SMMRY.ai TL;D[R|W|L] Made Easy!

TagCommunity

The Enduring Mystery of Friends [Freddie deBoer, Freddie deBoer’s Substack]

T
  • Friends is a show set in the mid-90s with a bunch of twenty-somethings navigating their lives and relationships and hanging out in their favorite coffee shop, set in New York City.
  • The show does not reflect any definable generational sensibility, and the characters have seemingly no interest in the culture of the moment.
  • The clothing the characters wear is garish and make no particular fashion statement, and their coffee shop is an ugly and haphazard place.
  • The show is apolitical and exists outside of culture, making it a cultural object that is resistant to style, fashion and generational position.
  • Seinfeld is another NBC Thursday night show that takes advantage of New York and captures more of the city’s character, but it is too spiky and mannered to be as lacking in personality as Friends.
  • The success of Friends is due to its refusal to reflect on a specific cultural or generational experience, making a space for the widest possible audience.
  • The mystery of Friends’ success lies in its broad and repetitive humor and its endlessly recycled plotlines, making it comforting for viewers, like its classic, awful theme song.
  • My So-Called Life is a delicate portrayal of quintessentially late-Gen Xer characters, operating in a world that’s unmistakably of its era, reflecting the fashions and music and cultural id of its own time.

Published February 16, 2023
Visit Freddie deBoer’s Substack to read Freddie deBoer’s original post The Enduring Mystery of Friends

American Christianity Is Due for a Revival [Timothy Keller, The Atlantic]

A

• In the late 1980s, the author noticed many churches in New York City being repurposed or torn down due to dwindling membership and cultural attitudes toward Christianity.
• The Pew Research Center projected that the percentage of Christians in the U.S. could plunge to less than half the population by 2070.
• Sociologists such as Émile Durkheim and Jonathan Haidt have argued that religion contributes to society in ways that cannot be readily supplied by other sources.
• Robert Bellah showed that American individualism is headed toward social fragmentation, economic inequality, and family breakdown without the counterbalance of religion.
• Churches provide community and support to people in their congregations and serve neighbors who do not attend church.
• The Church can experience a revival if it learns how to speak compellingly to non-Christian people, unites justice and righteousness, and embraces the global and multiethnic character of Christianity.
• The Church in the U.S. can grow again if it strikes a dynamic balance between innovation and conservation.
• Modern secularism holds that people are only physical entities without souls, but most people feel that life is greater than what can be accounted for by naturalistic explanations.
• Christianity offers grace and covenant, which is based on unconditional love and sacrificial service.
• The Church must escape from political captivity, engage in extraordinary prayer, and distinguish the gospel from moralism.
• Eric Liddell, the former Olympic star and missionary to China, was an example of how the gospel of sheer grace through Christ can produce love.

Published February 5, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Timothy Keller’s original post American Christianity Is Due for a Revival

Mostly Skeptical Thoughts On The Chatbot Propaganda Apocalypse [Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten]

M

• People worry about chatbot propaganda, but Alex Berenson already writes arguments against COVID vaccines and is much better than chatbots.
• Philosophy Bear discusses a broader chatbot propaganda apocalypse, which can be divided into two scenarios: Medium Bad and Very Bad.
• There are already plenty of social and technological anti-bot filters, and fear of backlash will limit adoption.
• Propagandabots spreading disinformation is probably the opposite of what people should worry about, and realistically most bots will be used for crypto scams.
• Bots will crowd out other bots, and most slots will be filled by bots promoting non-political topics.
• The article discusses the potential implications of using evil chatbots for malicious purposes.
• It suggests that chatbots could be used to trick people into believing they are talking to a real person.
• The author expresses concern that chatbots could decrease serendipitous friendship and make people more reluctant to open new conversations or start new friendships.
• The author predicts that in 2030, fewer than 10% of people will have had a good friend for more than a month who turned out to be a chatbot.
• The author also predicts that in 2030, the majority of the top 10 blogs in Substack’s Politics category will be written by humans.

Published February 2, 2023
Visit Astral Codex Ten to read Scott Alexander’s original post Mostly Skeptical Thoughts On The Chatbot Propaganda Apocalypse

 

Vertical communities [Noah Smith, Noahpinion]

V

• The paper “Public Perceptions of Local Influence” by Joshua Hochberg and Eitan Hersh found that most people can no longer name individuals who they think are influential in their community.
• This could be due to big companies muscling out small businesses, or it could be a sign of Americans becoming disengaged from their local communities.
• The idea of “community” has changed from being based on physical proximity to being based on identities, interests, and values.
• The internet has enabled the formation of vertical communities, which are groups of people united by identities, interests, and values rather than by physical proximity.
• Horizontal communities still exist, but they are often stifling and repressive.
• Vertical communities are thriving online, but they are not “network states” and are subordinate to horizontal communities.
• Public goods are still provided by horizontal organizations, but social interaction happens in the cloud.
• This dichotomy presents an enormous challenge to our institutions, as public goods are easier to provide when people have homogeneous preferences.
• Vertical communities could exacerbate divisions and make it difficult to provide public goods.

Published January 27, 2023
Visit Noahpinion to read Noah Smith’s original post Vertical communities

SMMRY.ai TL;D[R|W|L] Made Easy!
Please Signup
    Strength: Very Weak
     
    Powered by ARMember
      (Unlicensed)

    Follow SMMRY.AI on Twitter


    All Tags

    Advertising AI Amazon Antitrust Apple Art Arts & Culture Asia Autobiography Biden Big Tech Budget Deficit Celebrities ChatGPT China Chips Christmas Climate Change Community Congress Covid Crime Criminal Justice Crypto Culture Wars DEI Democrats Demographics DeSantis Economic Development Education (College/University) Education (K-12) Elections Elon Musk Energy Environment Espionage Europe Federal Reserve Florida Free Speech Gender Geopolitics Germany Global Economics Globalization Google Government Health History Housing Market Immigration India Inequality Inflation Infrastructure Innovation Intel Labor Market Law Legal LGBTQ Macroeconomics Media Medicine Mental Health Meta Microsoft Military Movies & TV Music News Roundup NFL Oceans OpenAI Parenting Pregnancy Psychology Public Health Race Recession Religion Renewables Republicans Research Russia Science Social Media Software Space Sports State law Supreme Court Trump Twitter Ukraine US Business US Economy US Politics US Taxes