/lit/ - Literature

>>11319527
Scientific discoveries + better technology =/= better writing

because people are getting worse

>>11319527
Because you don't need to be religious or feel any part of the human experience to crunch numbers, but it is required when writing a compelling story or a moving poem

>>11319527
The things we put value in as a society have changed. Art is no longer properly appreciated, and really has not been since before the modern era. The postmodern movement has left an even bigger scar.

You clearly know nothing about literature

>>11319527
video-games are getting worse, idiot

>>>/reddit/

>>11319549
This, we are becoming less and less appreciative of art, literature and philosophy. The only thing that has actually continued (or even improved in appreciation) is music

Probably something to do with this: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-iq-scores-1970s.html

>>11319571
When has the average middle-class public ever been appreciative of art, literature and philosophy?

Literature has always been rare, and among only a small niche of people. It's just that earlier, the number of literate people was so less, most of, or at least a good chunk, of books were good literature. The only problem now is that mass literacy and the prominence of the new middle class have allowed a LOT of people access to books, who wouldn't have before, creating a market for books that are easy to read and lack depth. Thus, the only problem now is that the good literature is hidden among millions of shitty books, which wasn't the case throughout history.

STEM CHADS
LIBERAL ARTS VIRGINS

>>11319608
you forget liberal arts majors occasionally become steves

>>11319585
kanye west
the simpsons

>>11319527
Things aren't getting better. The last big scientific discovery was nearly a hundred years ago, games are shit, movies are shit, and the geopolitics of the world as a whole are becoming disastrous.
Also, I can't think of any period of calm in history that had amazing literature. Maybe I'm wrong, but world-sweeping events and unimaginable suffering go hand in hand with good literature.

>>11319595
Bullshit since great literature has decreased in mere amount as well as proportion

If things are getting better then why do I feel worse

>>11319631
>The double helix wasn't a big discovery

>Scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs are getting better

Not really. These things can't go backwards so technically they're only bound to improve, but the progress we made between 1870 and 1970 will probably never be repeated. Read The Rise and Fall of American Growth.

The Singularity is a meme and AI has stalled massively.

>>11319671
It was as big of a discovery as the internet and other things. But it didn't complete change the way we look at the world as relativity did, for example.
>>11319672
This. You'd have to have your head far up your ass and to play no games at all to fall for this AI shit. Obviously, games aren't robots, but if we made serious advances in AI we would likely see them in games first. All the stuff in the news is just parlor tricks.

We yearn for those things that inevitably destroy us.

>>11319527
Because yo dick ain't right
Better get that dick right

Because of the common inclination to celebrate mediocrity in expression.

It's partially caused by the fact you don't see the shitty literature from times past, you only see the best of the best. There have been a TON of lowbrow/middlebrow novels published because for a few centuries it was a relatively affordable means of entertainment.

It does seem like literature is sort of stalled out though. I don't disagree with you, even music/film/tv/vidya games/etc seem to be making more forward progress. I can't really explain why this is happening because I honestly don't know.

My best guess is that the best talent is being siphoned off into new mediums.

isn't this just a question of numbers?

the more people work on something, the more likely that a statistical outlier will appear

and that is far from the only factor, such as the large teams of people required to make complex media

>>11319686
>but if we made serious advances in AI we would likely see them in games first. All the stuff in the news is just parlor tricks.

What the absolute fuck are you going on about? We didn't have the combined processing power and algorithmic capability to perform style transfer years ago.


>games

The kind of 'real time AI adaptation' that you'd expect games to use is tangential to the 'deep learning' systems that use countless thousands of iterations to test the viability of the models created. Most game AI generally tweaks well defined parameters. And the stuff that is more advanced that this, like Dynamic Motion Synthesis, has been in use for years.

>>11319549
I would say that it is the culture around you that must be religious AND spiritual (unlike the soviet union which was religious but not spiritual). We've had many atheist or agnostic writers that wrote well, but they did so in times of deep spirituality. Now that there ideology has dominated the entire culture, has it gone to shit.

