AI, also known as Assumed Intelligence
Either it will get incredibly better, or it will just fade out (except in some applications like execution of process based work, and possibly in the creative arts).
[Samuel Butler liked this]
MAGA
This. Racism, bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia, etc will never go away, but hopefully it will go back to being something that is shunned instead of promoted
until the ruling class need something elseto distract us
MAGA is from the 2010s
And it’s still here in the 2020s.
True
Hopefully it’ll become remembered as the McCarthyism of its day.
Maga
Probably low-hanging fruit here, but Cybertrucks
Hate to break it to you, but nostalgia will probably make them cool. Nostalgia is the rosiest of tints.
Ugh you’re probably right, it’s going to be our generation’s DMC DeLorean. The vehicle itself will age poorly, but slap it in a BTTF reboot in five years and it’ll fit right in
People are finding them cool now. Useless, overpriced pieces of junk used as trophies to a rich mans poor ego… but distinctive enough that it might change future car designs.
Look at what the USPS bought with their new fleet of postal trucks.
Fast fashion. At least I hope it does? It’s such a wasteful abomination that we don’t need right now.
Fast fashion is older that the 2020’s
Ah fair enough. I guess I only learned about it in the 2020s when I read some expose on it and it made me throw up a little bit in my mouth.
Trump/MAGA
eighty years later, in Germany is still trying to live down their shame
uhh, most of germany yeah.
Maybe. The US would have to first begin to feel actual shame about colonization and slavery though, which hasn’t really begun in earnest.
I don’t know if the US has the capacity for feeling the weight of its true guilt.
Half of Germany doesn’t think it was that bad and wants to repeat it. Or has at least nothing against a repeat
I feel like there’s been a trend of people switching from alcohol to cannabis as its become more widely accepted but I know a lot of people who have ended up taking it to excess as well. The idea of being addicted to it still really doesn’t come up often and looking back that might be viewed as problematic.
I’m not against people using it or anything but I do feel bad for the people who have gotten to the point where they need to smoke to feel like themselves.
People don’t think pot is addictive because it’s not chemically addictive, like nicotine or alcohol are. Those things actually change your body chemistry, and your system becomes reliant on them.
Pot doesn’t do that, but it can definitely be psychologically addictive . Virtually anything can be psychologically addictive, like video games or watching TV. If you feel the need to take a few bong hits every hour of every day, or if your desire to get high interferes with your responsibilities, then yeah, you’re probably psychologically addicted. Get help.
Getting wasted every once in a while is probably okay, though. People need to make sure they’re not like one of those idiots I knew in college, who insisted they drove better when high. They didn’t, and neither does anyone else.
100% agree!
As an addition to this I firmly believe medical marijuana is a phase.
Now I’ve made people angry here’s the nuance.
CBD/THC combinations certainly have a role in some patients with chronic pain, especially where it’s use can avoid or reduce the use of opioids.
There are clear specific uses such as intractable epilepsy where it is clearly the best treatment. It is effective for glaucoma but there are better treatments available.
I’m highly suspicious of marijuana having any role in mental health and there are, in my opinion, no convincing studies published showing that it is useful at all despite the fact that large studies have been done and presumably file-drawed.
The idea that smoking is an appropriate delivery method for a medication when other methods are available is insane. Very few things are as bad as tobacco smoke but inhaling smoke is bad for you.
My prediction is that in 20 years we will have cannabis derivatives in capsules that fulfil the specific purposes and the idea that any doctor prescribed marijuana to smoke will seem insane to younger doctors.
And a thing young folks using cannabis seem to be woefully under informed about is that cannabis use can kick off psychosis/schizophrenia as well as something called depersonalization disorder where basically nothing feels real to you, as well as actually lowering your IQ. I lost a high school friend who smoked copious amounts of ditch weed in the 80s and 90s, who became a paranoid schizophrenic and eventually killed himself as a result. I’m not saying occasional use is a big deal, but chronic heavy use is really not good.
the fact that we’re studying things properly now and regulating what terms and substances mean will almost certainly shake that out and find the specific cause/harmful quantity
anything is dangerous in high enough dose, but that doesn’t mean you stop doing beneficial things because it’s harmful at high dosage … if that were the case we wouldn’t have paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin - all much more harmful than CBD/THC at much lower dosages (and let’s not even talk about the harm of alcohol)
Having a truck (I wish…).
Trucks are undeniably useful, but now have become an instrument of ego, and a status symbol, hence the stupidity of modern pickups. Hopefully they close the loophole of “light trucks” so these things don’t have to be so recklessly dangerous, same with SUVs.
Everything, considering we’ll be fighting each other over puddles of standing water in about two to three decades. Today’s life will seem like paradise in comparison, even for people who are currently suicidal.
I don’t have kids of my own, and don’t plan to. I often wonder what kind of world my sisters children will grow up in.
I have a 13-year old son I love more than life itself, and my greatest regret is bringing him into this world. It was not my place to create yet another source of suffering in this pit of eternal damnnation. I will definitely not make the same mistake again. Luckily I’m currently pretty much infertile.
the future is not set in stone. Our weather predictive models are finding it harder to predict, given the high variability and uncertainty. Her kids might actually be fine.
I hope they are. I just don’t trust corporations/governments to take the major and expensive steps required before it’s too late, and I have a hard time seeing past that. Individuals can only do so much.
Corporations/governments didn’t take the major steps required. It is already too late.
Chat gpt
One could only hope
Milk.
I hope anti-abortion, and government restrictive bodily autonomy legislation.
That’s been getting much worse in the US at least.
The Barbie movie. It is a snapshot in time look at our culture and will make no sense to future generations.
Tbh there’s lots of stuff in the Barbie movie that I would consider timeless, especially the feminist aspects of it. What parts of the movie do you think applies to the 2020s but doesn’t apply to, say, 1990 or 1960?
EDIT: I may have interpreted this comment too pessimisticly-- this question is about the future, not the past. Maybe, hopefully, societal views on gender will change in the future enough that the Barbie movie will become outdated
I like your second take. I like to think 50 years from now it will be used to teach about the things we do/did wrong.
Counterpoint: A lot of things that are aggressively “of their time” end up as iconic period pieces after some twenty years.
Everything I like will be praised down the ages and everything I don’t like will be seen as irredeemably cringe.
Irony poisoning
me…
