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A counterpoint to this that may resonate with some: * I _feel_ significantly less hopeful than I did in the 1990s. Things _seemed_ to be heading in the right d

A counterpoint to this that may resonate with some: * I _feel_ significantly less hopeful than I did in the 1990s. Things _seemed_ to be heading in the right direction in lots of important areas then. Now I feel significant anxiety about whether my kids will live in a dystopia within the next 30 years * Many of the improvements listed reduce hassle and stress in some ways, and markedly increase stress and anxiety in other ways. I had ZERO concern about my identity being stolen in 1995. My identity has now been stolen 3x in the last 10 years and caused significant anxiety and hassle. * Many of the improvements to convenience feel like a bad trade. Having information and services a click away has begun to feel almost like a burden. Everything has to happen instantly now. This has been a negative from a psychological perspective for me. ---- I know some of this is just that I'm 25 years older and I'm trying to subtract that out. I understand that objectively this is a good time to be alive in many, many ways but I feel significantly worse than I did then. If I could return to the 1990s at my current age I would do so in a heartbeat.

dhruvkar 7y ago
>>Having information and services a click away has begun to feel almost like a burden. Everything has to happen instantly now. This has been a negative from a psychological perspective for me I feel you. I recently upgraded to a dumbphone (~1 month), no apps. Basically, I can do calls, even texting is too irritating. Yeah some stuff is harder, but the psychological burden has lessened to a marked degree. I'd love to hear other ways people have figured out how to reduce the constant low-level anxiety in our daily lives.
jdavis703 7y ago
> I had ZERO concern about my identity being stolen in 1995. My identity has now been stolen 3x in the last 10 years and caused significant anxiety and hassle. I have never been robbed, and I live in a place American suburbanites have told me is “dangerous.” But I have had my ID stolen. And to be honest I’d much rather be hacked or miss an ATM skimmer than having someone sticking a gun in my face demanding my wallet.
- chasingthewind 7y ago
  This is a good point and I was thinking about this as I read the article and wrote my reply. I've also never been the victim of violent crime and I admit that if I had been I would likely feel differently about this.
- tomrod 7y ago
  I've had both. Identity theft takes longer to resolve. Physical altercation is usually more immediately resolved, though the adrenaline and residual stress can take a long while to overcome.
  - jdavis703 7y ago
    Overall though violent crime is down nationally. That said my partner was robbed, pistol whipped, wrongly accused by the cops of being the robber, and then spent months recovering from a pistol-whip induced concussion. So yeah, sometimes a simple street robbery can take some time to resolve.
    - tomrod 7y ago
      My condolences -- that really sucks.
war1025 7y ago
> My identity has now been stolen 3x in the last 10 years Something I've been curious about recently that maybe you (or others) can help clarify: What do people count as having their "identity stolen"? I've had probably three times where I've had fraudulent purchases made after someone stole our credit card info. Does that count? In my mind, identity theft is more people taking out loans in your name or something like that. Which is it?
- chasingthewind 7y ago
  I agree...simple credit card fraud shouldn't be counted as identity theft. There are plenty of ways for people to get your card numbers and your basic information that won't allow them to go on to more serious impersonation fraud. In my case I had someone file a tax return in my name and try to open credit accounts at a later date. The incidents were probably all unrelated but I had to put a 7 year fraud alert on my 3 major credit bureau accounts which required a police report, a report to the FTC, and letters to the credit bureaus.
  - war1025 7y ago
    Yea that sounds like a huge pain. Thanks for clarifying. Does anyone know if there's a way to basically indicate, "I'm not planning to buy anything on credit" and freeze your credit the way you would freeze a bank account? Then again, I don't have a great credit score to begin with, so maybe that is enough to keep people from being interested in impersonating me...
    - diN0bot 7y ago
      https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faqs https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faq...
      - war1025 7y ago
        Thanks!
ksdale 7y ago
I think these are great counterpoints, and important to consider. I would offer that I think we are more worried about dystopia because we are so much more aware of all of the ways the world can turn into a dystopia, but I don't think that necessarily tracks with the actual likelihood of dystopia. I read a lot of history, and I occasionally find myself wishing I had lived in a... more "exciting" time, or a more authentic time, but then I remember that I would probably just be a normal person in that exciting or authentic time, possibly not even aware of the exciting-ness because I'd be trying not to starve to death or die of cholera. We feel like a ton of crazy stuff is happening all the time, but history has always been that way. You'd be hard pressed to live for 80 years (period, ha!) in any historical period anywhere in the world and not end up going through at least one or two of wars, famines, disease-outbreaks, oppressive governments, fires, earthquakes, riots, etc. And maybe it'd be easier to deal with because you wouldn't see it coming on twitter for two months before it killed you... but man, reading history, a lot of people die, all the time, often for no reason or really bad reasons. And fewer people die now, but we're a lot more aware of it.
- jbay808 7y ago
  > I would offer that I think we are more worried about dystopia because we are so much more aware of all of the ways the world can turn into a dystopia, but I don't think that necessarily tracks with the actual likelihood of dystopia. Unless you live in part of the world that became dystopian in the last 30 years, any optimism you had in the '90s that dystopia was far away was not false confidence. It was borne out by the facts. If you feel less optimistic now, that might be due to valid concerns, and it might also be borne out by the facts. We'll see. I also don't think people in the '90s were poorly informed compared to now. Sure they didn't have much of Wikipedia, but on the other hand, nonfiction journalism was in a better state and the internet (although less widespread) was also not as finely tuned to create information bubbles.
  - ksdale 7y ago
    I think in the 90’s, people were just a single digit number of years removed from the end of the Cold War, just a few decades removed from the Great Leap Forward, another few decades from the holocaust and gulags, not to mention WW2, which had a combat death toll that is just utterly unimaginable today, but which was comparable to WW1, just a few decades before that. Then there was the Spanish Flu in there. That just barely covers the past hundred years, but there were a ton of people alive in the 90’s who had lived through all of that. Anyone born since the late 80’s has lived through basically nothing like that. Certainly, lots of bad stuff has happened in the meanwhile, but in my opinion, nothing that remotely approaches WW2 or the Great Leap Forward as far as death and destruction, and I think it’s hard to argue that anything like that is more likely to happen in the future than it was in the 90’s (which also gave us attempted genocide in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda). I think people in the 90’s were informed, but they weren’t bombarded with negativity the way people are today. That’s not because there wasn’t negativity around. I don’t remember where I saw it, but someone had a post about how far the Overton window has shifted in politics, and compared quotes from Bill Clinton on immigration in the 90’s to quotes from modern day Republicans (if I recall, they sound almost identical) to emphasize just how much our sensibilities have changed, which was another illustration for me of how our perception of the nearness of dystopia is not necessarily very accurate.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

