5 ms·

I'm not seeing how the benefits have outweighed the positives at this point. Spam, scams, porn, being inundated with slop, people losing their skills and gettin

I'm not seeing how the benefits have outweighed the positives at this point. Spam, scams, porn, being inundated with slop, people losing their skills and getting dumber, mass surveillance... Is that worth possibly maybe saving some time programming, but then not gaining the knowledge you would have if you did it yourself, that can be built on in the future? I don't see technological advancement as good in itself if morality is in decline.

hirako2000 6mo ago
I reached the same conclusion. It also made me realised how most technologies degraded our lives. Before the TV people would go to the theatre. It's becoming hard to find a theatre these days. Artificial light is convenient, it made billion or people develop sleep disorder and we can't see stars at at night. Mass food production supposedly nourished more people: veggies today have 20% the minerals content they had 70y ago..the list go on and on.
- dasil003 6mo ago
  I think it's more fair to say that with every technology there are tradeoffs. Consider the wheel, before the wheel people probably were more physically fit, but they couldn't move as large of loads. Well, except in the Andes where they figured out how to move gigantic stones well beyond the weight that any wooden wheel would have been able to carry anyway and cut and place them into configurations that were earthquake resistant. Technology and civilization is path dependent, and I think it's silly to make blanket statements about the merit of technological progress overall. Everything choice (including the choice to do nothing) has unintended consequences. I would never condemn anyone for inventing a new technological solution to a problem, but once the systematic effects are understood then we do need the collective ability to course correct (eg. social media, AI, etc).
  - hirako2000 6mo ago
    Everything has tradeoffs. I imply technology rarely yields a net positive. I could call out the positive, those are so obvious. It's the subtle cost of the benefits that almost never gets discussed.
    - dasil003 6mo ago
      > technology rarely yields a net positive This is a super bold statement that I guest most people would disagree with, and I suspect if you somehow brought people forward from the past, even fewer would agree with. I do agree with you the subtle cost is rarely discussed. I also would say that the unintended consequences of technology are sometimes very very bad in unforeseeable ways, but that's very different from the "net negative" framing which I think is too reductive to be useful. Technology is not a zero sum game, effects are multifaceted, so any quantitative comparison relies on extremely subjective value judgements.
- azan_ 6mo ago
  > Mass food production supposedly nourished more people: veggies today have 20% the minerals content they had 70y ago..the list go on and on. I suggest you should have a look at malnutrition rates 100 years ago vs now. Without mass food production we would not be able to sustain even 50% of current population.
  - mountainb 6mo ago
    Why would that be bad? Why is more better?
    - TeMPOraL 6mo ago
      Would you ask that your starving great-n-grandparents worried about whether they're able to feed the infant that would later become your ancestor?
      - djeastm 6mo ago
        Isn't that a food distribution problem not a food production one?
        TeMPOraL 6mo ago
        It is now, because of mass production, industrialization of agriculture, and Haber Bosch process.
    - azan_ 6mo ago
      Do YOU want to die of starvation? Or are you ok with just others dying?
      - hirako2000 6mo ago
        typical emotionally charged, false dichotomy. To your question I'm not ok with either. We will likely ALL die from the impact of industrialization.
- yw3410 6mo ago
  It's odd to me that you live in a place where it's hard to find a theatre. Living in a cosmopolitan city there's so many theatres with anything from professional shows to amateur dramatics all at very reasonable price points.
  - hirako2000 6mo ago
    Sure, Edinburgh, London, New York, got plenty enough. My point is that technology displaces or replace activities. In many cities there are no theatre. To be clear I meant performance theatres by the way. We used to consume live performance. Drama, dance and whatnot. Comedy for instance is now for the masses, more or less controlled. Costing pennies to distribute via air or streaming platforms. They compete with a more valuable but harder to afford media. so they win. Is it a net positive that we can converse in almost real time for virtually no cost, with niche communities on the other side of the world. Yes. Anyone can still walk into a Café or the park and engage in conversations with others. But overall, the compounding of all tech advancements and what they displace, I think, is an overall net negative. Not because I'm an anti progress or losing my job because of technology, quite the opposite. I sat down and wrote down the list. How technology enables VS affects me personally, and other persona. From upperclass worker in New York, to the cocoa bean farmer in Ivory Coast. Overall it appears that technology isn't benefitial to humanity. I then challenge those who disagree. Typically, they haven't taken into account the negative seriously. The few who concede to do so, eventually agree that the question is in fact complicated and abandon the debate. It doesn't mean I'm right. I read the detractors in there, perhaps there is something I missed. So far there isn't.

