A show about things that tickle your brain - science, philosophy, mathematics, culture, rationality, technology, language, design...you've stopped reading this, haven't you? I mean either you're already intrigued or you've scrolled past already. I could probably put just about anything here because we've sorted potential viewers by this point. The only ones left are "people who enjoy reading meta-commentary," so, hi there! You should probably also watch the show - it's probably right up your alley.
This video is great stuff I stumbled upon and also a needed discussion. This reminds me of something I read where a spiritual teacher cautioned that the ego can use anything for its own purposes, including spirituality, and people can fall into traps of spiritual egoism and spiritual materialism. Even the practice of dissolving the ego can become something for the ego to reinforce itself. It’s definitely a knife’s edge as you say.
I had a very enjoyable career as a practicing telecoms prof engineer in public utilities. Great fun, great guys to work with. But I also had a great interest in books, all types of subjects, anything that looked interesting. This greatly expanded my life experience. Balance in all things is the answer. There is more to life than STEM.
The older you are the more of everything you STILL have to use! My mom used a mimeograph machine to run off church bulletins well into the '90s! We still need to drive standard shift just in case!
Fun red herring: "Generational differences are less predictive of home ownership than things like class, or race..." 1. In other words, regarding class: purchasing power is predictive of...power to purchase (homes). This is almost tautological and thus misleading when used to downplay generational effects. 2. You can't dismiss one predictive factor because another one exists. Both can be valid, and they often aren't mutually exclusive. I recommend watching economics professor Scott Galloway's latest TED talk, which explores the sobering issue of generational wealth gap. It's shocking, but important to hear.
1. "Class" is not reducible to "purchasing power," it's a group of people consciously coordinating to advance their economic interests. Homeownership is highly heritable, blocs of homeowners coordinate to prevent new development, banks & other institutions extend more financial "slack" to those who have familial & social ties to other ruling-class individuals, the "floor" for affordable housing is determined more by deliberate policy than supply/demand - these are phenomena that can't be explained by something like "Rich people can afford houses, poor people can't." 2. A predictive factor is only as useful as the interventions it facilitates. If I told you that left-handed people/soccer moms/fans of Italian food/etc. are suffering more wealth inequality now than they did 50 years ago, that gives you much less to work with than telling you "More wealth is being concentrated in fewer hands over time."
Well, 9/11 did create DHS, and the patriot act, and we're still in a state of national emergency since then.. saying or implying "generational" can be a red herring, but there are defining events. That is, the towers falling themselves had its affect on individuals, sure, but we can also look at the changes it had on the public and society as a whole instead.
I 100% agree that 9/11 marked an inflection point in US politics/policies, but I was trying to argue that attributing those changes *to* 9/11 (vs. pressure to dismantle the military welfare state or Dick Cheney's unquenchable thirst for oil) might be more of an inferential leap, as would suggesting that social changes (even social changes in certain age brackets) were more closely coupled to the attacks than e.g. the policies justified by them.
@@THUNKShow my personal opinion (not political, if that makes *any* sense) is that we might as well treat Cheney as already being dead. Likewise, 9/11 is dead as an event. But, as other things, like influential objects, I still think there's a small room for give and take. "If we do not want to equivocate" between Cheney and the policies 'of that time', or 'from that time', we could then 'observe' that it wasn't Cheney or the policies that made fire fighters make life-risking/ending choices in response to those towers. And, if we could momentarily look at the military as a burning building then think about the people who joined the military, possibly then going on to raise families. In this way we can look at a bracketed and *contracted* group or demographic who is pretty well defined by that thing we would unequivocally call nine-eleven; moreover, in a *generational* sense, though I am trying to speak through some implication, and not in a strict sense, here. For an actual (legally identifiable or trackable) subgroup we can begin a story about some people with 9/11, namely in the sense they weren't born, but it's undeniable the link that's forged between the thing witnessed on video and a political argument that we - at least as a military - will spend some indefinite time in the middle east due to this. There is a very sizeable impact to speak of, but it's still 1% of 