[HN Gopher] Amusing Ourselves to Death (2014)
___________________________________________________________________
Amusing Ourselves to Death (2014)
Author : yamrzou
Score : 358 points
Date : 2024-09-28 05:56 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (otpok.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (otpok.com)
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| A person running for president of this country comes from show
| business and there are venture capitalists like Mark Andreeson
| who seriously talk about him as somebody who knows policy all
| because they can get a seat at the table.
| zabzonk wrote:
| A person ELECTED for president of the USA came from show
| business - Reagan.
| bamboozled wrote:
| If I remember correctly, Trump was also elected once, as
| stupid as that is.
| samllmas wrote:
| He dabbled in show biz though.
| gomerspiles wrote:
| A demented figurehead with other people behind him directing
| the show. It's as if acting was the perfect training for the
| worst idea for a position in a system of checks and balances.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| As did Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| I don't think he can run for office in the US so this is
| false.
| valval wrote:
| And that should disqualify a presidential candidate... why
| exactly?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| It ain't democracy if you ain't won.
|
| -Vocal Minority, Intellectual Minority, Minorities et al.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The OP did not express the idea properly: people are not
| prejudicially disqualified because of the industries they
| worked in, but intrinsic disqualification comes from twisted
| profiles. "Guts exciters", getting followers through seducing
| their lower instances, is one of them.
|
| I am not labelling individuals here - but there are very many
| around the world fitting that description.
| valval wrote:
| My question was rhetorical, since I knew the previous
| poster's position was indefensible.
|
| Whatever point you're trying to make is also hilarious to
| watch. In democracy it does not matter what instincts were
| provoked to get the votes. Sometimes the person you didn't
| like wins, and that's part of the deal.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| <<Deal>> as in "I was dealt this"? As in, you play a
| cretinous game and we should be part of it? You seem to
| say, you called 'democracy' a game in which "who is
| elected rules, whatever the means that brought to
| election" - i.e. you are stating that a game is there
| which is pure filth. To that, you also seem to add that
| no judgement or criticism should be added, because the
| game would be under some unexplained extraordinary
| protection. And you are also resolving "bestiality" with
| "dislike", as if arbitrary, as if relativistic.
|
| Hilariousness not fitting.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| You are demonstrating what I joked(?) in another comment
| ("It ain't democracy if you ain't won.") _perfectly_.
| Thanks.
| valval wrote:
| You're either way too smart or way too stupid for me to
| understand. In any case, there must be at least a 40 IQ
| point difference between the two of us.
| hshshshsvsv wrote:
| Congrats. You brainwashed yourself into believing only certain
| class of people can run the country. Founding fathers would be
| proud.
| onion2k wrote:
| I think it's fair to say the "why not inject yourself with
| bleach!" people shouldn't be running the show while there's a
| class of people who do what people tell them without
| questioning whether it's a good idea. People in power have a
| responsibility not to suggest things that would kill people.
| That isn't a high bar.
| hshshshsvsv wrote:
| This assumes people are stupid and have no intelligence of
| their own and needs to be told what they should be doing.
| onion2k wrote:
| Not quite. It assumes that _some people_ don 't verify
| what they're told, and so follow what people in authority
| tell them. That means people in authority have a
| responsibility not to abuse their authority.
|
| If everyone was rational and didn't do what they were
| told, choosing to verify everything and only follow what
| was appropriate, then the entire marketing, ad,
| government, legal, prison, etc industries would all
| collapse because they wouldn't be necessary any more.
| It's fairly obvious that there are people who follow
| dangerous, stupid advice.
| hshshshsvsv wrote:
| Okay. That's fair.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'd prefer that the people elected to lead are smarter
| than I am.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| You make a case against stupid and irresponsible people
| that I agree with completely.
|
| Entertainers are not necessarily these things.
|
| Just like lawyers - presidents are often lawyers - are not
| necessarily brilliant paragons.
| mrkeen wrote:
| The founding _fathers_ , not the founding _parents_.
|
| Those slave-owners held it self-evident that all men had the
| unalienable right of liberty (among other rights.)
|
| I can't remember 1984 well enough to remember any specific
| examples of doublethink, but they can't be as good as this
| one.
| hshshshsvsv wrote:
| > The founding fathers, not the founding parents.
|
| Sorry. Who among the founding fathers was women to call it
| parents? Founding fathers seems to be more accurate than
| founder Mothers or Founding parents.
| naming_the_user wrote:
| Legendary comment from the old boy Terry Davis as the top post
| there.
| becquerel wrote:
| The only true seer of the modern age.
| rlt wrote:
| RIP
| edm0nd wrote:
| Gods true OS
| podviaznikov wrote:
| Live Neil Postman. Discovered him around 2016 and read many of
| his books. And planning to regularly reread him.
|
| So many things changed since he died but his ideas hold up pretty
| good.
| tines wrote:
| Technopoly is also amazing, make that your next read.
| podviaznikov wrote:
| yes, I've read that and many of his books. they all a bit
| similar and he reuses tons of similar quotes and ideas. but
| that is even better, he just tries to drive the same points.
| doubleorseven wrote:
| He passed away before the first iPhone and now my only 2 wishes
| are: 1) a new book about how smartphones revolutionize the
| modern world and 2) a new Lauryn hill album
| becquerel wrote:
| Hey guys, what if good things were actually bad? Wow!! Instead of
| enjoying ourselves we should instead spend eight hours a day
| intently studying woodworking & tax policy. The fact that people
| enjoy talking to each other and looking at cat pictures on social
| media proves that people will accept fascism and that Western
| liberal democracy is fated for impotence.
| theobreuerweil wrote:
| There is a middle ground between woodworking and TikTok, no?
| People enjoyed talking to each other and had fun before we had
| technology.
|
| It's easy to see social media as harmless, and maybe it is, but
| it also has the potential to act as a powerful tool for serving
| propaganda and brainwashing.
|
| I'm not suggesting an actual conspiracy theory here but it's
| concerning that a few huge companies have the power to
| broadcast (and control) the flow of information to a majority
| of population, who will consume that information by and large
| without suspicion.
|
| If for some reason Facebook or TikTok really wanted to
| meaningfully shift public opinion, they probably could, and in
| any direction they might choose.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > before we had technology
|
| There wasn't a time "before we had technology". Best to avoid
| that line of thinking if you want to escape the determinist
| (Veblem) trap and end up like Kaczynski.
|
| Postman is an author we enjoy but seldom acknowledge the
| wider genre into which he fits. It's called "tech critique".
|
| You can study it through the ages, comparing the outlooks and
| influences of Einstein, Ellul, Freud, Fromm, Heidegger,
| Illich, Kaczynski, Marcuse, Mumford, Nietzsche, and Postman,
| as well as sci-fi writers like Wells, Forster, Clarke,
| Gibson, Le Guin, Dick...It makes a very good companion to a
| study of the philosophy of science.
|
| Some takeaways (at least ones that stick in my mind):
|
| Technology is inseparable from the human condition, There are
| no primitivist escapes, noble savages or gardens of Walden.
|
| By the same token there is not and won't ever be any golden
| age of Utopian technology.
|
| Technology most closely resembles a "drug" in all its
| manifest functions.
|
| Technology comes with an accumulative maintenance cost.
|
| It is monotonic/directional. There's no easy way back and we
| can't uninvent stuff.
|
| Minimising the _harms_ of technology while maximising the
| benefits and maintaining human dignity amidst it is the best
| we can do.
|
| Even if initially excited by new developments all people are
| ultimately ambivalent about technology. They fear it, use it
| begrudgingly and resent their dependency on it. Iron bridges
| and steam locomotives raised the same questions as GPS and
| iPhones do today.
|
| Many people romanticise and worship technology. It is a
| secular God.
|
| If we "love" it, it's the sick love of an addict or the
| sadomasochistic power glee (tech "dealers" like Ellison,
| Zuck, and Musk)
|
| A tiny few (that's us) enjoy a curious fascination that makes
| tech an "end in itself". Those people get used to create a
| supply for the dealers and addicts.
|
| Anyway you gotta love Postman, if only for exquisite use of
| "centrifugal bumblepuppy". What he describes in this passage
| is really the soporific control/domination effects of
| technology in the hands of tyrants/dealers who delight in the
| subjugation of attention - which I think is made best by
| Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| >There wasn't a time "before we had technology"
|
| Well, this was nothing if not besides the point. Anyone on
| this site should recognize that when people like the person
| you responded to use the word "technology", especially in
| this context, it is typically a colloquialism for
| information technology, as in television, computers, phones
| and the like.
