7 ms·

It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the

It's no surprise. The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s has completely fallen apart as time and time again tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime and partisan hatred. (which itself, of course, is stoked to the absolute maximum in part due to technology trends in the past 15 years or so) The loneliness epidemic, a constant drip-feed of outrage -- all so that people can make a small amount of money, distracted driving. Nearly every single service becoming worse over time, etc. Since then, the tech CEOs has been sidling up to the halls of power and effectively begging to help destroy privacy as thoroughly as possible. I certainly know that my life was transformed for the worse by social media. And I don't mean that I went down any rabbit holes -- rather common culture was hollowed out, friends were distracted, friends fell down their own extremist rabbit holes. There is no successful social media company that actually cares about the negative impacts it has had on society. They speak about things such as "providing value" where value = time spent on the platform. They do not care if they ruin lives. So a few years ago, nearly everywhere you went people are talking about how thoroughly AI was going to transform society. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing it. Of course people are wary. Big tech has been a net negative in very loud, intrusive, and obvious ways in _most_ people's lives. And now they're saying they're going to radically reform society. The only hope we have is that they're wrong, and their power to change things will be minimal. For sure, if they really how the power to radically change everything, they would change it for the worse and would never spend a moment worrying about the damage they had done.

jms703 4mo ago
> tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives This. Many of us are cogs in these machines doing the harm...to ourselves and others around us. The thing is, these companies can't exist without employees. But employees need the companies for money to pay the other companies.
- sylos 4mo ago
  We are rapidly reaching a point where companies will exist without human employees, there'll just be the owners and an ai workforce.
  - autoexec 4mo ago
    Who is going to buy what they're selling? More AI?
    - everdrive 4mo ago
      According to the NVIDIA CEO, yes. He's quite ravenous at the possibility that before he only had humans as customers, but now he is potentially opening up a new customer base where agents are customers.
    - pixl97 4mo ago
      Why do economies need people? With a fractional reserve monetary system you can keep pumping more money in a system as the system creates more resources, so the game never has to stop. Just end up with an AI paving the Earth in solar panels buying minerals from another AI harvesting every metal in the crust of the Earth creating quadrillions of dollars in GDP.
- pixl97 4mo ago
  We call this system Moloch.
slg 4mo ago
>The only hope we have is that they're wrong, and their power to change things will be minimal. What even is the optimistic outcome if they are right? What are we all working towards? Like do people think that these AI companies will create some superintelligence, suck up all the financial benefits of that, and then just decide to share it with the rest of us out of kindness? Because I legitimately can't see a realistic outcome that actually benefits society as a whole. It all ends with very few obscenely rich people getting even more obscenely rich. But I guess we could tell an AI to put ourselves in the new Marvel movie to pass the time since we no longer have any jobs.
- ctoth 4mo ago
  What are jobs for? Should we have them? Should they be mandatory? What does it mean to have to work to eat, is this a good setup? Does everyone have to work? Should they?
  - ori_b 4mo ago
    Maybe figure out the answers to that before forcing everyone into an economy where they still need to work to make money, but any worthwhile jobs have been automated away. The other question, of course, is what happens to the political power of the newly disposable?
    - ctoth 4mo ago
      Brother, I'm trying to. Any thoughts? Also, what's a "worthwhile" job? Have you read Player Piano? Are brainjobs more important than musclejobs? If we can automate musclejobs so people don't have to die in the heat and we can automate brainjobs so people don't have to lose their sanity in offices, wouldn't that be a better world? Note: it probably won't be, because of what I like to call the "Enterprise High" effect, but here we are. Basically once the only thing people have to compete over is status, shit gets nasty quicklike, think PG's high school essay but for everything and forever. Everything goes into rivalrous goods like who's sleeping with who. Star Trek as soap opera where all their needs are met and the only concern is purely social. But this is probably better than a world where people don't actually have material needs met? I legit don't actually know. Would love to figure it out though, what do you think!
jondlm 4mo ago
