solutions:
Do not use a smart phone. It might surprise you but clamshell cell phones are still manufactured and sold.
Do not use social networks. I stopped when covid started and I saw the amount of stupidity that grew there.
I can give you a whole list but I don't want to start a war in comments
You are not only getting older, you are also getting wiser. From now on you will be known as ThorgerWolff the wise
It's not all bad. Yes, we have now come out of a global pandemic and it seems that we are on the verge of a third world war. But humanity is at the threshold of technologies that will change the world (hopefully for the better) something is coming I feel it in my bones and it makes me excited for the future....Or maybe I'm wrong and we'll all die a horrible death... anyway it won't be boring
as long as you don't believe in climate change everything is going swimminglysolutions:
Do not use a smart phone. It might surprise you but clamshell cell phones are still manufactured and sold.
Do not use social networks. I stopped when covid started and I saw the amount of stupidity that grew there.
I can give you a whole list but I don't want to start a war in comments
You are not only getting older, you are also getting wiser. From now on you will be known as ThorgerWolff the wise
It's not all bad. Yes, we have now come out of a global pandemic and it seems that we are on the verge of a third world war. But humanity is at the threshold of technologies that will change the world (hopefully for the better) something is coming I feel it in my bones and it makes me excited for the future....Or maybe I'm wrong and we'll all die a horrible death... anyway it won't be boring
Ive learned today too stay far away from twitter atleast, the amount of stupid that comes out of that place gives me a headache every time i glance at it. [...] -.- Facebook isent far after either. Man wtf happend?
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There simply seem to be a lot of people in the world today that believe what they think is simply the way it is. They seem to be under the impression that if an understanding makes sense to them, and no one has ever proved it wrong, then it's obviously right.
They do not seem to recognize the basic foundation of higher reasoning: correlation is not causation. Evidence is not proof. Our job as mature thinkers is to be independently and consciously aware, at all times, of what we don't know. We then spend our efforts trying to prove our own ideas wrong, not right. That's the core of empirical reasoning and process. That's what results in verifiable facts. It's not a matter of what we want to hear or how many people agree with us. Confirmation bias is probably the most rampant fallacy I come across on a daily basis.
And a lot of folks either don't accept that, or they actively disbelieve it. Either mindset is equally destructive.
They do not seem to recognize the basic foundation of higher reasoning: correlation is not causation. Evidence is not proof. Our job as mature thinkers is to be independently and consciously aware, at all times, of what we don't know. We then spend our efforts trying to prove our own ideas wrong, not right. That's the core of empirical reasoning and process. That's what results in verifiable facts. It's not a matter of what we want to hear or how many people agree with us. Confirmation bias is probably the most rampant fallacy I come across on a daily basis.
And a lot of folks either don't accept that, or they actively disbelieve it. Either mindset is equally destructive.
Way too true sadly. Also seems too be a rampart issue with admitting you were wrong or miss informed. Its a good way too learn to admitt that you messed up and try too learn from it, everybody fails at times. Try too learn and adapt!
I live for those moments when I discover my original understanding was incorrect. It's extremely exciting when that happens. It's like discovering a secret door that leads to a hallway full of rooms I didn't know was there. Love that.
Kinda miss those days... before the dark times, before DRM
I admire anyone being able to hold on to that attitude. I can't say it's always felt that great for me, like finding bottleneck in the system and then it's people coming from environment where higher ups feed people garbage, higher game appearing to be like having nice career and the best way to keep it that way is pull ladder up with them. Then you encounter those effed up by that and it looks very much like trying to maintain position by pulling a ladder up with them. So I thought this idea, never attribute to malice that can be attributed to incompetence to be very sound, yet then well, it turned out that there are people who are both malicious and, I guess luckily, incompetent.
It's certainly not natural or easy. It's certainly something people train themselves to do. And I'm not perfect either. There have been (and will be) times where I overstep, miss a detail, or jump to a conclusion, and will have to eat my words. The main caveat, however, is that if I recognize I've made a mistake, I'm the first one to address it and correct it.
I don't really think too many people are actively malicious -- just cowardly. I find most people that talk tough either do so when they think they're anonymous, or when they think they're safe from repercussions. (Put them face to face with the person they have a beef with, and all of sudden it's a matter of denials ["You can't prove I said that!"], excuses ["You heard wrong / didn't understand what I meant!"], or apologies ["Look, don't take it personally, okay! I didn't mean it like that!"].) No matter how you slice it, the only correct thing to say if I regret my comments or actions is: "That was a stupid thing for me to have done." Anything else is...trying to hide or misrepresent the truth because I'm scared of the consequences.
And right there, we're dealing with a mentality that is willing to deny the truth in an attempt to maintain a certain image in everyone else's eyes.
This will obviously translate into a person that prefers appearances and comforts to realities. In a sense, it's denying anything that might make me lose either face or ground in a (commonly desperate) attempt to protect myself from the truth. I am so frightened of how it will look, what it might cost me if I'm "wrong" about something, that I'd rather surround myself with others who share my ignorance, cower behind them, and then focus on acting cool.
(Or, as I've more recently come to view it in terms of the internet and social media: I surround myself with an army of anonymous fools equally or even more foolish than I am and call that security. Rather than study the truth and learn. Brilliant.)
But, in the end, any time someone simply assumes they're right and stands ground on that assumption...it's because they're afraid of what it would mean to be wrong. Any time someone refuses to consider other evidence or understandings...it's fear of what it would look like if they did.
