But when you think about technology, how far back are you going? Isaac Watts? The mechanical loom? Water power? — Bitter Crank

Yes, all of it. Of course the more modern we get, the more reliant the technology is on specialized engineers and scientists.

I mean, tech isn't a person. It doesn't walk in a magically transform nothing into something. Something has to be there first, and it has to be paid for early on. This hasn't changed in a long time. — Bitter Crank

But investors, eventually need to make money on tangible products and output. Eventually, making money on money only goes so far before it needs something real that actually is producing the profits. Products need the inventors and engineers to originate and further technologies. That is the piece that everyone else needs. An inventor can just invent. But a consumer needs those inventions, and an investor needs the tangible output- whether they be stone tools for cutting meat, or any number of modern products.

Sure, we can think of scenarios where the products are primitive to not need inventors or services with little skill, but that society doesn't exist anymore, if it ever did. The inventors and proto-engineers were always needed since civilization began (whether they were called that or not).

Who are the best?

One instance where "the best" technology is bought, where tech is tech, is in the purchase of patents. Large tech operations sometimes buy small competitors only for the value of the patents they own. Once the sale is complete and the patents have changed hands, the recent acquisition is flushed down the drain (if it isn't otherwise worth keeping).

Oddly, the patents might not be needed for future manufacturing. They may be useful only for future litigation. It's like if some small company owned the patent for "the computer mouse" they could sue all sorts of computer makers for patent infringement, and make a nice income. Apple, for instance, keeps unneeded patents on hand to sue or counter-sue competitors. They all are involved in this "high tech" legal maneuvering. — Bitter Crank

Interesting point. Consumers are not valuable. Only the creators of technology are. That's the thing. The investors are nothing without the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. They are needed by consumers, owners, and investors alike. There is no real production without it.

You can call it technology if you want, but if it's defined so broadly enough it could just as well be called output, production, GDP, or whatever. — Bitter Crank

But this is why I specifically called out technology- it is not the output aspect or the economic indicator that represents output. It is the technology that is the basis for the output.

What Intel or Samsung does in their factories is complex manufacturing, certainly, but it isn't really all that much different than what goes on in a Ford plant. Men and machinery are combined to produce highly engineered objects. Modern dairies are much more "technological" than they used to be -- in some operations cows and robots move around in the barn as they wish. When a cow wants to be milked (and they do want to be milked at least twice a day) the cows solicit the services of a robot. Whether it's done by a robot or a guy carrying a Serge milking machine from cow to cow, milk is sucked out of mammary glands. — Bitter Crank

You think cars aren't extremely complex technology? This all takes the engineering knowledge, of course. Something as simple as a milking machine, are also engineered.

Ford and Intel are making a product from raw or previously processed material, then selling the product for as much as the market will bear. In both cases, there is a major markup in price between the factory and the final purchaser -- probably by a factor of 10. (Each stage--manufacturing, warehousing, selling, shipping, incorporation into another product, more warehousing, distribution, etc. adds a little more to the final cost. By the time you buy something at Target, a lot of handling costs have been added. That's true of an eggbeater from Target or a computer from Dell.

I prefer to think of "technology" as one factor in products along with initial cost, toxicity, repair costs, longevity, convenience, and so on. — Bitter Crank

Again, great description of the economic factors. However, it is the technology that creates the items. We survive and are entertained through technology. None of the stuff you mentioned exists without someone figuring out a better code to program the machine to make a more efficient or "superior" product.

Also, it is the burden of knowledge. The best must create. The best must have the knowledge. The best have to be specialized.

Most of what I buy are food, utilities, health insurance, property insurance, and miscellaneous stuff -- as high tech as a kitchen pan, underwear, bike tires, etc. I bet most of your household spending is similar. — Bitter Crank

Yes I agree, but how much technology goes into all of what you described? A lot more than used to be. So tech here is meant broadly, not in the narrow definition of electronics or something similar when we think of technology

Creators, inventors, come up with new ideas. Labor brings them to fruition. In a capitalist economy workers are wage slaves and without paid work starve. Creators require the means to manufacture -- that means a building, machinery, and workers. Further, they have to buy raw materials (like sheet metal). All of this requires cash. That's where investors come in: IF they think the idea will make enough profit, they may invest. — Bitter Crank

All of this is based on the current technology which is used to make further technology. The workers and investors rely on technology. So it is still the inventors and engineers that are needed most. The very platform we are using was based on computing technology with all the computer engineering, and programming that goes into it, as well as networking technology, then forum technology, and further, the very nice format of "Plush Forums" which this particular forum is based. Of course that is not mentioning every other supporting technology, such as the electrical ones and manufacturing that goes into the devices we are using and keeping them powered.

