8 ms·

I’m becoming more convinced that the future I’ve been planning simply won’t be possible in the decades to come. The world is scarcely recognizable. And having e

I’m becoming more convinced that the future I’ve been planning simply won’t be possible in the decades to come. The world is scarcely recognizable. And having experienced nothing but peace and prosperity makes me feel woefully unprepared. The WEIRD world is becoming increasingly more authoritarian. I’m already detached from real conflict and scarcity, knowing nothing but peace and prosperity, and the TikTok generation behind me meming about WW3 doesn’t inspire much confidence.

xiphias2 5y ago
Meming about and being afraid of WW3 is critical in containing/deescalating it. WW1 happened partly because nobody was afraid of it happenning.
- choward 5y ago
  Not when the meming calls for escalation by sending weapons to Ukraine and imposing sanctions.
  - slowmovintarget 5y ago
    Escalation is what Russia is doing: cluster munitions, rolling elite troops in, and shelling apartment buildings. Sending weapons to the people who live there to fend off invaders, and imposing sanctions is a fairly tepid response.
  - xiphias2 5y ago
    Ukrainians using anti-tank weapons to fight on their own land against a different nation trying to take ownership of the country is the definition of defence.
- dsauerbrun 5y ago
  WWII happened despite people being afraid of it happening. Could you elaborate on your point?
  - aiisjustanif 5y ago
    The factors in World War 2 were much different, public sentiment didn’t matter. Nazis would have taken Poland in 1939 and pursue the Soviet Union sooner, it was inevitably a World War. World War 1 was editable. World War 1 was very much avoidable. Time and time again World War 1 has been called unnecessary because the original dispute that triggered the conflict was limited.
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      World War Two didn’t happen in isolation and was a direct result of unresolved and newly created issues at the end of the First World War.
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    There were people who foresaw, if not perfectly, how bad WWI would be, and tried to stop it. Many of them were socialists - Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany, Jean Jaurès in France for example - and their final hope was that the proletariat of the European nations would not fight against one another, but we know how that turned out. The problem was that there were not enough who were afraid, and that goes for WWII too. There is also the view, which I think has considerable merit, which regards WWII in Europe as a continuation of WWI, and the Pacific war as a largely separate, though concurrent, event.
- rsfern 5y ago
  According to Fiona Hill, we’re already in it. She doesn’t really indicate when we crossed the rubicon, but I guess there doesn’t always have to be a Franz Ferdinand moment? https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-iii-already-there-00012340 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-...
  - zouhair 5y ago
    If I learned anything about Tsars history, most of them do not get to have a natural death.
    - lurquer 5y ago
      Most? Source? Nearly 9% of US presidents have been assassinated. Over a much much smaller timeframe. I would bet you would be less likely to have been assassinated as a Tsar than as a President.
      - wahern 5y ago
        According to Wikipedia, 5 of 14 Tsars (35%) were murdered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_all_the_Russias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_all_the_Russias That seems substantial, at least compared to Presidents, especially considering the threat of assassination was a serious consideration given all the political intrigue. Whereas AFAIU U.S. Presidents didn't take the threat of assassination seriously until the 20th century, exposing themselves to the public in ways that would be unthinkable to Tsars; or monarchs and, later, autocrats generally for that matter. On the other hand, likelihood of death per year looks more comparable. For Tsars I get 2.1% (5 / (1917 - 1682)). For Presidents I get 2.3% (3 / (1917 - 1789)) or 1.7% (4 / (2022 - 1789)), depending on the range. These days autocrats don't invest themselves much in establishing national political legitimacy or institutional legitimacy, focusing almost exclusively on building and grooming a power base where everyone in power has a vested interest in keeping the leader alive. So Putin probably doesn't have much to worry about, excepting perhaps some patriot military General. EDIT: It's 27% of Tsars and 1.6% likelihood of death per year if starting from 1613, the start of the Romanov Dynasty. (Refreshing my Russian history as I go.) Numbers don't really change if we go back to 1547, Ivan the Terrible and first self-styled Tsar of Russia, as we add another intervening murder. And that's being charitable on the first metric given rapid succession and overlap during the Time of Troubles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_monarchs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_monarchs