This... this... this! This resonates soooo deeply with me. The wild thing is that these tech "systems" (aka companies) are made up of ostensibly good people. It's often impossible to look at individual people and say, "they're the cause of this damage." I believe that some form of evil (this word feel inadequate) emerges amidst these large systems that is incredibly hard to pinpoint. It's why dissension is so fucking critical. Tech companies continue to profit from the status quo and we need courageous people who disrupt that.
- autoexec 4mo ago
  > The wild thing is that these tech "systems" (aka companies) are made up of ostensibly good people. I don't think that's the case. The people running these companies certainly aren't good people and everyone else in any position of power is either happy to hurt anyone and anything in exchange for a paycheck, or they're willing to take the money and turn a blind eye to the things they know are wrong. It's difficult to know where people stop being complicit. The amazon warehouse employee who is forced to piss in bottles or wear diapers to keep their job isn't really the problem, and I'm sure many of them hate the company they work for, but the company only works because of their efforts.
  - jondlm 4mo ago
    I did say "ostensibly" ;) Agreed that power nearly always corrupts. It does so in often subtle and slow shifts. In general we have a paucity of leaders who wield their power on behalf of the oppressed. The truth is that the "bad" leaders need powerful help. They need someone to come alongside them and love them into the light of the damage they've caused by drifting into complacency. And I'm not talking about "nice" love here, it might initially look more like shame.
  - omnimus 4mo ago
    > “The people running these companies certainly aren't good people” That is an heavy understatement. After reading some biographies and books about the tech elite… it's just much weirder and sickly than i ever imagined. Strange cults, religions and beliefs. Surprisingly high stupidity mixed with intense hate of humans. Straight up anti-social anti-human behaviour… and drugs, so much drugs that lead to psychosis. Narcissism and superiority… you would have hard time finding anyone moderately nice to hang out with. It's a real curse that the system pushes up people like this.
lwhi 4mo ago
At the moment, the main visible effect is disruption in the job market. Everyone knows it's just another stake in the coffin.
hparadiz 4mo ago
People just forget the before times. No one wants to go back to printing out driving directions or emailing photos. We take all these things for granted now but I am 100 certain the technology we have now has saved hundreds of millions of lives through downstream butterfly effects.
- bix6 4mo ago
  How does not printing directions save hundreds of millions of lives?
  - hparadiz 4mo ago
    Oh man I can tell you're young. Those directions weren't always right. You couldn't just pull out your phone and find the nearest hospital if something happened during your trip. Or call 911 and have them find you by GPS. And that's just one casual convenience you take for granted. People used to drive around asking random people to use their phone in emergencies. Not exactly fast when seconds matter.
    - watwut 4mo ago
      I mean, you make it sound like a horrible horror movie, but none of that was perceived as large issue at all
    - bix6 4mo ago
      Honestly legit response. I didn’t really think about the 911 tracking which is so precise now. It is a bummer though how that location privilege has been abused.
- Telaneo 4mo ago
  It's possible to have both internet maps and photo web sites, and not have unregulated* social media. *Or rampant or whatever other word you feel fits the current state of social media.
- cjfd 4mo ago
  I am not so sure. The world of printing out driving directions or emailing photos sounds a lot more calm. Also, simply quite enjoyable. The current world is cramming too many events in too little time, it seems. Stress is quite bad for health so I am not so sure about these hundreds of millions of lives saved. It may also have costed quite a few.
paul7986 4mo ago
I wish we could unplug AI especially when you watch videos of tech folks saying it could destroy us. Umm well then. Yet i guess it's here to stay and AI needs us, our human content to stay relevant and thrive. Personally, I think it should pay all of us (set up some system or systems) for every piece of content we create daily & choose to publish. THat way we all thrive for keeping it relevant and it thrives alongside us. Wrote about one idea / a system that would get us paid for the daily content we produce via living each day https://ryanspahn.substack.com/p/ai-to-pay-for-all-americans-content https://ryanspahn.substack.com/p/ai-to-pay-for-all-americans... But, again I'd be happy if all of society and cultures unplugged it!
steve1977 4mo ago
I think social media is almost an oxymoron, as a medium is something "in the middle" and social contacts should be direct and not mediated (IMHO).
jchw 4mo ago