|
| Even in colloquial English amongst the public, "technology"
| hasn't referred to technology in general for several
| decades, but simply to "information technology". It has
| become so common that the general public refers to the
| entire information technology industry simply as "tech" or
| the "tech industry", which excludes all traditional
| engineering disciplines outside of electrical, despite all
| those disciplines working with technology.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I disagree that influence is really that malleable. Even if
| we take the power of selection algorithms for granted it is
| still constrained and must work with the 'winds' of the
| content posted. If they tried something 'simple' as promoting
| non-mammalian meat sources they would only succeed in
| creating memes mocking the concept.
|
| Besides, the most "effective" influencer does next to nothing
| because they were going to do that sort of thing already.
| There is a reason you see music stars doing promotionals for
| pleasurable to consume caloried drinks as a use for personal
| funds and not say deferred gratification products like
| investment banking.
| imjonse wrote:
| The book's title is a nod to the Roger Waters album/song that
| deals with the same theme.
| LeonB wrote:
| I think it's the other way around -- the book is from ~ 1985
| while the Roger Waters albums is ~ 1992.
| imjonse wrote:
| Thank you, my bad, you are right, as the other sibling
| comment.
| kurtdev wrote:
| The book predates the song and album by about 7 years, so the
| album name references the book. Postman even mentioned the fact
| in his 1995 book "The end of education"
| m-i-l wrote:
| > " _Postman even mentioned the fact in his 1995 book "The
| end of education"_"
|
| Quote from Postman according to wikipedia[0]:
|
| "the level of sensibility required to appreciate the music of
| Roger Waters is both different and lower than what is
| required to appreciate, let us say, a Chopin etude."
|
| Ouch.
|
| I actually got the album when it came out, and was roughly
| aware of the concept and the book from reviews in the music
| press. Had I known that it was comparing Orwell and Huxley
| I'd have definitely made the effort to read more. But this
| was before the internet so it wasn't easy (you had to do
| things like going to a public library), so technological
| progress is not all downside.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
| imjonse wrote:
| Thank you. I was mislead by the date on the post and did not
| know the book was older. TIL.
| cen4 wrote:
| Think more about Attention. Not about Information.
|
| Information is exploding and global available Attention doesn't
| grow. People who pay attention to one thing, can't use the same
| time to pay attention to something else.
|
| So govts and corps fight over this common pool of Attention using
| the Media (TV/Movies/Radio/Social/News/Sports/Gaming etc etc),
| just like they fought over land and oil and other natural
| resources. Media is literally used like front line troops of
| colonial empires in Attention capture wars.
|
| But no one wins as long as Global Human Attention isn't given
| purpose. We await someone or some group to articulate that
| vision. Until then people working in Attention Capture fields
| will keep amusing us to death.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Attention is all you need?
| ianpenney wrote:
| This is a very deep thought that has crossed my mind quite a
| lot as I've used LLMs and other AI.
|
| Ironically, we are discovering the human condition by
| evaluating what we are "not".
|
| ... but, we are.
| detourdog wrote:
| Attention is how we see ourselves reflected in others.
| portaouflop wrote:
| > as long as Global Human Attention isn't given purpose
|
| We tried out the grand visions to improve the human condition
| with one great push in the 20th century- didn't work out so
| well
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| The failure of some grand visions doesn't doom all future
| ones. That's just silly.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Everyone knows that if at first you don't succeed, never
| try again.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Grand vision (or ideology as it's also called) is a dead
| end of history - has been tried too many times, always
| failed spectacularly.
|
| Instead we need small incremental lasting change - thinking
| we can transform life within a generation without
| repercussions, that's just silly
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Grand visions are more in service of megalomaniacal egos
| than actual solutions. They all just paint over the very
| real complexities of the world and expect things to just
| work as they envisioned. Just get rid of the sparrows
| eating grains and it will just be fine! There are limits to
| what complexities can be contained within one human mind,
| and with a world already orders of magnitudes more complex
| than that we need the humility to admit that the vision of
| one human mind is not and cannot be all-encompassing. I
| think it is fair to say that the usefulness of grand
| visions is dead.
| CalRobert wrote:
| The Green Revolution, vaccines, and space exploration have
| been pretty great.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Literacy too!
| onion2k wrote:
| _But no one wins as long as Global Human Attention isn 't given
| purpose._
|
| The problem is that "people working in Attention Capture
| fields" are the exact people who _are_ winning, at least by the
| most common scoring mechanism of 'wealth'.
| chongli wrote:
| They're enriching their bank accounts just as they're
| impoverishing their spirits. On their deathbeds, no one ever
| says "gee, I wish I'd spent more time at the office." The
| same could be said for any other wealth-motivated exercise.
|
| If I have learned one thing in life it is this: money is, at
| best, a necessary evil. A means to an end. Pursuing it as an
| end in itself is an indication that we have strayed from the
| path and forgotten what we were doing.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Money has made it far easier to barter work into what
| people need to survive, obtain stability & enjoy life, than
| its absence.
|
| It's easy to be jaded by those that obviously value it more
| than others' well being.
|
| But the mismatch of priorities is what is wrong, that
| doesn't negate money's positive practical value & impact.
|
| Most people have a more multifaceted relationship with
| money than as a dehumanizing god or drug.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Sure, but they're also outbidding me for a house.
| apwell23 wrote:
| Are you trying to get in a "good school district" ? Is
| that really that strongly correlated to kids outcome in
| life .
|
| kids grow up and fight for a house in good school
| district :).
|
| I feel like having kids is root of all evil. Ppl justify
| all sorts of things (like wars and bidding for houses)
| and say that they are doing those things for sake of
| their kids.
| 10u152 wrote:
| >...having kids is the root of all evil.
|
| Quite a take there. Kids are also the source of all joy
| and happiness, depending on how you look at it.
| apwell23 wrote:
| Yea I agree. I have kids too :)
|
| But they are also the source of global warming, wars. On
| a personal level they a source of anxiety, continuous
| striving, jealousy and fear.
| ossobuco wrote:
| > I feel like having kids is root of all evil. Ppl
| justify all sorts of things and say that they are doing
| those things for sake of their kids.
|
| If that's true, then your/our existence is rooted in
| evil. Accordingly, if your parents were good people, they
| would have spared you of your existence, but apparently
| their very nature pushed them to bring more evil to the
| world.
| apwell23 wrote:
| yes exactly!
| CalRobert wrote:
| No, but I want to live somewhere my kids have the freedom
| to bike and walk around town safely.
|
| Anyway, I just took a job helping get more houses off gas
| and on heat pumps, which is aligned with my goal to be
| part of addressing climate change, but it is hard to get
| a house near work (in Amsterdam in this case) when not
| optimising for pay.
| onion2k wrote:
| _On their deathbeds, no one ever says "gee, I wish I'd
| spent more time at the office."_
|
| I bet a lot of people have died regretting they didn't earn
| more.
| strken wrote:
| I swear I am going to, on my deathbed, say "gee, I wish I'd
| spent more time at the office," just to stop this quote
| going around. In the last five years I've had a few
| conversations about regret with elderly relatives who have
| now passed away. None of them regretted going to work. My
| grandparents _met_ at work. One regretted that she 'd been
| a draftswoman rather than an engineer, but that's almost
| the exact opposite. I don't understand why people think
| doing good work that inspires pride and then getting paid
| for it is going to be some kind of horrible deathbed
| regret. It has literally never been a deathbed regret for
| anyone whose deathbed I have attended.
| amelius wrote:
| They should have said: "gee, I wish I spent more time
| influencing people into buying things they do not need".
| psychoslave wrote:
| > I don't understand why people think doing good work
| that inspires pride and then getting paid for it is going
| to be some kind of horrible deathbed regret.
|
| Because there is nothing in the definition you give that
| remotely looks like the median job. Societies are not
| structured to maximize the number of jobs that fits this
| definition. If social structure happens to fit your
| Ikigai, congratulation you won the cosmic loto, enjoy.
|
| But maybe it's not a relevant point to show surprise on
| this point. Consider how much people in the rest of
| humanity will have to go through major existential
| stressful abhorrent challenges, geopolitical struggles,
| being effectively reduced to dull task slaves by whoever
| happen to be their lord of the day. How then to be
| surprised that at the end of their life they can think
| "work moments were so shitty, I wish I had spend more
| enjoyable ones like those I experienced while taking time
| with people I deeply sincerely love".
|
| By the way, if you haven't yet do that today, tell at
| least to at least three people around you how much you
| love them and care that they enjoy moment passed
| together. I promise you won't regret it on your death
| bed. ;)
| strken wrote:
| I'm talking about a wide range of jobs -- draftswoman,
| ship's engineer and structural engineer, typist, teacher
| -- held by people who grew up during the major
| existential struggles that were the great depression and
| the second world war. Working as a typist in the 1940s
| and 1950s was not some kind of utopian magical job full
| of meaning, but my grandmother could still hit a higher
| WPM than I can and she was proud of what she'd done.
