4 ms·

> But I'd submit we've thrown out far more baby with the bathwater than almost anybody in modern times is any longer equipped to understand. Then again, the wo

> But I'd submit we've thrown out far more baby with the bathwater than almost anybody in modern times is any longer equipped to understand. Then again, the world has been through a lot in the last couple of centuries.

jerf 11y ago
I said what I said in full and abundant awareness of that fact. And I'm making this reply because that's worth making the point explicitly. I view it as similarly to how it seems like the programming world is in such fast flux. On the one hand, a Javascript framework comes out every week and you MUST MUST MUST change everything to using it or you're falling behind! On the other hand, I can't help but notice the computer science undergrad curriculum hasn't hardly budged an inch since I took it 1996-2000, nor can I help but notice that for all the sound & fury of web development, 2015-me could pretty much bring 2005-me up to speed in a couple of days. (A smidge of cheat there... 2005-me had actually written a pure-JS widget system that I can't necessarily call "modern", but let's just say that "shadow DOMs" wouldn't exactly blow 2005-me's mind either.) There's a lot of high-frequency churn... there's a lot less fundamental change. Again, not zero. But a lot less. A study of history will even show a lot of modern trends you think are unique in history may not be.
- cactusface 11y ago
  Oh I might not get what you're saying at all. I just meant like, for example, the wholesale throwing away of religion (or kinds of government, whatever) seems more bathtub emptying than throwing away something to do with some communication method.
  - jerf 11y ago
    In this particular case I'm thinking more culture-level, or the operating system of a civilization. Which, as I'm being a bit deliberately elliptical, is not necessarily something you'd be able to easily extract from that message. Religions are carriers of these things, but in this case I am thinking more of what they are carrying rather than the religions themselves. As with many human things, it's all a big mess that can't be cleanly segmented out.... On topic, "the need for privacy" is one of these things. Many have heralded a generation who has no need of privacy, but then, as we all live in the "global village", we are slowly groping back towards some of the very same ideals of privacy that villages used to have, for instance, or at least I'd contend that over time in lots of little ways people tend to rediscover that just chucking the entire idea overboard wasn't smart. That's not a religion, nor directly a hot-button issue. And should we ever decide that totalitarianism sounds totally awesome and we should totally do it, a whole bunch of people will have the opportunity to rediscover the virtues of privacy. "Yay."

jerf 11y ago

I said what I said in full and abundant awareness of that fact. And I'm making this reply because that's worth making the point explicitly. I view it as similarly to how it seems like the programming world is in such fast flux. On the one hand, a Javascript framework comes out every week and you MUST MUST MUST change everything to using it or you're falling behind! On the other hand, I can't help but notice the computer science undergrad curriculum hasn't hardly budged an inch since I took it 1996-2000, nor can I help but notice that for all the sound & fury of web development, 2015-me could pretty much bring 2005-me up to speed in a couple of days. (A smidge of cheat there... 2005-me had actually written a pure-JS widget system that I can't necessarily call "modern", but let's just say that "shadow DOMs" wouldn't exactly blow 2005-me's mind either.) There's a lot of high-frequency churn... there's a lot less fundamental change. Again, not zero. But a lot less. A study of history will even show a lot of modern trends you think are unique in history may not be.

cactusface 11y ago
Oh I might not get what you're saying at all. I just meant like, for example, the wholesale throwing away of religion (or kinds of government, whatever) seems more bathtub emptying than throwing away something to do with some communication method.
- jerf 11y ago
  In this particular case I'm thinking more culture-level, or the operating system of a civilization. Which, as I'm being a bit deliberately elliptical, is not necessarily something you'd be able to easily extract from that message. Religions are carriers of these things, but in this case I am thinking more of what they are carrying rather than the religions themselves. As with many human things, it's all a big mess that can't be cleanly segmented out.... On topic, "the need for privacy" is one of these things. Many have heralded a generation who has no need of privacy, but then, as we all live in the "global village", we are slowly groping back towards some of the very same ideals of privacy that villages used to have, for instance, or at least I'd contend that over time in lots of little ways people tend to rediscover that just chucking the entire idea overboard wasn't smart. That's not a religion, nor directly a hot-button issue. And should we ever decide that totalitarianism sounds totally awesome and we should totally do it, a whole bunch of people will have the opportunity to rediscover the virtues of privacy. "Yay."