>>11319788
>the best talent is being siphoned off into new mediums
agree, there's no reason to pursue literature at this point, attempting to overcome the massive amount of genius stretching thousands of years before your birth is difficult. The same could be said about canvas/sculpture, at least architecture has some new technology to play around with. On top of that, nobody gives a shit and it won't effect anyone but the useless tastemakers in academia

Cause writers were good before cinema and video games, when literature was entertainment with real demand and if you sucked nobody read you. Now there's a constant small inelastic demand from snobs. The content doesn't matter.

>>11319557
Cringe

>>11319585
Never, but it used to be largely deferential to the opinions of an academic intelligentsia founded on artistic objectivism, in regards to the humanities.
Now the academia has rotted from within and the disinterested masses defer only to the rot, like termites.

>>11319686
Nobody discovered the internet you retarded cunt
Goddamn I cannot believe I share board space with people as stupid as you. Every single line of the rest of your post was equally goddamn retarded but I cba to address them all.

>>11319527
1) Difference between achievements that can be objectively evaluated (athletic records, scientific discoveries, technological advances in all industries, advancement in music recording) and what relies heavily on subjective evaluation (the aesthetic quality of literature, music, and visual arts).
It's easy to see progress when there are clear numbers, not so when it's a matter of opinion.
2) You need to define what do you mean by advancement in literature: better writing styles, better text format, better themes, better flow, better what. Everything that could be done with language has been done.
If you mean style, then it's the fault of a trend for the journalistic style that is simple and easily understood and without any poetic or aesthetic nuance. Since gatekeepers demand the presence of that particular style of language, your attempt at interesting prose won't get published. At this point, it's the market fault that good literature is absent because they don't want to publish it under the assumption it won't sell well.
We don't know how many unpublished quality is there because the writers gave up on sending applications and getting rejections.
While game and music industry thrive on novelty, the publishing industry thrives of conservatism and going the safe route because that's what sells. No one wants to read well written, though provoking stuff but the same old good guy vs bad guys drivel with the appeal to sex and love.

>>11319866
The academic intelligentsia effectively had no say in the course of art when the Salon was opened to the public. I think it is more true to say that good art was always critical of the academies

>>11319527
Ease of life and lack of challenge leads to death of character, or rather growth of it. Human character just as everything in nature grows, matures and changes only in response to challenge, be it violence, lack of resources, or any other kind of problem. This together with fact that art nowadays, only as a tool of escapism, attracts the worst, weakest people, who are exact opposite of people who created art in past.

>>11319686
QED theory is arguably just as important as relativity for how we view the natural world if that's your metric. DNA, thermoplastics, and supersonic aviation, etc. all have had a much more substantial impact on everyday life than spooky physics autism. Your definition of "big" scientific discovery is totally untenable.

video games are all first person shooters and elon musk wasting tax payer money to make an app that counts your farts isnt a technological advancement
No one gives a fuck about chess or sports.

You want to know why books arent better? Because the only books people read today are young adult novels and shit genre fiction.

I shit you not, the only person who could probably capture this moment in time would have to be an Incel. But they would have to be an articulate one.

>>11319527
The Enlightment influence over modernity is overwhelming, it incentivizes all things you mentioned, but it is terrible at creating art and offering meaning in general.

>>11320114

>>11319527
Because the idea of Progress in tightly controlled sport, laboratory, industrial, and medical contexts naturally give rise to obvious metrics.
>that guy ran faster than that other guy
>this empirical evidence supports an alternative theory which better explains the universe compared to the previous theory
>this phone is faster than the old model, has more storage space, has this list of new features (...)
>modern technology, transporation, and logistics enable us to locate chess players from all over the world and cultivate their talent
>hardware and software advancements make possible these almost lifelike graphics in this new video game
etc.

There is no similar metric for writers and books. Name one (e.g. number of readers), and it will be contested - probably vehemently - and maybe validly.

The definition of progress in culture is a function of power (who defines progress) and it is not a real thing.

So there you have it. That's why writers and books don't improve. Improvement is not easily measurable.

>>11320155
racemixing: not even once

> video games
> better

>>11319527
"Videogames are getting better."

$100m budgets and they're all formulaic garbage trying to be movies, not games.

PC games have been getting worse for close to 20 years and console games have been declining for the last 10 years.

