6 ms·

I like how the author defines dystopia as > reckless uprisings, a long dark age, the collapse of institutions, climate disasters, a black mirror of stunted hum

I like how the author defines dystopia as > reckless uprisings, a long dark age, the collapse of institutions, climate disasters, a black mirror of stunted humanity descending into chaos. rather than the much more common understanding or portrayals like 1984 or Handmaid's Tale, which in fact feature incredibly, overly-strong institutions, and a tyrannical lack of autonomy (so not a whole lot of 'reckless uprisings'). But if you're trying to convince people that technology is in fact not the thing that's enabling mass surveillance and economic decline and black-mirror-like-drone-warfare and climate disasters and tyranny right now, then it would make sense to leave out the most common understanding of what a dystopia looks like. "No, AI is totally gonna result in Star Trek, not the Panopticon, I swear! What's a Palantir?" It feels like some kind of weird enlightened-techno-centrism.

bko 2mo ago
> mass surveillance I hear this complaint here a lot and I guess there are more cameras, but arrests have gone down in absolute terms in the US despite growing population. > The total number of arrests in the U.S. fell sharply in 2020 during pandemic-driven shifts in public activity and enforcement—and it has changed little since then. The 2024 arrest total was 25% lower than in 2019, the year before the pandemic, and half the number in the peak year of 1997. The combination of falling arrests and rising resident population has driven down the national arrest rate, which in 2024 was 30% lower than in 2019 and 71% below its peak in 1994. I think most (non-online) people would prefer more enforcement of laws. I've never had a conversation in real life where someone argued there should be less order and enforcement. That's an insane position to take and ahistorical. The idea you hear online that you can get rid of prisons. It's neither left nor right. You think failed communist states didn't arrest people? It's an idea whose intellectual roots go back only around 50 years and for good reason. It doesn't work, or at least doesn't produce societies that endure and get passed on. > Climate disasters Similarly, climate related deaths worldwide have dropped and continue to do so, pretty much a straight line. This is a more reliable proxy than the $1b damage climate events, because the other is due to development on risky coast lines and overall increase in property values above inflation. > Economic decline The middle class is shrinking, but the upper and upper-middle is growing. So it's a bit of a barbell. But I'll also note that many of these measures are households, and there have been changes in typical households. Many people are staying single well into their 30s which means its a household of 1 compared to what would be a 2 person household in the past > Done warfare Isn't this better than boots on the ground? I don't think the problem is technology, it's armed conflict. I guess if you consider that armed conflicts are more likely because nations don't need to put as much lives at risk, and maybe that is a factor. But I'm not convinced somehow drones are driving this. https://counciloncj.org/who-gets-arrested-in-america-trends-across-four-decades-1980-2024/ https://counciloncj.org/who-gets-arrested-in-america-trends-... https://www.wsj.com/opinion/climate-activists-disasters-fire-storms-deaths-change-cop26-glasgow-global-warming-11635973538 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/climate-activists-disasters-fire...
- ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago
  Is that reduction attributable to something like people fearing police state, you know with ICE shooting people and stuff
- wartywhoa23 2mo ago
  >> D[r]one warfare > Isn't this better than boots on the ground? The answer to this question depends on whether you firsthand experienced sleepless nights in a city when drones fly directly over your house while you wait for them do dive or get missile defenced into it, a neighbour's house, or somewhere else, and then hear explosions and wait for the morning news to learn how many people died this night, to such little grief in news' comments it makes you wonder if there is any hope for this humankind at all.
  - bko 2mo ago
    The answer to this question depends on whether you firsthand experienced sleepless nights in a city while an invading army advances toward your neighborhood, while you wait to learn whether soldiers will enter your street, your house, a neighbor’s house, or somewhere else, and then hear gunfire and explosions and wait for the morning news to learn how many people were killed that night, to such little grief in the news’ comments it makes you wonder if there is any hope for humankind at all.
    - etdznots 2mo ago
      Yeah I’d much rather be subjected to the invading army then the drone swarm
      - bko 2mo ago
        Disagree. Drones are more precise, tend to attack military targets. Invading army is more indiscriminate
        wartywhoa23 2mo ago
paytonjjones 2mo ago
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" There are many forms of dystopia and picking two that prominently feature absolute institutional control also seems like cherry picking. The Hunger Games, World War Z, and Fallout are also dystopias.
- NooneAtAll3 2mo ago
  isn't fallout post-apocalypse? and hunger games is about institutional control and rebelling against it
  - paytonjjones 2mo ago
    Dystopia just decomposes to "bad place", of which there are many and varied types Yes, institutional control features heavily in The Hunger Games, but so do "reckless uprisings, a long dark age, the collapse of institutions..." which is why it came to mind.
- ang_cire 2mo ago
  The hunger games is also about an authoritarian society with mass surveillance, though? WWZ is about a literal zombie outbreak, and while I can't comment on whether the book is actually using it as a vehicle to critique or extrapolate real-world social systems, the movie sure as hell didn't. Without going into a very long rant about Bethesda missing the point of Fallout as a universe, suffice it to say that it is also not intended to be a serious examination of what life might or even could become, ever. In fact, it was intended to be a platform for social critique via parody and caricaturism.
  - pbronez 2mo ago
    WWZ the movie takes almost nothing from the book beyond the title. Huge missed opportunity. The book uses a future history format and digs into practicalities. For example, people invent a new hand weapon optimized for killing zombies. They need it because firearms are too expensive, require too much skill to employ effectively in civilian areas. Still, conventional arms prove essential for large scale progress. IIRC much of the book focuses on the struggle to get from the initial chaos to manageable battle lines. Overall I really enjoyed it. I should re-read it…
PaulDavisThe1st 2mo ago
> I like how the author defines dystopia as [ ... ] rather than [... ] There's no need to choose. Dystopia is more than one thing, and both of the sets of things you mention are just different kinds of dystopia.
- ang_cire 2mo ago
  Except the author did choose, which is my point. They specifically chose to only represent it one specific way, that omitted the most common or famous incarnations, because those run counter to their narrative.

