Technology: Everything is so amazing and nobody is happy.

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/so_amazing_but.php

by old-gregg • 17 years ago

139 42 17 years ago

unalone• 17 years ago

This is one of my favorite Louis CK performances - he gets it perfectly.

Look at the number of people who complain that our president is corrupt, politics is doomed, the world is falling apart, etc. Politically speaking, things are more transparent now than ever before in history. Fewer people are being persecuted for their beliefs than ever before. On the whole, everybody is happier now than they were ten years ago, or ten years before that.

I'm usually guilty of being overly critical of things, and while I think that criticism has its place, there's a line between being critical of things to make it better and hating something because it doesn't reach a standard that couldn't have possibly existed even a year ago. A lot of people would be a lot happier if they could back off a little bit and see things for how they are rather than how they wish they were.

tdavis2• 17 years ago

A lot of people would be a lot happier if they could back off a little bit and see things for how they are rather than how they wish they were.

I knew this happiness after coming back from a deployment to Afghanistan. The people there had nothing, usually not even power, and our own accommodations weren't exactly... modern. I swore that I'd never forget how good I had it here, and indeed I didn't for a long time -- I even came to severely resent "Westerners" for a while.

During my "time of appreciation" lets say, I was very happy. I found joy and worth in the simplest of things, from showering with clean water to drinking a beer. Unfortunately, over time I once again became acclimated to my environment and now likely take things as much for granted as I did a few years ago.

I've found it takes a large amount of conscious effort to not fall into this same trap. It seems to be very much a case of "out of sight, out of mind"; the things I saw and experienced are mere vague memories now and somehow life has a way of blinding me from what I was once acutely aware: that no matter how bad I have it, others have it worse than I used to be able to imagine.

allenbrunson• 17 years ago

At the risk of sounding like a cliched old grandpa, I think a person's ability to appreciate simple things increases as you get older. It's certainly happening to me.

My daily walk with my dog is a real treasure to me now. Definitely couldn't have said such a thing about myself ten years ago.

silentbicycle• 17 years ago

"A lot of people would be a lot happier if they could back off a little bit and see things for how they are rather than how they wish they were."

That's one of the central messages in Buddhism, FWIW. It's what "desire is the root of suffering" refers to.

hrabago2• 17 years ago

I'm just old enough to have experienced life without cellphones and the internet, and now I have the internet on my cellphone. Yes, I still complain. It's slow, the screen is small, there's no Flash, etc. But every now and then I really do step back and recall how amazing technology is.

Recently, my brother-in-law (who's from a different country) came to visit. He saw the small differences that having the internet in your pocket can make - get a map of downtown right away, figure out the best route to that lot you parked on, figure out the phone number and closing time of that restaurant two blocks away, find out that it's not going to snow tomorrow so you can plan accordingly, all while having coffee at some corner store.

Is it life changing? No. But it's that incremental step that just makes some things a little bit easier, a bit more convenient.

Yes, the goal posts keep moving. And all of us here want to create the next thing that moves it just a bit more once again.

patio11• 17 years ago

Is it life changing? No.

In many places, these same technologies are lifechanging. Here's an "I love technology. I love capitalism. I love technocapitalism" story for you: many 3rd world fishermen lead a close to subsistence existence by catching fish and then having to take it to market. Market conditions at towns A, B, and C vary on a day to day basis. If you pick the wrong town to deliver your catch to, you lose out on earnings and some other town loses out on cheap fish. In the worst case, you may be unable to sell your fish at all, in which case the fish rot while someone else starves.

But now, you have a cell phone.

So you can call ahead to towns A, B, and C and ask them "Hey, what is the going price for fish today?" Then you head to the one that reported the highest price. Problem solved.

This means that you can sell your catch, every day, and never go home to the family empty handed. It also means that no one ever goes to the market and comes home saying "Sorry kids, no fish today."

All because of a little technical doohickey that is practically disposable in the Western world these days.

