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Comment by cannonpr | Hacker News Reader

Not everyone wants to be human for ever, some people take joy in their work and want to continue doing it and contributing in a meaningful way, etc, etc. Nothing to do with being a workaholic or the rest. I hate to say it, but 'leisure' gets boring awfully quickly.

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You realize that leisure could be any kind of work you want.

The distinction is not leisure vs work. It's freedom vs. constraint.

I appreciate that, however I feel constraints give meaning to a task, you might argue that I can self impose them, I will argue that I wish those constraints to be imposed by society or by the conditions needed to advance science. To do that, eventually as AI's come online, I will have to stop being human.

So everyone should suffer, because you enjoy it?

That's not fair. The argument you seem to be advocating for is that we can make people happier by reducing scarcity, they are offering you a counter example.

'happy' is hard, it could very well be that suffering is an important part of happiness... who knows, but it's a valid line of argument.

Have you actually tested this recently? I used to be concerned about unconstrained leisure bottoming out, but I've recently had about 6 months of a break of sorts and I was never bored. As long as I kept physical, social, emotional needs met AND had some creative output (side projects), I was perfectly content. A real surprise actually.

> 'leisure' gets boring awfully quickly

Not for me, as long as I get to keep all the toys in my garage. The list of projects I want to complete is probably an order of magnitude too big to finish in one lifetime as long as I have a full time job.

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