bko 2mo ago

> mass surveillance I hear this complaint here a lot and I guess there are more cameras, but arrests have gone down in absolute terms in the US despite growing population. > The total number of arrests in the U.S. fell sharply in 2020 during pandemic-driven shifts in public activity and enforcement—and it has changed little since then. The 2024 arrest total was 25% lower than in 2019, the year before the pandemic, and half the number in the peak year of 1997. The combination of falling arrests and rising resident population has driven down the national arrest rate, which in 2024 was 30% lower than in 2019 and 71% below its peak in 1994. I think most (non-online) people would prefer more enforcement of laws. I've never had a conversation in real life where someone argued there should be less order and enforcement. That's an insane position to take and ahistorical. The idea you hear online that you can get rid of prisons. It's neither left nor right. You think failed communist states didn't arrest people? It's an idea whose intellectual roots go back only around 50 years and for good reason. It doesn't work, or at least doesn't produce societies that endure and get passed on. > Climate disasters Similarly, climate related deaths worldwide have dropped and continue to do so, pretty much a straight line. This is a more reliable proxy than the $1b damage climate events, because the other is due to development on risky coast lines and overall increase in property values above inflation. > Economic decline The middle class is shrinking, but the upper and upper-middle is growing. So it's a bit of a barbell. But I'll also note that many of these measures are households, and there have been changes in typical households. Many people are staying single well into their 30s which means its a household of 1 compared to what would be a 2 person household in the past > Done warfare Isn't this better than boots on the ground? I don't think the problem is technology, it's armed conflict. I guess if you consider that armed conflicts are more likely because nations don't need to put as much lives at risk, and maybe that is a factor. But I'm not convinced somehow drones are driving this. https://counciloncj.org/who-gets-arrested-in-america-trends-across-four-decades-1980-2024/ https://counciloncj.org/who-gets-arrested-in-america-trends-... https://www.wsj.com/opinion/climate-activists-disasters-fire-storms-deaths-change-cop26-glasgow-global-warming-11635973538 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/climate-activists-disasters-fire...

ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago
Is that reduction attributable to something like people fearing police state, you know with ICE shooting people and stuff
wartywhoa23 2mo ago
>> D[r]one warfare > Isn't this better than boots on the ground? The answer to this question depends on whether you firsthand experienced sleepless nights in a city when drones fly directly over your house while you wait for them do dive or get missile defenced into it, a neighbour's house, or somewhere else, and then hear explosions and wait for the morning news to learn how many people died this night, to such little grief in news' comments it makes you wonder if there is any hope for this humankind at all.
- bko 2mo ago
  The answer to this question depends on whether you firsthand experienced sleepless nights in a city while an invading army advances toward your neighborhood, while you wait to learn whether soldiers will enter your street, your house, a neighbor’s house, or somewhere else, and then hear gunfire and explosions and wait for the morning news to learn how many people were killed that night, to such little grief in the news’ comments it makes you wonder if there is any hope for humankind at all.
  - etdznots 2mo ago
    Yeah I’d much rather be subjected to the invading army then the drone swarm
    - bko 2mo ago
      Disagree. Drones are more precise, tend to attack military targets. Invading army is more indiscriminate
      - wartywhoa23 2mo ago

paytonjjones 2mo ago

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" There are many forms of dystopia and picking two that prominently feature absolute institutional control also seems like cherry picking. The Hunger Games, World War Z, and Fallout are also dystopias.

NooneAtAll3 2mo ago
isn't fallout post-apocalypse? and hunger games is about institutional control and rebelling against it
- paytonjjones 2mo ago
  Dystopia just decomposes to "bad place", of which there are many and varied types Yes, institutional control features heavily in The Hunger Games, but so do "reckless uprisings, a long dark age, the collapse of institutions..." which is why it came to mind.
ang_cire 2mo ago
The hunger games is also about an authoritarian society with mass surveillance, though? WWZ is about a literal zombie outbreak, and while I can't comment on whether the book is actually using it as a vehicle to critique or extrapolate real-world social systems, the movie sure as hell didn't. Without going into a very long rant about Bethesda missing the point of Fallout as a universe, suffice it to say that it is also not intended to be a serious examination of what life might or even could become, ever. In fact, it was intended to be a platform for social critique via parody and caricaturism.
- pbronez 2mo ago
  WWZ the movie takes almost nothing from the book beyond the title. Huge missed opportunity. The book uses a future history format and digs into practicalities. For example, people invent a new hand weapon optimized for killing zombies. They need it because firearms are too expensive, require too much skill to employ effectively in civilian areas. Still, conventional arms prove essential for large scale progress. IIRC much of the book focuses on the struggle to get from the initial chaos to manageable battle lines. Overall I really enjoyed it. I should re-read it…

PaulDavisThe1st 2mo ago

> I like how the author defines dystopia as [ ... ] rather than [... ] There's no need to choose. Dystopia is more than one thing, and both of the sets of things you mention are just different kinds of dystopia.

ang_cire 2mo ago
Except the author did choose, which is my point. They specifically chose to only represent it one specific way, that omitted the most common or famous incarnations, because those run counter to their narrative.