| Earning an income was a means of doing things that she
| would never have been able to do otherwise. She felt
| lucky to be able to do things like take a ship to Europe
| without a chaperone and using money she'd earned, given
| that her mother's generation of women would have found it
| much harder.
|
| My experience has been that older people often have a
| different outlook on life than what people my age,
| including me, would predict. Part of that is experience,
| part is coming from a different time where the baseline
| for quality of life was lower, and I suspect part of it
| is rose-tinted glasses.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Yeah but there's negative attention, too.
|
| Negative attention will eventually have consequences. Either
| they grow deaf, run away, become enraged, etc.
|
| I think of the millions of ads, singers, bullies, salesmen
| who've vied for my attention, and you wear down. You get sick
| of saying "no", pretending not to notice, brushing aside
| dialogs, feeling bad because you can't help.
|
| https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Laurie-
| Anderson/Language-I...
| HPsquared wrote:
| I don't know, it's possible for a person to pay no attention to
| anything. Therefore it isn't always maxed out. Also the
| "quality" of attention can vary. I think the time spent looking
| at things has increased, but the level of focus and "deep
| attention" paid to things has likely fallen over time.
| smokel wrote:
| It's not all about attention.
|
| Most companies are still in it for the money, and attention is
| only a means to an end.
|
| For the idiotic narcissist leaders that pop up every now and
| then, attention might be interesting by itself. But luckily for
| us, there's just very few of those. Most of our government
| bodies are comprised of people who actually mean to do good,
| and just a bit of attention to some important matters suffices.
| sph wrote:
| > But no one wins as long as Global Human Attention isn't given
| purpose. We await someone or some group to articulate that
| vision.
|
| One of the best things I've done for myself is to stop reading
| the news. You will not believe how this ignorance has led me to
| a calmer life, to the gasp and concern of my peers, wondering
| how am I able to cope, to exist, without knowing what happens
| "in the world?"
|
| As you say, anyone has 1 unit of attention, and unlike many
| other things, it is fully in our control. The biggest lie
| modern generations have been told is that the more knowledge
| about things, the greater the happiness. That you need to know
| what happens half a world away from you, often in more detail
| than what happens at your doorstep.
|
| What saddens me the most about the future generations is seeing
| how politicised they has become, politics the game of rich old
| people; the powers that be have figured out that if they turn
| what happens in the palace into entertainment, people are
| distracted and don't get into them silly ideas like trying to
| change things. These days politics is slapstick comedy for
| "grown ups", and it's sad to see it infect the younger
| generations now.
| frereubu wrote:
| You might enjoy this piece by Charles Simic, which is a
| touchstone of mine:
|
| "I'm having trouble deciding whether I understand the world
| better now that I'm in my seventies than I did when I was
| younger, or whether I'm becoming more and more clueless every
| day. The truth is somewhere in between, I suspect, but that
| doesn't make me rest any easier at night. Like others growing
| old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through
| and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian
| calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement,
| like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many
| times. It hasn't happened to me yet. My late father, in the
| final year of his life, claimed that he finally found that
| long-sought serenity by no longer reading the papers and
| watching television. Even then, and I was thirty years
| younger than he, I knew what he meant. What devotees of
| sadomasochism do to their bodies is nothing compared to the
| torments that those addicted to the news and political
| commentary inflict on their minds almost every hour of the
| day."
|
| https://archive.is/0GZmW
|
| (I haven't managed to stop reading the news unfortunately...)
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| Thank you for that. I really enjoyed it. It resonates with
| me. I have lived in three different countries, and in my
| two non-native countries, I have enjoyed my life much more.
| I think part of it is that there I have been somewhat
| oblivious to the news and current politics of the new
| places I have lived. I get some of news and politics from
| my friends, but I do not follow it like I used to in my
| country of origin. I have also dramatically reduced my news
| consumption in my native country, because I am not there
| very often, and it does not preoccupy me so much anymore.
| Though I have not given up the news entirely, either in my
| home country or in my adopted countries, but less is, I
| feel, much better.
|
| I understand, fully and deeply, why news and current events
| are _important_ , but they are also a cancer. At least in
| the way that they are sold to us. I also get a sense that
| the negative effect that the news has our mental health is
| quite widespread around the world. As in, it is not unique
| to America or Britain or European countries, etc.
| _gmax0 wrote:
| It's my opinion that "thinking locally and acting locally" is
| a strategy better reserved for old age.
| tropicalfruit wrote:
| i would add laziness too.
|
| attention usually takes the path of least effort.
| navjack27 wrote:
| Change attention to intention
| fallous wrote:
| Arguably religion used to provide that purpose but most of the
| Western world has walked away from it without choosing
| something to replace that sense of purpose. If, as Marx
| asserted, that religion was the opiate of the masses then the
| current "attention economy" is the methamphetamine of the
| masses.
| detourdog wrote:
| What I have noticed about religion is that today's view of it
| is distorted. I see it as closer to
| psychology/sociology/civics. The description I see used today
| about ancient ideas of social cohesion is narrow minded with
| a hint of superiority.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| There is a war going on for your mind.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ne0DmiuHeg
| moffkalast wrote:
| It is interesting that these two books essentially show the most
| extreme end result of the two major economic systems. Socialist
| authoritarian communist states gravitate towards 1984, capitalist
| liberal democracies turn into Brave New World.
| rramadass wrote:
| Exactly! Both Orwell and Huxley are right but in different
| contexts. Also note that both of their works are an exaggerated
| caricature of aspects of Society which they wished to highlight
| and show its insidiousness. Thus one has to look beyond the
| "painted picture" and understand what was being meant.
|
| However; Orwell had a better insight on the overall issues
| which can be found in his essays eg. "Notes on Nationalism",
| "All Art is Propaganda", "Politics and the English Language"
| (eg. Newspeak) etc.
| renanoliveira0 wrote:
| Well said. I think the issue stems from the same point.
|
| Both cases assume that individuals are being coerced out of
| their potential to transform the world for the better, whether
| by Big Brother or by TikTok. In my view, both stem from an
| assumption that I don't see playing out in the real world: that
| all individuals have the desire or capacity to make a
| difference and be something "more".
|
| I think this idea came from the Enlightenment. That's when we
| started to forget that, unfortunately, the overwhelming
| majority are just here to occupy space.
| dave333 wrote:
| Doing things merely to stimulate pleasurable brain chemistry is
| fine unless all you do is play games or watch formulaic media
| that have no lasting effect or achievement.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| whats wrong with headshots on the PC while doomscrolling on the
| phone in the age of _monsters and idiots_?
| jll29 wrote:
| If you, like me, would have had to watch people play Candy
| Crush on the Tube [= the London subway] on the way to work
| every morning for seven years, you would not ask.
|
| I felt terribly sorry for that loss of GDP and decline in
| mean global IQ.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Why would playing Candy Crush on the subway have any impact
| on GDP or IQ? Sounds like a non sequitur.
| Toorkit wrote:
| The plebians should be doing business during their
| commute, never stop hustling! /s
| bee_rider wrote:
| Formulaic or novel media doesn't make a huge difference, it's
| just passive consumption either way.
|
| Coincidentally I've been listening to Divers a bunch recently
| (which is a really great album, although I am just passively
| consuming just like everything else... I don't know if it falls
| under formulaic for you, but it is a good formula if so). A lot
| of it is about death and time, and she ends one of the songs
| with a sort of gentle sing-songy "Look, and despair." I always
| read the "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" in
| Ozymandias as a giant "fuck your hopes and achievements" from
| that ancient king.
|
| Anyway, Joanna Newsom's delivery is a lot more gentle, so maybe
| the fact that all of our effects and achievements will ground
| to dust is not so bad. Mattering would be very stressful.
| skummetmaelk wrote:
| Which thing can you do that does not serve the purpose of
| generating desirable brain activity?
| HKH2 wrote:
| You missed 'merely'. The answer is: anything that involves
| delayed gratification.
| alexashka wrote:
| Thinly veiled 'I despise stupid people', this one.
|
| They'd be boozing (more than they already are) if there wasn't
| such variety of cheap and available entertainment, the author
| doesn't seem to realize?
|
| It's not what stupid people do in their free time - it's what
| capable and smart people value and pursue that makes all the
| difference.
|
| Nietzsche laid this out quite beautifully in Thus Spoke
| Zarathustra. Huxley and Orwell are kindergarten philosophy by
| comparison.
| yldedly wrote:
| >it's what capable and smart people value and pursue that makes
| all the difference.
|
| How do you know capable and smart people will keep having good
| values? Seems to me that it's true until it isn't - populism
| takes over politics, ideology takes over the humanities,
| science gets Goodharted to death, etc. Values are highly
| circular - we value what high-status people in our (sub)culture
| value, and you become high-status by getting what people value.
