surprised by change and upredictability

[Hristo Botev]

These days I try and avoid dwelling too much on the more macro doomsday stuff; both for my own mental well being but also (mainly) because I came to realize that me constantly thinking about and going on about collapsist stuff was not creating a particularly healthy family environment.

On a more micro level, however, these are the changes that I have had and continue to have the hardest time adapting to since returning to my hometown to raise my family:

1. Local/state school choice policies here seem to have destroyed the neighborhood schools I grew up in, and the communities that built up around those schools. Navigating education for elementary, middle school, and now high school-age kids is challenging, even for someone like me who assumes that most (nearly all) education happens outside of schools anyway.

2. Gabb Wireless has made it easier to keep DD off of social media--all of her friends (8th grade) have smart phones and almost all of them have zero restrictions placed on their use of those phones by their parents. It's been a battle at times with her, but she gets it; and she understands that sometimes parents have to say "no."

3. At this point I just have to assume that half of the people I encounter when I venture outside of my home are not here legally, and I have made adjustments accordingly. For example, I have become an extremely defensive and careful driver, as hit and runs are an everyday occurrence here. I no longer contract out any work at my house, after being burned by an electrician who bungled a job (my own ignorance as to electrical work at the time was partly to blame) and before I got the chance to insist that he come back and make it right he was deported (I didn't have anything to do with the deportation). DS is focused on learning Spanish via Babbel because he wants to play soccer professionally and/or coach soccer, and you really can't coach soccer here (even youth soccer) unless you are bilingual.

4. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, as Gen X parents who grew up largely without the Internet and who didn't have cell phones (much less smart phones) until we were in our 20s, we find it is in some ways very difficult to parent our kids--their experiences are so very different from ours. Also, we really have no idea what the world will look like in 10 years, except that it won't look much like the world that existed when we were in our early 20s. So, it seems sometimes that whatever wisdom DW and I have, much of it is not particularly relevant to the world our kids inhabit. This is partly the reason I have been focusing on reading the really old books lately, to ponder the wisdom of the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, etc. that continues to be relevant today.

[jacob]

This depends on perspective or how you might roughly identify. I think it's possible that the lifestyle of an urban/suburban middle-class, middle-aged, female in the U.S. changed more from 1965 to 2024 than from 1906 to 1965. For example, such a woman would have likely been wearing gloves to church on Sunday and a housedress at home on Monday in both 1906 and 1965, but not so much in 2024.

1906->1965 (from steam to electricity):
Plumbing transitions from wells and outhouses to indoor plumbing with hot water on demand and toilets.
Electricity becomes commonplace everywhere.
The energy mix transitions from wood and coal to oil and gas.
Radio becomes a thing and replaces telegraphs and newspapers for news. TV is invented and eventually redesigns every living room.
People change from getting around by foot and horse to driving cars. Suburbia is developed.
Flying spans the period between the Wright Brothers and almost landing humans on the moon. Wealthy people can fly commercially.
Germ theory becomes a thing and penicillin is introduced.
Two world wars.

1965->2024 (from electricity to information):
Everybody can fly commercially for less than a train ticket.
Trains and ships go out of fashion.
Cell phones are commercialized and replace landlines.
Personal computers become a thing.
The internet becomes a thing.
Cellphones+computers+internet -> smartphones which change the way of doing business.
Entertainment and ordering goods is moved from physical stores and onto the internet.
Certain cancers can now be largely cured.
Major epidemic diseases are almost eradicated.
Famines become almost extinct.
No wars with any great powers directly facing off.

I consider the first period much more materially significant than the second period. The former essentially introduces new "utilities" on a widespread basis. It became possible to do things that were not possible before. Basically humans commercialized electromagnetism. Whereas the latter period commercialized information: It moved mail order catalogues, newsletters, and clubs online making them easier and faster to find... but in my opinion it did not result in any material changes. I'm struggling to come up with something that cellphones+computers+internet have added other than convenience. Most humans don't use computers as computers ... they use them as an electronic version of sharing postcards, typing on a typewriter, browsing catalogues, and videoconferencing (first attempts at that were made in the 1960s)...

