Poll of the Day > Whats up with people getting suckered into sophisticated

(+) Yeah! (+)

Common sense. Similar to Ted talks people like being told that the grass is green in an intellectual way that's not really intellectual because its common sense. But people are like "i know what they are talking about!"

I prefer Sophisti-Pop.

ye can't sophisticate without sophistry

What's up with all these people?

Sophisticated what?

Sophisticooter

I saw a Ted Talk that lasted 20-some minutes, and essentially boiled down to, "It's important to be able to put yourself in someone else's shoes."

And Im sitting there like....."Isnt that just basic fucking empathy???? Do we really need Ted Talks for empathy now? Wtf is happening to our society?"

GreenKnight127 posted...

I saw a Ted Talk that lasted 20-some minutes, and essentially boiled down to, "It's important to be able to put yourself in someone else's shoes."

And Im sitting there like....."Isnt that just basic fucking empathy???? Do we really need Ted Talks for empathy now? Wtf is happening to our society?"

Well, there is a whole segment of society who thinks empathy is a bad thing, despite following a book in which the main person highlights empathy as a good thing.

So, yeah. I guess we do.

ooger posted...

So, yeah. I guess we do.

If so, we are doomed.

I'd guess because stretching a point for so long makes the speaker seem smart, which makes the listener feel smart when they get it. Even though typically if you put any amount of further thought into it, the whole thing would fall apart.

GreenKnight127 posted...

Do we really need Ted Talks for empathy now?

Probably. People who live their lives online and only interact with automated services and apps forget what it means to be human.

Why have empathy when you've abstracted every person you interact with online down to nothing more than pixels on a screen? They're not real.

And then when you do meet flesh and blood humans in the real world, you're terrified by this strange creature and the noises it makes. What does it want? And why does it insist on disagreeing with you? Kill it with fire!

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Probably. People who live their lives online and only interact with automated services and apps forget what it means to be human.

Why have empathy when you've abstracted every person you interact with online down to nothing more than pixels on a screen? They're not real.

And then when you do meet flesh and blood humans in the real world, you're terrified by this strange creature and the noises it makes. What does it want? And why does it insist on disagreeing with you? Kill it with fire!

Sad but fucking true.

I blame an entire generation of parents (many of whom are divorced) who don't monitor their kids' habits.

If you son literally paints his windows black and spends every waking moment locked in his bedroom glued to his computer doing who-knows-what....and you don't talk to him about the dangers of such behavior and/or make attempts to fix it....you have failed as a parent.

I personally know of countless kids who had a Nintendo Wii as a babysitter through most of their childhood development. And it has fucked their brains up, big-time.

GreenKnight127 posted...

I blame an entire generation of parents (many of whom are divorced) who don't monitor their kids' habits.

The problem is, there's only so much you can do.

Don't let your kid have a computer/phone until they're a teenager? Now they're treated like a loser at school, and lack the basic technical proficiency their peers have had since they could walk (which will almost certainly impact them later in life). You may have prevented one type of harm, but you've essentially contributed to another.

Aside from which, the state of the economy in recent times makes it almost a necessity for both parents in a household to work just to support themselves (and you'd better pray your kids don't have unexpected health scares). Which makes it extremely difficult to monitor every aspect of your child's behavior (especially if you have more than one). It's not like the old days where dad would go to work and mom would spend all day home with the kids. Many parents simply don't have the time to monitor their kids (or the money to pay for a babysitter to do it for them).

If anything, that's why the idea of extended families has grown a bit more accepted over the nuclear family model, where older grandparents or aunts/uncles can live in the same house and help raise kids effectively (like it used to be, for most of human history). But it's still not common enough in the US and other similar nations to really offset the problem.

And none of that really addresses the fact that a lot of that disassociation doesn't happen during childhood anyway. A lot of the currently alienated Gen X and Millennials didn't necessarily grow up locked in a room playing games or watching online videos, they really only fell into those behavior patterns once tablets and smart phones became ubiquitous. Losing touch with your ability to interact with other humans isn't just something that happens if you fail to learn how when you're young, it can also happen if you forget how once you're older.

My mother definitely found it harder and harder to socialize as she grew older, became a bit more shut-in, and slowly lost practice interacting with actual people (and Covid quarantines definitely didn't help). And she wasn't even on the Internet. She got to the point where any time she had to make an important phone call she'd usually ask me to do it for her, because her anxiety at talking to people on the phone (or worse, dealing with automated systems) made her panic, and then she was afraid she'd screw things up. It becomes a vicious cycle - the more shy and awkward you get, the less you want to try and reach out to interact with people, which makes you even more shy and awkward, and so on. Eventually you pull back into your shell.

I used to try to encourage her to go to local events (like our library sponsoring craft seminars or game nights) to potentially try and meet new people and make new friends, but she never wanted to, because she'd gotten to the point where she felt too socially awkward for it to ever be worthwhile to her. Much easier to just stay home and read books, watch TV, and listen to the radio alone.