| This holds for smart people as well.
| alexashka wrote:
| > How do you know capable and smart people will keep having
| good values?
|
| 'Good' values don't exist, so we need not worry about that
| one :)
| yldedly wrote:
| Then what do you mean when you say "make a difference"?
| moffkalast wrote:
| I think they mean the literal opposite of things staying
| the same, not the "helping people" idiom.
| yldedly wrote:
| Fair enough, but for the sake of this conversation, if we
| say 'good' values are those that keep things from staying
| the same, aren't the values of smart people just as
| likely to evolve towards 'bad' ones? For example, I'm
| sure most people know at least one smart person who only
| plays video games; it does seem that we'll keep inventing
| forms of entertainment that wirehead people more and more
| effectively, which seems in line with the Brave New World
| scenario.
| malthaus wrote:
| are you saying smart people are immune to the temptations of
| attention-dopamine?
|
| because i'd consider myself above average in terms of
| intelligence and ambition but i still fall into the
| procrastination trap often. now you might say that this makes
| me in fact "stupid" per your defininition (or maybe arrogant as
| i overestimate myself) but i see this in other people as well.
|
| i also would not say that being "productive" as in moving
| humanity ahead must be the KPI by which everyone is measured.
| you only have one life, you can spend it how you want, even if
| that is watching tiktoks 24/7.
| willguest wrote:
| This sentiment, that each is entitled to a life of choosing,
| resonates strongly with the spirit of individualism. Within
| it there is a disregard for obligation or belonging that, I
| think, is connected to the desire for mindless occupation and
| distraction.
|
| I suspect that, the more one is cut off from a sense of
| collective purpose, the more one finds solace in activities
| that reinforce a sense of "alright" in place of true
| wellness.
|
| Btw, I'm also a big procrastinator and I consider it a gift.
| Many wonderful things in my life have been helped by it. In
| this sense, I agree that there is something about an inner
| drive that should be listened and reacted to, but I am not
| sure that all activities are of equal value.
| judofyr wrote:
| > Thinly veiled 'I despise stupid people', this one.
|
| Are you talking about this comic (i.e. a few sentences from the
| book) or the whole book?
|
| I read the book a few years back and it's entirely focused on
| _culture as a whole_ and less about the individual choices. He
| 's not making a point of "television makes you dumb" (or "dumb
| people watches television"), but rather he makes the
| distinction between an "oral"-, "press"- and "television"-based
| _culture_. He claims that it 's bad when television becomes the
| main platform that a _society_ centers its communication
| around.
|
| He's also honest that there's probably far more junk (in
| absolute terms) in printing than in television: "Television is
| not old enough to have matched printing's output of junk." It's
| not about the amount of "junk" - it's about something more
| fundamental about the medium.
|
| I found the book quite interesting and would highly recommend
| reading it!
|
| > They'd be boozing (more than they already are) if there
| wasn't such variety of cheap and available entertainment, the
| author doesn't seem to realize?
|
| That's an _extremely_ pessimistic view of the world:
| Categorizing a set of human beings as "stupid" and saying that
| it doesn't matter how society is structured?
|
| And "smart people" are also influenced by how our society is
| structured, no?
| quartesixte wrote:
| >He's not making a point of "television makes you dumb" (or
| "dumb people watches television"), but rather he makes the
| distinction between an "oral"-, "press"- and
| "television"-based culture. He claims that it's bad when
| television becomes the main platform that a society centers
| its communication around.
|
| Or as Postman himself put it, "the medium is the metaphor".
| And he strongly disliked the metaphor TV was bringing to bear
| on the Western World.
|
| And everyone should note this is the television of the 1980s.
| You still don't really have home recording, there are a
| limited number of channels, and the monoculture truly exists.
| judofyr wrote:
| > And everyone should note this is the television of the
| 1980s. You still don't really have home recording, there
| are a limited number of channels, and the monoculture truly
| exists.
|
| This is a good point as well! When reading it I was
| reflecting on how internet compares to 1980s television.
| Yes, it has much more dopamine-fueled content, _but_ it 's
| way less of a monoculture. It gives a lot of opportunity
| for people to seek out what they're interested in and
| there's hundreds (thousands?) of communities with very
| different set of thoughts.
| quartesixte wrote:
| You also can't create actively yourself! TV was
| definitely a consumer only culture, with all creation
| heavily gatekept by an entire industry. Compare this to
| the print culture prior to that.
|
| The Internet definitely has changed this, and now we are
| back into a creation capable metaphor.
| yungporko wrote:
| plenty of smart people wasting their lives scrolling through
| bullshit. you don't use your brain to solve problems if you're
| never bored and allowing your mind to wander.
| r721 wrote:
| Original comic source:
| https://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ours...
| (archived:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20100111052839/http://www.recomb...)
|
| HN discussion from 2010:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554733
|
| Wikipedia entry for the book:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
| seabombs wrote:
| Bit of an aside, it was fun to notice the Australian references
| in the comic. Surprises me still to see something Australian on
| the "regular" internet.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > the Australian references
|
| I read the comic. Which Aus refs?
| everybodyknows wrote:
| "orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy"?
|
| These are unknown to most Americans.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Isn't that a reference to Brave New World?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Yes.
| anthk wrote:
| Brave New World and 1984 are books to avoid every extreme on
| politics, either left or right (put every Monopoly neocon fanboy,
| racist non-civic nationalist or burocratic socialist in there).
|
| 1984 looked scary, but BNW was hopeless. It exerced a much better
| control. The world of 1984 collapsed down itself.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| What's wrong with BNW? Have you forgotten the islands?
| anthk wrote:
| On "The Island", well, it's the book Huxley wrote as a
| counterpart against BNW.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| The islands in BNW: " _[Bernard is] being sent to an
| island. That 's to say, he's being sent to a place where
| he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be
| found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one
| reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual
| to fit into community-life. All the people who aren't
| satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of
| their own. Every one, in a word, who's any one. I almost
| envy you, Mr. Watson._"
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, I have to re-read _Brave New World_ because over the
| time since I have read it I have come to believe it was
| actually Utopian. The artists and others that could not
| conform were in fact given an island where like-minded
| artists could flourish.
|
| Sometimes I think that's all we all want: to find a community
| of like-minded people we can live among.
| tehnub wrote:
| People make too much of what Orwell supposedly feared may happen
| some day. He was writing about stuff the Soviet and British
| governments were doing in his time, and in particular, imagined
| what Soviet rule over Britain may look like. Assigning this
| philosophy to him and criticizing him for it seems unfair.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Also... maybe he achieved his purpose? Most people have read
| his books, and it helped generate a widespread aversion to
| authoritarianism... actually preventing it from happening in
| the USA and Britain. Many countries nowadays do have societies
| and governments that look a lot like 1984.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I think you are right. I wish people paid attention to Blade
| Runner, Alien, etc. and realized what an equal or greater
| danger unchecked corporations are.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Another, non-fictional, example of a corporation run wild
| is the British East India company. At one point they had a
| larger army than Britain. Because many of the British
| establishment had investments in the company and because
| the awful things it did were 'out of sight' it seems they
| were allowed to do pretty much whatever they wanted. As
| long as they kept turning a profit.
| kbolino wrote:
| Both the EIC and its Dutch equivalent VOC were eventually
| dissolved by their respective governments. This disarms
| people from viewing even rampant corporations as truly
| dangerous; even corporations that fielded armies and
| waged wars ultimately weren't beyond the reach of the
| law.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I understand that the EIC were only dissolved by Britain,
| after 274 years, when it was no longer profitable/viable.
| bdowling wrote:
| No, most people pretended to read Animal Farm and 1984 in
| middle school and haven't thought about them since. They
| didn't understand them at the time, and they don't see the
| similar manipulations going on in today's society.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I agree.
|
| _Animal Farm_ was taught to me by my capitalist and
| authoritarian teachers as an anti-communist screed. The
| problem with the farm is that the pigs end up being
| capitalists, though I have never seen or heard of the text
| being taught to children as an anti-capitalist text.
|
| This culture does a very good job of assuming that the
| field of possibilities can easily and quickly be reduced to
| two choices and, further, that we're forced to choose
| between the two and, finally, that anyone who thinks there
| are additional possible choices is "being childish and
| unrealistic".
|
| I find the US to be highly authoritarian, full of easy
| examples double-thought and duck speak.
|
| I don't, however think folks are being manipulated: I think
| that the fundamental authoritarian move is that folks here
| have manipulated themselves. To me, that's close to the
| point of 1984. Or Mark Fisher's books, or Ursula Le Guin.
| I'm in the middle of Butler's _The Parable of the Sower_
| and it's feeling like that self-deception is core to what
| is happening in that book as well:
|
| folks reducing the world to some pretty horrible binaries
| and then becoming happily ensnared in the ensuing problems.
