5 ms·

10 years ago or so I had a sudden and excruciating pain on my right side (my gallbladder was filled with stones), according to my doc the stuff was pretty serio

10 years ago or so I had a sudden and excruciating pain on my right side (my gallbladder was filled with stones), according to my doc the stuff was pretty serious and what it could be very well a life-threatening situation became a routine operation, I was out in less than 3-4 days. I dont think my experience was exceptional. Reading posts like these make me laugh and laugh and laugh.

titzer 6y ago
Congratulations on your insane level of tone-deaf privilege. Meanwhile, worldwide, millions live in abject poverty and millions die of cancers wrought by poisoning from chemicals that are wastes of our "progress".
- cambalache 6y ago
  I live in a 3rd world country, I was indeed "privileged" because I had a good insurance via my job. My sister had the same procedure (not an emergency like me thankfully).She earned by that time 300 USD/month. Talk about being tone-deaf.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- epicureanideal 6y ago
  Just because the entire world isn’t perfect doesn’t mean there hasn’t been progress. The population of the earth is 7 billion or more. More people live in relative comfort now than all people were alive 100 years ago. Many poor countries have high birth rates and could reduce poverty straightforwardly.
  - bordercases 6y ago
    > Many poor countries have high birth rates and could reduce poverty straightforwardly. This is pretty reductive if not ignorant.
  - 6AA4FD 6y ago
    Even if that was true, the people who are suffering the most in those high birth rate countries have very little they can do to alleviate that suffering. If there are major changes that could be made in a political system to drastically improve it, and they haven't been made, that is a sign that we are very far from utopia, once we ask ourselves "why hasn't that happened yet"? Either it's not that easy or simple, or it is, and the people with the capability to make those changes are unwilling. The former invalidates one of the assumptions behind that reasoning, and the latter tells us that rather severe injustices are occurring.
  - exporectomy 6y ago
    > high birth rates and could reduce poverty straightforwardly. If humans produce more than they consume over their life, then reducing the birthrate would increase poverty. Your suggestion implies that additional humans are worth less than nothing, but that doesn't seem to be true, at least not in the many countries that have both growing populations and economies. Is there some country that's getting both bigger and poorer because its people can't support themselves?
- rank0 6y ago
  You’re trying so hard to be enlightened and woke that you’re missing the point. Advancements in medicine has saved and improved billions of lives. But somehow technology = bad and OP having a simple medical procedure disqualifies him from having an opinion. We’ve had inequality throughout history it’s not unique to 2021.
  - titzer 6y ago
    I took umbrage at the OP "laughing and laughing" at how apparently technology has no downsides. In America, millions of uninsured and underinsured people get shitty healthcare. Many die. Many more go bankrupt. "Laughing and laughing" in the face of that is callous. I'm not "trying hard to be woke" and I'm not missing the point. I've been through this whole techno-utopia, all the way to the end, and without fail technology has its blind adherents whose overconfident pronouncements mean the rest of us have to eat the dust of this never-ending rollercoaster ride. I've been around long enough to tell you exactly what is in store for you. Future shock. Long years of struggling as every skill you have is rendered utterly obsolete by change; every fond memory of places and people you knew is chewed up and spit out by change, and the world, the physical world--how it works, how you go about life, will keep changing and changing and changing, and you'll end up old, surrounded by kids who literally have no memory of the past, who cannot understand your pining for a walk in the forests obliterated to put in a subdivision, for empty fields overrun by this--this technology. And yeah, it's technology. It's all technology. It's a machine eating all of us up. Technology is not just some nicer drugs and cancer treatments. Technology is our entire society revolutionizing itself because we have made change itself our only value. Technology is a helpless 80 year old person who can't do damn thing because their dead-simple phone has been replaced with some new-fangled machine that they simply cannot comprehend, and shouldn't have to. And yeah, that's great technology has improved so many billions of lives. But the number of people on this Earth has doubled in my lifetime. It's crowded. And I don't know most of these people. But their waste products are all over this planet, not just in the air. You'll find out. Have fun until those kids grow up and revolutionize the world you like to be some dumb arcade.
  - bordercases 6y ago
    > We’ve had inequality throughout history it’s not unique to 2021. Inequality is essential to the idea of social progress so if it's exacerbated in degree, it challenges the idea that we have progressed whatsoever. In the case of the 20th century there was a brief period where we developed a large middle class, and then post-1971 ended losing much of our gains in equity-per-capita along with stagnant wages. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ Many luxuries have become cheaper, which raises the overall standard of living for those people integrated into the global economy (a large number to be sure, still dwarfed by the number of people that need to be lifted out of poverty). But as seen on that first chart in the link above, the ability to capture the wealth of the economy on a whole has diminished for the individual (without resorting to measures that exacerbate inequality further, like inheritances or usury). In the long-run this reverses many of the gains made in having a middle class.
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slopey 6y ago
Respectfully, I think you've missed the key points of the article. As another commenter pointed out, nowhere does the author make the claim that technology isn't utopian. Rather, the author asks us to critically evaluate whether a technology is beneficial: "We should approach technology in the same way we approach any other human system: by evaluating how it supports or undermines individual well-being." Moreover, the author supports the point you are trying to make in your anecdote. The author makes it very clear that certain technologies, like medicine and hospitals, are examples of technologies which are inherently utopian: "There are profoundly anti-human technologies (nuclear weapons) and pro-human technologies (vaccines)." "Our struggle with death, especially untimely death, is a utopian struggle. Hospitals are perhaps the most utopian institutions we’ve built." The author's central claim is that a utopia must be humanist. In the words of the author, "The point is simply that we should always treat individuals as ends, never as means." In the context of technology, if utopia must be a humanist one, the author argues that if technological innovation trades off the humanity of individuals for growth, it must be rejected.
- cambalache 6y ago
  That is a truism, "Keep the technologies that are good and dont adopt the ones that are bad". It says nothing.

