this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
400 points (97.4% liked)

Showerthoughts

30037 readers
280 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. Avoid politics
    • 3.1) NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
    • 3.2) Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
    • 3.3) Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It was right there with flying cars and domed cities on the moon. That was part of the whole Disneyworld/OMNI Magazine promise about life in the year 2000.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] TranquilTurbulence 83 points 1 month ago (12 children)

Speaking of utopias, have you heard that the internet was supposed to bring people together and ends pointless debates?

The idea was that people would be exposed to opposing viewpoints since everyone could communicate effortlessly with everyone. Information would also be easily available to everyone, which would make it clear who is right and who is wrong.

Yeah, that worked out perfectly…

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean, It has partially worked, information is more accessible than it would be if you had to go find a library and search through a ton of book that may or may not even have what youre looking for, or had to try to find someone who knew something or had some skill that you wanted to learn. And it has brought together people across distance, consider the number of online communities and subcultures whos members live in far-removed places, some of whom might be in fairly small towns or rural areas that just wouldnt have enough people of a particular interest to even have a branch of that community there. And it does also reduce the monopoly on dissemination of news and information that traditional media outlets and governments used to share. Its just, the predictions didnt also take into account that it would increase the ease of spreading false information either, or that not all debates have an answer that is obvious to everyone if only they are presented certain info, or that people wont want to talk to everyone and will instead choose to talk to those they find commonality with even given the means to talk to people they dont.

[–] TranquilTurbulence 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Turns out, having the facts is only a partial solution. If people don’t want to take them as facts, you’re still going to have stupid debates about anything and everything all of the time.

We’ve fixed the information availability problem, but human psychology hasn’t changed one bit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

If everybody was fully exposed to the internet, a general consensus view on a topic would be eventually settled. The problem is that a lot of us live in walled gardens and the networks that be work to keep us in them

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (13 children)

It has.

The fact that we're in others people's faces isn't a bug, unlike before we actually can confront each other and see their arguments, in the past we just made up what the other side believed.

This is a huge improvement, and we can disprove obvious lies to everyone except the truly stupid.

Yeah, growing pains, but still a massive improvement.

load more comments (13 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Turns out it wasn't a lack of information accessibility keeping people stupid.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The internet has proven that the majority of the population doesn't want to think for themselves. That part of the population wants to be told what to think so they can fit into a group and feel better than some other group because we are social animals and that tended to work out for the vast majority of humanity's existence.

This includes people who do positive things to fit in too, and I don't think free thinkers are special, they are just not in the majority.

[–] TranquilTurbulence 3 points 1 month ago

That’s basically how innate tribalism manifests in a modern society. That used to be a killer feature to have in a human brain when you’re mostly surrounded by predators and wilderness. Being part of your local in-group was a matter of life and death, so tribalism wasn’t really optional.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Who ever said this about the internet?

On the alt.* newsgroups, long before the average non-techie started having “internet” access through prodigy or aol or genie or whatever, it was plain to see this would be nothing but arguments between strangers.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

have you heard that the internet was supposed to bring people together and ends pointless debates

I don't know why anyone would ever think that.

People are always going to have differing opinions.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

I was one of those people. I still maintain hope, but the fear of what the algorithms will do outweighs that hope some days.

The thinking was that people's core opinions are formed while they are young. They are mostly inherited from your family and society around you, so that information bubbles are formed early that are hard to break out of.

I thought that if people were exposed to multiple cultures and ideas from a young age through the Internet, they would understand them better -- not just as foreign concepts told to them through a thick lens of bias from their parents and teachers.

However, I failed to predict the opposite powers. First were the echo chambers that formed, strengthening the deepest dark sides of humanity that, before, were kept locked away in basements lacking anyone with whom to discuss and provide validity. Then the corpos and MBAs figured out they could psychology game us all with algorithms. They didn't necessarily know at first that the negative content would be the best for driving engagement; but they didn't care either.

So right now I think the bad is outweighing the good. But I don't think it has to stay this way forever.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I disagree!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Someday soon I'm sure we'll get that paperless office.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Someday soon I’m sure we’ll get that paperless office.

This one I've seen pretty darn realized. My last "in office" job was more than 5 years ago, but while there were printers available they were not used often. Nobody would hand you a piece of paper with any exception you'd have to keep it safe or for any period of time, and even then you'd also have a digital copy sent to you. Then and now, I still keep an notepad, but its only for things I need to remember for less than 24 hours or that get entered electronically very shortly after.

This was a fortune 100 company too, not some Mom-and-pop office.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago

'You won't have a calculator on you everywhere you go' was another one.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is the result of us seeing a shift from technology being benignly applied to technology being used as a tool for an unmitigated profits.

As with any product, all of the good is sucked out of it for the sake of making more money for the greedy tech billionaires.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

While capitalism is definitely a big part of it, the desire to control others for non-monetary reasons plays a huge part in it as well. LGBTQ+ harassment and abortion bans don't really play into the capitalist goals, they are there to cause suffering.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Abortion bans definitely play into capitalist goals. They ensure impoverished, desperate workers will be even more available to work for a pittance.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Lots of these predictions were actually quite horrible. e.g. flying cars would be so much worse than regular cars in so many ways.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yep. Imagine a flying car breaking down or crashing mid-air. All the passengers dead and possibly people on the ground too.

