Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

Increasingly with life these days, I feel like I am an actor in a play where the producer sees less and less of a role for me in the production as the curtain keeps raising on increasingly chaotic scenes - so I end up feeling disconnected and distant from something that I was immersed in and enjoying, and am now just an increasing befuddled and alienated observer.

The uptick in flat earth theories among other things is central to that. I made the mistake of clicking on an anti flat earth Youtube channel once (SciManDan for reference [0]) and now get others videos in that channel as 'suggested videos'. I try not to click on them, but... I do. And each time I do, a little more of me dies on the inside when I see what the pro F/E pundits are putting out there, AND see their followers applauding it as 'truth'. The globe earth model is now apparently just a 'belief system' and not science any more. o_O

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRtsZ5Iak9wSLsQLQ3XOAeA

now get others videos in that channel as 'suggested videos'.

FWIW, you can always remove that video from your history, so you won't get those recommendations anymore. Well, assuming you were logged into a Google account when you viewed it. Visit https://www.youtube.com/feed/history and use the smaller search bar to find any "questionable" videos and then you can delete them from your watch history.

Another option is to click the little 3-dot menu on the suggested video, click "not interested", then click the "tell us why" link, and there should be an option like "I'm not interested in recommendations based on (SOME VIDEO)". You can check that checkbox and submit, and you should stop seeing those recommendations.

I have youtube history disabled but still get "recommended" videos.

I'm thinking reinstalling greasemonkey to find a script that get rid of them.

Yeah, my guess is that if you're not logged in, or have history disabled, they still generate recommendations by IP or something... or they just give you generic recommendations that go to everybody that doesn't have a history to use.

I don't mind, since I like the recommendations in general. But I think they dramatically overweight recent videos when they generate the recommendations, and sometimes I'll watch a video that's outside my normal habits, and I suddenly start getting all these weird recommendations. That's the only reason I ever bothered learning about the "remove this from my history" feature. :-)

Thank you so much.

The flat earth thing is actually a new twist on flakey spirituality that has always resonated with a large portion of sheltered Americans.

Growing up before 2000, it was a lot more Noah’s Ark, The Shroud of Tourin, Bible Codes, whether angels are real, and of course, exorcisms.

I can only laugh at this flat earth shit, but it actually fits right in with how people would buy right into what used to be on TV. Only nobody watches TV like they used to, so whatever’s on the computer shall dominate. And that’s all there is to it.

I think the success of these off-kilter theories is strongly connected to many people's lives becoming off-kilter.

This society has increased both social isolation and material poverty over the last twenty years. Moreover, most people depend on the relative sanity of others to balance their own impulses and so a decline in rationality can have cumulative effect.

> This society has increased both social isolation and material poverty over the last twenty years.

Can you please support this claim with credible data? Sincere question - I'm just reading a book recommended by Bill Gates that claims that the world is way better today than it was 20 years ago.

$10 bucks says you're talking about Pinker's Englightenment now

Factfulness by Hans Rosling, it's the book that Bill Gates donated to US students.

Gates' claims are entirely concerning a world wide decrease in people living on "pennies a day". This is essentially just that group of people who lived outside the economy entirely now finally entering it. It really has nothing to do with the conditions of the average person already living in a money based economy.

We have seen a decrease in US median income over the last however many years [1]. The way rent tends to be excluded from this underestimates the increase in impoverishment here imo also. There are also the frequent articles concerning how many people are $500/$1000/etc away disaster.

For increased social isolation, Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone is the classic (Note, Gates is neither an economist nor a sociologist. Putnam is a well recognized sociologist).

Note that the Average American's life span decreased for the second year in a row. This is notable since increases in medical technology tend to increase this life expectancy even when nothing else changes[2]. A big factor in the reduced life expectancy is what's termed "deaths from despair".

[1]https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/01/20/who-is-the-middle...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/health/us-life-expectancy-stu...

"It really has nothing to do with the conditions of the average already living in a money based economy."

I'm not sure the median American is representative of the global citizen "living in a money based economy". I have not read Gates' book, but I think it likely you are being overly dismissive.

I think the average person in the world has an income of maybe $10K a year, which is not "pennies a day", but it's low by American standards. It seems at least plausible that people on this level have become better off.

Life expectancy has been decreasing in other places besides the US. I was just reading an article that said it's down in the UK. Russia hasn't been doing so well either, I seem to recall. But I figure there is a biological limit and the newest medical tech doesn't have much effect in the aggregate. So it's the countries that still have low life expectancies that are going to show uniform gains.

Life expectancy has been decreasing in other places besides the US. I was just reading an article that said it's down in the UK. Russia hasn't been doing so well either, I seem to recall. But I figure there is a biological limit and the newest medical tech doesn't have much effect in the aggregate.

Or actually quality of life for the working class world-wide could decreasing? Medical research has had an effect for quite a while most places, including the US. It seems like you are the one dismissing facts with unverified speculation.

