this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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I’ve read history. I know what actual dystopian nightmares look like. We’re not in one.
"Things can always get worse" is a pretty shit justification to say things aren't bad now.
Things are NOT bad now.
No-one is saying that all is fine. Yes, there are loads of big issues right now, but we're still living better and safer than 99% of all the humans that have ever lived. We are not living Ina dystopian world.
These are three different statements. Not the same thinfs.
Can we fucking stop with the sloppy quoting? Nobody in this thread is responding to what anybody else is actually saying.
I literally didn't quote anyone
History does not only repeat, and simply looking at the past can make you blind to the novel ways society has transformed. For example, oppression has been a constant throughout history, but it never has been as faceless as it is today. Lords and kings have been replaced by corporations and agencies operating across borders, in ways and with purposes that I don't think anyone who's not actually involved with can claim they fully understand.
You really think oppression is more faceless now than before the existence of cameras? What was the odds that a medieval peasant knew what the King looked like? Or that a slave in Egypt knew the face of the Pharaoh?
Maybe they could never see the actual pharaoh, but what I'm saying is that "The Pharaoh" was itself the "face" of power, and also where power and influence actually resided. Now we have surveillance and propaganda perpetuated by either known but opaque actors (e.g. governmental agencies, corporations) or simply unknown ones. You can believe or not in an international "elite" conspiracy, but by that I also mean random teen hacker groups, data brokers, gov agencies of nations other than the one you live in, etc.
And soon no human will be able to understand the main strategy of the company.
Sure the AI can break it down for the humans, but it’s not always going to be easily comprehensible in human terms.
Depends on who built the model, and the selection of the data used to train it. AI holds a lot of potential in my book, if you use it right. But never stop being critical of the answers you receive, and be aware of they work and their shortcomings
Someone in Gaza would disagree right now.
Yeah, and Jews in WWII would disagree with you.
It's always easy to find a very specific group of people that are having a horrible time, that doesn't mean that on average, humans live better and safer than in the entire history of humanity. Sure, the last 10 years saw a bit of a down turn, but thing are still way better than, say, 40 years ago.
I guess it's hard to remember how really hard life could be
Idk man it’s really not a competition. AI powered automated genocide and industrialized genocide are both horrible in their own way and to me absolutely dystopian nightmares. Same way how China uses AI to track every aspect of their citizens lives + also genocide.
The Uyghurs are absolutely living in a dystopian nightmare. China uses technology to track their citizens. You can't blame it on AI, although AI has improved their technology. Their tracking predates AI. Also our current "AI" is just self-improving algorithms, not true AI.
That’s just authoritarian abuse. That’s the same kind of horror humans have been facing throughout history.
To me, a “nightmare” is artificial life extension for the purpose of torturing people, and non-invasive mind control and neural reprogramming from a distance.
Don’t get me wrong we’re going there. We’re not going to be able to turn back from that course. The nightmare stage is when the ability to off oneself is gone, because the machines or other people own your body at a cellular level, and it can detect and paralyze you when you’re acting against their interests.
On average, I think humanity’s experience will rise. For the majority things will get better.
But for some unlucky ones (and unfortunately, because it will soon be as easy for a kid to do as pulling the wings off a fly, eventually there will be countless trillions of those people), all the usual stops and limits to suffering will ne raised only to usher in a continual flow of pain beyond anything they can imagine, for orders of magnitude beyond their normal lifespan.
But even if that only happens to one person, that is an indescribable nightmare.
My sincere hope is that in the long run, during the war for control of the galaxy, the resources necessary to maintain these eternal torture cloud instances will be reallocated to the war effort.
That’s the only eventual escape I see for those people, now that I know the depth of sadism that exists in the world.
I think we’re headed for a nightmare, but we’re not there yet.
Their situation could easily be the setting of a dystopian novel written 30 years ago. Your nightmare future is essentially the Matrix.
By the way, people have been kept alive and prevented from killing themselves to allow further torture for a long time. It's why there's doctors at Guantanamo Bay. And suicide watch in prison.
Can you explain why 40 years ago was worse, as a whole?
I look at the 80's and I see affordable housing, the fall of the Berlin wall, the birth of the internet, and a ton of economic upturn for the US (including way higher wages if you adjust for inflation.)
This decade is popularly referred to as the "decade of decadence."
The fall of the Berlin Wall was the end of the 1980s. It was such an amazing and joyous event specifically because of the level of mastery generated by the previous arrangement of Berlin being split in half and people in East Berlin needing a wall and razor and armed guards to block them from moving out of the area.
40 years ago people were literally living in 1984
Even a poor person in any EU country lives much better than any king a mere 200 years ago. Healthcare, painkillers, food safety, clean water, indoor plumbing, freedom of religion and expression, and in the palm of your hand all the knowledge, pr0n and memes you heart desires. Probably a few items less on that list in freedom land, but still not that bad.
They eat cleaner food and have more amenities than a King, but they certainly don't live better. The point of the article is that the rising tide is floating a few boats wayyyy higher than the rest, and the overall growth does not justify the fact that people still die of hunger, get evicted while working multiple jobs, fall ill and are saddled by medical dept for life (US only), and shit like that.
I don't think anyone dies of hunger in the developed world, even the US. No evictions in many EU countries either, even if you don't have a job at all you get unemployment that is high enough for a reasonable apartment.
I can only speak about the US, but sadly, the unhoused die of hunger, preventable disease, and exposure all the time here. And unemployment does not cover a 1 bedroom apartment in major cities, nor does it qualify you for the outrageous requirements of most leases. You may be right about the status of the poor in the EU though.
The homeless veterans in my city park disagree.
Yeah, it was much better before when vets died from gangrene swallowing their bodies. No vets - no problems!