6 ms·

Or a different perspective is that people realized technology wouldn't save us from ourselves. We used to dream how technological increases could reduce global

by slg 5y ago

Or a different perspective is that people realized technology wouldn't save us from ourselves. We used to dream how technological increases could reduce global suffering and perhaps even create a post-scarcity world in which we all benefit. But growing income inequality has taught us that would never happen. All technology does is act as a multiplier for our existing society. Instead of technology giving us the United Federation of Planets, we got a repeat of the space race with the two superpowers replaced with two billionaires.

echelon 5y ago
Or maybe instead of dreaming that one could see the stars, we instead started dreaming we could have super powers? Or that we could be a billionaire that could build a flying armor suit? Super hero movies are everywhere, to an almost absurd level. Why self-insert as a traveler in the stars when you can instead self-insert as the all-powerful center of attention? Makes sense given the rise of social media, too. Everyone is a YouTuber, live steamer, superhero.
- slg 5y ago
  There is a fundamental difference between scifi and fantasy in that scifi is often achievable. Traveling to see the stars is something we as a society can strive to achieve. People who grow up with that dream never have to give it up and they become the scientists that push society forward in pursuit of that dream. The fantasy of superhero movies isn't possible. So what becomes of the kids who grew up dreaming of being Spider-Man?
  - krapp 5y ago
    >So what becomes of the kids who grew up dreaming of being Spider-Man? Peter Parker is a science nerd. I'd bet plenty of people grew up to pursue science because they were inspired by the comics. Also, the people who "grew up dreaming of being Spider-Man" also grew up watching Star Trek, and Star Wars, and probably reading SF novels, maybe playing D&D, etc. This is literally the demographic that was interested in math, science and computers (back when being interesting in computers was 'weird') in school while the "normies" were playing sports and banging cheerleaders and such.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    When I was a kid watching TNG, I assumed that FTL propulsion and communication, shields, (non centrifugal) artificial gravity, and transporters were all plausible technologies, and that universal translators with CGI lip-sync was just a convenience for the sake of filming. We’ve got the latter, the former was theoretically impossible when it was filmed — yet the impossible was still useful inspiration.
- krapp 5y ago
  Superman has been a fixture of American culture since the 1940s, yet somehow, despite generations of children donning makeshift capes and engaging in flights of fantasy, we managed to land on the moon. No one is watching superhero movies and abandoning their aspirations and ideals hoping they get superpowers. People watch superhero movies because they're entertaining, and because they grew up with the characters in comic book form.
  - echelon 5y ago
    Super hero comics were a small slice of the overall pie in 1940. Now they're the largest genre and saturate all media. Something changed.
    - krapp 5y ago
      >Now they're the largest genre and saturate all media. Not true. They might be the biggest genre in terms of revenue, but look at American films released in the last couple of years [0,1] and you'll find the vast majority of them are not superhero movies. And while there is undeniably an insane amount of superhero merchandise out there, there aren't a ton of superhero books (outside of comics,) superhero albums, or even superhero video games either. So they're far from saturating even their own media, much less all media. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2020 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2019
zpeti 5y ago
Income inequality != it’s worse for the poor Look at every metric of poverty or things affecting the poor (literacy, hunger, access to education) and its improved like no other time in history in the last 50 years. Just because the rich got richer in the process might annoy you, but it benefitted a lot of others. What do you want? No income inequality and therefore everyone living in terrible conditions, or a large divide between rich and poor but things actually improving?
- TFYS 5y ago
  What's bad is relative. Bad quality of life 10000 years ago meant something different than it did 500 years ago or 200 years ago. People will always look at how other people in their community live. A poor person today can't compare himself to a poor person 50 years ago. They compare themselves to the people they see around them. If you put an average person from today to a future where the average person lives forever and is in a constant state of happiness, would you say the person from today is doing well?
- machinebun 5y ago
  Due to hedonic adaptation, what matters is not the absolute state of existence, but the trajectory that that state takes throughout your life. (a small positive slope in terms of life quality is much better than a negative or neutral slope at the same level - or even at a higher level). And people underestimate the importance of relative standing as opposed to absolute. Ultimately, we are a packet of genes that are made to reproduce (with a brain attached). Relative standings matter a lot more than absolute quality of life as far as reproduction is concerned (and as far as our genes are concerned). The human brain is but a simple abstraction on top of those genetic drives. > standings
nextlevelwizard 5y ago
>But growing income inequality has taught us that would never happen. This is pretty huge non-sequitur. Income (in)equality has exactly nothing to do with post scarcity world or reducing suffering. Just because someone has more than you doesn't mean you don't have more than someone in your position 50 years ago or that you aren't suffering less. Technology-wise we have focused on computers for so long that they are pretty much as solved as they are going to get, but we haven't made as huge leaps on other aspects. If your goal is to move the us to post scarcity world you have to come up with unlimited free and (relatively) clean power source. After that someone needs to figure out how to turn that unlimited energy into mass. Then someone needs to figure out how to 3D print things atom-by-atom using the previous technology. After that money loses all meaning and there is no longer income inequality.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  > If your goal is to move the us to post scarcity world you have to come up with unlimited free and (relatively) clean power source. Not a problem. Nuclear fusion. And before someone goes off on a tangent about, "It's only 10 years away for the past 60 years", that's because The Powers That Be won't give it - and by extension, pure science - the funding it needs to happen. The Defense Department budget increases by $80,000,000,000 for the 2021 Federal Budget. No one batted an eye. I guarantee you, if you throw $80 billion at fusion for 60 years, humanity will solve it. The pathetic $5 billion here and $2 billion there won't cut it. You have to sink real money into it. > After that someone needs to figure out how to turn that unlimited energy into mass. Funding. Once fusion is solved, throw $80 billion at this problem every year. See above. > Then someone needs to figure out how to 3D print things atom-by-atom using the previous technology. Funding. See above. > After that money loses all meaning and there is no longer income inequality. After that, we become a reputation-based economy, like Star Trek. It's about what you've done, not how much you have. None of this will happen until we stop allowing single individuals to hoard enormous amounts of wealth that could never possibly be spent in their lifetimes.
- daenz 5y ago
  The suffering from income inequality seems to be mostly psychological from the realization that others have more. This is why they don't care about improving their own bottom line as much as they do about preventing others from having so much more.
xorfish 5y ago
The world is in a massively better place than 50, 20 or even 10 years ago. Just have a look at https://ourworldindata.org/ https://ourworldindata.org/ and look at the development of extreme poverty, poverty, life expectancy, child mortality, literacy, proportion of the world that lives in a democracy and even happiness and life satisfaction.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I think it’s more nuanced. If people perceive future volatility as having increased, then current situation will not matter for one’s “happiness”. For many of the young, the story is that the last 60 to 70 years have been awesome, for the world as a whole, and maybe the next 20 to 30 will be too. But the cost will be what comes after.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  The world as a whole may be a much better place, but that does nothing to make someone in a rusted-put rust belt town feel any better. “There are fewer starving children in Africa” is an ineffective argument for convincing someone that their life hasn’t gotten worse.
  - RickJWagner 5y ago
    Ask those rusted-pot residents if they own a cell phone, and how life is different since they did.
    - cutemonster 5y ago
      At the same time, phones and social media can make you unhappy, can be for the worse
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    There were intentional decisions made about international trade that at least partially led to both those results. From an economic standpoint, free trade internationally leads to a higher worldwide GDP, but can also lead to losers in specific places like you mention. Good if you lived in a third world country, not good if you were a high school graduate making a living in manufacturing.