dhruvkar 7y ago

>>Having information and services a click away has begun to feel almost like a burden. Everything has to happen instantly now. This has been a negative from a psychological perspective for me I feel you. I recently upgraded to a dumbphone (~1 month), no apps. Basically, I can do calls, even texting is too irritating. Yeah some stuff is harder, but the psychological burden has lessened to a marked degree. I'd love to hear other ways people have figured out how to reduce the constant low-level anxiety in our daily lives.

jdavis703 7y ago

> I had ZERO concern about my identity being stolen in 1995. My identity has now been stolen 3x in the last 10 years and caused significant anxiety and hassle. I have never been robbed, and I live in a place American suburbanites have told me is “dangerous.” But I have had my ID stolen. And to be honest I’d much rather be hacked or miss an ATM skimmer than having someone sticking a gun in my face demanding my wallet.

chasingthewind 7y ago
This is a good point and I was thinking about this as I read the article and wrote my reply. I've also never been the victim of violent crime and I admit that if I had been I would likely feel differently about this.
tomrod 7y ago
I've had both. Identity theft takes longer to resolve. Physical altercation is usually more immediately resolved, though the adrenaline and residual stress can take a long while to overcome.
- jdavis703 7y ago
  Overall though violent crime is down nationally. That said my partner was robbed, pistol whipped, wrongly accused by the cops of being the robber, and then spent months recovering from a pistol-whip induced concussion. So yeah, sometimes a simple street robbery can take some time to resolve.
  - tomrod 7y ago
    My condolences -- that really sucks.

