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Comment by laurent92 | Hacker News Reader

- A successful life often feels like day-to-day failure. Failure to reach ambitious goals, but 90% of the goal is often good enough.

- Dedicating one’s life to work is often a form of suicide. « SINCE my life is void and I won’t do anything tonight, why not study this book, apply for an MBA or build a company. At least that will be some challenge. It’s not like I’m losing family time, and it will help me focus on one thing. »

I’ll leave people to decide whether this is good or bad, but if most people’s lives were fulfilling, we wouldn’t see that much technological progress.

I’m not denying a good share of people are into tech or work by passion, I’m just talking about those who work as a mean to avoid depression.

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> if most people’s lives were fulfilling, we wouldn’t see that much technological progress

Which then makes you wonder: do we really need that much technological progress?

I love technology, especially when it helps people lead better lives. But if we are just developing it without real purpose and mentally/emotionally enslaving ourselves to do it, then it seems self-defeating.

What if there is a real purpose, and it's enslaving others?

> if we are just developing it without real purpose and mentally/emotionally enslaving ourselves to do it

Or worse yet: the purpose is mental/emotional enslavement.

> Which then makes you wonder: do we really need that much technological progress?

Spoken like someone who takes all of the technological progress of the last centuries for granted. And I don't intend that as a personal attack. Many, many people think like you do, because they can't even begin to imagine a life without the fruits of progress. As for myself, I'm eternally thankful for that progress, for without it, I wouldn't be alive today (appendicitis), neither would my wife (also appendicitis), and probably neither would my two children (historically, most children died within a few years after birth). I'm also extremely thankful for not having to fear death from starvation (thanks to agricultural progress) or from bacterial infections (thanks to antibiotics).

> But if we are just developing it without real purpose [...]

That "if"-condition is doing a lot of work in your sentence. Kind of like saying "if technological progress wouldn't be bringing all the immense benefits it is bringing, it wouldn't be so great".

You bring up some excellent points, and you are right that I most likely take most technology for granted.

I would say the issues that you bring up don't have a clear "right answer", and it's all about perspective.

Me and my siblings were all born thanks to c-sections. Without that, none of us would have been born and my mom would have died trying to give birth. Are we better off having been born? Can't say. Is the world a better place because we were born? For who?

It all depends on goals and perspectives. If the goal is to be happy then, are current people happier than people that lived for example five thousand years ago? Have most technological advances been made in the service of happiness? It doesn't seem like it.

So what's the actual benefit of "all the immense benefits" of technology? Being alive? Living longer? Is it better to be alive and live longer just because we can? The answers to those questions depend on your individual situation and perspective on life.

> Are we better off having been born? Can't say.

If you're not sure whether there's a point in being alive, then why do you think there's a point in not "mentally/emotionally enslaving ourselves", as you wrote in your original post? If you have no terminal values [1], there is no point in anything, and everything is meaningless.

I suspect that you do value being alive [2], and your father does value his wife not having died in childbirth. But you take being alive for granted, because actually facing death (yours or that of your children) is a rare occurence, and the probability that you or your loved ones die before the age of 60 is very low. Again, mostly thanks to technological progress.

[1] I.e., a value that is not in service of another value – similar to an axiom in mathematics.

[2] If you really don't value being alive, you might suffer from depression. In this case, please seek professional help.

You are making way too many assumptions about me and life in general. It's ok for people to have different points of views.

About not being able to say if I'm better off having been born, I don't know/remember what it was like before being born or being dead, it might be amazing, I don't know, so I can't compare. Doesn't mean I want to be dead right now. I also never said there's no point in being alive.

Why does life need any "terminal values" at all to be meaningful? Do you think there needs to be an absolute truth to it? What if someone disagrees?

> Why does life need any "terminal values" at all to be meaningful?

Life doesn't have or need terminal values, people have terminal values. Without terminal values, you cannpt have any values at all, and without values [1] nothing can be meaningful.

> Do you think there needs to be an absolute truth to it?

No, terminal values depend on the individual, and don't even have to be constant over time.

[1] "Values" in the sense of "goals" or "things important to you", not in the sense of "moral values".

I've also come to think this in recent times. Take the modern web for example: created largely for the sake of ensnaring and exploiting those who use it, and constantly reinvented with additional complexity to the benefit of the resumes of those who develop it.

But it isn't just the web. Even a modern TV is full of additional bullshit complexity that makes life worse.

Yes we do, or people must die. Imagine how much energy we’d consume if people heated by outdoor fires, which was the highest tech 10-20kyears ago. Also agricultural advances are needed to feed us all.

> - A successful life often feels like day-to-day failure.

So do unsuccessful lives. And moderately successful lives. This is just a characteristic of most lives, unless measures are taken to overcome the tendency to experience life this way.

But not working on your passion will lead to depression. I think it's about finding fulfillment in the process, in working on your passion. Technological progress comes from that.

I sincerely doubt technological "progress" is driven by filling needs in peoples lives. Rather, it creates the appearance of needs the technology can then fill. The "killer app" of a smartphone is still gps + mobile calling.... shit hasn't changed since the 80s.

> - Dedicating one’s life to work is often a form of suicide. « SINCE my life is void and I won’t do anything tonight, why not study this book, apply for an MBA or build a company. At least that will be some challenge. It’s not like I’m losing family time, and it will help me focus on one thing. »

I always thought that but could never quite put words on it. Thanks that’s a nice way of phrasing it.

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