Well if it's not the consensus, then I believe the group that believes Agrarian workers were worse of, because their arguments seem better to me. Agrarian workers had to work long days, in ways their body was not really suited for, had a one-sided diet, and the larger groups that resulted from the revolution entailed more hierarchical structures and a ruling class living of the work of others etc...
Objective measures, like lifespan... don't tell a whole lot about quality of life. Quantity is not quality.
Anyway, you can obviously respond to this if you want, but i'm not really interested in going into this right now, because it's only an example to show that more prosperity overall doesn't necessarily entail more quality of life for the majority. If you want to make the case that this allways is necessarily so, then that seems to be a hard argument to make. The answer, it seems to me, is that we can't know for sure. — ChatteringMonkey
Really... and the times we came close doesn't give you pauze? All that is needed is things getting out of hand one time. — ChatteringMonkey
As for AI, I'm not so much concerned that they will end up 'terminating' us, it's the effects on society that might not be so positive. If large parts of the population become useless for the economy because of automation and AI, that would create problems that needs new kinds of solutions. And I don't have that much faith in the whole economic and political system, if I look at how things are going now. — ChatteringMonkey
My point is this really, I'm certainly not against economic growth, innovation and new technology in principle... but I also don't think we should just have blind faith that it will necessarily make things better. And as it stand now, we just seem to be dragged into it without much deliberation, whether we like it or not, and for better or for worse. — ChatteringMonkey
Why are governments putting billions of dollars into AI, Biotech and other technologies that will have a profound impact on societies and people... without it having been the subject of any major public debate?
You'd think there would be debate about something that impactfull, if democracy was on a high. — ChatteringMonkey
There is endless debate on these subjects, it's just too highfalutin for channel 6 public discourse. If and when reliable consensus emerges, or the preponderance of evidence comes in, we can then boil down new such technologies into "good" and "bad" camps. Wealth redistribution made necessary as the result of runaway AI efficiency and wealth production is a complex subject that is being rigorously explored, and biotech isn't a direct threat to the public until a government like China decides to somehow force genetic engineering upon it's people.
There is more debate today than ever before and there is more to debate about. We're not all of a single mind about what should even be debated, but that's democracy for you... — Vagabondspectre
VagabondSpectre ChatteringMonkey
Hey excuse me, I'm kind of just passing by, posting randomly and being new here.
I think what you both are overlooking is what humans actually do with their existence, which is to reproduce, replicate old self-sustaining behaviors and display idiosyncratic behavior leading to both death with deep unhappiness(the risk) and newly discovered ways of perpetuating their being(the reward). The newly discovered ways of being over time become established and normal.
What allows us to think that happiness is continuously occurring is the observation whether human being is able to perpetuate itself(the culture he and she is embedded in continues to evolve and survive). This alone is a sufficient test of the goodness of being as per the Myth of Sisyphus (there is nothing a human being likes so much as perpetuating existence, therefore being able to do so makes a human population happy).
We are thus confronted only by two very practical questions: (1)Does the expansion of the ways of human being pose a threat to the perpetuation of culture as a whole? (2)If yes, how much risk is justified?
Conceptually it is easy to see that an expansive human culture may well consume itself. There is a link from this debate to religiosity. There is a link from here to political philosophy too. But the conceptual clarity we can impose now is, that economic development is a baseline that enables being. As such it is an absolute good. At least in so far as it does not saw off the tree branch we are sitting on. How good the actual existence we obtain is, is defined by our mastery of being(educational, political, religious etc). — Existoic
A secondary/tertiary point I might claim is, that to the best of our knowledge, our universe is finite, the clock is ticking on us and all future us'es(Tony Stark, how do you spell that?), and as such some risk to the whole of culture is justified in attempts to expand it. — Existoic
What do you think? — ChatteringMonkey
Yes, I think this is the problem. Continuous-growth economics cannot work in a system with finite resources. Like our Earth, for example. For years I have been amazed that this is not a phrase on everyone's lips. It is the reason for nearly everything we humans have got wrong in our treatment of our world. IMO, of course. :wink: — Pattern-chaser
One can expect growth all the time, but not in all industries or aspects of societies. I think some countries have done controlled growth -- where they intentionally allow to die certain economic activities in order to grow other activities.There's uncertainty about a number of things, when, how much, etc... but one thing seems clear, keeping our economy running on an expectation of growth seems like a recipe for disaster. — ChatteringMonkey
There's uncertainty about a number of things, when, how much, etc... but one thing seems clear, keeping our economy running on an expectation of growth seems like a recipe for disaster.
— ChatteringMonkey
One can expect growth all the time, but not in all industries or aspects of societies. — Caldwell
No, that would be pretty weird :-).I hope you haven't been waiting 3 years for this factoid; — Bitter Crank
I just came across it again. After the dust settled from the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and following for several hundred years, the economic growth rate was about 1/100th of a percent per year. Super stable. No growth. Once every century you could expect a 1% raise.
The so called "dark ages" during which the rate of growth was practically zero, wasn't 'dark'. The period saw some development, some innovations, improvements in agriculture, and so forth. But economic growth was very slow; the economy was a 'stable steady state'. — Bitter Crank
I can't think of a tolerable method of achieving stable zero-growth. Global warming might do it for us, by reducing the population, wiping out the technological knowledge base, and focussing our minds on the matter of bare survival. The survivors would experience one grand RE-SET. Quite possibly, after the dust settled, life would go on in a stable, no-growth fashion for a long time. — Bitter Crank
(ZPG) — Bitter Crank
It seems as though population is the root cause of our problems. — TheMadFool
It seems indeed. Nothing les further from the truth. Global population has risen (multiplicated) only by facto 5 or so since 1900. Nature was fine. And just look now... — Cartuna
Reminds me of how many people have told me to exercise more self-control. Humanity, it seems, is running amok on planet earth. No sense of restraint, temperance, or moderation. We're multiplying like Fibonacci's rabbits. We'll eventually have to, as they say, pay the piper. For better or worse I probably won't be around when the shooting starts. — TheMadFool
Once there lived 100 000 people. That they lived 12 years max is just propaganda. — Cartuna
Averaging out dead 1 - 5 year olds with mature adults, you get absurdly low life expectancies. — Bitter Crank
Who are Denisovans? Danish savants? — Cartuna
You must be thinking of Søren Kierkegaard's family. — Bitter Crank
As it happens, those 800 years were not terrible for everyone. Life was just very stable. — Bitter Crank
Donald Trump, possibly, — Bitter Crank
Seems like you know a lot! An American (?) savant! — Cartuna
Why can't that hold nowadays? — Cartuna
Between 950 and c. 1100 Europe experienced a streak of very nice warm weather--good — Bitter Crank
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