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My life turned out alright. Full of problems, pains and questions like everyone's else's but, in the grand scheme of things, I'm incredibly fortunate given the

My life turned out alright. Full of problems, pains and questions like everyone's else's but, in the grand scheme of things, I'm incredibly fortunate given the amount of poverty and misery in this world. I always liked the thought experiment of living my life again. However, I'm much more interested in the thought of living in the future. If I could do it again, I'd take the risk of living 1000 years from now. I know this could be a mistake, but I'm an optimist.

kgwxd 1y ago
It'd just be the same game in a different environment, with an inventory of items from a different tech tree.
- glimshe 1y ago
  Do you think someone from 1025 would feel this way if they came here? Serious question.
  - owebmaster 1y ago
    Do you think people in 1025 weren't living happy and fulfilling lives? People are happy in Africa, Latin America and the poor parts of Asia now, many places people are happier than in the US actually.
    - FinnLobsien 1y ago
      I don't think they're saying that people weren't happy then. I think it's more about "how recognizable is the human experience?". Which I think there's a good claim that it's totally and entirely transformed, save for a few things.
    - deadbabe 1y ago
      I don’t think they are truly happy. They have moments of joy and things that feel good, but they live in a mileu of misery that they’ve just grown to normalize and doesn’t affect them much. Happiness isn’t just being able to avoid sadness, that’s just contentment. It is difficult to explain happiness to someone that hasn’t been truly happy. When I used to do cocaine, those feelings were pure happiness, and I’ve never really felt something to that degree again. I think happiness as we know it is really just a modern concept, one that is enabled by our increasingly leisurely and stimulating life, that has vastly expanded the length and enjoyment of our childhoods. Maybe being happy is a lot like being a child, forever.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - owebmaster 1y ago
        I think you might not have the best definition of what's happiness. If you go to some Amazon/brazilian indigenous tribe today, you will see happier people than the modern human. That is how many people lived in 1025. Even the people living from the land, they could not work the whole day all day, there was not enough things to do. Nothing knowing that they could have an easier life also probably played a big role on their happiness. Unhappiness (and depression), I would argue, is probably a modern disease.
- i_love_retros 1y ago
  people would still be trying to understand how to upgrade node dependencies
jajko 1y ago
Maybe you are tech nerd so all the probable tech progress would amaze you. But unless you yourself would literally do time travel (and be treated like a primitive Neanderthal), your level of satisfaction would most probably be the same since all amazing and cool becomes a new baseline rather quickly, and curiosity and longing for next future would be there again. We could also end up in millenia-spanning dictatorship of immortal piece of scheize egomaniacs like stalin, hitler, puttin', trump and so on and on. All of them would kill millions to achieve that, in a heartbeat with no remorse. We could also destroy our ecosystem beyond easy repair and live in postapocalyptic mad-maxesque world (sure it will bounce back in a million years or two, but we would most probably be wiped out along the path). I look out of window on a dense beautiful wild forest in full bloom, doesn't get much better than that. Nah, these are pretty good times we, most of us at least, have right now. If you are not happy now, chances of being happy some other time are slim.
- glimshe 1y ago
  I'm happy now, but I have a more optimistic take. I believe that humanity could make progress in conquering unhappiness, disease or even death. While happiness levels possibly didn't improve as much as we expected in the last 1000 years, we did eliminate much misery in the world. Losing loved ones to diseases is bad, among many improvements we made. So, I think that in 1000 years, our descendants may be living in an objectively better world - possibly even without the gadgets we rely on so much for our happiness today.

kgwxd 1y ago

It'd just be the same game in a different environment, with an inventory of items from a different tech tree.

glimshe 1y ago
Do you think someone from 1025 would feel this way if they came here? Serious question.
- owebmaster 1y ago
  Do you think people in 1025 weren't living happy and fulfilling lives? People are happy in Africa, Latin America and the poor parts of Asia now, many places people are happier than in the US actually.
  - FinnLobsien 1y ago
    I don't think they're saying that people weren't happy then. I think it's more about "how recognizable is the human experience?". Which I think there's a good claim that it's totally and entirely transformed, save for a few things.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    I don’t think they are truly happy. They have moments of joy and things that feel good, but they live in a mileu of misery that they’ve just grown to normalize and doesn’t affect them much. Happiness isn’t just being able to avoid sadness, that’s just contentment. It is difficult to explain happiness to someone that hasn’t been truly happy. When I used to do cocaine, those feelings were pure happiness, and I’ve never really felt something to that degree again. I think happiness as we know it is really just a modern concept, one that is enabled by our increasingly leisurely and stimulating life, that has vastly expanded the length and enjoyment of our childhoods. Maybe being happy is a lot like being a child, forever.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - owebmaster 1y ago
      I think you might not have the best definition of what's happiness. If you go to some Amazon/brazilian indigenous tribe today, you will see happier people than the modern human. That is how many people lived in 1025. Even the people living from the land, they could not work the whole day all day, there was not enough things to do. Nothing knowing that they could have an easier life also probably played a big role on their happiness. Unhappiness (and depression), I would argue, is probably a modern disease.
i_love_retros 1y ago
people would still be trying to understand how to upgrade node dependencies

jajko 1y ago

Maybe you are tech nerd so all the probable tech progress would amaze you. But unless you yourself would literally do time travel (and be treated like a primitive Neanderthal), your level of satisfaction would most probably be the same since all amazing and cool becomes a new baseline rather quickly, and curiosity and longing for next future would be there again. We could also end up in millenia-spanning dictatorship of immortal piece of scheize egomaniacs like stalin, hitler, puttin', trump and so on and on. All of them would kill millions to achieve that, in a heartbeat with no remorse. We could also destroy our ecosystem beyond easy repair and live in postapocalyptic mad-maxesque world (sure it will bounce back in a million years or two, but we would most probably be wiped out along the path). I look out of window on a dense beautiful wild forest in full bloom, doesn't get much better than that. Nah, these are pretty good times we, most of us at least, have right now. If you are not happy now, chances of being happy some other time are slim.

glimshe 1y ago
I'm happy now, but I have a more optimistic take. I believe that humanity could make progress in conquering unhappiness, disease or even death. While happiness levels possibly didn't improve as much as we expected in the last 1000 years, we did eliminate much misery in the world. Losing loved ones to diseases is bad, among many improvements we made. So, I think that in 1000 years, our descendants may be living in an objectively better world - possibly even without the gadgets we rely on so much for our happiness today.