9 ms·

>Does anyone know how to handle the depression/doom one feels with these updates? Realize that it's a choice to respond to things this way. This feeling comes

>Does anyone know how to handle the depression/doom one feels with these updates? Realize that it's a choice to respond to things this way. This feeling comes from a certain set of assumptions and learned responses. Remember that people are bad at predicting the future. Look at the historical track record of people predicting the implications of technological advancement. You'll find that almost nobody gets it right. Granted, that sometimes means that things are worse than we expect, but there are also many cases where things turn out better than we expect. If you're prone to focusing on potential negatives, maybe you can consciously balance that out by forcing yourself to imagine potential positives as well. Try to focus on things you personally have control over. Why worry about something that you can't change? Focus on problems that you can contribute to solving.

Ludleth19 3y ago
The implications of technological advancement are always the same- if it can be used to replace people at a satisfactory level, it will. Appealing to stoicism is nice, but it's a bittersweet salve in this situation.
- inference-lord 3y ago
  Honestly though, as if technological advancement has been overall worse for humans. Without it, we'd be fighting lions for food in the Savannah forever, that might be appealing to some, but I'd have prefer to have spears, fire, shelter, medcine etc. Industrial scale technology might ruin us though, so you might have some point, mostly I'm referring to climate change which is for sure the greatest existential threat imaginable right now. However it seems technology might bail us out here too, nuclear and renewables.
  - Ludleth19 3y ago
    I have no issue with technological advancement, it's obviously one of the pinnacles of human achievement- I have an issue with how those advancements are spread about and shared, especially shortly after large technological advancements happen. We undoubtedly have reaped immense benefits from the industrial revolution for example- that doesn't mean I'd have any interest in living through it or that it was executed in a way that prioritized the people who lived during those times.
    - inference-lord 3y ago
      There is a super simple solution to the problem you're describing, get involved in and contribute to open source and education. It's this easy. The more freely available the tech is, the easier it is to reproduce, the less the average joe is going to be locked out of the benefits. My entire career and everything good in my working life has involved open source software and I'm sure that it will continue to be the case.
      - Ludleth19 3y ago
        Open source stuff is great, and I support it and have contributed to projects myself, but people bandy it out as if it's a silver bullet and I have my reservations there. The issue goes way beyond technology itself, it's structural/sociological/cultural and that's not going to be fixed just because there are open source alternatives.
        inference-lord 3y ago
        It's not a silver bullet, nothing is, no one said that, but it's the best chance at democratizing technology that we have.
      - shortrounddev2 3y ago
        How does contributing to open source software and education help me pay the bills in a world where my job has been automated
        inference-lord 3y ago
        It doesn't stop that, but would you prefer a world where you're unemployed and locked out of the technology, or unemployed, and have access to the technology so you can learn and use it for free to maybe get back in the game?
        shortrounddev2 3y ago
  - fatherzine 3y ago
    there must be a fallacy name for 'more of a good thing is always a good thing' line of reasoning. almost every good out there is good in a certain range. outside of that range it becomes detrimental, possibly deadly. there is even a Swedish word for it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom. a few examples. material: - water: too little => thirst, too much => drown - heat: too little => freeze, too much => burn - food: too little => starvation, too much => obesity spiritual: - courage: too little => cowardice, too much => foolhardiness - diligence: too little => slothfulness, too much => workaholism - respect: too little => disregard, too much => idolatry etc. life is a balance
    - inference-lord 3y ago
      I understand your sentiment entirely, but it's not what I said, I didn't say an abundance is everything we should strive for , I said that having more efficient systems is good.
inference-lord 3y ago
As someone who has suffered immensely from anxiety disorders and worrying / anger my whole life, this comment is wisdom right here. Not in my thirties and almost nothing I worried about has come true. I mean, tomorrow we might get wiped out by a runaway technological singularity, but I could've spent the last 30 years of my life worrying a lot less too..
- AH4oFVbPT4f8 3y ago
  I know that I should stop worrying as I have no control over what might happen but I can't stop worrying. What was the key for you that helped you let things go?
  - ionwake 3y ago
    when i realised i just didnt care anymore
    - inference-lord 3y ago
