>In a world where fascists redefine truth, where surveillance capitalist companies, more powerful than democratically elected leaders, exert control over our desires, do we really want their machines to become part of our thought process? To share our most intimate thoughts and connections with them?

Generally speaking people just cannot really think this way. People broadly are short term thinkers. If something is convenient, people will use it. Is it easier to spray your lawn with pesticides? Yep, cancer (or biome collapse) is a tomorrow problem and we have a "pest" problem today. Is it difficult to sit alone with your thoughts? Well good news, Youtube exists and now you don't have to. What happens next (radicalization, tracking, profiling, propaganda, brain rot) is a tomorrow problem. Do you want to scroll at the end of the day and find out what people are talking about? Well, social media is here for you. Whether or not it's accidentally part of a privatized social credit system? Well again, that 's a problem for later. I _need_ to feel comfortable _right now_. It doesn't matter what I do to the world so long as I'm comfortable _right now._

I don't see any way out of it. People can't seem to avoid these patterns of behavior. People asking for regulation are about as realistic as people hoping for abstinence. It's a correct answer in principle but just isn't going to happen.

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Razengan 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> I _need_ to feel comfortable _right now_. It doesn't matter what I do to the world so long as I'm comfortable _right now._

I think that can be offset if you have a strong motivation, a clear goal to look forward to in a reasonable amount of time, to help you endure through the discomfort:

Before I had enough financial independence to be able to travel at will, I was often stuck in a shit ass city, where the most fun to be had was video games and fantasizing about my next vacation coming up in a month or 2, and that helped me a lot in coping with my circumstances.

Too few people are allowed or can afford even this luxury of a pleasant future, a promise of a life different/better than their current.

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Razengan 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> People broadly are short term thinkers.

I wonder how much of that is "nature vs. nurture"?

Like the Tolkienesque elves in fantasy worlds, would humans be more chill too if our natural lifespans were counted in centuries instead of decades?

Or is it the pace of society, our civilization, that always keeps us on edge?

I mean I'm not sure if we're born with a biological sense of mortality, an hourglass of doom encoded into our genes..

What if everybody had 4 days of work per week, guaranteed vacation time every few months, kids didn't have to wake up at 7/8 in the morning every day, and progress was measured biennially, e.g. 2 years between school grades/exams, and economic performance was also reviewed in 2 year periods, and so on, could we as a species mellow the fuck out?

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IAmBroom an hour ago | parent [-]

I've wondered about this a lot, and I think it's genetic and optimized for survival in general.

Dogs barely set food aside; they prefer gorging, which is a good survival technique when your food spoils and can be stolen.

Bees, at the other end of the spectrum, spend their lives storing food (or "canning", if you will - storing prepared food).

We first evolved in areas that were storage-adverse (Africa), and more recently many of us moved to areas with winters (both good and needful storage). I think "finish your meal, you might not get one tomorrow" is our baseline survival instinct; "Winter is coming!" is an afterthought, and might be more nurture-based behavior than the other.

	▲	Razengan 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, and it's barely been 100 years, probably closer to 50, since we have had enough technology to make the daily lives of most (or half the) humans in the world comfortable enough that they can safely take 1-2 days off every week. For the first time in human history most people don't have to worry about famine, wars, disasters, or disease upending their lives; they can just wait it out in their homes. Will that eventually translate to a more relaxed "instinct"?