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by BoorishBears 36 days ago
> I’ll take scrolling myself to death at 80 over smallpox and dying of a trivially curable infection at 40 every time.

I think we could have stopped somewhere between dying of smallpox at 40, and children scrolling themselves into eating disorders and suicide at 13 so Zuck can go for some moonshots.

1 comments

Smallpox was eradicated in 1980.
80s would be a fine place to have stopped, you even get the Gameboy!

But I also feel obligated to point out... the last time smallpox killed as many people in the US as social media does was well before 1980. The final US death was in the 40s.

There's a lot of meat between "We beat smallpox!" and "I can click a button and expose myself to commentary from any of 3 billion people." in terms of technology.