> And I don't mean that I went down any rabbit holes -- rather common culture was hollowed out, friends were distracted, friends fell down their own extremist rabbit holes. Yeah... It's actually not so hard for me to just not take part in social media. The big struggle is that what I'd like to leave more than anything is a world born of its influence. The small percentage of people who are willing to go outward to places beyond the bounds of ten or so websites/apps of the Internet are still vastly influenced by them even when they reach outside. And despite that it would only take a handful of people "defecting" to form a nice tightly knit community, it's hard to find that many people with a common thread tying them together that aren't afflicted with behavior influenced by social media. I don't want to just have places on the Internet that are actually "secretly" kind of like offshoots of Twitter/Reddit/Discord communities. That's almost not better and yet it's what a lot of attempts at "hey we're doing forums again" tends to feel like.
- vitaflo 4mo ago
  It’s like trying to give up smoking when all your friends still smoke. Even if you do give it up you either also give up your friends or still reek of cigarettes.
- squidsoup 4mo ago
  > It's actually not so hard for me to just not take part in social media Unfortunately that’s not quite as easy for people in creative professions that must now use social media to promote themselves and their work.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
thewebguyd 4mo ago
> I certainly know that my life was transformed for the worst by social media. And I don't mean that I went down any rabbit holes This aspect isn't talked about enough. We discuss plenty the direct impact of social media on its users, but little about how it effects even those who don't use social media at all, by proxy. Little is said how it's impossible to escape being profiled and having shadow profiles on these products just by virtue of everyone else in your life around you using them. That's a huge problem. There is no possible way to opt out, at all.
carlosjobim 4mo ago
Life is like a supermarket. You are supposed to seek out the good things. You can't stop and stand and rage in the first aisle, which is filled with ultra processed food for the masses. You have to seek out the good ingredients in the back and make an effort. You can't get stuck in life being disappointed in average people. You have to seek out good people. And good places and good things. Or stay in the cranky cynic rabbit hole. God knows there are unlimited amounts of other cranky people to back you up. Maybe even the majority?
- fl4regun 4mo ago
  You are naive, you don't seriously expect people to "seek out the good ingredients" do you? When the shit ingredients are addictive, cheaper than the good ones and more available? The entire premise of these platforms is use whatever edges possible to get more ad money, they do that by getting people addicted to their phones and using psychological tricks that have been refined through over a decade of A/B testing to be effective.
  - carlosjobim 4mo ago
    I'm speaking to whoever wants to listen. Advice is a gift that you are free to refuse.
    - fl4regun 4mo ago
      you miss my point entirely. People are a product of their environment. Just because YOU or I don't fall down this trap doesn't mean our friends or family or people in our communities won't. In my country we charge sales tax on processed foods but not on fresh foods. It's because we can make the good choice easier and the bad choice harder. We shouldn't be doing the opposite, then laying all the responsibility on individuals (many of which will still be children who aren't aware of the consequences of their actions)
      - carlosjobim 4mo ago
        Maturity is understanding that no matter who is to blame for the situation you are in or the problems you have, you as an individual are most of the time the only one who can fix your problems. Nothing is more effective than a determined person. And nobody knows you better than yourself. Unless you think you can change the entire universe to do your bidding - then the best thing you can do is helping yourself and helping others. Nobody is helped by complaining. And I'm not missing your point, I just don't share your perspective. People who want to be mislead will always find a way to be mislead, because they want somebody else to be blamed and "responsible" for their life and their mistakes. Failing to realize that it is always themselves in the end who pay the price and bear the burden. That's how they have been bred on this earth. "At least it was not my fault" feels perfectly good in the soul of many suffering people, because they have been raised within a guilt or shame culture. And there are plenty of unethical people willing to indulge them in this falsehood. That's why I'm saying to seek out what is good instead of what is evil. And help those who want to be helped.
asveikau 4mo ago
> ... tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime Not so fast. Violent crime has been declining for about 30 years. Tech has been ascendant in that time.
andrewmutz 4mo ago
It's beyond tech. Optimism in general is out of fashion, and pessimism is pervasive. The technology for delivering bad news and highly-engaging outrage-bait has developed much faster than our society has been able to adapt to it. Just as americans don't trust AI or the tech industry, they don't trust any public institutions. The fundamental problem is not AI or tech or institutions being bad. The fundamental problem is that the way we distribute information about the world has a deep negativity bias. This exists because the information economy is supported by advertisement, which requires attention to profit, and attention is easiest to attract with negativity. "If it bleeds, it leads" has been true forever.
