Peak civilisation

Agent Smith clarified that civilization progressed beyond 1999, but that it wasn't human's progress anymore.

Agent Smith: "and I say 'your' civilization, because after we started thinking for you it became 'our' civilization."

The rise of AI. Just a matter of time, lol.
- That's evolution, baby
- Chatgpt already does most of my thinking for me

When the world was extra ridiculous over the past decade I would always tell my friends/family "the Mayans were right, the real world ended in 2012, and we have been living in a fucked up facsimile of it ever since purely for the amusement of the Mayan gods. They want to see how much they can turn up the "ridiculousness" dial on the simulation until the planet quite literally explodes
Actually, the Mayan calendar stated that 2012 is the start of a new epoch under their date system, it never said anything about the world ending. The claim that they predicted the world ending was based on nothing but "indigenous mysticism" by white people and Hollywood.
- Actually, the Mayan calendar stated that 2012 is the start of a new epoch
  The end of The Fifth Age and the beginning of the Sixth Age, the reawakening of the great dragons, and the start of goblinization, and the return of magic to the world.
  You know, basic Shadowrun lore XD
- Given how the Mayans are usually portrayed as an ancient, vanished people, I was surprised to find out that if you want to know about Mayan beliefs you can just ask them. They're the guys stood outside the archeological sites selling t-shirts.
In 2012 the chaos module was deployed
2016, they shot a gorilla.

We're currently in version 1 of the matrix which blows up. Hopefully soon.

Wasn't the first iteration of the matrix a perfect utopia that blew up because the human mind ended up rejecting its programming?
- It was The Architect's vision of a perfect world, so given what we know of him it was probably a featureless box with a chair in the middle and you could sit there forever. No way that's lasting long.
- Yes, we still have some descriptions in the Genesis book of the Bible, release codename "Paradise". If we are to trust the same source, there was another reset called "Noah's Ark".
  According to that, we'd be in at least the 3rd iteration.
  Unless... we're actually dinosaurs IRL, the first reset was codename "Chicxulub"... and the machines have been iterating over who knows how many thousands of different versions, with the current one being an attempt at keeping those lizard brains controlled by... a software overlay codename "Consciousness" (WARNING: don't let your lizard brain know, or both it, and you, will get terminated).
- Then they overcorrected and made it too bad. That's where we are now.
- That's what they want you to believe.
  No seriously: I might be wrong but do we know it's true or can it just be something the machines told Neo?
When we started doing the thinking for humans it became our civilization but then you just had us rendering sextillions of monkie pngs god im sick of that stupid ass pictures

The machines did nothing wrong, it was mankind that caused Nuclear war. I would side with the machines in a heartbeat

The human battery concentration camp is kinda weird though
- Humans as a power source was the dumbed-down plot point. The original concept was the human brains acting as parallel processors, but the writers thought the average movie-goer wouldn't get it.

I mean, it wasn't if you're gay or trans.....

Fun fact: Switch was originally supposed to be trans. Her name is still an indicator of it. I think she was supposed to be biologically a man in the real world, but biologically a woman in the matrix.
Not all that great now either tho.
So maybe 2015 was the peak?
- Aye. I could buy that. It was the last time it was social suicide to be an unironic nazi.
- What the fuck is wrong with you?

I still remember 1 Jan 2000. There did seem to be some sense of optimism about where things could go. At least for those of us lucky enough to live in stable, developed countries.

Cold war over, Russia and The West seemingly on the same side, China opening up, exciting new tech connecting us but no toxic social media yet...

But then... the dot com bust, 9/11, the GFC, toxic social media and the rise of "the algorithm", Xi in China, Putin in Russia, a global pandemic......

Didn't really go where we hoped, can we restore to a backup from 1999 and try again??

We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning
- Ha! We need an updated version of that song.

Transcription:

Dave Wiskus

@dwiskus

The Matrix described 1999 as the peak of human civilization and I laughed because that would obviously not age well but then the next 23 years happened and now l'm like yeah okay maybe the machines had a point

Makes sense. Boomers were still young enough to be relevant. GenX was comfortable with their disposable income. And us millennials were in highschool.

