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Comment by ASalazarMX | Hacker News Reader

This could also be interpreted as resistance to change. Would the world be better if screens had not robbed people of the sensations of holding a physical book/magazine/newspaper? If electric or gas lighting had not filled the cities with light contamination? If planes and trains weren't making so much noise? If instant messaging hadn't replaced phone conversations?

A sky with thousands of satellites is something the next generations will admire as much as we admire the actual one with less satellites and more planes.

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The difference is, all your examples aren't unavoidable. I still own and can buy physical books. There are plenty of places without urban light pollution, as well as places without planes and trains. I can still make phone calls, and do so every day.

There is only one night sky, and when you put satellites in it they go everywhere. The remotest-living luddite bookworm will still have to see the satellites overhead.

The better analogy you should be making is (Assuming American here) do you really miss the old growth forests and wild areas that were leveled to make room for your cities and agriculture?" And the answer is, yes obviously! That's why we have national parks. But unlike with wildlife, the sky cannot be partially conserved. It's all or nothing unless all the satellites are geosynchronous. And I guarantee they won't be.

Planes are more intrusive. Bigger, brighter, and there are more of them. But they still don't ruin the night sky. At least for me, for naked-eye stargazing, satellites are a non-issue.

> This could also be interpreted as resistance to change. Would the world be better if screens had not robbed people of the sensations of holding a physical book/magazine/newspaper? If electric or gas lighting had not filled the cities with light contamination? If planes and trains weren't making so much noise? If instant messaging hadn't replaced phone conversations?

I think these are all questions that could, and perhaps should, be asked and pondered. For screens, it's not so much the sensation but what they have enabled (i.e. the dopamine hitting notifications), though there is evidence that our brain interprets text differently, less deeply, on a screen.

Likewise, I do think light pollution is bad, and perhaps we would be better if we took steps to minimize light pollution.

Same with noise pollution. I know I read that even low levels of noise pollution can heighten things like anxiety and drive a flight or fight response constantly. I for one look forward to electric vehicles in hopes that some of the noise pollution does die down, and think it will be better for many even if they don't realize it now.

Likewise, there's also evidence that interacting via messaging is robbing us of empathy, because we never hear other people's voices and learn to interpret body language cues and cue in on how others are feeling.

They're all questions that could, and should, be discussed and not just dismissed out of hand. In some respects, I truly think the Amish and the Luddites (who weren't necessarily against technology, but how it would be used and its long term cost-benefit ratio) took the correct approach to it.

It's not resistance to change, though. It's interpreting whether the benefits of that change are worth the downsides that come with it.

Doing cost-benefit analysis of new technologies is a good idea. More often than not for the majority of people the answer is "obviously worth it", and that can give an impression of out-of-hand dismissal. I for one would take all the downsides you mentioned and then some over the Amish lifestyle and it's not even close.

I don't think the majority of people actually do a full cost-benefit analysis, in particularly with the way advertising works. And doubly so with screens and the way things have slowly changed to become more addicting. That also assumes that all the costs and benefits are well known.

That said, I'm not sure I would take the Amish lifestyle as well, but it's definitely a close choice and I think they live more intentionally and that's something to be preserved. There are quite a few tradeoffs I would take though -- dropping text messaging for phone calls, for one; changing the way our cities are lighted to decrease light pollution; and definitely decreasing noise pollution.

it's all subjective I suppose but your analogy is describing trading one human invention for another. but in this case we lose yet another connection to the natural world outside our own making -- and increase the inward facing, solipsistic bent of humanity.

Yet, looking forward, if Mars and the Moon get colonized, a swarm of satellites would be the quickest way to wire a whole planet, a whole network of planets. That would be the most looking outward humanity has done so far.

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