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/qjec.122.3.8...

hrabago2• 17 years ago

I should clarify, then, that my statement was specific to getting the internet on my cellphone, not about the cellphone itself. The scenario I specifically cited was how having access to the web from whereever I may be may not have changed my life, but it is an incremental improvement. I have no doubt about the life changing effect of cellphones. Where I come from, cellphones fulfilled, and exceeded, the promise that landlines failed to meet.

andreyf• 17 years ago

Discontent and innovation often go hand in hand... if everyone were happy, people would stop making the amazing stuff.

weavejester2• 17 years ago

I'm of the same opinion. Not only are we never satisfied, we're also very quick to criticize our society and species. We rarely reflect on our triumphs, but repeatedly highlight our failures. Some monotheists take it a step further, drawing a comparison not only between humans, but between humans and the concept of a perfect being.

I suspect there's a degree of evolutionary pressure in this. An individual who is never satisfied is more likely to be successful than one who is easily satisfied. Without our ability to dwell on the negatives and forget the positives, we wouldn't have invented half the things we have.

chez17• 17 years ago

To me, our triumphs will likely never out weigh our failures. There are a small group of people in this world doing amazing things. However what is the point if we can't survive as a species? As technology improves, one day making something to destroy the world(bomb, nano-machine, virus, etc...) will be as easy and accessible as buying a toaster and if we haven't evolved mentally by then, none of our technology will mean anything. The world right now could be a vastly better place if people only cared a tiny bit more, but we have been so bought off by convenience that I don't think we ever will.

DannoHung• 17 years ago

We do tend to forget the bad stuff that's happened and mostly reflect in the past on the good stuff.

But we ignore the good stuff that's happening right now and focus on the bad stuff.

I think this explains why people always think things were better 10, 20, 30 years ago.

bk• 17 years ago

Part of his point was calling out the pure consumers ("you non-contributing zero"), who are not the ones making the amazing stuff.

I generally agree with you though.

lunchbox• 17 years ago

Louis CK is talking about the "hedonic treadmill" theory of happiness: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

and when people in the topic talk about seeing "how bad others have it" as a route to being more satisfied with your life they are trying to hack the treadmill. That is, reset it to a lower level.

timcederman• 17 years ago

I appreciate what I've got, it doesn't stop me for striving for better.

tptacek• 17 years ago

Slightly off topic, but, Louis CK --- highly recommended. Heavily inspired by (and probably the heir to) George Carlin. Caught him live this year, outstanding. Apparently, none of his material in his tours is ever recycled, something he picked up from Carlin.

yan3• 17 years ago

CK is my favorite comedian and I am still waiting for the chance to catch him live. I whole-heatedly agree and recommend him to anyone who'll listen.

mnemonicsloth• 17 years ago

For some reason, discussion on this topic is focused on cellphones and the internet. I guess that makes some sense -- they're familiar and amazing and this is Hacker News, after all -- but talk about the latest and greatest in consumer electronics is kind of pathetic when...

Well, just think for a minute about the results being produced by the brand-new science of paleopathology. Now that we can do autopsies on 5000 year old Egyptian mummies, we know that [1]:

- malaria, tuberculosis, severe ear infections, a variety of intestinal worms and kindred parasites, silicosis (a lung disorder caused by inhaling sand over a long span of time) [were all widespread], as well as perhaps smallpox, polio, and gout...

- severe tooth loss, common to all classes ... resulting from the infiltration of windblown sand into granaries and kitchens. The teeth of pharaohs and commoners alike were steadily worn down, often nearly to the gums, leading to ... CHRONIC TOOTH AND GUM INFECTIONS THAT COULD IN SOME CASES BE FATAL.

- bone growth patterns disclose a chronic pattern of malnutrition...

- [besides schistosomiasis, one specimen's] body was a beehive of various parasites ... had he lived on into EARLY ADULTHOOD, he might well have contracted such degenerative diseases as ARTERIOSCLEROSIS and ARTHRITIS. We tend today to associate these with middle or old age...

