When I look back, I see two ways in which we in the tech community were naively optimistic. First, like many in Silicon Valley, I had an overly rosy view of human nature. Most of us thought that it was inherently good to just connect everybody and everything. But now I can see that even though most people are good––or, at least, they behave well when interacting with strangers––a small number of trolls, foreign agents, and domestic jerks gain access to the megaphone that is social media, and they can do a lot of damage to trust, truth, and civility.
Second, I didn’t fully understand human tribalism and the way that social media could supercharge it. All platforms wanted to grow their user bases and increase their engagement, and we all thought that social media was a healthy way to help small communities form and flourish. But as political polarization rose steadily, not just in the USA but in many parts of the world in the 2010s, we discovered that issues of partisanship, identity, and us-versus-them were among the most powerful drivers of engagement.
- Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google
Clipping
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web > Mistakes made by techno-optimists
[https://www.afterbabel.com/p/ai-will-make-social-media-worse]
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web > We have become a lonely nation
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/133ttgw/comment/jibtwdw/]
It’s beyond that. It’s a cultural problem of hyper-targeted consumerism, individualism and rootlessness. We are exposed to fewer potential friends and partners because our homes are more entertaining than seeking out enjoyment in new hobby related groups. We move away from our existing base for school, jobs and housing more than ever. The demographics in many western countries skew older so our own generations are smaller. Many traditions and cultural events that used to get people together have become passé.
The talking point of third places is brought up a lot now after the NotJustBikes video on this, and it’s valid to have options. But there are plenty of options here in Sweden, there are plenty of options to be car free. People just don’t want to participate in local affairs anymore. It’s easier and more fun (addictive) to relax at home in your free time and consume entertainment and socialize over the internet with basically the whole world at your fingertips.
You can live shielded in your bubble with remote anything and delivery everything. It’s all about infinite choices and no need to depend on others or for them to depend on you. This big societal shift brought with a more globalized and connected world also brought a new sense of hyper-awareness of everything everywhere, and it’s good at minimizing a lot of local things.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/133ttgw/comment/jibhubv/
I just asked chatGPT why Western European countries consistently rank above the US (15th - 20th) on the lists of “happiest places to live”:
While it is important to note that happiness is subjective and can vary greatly from person to person, some factors that contribute to these rankings include:
Social welfare systems: Many European countries have extensive social welfare systems that provide citizens with access to healthcare, education, and other essential services. This can lead to a higher quality of life and a greater sense of financial security.
Work-life balance: European countries tend to prioritize work-life balance, with policies that support paid parental leave, vacation time, and reasonable working hours. This can lead to lower stress levels and increased overall happiness.
Income inequality: European countries generally have lower income inequality than the US, which can contribute to a greater sense of social cohesion and well-being.
Public transportation and urban planning: European cities often have well-developed public transportation systems and are designed to be more walkable and bike-friendly, promoting physical activity and environmental sustainability.
Emphasis on community: Many European countries emphasize social cohesion and community involvement, which can lead to stronger social connections and support networks.
Education: European countries often invest heavily in their education systems, leading to higher levels of literacy and overall educational attainment.
Healthcare: Universal healthcare is more common in European countries, which can contribute to better health outcomes and reduced financial stress related to medical expenses.
Cultural factors: European countries may place a greater emphasis on happiness and well-being, which can influence individual priorities and values.
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web > Ayn Rand will kill us all
[https://superbowl.substack.com/p/ayn-rand-will-kill-us-all]
The mistake is that…it’s not just a logical deduction, but, so to speak, a deduction that has turned into a feeling. Not all natures are the same; for many, a logical deduction sometimes turns into the strongest feeling, which takes over their whole being, and which it is very difficult to drive out or alter. To cure such a person, it’s necessary in that case to change the feeling itself, which can be done only by replacing it with another equally strong. That is always difficult, and in many cases, impossible.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Adolescent
Fact is, the same dynamic plays out in a wide variety of contexts. Smart people become invested in an idea, often for emotional reasons, then they launder their beliefs through a veneer of rationality.
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web > The slow but inevitable overwhelm of consumer capitalism
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web > Benefits of teaching
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35675158]
I always say that I learned more while teaching technology classes in my local community than any individual student.