You paint a very good picture of how investment, manufacturing, engineering, and invention work. However, what I mean by money doesn't do anything without technology is literal. Money is only as good as what can be done with it. Otherwise, its just paper. So where does money get put to use? Basic survival-like needs such as homes, heating, appliances, electricity, etc. What do the taxes need to do? Other survival-like stuff at the community level. Roads, electrical supplies, stop lights, all sorts of infrastructure. Then of course, luxuries are spent on. Stuff needs to get made, is complicated to configure and make, and takes the brains to make it, and yeah the brawn to put it together.. But the workers need to have the technology as well, otherwise there is nothing to work on, build, and fix, or the building and fixing would be of a very home made, 17th century type technology.

So, you can describe the methods for which investments promote technology, but LITERALLY money means nothing without the BACKING of the value technology gives money. Yeah money can be seen in lots of ways, as an exchange or a "store of value"..but none of it stores anything unless there is the technology for which the money can obtain. That is the final telos of the money.. It is waiting to be cashed out in technology.

@Bitter Crank

I'll put it this way. Try to make an argument against the fact that the most valuable people are the technology originators? You can be cynical and say its money that talks. Its technology that makes the money do anything.

I agree with a lot of your down-beat points. People who are consciously and deliberately upward mobile start planning their child's glorious career before ovulation. They already have the money (or they have a plan) to thrust this baby into the upper class if at all possible and they pursue it from the get go. Pregnant mama eats well, listens to Mozart, all that. Then attention showered on the baby, and early childhood education (way before first grade), private schools, tutoring, dancing lessons or whatever the fuck, push, push, push. If all goes well, these great expectations pan out pretty well, on a local basis, anyway. — Bitter Crank

Very good description.

The book and series I suggested won't change your mind -- I think you will find Kunstler's approach affirming. His non-fiction books, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation and The Long Emergency (among others) develops ideas about the logic of STUFF that you expressed. Mostly I suggested the books because they are great post apocalypse fiction and are far, far more pleasant than Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD which made me very uncomfortable. I watched the first few minutes of the movie The Road and decided it was going to supply too many intolerably vivid images of ghastliness. CLICK! — Bitter Crank

Thanks for recommendations. They do fit the theme it seems. Fiction can often paint the picture, that a monograph can't quite get at.

We and pack rats seem to have a similar urge. — Bitter Crank

Need a home to keep stuff.

Are you familiar with Thorsten Veblen? He published his Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899. It is a slim volume. One of the themes in the book is about "conspicuous consumption". People consume in order to display their excess capacity. His classic example are fields of grass upon which no sheep are allowed to graze, yet the grass is short. "Lawns" are a demonstration that one can afford to grow grass for appearance and pay someone to cut it short. It's a totally non-productive pasture. The manicured pasture surrounding stately homes was quickly copied by the middle class (even the working class) who propagated much-fussed-over small pieces of pasturage upon which no cow will ever graze. — Bitter Crank

I've heard of this. Sounds like it is still relevant.

I think Marx main contribution was showing that the material circumstances- like economic structures drive ideas. Well, to tweak that a bit- technology might even be more foundational than economic systems. It doesn’t matter who owns what, or what style of distribution. Rather, it matters more in how a society protects, maintains, and progresses the technologies. Our culture really is centered on this. The priests? The engineers.

@Πετροκότσυφας
Thanks for the book recommendations! I might have to add it to the reading list. As you know by now, these topics simply go back to the major premise I see about life. That is to say, structurally, we are always in a state of "lack". Certainly, technology (of any era) speaks to the lack of many things: the lack of the ability to survive without it, for example. If we always had what we needed, we would never want. But want is subversively valued as the summum bonum so that we can cope with our deficiency by praising that very deficiency. Lack brings want, want brings MORE STUFF, MORE STUFF brings MORE METHODS FOR GETTING THE STUFF! Just the fact alone, that we need health care STUFF, and food STUFF, alone means there needs to be more growth.. Then we need MILITARY STUFF, and scientific STUFF, which filters into CONSUMER STUFF. And of course that STUFF needs more STUFF to support the STUFF and administrations grows, and writing jobs to market it, and on and and and on. The growth of technology is the growth of the minutia. Every equation, every line of code, every twist of the manufacturing widget. It is an ultimate delve into the intricacies of the minutia of the intricacies of minutia. It is the ultimate culmination of our sense of lack.

