I think it’s bigger than a decrease in attendance in religious groups though I agree the impact is felt there too. Social clubs, non-profits, fraternal and civic organizations, neighborhood associations, labor unions, local political chapters, trade associations, etc etc.
Basically all forms of outward focused, community or geographic based groups seem to have been on a downward trend for decades in favor of hyperreal, inward-focused online spaces.
Church is a big thing though, it's weekly and not some hobby or niche. Like I've moved more often than I kinda wanted to, and each time instantly started hanging out with friends I met after church, even though I wasn't going there to meet people.
I thought this was going to talk about the struggle of sizing windows to arbitrary widths. I often try to keep slack and my email windows side by side and Mac OS seems to go out of its way these days to frustrate my efforts and maximize the one window or the other.
The resize corners grab area is also very frustrating though.
Very cool concept. Several people have made good suggestions on improving the UX. If I were implementing I’d probably try to support a stack of picked items so I could grab several and move them all at once.
I like the spirit of your efforts. But without simultaneously fracturing and shrinking the power of capitalist elites your ideas wrt to government pay transparency seems destined to fail. Everyone likes making money—even when they already have enough. Sure, pay each politician 1 million dollars a year. They’re still over 100,000 times poorer than the richest in our society. They’ll still be corruptible and liable to influence by the monied elite. They’ll still get gifts in return for favor. And with more positions it’ll be easier to rotate people in and retire them out to receive their bribes held in escrow contingent upon their votes. And my god the amount of pork shoved into bills to satisfy 1300 different representatives!!! If congress wasn’t already in a dead stop before it will be now.
My inner cynic says it’s going to take a violent revolution followed by a complete reshaping of society from the top down. Or a total dissolution of the Union combined with a complete social reversal on money and work.
I can't reply without a book, maybe literally actually which is problematic bc nobody reads anymore books regularly anymore.
A crazy number of people will read crazy long comments tho, so when I noticed that 7-8 months ago, I took to the Internet and started dropping "bite sized" pieces of ideas that I only had crumbs of.
I've been actively contemplating, researching, imagining, discussing, generally working towards a New America - with only what I didn't want it to be as a guide.
That new America has to include an economic system that BOTH motivates and mandates activities that corrects the current imbalance of wealth distribution AND it must also implement simultaneously changes that prevent such an imbalance again fr occuring in the foreseeable future.
I'm about done actually. Motivation was everything. A billionaire is motivated by the pursuit of money - so that's where we get them.
They can be billionaires, but we are going to gamify their pursuit of our collective monies, so much so that between massively increasing tax brackets/rates on those in the upper echelons - we also make them do stuff and things with their money - or they literally hit maximum limits in their bank accounts/investment brokerages - perhaps there is maximum wealth total, so if the taxes don't get it and the billionaires too mentally ill with dragon sickness to spend it on their missions to level up - then they can't claim or accept a single dollar more until they do.
Essentially, I turned regulations into incentives and incentives into regulations tho how exactly is hard to explain - it's not standalone and ought to be utilized alongside an asset value tax - a small tax on the fair market value of any and all assets above x amount, and owned by someone with a net worth of greater than x amount.
Without just explaining more I'll skip to the end.
If assets don't just appreciate in value - tho the ones like single family homes will actually appear to be become negative value by the 3rd or maybe 4th home owned by/between the same property own owner, all directly due to increasing taxes on fees applied to all properties owned by said person
I can say my family never once paid for AOL or cared about its basket of features. But we did pay for NetZero for a long time until broadband become more affordable in our area.
> RD: I do think we should err on the side of caution when it comes to ethical decisions on the treatment of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) which might be an Artificial Consciousness (AC). Already, although I THINK you are not conscious, I FEEL that you are.
Feelings and pain are embodied experience. There’s no ethical quandary in my mind when dealing with these creations. Because they do not feel—they imitate feeling. They do not get depressed—they imitate the patterns of depressed humans.
The only way this changes is if their creators act with cruelty to give them subsystems which induce emotional states unnecessarily. But why would you give pain to your digital servants? Would you not be in some way responsible for all the pain they felt thereafter?
Scary presentation! And nice to see some of the so-called “party of math” pushing back against the trump tax cuts. He still mostly demonizes the democrats, but it’s interesting that not once did he mention raising taxes on the very wealthy. Why does America need billionaires?
I’ve been coming around to a similar point of view that modern software technology removes human agency. Everything is being automated—we thought it would free up our time for other things, but to my eyes we’ve become less free. AI is only going to accelerate this phenomenon—robbing us of even higher levels of agency as well as our ability to think independently and deeply. All in the name of efficiency and engagement. I struggle with this daily since I work in and have been steeped in tech for decades. I used to love it. Part of me still sees the good that modern technology has enabled too. I’m not sure what the solution is here besides logging off the internet and returning to live in the real world with real human interaction and slower, more meaningful connections.
Basically all forms of outward focused, community or geographic based groups seem to have been on a downward trend for decades in favor of hyperreal, inward-focused online spaces.