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Comment by Mistletoe | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately this hasn’t resulted in people being more happy. It’s quite the paradox. What are we doing all this for?

https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-n...

I don’t post that to be negative, because I agree with what you are saying about a unique time to be alive and have done the same Atari to Xbox Series X glow-up and I marvel at the improvements there. But I do think happiness (and decreased mortality, increased lifespan) should be the ultimate end goal we are striving for for humanity and we seem to be failing, at least in the USA. The reasons are certainly multifaceted, but increased transistor density may be one of the reasons just like obesity, environmental toxins, etc.

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At some level, I think this is orthogonal to technological progress.

One possible way of getting at this is to ask if people were more ‘happy’ when there wasn’t this level of tech available - and I’m not sure the answer is yes - I mean, there’s the mythos of ‘a simple life’ and ‘noble savages’, but from what I’ve read of life even a 100 years back - I would surmise folks were as unhappy / miserable then too - but likely for different reasons.

I think expecting just tech to make us happy is framing the wrong problem space.

but existence influences choices

so technological progress in itself, regardless of its use, is a consideration

Maybe happy isn’t the right word, but I think it’s pretty clear people were more content and felt a sense of purpose. Social media has made things worse, but it’s really the loss of community and religion that has led to the crisis of loneliness and depression among todays people.

> I think it’s pretty clear people were more content and felt a sense of purpose

From what available data would you derive this and not immediately question selection bias?

> but I think it’s pretty clear [...]

Is it? Because that is not clear to me in the slightest.

Modern loneliness is a far more multifaceted issue than it’s often presented as.

For instance I’m sure that a major factor is the need for people to move great distances away from family and the community they grew up in to be able to find education, living wages, and other forms of opportunity. That breaks existing connections and makes it harder to form new ones, but I never see that talked about.

Those kinds of movements aren't new though: Entire generations in many a country ended up emigrating across the sea, back when it was far slower and dangerous, to make their fortunes, as their home was too poor to handle more than one son. And today we have our home culture on our phones. I can watch TV from my home country, and my home team's soccer matches live. I can video call whenever, for free.

So maintain connection has never been easier, and migration is not any worse. I have no doubt there are far more things than social media making people more unhappy than historically, but having to move away from where we were born isn't it.

Moving itself is probably wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t as frequent, for instance if maybe moving once after college would be it for most people. That’d still give people time to set down roots.

Instead it’s often necessary to move repeatedly, for reasons varying from going to school to getting a job to finding housing with room for kids to just trying to keep rent from eating up the majority of one’s paycheck.

In my case I’ve moved 9 times in the ~15 years since I turned 20 and it’s very likely I’ll be moving again in the future. It’s been very disruptive for maintaining connections, even with the power of modern communications at my disposal. I’ve more or less grown used to it and am kind of introverted anyway so I’m not depressed but I could see where others might not be so lucky.

As opposed to living with a spouse that abused them/who they were not in love with, without a way to divorce. Or a huge percentage of people having to experience losing their children?

It was simply not spoken about, people either poisoned their husband if it got that bad, or lived a sad life in silence.

Leaving aside issues caused by social media etc, this always seems like an odd take to me. Why do you expect technology to make people happier? I mean, cars have gotten drastically better since their inception, but I don't really expect my car to make me happy, much like I don't expect the insulation of my house to make me happy, or the x-ray machine my doc uses to make my life a happy one. I think technological development is a completely separate axis to happiness, you can be technologically stagnant and happy or advancing and happy, you can be standing still and sad and moving forwards and sad.

> I don't really expect my car to make me happy, much like I don't expect the insulation of my house to make me happy, or the x-ray machine my doc uses to make my life a happy one

I think this is valid for most people. But as I've tried to integrate more gratitude into my life, I've noticed that it is possible to feel happiness from these things. I find it all too easy to disregard many of the things I have because they've always been there and available. But as soon as I don't have some of my comforts (being outside in the cold, camping and batteries are dying, my car needs an unexpected repair, a pain in my arm that I can't treat myself, etc.), it becomes easier to realize just now nice things really are.