The rational "parent" brings new children into the world so that they can be MINUTIA MONGERS and bring us more STUFF. But of course, I am not talking about the simple sex = baby cases. This was meant for purely so-called rational reasons to bear and raise a child

But then, were you ever positing that parents "individually apart from society" imagined that their children would find happiness and nice technology? — Bitter Crank

Well, let me put this in a broader context- think about the burden of technology. As you mentioned a large EMP over North America, I can hear in the background the proverbial technophiles in ThePhilosophyForum land saying statements like, "Actually, the North American grid is connected to such and such frameworks, this or that power stations, such that an EMP could not possibly fry the whole power grid, and perhaps only a quarter of the country would fail from such an event, and then go into the mechanics of how the possibility of a nationwide power failure would occur, and the slim chances of such occurrence. You see, someone has to know this. Someone has to work towards knowing this. Happiness is wrapped up in our ability to grasp, innovate, and further technology. The burden of the details has to be gained and furthered. You can spend years just knowing the details of some engineering concept.

Well I’m connecting it with technology for a reason. There is the need for someone to master the technology and perpetuate it. Who shall it be? You do make a good point children historically are the result of the desire for sex with no birth control methods. The lofty goals were perhaps after the fact.

The reality is survival requires the technology. It is primary to all else whether flaking stones and hut building techniques or machine coding.

Well if I had the time I would try to get the exact recount of the thoughts of the person who invented the C language exactly as he invented it. Then I would have the exact recount of a programmer building an app in the language of C. I would hopefully have accounted for any biased in each so the reader had pure experiential understanding of the originator and advancer concepts.

I will happily change the title if you think it appropriate. If you want to point the way to proper epoche methodology, I would be happy to see an example.

Well started off describing the two ways of innovating tech

an approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience. Basically what things are like from first person.

I explained it in the OP. Happiness > Community > Technology

I guess there’s no evaluative aspect to this. It is to reveal the connection of happiness to technology by necessity.

The problem is having no choice.
Back to your point about the reduction..more technology producers why?

There’s no other choice..I guess you can call that inherently satisfying.

And the fact, if it is a fact, that you can't have happiness without technology, does not mean that happiness is the same as technology. — Πετροκότσυφας

Granted, perhaps I should phrase it differently such that "The intention of happiness is only had by way of technology, and thus happiness brings with it the treadmill of technology-originators/advancers/maintainers."

And yes, you're not saying we are born to produce technology, you're saying we use technology to reproduce to use technology to reproduce, to infinity. — Πετροκότσυφας

Not exactly. Rather, what I said above. To reproduce based on happiness is to bring about the workers needed to advance technology for the community. I suppose the connection is more unintended than the way I first stated it.

Every new line of code is just substantiating it :D.

No, there's no "need" to reduce something to something else. — Πετροκότσυφας

I am not really reducing actually. It is actually more revealing happiness= technological advancement for reasons of having children. Its more definitional than explanational I guess. It was you who brought in the idea of reduction. Survival is in the equation, but via technological advancement. There is no way to have happiness without the technology that provides the sustaining community. It is all tied together, I am not sure if reduction has to play into it. I am not saying "we are born to produce technology", but rather the reason of "happiness" is necessarily tied into technology. There is a difference.

Certainly I see technology as foundational- thus the necessary tie with it rather than with other human cultural phenomena.

The same logic can apply all the way down to the reduction ladder. Natural selection is not the real reason things happen, the selfish gene is. Oh, no, it's not the gene, it's the molecule. No, it's the atom. Maybe it's the second law... all the way into the abyss! — Πετροκότσυφας

Ha, I see what you're saying, but I don't think that it is necessarily an argument against survival as the stopping point. At the level of organism, which we are, survival is essentially all we need to reduce to. But, I am not SIMPLY reducing to survival. It is survival via technology via happiness. So, I acknowledge there are levels at play here, it is just that where they may seem disparate, I see cohering connections.