>>11319631
Well the 100 year thing is objectively wrong so here we go:

Black holes,
Penicillin (as well as the other antibiotics it lead to)
The first computer all the way to today.
The atom bomb
String theory

These are just a few majors ones from the top of my head. Idon't really want to keep going. Someone else expand the list.

Because any retard can write some screed and post it on google books

exponentiation

Videogames are NOT getting better. They are advancing, but not better.
Prove me wrong.

Art was turned into solely an academic pursuit, and academia homogenized the artistic class.

>videogames

>>11319585
the middle class didnt even used to exist, there used to be proles, peasants, tradesmen, capitalists, and aristocracy. The only class that ever made good art was the aristocracy in conjunction with certain members of other classes they would elevate for their talents.

the ridiculous capitalist-progressive establishment we have today is utterly incapable of producing art, it is one giant whirlwind of resentment at its inferiority to the aristocracy it supplanted and crass narcissism from its dishonest power. most of our shit tier art now comes from a novel class of glorified criminals who exist so that the elite can spite the masses of people they manage to clamber over in their perpetual status maximizing struggle, and is composed of nothing but vulgar expressions of sensuality and id

>>11319527
earrings are the ugliest things ever created by humans and i wish girls never wore them

>>11319658
who said things are getting better FOR YOU?

>>11319551
yes, i agree anon, its postmodern neo marxists that have ruined art, definitely not market incentives and an industry that makes billion dollar CGI shitshows and hordes writers, forcing them to write lowbrow shit for the only fair pay they'll get

>>11319797
Writers dont work in teams, despite taking influence from their intellectual surroundings, Its not the same thing as science team

>>11319527
>everything is getting significantly better, athletic records, scientific discoveries, technological breakthroughs, chess masters, videogames

>>11319631
>last big discovery meme
Computing theories are continually pushed forward. Huge, and I mean really huge medical discoveries are made yearly now, but can take up to a decade before they can be safely put into practice. Biology, specifically genetics, is a work in progress, with new understanding of specific functions for loci ALMOST DAILY. Agriculture has had at least half a dozen “breakthroughs” (admittedly sometimes just changes in nationwide policy, but still) that have literally saved us from worldwide famine.
Biology is literally moving so quickly that a molecular bio textbook becomes basically worthless after 2 years.

You’re just a sad retard that likes to feel
Smart by being negative. You can make some bullshit arguments about “muh human spirit” or something, but everything is progressing whether you like it or not. I suspect people like you just fear being left behind. And you should, because it’s obvious bitching is your only skill.

>>11321121
Fag.

>>11321171
fuck you faggot

>>11319686
the whole Darwinian idea should have revolutionized the humanities but they have largely refused to accept its implications

for example 'evolutionary psychology', which is obviously not that great a field at this point, but should be the new basis for understanding humanity for everyone who accepts that evolution exists and created us, is excoriated by almost everyone in the humanities

>>11320155
>tfw been told I look like Elliot Rodger

>>11319631
Here’s a list of formerly deadly illnesses that have such breakthroughs in treatments as to basically be considered cured in the last decade or so alone:
Hepatitis C
AIDS
At least one type of prostate cancer
Ebola

That’s just off the top of my head.

>>11319527
Literary fiction is dead. All progress is happening in "genre" fiction. Compare Blindsight with, for example, Mission of Gravity. MoG was great by 1950s standards, and it's still worth reading today, but it's obvious that the aliens are just humans with a few minor tweaks. Blindsight has truly alien aliens. Additionally, it uses neurology results that were unknown in the 50s.

>>11321183
Smallpox was eradicated in the 70s. Polio is almost eradicated.

>>11319527
I don't understand anyone who says that we're not living in a golden age of literature.

>>11321207
what has been created comparable to Goethe's Faust in the past 200 years

>>11319527
>everything
"Everything" is a misleading word. I can spool off a long list of things that aren't getting better: mental illness epidemiology, obesity rates, national deficits, mean personal debt, wage stagnation, climate change, species extinction, refugee crises, political polarization.

Don't be fooled by superficial patterns. The world doesn't progress uniformly in lockstep.

>>11321215
watchmen
to kill a mockingbird
1984

>>11319624
What's a steve?