- jorgesborges 5y ago
  I agree in a sense. But my point is that the memes don’t carry purpose or urgency because the possibility of a catastrophic world war feels remote. Just like the possibility that our democracy might vanish in an instant.
- dogline 5y ago
  > WW1 happened partly because nobody was afraid of it happenning. That is an interesting take on it. It may not be wrong, but I hadn't heard that before.
  - wahern 5y ago
    I think the point is that WWI was precipitated by a chain of events that could have, in theory, easily been interrupted if the belligerents had been sufficiently fearful of conflict.
  - nescioquid 5y ago
    The "August Madness" is sometimes how this gets summed up. Novels/movies like All's Quiet on the Western Front make this point, too.
  - polished85 5y ago
    There is a thought provoking book about how terrible the repercussions of WWI really were. The author claims the world was on the verge of a renaissance in technology, medicine, energy, music, trade, etc. The thought of a world war was incomprehensible at the time—no one believed it could happen. Who knows how the world would look today without WWI. (If any one is interested in the book I will hunt it down as I don’t remember the name).
    - o_____________o 5y ago
      I'm curious ^
    - pfarrell 5y ago
      Please do.
    - polished85 5y ago
      This was discussed shortly in: A Study of History by Arnold Toynbee Another anecdote that speaks to the sentiment of the beginning of the war is Britain’s initial deployment of troops. The troops were literally marching towards Germany with music and percussionists that was supposed to motivate the troops and strike fear into the enemy. I imagine an army like you would see in Game of thrones (walking from point A to point B and making camp in between). Germany used their planes and promptly dispatched the British troops which suffered devastating losses. After this event Britain changed their tactics and took the war seriously. (This event may have been WW2 which would make the story even more ridiculous).
- newsclues 5y ago
  I’d say joining the army or building a factory that can crank out precision guided munitions is better to contain the threat of war than cooking up some spicy memes.
natsup123490 5y ago
Hard times and war change people. Many changes are negative: poorer, less secure, less trusting, more fearful, devastating losses. But other changes are for the better. And you don't need war to make these changes. If you make them before hard times come, you'll be better prepared for them: becoming more stoic (less emotional, less offended at everything), becoming more serious, more resourceful, more self-reliant, lowering your expectations, being more humble, being more careful with your words and who you speak openly with, knowing your place instead of speaking for the whole of humanity, being better able to negotiate, being better able to compromise, being more tolerant of other opinions, appreciating the wisdom of our ancestors more, and focusing more on what really matters.
- AaronFriel 5y ago
  All of the things you wrote as good things are (mostly) good things, glittering generalities that have no bearing on whether hard times are good or bad. To connect the two, you'd have to complete the scurrilous reference made that we are currently in a time of "weak men". You may or may not be aware that the "Hard times..." meme is widely used among not just stoics, but also fascist groups to suggest that the current generation is soft and weak, and that only by adversity can men become strong again. One can do almost everything good you listed, and indeed aspire to it, without becoming stoic and emotionless. To have feelings isn't weak.
  - vain_cain 5y ago
