cloned and out of touch with themselves and the world than random citizens of other times and places. The ones who aren't 100% market whores, anyway, who at least pretend to themselves they're artists. We went from turning our world into meaninglessness to turning our selves into meaningless, mass produced objects. We can't even afford to make something for the sake of craftsmanship, or leave a blank space blank instead of smearing marketing. We went from everybody and their dog being a member of 20 and running 5 forums to everybody being on Facebook. We went from RSS to fucking Twitter, who "let users express themselves". Companies openly brag about wanting to create "compelling experiences", marketing people dog food their own idiotic slogans and are now honest when repeating them ad nauseam, because they're now actually this small and weak to actually believe actually all of it. We went from browser makers doing whatever to user agents and back to browser makers doing whatever and users just sitting there and hoping some of that will be fun for them, too. We went from metacrawlers to Google. We went from Apple, Atari, Amiga, IBM-PC to -- a few player essentially all doing the same user hostile, uninspired shit. How many newspapers are owned by how many conglomerates? And look at company names. Herply this, derply that. Look at people's names. Are you meaning to look me in the eye and tell me we're not approaching Idiocracy? 500 years was the science-fiction part about it. Give it 20. But safety and prosperity? Heh. It's the safety of securely being born dead. The biggest threat used to be death, now there is less and less difference between existing for a while, to shove some franchises in the mental and physical orifices, and not having been born. What does it profit a man? What does a man lose? I can't tell you the answer, but I can tell you who you shouldn't ask for that answer; the man who did lose his soul to gain the dissolution of the world, like some Midas turning things to poop. Nietzsche was right about some things, Erich Fromm was right about others, Hannah Arendt was right about everything, Einstein was right about people and who gives two shits about physics anyway, Orwell and Huxley were on to it, and then there's the thousands of others who I don't know but who all said the same things in various ways. Safety and prosperity? Fuck that. Life isn't safe, the whole universe isn't. Only death wants safety, only fear wants more, life wants to live. And yes, life is more fun when it's not reckless, when it is intentional. Food and shelter and medicine are great. That we focus on power and alienation while pretending they have anything to do with safety and prosperity, that we killed the point of living in the first place, that's the problem. Sorry for ranting, but you don't get to tell me what I've been told or how I judge things. If it's the safest and best in your opinion, fine. But if you simply state that as fact, you brought nothing to an everything fight.

libertyEQ 9y ago
>If it's the safest and best in your opinion, While being a poor translation of what I wrote, based on facts you are completely incorrect. Just tell me what you are for. I am using statistics. Do I need to cite sources for you to believe that this is the safest and most prosperous time in the history of humanity?
- eecc 9y ago
  In the history of that portion of humanity you "belong" to. There are several parts of the world where the last thing people feel before dying is the stink of their own diarrea; or the sound of rockets and drones about to tear them up; or the hopelessness of hunger... Since you're mentioning statistics, I'll mention the "Polli di Trilussa", whereby if the average says everyone has a chicken to eat and you're not getting any, don't worry because there's someone gorging on two.
- musage 9y ago
  Safety of what? Of pure physical life? Wouldn't prospering life imply some kind of vitality? Then how come we all just sit there and "hope" something will be done about climate change or nuclear proliferation? How come rising drug deaths? How come the need for a dedicated WP page about the suicide problem in Japan? How come the best we can hope for is for some to condemn war criminals - instead of their brothers and fathers and children disowning them as they rot in jail? How come Trump is president and Snowden can't go home? Prosperity? We cannot even afford same rights and laws applying to all period. We shine the boots of crazy sadists who get nothing out of it but a prolonging of their suffering and the damage they cause, and we just bite our lips and give a sympathetic shrug to those who should be in their place, or at least not get trampled in the dirt. Not that I'm saying there was ever justice for all, but we know a lot these days, we can do a lot these days, we have a lot these days; we could technically afford a striving towards instead of away from justice, just like we could afford everybody on the planet having food and shelter. Just like there is no need to plunder and mutilate language and thought, but we still do it. Workers used to be proud of reading and educating themselves, now even so called intellectuals can't face weighty authors. We truncate at best, and usually ignore outright. Not because that's milk and we now have meat, but because that's meat and we no longer have teeth. I hardly see anyone who can afford to just take in their surroundings and the people they are faced with. We now actually call movies franchises ourselves, as if the soulless way was the more advanced and correct one. Something "making sense" always has to take the backseat to "making business sense", and boo on anyone daring to more than shrug their shoulder and bite their lip. I see a lot of people who individually have and are nothing, who always have to refer to someone or something other than themselves. My main criticism isn't historical, it's that I see people getting weaker and lamer by the year, more and more without thoughts that are truly their own, everything is being handed off. I remember that recent discussion about tech "taking Saudi money", and many pointing out that it's just money. We cannot afford to distinct between 10$ taken from the purse of an elderly woman, and 10$ earned by fixing a chair. That's the biggest destruction of information I can think of. Oh, and we no longer can afford to print things on paper, and what we print on paper today often doesn't last as long as older books, kind of like houses. Please download the manual from a website that will be gone in N time units. Please upload your "culture" to YouTube, and put all your means of contact into the hands of Gmail and Facebook, put your free time into the black holes of EA and Disney and stream your reactions [sic, it should be called facial expression plus mouth noises] on Twitch. Those who do can't afford to talk in the first person singular just because we can't afford anything too grounded, since that would attract other grounded things and before you know it someone is turning on the light in the insane asylum torture chamber, and we can't have that. You cannot afford owning anything, and oh, we updated the terms of our license, you'll have to agree again to continue using our "services". We serve you. Just like in "the industry", we're being industrious. We no longer can afford to be alone with our thoughts and creations, and judge their value freely. Yet if that goes for everybody else, with what authority do we outsource judgement? And if it doesn't, with what authority do we let our own ability to judge to rot? > I am using statistics. Do I need to cite sources for you to believe that this is the safest and most prosperous time in the history of humanity? No, you need to put forward your own definitions, and you haven't even attempted to make the argument why only countable things should count. That in itself is the poverty of thought I am also referring to. You might say you're making part of my point for me.

