For me this is just patently false, humanity has tackled with existentialism, art, science and much more. Many of which is to better understand our position in the universe and not just to survive.

But there is a crux to it; not everyone cares. Which again can also be seen through the generations many people are just interested in surviving and have no more desire than to get to the nearest McDonalds or Starbucks, and that's fine.

I feel this is the majority of people and it's only a few exceptional individuals that have the drive and ability to push beyond; some of them are actually often quite troubled and maybe it's their very lack of contentment and happiness that drives them on.

I feel the nihlistic point of view has the greatest of troubles with this state of affairs because if the vast majority are just content to sit back and go to the nearest Yelp recommendation, and there's no real higher purpose, then it's all just rather depressing.

I think we're there. Many I people I know, or know of, don't care about higher purpose and don't care to understand the concepts or mechanisms underlying the technology that does stuff for them. They just want life to be easy and fun (as we all do), but they don't care about exploring meaning in life or even going in-depth into their own beliefs

(MIT fraternities may be a bit different from what you'd expect. About half of MIT undergraduate men are members of fraternities.)

The problem is that to even ask these questions, you must already have an answer to them: you have to know who "we" is.

If my sewage or plumbing stop working, I get sick and die. If my Twitter stops working, nothing...I am not on Twitter. Lots of countries (e.g. Japan) do fine with a private postal service. And plenty (e.g. Panama or America in the era of free banking) do fine outsourcing their currency.

I am not saying Twitter shouldn’t be regulated. Just that this isn’t the argument for it.

The likes of Facebook/Twitter/YouTube have blown past this limit a long time ago.

At this point it's too late for regulation. You can't effectively break them down. Nationalizing them is pretty much unfeasible since they have so many international users. So the only solution left seems to be to shut them down completely, and let the competition do their job (it won't take long, considering Internet timescales). But maybe before consider what kind of regulations these competitors will have to live under. (Maybe a built-in time limit before they are shut down in turn, and the cycle starts all over again ?)

When social media becomes the primary driver of misinformation and anti-democratic sentiment, then it has arguably “stopped working”. While users might not be sick in the flesh, their minds will surely start to rot.

The platforms aren't the problem, people are the problem. Education is piss poor, if that's not fixed/improved, we can go back to pre-industrial times and people would still vote for a moron who promises big things, never delivers and just grabs power for themselves.

Financial/civic/political education in schools? Public-sponsored articles and videos debunking conspiracies? Nah, just ban Twitter, that'll solve it.

People on either side of the fence believe they're right. Keep ignoring and belittling each other and it will lead to an even worse situation down the road.

Are blocked sewer is a people problem; it’s either poorly designed, poorly constructed, poorly maintained or a combination of causes. But in the end, the problem is caused by people.

While moving thinking up the stack may be an option, I don't think that's really what's happening. People would rather use that time for leisure (look at digital consumption). Not to mention, knowing the basics of these services is very elementary. The people capable of thinking further up the stack would not be significantly impacted by possessing a basic understanding of simple services.

The big idea from Postman on this is that with simple technologies, the culture and the society drive their development and use. Whereas with bigger technologies (Internet, statistics, Twitter, etc.) start to shape society around them.

I'm doing a poor job of explaining myself; Postman has more to say on page 23 onward of Technopoly if you're curious for a better explaination.

On a macro scale I also want to understand them so I know how badly my utility is screwing me when they propose rate hikes and other things to justify their poor management covering that poor stewardship with need for "improvements" or other explinations that will be ignorated by the masses of people that "do not want to think about any of this things"

This is known as Outsourcing your thinking, one should never do that

I also do not at all want them "regulated and managed by a democratic authority". I neither want centrally planned systems nor do I want them to be managed "democratically" which is at the end of the say 2 wolves and lamb voting on what is for dinner.

The other problem is that platforms try to be the arbiters of truth. That can't work because most things are in shades of gray. When platforms take sides, the other side feels slighted.

Often trotted out as an example of frivolous litigation, you're likely referring to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...

> "Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old woman who suffered third-degree burns in her pelvic region"

> "Liebeck sought to settle with McDonald's for $20,000 to cover her actual and anticipated expenses. Her past medical expenses were $10,500; her anticipated future medical expenses were approximately $2,500; and her daughter's loss of income was approximately $5,000 for a total of approximately $18,000"

McDonald's offered $800. Liebeck retained an attorney. After continuing to refuse to settle, the jury ultimately awarded $160,000 to cover expenses, and $2.7M in punitive damages.

If you want to argue the personal responsibility angle for the $20,000, you're entitled to your opinion. The millions were not what she personally was asking for.

Skin grafts on your genitals are not just hot coffee. They were serving coffee 40 deg F (22 deg C) hotter than the temperature needed to fry an egg, and at least 20 deg F (11 deg C) hotter than any other tested vendor. Also, at the time, McDonald's had reports of over 700 people who had been injured to various degrees by their coffee.

That right there is also PR spin, because it does not actually take that high of heat to "fry an egg", infact to cook eggs properly you often want lower heat or they become rubbery... Thus it is PR spin to phrase it in that manner because people associate "frying" with extreme high temps well over boiling point (212 degrees F / 100 deg C)

The coffee at McD's at the time was around 180 degrees F (82 deg C), their justification for that (right or wrong) was customers wanted to hotter coffee so it would still be hot when they arrived at the homes or offices after visiting the drive through.

Anecdotally, I know many people today that complaining about drinks from Drive through not being HOT enough, or cooling down too quickly

>>Also, at the time, McDonald's had reports of over 700 people who had been injured to various degrees by their coffee.

Over a 10 year span, over thousands of locations, and probably millions of cups of coffee sold, from a statistical standpoint that is very small rate

it's important to keep reminding people of those important details.

thank you!

I've also heard they deliberately kept the coffee very hot because they were promoting free refills, but wanted to discourage them to actually happen, but I don't know if it's true.

I think you pwned yourself here, repeating blindly a very distorted presentation of the actual incident. Go read up more on it, you might change your mind. There is a good reason why McD lost the case despite lawyering up.