It’s a good idea to bask in whatever the present moment brings us. No argument there. And where I disagree makes makes things even rosier: AI will undoubtedly hurt the quasi-creative. But try to imagine it coming up with a short story like a creation of George Saunders, much less a cogent term paper. I’m looking forward to more real, human movies by real writers alongside the AI-generated toons. But ... I’m not looking forward to the fall. And I don’t mean autumn.
I'm taking all your evidence to heart, but one glaring problem bullied my mental well-being all summer long: the problem of the environment. Watching the world's forests burn—and breathing in the fumes of those fires—filled me with dread throughout these last few months. The nightmare has begun.
Lots of us are still thinking about the lockdowns because they destroyed our social life and communities, shut down our favorite businesses, and forced us into isolation. They left a traumatic impact that will stay with us for decades. This isn’t even to mention the physical problems that people had to experience after the gyms closed down and doctors closed down their practices. There is plenty of hell to pay.
On balance, is that balanced by the lives we saved? I’m not saying it’s a simple equation -- some unnecessary measures were taken and some mistakes were made. But on balance...
I have no idea! That’s the point. The real issue, as I see it, is that debate was stifled and the free flow of information cut off for a prolonged period. Public policy isn’t my ‘department’; what I care about is journalism, information, culture, etc. Record-keeping was so skewed, and media so quiescent, at a critical moment that I don’t think we’ll ever have any real answer about ‘lives saved’ from policies adopted as opposed to countervailing harms from unintended consequences. Probably, from a governmental/public health point of view, mistakes were made. What matters to me though is the way that civil society folded on itself and deferred automatically and often irrationally to ‘authority.’ That was a bracing lesson for me and I would like to see it internalized more by the society at large. - Sam
It’s a good idea to bask in whatever the present moment brings us. No argument there. And where I disagree makes makes things even rosier: AI will undoubtedly hurt the quasi-creative. But try to imagine it coming up with a short story like a creation of George Saunders, much less a cogent term paper. I’m looking forward to more real, human movies by real writers alongside the AI-generated toons. But ... I’m not looking forward to the fall. And I don’t mean autumn.
I'm taking all your evidence to heart, but one glaring problem bullied my mental well-being all summer long: the problem of the environment. Watching the world's forests burn—and breathing in the fumes of those fires—filled me with dread throughout these last few months. The nightmare has begun.
Lots of us are still thinking about the lockdowns because they destroyed our social life and communities, shut down our favorite businesses, and forced us into isolation. They left a traumatic impact that will stay with us for decades. This isn’t even to mention the physical problems that people had to experience after the gyms closed down and doctors closed down their practices. There is plenty of hell to pay.
On balance, is that balanced by the lives we saved? I’m not saying it’s a simple equation -- some unnecessary measures were taken and some mistakes were made. But on balance...
I have no idea! That’s the point. The real issue, as I see it, is that debate was stifled and the free flow of information cut off for a prolonged period. Public policy isn’t my ‘department’; what I care about is journalism, information, culture, etc. Record-keeping was so skewed, and media so quiescent, at a critical moment that I don’t think we’ll ever have any real answer about ‘lives saved’ from policies adopted as opposed to countervailing harms from unintended consequences. Probably, from a governmental/public health point of view, mistakes were made. What matters to me though is the way that civil society folded on itself and deferred automatically and often irrationally to ‘authority.’ That was a bracing lesson for me and I would like to see it internalized more by the society at large. - Sam
That’s true. During both admins.