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Comment by zwkrt | Hacker News Reader

Baudrillard's visison of the hyperreal is becoming overwhelmingly true and at an exponential rate. I envision that soon we won't even need historical documents because we can just auto-generate documents based on historical data. Which will then become the new historical documents, in a process that keeps folding in on itself until the bubble our immediate reality shrinks and shrinks until there is only the smallest part of the inner ear vaguely recalling that gravity is acting upon us, while the rest of our senses and thoughts are wrapped in the warm blanket of an auto-generated fugue.

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When I think about procedurally generated entertainment, that can be materialized on demand, I find my self thinking about the movie Strange Days.

Will the future be one of societal fragmentation where 1) nobody ever rewatches anything, they just generate more new stuff 2) nobody watches each others work ("hey watch my feed I just generated, it was awesome" followed by "yeah sure, someday") and just watches more new custom stuff generated for them which just becomes 3) everybody is watching an endless feed of new procedurally generated levels like endless runner games and 4) there is no longer any shared experience between people that they can realistically use as a foundation to communicate or interact.

OR will the future be MOSTLY the previous but with a counterculture market for vintage (and modern) "authentic experiences" some of which will be black market. And then as part of that counterculture demand, how much of the "authentic experience" content be counterfeit procedurally generated to look real. And then the act of consuming counterfeit "authentic experiences" en mass just becomes a role play archeology treasure hunting game.

But at the moment, people watch new TV shows when they come out, rather than watching old shows which are just as good. I think it's because they enjoy watching the same thing as other people.

I still do rewatch X-Files, Star Trek TNG, Seinfeld and Stargate SG-1.

I uh, want to believe.

Would you if there were endless new episodes? Or upon rewatch that they could change slightly?

What about your kids kids? Would they look back on older generations who are watching non procedurally generated content that never changes as weirdos?

For story arcs, the thrill is an evolving story with a coherent plot. I suppose singular X-Files and Seinfeld episodes could easily fit in with the procedurally generated category. That is very exciting prospect. Seinfeld infinity.

That’s true, but it’s also because of marketing. At least streaming services also list “related” productions that are older.

Xerox did it in 2013, changing 6s into 8s in scanned documents: https://www.dkriesel.com/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_ar...

We can also, you know, just decide we won't do that.

But will we? Those of us who have been alive long enough to know what life was like before any of this may choose not to. But our youngest generation, and those to come, may grow up not knowing any different.

Not suggesting it will happen, but it is an unappealing thought.

If anything, I think technology like this has gradually empowered people to rise above the autogenerated fugue that has historically always been a part of everyday life (though historically the human mind did a pretty good job generating that on its own thanks to widespread ignorance, superstition, and fear). Speaking personally, I find AI chatbots and image generators when I'm using them myself to be like a refreshing drink of cool fresh water compared with the sensation of being only drip fed or waterboarded by businesses wielding the technology to influence my behavior without my explicit input or full consent.

There is no mechanism in existence to collectively decide anything. It's why things suck in general.

There are many mechanisms to collectively decide things, so you aren't even close about that (Democracy, the market, representative government at every level, the United Nations, proxy votes for corporations, school boards, boards of governors, juries, HOAs, ballot initiatives and referendums, elections generally, zoning commissions, family meetings, 4 friends debating where to get dinner, really far too many to list here, if anything almost all decisions of any importance are made via some mechanism to collectively decide things).

There isn't a way to collectively decide things with absolute authority, but that is why things don't suck worse in general. If we make collective decisions we could force people to do some things which are more optimal to our goals. However, that assumes that we universally agree on what the goals are (not even close) and that the decisions won't actually be worse for the chosen goals (sometimes they will be far worse) and that the decision making process will never be irreversibly hijacked by some group for their own benefit (it absolutely will be). So you are not just wrong about this, your premise is incorrect and your conclusion does not follow from that premise even if it were.

Where did I say we would or could decide against it collectively? Individual people can decide for themselves not to engage with harmful technologies in the future, just as many do today with cell phones, computers, television, etc. Not everything has to be done by governments.

as individuals we have enough trouble asserting will over impulse as it is--hard to imagine us collectively deciding on anything like this when institutions are even more vulnerable to reactivity

That sounds like the view of an anti-progress luddite. Be careful where you make such statements.

"[A]uto-generated fugue" is a superb phrase for this situation.

> I envision that soon we won't even need historical documents because we can just auto-generate documents based on historical data.

A.K.A. forgeries.

The term "historical documents" gives me strong Galaxy Quest vibes. Someday, maybe we can generate the TV show that it was based on.

Lots of Historical documents are, eh, less historical than might appear.

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