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Against Productivity

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Re: Against Productivity

#91

Post by xg15 »

ggreer wrote: post #30
wodenokoto wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with you. I thought it was very clear and well written. > Of course per-capita GDP doesn't fully capture quality of life, but it's easy to measure and hard to fake. It's extremely easy to fake. I sell you a backrub for 10.000 dollars and after that I buy one from you for 10.000 dollars and we've now in 10 minutes boosted our GDP with 20.000 dollars. > Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite t…

It's extremely easy to fake. I sell you a backrub for 10.000 dollars and after that I buy one from you for 10.000 dollars and we've now in 10 minutes boosted our GDP with 20.000 dollars. I didn't want to sidetrack my comment by getting into PPP and other adjustments[1], but suffice it to say that economists have been aware of these issues for over a century. We are too focused on optimizing, when a lot of what it mea…

Maybe instead of saying "optimizing is bad", a better idea is to remember that you can't just "optimize". You always optimize for something: You're trying to bring a certain quality into an extreme, usually by willingly trading it off against other qualities - e.g. free time against a higher income.

Therefore, optimisation isn't bad, but you should always keep in mind what you're optimizing for, as you usually can't optimize everything at the same time.

If you have two qualities that are mutually exclusive but both important to you, you obviously wouldn't want to optimize either of them - you'd try to find a balance between them instead.

Re: Against Productivity

#92

Post by wyager »

calinet6 wrote: post #34
ggreer wrote: post #16

This post is full of mistakes and unclear thinking. I can't figure out what the author is arguing against or for. Is she against quantifying wealth? I'm not sure. Is she against working hard? Maybe. Does she think it impossible to quantify happiness and well-being? I get the impression she does. First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP. Her comparison used absolute instead of per-capita values. In…

If you're attempting to find a productive rhetorical truth in a piece about shedding productivity as a focus, you're missing the point. In fact, you're arguing that she should 1) be able to quantify happiness, 2) consider life-expectancy as a proxy for life quality, and 3) pursue optimizing life by quantifying and measuring it. I think you're missing many points. The whole idea—the wisdom, if you will—is that you los…

> and is not particularly hindered by slight rhetorical mistakes or lack of clarity. It's that true.

Clearly it is hindered by bad writing and rhetoric, because here we are not agreeing with it.

>It's so confusing and seemingly contradictory and paradoxical, yet we know it's true.

Speak for yourself.

>converging on the ability to hold a thing in your head that's both true and false at the same time

That's not impressive. It's called "being inconsistent" and sometimes "being an idiot". A more impressive ability is being able to simulate multiple outcomes in your head without necessarily believing in them, and that has nothing to do with whatever religious dogma you're preaching.

Do you reject the Principle of Excluded Middle?

Re: Against Productivity

#93

Post by dashboardfront »

ggreer wrote: post #16

This post is full of mistakes and unclear thinking. I can't figure out what the author is arguing against or for. Is she against quantifying wealth? I'm not sure. Is she against working hard? Maybe. Does she think it impossible to quantify happiness and well-being? I get the impression she does. First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP. Her comparison used absolute instead of per-capita values. In…

I feel like many Americans (assuming you're American) have a knee jerk response when they're told that money cannot buy them happiness. They get defensive as our society constantly reinforces us with the idea that money does in fact purchase happiness. This is a great message to keep us productive and increase GDP, but is it really true? You've presented that journal article as evidence, but looking past the catchy title, it still does not show that money = happiness. It says that money, when used to purchase experiences or help other people, brings about happiness. If anything, this seems to imply that experiences and helping others brings about happiness, and money is a means in which we can help others or experience things. However, excess wealth is hardly a pre-requisite for experiences nor helping others. Certainly, there exists a baseline; if you're struggling to get food, you probably can't focus on helping others, but there's nothing stopping you from deciding to quit your job, emigrate to a foreign developing country, and start working at a non-profit (sans debt obligations, of course, which tends to be the result of a horrible education system and/or rampant consumerism). I remember meeting an Australian engineer in Montreal who worked for a year and then took two or three off to go travel around the world. He especially liked to snowboard. Yes, productivity and wealth were necessary for him, but it was a means to an end; so that he could purchase experiences that made him happy. I feel like many people in our world would look at him and say "but what about your career progression? Dear god man, don't you have any ambition? You'll never become CTO like that!" I feel like our society has gotten sucked into a rat race, where it treats productivity and the accumulation of wealth as the end itself rather than the means to happiness. Nothing better signifies this than our obsession with GDP.

