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Comment by maxerickson | Hacker News Reader

I had a surgery 20 years ago that probably saved my life (I say probably because I never tried surviving without it).

I'm pretty down with all the complications we've layered over the paleolithic lifestyle.

I'm a t1 diabetic; I of course share your feelings on progress. That said, I'm unconvinced that technological progress is necessarily dependent on long work weeks (to start, most people working long weeks are totally uninvolved with this sort of innovation).

Sure, but at least over medium to long periods of recent history there is a pretty direct relationship between work and economic productivity (productivity which is required to have the resources to do things like training doctors and building hospitals).

It's also not true that labor is uninvolved with technology. If people are busy with the hum drum details of survival they have less time to try new ideas and the like.

Yea. For example median lifespan, childbirth, rule of law, the potential to expand to new galaxies. And the simple fact that if we chose to stay in the stone age some more advanced predator would kill us like we've been killing all other advanced predators. Nature tolerates no mediocrity.

Is it possible that our modern lifestyles are at least partially to blame for getting these diseases that need medical treatment in the first place? I.e. sitting in front of a computer for 8+ hours a day might lead to us developing these medical conditions that we must then spend thousands of dollars "fixing" (i.e. often treating the symptoms or temporarily improvement) these things that our work environment caused in the first place?

Granted, yes, some things existed before this became the norm, like plagues and whatnot, but I think part of the reason we all need to be treated for medical problems is because of the nature of modern work being incompatible with human biology.

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