Fear profits people nothing.
I can be openly nostalgic about it -- but I don't miss the days! Internet completely cuts out if you get a phone call. Running cables from window to window in the dorm, trying to get 5 computers networked to play Red Alert or Descent together.
Good times! But I'm good with the tech as it is now. I don't need to go back.
Yea sadly the internet has pretty much enabled that way of being. Its not like you cant get in trouble for stuff you say but when its anonymously and with zero accountability the worst parts of people comes out. Think we kinda have hade this talk a couple of times in an old thread i think or a similar one atleast. Humans are humans, we are just as flawed as anything else. People lie, people cheat, people do worse things. All you can control is how you act yourself.
I can think several things running on parallel that contribute to that.
Not least influential, even though statistical outliers, neurological and psychological
Cultural factors, competition that's not necessarily always economical but social status there's certain perceived benefit from creating very black and white scenarios where each side can say they won.
Ramifications of that culture where we have started to think our societies are as great as how many services there are available, private or public. We don't bother thinking that if things are working so great for us, why do we need a ton of therapists, all the medication, other help.
Further consequences to kids trying to integrate into this culture, where we say we have such and such great goals, even when we are not actually working towards those goals, have difficulties to maintain close social relationships, as in this competitive world their main purpose is to reflect our illusion of perfection, which is unattainable so we run to therapists, eat pills, go to pilates or whatever, so we don't need to comfort that.
There are also real economical matters with our systems getting more complex, contributing people to just withdraw into some parallel reality. Whole system might be something utterly stupid but at least simple enough to hang on.
Almost like the Night City.
I'm not describing everyone, but still, I see those being factors.
About that fear, yeah. Some things I have seen, when applying game theory they look batshit insane.
That is the right of it. I struggle to be patient with it. "Please," "Thank you," "Excuse me," and, "Let me help with that," are going wildly out of fashion. I'll be damned if I'm going to stop holding the door for people, though. (Weird to say it like that, but that's exactly what it feels like, sometimes.)
Heh -- that's a fair comparison. If it makes you feel any better, look at it this way: Pondsmith was well aware of where society was going back in the 1980s. The ideas didn't come from nowhere!
Or I could dig up the letter from an angry citizen to a Senator about the state of young people. They're not in school. They're not reliable when given work. They're often creating public disturbances and being nuisances to people in general. All of it for no reason other than delinquency. And it goes on to complain about how it is a government's responsibility to manage the society they're in charge of. And what is the government doing? Nothing but sitting there, collecting taxes, and letting society go to pieces. He rants at them, saying that the true embarrassment is not the kids running amok, it's the senators hiding in their fancy homes because they're too insecure to handle a bunch of lazy youth with attitude problems. Pathetic!
And right there, it might sound as if I've totally crossed the line into real-world issues...except the letter was written by a citizen of Ancient Greece to the Athenian Senate, over 2,500 years ago.
I have to (constantly) remind myself that none of it is new. I will say that the deindividuation provided by the internet is a very serious, psychological concern, though. That's a brand new way of insidiously reinforcing dishonesty, aggression, and a ready willingness to take advantage of others for no better reason than something to do. And it's very easy to find endless anonymous strangers that will encourage it or join in. (With largely no, immediate repercussions.)
I was just about too say: sounds like what people have said since forever before i saw the last part. Yea some universal truths have probably allways existed: It was better when i was young! and :turn it down, that isent music!
Yeah, well it doesn't bother me at all actually. Sometimes though like this groundhog day thing. Since the day I joined writing here about how game is relevant work in the cyberpunk genre and things like how if you check things further, just hinted in game, he understands differences between schools of economics where the US and European system comes in ways that comes from reading both Sowell and Kant.
Also trying to kept mentioning this book by Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (1979), Robert D. Putnam's Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) and certain aspects also hints at Joseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies (1988). That last one I mentioned all 9 days ago it seems.
I'm not picking these as critique of America, but because there are similar things happening in Europe. Book that put me on that journey way back was fiction, Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Fuck the modern world! 1400 messages, trying to convey this idea that yeah, it's a nice common story we have here, that writing good, but what if it's seriously good, beyond having a nice association for habit, hobby, whatever, as this is a journey you can continue beyond fiction, move to real things.
And it's like pouring water on hens back
Kidding aside, my serious fuck the modern world is one more topic to make, which is to reflect game to other media and future of genre, regardless of medium. Fuck the modern world, that trying to improve craft like writing about subjects on apolitical genre like cyberpunk can be one most suitable for exploration of matters that are quite present, may end up being doing that and starving and I believe that's shit really. We won't get brilliant writers that way, but more writers aiming for lowest common denominator. Studying relevant research might be alternative, give more venues.
Fuck the modern world that I have spent a week or so trying to figure out how to summarize that well enough to end up with something somebody might actually read.
I gave four points for context.
Critics didn't originally liked Moby Dick, but I don't think Hemingway had to worry about people taking his life and / or burning his house down because story doesn't have a happy ending.
Things related to gaming appears to be a bit special as there's a deadlock between value as form or expression and certain other aspects related to economics.
Fringe elements, what's feeding say self victimization, influencers for most part from what I have seen, aren't kids. I don't think one size fits all applies to everything but self victimization can look like some form of escapism and that can be very toxic as then being in danger for ending in position with very little socially economically mobility can actually happen, simply due inactivity what comes to real life decisions.