durdenhobbes
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User ID: 1307
Has anything noteworthy improved in the world in the past 10-15 years?
I've wondered if it's just a natural product of depression or aging, but I was thinking recently about how absolutely everything feels as if it were so much better a few short years ago. Housing/food/necessities more affordable, political discourse less toxic, the internet was both more wild west but also more self-regulating, TV was in its golden age (Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men, etc.), sports felt more like an escape than circus, technology still held promise of a brighter future rather than potential enslavement of humanity, people still talked to one another without being addicted to smartphones, the media was still somewhat believable, medicine was still a respected profession by a wide margin, college was the smart choice for many/most young people... I could go on but you get the idea.
What has actually improved in the time since? Uber? Starlink? That's all I can think of, and I don't use either one.
durdenhobbes
11mo ago
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
durdenhobbes
11mo ago
it might make sense to consciously get people to adopt non-zero-sum measures for status.
Is this even theoretically possible, though? Status is a relative position, and a rising tide does not lift all boats. It'd be akin to raising everyone's SAT scores—you're still going to have a 99th percentile and a 5th percentile, along with the correlated benefits (or lack thereof).
durdenhobbes
11mo ago
I mean, sure, but we're talking about the average person, who is always going to take the path of least resistance. So it should concern us that said path is heavily tilted toward one worldview.
durdenhobbes
11mo ago
Because Wikipedia is usually the first search result for any random thing any random person wants to research on the internet.
durdenhobbes
11mo ago
10 years ago I'd have said Reddit, but that hasn't been true for a long time now.
durdenhobbes
11mo ago
It wouldn't help to pretend not to be together, since single people are also faced with additional tax.
durdenhobbes
11mo ago
I can't believe we even have doctors, given this system. I wouldn't live like that for 5 years even if the payoff was a trillion dollar lump sum.
I had the same thought, although from the looks of things there were absolutely explosives planted in these pagers; batteries don't just explode like that.
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