TL;DR I would find it a lot easier to explain 2024 to someone from 1965 than to explain 1965 to someone from 1906.

[zbigi]

I'm struggling to come up with something that cellphones+computers+internet have added other than convenience. Most humans don't use computers as computers ...

Internet made knowledge universal, which disproportionally helped people who can take advantage of knowledge being available to them (i.e. the smarter part of the population). After Internet, everybody in the world, who taught themselves reasonably good English, could now read millions of English language books, not to mention websites and forums. Whereas previously, they'd be confined to their own physical bubble. Just imagine young Jacob in a world where there were no BBS and no Internet. You'd be in a completely different place today, and so would I.

[jacob]

Internet made knowledge universal, which disproportionally helped people who can take advantage of knowledge being available to them (i.e. the smarter part of the population). After Internet, everybody in the world, who taught themselves reasonably good English, could now read millions of English language books, not to mention websites and forums. Whereas previously, they'd be confined to their own physical bubble. Just imagine young Jacob in a world where there were no BBS and no Internet. You'd be in a completely different place today, and so would I.

I actually remember that world. I got my first computer in 1986. Computer nerds met in school yards and swapped software on floppy disks. Sometimes we'd get together for LAN parties or even haul a computer to a friends house to play via the serial port. News were delivered by trade magazines. You could also send in a letter (by regular mail) to their mail box and if you got published, you were a local celebrity. I spent a lot of $$$ on overseas English language subscriptions on Amiga Format et al.. You could order software from the US and UK like a mail order catalogue sending in a travelers check. Then 2-3 months later your computer books and disks would arrive from overseas. There were actual computer shops (although often it was a photography shop expanding into computers) where the staff was informed and you could buy individual ICs to replace in your own computer.

I bought my first 2400 baud (that's about 2kbps for you kids ) modem in 1989 and got on Fidonet. Phone bill paid by the minute. While this expanded my bubble, I think the biggest difference was that I learned how to communicate in writing. My teachers noted how my essays suddenly leveled up. Otherwise, the fidonet was still based on the physical bubble. I started my own BBS in 1991. This way people would call me rather than the other way around, which was good, because my phone bills were $$$. BBS's were mainly oriented around swapping software (shareware and public domain). They weren't "websites" in the way we now understand it. I do think the various fidonet conferences correspond to what is now a forum. We'd still get together offline. This whole idea about people online meeting up IRL is not a new thing.

All that to say is that getting online didn't add anything new compared to what already existed. What it did was make it possible to engage daily without leaving your house and without having to wait 1-3 months for a response from somewhere outside your bubble. It made the existing bubbles faster and wider so to speak. However, if you were able to get to a major city, you already had access to those bubbles. Also, some people had access to more than one bubble. This way information and software could travel slowly as people swapped demos, etc. Basically, you'd know the computer-people (nerds) from school, the nerds from your sport, perhaps the nerds from your parents' work, etc.

It's conceivable that I still live with the mentality of that old bubble. I don't think of the internet as a vast trove of knowledge with millions of books. Much of the internet's knowledge/information/news is garbage. I still rely on the oldschool sources for actual learning. Perhaps one exception there though. When it comes to technical details, like "how to install X in Y", the internet really has made quite a difference. Previously, you would either be stuck or spend months figuring it out. Now it's a 5 minute google away. Conversely, the idea of relying on the internet for a baseline education in something sends "shivers down me spine".

Perhaps in that sense, people of my generation and interests (nerds who were kids in the late 1970s and 1980s) are perhaps in a unique situation of having experienced the whole evolution from near nothing to today's near everything (or at least a lot). So we can relate to both the before culture (when owning a computer or being online was unusual) and the present situation (where not owning a computer or being online is unusual).

[zbigi]

@jacob

I'm around five years younger than you, so I missed the entire BBS thing. I got on the relatively early stages of Internet though (from 1996 onwards IIRC), and I think it greatly expanded my horizons. For one thing, I participated in discussions with people much older and mature from me on various news forum (back when the news protocol was a thing), and it helped my reasoning and my writing. Also, Internet made me go deep on various nerdy interests that were underdeveloped before (like software, maths), which paid off handsomely in monetary terms. After that, I got to read books and texts that would never be available in a local library, or even translated into Polish at all. Not to mention finding a forum like ERE, with its unique perspective.
All of this combined, made me a radically different person that I would have been otherwise. The strength of this effect is probably correlated with how poor and underdeveloped (also intellectually - lack of locally available books, few local people with broader perspectives etc.) one's region of origin is.