That can happen to anyone, at any age. If your entire life consists of just going online, using automated ordering and delivery services, using computer ordering kiosks when you get fast food, paying for everything at self-checkouts, and generally minimizing the amount of interaction you have with actual people, you slowly start to forget how. It becomes harder to talk to people, and easier to avoid them.

And the more people start to feel that way, the more tech companies will create the "solutions" needed to help maintain that sort of lifestyle. Which in turn only makes the problem worse.

We're basically creating the conditions as a culture for everyone to just live in their own personal bubble and never have to interact with another human being ever again.

And because of how algorithms and content delivery work, most of those people's world-bubbles will be radically different from everyone else's, so they'll have almost nothing in common even if they tried to interact. It'll be like being the only human on Earth surrounded by a world full of aliens. But it will be like that for everyone. And it'll be maddening to try and deal with the idea that these other people somehow don't see the world the way you do. Are they crazy? Are they stupid? Are they evil?

And from there it's very easy to decide that those crazy stupid evil aliens don't matter. That they're not as important as you, that their personal experiences aren't as important as yours. And at that point, who gives a shit what they think or feel? They're wrong. And should be treated as such.

Welcome to the glorious future.

I blame gamer gate bros.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The problem is, there's only so much you can do.

Don't let your kid have a computer/phone until they're a teenager? Now they're treated like a loser at school, and lack the basic technical proficiency their peers have had since they could walk (which will almost certainly impact them later in life). You may have prevented one type of harm, but you've essentially contributed to another.

Aside from which, the state of the economy in recent times makes it almost a necessity for both parents in a household to work just to support themselves (and you'd better pray your kids don't have unexpected health scares). Which makes it extremely difficult to monitor every aspect of your child's behavior (especially if you have more than one). It's not like the old days where dad would go to work and mom would spend all day home with the kids. Many parents simply don't have the time to monitor their kids (or the money to pay for a babysitter to do it for them).

If anything, that's why the idea of extended families has grown a bit more accepted over the nuclear family model, where older grandparents or aunts/uncles can live in the same house and help raise kids effectively (like it used to be, for most of human history). But it's still not common enough in the US and other similar nations to really offset the problem.

And none of that really addresses the fact that a lot of that disassociation doesn't happen during childhood anyway. A lot of the currently alienated Gen X and Millennials didn't necessarily grow up locked in a room playing games or watching online videos, they really only fell into those behavior patterns once tablets and smart phones became ubiquitous. Losing touch with your ability to interact with other humans isn't just something that happens if you fail to learn how when you're young, it can also happen if you forget how once you're older.

My mother definitely found it harder and harder to socialize as she grew older, became a bit more shut-in, and slowly lost practice interacting with actual people (and Covid quarantines definitely didn't help). And she wasn't even on the Internet. She got to the point where any time she had to make an important phone call she'd usually ask me to do it for her, because her anxiety at talking to people on the phone (or worse, dealing with automated systems) made her panic, and then she was afraid she'd screw things up. It becomes a vicious cycle - the more shy and awkward you get, the less you want to try and reach out to interact with people, which makes you even more shy and awkward, and so on. Eventually you pull back into your shell.

I used to try to encourage her to go to local events (like our library sponsoring craft seminars or game nights) to potentially try and meet new people and make new friends, but she never wanted to, because she'd gotten to the point where she felt too socially awkward for it to ever be worthwhile to her. Much easier to just stay home and read books, watch TV, and listen to the radio alone.

That can happen to anyone, at any age. If your entire life consists of just going online, using automated ordering and delivery services, using computer ordering kiosks when you get fast food, paying for everything at self-checkouts, and generally minimizing the amount of interaction you have with actual people, you slowly start to forget how. It becomes harder to talk to people, and easier to avoid them.

And the more people start to feel that way, the more tech companies will create the "solutions" needed to help maintain that sort of lifestyle. Which in turn only makes the problem worse.

We're basically creating the conditions as a culture for everyone to just live in their own personal bubble and never have to interact with another human being ever again.

And because of how algorithms and content delivery work, most of those people's world-bubbles will be radically different from everyone else's, so they'll have almost nothing in common even if they tried to interact. It'll be like being the only human on Earth surrounded by a world full of aliens. But it will be like that for everyone. And it'll be maddening to try and deal with the idea that these other people somehow don't see the world the way you do. Are they crazy? Are they stupid? Are they evil?

And from there it's very easy to decide that those crazy stupid evil aliens don't matter. That they're not as important as you, that their personal experiences aren't as important as yours. And at that point, who gives a shit what they think or feel? They're wrong. And should be treated as such.

Welcome to the glorious future.

I've always appreciated your perspective, ParanoidObsessive. I'm glad you're still around.

GreenKnight127 posted...

I've always appreciated your perspective, ParanoidObsessive. I'm glad you're still around.

UwU

GreenKnight127 posted...

I blame an entire generation of parents (many of whom are divorced) who don't monitor their kids' habits.

What requiring both parents to work full time does to a society.