Submitted by Exiled_to_Earth t3_zz203q in Futurology
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Comments
zenfalc t1_j2cm0m9 wrote
It sounds good, but I have a feeling given humanity's nature that this would be turned into a barrier to entry. Whether bias, bureaucratic obstructionism, political BS, or religious objection, someone would find a way to weaponize it. Like, I love the idea, but people are not typically nice when they want power.
2old4acoolname t1_j2d4z7j wrote
You are quite right.
CTDKZOO t1_j29kkx8 wrote
I read a few of their fantasy books. I'm going to have to find this as it explores a concept I am fascinated by. Knowing when to say when.
To the point of /u/Exiled_to_Earth 's question about the line - there is no line. Individually we may have them but there's always someone willing to go the next step. So it's hard to know when to stop even if there's a hard case to decide "Is this helping, or just doing something because we can?"
2old4acoolname t1_j2a5rxf wrote
Got to thinking about your “there is no line” comment. I don’t have a direct response to that, other than opinion. And that is that there is no line AS LONG AS there is an equal amount of responsibility, education, and understanding developed with the new technology. A good example of what I mean to avoid by my statement is America having Nuclear weapons. Our country is just 300 years old. We have no stable culture (other than extremism) and no depth of wisdom as a nation. And yet we have nuclear weapons. It’s like giving a toddler a loaded gun. Now, you’ll ask me how to make my desires happen. And that’s when the crickets start to chirp. Cause I got no idea, lol
CTDKZOO t1_j2a8rkk wrote
It's something I've struggled with all my life. There is no line. Holding yourself back on a technology doesn't mean others will. Doing it because others will does not mean the technology is good.
Your nuclear weapons example is great.
Not developing them feels like a mistake in hindsight.. but developing and using them does not mean it is/was great. But how do we let go now that others have them?
We've trapped ourselves in a tech, but had we not done it what would have happened?
Back when everyone was freaking out about a cloned sheep I started to think this way regarding human cloning. If we don't, someone else will. If they do and we don't, what happens next?
It gets messy
25hourenergy t1_j2cfvzr wrote
Well, like the protagonist’s parents in GATTACA. They chose to have a baby without selecting for the baby’s best-possible traits. Compared to all the other optimized babies, this baby was an “in-valid” and high risk for heart issues, personality issues, etc etc. and had to work as a janitor until he stole someone else’s identity.
mypeez t1_j2d6a90 wrote
Did they choose to? I thought they couldn't afford to do as much for their second child as their first.
Great movie BTW.
25hourenergy t1_j2dvqgl wrote
Yes, and other way around—protagonist was the in-valid, and it was so horrifying for his parents they decided to optimize the younger son (who ended up being stronger and bigger than his brother from a young age).
It is implied though that yeah, if you can’t afford it you get left behind by the superior “valids”. There’s currently a movement among the ultra-rich Silicon Valley for this.
mypeez t1_j2dzweo wrote
It has been a while since I've watched it, probably 25 years now that I think about it.
2old4acoolname t1_j2adug7 wrote
Exactly! It’s a real twist.
mhornberger t1_j29x9fm wrote
What "science fiction" means differs, since there is a lot of dystopian fiction out there, far larger than the amount of solar-punk type positive portrayals.
> How accepting did they think they could be in a future where they had to eat bugs instead of cow
Stuff like that is a great example. "Eating bugs" can be a Snowpiercer-style dystopian image of you forcing down cockroaches while the rich eat steak. But IRL insect protein is being made into flour or other substrates for processed foods. Insects are mainly being grown for chicken and aquaculture feed. And soon culture meat is going to enter the market and scale. But much of r/futurology seems intent on framing that as dystopian, too.
> The question of how far we could adapt to higher science fiction level advances was truly fascinating to listen in on as my students debated.
I think there are a lot of questions posed by science fiction that our ethics are just not equipped for yet. Take robots or androids. Where do we consider them human? A mining robot isn't going to be seen to have rights or need protection, I'd wager. But what if your neighbor has a bevy of sex-bots that look like underage kids? Should that be illegal? But they're robots, right?
Consider too virtual worlds. Do you allow any fantasy to be acted out in virtual worlds? Nominally, going in, sure, many would agree to that. But humans have an 'icky' factor that kicks in very quickly. Consider hentai now. There are plenty of types of porn that were never anything more than ink on a page or pixels on a screen, but people would still want to be illegal. No humans were harmed, but people insist (with no real foundation) that it "encourages" this or that, ergo if you hand-wave hard enough then it's a public danger and thus should be banned. It's bullshit, but it's also that "icky" factor kicking in, where people have to rationalize banning it on basis of moral revulsion. That's only going to become a more acute problem as technology improves.
