So close to being useful. The situation is far more serious: question everything. Question your education, and why there is so much emphasis on obedience and team playing, yet next to nothing on strategy or communications. Question these political parties that have inserted themselves into our politics, yet they are not mentioned in the Constitution nor Amendments and in fact several of the USA's founding fathers were strongly against their formation. Question your bosses income, versus your own, and why you're working for others at all. Question all the pointless gatekeeping. Question the motivations of anything anyone states as a point of advocacy for them, and not a point of fact of what they are talking about.
DavidPiper · 36m ago
This is a very curious take (pun intended). I also agree with many of the lines of questioning you've written here. (Not American, but very generalise-able of course.)
Based on your bio, I'd be genuinely interested to know if you have thoughts on a very related question that I've been struggling with lately:
If we can create things that people believe reflect reality (news, literature, video games, ...), or further create fake things that people believe are completely real (voice clones, deep fakes, AI video, ...), what evidence (or other factor) is sufficient for someone with this questioning mindset to stop questioning and start acting?
bsenftner · 6m ago
Desire? Will? Not sure how this decision could be anything but individual.
> The situation is far more serious: question everything.
Someone who thrived at life or work to a satisfying enough point will always tell you something
- nihilistic like "it does not matter",
- or reaffirming like "that's a lot of stuff to write about, no matter how many people write about it"
- or "that's a lot of stuff to deal with, are you in a state to work any of these inquiries problems?".
- or they tell you all the above combined in the form of "that's where we are and there's reasons why and how we got here. Where do you wanna go?".
In either case you are left with sticking to the prescribed reality or you say fuck it and go down any of the spiritual and or occultist rabbit holes. There's enough narratives for billions of lifetimes.
When it comes to our online experience, the main questions are: how big or small is your network and how deep or shallow are the connections.
Whether something is real is easier assessed in cooperation; as is whether and how something useless can be turned into something useful. But it all works solo just as much, except in cases where doubt is warranted, which is when more heads traverse more data, connections and patterns in less time.
We found our inquiries entirely on our backgrounds and the motivations of our psychosocial (low base death growl in the back of my head intensifies) environment, which is, by definition, almost always, perfectly average. They don't take any of the things you mentioned serious because they haven't been negatively affected by any of it for at least one and half generations.
60 - 70 %, maybe more, of the population live by the narrative created by swarm intelligence and the gratefulness of having a comfy enough place, spot, role in that swarm. They will, passively or actively, support those who convince them of what is necessary to keep that place, spot, role comfy enough. In the end, these people and that process alone, is responsible for the current state of civilization.
0points · 3h ago
Questioning becomes meaningless if that's all you do.
Instead, be the change you want to see.
bsenftner · 1h ago
I impell people to question, because that is step one. Such people if given step two or more too early will quit
roenxi · 6h ago
This article was too rambly for me, but I got about 6 paragraphs in and became disappointed at how long it was taking to get to the obvious point about online experiences - online forums are dominated by terminally online people. According to my observations [0], the terminally online are just a completely different demographic from the average healthy & happy human who don't have the time or inclination for that.
It is pretty obvious every time any country has an election or any policy debate comes up that the priorities of the sort of people who write or comment on the internet represent the median view more by accident than intent when it does happen. They're typically very isolated voices.
somedude895 · 3h ago
This is why I utterly detest media outlets who amplify those people by reporting on petty "shitstorms", giving them way more power than they deserve. Opinions on the internet are almost always extremely niche all things considered and do not represent the views of society at large, but the media makes it look like they do.
gyomu · 3h ago
> This is why I utterly detest media outlets who amplify those people by reporting on petty "shitstorms", giving them way more power than they deserve
My thoughts exactly when “highbrow” outlets like the NYT started making headlines out of every silly thing Trump said in 2015/2016. All those media sources who professed to be against what he stood for didn’t realize that the words were meaningless, and merely by reporting on his inanities, they were implicitly endorsing exactly what he stood for.
cal_dent · 4h ago
I do always think there is some truth to the classic reddit post that says most of what you read on the internet is written by someone insane
HN news is great because the crazies are high-functioning.
gyomu · 3h ago
Crazy high functioning people pretty much came up with every technical and social innovation modern civilization runs on.
No crazies = no Newton, no Dirac, no Marx, no Descartes, no Curie, etc etc etc.
CommenterPerson · 3h ago
Yes. I agree with the gist of it but, TLDR.
tolerance · 3h ago
This is an awfully curious treatise. On one hand, I get it. How the internet fractures co-operation.
