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Disclaimer: although I'm a libertarian, I see no reason why technology couldn't help us live in a world with no work at all. I believe this is a good and noble

Disclaimer: although I'm a libertarian, I see no reason why technology couldn't help us live in a world with no work at all. I believe this is a good and noble goal for humanity to have. Philosophy question: does adversity build character? In my personal experience, and looking at all the people I've encountered in life, for the most part it's quite difficult to self-actualize. If you had given me a million dollars as a 20-year-old, you could have come back a month later and I would have a bunch of crap I didn't need and would be a worse person for it, not a better person. They killed Socrates. And they killed him because he didn't fit in. He was actually thinking for himself and asking difficult questions. One of the reasons the word "democracy" had such a bad reputation over the centuries was all the examples of the Greeks acting like mindless morons. The Greeks were conquered. And their conquerors, the Romans, were quite concerned for many decades that the Greek influence was destroying their way of life. You can read Romans complaining that other Romans were growing soft and decadent by doing things like sleeping on a bed (instead of the ground). Once a sufficiently violent and organized group of people came along, Greek society was absorbed and diffused throughout western civilization. Greece was no more. It was Rome -- with a Greek influence. Living in a world of leisure, thought, and self-actualization is a noble goal, but it's not a goal without a lot of danger attached to it. We need to tread carefully here and avoid at all cost making simplistic arguments.

RobertoG 10y ago
"Philosophy question: does adversity build character? [..]. If you had given me a million dollars as a 20-year-old,[..] I would have a bunch of crap I didn't need and would be a worse person for it, not a better person." Not that I disagree, but there is the other side of the coin that we don't hear frequently: does adversity destroy character? Because I'm sure we can all think of more than one example.
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  I completely agree. How about this formulation: is stress, whether internal or external, required for learning? My answer is yes. With no stress there is no desire for change. The best case is the self-actualized person, where they form their own goals and provide internal stress in order to learn more and reach them. But even then, I think we can all think of folks with so much internal drive that they distorted their personality.
  - RobertoG 10y ago
    There is stress and there is stress. I agree that the human (all animals actually) trend is to conserve energy and minimize risks. So you need some kind of pressure to go out and change. But I was thinking in how people get trapped by bad conditions, environmental circumstances where they are born and that are going to be with them all their life. This "problems create character" thing suffer a little from surviving bias, in my opinion.
    - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
      Agreed. I think we're saying the same thing. I'm thinking that perhaps there are some core life skills that can be taught so that people are able to positively handle more external stress and provide themselves the correct amount of internal stress. At least I hope so. It would be depressing to contemplate a large section of humanity unable to self-actualize without chemical dependency or other problems. Not only is that bad for those folks, it brings up the insane question of whether or not such a condition is a disability.

RobertoG 10y ago

"Philosophy question: does adversity build character? [..]. If you had given me a million dollars as a 20-year-old,[..] I would have a bunch of crap I didn't need and would be a worse person for it, not a better person." Not that I disagree, but there is the other side of the coin that we don't hear frequently: does adversity destroy character? Because I'm sure we can all think of more than one example.

DanielBMarkham 10y ago
I completely agree. How about this formulation: is stress, whether internal or external, required for learning? My answer is yes. With no stress there is no desire for change. The best case is the self-actualized person, where they form their own goals and provide internal stress in order to learn more and reach them. But even then, I think we can all think of folks with so much internal drive that they distorted their personality.
- RobertoG 10y ago
  There is stress and there is stress. I agree that the human (all animals actually) trend is to conserve energy and minimize risks. So you need some kind of pressure to go out and change. But I was thinking in how people get trapped by bad conditions, environmental circumstances where they are born and that are going to be with them all their life. This "problems create character" thing suffer a little from surviving bias, in my opinion.
  - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
    Agreed. I think we're saying the same thing. I'm thinking that perhaps there are some core life skills that can be taught so that people are able to positively handle more external stress and provide themselves the correct amount of internal stress. At least I hope so. It would be depressing to contemplate a large section of humanity unable to self-actualize without chemical dependency or other problems. Not only is that bad for those folks, it brings up the insane question of whether or not such a condition is a disability.