Comment by forgetfreeman
4 hours ago
The first step in resolving any problem is acknowledging that it exists. Ignoring real issues in favor of comfortable narratives is insane.
4 hours ago
The first step in resolving any problem is acknowledging that it exists. Ignoring real issues in favor of comfortable narratives is insane.
College students had 4+ years to learn about the real issues before the graduation ceremory, and the rest of their lives after it. Rubbing every problem in the world in their face at a graduation ceremony is just gauche.
To everything a time and a season. Not every second has to dedicated to "problems".
Totally agree, cut the kids a break and give them a pat on the back and tell them something inspiring! Try to remember what it was like to be in their shoes on that day.
Edit: I don’t mean “kids” in a condescending way, I just mean young people taking the first steps into adulthood and careers.
collage students had 4+ years to be gaslit, and redirected from what they were indepedently discovering, toward subservience.
"Not every second has to dedicated to "problems"." I was a lot quicker to agree with this sentiment in prior decades where we had notionally fewer of them, the big ones seemed better understood, and the folks managing the levers of power at least managed the appearance of competence.
There has never been a commencement speech made when the speaker couldn't have spent the entire time speaking about problems. Ever. Not even one. It has always been possible to spin an hour of doom and gloom about the future, based on 100% real problems.
A commencement speech is not the time or place for that.
I'm not saying it has to be 100% upbeat each time, just that it is not the time or place for an enumeration of problems.
It won't even do any good. What are they supposed to do with this that they weren't already doing? It's not like the world was sunshine and rainbows for all of them up to this point and the commencement speech is the correct time to disabuse them of that notion. This isn't your one chance to reach them with news of doom. It's your one chance to send them off and maybe encourage them to fight the doom. It is appalling to miss out on that opportunity because you've got an axe to grind and don't understand that not every opportunity to grind it is appropriate. Actively depressing and discouraging them is almost certainly achieving the opposite of what even you want to achieve.
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This will go over great at weddings and birthday parties!
We need to fight for a better world, but that requires that we're not burnt out by thinking about our problems 24/7. We need some fun and joy to make the fight worthwhile.
Like I wanna stand here and listen to a tech billionaire run through a list of shit he did to my generation.
I am a teen, so I want you to consider yourself in the shoes of us youngsters.
you grind for 4 years, you might have student debt or a substantial loss of family income as it was invested in your education (I am assuming 30k$)
Now the whole purpose of it was to educate you, now some people cheated their way through with AI or whatever in the education system.
So the whole thing ends up going to the job market and well the job market isn't doing good.
There are multiple (and I mean multiple) factors for the job market to not do good but its not a overexaggeration that people at the top who have influence might be more prone to AI psychosis (Read mitchell's tweet) and how they are all announcing that AI is the reason why you might not have jobs.
Then, you have these same people come to you on stage and say to integrate AI or use AI and this AI that AI.
What would you as a student do in this? Would you not feel angry, frustrated, would you not disagree and you all don't have a mic and can't cut off that speaker with words.
The only thing that you can do to show disagreement is to boo, it takes one kind soul's immense frustration to boo and then everybody would join, would you also not boo if that was the case, to show your disagreement
To finally have a voice because their boos had voice larger than many things which is why we are discussing it here and people are discussing it!
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Mate just because you spend more time staring at a screen wringing your hands doesn’t mean there’s notionally more problems
The "boos" are an indication that kids finally understand who to blame. In a dark time, that's a ray of hope: the kids are alright.
> the kids finally understand who to blame
You do realise that “sticking it to the man” is something that kids are uniquely good at?
This isn’t something that’s only just happened in the last generation. It’s how society has operated since before we lived in caves.
The increased younger vote for Trump is a big part of our current set of problems.
Remember: Google was declared a monopoly by Bidens Justice department. We were setting up a system to break down monopolies and restore order to the market. Trump got rid of that.
The last batch of kids was blaming their job woes on mexicans, women, and authority figures delivering mild punishments for shouting trans slurs. This batch seems more upset with the billionaires or at least AI. That's a big improvement.
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And they’re not going to do anything about it, just boo on command and go to work
That statement makes sense for Eric Schmidt but not the random real estate executive. I'm pretty sure they're just taking their anger out at the nearest target
lol the real estate executive celebrating how they've using "AI" to destroy the housing market is maybe not just the "nearest target"
Before GenAI came for their jobs, real estate was more extractive on the younger generation and it wasn't close: the median financed phone is $30/mo while median rent is $1500/mo. We generally find RE less interesting here because it has a scale ceiling and low returns-to-intelligence (compare Elon Musk to Donald Trump) but it's the oldest hustle and it never went away.
Commencement is a time of celebration and accomplishment. The students are well aware of the existence of the problem; that's the exact reason they're booing.
It's like going into your therapist's office and having them trauma-dump on you. Their issues might be entirely legitimate; it's still not the time or place.
For comparison, see Mr. Rogers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=907yEkALaAY
How come the problem isn't that "lots of people really don't like AI"?
> Some of the loudest hostile voices were reserved for Schmidt’s comments on AI, however. “You can now assemble a team of AI agents to help you with the parts you could never accomplish on your own,” comparing it to a “seat on a rocket ship.” He also suggested that the students will be the ones to “shape artificial intelligence,” even if they “don’t care about science… because AI is gonna touch everything else as well.”
The Google CEO claiming he and other tech billionaires gave you a seat on a rocket ship via AI is not "acknowledging a problem". Booing something you consider a problem is a form of acknowledgment though, so I'm not sure how you can conclude that the speaker was the one doing what you suggested and not the audience here. Do you really think "AI is like a ride on a rocket ship" is an acknowledgment of issues rather than a "comfortable narrative"?
"We're all trying to find the guy who did this" - guy dressed like hotdog
Okay, show me where these commencement speakers are acknowledging that AI is a problem.