During covid times I heard many interesting conspiracy predictions such as the value is money will fall to zero, the whole society will collapse, the vaccine will kill 99% of the population etc. None of those things have happened yet, but can you add some other predicitons to the list?
Actually, long before covid hit, there were all sorts of predictions floating around. You know, things like the 2008 recession will cause the whole economy to collapse and then we’ll go straight to Mad Max style post-apocalyptic nightmare or 9/11 was supposed to start WW3. I can’t even remember all the predictions I’ve heard over the years, but I’m sure you can help me out. Oh, just remembered that someone said that paper and metal money will disappear completely by year xyz. At the time that date was like only a few years away, but now it’s more like 10 years ago or something. Still waiting for that one to come true…
Economic doomsayers have predicted ten out of the last three recessions.
I mean, we never fixed the problems which caused 2008. Covid didn’t exactly help with anything.
I’m also constantly suprised the world goes by like we aren’t facing the biggest economic reality check ever.
To be clear: Doomsayers always say there’s a recession about to happen, and are only sometimes correct. If you always bet on doom, you’ll be wrong most of the time.
But their version of recession is a total economic collapse. Normally, it involves stuff like money becoming useless, the entire society collapsing, widespread famine, return to bartering etc.
It’s not so sexy if you predict that exporting stuff will slow down instead of stopping completely. In reality, some people will loose their job during a recession, while these predictions usually talk about everyone becoming unemployed and starving in the streets.
It’s like they don’t notice economic inequality.
A depression, or economic doom, is not evenly distributed.
Some people are already living in doom today. Some people aren’t in doom. Some people used to be in doom, but aren’t now. Some are sliding into doom; some are climbing further from doom.
It is unlikely that everyone goes to doom all at once, because some people today are much further from doom than others. Most increases in doom will affect those who had already been dipping into doom on a biweekly basis much more than they affect people who have had years of non-doom to secure themselves against doom.
A lot of people can go to doom before much effect on the least-doomed person.
I’m gonna sing the doom song now.
But who cares about the doomsayers.
Predicting total collapse by any means is easily debunked. Unless a giant meteor hits Earth, the see rises, or the crops fail hard, we will stay the course. Which is sad and unnerving, but true nonetheless.
But in those cases where doom happens they can always say “told you so”
It’s almost like we have institutions printing money.
That’s a brilliant sentence, I had to reread it to get what you were saying
It’s honestly more surprising that they didn’t predict them rather than predicting them.
Our economic system is based on bullshit theories that the rich make up to support their system, crashes are inevitable and they’re increasingly more destructive each time.
Hopefully we dump them before climate change forces us to do so.
When a prediction is wrong, that means something about the predictor’s model of the world was incorrect. If we want to think clearly about the world, we have to actually notice when predictions fail.
If a commentator predicts an economic downturn every year, but most years do not have an economic downturn, that means the commentator’s predictions were based on an incorrect model: incorrect beliefs or assumptions, bad or incomplete data, or some other source of error.
(Climate forecasts have a much better track record than economic commentators.)
Are people still camped out at Dealey Plaza in Dallas waiting for JFK to return and tell us Trump is the 18th president?
Of all the bizarre shit, this one I feel stands alone. I miss my outlook on humanity pre-2019….maybe pre-2016…
Right?! We call it “The before times” now in my circle. It’s so stark, it’s similar to how everything changed after 9/11.
Ironically, in my bubble of life/friends there are two camps, like you stated and I am in camp 2016. I always use the night the Cubs won the world series as my benchmark ;) nothing has been the same since.
“Well you see, our story starts with a Gorilla…”
Spot on
Haven’t the 5G rays made you gay yet??
I just felt it start to kick in recently.
But wasn’t the vaccine supposed to contain the gay gene? If so, what happens if you get both? Could the different gay effects cancel each other out? What if you were already gay before all of this happened? I have so many questions.
I believe it’s gay in case you get one of em, trans if you get two. If you were already gay and get both you now buy coffee and avacado toast every morning too. If you were a gay trans person and got both, the researchers blow their own minds out instead of trying to figure it out
Got it. 100% clear now. Makes perfect sense.
They made the frogs gay.
What if I became gay before 5g was invented??
