2024 ELECTION THREAD
The next presidential race will be here soon! Please see current Bovada odds. Thoughts?
It's also VERY unclear in terms of actual human happiness if prolonging the last, worst years of life is a net increment or not, at least in all those places where the option of euthanasia isn't legal.
But in general for people who aren't capable of deciding for themselves anymore it's not obvious at all that "medical improvements" that prolong their lives are a net positive, it depends, again, on what we value in human life.
IME they are not and every older person I know well enough to know (and I've been very close to these decisions for my parents who have both passed and for my wife's parents) has been very worried about being kept alive too long. Everyone has wanted their DNR clear so that if they are not capable of making the decision, they are allowed to die. People are widely basically terrified of this in the US.
I mean, otherwise healthy people who have gotten a stint or something have had a lot of benefit from that, so it's not like a lot of medical improvements aren't there and making people happier, but in the very end they scare people.
Tangentially related to the last couple of posts - I've kind of pondered about this before in passing, but haven't really given it a huge amount of thought - what sort of impact does the fact technological advances are essentially exponential whereas biological evolution is something like, say, sub-logarithmic have on people's ability in general to cope mentally/be happy/live a fulfilling life in such a relatively fast-changing and fast-paced world?
The rate of change of your "surroundings" can be "too high" yes but it's unclear if today it's higher than in the last 150 years.
The last 2 centuries gave us a massive increase in the rate of change and with that a lot of problems for many people yes. But is it accelerating? i am not so sure. Like today vs 1985, has it changed more than 1985 vs 1945? than 1945 vs 1905? in terms of what you can do, technology and stuff, not "accepted social behaviour".
Not obvious at all, and i will tend to say actually no.
I think having cable TV vs radio is a 100x bigger change than netflix vs cable TV for example. I think having cars vs horses has no comparison today. Or having a telephone vs not having any is a lot more of a change than having a mobile vs having a fixed line. And so on
uh? i am just saying that the fact that people can't work a single job all of their life anymore , and/or have a very high chance of divorcing if married, generates a lot of despair in a lot of people who crave certainty in their lives.
Childhood mortality was already close to 0 in 1985 in the first world so i am not sure what you mean with your example.
Yes i am talking about specific fairly recent times in first world countries *as i wrote* which had elements which people might prefer IN AGGREGA
I often think I'd have much preferred to have been a teenager in the 60s. I have no idea whether this is true, of course.
The rate of change of your "surroundings" can be "too high" yes but it's unclear if today it's higher than in the last 150 years.
The last 2 centuries gave us a massive increase in the rate of change and with that a lot of problems for many people yes. But is it accelerating? i am not so sure. Like today vs 1985, has it changed more than 1985 vs 1945? than 1945 vs 1905? in terms of what you can do, technology and stuff, not "accepted social behaviour".
Not obvious at all, and i will tend to say ac
Well, my thesis is that absolutely yes, it is, that's what "exponential" (or generally, anything faster than linear) means. I also think it's quite self evident that this is true - I find it hard to see how anyone can objectively look at the advances of the last 30 years and say that they are not "greater" in a general sense than the 30 years before that, etc. The internet alone has basically changed how humans live on a day-to-day basis.
Tangentially related to the last couple of posts - I've kind of pondered about this before in passing, but haven't really given it a huge amount of thought - what sort of impact does the fact technological advances are essentially exponential whereas biological evolution is something like, say, sub-logarithmic have on people's ability in general to cope mentally/be happy/live a fulfilling life in such a relatively fast-changing and fast-paced world?
I have raised this issue in this forum at various times in the last 5-10 years, most recently in the AI thread.
This is definitely true. And it raises an almost existential question that has bothered me for a decade or more.
The plasticity of the human brain is exceptional, but I'm not convinced that we can accommodate an accelerating rate of technological change without profound psychological distress. Even in today's world, older people are extremely susceptible to feelings of alienation and being lost in the modern world. It's hard to adapt to a world that is very, very different than the world you gre
I don't think it's just change itself that is alienating, I think it's that the specific changes have almost all been alienating. Technology has consistently allowed people to be more independent and thus separate from each other. People want that in the short term, but it's alienating.
Work from home, get everything delivered, interact with everyone virtually...when do people just start accepting AI as their "friends"?
Well, my thesis is that absolutely yes, it is, that's what "exponential" (or generally, anything faster than linear) means. I also think it's quite self evident that this is true - I find it hard that anyone can objectively look at the advances of the last 30 years and say that they are not "greater" in a general sense than the 30 years before that, etc. The internet alone has basically changed how humans live on a day-to-day basis.
I think internet changed life orders of magnitude less than electricity and i don't think this is even controversial at all
uh? i am just saying that the fact that people can't work a single job all of their life anymore , and/or have a very high chance of divorcing if married, generates a lot of despair in a lot of people who crave certainty in their lives.
Childhood mortality was already close to 0 in 1985 in the first world so i am not sure what you mean with your example.
Yes i am talking about specific fairly recent times in first world countries *as i wrote* which had elements which people might prefer IN AGGREGA
lol so we’re talking about some very highly specific period of time for some very specific group of people. awesome. that really says a lot about society.
