8 ms·

His philosophy doesn't resonate with me. Broadly speaking, since the industrial revolution scientific and technological progress has been about increasing produ

His philosophy doesn't resonate with me. Broadly speaking, since the industrial revolution scientific and technological progress has been about increasing productivity and available energy. This has had profoundly positive effects on our lives but in a developed country it's not obvious that becoming another order of magnitude more productive will automatically lead to people having even better lives. In the advanced countries of the world there is no shortage of material and energy abundance, our intractable problems are things like isolation, obesity, inequality, and a lack of purpose, and the mental and physical ailments which accompany them. If there is a technological solution to these things it's not obvious. In some cases, technology is the problem. In others the problem stems from how we order our society, but there are no serious and thoughtful proposals about how to reorder it.

ChatGTP 4y ago
I thought Max Tegmark had some pretty awesome words to say they resonate with this on his latest interview with Lex Fridman, it was quite inspiring albeit kind of scary. Worth checking it out if you like him. But yeah, we really need to start questioning if optimizing everything is the best way forwards as a species.
donatj 4y ago
This list of problems really just sounds a lot like the goals of humanity at large for the last couple hundred thousand years. To have plenty, more than your neighbors, and enough that you don’t need to deal with other people (what hell is, to wit).
- h0l0cube 4y ago
  > and enough that you don’t need to deal with other people (what hell is, to wit) This is actually a new phenomenon. I'm not sure if it's just because I'm older, but I've literally grown to see this shift in mindset. There was a time when it was common to invite neighbors over for dinner, now more often than not, it seems like people want to have bigger fences and less interaction with their community. Meanwhile, all mental health indicators are going in the wrong direction in the developed world.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    A lot of people, myself included, get tired of dealing with people as we get older. We have to deal with people for the majority of our lives, especially during our schooling and working years. Once we've accumulated enough to retire into the countryside with no need to give a fuck to anyone it becomes a very appealing change of scenery.
    - kelipso 4y ago
      The question is why a lot of people get "tired of dealing with people". Was that even a thing in most of history? Is there some subconcious cost-benefit analysis their brain is working out where solitary activities are more enjoyable for them? Probably. There's infinite entertainment at our fingertips these days.
    - h0l0cube 4y ago
      And I’m saying this wasn’t always the case for the majority. It’s worth understanding how that came to be
    - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
      It’s funny because I grew up in the country and I have mostly worked alone. Now at 38 I’ve moved in to the city and I’m fascinated by how many interesting people there are here! I guess we just appreciate change and novelty over the course of our lives.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Wait why do we need more than our neighbors to be happy? I mean, I don't believe that personally. It is also unachievable for humanity as a whole to all have more than our neighbors.
  - euroderf 4y ago
    Yeah, srsly. Just inserting the word "more" suddenly ties the comment to an entire discredited life philosophy of competitive acquisition.
- aylmao 4y ago
  To quote from Martin Luther King Jr., during his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech: "We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers"
RandomLensman 4y ago
If in the developed world most policies now are based on the premise that the future is bleak (climate change, war, deficits, ...) then it comes as no surprise that actual progress isn't high on anyone's agenda. Until the future is seen as a land of opportunity again, things will remain bleak.
- beambot 4y ago
  Curious - many people do see those "problems" as the "opportunity" of our time, just as past generations had their own bleaknesses to overcome.
  - RandomLensman 4y ago
    If you compare, for example, the 1960s view of future with the current - quite a difference. A lot now is about costs to bear and then eventually it might get better. Are there business opportunities in the problems - for sure, but that isn't quite the same as a general bright outlook on the future.
    - mandmandam 4y ago
      Our future was robbed between the 1960s and now. Crazy great things have happened - usually thanks to the best of us. But the worst of us have been pulling the same mega-destructive stunts for decades, and they keep getting away with it. There are good reasons to have optimism, but like... We were violently mugged, and are bleeding. We need to do something about all that before worrying that our outlook isn't rosy enough.
      - RandomLensman 4y ago
        Nothing was robbed or destroyed - not sure why you adopt that defeatist attitude. The future could probably be all yours.
        mandmandam 4y ago
jmeister 4y ago
