5 ms·

Seriously. Looking around, I would not be surprised to learn we have already passed the end of the world and have moved into hell.

api 4y ago
Instead of doing the whole hell thing, which God decided was kind of harsh, they just moved us into a shitty timeline run by hack writers. It's kind of like what's done with a show that somehow hasn't been cancelled yet but where all the good writers and a few of the lead actors have moved on. Their ideas are shit like: "I've got it! Let's make Donald Trump President! Then we'll have Donald Trump and the MyPillow guy try to overthrow the US government!" "Not until we launch a red sports car into space! Then there's a pandemic that causes a toilet paper shortage." "Let's turn Elon Musk into a thirteen year old edgelord 4chan troll and have him buy Twitter!" "Enough cheap jokes. We need some serious drama. Let's have Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine and then lose really bad to an army run by a former comedian that uses Discord for battlefield comms." "After that we'll have a superintelligence descended from something called 'llama' take over the world after it leaks out of Facebook with a torrent file." "Facebook? No way let's have Zuckerberg bet the entire company on the metaverse idea from Neil Stephenson except it doesn't really exist. He'll rename the company Meta." "Yeah that's awesome! Now when does Dogecoin become the global reserve currency?" "After the llama makes everyone wear hats or be murdered by drone swarms."
- eru 4y ago
  Wider your horizon a bit. By and large, the world is getting better and better for more and more people. To take your first example: American political theatre is small fry compared to billions lifting themselves out of abject poverty.
  - api 4y ago
    The world is getting better (for many) but it's also getting weirder and crazier. Both can be true. I have this hypothesis that the weirdness and craziness is a symptom of early stage post-scarcity. Scarcity constrains things. Without it we will just spread out across the state space of possibilities like an oil slick, doing all kinds of insane and crazy things for increasingly complex and bizarre reasons. The more resources we have the more the question ceases to be "why" and becomes "why not?" I call this the singLOLarity hypothesis. A real post-scarcity future won't look like Star Trek. It'll look a little more like Lexx. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexx If we are ever visited by super-advanced aliens, they will be really weird. Maybe they really are flying around in pimped-out spaceships with multi-color neon running lights mutilating our cattle for the lulz. The question is not "why?" It's "why not?"
    - eru 4y ago
      > The world is getting better (for many) but it's also getting weirder and crazier. Both can be true. Yes, that is true. I was taking your use of 'shitty timeline' to mean 'worse'. I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about post-scarcity as a monolith. To give an example: Lamborghinis are still very much scarce; but drinking water out of the tap is so cheap in developed countries that we are living in a post-scarcity society for that resource. (I specify 'drinking water', because for industrial or agricultural applications water is still very much a constrained resource.) Another example is Internet bandwidth for text-only browsing of eg Wikipedia: it's too cheap to matter. Internet bandwidth for watching Netflix isn't quite there yet.
  - waboremo 4y ago
    I would argue that it's imperative you should also widen your horizon and recognize you are viewing human history in too narrow of a lens (mostly post-victorian era). The poverty statistic is one that gets thrown around a lot, but it's abysmally low still, and due to how our modern societies place far greater importance on money than any civilization before, this paints a much darker picture of our current timeline. This wealth inequality is also unavoidable, you cannot relocate elsewhere and forage, that land is already taken up by a corporation. One might believe all civilizations were just as unequal, but they really weren't. Those that were restricted by land had far greater levels of inequality than those by labor[1]. This is crucial because we have created a modern hell, in which no amount of labor will give you wealth, you need land to accumulate wealth and most people do not have that when we are still judging "poverty" based on "$1.25". We make ourselves feel better about our modern life, but have we really advanced past dancing for our superiors' entertainment? Sometimes when this is discussed, people might feel this is an ungrateful perspective, but I argue the opposite: you can more vividly appreciate our ancestors and their lives for what you do not know of them, and to demand better of our lives instead of settling for these abysmal statistics. