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Comment by supportengineer | Hacker News Reader

I see everything turning to shit. It's the collapse of society. We've seen that no one is out there protecting us and "fighting the good fight".

We had a good run.

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Society has always been collapsing, at least since the younger generation first started making written notes and letting their brains rot instead of keeping their memory exercised.

You're right fellow snarky silly redditor this is just business as usual and the young and the old people freaking out! The polycrisis of climate, collapse of a hegemon and brain of the west, billions starving from climate collapse and the effect that will have on the psyche of our species are just silly little problems that wont fuck us forever. We're going to be living in a hell of sorts for like over a century. It really is those dang people overreacting isn't it?

Civilization does not collapse from the edges, but rot from the center — in our case when middle management silences vision, and shareholders trade legacy for dividends.

Shareholders aren't the center of civilization. Pretty much everyone is a shareholder now, at least indirectly through some sort of retirement plan or pension fund. We all benefit when profitable companies return some of that profit to shareholders in the form of dividends or share buybacks.

For all of its flaws, the EU does attempt to protect consumers. Lina Khan had a good run while she was around.

What about the Antichrist guy that allegedly took down 4chan because they came after him/her?

Less scatalogically, everything has a lifecycle.

So true.

Quite a bit before Doctorow started emphasizing his feelings about a particular type of stink, I was having a bit of hindsight that we had already entered the Garbaceous Period which seemed like it could have the potential to permeate in a lot more different ways if something isn't done.

> "fighting the good fight"

Well certainly currentaffairs isn't unless the good fight is platforming genocide deniers like Noam Chomsky. Or complaining that the US is undermining Russia's power too much. Or advocating for Ukraine to give up land to Russia to end the war.

Thinking that there is such a thing as an infallible hero or idol is a fool's belief. Noam Chomsky can be right in some parts, and wrong in some other parts. Everybody is, that's kind of the point of our species.

He's not a fallible hero. Has he ever been anything more than a propagandist?

He did some work on grammar long ago. Then he held back research in cognitive science for decades promoting nativism.

And he's spent most of his time embracing Kremlin talking points both during the cold war and post cold war. Some of that work includes denials of genocide that he has still not apologized for.

I disagree I think China is doing a fine job of working on a future of the country they can be proud of. And their expansionist efforts all over but especially Africa are something that I hope yield great and positive outcomes.

The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed.

I think a better way of putting it is the collapse of western style free and democratic societies. This is the post-truth era where reality doesn't matter and you can consume any version of "reality" you feel like on Internet.

China is not impacted because it has a tight grip on what its citizens can consume. Society will not collapse all over the world it will just become an authoritarian dystopia.

I think that’s another way of saying social cohesion is critical, and China has very strong cohesion whilst in Western countries it’s falling apart. We can’t stop dividing ourselves and fighting and I think social media is a major driver of that.

Perhaps, but it's entirely possible that China will collapse in another violent revolution within our lifetimes. It has happened several times before and will probably happen again. China has serious structural problems with food and energy security, and in a crisis the central government may find it difficult to maintain the loyalty of internal security forces.

As the old Chinese saying goes, "The mountains are high, and the emperor is far away."

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