> Admittedly, it does seem slightly ludicrous to forget about one’s immortal soul and instead busy oneself, as Faust does, with the project of reclaiming land from the sea. > We should acknowledge that there are many perils with the scientific and technological trajectory on which we find ourselves. But we should never forget that the alternatives to technological acceleration are far from ethically or politically neutral. > Technology means doing more with less. In the absence of technological progress, we end up with a zero-sum world, in which there must be a loser for every winner. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/06/against-edenism https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/06/against-edenism Yes this is from Peter Thiel. Yes it is not very persuasive. But it is worth thinking what the alternatives are and if they can be any better.
tudorw 4y ago
AI will shift things, if I can boot up another doctor or therapist or educator that's 80% as good as a human, in comparison to nothing at all, that's good, so one professional doctor could oversee a small squad of AI doctors and sign off on treatments. Whether this makes things better or worse, who knows! The apocalypse has been arriving since we invented the word.
boxed 4y ago
Lack of purpose is the core thing I think. If you have that, then isolation solves itself, and obesity might very well solve itself too. Lack of purpose is also the consequence of not being able to even think of a brighter future. Not seeing what humanity COULD be and working towards it.
- anovikov 4y ago
  Lack of purpose is inevitable and unfixable. In the world where success is infinitely scalable as we are living in the information age, most people are doomed to uselessness no matter what. Trick is how to help them get over it. Obesity is a medical problem and will be solved by rather trivial medical means very soon, at least on that front, future is bright.
  - dr_dshiv 4y ago
    >most people are doomed to uselessness no matter what Well, no mater how smart computers get, mothers will be generally useful to their children. So at least one counter example.
    - anovikov 4y ago
      That's right and this is why rates of depression, suicide and stuff, is way lower among women than men. Still it leaves an impression of a Ponzi scheme of a sort?
      - boxed 4y ago
        A Ponzi scheme works because it gives the illusion of being real. Life isn't that. Life is real. The only real thing in many ways.
  - safety1st 4y ago
    Woah that's a contrarian take on obesity. Can you elaborate?
SanderNL 4y ago
We don’t become more productive because we are striving towards it like some shared goal, we do it because if we don’t, we lose (our jobs, among other things). There is no element of choice. There is no stopping this.
- safety1st 4y ago
  That my be true, but what I was referring to when I used the word productivity, and what for example an economist would usually be referring to, isn't personal productivity per se. Like yes you can work more hours a day, or potentially work more efficiently, and yes a shitty boss may force you to do too much of this. But that is a very small part of what happened in the Industrial Revolution. Better to think of increased productivity in this context as "all inputs generate greater outputs," or as a function of available energy a society can produce. Like the increase in what society can produce when you go from horsepower to burning fossil fuels to splitting the atom is many orders of magnitude because you get more energy for cheaper at every step up. Or the way that agricultural technology has enabled us to obtain a harvest that is 100-1,000x more productive in terms of calories than it was in antiquity. That's productivity in this context. Calories (as in food) is a really good example of what I'm talking about with relation to the problems of modernity. For much of human history famine and starvation were basically an agricultural problem, there were situations where a geography couldn't produce enough calories to feed all the people there. Technology has solved this problem, we now produce an insane surplus of calories and can ship them all over the globe with ease, if people starve today it is not an agricultural problem, it is a political problem, it is systems of people choosing not to allocate food to the starving. It's not clear that better agricultural tech will further reduce starvation - quite possibly it won't without some kind of societal evolution.
  - SanderNL 4y ago
    I understand and thank you for the clarification. My point was that societal productivity progress is ultimately not driven by factors such as “better lives” (satisfying primary needs). It is IMO not going matter if increasing productivity leads to “better lives” or not because that was never the primary driver in the first place. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this march continues even if it in fact decreases our quality of life as is already happening. What is a primary driver? Good question. I can think of multiple candidates, but power comes to mind. Given a choice we would all rather be financially independent rather than tied to a job. Why? Some of us like the status, others like the freedom, but we all enjoy the power to just say “nope, not going to do that”. I think “nope” may be the most powerful driver of human progress. Edit: I forgot to quote. > it's not obvious that becoming another order of magnitude more productive will automatically lead to people having even better lives. This was my point: no better lives, but an order of magnitude productivity will increase the power we (or a small group) will experience and ultimately that is a stronger drive.
tourgen 4y ago
[dead]