by musage 9y ago

libertyEQ 9y ago

>If it's the safest and best in your opinion, While being a poor translation of what I wrote, based on facts you are completely incorrect. Just tell me what you are for. I am using statistics. Do I need to cite sources for you to believe that this is the safest and most prosperous time in the history of humanity?

eecc 9y ago
In the history of that portion of humanity you "belong" to. There are several parts of the world where the last thing people feel before dying is the stink of their own diarrea; or the sound of rockets and drones about to tear them up; or the hopelessness of hunger... Since you're mentioning statistics, I'll mention the "Polli di Trilussa", whereby if the average says everyone has a chicken to eat and you're not getting any, don't worry because there's someone gorging on two.
musage 9y ago
Safety of what? Of pure physical life? Wouldn't prospering life imply some kind of vitality? Then how come we all just sit there and "hope" something will be done about climate change or nuclear proliferation? How come rising drug deaths? How come the need for a dedicated WP page about the suicide problem in Japan? How come the best we can hope for is for some to condemn war criminals - instead of their brothers and fathers and children disowning them as they rot in jail? How come Trump is president and Snowden can't go home? Prosperity? We cannot even afford same rights and laws applying to all period. We shine the boots of crazy sadists who get nothing out of it but a prolonging of their suffering and the damage they cause, and we just bite our lips and give a sympathetic shrug to those who should be in their place, or at least not get trampled in the dirt. Not that I'm saying there was ever justice for all, but we know a lot these days, we can do a lot these days, we have a lot these days; we could technically afford a striving towards instead of away from justice, just like we could afford everybody on the planet having food and shelter. Just like there is no need to plunder and mutilate language and thought, but we still do it. Workers used to be proud of reading and educating themselves, now even so called intellectuals can't face weighty authors. We truncate at best, and usually ignore outright. Not because that's milk and we now have meat, but because that's meat and we no longer have teeth. I hardly see anyone who can afford to just take in their surroundings and the people they are faced with. We now actually call movies franchises ourselves, as if the soulless way was the more advanced and correct one. Something "making sense" always has to take the backseat to "making business sense", and boo on anyone daring to more than shrug their shoulder and bite their lip. I see a lot of people who individually have and are nothing, who always have to refer to someone or something other than themselves. My main criticism isn't historical, it's that I see people getting weaker and lamer by the year, more and more without thoughts that are truly their own, everything is being handed off. I remember that recent discussion about tech "taking Saudi money", and many pointing out that it's just money. We cannot afford to distinct between 10$ taken from the purse of an elderly woman, and 10$ earned by fixing a chair. That's the biggest destruction of information I can think of. Oh, and we no longer can afford to print things on paper, and what we print on paper today often doesn't last as long as older books, kind of like houses. Please download the manual from a website that will be gone in N time units. Please upload your "culture" to YouTube, and put all your means of contact into the hands of Gmail and Facebook, put your free time into the black holes of EA and Disney and stream your reactions [sic, it should be called facial expression plus mouth noises] on Twitch. Those who do can't afford to talk in the first person singular just because we can't afford anything too grounded, since that would attract other grounded things and before you know it someone is turning on the light in the insane asylum torture chamber, and we can't have that. You cannot afford owning anything, and oh, we updated the terms of our license, you'll have to agree again to continue using our "services". We serve you. Just like in "the industry", we're being industrious. We no longer can afford to be alone with our thoughts and creations, and judge their value freely. Yet if that goes for everybody else, with what authority do we outsource judgement? And if it doesn't, with what authority do we let our own ability to judge to rot? > I am using statistics. Do I need to cite sources for you to believe that this is the safest and most prosperous time in the history of humanity? No, you need to put forward your own definitions, and you haven't even attempted to make the argument why only countable things should count. That in itself is the poverty of thought I am also referring to. You might say you're making part of my point for me.