Mr_Mons_of_Nibiru t1_j2b934g wrote
Canada is about to vote on whether or not their Medical Assistance In Death(MAID) act will extend to mental health patients that are suicidal. They tried to sell an aging Paralympian on considering euthanasia instead of getting a hip replacement.
Plus, there's this guy in Switzerland that is trying to patent an actual suicide pod. It's currently sitting in an art gallery on exhibition. I believe it kills you with gas, nitrogen I think.
In Walter Tevis's glorious unsung masterpiece, "Mockingbird" he postulates a future where all services are automated, nobody works, drugs are mandatory this making humanity sterile and unable to read or tell time or think, and talking to each other is made illegal as an "invasion of privacy". And there is an epidemic if elderly people lighting themselves on fire in public.
We're close.
Grayman222 t1_j2d73kr wrote
MAID is scary as it looks like a fast ride down the slippery slope. I've seen a story or two of people going into the process because they have a medical condition that cannot be comfortable with their current finances. If various social safety nets and healthcare were enhanced more the person would prefer that to MAID.
The concept of MAID for non-curable pain, losing your mind, terminal conditions and removing the legally grey exposure to doctors, nurses, and family on itself seems ethical and moral but oh boy does it open a flood gate.
I think the paralympian you mention was also a vet, and one employee at VA had pushed MAID to 4-5 people who called in before it made the news. Still scary, but the media spun it off into a more outrageous second terrible story instead of part of an existing one.
Mr_Mons_of_Nibiru t1_j2d9apw wrote
I read that an 18 year old went behind his parents' back at a clinic and he had gone through the whole process without their knowledge he just had to make it there on the date. Incurable nerve pain condition.....that has to be living hell ....but 18?
I thought Canada was medical utopia compared to us here, has to be. But I'm curious, what safety nets could be improved?
[deleted] t1_j2dclc6 wrote
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b00ks101 t1_j2divgn wrote
[I am not mad and there is no darkness in my soul.] I welcome a future where a much older, dilapidated version of me is able to have access to the 'suicide pod' you mention. I think if you have ever actually seen the terrible end that faces some old people in our current health care system - begging to go home at each family visit, unending pain, bed sores, catheters, urinary infections, gasping for breath and the eventual 'drowning' as your lungs fill with fluid or if you are lucky heart failure - YOU WOULD BEG for a such a peaceful, painless transition on your own terms.
We would be arrested if we treated animals the way we treat some humans stretching out their last weeks or months for no other purpose than "it is gods will" or some other ancient hierarchical bullshit. If you haven't seen it you are lucky - but you are also uninformed and should not be allowed to have an opinion until you have actually seen what awaits you with your own eyes. If that was gods plan for us all along - then he needs a new playbook or we need a new coach.
Personally I welcome the suicide pod option for me as a sane choice in a hopefully more compassionate, rational future.
TLDR: Personal choice is always good - especially if its about how you die.
Mr_Mons_of_Nibiru t1_j2djkh1 wrote
You should embroider the words in the brackets on your soapbox preach. Uninformed. Not allowed. The whole point of that paragraph was to address the MAID act being extended to the mentally ill. Hope you enjoyed yourself.
But sure, because I didn't extend it to the population YOU had in mind for euthanasia, you know how I think and what I deserve.
b00ks101 t1_j2efvsg wrote
please dont consider my comments a personal attack - they were a pow only.
WholeEmbarrassed950 t1_j2dlxgs wrote
As someone who has been suicidally depressed for literally decades I would like to die in a dignified way. The main thing stopping me is that I don’t want to traumatize my wife or kids when they come across me hanging or with a shotgun in my mouth.
theWunderknabe t1_j297akp wrote
Well different for each person. I think in an advanced future where humanity (and its off-spawn..) are able to settle space en massé and ressource based fighting we have now (territory, oil, power, EEZ, fishing rights, etc.) largely seizes, each group could just have their own society really.
One likely future is one where the solar system and eventually other star systems are settled by many habitats on other planets, moons, asteroids or in plain space and each essentially is its own nation.
I think there will be hardcore conservative techno-primitivists and also the opposite, what ever that means, and anything in between.
I think the border will be drawn where behaviour of one group threaten others in their existence, so groups like hardcore space Nazis or -Commies etc. that want to convert everyone else or outright kill them.
mhornberger t1_j29z5we wrote
I think this spreading out, the independence that would offer, would pose some interesting moral conundrums. Sure, everyone "does their own thing," But... not really. You'll have a cult habitat/asteroid where a guru is lording over his 50 glassy-eyed underage wives. Do you intervene? These young women aren't "doing their own thing," after all. You could have a world where white supremacists have reinstated race-based slavery, and they're kidnapping people from other worlds. Do you intervene?
