Pessimists Archive

Only nine weeks later, the Wright Brothers achieved manned flight. The pathologically cynical always will find a reason to complain.

Is Eliezer Yudkowsky the same false prophet that Paul Ehrlich was?

AI helped create films like “Jurassic Park” and “A.I.”, so Steven Spielberg and other artists shouldn’t worry about losing their jobs.

Telegrams were the “Twitter of the 1850s and 1860s” — and they elicited the exact same overblown fears as Twitter does today.

Rushdie was heavily criticized by figures across the political spectrum for being offensive. People tried to “cancel” Rushdie long before that term was invented.

Televising the coronation was thought to be an affront to the dignity of the event.

Moral panics about the content of children’s cartoons and other forms of entertainment have a long history.

In the early 1900s, some Americans feared that teddy bears would not instill maternal instincts in girls, thereby causing “race suicide.”

Chess was once blamed for triggering mental health problems, including suicide and even murder. Today, the same is said of video games.

Germany finds itself once again allowing a murderous dictator to run rampant in Europe, though this time it is due to incompetence and technophobia rather than malice.

Graphical user interfaces are how most of us interact with computers, from iPhones to laptops. But they were once condemned as making students lazy and destroying the art of writing.

Long before the Wordle mania, there was the crossword puzzle craze. And newspapers around the world condemned them as an “invasive weed” that caused mental illnesses and even murder.