      "not caring" doesn't really work for most people...
      - ionwake 3y ago
        I cant fix everyones problems but they have my sympathies
  - inference-lord 3y ago
    thoughts are not facts. I went to cognitive behavior therapy, for me it was like someone opened up my mind and showed it to me on a screen, it was a mirror into my head. It was amazing how it felt like I could rewire my thought patterns over the course of a few months. The main takeaway from it all however, was the mantra: _thoughts are not facts_. If you can realize that your thoughts are not objective truths, you will be much better off in almost every aspect of your life, because after living this mantra for many years, putting it to the test constantly, I know it's solid. Later on I read a lot of Buddhist philosophy which matched incredibly well with the therapy because a lot of Buddhist thinking and meditation practice is quite similar in it's approach. This sort of reinforced the validity of the CBT because I realized wise people have known about seeing things in an objective light for millennia, which was validating for me and helped me continue on the introspective path. Basically, we're all hallucinating in one way or another, almost all of the time, and that is ok, just be aware of that. When we're worried about the future, we're worried about something which doesn't yet exist, which is actually crazy. Of course it doesn't mean we should just ignore long term problems, no one advocates for that. But we shouldn't assume we know the outcome in advance because that often causes stress. Warning: I think that for most westerners, it's "safer" to get into something like CBT, Buddhism comes with some IMO very confronting ideas for a lot of people where as CBT is much more user friendly for westerners.
echelon 3y ago
Be excited! The tens of thousands of people working in entertainment building other people's visions can now be their own writers, actors, and directors. And they'll find their own fans. Studios will go away. Disney will no longer control Star Wars, because your kids will make it instead. In fact, the very notion of IP is about to drive to zero. And OpenAI won't own this. They won't even let you do "off book" things, and that's a no-go for art. Open source is going to own this space. There are other companies with results just as mature. They just didn't time a press release to go head to head with Gemini.
- Bost 3y ago
  What I see is the tens of thousands of people in troll factories producing content for 3/4 of the world population ready to believe whatever they see in the TV. Edit: Putin on AI, 2017 https://youtu.be/aJELcvjREgk?t=29 https://youtu.be/aJELcvjREgk?t=29 "Whoever takes the lead in this area will be the ruler of the world." "тот кто станет лидером в этой сфере будет властелином мира"
  - meowface 3y ago
    I think a more likely scenario is that people will be so used to it that a lot of people are going to have trouble believing that real things are real. Conspiracy theorists already suffer from this and it's going to get so much worse. I think in the initial years there'll be some major incidents where a fake thing gets major attention for a few days until it's debunked, but the much larger issue will be the inverse.
- khazhoux 3y ago
  Fully agree. I got a bit depressed Nov 22 when chatgpt and midjourney dropped… and then realized midjourney would let me create images I’ve had in my head for years but could never get out. (At least, MJ gave a reasonable approximation)
- thomastraum 3y ago
  Sorry, but this is a 5th-grade take everyone on tech-heavy forums loves. Only some people can make Star Wars (the pinnacle of independent filmmaking if you read Lucas's biography). It has nothing to do with the tools. IP in the arts is how artists get paid. I can assure you that no one in the creative industry feels liberated by these tools. Do you realise that just because you are good at lighting, you don't want to be an actor and make a movie? No, you like to be good at lightning, work with others who are good at what you do, and create a great work of art together. AI imagery only knows what exists. It's tough to make it do innovative technical effects and great new lightning. "oh my god, stock video sites are dead" Yes, exactly; stock, by definition, is commoditised.
LoganDark 3y ago
> Realize that it's a choice to respond to things this way. Why do people always say this / think that saying this is helpful? Try saying to someone with ADHD, "realize that you are choosing not to get your chores done today. You're choosing not to get out of bed on time. You're choosing to show behavior that your peers describe as 'lazy'. This will keep happening as long as you let it!" So what if you have the ability to choose whether you are depressed or not? Not everyone got the same choice. Not everyone still has that choice. I don't really expect another solution, but this always kind of bothers me when I see people saying everything is a choice. With neurodivergence and mental disorders, what you see as "choice" can end up not being a choice at all.
- adamredwoods 3y ago
  > Realize that it's a choice to respond to things this way. It's an easy thing for people to say when they don't really want to help others.
  - fasterik 3y ago
