[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by lifetimelearner

my statement about technology has been taken way out of context

You have been welcome to correct its improper interpretation since you made it two days ago. You were, after all, the first person to respond to my request for more information. But even now, you don't disagree with my assessment of it. You have agreed, time and again, to the way I've responded to it.

If you want to be understood, then explain yourself.

Originally Posted by lifetimelearner

all I referred to was the fact that technology has replaced people in some jobs and that in itself can cause a existential distress

How small-minded of you.

Originally Posted by lifetimelearner

have some compassion Michael

Compassion? Do you even know what that is? I am not compassionate, because in seeing that a bunch of Luddites are out of a job and now instead of learning new skills and getting new jobs, and hearing them whine about the purposeless of their lives, I am unimpressed? If you want to die so badly, do it. Don't be such a coward about it. Some of us actually make the world a better place; if you don't want to help with that, go away.

And I am being specific about the Luddite reference. I am not talking about anti-technology; I am talking about the Luddite Fallacy. But I have been over this before.

Originally Posted by Starman

A technologically enabled world is so much easier to live in because so many things are now so available, whether it's food or vacations, or whatever; this is the demand side of the coin, and it's all very nice.

This much is true. We have fire, we have sewage systems, we have reliably clean water, we know if a storm is moving in, we know how to make durable clothing. Technology does make survival easier.

Originally Posted by Starman

But the supply side of the coin has made some terrible sacrifices to deliver things so quickly and fairly. Who you are as a person is no longer important to the supply/demand society; it now only cares about what you're worth, and whether you can deliver something that can make money for someone.

And here it is again. Claims made without substance.

I started reading Steve Pavlina because I was told it was a useful site for burgeoning entrepreneurs. Do you know what entrepreneurship is? Do you understand what value is? You're important to me as a person, if only as a pseudonym on an Internet forum. I don't care about whether you can deliver ad revenue for Steve, and I get no money from listening to you talk. So show me what you're talking about.

Originally Posted by Starman

For example, in another thread (on suicide), someone made the point that if a person is of no worth to their society, as in being more of a drain than a benefit, then maybe there's no point in them sticking around.

If I care about what someone wants, and what that person wants is to die, then what is so righteous about intervening and stopping them from fulfilling their desire? What makes your desire to be noble more important than their desire to die? Why is it always about you and not the suicidal person?

Originally Posted by Starman

It seems as though the only ones that care about a person specifically and not their value or potential value to society in terms of $, is the person's family, which society considers secondary to job, role, taxes, law, and the like.

If you really cared about them, you would ask what they want, rather than pontificate on macroeconomics.

Originally Posted by Starman

I'm betting that one day, a man like Hitler will come around again, and suggest that everyone that isn't rich or can't produce wealth, should just be killed off, to make room, and make it easier for the world to keep supplying and producing. I'm sorry to say that it won't surprise me if such a man is extolled as a hero.

A nice attempt at Godwin's Law, except Hitler's party platform was that the Jews were stealing jobs (gasp!) and making it hard for honest Germans to get work (this is familiar!). It was not a lie, just as the issue of Mexican immigrants and Asian offshoring and the general problem of automation as a whole are not lies. Like these, they are exaggerations and fantastical speculation, but also founded on statistical truth: we do have the numbers.

The Jews had adapted better and, in a proto-capitalist society, succeeded in making a life for themselves in a foreign country. So naturally, they were a threat. Just as technology is for you. A man like Hitler? Look in the mirror.

Originally Posted by Starman

On more than one occasion, I've asked the rhetorical question, if I'm not of worth to anyone else, what's the point in living here? Although society wouldn't have an answer to that question, I have supplied my own. I'm worth staying alive, even if no one else thinks so.

Find some friends. Really. A true friend is someone who you're curious about, and is mutually curious about you. Who engages you on a level that both challenges and comforts you. A friend's existence says, "You're worthwhile to someone."

Of course your first friend is yourself. That's the basis of why you're interesting as a human being, after all.

This is the primary ill of society: it fails to understand friendship, to educate people in having them, and to encourage it. Instead, we have partisan politics, nationalism, religious arrogance, corporate espionage, anti-trust lawsuits, petty bickering. And schools barely squeak by in exceptional English teachers sharing old and worthy stories of brothers; then they squash it by judging it with meaningless letters. Feh. But I rant.