[HN Gopher] Tech-vexed: how digital life threatens our capacity ...
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       Tech-vexed: how digital life threatens our capacity for awe
        
       Author : gmays
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2024-11-19 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (aeon.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
        
       | johnea wrote:
       | Luckily, the effect is limited to those who can't tell the
       | difference between reality and make believe...
        
         | MrMcCall wrote:
         | Unfortunately, their ignorance has made them the tools and
         | fools of bad, bad folks.
        
         | uoaei wrote:
         | Unluckily, that means all of us. Contemporary neuroscience
         | tells us the experiences of the two are indistinguishable.
        
           | MrMcCall wrote:
           | We are the information processors of the universe and have
           | special abilities with respect to understanding the truth of
           | a given situation. Those abilities, however, do have a
           | development curve that is aligned with how we have chosen to
           | morally develop ourself. Moral development is optional --
           | obviously -- thus most of our fellows do not have the ability
           | to just "know".
           | 
           | The prerequisite for gaining access to such direct knowledge
           | is to first learn how to say, "I don't know." Humility is an
           | essential, albeit fairly rare, life skill, and is related to
           | a person's truthfulness.
           | 
           | Most people say, for example, that their not having a
           | specific ability means that no one has that ability. Humility
           | is also the key to understanding the Dunning-Kruger result,
           | but few grok that depth of meaning from that seminal study.
           | 
           | An example of neuroscience's lack of understanding is
           | Stanford's mostly-brilliant Dr. Robert Sapolsky, who is a
           | leading expert on the neuroscience of stress, yet claims that
           | we don't have free will. That's just silly, but I will always
           | relay his teachings (from his Human Behavioral Biology
           | course) about trans folks having areas of their brain with
           | the opposite structures to their genitals' gender. Those
           | sexually dimorphic areas of the brain could very much lead
           | them to "feel" different to their genitals' gender. [Side
           | note: Suzie (Eddie) Izzard is one of my top 5 brilliant
           | comedians.]
           | 
           | Please note, also, that we are fully free to choose to
           | believe what we want to consider true. That's why there are
           | both flat-Earthers and telescopic pictures showing rotating
           | planets, in the same universe.
        
       | fractallyte wrote:
       | Sigh. People are overrated. :-/
        
         | idolofdust wrote:
         | and greedy
        
           | MrMcCall wrote:
           | and mostly willfully ignorant of the importance of
           | compassion, both personally and societally, for our world to
           | enjoy a more successful trajectory than we are currently on
        
       | openrisk wrote:
       | What is tragic is that digital life should be very much part of
       | the awe of the living experience.
       | 
       | We are extremely lucky to live in this new period where
       | communication and information processing have undergone
       | exponential evolution.
       | 
       | The issue is that this enormous potential of augmenting our
       | existence is held hostage by the same forces that have suppressed
       | the opportunity for generations upon generations of earlier "non-
       | tech-vexed" humans.
        
         | CamperBob2 wrote:
         | _What is tragic is that digital life should be very much part
         | of the awe of the living experience._
         | 
         | Yeah, part of me dies at least a little when someone on HN who
         | probably didn't know what a Markov model was last week rambles
         | on about how "that's all a transformer really is."
         | 
         | People have no idea what's coming, how big a deal it will be,
         | and (worst of all) how overdue it is.
        
       | HPsquared wrote:
       | I'm sure people said the same about literature back when mass
       | market novels became a thing. Or TV for that matter. Just a
       | little further down the rabbit hole.
        
       | mewse-hn wrote:
       | Ah yes we must return to our natural environment of a beach in
       | 1968 to regain our humanity, what a crock
        
       | deadbabe wrote:
       | No matter how technologically advanced we get, I find that the
       | only thing that still has near infinite capacity for awe is
       | people's stupidity.
        
       | renewiltord wrote:
       | The truth is probably that one's capacity for awe is like one's
       | capacity for joy: it is within oneself and exogenous factors
       | produce only momentary impulses that alter things only
       | temporarily, after which they decay.
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-19 23:01 UTC)