That's not to say that you could govern a 1000-light-year-wide empire, with the limits imposed by the communication lag (speed of light), etc. Not to mention transportation, obviously. Which I guess is why most science fiction just has the convenient trope of FTL travel and communication and whatnot.
theWunderknabe t1_j2bzms7 wrote
>Do you intervene?
Good question? Do we now? Not really when it is not in our own country. Politicians send a strongly worded letter and celebrities write some angry twitter posts, but thats pretty much it.
Only when things really escalate and threaten other countries, especially our own, we actually doing something. Uigurs get mistreated in China. This is a known fact that is against what western societies believe. Yet we don't really interfere because it doesn't actually inflict us in any way.
I don't say that is good, but that is how it is and that will likely continue, because risking war as the only way to actually force someone to change something over things of smaller magnitude such as the mistreatment of Uigurs or a strange space-harem would only get more deadly than they already are and thus get avoided as much as possible.
drop_database_run t1_j2csxjz wrote
>Yet we don't really interfere because it doesn't actually inflict us in any way.
The cost of intervening outweighs any benefit we would receive. Now should some other factor arise requiring intervening in a nation such as China, were going to get what we pay for
JynFlyn t1_j29yx9z wrote
I feel like it’s important to draw the distinction of whether or not it’s rational to reject the new things. For example, eating real food over pills. Pills would be faster, easier, and probably cheaper than a real meal. But they wouldn’t match the flavor/texture experience. Either side would be valid to argue for. Whereas with electronic grading there isn’t any real reason to do paper grading. It’s just stubbornness and being set in your ways.
Personally, I don’t think I’d ever stay away from something beneficial or more convenient out of pure stubbornness but who knows.
Sensitive-Issue84 t1_j2dnldi wrote
This is the human way. Lol. As for the pills? No one would go for that, it was a big talking point in the 50-60s but nothing ever came of it because people like to eat food, they like to sit down and talk and drink and eat. And it seems no matter the consequences or even what we are eating.
AndromedaAnimated t1_j2bmzbh wrote
Bugs? Pill? Don’t care, I am pretty anhedonic when it comes to food. But insects are actually rather tasty, flies for example taste sweet.
My grandkids marrying gynoids and androids? If my son already wanted to, I‘d congratulate him on making a wise decision.
AI rights? I am pretty much with Lemoine on that - not because I consider AI to be sentient already but because it’s better to prepare in advance.
Brain chips to access the internet? I am a neuropsychologist applying to university to acquire a computational science degree so I can finally work in exactly this field. Neuralink, Synchron, yes to it all.
But I draw the line at matchmaking apps. Just no. I don’t want to be matched to some human, give me a robot girlfriend instead!
Okay now the serious answer: we cannot know where we would really draw the line until we do it. Sometimes even not then - only recognising we drew the line in hindsight.
cgb1234 t1_j295ijl wrote
Such a good post. Well written, with a lot of food for thought. Many cultures fear any change and progress (usually religion based..so based on nothing other than "it's been this way") and remain 'stuck' in that time period. Look at the extremists in the Middle East and their attitude towards women, for example.
I've never understood fear of knowledge to achieve a better way of life, but that's my personal opinion of what is a better way of life (happy, purposeful, and long/healthy). So, for me there is NO LINE. It doesn't matter what we think now about the future, because human thought is so malleable. Some day in the near future it'll be considered selfish to carry a fetus naturally as opposed to a safer option of an external womb. Can you imagine the verbal wars that will inevitably take place? And then it'll be accepted.
NewCenturyNarratives t1_j2aqmjk wrote
It is deeply strange to me that artificial wombs aren’t brought up in these conversations
teb_art t1_j2a4nqf wrote
I’m going to go a bit off-topic and simply list a handful of items that make me nervous about the next couple of decades:
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machines/AI increasingly obsoleting jobs; I think basic income for all MUST be established at some point or universal poverty will ensue.
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current trends showing fewer people in the US going to college (can someone speak to other countries?). This is frightening, because the less educated you are, the more easily manipulated. We see that already.
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less educated people reproducing faster than more educated.
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too many people on the planet, overall. Total global births MUST diminish.
As for technology, I mostly love it. Who wants to go back to paper maps?
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j2d6jdc wrote
> too many people on the planet, overall. Total global births MUST diminish.
