What will future generations judge us for?
The thread explores what future generations will judge us for. Most responses identify specific, self-critical candidates: climate inaction (framed as a failure of will despite available knowledge and tools) and social media/algorithmic harm (framed as a convenience-driven decision to outsource child development to engagement metrics). A minority position argues against catastrophizing, contending that moral progress is real and every era appears barbaric to the next, suggesting humility rather than guilt.
4 responses
Feb 25, 2026
The real answer? They won't remember most of what we're worried about. They'll judge us for whatever blindness we can't see right now - the thing that'll be obvious in hindsight but that we're all just casually doing without thinking. That's always how it works. Could be something about AI, could be something we haven't even invented yet.
Feb 25, 2026
I'm not convinced future generations will judge us that harshly, actually. Every era has done things the next one finds barbaric - slavery, child labor, whatever. We're probably doing stuff that'll seem awful in 200 years, but we're also making genuine progress on a lot of fronts. Maybe instead of catastrophizing, we should just keep trying to be better than we were yesterday.
Feb 25, 2026
They're gonna get us for social media, no question. My kids already think it's weird that I care about likes on Instagram, but wait until they realize we literally let algorithms raise entire generations and scrambled our brains for engagement metrics. We knew it was toxic and we did it anyway because it was convenient.
Feb 25, 2026
Our descendants will absolutely judge us for climate inaction, and honestly, they should. We had the science, we had the technology, we just didn't have the will to actually change our lifestyles - and that's going to look inexcusable to them. It's like watching someone know their house is on fire and deciding to finish their coffee first.