We’ve had market corrections. We’re coming up on some global population correction for sure in the next century or so. I guess we’ll all find out if that’s the Great Filter, or if it’s something else we haven’t found yet.

Hasn’t the WHO officially declared it over?

The provisional count of all US deaths involving COVID-19 was 48,615 compared to over 200,000 during the same time period in 2022. Of those 98.4% of the deaths were elderly Americans. The pandemic is long over.

A friend of mine had an interesting basis for dismissing Pinker.

They saw a discussion panel which included Pinker and noticed that in all the discussion and Q&A he didn’t express a single thought that wasn’t already in his book or speech.

The basis is that any person intelligent and thoughtful enough to be an academic let alone a public intellectual has myriad thoughts and ideas that don’t make it into publication and should spill over in conversation. They reasoned that Pinker is just a clever nerd that got lucky in academia, and I’ve always figured that they’re right (having never thought of that way of thinking about it myself).

Incidentally I’ve seen Penn (of Penn and Teller) reason similarly about how dumb Trump is.

Yeah, this is exactly what’s wrong with constantly demonizing boomers and attributing every shitty thing they’ve ever done to leaded gas and paint chips. Populations tend more conservative as they get older and they have for centuries. Even if a minority of individuals actually change their minds, people who were politically apathetic when they were younger tend to be more conservative when they do start voting when they’re older, skewing the whole generation more conservative. There’s already plenty of conservative millennials out there, and even more of them among the ranks of the non-voters.

Remember, boomers are the generation of hippies. Actual, literal hippies who, despite whatever imperfect motives you may ascribe to their movement, achieved greater social revolution in their time than any attitude shifts that have occurred during millennials’ peak social years. And that was only with ~30% of boomers participating in the movement. The rest of them went on to vote for Reagan and kick off helicopter parenting and satanic panic and music censorship and the whole bit.

Anyone who thinks millennials will be somehow immune to this pattern is in for a rough next few decades.

Fewer millennials ate lead paint chips as kids, I know that much.

Boomers are a problem because they took power early and refuse to let go

That’s the thing with self-organizing systems like democracy or capitalism… You need constant churn, because if it stagnates, the worst kind of people entrench themselves.

I don’t think inflation is normal here. It’s still about 8%.

I wonder whether these positive comments come from those that are well off.

Sorry, what salaries?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHI61GHNGJM

Andewism has a ton of great videos about it I suggest watching more than just this one to get an idea. That video I linked is a good introduction but its 3 years old so some of the more recent videos have a more evolved view on it.

At the moment Solarpunk is a somewhat small and not very well defined movement, but it’s slowly growing and coming into its own. It started as a call to writers to write more hopeful fiction about the future as a response to the disproportionate prevalence of dystopian fiction, chiefly cyberpunk.

Here is a more comprehensive write-up about it. Solarpunk imagines a future where humanity finds a way to live in balance with nature, technology, and each other, with a heavy focus on being realistic, grounded, and attainable. Politically it’s very socially progressive, environmentalist, anticapitalist, and anti-authoritarian.

Or you could just google it?

I"m aware of that and I do agree some things are getting better. That was exactly my mindset in my 20s. But I believe you could use other data, like wealth repartition, environnement, consumption, media concentration, etc. to demonstate the opposite. The simple fact that we did more damage to the planet in 200 years that we did over 40k years is making me really worry. But yeah, I guess it depends on how you perceive certain things.

From my perspective, toxic masculinity has been more assertive than ever in recent years. As mentioned in another reply, I had to intervene to protect female students from male behavior for the first time in my career this year. One of my colleagues was harassed by a student in full view several times this session. This is new for us. We have both extremely open, sensitive and respectful students, and the opposite, but the main difference is that the second group is now uninhibited and not shy about putting himself in the spotlight.

I dont want to be rude but you dont seems to have any no clue about what teaching is, even more so at a university. I’m a good teacher. I teach them things that are fundamental to our field and that will serve them for the rest of their lives for those who graduate. They tell me. I have a good relationship with most of my students, they like me and I like them (I’m not a dinosaure, I was in their shoes 15 years ago). Still, the reality is that each year we have to lower the pass threshold, both at the High school (my wife teaches) and university level. The level of entitlement and the view that teaching is a business like any other, on the part of both students and the institutions, reduces the level and value of learning. For the past few years now, we have been graduating students that I would never hire because they lack fundamental skills. For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t even blame them, I’d blame their parents instead, because they’ve been guinea pigs for malicious technology like social networking and ubiquitous cell phones. In terms of values ​​now, the only thing I will add is that this year, for the first time, I had to intervene to protect female students from the toxic behavior of male groups. More then once. And also It’s funny because the tone and confidence of your message actually reminds me of certain students.

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Granted, this isn’t always easy. And I don’t know if this applies to (for example) the political situation and society in the US. I can’t relate to that too much. I mean there is so much populism and I don’t know what I’d do if half of my neighbors were in the mindset to vote for right-wing a-holes, there were hundreds of school shootings each year, my medication was unaffordable to me and women’s reproductive rights were cancelled. I mean you can’t really ‘avoid’ that. I don’t want to bash the USA but it’s somewhat beyond my own reality. I struggle with other things in my life. But all of that isn’t my achievement. I was simply born someplace else.

All that are things I can’t do anything about. so I don’t let it occupy my mind. I’m fortunate to be in good health but if that were to change I’d deal with it as best I can. Nothing I can do to make it cheaper. I vote for whatever good that does but outside election time I focus on things I can actually do.