Comment by rcbdev
3 years ago
I once came across the take that the shift in popular sci-fi from utopian to dystopian lead to a generation of wealth that has been shaped by these stories.
The logic is that if you have lots of popular fiction describing the future a certain way, these ideas will influence the future to become that way to an extent.
I think it's a bit understated just how much popular culture shapes our view of the world, not only of what's true, but also of history, what might come true, inevitable patterns in history, and so on.
But then, many alive today have probably seen more of the world through a screen than outside of one, so it perhaps shouldn't be surprising.
Dunno, maybe Plato was onto something when he wanted to ban fiction in his republic...
It's not clear to me that that's the order of causality.
It's easier to be optimistic and to write optimistic when your society has high marginal tax rates and visibly uses those rates to combat poverty, fund research, and subsidize college (and when you're part of the demographic receiving most of those benefits).
When you see societal protections being stripped away and privatized, the suffering that was caused by that, and the callous nature of your fellow citizens who "got theirs" and continue to vote for politicians who attack and tear down the systems that enabled such growth and optimism, you're more likely to write stories shaped by that world view.
Dystopian fiction has a long history, but from stories I've read it feels like the inflection point was, as with so many things, the Vietnam war, which for many people shattered the myth of technological infallability.
> from stories I've read it feels like the inflection point was, as with so many things, the Vietnam war
There's not just one inflection point where things get dark. There are many. Vonnegut might be associated with the Vietnam generation, but I think living though the WWII firebombing of Dresden as a POW probably had a bigger impact on him, for example.
I was referring to a societal inflection point, not any one person - of course there are individual counterexamples.
I consider Vonnegut cynical but not dystopian in most cases (Player Piano being a notable exception)
> the shift in popular sci-fi from utopian to dystopian
As a kid I used to want things to like Star Trek.
I now have a smart phone instead of a communicator, touch screen tablets, a universal translator, my house responds when I call it "computer," and I've seen those expensive in-wall coffee/tea makers . . .
But that wasn't what I really wanted. I wanted the future where people didn't have to worry about money, where the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy wasn't a concern for anyone, and where people were enabled to learn and produce and contribute as they truly desired, so they did.
Gene Roddenberry died. Everything Star Trek turned dark and twisted. And I realized that I didn't get my dream so much as a pile of consumer goods, most of them trying to advertise at me, surveil me, or both.
I think I'm not the only one with this experience.
Yup! LLMs are literally the most “life imitates art technology” situation of all time! By writing a bunch of shit about how an AI is supposed to behave, lo and behold, the AI acts stereotypically.
That’s why people need to STFU about Rokos basilisk.