I agree with the gist of your response. I live over near 24th & Valencia. This part I’ve quoted above is perhaps the most destructive aspect of the entire situation, as it is a modification of the American Dream into something completely opposite: short-term thinking, denialist culture which – as they age – will, for some, transform into a financial survival mindset. Most will simply adopt the denial that they see around them until they are fired. I think that, of all of the problems, this is the one that we need to deal with the most. We need to develop a cultural aversion to people who simply refuse to consider the ends of their own lives. If somebody can’t write a satire piece based upon that, then you’re not a writer.
I also really feel you on the arrogant aspect of the culture. The Slashdot culture is the culture of the mob. Having the mob evaluate ideas leads to predictable places when the mob consists of a bunch of specialists. The specialist culture sees a fragment of the world – a slice – and the world nevertheless thinks these specialists have a monopoly on wisdom and the “big questions” which people think about. The truth – and I highly recommend that people read Jeff Schmidt’s Disciplined Minds – is that the specialist is trained to not question assumptions. That’s the very reason why we can generate so many technologies with questionable ethical implications, without any social upheaval to come with it: Because we design our schools such that the ones who stop to think and question that which they are learning basically fall behind, while the more “gung-ho” types tend to just blast right through. This is the entire basis of the modern American physics graduate school. Sadly, the institutions which used to value creativity and sticking it to the man – such as MIT – increasingly side with industry’s need to generate students who do not see the world in terms of choices based upon values. This is the perfect bunch to task with creating our machine learning future!