>>11319564

this

>>11321227
a steve combines the best elements of chad and virgin. Not only is he physically fit and incredibly attractive, but he is also refined and culture. he has a booming business career and will retire a multimillionaite. even more rare than chad, but continues to dominate the social hierarchy even after his youth

>>11321242
Hey I like this meme

Eh, I've been writing for 3 years now what you'd gobble up cuz it's so amazing. /lit/ whines about the lack of quality stuff a lot, but when an actual genius frequents you, you ignore him.

I'm almost done writing, wrapping up my last projects and then calling it quits. Not sure why I still visit this place, full of sad hopeless frogs.

>>11321143
You seriously read "postmodern" in my comment and your immediate thought was this? I'm talking about the actual movement in art, moron.

>>11319686
The internet has completely changed how we interact as a species in most developed nations,what the fuck are you on about

Except for books? lol what the fuck! I just came here from reddit and don't know what you're talking about! Artemis (by the same author that wrote The Martian) The Winds of Winter coming soon of course (sixth Game of Thrones book! Can not wait!) Also Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood is so epic! (made by my favorite youtuber)

That's some pretty shit-tier bait so no (you) today

Corncobbers is keeping the fire burning. He is at least ensuring that there is one living author who isn't absolute shit.

Nothing is getting better. It's all the same quarks since the Big Bang, or prove to me that any arrangement of quarks in space is somehow better than another.

>>11319571
>The only thing that has actually continued (or even improved in appreciation) is music
"No!"

>>11319527
Because we are in the middle of a rational era in literature, and those tend to be garbage. Irrational eras like romanticism and modernism are miles better than anything rational

>mfw impending IQ collapse
>mfw impending demographic collapse
>mfw impending nutrient collapse
>mfw impending large scale ecological collapse
And literally nobody cares and everyone is wrapped up in fake memes like carbon emission or geopolitics, feels good man

>>11321809
Nutrient collapse is partly due to carbon emissions (more CO2 means faster growth but lower micronutrient density).

>>11321832
True, but a lot of the meme politics specifically created to target carbon emission ironically is the cause of it, specifically in the dietary/agricultural sectors.

>>11321097
When someone says 'we' are less appreciative of art I don't think they are referring to the aristocracy

>>11319527
is that everyone's favorite antifu?

>>11321097
based

>>11319540
This.
Language is shown to always get simpler in metropolitan areas throughout history. The more metropolitan we get, the more we adapt the trait of efficiency which has it's drawbacks. People have become unchallenged and absolutely retarded. They've adopted an abbreviated sense of emotions and translate emotions like hate and anger through pity and sympathy. Eventually that portion of humanity will become weak enough they will simply be conquered by anyone even slightly more challenged emotionally. I think this is the issue of modern man

>>11322280
weak language --> weak emotions --> weak thought --> bugman society
shieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet nigga you smart

>>11319686
>Obviously, games aren't robots, but if we made serious advances in AI we would likely see them in games first.
No you wouldn't. First off, almost nothing cutting edge starts in games, second off most games are extremely tight with computational resources as it is, and finally AI hasn't been a focus in games since broadband made online multiplayer a thing.

>>11319527
The humanities lack a quality control system and are heavily influenced by intelligence agencies.

>>11322315
>First off, almost nothing cutting edge starts in games
The GPUs that made modern NN-based AI possible were literally designed for games.

The 20s, 30s, 40s, 80s, 90s, 00s, all sucked for literature. Its nothing new.

>>11322288
I have a fan who follows me around and it's never hot

>>11319540
/thread

The sciences never went full postmodernist

>>11321550
>retards introduction to subjectivity

>>11322280

>>11319540
Society will correct itself once we can effectively setup Gattaca-style genoism via liberal eugenics.

>>11322280
Sounds thought out, except ebonics is a more complex form of language than typical English, which is why it is more efficient. There are a few linguists who have commented on this but I don't have the link on me and you are just as capable of googling stuff.

>>11323558

>>11319527
>everything is getting significantly better

The world is literally dying and the human species is degenerating. Things are only getting better for a shrinking minority.

>>11319527
She looks like a boy.

and it makes my dick diamond hard. Who is (s)he?