Like this person, it helped hone my skills communicating technical ideas to non-technical people. Most importantly, it helped me understand others’ limitations and abilities of mine I had taken for granted. As a result, I learned patience and grace, that sometimes it’s better to show someone while doing it yourself, rather than expecting them to master it.
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web > How to make friends
[https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/how-to-make-friends]
Join the Elks or the Lions, the Knights of Columbus or the Polish American Civic Association. You might find it awkward, dull, or corny at first, but do you want to be a friend or do you want to be cool? The desire to be a friend sees everyone as interesting, as they are. It seeks greater ingress into the social and physical reality around you. The desire to be cool desires glamor and thrills; it sees people who cannot provide these as NPCs.
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web > More research about spiritual awakening
[https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/hey-why-arent-we-doing-more-research]
Imagine that there were a bunch of intelligent people trying to figure out how best to kill other people. This isn’t hard to imagine, since this is the world we live in. But let’s add another fun little wrinkle: imagine, also, that in this alternate world, some people are capable of killing other people by shooting deadly lasers out of their eyes. Not only that, but the laser shooters claim that this is a learnable skill, and there’s some old guy who hangs out at your local coffee shop who has laser eyes—he refrains from killing you because your silly jokes amuse him. And, according to historians, people have been shooting lasers out of their eyes for millennia.
For thousands of years, people have been like, “yeah, I meditated/prayed/contemplated for a while, and, one day, my mind metamorphosed, and now my relationship with the universe is a fundamentally constructive and peaceful one. I still have problems and get sad sometimes, I’m still a human, but it all seems much easier to deal with, and my day-to-day reality is luminous and beautiful in a way it wasn’t before, like God is ever-present, or the Godhead, or the Mystery of Being, or whatever I believe in personally.” That seems nice. That seems like something that should be available to as many people as possible.
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web > Diatribe against skeptics
[https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/my-controversial-diatribe-against-skeptics]
Here’s an example involving two idols of Capital-S Skepticism: biologist Richard Dawkins and physicist Lawrence Krauss. In his book A Universe from Nothing, Krauss claims that physics is answering the old question, Why is there something rather than nothing?
Krauss’s book doesn’t fulfill its title’s promise, not even close, but Dawkins loved it. He writes in the book’s afterword: “If On the Origin of Species was biology’s deadliest blow to supernaturalism, we may come to see A Universe From Nothing as the equivalent from cosmology.”
Just to be clear: Dawkins is comparing Lawrence Krauss, a hack physicist, to Charles Darwin. Why would Dawkins say something so dumb? Because he hates religion so much that it impairs his scientific judgment. The author of The God Delusion succumbs to what you might call the science delusion.
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web > Humans worshipped gods, then fame, then AI
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35510021]
Some related pop sci-fi: in the game Deus Ex they call it “Daedalus”. A super intelligent AI that evolved to replace government. The main character has an encounter with the prototype (called Morpheus) and it just drops some fascinating dialogue for a game released more than 20 years ago.
“The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.”
“The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment.”
“The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization.”
“The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning.”
“God was a dream of good government.”
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web > Everyone will have their own AI
[https://newsletter.squishy.computer/p/everyone-will-have-their-own-ai]
I’ve been reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy recently, a near-future sci-fi epic of terraforming, ecology, politics, big history.
One of the intriguing background details in this story is that everyone has a personal AI.
Your AI can think with you, riffing on possibilities, helping spark creative breakthroughs.
Your AI keeps a running a log, and fine-tunes itself on everything you’ve been thinking about.
You can talk to your AI, like Siri. You can also read it, like a book, and add notes to it, like a notebook.
Your AI can do research for you, ambiently crawling the net for things you’re thinking about, reporting back.
Your AI can talk with other AIs, negotiating with them to get information you need.
Your AI can do complex calculations and spot high-dimensional patterns… the kind of thinking computers are good at.
The data in your AI belongs to you. It is end-to-end encrypted. Only you can access its locked contents. Yours for life. You might even pass down a personal AI to your kids, like sharing an old journal, but interactive.
An AI networked notebook. A second brain.