What you’re describing is just human nature. I also wish for a world where everyone was honest with their intentions. It’s not realistic. You might as well just complain about humanity as a whole, unless you have a better idea, or can fix humanity, dating apps do a decent job.

Agreed.

But I read your comment as complacency.

I believe the fix is to complain. How else to change human nature?

That is the best part: we can change. We can do better.

Naive? Maybe. Probably. But I would prefer idealist. Pretty much potato/potato in my world.

This is a noble idea which I completely respect.

But changing human nature is a tough task. Plus, changing a trait into something that seems better (e.g., full honesty on goals) might have all sorts of unexpected consequences. There are dark fiction stories about societies with forced honesty (and a few who figured out the way out of it). The road to hell and all that.

No offense intended. My 2c.

> But changing human nature is a tough task.

It is up to each of us to self-reflect and then make the effort to self-evolve. The key to this is doing so for the benefit/happiness of others.

> There are dark fiction stories about societies with forced honesty

Of course. a) It's fiction, b) We must choose to be honest and then make the effort to both know the truth and manifest the truth in not just what we say but what we do.

And, everyone should know that the worst lies are those we tell ourselves, thus the deeeeeep wisdom of "Know thyself." It is the essential foundation for aiming the compass towards a better path.

this is very naive and kind of adorable if you look at it in the grand scheme of things nothing really has changed since the days of the theocracy

we have gigantic compute clusters that do things what humans would have thought as deities but have people advocating for the return of feudalism

we are closer to pride and prejudice than ring world that won't change in the next 1000 years or so regardless of the amount of wisdom

> nothing really has changed since the days of the theocracy

democracy is God's Will, because all our free wills are equal, and we should work together in cooperation instead of against each other in competition

theocracy based upon love has basically never been tried

most theocrats are just doing it for the power, money, and sex, in whichever order

the Wisdom of the lovers of God are also the lovers of their neighbors, but they do not rule nations, or even cities

but they could, if only the people tried to learn the value of compassion

that is the only path to success, all else is compromise, and often a horrible one at that

  always love, teach to always love
  never hate, teach to never hate

we could choose to live compassionately, create compassionate societies, if we wanted, but our selfish desires must be shelved to do so

and so, it's just more of the same, with different tech, now in service to the Church of the Almighty Dollar, no matter which denomination

"Same as it ever was." --Talking Heads

None taken. At all!

If you take everything to the extreme "full" honesty becomes "blunt" honesty. I do not advocate that. Pink Floyd answered that with "The Trial". Dark fiction tends to explore the extremes and to me often tends to miss the nuances. Reading such fiction can and should be thought-provoking but not be seen as a pattern.

The kind of honesty I try to advocate is a personal stance. Can you be trusted? Do your viewpoints falter under pressure? Are you able to change them openly? So it all basicly ties into a sense of morality. A bit of a dirty word in our business first world of today.

Reach for the moon and all that. ;-)

Has it occurred to you that tools are created by people for reasons, which absolutely may be judged both for intentional malice and insufficiently forestalled harmful consequence?

Yes.

But taking such a stance will make it much harder to move the discourse forward in a positive way.

I am prone to bitterness and dystopic thinking. To combat this I try to find a positive view to move forward.

Humans and humanity is not a force of good. Greed is too foundational in our nature. Our ability to improve based on ideas is our only really redeeming feature. Both a blessing and a curse.

'Judged,' I said, not 'prejudged;' for example I would like to see certain responsible individuals, as well as (I guess now Meta indirectly but beneficially d/b/a) Facebook the corporate entity, answer charges in some competent and not currently extant court of knowing complicity in at least one genocide. (The talking shop and mutual disadmiration society called the International Criminal Court has for decades lacked competence on the obvious grounds that enforcement scales in inverse proportion to the geopolitical relevance of the judgment. A law so unevenly enforced is no law an honest American should recognize, though I grant we seem somewhat thin on the ground these days.)

In any case what's dystopic in desiring that a system of governance under law function basically as designed? I realize the idea of any kind of international cooperation beyond the scope of new mercantile or Hanseatic Leagues is lately much out of fashion, but as noted I'm a touch old-fashioned myself, enough so still to consider that what's good for the goose is, broadly and taking one thing with another, likely about as tasty a dressing for the gander. Certainly in either case the bird seems lately about equally cooked.

If we have supranational corporations - Facebook claims half the species, which I might believe 10% exaggerated at most - and thus supranational crimes, then we should, always as a norm if not at all times in practical effect, have supranational courts and like-scoped means of deterring bad behavior. Lacking those, we face a return more or less to the days of the East India Companies, or - for younger folks, who may more intuitively grasp fictional examples inspired by that history - Weyland-Yutani and the like.