Scott Alexander

Tanya Javik writes, quote,

Scott writes, The two most certain things in the world are that people will suspect every social complaint of being a proxy for economic problems, and that people will suspect every economic complaint of being a proxy for social problems.

The strongest argument against this position is that the vibe session started sometime between 2008 and 2023.

I don't think this was an especially bad time for community and purpose compared to any other time since the 60s.

I don't think earlier periods of social dissolution were sublimated into economic complaints.

Alex Zavaluk comes down in favour.

Quote, "...players are great at identifying problems but terrible at coming up with solutions."

This is from Mark Rosewater, the head designer of Magic the Gathering.

His point is that when playing the game, it's easy to tell that you aren't having fun, but not always so easy to know exactly why or how to fix it.

And in my experience, it's very true.

People will repeat platitudes that they've heard from others about what makes a game fun or not fun, but the complaint manifestly does not apply to the situation they're describing.

Or there's another situation which totally resolves the complaint, but they're still not having fun.

I think the same principle applies more generally.

People are unhappy, and they can easily determine that.

But that doesn't mean that they know what would change that fact.

Money and material standard of living are easy to point to as things that would make life better, but my understanding of the research is that how much happier people think they'll be after making more money is higher than how much happier they actually become.

people in their 20s are now Gen Z. That is, people who were raised after several generations of an increasing trend to shelter children and prevent them from having any independence, and who have been exposed to a constant stream of social media since middle school.

Even if that's true.

End quote.

Alex also mentions the political angle.