We can easily say the same for the knee jerk reactions to these articles that everything is fine.
What if people complain about this decade after decade because it is getting worse and worse? Of course, people in the conventional wisdom like you would never think of that.
I firmly believe that increased technology makes smaller and smaller cogs of us all, making us worse and worse, concentrating real experiences and all that creative stuff onto fewer and fewer people who can actually afford it.
Ease of communication means it's more difficult to separate your thoughts from others. You become ever closer to a mere regurgitator of pre packaged thoughts.
Luckily, if you regurgitate the thoughts of people who have better and healthier ideas (like how I'm regurgitating Baudrillard right now) the system is self defeating.
But it knows that as well, so there will always be zombies like you produced to promote the conventional wisdom!
> I firmly believe that increased technology makes smaller and smaller cogs of us all, making us worse and worse, concentrating real experiences and all that creative stuff onto fewer and fewer people who can actually afford it.
This is just demonstrably false, by a whole host of measurable metrics. For example:
Average people fly long distances dramatically more today than ever before. (And I'm not talking about just in rich countries -- regional airlines are booming in Africa and Asia too.) It's pretty hard to argue that visiting a faraway place is not a "real experience" that is more accessible than ever.
The fraction of children in the world who go to school instead of doing menial labor is the highest in history and continuing to rise.
And you can't have any "real experiences" if you're dead, so historically low global child mortality is generating an awful lot more real experiences.
> You become ever closer to a mere regurgitator of pre packaged thoughts.
It's rather rich to claim the past was better along this dimension, when most of history was dominated by orthodox religions backed by political elites, and only a tiny elite could even read. Unless you think literacy implies more regurgitation, in which case you've watered down the term enough that it loses it opprobrium.
The tourist industry and mentality is precisely what makes travel to another country less of a real experience. That's actually exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about, but that is lost on people like you who base all their thinking on metrics, which are always collected to justify an agenda, and this particular metric is about the global, totalizing economy, which brings me to my second point:
More kids are in school? For what? To be a white collar slave? To be a white collar slavemaster (entrepreneur)? Death in menial labor, while undesirable, at least prevents one from fattening the elites' wallets with their brains.
Where are the African and Asian artists? Scientists that arent just the tools of whoever is in charge? Philosophers with real, valuable ideas? I'll tell you, theyre the same as the ones in the rest of the world: few and far between, virtually unheard of.
Similarly, low child mortality just currently means the commodification of children and childhood.
I'd also say literacy could have resulted in more healthy attitudes and less regurgitation of what doesn't work, but few read for the sake of reading, and what they do read is trivial crap designed to keep them down.
Your reply is exactly another example of what I'm talking about where all the improvements in technology and education yield only people who think everything is great and there cannot possibly be any systemic problems with the way we live, after all these numbers say everything is fine and if it cannot be quantified or if the numbers arent big enough, it is not worth pursuing or it doesnt exist!
Man you are a good troll. Cheers to you. I lol'd at the "Death in menial labor, while undesirable, at least prevents one from fattening the elites' wallets with their brains".
Thanks for making the utter bankruptcy of Baudrillard's ethics so plain for all to see. Usually it's hiding under much more jargon.
> More kids are in school? For what? To be a white collar slave? To be a white collar slavemaster (entrepreneur)? Death in menial labor, while undesirable, at least prevents one from fattening the elites' wallets with their brains.
I'm a strong critic of schooling as its typically done, because it is indeed a conformity machine. But here's the thing: it's still better than sending all the kids to a salt mine, because that's a precondition for us to even be having this discussion. The kids who got sent to salt mines don't get to read Baudrillard and comment on HN.
> Where are the African and Asian artists?
On those continents, respectively. Racist much?
> scientists... philosophers... virtually unheard of
This has always been the human condition. I guarantee you the fraction of people who appreciated Aristotle during his life was a vanishingly small fraction of the human race.
> Similarly, low child mortality just currently means the commodification of children and childhood.