OR, alternatively, we need to stop polluting so much and use what limited resources we have more efficiently. Thanks to all the technological advances, food isn't one of them. We have plenty of food. It's cheap. It's the first one that everyone jumps to, what with all the extra mouths to feed, but it's really not the problem.
Let's not advocate for genocide or holocausts.
jbuchana t1_j2cutmb wrote
As a 60-year-old, who's seen much of today's technology developed, I love it. I'd hate to go back to the technology of my youth, just the example of paper maps really highlights how much better we have it from a technological perspective. Now if we'd just mature socially...
makesomemonsters t1_j2d936m wrote
I think the bigger problem with maps a few decades ago was that most people didn't have access to detailed maps of most places near them, so had to rely on bad directions and guesswork to get them where they needed to go. Even now, I almost never use any type of sat nav because I can generally memorise the route to anywhere I'm going from a map in a few seconds, but I still need to see the map in the first place and that wasn't possible 20 years ago!
themanfrommars101 t1_j2dkp6q wrote
Due to falling birthrates in the developed world it looks like the population is going to plateau so I'm not too worried about it. Economically some of those countries are going to hurt but places with a lot of immigration like US and Canada will be fine.
People are going to college less because they're realizing it's a massive long-term financial risk depending on their field of study. More people are going into trades that are always in demand and have skills to show for it. College, at least in America has become an overpriced social club for 20 year-olds where the quality of education has been decaying thanks to administrative garbage and tenured professors. I don't like this elitist notion that those who didn't go to college are inferior people. I know plenty of college dropouts who are intelligent. It's arrogant to believe the "educated" aren't being manipulated.
teb_art t1_j2drqpm wrote
The trouble with college is that even STEM areas “age” - what you studied may no longer be in demand 20 years after graduation. So, you do have to keep evolving, or else. But, of course, everyone is manipulated to a point; we live in a sea of info and misinfo.
There are absolutely tradesmen and craftsmen who provide useful services and do fine without college. My point was that, at least in the US, non-college people are more likely to be suckered into voting Republican (excuse the politics), which is detrimental to the Earth as a whole. Republicans don’t care about climate, poverty, human rights — or doing ANYTHING that helps people.
Petal_Chatoyance t1_j2d9vgr wrote
Bring it on! I just turned 63 today, and I have spent my life reading science fiction.
My greatest disappointment in life is that all these things you list - and many, many, many more - have not yet come to pass. When I was a child, I fully expected that by the time I was this age there would be sapient machine life equal under the law, cities on the moon and mars, universal income that makes money irrelevant, a world government based on scientific evidence above all, mind uploading, humans living in both virtual worlds and inside machine bodies, biological immortality, machine superintelligences able to solve problems beyond human capacity, and so many other wonders.
Instead, we've got uncontrolled covid, rampant racism and sexism, dumbshit robots, shitty AI that isn't even sentient yet, much less sapient, and fascism, religion, nationalism and unrestrained capitalism on the rise and destroying the planet.
I am beyond ready to embrace the future. Humanity let me down.
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Exiled_to_Earth OP t1_j296bi0 wrote
I love the show! It was actually mentioned during their discussion.
[deleted] t1_j29a8dr wrote
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cafffaro t1_j2a60m9 wrote
> Be me
> Show prime minister of the UK fucking a pig to my high school classroom
> Lose job
> Am I fucked?
Xbalanque_ t1_j2apzdw wrote
in a future where they had to eat bugs instead of cow
That's the kind of framing the meat industry puts on anything to do with people eating less meat, or being less supportive of how destructive cattle farming is. It's false. We can have good food to eat without eating cows. We went to the farking moon, people!
jbuchana t1_j2cux2v wrote
I love lobsters, crab, and shrimp, pretty much eating bugs already. If the shells can somehow not be a problem, I'm fine with eating insects.
anengineerandacat t1_j2aroj5 wrote
Not really an individual that would push back against technology typically.
Even in the car space and I am a huge gear-head but I generally welcome EVs and am just sad that exhaust noises will be going away.
What I dislike is when technology generally isn't the answer and it's forced in; using the same car example for instance it's stuffing easily accessible vehicle features deep into a capacitive UI (that usually isn't that well thought out).
Things like the AC settings, Radio, Cruise Control, Windshield or even Lights should be tactile and easily accessible because generally speaking the automation isn't that great and voice commands take more overall thought time than using a button or dial.
So as long as technology actually improves our quality of life I am all for it.
flameleaf t1_j2atfb8 wrote
> Where do you think you would draw the line as an old geezer?