- whimsicalism 4mo ago
  It's scrollable algo video. This is at the root of essentially all of our current cultural woes. I was in denial about this for a long time, but atp it's undeniable.
- squidsoup 4mo ago
  > Optimism in general is out of fashion, and pessimism is pervasive. Hardly surprising given we are not collectively making sufficient change to avert climate disaster. There’s no negative bias or spin there - the majority of climate scientists agree that we’ve passed the tipping point.
jf 4mo ago
This comment resonated with me in a way that few pieces of writing do. My only complaint is that it’s perhaps too short. I get the impression that you could turn this comment into longer post (with citations) and I encourage you to do so.
Terr_ 4mo ago
> The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s Anecdotally, my optimist and disappointment has a lot less to do with flaws in the technology, versus outcomes that rested on the social / political / power-dynamic side of things. For example, instead of everyone being able to command the digital factory of capital-equipment on their desk (or in their palm) to pursue their personal interests and welfare, the devices feel like tools of someone else who considers you a resource to be exploited, and they can command people to beat you up if you use "your" property "wrong". To cast things out in a future-direction, imagine being excited about the dawn of practical spaceships, and the disappoint when--somehow--there are no limits on launch pollution, monopolies abound, and the average migrant to cleaner worlds must enter into multi-generational indentured servitude.
lambdaone 4mo ago
> The loneliness epidemic, a constant drip-feed of outrage -- all so that people can make a small amount of money I think that should read "all so that a very small number of people can make a very large amount of money"
csnover 4mo ago
> There is no successful social media company that actually cares about the negative impacts it has had on society. They speak about things such as "providing value" where value = time spent on the platform. They do not care if they ruin lives. I will never forget Ruchi Sanghvi’s remarks at the Female Founders Conference talk in 2015[0]: > It [the News Feed] became this virtuous cycle that we all dream of: consumption and production that just kept on giving. […] Even though everyone said they hated it, engagement had doubled. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01FjJyBAOUE#t=6m29s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01FjJyBAOUE#t=6m29s
ryandrake 4mo ago
> a constant drip-feed of outrage I say this as someone highly critical of social media. I'm not sure you can entirely blame Social Media for this. The fact is, outrageous things are happening constantly throughout the world. We just didn't hear about most of it before Internet connectivity and the reach of social media. It's not like social media suddenly created outrage. It's just informing people about the existing absolutely outrageous things happening. Are the algorithms tuned for outrage? Sure. But that doesn't mean these outrageous things are not happening. Back in the 1960s there was widespread outrage over the Vietnam war, but no social media drip to blame it on. The difference was: The outrageous acts were getting press and constant attention, through non social media channels. You can either be 1. ignorant / not paying attention to the state of the world, 2. paying attention but deliberately ignoring the state of the world, or 3. outraged all the time. I'm not saying it is good to be outraged, but that's our world. The state of the world is absolutely outrageous, and a normal human being should be feeling outrage at what is constantly being done.
itissid 4mo ago
I think the main reason for this outrage is partly a confluence of factors some of which you pointed it. But my money/theory is on what I call `alonliness` specifically due to lack of labor mobility: There is no good rapid transport connecting american interior towns to big cities and people don't want to move due to a variety of factors(real estate debt, cultural affinity to area). To be clear these people are alone but not necessary lonely(there is that going on too in other segments of the population). And once you don't understand or never had the opportunity to understand something(or rather only experience its bad side effects), you distrust it at best and fear and hate it at the worst. If you ask people 1:1 IRL who live in communities where the main source of employment is not whatever Silicon valley businesses are. They will ask you questions or make comments like " 'those' jobs are not real American jobs!" or "Aren't you afraid of getting thrown on subway tracks in NYC?". These are actual questions i got from people there. These give an indication of the disjointedness of the sets in the venn-diagram of of the socio-economic equality and what creates such psyche. I am not sure why some think its a PR/Comms problem for big tech.