1% of the world, when just looking at the contracts. Now; who those contracted people touched in the sense that it would undeniably be a bedrock for further family and hence generational life is where we ought to leave the word "generation" out of mouths (arguments or w/e) and minds, in order to avoid unnecessary if not damaging presumptions. I am truly sorry for all this text btw. There's usually a lot of heart and mind put into these videos, and I just don't make them myself, otherwise, that's probably the more appropriate way to reply here. All I'm saying is we can, on paper, say we have 'a handful' or certain group of people, and it's more fair to speak about those who immediately rush into 'the fire' of the situation - whether as actual first responders or not - versus those coming into the area, after the event to do clean-up, although and however risky, still. Regardless, at some point, things have settled down, and the past is the past - *which isn't generational*. And, as words go, we might call some people out there children of 9/11, but that certainly wouldn't go for all of America, or anyone else. Again, my apologies, because you might be the only one who reads all of this lol
I think Generationalism is thing: as a member of Gen X, as a youth I nihilistically rebelled against and tried to destroy everything every previous generation believed in. Now as an adult I feel obliged to nihilistically rebel against and destroy everything every subsequent generation believes in. As for your point on news agencies not touching wealth inequality and feeding generational differences. I would call that a red herring. Talking about solving homelessness, poverty, workers rights, low pay and so on, costs the wealthy money. Changing to liberal social issues costs the rich nothing. Free healthcare requires a massive tax hike for the wealthy, transgender rights cost them nothing. The news agencies are owned by and serve the interest of the rich. So there job is to fill their pages with liberal social issues to divert people's attention from economic reform that doesn't serve the rich's interest.
Three Glasgow lecturers just released a paper called "ChatGPT is bullshit", referring to bullshit in the sense Frankfurt used it in the 2005 book 'On Bullshit'. Thought it to be very interesting and thought you might want to have a look. Also at the book itself, I was honestly surprised you haven't covered it yet.
I have, on a couple occasions! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8CrbNNwirkI.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9VrkFmMkzwc.html
I started an appliance the second the distortion starts on your video and it made me think my phone was fried. *** Anyway. This generational framing is really insidious. I don't think it's a conspiracy of sorts by some nefarious forces, just something that opportunists latch on to, but it aligns with a lot of misreadings of history as a whole. Neanderthals and anything other than ancient sapienses were thought to be a ton of what is now understood as very crude racist caricatures, until they were instead interpreted as honored (direct) ancestors of certain modern human groups, and their image has been rehabilitated. Those ancient groups or ancient cultures and ethnicities get the same reading as generational framing, if you look at the large scale; if you look into individuals, the framing becomes intrinsic unchangeable personality traits derived from personality tests and all of this, all of it, all the misreadings of proto-sapiens, ancient cultures, preceding cultures, ethnicities, generations and personalities are nothing but horoscopes. Seriously. You were born under this sign which is good when we like it and bad when we don't AMA but it doesn't matter, all answers are the same.
Sorry for the momentary phone-anxiety! 😅 I lay the overwhelming desire to divide all of humanity into "good people" and "bad people" (scientifically, morally, biologically, etc.) at the feet of John Calvin - he was a really confused dude, but it probably wasn't his fault.
I honestly don't even know what generation I'm supposed to be a part of. Always felt like astrology but for people who are way too obsessed with age to me.
One definition I don’t dislike is whether you grow up with/without/without-and-with social media with -> zoomer without -> gen x without-and-with -> millenial
"Astrology" was exactly the metaphor I used in a previous version of the script! As for social media - I don't disagree that different aged people experience it differently, but positing some insurmountable difference in the way we experience the world based on when we created our first Facebook account seems like a stretch to me.
@@THUNKShow It’s not social media that’s interesting per se but the option to talk to their friends at any time, the ability to acquire a following and the chance to be harassed online that I think could have a signaficant impact on an individual. I prefer “definitions” that are not based purely on age and these circumstances seem new with social media. If you have another way to describe generations and better describe inter-generetional differences I’d be curious to hear.