I do, however, agree with you that the article is poorly organized, rambles in random directions, and fails to present any actual argument.

Re: Against Productivity

#94

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ggreer wrote: post #16

This post is full of mistakes and unclear thinking. I can't figure out what the author is arguing against or for. Is she against quantifying wealth? I'm not sure. Is she against working hard? Maybe. Does she think it impossible to quantify happiness and well-being? I get the impression she does. First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP. Her comparison used absolute instead of per-capita values. In…

As Weird Al wrote, if money can't buy happiness then I guess I'll have to rent it.

Re: Against Productivity

#95

Post by calinet6 »

wyager wrote: post #92
calinet6 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're attempting to find a productive rhetorical truth in a piece about shedding productivity as a focus, you're missing the point. In fact, you're arguing that she should 1) be able to quantify happiness, 2) consider life-expectancy as a proxy for life quality, and 3) pursue optimizing life by quantifying and measuring it. I think you're missing many points. The whole idea—the wisdom, if you will—is that you los…

> and is not particularly hindered by slight rhetorical mistakes or lack of clarity. It's that true. Clearly it is hindered by bad writing and rhetoric, because here we are not agreeing with it. >It's so confusing and seemingly contradictory and paradoxical, yet we know it's true. Speak for yourself. >converging on the ability to hold a thing in your head that's both true and false at the same time That's not impress…

"We" are not here not agreeing with it. You are here not agreeing with it, and clearly another group of people agrees with it quite strongly. I agree it could be clearer, but it does not follow that a point that is not clearly made is not true at its core. A thing does not need to be argued successfully to be true: the truth of the thing exists first.

Absolutely, with prejudice, I reject the principle of excluded middle—if not based on mathematics, then for its societal impact on the way we think about the world and ourselves. I think a three- or four-valued logic (yes/no/maybe or yes/no/both/neither) applies to reality better and helps humans understand complexity as it really is, while a two-valued logic nearly always oversimplifies and causes direct harm to ideas and how they spread and are discussed.

In general I have no patience for those who think in binary.

Re: Against Productivity

#96

Post by wyager »

calinet6 wrote: post #95
wyager wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and is not particularly hindered by slight rhetorical mistakes or lack of clarity. It's that true. Clearly it is hindered by bad writing and rhetoric, because here we are not agreeing with it. >It's so confusing and seemingly contradictory and paradoxical, yet we know it's true. Speak for yourself. >converging on the ability to hold a thing in your head that's both true and false at the same time That's not impress…

"We" are not here not agreeing with it. You are here not agreeing with it, and clearly another group of people agrees with it quite strongly. I agree it could be clearer, but it does not follow that a point that is not clearly made is not true at its core. A thing does not need to be argued successfully to be true: the truth of the thing exists first. Absolutely, with prejudice, I reject the principle of excluded mid…

>"We" are not here not agreeing with it.

I never made this claim. I reject your claim that "we know [the author's claims to be] true". I don't know them to be true. In fact, I think them to be false.

>A thing does not need to be argued successfully to be true

This is true, of course. But neither your nor the author have proven the truth of what you are saying. You've just flung dogma at us, sans evidence.

>I reject the principle of excluded middle—if not based on mathematics, then for its societal impact on the way we think about the world and ourselves.

Just because you wish something to be true does not make it true.

You may be uncomfortable with the consequences of the truth of the PEM, but that is not an argument against its truth.

Do you have any evidence contradicting the PEM? I'd love to hear it.