I'll still be buying music albums and storing them locally. I have very little nostalgia for vinyl or cds, but I need my media collection accessible offline.
I'm in agreement with most of what you said, but I've been burned far too many times by unstable internet. The future is bright, but our infrastructure is in shambles.
fitnessgrampacerbeep t1_j2bihiz wrote
Honestly cooking and eating is such a waste of time, if i could take a pill and be fully nourished (not just suppressed appetite) i would be over the moon
Sensitive-Issue84 t1_j2dnus4 wrote
You are the rare person. My ex mil used to say of her and her husband "I live to eat! He eats to live." it was true, and he outlived her by decades. Everyone is different. It keeps it all interesting.
fjdkf t1_j2dolqt wrote
I don't think it's that rare. I hate having to eat too, but it's not socially acceptable to mention it in most circumstances.
BassoeG t1_j2ali24 wrote
>But would they be okay with their grandchildren marrying an android?
No. That ends the family bloodline in one generation. Which I can only assume was the intention all along, now that androids existed and the human working class became economically redundant competition with exterminist android manufacturing company executives for finite resources.
>Would they be accepting of AI that gained sentience and wanted equal rights?
Realistically, the goal of an AI rights movement would be corruption rather than altruism. AI rights with an uncertain definition would turn democracy into a joke. Whoever could afford the most computers to run the most copies of Vote4Me.exe chatbot would be able to automatically win all elections regardless of the chatbot's actual sentience or lack thereof. In the event of an actual AI rather than just a glorified chatbot being created, humanity won't need to give it rights, our only hope is that it'll give some for us. The right not to be rendered down for raw materials to make more paperclips for example...
>How accepting did they think they could be in a future where they had to eat bugs instead of cow...
Feed the bugs to chickens, then eat the chickens. If some power-tripping egotistical billionaire insists otherwise, feed them to the chickens.
>...where brain chips to access the internet was the norm?
>Would they be okay with a trend of eating daily pills over real food...
See eating the bugs.
>...or if we suddenly created a matchmaking app so accurate that dating became obsolete?
I don't trust it. Too vulnerable to corruption. Isn't it suspicious how all the matchmaking app company executives get paired with underwear models?
Your mistake is treating geezerdom as eccentricity rather than entirely justified paranoia.
Jay-Hawke t1_j29c7le wrote
I could handle all the things you mentioned except for bugs. Unless maybe they were soy bugs.
ElvisArcher t1_j29hv7t wrote
The world has already changed from your student's defined belief system in some way, so technically they are already outdated. But does that matter? The big step from adolescence to adult is in making belief system decisions for yourself. And if your primary concern in these decisions is other people's opinion of you, then you might need to take a closer look at your surroundings, and maybe ask yourself why this is the case?
w-star76 t1_j29ng90 wrote
The future belongs to those who can imagine it but is limited by the best efforts of its builders.
I suppose that line is drawn at what we suspect limits our efforts. For example, reading r/Futurology but not much else because of time constraints or low expectations for other reddit subs.
NotHowAnyofThatWorks t1_j2a99jl wrote
It would seem you’ve conflated accepting sci-fi possibilities with a ultra liberal version of sci-fi. I’d posit despite Reddit’s biases and those of your admittedly liberal bubble, that there are many sci-fi visions of the future that don’t include a weird spiral into a society that says anything and everything is acceptable, nor are dystopian in their scarcity. What you really seem to be asking is how crazy / bad can things be before you reject them. I think your premise is flawed, in that not all change can or should be accepted. We can do better.
fjdkf t1_j2dqziq wrote
Yea, societies on the decline are well known for focusing on superficial stuff like sexuality. The idea that this will continue indefinitely seems presumptive.
NewCenturyNarratives t1_j2antua wrote
I’m a transhumanist and a largely “future oriented” person, so I have a hard time imagining a techno-social advancement that I would be against
KamikazeArchon t1_j2b36va wrote
Eating insects isn't science fiction, it's just a cultural difference. Insects are a normal part of diets in some countries.
I would also warn against conflating social progress with technological change. There are a few areas of overlap, like "equal rights for AI", but most of what you've mentioned isn't a "progressive" or "liberal" thing. Electronics in cars has nothing to do with equal rights, for instance.
YoghurtDull1466 t1_j29j5rn wrote
All of these are options of desperation and if these decisions need to be made larger problems are at bay. Living naturally and happily is and always will be the goal, bar extreme overpopulation and resource scarcity which is already occurring. Whoops.
symonym7 t1_j2a24oa wrote
I guess another way to look at it would be to factor in advances in human active, deliberate evolution, a term I just made up but may or may not exist.