| takinola wrote:
| > I find the US to be highly authoritarian, full of easy
| examples double-thought and duck speak.
|
| I'm curious to know where else you have lived (I assume
| you live in the US). As someone that has lived under an
| authoritarian regime, I find this statement really hard
| to agree with. The US is far from perfect but it is far
| from authoritarian in my opinion.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| It's neither anti-capitalist nor anti-communist, just
| anti-authoritarian.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| That's what I was thinking. First, if you don't remember
| the text go read it right now; it will take you an hour.
| It's not really pro- or alt- anything, as much as anti-
| cma wrote:
| Also worth reading the preface Orwell wanted for it but
| that I think the editor rejected:
|
| https://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_
| go
| teddyh wrote:
| Excerpt:
|
| " _These people don't see that if you encourage
| totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be
| used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of
| imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the
| process won't stop at Fascists._ [...] _Tolerance and
| decency are deeply rooted in England, but they are not
| indestructible, and they have to be kept alive partly by
| conscious effort. The result of preaching totalitarian
| doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which
| free peoples know what is or is not dangerous._ [...]
| _But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways
| of thought is traceable to the 'anti-Fascism' of the past
| ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?_
|
| [...] _intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition
| without which our characteristic western culture could
| only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our
| intellectuals arc visibly turning away. They have
| accepted the principle that a book should be published or
| suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but
| according to political expediency. And others who do not
| actually hold this view assent to it from sheer
| cowardice._ [...] _I know that the English intelligentsia
| have plenty of reason for their timidity and dishonesty,
| indeed I know by heart the arguments by which they
| justify themselves. But at least let us have no more
| nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If
| liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell
| people what they do not want to hear. The common people
| still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it.
| In our country -- it is not the same in all countries: it
| was not so in republican France, and it is not so in the
| USA today -- it is the liberals who fear liberty and the
| intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect: it is
| to draw attention to that fact that I have written this
| preface._ "
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > I don't, however think folks are being manipulated: I
| think that the fundamental authoritarian move is that
| folks here have manipulated themselves. To me, that's
| close to the point of 1984.
|
| Yes. It's rare to find people online who understand this
| point of 1984, that everyone becomes big brother and
| that's how it (it being the oppressive system in place to
| keep people in check) sustains itself.
| 363874844 wrote:
| Did it really though? Ideological censorship has been on the
| rise for awhile. Books might only be occasionally banned but
| that's because their relevance in the modern zeitgeist has
| waned. The privatization of the public square has nonetheless
| meant that moderation of communication has become widespread
| and politically charged.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I didn't claim Orwell had universally eliminated all traces
| authoritarianism... it is rising in popularity right now.
| Only that it may have shifted things enough to keep us from
| literally living in a 1984-esque society nowadays... enough
| so that people in this thread and the article above are
| saying Orwell was "wrong."
| kbolino wrote:
| This seems like a stronger argument that _Fahrenheit 451_
| has failed in its purpose than that _Nineteen Eighty-Four_
| did.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Did he fear what would happen, or propose extrapolating the
| current experience as a cautionary tale? Meanwhile Huxley
| presented a world where we voluntarily pursue ignoble goals. I
| don't think we're criticizing him as much as mourning we appear
| to have palced the yoke upon ourselves.
| m463 wrote:
| Why can't it be both outcomes at once?
| bccdee wrote:
| Yeah I think this is a misreading of Orwell. Orwell wasn't
| afraid that the government would point a gun at the public's
| heads and the people would hate it. He was afraid that, when
| that happened, the people would love it.
|
| Authoritarians are popular. The January 6th Capitol attack was
| perpetrated by people who _wanted_ the state to exert itself
| violently, because they believed The State and The People were
| one and the same, and anyone who is a victim of The State was
| not truly part of The People to begin with.
|
| The threat of Big Brother is not that he'll watch us, but that
| we will believe he is watching everyone else on our behalf.
| Police militarization and mass incarceration are already proof
| that Americans are willing to cede rights when they believe
| that only "outsiders" will suffer as a result.
| helloplanets wrote:
| _A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all
| over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game
| have been formed in cities and villages...chess is a mere
| amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of
| valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements ...
| they require out-door exercises-not this sort of mental
| gladiatorship.
|
| A game of chess does not add a single new fact to the mind; it
| does not excite a single beautiful thought; nor does it serve a
| single purpose for polishing and improving the nobler faculties._
|
| Scientific American, July, 1858
|
| [0]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/19th-century-
| conce...
| kubb wrote:
| I kind of agree. Chess sucks big time, especially played
| online. Playing with your grandpa in the park is OK.
| mikub wrote:
| Which is not really wrong. Chess can be fun, but I always
| thought it is pretty fascinating that the chess champions are
| viewed by the media as some kind of genius. I mean, it's just a
| game, not more but also not less.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Life is a game no more no less.
|
| If you can be a champion at anything you deserve recognition
| - just look at the people lauded for chugging dozens of hot
| dogs
| Aeolun wrote:
| To be fair, I do not understand how someone can gobble up
| food so quickly and not throw up. It really is amazing in a
| sense.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "Life is a game no more no less."
|
| Exactly.
|
| So take a game AI from Deep Mind, link it to some AI that
| can build a world model, categorize images, put it in a
| robot, maybe an LLM so it can talk to you, give it some
| goals. See what happens.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Lauded as champions or freaks? I'm on the side that
| believes there IS bad publicity...
|
| Life can look like a game, but to think it is nothing more
| betrays just how easy you have it.
| tankenmate wrote:
| But playing Chess at any serious level (more than a couple
| hours a week) has some non Chess side effects; it teaches you
| to examine your own behaviour, it teaches you that even if
| you're very good you can still lose (and hopefully how to
| lose well), and it teaches you that the other side gets a
| vote (get a turn, no action happens in a vacuum).
|
| All of which are very valuable life lessons.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| You'll get that from any sport and also physical benefits
| j_maffe wrote:
| You learn all of these lessons by practicing most other
| practices/crafts.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Can't I learn this from any game, some with other, more
| life-applicable lessons and benefits, like sports?
| baliex wrote:
| Something that I believe sets chess aside from most other
| pursuits (e.g. sports, other games) is the lack of luck;
| it's almost all skill. You and your opponent both have
| everything laid out in front of you, and if you're
| skilled enough you can see more than they see, etc etc
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, if you spend your life solving crossword puzzles, you
| end up intellectually poor by most standards.
|
| Note that this might also hold to some degree for computer
| programming.
| cxr wrote:
| I don't think that's true, let alone self-evident.
|
| In any case, a life spent solving crossword puzzles would
| almost certainly deliver more positive net effects to the
| "player" (and society at large) than a person spending a
| lifetime getting good at chess. It really is odd that chess
| is considered so refined, laudable, etc. We probably
| shouldn't put it on a pedestal any higher than where we
| place video games.
|
| (In fact, video games might actually be better--and I'm not
| saying that as someone staring up from a batch of sour
| grapes and/or looking for an excuse to play video games;
| that's not how I spend my time.)
| scandox wrote:
| Lenin eventually took the same view - that chess was
| distracting him from a higher purpose. Perhaps a harmless game
| would have been a better use of his time.
| somedude895 wrote:
| I much prefer people amuse themselves to death than they
| think and theorize themselves- (or others, in the case of
| many late 19th and early 20th century intellectuals) to
| death.
| renanoliveira0 wrote:
| At what point did this become a valid and legitimate issue?
|
| Why do we feel the need to prefer or not prefer what others
| do with their time? Isn't that something that concerns only
| the person and their own life, which really shouldn't
| concern us at all?
|
| I think your point really highlights this ethical mindset
| that has become so prominent today, especially with the
| rise of the internet.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| They did not mean 'prefer' in the way you interpret it.
| They mean 'I believe the world would be better if...'
| rather than 'I'd choose for others to behave like...'
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Lenin eventually took the same view - that chess was
| distracting him from a higher purpose
|
| The world would have been a better place had he kept playing
| chess then.
| Topfi wrote:
| Another more historic example in the same mold:
|
| >>If men learn [to read], it will implant forgetfulness in
| their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they
| rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no
| longer from within themselves, but by means of external
| marks.<<
|
| Plato, 400-300 BC
|
| Basically, learning to read and write would lead to an
| overreliance and provide only a "semblance of wisdom", rather
| than "true wisdom".
|
| [0] https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| He wasn't wrong; we did lose the skill for memorising large
| oral works. He just missed the upside.
| twelve40 wrote:
| haha the man probably would have been absolutely devastated
| to learn that his posterity has degenerated to the point of
| using Google while coding... or god forbid, interviewing.
| brvsft wrote:
| I don't know that much about literacy rates and social
| competition in ancient Greece, but I suspect it may have been
| in Plato's personal interests that others remain illiterate.