    I think you misunderstood what the commenter was trying to say. He didn't mention anything about becoming emotionless, but becoming less emotional. I think we can all agree that new first world generations are on the extreme side of the spectre of emotions and would benefit from leaning to the opposite side a bit.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      > I think we can all agree that new first world generations are on the extreme side of the spectre of emotions and would benefit from leaning to the opposite side a bit. "We all" find our opinions are unwelcome on the internet when we say things like that.
slg 5y ago
I always enjoy a well crafted comment like this in which the reader can't tell if the "authoritarianism" you are decrying is the former president trying to circumvent democracy or the censorship of people who are spreading that message. It allows you to collect upvotes from people on both sides thinking you are accusing the other of authoritarianism.
- cabaalis 5y ago
  Either people have and live by principles or they don't. Part of our division is these sides you speak of, instructing their followers what to believe about individual topics.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    The world is sadly more complicated than that. Often people's principles contradict each other, especially when it comes to bad actors. Consider the person with a principle of non-violence who is still willing to fight to defend their family. Are they a hypocrite?
    - airstrike 5y ago
      "Defending" assumes an attacker, which is the one breaking the principle of non-violence. So no, you're not a hypocrite to defend yourself if you believe in non-violence Said differently, the belief in non-violence can be stated as "I believe in pursuing non-violent means in absolutely every situation except for those in which another actor acts violently toward me"
      - couchand 5y ago
        The GP's point about internal contradiction remains regardless of the contortions you choose to apply to your definition of "non-violence".
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    Most atrocities in the world are committed by principled people. If they didn't have them they wouldn't care enough to commit them.
cyanydeez 5y ago
Is it thought, or is it just an actual threat of fascism require a hardline on the "tolerance of intolerance" If course mistakes happen when you stop blindly accepting everything S valuation.
throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
Just wait until GPT3 deep-fake audio. Closely followed by Deep-fake video. And algorithms will amplify this content to the echo chambers that "want" to hear it to increase ad revenue a few percentage points. All this will enter society at a time when trust in institutions is already low; you already hear some people predicting that there may not be an election with uncontested results (in the USA) ever again. If we solve/survive all those problems maybe there will be enough sense-making to actually tackle climate change come 2032. and maybe people will claim that the 20's were the true great filter of civilizations. On the other hand, the world is probably the most united it's been in a while because of Russia so there's that.
- pg5 5y ago
  Hate to say it, but deepfake audio and video are already pretty convincing (though post processing is needed)
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    Good looking post processing used to be exclusively reserved for movie studios with render farms. Then it became available to any YouTuber with a PC and a license (or not) of Adobe. Now the average phone can do more impressive special effects for Snapchat filters than big budget movies had not long ago. I'm convinced that deepfakes will be as easily generated as a Snapchat filter within a few years, substantially less time than society will require to adjust to this reality.
  - atlantas 5y ago
    There was a viral video last week of the "Ghost of Kiev" that looked like real war footage. It ended up being from a 2013 video game! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_of_Kyiv#Morale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_of_Kyiv#Morale
  - RajT88 5y ago
    Post processing or just lowering the resolution? Filming a deepfake with a DV cam pointed at your screen is very convincing. Sadly.
8note 5y ago
Is the word "plan" intentional, or a translation for some other concept?
engineer_22 5y ago
what were you planning?
FollowingTheDao 5y ago
wslh 5y ago
There is no easy answer: on one side you have censorship but on the other you have noise. Decentralized solutions produce a lot of noise and there is no existing protocol to automatically separate noise from signal.