[jacob]

For one thing, I participated in discussions with people much older and mature from me on various news forum (back when the news protocol was a thing), and it helped my reasoning and my writing.

Yeah, I might be taking this for granted/be blind to what a difference that made. I was stuck with the general population in the regular school system---the only population available in our school system at the time---and basically just mailing it in with minimum effort. I was very close to dropping out after 9th grade out of sheer boredom and lack of challenge. I ran into a guy calling himself miniGauss (after the mathematician) in the Danish science forum on fidonet. He was only a year older than me but talked about complex numbers and proving theorems---something I knew was way ahead of next year's curriculum. He basically made it okay to "study ahead of the class"---something that was otherwise severely frowned upon within Danish school culture. So I went to the school library and started reading college books on physics and pestering my physics teacher after class with questions about quantum mechanics. That basically launched me towards a career in physics.

Whether it makes a difference likely depends on how esoteric one's interest is. An interest in computers, games, and programming was fairly common... like 10% at the time. We had our own corner of the school yard with about 6-7 regular people or so. An interest in more intellectual rarities like physics and mathematics, say 0.1%, required the internet to connect. The internet is definitely a boon for connecting with niche interests and people.

When I was coming up with the whole ERE thing/theory, I only had access to a few books and a couple of pre-blog websites. In that regard, the internet certainly has made it easier to find such stuff. Social media has in turn made it easier to connect with people instead of just reading "theory". OTOH, I wonder if this has also made people less creative. That's another issue though.

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:


1906 Vacuum Advertisement




1965 Toy Vacuum Advertisement (I owned a toy set very much like this as a child):



2024 Vacuum Advertisement:

[daylen]

OTOH, I wonder if this has also made people less creative. That's another issue though.

Reminds me of this letter to the editor I wrote for my local paper near the end of high school:



I might contract my time spans a little now in light of recent evidence.

[guitarplayer]

What I occasionally get surprised by in terms of change and unpredictability is in the context of the phenomenology of self or 'how life feels like' after a change has occurred. I know that if I spend a lot of hours doing something, it will change my ability to do it, and if I do a bunch of different things in at least semi-coordinated way then I will be able to do things of new quality. Even though I grasp this with my mind, I catch myself surprised by it. Some examples would be:

- I do quite a bit of coding nowadays. Conceptually I know and knew that this is based on logic and that I would theoretically be able to do it. After practicing different elements of it, I find myself surprised by how I can relatively easily speak to the computer to answer questions that someone asks me and I don't know them but I know how to get them.
- I was probably a typical person in my early twenties by many measures, and in particular was going to parties a lot, not caring about what I eat, smoking and drinking. I conceptually knew about stuff like exercising routines etc. and how to make change happen. But now that I made change happen (or someone else will say this had been predetermined, like Sapolsky would say it), I am surprised how it feels, because I remember how I felt in my early twenties after a run, and also in my late twenties after a run.
- I remember trying to play some basic riffs on the guitar, like Smoke on the Water, when I was about 14 years old. Now I listen to myself playing today and I am surprised, even though I should not be. Richard Bona says that there is no improvisation in music, there is just repetition. But my insight into all the mechanics of this activity is not-enough-thorough enough that I find myself surprised by the unpredictability of what comes out of it.
- I do heaps of daydreaming about some impossible life scenarios so in principle can imagine their outlines, and yet am surprised about particular life scenarios that unfold.

So, the change from conscious incompetence to unconscious competence feels surprising when I reflect on the change.

I would like to extend it to say that change from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence feel surprising based on the unpredictability of where it leads, but I don't think I have good examples to back this up just now.

From the points in the OP, I encountered the ebikes phenomenon only recently moving from countryside to a city. I find it annoying that folk don't keep their seats at proper height and don't use lube for their squeaky chains. The speed is somewhat annoying also.