[1] Hollister & Rogers, Roots of the Western Tradition. Emphasis is mine.

cglee• 17 years ago

Louis CK is a comedian. I doubt he was truly trying to engage in discussion.

ivankirigin• 17 years ago

The best comedy works because it is intuitively true and engaging.

herval• 17 years ago

it's just a personal observation, but I think people seem to be hardwired to survival, not happiness - that means as more basic needs are fulfilled, the more sad they tend to become - unless they fallback to things to justify their lifes (religion, a lot of hobbies, buying the next iphone...). No wonder suicide rates are a lot higher in very well developed and safe countries than in warzones/poor places. I guess what happens is the firmware in everyone's heads starts to wonder why should it keep maintaining that expensive and energy-hog piece of hardware when all the basic goals defined on its DNA are fulfilled - and then gently asks the hardware to just go ahead and turn itself off.

sudo shutdown -h now.

peregrine• 17 years ago

I've been having a similar discussion with all of my friends lately. When I brought a plant to work someone asked 'Why did you bring that?' and I explained to him that not 50 years ago the majority of Americans would see green on a daily basis, in fact so much green it would seem like a jungle. Now we work in concrete jungles, grey cubes, beige walls and highways.

People forget that for thousands of years we were hard wired to kill those attacking us, hunt for food, and protect our family. We struggled through disease, famine, lived in every condition this world can throw, and now we only use our brain and our bodies become confused when the genes tell them one thing and we do another.

Its probably going to be a while until our bodies catch up to our brains(maybe never).

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

Dupe from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=474588

(I believe this one has more than one dupe)

It's a good article, though. People naturally gravitate towards a feeling of unhappiness. I believe that if you look at most religions over the years, instead of finding out about religion, you end up finding out about the natural emotional state of man, i.e. that people are hard-wired to feel certain ways and they'll find some way of feeling them no matter what the age is.

Overall, this is a good thing -- drives innovation, keeps societies from stagnating, etc. In fact, hell would be a society in which everybody was perfectly at peace all the time. It seems we are designed to struggle and perform our best when we are struggling.

bianco• 17 years ago

Sure, because all of technology and all of science don't really feed our soul: so, our souls grow thinner and thinner, and our heads feel more and more overweight.

It's like eating straw all day long: at the end you are full of nothing (really important).

TrevorJ• 17 years ago

Human happiness seems to be calibrated by whatever situation you consider to be your ordinary world. I traveled to Africa and visited a lot of people who's living conditions where less than ideal by my standards, but they where no more or less happy than I am, despite my (by western standards) better living conditions.

It reminds me of the quote by Bertrand Russell: "To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness."No doubt in a few hundred years people will wonder how we ever got along happily in the era we live in now. They may think it inconceivable that we could be happy under such circumstances.

david927• 17 years ago

Kai Krause:

It is a near impossibility to define quality of life, a deeply personal set of values, judgements and emotions. But in recent years there have been breakthroughs, a new sense of empowerment, a new degree of functionality for our tools: Research is now immensely powerful, fast, cheap and enjoyable, it used to be a slow, painful and expensive chore. To have the entirety of Britannica, Wikipedia, millions of pages of writings of all ages, find answers to almost any question in seconds, view them on a huge sharp window-to-the-world screen: a pure joy to "work".

Images: memories can be frozen in time, at any occasion, in beautiful detail, collected by the hundreds of thousands. The few cineastic masterpieces mankind produced, among the wretched majority of trashy abyss, one can now own & watch, rerun & freeze-frame. Music: all I ever cherished at my direct disposal, tens of thousands of pieces. Bach's lifetime oeuvre, 160 CDs worth, in my pocket even! Consider that just a few generations ago?

A perfect cup of tea, the right bread with great jam, the Berlin Philharmonic plays NOW, just for ME, exactly THAT ....and will even pause when I pee! What more does anyone need ??

Billions of our predecessors would have spontaneously combusted with "instant happiness overdose syndrome" given all these wonderful means, and I am not even mentioning heated rooms, lit at night, clean showers, safe food, ubiquitous mobility or dentists with anaesthesia.

...

No need to invoke grand sweeping forces, momentous upheaval, those armies of nano-tech, gene-spliced A.I. robots...

Let's embrace the peace and quiet of keeping things just as they are for a while. Bring them to the rest of the planet. Taking the time to truly enjoy them, milking the moment for all it has, really watching, listening, smelling and tasting it all.... ...that stasis..... that changed everything.

http://server1.edge.org/q2009/q09_11.html#krause

jordyhoyt• 17 years ago

i'm happy most of the time: i mostly leave technology at work and only use it as a tool for interacting with people when i'm home. technology is not the end, it's a means.

Technology: Everything is so amazing and nobody is happy.

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