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| If this man knew TikTok, he'd have a stroke.
| badpun wrote:
| There was some chess prodigy who, in his teens, was already
| winning against most champions, and who in his early twenties
| abandoned chess altogether, citing it a "waste of life".
| nick0garvey wrote:
| Morphy, one of the greatest players of all time, is famous
| for this.
|
| "The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The
| ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life."
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Is this meant to be an analog to Postman's argument? Because it
| isn't. His argument doesn't really have a moral bent to it.
| It's a very practical argument that different mediums are
| capable of carrying different messages.
| bumby wrote:
| I read it as a counter to Postman's citing Huxley that
| society is becoming enamored with the superficial (ie the
| ignoble) pursuits. I read the OP as effectively saying "who
| is to say what is noble vs trivial, considering it varies in
| societal context."
|
| 170 years ago, people may have thought chess was superficial.
| I think now, maybe it would be considered a more noble
| pursuit.
|
| Or, maybe the OP was saying it's a constant devolving towards
| the increasingly trivial.
| brvsft wrote:
| Chess is a superficial pursuit, especially today, because
| it became a meme due to a Netflix television show.
|
| Not that I care. People can pursue whatever they want
| superficially. And I have plenty of my own superficial
| pursuits.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Couldn't agree more with that quote. It is completely correct.
| indy wrote:
| Dopamine is one hell of a drug.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Outrage and fear are exhausting, let me tell ya. Somehow I
| cannot get away from nursing my PTSD online, with sick pleasure
| in picking fights and "winning" arguments.
|
| Sometimes I wake up with a thread racing through my mind and
| the perfect retort to my "adversary"
|
| I honestly don't hate you guys, but you give my life purpose
| and meaning... So thank you
| mixtureoftakes wrote:
| Most of us will read this and continue living our life exactly
| the same way as before ...wake up
| jumping_frog wrote:
| Even if people wake up and "do something", govts will just tire
| us out. Similar to how online protests against reddit, (or on
| ground protests like occupy [X], and so on) and others failed.
| We have no option but to accept what is handed out to us.
| epicide wrote:
| Wake up and... do what exactly? Tell others to "wake up" ad
| nauseum? The whole "wake up, sheeple, you're being manipulated"
| is both correct and amusingly self-terminating.
|
| Metacognition, for all its benefits, comes with the newfound
| sisyphean task of being unable to intentionally avoid thinking
| about a white elephant for an entire minute. "Don't be
| influenced by the ads/media/propaganda" works about as well.
|
| So perhaps the best way to reduce manipulation is to find a way
| back to sleep sometimes. A sort of meta-meta-cognition, if you
| will. It's self-awareness all the way down.
| r721 wrote:
| Reminds me of my favorite copypasta:
|
| >If you're reading this, you've been in a coma for almost 20
| years because of a car accident. We're trying a new technique.
| We don't know where this message will end up in your dream, but
| we hope we're getting through. Please wake up.
| tlb wrote:
| The sad thing is that none of it is very amusing. Current events
| twitter is more aggravating than amusing. We're aggravating
| ourselves to death.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah, and then you do something fun to distract you from said
| current events.
| tempodox wrote:
| The point is that it's both distraction. Social media has told
| us that enragement sucks up even more attention than amusement.
| Mission accomplished.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "aggravating than amusing."
|
| But it is distracting. Huxley didn't necessarily say everything
| was fun, just that it is distracting.
|
| Rage, anger, outrage, keeps people engaged more than amusing.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| A couple of years ago i was working for a design studio which
| produced an image movie for a big cooperation which somehow
| painted an utopian future for their upcoming product ideas. In
| that movie there was a woman reading in "Brave new
| World".[EDITED] It was clear none of the people involved read the
| book. My remarks were swept aside by claiming hardly anyone has
| read the book anyway... headlessness might be a real issue.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Do you mean "Brave New World"?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| That's hilariously ironic
| have_faith wrote:
| People always reference 1984 but Orwell's essay "Pleasure Spots"
| is probably more relevant to this subject:
| https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
| jumping_frog wrote:
| I think there was a quote by a Nordic writer (possibly Hans
| Christian Andersen) in which he talked about how circuses and
| amusement parks keep people distracted and busy so we don't
| focus on important policy issues.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220818-the-surprisingl...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
| robocat wrote:
| That references the Latin phrase: panem et
| circenses
|
| Paragraph from a page describing it: It
| refers to a concept prevalent in ancient Rome, where the
| government would provide its citizens with free food and
| entertainment in the form of lavish spectacles, such as
| gladiator fights, chariot races, and theatrical performances.
| The phrase highlights the strategy employed by the ruling
| class to keep the population content and distracted from
| important political issues and matters of governance.
|
| Orwell and Huxleys work are both centralised (authoritarian -
| you had to take your Soma) whereas our current risk is
| possibly more systematic and less conspirational.
| yamrzou wrote:
| La Boetie? Plays, farces, spectacles,
| gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures and other such
| opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward
| slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of
| tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient
| dictators so successfully lulled their subjects ... that the
| stupified peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain
| pleasures, ... learned subservience as naively, bit not so
| creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at
| bright picture books.
| willguest wrote:
| Given that the vast majority of people go to work to earn money
| for businesses that exist either to exploit natural resources or
| appreciate in value in the eyes of an economic system that
| prioritizes increasing capital valuations above all else,
| including human dignity, long-term survival and the life of other
| species, I would say we're already there.
|
| Talking about a dystopian future is a convenient way to assuade
| our sense of dissonance that the present is most certainly not
| that.
|
| Case in point, nobody wants to rid the Earth of insects, fill the
| oceans with plastic or plough microplastics into every orifice,
| but we are all complicit and can't seem to gather ourselves to
| fix it.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Given that the vast majority of people go to work to earn
| money for businesses that exist either to exploit natural
| resources ...
|
| Or for governments, doing government jobs that produce
| absolutely nothing of value and force people to waste a big
| chunk of their lives on administrative tasks...
| epicide wrote:
| Or for corporations that produce things of negative value and
| force people to waste a big chunk of their lives on
| administrative tasks.
| specproc wrote:
| I come from a town where the biggest employer is the state in
| a few different forms. I think it's entirely valid for the
| government to keep them all busy 9-5, salaried and pensioned.
| Main function of the state IMO.
|
| I don't fear government, I fear the lack of it.
| willguest wrote:
| This doesn't deserve to be downvoted, it is very legitimate
| point.
|
| I think there is a role for public organisation, with
| political groups being one type. I am, however, critical of
| the prevailing agenda, since they often exist in a system
| where money can play a big role in deciding which
| priorities rise to the top.
|
| I am not sure that politics plays such a central role as it
| used or as many people assume. Our society today seems to
| be divided functionally... we answer to many bosses, some
| economic, some political, some technological, and so on.
|
| For me the more/less gov't debate misses the important
| points. It is the incentives, mechanism and processes that
| determine their value. I think you are referring to
| maintain order and keeping the peace - valuable functions,
| but made more necessary when people are under such strain
| in their daily lives.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless,
| unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot
| justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions
| of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that
| this is not the case" -- Nathan Heller
|
| Whats the public vs private split to this idea? Its not a new
| idea -
|
| "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble
| is I don't know which half." -- John Wanamaker
| randomdata wrote:
| He doesn't speak to any particular split. The government
| forces the private sector to do pointless work as much or
| more.
| yaky wrote:
| > First of all, I know it's all people like you. And that's
| what's so scary. Individually you don't know what you're doing
| collectively. - The Circle by Dave Eggers
|
| > In the course of her job, Resaint had met people like
| Megrimson, executives who went into work and sat down at their
| desks and made decisions that ravaged the world. They didn't
| seem evil to her. They seemed more like fungal colonies or AI
| subroutines, mechanical components of a self-perpetuating
| super-organism, with no real subjectivity of their own. That
| said, she would have happily watched any of them die. -
| Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
|
| I know it's still science/climate fiction, but very relevant to
| your point.
| verisimi wrote:
| Do you really think the world has no insects, that the ocean is
| full of plastics and that there are micro-plastics everywhere?
|
| Have you personally checked any of these claims? Or are you
| depending upon (possibly fraudulent) science claims?
|
| Additionally, if you want to fix something, go ahead and do it.
| But don't start petitioning this out that authority to do it -
| they won't, you won't like the result, but you are sanctioning
| use of force against others.
| zafka wrote:
| I have lived in South Florida, close to the Atlantic ocean
| for close to 40 years. In the time I have lived here, the
| insect populations have noticeably dropped. I have also
| queried relatives from the midwest. It used to be every
| summer your car would get covered with dead bugs, not so any
| more. As for plastics in the ocean, every time I go to the
| beach I see a lot of macro plastics.