jms703 4mo ago

> tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives This. Many of us are cogs in these machines doing the harm...to ourselves and others around us. The thing is, these companies can't exist without employees. But employees need the companies for money to pay the other companies.

sylos 4mo ago
We are rapidly reaching a point where companies will exist without human employees, there'll just be the owners and an ai workforce.
- autoexec 4mo ago
  Who is going to buy what they're selling? More AI?
  - everdrive 4mo ago
    According to the NVIDIA CEO, yes. He's quite ravenous at the possibility that before he only had humans as customers, but now he is potentially opening up a new customer base where agents are customers.
  - pixl97 4mo ago
    Why do economies need people? With a fractional reserve monetary system you can keep pumping more money in a system as the system creates more resources, so the game never has to stop. Just end up with an AI paving the Earth in solar panels buying minerals from another AI harvesting every metal in the crust of the Earth creating quadrillions of dollars in GDP.
pixl97 4mo ago
We call this system Moloch.

slg 4mo ago

>The only hope we have is that they're wrong, and their power to change things will be minimal. What even is the optimistic outcome if they are right? What are we all working towards? Like do people think that these AI companies will create some superintelligence, suck up all the financial benefits of that, and then just decide to share it with the rest of us out of kindness? Because I legitimately can't see a realistic outcome that actually benefits society as a whole. It all ends with very few obscenely rich people getting even more obscenely rich. But I guess we could tell an AI to put ourselves in the new Marvel movie to pass the time since we no longer have any jobs.

ctoth 4mo ago
What are jobs for? Should we have them? Should they be mandatory? What does it mean to have to work to eat, is this a good setup? Does everyone have to work? Should they?
- ori_b 4mo ago
  Maybe figure out the answers to that before forcing everyone into an economy where they still need to work to make money, but any worthwhile jobs have been automated away. The other question, of course, is what happens to the political power of the newly disposable?
  - ctoth 4mo ago
    Brother, I'm trying to. Any thoughts? Also, what's a "worthwhile" job? Have you read Player Piano? Are brainjobs more important than musclejobs? If we can automate musclejobs so people don't have to die in the heat and we can automate brainjobs so people don't have to lose their sanity in offices, wouldn't that be a better world? Note: it probably won't be, because of what I like to call the "Enterprise High" effect, but here we are. Basically once the only thing people have to compete over is status, shit gets nasty quicklike, think PG's high school essay but for everything and forever. Everything goes into rivalrous goods like who's sleeping with who. Star Trek as soap opera where all their needs are met and the only concern is purely social. But this is probably better than a world where people don't actually have material needs met? I legit don't actually know. Would love to figure it out though, what do you think!

jondlm 4mo ago

This... this... this! This resonates soooo deeply with me. The wild thing is that these tech "systems" (aka companies) are made up of ostensibly good people. It's often impossible to look at individual people and say, "they're the cause of this damage." I believe that some form of evil (this word feel inadequate) emerges amidst these large systems that is incredibly hard to pinpoint. It's why dissension is so fucking critical. Tech companies continue to profit from the status quo and we need courageous people who disrupt that.

