9 ms·

What a horribly myopic take, it completely changes the "outcomes". I am way more productive and happy: - I save more money so I have more to spend towards pro

What a horribly myopic take, it completely changes the "outcomes". I am way more productive and happy: - I save more money so I have more to spend towards productive uses. - I don't die as often, living is productive. - I listen to podcasts, diverse videos (just listening) or music, learning more during my drive. - I call friends and family, enhancing connections and communicating more. - The car drives for me, leaving me more relaxed and energized when I reach my destination, and I am more likely to travel further than I would normally. - The car is much safer, lowering anxiety, so I use it more often for productive uses and generally feel safer and happier, and therefore more productive. - It accelerates and coasts at higher speeds easily, so I get there faster. - My back doesn't get sore nearly as easily (I get back pain easily sitting up), a huge productivity boost. - The AC is cooler and heat is faster, sound is nicer, every material is nicer, tint is stronger, wipers are automatic and fast, lights are automatic and fast, etc etc - all this adds up to lower stress and higher safety, meaning less death, less injury, higher likelihood to use it productively, and less stress. To wave away these things as minor is a very Thiel-like thing to do, but I find it ridiculous. You want to go to space? To be in the most inhospitable environment possible? What does that do for us, again? I'd rather have better Wifi and more legroom on a flight than a rocketship that went 2x faster but didn't have either. We didn't get flying cars, we got unlimited knowledge and communication at the speed of light, even when flying through air. I'd like to fly a car, but again: Cars from then 2020s are spaceships compared to cars from the 90s, while cars from the 90s are not really much different than those from the 60s. Within a decade we likely have self-driving electric cars completely dominate, and suddenly the Theilians look silly because all these "non-important" advances like, oh, computers and AI, suddenly solved a big problem, ignoring the fact that those same computers are already solving medical problems left and right, landing rockets from space, folding proteins, re-inventing Chess and Go, saving millions of man-hours of work, connecting people all over the world and greatly enhancing their general knowledge, amongst a few hundreds of other things.

nosianu 4y ago
To get to your conclusion you ignore 99% of what my comment si about and concentrate on a single thing, cars. I don't like these kinds of arguments where people carefully select one minor thing and pretend it's the main point. I wrote about quite ab bit more, and cars were not even close to the center of my post! > I call friends and family, enhancing connections and communicating more. I also question the validity of statements such as these. It does not seem to me to be supported by evidence that our connections between people - and lets concentrate on connections between already connected people to remove the question if new tech lets us make new ones more often - are qualitatively better than in the past. I would think such a statement very much deserves a [Citation needed] response. I think a lot of your statements are equally... creative and subjective, or worse ("I don't die as often, living is productive.").
- nwienert 4y ago
  Sorry, I use a phone to look up transit info and it's 100x more convenient. There's a massive and tangential discussion to be had about tech and it's influence on culture and connectivity, but that's not for this thread.
  - nosianu 4y ago
    > Sorry, I use a phone to look up transit info and it's 100x more convenient. I'm a bit baffled, what does your reply have to do with either of my previous comments? I mean what I actually wrote, I'm aware I prominently mentioned such a convenience feature. It's just that there was no question that it was convenient.
    - nwienert 4y ago
      It's a direct response to this: > It was when I looked at the tram station not far form my house, which for a year or so has been upgraded to have a display with the expected arrival times of the next three trams. > It sure is very convenient! However, compared to a similar transport system of fifty years ago, which achieved the same thing, we now have a lot of additional effort to maintain such infrastructure. It got waayyyy more complex, all the electronics, and software has to be written and maintained, screens installed and maintained, computer infrastructure - all just for some slight improvement in convenience. Is it worth it? I have no conclusion, I just have to think about that when I hear yet another "we need more 'Fachkräfte'" (skilled workers). How many people do we need for mostly just minor convenience upgrades? You made up some arbitrary thing that you admit improves quality of life, and I pointed out that your example doesn't really even capture the difference. 40 years ago you had to ask around, or call to ask about the times of tram. Now you can find the exact times, delays, of any tram anywhere directly from your tiny pocket supercomputer. The difference is so stark, and yet you focused on signs at the station when the revolution was in your hand. --- Realizing you brought up like 5 different things, and now every time I refute one you're motte and bailey-ing to the next thing. I don't owe you to refute every point you put out, the thread here was a specific example of tech improving productivity, and I think it's definitive. The study is ridiculous and proves nothing, and the rest is pathos and too broad to reply to.
cudgy 4y ago
Virtually everything you mentioned has nothing to do with the point that was so eloquently stated by the above poster.
- nwienert 4y ago
  > The main point though is that you don't accomplish more And I pointed out ~10 ways I do accomplish more because of it, refuting exactly the point. The rest of the comment cites a ridiculous one-off, narrow social science study with a few vague pathic appeals to the quaint simplicity of the before-fore-times. I think you both want to zoom way-way out to 10-guy "like, what does accomplish even really mean? Isn't simplicity, like, the real accomplishment?" and I'm all for a simple life well lived, but that's pretty much re-defining the entire discussion to be about something else. And no one is getting rid of cars or phones at this point, I'd love to see that argument. You write to me on an internet-connected device, on a forum on the web, from likely a laptop or phone built within the last 5 years. That same phone you likely use all day, every day for hours a day. And you'll argue it's somehow a sinister regression? So... why are you here? A laptop, the internet (and modern healthcare that saves lives, modern cars that save lives, etc) doesn't exist without "complexity". It's such a ridiculous attempt to de-rail an interesting and specific debate. It's also such a uniquely HN-specific type of person that pines for olden days while distinctly relying on modern technology all day every day, so weird. The same types will laud the Framework Laptop - yet talk about reducing complexity and supply chain reliance.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Laptops were much easier to maintain twenty years ago. The idea of a Framework would not be much of a novelty. Most decent laptops had swappable batteries, and both the RAM and CPU were socketed instead of soldered.