Good points. See my thread here about how happiness reason is really about technology. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3977/on-the-phenomonology-of-technology/p1

This is the least persuasive of reasons for reproduction that you have come up with. In our long history of mindless reproducing, very very few children have produced any growth in technology. For most of our history (as the species we have been for several hundred thousand years--and before that, millions of years) children duplicated the existing technology--knapping pieces of rock into tools, cooking birch bark to get a strong pitch adhesive, food preparation, etc. We know they duplicated technology (rather than innovating) because the styles of knapping rock change very slowly.

Reproduction is the essence of life: the first life forms (simple one celled animals) reproduced. Life has been doing that for billions of years--not because it is in favor of reproduction. Life has no choice in the matter. It is designed from the molecular level and up (maybe the atomic level and up? Sub atomically and up?) to reproduce. — Bitter Crank

While I grant that reproduction is partly hardwired (in our case by means of pleasure-centers (i.e. orgasms in sex and oxytocin released during childbirth perhaps..), I did qualify my statement that, I am only discussing those claiming to have kids intentionally, in order so that a new human can experience happiness, but are really doing it to advance technology. Happiness is only gained by means of enculturation by way of society. Human society is only maintained via technology. The child is born to maintain and advance technology. The hope is to advance it, but if they become a common maintainer rather than advancer, then oh well, the hope was there.

Anyways, this also proves that the intention to bring new humans about for reasons of promoting "happiness" is actually subtly (but importantly) promoting technological advancement and maintenance. I will say, the addition of maintenance is from considering your response that most humans don't advance, but replicate. I still think that the hope is the offspring will either originate or further advance from the originators.

So children are put on the treadmill.. or rather the GRISTMILL of trying to innovate technology. But its hardwork and sweat.. so the children are born to work hard to create technologies, but most will not, they will just work hard.

As a side note, I always like your posts- they are well-crafted and fun to read, even if I disagree with parts. You should teach a course on, "How to disagree without being disagreeable".

Because the origination of “survival” in the statistical..fit enough to not die sense, is allocated at the level of evolutionary biology, not the level of physics. I can explain the phenomenon without going any further down the causal/physical chain.

But instead no one has to be responsible for anything because of this fatalistic attitude towards having children as though it is inevitable. — Andrew4Handel

Good point, especially bringing up the fatalistic attitude. Self fulfilling prophesy.

Ok, I see what you mean now. I reduce only to the level of survival as that is as far as “reasons” go when related to the specific situation of the animal. Once natural selection took place, it’s kind of a given. Technology may be more basic than other cultural traits, and can even be argued as our species survival niche so this especially pertains to the human animal at the foundational level. Why would it then be appropriate to go further to physics?

I don’t see an argument. What is your main point? Happiness for the child is tied to technology and it is a subtle but logical connection.

I think it is a problematic or unjustified stance to assert that people are entitled to have children. And if people had that right then don't they have equal responsibilities? — Andrew4Handel

The problem with bearing more life is the person being born is stuck with it. There is no simple off button, just the very difficult mechanism of suicide. In tribal societies, it was simply a rite of passage to have children, and a duty to the tribe itself in order to perpetuate it. This, of course, leaves little thought about the individual at question being born. Religion and unquestioned social norms (and lack of birth control coupled with desire for sex) continued this practice of procreation into "the age of civilizations" around the world. Around the 1700s, personal reasons like pursuing happiness came into vogue. Thus having a child would allow the new person to experience their potential for happiness. See? All resolved.. Once the word happiness is thrown in as a reason, then there is no reason to question it, right? Not being facetious at all :).

What is the origin of the need to work? Hint: it is a very simple answer.

Contrary to de­terminists who give time-sequenced causality prior­ity over voli­tion, will is the prime analogue and causality deriva­­tive. Associ­ation plays a role, but, as Hume noted, asso­cia­­tion does not warrant necessity. The idea of causal con­nec­tion over time derives from our experience as agents. — Dfpolis

I just started reading this thread. Sorry for the late addition. This point to me seems to have connection to Schopenhauer’s main thesis regarding will as metaphysically primary. Just thought that was interesting. I would characterize your approach as a certain “flattening” which is not necessarily a bad approach. I would define a flattening approach as one where two unrelated phenomenon (human intention) and physical events connect in a deeper principle. The obvious criticism I can see is that your claim is making an unsubstantiated comparison. Just because there are two similar mechanisms that doesn’t mean they have the same metaphysical origin but are perhaps similar but convergent and parallel phenomenon.