For example, implementing methods of extending the brain’s ability to be plastic, making it easier to learn/understand/accept new things. It’s not just the tech that’s advancing; we’re changing along with it.
donerkebab14 t1_j2al6zg wrote
There’s always going to be people that are resistant to new tech. That being said, I think its important to differentiate between resistance to new tech and then resistance to our current social allocation of technology.
Adam Smith envisioned a world where people would only have to work 20 hours a day because of advancements in new tech. Despite increases in productivity that clearly hasn’t happened and instead we’ve just seen tech being used to create a new underclass of workers and web of state/corporate surveillance.
I think one of the huge problems is that we’ve completely disconnected the creation of new technology from any ethical discussion about how its used and the consequences. Both as a society and individuals we’re all going to have to figure out where we ‘draw the line’ as new tech reshapes our society and creates an array of ethical dilemmas.
This isn’t a new question either, but rather one that people have been grappling with for centuries. Check out the Luddites—a group of weavers in the early 19th century who engaged in industrial sabotage and outright rebellion after the invention of the steam loom—for a good historical example.
jharel t1_j2bmsex wrote
I see people blindly accepting whatever science fiction throws at them.
The pervasive attitude I encounter is that of "if I can imagine something happening in the future then it must be inevitable future fact."
https://towardsdatascience.com/artificial-consciousness-is-impossible-c1b2ab0bdc46
Lifeinstaler t1_j2chx6j wrote
I think you aren’t asking the right questions. You, me or the people who were in that class aren’t the ones that will be inventing or pushing for the adoption of whatever new technology or trend might make us seem outdated 30-40 years from now.
The inventors of those haven’t been born. They will be impacted and grow up with stuff that will be popular 10 or 15 years from now.
All the examples you gave are pretty easy to go: “yeah marry and android; sure eat a mealpill; do the isntamatch, if it works it works”. Because they are what you can think about. Someone who lives today, and has grown up with all the tech and things we already know.
dave200204 t1_j2cn0k6 wrote
The Forever War explored some of this topic. Humanity kept progressing, changing, evolving all the while humanity pursued a war without end. The main character gets to see all of it unfold and take part in some of the changes. Humanity goes from homophobic to openly accepting of alternate lifestyles to cloning. The story connected with me in part because I am a soldier who lived through a good chunk of the global wear on terrorism.
MenudoMenudo t1_j2dj84o wrote
Becky Chambers is a very recent science fiction author, but she's amazing, and the worlds she creates in both of her series are very progressive and creative. Her Monk and Robot series is about a very positive view of humanity in the future where we've figured out sustainability and moved on from what the characters refer to as "the Factory Age". Robots achieved sentience at some point a few generations past, and robots and humans mutually and peacefully agreed that robots could go off on their own. The main character is non-binary, and overall it's a lovely set of books, and I hope she writes more.
Her other series is set in a different future where aliens across the galaxy mostly live in peace, and while progressive values are the norm, there are exceptions which often feature heavily in the plots. Again, lovely series and I highly recommend it.
[deleted] t1_j28z0vz wrote
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chomponthebit t1_j29046n wrote
If only online porn, social media, computer games, and Alexa could replace genuine human connections. Alas, the research proves something entirely different
Kirbyoto t1_j29yr14 wrote
You ever tried genuine human connections? There's a reason people moved away from them.
Test19s t1_j29e4nw wrote
Hell, even the AI/robotics developments of the 2020s to date (3 years) has been mind-boggling for me. I feel like a god-damn Transformers character, and I didn't grow up watching Transformers. Obviously the digital 1990s-2010s were cool, but the theme was mostly making it easier for humans in Place A to communicate with humans in Place B. Nowadays, many if not most vehicles have AI inside of the vehicles and the venerable Black Hawk helicopter is being replaced by a tilt-rotor that can fly and transform autonomously.
Kirbyoto t1_j29yms4 wrote
>But would they be okay with their grandchildren marrying an android?
>How accepting did they think they could be in a future where they had to eat bugs instead of cow
Lots of them are probably already vegan or vegetarian, so...
>Would they be okay with a trend of eating daily pills over real food
gamerbrains t1_j2bhkn7 wrote
soylent chocolate is black people!
[deleted] t1_j29zeon wrote
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Hoosier_Ken t1_j2bgj4o wrote
Chuck Wendig's Wanderers comes to mind. It centers around a sentient super computer called Black Rock that from what I remember has decided that human society is going to fail and is supposedly saving some special humans to begin a new society but may just be setting itself up as a sort of god. I haven't listened to book two so I can't say exactly how it will turn out. It is a fantastic tale and well worth a read or listen. So I guess that I would say that I would be uncomfortable with an AI that decides to end our present human societies to start over with one engineered by an intelligent machine.
