Posted from a huge house with air conditioning while using multiple petroleum products (iPhone/computer, chair, desk, fleece, etc). The pollution lifted every single person’s standard of living across the globe to levels unimaginable 100 years ago. It’s easy to be in Seattle or New York and say we gotta stop burning oil and coal but there are trade offs that were worth making. If you live in a developing country without aircon those trade offs are still worth making.
Every single person? Not exactly. What about farmers forced off their land for corporate interests? What about people working in the garbage dumps of Tijuana in Mexico [1]? I've actually lived in the "first world" (born there) and now have lived over a year in a developing country where most people (including myself) don't have "aircon", and whether technology has improved things is not as clearcut as you might think.
Yes, we have better health care and more products, but we also have more pollution, more meaningless jobs, weaker local communities (especially in the most developed parts of the world), and beautiful species are going extinct.
Actually, I think the standard of living, at least in the long-term and for the many future climate refugees, is not actually that much improved.
> Actually, I think the standard of living, at least in the long-term and for the many future climate refugees, is not actually that much improved.
Compared to what? Where do you draw the line of the "pre" technology? Technology has been as part of human society since before we invented history.
Do you have a specific point after which you think technology became a net negative? Do you think thinks were fine pre-industrial revolution, but after we invented the steam engine things when to shit? Perhaps it was the domestication of bananas that really took us away from living in harmony with nature rather than twisting it to our own ends.
I don't think it really makes a sense to draw a line in history and say everything after this point is bad. The only sensible way to draw a rational technophobic line is to look at specific technologies and their effects and decide if your life will be better or worse with each.
> The only sensible way to draw a rational technophobic line is to look at specific technologies and their effects and decide if your life will be better or worse with each.
Interesting to note that this is what the Amish actually do.
The popular depiction is of people who blindly live as if they're in the 1790s, but it is not that simple. The various Amish communities all do things slightly different from one another, and the technology allowed in different communities is not homogenous.
For ex., the Amish family just down the road from me has a solar panel on one of their barns, and a small forklift, I think diesel-powered (might be battery). But on the occasional Sunday when the meeting is at their house, there's not a car to be seen.
I've read of Amish carpenters who actually use a computer to run their business. It's usually kept in the workshop, away from the family home, though, and IIRC none of them had an internet connection.
> Interesting to note that this is what the Amish actually do.
It is indeed. I would argue that many people make this choice; we pick which technologies and tools make our lives better. The right and ability do this is one that I think our society would do well to protect as it promotes freedom, accessibility and choice.
The Amish differ only in doing it as a more cohesive social group and on a larger scale.
A better way to think of it is in terms of proportions, I guess.
To wit, the negative effects of technology are simply an increasing function of how advanced it is. There is no need to think in terms of "pre" or "post" good technology. As it becomes more powerful, we need greater wisdom to control it. And of course, we completely lack that wisdom.
> To wit, the negative effects of technology are simply an increasing function of how advanced it is.
Laughably easy to disprove. Gunpowder is less sinpler and older than antibiotics and sterilization techniques. Are you saying that somehow the negative effects of saving people from lethal and debilitating infections outweighs the negative effects of greatly increasing the our ability to kill eachother?
I find it truly amusing how any suggestion that technology LOWERS our standard of living is immediately met with a severe reaction here. It's as though it is gospel, to be assumed without any question. Technophiles are truly narrow-minded.
the micro view of technology is that it improves things. how could it be otherwise? the things that used to take a painful ten hours can now be done in six, without painf. it's not until you look at capitalism, realize that we're not all on the same team, that things go awry. see, we invented this thing called money, and things have gone downhill ever since. there have been some good things to come out of it, sure, but the thing of it is, we're already at a place where we can make enough food for everybody yet people die of starvation every day because we can't get over ourselves because they don't have money so they don't deserve to eat, even though there's food right there! so technologists keep invention new technologies and society just has to deal with these technologies. because we can't just have a society where everyone is fed and has a roof over their heads and can do whatever else they want to do with their time.
so the macro view, that some technologies have actually lowered our standard of living, is difficult, because it's not the technology's fault! it's only when you have to deal with other people that there are problems. throw in 7 billion other people and of course things are bad .
Yes, that is very true. The micro perspective is that it improves things indeed, which is why it is hard to understand its true nature, which is just pure development of itself. But in fact, the Greeks already realized it in their creation of the words "techne" and "logos", which form the modern word "technology"!
> Yes, we have better health care and more products, but we also have more pollution, more meaningless jobs, weaker local communities (especially in the most developed parts of the world), and beautiful species are going extinct.
Small tangent, I just want to point out that all of the issues you've pointed out in first world countries are maybe a problem in the cities, but not so outside of them. To wit, where I live in small town Iowa, USA, there's no pollution; there's a strong sense of community; plenty of beautiful species; and if I wanted a "meaningful" non-tech job I could easily get hired working on any number of farms in the area.
Tell that to the people in Mato Gross do Sul now who don't even have running water now because of the extreme weather events caused by technology. Just an anecdote, I guess.
Ah yes I forgot the standard of living is just more stuff in my house! Meanwhile we have all this cheap junk but expensive healthcare, expensive education, expensive housing, poison in our food and water, and rising temperatures. Glad some folks could binge order cheap plastic crap on Amazon for these amazing benefits. Advancement!
> We could've had all of that without the C02 we've emitted, please don't talk silly talk.
Wait, what? How could we have possible done all this without fossil fuels? Our modern life takes immense amounts of energy and fossil fuels are basically free energy we can suck out of the ground.
And I'm the first one here to critique the profit motive, but fossil fuels are profitable because they are a really easy to use, dense, transportable energy source.
> The pollution lifted every single person’s standard of living across the globe to levels unimaginable 100 years ago.
I think it's important to note that you are making this statement with virtually no evidence about the long term sustainability of this standard of living. It's great to be sitting on all this bounty, sure, but from the perspective of history we're not even out of the prototyping phase. If climate change models are even remotely accurate, for example, then the standard of living we are currently enjoying will not be shared by future generations in any nation. I definitely take your point that it's unreflective for a citizen of a rich nation to say "pollution for me, but not for thee", however if in the long term we experience severe ecological collapse as a result then is it really worth it for 2-4 generations to have iPhones and air conditioning? Only time can ultimately tell, but I think it's critical to consider how radically unique the last ~200 years of human history have been, and as a result how poorly equipped we are to extrapolate its lessons into the future.