I count as a "Boomer" (born 1960) but the thing that has always amazed me is how adaptable the generations can be. My grandparents were born in the Victorian era (1880 for my grandfather and 1888 for my grandmother) and both lived to see the moon landing in 1969. When they grew up, the major technologies were electricity and telephones and where they lived for a good part of their adult lives in Northern Alberta, they had neither. And yet, at the age of 89 and 81 respectively, they sat in front of the television watching man walk on the moon. In their younger years, both the idea of sending people to the moon and being able to see pictures at great distances were the stuff of Jules Verne fantasy. The difficulty with trying to put "generations" into neat categories is that you run into the main problem when dealing with people: we are all agents of chaos and chaos is not exactly predictable. However, even though we live in a very chaotic, analogue world, we still insist on thinking in yes/no, good/bad binary. We want instant, neat categorization and when something does not fit into the box that we have prepared for it, we get confused. "What's that you say? A Millennial with good table manners? IMPOSSIBLE!!!" Categories are useful for organizing and analyzing data, but it is a mistake to think that they are hard and fast definitions.
7:41 Is this reacting to BritMonkey's ''Britain is a dump'' video? (For those that don't want to watch his whole video, skip to the "No country for young men" section) I do think that class is a much much more important framing than age, and his video veers into rhetoric more than analysis in a lot of places. However, I do think a couple of the policies he pointed out are clear examples of older people being privileged (in some aspects), and his hypothesis that this is for political reasons does seem plausible (especially for the one where he provides a clip of a conservative MP bragging about it to an audience).
I wasn't responding to BritMonkey specifically, but I'll be sure to check the video out. FWIW I don't think privileging certain demographics is incompatible with the idea that the primary antagonism is class-based - pouring fuel on culture war stuff is part of the dance!
@@THUNKShow It's basically a long plea to his viewers not to vote for the Conservatives in the upcoming UK elections. Just one and a half hours of listing every little thing the conservatives ruined. I am thoroughly convinced (not that I needed it), but I also can't vote there, so perhaps we're not the primary audience.
I have heard this idea, that imagining generational divides is more hurtful than helpful, some years ago. Enough that I have actively scrubbed my online content from hearing people talk about it as though it were a true thing. I'm glad to hear that it's being less relied upon for studies. Thanks for this breakdown, interesting to think about this rhetorical device as a tool, and how that helps or hurts different political or click bait-y goals.
White suggests it's useful to both left- & right-wing agendas, but in both cases says it's a neat way to talk about class without actually *mentioning* class. The clickbait thing...I believe I've made my feelings on that clear. 😅 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nwOVZgClUs8.html
It's a pet peeve but I am endlessly bothered by the inconsistent boundaries for generations, even to the extent they make sense at all. Like the reason "boomers" are a thing is because birth rates went up after WWII and then down around 1965, a nice 20 year block. Birth rates also went back up around 1985, again a nice even 20 year block that also corresponds to birth rates. For some reason though, people want to define millennial at 1980-1995, a 15 year block that straddles birth rates at random. It gets even worse with Z and alpha. By my definitions zoomers are 2005-2025 and alpha hasn't even started but people have all sorts of definitions that make absolutely no sense, not to mention none of the definitions are that consistent. To the extent any group identity defines anything its class not age.
For some stuff, the strong adherents to generational cohorts also seem to forget that people can change their minds. And as you rightly pointed out their material circumstances can (and do) also change. Cohorts based on lived experience are probably much more useful in both regards. Living through a nationwide catastrophe might inspire certain ideas and behaviors, but not everyone of a generation experiences such events the same. The 9/11 thing for example: I do remember that day, but for me it was a thing that happened very far away in a place I knew basically nothing of at the time. So the emotional impact is entirely different than someone of the same as as me who lived in NYC at the time. But even within a country (or city), the same events can play out differently for people. A drought and food shortage may not inflict the same hardship of a rich industrialist who owns half the grocery stores in the city, for example.
Statistics are a useful quantitative way to tell a story - the more stats you have, the more stories you can tell, but that's not always a good thing! :P
I can feel my brain going to mush after a month without thunk! So if you value my continued intelligence and learning pray consider another video as soon as creatively possible! Not rushing you but worried about my mental acuity!🤔😎😍
I worked in software security for a few years, and I was kind of blown away by how much of what I did was just giving assurance to people that things were ok. By that I mean, it wasn't just executing on tasks to find helpful truths, but I had to lean on rhetoric to guide people towards feeling ok about the security of the product. That was a learned skill from years ago, I appreciate this perspective of approaching it with rigor, something I'm definitely going to take with me to the job. Thanks for the great video as always. Nice moustache!