| verisimi wrote:
| Thank you for your personal testimony. It's good to hear
| that in your experience it seems that the insect
| populations really have dropped. Of course, there may be
| other reasons - eg if there are highways where it used to
| be small roads, you would expect insects to stay clear of
| the area. Also, litter you can see, is not microplastics -
| you can't see the microplastics.... But they are there!
| Apparently.
| willguest wrote:
| So, objective science is untrustworthy and subjective
| testimony is easily explained away. Let me guess - only
| your opinion is the one that matters.
|
| You have a poorly-crafted answer for both sides of the
| coin, but also fail to read the details of the things you
| oppose.
| verisimi wrote:
| One has to ask oneself, is it better to have a comforting
| story, that is likely leveraged for someone, somewhere's
| benefit, or to start with the honest position, which is
| that "I don't know". One can of course become more
| certain of whatever-it-is, but not without attempting
| some personal research. Or, one can just defer all
| personal responsibility and parrot whatever the consensus
| view is.
| cholantesh wrote:
| So then, obviously, you've been personally responsible
| and tried to replicate all of the studies that led to the
| conclusion that microplastic concentrations in reservoirs
| are increasing, as well as the ones that concluded that
| bioaccumulation of microplastics have deleterious effects
| on human health, and then got them peer reviewed, right?
| And you also decided that 'personal responsibility' is
| actually tacitly accepting that when petrochemical
| lobbyists write op-eds that deny these scientific
| consensuses and that you don't need to make any lifestyle
| adjustments and their clients don't need to make any
| changes to their supply chain, they're telling the truth.
| Truly heroic that you still have time to shitpost on HN
| after all that.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Well to be honest, we don't truly 'know' anything, we can
| only make best guesses. My best guess based on what i've
| read from who i perceive as smart people is that
| microplastics are everywhere, not enough exercise makes
| you ill, looking in the sun kills your eyes and doing
| drugs is no good. Are you just can say "I don't know"
| cholantesh wrote:
| Are you aware of widespread fraud in the data associated with
| insect population decline? Or are you arguing that science is
| just inherently fraudulent or unreliable? These sound like
| pretty extreme responses of the type ancaps gave for years to
| the claim that global surface temperatures were rising. Those
| looked pretty quaint even without the benefit if hindsight.
| verisimi wrote:
| I am arguing that scientific data is unreliable in general.
| cholantesh wrote:
| Which is simultaneously broad and vacuous. Why? Compared
| to what? In this specific context, what method would
| provide a better intellectual foundation?
| verisimi wrote:
| Personal verification. At least some attempt towards
| that. And I don't mean reading an article.
|
| The scientific method applied personally.
|
| Pretty much no one is checking anything.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Would be nice if strengthened by some concrete examples.
| willguest wrote:
| Doubt is not a strategy and nay-saying rarely moves a
| conversation forward.
|
| My comment was not intended to illicit the abdication of
| responsibility - quite the reverse.
|
| Where was my petitioning? Your response is combative,
| seemingly intended to be personally offensive and built on a
| straw-man argument, likely the result of a multitude of
| others treating your opinions like crap. I'm not them...
|
| You are absolutely right, agency and the realisation of it is
| a key component to shifting us out of this mess. I put
| significant daily effort into building an alternative kind of
| personal existence, at significant personal cost. I attempt
| to carry as much of this as I can since I recognise my own
| complicity in this mess.
| verisimi wrote:
| My more relevant point to the OP, with reference to your
| comment, is that no, we are not amusing ourselves to death.
| It's more that we are worrying ourselves to death, despite
| a lack of personal indicators about this or that. If you
| want to proceed meaningfully to self, this requires
| prioritising one's personal experience over the provided
| stats, which are as much a control/guidance mechanism as
| anything.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Well, did you see with your own eyes the earth is round
| rather than flat? No, so you can't state either? That makes
| most reasonable statements impossible to make.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| This is something I regularly read, something in the line of
| 'we're doomed and it's our own fault since we are actively part
| of this destructive system'.
|
| I think while humanity is destroying things they are fixing
| things as well. Banning of heavy metals in environment,
| removing asbestos, getting most people to stop smoking, eating
| less meat, energy transition... it's not perfect but we are
| working on it. Meanwhile average age increases and violence
| decreases (averaged over a large period at least)
| IndrekR wrote:
| (2014)
| keybored wrote:
| The article just lifts the content from the book and doesn't add
| anything original. Great. We've heard.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Exactly, and the comments here are not about the point in the
| article, just like the article points out people missing the
| point of Huxley.
| jll29 wrote:
| I would say 1984 is rather more subtle than portrayed here.
|
| For instance, the masses are kept at bay by scaring them with
| perpetual wars on the one hand and by keeping them distracted
| with machine-generation filthy "literature" (we only reached
| the level of technical sophistication to do that courtesy
| GPT/Llama last year). That part is more similar to what the
| post portrays as the "Huxley" view, perhaps.
|
| The appendix of 1984 ("Newspeak") is a masterpiece on its own,
| redefining English words like "freedom" so that they can only
| mean "free from lice", with the notion of freedom forgotten.
| j_maffe wrote:
| Content from Amusing Ourselves to Death presented as a visual
| comic to facilitate/"enhance" its communication is deeply ironic.
| Can't wait for the TikTok video.
| alecco wrote:
| Given the current pro-war propaganda all over the place combined
| with the creeping cost of living, I think Nineteen Eighty-Four is
| becoming more prescient than Brave New World.
| r721 wrote:
| The topic of "creeping cost of living" reminded me of two other
| good dystopian novels:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Room!_Make_Room!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/334_(novel)
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| 1984 can't be more prescient than a book that has already
| become reality in most of the world that matters (culture, art,
| science, influence wise). If you don't see that hedonism and
| general moral decay has become the overwhelming norm, you're
| probably part of it.
|
| 1984's surveillance may be here, but the brute force is only
| reserved for the rare nails sticking out; if those haven't
| already gone crazy from surviving in the sane asylum.
| dangus wrote:
| Huxley's fears presented in this particular way are immediately
| debunked by actual book sales and education statistics.
|
| Independent bookstores have been consistently growing since 2009:
| https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/programs/growthpol...
|
| The book industry is expanding with particularly strong growth in
| e-books and audiobooks: https://worldmetrics.org/book-industry-
| statistics/
|
| Educational attainment is generally increasing as time goes on in
| the US:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
|
| Voter turnout has increased over time in the United States:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
|
| If anything I think that the general population is becoming more
| aware and educated.
|
| A more diversified leisure industry with more options than the
| days of having three channels on television is not the same as
| drowning in amusement, or the average person spending more time
| on amusement than on "serious" and "thoughtful" activities.
| Instead, it means that the individual has more options for forms
| of amusement they enjoy.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I think you can argue that 'books' were deemed as intellectual
| in Huxley/Orwell's time, so banning them would be a sign of
| society decline ---> BUT, todays books can be seen as just part
| of the entertainment distraction. Books sales are up, but how
| many of them are YA, Manga , Pop-Fiction. They are as shallow
| and distracting as a TV Show.
|
| I tend to think even reading the worst trash book is still
| better than Video. But it is still playing into distraction.
|
| Note: I Like Manga, but those series that are 100 volumes long,
| that is distracting.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| The book came out in 2005.
|
| Was there any follow up, I didn't see one on the wiki.
|
| It seems like we are accelerating to this.
|
| Even the changes between 2005 and 2024. Near 20 years, we've
| leaned into the Huxley vision. Really leaned into it.
|
| This is all getting really scary. I feel like we should do
| something. We should really band together and change course. I
| volunteer to go out and do something, except of course, I'm a bit
| distracted at the moment, so maybe can we put off the change for
| another week? I really need to see the end of this season of
| "Industry". Then we can do something, I'm sure I'll have some
| free time next week to get right on this.
| layer8 wrote:
| The book came out in 1985. The author was already dead in 2005.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Missed that.
|
| It was re-issued in 2005. For 20th anniversary.
|
| So nearly 40 years.
| aklemm wrote:
| I just listened to this a few weeks ago. It's incredible and
| really helps frame how we got here and is still very relevant to
| social media even though it's written about TV/Hollywood. You'll
| be hard pressed to find deeper media analysis that remains very
| approachable.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Brave New World supposes a world of plenty controlled by a few
| ruling oligarchs and aristocrats; 1984 supposes a world of
| scarcity also controlled by a few ruling oligarchs and
| aristocrats. One society is controlled by the carrot, and in the
| other society, given the shortage of carrots, the stick is
| brought out to maintain the social order.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| It's amazing that solving death and aging is not Goal #1 of every
| rich and poor person on the planet. Death is coming _for you_ and
| you 're trying to get rich? Engaging in politics? Fighting?