hdjsklab 5y ago
astonex 5y ago
It's all because of ads. Everything is done in the name of getting more advertisers, and more ad-clicks. So everything must be sanitised, and strictly regulated lest you upset the advertisers
mkr-hn 5y ago
I think what's changed is that the ability of a few outlets to control the narrative is diminished. The interstate always cut through poor communities. The bridges were always designed to keep buses from carrying people out of the cities to the suburbs. Certain demographics were always over-represented among the poor, and the policies responsible were always there. (US examples, but systems keep some people down for the benefit of others everywhere.) But now you hear about it. The world you planned for was always an illusion. It never existed outside a narrow slice of time in post-WW2 peace and prosperity, and only for the thin slice of humanity that got to enjoy it. Now the hard part is: what do you do about it now that you know you were fed pleasing lies?
eezurr 5y ago
Just my 2 cent crystal ball. Perhaps people want a more authoritarian world (without realizing it). The ratio of static to noise has been increasing year by year. People don't want to take (nor have) the time to balance alternate view points and spend the time to independently determine fact from opinion. I think the current lack of direction creates turmoil--there are too many options, too many sources of information, and the quality of all of them have gone down while they compete to pull at our amygdalas for seconds of our time. Maybe there is a higher percentage of people who just want answers from someone they trust so they can get on with their lives. I think I've been on HN long enough to know that (re)implementing limitations on the control of information would make most of you scream. But maybe its for the best. It's already been proven many times over that people aren't going to research facts themselves. So having fewer organizations spoon feed choice bits of information can't be worse. Note that I am not suggesting to deliberately block information, but rather have organizations that are more selective (i.e. exactly like it was during the newspaper era). I think it's incredibly unlikely for the USA to become a dictatorship. We have too many checks and balances, and the decision making is cordoned off into many compartments, and the country is split 50/50 on who they vote for. An authoritarian-bent president would have to fight three branches of government, 50 governors (all of whom have their own state-level army, by the way), 100 senators, hundreds of congressmen, thousands of judges and lawyers, 150 million citizens, and so on and so forth. And on top of that, manage the country on a national and international level. I just dont see it happening. Trump did not bring us any where closer to that reality by the way (name one legislative/judicial change that moved the needle closer in that direction). All this to say, there's nothing to be scared about. The internet has been a fun experiment but it's given a microphone to too many people, and has crumpled the gatekeepers who had the job of filtering out the diamonds from the mud (and did that job extraordinarily well, by the way, because they had to, or die). It feels like our culture has been dying. The influence artists had up until the 90s was comparatively huge. If resources were pooled to support the most talented (be it artists, journalists, architects, musicians, corporate / government leaders, etc), I think we would experience another golden era of culture.
- colordrops 5y ago
  The US will become authoritarian precisely because of thinking and assumptions such as yours. 1. Authoritarianism is not a good thing, hard stop. 2. The US is not a long way away from authoritarianism. It's one strongman with actual brains away from it. Making consessions like you suggest is precisely how we slip into authoritarianism.
zapataband1 5y ago
I would recommend reading about people that have gone through revolutions/war conflicts. Especially worker-led movements that have toppled Tsars, Kings, and Militaries. I'd also recommend this for non-violent weapons against dictatorships(https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FDTD.pdf https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FDTD.pd...) The world is certainly dark but I find comfort in knowing that the majority of us simply want to live peaceful lives, and watch our families prosper.

