thoughts/black_pill
What can we do to combat the doomer worldview?
The following is a commentary to this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLZwpH5lCD4
I’ve already been called out on HN that I seek for technical solutions for problems of organizational nature. In the terms of the main allegory of the talk, not all solutions can be solved effectively by applying a small voltage to a transistor’s control terminal. When a platform with infinite resources and near-infinite influence actively tries to prevent you from having agency, you either have to resort to more and more extreme ways while staying on the platform, or leave this platform altogether. Even if you decide to switch from Android to pmOS, you would still have to have a device which supports both the system and bootloader unlocking organizational problem, figure out how to run banking apps which do not like to be executed on a non-stock OS ~organizaaational proooblem~ and figure out what to do with essential apps which require Android 13+ cryptographically signed runtime you get the idea. For sure, there exist myriads of tedious technical solutions to each one of these problems, including owning a separate Android device exclusively for running those apps, but at some point the amount of effort required to clear the neverending list of those issues makes it infeasible to compete. Creating an another Discord alternative is a noble cause (and I totally respect the effort of harnessing the magic of computers), but it still remains an organizational problem of moving people from the platform. Thus, a natural question arises: how do we solve global organizational problems, if technical solutions have a theoretical limit? That being said, I’m all in for technical solutions and various types of coping mechanisms! The next big project on this blog is by far the greatest mix of both I ever worked on, the perfect combination of acceptance and technical convenience. So, finding answers to this thought is also a personal journey of dealing with the Black_Pill.
I wish to thank Andy for the talk. Even if we have to find the exact answers for ourselves, it highlights the problem I didn’t think much about. Starting the discussion is the first step of dealing with the problem, and the talk motivated me to start looking for some answers.