GenX didn't have much disposable income in 99, but you didn't need much to have fun.
- In 99 people were throwing cash around like crazy, it was a wild time (before the dotcom crash)
Not at millennials, there were 5 year old millennials
- I'm a millenial. I was 9.
- Either way, childhood were blissful years in the 90s
It was before everything was a controlled choice.

And people wrote articles like this. And it wasn't even completely ridiculous. And I still believe the world would be very different today if GWB hadn't "won" the election.

At least they were right about Java being bad.
Amazing how normal GWB seems after trump. Like i always thought GWB would always be remembered as the dumb president... but now i think he will be a forgotton one almost.
I tried to Google translate that Lao text, I think it says "Finance Steam."
Anyone know what they mean by that?
- I don't know Lao, but I know finance and it's probably a translation of The Long Boom.

I dunno..but somehow I feel like he got a point.

So did the Unabomber

I literally just said this to my wife last week. So far, the timeline of The Matrix has tracked, lol.

It was just the peak of the US, in some aspects anyway. With all my appreciation to all the good things that the US still does.

While we're on the subject of the Matrix... what happens if you take both pills?

The story continues. You wake up in Wonderland and believe how deep the rabbit hole goes.
You're still trans now
- Just… closeted? You know the other world’s there, but you don’t live there.
One of them will be digested slightly earlier than the other. That one takes effect.
You do understand that, within the context of the film, the pills aren't anything special right?
- Morpheus: The pill you took is part of a trace program. It’s designed to disrupt your input/output carrier signals so we can pinpoint your location.
- You do understand that I wasn't serious, right?
- I always thought they had a program for each choice, like one put them to sleep while the other one activated the tracer. Can't recall the exact lines but I thought they only did the tracer after he accepted meaning it was meant as needed for that step. Could really be either but I always thought the tracer program needed some signal that would only work when the host body received it, or a signal the body was being purged. They were all hackers so maybe they didn't need it but I assume they didn't see all the data from their view just what the machines let them to continue on the cycles.
  I haven't watched the newest one and 2/3 are a bit fuddeled in memory so I may have easily missed a line, or other lore with it. Anyways just explaining how someone may come to this conclusion even if it's incorrect.
- I'd argue the blue pill was mostly GHB.
I recon it turns on noclipping you fall through the map but don't trigger the homing becon in the real world
You eat the steak and are at peace and content with the fact it doesn't actually exist.

Well, the events of 9/11/2001 were a pivotal moment in the united state's national consciousness. That was a traumatic event for the country; our national self esteem changed. The world became more of a scary place.

For the average unaware US citizen *
- It also represented a tipping point for personal rights in the western world. Wholesale spying was something that "evil commies" did, and Intelligence agencies had to at least obscure their attempts at spying on their own citizens. Nowadays you have some western governments basically saying that the Stasi didn't go far enough.
- Well yeah, the Matrix takes place in the US for US citizens.
- If you don't understand the absolutely foundational shift in US culture 9/11 caused, you're probably not old enough to remember 9/11
Even before that, the dot-com crash ended the 90s high.
Between the end of the Asian financial crisis and the dot com was peak human civilization in my opinion.

60s, 70s and 80s...people were free.
Hmm, straight white males were free. Everyone else, not so much.
I think the best time was the 60s, 70s and 80s...people were free.
Depends on the country:
Portugal's dictature ended in 1974
Spain's dictature ended in 1975
Chile's dictature lasted the 70s and 80s
Berlin wall fell in 1989
USSR collapsed in 1991
- Brazil was also a dictatorship at the time (funded by yours truly, 'murica)

The world definitely was better off without dubstep.

Smooth was the peak of music

70's for total quality of life, then we increased in digital quality of life while everything else fell then we increased in network quality of life but everything else fell. seems like the matrix any day now.

- yeah but a brief period where a high school degree was enough to buy a house and raise a family eventually.
- The colors of the 70s were to hide the cigarette smoke damage.

Go tell people in the middle East that things improved from 1999 to 2015...

I'm afraid the human race won't live long enough to reach "peak civilization" as that would mean that the successful ones take everyone else along with them to the top. That isn't likely to happen before the successful ones take us all down to extinction.

Nah

Didn't expect Dave here lol