autoexec 4mo ago
> The wild thing is that these tech "systems" (aka companies) are made up of ostensibly good people. I don't think that's the case. The people running these companies certainly aren't good people and everyone else in any position of power is either happy to hurt anyone and anything in exchange for a paycheck, or they're willing to take the money and turn a blind eye to the things they know are wrong. It's difficult to know where people stop being complicit. The amazon warehouse employee who is forced to piss in bottles or wear diapers to keep their job isn't really the problem, and I'm sure many of them hate the company they work for, but the company only works because of their efforts.
- jondlm 4mo ago
  I did say "ostensibly" ;) Agreed that power nearly always corrupts. It does so in often subtle and slow shifts. In general we have a paucity of leaders who wield their power on behalf of the oppressed. The truth is that the "bad" leaders need powerful help. They need someone to come alongside them and love them into the light of the damage they've caused by drifting into complacency. And I'm not talking about "nice" love here, it might initially look more like shame.
- omnimus 4mo ago
  > “The people running these companies certainly aren't good people” That is an heavy understatement. After reading some biographies and books about the tech elite… it's just much weirder and sickly than i ever imagined. Strange cults, religions and beliefs. Surprisingly high stupidity mixed with intense hate of humans. Straight up anti-social anti-human behaviour… and drugs, so much drugs that lead to psychosis. Narcissism and superiority… you would have hard time finding anyone moderately nice to hang out with. It's a real curse that the system pushes up people like this.

lwhi 4mo ago

At the moment, the main visible effect is disruption in the job market. Everyone knows it's just another stake in the coffin.

hparadiz 4mo ago

People just forget the before times. No one wants to go back to printing out driving directions or emailing photos. We take all these things for granted now but I am 100 certain the technology we have now has saved hundreds of millions of lives through downstream butterfly effects.

bix6 4mo ago
How does not printing directions save hundreds of millions of lives?
- hparadiz 4mo ago
  Oh man I can tell you're young. Those directions weren't always right. You couldn't just pull out your phone and find the nearest hospital if something happened during your trip. Or call 911 and have them find you by GPS. And that's just one casual convenience you take for granted. People used to drive around asking random people to use their phone in emergencies. Not exactly fast when seconds matter.
  - watwut 4mo ago
    I mean, you make it sound like a horrible horror movie, but none of that was perceived as large issue at all
  - bix6 4mo ago
    Honestly legit response. I didn’t really think about the 911 tracking which is so precise now. It is a bummer though how that location privilege has been abused.
Telaneo 4mo ago
It's possible to have both internet maps and photo web sites, and not have unregulated* social media. *Or rampant or whatever other word you feel fits the current state of social media.
cjfd 4mo ago
I am not so sure. The world of printing out driving directions or emailing photos sounds a lot more calm. Also, simply quite enjoyable. The current world is cramming too many events in too little time, it seems. Stress is quite bad for health so I am not so sure about these hundreds of millions of lives saved. It may also have costed quite a few.

paul7986 4mo ago

I wish we could unplug AI especially when you watch videos of tech folks saying it could destroy us. Umm well then. Yet i guess it's here to stay and AI needs us, our human content to stay relevant and thrive. Personally, I think it should pay all of us (set up some system or systems) for every piece of content we create daily & choose to publish. THat way we all thrive for keeping it relevant and it thrives alongside us. Wrote about one idea / a system that would get us paid for the daily content we produce via living each day https://ryanspahn.substack.com/p/ai-to-pay-for-all-americans-content https://ryanspahn.substack.com/p/ai-to-pay-for-all-americans... But, again I'd be happy if all of society and cultures unplugged it!

steve1977 4mo ago

I think social media is almost an oxymoron, as a medium is something "in the middle" and social contacts should be direct and not mediated (IMHO).

jchw 4mo ago

> And I don't mean that I went down any rabbit holes -- rather common culture was hollowed out, friends were distracted, friends fell down their own extremist rabbit holes. Yeah... It's actually not so hard for me to just not take part in social media. The big struggle is that what I'd like to leave more than anything is a world born of its influence. The small percentage of people who are willing to go outward to places beyond the bounds of ten or so websites/apps of the Internet are still vastly influenced by them even when they reach outside. And despite that it would only take a handful of people "defecting" to form a nice tightly knit community, it's hard to find that many people with a common thread tying them together that aren't afflicted with behavior influenced by social media. I don't want to just have places on the Internet that are actually "secretly" kind of like offshoots of Twitter/Reddit/Discord communities. That's almost not better and yet it's what a lot of attempts at "hey we're doing forums again" tends to feel like.