ChatGTP 4y ago

I thought Max Tegmark had some pretty awesome words to say they resonate with this on his latest interview with Lex Fridman, it was quite inspiring albeit kind of scary. Worth checking it out if you like him. But yeah, we really need to start questioning if optimizing everything is the best way forwards as a species.

donatj 4y ago

This list of problems really just sounds a lot like the goals of humanity at large for the last couple hundred thousand years. To have plenty, more than your neighbors, and enough that you don’t need to deal with other people (what hell is, to wit).

h0l0cube 4y ago
> and enough that you don’t need to deal with other people (what hell is, to wit) This is actually a new phenomenon. I'm not sure if it's just because I'm older, but I've literally grown to see this shift in mindset. There was a time when it was common to invite neighbors over for dinner, now more often than not, it seems like people want to have bigger fences and less interaction with their community. Meanwhile, all mental health indicators are going in the wrong direction in the developed world.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  A lot of people, myself included, get tired of dealing with people as we get older. We have to deal with people for the majority of our lives, especially during our schooling and working years. Once we've accumulated enough to retire into the countryside with no need to give a fuck to anyone it becomes a very appealing change of scenery.
  - kelipso 4y ago
    The question is why a lot of people get "tired of dealing with people". Was that even a thing in most of history? Is there some subconcious cost-benefit analysis their brain is working out where solitary activities are more enjoyable for them? Probably. There's infinite entertainment at our fingertips these days.
  - h0l0cube 4y ago
    And I’m saying this wasn’t always the case for the majority. It’s worth understanding how that came to be
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    It’s funny because I grew up in the country and I have mostly worked alone. Now at 38 I’ve moved in to the city and I’m fascinated by how many interesting people there are here! I guess we just appreciate change and novelty over the course of our lives.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Wait why do we need more than our neighbors to be happy? I mean, I don't believe that personally. It is also unachievable for humanity as a whole to all have more than our neighbors.
- euroderf 4y ago
  Yeah, srsly. Just inserting the word "more" suddenly ties the comment to an entire discredited life philosophy of competitive acquisition.
aylmao 4y ago
To quote from Martin Luther King Jr., during his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech: "We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers"

RandomLensman 4y ago

If in the developed world most policies now are based on the premise that the future is bleak (climate change, war, deficits, ...) then it comes as no surprise that actual progress isn't high on anyone's agenda. Until the future is seen as a land of opportunity again, things will remain bleak.

beambot 4y ago
Curious - many people do see those "problems" as the "opportunity" of our time, just as past generations had their own bleaknesses to overcome.
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  If you compare, for example, the 1960s view of future with the current - quite a difference. A lot now is about costs to bear and then eventually it might get better. Are there business opportunities in the problems - for sure, but that isn't quite the same as a general bright outlook on the future.
  - mandmandam 4y ago
    Our future was robbed between the 1960s and now. Crazy great things have happened - usually thanks to the best of us. But the worst of us have been pulling the same mega-destructive stunts for decades, and they keep getting away with it. There are good reasons to have optimism, but like... We were violently mugged, and are bleeding. We need to do something about all that before worrying that our outlook isn't rosy enough.
    - RandomLensman 4y ago
      Nothing was robbed or destroyed - not sure why you adopt that defeatist attitude. The future could probably be all yours.
      - mandmandam 4y ago

jmeister 4y ago

> Admittedly, it does seem slightly ludicrous to forget about one’s immortal soul and instead busy oneself, as Faust does, with the project of reclaiming land from the sea. > We should acknowledge that there are many perils with the scientific and technological trajectory on which we find ourselves. But we should never forget that the alternatives to technological acceleration are far from ethically or politically neutral. > Technology means doing more with less. In the absence of technological progress, we end up with a zero-sum world, in which there must be a loser for every winner. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/06/against-edenism https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/06/against-edenism Yes this is from Peter Thiel. Yes it is not very persuasive. But it is worth thinking what the alternatives are and if they can be any better.

