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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.
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