109 billion people have died outside of underwater caves. I'll take my chances.
DuckOverload
joined 8 months ago
Bud, you sound like a technophile geek. The kind of person who custom built his own computer. You're not the target customer. Apple builds products for people that don't care about technology, they just care about what the technology does and want it to be easy and seamless. And that is a vast majority of the people.
I think the issue here is that we're all genetically just apes and we live in a world where we're expected to know about geopolitics, outrageous technologies, all kinds of cultural artifacts, and a bazillion other complexities of modern life, in addition to the basics of feeding ourselves, finding a mate, and child rearing. At the same time, we have behemoth corporations in control of all media with a strong interest in keeping people dumb, angry and discontent. And education is... not what it should be.
No, humans aren't inherently evil or stupid or whatever. We've just inherited a world situation that we are not adapted for, and few people are able to learn and grow sufficiently to really understand and handle it all properly.
I think it depends on context. If you're brought up in a wholesome environment with respect and positive values, you'll realize that living like that is better. If you're brought up in a cesspool of fear and violence, you'll think that's the way the world is, and you'll behave accordingly.
It's not that America is inherently bad, or any particular cultural system. It's that when a society doesn't maintain its values and spiritual core, it will rot from the inside out.
The problem is our society has sold out so much of our community, our education, our values for convenience and corporate greed. This is like what the Right used to blather on about, but they're to blame for most of the real depravity. In any case, we're just seeing the fallout.
Fig ma balls.
News Feed Eradicator is a must have. I can check in on Facebook for personal messages and events, even post occasionally... but I don't see the feed and I'm not the least bit tempted.
It's also good for sites like Reddit (which I'm migrating away from, of course) where you can disable it for a set amount of time, to enjoy some idle web browsing time without slipping into a vortex.
Also, not a browser extension, but I use Google's Family Link to moderate my web use. I can't access social media on my phone. My wife administers it. It's occasionally inconvenient, but on the whole it has been transformative.
Buttons? Ew.
I have consistently been Luddish about moves like this (removign physical keyboard, eliminating phone jack, even the tablet form factor in general) but I think I was mostly wrong, and monimizing hardware features in favor of software seems to improve user experience.
If you really want to escape from the data-mining ad-driven model, you could always switch to Google Fiber.
I think this is pretty cool. Sure, capitalists are gonna capitalist, but here we have subversive moves in a positive direction.
Because life is and will continue to be pretty good for a lot of people. I definitely think it will be for my kid. Also, Idiocracy. If all the good, thoughtful people take your attitude then every human will be an idiot or asshole, which is an utterly hopeless future. I get that hopelessness. I felt more or less as you do for a while. But there a good, noble reasons to have a family. It's not so cut and dry.