>>11323606
some antifa-type gal who interacted with one of the infowars reporters

>>11323599
>Things are only getting better for a shrinking minority.
I think you mean the growing majority. The white man's time has been and passed. The time of the brown masses has come.

>>11323606
A neechee worshipper.

>>11323599

>>11323688

>>11323696

>>11323696
What do you think of this?

>>11323696
Or this?

>>11323696
How about this?

>>11323606
August Dog
https://twitter.com/augfrogg?lang=en

>>11319631
imagine being this much of a fucking reddit pleb. kill your self retard

>>11323696

>>11319527
videogames peaked in the late 90s / early 00s and that is a hard fact

>>11321097
>most of our shit tier art now comes from a novel class of glorified criminals who exist so that the elite can spite the masses of people they manage to clamber over in their perpetual status maximizing struggle, and is composed of nothing but vulgar expressions of sensuality and id
you’re talking about porn, right?

>>11323707
>>11323714
>>11323719
None of these trends compare in any way to the scale and importance of decreasing poverty, hunger, illiteracy, child mortality and pollution. You're just making yourself look like a narrow-minded moron. Especially the second graph, that just tacks on a statistic about reported female happiness to prove increased promiscuity is the cause. "Why, it's ironclad! A graph showing decreased happiness ADJACENT TO promiscuity statistics?? I cannot possibly doubt the connection."

People are easily more distressed than ever and engineering technology peaked in the 60s. All these fufu advancements are nil when we are too bureaucratic to continue space exploration. The only real progressing frontier is phone and data technology, otherwise humanity has stagnated if not regressed on virtually every front. Aesthetic age is just making dumber people with hyper specified, useless STEM jobs

>>11320155
tfw you are literally elliot rodger except much uglier
it's over lads

>>11323771
I was thinking of music, the rappers who are literal criminals, or the popstars who affect the image of a criminal, the music is all designed to be maximally sensuous and impulse driven, which it has become extremely good at it, it's basically on the level of like a mid tier intoxicant at this point

>>11323778
>decreasing poverty, hunger, illiteracy, child mortality and pollution

These things are not decreasing, they are being shifted onto a wider populace at the behest of a smaller, more influential minority. You have to be a slave to think the world is becoming a better place. Not your little fucking bubble, but the world over. How can you say, for example, that illiteracy is decreasing when most people don't read books? This is an insidious lie. This is the illusion of progress. Agglomeration is progress. Consolidation is not decreasing poverty. Keeping people dependent on corporate food chains is not solving world hunger. Corrupting children into little abominations that consume and grow into depressed, confused, mentally disturbed drones DOES NOT HELP THEM. NO MORE FUCKING LIES

>>11323856

Your post is very dramatic but does not make any sense. If poverty were being "shifted onto a wider populace", poverty would be affecting more people. But poverty is affecting fewer people. This is what it means for a phenomenon to be decreasing.

I can say that illiteracy is decreasing because the proportion of people who are able to read has increased. Literacy rates do not describe the tendency of a population to read books. It describes their capacity to read at all.

If by 'corporate food chains' you mean the world-spanning infrastructure for food distribution, that is exactly what is solving world hunger. This infrastructure distributes food from where it is produced to where it is required for consumption.

Of course, this distribution is not perfect. World hunger is still a problem. But the infrastructure is growing. We are able to produce more food and get it to more people as time goes on. This is what it means for the world to be getting better. Fewer people starving to death, watching their children die young...and more people able to read.

>>11319686
>made serious advances in AI we would likely see them in games first

Deep Blue 20 years ago. AlphaGo less than 20 years later.

>>11323955
Yes, because we definitely need more Africans and Indians in the world

>>11323955
>But poverty is affecting fewer people.

No it is not. In the States, the wealth disparity is increasing and the wealthy are investing in real estate, most often at the detriment of long standing inhabitants. This is gentrification, and it is most plainly observed in Washington D.C. Blocks and blocks of restaurants only economically feasible to the wealthy... and this scenario replicates itself across all sectors, not just the food industry.

>illiteracy is decreasing because the proportion of people who are able to read has increased

In the States, English is degenerating. Grammar and polysyllabic words are becoming much less known, especially among youth whom are the future. And you know what they are most prone to reading these days, especially online. Not only that, but the college graduation rate is declining. The cultural decay is quite evident, it's just that people like you think this glossy veneer of technocratic sophistication is somehow helping it.

