Nope, raw "actually good balance of stuff I like and stuff I don't like in those decades" pragmatism.
I could not give less fucks for having AI and smartphones and most other stuff, including all the fancy new medical procedures which are barely incremental.
Fridges, basic 90s-style internet and mini-skirts and welfare, and cheap housing, and jobs-a-plenty, more affordable healthcare, and the lifestyle, I can use just fine!
And I'd avoid the Plague or feudal times too. Including the techno-feudal times of today.
Pretend people can't have periods they'd be fine to live again and might prefer to today is bullshit.
The thing is, the option you want is available today. There are communities all around the world that live much simpler lives. Some just because that is how they are, others because they've formed communities to escape all the things you don't like.
Genuine question, have you ever investigated these options? If so, why did you dismiss them?
> The thing is, the option you want is available today.
Disagree
Removing yourself from the computing environment does not remove the impact it has on the world and around you. That is the equivalent of sticking one's head in the sand.
I really think this is extreme doomerism. Things are not that bad. And as I say, wouldn't you be happier if you lived in an environment where you were not impacted by all the stuff you dislike?
>wouldn't you be happier if you lived in an environment where you were not impacted by all the stuff you dislike?
What I want is a better society (as I see it), not convenience for me personally.
Obviously to the degree I can distance myself from stuff I don't care for, I do it. But I don't want to larp in some like-minded commune while the world turns to shit, I want the world to not turn to shit.
> while the world turns to shit, I want the world to not turn to shit.
But a lot of people disagree with you and think it isn't turning to shit, and in fact for most people on the planet, life gets better every year.
I understand your issues are more local, but remember, actions always speak louder than words. People say they don't want certain things, but then they engage prolifically with those things.
All I'm saying really is, try to avoid making the mistake that your reality is *the* reality. You can control your reality, and in this world you (and others) seem to dislike so much, there are other ways of being.
> But a lot of people disagree with you and think it isn't turning to shit
They're wrong. Their little corner might not be, but the world as a whole is.
> and in fact for most people on the planet, life gets better every year.
Sure, if you're a subsistence farmer, five of whose nine kids would have died of starvation a few decades ago. Now it's only one out of six. And yes, that is even in part thanks to the agricultural apps on your smartphone.
But for the larger part of the world's population, who aren't subsistence farmers — they're beyond all that, and into the downside (and that's where the subsistence farmers are headed too, once they are no longer such): Materially safe and well-fed, but prisoners in a bunch of walled panopticon gardens.
> You can control your reality
What one can control is a little Potemkin village, which one will always know is not actually reality. Your avid proselytizing for that as a "solution" is you working, intentionally or (hopefully) unintentionally, on behalf of the techbroligarks who are busily acquiring the real world as their personal fiefdoms.
If you are (hopefully not!) doing this intentionally, one can only wonder: Are you a techbroligark? (If so, who are you — Zuck, Musk, Thiel...?) If not: Why on Earth would you want to lull people — why would you be propagandizing for people lulling themselves — into the bliss of ignorance; why would you want them to ignore the world actually going to shit by hiding in some little artificial enclave where they can pretend that it isn't?
And if you aren't doing it intentionally, you need to wake up to the fact that it is what you're doing... And stop doing it.
"Just take soma" is what you are telling me right now.
Four things:
1. I am a parent. Ignoring like the world doesn't exist is not an option.
> wouldn't you be happier if you lived in an environment where you were not impacted by all the stuff you dislike?
2. That would not be possible.
3. If you have the capability to do something, some believe you have an obligation to. Actively working to not make a shit world requires a deep awareness and understanding that leads to consistent action.
4. Trying to isolate yourself like in the face of so much suffering, including those around you, seems like the most selfish thing I can imagine. Could never be me.
anti-recency bias, with a less recency bias tagged on before.
I gotta say it reminds me a bit of that old Louis C.K bit where black people can't be messing with time machines. I guess gay people can't either. I don't think if you were gay you'd want the 60s, 70s, 80s or even 90s - maybe late 90s.
I mean it does seem that there are many groups of people I could think of that might be like 10 years ago please, but not much further back than that. Then again social progress not being evenly distributed might mean that 20 years ago and in a different country might be equivalent to 10 years for some life scenarios.
