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My opinion is that we should stop obsessing about storing everything and anything. It's unhealthy...we're accumulating too much. Almost everything on the intern

My opinion is that we should stop obsessing about storing everything and anything. It's unhealthy...we're accumulating too much. Almost everything on the internet is not worth preserving.

rco8786 3y ago
> we're accumulating too much. What does that mean? By what measure is "too much"? > Almost everything on the internet is not worth preserving. Certainly true. But some things are very, very much worth preserving and we don't necessarily know what those things are in the present.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  > What does that mean? By what measure is "too much"? It already seems intuitive to me that people are far too obsessed about storing anything and everything, from photos to notes to random thoughts and more. To me it seems pathological. I saw one estimate that is around 500 exabytes already... it looks a lot like those people whose basements are full of unused junk, only in virtual form. I also noticed for sure that people keep way too much stuff they never use...I've rarely met anyone who doesn't. That certainly carries over to their virtual life too.
  - eddieroger 3y ago
    It's worth considering that we all get to individually assign value to something, and that value is mostly an opinion, which means it's not right or wrong objectively. There are certainly extremes like those who hoard, but just because others values some things more than you do doesn't make them wrong.
    - vouaobrasil 3y ago
      I agree in one aspect, but in another aspect, I disagree. Humans have natural instincts which makes them hoard because that would have been adaptive in times of scarcity (i.e. our ancient past). Now, in times of surplus, that instinct is mostly maladaptive. So I DO posit that humans on average place a higher value on hoarding than they should, and that if they actually took the time to override this basal instinct with higher brain functions, then on AVERAGE they would be happier.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  > But some things are very, very much worth preserving and we don't necessarily know what those things are in the present. I don’t exactly disagree. But this sounds a lot like hoarding.
  - rco8786 3y ago
    Sure but when the cost is negligible and takes up no physical space in your life…does it matter
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
samwillis 3y ago
If we create something of value it will naturally survive. Artificially extending the life of something transient is a waste. When we except that both what we create and ourselves are transient, life become better. Concentrate on the now. -- Edit: not sure which reply to reply to, so commenting here. My badly made point was that trying ourselves to insure the longevity of something we create is not the best use of our time and resources. If we create something of value, and it means something to other people, it will spread, and it will be saved for the future and future generations. Society saving things for the future is essential, and we generally do a good job of it.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > If we create something of value it will naturally survive Ever heard of the library of Alexandria?
  - hk__2 3y ago
    > Ever heard of the library of Alexandria? Yes: the end of the library of Alexandria had virtually no impact on the preservation of knowledge. The library of Alexandria slowly declined for various centuries, and was progressively replaced by dozens of libraries in the rest of the world. We don’t know how much of its materials was lost in time, but the key thing is that knowledge of that time was not preserved by libraries but by copies of documents. What we know from Antiquity is mostly due to scribes and monks who spend their life copying content, while libraries have been mostly useless for that purpose.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  Yes, I agree with that. For example, if you really think something is worthwhile, write a book instead of keeping it on Wordpress.
  - tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
    That’s an absurdly arbitrary difference buried in a value judgement informed by your own personal biases. And, beauty is not always in the eye of the beholder.
Knee_Pain 3y ago
Imagine if we found an ancient monastery hidden deep inside a mountain and containing 100 books. Then we found a note from the copyist saying that most stuff wasn't worth preserving so these are only the 100 books he liked the most out of 10,000 What would you say? What would any historian say?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
TheCapeGreek 3y ago
I see it less as us storing too much, but rather that it's impossible for us to tell what will be truly of historical significance (and thus worth preserving) in the next 10, 20, 50, 100 years. Think about it in terms of art. Social media has exploded with various digital artists of all kinds. With the tools available to us these days, I'd also posit at least some of that art in a few hundred years would be considered beyond even the renaissance masters. However, the sheer amount of it available today compared to the past likely means most of it will be lost to history. Taking the same logic in reverse, how many masterpieces in history were lost because they weren't important to store, or their creator went undiscovered for their entire lives? The same can be said to all sorts of knowledge and insights. Given that digital media is largely some kind of knowledge storage, we'll likely lose a ton of those too.
nextaccountic 3y ago
It's worth it for historians and people curious about the past. We have lots of accounting and tax register and genealogies and war stories of ancient times, but too few stories from the common people. How their daily life were, etc. This is honestly a huge loss. Now, the problem is that LLMs are polluting our digital record. It will become harder and harder to distinguish human text from bots.

