
Technology: Everything is so amazing and nobody is happy. - old-gregg
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/so_amazing_but.php
======
mnemonicsloth
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
Louis CK is a comedian. I doubt he was truly trying to engage in discussion.

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

~~~
sangaya
I find myself most enjoying the comedy that points out problems in society
that would often be too taboo to talk about if not done in a humorous manner.
I'd say that Lewis Black, Lewis C.K., and Jon Stewart all exemplify this
quality.

~~~
paulgb
George Carlin was a master at this as well. I'm not a huge fan of Bill Maher,
but some of his stuff would qualify too.

~~~
gnaritas
Correction... "the" master.

------
unalone
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.

~~~
tdavis
_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
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.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I heard a fun lecture once from a professor at the Stanford Center on
Longevity. Their psychologists have observed a so-called _positivity effect_
in older people, and they've got lots of studies on the subject:

[http://longevity.stanford.edu/mymind/mentalhealthandemotiona...](http://longevity.stanford.edu/mymind/mentalhealthandemotionalwellbeing/positivityeffect)

 _“Human minds don’t process information like a computer,” says Carstensen,
who was one of the first researchers to discover that older people tend to be
happier. “We process what is relevant to our goals.”

And as we age, our goals tend to change — toward achieving emotional well-
being, she says._

My favorite part of this article is this paragraph:

 _Further studies that showed a similar positivity effect in young people
whose expected life spans were cut short by cancer or AIDS led to Carstensen’s
current “shorter life span” explanation for the positivity effect._

This suggests that maintaining an awareness of your own mortality is a useful
way to improve your happiness -- by encouraging yourself to focus on the
positive -- and, paradoxically, that pretending you are going to live forever
may be a recipe for unhappiness.

~~~
mapleoin
Thanks. I liked tdavis's non-explanation of it better.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Well, so did I! But it's over so quickly. So just in case you find yourself
wanting more...

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

~~~
weavejester
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
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.

~~~
weavejester
I'm inclined to be optimistic. Nature has been experimenting with viruses and
self-replicating machines for a while now, and has yet to come up with a
design that cannot be countered. Bombs are capable of causing mass
destruction, but we're still a long way off from having a doomsday device as
cheap as a toaster.

I also suspect that, given a century or two, we'll have discovered ways of
spreading the risk of catastrophic events. Perhaps by regularly downloading
our consciousness and distributing backups across the solar system, perhaps
even a few sent to neighbouring stars: "Alpha Centuri Backups - Just In Case
Some Jackass Blows Up The Sun".

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

~~~
nazgulnarsil
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.

------
hrabago
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
_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...](http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/qjec.122.3.879?cookieSet=1)

~~~
hrabago
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.

------
TrevorJ
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.

------
tptacek
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.

~~~
yan
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.

------
herval
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
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).

------
david927
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>

------
DanielBMarkham
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.

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

------
jordyhoyt
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.

------
bianco
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).

