zlacker

>>davidb+(OP)
- Corporate-owned proprietary AIs? Check.

- Monitoring of power consumption for illegal computer usage? Check.

- Superintelligent AIs under tight supervision? Check.

- Bootlegged neural nets passed around on torrenting networks? Check.

- Poverty and homelessness running rampant? Check.

Folks, we're officially living in a cyberpunk dystopia.

>>genera+H4
The current poverty rate in the US is around 11% today vs ~24% in 1960, and the poverty rate for children has dropped even further. There's also been about a 6% decrease in homelessness in the US in the past decade[1].

[1] https://www.security.org/resources/homeless-statistics/

>>ch4s3+m6
It's cliche but metrics aren't the truth. Being in perpetual debt and living a hollow life is a much smaller improvement over being homeless than these percentages imply IMO. I'd be more interested in historical data wrt to overall well being rather than employment/arbitrarily defined poverty lines

EDIT:

To those who are illiterate, notice that I said 'small improvement' rather than 'downright worse'

>>mxkopy+N8
I can assure you that being homeless is far worse than not being homeless. It's actually completely incomprehensible to me that you would suggest otherwise. It seems like a totally disconnected comment.

But you can looks for yourself. Most people int he US today are far better off than most people were in the 1950s and 1960s. Median household income is up, life expectancy is up, educational attainment is up, percentage of income spent on food/housing/debt is all down, and on and on. Are there losers in the current social arrangement, of course but they represent a smaller fraction of society.

>>ch4s3+Og
> It's actually completely incomprehensible to me that you would suggest otherwise. It seems like a totally disconnected comment.

I think you are the one who's disconnected. Ask your average crackhead on the block if they're happy, and then compare the answer to your average college dropout stocking groceries. People who haven't seen both sides tend to think happiness is made by Maslow's hierarchy of needs or is a linear function of material wealth - it's not. It seems like a joke, but this post https://www.reddit.com/r/drugscirclejerk/comments/8iyp0c/i_f... describes exactly what I mean. I genuinely believe some homeless people are more happy than some working-class people.

Case in point, you just spouted more metrics to me that have to do with the well being of the economy not the well being of the average person. I do not care about your numbers, because time and again they have been played. We should consider the idea that if we can take steps forward, we can also take steps backward.

And while we're at it I should ask - have you ever had to deal with a dead-end job with subpar pay? Were you ever forced to work in abusive environments? If so, then you can agree with me that it's a terrible state to be in - not the same as being homeless definitely but still terrible.

And if not, then why are you talking about things you don't know about? Do you really think economic metrics are a viable substitute for this lack of knowledge?