by slg 5y ago

echelon 5y ago

Or maybe instead of dreaming that one could see the stars, we instead started dreaming we could have super powers? Or that we could be a billionaire that could build a flying armor suit? Super hero movies are everywhere, to an almost absurd level. Why self-insert as a traveler in the stars when you can instead self-insert as the all-powerful center of attention? Makes sense given the rise of social media, too. Everyone is a YouTuber, live steamer, superhero.

slg 5y ago
There is a fundamental difference between scifi and fantasy in that scifi is often achievable. Traveling to see the stars is something we as a society can strive to achieve. People who grow up with that dream never have to give it up and they become the scientists that push society forward in pursuit of that dream. The fantasy of superhero movies isn't possible. So what becomes of the kids who grew up dreaming of being Spider-Man?
- krapp 5y ago
  >So what becomes of the kids who grew up dreaming of being Spider-Man? Peter Parker is a science nerd. I'd bet plenty of people grew up to pursue science because they were inspired by the comics. Also, the people who "grew up dreaming of being Spider-Man" also grew up watching Star Trek, and Star Wars, and probably reading SF novels, maybe playing D&D, etc. This is literally the demographic that was interested in math, science and computers (back when being interesting in computers was 'weird') in school while the "normies" were playing sports and banging cheerleaders and such.
- ben_w 5y ago
  When I was a kid watching TNG, I assumed that FTL propulsion and communication, shields, (non centrifugal) artificial gravity, and transporters were all plausible technologies, and that universal translators with CGI lip-sync was just a convenience for the sake of filming. We’ve got the latter, the former was theoretically impossible when it was filmed — yet the impossible was still useful inspiration.
krapp 5y ago
Superman has been a fixture of American culture since the 1940s, yet somehow, despite generations of children donning makeshift capes and engaging in flights of fantasy, we managed to land on the moon. No one is watching superhero movies and abandoning their aspirations and ideals hoping they get superpowers. People watch superhero movies because they're entertaining, and because they grew up with the characters in comic book form.
- echelon 5y ago
  Super hero comics were a small slice of the overall pie in 1940. Now they're the largest genre and saturate all media. Something changed.
  - krapp 5y ago
    >Now they're the largest genre and saturate all media. Not true. They might be the biggest genre in terms of revenue, but look at American films released in the last couple of years [0,1] and you'll find the vast majority of them are not superhero movies. And while there is undeniably an insane amount of superhero merchandise out there, there aren't a ton of superhero books (outside of comics,) superhero albums, or even superhero video games either. So they're far from saturating even their own media, much less all media. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2020 [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_films_of_2019