>corporate food chains' you mean the world-spanning infrastructure for food distribution

Food distribution =/= Consolidating the means to distribute food. You confuse and subsequently obfuscate this simple fact.

>Of course, this distribution is not perfect. World hunger is still a problem. But the infrastructure is growing. We are able to produce more food and get it to more people as time goes on. This is what it means for the world to be getting better. Fewer people starving to death, watching their children die young...and more people able to read.

The US alone produces waste at a vastly disproportionate rate than other countries. Most of it is food. I've worked in restaurants before., and the two things they waste the most is water and food.

>This is what it means for the world to be getting better

Not only do you not know what it means for the world to become better, but you don't even have an awareness as to what is going on.

>>11319686
>made serious advances in AI we would likely see them in games first

Deep Blue 20 years ago. AlphaGo less than 5. Seems like progress to me.

>>11320919
I can't, because games getting better is a subjective opinion
This is what /v/ fails to understand when they bitch about vidya

>>11321809
>impending IQ collapse
What do you mean by this? Are you postulating that Idiocracy is going to happen soon?

>born in le wrong generation :)

>>11324104
Smart populations have stagnated, dumb populations haven't.

>>11319527
You described things that can only get better without a 1177 style global collapse (except videogames, which isn't true). Second, once the writers of today are picked out by their colleagues and real critics and handed to smallbrains like yourself, you'll sing today's praises.

>>11324357
>>11324104
IQ levels are also tanking in the west. This is likely a combination of several environmental factors including dietary and non-dietary poisons, malnutrition, likely consumer electronics mass media etc. Would assume this is a global trend.

>>11324438
Probably more to do with immigration.

>>11324461
The trend was also observed within families. It likely does factor in, but I don't think it's as significant as environment. The researchers conclude it has to do with "education" which is likely wrong and they are just sticking their heads in the sand w/r/t pollution, nutritional collapse and the fact that anyone born ~1980 is subject to a large-scale experiment with consumer electronics, internet, radiations etc. etc.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115

>>11319527
Copyright laws. You think the Odyssey was the work of just one guy? It is the retelling and retelling of a work a thousand times that polishes it to perfection.

Also heavy selection bias. Comparing the best works of a 1000 years of history to the best of a 10 is not reasonable.

>>11324476
M8, I don't think it is caused by nutritional collapse or people using consumer electronics... Countries with low immigration like Japan and Korea are unaffected. Singapore, with its elitist immigration policies, has seen an increase in IQ. It's only really western European countries that has seen large drops in IQ. Countries like France who get large amounts of immigrants from northern Africa, and Germany with their middle easterners are the most affected.

>>11322315
>we live in a society: the post
that being said I fully agree with you

>>11322280
Linguistics says languages don't get 'simpler' there is no way of quantifying that anyway. There are vowel mergers happening in the US (caught-cot merger for example) but also splittings and new slangs being made. (how often was the word selfie used seriously 10 years ago)

Because there is only a limited amount of creative and artistic people. 200 years ago they had nothing but books and plays. Today they can express themselves in other forms of media. Therefore there are fewer talented authors.

>>11319527

It's a technological problem. You could say, there are less good books BECAUSE there have been so many scientific discoveries and technology breakthroughs...

1) People are far more distracted today.

2) People are far less reflective today.

3) People experience far less today (I mean real, authentic experiences, like truly wild adventures, life-and-death dangers, meeting truly different and diverse people etc.)

4) People read less (less of a market, less livelihood)

5) STEM has totally out-balanced humanities in terms of prestige and popular excitement. The culture of the middle-class has shifted to caring far more about Tech, so literature is seen as worth far less (its insights less helpful etc.)

6) Popular electronic media have exposed most people to pretty much everything. People are therefore far less excited or intrigued by novel ideas like they once were (unless, of course, they're technology ideas...see Item 5, above).

7) There's far more anxiety and depression in our society today, and anxiety and depression historically has affected writers disproportionately.

>>11321180
evopsych is nothing more than a funny thought experiment because you can basically construct any selective pressure for any psychological trait and nobody can really tell you you're wrong

>>11324054
Your assessment of language is even more retarded than your use of "whom."