titzer 6y ago

Congratulations on your insane level of tone-deaf privilege. Meanwhile, worldwide, millions live in abject poverty and millions die of cancers wrought by poisoning from chemicals that are wastes of our "progress".

cambalache 6y ago
I live in a 3rd world country, I was indeed "privileged" because I had a good insurance via my job. My sister had the same procedure (not an emergency like me thankfully).She earned by that time 300 USD/month. Talk about being tone-deaf.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
epicureanideal 6y ago
Just because the entire world isn’t perfect doesn’t mean there hasn’t been progress. The population of the earth is 7 billion or more. More people live in relative comfort now than all people were alive 100 years ago. Many poor countries have high birth rates and could reduce poverty straightforwardly.
- bordercases 6y ago
  > Many poor countries have high birth rates and could reduce poverty straightforwardly. This is pretty reductive if not ignorant.
- 6AA4FD 6y ago
  Even if that was true, the people who are suffering the most in those high birth rate countries have very little they can do to alleviate that suffering. If there are major changes that could be made in a political system to drastically improve it, and they haven't been made, that is a sign that we are very far from utopia, once we ask ourselves "why hasn't that happened yet"? Either it's not that easy or simple, or it is, and the people with the capability to make those changes are unwilling. The former invalidates one of the assumptions behind that reasoning, and the latter tells us that rather severe injustices are occurring.
- exporectomy 6y ago
  > high birth rates and could reduce poverty straightforwardly. If humans produce more than they consume over their life, then reducing the birthrate would increase poverty. Your suggestion implies that additional humans are worth less than nothing, but that doesn't seem to be true, at least not in the many countries that have both growing populations and economies. Is there some country that's getting both bigger and poorer because its people can't support themselves?
rank0 6y ago
You’re trying so hard to be enlightened and woke that you’re missing the point. Advancements in medicine has saved and improved billions of lives. But somehow technology = bad and OP having a simple medical procedure disqualifies him from having an opinion. We’ve had inequality throughout history it’s not unique to 2021.
- titzer 6y ago
  I took umbrage at the OP "laughing and laughing" at how apparently technology has no downsides. In America, millions of uninsured and underinsured people get shitty healthcare. Many die. Many more go bankrupt. "Laughing and laughing" in the face of that is callous. I'm not "trying hard to be woke" and I'm not missing the point. I've been through this whole techno-utopia, all the way to the end, and without fail technology has its blind adherents whose overconfident pronouncements mean the rest of us have to eat the dust of this never-ending rollercoaster ride. I've been around long enough to tell you exactly what is in store for you. Future shock. Long years of struggling as every skill you have is rendered utterly obsolete by change; every fond memory of places and people you knew is chewed up and spit out by change, and the world, the physical world--how it works, how you go about life, will keep changing and changing and changing, and you'll end up old, surrounded by kids who literally have no memory of the past, who cannot understand your pining for a walk in the forests obliterated to put in a subdivision, for empty fields overrun by this--this technology. And yeah, it's technology. It's all technology. It's a machine eating all of us up. Technology is not just some nicer drugs and cancer treatments. Technology is our entire society revolutionizing itself because we have made change itself our only value. Technology is a helpless 80 year old person who can't do damn thing because their dead-simple phone has been replaced with some new-fangled machine that they simply cannot comprehend, and shouldn't have to. And yeah, that's great technology has improved so many billions of lives. But the number of people on this Earth has doubled in my lifetime. It's crowded. And I don't know most of these people. But their waste products are all over this planet, not just in the air. You'll find out. Have fun until those kids grow up and revolutionize the world you like to be some dumb arcade.
- bordercases 6y ago
  > We’ve had inequality throughout history it’s not unique to 2021. Inequality is essential to the idea of social progress so if it's exacerbated in degree, it challenges the idea that we have progressed whatsoever. In the case of the 20th century there was a brief period where we developed a large middle class, and then post-1971 ended losing much of our gains in equity-per-capita along with stagnant wages. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ Many luxuries have become cheaper, which raises the overall standard of living for those people integrated into the global economy (a large number to be sure, still dwarfed by the number of people that need to be lifted out of poverty). But as seen on that first chart in the link above, the ability to capture the wealth of the economy on a whole has diminished for the individual (without resorting to measures that exacerbate inequality further, like inheritances or usury). In the long-run this reverses many of the gains made in having a middle class.

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slopey 6y ago

Respectfully, I think you've missed the key points of the article. As another commenter pointed out, nowhere does the author make the claim that technology isn't utopian. Rather, the author asks us to critically evaluate whether a technology is beneficial: "We should approach technology in the same way we approach any other human system: by evaluating how it supports or undermines individual well-being." Moreover, the author supports the point you are trying to make in your anecdote. The author makes it very clear that certain technologies, like medicine and hospitals, are examples of technologies which are inherently utopian: "There are profoundly anti-human technologies (nuclear weapons) and pro-human technologies (vaccines)." "Our struggle with death, especially untimely death, is a utopian struggle. Hospitals are perhaps the most utopian institutions we’ve built." The author's central claim is that a utopia must be humanist. In the words of the author, "The point is simply that we should always treat individuals as ends, never as means." In the context of technology, if utopia must be a humanist one, the author argues that if technological innovation trades off the humanity of individuals for growth, it must be rejected.

cambalache 6y ago
That is a truism, "Keep the technologies that are good and dont adopt the ones that are bad". It says nothing.