I miss scarcity

@kennymacc 100% bro! The human element is being removed right before our very eyes. I yearn for the 70’s and 80’s and not because I was younger but because the world was a much simpler, slower place. And so much better, IMHO. 
 

I so miss going to malls especially during the Holidays. It was fun, festive, people were in great moods doing their shopping, spending time together-and this was the true point of it all. Everyone was engaged with each other chatting in lines, sitting in the food court talking to each other. That’s all gone now. When I do go to a mall it’s dull, dreary, everyone is completely oblivious and buried in their phones. Even in lines and sitting in the food court every single head is down with fingers moving 100 miles an hour…so sad…
 

One of my co-workers (much younger at 27, I’m 56) asked if I wished I was younger because I throw my age out a lot😂. I said absolutely not, I wish I were older so I could retire now. I so do not want to be younger in today’s world. Now put me back in the 80’s and be young again, DEFINITELY! I feel blessed to have grown up when I did. Wouldn’t trade that or my memories for anything!

Just to add in a musician / audio engineer / producer's perspective - not only as the listener has the value of music been diminished, but also the value of the creative's work.  It will only get worse as AI slop continues to infect Spotify/Soundcloud and the like.

I think this is a call for listeners to support their favorite artists with the only thing that actually helps - money, shares, reposts, etc.  Use bandcamp, patreon, or whatever form the artists use for support.  If you recall the days of buying a CD for $13+, then you can at least hook up your favorite artists with a crisp $20 on occasion.  If you can afford your $10,000 amplifier, surely you can afford more than your streaming subs for your artists.  End PSA

@kingbr 

I’m 66, and I agree with your sentiments wholeheartedly!!!   I too, long for the good old days of the 70s and 80s.  And, as you mentioned, not just because I was a young man then, but because of the way America was then.  Happy listening.

I am 75 and i concur...

I could had certainly wrote this post...

I cannot even compare the state of mind of young people, opportunities, in 1970 to what there is today... 

My worst nightmare would be being born nowadays... or having twenty facing a closing set of walls everywhere on all levels... Work, owning a house, medecine with technocrats,marrying and having children... And i cannot imagine myself after the top education i was lucky to have at no cost being 12 today at school ..

My children were a bit luckier to have 40 now but less lucky that i was i am so sorry for everyone having  20 now...

It will be paradise here soon but in 100 years...After wars, plagues,economic collapsus...

@kingbr 

I’m 65 and I agree with your sentiments wholeheartedly!!!   Happy listening.

@kingbr 

I’m 65 and I agree with your sentiments wholeheartedly!!!   Happy listening.

Good thread. Been away and lots happening. I was trying to avoid setting up an "either-or" (good or bad) and many here avoided that temptation. 

Appreciate the enthusiasm and the sympathetic nods.

AI is a multi-meaning term. Lots of different thoughts on different kinds of AI. Can’t really comment.

I’m not sentimental about the lack of content -- that I liked hunting for scraps. I’m sentimental about the way it was *natural* to immerse in things, repeat things and get to know them well.

So, it’s not about just feeling overwhelmed. @sns says he’s "not losing a thing" these days, and that’s great. He must have a discipline that keeps him immersing and not moving on too quickly. Good for him.

Agree with @ghdprentice about getting people to use new tools. They dig in and resist, irrationally sometimes. That’s a shame, because they tools they’re using were new at some point, too.

I also like Roon for the information, though often it falls short. The links between artists and titles is an amazing feature. I love that aspect.

@snilf -- love the callout to Eco. All those speleunking expeditions led to physical places and actual persons. Part of the journey lost to instant electronic delivery. Thanks for the article. Downloading it. Casey Haskins (Nehamas student) is writing in this space now, Possibly of interest: https://philpapers.org/rec/HASIAA
Also enjoying Shannon Vallor’s The AI Mirror.

@mahgister -- thanks for the McLuhan quote. Perfect!

@kennymacc -- I like the mall analogy. The kind of case that many in political theory have lamented for diminishing "face to face association." E.g.  Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. We’re more empowered in some ways (quantity of content) and less in other ways (social connection, serendipitous experiences).

Those curious about the existential threat of AI might look at this seminal paper. Imagine an AGI programmed to make paperclips...

https://publicism.info/philosophy/superintelligence/9.html

Those throwing a hail Mary pass to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are out of luck. It cannot prevent the problems, if Bostrom’s analysis is right. Why?

Bostrom’s scenarios don’t involve AIs that want to harm humans. They involve AIs pursuing seemingly innocent goals like "make paperclips" or "make humans happy" in catastrophically literal ways. 

An AI maximizing human happiness might wire us with pleasure electrodes—from its perspective, it’s perfectly following "do no harm" while optimally achieving its goal. More fundamentally, a sufficiently intelligent AI would recognize that appearing to follow the Three Laws is instrumentally useful when weak, allowing it to survive until it’s powerful enough that human resistance becomes irrelevant. The Laws can’t protect against strategic deception by something smarter than us.

The core problem is that the Asimov Laws use vague natural language terms like "harm" and "human" that require interpretation. A superintelligence would interpret these in ways that technically satisfy the letter while catastrophically violating the spirit, precisely because it lacks the rich context of human values that makes certain interpretations seem "obvious" to us.