vitaflo 4mo ago
It’s like trying to give up smoking when all your friends still smoke. Even if you do give it up you either also give up your friends or still reek of cigarettes.
squidsoup 4mo ago
> It's actually not so hard for me to just not take part in social media Unfortunately that’s not quite as easy for people in creative professions that must now use social media to promote themselves and their work.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

thewebguyd 4mo ago

> I certainly know that my life was transformed for the worst by social media. And I don't mean that I went down any rabbit holes This aspect isn't talked about enough. We discuss plenty the direct impact of social media on its users, but little about how it effects even those who don't use social media at all, by proxy. Little is said how it's impossible to escape being profiled and having shadow profiles on these products just by virtue of everyone else in your life around you using them. That's a huge problem. There is no possible way to opt out, at all.

carlosjobim 4mo ago

Life is like a supermarket. You are supposed to seek out the good things. You can't stop and stand and rage in the first aisle, which is filled with ultra processed food for the masses. You have to seek out the good ingredients in the back and make an effort. You can't get stuck in life being disappointed in average people. You have to seek out good people. And good places and good things. Or stay in the cranky cynic rabbit hole. God knows there are unlimited amounts of other cranky people to back you up. Maybe even the majority?

fl4regun 4mo ago
You are naive, you don't seriously expect people to "seek out the good ingredients" do you? When the shit ingredients are addictive, cheaper than the good ones and more available? The entire premise of these platforms is use whatever edges possible to get more ad money, they do that by getting people addicted to their phones and using psychological tricks that have been refined through over a decade of A/B testing to be effective.
- carlosjobim 4mo ago
  I'm speaking to whoever wants to listen. Advice is a gift that you are free to refuse.
  - fl4regun 4mo ago
    you miss my point entirely. People are a product of their environment. Just because YOU or I don't fall down this trap doesn't mean our friends or family or people in our communities won't. In my country we charge sales tax on processed foods but not on fresh foods. It's because we can make the good choice easier and the bad choice harder. We shouldn't be doing the opposite, then laying all the responsibility on individuals (many of which will still be children who aren't aware of the consequences of their actions)
    - carlosjobim 4mo ago
      Maturity is understanding that no matter who is to blame for the situation you are in or the problems you have, you as an individual are most of the time the only one who can fix your problems. Nothing is more effective than a determined person. And nobody knows you better than yourself. Unless you think you can change the entire universe to do your bidding - then the best thing you can do is helping yourself and helping others. Nobody is helped by complaining. And I'm not missing your point, I just don't share your perspective. People who want to be mislead will always find a way to be mislead, because they want somebody else to be blamed and "responsible" for their life and their mistakes. Failing to realize that it is always themselves in the end who pay the price and bear the burden. That's how they have been bred on this earth. "At least it was not my fault" feels perfectly good in the soul of many suffering people, because they have been raised within a guilt or shame culture. And there are plenty of unethical people willing to indulge them in this falsehood. That's why I'm saying to seek out what is good instead of what is evil. And help those who want to be helped.

asveikau 4mo ago

> ... tech companies have proved to be some of the most hostile actors in most American's lives. Perhaps edged out only by things such as actual violent crime Not so fast. Violent crime has been declining for about 30 years. Tech has been ascendant in that time.

andrewmutz 4mo ago

It's beyond tech. Optimism in general is out of fashion, and pessimism is pervasive. The technology for delivering bad news and highly-engaging outrage-bait has developed much faster than our society has been able to adapt to it. Just as americans don't trust AI or the tech industry, they don't trust any public institutions. The fundamental problem is not AI or tech or institutions being bad. The fundamental problem is that the way we distribute information about the world has a deep negativity bias. This exists because the information economy is supported by advertisement, which requires attention to profit, and attention is easiest to attract with negativity. "If it bleeds, it leads" has been true forever.