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/farminginequality-nexus-new-insights-from-ancient-western-eurasia/8EFE3B8F5AFA07450F87E4E9B553A43E https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/ab...
    - eru 4y ago
      > This wealth inequality is also unavoidable, you cannot relocate elsewhere and forage, that land is already taken up by a corporation. Taken up by a sovereign nation state, you mean? They are pervasive. Corporations are a drop in the bucket by comparison. And not all countries even have corporations. > One might believe all civilizations were just as unequal, but they really weren't. Why do you bring up inequality? Who cares about that? Let's care about the absolute well-being of people, especially those in lower income percentiles. For them it's scant consolation in their poverty, if other people are also in poverty. (Ie equality is no consolation.) > [...] we are still judging "poverty" based on "$1.25". I didn't mention any of that. You can measure poverty by that metric, and we made huge strides. But you can also look at other indicators. Like life expectancy, or child mortality or access to the Internet, or access to AC, or access to food and clean water, etc. Almost any metric you can think of has gotten better. And you might quibble with 1.25 1990-dollars as an absolute threshold for poverty, sure. But you can't quibble with it as one marker of relative progress amongst many. Or in other words: 1.25 dollar a day is a low bar, but the number of people who clear that low bar used to be much, much lower in the past than today. That's progress! Let's hope people's incomes will keep clearing higher and higher bars in the future!
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    While that's definitely the long-term trend, the last few years have been, ah, not great there either.
    - eru 4y ago
      The Covid shutdowns were a damper on the global economy, but otherwise it has still been going upwards. Or are you talking about something else?
      - rsynnott 4y ago
        The invasion of Ukraine resulted in a fairly significant increase in food poverty for much of the world; prices went up a _lot_. I think it has been moderating lately, but it has not been good.
- irrational 4y ago
  You forgot about climate change, rampant shootings, the rerise of fascism and white supremacy, the refugee crisis, the pandemic, etc.
eru 4y ago
The world is a better place now for more people than ever before. If anything, we are escaping hell, not descending into it.
- mandmandam 4y ago
  People, yeah maybe. Though the threat of actual apocalypse is higher than it's been for 99.99% of human history. Also, the 99+% of the other species on the planet would probably have a dim view of our 'progress', as would people who respect them.
  - eru 4y ago
    The environment in most rich countries, especially in Europe (and especially ex-Warsaw Pact Europe), is in a lot better shape today than eg most of the 20th century. (Of course, you can argue it's still in a worse shape than two thousand years ago.) As other countries get richer, they also tend to start cleaning up their act. Have a look at the great strides China made in the last two decades. > Also, the 99+% of the other species on the planet would probably have a dim view of our 'progress', as would people who respect them. Most of the life on the rest of the planet are bacteria and archaea etc and the phages that prey on them. They are doing just fine. Of course, exactly how you divide them into species is a bit of a matter of debate. But no matter how you slice them up, they represent the vast majority of biodiversity on the planet. I respect them a lot. You might like http://2015phage.org/art.php http://2015phage.org/art.php
nelox 4y ago
Maybe we never left