Actually that seems like quite a controversial statement. Do you have a source for it or is it just your sense of things? — gurugeorge

So love is easy to find, eh? News to me. All those forlorn love songs, stories and such, must have been from the "unusual" cases. Divorce rates hover over 50% I believe.. People unhappy with their love life are pretty numerous. Though if you need one cursory glance at some study done by searching on the internets, here is one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4757816/Mathematicians-reveal-odds-finding-love.html

But to reverse the somewhat obnoxious question, do you have proof that most people have a healthy flourishing love life? Is this important thing easy for most people? Is it reliable? Now you may scoff at the notion that basic forms of happiness should be so easy but that’s just because you’ve adjusted your exlectations to lowered circumstances that reality offers. Philosopher David Bentar writes at length regarding this psychological technique of adjustment. Doesn’t make the reality better just your relative position to it..like psychological armor..the beserker, the stoic, the man of equanimity. Constantly honing, adjusting, lived experience of trial and error, and of course fortune has its part. This is reality and we must deal.

When things go well for people, it’s even easier to scoff.

:lol: :up:

Not achieved by "most?" I'm not sure if people have such a concrete idea of their ideal partner as all that, — gurugeorge

I'm not saying anything particularly controversial. I'm saying that most people don't find a significant other or at least in some satisfactory manner. Humans especially have a messy social way of trying to attain and maintain this. I'm just observing this phenomenon that not many people have this "good" that most people consider rather important.

“I want it all! I want cushy paradise on Earth! I want and [believe that I] need constant entertainment!” — Michael Ossipoff

You are being purposefully provocative now to the point of distorting my position. Entertainment is not used in the sense that senses need tantalizing (i.e. games/electronics/etc).. it is ANYTHING not directly related to survival and maintaining comfort. ANY goal related to things other than the two aforesaid things can look like many things.. religious goals, meditation, charity work, reading, learning, taking a class, staring at a tv, playing a video game, etc. etc. If anything, a universe where everything is satisfied looks more like dreamless sleep (pace Baden's observation).

I don’t believe in ad-hominem critical attack-style, but what answer to you leave for me, other than to say that your non-acceptance of life as it is, is unreaslistic? — Michael Ossipoff

I've never claimed that reality is other than the state it is. I merely made observations about how that state is. You have yet to address the issue that indeed, this is how the state is.

but is that avoidable when criticizing positions? — Michael Ossipoff

Yes.. but I'll respond to more later.

So you want everything about life to be easy for you, and otherwise it's "broken". You're too demanding; you expect too much. That's the source of your dis-satisfaction. You expect a physical world to be perfect, some sort of custom-deluxe provided environment for you, and you expect human-animals to have immediate complete mastery of life. — Michael Ossipoff

You tend to personalize or psychologize the philosophy rather than view it as a subject separated from the person who holds it. I suggest fruitful dialogue would be had from looking at the viewpoint and not throwing it back on the viewer. That would be a subtle form of ad hominem, and a turn away from the issues.

I will say that if I was to have set a philosophical trap, you stepped right in it. Your reply here reflects the exact point that the OP was making. The issue is not why don’t we learn to toughen up and accept our lot, but rather, what is going on here that this is our lot.

If you snort and chortle in really that we need struggle (cue German raving philosopher madman) in order to have goals to summit, then I will point you to Schopenhauers quote about the paradox and contradiction that is man..

False equivalency. Peoples ideal partner can vary. The point is an integral part of what most people consider a valuable good, is not achieved by most.

I find it interesting that this very big important part of the human experience is so hard for people to achieve, maintain, and access. Only some people experience it and sustain it. That it’s not something more common is troubling and speaks to more brokenness to begin with.

See, the problem is, most people don't find that problematic, because most people are built to cope with it just fine - in which case you might consider the possibility that it's you that's "broken" (I trust you understand I don't mean that in an insulting way, but as something for contemplation). — gurugeorge

So unevenly distributed? Ah right