Comment by throw101010 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw101010 | Hacker News Reader

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Plato allegedly said it better than you thoudands of years ago... and if you are "old", maybe he was talking about you? ;)

> What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?

All of this to say that generations judging each other are rarely objective and very prone to both confirmation bias and broad generalization.

But if are going to generalize, how about this, transgression is part of a healthy growth for most young people (we all test limits by crossing lines one time or an other, some more than others), and most old people (conveniently) forget that they were doing exactly the same with the tools they had at the time. Let's take a step back and appreciate that societies around the world tend to become less violent and less criminal... when these trends might reverse we can start talking again about the decadence of young people and it's consequences.

So, in the context of the US, yes, those trends are reversing, so it is apropos to examine it (see article content). I am fully aware of the tendency of grumpy old people decrying the amoral youth, my point is that the degree of nihilsim seems qualitatively different than 70's burn-out, 80's goth, or 90's grunge, or what have you. It appears more like a kind of defeatism than rebellion (the more normal youth passtime). Who knows, maybe during the great depression the younger generation was in a similar place, don't know, not THAT old ;-) But it seems less a case of "those old peoples values aren't MY values" and more of a "there are no values" differnce than previous generatonal divides.

Surprised that generation who named themselves slackers gave birth to kids that also don’t have any vision and take pride in not caring about anything?

Also the group is so varied you can’t generalize of what the age group is about. If I think of young person I think of mrbeast or the kids who sit on the road to block the traffic cause they care immensly. I always thought the youth of today just hustle and influence and try to build it themselves and totally lack the ability to chill out. Happy to know there lurks some nihilists somewhere.

I wouldn't say they take pride in not caring actually.

This quote is made up I think (e.g https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/respectfully-quoted/socrate...)

Even if it wasn't made up it, it would not be all that relevant IMO because it would not have to mean that "adults have always complained about youth but they always turn out fine", it could also mean "the quality of a society goes up and down over the centuries, in cycles, and both we and Plato/Socrates are/were on a downturn when things started going worse".

That’s an interesting step back, but stepping back further we can recognize that there is no single metrics to let us evaluate if some society is going up or down.

And also that "ceteris paribus sic stantibus" might be indispensable for growing scientific approaches, but irreconcilable gaps in world perception between generations is better taken as an anthropological constant across time than a minor insignificant detail.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceteris_paribus

I feel that stepping as far back as you do here will kill any meaningful discussion.

"There is no single metric" translates pretty much into "there is no objective meaning of life that can be proven".

In most discussions certain things are implied about shared values. E.g., fascism is bad and democracy good (plenty of people seem to disagree with this these days, but much written discussion, e.g. on HN, assume shared values anyway).

I heard a story yesterday from someone who's job involves dynamite. He had a vocational student tag along for a couple of weeks that would constantly stare at his phone and not pay any attention, causing some dangerous or at least inconvenient situations.

If you step enough back, who can say it is "bad" to get yourself blown up to pieces because you are too TikTok addicted to look around you? In everyday language we assume enough shared values to say this is "bad" though.

>"There is no single metric" translates pretty much into "there is no objective meaning of life that can be proven".

That seems a rather robust baseline, if "objective" means something like "absolute certainty on which we can practically leverage on to reach absolute understanding of everything we might have to deal with". That is, it’s one thing to admit there are some universal truths, it’s an other very different faith step to believe any human can ever be able to construct anything close to the latter.

>fascism is bad and democracy good (plenty of people seem to disagree with this these days, but much written discussion, e.g. on HN, assume shared values anyway).

I’m afraid that I observe the very same tendency in values evolution (I live in France for some context). Though contrary to what this threads focus on, I’m far more concerned with the extreme views that the oldest people in my acquaintances are moving to. No Tiktok on that side, but TV rolling news channel are not that much better. Probably my own HN addiction could be pointed at me just as well.

>In everyday language we assume enough shared values to say this is "bad" though.

Sure we agree here, but just because we assume something, it doesn’t make us correct and accurate.

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