xiphias2 5y ago

Meming about and being afraid of WW3 is critical in containing/deescalating it. WW1 happened partly because nobody was afraid of it happenning.

choward 5y ago
Not when the meming calls for escalation by sending weapons to Ukraine and imposing sanctions.
- slowmovintarget 5y ago
  Escalation is what Russia is doing: cluster munitions, rolling elite troops in, and shelling apartment buildings. Sending weapons to the people who live there to fend off invaders, and imposing sanctions is a fairly tepid response.
- xiphias2 5y ago
  Ukrainians using anti-tank weapons to fight on their own land against a different nation trying to take ownership of the country is the definition of defence.
dsauerbrun 5y ago
WWII happened despite people being afraid of it happening. Could you elaborate on your point?
- aiisjustanif 5y ago
  The factors in World War 2 were much different, public sentiment didn’t matter. Nazis would have taken Poland in 1939 and pursue the Soviet Union sooner, it was inevitably a World War. World War 1 was editable. World War 1 was very much avoidable. Time and time again World War 1 has been called unnecessary because the original dispute that triggered the conflict was limited.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    World War Two didn’t happen in isolation and was a direct result of unresolved and newly created issues at the end of the First World War.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  There were people who foresaw, if not perfectly, how bad WWI would be, and tried to stop it. Many of them were socialists - Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany, Jean Jaurès in France for example - and their final hope was that the proletariat of the European nations would not fight against one another, but we know how that turned out. The problem was that there were not enough who were afraid, and that goes for WWII too. There is also the view, which I think has considerable merit, which regards WWII in Europe as a continuation of WWI, and the Pacific war as a largely separate, though concurrent, event.
rsfern 5y ago
According to Fiona Hill, we’re already in it. She doesn’t really indicate when we crossed the rubicon, but I guess there doesn’t always have to be a Franz Ferdinand moment? https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-iii-already-there-00012340 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-...
- zouhair 5y ago
  If I learned anything about Tsars history, most of them do not get to have a natural death.
  - lurquer 5y ago
    Most? Source? Nearly 9% of US presidents have been assassinated. Over a much much smaller timeframe. I would bet you would be less likely to have been assassinated as a Tsar than as a President.
    - wahern 5y ago
      According to Wikipedia, 5 of 14 Tsars (35%) were murdered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_all_the_Russias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_all_the_Russias That seems substantial, at least compared to Presidents, especially considering the threat of assassination was a serious consideration given all the political intrigue. Whereas AFAIU U.S. Presidents didn't take the threat of assassination seriously until the 20th century, exposing themselves to the public in ways that would be unthinkable to Tsars; or monarchs and, later, autocrats generally for that matter. On the other hand, likelihood of death per year looks more comparable. For Tsars I get 2.1% (5 / (1917 - 1682)). For Presidents I get 2.3% (3 / (1917 - 1789)) or 1.7% (4 / (2022 - 1789)), depending on the range. These days autocrats don't invest themselves much in establishing national political legitimacy or institutional legitimacy, focusing almost exclusively on building and grooming a power base where everyone in power has a vested interest in keeping the leader alive. So Putin probably doesn't have much to worry about, excepting perhaps some patriot military General. EDIT: It's 27% of Tsars and 1.6% likelihood of death per year if starting from 1613, the start of the Romanov Dynasty. (Refreshing my Russian history as I go.) Numbers don't really change if we go back to 1547, Ivan the Terrible and first self-styled Tsar of Russia, as we add another intervening murder. And that's being charitable on the first metric given rapid succession and overlap during the Time of Troubles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_monarchs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_monarchs
jorgesborges 5y ago
I agree in a sense. But my point is that the memes don’t carry purpose or urgency because the possibility of a catastrophic world war feels remote. Just like the possibility that our democracy might vanish in an instant.
dogline 5y ago
> WW1 happened partly because nobody was afraid of it happenning. That is an interesting take on it. It may not be wrong, but I hadn't heard that before.
- wahern 5y ago
  I think the point is that WWI was precipitated by a chain of events that could have, in theory, easily been interrupted if the belligerents had been sufficiently fearful of conflict.
- nescioquid 5y ago
  The "August Madness" is sometimes how this gets summed up. Novels/movies like All's Quiet on the Western Front make this point, too.
- polished85 5y ago
  There is a thought provoking book about how terrible the repercussions of WWI really were. The author claims the world was on the verge of a renaissance in technology, medicine, energy, music, trade, etc. The thought of a world war was incomprehensible at the time—no one believed it could happen. Who knows how the world would look today without WWI. (If any one is interested in the book I will hunt it down as I don’t remember the name).
  - o_____________o 5y ago
    I'm curious ^
  - pfarrell 5y ago
    Please do.
  - polished85 5y ago
    This was discussed shortly in: A Study of History by Arnold Toynbee Another anecdote that speaks to the sentiment of the beginning of the war is Britain’s initial deployment of troops. The troops were literally marching towards Germany with music and percussionists that was supposed to motivate the troops and strike fear into the enemy. I imagine an army like you would see in Game of thrones (walking from point A to point B and making camp in between). Germany used their planes and promptly dispatched the British troops which suffered devastating losses. After this event Britain changed their tactics and took the war seriously. (This event may have been WW2 which would make the story even more ridiculous).
newsclues 5y ago
I’d say joining the army or building a factory that can crank out precision guided munitions is better to contain the threat of war than cooking up some spicy memes.

natsup123490 5y ago

Hard times and war change people. Many changes are negative: poorer, less secure, less trusting, more fearful, devastating losses. But other changes are for the better. And you don't need war to make these changes. If you make them before hard times come, you'll be better prepared for them: becoming more stoic (less emotional, less offended at everything), becoming more serious, more resourceful, more self-reliant, lowering your expectations, being more humble, being more careful with your words and who you speak openly with, knowing your place instead of speaking for the whole of humanity, being better able to negotiate, being better able to compromise, being more tolerant of other opinions, appreciating the wisdom of our ancestors more, and focusing more on what really matters.