nosianu 4y ago

To get to your conclusion you ignore 99% of what my comment si about and concentrate on a single thing, cars. I don't like these kinds of arguments where people carefully select one minor thing and pretend it's the main point. I wrote about quite ab bit more, and cars were not even close to the center of my post! > I call friends and family, enhancing connections and communicating more. I also question the validity of statements such as these. It does not seem to me to be supported by evidence that our connections between people - and lets concentrate on connections between already connected people to remove the question if new tech lets us make new ones more often - are qualitatively better than in the past. I would think such a statement very much deserves a [Citation needed] response. I think a lot of your statements are equally... creative and subjective, or worse ("I don't die as often, living is productive.").

nwienert 4y ago
Sorry, I use a phone to look up transit info and it's 100x more convenient. There's a massive and tangential discussion to be had about tech and it's influence on culture and connectivity, but that's not for this thread.
- nosianu 4y ago
  > Sorry, I use a phone to look up transit info and it's 100x more convenient. I'm a bit baffled, what does your reply have to do with either of my previous comments? I mean what I actually wrote, I'm aware I prominently mentioned such a convenience feature. It's just that there was no question that it was convenient.
  - nwienert 4y ago
    It's a direct response to this: > It was when I looked at the tram station not far form my house, which for a year or so has been upgraded to have a display with the expected arrival times of the next three trams. > It sure is very convenient! However, compared to a similar transport system of fifty years ago, which achieved the same thing, we now have a lot of additional effort to maintain such infrastructure. It got waayyyy more complex, all the electronics, and software has to be written and maintained, screens installed and maintained, computer infrastructure - all just for some slight improvement in convenience. Is it worth it? I have no conclusion, I just have to think about that when I hear yet another "we need more 'Fachkräfte'" (skilled workers). How many people do we need for mostly just minor convenience upgrades? You made up some arbitrary thing that you admit improves quality of life, and I pointed out that your example doesn't really even capture the difference. 40 years ago you had to ask around, or call to ask about the times of tram. Now you can find the exact times, delays, of any tram anywhere directly from your tiny pocket supercomputer. The difference is so stark, and yet you focused on signs at the station when the revolution was in your hand. --- Realizing you brought up like 5 different things, and now every time I refute one you're motte and bailey-ing to the next thing. I don't owe you to refute every point you put out, the thread here was a specific example of tech improving productivity, and I think it's definitive. The study is ridiculous and proves nothing, and the rest is pathos and too broad to reply to.

cudgy 4y ago

Virtually everything you mentioned has nothing to do with the point that was so eloquently stated by the above poster.

nwienert 4y ago
> The main point though is that you don't accomplish more And I pointed out ~10 ways I do accomplish more because of it, refuting exactly the point. The rest of the comment cites a ridiculous one-off, narrow social science study with a few vague pathic appeals to the quaint simplicity of the before-fore-times. I think you both want to zoom way-way out to 10-guy "like, what does accomplish even really mean? Isn't simplicity, like, the real accomplishment?" and I'm all for a simple life well lived, but that's pretty much re-defining the entire discussion to be about something else. And no one is getting rid of cars or phones at this point, I'd love to see that argument. You write to me on an internet-connected device, on a forum on the web, from likely a laptop or phone built within the last 5 years. That same phone you likely use all day, every day for hours a day. And you'll argue it's somehow a sinister regression? So... why are you here? A laptop, the internet (and modern healthcare that saves lives, modern cars that save lives, etc) doesn't exist without "complexity". It's such a ridiculous attempt to de-rail an interesting and specific debate. It's also such a uniquely HN-specific type of person that pines for olden days while distinctly relying on modern technology all day every day, so weird. The same types will laud the Framework Laptop - yet talk about reducing complexity and supply chain reliance.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Laptops were much easier to maintain twenty years ago. The idea of a Framework would not be much of a novelty. Most decent laptops had swappable batteries, and both the RAM and CPU were socketed instead of soldered.