| What's that gonna do when you're falling apart in real time?
|
| We're all dying _fast_. Medical industry can 't stop it either,
| they don't know how. Nobody does.
|
| Yet nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.
| teamspirit wrote:
| That's what bugs me about gen ai. How is it that all these
| resources are being used on recreating things that humans
| already do and not entirely focused on aging, health, and the
| climate?
|
| We already have artists, we don't have a cure for what we've
| done to the climate. It's frustrating.
| wrkronmiller wrote:
| Even if you could solve aging, you could never solve death.
| Probability and entropy will catch up with you eventually.
|
| I think that most people over a certain age are quite aware of
| their own mortality, and are looking to bring meaning to the
| time that they have.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| > eventually
|
| I'll take millions of years instead of 75 thanks
|
| > looking to bring meaning to the time that they have
|
| Everybody says something like this in response to this kind
| of question about death/aging - or they go all religious on
| me talking about Jesus etc.
|
| I'm like "what is 2 + 2" and half or more of the people go "I
| like cake"
| gessha wrote:
| Some[1] do invest, others don't. Personally, I see myself on
| the poor side, rather than the rich side and what I care about
| is having a good life however short it is. Family, friends and
| adventure. I don't believe in the afterlife in any form and I
| wish I could live forever with my loved ones but I've also
| accepted it's natural to die. Maybe one day we will overcome
| death and we will live until the heat death of the universe.
| Meh.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_(company)
| bschmidt3 wrote:
| Invest? No that aint it.
|
| I'm talking about the poignant reality that you, me, and
| everyone on this website will be gone in a matter of decades
| (or less).
|
| Half or more believe that upon death they will be instantly
| transported to a GOLDEN CITY (unless you're bad, then you go
| to FIRE CITY!) _forever_. "Gold good... fire bad..." yeah
| totally not made up guys sounds real.
|
| For everyone else it's MasterCard - distractions.
| richk449 wrote:
| For those who haven't read the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death
| is incredible, and absolutely worth reading. One of my mentors
| gave it to me years ago and it became one of those mind blowing
| reads.
|
| In the book, Postman analyzes how media affects humans and
| society. He basically gives a framework for predicting and
| understanding the effects of different types of media. The book
| was written before social media, so the examples are books,
| newspapers, tv, radio, etc. But so much of social media seems
| obvious once you read his analysis.
|
| Every time I see the typical discussion (person A: social media
| makes people dumb; person B: Plato said books make people dumb) I
| think that the discussion could use some Postman - not all media
| affects us in the same way - some media encourages behaviors that
| are good for society, and some media encourages behaviors that
| are bad for society.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > I think that the discussion could use some Postman - not all
| media affects us in the same way - some media encourages
| behaviors that are good for society, and some media encourages
| behaviors that are bad for society.
|
| I think media simply mostly brings out the behaviors already
| inherent to people. If a shitty person sees their behavior
| validated in media, they are now more likely to act it out in
| real life. Likewise for good behaviors.
|
| Some people are definitely more susceptible to such influence
| than others.
| mihaic wrote:
| People have a wide spectrum of inherent behaviors. I don't
| think you'd expect any medium to simultaneously amplify all
| of them.
|
| So if some behaviors are amplified more than other, isn't
| that equivalent to considering that a medium induces more
| frequently a certain behavior?
| Liquix wrote:
| Precisely - the medium is the message. Books are slow,
| deliberate, require imagination and attention. Seven second
| tiktok videos are the opposite. The method by which we consume
| the information impacts us just as much if not more than its
| content.
| detourdog wrote:
| The issue is spending equal amounts of cumulative time in 7
| second disparate chunks. The book could build to a complex
| insight.
|
| The other strange part of video media is that intimate
| parasocial relationships it builds.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Books also build intimate parasocial relationships. People
| feel a sense of loss when finishing a book.
| detourdog wrote:
| Yes, that is true and they feel a loss after a 7 second
| video.
|
| I believe living in an environment that favors short
| attention spans were usually dangerous. Monitoring
| constant change is what one does when they are alert.
|
| I see the real issue is the duration of the reward cycle
| without building to a larger idea.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| My parasocial relationships started over the radio, I
| suppose, and TV took that to a whole new level
| (simultaneously) especially with the advent of music video.
| Now it's Social Media with the Stars, all the time...
|
| When I was young, it was a rare thrill to interact with my
| idols. To accost them for a signature after a concert. To
| send fan mail and receive a personal postcard in return.
| Once, there was a surrealist late-night host who I met by
| chance at a Burger King with my mother. He was subsequently
| arrested with charges of child endangerment!
|
| So now we're on the Internet and it's so easy to become a
| fan, a patron, a supporter, of "stars" and "influencers"
| who are so niche that your money and attention make a
| difference, and they can return that attention with
| personal comments and reactions, or even commission works
| for you. In days of yore, it was the Church and State and
| wealthy aristocrats who commissioned art, and now I could
| fund a KickStarter or Patreon for next to nothing. You've
| got private/semiprivate livestreams where they just read
| your comments and react. And we remain perfect strangers.
|
| Thankfully, there are ways to stay connected to the
| community and maintain healthy relationships too. Since
| before the pandemic, I've "gone to church" on YouTube and I
| do see familiar names in the live-chat. You can attend city
| council meetings and other real stuff of local interest.
| Your support group can stay connected via Zoom.
|
| But these pernicious ideas that a celebrity is your best
| friend, that your attraction to a woman will be requited or
| reciprocated, that a personal connection has been made,
| that's dangerous and a growing threat to our collective
| safety and sanity.
| api wrote:
| I've started reading more books (again) lately and the depth
| of character development and ideas in long form fiction is
| striking compared to even most long-form TV and films, let
| alone short attention span social media slop. (... and the
| best long-form TV and films are often based on books ...)
|
| You can really get deep into characters' heads, their
| motivations, etc. The more I read the more I feel like it
| makes me a better person as I absorb empathy and deep
| insights about consciousness and the human experience.
| watwut wrote:
| Back then when people read a lot there was "junk
| literature". I read it a lot when I was younger. There was
| no dept of character development nor complex plots. It was
| formulaic, simple, you got your
| violence/romance/thrill/whatever fix for the week and moved
| on.
|
| The things people read when they read a lot were not deep
| masterpieces. They were, basically, shovelware in book
| form.
| rurp wrote:
| I strongly second this. When I got back into reading I was
| also struck by how much deeper the stories and characters
| are, even compared to excellent TV shows or longform
| articles.
| larkinnaire wrote:
| This is not exactly correct. When the book was written, a lot
| of commentators had written off television as useless garbage
| -- totally bad for society. Postman (correctly) complicates
| that by pointing out that television is great for emotional
| storytelling, and he is in favor of fictional television shows
| that model social values for people. Television turns
| everything into emotional content, which is why TV news evolved
| to be so sensationalistic -- TV is not good at news. Printed
| media is good at news. So, each media has uses that play to its
| strengths and weaknesses. When a medium is used in weak ways,
| that is bad for society.
|
| (I don't know what the redeeming argument for TikTok would
| be...)
| Spivak wrote:
| TikTok is good at personal content-- short form videos that
| capture a slice of life for other real people. TikTok is a
| _salon_.
|
| Little bits of entertainment -- music, poetry,
| jokes/clowning, gossip, show and tell on all kinds of topics,
| musings about life and interpersonal relationships,
| practitioners demonstrating their craft.
|
| It presents an interesting cross-section of news that's hard
| to get anywhere else. It's not great or even good at the
| normal news format but you can read about a riot and that the
| mayor called in the national guard in the paper, but the
| video of someone on their porch getting screamed at and
| having warning shots fired at them for not going indoors has
| an impact.
| dbtc wrote:
| "Entrainment" is an apt slip.
| watwut wrote:
| Printed media were emotional and sensationalistic too when
| there was not TV yet. Journals like that still exist and they
| used to be common and large. Sensationalism changed form,
| that is it.
| schmookeeg wrote:
| I find it really strange that the 3 paragraphs of text at the top
| needed the comics summarizing them below. Like, did our short
| attention spans need those little footholds in order to progress
| through the point being made? :)
|
| Sounds like I need this book added to my reading list. I've not
| been able to get through Brave New World, but I might give it
| another try also.
| ccorcos wrote:
| This comic misses some of my favorite details from the book.
|
| The book talks a lot about Marshall McLuhan's quote "the medium
| is the message" and about how discourse has turned more and more
| into entertainment. Nixon lost to Kennedy because he was more
| attractive on television, and people are judged by how they look
| or behave as opposed to what they say.
|
| More than anything, this book really made me appreciate written
| discourse.
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