tudorw 4y ago

AI will shift things, if I can boot up another doctor or therapist or educator that's 80% as good as a human, in comparison to nothing at all, that's good, so one professional doctor could oversee a small squad of AI doctors and sign off on treatments. Whether this makes things better or worse, who knows! The apocalypse has been arriving since we invented the word.

boxed 4y ago

Lack of purpose is the core thing I think. If you have that, then isolation solves itself, and obesity might very well solve itself too. Lack of purpose is also the consequence of not being able to even think of a brighter future. Not seeing what humanity COULD be and working towards it.

anovikov 4y ago
Lack of purpose is inevitable and unfixable. In the world where success is infinitely scalable as we are living in the information age, most people are doomed to uselessness no matter what. Trick is how to help them get over it. Obesity is a medical problem and will be solved by rather trivial medical means very soon, at least on that front, future is bright.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  >most people are doomed to uselessness no matter what Well, no mater how smart computers get, mothers will be generally useful to their children. So at least one counter example.
  - anovikov 4y ago
    That's right and this is why rates of depression, suicide and stuff, is way lower among women than men. Still it leaves an impression of a Ponzi scheme of a sort?
    - boxed 4y ago
      A Ponzi scheme works because it gives the illusion of being real. Life isn't that. Life is real. The only real thing in many ways.
- safety1st 4y ago
  Woah that's a contrarian take on obesity. Can you elaborate?

SanderNL 4y ago

We don’t become more productive because we are striving towards it like some shared goal, we do it because if we don’t, we lose (our jobs, among other things). There is no element of choice. There is no stopping this.

safety1st 4y ago
That my be true, but what I was referring to when I used the word productivity, and what for example an economist would usually be referring to, isn't personal productivity per se. Like yes you can work more hours a day, or potentially work more efficiently, and yes a shitty boss may force you to do too much of this. But that is a very small part of what happened in the Industrial Revolution. Better to think of increased productivity in this context as "all inputs generate greater outputs," or as a function of available energy a society can produce. Like the increase in what society can produce when you go from horsepower to burning fossil fuels to splitting the atom is many orders of magnitude because you get more energy for cheaper at every step up. Or the way that agricultural technology has enabled us to obtain a harvest that is 100-1,000x more productive in terms of calories than it was in antiquity. That's productivity in this context. Calories (as in food) is a really good example of what I'm talking about with relation to the problems of modernity. For much of human history famine and starvation were basically an agricultural problem, there were situations where a geography couldn't produce enough calories to feed all the people there. Technology has solved this problem, we now produce an insane surplus of calories and can ship them all over the globe with ease, if people starve today it is not an agricultural problem, it is a political problem, it is systems of people choosing not to allocate food to the starving. It's not clear that better agricultural tech will further reduce starvation - quite possibly it won't without some kind of societal evolution.
- SanderNL 4y ago
  I understand and thank you for the clarification. My point was that societal productivity progress is ultimately not driven by factors such as “better lives” (satisfying primary needs). It is IMO not going matter if increasing productivity leads to “better lives” or not because that was never the primary driver in the first place. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this march continues even if it in fact decreases our quality of life as is already happening. What is a primary driver? Good question. I can think of multiple candidates, but power comes to mind. Given a choice we would all rather be financially independent rather than tied to a job. Why? Some of us like the status, others like the freedom, but we all enjoy the power to just say “nope, not going to do that”. I think “nope” may be the most powerful driver of human progress. Edit: I forgot to quote. > it's not obvious that becoming another order of magnitude more productive will automatically lead to people having even better lives. This was my point: no better lives, but an order of magnitude productivity will increase the power we (or a small group) will experience and ultimately that is a stronger drive.

tourgen 4y ago

[dead]