[duskdozer]

People are louder about things that have not yet taken hold because it's easier to stop them. The constant rumble of airplanes in the sky is a problem actually, but it's far more entrenched. Why is it difficult to understand that people notice and care about negative externalities of so-called "progress"?

[foxglacier]

Because it's a negative unhappy view. It's not enjoyable to hear people complaining about problems or imaginary problems everywhere - and it really is everywhere. It's hard to find news about exciting new technology without rampant negativity from the commenters. I suppose HN is particularly negative about technology but so is mainstream culture. It's also irrational - the world keeps getting better in leaps and bound but we hardly celebrate that. High speed low latency affordable internet in any remote place in the world is amazing!

Perhaps another offputting aspect of this is Musk-hate. People were excited about SpaceX and Tesla a decade ago. It was a rare burst of popular techno-optimism, but now they aren't able to appreciate anything Musk does because their minds are clouded with hate.

[bayindirh]

I don't think people have to be happy about everything happening around them, especially if they're tangibly harmed by them. "Good vibes only" is a toxic mentality. It only makes you ignore other people's view and pushes you inside your own bubble deeper.

The problems you declare imaginary creates real problems for many scientists. Mostly for astronomers. There are projects created solely to track space objects and space debris, so they can find windows to do their experiments without affected by these satellites. It's not Starlink only. We're crowding space so much that probability of Kessler Syndrome is increasing ever faster.

The world gets better and better, that's true, but it's not linear. How hard is it to accept that we make, sometimes costly, mistakes? Many "wonder" chemicals turned out to be deadly. We used to drink radon infused water. PFAS dangers have been knowingly hidden from general population for decades. Overuse of plastics is showing its effects now. I mean, we used to spray DDT to people's hair.

I don't care about high-speed low latency internet in the middle of a jungle. While I can understand its applications for remote sensing applications, there can be other ways to do that.

Personally, I don't "hate" anyone, it's a so strong of a word, but I dislike who damages ordinary people's lives for monies the same. For me Tesla's outrageous claims and AI datacenters' footprint is a bigger source of dislike. Starlink works at least, but it doesn't mean I'm favorable against its existence.

When the world is transforming to the techno-dystopias the SciFi books I have read warned about, how can I be happy? There's nothing to be excited about right now, maybe except renewable energy and some aspects of electric cars. Other than that we're going full-bore surveillance and oppression combined with destruction of nature and planet turned up to 11.