4 ms·

Utopias are always fantasies. All of them. There is no such thing and never will be. Solve problems and more problems present themselves, often harder ones sinc

by api 2y ago

Utopias are always fantasies. All of them. There is no such thing and never will be. Solve problems and more problems present themselves, often harder ones since we are always swimming against entropy. That’s life. Life is war against entropy and for the individual at least entropy always wins. We die. The Internet made countless things better and a few things worse. We notice the things it made worse because humans have a powerful negativity bias, probably because this was adaptive. “Mistake a bush for a lion and you’re fine, but mistake a lion for a bush and you’re dead.” Your ancestors were paranoid enough to survive. Edit: I do want to add one point on which I am sympathetic. Unfortunately it seems as if politics is a thing the Internet made worse. That’s dangerous because governments have a monopoly on force. Restoring some kind of sane not-hyper-polarized political discourse is probably an existential problem.

bryanrasmussen 2y ago
omg that bush is a lion! I'm just gonna jump over here... argh snake!
- bitwize 2y ago
  Ohhh, it's a snake! It's a badger badger badger badger...
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
[flagged]
- api 2y ago
  Liberalism doesn’t try, and shouldn’t, because it takes the position that human beings should be free to seek their own goals rather than have them imposed. The alternative is to have a vision imposed by the state. History has shown this usually doesn’t work very well and often results in horrors. The horrors come when reality inevitably conflicts with the vision and the political leadership grabs a mallet to bash that square peg into the hole. See: communism, fascism, theocratic regimes, imperial adventures, etc. Star Trek is fantasy. In reality I’m not convinced that society would be so pleasant. Even in fiction trying to portray utopia you sometimes see glimpses. Why do they all listen to classical music? Why, because there is no culture of course. Nothing new has happened culturally since our era. I wonder what happens if you try to deviate in that culture? Where are those people? It’s never discussed. Maybe all record of them is just deleted silently and everyone forgets.
  - bitwize 2y ago
    > Why do they all listen to classical music? Why, because there is no culture of course. Nothing new has happened culturally since our era. That's an interesting read on it, but the most likely reason is simply because the writers had a high regard for classical music. But nevertheless I'm reminded of the Zentraedi from Macross, who were created as a warrior underclass to protect the interests of the spacefaring Protoculture (ancient precursor beings; it's implied that humans are descendants of a stranded Protoculture colony). They are genetically engineered and raised with enough knowledge to fight interstellar battles, but not really do anything else. They know how to use their battleships and mechs and stuff, but not how to repair them. Even their language is a restricted, Newspeak-like version of Protoculture language with plenty of words suitable for battle but a dearth of words for other purposes (there is no word for "friendship" or "love"; there is only "ally" and "not-ally"). They have no culture to speak of. So the first love song they hear causes them to utterly go to pieces. It's what wins the war for the humans, as sure as our germs did against the Martians in War of the Worlds. This also calls to mind one of our real attempts at utopia -- the Soviet Union, whose citizens smuggled in Western music and fashion because their own culture had stagnated.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    > Liberalism doesn’t try, and shouldn’t, because it takes the position that human beings should be free to seek their own goals rather than have them imposed. Ok, but then you're stuck with today's clusterfuck where nobody's goals can be realized because people refuse to work together and openly exploit each other. That sucks ass. We've got to be capable of more and can't realize that without imagining a society where we're capable of doing more than giving up.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
When there aren't many problems people seem to invent them. I think people in the US don't realize how unbelievably lucky they are. No- we need a shakeup!
gnramires 2y ago
> Restoring some kind of sane not-hyper-polarized political discourse I don't think it's just a systems problem. Sure, systems can help, but education is even more important. Recognizing it's terrible is valuable too (I hope most people have recognized that...). I recommend Julia Galef's Scout Mindset[1] as an inspiration for the kind of change that I believe is needed. (perhaps the most book of the 3rd millenium? :P ) We need to boost our immunity against fake news and extreme discourse. Information now is what is decisive, and viral (and wrong, misleading, hateful, etc.) information can spread very quickly. Apart from that, more compassion in general. We're very good at teaching kids about "productive" things they are interested in, but very poor about ethics and meta things, like compassion for fellow beings, the importance of a peaceful and kind discourse to the survival of civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scout_Mindset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scout_Mindset > Utopias are always fantasies. All of them. Historically utopia had this association. But I think if an utopia is impossible, then it's less interesting. There has to be something achievable that's worth striving for. It's not going to be perfect of course, but I'm confident it exists somehow. I also think Utopia is as much as about the small as the big. Tolkien famously had his utopia in the Hobbit way of living, with a simple, relatively wealthy, relatively peaceful society -- but with great interpersonal relationships and all the little things (literally :) ).
LouisSayers 2y ago
Well said. People definitely latch on to the negatives, and that is in itself a big part of the problem of social media type platforms today. Sure there's misinformation etc, but I'd much rather what we have today - it's not perfect, but it is so much easier to learn topics, so many more resources, and no not everything is free, but a lot of it is, and at least the paid resources exist! I'm also glad that we do have people raging and seeing the negatives too. We need these people as a way of finding balance, and I'm sure as a system we'll regress to a mean and everything will be ok.
timeon 2y ago
> sane not-hyper-polarized political discourse Polarization (as the word implies) is not outcome of the tech but side-effect of two-party system.

by api 2y ago

bryanrasmussen 2y ago

omg that bush is a lion! I'm just gonna jump over here... argh snake!

bitwize 2y ago
Ohhh, it's a snake! It's a badger badger badger badger...