On the other hand, so much about this article (and just about every other that makes similar appeals) presupposes a shared understanding or appreciation of high Western culture and philosophy to the point that it becomes unintelligible.
carlosjobim · 2h ago
Two things that future people will consider completely insane, which everybody takes for granted:
1. That you should have a television in your home. I'm not some kind of hipster, but it is just completely crazy when you think about it. How come that for decades it has been the norm that people - families - have a machine in their middle of their house which spews out the lowest form of government propaganda, mixed with the most obnoxious advertisements, mixed with abhorrent degeneracy of violence, damaging sexuality and humiliation of people. And this machine has been worshipped much higher than any God by the generations which are now old people. Who then complain about the behaviour of younger generations, which have been raised to behave like that by their "God" the TV.
In a sane world, a person who put a television in their family house would be shunned as a freak by his or her community, loose their job, and be forced to move. But now it's been the norm - for decades.
2. That you're supposed to document everything you do and post it to Instagram. This is a recent insanity, but it's become a mind virus to most people and they are no longer capable of enjoying anything in life for what it is. Rather the purpose of uploading to Instagram takes priority. For what? Instagram pays zero for people to upload their photos and videos. Can't you tell your friends later what you did and show them the photos? I get the appeal, but does it have to be all the time for the rest of your life?
Based on your bio, I'd be genuinely interested to know if you have thoughts on a very related question that I've been struggling with lately:
If we can create things that people believe reflect reality (news, literature, video games, ...), or further create fake things that people believe are completely real (voice clones, deep fakes, AI video, ...), what evidence (or other factor) is sufficient for someone with this questioning mindset to stop questioning and start acting?
https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/03/17/diseases-of-the-wi...
> The situation is far more serious: question everything.
Someone who thrived at life or work to a satisfying enough point will always tell you something
- nihilistic like "it does not matter",
- or reaffirming like "that's a lot of stuff to write about, no matter how many people write about it"
- or "that's a lot of stuff to deal with, are you in a state to work any of these inquiries problems?".
- or they tell you all the above combined in the form of "that's where we are and there's reasons why and how we got here. Where do you wanna go?".
In either case you are left with sticking to the prescribed reality or you say fuck it and go down any of the spiritual and or occultist rabbit holes. There's enough narratives for billions of lifetimes.
When it comes to our online experience, the main questions are: how big or small is your network and how deep or shallow are the connections.
Whether something is real is easier assessed in cooperation; as is whether and how something useless can be turned into something useful. But it all works solo just as much, except in cases where doubt is warranted, which is when more heads traverse more data, connections and patterns in less time.
We found our inquiries entirely on our backgrounds and the motivations of our psychosocial (low base death growl in the back of my head intensifies) environment, which is, by definition, almost always, perfectly average. They don't take any of the things you mentioned serious because they haven't been negatively affected by any of it for at least one and half generations.
60 - 70 %, maybe more, of the population live by the narrative created by swarm intelligence and the gratefulness of having a comfy enough place, spot, role in that swarm. They will, passively or actively, support those who convince them of what is necessary to keep that place, spot, role comfy enough. In the end, these people and that process alone, is responsible for the current state of civilization.
Instead, be the change you want to see.
It is pretty obvious every time any country has an election or any policy debate comes up that the priorities of the sort of people who write or comment on the internet represent the median view more by accident than intent when it does happen. They're typically very isolated voices.
My thoughts exactly when “highbrow” outlets like the NYT started making headlines out of every silly thing Trump said in 2015/2016. All those media sources who professed to be against what he stood for didn’t realize that the words were meaningless, and merely by reporting on his inanities, they were implicitly endorsing exactly what he stood for.
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
No crazies = no Newton, no Dirac, no Marx, no Descartes, no Curie, etc etc etc.
On the other hand, so much about this article (and just about every other that makes similar appeals) presupposes a shared understanding or appreciation of high Western culture and philosophy to the point that it becomes unintelligible.
1. That you should have a television in your home. I'm not some kind of hipster, but it is just completely crazy when you think about it. How come that for decades it has been the norm that people - families - have a machine in their middle of their house which spews out the lowest form of government propaganda, mixed with the most obnoxious advertisements, mixed with abhorrent degeneracy of violence, damaging sexuality and humiliation of people. And this machine has been worshipped much higher than any God by the generations which are now old people. Who then complain about the behaviour of younger generations, which have been raised to behave like that by their "God" the TV.
In a sane world, a person who put a television in their family house would be shunned as a freak by his or her community, loose their job, and be forced to move. But now it's been the norm - for decades.
2. That you're supposed to document everything you do and post it to Instagram. This is a recent insanity, but it's become a mind virus to most people and they are no longer capable of enjoying anything in life for what it is. Rather the purpose of uploading to Instagram takes priority. For what? Instagram pays zero for people to upload their photos and videos. Can't you tell your friends later what you did and show them the photos? I get the appeal, but does it have to be all the time for the rest of your life?