My opinion is that we should stop obsessing about storing everything and anything. It's unhealthy...we're accumulating too much. Almost everything on the internet is not worth preserving.

rco8786 3y ago

> we're accumulating too much. What does that mean? By what measure is "too much"? > Almost everything on the internet is not worth preserving. Certainly true. But some things are very, very much worth preserving and we don't necessarily know what those things are in the present.

vouaobrasil 3y ago
> What does that mean? By what measure is "too much"? It already seems intuitive to me that people are far too obsessed about storing anything and everything, from photos to notes to random thoughts and more. To me it seems pathological. I saw one estimate that is around 500 exabytes already... it looks a lot like those people whose basements are full of unused junk, only in virtual form. I also noticed for sure that people keep way too much stuff they never use...I've rarely met anyone who doesn't. That certainly carries over to their virtual life too.
- eddieroger 3y ago
  It's worth considering that we all get to individually assign value to something, and that value is mostly an opinion, which means it's not right or wrong objectively. There are certainly extremes like those who hoard, but just because others values some things more than you do doesn't make them wrong.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    I agree in one aspect, but in another aspect, I disagree. Humans have natural instincts which makes them hoard because that would have been adaptive in times of scarcity (i.e. our ancient past). Now, in times of surplus, that instinct is mostly maladaptive. So I DO posit that humans on average place a higher value on hoarding than they should, and that if they actually took the time to override this basal instinct with higher brain functions, then on AVERAGE they would be happier.
Waterluvian 3y ago
> But some things are very, very much worth preserving and we don't necessarily know what those things are in the present. I don’t exactly disagree. But this sounds a lot like hoarding.
- rco8786 3y ago
  Sure but when the cost is negligible and takes up no physical space in your life…does it matter
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

samwillis 3y ago

If we create something of value it will naturally survive. Artificially extending the life of something transient is a waste. When we except that both what we create and ourselves are transient, life become better. Concentrate on the now. -- Edit: not sure which reply to reply to, so commenting here. My badly made point was that trying ourselves to insure the longevity of something we create is not the best use of our time and resources. If we create something of value, and it means something to other people, it will spread, and it will be saved for the future and future generations. Society saving things for the future is essential, and we generally do a good job of it.

ekianjo 3y ago
> If we create something of value it will naturally survive Ever heard of the library of Alexandria?
- hk__2 3y ago
  > Ever heard of the library of Alexandria? Yes: the end of the library of Alexandria had virtually no impact on the preservation of knowledge. The library of Alexandria slowly declined for various centuries, and was progressively replaced by dozens of libraries in the rest of the world. We don’t know how much of its materials was lost in time, but the key thing is that knowledge of that time was not preserved by libraries but by copies of documents. What we know from Antiquity is mostly due to scribes and monks who spend their life copying content, while libraries have been mostly useless for that purpose.
vouaobrasil 3y ago
Yes, I agree with that. For example, if you really think something is worthwhile, write a book instead of keeping it on Wordpress.
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y ago
  That’s an absurdly arbitrary difference buried in a value judgement informed by your own personal biases. And, beauty is not always in the eye of the beholder.

Knee_Pain 3y ago

Imagine if we found an ancient monastery hidden deep inside a mountain and containing 100 books. Then we found a note from the copyist saying that most stuff wasn't worth preserving so these are only the 100 books he liked the most out of 10,000 What would you say? What would any historian say?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

TheCapeGreek 3y ago

I see it less as us storing too much, but rather that it's impossible for us to tell what will be truly of historical significance (and thus worth preserving) in the next 10, 20, 50, 100 years. Think about it in terms of art. Social media has exploded with various digital artists of all kinds. With the tools available to us these days, I'd also posit at least some of that art in a few hundred years would be considered beyond even the renaissance masters. However, the sheer amount of it available today compared to the past likely means most of it will be lost to history. Taking the same logic in reverse, how many masterpieces in history were lost because they weren't important to store, or their creator went undiscovered for their entire lives? The same can be said to all sorts of knowledge and insights. Given that digital media is largely some kind of knowledge storage, we'll likely lose a ton of those too.

nextaccountic 3y ago

It's worth it for historians and people curious about the past. We have lots of accounting and tax register and genealogies and war stories of ancient times, but too few stories from the common people. How their daily life were, etc. This is honestly a huge loss. Now, the problem is that LLMs are polluting our digital record. It will become harder and harder to distinguish human text from bots.