    It's also easy to attribute bad motives to someone to try and discredit them without making a substantial point. What I posted is what I have personally found to be the most useful advice in overcoming self-destructive mental habits.
    - adamredwoods 3y ago
      >> What I posted is what I have personally found to be the most useful advice in overcoming self-destructive mental habits I'm glad a one-time, one-line quip worked for you, but in my experience, positive mental habits are built over time, through support and continuous practice.
      - fasterik 3y ago
        >I'm glad a one-time, one-line quip worked for you That's making a lot of assumptions about my personal history that you couldn't possibly know anything about. >but in my experience, positive mental habits are built over time, through support and continuous practice. I agree, and I don't think anything I said implies otherwise.
adamredwoods 3y ago
I've been personally affected by technology advancements, and had to spend lots of time and effort recovering professionally from it. Mind you, I'm not saying it cannot be done, but those that do get affected have to work harder than those that don't. It's easy to say "don't worry" if you haven't been affected by events like this. I feel it's stronger for society to say "I don't know what will happen, but we'll work through it together."
- serialNumber 3y ago
  Not pressuring you at all if this is hard to talk about - but if you're open to sharing more about how you were affected, I'd love to listen
romeros 3y ago
It is easy wax philosophical when it doesn't affect you directly. There are folks honing on their VFX skills for close to a decade and they will be impacted in a significant way.
- roenxi 3y ago
  HN is in the perfect position to wax philosophical; this behemoth is coming for tech too. I've started plotting out what will happen if I have to use my hands to make a living and I'd really rather not be doing that. But reality is as reality is and nobody is owed a desk job. These are very exciting times with what type of society could be built with this tech, human inefficiencies are responsible for a lot of suffering that we can might be ab;e to stamp out soon.
- fasterik 3y ago
  It's not waxing philosophical, it's concrete advice for how to handle negative emotions associated with uncertainty and instability. The way things are going, it's very likely I'll be affected directly by these developments at some point. When that time comes, I'm not sure what will be better advice than focusing on the problems that I'm personally able to solve and looking at the potential upsides of the situation.
  - aknfffn 3y ago
    I think the issue with “don’t worry about things you can’t control” is, in this tech forum, not as valid as you might think. We are building technology, to suggest no agency is helpful in avoiding any feeling of responsibility or guilt — perhaps rendering your comment within the realms of waxing philosophical. Who better to worry about this than the people of hacker news? From a pure mental health standpoint, sure, it’s solid advice but I think it’s narrowed the context of the broader concern too much. An alternative to learned helplessness of “nothing you can do” is to encourage technologists to do the opposite. Instead of forgetting about it, trying to put it out of your mind, fight for the future you want. Join others in that effort. That’s the reason society has hope — not the people shrugging as people fall by the wayside. Depression mediation by agency feels more positive, but I don’t have a lot of experience tbh. Just a view that we, technologists, shouldn’t abdicate responsibility nor encourage others to do so. That culture, imo, is why a large section of tech workers, consumers and commentators see the industry in a bad light. They’re not wrong. EDIT: to add, “what problems can I personally solve” also individualises society’s ability to shape itself for the better. “What problems can I personally get involved in solving”, “what communities are trying to solve problems I care about” is perhaps the message I’d advocate for.
jojobas 3y ago
Coping skills are nice and all, but there's no meditating around the fact that a psychopath billionaire can now basically fake reality.
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  "...a psychopath billionaire can now basically fake reality....more easily than before. Like billionaires didn't already scare a lot of people.
- fasterik 3y ago
  People should already be skeptical of everything they see/read on the internet. I don't think this is going to change my media consumption habits dramatically.
- fatherzine 3y ago
  hahaha, what do you think mass media is?!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
anon373839 3y ago
This is excellent advice. I will also add that with change and uncertainty, it’s difficult for us to imagine how banal things can ultimately turn out to be. For example, I’m getting text messages all day long from random politicians asking for money. If you told people 50 years ago that one day we’d be carrying devices where we could be pinged with unwanted solicitations all day and night, they might have imagined an asphyxiating nightmare. But in reality, it’s mainly a nuisance. The point is that your brain makes all kinds of emotional predictions about the future, but they aren’t really very useful and if you’re experiencing depression or anxiety, I can guarantee they are biased predictions.