Life expectancy generally goes down these days either in war-torn places, or other extreme - people overeating on tons of junk food, and generally not compensating their eating habits with adequate physical activity. We are very far from times when medicine and science can properly fix bodies destroyed by such a lifestyle.

Russia & former soviet union countries are a bit special but within same category - their alcoholism contributes heavily to their lower life expectancy.

To me it looks like a perfect storm - people living more stressful lives getting their impulses more from cell phone than real world out there, eating worse and more of it, exercising less. I don't believe most of this is directly related to wealth, although many would like to connect these. More like some mental fortitude and strength to keep up some sane regime of healthy eating & exercising (really, you just need running shoes in most of the world, cheap yearly gym pass can easily cover 100% of your needs).

One small remark: you say "fraction" of people living on pennies a day. To me, at least, "fraction" implies a small group. To an American, it might be a small group, but world wide they were still the majority until 30 years ago. Even now, they're probably 30-40% of them world's population.

I have not read Bill Gates' book, but I have heard little dispute that the material conditions of the working class _in the developed world_ have not improved much in the last forty or so years. The "elephant curve" is the best simple depiction I've seen of this: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2016/09/17/s...

The article goes on to describe why it's not quite so bad as the original graph made it seem, but even the "Alternative" shows the same general pattern.

Material conditions have improved almost universally, but it doesn't mean that social cohesion is any better.

It just means we're not dying of a bunch of things, our homes are heated and we do less dishes etc..

You could easily find lots of ways to find that fortunes have improved while objectively the majority wholly in the US have seen theirs decrease.

- The gains of a larger number of very poor much more than offset losses by a relatively smaller number.

- The total value of wealth can increase substantially even if almost all of it sticks to a minorities hands total/population still gives a higher number.

- The relative price of many goods could have fallen leading to more buying power ergo more stuff you don't objectively need to live while the cost of stuff you vitally need like a home and medicine have gone way up. Therefore you are more "wealthy" and worse off.

I recently had a chat with a “flat earther”, well not really but a ... believer in the same conspiratorial vein. It was quite fun to suggest that chem trails flat earth etc might be a anmerican corporate conspiracy to extract woulrd dominance.

Once you put it in a langugage they can understand, a real conversation can be had. I did not convert him or anything but at least managed to make him ask real questions.

And to be honest this is not that far from the truth - all those cult leaders are just praying on people with hightened curiosities and pushing them into a “local maximum” of understanding, one that they can extract money / fame from. A textbook conspiracy:)

> It was quite fun to suggest that chem trails flat earth etc might be a anmerican corporate conspiracy to extract woulrd dominance.

It's more likely a Russian plot to damage US scientific and technical capability. Why else would RT feature so much of that stuff?

Both pro- and anti- flat earth content attracts views, which translate into ad hits and money. Some outlets will push anything for money.

You just have to accept that most people are not rational. They don't experience reality through a scientific (for lack of a better word) perspective. Most believe in some sort of magical deities or spirits or life force or whatever. Most operate with a physical model of reality that's clearly pre-Galilean.

So flat Earth? Why not?

My working hypothesis is that most people lack the intellectual capacity to understand these things, and they haven't the fortitude to accept that they don't understand or don't know something.

So instead of attempting to understand they select some imagined model that does make sense to them and act as though it is truth.

Challenging them is difficult since they are so invested in their fancies being true; the alternative after all is accepting that you don't understand something and where does that leave them? This is why evidence and rational arguments are futile.

If they could grasp the facts and the arguments in the first place they wouldn't have had to construct these fancies in place of them! It's almost tautological that those who can believe flat earth stuff are also incapable of accepting science.

>>So instead of attempting to understand they select some imagined model that does make sense to them and act as though it is truth.

Furthermore, the reason they are attracted to such models is that it gives them the sense that they are a member of a small, exclusive group of “enlightened” individuals who have it all figured out.

There is a reason con men go after such people.

> My working hypothesis is that most people lack the intellectual capacity to understand these things, and they haven't the fortitude to accept that they don't understand or don't know something.

I don't think it is a lack of intellectual capacity, but it is more of nurture. In the sense of their community / groups do not put much focus / value on "intellectual" things.

Imagine it as currency, say you're surrounded by people using US$, you probably wouldn't collect Swiss Francs because it is not valued by your community.

So people in different communities value certain things (intellectual ability, social IQ, even knowledge about what fashion is in atm.) differently. Many communities do not see being adept in scientific reasoning and critical thinking valuable traits.

Yesterday I found a post about electric universe or so. Boy, that thing seems to get traction is right on the level of flat earth... They think math is wrong and not needed and everything is based on electricity...

I'm laughing grimly because I know the feeling. I like your stage analogy. The antidote I use is to carve out my own small space... My own show, as it were. Also I think it helps to get away from the information firehose and be outdoors in a natural or quasi-natural environment for some hours. Gives you a different kind of understanding of what's real.

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