Bread is a great invention and a staple for many across the world. People have grown better at the process of developing grass into ever more productive wheat crops, transforming the inedible into something people find comfort in. But yes, there’s also an element of bread and circuses. Technology is not enough. It is not orthogonal to happiness, as you point out, but having the best bread doesn’t fundamentally make the course of humanity better. That begins and ends with what we individually and collectively choose: technology merely enhances our will.

Some technology does and some doesn't.

A washing machine is a fantastic piece of machinery you could even build on a small scale that saves hard labor

A patent by Sony that forces the TV viewer to stand up and lift their hands and say "McDonalds!" to continue watching TV, is not

Security. Nature owes nothing to anything. Even the warmest bosom in the cosmos (Earth) is hostile, temperamental, and temporary. If the death of one individual is a tragedy then I don't know the right word to describe the termination of life.

Or the false sense of security.

What is false about it?

Are you arguing that we are less secure against nature while sitting in climate controlled buildings with food stores in them, and a global industrial complex raised to keep these trains running?

I have never lived in a world where there was not the existential threat of nuclear annihilation in every minute of every hour of every day of my life.

But you're right: I'm not going to get lost in my own city - or yours - because I have an iPhone in my pocket. I may never really learn my city and all its hidden little secrets you find only by wandering around, but I'll be efficient getting to the bar in a "climate controlled buildings" where I'll just stare at the iPhone some more and not really talk to anyone, as that's what everyone is doing, too.

"It is a world suited for monomaniacs obsessed with the idea of progress - but a false progress, a progress which stinks. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful ... Whatever does not lend itself to being bought or sold ... is debarred" –Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

> but I'll be efficient getting to the bar in a "climate controlled buildings" where I'll just stare at the iPhone some more and not really talk to anyone, as that's what everyone is doing, too.

Sometimes I wonder if internet people are living in parallel universe. I see literally opposite, wherever I go, of what people like you describe.

Well you're spending your Sunday staring at a screen on a venture capitalist's message board, having contributed nine comments in the last 24 hours. Where are you right now, exactly?

This is incredibly myopic and ungrateful.

Thanks to technology, we don’t have to try and have eight kids—losing half of them at a young age—just so that we don’t lose the farm and starve.

Thanks to technology, millions of children are protected from diseases that years ago they would’ve died from.

But sure, blame technology for your lack of self control causing you to stare at your phone at bars.

Thanks to technology, I have no interest in ever having kids.

Happiness is relative. Paris Hilton might feel distraught if her credit card is declined, if that's the worst thing that's ever happened to her.

That's why it's important to understand context, both local and historical, to understand our place in the world and how we should feel about it.

Is it really happyness we should strive for? I hear this over and over without anyone challenging this. Maybe a meaningful live is more fulfilling than a happy one? If i remember Nitzsche correctly: „No one strives for happiness - only the englishman does!“

I don’t think tech comes out better on this scale than the happiness one.

Perhaps people are happy when they are using their tech, but in normal life they feel depressed.

I think there's reverted or diminishing returns.. a 400MHz svga was generational, now a prosumer pocket supercalculator quickly goes meh, very odd to observe

Idk man, air conditioning makes me very happy.

What does happiness have to do with material progress?

There are happy monks and unhappy billionaires.

Humanity must push forward on all fronts.

The book Sapiens argues that tech has made us less happy ever since the invention of farming 10,000 years ago, the hunter gatherers were happier and healthier than the farm villagers. But since tech allows the population density to grow we get stuck in "the luxury trap", we can't go backwards or a bunch of people will die. And the unhappier larger village is more powerful than the hunter gatherers so they have an evolutionary advantage.

I think you could apply a similar theory to the modern capitalist world.

On the one hand, I love the idea of living a slower-paced, less competitive life. Most humans ending up crammed into urban rat-races is a horrible outcome. On the other hand, I like not dying in agony of easily treatable diseases. I like that the vast majority of people in developed countries have zero chance of dying of malnutrition.

Having to choose between one or the other would suck. I wonder if we can have both?

Nothing is stopping you from living a slower-paced, less competitive life right now, today. While still getting all the benefits of society being advanced enough to not die in agony of easily treatable diseases.

I cannot sleep well at night knowing my neighbor just upgraded his Porsche.

> healthier than the farm villagers.

I would like to see some data comparing modern, fit worker against average hunter gatherer.

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