war1025 7y ago

> My identity has now been stolen 3x in the last 10 years Something I've been curious about recently that maybe you (or others) can help clarify: What do people count as having their "identity stolen"? I've had probably three times where I've had fraudulent purchases made after someone stole our credit card info. Does that count? In my mind, identity theft is more people taking out loans in your name or something like that. Which is it?

chasingthewind 7y ago
I agree...simple credit card fraud shouldn't be counted as identity theft. There are plenty of ways for people to get your card numbers and your basic information that won't allow them to go on to more serious impersonation fraud. In my case I had someone file a tax return in my name and try to open credit accounts at a later date. The incidents were probably all unrelated but I had to put a 7 year fraud alert on my 3 major credit bureau accounts which required a police report, a report to the FTC, and letters to the credit bureaus.
- war1025 7y ago
  Yea that sounds like a huge pain. Thanks for clarifying. Does anyone know if there's a way to basically indicate, "I'm not planning to buy anything on credit" and freeze your credit the way you would freeze a bank account? Then again, I don't have a great credit score to begin with, so maybe that is enough to keep people from being interested in impersonating me...
  - diN0bot 7y ago
    https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faqs https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faq...
    - war1025 7y ago
      Thanks!

ksdale 7y ago

I think these are great counterpoints, and important to consider. I would offer that I think we are more worried about dystopia because we are so much more aware of all of the ways the world can turn into a dystopia, but I don't think that necessarily tracks with the actual likelihood of dystopia. I read a lot of history, and I occasionally find myself wishing I had lived in a... more "exciting" time, or a more authentic time, but then I remember that I would probably just be a normal person in that exciting or authentic time, possibly not even aware of the exciting-ness because I'd be trying not to starve to death or die of cholera. We feel like a ton of crazy stuff is happening all the time, but history has always been that way. You'd be hard pressed to live for 80 years (period, ha!) in any historical period anywhere in the world and not end up going through at least one or two of wars, famines, disease-outbreaks, oppressive governments, fires, earthquakes, riots, etc. And maybe it'd be easier to deal with because you wouldn't see it coming on twitter for two months before it killed you... but man, reading history, a lot of people die, all the time, often for no reason or really bad reasons. And fewer people die now, but we're a lot more aware of it.

jbay808 7y ago
> I would offer that I think we are more worried about dystopia because we are so much more aware of all of the ways the world can turn into a dystopia, but I don't think that necessarily tracks with the actual likelihood of dystopia. Unless you live in part of the world that became dystopian in the last 30 years, any optimism you had in the '90s that dystopia was far away was not false confidence. It was borne out by the facts. If you feel less optimistic now, that might be due to valid concerns, and it might also be borne out by the facts. We'll see. I also don't think people in the '90s were poorly informed compared to now. Sure they didn't have much of Wikipedia, but on the other hand, nonfiction journalism was in a better state and the internet (although less widespread) was also not as finely tuned to create information bubbles.
- ksdale 7y ago
  I think in the 90’s, people were just a single digit number of years removed from the end of the Cold War, just a few decades removed from the Great Leap Forward, another few decades from the holocaust and gulags, not to mention WW2, which had a combat death toll that is just utterly unimaginable today, but which was comparable to WW1, just a few decades before that. Then there was the Spanish Flu in there. That just barely covers the past hundred years, but there were a ton of people alive in the 90’s who had lived through all of that. Anyone born since the late 80’s has lived through basically nothing like that. Certainly, lots of bad stuff has happened in the meanwhile, but in my opinion, nothing that remotely approaches WW2 or the Great Leap Forward as far as death and destruction, and I think it’s hard to argue that anything like that is more likely to happen in the future than it was in the 90’s (which also gave us attempted genocide in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda). I think people in the 90’s were informed, but they weren’t bombarded with negativity the way people are today. That’s not because there wasn’t negativity around. I don’t remember where I saw it, but someone had a post about how far the Overton window has shifted in politics, and compared quotes from Bill Clinton on immigration in the 90’s to quotes from modern day Republicans (if I recall, they sound almost identical) to emphasize just how much our sensibilities have changed, which was another illustration for me of how our perception of the nearness of dystopia is not necessarily very accurate.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]