Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

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I’m not on social media unless you consider HN social media (I don’t) and the world is still totally as insane as it was before the internet.

For your average city person:

The food you’re offered is sugar + preservatives, the water is either non-existent (Tehran) or poisoned with fracking gas (Flint), almost all local communities have collapsed into extreme versions of themselves, the rich and poor still don’t mingle, men fear women and women want nothing to do with men, there is no upside to having a family or children.

I just spoke at a HBS event in DC last night about robotics and on one side of the room were people starting AI companion services and in the other side people were saying AI was causing the rise of Tradwives. It was like looking at 50 “deer in headlights” when explaining how thoroughly they have already integrated third party algorithmic logic into their decision processes - and are totally unaware of it.

The real world is absurd and getting less coherent with more information available. Humans aren’t biologically equipped for the world we collectively built.

Your disconnect from Social Media and "the world still totally insane"—the latter is of course not dependent on the former. Perhaps we need to get the rest of the world also off Social Media? Off the internet?

Given that we can't do that, I choose then to continue my hobbies, take more walks, try to declutter my place, improve my health, lose weight, look for comfortable chats with my daughters, wife, friends…

I'm not sure where you see men and women not trusting one another. If I had to guess it would be that you perceive this from things you have seen on the internet?

I find the internet is kind of like that silly cave in "The Empire Strikes Back"—where you find only what you bring with you. Try looking for positive things and people and see if you are not rewarded. (And if you cannot, just drop the internet completely. I have a friend that I think checks online for about 30 minutes in the morning and then he's done for the day.)

I have teenagers headed to college. I’m seeing it first/second hand.

Across high schools in the US kids aren’t dating like they used to and are vocal about not just ambivalence but hostility toward having kids.

Oddly enough my kids want to get married and have kids and report on how it’s odd to them others positions, so if anything I’m biased the other direction from exposure.

I don’t care either way, not having kids is a valid approach, but it’s a fact that there’s going to be societal impacts.

You think Tehran and Flint are good cases for 'average city'?

Yes

Both are significantly different but still fail to provide the most basic service: access to clean water

I can trivially get access to plenty of clean drinking water in most “wild” places in the world, in fact that’s like the third core thing you learn in survival schools (of which I’ve attended many).

You're doing the thing that the article is talking about. Neither are average examples. I don't know about Tehran, but you have to really be cherry-picking to make a data set where Flint ends up as an average case of municipal water quality.

No it’s demonstrating that at the relative extreme ends you have the same problem thus creating the linear equation with the minimum set

The reader should deduce that any measure along the same linear map - which is effectively every city aka the “average city” - will eventually be subject to this condition (water insecurity)

You can trivially verify this by looking at issues of water insecurity and water quality issues across every size city. Notice that you will have non-trivial numbers of “boil water” events in the United States south. You may have significant periods of drought throughout your average city in sub-Saharan Africa, Sonoran desert or western China for example.

I think maybe your definition of “average” only includes modern metropolitan areas and not simply as cities where people are geographically clustering across the globe.

I lived in San Angelo Texas in 2009 and I did not have potable water in my home. I had to go to Walmart and fill 5 gallon jugs of Culligan water every few days. That’s not particularly abnormal

To be fair I offered a fairly complex/compressed way to approach this, so not easily interpreted, but nonetheless that’s the point

Stoked you took a survival class though! I'm not being sarcastic, it sounds fun.

Man, I’d love to hear that talk.

> there is no upside to having a family or children

what exactly does this even mean?

Search: Gen Z explains why they don’t want a family and kids

All are rational arguments

https://youtu.be/fHpgIvuETx0?si=zWIqJvQMeDcSD223

I felt the same thing when i was 22--kids aren't for me, this world sucks, etc etc. Eventually I "grew up," toned down short term hedonistic pleasures, read books that deepened my connection to humanity and realized family is extremely meaningful.

First off, there's nothing new about interviewing people who are in their early 20s and hearing moaning and groaning about how this world sucks and it's not worth bringing anyone into it. I'm not religious whatsoever, but there's something deeply spiritual about the human experience of family/kids. It's certainly not for everyone if you're mature enough to understand the downsides and decide not to--but the secondary point I want to make is that I think most people are naive/immature. They follow trends and take a lot of direction from social media. The endless short term dopamine hits from every corner of your life will definitely have anybody questioning -- "why would i make my life harder when i can live only for myself and continue tiktoking in the evenings for 3 hours" -- our society is fundamentally broken, and that's not just the USA. I've traveled to other places and have bumped into the social media zombies everywhere.

> this world sucks and it's not worth bringing anyone into it

What exactly is wrong ("moaning and groaning", something that you "grew up" from), in your estimation, about that perspective?

> realized family is extremely meaningful

I believe that many people with the aforementioned perspective would agree with you, but would add that reducing further suffering is an overriding priority.

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