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Comment by jdkjs | Hacker News Reader

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.

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Life expectancy has increased dramatically virtually everywhere in the world [1], and not just due to dramatic reductions in child mortality.

Poverty, presumably one of the major causes of human suffering, has also declined dramatically worldwide. [2]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

Life expectancy != quality of life. In the modern world many more people are alienated and kept alive when nature would release them. Many people are spiritually alienated. The newest version iPhone does not give meaning to your life. Neither does buying a bunch of crap you don't need every week off of Amazon.

I'm not going to claim life expectancy is equivalent to quality of life (although I do think it correlates). But I was just responding to the comment which claimed life expectancy had only increased in advanced countries.

What does it mean to be spiritually alienated? I think also you are projecting a large part of your own unhappiness onto the world by suggesting that people are buying the newest iPhone to give meaning to their life.

At the same time, industrialization has created the very concept of leisure time. Vacation, travel, two days off per week, much less a 40 hour work week — these would have only been fantasies before industrialization.

Maternal death during childbirth, child mortality, and plagues dominated peoples' lives and offered no escape other than dumb luck before the rise of technology. Superstition provided the only hope of escaping the grim reaper who was omnipresent — could strike at any time and without warning.

Mass starvation was commonplace throughout history, but is now quite rare — due to high tech farming and distribution of foodstuffs.

All of those fears have faded enormously since the rise of modernity and public health advanced tech. COVID-19 would have been FAR worse (especially to the elderly and unhealthy) than it was but for the advancements of modern tech, especially the MRNA vaccines which, through the rapid advancements of tech, were created at an ASTONISHING rate. And it was only through the presence of tech that we've all been able to continue sharing our lives with friends and family during this, the first truly GLOBAL pandemic in history.

No, I'm thankful for the rise of technology EVERY DAY, and it gives we a lot of hope to continue improving everyday life in years to come.. It's the failures of humankind individually to advance emotionally and rationally that I fear. Humans still have a lot of growing up to do before we start responding to the vicissitudes of life like responsible adults still. In far too many ways, we still behave like children convinced the best response to difficulty is to behave badly and tear our hair in despair.

Fact is, living now, with all the plenty that tech has given us, should offer more hope for a better future than ever before. Yes, tech is disruptive, as it always has been. But tech has made the world a far better place in the past 300 years, and I for one expect that to continue, once the public gets some perspective on what life was BEFORE industrialization gave us hope for a better future.

For those who aren't immediately getting the quote:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Theodore_Kaczynski#Industrial_...

I got a good laugh at how many people replied sincerely to this comment, not knowing it’s literally the opening paragraph of the Unabomber’s Manifesto.

It is a great practical joke indeed, but the feelings themselves are not illegal. What we choose to do about it matters a lot.

I posted it sincerely, even though I don’t completely agree with it.

Subsistence farming in the year A.D. 22 is just as unfulfilling as repetitive factory work in 2022.

What makes unfulfilling work meaningful is it going to yourself. When you work and your earnings are not going to a feudal lord or bank, it's worth it.

Modern finance engineering is ruining everything, and tech is beneath it.

I personally think we a converging on some kind of an apocalypse rather than a singularity as the fanboys thought ten or twenty years ago.

Thanks, Ted.

> they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities

Wait till you learn about serfdom, slavery, French revolution and so on

I think the industrial revolution was great. What puts us under pressure today is the economic arms race it accelerated. Religious work ethics also played a role here, but a minor one.

Just read about how a software glitch lead to conviction of people for alleged theft in the UK. This is a severe example of people being overwhelmed with technology they don't understand and I don't mean the clerks.

I'll play Devil's Advocate: "advanced" nations went through the same suffering and exploitation on their way to being advanced as newly-industrialized nations are going through now. Much of the modern discontent with society and technology is simply due to greater awareness and better education, rather than actual change in the nature of society or how technology is used.

I don't necessarily disagree that Big Tech is driving dystopian changes in the nature of governance, but I don't think a rose-tinted view of the past is very helpful. Spying, disinformation, and corruption in the controllers of communication technologies has been a thing since the telegraph, if not earlier.

That sounds like an unhappy delusion. Life was not magically better before the industrial revolution, unless you were the king. The problems we have now are mostly related to a greatly increased number of people, so unless you want to be Thanos, we'll just have to learn to deal with it. And if we fail, reversion to the mean will do it for us.

Eh, so was agriculture. You can't really go back though, we all have to run the red queen's race.

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