>In general I have no patience for those who think in binary.

Why? Because the truth of the PEM would mean you're wrong?

Re: Against Productivity

#97

Post by damon_c »

I have always considered productivity to be a measure of production over time where time is the duration a person works at a task and not a constant.

So a highly productive person gets a lot done in a small amount of time.

People who get a lot done and work all the time aren't really high productivity people; they just work a lot.

I see nothing wrong with striving for productivity if this is how it is defined.

Re: Against Productivity

#98

Post by kstenerud »

erikb wrote: post #66
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a regular 40 hour / week or part-time job for a decent wage? It's what the vast majority of people do.

Maybe I misunderstood the article? I understand that he wants to go to other countries, walk around, watch the rain and think about life in general. Maybe you can do that if you are a museum security guard, but in most jobs that's not possible. And at least I am quite tired after working 40 hours plus taking care of the basics needs I have (buying grocieries, cooking, cleaning) and my family has (spending time togeth…

Don't you think there's something inherently wrong with that?

Re: Against Productivity

#99

Post by Chinjut »

ggreer wrote: post #16

This post is full of mistakes and unclear thinking. I can't figure out what the author is arguing against or for. Is she against quantifying wealth? I'm not sure. Is she against working hard? Maybe. Does she think it impossible to quantify happiness and well-being? I get the impression she does. First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP. Her comparison used absolute instead of per-capita values. In…

Re: "If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right", that's the cheeky title of the article you link to, but not really the content of it. The article discusses how to get the best bang for your buck when spending your money. It may still be the case, however, that the best happiness bang for your buck is to do something with your free time other than seeking above all else to maximize your income in the first place, and the article is not intended to exclude this possibility.

Re: Against Productivity

#100

Post by calinet6 »

wyager wrote: post #96
calinet6 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" are not here not agreeing with it. You are here not agreeing with it, and clearly another group of people agrees with it quite strongly. I agree it could be clearer, but it does not follow that a point that is not clearly made is not true at its core. A thing does not need to be argued successfully to be true: the truth of the thing exists first. Absolutely, with prejudice, I reject the principle of excluded mid…

>"We" are not here not agreeing with it. I never made this claim. I reject your claim that "we know [the author's claims to be] true". I don't know them to be true. In fact, I think them to be false. >A thing does not need to be argued successfully to be true This is true, of course. But neither your nor the author have proven the truth of what you are saying. You've just flung dogma at us, sans evidence. >I reject t…

I don't much care about myself being wrong. I care that the conclusions of the type of black and white rhetoric you pursue are the very same that are driving society into ever more harmful separation, for ever less logical reasons, all under the simple concept that if something is not true, it must be false.

What I mean is, the high complexity of most systems in nature and society and humanity about which we argue necessarily dictate that a statement cannot be absolutely false without variance, or absolutely true without variance. There are too many inputs and variables, for a logician let alone a layperson to make sense of. Yet the dichotomy of the PEM (or thinking akin to that) is applied even in those cases. It has become not only a logical statement, but a way of life and a way of thinking, and it far overreaches its definition.

Thus, I don't care if the PEM is an irrefutable mathematical truth or not. That is irrelevant, and it is not what I'm arguing. I argue that it does not apply to most situations of the real world, and following it when it should not be followed leads to mistaken conclusions. We see this played out presently in politics, society, and in our own lives; as this article describes.

The real question is not whether the mathematics of the PEM hold true (they do), but whether the type of thinking they lead to is beneficial to humanity. And about that I am allowed to have opinions and make an argument. My opinion is that it is detrimental to humanity, and my argument is that most places where a binary or dichotomous argument is used are too complex for it to apply cleanly, yet we ignore that major problem and continue anyway. This leads to false conclusions and actions within complex systems.

I continue to have no patience for those who think in binary, because it is inhuman, selfish, and irritating; not because it is untrue, but because it is an incredibly poor way to interact with other human beings, and an unproductive way to approach complexity.

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