Like most of the world, it suffers from extreme tribalism and group think.
I miss the former positive HN. And the positive world. sigh
But then it attracted too many people that would just emulate the KPI in order to get funded, and instead of letting it crash and rise from the ashes, we lowered the interest rates and bailed out a bunch of "too big to fail" banks in 2008, pretty much guaranteeing viability of shitty investments. Oh, and when people started calling it out in 2012 with Occupy Wall Street, they were redirected using the centuries-old divide-and-conquer techniques.
So now it's a shell of former self. Founders try to create something that looks like a great company. VCs pour money in, hoping to resell to the next fool. Founders are now more like figureheads than idea-driven people. Most big successes (Uber, AirBnb) could be attributed more to regulatory capture than a revolutional way of doing something.
Smart people understand it very well and it doesn't make you very optimistic. You can pretend well enough to convince an average layperson, but deep inside you know the game is fake, and it kinda builds up. Notably, game-changers that are appreciated by users (rather than speculative investors) now mostly come from China (e.g. TikTok), because the vibe there (with all the downsides) is now closer to the "good old SV" than the current SV.
But legitimately, there is a strong cynical bubble in the zeitgeist now, and it’s dangerous.
There are a few things this cynicism says.
1. “People suck and are terrible.” 2. “People are stupid.” 3. “We can’t change anything.” 4. “Great calamity is going to happen and we are powerless to stop it.”
This is a lie. The world doesn’t suck, it’s much better than it used to be, people aren’t terrible - if people were more bad than good on average we’d still be hitting each other with clubs and going Conan on people. We aren’t stupid - it’s just that the stupid people are louder. And while the possibilities for great calamity exist, they are not guaranteed.
This may be more emergent than anything else, but trust your neighbors, treat people nicely, and you - yes individually each of you - need to start trying to make the world better.
Nobody is going to do it for us. I know what it’s like to feel bleak, trust me I do - but that’s just a call to action. It’s not “techno optimism” we need - it’s optimism, there are radical solutions that don’t use a single transistor.
>> ...leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness
This all sounds rather familiar and feels like more a cultural question than one of personal virtue.
It’s dangerous to be optimistic. When you’re excited about stuff and it doesn’t work out culturally you look like a moron, when you’re a cynic if you’re wrong nobody cares because we’re all lucky that things didn’t turn out shittily. When things do turn out poorly you look like a genius because “you predicted the calamity.”
The “easy money” comes from being a pessimist because you don’t have to commit to anything.
Sometimes the positive effects of sustained efforts have had a real impact over time. Having a cynical and defeatist attitude works against that. I don't know the roots of those attitudes exactly, but from the people I know they're not related to climate change, the country's leader, cultural issues, etc. It's more like those are a good reason for them to be more vocal about their underlying cynicism which has different roots (family life, general temperament, etc).
We have real problems. Very big ones. A defeatist attitude will ensure we end up in the worst of all outcomes. I wonder if we just have too much change too fast for our society to keep up and figure out ways to function better with the new constraints.
Edit: clarification
Better then when and by what meassure?
It is quite subjective I think.
One satirical person offered this quote:
We optimized for the minimum of individual luck, to get the maximum of people.
I am not fully behind this quote, it is satirical, but I think there is too much truth behind it. Ecologically things look bad. Geopolitical the same.
But yes, the sun is still shining and spring is nice and we do are progressing to new technological heights every day. It is just how this awesome tech is used overwhelmingly, that is a bummer.
Except, it is not, by all the data that I know.
E.g. "https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/global-income-inequal..."
https://medium.com/incerto/inequality-and-skin-in-the-game-d...
We can still fix things. We can still change the world - and for the better. Largely we have to slough off the outdated and pernicious idea that “more money == better” first.
I strongly doubt this attitude ever changed. It's always been
- first comments are dismissive gut reactions
- a bit later some nuanced/positive comments arrive
- depending on mood and luck, one or the other kind floats to the top
I’m specifically not going to post examples because that will invite the same old conversations to be rehashed, and any one example is useless anyways. People will claim confirmation bias and they may even be right.
However, none of that has anything to do with fusion tech, so I remain hopeful about that!
If your reality is the Internet, the apocalypse is upon us.
I’ve spent the past year reducing Internet one and increasing immersion in my local community and the world looks like a very different (better) place.
The techno optimists really do a lot of grifting these days (especially on YouTube), and the knee-jerk cynics are predictably annoying as well. The fact that a knowledgeable fusion insider is criticizing this speaks volumes to me, and his criticisms seem on point.
I'm a lay person so my take on it is effectively of zero value. And I don't think I'm the only one in this thread in that position :)
You can have a look! https://hackermoods.com/
(I only did a quick search)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/healthy-surf/
It turned out to be a lie and a scam, so now people are more skeptical.
Needless to say, the world doesn't exactly lend itself to positivity about yet another fucking startup promising you fusion powered dog feeders.