Are you familiar with the details of the French Revolution? Some of the eventual outcomes were indeed positive, but a lot of what actually went on was pretty horrific.

It was horrific. Revolutions tend to be. Yet our institutions continue consolidating money and power in fewer and fewer hands. If that doesn't stop, we'll be headed there again. It will probably be even worse this time.

A lot of what happened during the French revolution was horrific... This is such a bewildering sentence in this context. Yes, killing the rulers is horrific. Revolutions are horrific. Wars are horrific. It seems irrelevant to what the parent is (sarcastically) saying.

Their point was that violence is sometimes justified, using the French Revolution as an example. I'm pointing out that the FR wasn't just a matter of "killing the rulers". Many, many people were killed. It wasn't such an unambiguous good as they seemed to be implying. Also, other countries have transitioned to democracy without such bloodshed.

It's just not helpful to the conversation

"If we don't put the brakes on this car it's going to go off the cliff!"

"Historically, cars falling off cliffs was horrible for all the passengers involved."

At the same time considering the people participating, there wasn't a way out of the problems that didn't involve violence. Different outcomes would require different choices that require different people.

what are you arguing? that people should not violently overthrow their corrupt leaders? that the french should've let the Ancient Regime entrench and continue? That the serfs (slaves) in tsarist Russia should've stayed put and not revolt against the corrupt and incompetent Nicholas II? Or that the Hungarians and Czechoslovaks not revolt against the totalitarian regimes propped by the Russians? Should've the Romanians in 1989 stayed at home, in cold and hunger, and let Ceausescu regime continue to cruelly oppress them?

You think the cyberpunk dystopia we're headed towards isn't going to be horrific? The one where 99% of the human race has no economic value? Where the 1% helm megagigaultracorporations with fully autonomous AI powered kill bots? Where they think it's no big loss if they genocide an entire human population because all those people were doing nothing but costing them money anyway?

This is our only chance to transition to a post-scarcity society. We won't have another. Allowing them to monopolize access to AI is a fatal mistake.

99% of humanity is too busy scrolling on their phones, consuming “content”, to even notice.

It looks like I'm a bit slow in noticing this, but I see more and more young people today getting dumbphones. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a backlash among them

17 year old guy who had rocked a dumb phone for an year or two and I still don't use a phone (I have a tablet that lies around but yeah)

I feel heard from this statement, thanks!

> I wouldn't be surprised if there's a backlash among them

The backlash is more than what people might imagine. We are a generation that most of us would have nothing to gain and thus nothing to lose as colleges are diluted more and more and job security becomes a question as we are still connected more than ever seeing all the darkness taking place live time while our consciousness has just sprung out in this chaotic unpredecented world.

Thinking about it, We as a generation are more lonely than ever, more hopeless than ever, more angry than ever. I feel like my generation might be watching phones not out of enjoyment but out of desperation for the day to end if meaning of life can't be derived from a normal place.

They won't be for long.

The French Revolution brought on Napoleon, wars that brought about the deaths of many millions of people, and then another emperor. The subsequent events are where they found liberty.