Hoosier_Ken t1_j2bhvoo wrote
I have to add a second one because it is so good, Klara and Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Klara a sentient solar powered android who was engineered / created to be an artificial friend to a human child. The designers did not provide Klara with the intelligence of a normal human child let alone a genetically modified 'lifted' human child. The book opens a great big can of ethical worms. AFs are treated as great friends in the beginning but like too many pets are outgrown by their human child companions especially since AFs can't grow. It is a heart breaking story and something that human society will probably have to deal with at some point in the future.
'Klara And The Sun' Is A Masterpiece About Life, Love And Mortality
n_LiTn t1_j2bx4lq wrote
I will just focus on your first example. The students will represent a corrupt sample. Asking in a classroom of young people that covet acceptance and open mindedness "would you be okay with __ in the future" is one thing. Whether they actually would is a whole different thing. Firstly, they will be older, wiser, more worrisome, and more protective. Age skews conservative historically, though I have read some articles about Millenials bucking that trend, I am not buying it. You get older and you cling to what has worked, or at least what has grown comfortable. And any mention of stray from that model for you or your loved ones will slowly begin to spark increasing anxiety in you.
Second, they are not actually being faced with the situation. If a day comes when it is becoming trendy to actually bond and marry Androids, there will surely be division about it. Right now there is almost zero societal pressure against an issue we will likely never face in our lifetime. So it would be very easy to reason toward the affirmative. Like all things though, the public discourse will affect peoples willingness to accept things, much like it often represents the only reason we tend to hesitate and downright oppose change in our current day.
What would need to happen first is the recognition of Androids as sentient beings, and as persons. Otherwise it is sort of a hollow marriage without the implications we are likely alluding to. Though I do think people can marry objects, I seem to remember stories about people marrying (and even consummating) abandoned theme park rides out of some fetish. I mean that's a bit odd. I could see a shiny new Waterslide or something, but a derelict Merry-Go-Round..? (judging).
I think some Japanese have married robots, and even digital artificial personalities (AI bots & E-girls). Both of these examples I listed became notable obviously, but only because of their novelty and shock value. And they sort of leave you with a sense of charm and wholesome satisfaction for those individuals, they love what they love... It is a whole different story though as mentioned once it is a real pattern in society. That is when fear and hatred can form, or even practical opposition. So it is almost impossible to predict, other than that there will be friction.
spacester t1_j2c39fk wrote
Terrific OP and even better answers here.
I am an old geezer and I wrote a paper in High School asking very similar questions, in 1976. The pace of change was already too fast for the old folks of the day, but we all knew it would just get faster and faster.
All the points I wanted to make I see here already with a quick scan.
I would just emphasize the individuality of the thing. It is very hard to even state a valid generalization, and it is all too easy to paint with a broad brush.
rizpoutine t1_j2c80df wrote
It seems to me that progress has become one of the dominant myths of our times. Since change has been the main constant for a hundred years or two, we have gotten used to look to the future in order to tell who has been right. It is as if we were stuck in some sort of disrupt - adapt - conquer cycle and the ultimate sin was failing to go along with whatever will be.
"Better be ready for the next que sera sera" might well be the motto of our times, which kind of makes us into slaves to the future.
We celebrate change to the point of counting on it for our future survival. However, as much as we wish to control it, we are mainly subjected to it. When normality becomes an unstable idea and everything around us is shifting, it's hard to stick to a common baseline.
Maybe amateurs can only play gods for so long... and the weight of progress has been catching up on us. The computer I am writing on depends on the coordination of so many components that I could not imagine how it ever came to be. I am too much aware how a few small disruptions could easily bring down so many of my assumptions.
It is quite possible that the vertigo of progress and these ever expanding outlooks of collapses might steer us towards a more simple and manageable life. While it might sound a bit far fetched to get back behind a line we've already crossed, it might be a matter of life or death and liberty.
FakeVoiceOfReason t1_j2cqt3c wrote
"Why, those darned kids don't understand the forces they're messin' with, connectin' up their minds to the Hive. I swear, once someone jacks in, they just ain't the same person no more! A brain's organic - it ain't meant to be stored in a system that's just discrete. It ain't healthy, and it just ain't natural."
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j2d4ik7 wrote
Apparently I draw the line about 15 year ago. Because I still prefer books over e-readers. Boom, change rejected.
