@ConorMancone Indeed

I wonder under what circumstances people become like this

@MechMK1 I suspect that there is some underlying mental illness. I mean, don't get me wrong. Humanity in general sets the bar pretty low (I'm sure that much would be obvious just from perusing the nice guys reddit Anders referenced). Still though this one is an extra level of crazy... Severe detachment from reality....

Although it is also pretty crazy how much of an impact early childhood trauma can have on someone's life. I've had the pleasure(?) to get to know a few people who were badly abused as children. It can seriously and permanently ruin a person's ability to be a functional human being. Of course it doesn't always go like that either, so who knows. The brain is so unbelievably complicated I doubt we will ever understand such things

@ConorMancone I don't know if we will ever understand. Perhaps we'll have some breakthroughs in psychology a few centuries down the line

Using the brain to understand the brain leads to some interesting circular logic...

@ThoriumBR see xkcd:

@MechMK1 That's a great one.

@MechMK1 You are very optimistic. If humanity is around in a few hundred years we will be on our way back to the stone age.

It's amazing our brains have gotten us this far. Unfortunately physics and our brains will conspire together to stop us from getting much farther. At least, that's my prediction anyway...

@ConorMancone I've got too much pessimism around

So my mind automatically switches to counter-culture

@MechMK1 I'm by no means a pessimist, but everyone watched too much Star Trek and so the world thinks our future is bright. The world is kidding itself. We're all doomed! And that's the counter-cultural viewpoint :)

@ConorMancone That is counter-culture?

I thought everybody knew the world was fucked

Fossil fuels, anyone?

When you think about it, it's a miracle we are still alive. And it's a miracle humans are not extinct. Think of how many things could have gone wrong, in your life, and in the whole history. Unfortunately, I believe that technology has a limit, and we might be approaching it. Humans are too human to be able to keep building logic upon logic. We live in a world that relies on software provided "AS IS"

@reed I think the contrary. I think we'll keep building ever more complex machines. In fact, we'll build machines so complex we can't even understand them. We'll build machines that will design and build those machines for us. No wait, that has just happened.

To paraphrase "M":

> Humanity built a machine so fantastic and complex. It was the apex of their creation. And when they turned it on, the first thing they asked was what the meaning of life was. And precisely in this moment, humanity was doomed. Why, you ask? Because it was in this moment that humanity conceded the throne of the world to a machine. We no longer saw ourselves as the most superior beings. We gave this title now to a machine.

@MechMK1, I actually meant that there's a limit to our understanding of technology, a limit to our control over technology. So yes, what you say might happen of course. It's what they call the technological singularity, basically. Except that I think whatever we will build in the future will still be full of bugs. Which means we are doomed anyway, one way or another

@MechMK1, also, can you tell me what or who that "M" you quoted refers to? Thanks