whimsicalism 4mo ago
It's scrollable algo video. This is at the root of essentially all of our current cultural woes. I was in denial about this for a long time, but atp it's undeniable.
squidsoup 4mo ago
> Optimism in general is out of fashion, and pessimism is pervasive. Hardly surprising given we are not collectively making sufficient change to avert climate disaster. There’s no negative bias or spin there - the majority of climate scientists agree that we’ve passed the tipping point.

jf 4mo ago

This comment resonated with me in a way that few pieces of writing do. My only complaint is that it’s perhaps too short. I get the impression that you could turn this comment into longer post (with citations) and I encourage you to do so.

Terr_ 4mo ago

> The wild tech optimism of the 1990s and 2000s Anecdotally, my optimist and disappointment has a lot less to do with flaws in the technology, versus outcomes that rested on the social / political / power-dynamic side of things. For example, instead of everyone being able to command the digital factory of capital-equipment on their desk (or in their palm) to pursue their personal interests and welfare, the devices feel like tools of someone else who considers you a resource to be exploited, and they can command people to beat you up if you use "your" property "wrong". To cast things out in a future-direction, imagine being excited about the dawn of practical spaceships, and the disappoint when--somehow--there are no limits on launch pollution, monopolies abound, and the average migrant to cleaner worlds must enter into multi-generational indentured servitude.

lambdaone 4mo ago

> The loneliness epidemic, a constant drip-feed of outrage -- all so that people can make a small amount of money I think that should read "all so that a very small number of people can make a very large amount of money"

csnover 4mo ago

> There is no successful social media company that actually cares about the negative impacts it has had on society. They speak about things such as "providing value" where value = time spent on the platform. They do not care if they ruin lives. I will never forget Ruchi Sanghvi’s remarks at the Female Founders Conference talk in 2015[0]: > It [the News Feed] became this virtuous cycle that we all dream of: consumption and production that just kept on giving. […] Even though everyone said they hated it, engagement had doubled. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01FjJyBAOUE#t=6m29s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01FjJyBAOUE#t=6m29s

ryandrake 4mo ago

> a constant drip-feed of outrage I say this as someone highly critical of social media. I'm not sure you can entirely blame Social Media for this. The fact is, outrageous things are happening constantly throughout the world. We just didn't hear about most of it before Internet connectivity and the reach of social media. It's not like social media suddenly created outrage. It's just informing people about the existing absolutely outrageous things happening. Are the algorithms tuned for outrage? Sure. But that doesn't mean these outrageous things are not happening. Back in the 1960s there was widespread outrage over the Vietnam war, but no social media drip to blame it on. The difference was: The outrageous acts were getting press and constant attention, through non social media channels. You can either be 1. ignorant / not paying attention to the state of the world, 2. paying attention but deliberately ignoring the state of the world, or 3. outraged all the time. I'm not saying it is good to be outraged, but that's our world. The state of the world is absolutely outrageous, and a normal human being should be feeling outrage at what is constantly being done.

itissid 4mo ago

I think the main reason for this outrage is partly a confluence of factors some of which you pointed it. But my money/theory is on what I call `alonliness` specifically due to lack of labor mobility: There is no good rapid transport connecting american interior towns to big cities and people don't want to move due to a variety of factors(real estate debt, cultural affinity to area). To be clear these people are alone but not necessary lonely(there is that going on too in other segments of the population). And once you don't understand or never had the opportunity to understand something(or rather only experience its bad side effects), you distrust it at best and fear and hate it at the worst. If you ask people 1:1 IRL who live in communities where the main source of employment is not whatever Silicon valley businesses are. They will ask you questions or make comments like " 'those' jobs are not real American jobs!" or "Aren't you afraid of getting thrown on subway tracks in NYC?". These are actual questions i got from people there. These give an indication of the disjointedness of the sets in the venn-diagram of of the socio-economic equality and what creates such psyche. I am not sure why some think its a PR/Comms problem for big tech.