= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
MixedNuts comments on Existing Absurd Technologies - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (58)
(Prediction: Russia will come around in < 50 years
Revolutions help because you threaten politicians with them so they cooperate, actually doing them sucks but you have to to keep the precommitment believable.)
I agree they don't get it. But they don't have a point, they're making the common mistake of failing to learn from history. People are crazy, the world is mad.
Also, do they appreciate indoor plumbing? Much of my 1960's-born family grew up without it, but they seem to consider it mundane now. What about cell phones?
Any data to back this up?
(I'm no expert here, but based on my own observations, I've yet to see a country that benefited from a revolution -- at least in the last decade. I may be wrong here, so any real data is welcome.)
I was without plumbing for several years as a teenager (1980s). Occasionally I marvel that I can use an automatic dishwasher instead of dipping up a pot from the rain barrel and heating it on the stove. It got mundane for me mighty quick though.
pretty much. Humans get used to new things amazingly fast. My family home got running water in the mid 80s, sewage and telephone in the 90s, central heating in the 00s. These days I get phones and netbooks for free and use them everywhere. My technology exposure curve was higher than common in the 90s, but it has evened out, and i am very used to all of the items I have. Living in the future is awesome!
No, I meant the opposite (well, I think some South American countries did, but I'm no expert and still ambivalent on the Chavez countercoup). A revolution actually happening is very bad. But the threat of a revolution keeps politicians in check; occasional revolutions are better than letting dictators run free because they know there won't be one.
I would nominate as an example the French Restauration; after a series of revolutions, the restored French monarchy moved towards constitutionalism and generally more freedom.
Maybe their point isn't "technology doesn't provide any tangible benefits", but "the scale of benefits that trickle down to us from technological advancements doesn't match the (perceived) scale of these advancements"?
No, they take it for granted -- and I'm afraid I'm guilty of this too. Strangely, cellphones and the Internet still amaze me, perhaps because I remember life without them.
Hmm, that just isn't true. There isn't a perfect match (indoor plumbing is low-tech with big benefits, I've seen really cool tech that's useless out of tiny niches), but there's a correlation (like, I could name five laser-based things you've used this week). There have been huge social changes (farming, literacy, urbanization, medicine, electric lighting, the Internet) due to technology.
They have more of a point about time scales. "Technology improves too slowly for us to benefit." But that's not so true since the industrial revolution, and completely false now.
If the Internet hasn't changed their lives (it sure changed mine), and neither have cell phones or cheap TV or recent medical advances or new kinds of jobs or satellite TV that reports on revolutions in nearby countries, then at least they could have noticed that as it accelerates so does social change (you mean they don't marry two black genderqueer atheists, either?).