Ludleth19 3y ago

The implications of technological advancement are always the same- if it can be used to replace people at a satisfactory level, it will. Appealing to stoicism is nice, but it's a bittersweet salve in this situation.

inference-lord 3y ago
Honestly though, as if technological advancement has been overall worse for humans. Without it, we'd be fighting lions for food in the Savannah forever, that might be appealing to some, but I'd have prefer to have spears, fire, shelter, medcine etc. Industrial scale technology might ruin us though, so you might have some point, mostly I'm referring to climate change which is for sure the greatest existential threat imaginable right now. However it seems technology might bail us out here too, nuclear and renewables.
- Ludleth19 3y ago
  I have no issue with technological advancement, it's obviously one of the pinnacles of human achievement- I have an issue with how those advancements are spread about and shared, especially shortly after large technological advancements happen. We undoubtedly have reaped immense benefits from the industrial revolution for example- that doesn't mean I'd have any interest in living through it or that it was executed in a way that prioritized the people who lived during those times.
  - inference-lord 3y ago
    There is a super simple solution to the problem you're describing, get involved in and contribute to open source and education. It's this easy. The more freely available the tech is, the easier it is to reproduce, the less the average joe is going to be locked out of the benefits. My entire career and everything good in my working life has involved open source software and I'm sure that it will continue to be the case.
    - Ludleth19 3y ago
      Open source stuff is great, and I support it and have contributed to projects myself, but people bandy it out as if it's a silver bullet and I have my reservations there. The issue goes way beyond technology itself, it's structural/sociological/cultural and that's not going to be fixed just because there are open source alternatives.
      - inference-lord 3y ago
        It's not a silver bullet, nothing is, no one said that, but it's the best chance at democratizing technology that we have.
    - shortrounddev2 3y ago
      How does contributing to open source software and education help me pay the bills in a world where my job has been automated
      - inference-lord 3y ago
        It doesn't stop that, but would you prefer a world where you're unemployed and locked out of the technology, or unemployed, and have access to the technology so you can learn and use it for free to maybe get back in the game?
        shortrounddev2 3y ago
- fatherzine 3y ago
  there must be a fallacy name for 'more of a good thing is always a good thing' line of reasoning. almost every good out there is good in a certain range. outside of that range it becomes detrimental, possibly deadly. there is even a Swedish word for it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom. a few examples. material: - water: too little => thirst, too much => drown - heat: too little => freeze, too much => burn - food: too little => starvation, too much => obesity spiritual: - courage: too little => cowardice, too much => foolhardiness - diligence: too little => slothfulness, too much => workaholism - respect: too little => disregard, too much => idolatry etc. life is a balance
  - inference-lord 3y ago
    I understand your sentiment entirely, but it's not what I said, I didn't say an abundance is everything we should strive for , I said that having more efficient systems is good.

inference-lord 3y ago

As someone who has suffered immensely from anxiety disorders and worrying / anger my whole life, this comment is wisdom right here. Not in my thirties and almost nothing I worried about has come true. I mean, tomorrow we might get wiped out by a runaway technological singularity, but I could've spent the last 30 years of my life worrying a lot less too..

