I assume most people who use XP (which by default means non-hobbyists) are using it to run some software that was made to run only on it and the people who made said software never bothered to update the software for another OS. Something like a software application to manage prices in some family-run grocery store or warehouse in a former socialist country or what have you. The people using XP don't know they're even using an old OS, and they're oftentimes not very technical people (to say the least). They're using it because it's their job and they don't care particularly about it. It's usually not connected to the internet
Recently I went to the dentist, and while they weren't using XP, they were using Windows 7 to run some in-house software (I assume) to check my insurance
You can always count on someone coming along and defending the multi-trillion dollar corporation that just so happens to take a screenshot of your screen every few seconds (among many, many - too many other things)
Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7? If so, why even target the poor guy? What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit? Either way, I hope he makes it, even though it looks like it was a fatal blow
Then at least you tried whatever it may have been you wanted to succeed at. You may fail, but at least you won't wonder what could've been "if only I had tried"
Long-term planning on a colossal scale (like nation-state-level) (or even on a not-so-colossal scale - think of how many plans YOU have made and how they turned out) is pointless because of black swans
Sure, having a general idea of where you want things to go is fine, and everyone already does that; but when a government starts thinking that they should set a concrete goal X and they should do Y to achieve it, it's just akin to trying to predict the future, and we all know how well that always works out, because theyre under the faulty premise of thinkin Y will be constant forever, or that even the goal itself (X) should remain constant in a world that is anything but constant
So, this is a terrible argument for not having elections, or bigger election cycles. I'm sure someone could potentially put forward a better argument, but this one is not it
Life without work is meaningless. Over the millennia we have done nothing but work. We were made to work.
I don't know if you've experienced not working without having to worry about money, but I have and it has a unique feeling of emptiness to it.
This is not me praising 9-5 office jobs, or work from home jobs, or any other specific job. They can all be hell in and of themselves, but the idea of abolishing work is just so laughable to me.
The moment that happens, a collective neurosis will overtake humanity the likes of which has never been seen before. We can only hope work will continue to be around as long as we are around, for our own sake.
AI fakes, and AI in general, will push more and more people to interact with each other in real life. I, for one, can't wait for that. Sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same
>Cromwell ravaged through and tried to cleanse them
I don't think you realize just how weak central states were back in the day. To even call them states in the same vein as how we would today call a state a state is a bit of a misnomer
Cromwell lived in the 17th century, a time when there was no instant access to information between large (or small) spans of geography. A time when commands couldn't be given and executed right away
>you live a life free of strife or serious concern for bodily harm
Like in Cromwell's time, for the majority of even his opponents. Good luck finding your enemy who has no phone or any other device that emits signals. And if you do find him, good luck getting that information to your superiors before he can escape again
And to go a bit off-topic:
I don't understand why there is a tendency here where people think we live in these semi-perfect, vaguely utopian Times where life is so much better in every way compared to even 100, or god forbid, 500 years or more; and that these Times will only get better and better as the clock keeps spinning
People lived and flourished and did just fine back in the day. People weren't breaking down every day because they had no electricity, vaccines (im not anti vax before someone accuses me of being one), or any other things we have today that they didn't have back then
Sure, maybe life was shorter on average (mainly thanks to things like stillbirth), but I think we should question if our comparatively longer lives today (propped up artificially for the vast majority) are any more meaningful or better in quality just because they're quantitatively bigger
- just think of how many people rely on things like blood pressure medication to squeeze out another day instead of making meaningful changes to their lives (and most people could; exceptions exist, though very few) which would actually make their lives much better and more enjoyable
And the following is from Pinker himself(https://web.archive.org/web/20201026010157/https://stevenpin...):
"The upshot is that each of the following two
assertions can be true: (1) the chances of war are lower than they were before, and (2) the damage
caused by the most severe imaginable war is greater than it was before. That makes it meaningless—an
issue of semantics—to speculate about whether the world is “safer” overall; in one sense it may be
safer, in another sense, less safe. That is exactly why Better Angels does not claim, contra Taleb, that the
world is “safer” across the board"
>The world also tended to be far more violent in the past than it is now.
Do you think people just dropped dead? Humans are not that fragile. The reason the average Roman age was relatively low is because of high mortality at childbirth. If you got to 20, chances were in your favor that you'd get to at least 60. This applies to non-roman, pre-vaccine societies too.
>Basically everyone suffered trauma we'd call fairly extreme, these days.
Eh, maybe. But at the same time, I don't agree that they would be "traumatized."
Heck, I bet if you could place a modern human who has lived his entire life in a developed Western country even a couple of thousand years back, I think he'd get pretty acquainted with that way of life in no time. If there's one thing we're good at it's probably adapting to our environment.
Life is a collection of habits. If you're used to death and destruction (though I am not saying that death and destruction were as common as you make it out to be), it won't phase you. Montaigne talks about this when comparing European society and moral norms to New World (Indian) societies and moral norms.
>The world also tended to be far more violent in the past than it is now.
No data proving this to be true, whatsoever.
Plus it's a vast overgeneralization. More violent where? In what today we would call France? China? Canada? Turkey? Chad? Argentina? Was there even a single event nearly as violent as World War 2 pre-vaccines, which happened 80 years ago? Your postulation is on very shaky legs, at best.
>in the year 1200 the average person would likely not have considered the people living 800 years before them to be all that different from them
How do you know this?
And does the average person today really think someone living in the year 1200 to be all that different from them living in 2025? If so, in what way does this person think people 800 years ago are different from us? (I'm asking because I don't share your assumptions if this hypothetical person were to think on this matter for more than 5 seconds)
Recently I went to the dentist, and while they weren't using XP, they were using Windows 7 to run some in-house software (I assume) to check my insurance
Yes, im from a former socialist country