zpeti 5y ago

Income inequality != it’s worse for the poor Look at every metric of poverty or things affecting the poor (literacy, hunger, access to education) and its improved like no other time in history in the last 50 years. Just because the rich got richer in the process might annoy you, but it benefitted a lot of others. What do you want? No income inequality and therefore everyone living in terrible conditions, or a large divide between rich and poor but things actually improving?

TFYS 5y ago
What's bad is relative. Bad quality of life 10000 years ago meant something different than it did 500 years ago or 200 years ago. People will always look at how other people in their community live. A poor person today can't compare himself to a poor person 50 years ago. They compare themselves to the people they see around them. If you put an average person from today to a future where the average person lives forever and is in a constant state of happiness, would you say the person from today is doing well?
machinebun 5y ago
Due to hedonic adaptation, what matters is not the absolute state of existence, but the trajectory that that state takes throughout your life. (a small positive slope in terms of life quality is much better than a negative or neutral slope at the same level - or even at a higher level). And people underestimate the importance of relative standing as opposed to absolute. Ultimately, we are a packet of genes that are made to reproduce (with a brain attached). Relative standings matter a lot more than absolute quality of life as far as reproduction is concerned (and as far as our genes are concerned). The human brain is but a simple abstraction on top of those genetic drives. > standings

nextlevelwizard 5y ago

>But growing income inequality has taught us that would never happen. This is pretty huge non-sequitur. Income (in)equality has exactly nothing to do with post scarcity world or reducing suffering. Just because someone has more than you doesn't mean you don't have more than someone in your position 50 years ago or that you aren't suffering less. Technology-wise we have focused on computers for so long that they are pretty much as solved as they are going to get, but we haven't made as huge leaps on other aspects. If your goal is to move the us to post scarcity world you have to come up with unlimited free and (relatively) clean power source. After that someone needs to figure out how to turn that unlimited energy into mass. Then someone needs to figure out how to 3D print things atom-by-atom using the previous technology. After that money loses all meaning and there is no longer income inequality.

cbozeman 5y ago
> If your goal is to move the us to post scarcity world you have to come up with unlimited free and (relatively) clean power source. Not a problem. Nuclear fusion. And before someone goes off on a tangent about, "It's only 10 years away for the past 60 years", that's because The Powers That Be won't give it - and by extension, pure science - the funding it needs to happen. The Defense Department budget increases by $80,000,000,000 for the 2021 Federal Budget. No one batted an eye. I guarantee you, if you throw $80 billion at fusion for 60 years, humanity will solve it. The pathetic $5 billion here and $2 billion there won't cut it. You have to sink real money into it. > After that someone needs to figure out how to turn that unlimited energy into mass. Funding. Once fusion is solved, throw $80 billion at this problem every year. See above. > Then someone needs to figure out how to 3D print things atom-by-atom using the previous technology. Funding. See above. > After that money loses all meaning and there is no longer income inequality. After that, we become a reputation-based economy, like Star Trek. It's about what you've done, not how much you have. None of this will happen until we stop allowing single individuals to hoard enormous amounts of wealth that could never possibly be spent in their lifetimes.
daenz 5y ago
The suffering from income inequality seems to be mostly psychological from the realization that others have more. This is why they don't care about improving their own bottom line as much as they do about preventing others from having so much more.

xorfish 5y ago

The world is in a massively better place than 50, 20 or even 10 years ago. Just have a look at https://ourworldindata.org/ https://ourworldindata.org/ and look at the development of extreme poverty, poverty, life expectancy, child mortality, literacy, proportion of the world that lives in a democracy and even happiness and life satisfaction.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
I think it’s more nuanced. If people perceive future volatility as having increased, then current situation will not matter for one’s “happiness”. For many of the young, the story is that the last 60 to 70 years have been awesome, for the world as a whole, and maybe the next 20 to 30 will be too. But the cost will be what comes after.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
The world as a whole may be a much better place, but that does nothing to make someone in a rusted-put rust belt town feel any better. “There are fewer starving children in Africa” is an ineffective argument for convincing someone that their life hasn’t gotten worse.
- RickJWagner 5y ago
  Ask those rusted-pot residents if they own a cell phone, and how life is different since they did.
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    At the same time, phones and social media can make you unhappy, can be for the worse
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  There were intentional decisions made about international trade that at least partially led to both those results. From an economic standpoint, free trade internationally leads to a higher worldwide GDP, but can also lead to losers in specific places like you mention. Good if you lived in a third world country, not good if you were a high school graduate making a living in manufacturing.