Things Change News

YES

YES

Social Media

Increased awareness/willingness to diagnose

Phones

Mass Psychogenic Illness

Some form of intentional psychological manipulation (algorithmic manipulation, intentional group polarization, psychological warfare, etc.)

There actually is no mental health crisis, it just looks like there is one due to e.g. biased reporting

The postmodern condition becoming more widespread

Hearing about bad things going on (like Climate Change)

REM defficient sleep

Psychoactive drugs (prescribed or recreational)

Socioeconomic hardships

Urbanicity

Microplastics

Nanoplastics

Some sort of ingested/inhaled contaminant

cocaine dust particles passive intake

NO

Any policies that in line of requirement for all children in New York to learn Arabic numerals at an early age

Change how caseworkers, inspectors, teachers, social workers handle things within existing law

A rent freeze in rent-stabilized housing

Raise corporate tax

Creating the Department of Community Safety

Commit 0.5% of NYC's budget to libraries

Free city buses

Free childcare in NYC

Raise income tax

At least two grocery stores operated by the city government

Appoint a Mom-and-Pop Czar

YES

NO

A. Death by paperclips, eternal torment of all humans by AI, or similar unalignment catastrophe.

F. AI wipes out most jobs as in D. People not forced into mind-uploads or experience machines. General perception that AI has made life more meaningful/fulfilling&improved the human experience on dimensions other than hedonium maximization.

I. AI soon hits fundamental scaling laws and we go into another AI winter.

B. Governments and/or other powerful entities use AI as a tool of repression, enabling global techno-totalitarianism along the model of China during Zero Covid or worse.

G. AI development continues but doesn't change things too much, somehow. Most jobs, even low-level white collar jobs, don't get impacted too hard, as new work is found to replace newly automated work. Labor force participation remains high.

C. AI doesn't actively want to hurt us, but (possibly aided by transhumanists) they become obsessed with utility maximization and force us all into mind-uploads and/or experience machines to free up resources for more computronium.

D. AI wipes out most white-collar jobs within a decade and most blue-collar jobs within a generation; powerful humans and/or AIs at least seriously consider disposing of the "useless eaters" en masse, us being powerless to resist.

E. AI wipes out most jobs as in D. No disposing of the human masses, but general perception that AI has made life less meaningful/fulfilling & significantly worsened the human experience on dimensions other than hedonium maximization.

YES

YES

Project Hail Mary

The Metropolitan Man

Worth the Candle

The Black Company

Consider Phlebas

Grog (by RW Krpoun)

The Torture Camp on Paradise Street

House of Leaves

HPMOR

The Orphanage

The Shadow in the East

Red Famine

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

NO