This is pretty hilarious, because high-mortality societies are the ones that have large families specifically because children are valued as sources of labor. Some societies didn't even name their infants until they got old enough to be out of the highest morality risk -- they were treated as fungible commodities before then.
> I'd also say literacy could have resulted in more healthy attitudes
It could have resulted in spontaneous world peace, too. But that kind of navel gazing is not relevant to the question of whether literacy is still better than nothing. It's clearly a precondition if you want those great scientists and philosophers to ever have a shot.
> people who think everything is great and there cannot possibly be any systemic problems
This is a giant straw man. Please find me a single person who thinks the world has no systemic problems. The presence of problems is a necessary precondition for someone like me to argue that things are getting better. "No problems" implies stasis, not improvement.
Hmm I think I am agreeing with you on the preconditions; I did say that the system, through literacy has sowed the seeds of its own destruction.
But it seems like we're on a path that makes this less and less likely, whereas the introduction of technology and so forth should have done the opposite, were we not "ethically bankrupt" as a species.
Baudrillard can be said to have identified the problems. and that more than makes up for his defeatism.
The rest of your reply is basically, now that we dont have salt mines worked by kids, everything is awesome and you cant complain.
If you really do recognize that we have the systemic problems I was talking about, perhaps we actually agree and I'm only saying things arent getting better fast enough.
Which is a real danger. There's only so much resources one can devote to not being a complete tool, and these are running down, quickly.
The evidence suggesting that society is deteriorating and we have less thinking and more following going on just isn't there. Its completely the opposite. More people are developing technologies in small groups, thanks to the democratization of resources like powerful hardware. No more is creativity to create and progress limited to Universities and Government. We have more time to spend with each other than salving away in repetitive and soul sucking jobs and religious dogma is manipulating less and less people. Explain to me how things are getting worse and worse please?
> thanks to the democratization of resources like powerful hardware
(Em mine.) I have a problem, my rig's not very powerful. Where can I vote to get a better rig? Or does my rig do the voting weighted by its power? (http://lesswrong.com/lw/jb/applause_lights/)
By democratization of powerful hardware I meant the democratization of technology which refers to the process by which access to technology rapidly continues to become more accessible to more people(definition from Wikipedia).
Developing tech in small groups, making multiple versions of the same social media apps / manual labor explotation apps lol, while all thinking they will make it big, while sucking up to VC's. You could not have picked a worse example.
I'd say universities and government are actually the only institutiona left where one can really do the work you are talking about, and even that is with significant capitulation to the economy in order to continue existing.
We have a new religioua dogma now: capitalism, make more money than the next guy, everything is exchangeable, what you cannot pay for doesnt exist.
Ease of communication means it's more difficult to separate your thoughts from others. You become ever closer to a mere regurgitator of pre packaged thoughts.
This is going to sound snippier than the tone it's intended in:
What's your proposed alternative? So very much human suffering is directly caused by a failure to communicate well - seems like increasing ease of communication would be the best way forward based on that alone, regardless of the growing pains and the bad actors. Manipulation has been a thing since communication has been a thing - you're simply not thinking straight if you think retarding the latter will impact the former.
What the hell is a "pre packaged thought" anyways? A synonym for unoriginal? We're products of our shared environment, the likelihood that your thoughts are entirely unique is just about nil.
Aside:
there will always be zombies like you
Could you not? Doing this, your entire opinion becomes worthless, and even uglier than it already was considering the cynicism it's practically dripping in. Snide remarks aren't necessary here. Thanks.
What if people complain about this decade after decade because it is getting worse and worse? Of course, people in the conventional wisdom like you would never think of that.
I firmly believe that increased technology makes smaller and smaller cogs of us all, making us worse and worse, concentrating real experiences and all that creative stuff onto fewer and fewer people who can actually afford it.
Ease of communication means it's more difficult to separate your thoughts from others. You become ever closer to a mere regurgitator of pre packaged thoughts.
Luckily, if you regurgitate the thoughts of people who have better and healthier ideas (like how I'm regurgitating Baudrillard right now) the system is self defeating.
But it knows that as well, so there will always be zombies like you produced to promote the conventional wisdom!
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