Comment by agalunar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by agalunar | Hacker News Reader

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> Like rich food, idleness only seems desirable when you don't get enough of it. I think we were designed to work, just as we were designed to eat a certain amount of fiber, and we feel bad if we don't.

This is certainly not a new perspective; it's what I was taught growing up.

It sounds profound, but I take some umbrage with it, because it stops short. What kind of work? How much? For whom? It's a terribly convenient thing to promulgate the idea that "we were designed to work" without further clarification when you own capital and reap the value of others' labor, and it's an easy thing to say when you derive healthfulness from the work that you personally happen to do. By "work" do you mean activity that's deemed productive to modern society? Otherwise, why not say people need to spend some time being focused, exerting mental effort, being creative, having long-term goals or engaging in long-term endeavours, &c, if that's what you really mean?

I don't mean to sound suspicious or to insinuate some dark motivation on PG's part, but it (ironically) seems lazy to not bother to scrutinize the modern conception of work – to take something for granted because it's all that most of us living have ever known.

We need exercise, but we can get that running for our lives or playing a sport, and the latter is less dangerous (and preferable unless you're a thrill seeker). We need work, but do we need to get that by doing the things that we call "work" today?

(As a total aside: this reminded me of [1], shared some time ago on HN, which tenuously suggests that we were also designed to be idle. I took "designed" in PG's comment to mean "evolved", and my assumption is that small, pre-industrial societies are more representative of the conditions of the past few hundred thousand years in which modern humans evolved.)

Edit: @kergonath also replied to the idea of too much idleness elsewhere in this thread [2].

[1] https://twitter.com/mnvrsngh/status/1510978995269029888 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33931427

What's the point of "being focused, exerting mental effort, being creative, having long-term goals or engaging in long-term endeavours, &c." if it's not beneficial to society in some way? Also, PG is explicitly talking about people doing things that they enjoy at least to some extent. That's what motivates them to stay active. Not very different from your example of sports - except that sports are rarely helpful to others, and then only as simple-minded entertainment.

"What's the point of "being focused, exerting mental effort, being creative, having long-term goals or engaging in long-term endeavours, &c." if it's not beneficial to society in some way?"

Self-fulfillment?

> What's the point of "being focused, exerting mental effort, being creative, having long-term goals or engaging in long-term endeavours, &c." if it's not beneficial to society in some way?

PG's statement [1] seemed to be about individuals, so the point is that doing x, y, z is beneficial to the individual.

I may have misunderstood, but the only other interpretation of his statement I can think of (besides "we were designed to work, and somone will feel bad if they don't") is "we were designed to work, and if we don't work enough, something will happen to our society or our environment, and then that something will cause most of us to feel bad", and that's a bit of a leap.

[1] i.e. "I think we were designed to work, ..., and we feel bad if we don't."

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> Also, PG is explicitly talking about people doing things that they enjoy at least to some extent.

I think it's somewhat beside the point, or at least it's not enough, to find some amount of enjoyment in one's work. Is it how you would choose to spend your time? Are there ways you can spend your time that would be better for you? Those are more important questions, I think.

And notably, PG is implying that we wouldn't choose to work enough, that the motivation we have is insufficient to get us to work as much as we'd need to not feel bad. After all, if we enjoyed working enough, we'd work as much as we needed, and there wouldn't any reason for PG to suggest that people need to be forced to work (by making an analogy with the claim that "the healthiest diet is the one our ancestors were forced to eat").

It's possible that for us to feel good, we need to be forced to do things, and that left to our own devices, as individuals, we'd never muster the cleverness to overcome our ill-serving desires or aversions. In fact, if we evolved in the constant presence of scarcities and abundances that our desires and aversions precisely counteract, it seems likely! [2] But why should we trust the business owners, who control their workers, or the wealthy or politically powerful, who want to maintain the status quo, to be the ones to force us? Why can't each of us pick who it is we want to help us by imposing structure in our lives?

[2] I actually don't believe this in the case of "not feeling bad", although I believe it for health. There is natural selection for behaviors promote healthiness, almost definitionally, but I can't think of any compelling reason for there to be evolutionary pressure for us not to suffer or not have contradicting desires that can't be simultaneously satisfied. In fact, designing intelligent life to be perpetually dissatisfied and wanting improvement seems like an excellent strategy for ensuring its perpetuation.

> there wouldn't any reason for PG to suggest that people need to be forced to work

PG isn't suggesting this. He's saying that people are already forcing themselves to work, with rather dismal results (later in the same piece, he argues that this might define the real-world ethic of "professionalism") while suggesting there would be less need of this if business reoriented itself more towards work that can be enjoyable and fulfilling.

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