>>11319527
all those things are easily measured except video games, and video games run on technology which is always getting better

how the fuck would you know if the novel of the century was written right now?

>>11322280
Yes. Tribal humans have noticeably more nuanced and complex semantic language due to their social environment. Also, probably due to their lack of literacy and literature. Actually, I think literacy has detracted from a great deal from humanity, including things like dance (which was an important part of memorisation and meaning-conveying in the past).

>>11322820
This. Though they will be eventually, you'll have a baseline that's actually used for something (in other words: it has to work or the foundations of society won't) with all newer developments being inane slop that can't be used for anything.

>>11319564
The biggest issue is that developpers think plot and characters are what make games good. Many games are either protagonists on rails, or are a world filled with literal books for the player to read. In any case a game's plot would, in every case, be better served by a novel. There are indeed some games with interesting mechanics, and plot only exists to present the underlying game itself. As opposed to the games where the generic FPS or hack and slash mechanics are used to present some story.

To answer OP, young people have had access to the internet and computers for 2 decades now. They can watch youtube, or play minecraft for 8 hours a day without getting bored. Youtube is also an attractive easy entry platform for presenting creativity.
>Instantly have your "work" presented to the world all by yourself
vs
>Anxiously hope that an expert third party will actually publish your book

>>11321218
b8

>>11321672
>tfw this is what I'm trying to provoke
How do I do it /lit/?

>>11319527
Because while scientists, athletes and so on look at the future, writers are constantly looking at the past, satisfied on merely reproducing it with some minor personal tweaks.

Iliad is to writing what Aristotles was to modern philosophy.

>>11319527
>How come everything is getting significantly better, athletic records, scientific discoveries, technological breakthroughs, chess masters, videogames, EXCEPT for writers and books?
Modernism ruined literature for good. Literature is so dead that it doesn't even stink anymore.

Protip: all fiction is (literally) fantasy, if it isn't then you're doing it wrong.

>>11319527
I would argue that there are just as quality books as before but that they are just drowned out by the multitude.

Also, keep in mind that the way writing is done is changing, a lot of writing effort goes into blogs and image boards like this one.

Also, keep in mind that we are at a precarious moment in our civilization/culture, where we are in the shadow of the ruins of the golden age of the Enlightenment. We have failed miserably on almost all accounts so now, either the Internet and 4chan will lead a new Renaissance, or we will fall into the new Dark Ages.

>>11319527
>scientific discoveries

nothing compared to 100 years ago
enjoy your slightly better screen

>technological breakthroughs
yeah, oil and coal gonna go away any day now!
oh wait...

>chess masters
lol

>videogames

worse than 20 years ago

>athletic records

fucking brainlet

>>11324920
it's not though, for example it is very obvious why pain evolved right? as in 'get the fuck away from source of pain'

the entire human mind should be similarly deconstructed, all our emotions, desires, ways of thinking, etc. If youre saying the present state of evopsych is not impressive I agree, but the idea itself, that humans are evolved and as such have specific patterns of behavior that evolved due to natural selection- this is literally indisputable, you have to reject evolution to reject this.

>>11326524
pain is barely psychology, even things like plants and worms can detect pain

think of something more complex, like why we like fakery (paintings, movies, books, games, etc), not so easy to reason out why that exists, now is it? With normal evolutionary studies we have fossils, phylogenetics, comparative biology, natural environments of creatures, simpler targets, etc, that allow us to do things like
>find fish fossil on former ocean bed
>identify similarity to land creature
>sequence it, it's related to a contemporary sea creature
>the fin has a different shape on the land creature that appears to let it move better in sand
>we can say that the land creature evolved special fins to run on sand
or whatever
with evopsych you have nothing, so it's just armchair bullshitting
fun thought experiments but has absolutely no scientific rigor

>>11326604
there is no actual difference between 'pain evolves so organism avoids' and 'love evolves so organims pair-bonds'(or whatever thats just an example). Like it is precisely the same sort of argument, the latter type is just called speculative because it ruins everybody's already existing memes about humanity.

