Page 3 of 3 FirstFirst
1
2
3
  1. #41
    The Unstoppable Force PC2's Avatar
    7+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Feb 2015
    Location
    California
    Posts
    21,877
    Quote Originally Posted by Shadowferal View Post
    You're only going by what affects you.
    I use statistics for looking at the big picture and not just focusing on myself. If statistics show society has declined into a dystopia then I would believe it, yet in most cases most of metrics we care about are at or near an all-time high.
    Quote Originally Posted by beanman12345 View Post
    I'm gonna continue to do me. I'd probably take advice from trump and do things he think is better than do things you think is better. You are one of the last people i'd ever take advice from.
    Okay well all I'm asking for is a criteria that tells us when society is normal versus when it is a dystopia. Without that people can always claim we're in a dystopia because every generation keeps shifting its standards.

  2. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by PC2 View Post
    I use statistics for looking at the big picture and not just focusing on myself. If statistics show society has declined into a dystopia then I would believe it, yet in most cases most of metrics we care about are at or near an all-time high.


    Okay well all I'm asking for is a criteria that tells us when society is normal versus when it is a dystopia. Without that people can always claim we're in a dystopia because every generation keeps shifting its standards.
    Metrics you care about are at or near all time high, while asking which metrics we're talking about. conversation with you is pointless.

  3. #43
    The Unstoppable Force PC2's Avatar
    7+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Feb 2015
    Location
    California
    Posts
    21,877
    Quote Originally Posted by beanman12345 View Post
    Metrics you care about are at or near all time high, while asking which metrics we're talking about. conversation with you is pointless.
    Nobody will even say what metrics they are talking about. A dystopia is essentially just a society that has declined into poverty and violence. Poverty rates are not really higher than they were a few decades ago when society was not a dystopia. Violence is lower than it was in the past couple decades. The idea that we're in a dystopia is literally just a myth fueled by Covid and political hyperbole.
    Last edited by PC2; 2021-01-14 at 03:08 AM.

  4. #44
    I am Murloc! Selastan's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    IN THE MOUNTAINS
    Posts
    5,772
    Quote Originally Posted by Themius View Post
    They don't? We have gone to war, organised coups, organised regimen destabilisation based on monetary interests...

    When you then also consider the people in cabinet positions... people who make these decisions about war and such all too often they also serve on the board of some military-industrial company
    I feel like our current reality is very close to the one imagined in Ghost in the Shell. While other cyberpunk stories often paint corporations as de facto kingdoms who rule directly, some like Ghost in the Shell keep the real-world trappings of governments, but ones where politicians are bought, and corporations (particularly arms manufacturers and tech companies) thrive by acting as puppet masters.

    While arms manufacturers and other companies using political influence to start beneficial wars is very dystopian, it doesn't exactly scream cyberpunk dystopia. For that we have to turn to tech companies. Facebook selling data, and Google using AI-supported algorithms to use that data to generate income, all while paying off politicians to slowly weaken privacy laws, open up tax loopholes, and even directly receive government money...THAT is where the cyberpunk comes in.

  5. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by Selastan View Post
    I feel like our current reality is very close to the one imagined in Ghost in the Shell. While other cyberpunk stories often paint corporations as de facto kingdoms who rule directly, some like Ghost in the Shell keep the real-world trappings of governments, but ones where politicians are bought, and corporations (particularly arms manufacturers and tech companies) thrive by acting as puppet masters.

    While arms manufacturers and other companies using political influence to start beneficial wars is very dystopian, it doesn't exactly scream cyberpunk dystopia. For that we have to turn to tech companies. Facebook selling data, and Google using AI-supported algorithms to use that data to generate income, all while paying off politicians to slowly weaken privacy laws, open up tax loopholes, and even directly receive government money...THAT is where the cyberpunk comes in.
    Hey we can look to AC and the Trinidad experiment of pushing a "don't vote" campaign targeting black voters causing the Indian voters to lock down that election.

    Honestly, I think people discount just how intertwined the military corporate world and the government is... almost nothing in this country gets done unless there are corporate interests. Princeton showed as much.

    Technology is used to recruit people among hate groups that target say... white furries for nazisim. I don't see why our intelligence agency wouldn't do the same.

  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Selastan View Post
    Current events here in America got me thinking...things aren't great here. Wealth inequality and corporations owning the politicians, along with our current level of technical achievements...are we living in a cyberpunk dystopia by definition? We live in a society where a man can get sick, get an artificial organ, go in debt to pay for it, and spend the rest of his life working off that debt for a corporation that all but writes the laws. All while a robot cleans his house, his car drives itself, and he carries a computer in his pocket. I know I've seen it joked about before, 'haha why play Cyberpunk 2077 when we are living in a cyberpunk world right now?' but I'm asking seriously...are we living in a cyberpunk world right now? Out of all the dystopian futures science fiction writers have dreamed in the past, is that the one that ultimately came to be? (At least, in America?)
    you could always pay more taxes and enjoy free health care like people in normal developed countries do.

  7. #47
    Well no wonder things aren't very optimised in today's society.

  8. #48
    Uuuuh Orwell was a Prophet

    As a 5 years old I realized that at some point this society cannot sustain itself on this methodology.

    Profit driven society means you're maximizing your profit. Which means each transaction of goods is a fraction more expensive than the actual value of the purchased item. Which means, since some people will be better at this than others, someone will at some point have to lose money in oder for others to gain money.

    Since big corporations deal with a metric ton of more money than normal people do, this effect is disproportionately higher. Which means the more money you have, the more money you can take away from others.

    Played until the end, either the richest of the richest strike an agreement to not take from one another anymore, only exclusively deal in balance (read, no profit) or the system only allows one winner.

    Since it cannot reach that point though because of human nature (when you have nothing left you feel like shit, when the masses have nothing left they revolt), we will have a war before that happens and both sides will obliterate each other.

    We shall then realize that living in huts and trading food for goods was always the better system, until we rinse and repeat the same mistakes again.

    An asteroid will then end this failed experiment.

  9. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by Edge- View Post
    Gamers were a mistake.
    Five idiots on Twitter -> "Gamers were a mistake".

    Seems you are not much better the "gamers".

  10. #50
    No, but I think we are kind of entering the dystopia seen in "Years and Years", if anyone's familiar with the miniseries.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •