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Comment by friend_and_foe | Hacker News Reader

In skeptical of any claim that software will make the world better. Perhaps it's selection bias, but all I can see is software overcomplicating things to the point that any benefit derived from it is overshadowed by the maintenance burden and unforseen externalities. I say this as a once Utopian hopeful, Uber was going to get rid of the monopolistic taxi cartels, google was going to put balloons up and fiber and give us all affordable high speed connectivity. All they seemed to do was get in control with these pitches and then become worse than their predecessors.

I am not someone who thinks AI is going to kill us all. But I dont think it's going to usher in a new utopia either. I think probably it's going to be useful and beneficial in some ways, cause problems in others, and like always, our nature and behavior will determine the human condition going forward.

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I don't know about you, but Uber has significantly improved ride-sharing for me, along with countless other aspects of life such as government services, interpersonal communication, and education.

It's a miracle I can live in another country than I was born, top income bracket due to a free internet education, effortlessly facetiming my parents whenever I want in amazing quality, learning and talking about all sorts of niche interests without any effort.

I think this is just all so obvious these days that you don't remember how much it used to suck, and that's a real testament to its greatness.

I remember, and I agree with you. These tools have improved our lives. But they've damaged our lives on other ways.

I remember waking up every morning and without a second thought, I got up, out in the world, did things I felt like doing, saw people I liked on a whim, every day was jam packed with eventfulness and dimension and interaction. I took that for granted. Now, kids don't play outside, nobody knows how to drive because their mind is somewhere else 24/7 and we check our phones before we do anything else. But the flip side is, I can know anything I want that is known by someone else with less physical effort than it would take me to make a sandwich. I can talk to almost any human being in the world while doing any mundane task anywhere in my environment. It's amazing.

But we did lose something, I believe something very important. It wasn't free, it cost us something. Was it worth it? I don't know. I think yes, but I'm not really sure.

It feels like we're at the pareto frontier. Technological advancement used to feel like it truly was progress, but we're now at a point where advancement is simply advancement, and we're well aware that as the technology advances, there's an equal an opposite regression in society somewhere.

> I don't know about you, but Uber has significantly improved ride-sharing for me

Uber did the exact opposite of that for me. I still curse their existence on a regular basis for the impact they've had.

> I think probably [technology] is going to be useful and beneficial in some ways, cause problems in others, and like always, our nature and behavior will determine the human condition going forward.

Beautifully put. I'm considering writing this on a post-it and quoting it over Zoom calls for years to come.

Re:benefits of software, I think it's a mistake to focus on stuff like Uber. I would vehemently defend the assertion that the internet (Wikipedia, Google, Kahn Academy, etc.) have brought massive good in the form of public access to information. More fundamentally, I think it's objectively true that it leads to increased productivity via tools like spreadsheets, email, and now AI-assisted writing, which I think is a fundamental part of our path towards a better society.

Software surely won't fix society, but I think making a utopia out of the current material conditions would be tough. Many things are broken and rotting because of greed and corruption, but I see scarcity (of labor, resources, knowledge, etc.) as a powerful factor to.

> In skeptical of any claim that software will make the world better.

You are in the wrong community pal. Maybe try an Amish blog instead.

Pretty sure voices like that are here to serve as the naloxone to the hopium everyone else is shooting up. :)

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