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Comment by alangibson | Hacker News Reader

My feeling is that mood-souring is universal, if unevenly distributed, across all communities. Part of it is lockdown, part is growing political divisions, and so on.

It's interesting that this post hits the front page on the same day that Facebook announces (admits to?) its first user drop. Everyone is just getting sick of being social online. From here on out, content is king.

In 10 years we'll look at the Facebook news feed as being the necessary intermediate step between Web 2.0 and whatever TikTok becomes.

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And fatigue. I think the entire world is just tired.

Indeed. This comes up all the time in American political discussion. People on the left say that we're a worn out, declining empire. People on the right say we're falling apart due to the left.

No matter your orientation, it's pretty clear that Neoliberalism, aka The Washington Concensus, is on its last legs. We're all just sort of hanging around waiting for the paradigm shift to start.

Where do you think the paradigm will shift to?

At this point in time capitalism is essentially mandatory, but people move toward authority when things go wrong. Liberalism has always been a luxury good. My fear is that we'll slowly shift from a Washington Concensus to a Beijing Concensus of authoritarian capitalism. Only fools and con men try to predict the future though.

I think also a lot of the world is negative minded towards the challenges they're facing. Mindset/framing makes a very big difference in how challenges are interpreted and how they stress the system.

I would suggest there is a very general decrease in gratitude, humility, and an increase in entitlement.

It's well earned negativity. If you look at the "success" we've had with COVID-19 and climate change so far, there's little reason to believe we're up to the challenges that are here/coming. Yes, there is plenty that we could do, but very little that we will do. All that's left is to brace for impact.

if we look at the human race's success across time though we've survived many pandemics and many hard to adapt to events. I guess it entirely depends on your scale of perspective, from individual and short term to species and long term.

An example of support for success could be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCm9Ng0bbEQ (Steven pinker TED talk)

Oh we'll adapt. The question is at what cost.

The fact that so many talented bright minds can be bought at a high enough price and forced to optimize targeted advertising instead of solving climate change or humanities most pressing issues is a sad state of affairs. I wish we could harness the brightest minds and give them everything they need to solve humanities hardest hitting problems, they shouldn’t have to worry about making money, etc. the KPIs are how many global crises they can avert and are measured by months, years, decades not quarters.

You’d have to likely get rid of capitalism at that point. Ain’t happening.

We’ll need something wiping out billions including the rich in order for that to have any traction… by then though - might be too late for society to feel like they should bother. After all - if they can’t feel the effects of their work within their lifetime - is it worth doing? Most would say no.

> I wish we could harness the brightest minds and give them everything they need to solve humanities hardest hitting problems,

I think more anti-corruption laws in government could help. I also think what you described was supposed to be the roles of Academia, but we turned them into job training facilities.

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