[–] possiblylinux127 7 points 1 month ago

I'm pretty sure that depends on the technology. For instance planes just become gliders in the worse possible case.

The bigger issue is when the crash by result of error. There is a limited amount of air space anyway so if you had tons of cars there would need to be highways which would create traffic equivalent to what's on the street.

In short, way more deadly for the same result.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] oyenyaaow 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Khan Academy Kids is incredible. Watching a toddler battle brain fatigue learning the number two because they want to is terrible and terrifying. If you let them pace themselves and treat it as a game without forcing a schedule they easily get two years ahead of schedule. But it is so much an outlier.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And I'm guessing you wouldn't substitute school entirely for Khan Academy.

[–] oyenyaaow 7 points 1 month ago

No. wouldn't. And the kids themselves wean themselves off the kids version at about age 6 suddenly by whatever interests them - seems all:zero for all the kids I'm aware of using the kids version. But the greatest impact in my opinion is understanding a structured lesson is a skill they mastered before formal schooling which puts them ahead. Not to mention early use of english - not our mother tongue.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

the lack of physical books certainly came true

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Actually, your kids will be taught dependency on proprietary corporate software that spies on them and conditions them into corporate vendors walled gardens in order to a create lifelong customers (+ data mining sources) in order to enrich giant tech corporations.

Ideally, your kids would be taught genuine computer literacy so that they can be digitally self sufficient but that is never going to happen in a school setting.

Here's an unrelated picture of a North American wood ape:

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

and the computers they ARE given are so locked down to the point where the subject material is blocked and you can't do the lesson the teacher has assigned for years before. Literally had that happen well over a dozen times in the last 3.5 years of hs

edit: just remembered the time someone got assigned to make a PowerPoint about boobytraps. Didn't go well lol

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

In high school, teachers used to insist we become computer techs and engineers cause it was the future! And teachers would tell us "if you don't get into computers, you'll end up as a plumber or garbage man!"

Meanwhile I'm adult, watching the plumbers and garbage man bringing home the money and having unions and benefits. And I hated computers so I just got into nothing

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

in the year 2000

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago
[–] treadful 9 points 1 month ago (5 children)

I learned almost everything I know of value from a computer.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

Came here to say this. I am one of the oldest people you’ll ever meet that learned how to read on a computer. My parents bought me reader rabbit in the mid 90s and I played the shit out of it lol.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Funny answer: well it's not like we're going to pay teachers a living wage, either way!?

Brace yourself for a significantly worse one now: Project 2025 may end teaching almost entirely. Factory workers don't need "school" like we have had it all of our lives - I mean they would to avoid getting scammed and such, hence why schools would be taken away, bc they lead to such things as unionization, which henceforth is to be consolidated "bad" (bc sharing = caring hence socialism = communism and... fuck, nobody can explain this with "factual terminology", you just have to turn off your brain in order to feel the Truthiness of it, yeah!? 👍🤮).

Similar attacks on basic infrastructure are ofc also taking place elsewhere across the world as well. And ofc even if any individual attempt to roll back provision of education fails, it will simply continue on with the next attempt, and the one after that, etc.

Therefore I vehemently disagree: learning via computers may be the only method of instruction left to people who cannot afford access to human teachers, in the world that seems inexorably and progressively advancing upon us.

So it is what may offer us perhaps the best source of hope for our future!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I disagree... If they eliminate schools then mother's would have to stay home with the kids. That would mean less current wage slaves.

Plus then the family would control what the kids are taught instead of the kids learning what they want them to learn.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)

My kids use chat gpt to learn stuff sometimes, like math. They do extensively check it's not bullshit though.

I definitely see a trend where crappy teachers get bested by computers.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (8 children)
load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Crappy teachers get bested by computers which turn out to be even crappier because they don't give a shit about things like how a kid is feeling today psychologically or if they just need some encouragement to try a little harder.

And then you get into the hallucinations.

I would rather have a crappy teacher that cares about the kids than an AI who has no capacity to do so.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's why you should have good teachers. Replacing them with machines isn't a solution, because kids have to learn from other humans. That's kinda how our species works. Learning isn't just based on strings of words, but also human interaction.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Being the devils advocate here but the quality of my teachers during school was worse than GPT4. They were more biased, made more errors, were more unfair, pushed more extremist views...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Flying cars are also horrifying: they've existed for about a century, popular culture won't accept they're a bad idea and imagine the research breakthroughs drone warfare would experience if a consumer market were funneling funds in from a whole new closely-related industry

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How will this take place when kids won't even respect a substitute teacher let alone an AI generated personality?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Who looses if they don't respect the AI?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

This is a 1972 documentary about the life in the year 2000. It is in German, but English subtitles can be set up in the video settings. It turned out to be a bit different, but some predictions back then came to reality.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Back when computers were nowhere near capable of teaching kids, one can handwave away issues with the tech by saying "when the tech is ready to do this, it will be great" essentially. When the tech is at the point where it can sort of do something, but not do it well, one instead imagines how badly things might go if one tried the notion right now instead of at whatever point in the future the technology is good enough to actually do a good job.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

well this is not far off. We had a whole year of remote learning and "computers" did teach the kids.

load more comments
view more: next ›