AH4oFVbPT4f8 3y ago
I know that I should stop worrying as I have no control over what might happen but I can't stop worrying. What was the key for you that helped you let things go?
- ionwake 3y ago
  when i realised i just didnt care anymore
  - inference-lord 3y ago
    "not caring" doesn't really work for most people...
    - ionwake 3y ago
      I cant fix everyones problems but they have my sympathies
- inference-lord 3y ago
  thoughts are not facts. I went to cognitive behavior therapy, for me it was like someone opened up my mind and showed it to me on a screen, it was a mirror into my head. It was amazing how it felt like I could rewire my thought patterns over the course of a few months. The main takeaway from it all however, was the mantra: _thoughts are not facts_. If you can realize that your thoughts are not objective truths, you will be much better off in almost every aspect of your life, because after living this mantra for many years, putting it to the test constantly, I know it's solid. Later on I read a lot of Buddhist philosophy which matched incredibly well with the therapy because a lot of Buddhist thinking and meditation practice is quite similar in it's approach. This sort of reinforced the validity of the CBT because I realized wise people have known about seeing things in an objective light for millennia, which was validating for me and helped me continue on the introspective path. Basically, we're all hallucinating in one way or another, almost all of the time, and that is ok, just be aware of that. When we're worried about the future, we're worried about something which doesn't yet exist, which is actually crazy. Of course it doesn't mean we should just ignore long term problems, no one advocates for that. But we shouldn't assume we know the outcome in advance because that often causes stress. Warning: I think that for most westerners, it's "safer" to get into something like CBT, Buddhism comes with some IMO very confronting ideas for a lot of people where as CBT is much more user friendly for westerners.

echelon 3y ago

Be excited! The tens of thousands of people working in entertainment building other people's visions can now be their own writers, actors, and directors. And they'll find their own fans. Studios will go away. Disney will no longer control Star Wars, because your kids will make it instead. In fact, the very notion of IP is about to drive to zero. And OpenAI won't own this. They won't even let you do "off book" things, and that's a no-go for art. Open source is going to own this space. There are other companies with results just as mature. They just didn't time a press release to go head to head with Gemini.

Bost 3y ago
What I see is the tens of thousands of people in troll factories producing content for 3/4 of the world population ready to believe whatever they see in the TV. Edit: Putin on AI, 2017 https://youtu.be/aJELcvjREgk?t=29 https://youtu.be/aJELcvjREgk?t=29 "Whoever takes the lead in this area will be the ruler of the world." "тот кто станет лидером в этой сфере будет властелином мира"
- meowface 3y ago
  I think a more likely scenario is that people will be so used to it that a lot of people are going to have trouble believing that real things are real. Conspiracy theorists already suffer from this and it's going to get so much worse. I think in the initial years there'll be some major incidents where a fake thing gets major attention for a few days until it's debunked, but the much larger issue will be the inverse.
khazhoux 3y ago
Fully agree. I got a bit depressed Nov 22 when chatgpt and midjourney dropped… and then realized midjourney would let me create images I’ve had in my head for years but could never get out. (At least, MJ gave a reasonable approximation)
thomastraum 3y ago
Sorry, but this is a 5th-grade take everyone on tech-heavy forums loves. Only some people can make Star Wars (the pinnacle of independent filmmaking if you read Lucas's biography). It has nothing to do with the tools. IP in the arts is how artists get paid. I can assure you that no one in the creative industry feels liberated by these tools. Do you realise that just because you are good at lighting, you don't want to be an actor and make a movie? No, you like to be good at lightning, work with others who are good at what you do, and create a great work of art together. AI imagery only knows what exists. It's tough to make it do innovative technical effects and great new lightning. "oh my god, stock video sites are dead" Yes, exactly; stock, by definition, is commoditised.

LoganDark 3y ago

> Realize that it's a choice to respond to things this way. Why do people always say this / think that saying this is helpful? Try saying to someone with ADHD, "realize that you are choosing not to get your chores done today. You're choosing not to get out of bed on time. You're choosing to show behavior that your peers describe as 'lazy'. This will keep happening as long as you let it!" So what if you have the ability to choose whether you are depressed or not? Not everyone got the same choice. Not everyone still has that choice. I don't really expect another solution, but this always kind of bothers me when I see people saying everything is a choice. With neurodivergence and mental disorders, what you see as "choice" can end up not being a choice at all.