AaronFriel 5y ago
All of the things you wrote as good things are (mostly) good things, glittering generalities that have no bearing on whether hard times are good or bad. To connect the two, you'd have to complete the scurrilous reference made that we are currently in a time of "weak men". You may or may not be aware that the "Hard times..." meme is widely used among not just stoics, but also fascist groups to suggest that the current generation is soft and weak, and that only by adversity can men become strong again. One can do almost everything good you listed, and indeed aspire to it, without becoming stoic and emotionless. To have feelings isn't weak.
- vain_cain 5y ago
  I think you misunderstood what the commenter was trying to say. He didn't mention anything about becoming emotionless, but becoming less emotional. I think we can all agree that new first world generations are on the extreme side of the spectre of emotions and would benefit from leaning to the opposite side a bit.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    > I think we can all agree that new first world generations are on the extreme side of the spectre of emotions and would benefit from leaning to the opposite side a bit. "We all" find our opinions are unwelcome on the internet when we say things like that.

slg 5y ago

I always enjoy a well crafted comment like this in which the reader can't tell if the "authoritarianism" you are decrying is the former president trying to circumvent democracy or the censorship of people who are spreading that message. It allows you to collect upvotes from people on both sides thinking you are accusing the other of authoritarianism.

cabaalis 5y ago
Either people have and live by principles or they don't. Part of our division is these sides you speak of, instructing their followers what to believe about individual topics.
- majormajor 5y ago
  The world is sadly more complicated than that. Often people's principles contradict each other, especially when it comes to bad actors. Consider the person with a principle of non-violence who is still willing to fight to defend their family. Are they a hypocrite?
  - airstrike 5y ago
    "Defending" assumes an attacker, which is the one breaking the principle of non-violence. So no, you're not a hypocrite to defend yourself if you believe in non-violence Said differently, the belief in non-violence can be stated as "I believe in pursuing non-violent means in absolutely every situation except for those in which another actor acts violently toward me"
    - couchand 5y ago
      The GP's point about internal contradiction remains regardless of the contortions you choose to apply to your definition of "non-violence".
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  Most atrocities in the world are committed by principled people. If they didn't have them they wouldn't care enough to commit them.

cyanydeez 5y ago

Is it thought, or is it just an actual threat of fascism require a hardline on the "tolerance of intolerance" If course mistakes happen when you stop blindly accepting everything S valuation.

throw_nbvc1234 5y ago

Just wait until GPT3 deep-fake audio. Closely followed by Deep-fake video. And algorithms will amplify this content to the echo chambers that "want" to hear it to increase ad revenue a few percentage points. All this will enter society at a time when trust in institutions is already low; you already hear some people predicting that there may not be an election with uncontested results (in the USA) ever again. If we solve/survive all those problems maybe there will be enough sense-making to actually tackle climate change come 2032. and maybe people will claim that the 20's were the true great filter of civilizations. On the other hand, the world is probably the most united it's been in a while because of Russia so there's that.

pg5 5y ago
Hate to say it, but deepfake audio and video are already pretty convincing (though post processing is needed)
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  Good looking post processing used to be exclusively reserved for movie studios with render farms. Then it became available to any YouTuber with a PC and a license (or not) of Adobe. Now the average phone can do more impressive special effects for Snapchat filters than big budget movies had not long ago. I'm convinced that deepfakes will be as easily generated as a Snapchat filter within a few years, substantially less time than society will require to adjust to this reality.
- atlantas 5y ago
  There was a viral video last week of the "Ghost of Kiev" that looked like real war footage. It ended up being from a 2013 video game! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_of_Kyiv#Morale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_of_Kyiv#Morale
- RajT88 5y ago
  Post processing or just lowering the resolution? Filming a deepfake with a DV cam pointed at your screen is very convincing. Sadly.

