3 ms·
Yeah, what the hell kind of a question is that. What are we doing building all this technology if not trying to work less?
by cgag 13y ago
Yeah, what the hell kind of a question is that. What are we doing building all this technology if not trying to work less?
- sliverstorm 13y agoTrying to achieve more, perhaps? Work x Leverage = Achievement
- danenania 13y agoBut trying to achieve more for what purpose, ultimately?
- sliverstorm 13y agoWho knows what the future holds? FTL travel? Space colonization? Cold fusion? Yes, we could stop where we are, decide things are good enough, and operate the world at subsistence levels. But who's to say we aren't twenty years from doubling the efficiency of agriculture? A hundred years ago we could have said, trains are pretty awesome, let's stop here. But then we never would have had flight. Five hundred years ago we could have said, horse and buggy is so much better than walking, how can I get any better than this, let's stop here. But then we wouldn't have had trains. Technological advancement has a long track record of being very good for quality of life for everyone, and it certainly hasn't stopped, so why should we stop?
- saraid216 13y agoI realize you're just replying to cgag and danenania, but I want to point out that this thread is running the risk of a bad conflation: Work != technological advancement. More to the point, while good things come out of work, so do a lot of bad things. The more selective we can be about how we work, the more capable we are of filtering out the bad effects while retaining the good ones.
- sliverstorm 13y agoTechnological advancement can't come without work though. I'm not saying work == good. I'm arguing the inverse, that work != bad.
- cgag 13y agoWork isn't bad. Having to work to survive is bad.
- danenania 13y agoI'm not saying we should stop trying to advance technology, but how much have we really progressed if we end up with space colonization and cold fusion, but the average first world worker is still a creatively suppressed wage slave struggling to stay out of debt and the average third world worker is still a borderline real slave struggling to fulfill basic necessities? A set of priorities that is humanist in nature and puts quality of life before advancement would lead to greater output on both sides of the coin. We know in the case of open source and experimental hacking, for example, that a driven and intelligent person's productive capacity is enhanced by additional free time, not decreased. Put humans first. The technology will follow, and it will be better and more sustainable technology.