adamredwoods 3y ago
> Realize that it's a choice to respond to things this way. It's an easy thing for people to say when they don't really want to help others.
- fasterik 3y ago
  It's also easy to attribute bad motives to someone to try and discredit them without making a substantial point. What I posted is what I have personally found to be the most useful advice in overcoming self-destructive mental habits.
  - adamredwoods 3y ago
    >> What I posted is what I have personally found to be the most useful advice in overcoming self-destructive mental habits I'm glad a one-time, one-line quip worked for you, but in my experience, positive mental habits are built over time, through support and continuous practice.
    - fasterik 3y ago
      >I'm glad a one-time, one-line quip worked for you That's making a lot of assumptions about my personal history that you couldn't possibly know anything about. >but in my experience, positive mental habits are built over time, through support and continuous practice. I agree, and I don't think anything I said implies otherwise.

adamredwoods 3y ago

I've been personally affected by technology advancements, and had to spend lots of time and effort recovering professionally from it. Mind you, I'm not saying it cannot be done, but those that do get affected have to work harder than those that don't. It's easy to say "don't worry" if you haven't been affected by events like this. I feel it's stronger for society to say "I don't know what will happen, but we'll work through it together."

serialNumber 3y ago
Not pressuring you at all if this is hard to talk about - but if you're open to sharing more about how you were affected, I'd love to listen

romeros 3y ago

It is easy wax philosophical when it doesn't affect you directly. There are folks honing on their VFX skills for close to a decade and they will be impacted in a significant way.

roenxi 3y ago
HN is in the perfect position to wax philosophical; this behemoth is coming for tech too. I've started plotting out what will happen if I have to use my hands to make a living and I'd really rather not be doing that. But reality is as reality is and nobody is owed a desk job. These are very exciting times with what type of society could be built with this tech, human inefficiencies are responsible for a lot of suffering that we can might be ab;e to stamp out soon.
fasterik 3y ago
It's not waxing philosophical, it's concrete advice for how to handle negative emotions associated with uncertainty and instability. The way things are going, it's very likely I'll be affected directly by these developments at some point. When that time comes, I'm not sure what will be better advice than focusing on the problems that I'm personally able to solve and looking at the potential upsides of the situation.
- aknfffn 3y ago
  I think the issue with “don’t worry about things you can’t control” is, in this tech forum, not as valid as you might think. We are building technology, to suggest no agency is helpful in avoiding any feeling of responsibility or guilt — perhaps rendering your comment within the realms of waxing philosophical. Who better to worry about this than the people of hacker news? From a pure mental health standpoint, sure, it’s solid advice but I think it’s narrowed the context of the broader concern too much. An alternative to learned helplessness of “nothing you can do” is to encourage technologists to do the opposite. Instead of forgetting about it, trying to put it out of your mind, fight for the future you want. Join others in that effort. That’s the reason society has hope — not the people shrugging as people fall by the wayside. Depression mediation by agency feels more positive, but I don’t have a lot of experience tbh. Just a view that we, technologists, shouldn’t abdicate responsibility nor encourage others to do so. That culture, imo, is why a large section of tech workers, consumers and commentators see the industry in a bad light. They’re not wrong. EDIT: to add, “what problems can I personally solve” also individualises society’s ability to shape itself for the better. “What problems can I personally get involved in solving”, “what communities are trying to solve problems I care about” is perhaps the message I’d advocate for.

jojobas 3y ago

Coping skills are nice and all, but there's no meditating around the fact that a psychopath billionaire can now basically fake reality.

DoreenMichele 3y ago
"...a psychopath billionaire can now basically fake reality....more easily than before. Like billionaires didn't already scare a lot of people.
fasterik 3y ago
People should already be skeptical of everything they see/read on the internet. I don't think this is going to change my media consumption habits dramatically.
fatherzine 3y ago
hahaha, what do you think mass media is?!

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

anon373839 3y ago

This is excellent advice. I will also add that with change and uncertainty, it’s difficult for us to imagine how banal things can ultimately turn out to be. For example, I’m getting text messages all day long from random politicians asking for money. If you told people 50 years ago that one day we’d be carrying devices where we could be pinged with unwanted solicitations all day and night, they might have imagined an asphyxiating nightmare. But in reality, it’s mainly a nuisance. The point is that your brain makes all kinds of emotional predictions about the future, but they aren’t really very useful and if you’re experiencing depression or anxiety, I can guarantee they are biased predictions.