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Some anon on 4chan /tv/, talking about the decline in movie quality, wrote "name ONE thing that has not gotten worse in recent years". From the context of movie discussions and the average age of 4channers, one can infer that the anon probably means roughly the last 10, maybe 20 years.
What say you, Motte?
My thoughts, off the top of my head, are:
AI. This one is self evident. Massive breakthroughs. Yes, there is a danger of Skynet, but that doesn't seem very serious to me at the moment at least and I do not share people like Yudkowsky's despair.
Spaceflight. Look at SpaceX.
Challenges to the establishment: This one is a maybe, and contentious. Much depends on whether you like or dislike the establishment. The first 15 years of the millenium were dominated by bog-standard Democrats and neocons. People like GWB, Obama, and Romney. The last 8 years have seen a partial breakdown of that order, for better or worse. There has also been the rise of wokeism, but despite many apocalyptic prophecies it has not managed to end free speech or liberalism. In terms of sheer numbers, I think that many more people are exposed to heterodox political opinions today than were 20 years ago.
Social media diversity: The Internet of the 90s collapsed into walled gardens and in some places into stultifying echo chambers, but I see reasons to be optimistic about the way things are going the last 3-4 years. Spurred partly by censorship on major platforms, people actually have started to spread out and build their own forums again. This site is one example but there are many others.
Cell phones are pretty great, I even write my novel on one and pretty much use it for everything other than pc gaming. There's little meaningful tradeoff past the entry level or midrange, they all have good screens, cameras and battery life that lasts a day at least. They might be stagnating, but I'll probably buy a foldable next, probably a Samsung since I crave the pen.
Ozempic looks like it's the real deal. I don't put much stock in people who keep muttering under their breath about some hidden catch, as if the universe works that way. A cure for obesity, as well as seemingly effective against other disorders of executive function like gambling and alcoholism? Hell fucking yeah, maybe it'll turn out to work for ADHD, but that would actually be even more surprising. It's going to get cheaper, nothing has economies of scale like a weight loss drug, there are other companies rushing out comparable drugs, and you can get generics through dubious sources if you wish.
Can't wait for it to get cheap enough for us poor Third World bastards, I'll be putting my mom on it ASAP, and then myself if I can shake enough change out of the cushions. I'm not obese, but I have gained like 10 kilos from my habit of having ridiculously cheap and ridiculously greasy biryani as comfort food, even if it's my only meal of the day (!). I've lost said weight before the hard way, through exercise and dieting, and I found both to be too painful to bother with unless I'm desperately single. Give me a pill or give me a jab, I'll take it and I couldn't care less about sanctimonious looks.
Less important, but cool: VR is a thing. Yeah. The Quest 3 looks great, even if I sorely miss the potential of eye tracking, but at that price something had to give. Shame it turns out I'm too lazy to play much, but it's a tick off the bucket list until we can control our characters simply by thinking.
To elaborate on AI:
I've found GPT-4 to be invaluable, the idea of simply googling anything complex fills me with a headache, even if I append a site:reddit.com at the end. God knows I'd spend more time staring at the summaries on UpToDate and Co, I can trust the answers most of the time, even if I make sure to check where I'm not confident in it.
Image generation is almost solved, like 90% there except for the most baroque prompts. DALL-E 3 can understand semantics for multiple characters engaging in different actions, even if it's not quite as aesthetic as Midjourney. Shame they went ham on the safety filters lately, but I already have hundreds of pieces, many of which I've sprinkled into my novel. A luxury, yes, but very nice to have, since I have no intentions for paying for an illustrator.
AI music is coming around nicely, I unironically listen to SpongeBob and Patrick rap Niggers in Paris, and it'll be simple enough to throw the name of your favorite artist who no longer does their old style and get something decent out of it. (I'm looking at you, Alex Turner. AM was the peak, fight me.)