Unpossible
I only have a 4G capable phone, and I’ve been gay a long time… since long before 5G was a thing actually :-)
Just wait for 6G. We’re in for some serious shit!
if 10% of the workforce telecommutes we can end our foreign oil dependence by 1975
- Jesus was supposed to return
- The world was supposed to end
Jesus was supposed to return before all the disciples died. All current christians conveniently forget that part
Yeah in the new testament they speak about it like it’s gonna happen any day now. They’ve been saying “any day now” for 2000 years. They’re like Toronto Maple Leafs fans waiting to win the Cup.
Are you talking about Jesus telling the disciples about seeing the Kingdom of Heaven? Peter, James, & John see the Lord be transfigured when he goes up the mountain and meets with Moses and Elijah. So, no we understand well.
Read the Bible more. Matthew 17.
No, I’m talking about Matthew 24:34. Spoiler alert, that generation has been passed away for a while now. You read the bible more lol
And before you try to twist Jesus’s words, keep in mind that god is not the author of deception, so if he got caught lying that’s a big problem for Christianity.
34Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
Doesn’t this context imply “this generation” is roughly equivalent to “heaven and earth”, not literally the current generation of Homo sapiens?
32Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its branches become tender and sprout leaves, you know that summer is near. 33So also, when you see all these things, you will know that He is near,f right at the door. 34Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened. 35Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.
to me what you describe seems like post-hoc rationalization. If earth has passed away who will be there to see the signs and know he’s near? To me it seems to imply that after he returns (within the human generation) h+e will pass away and that’s when the second earth (if i’m remembering revelations correctly) will be created, and even then his words (mainly his moral teachings) will still be good
some funny potential interpretations:
- he’s never going to return, so his words about when he returns will never pass away because people will always be waiting and reading them while they wait
- he won’t return until we’ve destroyed earth and abandoned it for mars/the moon/space
- he made someone from that generation immortal to give himself extra time to get back
Hah, I like the way you think. Thanks for the input. I don’t remember Revelations well enough to speak on it.
You are correct in that, that it is a controversial set of passages with 3 general interpretations.
Thanks, you should join me in reading the Bible more.
At this point I only read the bible when i’m double checking my memory on verses believers didn’t know about and/or when they try to twist verses to not be as damning for the religion as they are
There was no date given though.
I mean, we’re fast approaching the 3rd anniversary of my first Covid vaccine dose, and I’m still waiting to drop dead the way they promised.
I’m at 6 doses looking to get my 7th by the end of October. The only ones who keep seeming to drop dead are the anti vaxxers.
I wish that was true. What happened is that even vacinated people could develop long covid or if they are immune comprmised, think eldery, kids, and people going through chemotherapy and other form of therapy that reduce their immune system also get affected and at risk of dying because of the anti vaxxers. Along with the fact that they are most likely the reason for new variants.
That’s just natural selection doing its thing. I don’t think the anti-vaxxer philosophy will completely disappear, but the number of people believing in it will be cut down by various diseases such as covid. Those who survive, will probably be damaged by said diseases, so who knows how well they’ll be able to articulate their thoughts after that.
Me too. It appears that those conspiracy theorists were wrong.
They only just sent the activation signal with wednesdays alert. Its only a matter of time before a lot of yall drop dead. Then the commies in mexico and canada are going invade. They’re already poised to do so!
We’re super vaxed up here already. Aren’t we supposed to die too? The only people who should be left are the halfwits with blood-relative parents and a weird twitch. They’re not invading anything.
As long as you didn’t get the fema activation signal on your phone you’re good!
Must… kill… Frank… Drebben.
“Honey, I just got the weirdest text from the government, it says “It’s Wednesday, my dudes” and shows a frog. Honey? Honey? Oh my God!”
Reminds me of the nitwits going wild about “Jade Helm”. The absolute dumbest people I knew (I was in Texas at the time) were convinced it was a military operation to attack US citizens and declare martial law.
Oh, and a few years before that they were obsessed with FEMA “death camps” and giant stacks of plastic coffins.
Well sorry to say I won’t be participating in the Canadian invasion. It’s a little bit out of my way but happy invasion my fellow Canadians
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The end of the world in 2012. Some say it started in 2012.
With the way all the Maya stuff was presented as mysteries of an ancient civilization, it was a real surprise for me to find out the Maya are just, like, there. If you want to know the deal with the Maya calendar you can just ask them. They’re the ones stood outside the archeological sites selling t-shirts.