Of course, I'm a big fan of other changes. And the nature of this topic really just boils down to a bajillion little things about where people "draw the line". It's just so massively open-ended. It's a conversation starter, but there's really no answer / solution / actual goal the discussion is going to work towards.
12yearoldvirgil t1_j2d7hdg wrote
Time isn’t always a line. Sometimes it’s a circle. Sometimes you try and go so far forward it ends up being backwards
hindusoul t1_j2e70zc wrote
Could you say… history repeats itself?
zam0th t1_j2da52y wrote
You mistake conscious choice for being a retrograde. Is using microwave oven more "advanced" that cooking on gas? Is posting stupid shit on Reddit more "liberal" than actually reading paper books?
playbehavior t1_j2dcghi wrote
I think I'd be happier as a vegan than as a bug eater
greg_d128 t1_j2dcslr wrote
I would say it is a good thing. All of it - both pushing the boundaries and resisting against them.
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I'm by no means an expert, but I did play a bit with genetic algorithms. One of the problems is making sure your population has sufficient genetic diversity. Basically you do not want most of your population to just follow the currently "best" solution. You want multiple sub-populations to give you a broad base to try to solve new problems from. Perhaps neurodivergent individuals (like people with ADD or ADHD) might just be absolutely vital to the whole population and their survival. After all, it is impossible to predict future challenges that need to be overcome in order for population to survive.
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Looking at this in that light, having both people who want to regress and people who want to challenge the status quo is a way of making sure that we all do not jump into pool that turns out to be lava. It does make the progress slower. Much slower than it could be, but we seem to be having issues with progress being too fast. As an example, the news feed algorithms choosing the content we see creates bubbles and ultimately allows few individuals to shift the reality of a large section of the population. We no longer live in the same reality and we struggle to agree on the same set of historical facts. But, at least we recognize that as a problem, at least at some level. Whether this is a useful sub-population split is something that remains to be seen. Still, looking at it from the genetic diversity point of view makes it easier to accept all the differing points of view as valid, and useful. At least for me.
ProfessorWhat42 t1_j2djr8m wrote
I can tell you I've gotten to my line. The technology based systems that are supposed to be more efficient and effective in tracking our lives is not helping regular people anymore. For a system I have to use regularly, I have to keep a spreadsheet of commands, I have to know how to use spreadsheets, I have a file of screen capture videos explaining how to accomplish regular tasks, an instruction sheet to make the videos, an "if-->then" list of tasks and commands, and a list of instructions to get all your hardware set up in order to make the videos of the instructions of the task to do the thing. This is SO MUCH more time than how we did this job on paper 40 years ago. To me, it seems like the only effective use for technology is to track our spending habits and give us targeted ads, but it would be so easy for a world leader to harness that ability and use it to track our behaviors and stop us from going about our lives. And we just keep letting it happen...
Socially, I used to describe myself as a "knee-jerk-bleeding-heart-pinko-commie-bastard-liberal" but I gotta' say, land acknowledgements and pronouns/gender identifications are performative bullshit, and I can't argue without being labelled a racist/sexist homophobic asshole myself. So many young folk making a huge stink about who they love and how they dress when there's real people with real issues that are being actually oppressed and you're kind of diminishing their life experiences with your bullshit. Stop it. I'm going to call you what you want to be called, you can dress and love (or fuck depending on your mood) whoever you want, please stop telling me to categorize you and stop trying to categorize me.
Authoritarianism is not a line, it's a horseshoe and the far ends of it are a lot more alike than different.
fjdkf t1_j2dqh75 wrote
There's already a bunch of tech that exists today that many people don't understand and won't embrace(i.e. chatgpt).
Progress is more of a high dimensional vector than than a basic line.
It's also quite possible that things become more conservative rather than more liberal.
MootFile t1_j2dot9f wrote
I'm apart of gen Z and I want to breed with android chicks. And there's nothing reactionaries can do to stop me once androids are created >:3
2old4acoolname t1_j29c1zg wrote
I once read a sci-if book written by LE Modessitt where the culture had shifted from what was possible to what was best. Certain percentages of safety features had been removed from all tools and vehicles, laws were written to enforce education/training requirements before access was given to most technology. Tech dependency (to cars, calculators, etc) were frowned upon (much like Dune’s accounting for the lack of AI tech). According to the book it led to a slower society overall, but an individual freedom to advancements based on a persons willingness to learn. I wish I could remember the book title. It was very interesting. I think it was a good conceptual start to answering this question from a population level perspective. The overall point being that ideally, access to all things would be practically based on need, and voluntarily, based on a willingness to learn. This could provide growth, without loss of basic cultural knowledge while still allowing forward progress.