"Safety is a feeling and its hard to engender a feeling with facts." That is how you this video is stupid and all the second order conclusions are stupid, false, misguided, or gaslighting.
How to deter Russia from invading your country? Defence budget is limited. So better to buy more high tech military guns but few of them (citizens won’t regard them as enough power and will still might feel risk and fear) or to use those money to train citizens and give them low tech guns so they know to fight (more prepared morally and physically which decreases fear) but not have high tech defence mechanisms.
This past weekend I had a long conversation about risk. As a rock climber and mountaineer, I think about hazards and risk mitigation a lot. I was thinking over how I notice that accidents in climbing are often discussed in a different way than reactions to disasters like the Key Bridge collapse or the Challenger disaster; there is often significant acknowledgement that the involved climbers accepted risk, even with due mitigation, and the role that decision plays in the outcome. For example, if someone fails to catch their partner's fall, analysis and discussion usually doesn't lose sight of the fact that the climber chose to climb with their partner or chose to climb on terrain where the consequences of a fall might be significant. In contrast, I think many people not only fail to assess the risk involved in their activities (e.g. driving), but once they have participated in mitigation of the risk or observe mitigation has taken place, i.e. once they *feel safe*, effectively lose all perception of the risk and proceed with their activities with an expectation that the risk is ZERO. Often when talking with people about climbing, I struggle to tell them whether or not my activities are "safe" -- certainly there are times my activities do not feel "safe" to me! But I do not think I make decisions that seem unduly dangerous or ignorant of the risks involved, and I feel mindful of hazards and how I will mitigate risks associated with them. "Safety" as a psychological state seems to be about managing fear, and both safety and fear as psychological states may be helpful or harmful in relation to effective risk management.
These days I immediately think of x-risks caused by AI whenever I see any discussion of safety or risk. In the context of risk management this is a sort of a counter example to the premise of the whole video because this risk exists for any goal or action I will take. Same with stuff like nuclear war or any other x-risk. Maybe escaping to Mars is some kind of way to mitigate those risks but other than that there's nothing one can do about them.
It's certainly worth asking how much risk is acceptable, what sort of controls would be necessary to reduce AI risk to acceptable levels, & whether those controls are worth the cost!
I once asked my friends what they thought was taught in the education system that they would rather not have learned and i got a whole bunch of responses of really traumatic abuse stories that i was not expecting Is it better to know or not know what it's really like to be raped? to be bullied? to be abandoned by those you most love and cherish? these are things you can experience and know, and many do. I don't have an answer but if there was knowledge I'd rather not have, these kinds of emotionally laden bad memories would be contenders then there's the example similar to that given by @bergweg: i took a good couple of economics classes in university, and got to the point where I started to turn the tools of economics on the question of "should I take more economics classes". I proved pretty much to my satisfaction that there was a point of diminishing returns and that I was probably already past it. This seems to be a particularly special case -- a science of knowing when to do things based on expected general profit, and how to calculate expected profit. No matter what your value system is there is probably such a field that returns this kind of answer, and you should be able to feed the question of 'how much time to spend learning things in this field' into the field.
Meditation is actually a very intense kind of activity and you can experience flow in it. Doing nothing - if you are totally focused and immersed in it - channels you into flow just as well... Methinks you should rework this part of your video, if possible - it is so much better if it is correct.
I think the key question to answer is if we can judge human behavior as a trend or if we should judge individual behavior as an self-contained phenomenon. It is obvious that our personality and experience shape how we do things, but we are not machines, and thus from scenario to scenario we are not as internally consistent as we think we are. And added to personal decision making, there is a large social component to the outcome of said decisions, yet as on-lookers we can only judge things by outcome instead of process. For example, a poor person getting into even more debt to pursue education instead of getting a labor-oriented job. is that decision good or bad? Well, we simply don't know, unless we are looking at him 20, 30 years later. If he became a rich doctor or lawyer, maybe we'd say he made the right decision, but what if he became rich and own a construction company instead? Does that mean picking education is the wrong decision? And here is the problem,is that we prescribe "right" and "wrong" to false decision making, because we unconsciously connects cause and effects that are not connected due to randomness. To sum up, there is no secret sauce to any human pursuit due to environment impact (aka noise) being overwhelming. and thus individual success can not be explored as a definitive mixed factor model