8note 5y ago

Is the word "plan" intentional, or a translation for some other concept?

engineer_22 5y ago

what were you planning?

FollowingTheDao 5y ago

wslh 5y ago

There is no easy answer: on one side you have censorship but on the other you have noise. Decentralized solutions produce a lot of noise and there is no existing protocol to automatically separate noise from signal.

hdjsklab 5y ago

astonex 5y ago

It's all because of ads. Everything is done in the name of getting more advertisers, and more ad-clicks. So everything must be sanitised, and strictly regulated lest you upset the advertisers

mkr-hn 5y ago

I think what's changed is that the ability of a few outlets to control the narrative is diminished. The interstate always cut through poor communities. The bridges were always designed to keep buses from carrying people out of the cities to the suburbs. Certain demographics were always over-represented among the poor, and the policies responsible were always there. (US examples, but systems keep some people down for the benefit of others everywhere.) But now you hear about it. The world you planned for was always an illusion. It never existed outside a narrow slice of time in post-WW2 peace and prosperity, and only for the thin slice of humanity that got to enjoy it. Now the hard part is: what do you do about it now that you know you were fed pleasing lies?

eezurr 5y ago

Just my 2 cent crystal ball. Perhaps people want a more authoritarian world (without realizing it). The ratio of static to noise has been increasing year by year. People don't want to take (nor have) the time to balance alternate view points and spend the time to independently determine fact from opinion. I think the current lack of direction creates turmoil--there are too many options, too many sources of information, and the quality of all of them have gone down while they compete to pull at our amygdalas for seconds of our time. Maybe there is a higher percentage of people who just want answers from someone they trust so they can get on with their lives. I think I've been on HN long enough to know that (re)implementing limitations on the control of information would make most of you scream. But maybe its for the best. It's already been proven many times over that people aren't going to research facts themselves. So having fewer organizations spoon feed choice bits of information can't be worse. Note that I am not suggesting to deliberately block information, but rather have organizations that are more selective (i.e. exactly like it was during the newspaper era). I think it's incredibly unlikely for the USA to become a dictatorship. We have too many checks and balances, and the decision making is cordoned off into many compartments, and the country is split 50/50 on who they vote for. An authoritarian-bent president would have to fight three branches of government, 50 governors (all of whom have their own state-level army, by the way), 100 senators, hundreds of congressmen, thousands of judges and lawyers, 150 million citizens, and so on and so forth. And on top of that, manage the country on a national and international level. I just dont see it happening. Trump did not bring us any where closer to that reality by the way (name one legislative/judicial change that moved the needle closer in that direction). All this to say, there's nothing to be scared about. The internet has been a fun experiment but it's given a microphone to too many people, and has crumpled the gatekeepers who had the job of filtering out the diamonds from the mud (and did that job extraordinarily well, by the way, because they had to, or die). It feels like our culture has been dying. The influence artists had up until the 90s was comparatively huge. If resources were pooled to support the most talented (be it artists, journalists, architects, musicians, corporate / government leaders, etc), I think we would experience another golden era of culture.

colordrops 5y ago
The US will become authoritarian precisely because of thinking and assumptions such as yours. 1. Authoritarianism is not a good thing, hard stop. 2. The US is not a long way away from authoritarianism. It's one strongman with actual brains away from it. Making consessions like you suggest is precisely how we slip into authoritarianism.

zapataband1 5y ago

I would recommend reading about people that have gone through revolutions/war conflicts. Especially worker-led movements that have toppled Tsars, Kings, and Militaries. I'd also recommend this for non-violent weapons against dictatorships(https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FDTD.pdf https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FDTD.pd...) The world is certainly dark but I find comfort in knowing that the majority of us simply want to live peaceful lives, and watch our families prosper.