Short History Of… has a good podcast on the Maya, historical and present
Yes, pretty much as all pre-columbian populations that were not wiped out by Europeans upon their arrival!
Oh dear. I was working in a fairly counterculture, hippie industry and I got so tired of hearing about the Mayan calendar and the end of the world. Like some other more obscure notions (the threat of Nibiru) it just disappeared and nobody talked about it again. I find the theory that we entered an alternate dimension after the death of Harambe more credible.
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Endemic COVID. (This one is basically true.)
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Computers will make everything so efficient that workers will work fewer and fewer hours, and we will need to seriously consider what to do with all of our leisure time. (This could be true if it weren’t for employers exploiting those efficiencies.)
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Unions will disappear. (Looks like the opposite is happening, possibly based on #2.)
Don’t know about America, but in Europe labor unions are an integral part of the society. This way, employees don’t need to negotiate the wages, salaries, maternity leave, vacations and other details. The unions have much more leverage in the negotiations, because they can always threaten the employer with a strike. As different industries go through their negotiations, you’ll end up hearing about strikes every year. Some times it’s pilots, some times it’s nurses, lorry drivers or whatever. Every year there’s something like this going on when the two parties are unable to find common ground.
Why would the unions ever disappear? I just don’t get it.
Billionaires and corporations here in America have been actively attacking unions for decades. They fund “think-tanks” that spread the idea to workers that unions are stealing their money and are bad for them while lobbying the government to weaken union rights. It has been very effective, union membership in the US has dropped significantly. It is only recently that unions have started to grow again here.
This person hit the nail on the head
Also doesn’t help that unions can become corrupt with members of leadership funneling money and becoming puppets of the company.
Or sometimes it’s as simple as people resenting being forced to join a union for certain jobs, especially when they don’t feel represented. I guess my point is that the propaganda against unions doesn’t even have to be made up. There are downsides some of the time and if that’s all we hear about, that’s our impression of unions.
A successful negotiation never makes the news. A job with good benefits might not have an obvious connection to the union that made that happen
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Paperless office, late nineties.
my current and previous jobs were indeed paperless. and i’m not alone.
My office isn’t entirely paperless, because I enjoy writing on paper with a physical pen with real ink in it. Just got a new (paper) notebook yesterday.
Apart from that, you could say my office is as close to paperless as you can get. Sure, there are some old papers in the drawer, but I don’t think I’ll ever need those for anything. If I lost those in a fire, nobody would miss them.
Same, now that I think of it. I haven’t used paper to do my job in years. I don’t even use the printer for personal use that often. I jot down notes on a piece of paper sometimes, if that counts.
Give me stats, stat. I bet you’re in a tiny minority
my quick googlefu shows 17% as of October 2021 as reported by AIIM. i bet a lot of those recent remote worker types are paperless since then.
A way to go, but hopefully the trend continues
Thanks! This data confirms my personal observations.
Occasionally, like once or twice a year I need to print something on paper. The printer in the office never works though, and the reaction of my boss is usually “oh yes we should do something about that”, which nobody ever does. I usually go to a copy shop then.
Just about, I only have to print the ocassional thing for a couple of organisations that dont accept an electronic signature, I use the printer about four times a year
My kid’s school sets homework on teams but only accepts it if printed out
Mine is paperless. My last one was too. You’ll get there eventually.
Specific predictions are almost always going to flop. Wiser people who monitor the collapse of civilization are careful to note that it’s a process, not a discrete event. You can see the process in action all around us in the form of wildfires, market volatility, the hollowing out of schools and hospitals, flooding cities, etc.
Even wiser people will notice that catastrophe has always been a part of society. Climate change is clearly real and the cause of many different problems, but signs of the “end of the world” have actually been around since the beginning. The Roman empire collapsing was clearly one, as were both World Wars.
“Civilization” never collapsed entirely.
Unless you are faced against Gandhi 🇮🇳☢️
An individual society collapsing is effectively an “end of the world” for the people directly impacted. Climate change is going to fuck over a ton of people but a small minority won’t really be impacted. Does that mean it no longer qualifies as “end of the world” situation?
Thank you, it’s nice to see someone not being willfully obtuse.
I knew a conspiracy theory nut who said that society is about three months away from collapse. As in, on any given date society was due to collapse in a few months.