[jacob]

For those who are interested, The Rise and Fall of American Growth gives a good overview (going back 150 years) of how various technologies have been incorporated into the households as history has progressed. As a rule of thumb, it takes some 20--40 years between the appearance of the first prototype and widescale adoption. Enthusiast who are willing to fork over a lot of money get access after twenty years. Everyman will have to wait another two decades.

For example, I spent nearly $3000(*) in today's dollars on a 120MB harddrive in 1991 so that I could start my BBS. This took me almost a year to save up from my part time job ($9/hr in today's money). Back then hard drives were rare. Most computers (if you had one, not everyone did) were in the process of transitioning from a 5.25" floppy to a 3.5" floppy. Software came on a 1-5 disks. A good computer might have TWO floppy drives. Going from floppy to HDD was a much bigger jump in speed and convenience that going from HDD to SDD.

(*) More expensive than the rest of the computer!

Thus, if you know what we'll all be doing in 2050, check out what the nerds are currently paying out the nose to be doing. The technology of the future is in some way already here except it's clunky, very very expensive, and quite rare. See @7wb5's pics for an example. My best guess for the future of hometech is mixed-VR headsets. Also conceivable that medical tests will become cheap and automated... like your toilet might tell you if you have covid or colon cancer. You can already sequence your own DNA now, but it's gonna cost you $1500--2000, so "affluent nerds only". Expect this to come down in price and technical skill required. Robotics? No, it's not even happening now (need to see a generalized robot folding laundry and taking the kids to school, not one doing dance moves), so 2050 is not far enough into the future. Flying cars? Also no.

[7Wannabe5]

Thus, if you know what we'll all be doing in 2050, check out what the nerds are currently paying out the nose to be doing. The technology of the future is in some way already here except it's clunky, very very expensive, and quite rare. See @7wb5's pics for an example.

Yes, but where would you have looked in 1965 for sign that although vacuum was being operated by female wearing an apron in 1906, and young females were still being trained for apron-wearing-vacuum-operation as possible primary profession 59 years later, the advertisements of 2024 would bring the previously absent-but-assumed- affluent-male-house-holder into the picture, but automate away the apron-wearer?

[jacob]

Yes, but where would you have looked in 1965 for sign that although vacuum was being operated by female wearing an apron in 1906, and young females were still being trained for apron-wearing-vacuum-operation as possible primary profession 59 years later, the advertisements of 2024 would bring the previously absent-but-assumed- affluent-male-house-holder into the picture, but automate away the apron-wearer?

Note how the vacuum cleaner goes from "servant in a very expensive house" (<5% of homes had electricity at the time) to "kids play-acting parents" (rarely do kids play-act menial labor, at this point the housing stock electrification has reached 99%+) to "automated away".

This is an evolution of professional expert->insource amateur->automate. The sign to look for in terms of what is going away is what is currently children's play-acting. Probably the easiest way to do this is to pick up a toy catalogue and see which toys resemble adult tools.

[J_]

@ Jacob thanks for further elaborating on the topic per number.
I do find such prediction helpful. And yes, like others have noticed, also a bit scary.

But it is as it is. It gives direction to my choices.

The new adverse and extreme weather-patterns gives me indications to where and in what period of the year I want to live in Europe. And which outdoor sports I can do. Heavy winds reduce my rowing days, less mountain snow reduce my cc skiing days. Walking and kayaking will be the alternatives for me.

Prices of (plant based) food will continue to rise by inflation and growing number of people. Other than @delay calculated above, a rise from 5 to 7% of cost of food in his household, is in our household more substantial (40 to 50%) of our fixed yearly expenses. Dw is participating in an allotment. We gather knowledge about maintaining a kitchen garden so we can choose to grow more produce ourselves if circumstances require.

A continued higher interest-rate as we have in Europe (3 to 4 %) is for us welcome as a method against inflation. We do only deposits, and have decided long ago not to invest in stocks.

[jennypenny]

@7W5--I'm glad you said something. To me, the whole point of that last advert was 'Who needs a wife?" but I was afraid I'd sound bitter if I said it. I guess that ad is a sign that some things never change.

