The cold war and space race created a magical level of incentive in both the USA and USSR. It makes a lot of modern culture look very petty in contrast.
The incentive still exists, But the entertainment industry has taken the front seat. All that creative energy is now spent making youtube, tiktok videos.
i don't know. i see the tiktok generation as druggies who require a daily shot of likes and hearts and shares to feel the adrenaline and dopamine shot.
call me old fashioned but i do not have an online presence in my name. I learned from the early days to not give my real name in chat rooms and things carried over from there.
i do not own a youtube/google account and use newpipe so i do not have the urge to "comment" on a video on youtube, or use twitter to voice my opinion.
Anyway, what i am getting to us, why doesn't someone like musk re-start the science grassroots level industry across the world? we have things like pi and arduino which are doing their bit in helping re build the hacker culture in the kids but imo its needs more energetic push, across the world.
imagine what kids can do with current tech if they are made to pour their energy from tiktok cringe into science
Interestingly (N == 1), when I abandoned Twitter and Facebook, I started spending a lot more time on HN. Those upvotes are still addictive, even if they come just in numeric form without all the cute icons.
sure but HN has downvotes that act as deterrence to content that is not acceptable to others unlike any other platform where you can only say yayy but not disagree. that has its problems.
i write a comment on HN, then another later. occasionally i check the replies in the comments page that makes me answer but the thread does not go too deep for me. i do not spend "that" much time here.
Those negative thumb downs have great value, i have gotten so much downvotes over the years, that loss in karma has shaped my thinking, i am honestly grateful of those downvotes to clearly shape my thinking. But it largely depends on the kind of forum you are in, thankfully HN is a platform where a mojority saner minds prevail.
and I don't find anything wrong with that. It would be great if this field would have more creative energy and enthusiasm among general audience, but bashing it on people that are doing something different than what you and I think is better is just wrong.
People are making videos either because they want to or there are greater incentives for that than space fields. The goal should be to create more enthusiasm among people about this field and provide greater incentives to work in this field rather than bashing their fields. What you said in the last sentence reeks of "how the field I like is superior than others".