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

[flagged]

api 2y ago
Liberalism doesn’t try, and shouldn’t, because it takes the position that human beings should be free to seek their own goals rather than have them imposed. The alternative is to have a vision imposed by the state. History has shown this usually doesn’t work very well and often results in horrors. The horrors come when reality inevitably conflicts with the vision and the political leadership grabs a mallet to bash that square peg into the hole. See: communism, fascism, theocratic regimes, imperial adventures, etc. Star Trek is fantasy. In reality I’m not convinced that society would be so pleasant. Even in fiction trying to portray utopia you sometimes see glimpses. Why do they all listen to classical music? Why, because there is no culture of course. Nothing new has happened culturally since our era. I wonder what happens if you try to deviate in that culture? Where are those people? It’s never discussed. Maybe all record of them is just deleted silently and everyone forgets.
- bitwize 2y ago
  > Why do they all listen to classical music? Why, because there is no culture of course. Nothing new has happened culturally since our era. That's an interesting read on it, but the most likely reason is simply because the writers had a high regard for classical music. But nevertheless I'm reminded of the Zentraedi from Macross, who were created as a warrior underclass to protect the interests of the spacefaring Protoculture (ancient precursor beings; it's implied that humans are descendants of a stranded Protoculture colony). They are genetically engineered and raised with enough knowledge to fight interstellar battles, but not really do anything else. They know how to use their battleships and mechs and stuff, but not how to repair them. Even their language is a restricted, Newspeak-like version of Protoculture language with plenty of words suitable for battle but a dearth of words for other purposes (there is no word for "friendship" or "love"; there is only "ally" and "not-ally"). They have no culture to speak of. So the first love song they hear causes them to utterly go to pieces. It's what wins the war for the humans, as sure as our germs did against the Martians in War of the Worlds. This also calls to mind one of our real attempts at utopia -- the Soviet Union, whose citizens smuggled in Western music and fashion because their own culture had stagnated.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > Liberalism doesn’t try, and shouldn’t, because it takes the position that human beings should be free to seek their own goals rather than have them imposed. Ok, but then you're stuck with today's clusterfuck where nobody's goals can be realized because people refuse to work together and openly exploit each other. That sucks ass. We've got to be capable of more and can't realize that without imagining a society where we're capable of doing more than giving up.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

When there aren't many problems people seem to invent them. I think people in the US don't realize how unbelievably lucky they are. No- we need a shakeup!

gnramires 2y ago

> Restoring some kind of sane not-hyper-polarized political discourse I don't think it's just a systems problem. Sure, systems can help, but education is even more important. Recognizing it's terrible is valuable too (I hope most people have recognized that...). I recommend Julia Galef's Scout Mindset[1] as an inspiration for the kind of change that I believe is needed. (perhaps the most book of the 3rd millenium? :P ) We need to boost our immunity against fake news and extreme discourse. Information now is what is decisive, and viral (and wrong, misleading, hateful, etc.) information can spread very quickly. Apart from that, more compassion in general. We're very good at teaching kids about "productive" things they are interested in, but very poor about ethics and meta things, like compassion for fellow beings, the importance of a peaceful and kind discourse to the survival of civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scout_Mindset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scout_Mindset > Utopias are always fantasies. All of them. Historically utopia had this association. But I think if an utopia is impossible, then it's less interesting. There has to be something achievable that's worth striving for. It's not going to be perfect of course, but I'm confident it exists somehow. I also think Utopia is as much as about the small as the big. Tolkien famously had his utopia in the Hobbit way of living, with a simple, relatively wealthy, relatively peaceful society -- but with great interpersonal relationships and all the little things (literally :) ).

LouisSayers 2y ago

Well said. People definitely latch on to the negatives, and that is in itself a big part of the problem of social media type platforms today. Sure there's misinformation etc, but I'd much rather what we have today - it's not perfect, but it is so much easier to learn topics, so many more resources, and no not everything is free, but a lot of it is, and at least the paid resources exist! I'm also glad that we do have people raging and seeing the negatives too. We need these people as a way of finding balance, and I'm sure as a system we'll regress to a mean and everything will be ok.

timeon 2y ago

> sane not-hyper-polarized political discourse Polarization (as the word implies) is not outcome of the tech but side-effect of two-party system.