>>11326621
yeah except pain has a clear purpose and exists in all of the animal kingdom while love is a complex human phenomenon that people can barely get clear in the first place without also having to do mental time travel to figure out why it came about

back in the day they thought primitives were like animals and had no morality, it was just grug smash grog all the time, then they thought primitives were basically hippies, then we realize that all these primeval tribes we study actually have their own distinct cultures, so which one are you going to run your mental experiment on?

>>11326686
im just saying is the idea that love evolved to make us pair bond and raise the kid really that out there, like it is completely plausible but people flip out about it

if that's the wrong explanation then ok, we find a different one, but love, the distinct feeling we get that attaches us to a person, that is recognized in every human society as a basic thing, that has to be evolved for a specific purpose, it is too important a characteristic of behavior to not be

>>11319527
how do i get a gf that is this prettty?

>>11326708
>if that's the wrong explanation then ok, we find a different one
this is where the whole thing collapses
we can't confirm or deny any evopsych hypothesis

>>11321242
nah steve is that skinny guy who hangs out at places like bowling alleys, has a patchy beard and thinks he's way better than he is.

>>11326720
you're making it sound impossibly complex but it's not. love has a specific set of effects on human behavior, so it has to have evolved for something related to those effects, and how they impact evolutionary success

i literally never see people talk about love this way, it is always framed in an almost mystic light, and the majority of human psychology seems to be approached in a similar fahsion, instead of thinking about why it would have evolved

>>11319527
>video games

>>11319527
scientific discoveries aren’t getting significantly better and neither is technology, relative to the transition from agrarian mechanized economies to economies of scale based on telecomm nothing of that magnitude is occuring or has occured. Athletic records are getting better because of drugs; writing continues to circle the drain because it depends on intuitive and polygenic cognitive traits heavily damaged by dysgenics, high mutational load and societies that discourage introspection and sensitivity to aesthetics (as opposed to addiction). You won’t see another Pynchon because that type of person can’t breed and their genes don’t survive the iq shredders. Also, fetishizing e-girls is a sign of being a eunach

>>11319527
Is this august?

>>11326792
>muh dysgenics
it's not 2400 yet

>>11324054
It's pretty funny that you say I should get outside my bubble when I'm talking about the whole world and you can only think about America. Sure, wealth disparity is a problem in the US, and in another countries. There are still fewer starving people in the world.

As far as English goes, you are not even talking about literacy. I could concede everything you say (which I don't) and still maintain that illiteracy has declined. You seem to consider polysyllabic word comprehension important, but you don't actually know what 'illiteracy' means. Little rhetorical tip: grandiose phrases like "glossy veneer of technocratic sophistication" do not say 'I am resisting the cultural decay affecting America'; they say 'I have an over-inflated sense of myself and my abilities and am in consequence faintly ridiculous'.

>>11319527
You sound no different than the old dudes complaining that basketball today is soft or how back in my day....

>>11326686
>love is a complex human phenomenon

Are you seriously implying animals don't love? That these emotions just cropped up in man and everything that 'lower creatures' do that's equivalent is just 'instinct'?

>>11326809
no, its june

>>11326728
Exactly, Steve is this, but thinks he's >>11321242

steroids

>>11320155
This guys was hilariously hilarious.

>>11326156
>nothing compared to 100 years ago
This meme needs to die
I agree with the rest of your post though

>>11324881
I agree, especially on points 2) and 3). I do want to say though, depression has created some of the best pieces of literature out there. This relates to point 3) as well.

>>11326604
Games/movies/animation stimulate your pineal gland. For you brain it's very stimulating, and quite literally an escape.

>>11319564
Ridley being in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate alone will make up for any future shortcomings in games.
I was in hysterics since me and my friend had heated arguments about his validity in Smash even before Brawl. I was so ridiculously convinced it would be impossible on top of the fact that I've loved reptilian, dragon-like anything for as long as I can remember made the whole reveal an extremely euphoric experience.
I think I'm permanently satisfied

>>11319527
Usa have destroyed culture

>>11319527
Videogames aren't getting better
Also, music isn't as well

>>11331752
No we invented it.

writing books is hard and has to compete with the instant gratification of vidya, tv and porn

>>11325839
he meant rampant anti-consumerism in videogames shithead