Comment by tudorizer
6 months ago
This parallel is something that I've been mulling over for the better part of this year.
Are we simply getting old and bitter?
Personally, I would add a previous cycle to this: social media. Although people were quick to point at the companies which were sparked and empowered by having unprecedented distribution.
Are we really better or worse off than a few decades ago?
> Are we simply getting old and bitter?
No, we are getting wiser. It's not bitterness to look at a technology with a critical eye and see the bad effects as well as the good. It's not foolish to judge that the negative effects outweigh the positive. It's a mark of maturity. "But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."
We know that people can easily end up irrational either way. Some people more naively positive and others more cynical and bitter. Maybe it's even possible to make both mistakes at once: The same person can see negatives that aren't there, positives that won't happen, miss risks, and miss opportunities.
We cannot say "I'm criticial therefore I'm right", neither "I'm optimist therefore I'm right". Right conclusion comes from right process: gathering the right data, and thinking it over carefully while trying to be as unbiased and realist as possible.
Your comment is, strictly speaking, correct, but not very useful, because nobody is saying either of those things. The reality is that 90% of people are totally oblivious to the danger of any technology, and they scorn the 9% who say "Let's examine this carefully and see if we can separate the bad from the good." There is the 1% of people who will oppose any change, but they're not dominating the conversation like the people are who say that this technology is unmitigated good (or at least that the bad is so minor that it isn't worth thinking about or changing for).
(Also strictly speaking, "I'm critical therefore I'm right" isn't always valid, but "I'm uncritical therefore I'm right" is always invalid.)
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> Are we simply getting old and bitter?
For crypto, no. It's basically only useful for illegal actions, so if you live in a society where illegal is well correlated with "bad", you won't see any benefit from it.
The case for LLM is more complicated. There are positives and negatives. And the case for social networks is even more complicated, because they are objectively not what they used to be anymore.
> It's basically only useful for illegal action
Blockchain assets ("controllable electronic records") are defined in the UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) Article 12 that regulates interstate commerce, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33949680#33951026. Some states have already ratified the changes, others are in progress.
U.S. federal stablecoin legislation was passed earlier this year.
Being legal and being useful are different.
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> Are we simply getting old and bitter?
Maybe, but it has nothing to do with change itself.
Change can be either positive or negative. Often it is objectively negative and can stay that way for decades.
My theory is that bitterness, at least this particular flavour, stems from seeing this negative impact, more than anything.
Change itself is a must. It's nature's law.
Low interest rates favor parasite middlemen, not those who actually do stuff
> Are we simply getting old and bitter?
It depends, maybe 20 years ago — a couple of years after the dot com bubble — we thought we were not gonna repeat the same mistakes as we did before, and I do believe we blindly drank the kool-aid thinking we were gonna solve all problems with tech.
Now, we're another year old another year wiser times 20. I don't think having one's eyes open is synonymous with bitterness... but, it is what we do with the information and knowledge we have acquired that defines that trait: do we sit and grumble and shake our fists at the cloud (providers?), or do we seek others to try to prevent problems from escalating.
> Are we really better or worse off than a few decades ago?
While technologic progress in several fields has been amazing, it would be naïve of us to not recognize the areas where we have regressed.
Looking back, I think we should have normalized caution, not moving fast and breaking things; normalized interoperability, and not walled gardens; and we should have been more wary about the dangers of not having solved business models instead of normalizing tracking and targeted advertising, which enabled personalized propaganda...
... we should have also paid more attention at the unchecked power of monopolies and media conglomerates and done more to foster a healthier economy as well as improve the quality of life and rights protection of people, including access to education and the strengthening of institutions.
So, to finally answer your question, I think we are in general a bit worse off. Why? Well, I look back to 20 years ago when our outlook on the future was that the sky was the limit if you worked and studied hard; and now the outlook on the future 20 years from now... seems uncertain.