I’m not even sure that’s really the case either, but even if I grant that for the sake of argument I just think the vast majority of people live better lives than they have in human history. actually I would attribute a lot of the problems to what I was talking about earlier. People might not want to live prolonged lives where they are bed ridden and a shell of themselves, but they might feel better about it if they had family and community around them like what you had in religious communities.
maybe I’m just built different though, I had a very horrible childhood and as a consequence developed a lot of psychological coping mechanisms. I can’t speak for everyone’s experience though. obviously for anyone going through personal or social conflict the aggregate isn’t going to matter too much.
even during 1985 we had way different problems than we had today. the crime rate was ever-increasing and would soon peak in the 1990’s. the seeds of consumerist, beauty-obsessed, superficial culture was being planted. this was the calm before the storm that would culminate in the early 2000’s housing bubble. we came out of the 80’s and 90’s high on our own supply and then the foreign policy failings of the Bush administration + 9/11 obliterated a lot of the good will we had built up and exposed geopolitical problems bubbling beneath the surface.
there’s always going to be this problem of looking back to 40 years ago and saying “zomg it was so much better than”
I don't think it's just change itself that is alienating, I think it's that the specific changes have almost all been alienating. Technology has consistently allowed people to be more independent and thus separate from each other. People want that in the short term, but it's alienating.
I think that it is both, but I obviously agree that certain types of change foster alienation more than others.
I think internet changed life orders of magnitude less than electricity and i don't think this is even controversial at all
I think it took the internet a while to get there, but people (me more than most) spend so much time on the internet now and I'm not just talking about wfh (which I do), that it's definitely giving electricity a run for its money. It doesn't take *that* long to wash clothes by hand.
I think internet changed life orders of magnitude less than electricity and i don't think this is even controversial at all
I don't necessarily agree with this, but even if so, the internet was still much faster-acting. The internet has a significant impact on the day-to-day life of the average person in less than a decade, and arguably an even more significant impact over the course of the next 2 decades. I would imagine the adoption of electricity was much more gradual.
Or i mean moving from "i work in a farm and i sleep there with my family" to "i move to an urban center to work in a factory" is a 100-1000x bigger change than "i work at a desk shuffling paper for a big company and operating a fax machine and a copier a lot" to "i work at a desk from a PC for a big company "
If I had to pick being a kid in my generation and place and social class vs the same place and class today, it'd be no contest with the olden days when kids and teenagers all roamed freely winning.
I don't necessarily agree with this, but even if so, the internet was still much faster-acting. The internet has a significant impact on the day-to-day life of the average person in less than a decade, and arguably an even more significant impact over the course of the next 2 decades. I would imagine the adoption of electricity was much more gradual.
Electrification was kinda slow in rural areas (and more people lived in rural areas at the time) but in urban areas they went from 0 to 50%+ of houses electrified in less than 20 years.
Then there was the complete change of production patterns as well (and so , the way you worked your job).
Moreover, the arrival of instantaneous communication IMMEDIATLY changed life forever, newspapers printed news from across the ocean in approx real time (daily, sometimes more than daily) as soon as the ocean was cabled.
That jump from "i only hear from far away places weeks-months later" to "i know immediatly what happened" can only happen once and it happened a while ago, nothing else in communication can ever come close to that existential change.
If you’re normal the past was great. If you’re some gay kid or a little nerdy then it sucked. Where does that factor into everything?
Or i mean moving from "i work in a farm and i sleep there with my family" to "i move to an urban center to work in a factory" is a 100-1000x bigger change than "i work at a desk shuffling paper for a big company and operating a fax machine and a copier a lot" to "i work at a desk from a PC for a big company "
"The internet" includes all sorts of things, like instant communication over audio or video with anyone in the world, social media, online shopping, Uber, Wikipedia, email, Google, online flight check-in etc. etc. etc. It's not just putting up a home page for your dog.
If you’re normal the past was great. If you’re some gay kid or a little nerdy then it sucked. Where does that factor into everything?
For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't saying I think the past was better (although I think Luciom might be implying that), I was just questioning the ability of the human psyche to deal with an ever faster changing world - a point that Rococo looks to have made much more clearly and articulately than I did.
"The internet" includes all sorts of things, like instant communication over audio or video with anyone in the world, social media, online shopping, Uber, Wikipedia, email, Google, online flight check-in etc. etc. etc. It's not just putting up a home page for your dog.
Yes i understand what the internet entails. But for communication and other stuff you fail to realize the 0 to 1 jump matters a lot more than 1 to anything else.
Take water pipes in homes to understand it better, there is literally nothing that can happen to improve the water supply today or in the future that will ever come close to the jump from having to go to a well , and having pipes at home.
Nothing to receive or send communication at distance -> to a radio and a fixed line phone, is a lot more than radio to internet, close to "infinitely more", the former is life changing orders of magnitude more.
For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn't saying I think the past was better (although I think Luciom might be implying that), I was just questioning the ability of the human psyche to deal with an ever faster changing world - a point that Rococo looks to have made much more clearly and articulately than I did.
I didn't imply, i claimed that for people who crave certainty (a lot of normies do, perhaps a majority, women more than men because they are more risk averse) the recent past in first world country was probably better than the present.
I disagree instead with the fact that the present has unique problems related to the rate of change of technology because i think there are fewer life changing changes for now than in the previous 150-200 years.
If you’re normal the past was great. If you’re some gay kid or a little nerdy then it sucked. Where does that factor into everything?
The economic reward of education was massively higher in the past (and college education far cheaper) so the "little nerdy" had a much bigger advantage in life so i am not sure what you mean there.
As for gays, what factors in is how many people are gay, compared to the total.
I trust people will remember that I hold the copyright on MPD - Brain Modeling Disorder
That's re Rococo & D2's joining of the party
and that's a bauble on the massive change to a world with no jobs
