Comment by 1_2__3
10 years ago
> Hampering progress for the greater good just because it harms you in the short term is never a good idea.
I'd love to hear your thesis for this, in a way that doesn't whitewash away the negative effects on the individual. If you're going to claim we should all be throwing ourselves on the burning pyre of progress no matter what I'd love to hear more of a compelling argument than "never a good iea".
Not OP, but I'd like to offer up a reframing. Progress gives us the opportunity to grow, to adapt, and to learn new things. Do you want to be the person who is stuck as the person they were when they first entered the workforce? Wouldn't you rather be someone who remains present in whatever moment in history it is now, and constantly redefines themselves according to the environment they are.
There's no reason why you have to think "I'm a software engineer, therefore any attack on software engineers is an attack on me." You could, just as easily, define yourself by "I'm a person. I do software engineering because the money is good right now and that is what the economy happens to need right now, but if in the future society ceases to need software engineers, I'll retrain with whatever skill is highly valued then."
I remember coming out of college, happy to learn about the world, and thinking how sad it was that people's identities were so wrapped up with their jobs that they were broken when their jobs were eliminated. I felt that shift happening soon after I turned 30, where I started to get just a little bit too comfortable and too proud of what I was rather than what I did, and then quit so that I'd have that opportunity to grow again.
You always have these great insights - you should blog! Or at least tell us what you have been reading...
>I'll retrain with whatever skill is highly valued then.
Software development has been invaded by mouth-breathers who don't give a shit about what they're doing, and I don't see a way to switch careers as an adult chasing money without becoming one of those.
Well, it might involve respecting fellow human beings and acquiring a bit of humility.
And I don't meant that facetiously - interpersonal skills matter. A lot more than pure technical skills, because they allow you to leverage groups of people to achieve bigger goals.
One way to do that would be to give a shit about what you're doing even after you switch careers.
But I'm not whitewashing away the negative effects of the individual. We'd all be personally very screwed if programming was automated. But I've never seen anyone on HN ever stand up and defend truck drivers, lawyers, taxi drivers, hotel workers, factory workers etc all who currently have their job threatened to various degrees. The double standard is what I'm complaining about. You can't have it both ways.
I'm not the person you asked. But for me, I think we have for too-long "fought" pure progress in the name of social-welfare and protection. So much so that that effort affects and pervades every facet of life. Just look around you and think how many jobs would not exist, or how many generations of people would not have made it this far if it weren't for societal-level intervention on the part of a state. The net-result of that is that if we were to now have some sort of revolutionary piece of progress, it would displace millions if not billions of individuals. Of course that is bad.
I know it sounds cruel to talk about people like a resource or as an animal, but that is precisely how I see society as treating lots of us in the name of a greater good. Under the guise of social-welfare we've increased our numbers to levels that never would have occurred naturally by us simply taking care of the really needy.
So now we're stuck in this predicament. Either we progress our society, and potentially affect a lot of people negatively. Or help everyone slightly-struggling and below out by preventing a technological-revolution so we can grow a bit at a time, and delay the problem for the next generation.
Maybe it's never a good idea at a species/progress level. But it's acceptable that trying to stop progress is a good (albeit selfish) idea at the individual level.