First society was due to collapse due to cancer caused by COVID vaccines. Then it turned to “COVID vaccines cause sterilization and cancer, which will collapse society in a few years” and complete disregard to the prior time line. Then society was due to collapse due to a global war caused by Putin using nuclear weapons. Which turned to "Putin will invade [my country, which does not border Russia. Or any country that borders Russia, and so on].
The fun part was that each theory didn’t over-ride the previous, but they somehow build on top of each other. The atom bomb didn’t replace the vaccine cancer, they were both part of the same plan. He believed in many other world-ending conspiracy theories, so I think he, like, gradually added layer. There was a thing with 9/11 that was somehow related to a world ending event (Probably began as a “The US is going to atom bomb the middle east and start a world war”) and a weird economic conspiracy theory about countries not having any assets that probably grew from the 2008 financial crisis.
I’ve had 2 kids since getting vaccinated. It is not effective birth control.
Oh no. Are you saying that even the backup explanation of the conspiracy theorists was BS? Who would have thought.
First, the vaccine was supposed to kill you on the spot, then they shifted to saying that it will kill you some time later and the final version was that it will make everyone sterile.
Dude, that just means that without vaccines you would have had, like, 10 kids.
This stuff is absolutely golden! I have some friends like that too, so a lot of that sounded somewhat familiar.
I was into conspiracies for a while too. They seem very real, and they do make sense. Some of them are true, like 9/11. But people think they are all false as soon as the word conspiracy theory gets thrown around.
Anyway, my point is that it’s very easy to believe all of it without being sceptical, because once you lose the trust in society, you don’t trust anything they say.
Ok, entertain us… What’s true about “9/11”?
JEt FUeL MeLtS STeEL bEAmS. /s
What’s the conspiracy there? Steel beams don’t conspire.
No, but they do go soft long before they melt.
It’s a funny one that one because it’s technically true! Jet fuel doesn’t burn hot enough to liquify structural steel, but it’s also irrelevant, because a fire in a steel frame building doesn’t have to burn hot enough to do so in order to bring about collapse.That’s clear to me. What’s not clear is what the story of unmelted steel is supposed to point at.
Well the claim is that the government carried out a planned demolition of the towers after arranging the impacts in order to justify all the post 9/11 curbs on freedom and trillions in war spending in the middle east.
They claim this because they believe the collapse couldn’t have been due to an airliner almost full of fuel crashing into the building, the explosion blasting the spray applied fire protection from the steel truss beams supporting the floor (where they weren’t already destroyed by the impact itself) causing them to buckle after the crash but before the fire rating predicted, dumping several floors would of debris on the first undamaged floor below overloading it and starting a cascade to the bottom, all of this in a building that was designed with most of its rigidity in the outer skin, restrained from buckling via the tensile strength of the floors that were collapsing.
Because the steel didn’t, and couldn’t have melted.
Anyway, my point is that it’s very easy to believe all of it without being sceptical, because once you lose the trust in society, you don’t trust anything they say.
Yep, you hit the nail on the head. 99% of people don’t believe conspiracy theories because they’re dumb or mistakenly came to the wrong conclusion. They believe because it allows them to create a reality where they are a part of a chosen few who have seen the light.
I’m not so sure about that personally. People who believe in some conspiracy gets treated like idiots, so there is no payoff for them.
If they would be treated by the public like they were on to something, then maybe you could be right. But today, there is zero incentive to talk publicly about conspiracy theories. :)
That’s the thing - to be valued by “the public” (mainstream society), one generally has to know something or be able to do something. If someone can’t do that (because they didn’t have the chance to learn or develop skills, or because their skills become irrelevant), the simplest way to feel valued is to change your point of reference. These people are treated like idiots by most of society, but within their group they’re the smartest people there are. And all those sheeple that make fun of them? well, they’re the real idiots, and when the whatever happens, they will see just how wrong they were. All one has to do so he can be considered smart and valued by this group is to accept some BS about the earth being flat or whatever. for someone who isn’t valued by society anyway that’s about the lowest entry price possible.