[daylen]

I was thinking more along the lines of robots doing jobs in general as opposed to chores. Although it does appear robots are getting close to zero-shotting (i.e. success on first try) many chores after doing some simulation. There is supposedly a 1/71 ratio of robots to humans in manufacturing globally which isn't rare by any means. Technological adoption seems to be accelerating. There may not be that many major 0 to 1 technological breakthroughs left but we have been getting quite good at 1 to large N.

[The Old Man]

Flying cars? Also no.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fcWOivJ6bs

The above link discusses why flying cars are an impractical idea. However, the video also shows some examples of working flying cars. Technologically, flying cars are here. If you want one, you can have one. It is not very practical, though.

[daylen]

Helicopters are essentially primitive flying cars that have niche uses (e.g. medical and remote transport, wilderness management, special operations). For mass transit there are more sensible options for sure.

[jacob]

Reminds me of this letter to the editor I wrote for my local paper near the end of high school:

I'm currently reading some proceedings on creativity by Sternberg. My takeaway so far is an actual definition of creativity, which is something that is "new and useful within it's social context while referencing previous work". The second takeaway is that creativity researchers work with a graduated scale from "little-C" to "big C", where "c" is towards a scientific paper containing an original research idea and "C" is Picasso.

With such a definition, creativity is actually pretty rare. For example, a lot of crafting (an amateur landscape painter) is not creative in that sense. (Painting a landscape is not a new idea ... and likely not that useful to the social context; few buyers.) Children coming up with wild ideas are imaginative, sure, but not creative under the definition because while new, they're not useful (and when useful, for e.g. play, they're probably not new) and they don't reference previous work. When thinking about the things I've done/made, not that many are actually creative under this high standard. And I consider myself creative.

(The reference to previous work essentially establishes the social context.)

WRT to social media, there's some concern that people's creative juices essentially get wasted on coming up with clever one-liners on twitter. Another example is finding a picture; editing in some text describing a feeling; and calling it a meme. Lots of effort goes into making memes but most memes are quickly forgotten. They're barely little c ... with no chances of ever leading to Big C. I even wonder if the same is not the case for forum participation. The creative energy goes into finding clever responses and explanations but oftentimes such tangents don't lead anywhere. Overall, I think web1.0 was rather more creative in spirit than web2.0 is!

Whether the internet/web2.0 is helpful in terms of creativity really depends on whether creativity is a finite zero-sum resource that is spent either here or there; or whether, like social capital, the more you use it, they more you get. I lean towards the former, but that may very well be because constant communication zaps my energy rather than building it. For example, blogging required coming up with a combination of ideas and writing 500-1000 words. This was something I could do in 10-20 minutes back then. However, now writing a similar article/post is a struggle because I'm so used to the format of responding to threads instead. Basically, the "new" has been taken out.

OTOH, basically leaving social media or social contexts in general to go discover the creative spirit seems like a big risk to take. I still wonder, though, whether the current form of the internet is leading to more creativity or wasted creativity. If the later, it's a huge social trap.

[J_]

About this Forum and use of creativity: I think the creativity part starts with the (right or useful) question following (un-)expected answer or answers from an angle which is new. The creativity part is, as in above definition, only seldom. I do not think it is a social trap. I do think it cost @Jacob a lot of his energy.
And another perhaps even more important function of this Forum is a social "meeting" and helpdesk.

[daylen]

I sorta like to think of the internet as a giant Picasso painting. There is beauty in how it made its place in this universe and continues to evolve. The signal to noise ratio may seem low from certain perspectives but there are infinite perspectives from which to interpret this ratio in various subnet interactions, bringing life to even the most mundane memes. Internets are much like the nervous systems of civilization. Coalescing into our collective sense-making capacity which is still very much in development. Perhaps the days of creative individualism are waning somewhat, and the days of collective creation are in our purview.

In other words, we can't skip the postmodern cluster fuck of cultures on the way to maturing our civil nervous system. Even the most polarizing and degenerate memes may give way to alleviating cultural tensions that stress out the body of humanity, shining light on our collective shadow.