Humanities & Cultures

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Human society and cultural news, studies, and other things of that nature. From linguistics to philosophy to religion to anthropology, if it's an academic discipline you can most likely put it here.

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Hot take: It’s okay if we don’t consume all of the world’s information before we die (gkeenan.co)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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One of the more distressing qualities of humanity, in my mind, is the emphasis we collectively put on “efficiency.”¹ It saturates our professional existence. It haunts our socioeconomic barometer. And it drives our current approach to both creating and appreciating art. It’s insidious, the inordinate amount of power “efficiency” holds over our daily lives, without even drawing much attention to itself, creeping up in unanticipated ways: the life hacks bombarding us on TikTok; the large language models we use to reduce the amount of effort we need to put into writing an email to our colleague; the Trim Silence feature on our podcast player of choice.

[...]I will admit that this is perhaps a weird hill to die on, but I truly believe that Trim Silence is an abomination that should be fully eradicated from existence, as it not only spits in the face of the people who take the time and effort to produce their shows, but also, more broadly, encourages a way of interfacing with art that can only be described as gluttonous.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I do and don't disagree, but I think it's contextual.

I 100% agree that we don't have to consume all information - nor should we in most cases. Using tools to cut down time infringes on the art, hampering the users experience with it supplanting it with FOMO.

At the same time, if I'm delving into a niche topic or a hobby that I want practice in, I would absolutely use Trim Silence if there isn't a better alternative - I would prefer a script in most cases given that it would be a step-by-step process, where a video has to be replayed. So in that regard I disagree, but I would say that's less about consuming all and more about consuming a specific facet of "all" that I'm interested in.

the large language models we use to reduce the amount of effort we need to put into writing an email to our colleague;

In this case, I think work culture and burn-out is what leads to this. If Jane is too wiped to type and e-mail, she shouldn't be working. But she has to, so shit man use ChatGPT I don't give a fuck. Same if that's the only way she is able to produce art to express herself, I don't blame her or AI, I blame the culture (corporatocracy) that brought us to this point. Which comes back to sort of why I disagree about consuming all - I personally disagree and don't think we need to or should, but I also think if that's what people want to do to escape the bullshit then that's well within their right. I would prefer if people were able to respect their own time and experience the art, but I also understand that their time is not respected.

All this to say,

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