There hasn't been a better time to be alive, we can potentially solve ~all our problems in a few decades. While I've gone from P(doom) of 70% to around 30%, I still take AI X-risk as the most pressing concern of the day. And I certainly don't look forward to AIs taking my jerb, I even spent about an hour chatting with the one person more fucked than I am, a med student. I might get to enter training and progress a bit with a lot of luck, he's going to be lucky to have training programs by the time he's going to sit the exams, worse case is he never finishes the post grad courses before they become obsolete.
Even if I am quite depressed, I'm confident that it's worth sticking around to see the future, we're on the cusp of great or terrible things, to the extent that that classification depends on your POV.
Not that easy, and I'm speaking as a whale with Type II diabetes who was put on both Ozempic (until I couldn't get it because people like you were snapping it up to lose ten kilos) and Trulicity. Ozempic I wasn't on long enough, or at high enough doses, to see any results, but at the initial dosage I tolerated it well but did not see loss of appetite, etc. happening, and those were the touted effects of "this makes losing weight so easy!"
Trulicity I had to stop because the side effects were so bad. Yeah, I lost some weight - due mostly to vomiting and diarrhoea from the gastro-intestinal effects, again not from any curbing of appetite.
And both are not 'miracle cures' as you are supposed to also do the traditional "diet and exercise" accompanying taking the drug, not relying on it alone to lose weight.
There also seems to be problems becoming apparent, now that these drugs are being used by the public at large. Even when using 'as directed', the warning leaflet warns about the risk of pancreatitis and other serious side-effects.
So if you're hoping for quick weight loss - yeah, it may do so. But you'll (1) be expected to diet and exercise alongside it, so give up the greasy biryani and (2) be on it for life - stop taking it, the weight piles back on. Most responsible medical advice would be "you only need to lose ten kilos, stop eating the greasy comfort food and become more active" but if you can manage to wangle it, you may not like the side effects. The major mechanism of action of these drugs is to slow stomach emptying (so you feel fuller for longer, thus don't eat as much and as frequently) and that can be accompanied by everything from flatulence to stomach paralysis.
As for a "cure for obesity" - it seems to work for a lot of people, but not all people, and it probably works best the least amount of weight you have to lose. There's no easy, painless way to lose weight, diet and exercise and life-long changes in eating habits are expected to accompany it (so bye-bye comfort foods forever).
Cure for gambling/alcoholism/addiction? I'm very dubious, I don't see how this links up with the reported mechanism of action. It may be that people have a cluster of behaviours (e.g. they drink and smoke when they eat, and if they're not eating as much/frequently, so they're drinking and smoking less) but I do wonder. I need more evidence on this, rather than "I read somewhere that someone said someone else said they were cured of being an alcoholic by taking Ozempic").
If you truly are obese, have Type II diabetes, and can't get access to Ozempic, have you considered a ketogenic diet?
I've been doing it for a couple months now, and the results have been incredible on both my waistline and on the scale. And I'm loving the food too. So delicious.
For me, the need is not that huge. I was only slightly overweight before and I'm doing it mostly out of vanity and for sports performance. For you, the benefits of a keto diet could be life-changing.
I know that pretty much everyone who is overweight wants to poo poo the keto diet, giving excuses not to do it, and reasons why it won't work for them. But it does work for almost everyone who tries it. I'd give it a shot!
Ditto from me on basically everything you said.
Under the theories that power Keto, most of the food that's easily available in the Western world is completely terrible for you. Eating food that's terrible for you and also taking a drug that probably makes it have less of an effect for life seems like a worse idea than just eating better food.
I advocate a gradual approach to moving onto Keto. Start by making a list of everything you eat. One at a time, replace each thing with something more Keto, ideally starting with the worst. Keep going until you notice positive effects. The usual standard of 20g of carbs a day is probably not necessary to get down to if you're not trying to lose hundreds of pounds of weight. If you can stay under 100g or so of carbs a day and not notice at least some positive effects, then it's probably not going to work for you.
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