hirako2000 6mo ago

I reached the same conclusion. It also made me realised how most technologies degraded our lives. Before the TV people would go to the theatre. It's becoming hard to find a theatre these days. Artificial light is convenient, it made billion or people develop sleep disorder and we can't see stars at at night. Mass food production supposedly nourished more people: veggies today have 20% the minerals content they had 70y ago..the list go on and on.

dasil003 6mo ago
I think it's more fair to say that with every technology there are tradeoffs. Consider the wheel, before the wheel people probably were more physically fit, but they couldn't move as large of loads. Well, except in the Andes where they figured out how to move gigantic stones well beyond the weight that any wooden wheel would have been able to carry anyway and cut and place them into configurations that were earthquake resistant. Technology and civilization is path dependent, and I think it's silly to make blanket statements about the merit of technological progress overall. Everything choice (including the choice to do nothing) has unintended consequences. I would never condemn anyone for inventing a new technological solution to a problem, but once the systematic effects are understood then we do need the collective ability to course correct (eg. social media, AI, etc).
- hirako2000 6mo ago
  Everything has tradeoffs. I imply technology rarely yields a net positive. I could call out the positive, those are so obvious. It's the subtle cost of the benefits that almost never gets discussed.
  - dasil003 6mo ago
    > technology rarely yields a net positive This is a super bold statement that I guest most people would disagree with, and I suspect if you somehow brought people forward from the past, even fewer would agree with. I do agree with you the subtle cost is rarely discussed. I also would say that the unintended consequences of technology are sometimes very very bad in unforeseeable ways, but that's very different from the "net negative" framing which I think is too reductive to be useful. Technology is not a zero sum game, effects are multifaceted, so any quantitative comparison relies on extremely subjective value judgements.
azan_ 6mo ago
> Mass food production supposedly nourished more people: veggies today have 20% the minerals content they had 70y ago..the list go on and on. I suggest you should have a look at malnutrition rates 100 years ago vs now. Without mass food production we would not be able to sustain even 50% of current population.
- mountainb 6mo ago
  Why would that be bad? Why is more better?
  - TeMPOraL 6mo ago
    Would you ask that your starving great-n-grandparents worried about whether they're able to feed the infant that would later become your ancestor?
    - djeastm 6mo ago
      Isn't that a food distribution problem not a food production one?
      - TeMPOraL 6mo ago
        It is now, because of mass production, industrialization of agriculture, and Haber Bosch process.
  - azan_ 6mo ago
    Do YOU want to die of starvation? Or are you ok with just others dying?
    - hirako2000 6mo ago
      typical emotionally charged, false dichotomy. To your question I'm not ok with either. We will likely ALL die from the impact of industrialization.
yw3410 6mo ago
It's odd to me that you live in a place where it's hard to find a theatre. Living in a cosmopolitan city there's so many theatres with anything from professional shows to amateur dramatics all at very reasonable price points.
- hirako2000 6mo ago
  Sure, Edinburgh, London, New York, got plenty enough. My point is that technology displaces or replace activities. In many cities there are no theatre. To be clear I meant performance theatres by the way. We used to consume live performance. Drama, dance and whatnot. Comedy for instance is now for the masses, more or less controlled. Costing pennies to distribute via air or streaming platforms. They compete with a more valuable but harder to afford media. so they win. Is it a net positive that we can converse in almost real time for virtually no cost, with niche communities on the other side of the world. Yes. Anyone can still walk into a Café or the park and engage in conversations with others. But overall, the compounding of all tech advancements and what they displace, I think, is an overall net negative. Not because I'm an anti progress or losing my job because of technology, quite the opposite. I sat down and wrote down the list. How technology enables VS affects me personally, and other persona. From upperclass worker in New York, to the cocoa bean farmer in Ivory Coast. Overall it appears that technology isn't benefitial to humanity. I then challenge those who disagree. Typically, they haven't taken into account the negative seriously. The few who concede to do so, eventually agree that the question is in fact complicated and abandon the debate. It doesn't mean I'm right. I read the detractors in there, perhaps there is something I missed. So far there isn't.