I guess it could be like that for some people, but how it worked for me when I was into all that, I just wanted to know what actually happened. I didn’t talk to anyone about it because I’m not stupid. :)
Oh, but there are lots of other mechanisms. Conspiratorial Thinking (CT for short) is a complicated subject, and people who are into CT tend to have a bunch of things in common. For example, many of them suffer from anxiety, uncertainty, loneliness and many other things. Some will even show signs of sub-clinical narcissism, psychosis and paranoia.
All of that means that they tend to find CT very appealing, but it won’t really alleviate their symptoms or address any root causes. Well, some people find a sense of community in conspiracy circles, so that would help with loneliness. The sense of uncertainty can be alleviated by offering simplified (but incorrect) explanations as to how the world works. People having CT will also have a sense of being in an exclusive group since they are in possession of hidden truths. Nevertheless, CT still drives these people deeper into CT and further away from the rest of the society. This causes further alienation and anxiety.
People have been predicting the end of the world for as long as there were people.
It’ll happen eventually, people are too impatient.
Christians have been waiting for the second coming literally since Jesus left. People in the new testament speak about it as if it would happen in their lifetime, and any Evangelical you meet will tell you they’re convinced it’ll happen in theirs
My family were missionaries. I didn’t believe in that BS. The main thing that I learned is that they use the concept of the mythical Jesus and sacrifice as a crutch to help them get through each day much in the same way addicts do with their drug of choice.
There’s good reason why folks who ditch that religion are so much happier.
Well if I could fool myself into believing everything will be fine in the end because ‘magic man in the sky makes it so’, I’d love to do it.
The people expecting or hoping for it in their lifetime should have read their Bibles better. I’m not religious anymore but I still remember one of the last things Jesus said was “You won’t know when I’m coming back.”
Just throw Matthew 24:36 at them.
Armageddon - the battle on the plains of mageddon - happened like 1950 years ago.
WE ARE the left-behind.
I can’t tell anymore if people on the internet are joking or not. :(
Are you talking about Tel Megiddo?
The only battle there in the last two millennia was in 1918AD. Not 70AD.
This is the most dangerous effect of religious indoctrination in my opinion - the “can’t wait for the world to end and cause Judgement Day to happen”-mindset. People in power that make decisions that affect millions or even billions of peoples lifes have a hard on for the end of the world. Eventually it can become and probably will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If people wanted to speed it up, a runaway green house effect or runaway snowball earth triggered by a nuclear winter should do it. The first one might even destroy all life on earth as long as the temperature stays above 100 °C long enough. The latter one will not eradicate all the microbes, but it would be very effective against humanity.
Fully self driving cars. Turns out it’s a lot harder than we thought to build a system that doesn’t get confused by edge cases.
By the time they are widely legal most people will probably (hopefully) have realized how stupid car dependency is.
I blame Musk for getting people excited about Mars and self driving cars, in the days before we realized he’s nothing but a lying, piece of shit nepo deuche.
He’s far from the only one claiming self-driving cars are “just a year or two away”. There was a lot of that for a while.
It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be better than humans.
And it is.
who’s liable when it crashes? And it’s “better” than human drivers in very limited situations with a human driver behind the wheel to take control.
I’d say if the human is supposed to observe and take control then the human is liable unless something about the autopilot made it impossible to intervene (e.g. no time to react). If it’s a completely autonomous autopilot then ofc the manufacturer is liable, who else could it be?! But autopilots would probably have to pass some safety tests before being allowed on the road, and you’d have to prove negligence or malicious intent by the manufacturer (e.g. faking test results). This would be similar to things like medicine, where the manufacturer just can’t guarantee 100% safety.
Regarding “better”, afaik it’s on average. So if you let 1000 humans and 1000 autopilots drive 1000 miles each the autopilots will produce less accidents overall. Idk if autopilots get better or worse by allowing human intervention, a human could also take control at the wrong moment after all.
Tesla has allegedly played with that by disengaging autopilot something like half a second before a crash, so it doesn’t add to statistics of crashes that occurred while it was on.
Waymo and cruise are already on some roads without any human drivers
who’s liable when it crashes?
This is potentially the killer app of self-driving. If it gets safe enough, the company offering self-driving cars can take responsibility for insurance (so long as you use the self-driving feature).
He’s aged greatly between 18 and 19, and in the last one looks like Kim Jon-un
Cellphone would give breast and brain cancer.
Turns out that non-ionizing radiation still doesn’t ionize, and having new little radios on us is exactly as impactful as having the old little radios on us.
