7 ms·

I'm guessing you're an engineer? Life certainly isn't amazing for people in society at large. There are people on the other side of the code we're producing. S

by tw1010 7y ago

I'm guessing you're an engineer? Life certainly isn't amazing for people in society at large. There are people on the other side of the code we're producing. Something us engineers love to forget about.

jdnenej 7y ago
Life wasn't exactly luxury for a farmer 200 years ago.
- closeparen 7y ago
  According to the "inequality" framing, that is irrelevant, the important thing is that the lack of luxury was uniform across society.
- tw1010 7y ago
  Sometimes I get a bit conspiratorial about the fact that whenever people want to give an example of how terrible life was in the past, they always mention primitive or agrarian times. It's almost never comparing life today with 100 years ago. (It's like they're finding a straw-man period.) But as Eric Weinstein has mentioned in plenty of interviews (e.g. in his latest one with Peter Thiel), life for the boomers were actually arguably better on average than it is for millennials today (and we're not talking about engineering millennials here).
  - Kiro 7y ago
    > life for the boomers were actually arguably better What is he referring to exactly though when he says it's better?
    - filoleg 7y ago
      Probably that everyone was worse off, but more equal on average, thus making it look like everyone was better off. Because you couldn't easily see back then that you are worse off than John Smith across the street.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    100 years ago we didn't even have penicillin. I think you're vastly underestimating the amount of technological progress made in the last century. For most of humanity, life has never been better. Infant mortality is at an all time low (among nearly every other quality of life metric): https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality
cosmodisk 7y ago
I'm talking about western world here.An average person,even on low income is lightyears better of than a middle class person a few hundred years ago.
- Animats 7y ago
  But quite possibly worse off than a unionized manufacturing worker from 1950-1970.
  - wesammikhail 7y ago
    The population has more than doubled since while overall efficiency has increased. This has nothing to do with unions or otherwise. It´s just a matter of the pie not growing as fast as the population is in some sense. Also, society looked very different back then. Women´s work force participation alone renders any comparison between the two ages rather difficult to make to begin with so assuming right off the bat that the 1950s were better (while disregarding all the advancements in medicine, etc.) is unfair at best. note: I understand that you said "possibly" but this is a claim that I hear rather often and I don´t know how people can actually make that comparison so easily.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Possibly, but possibly not. Assembly lines have all the bad parts of the Amazon warehouse exposes, except every rule is enforced by a giant hunk of steel that literally cannot accommodate you.

by tw1010 7y ago

jdnenej 7y ago

Life wasn't exactly luxury for a farmer 200 years ago.

closeparen 7y ago
According to the "inequality" framing, that is irrelevant, the important thing is that the lack of luxury was uniform across society.
tw1010 7y ago
Sometimes I get a bit conspiratorial about the fact that whenever people want to give an example of how terrible life was in the past, they always mention primitive or agrarian times. It's almost never comparing life today with 100 years ago. (It's like they're finding a straw-man period.) But as Eric Weinstein has mentioned in plenty of interviews (e.g. in his latest one with Peter Thiel), life for the boomers were actually arguably better on average than it is for millennials today (and we're not talking about engineering millennials here).
- Kiro 7y ago
  > life for the boomers were actually arguably better What is he referring to exactly though when he says it's better?
  - filoleg 7y ago
    Probably that everyone was worse off, but more equal on average, thus making it look like everyone was better off. Because you couldn't easily see back then that you are worse off than John Smith across the street.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  100 years ago we didn't even have penicillin. I think you're vastly underestimating the amount of technological progress made in the last century. For most of humanity, life has never been better. Infant mortality is at an all time low (among nearly every other quality of life metric): https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality

cosmodisk 7y ago

I'm talking about western world here.An average person,even on low income is lightyears better of than a middle class person a few hundred years ago.

Animats 7y ago
But quite possibly worse off than a unionized manufacturing worker from 1950-1970.
- wesammikhail 7y ago
  The population has more than doubled since while overall efficiency has increased. This has nothing to do with unions or otherwise. It´s just a matter of the pie not growing as fast as the population is in some sense. Also, society looked very different back then. Women´s work force participation alone renders any comparison between the two ages rather difficult to make to begin with so assuming right off the bat that the 1950s were better (while disregarding all the advancements in medicine, etc.) is unfair at best. note: I understand that you said "possibly" but this is a claim that I hear rather often and I don´t know how people can actually make that comparison so easily.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Possibly, but possibly not. Assembly lines have all the bad parts of the Amazon warehouse exposes, except every rule is enforced by a giant hunk of steel that literally cannot accommodate you.