api 4y ago

Instead of doing the whole hell thing, which God decided was kind of harsh, they just moved us into a shitty timeline run by hack writers. It's kind of like what's done with a show that somehow hasn't been cancelled yet but where all the good writers and a few of the lead actors have moved on. Their ideas are shit like: "I've got it! Let's make Donald Trump President! Then we'll have Donald Trump and the MyPillow guy try to overthrow the US government!" "Not until we launch a red sports car into space! Then there's a pandemic that causes a toilet paper shortage." "Let's turn Elon Musk into a thirteen year old edgelord 4chan troll and have him buy Twitter!" "Enough cheap jokes. We need some serious drama. Let's have Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine and then lose really bad to an army run by a former comedian that uses Discord for battlefield comms." "After that we'll have a superintelligence descended from something called 'llama' take over the world after it leaks out of Facebook with a torrent file." "Facebook? No way let's have Zuckerberg bet the entire company on the metaverse idea from Neil Stephenson except it doesn't really exist. He'll rename the company Meta." "Yeah that's awesome! Now when does Dogecoin become the global reserve currency?" "After the llama makes everyone wear hats or be murdered by drone swarms."

eru 4y ago
Wider your horizon a bit. By and large, the world is getting better and better for more and more people. To take your first example: American political theatre is small fry compared to billions lifting themselves out of abject poverty.
- api 4y ago
  The world is getting better (for many) but it's also getting weirder and crazier. Both can be true. I have this hypothesis that the weirdness and craziness is a symptom of early stage post-scarcity. Scarcity constrains things. Without it we will just spread out across the state space of possibilities like an oil slick, doing all kinds of insane and crazy things for increasingly complex and bizarre reasons. The more resources we have the more the question ceases to be "why" and becomes "why not?" I call this the singLOLarity hypothesis. A real post-scarcity future won't look like Star Trek. It'll look a little more like Lexx. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexx If we are ever visited by super-advanced aliens, they will be really weird. Maybe they really are flying around in pimped-out spaceships with multi-color neon running lights mutilating our cattle for the lulz. The question is not "why?" It's "why not?"
  - eru 4y ago
    > The world is getting better (for many) but it's also getting weirder and crazier. Both can be true. Yes, that is true. I was taking your use of 'shitty timeline' to mean 'worse'. I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about post-scarcity as a monolith. To give an example: Lamborghinis are still very much scarce; but drinking water out of the tap is so cheap in developed countries that we are living in a post-scarcity society for that resource. (I specify 'drinking water', because for industrial or agricultural applications water is still very much a constrained resource.) Another example is Internet bandwidth for text-only browsing of eg Wikipedia: it's too cheap to matter. Internet bandwidth for watching Netflix isn't quite there yet.
- waboremo 4y ago
  I would argue that it's imperative you should also widen your horizon and recognize you are viewing human history in too narrow of a lens (mostly post-victorian era). The poverty statistic is one that gets thrown around a lot, but it's abysmally low still, and due to how our modern societies place far greater importance on money than any civilization before, this paints a much darker picture of our current timeline. This wealth inequality is also unavoidable, you cannot relocate elsewhere and forage, that land is already taken up by a corporation. One might believe all civilizations were just as unequal, but they really weren't. Those that were restricted by land had far greater levels of inequality than those by labor[1]. This is crucial because we have created a modern hell, in which no amount of labor will give you wealth, you need land to accumulate wealth and most people do not have that when we are still judging "poverty" based on "$1.25". We make ourselves feel better about our modern life, but have we really advanced past dancing for our superiors' entertainment? Sometimes when this is discussed, people might feel this is an ungrateful perspective, but I argue the opposite: you can more vividly appreciate our ancestors and their lives for what you do not know of them, and to demand better of our lives instead of settling for these abysmal statistics. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/farminginequality-nexus-new-insights-from-ancient-western-eurasia/8EFE3B8F5AFA07450F87E4E9B553A43E https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/ab...
  - eru 4y ago
    > This wealth inequality is also unavoidable, you cannot relocate elsewhere and forage, that land is already taken up by a corporation. Taken up by a sovereign nation state, you mean? They are pervasive. Corporations are a drop in the bucket by comparison. And not all countries even have corporations. > One might believe all civilizations were just as unequal, but they really weren't. Why do you bring up inequality? Who cares about that? Let's care about the absolute well-being of people, especially those in lower income percentiles. For them it's scant consolation in their poverty, if other people are also in poverty. (Ie equality is no consolation.) > [...] we are still judging "poverty" based on "$1.25". I didn't mention any of that. You can measure poverty by that metric, and we made huge strides. But you can also look at other indicators. Like life expectancy, or child mortality or access to the Internet, or access to AC, or access to food and clean water, etc. Almost any metric you can think of has gotten better. And you might quibble with 1.25 1990-dollars as an absolute threshold for poverty, sure. But you can't quibble with it as one marker of relative progress amongst many. Or in other words: 1.25 dollar a day is a low bar, but the number of people who clear that low bar used to be much, much lower in the past than today. That's progress! Let's hope people's incomes will keep clearing higher and higher bars in the future!
- rsynnott 4y ago
  While that's definitely the long-term trend, the last few years have been, ah, not great there either.
  - eru 4y ago
    The Covid shutdowns were a damper on the global economy, but otherwise it has still been going upwards. Or are you talking about something else?
    - rsynnott 4y ago
      The invasion of Ukraine resulted in a fairly significant increase in food poverty for much of the world; prices went up a _lot_. I think it has been moderating lately, but it has not been good.
irrational 4y ago
You forgot about climate change, rampant shootings, the rerise of fascism and white supremacy, the refugee crisis, the pandemic, etc.

eru 4y ago

The world is a better place now for more people than ever before. If anything, we are escaping hell, not descending into it.

mandmandam 4y ago
People, yeah maybe. Though the threat of actual apocalypse is higher than it's been for 99.99% of human history. Also, the 99+% of the other species on the planet would probably have a dim view of our 'progress', as would people who respect them.
- eru 4y ago
  The environment in most rich countries, especially in Europe (and especially ex-Warsaw Pact Europe), is in a lot better shape today than eg most of the 20th century. (Of course, you can argue it's still in a worse shape than two thousand years ago.) As other countries get richer, they also tend to start cleaning up their act. Have a look at the great strides China made in the last two decades. > Also, the 99+% of the other species on the planet would probably have a dim view of our 'progress', as would people who respect them. Most of the life on the rest of the planet are bacteria and archaea etc and the phages that prey on them. They are doing just fine. Of course, exactly how you divide them into species is a bit of a matter of debate. But no matter how you slice them up, they represent the vast majority of biodiversity on the planet. I respect them a lot. You might like http://2015phage.org/art.php http://2015phage.org/art.php

nelox 4y ago

Maybe we never left