Comment by matheusmoreira
12 hours ago
The realization that "normal" people don't care and will never care was the saddest for me. There are so few people who care. We're essentially irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. We have no leverage.
12 hours ago
The realization that "normal" people don't care and will never care was the saddest for me. There are so few people who care. We're essentially irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. We have no leverage.
When I was younger and I heard the saying along the lines of "struggling against the indifference of the universe" I didn't realize at the time it included people too.
Yeah. The indifference of the universe is perfectly manageable. It's the indifference of people that broke me... I'm starting to question every principle I've ever had.
This may sound misanthropic of me, but it has helped immensely for me to view all of humanity as insignificant. Maybe even an anomaly as far as the scale of the universe, or at least an extreme rarity, capable of building societies and machines with more power and influence than our brains and bodies ever evolved to handle.
Perhaps many of us are indifferent because that is our default, and there is no reason we were "meant to" survive this long. If the universe's age scaled down was the length of a human lifetime, we almost went extinct the day before yesterday[1].
Beyond at least that moment, we are very lucky to still be around. There is nothing about us that is special against the vast indifference of the universe. While we may feel special ourselves, against our own atomic understanding of our surroundings, we are not, and that gap could very well be a primary source of our suffering.
That said, it does not stop me from enjoying my time here in this beautiful place and, as Camus put it, raging against the absurdity.
1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-ancestors-n...
Life is complex. You probably don't optimize your life in a way that some other person would be shocked you're not doing.
And they probably optimize their life in a way that's invisible to you.
Different people care about different things (beyond near term well being). We have no ability to be deeply involved in million different topics, but most of us care about several. And random couple of people may have no intersection and could symmetrically see each other as a "useless normie".
That's, uhm, normal and why groups form by interests, from cooking to hiking to reading to hackerspaces to rocketry. I see it as neither bad nor sad. My 2c.
I understand that, I just don't like it.
Computers are world changing technology, magical runes we can bend to our will. I wanted people to care, to fully harness the power of these machines. But virtually nobody cares.
That wouldn't be a problem if this just came down to individual choice, but it doesn't. The fact they don't care has enormous impact on us who do care.
Because they don't care, we are a minority and therefore have no economic leverage. One day the big corporations will make computers that only they control. They will lock us all out. Nobody really cares, people will keep buying the locked down computers and will even defend it as a security feature as though the lockdown was for their own benefit. They could have been lords of their own digital domain, but it turns out they enjoy living as serfs in the digital fiefdoms of trillion dollar corporations.
We also can't have privacy and anonymity because of this. For anonymity to work, we need a massive anonymity set. We need lots of people using things like Tor, ideally most people if not all people. This is so that people can't tell us apart, but also so that they can't just blanket ban Tor traffic without serious economic consequences. But nobody cares, people are just fine with being spied on, so they don't use it and it weakens privacy for us who do care as well.
It's so sad, and I'm starting to actually blame these people for the sad state of things. I look at the trillionaire technocrats building this dystopian world and taking advantage of them, and I start to wonder if they were right to do so. People could have stopped this, if only they cared. They didn't... And therefore they deserve it.
How about this framing: no one person can care about everything but it's important that everyone care about something.
You pushing back on computing makes the digital world a little better for the Ikea designer who doesn't see the magic and just wants to make figure out if the pizza place is still open. In turn, that designer makes sure there's a decent baseline for the design of your home, even when you don't want to think about it. Together, you both make room for the urban planner or chef or nurse, even if you don't think much about transit or gastronomy or healthcare....
There is a mental load budget and when it runs out, people experience decision fatigue ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue ).
When that is exhausted, people are more likely to take the simple decisions without thought.
Not having to make those decisions is a privilege. Not having to worry about food prices is one such example. Not having to worry about the healthiness or preparation of the food is another.
For many people, they're fighting with the lowest levels of their needs ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs ) that the higher ones don't get much attention.
Even when one does have all the needs fulfilled and able to make decisions about things at the "self actualization - achieving potential and purpose" level, there are so many things out there that one can't make everything a personal utopia (even if they had all the resources to do so).
I'm ok with having an Ikea bed and shelving because I lack the skills and my financial priorities aren't in that direction to customize it myself. I'd love to have the perfect shelves for my game room... but Kallax is ok.
And while I've got the perfect computer setup for the things that I do... my kitchen is a mess that lets me cook the basic food things that I do. To a chef, my kitchen is dystopian. To a carpenter, my shelves are a corporate blandness. To me, their computers and digital workflows are poorly organized.
Not everyone has the capability to understand the nuances of digital security and make choices that improve (or at least don't make it worse) situation.
I can't care about all those things.
What can be done is try to contribute to a "raising tide that lifts all boats" and helps everyone more easily achieve their needs and allow others to be able to meet their potential so they can care about those things without being overwhelmed.
The minority of the population isn't "people who care about digital security" - it's "people who are able to act on realizing their potential." To say that the people who are still working on achieving their safety and physiological needs of housing and health and food and water don't "deserve it" because "if only they cared" are to blame for the world taking advantage of them and responsible for the sad state of things.
People need to be able to not worry about where their next meal comes from before they can be worried about using Tor for everything (or ensuring that people are eating healthy as a chef, or are living in houses that meet their needs as a carpenter).
What exactly are you sad about? You're only just realizing highly technical knowledge makes your opinions a minority?
DUH.
Guess what? That same knowledge gives you agency. With LLMs now, even more so. Want something? Build it (or have claude build it)
Why are you being a defeatist over something you can't control that was always the case? Nothing has changed.