Stoics[1] said the same many thousand years back.
* On shortness of life by Seneca
Time is the only real currency we have
251–260 of 313 posts
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#252I hate this framing. It is pressuring, dehumanizing as it contextualizes human endeavor in transactional terms, usually in a market. I know this goes against the ethos of high-tech, but humans don't have an imperative to be as productive as possible. They don't have to make the most use of their time. They don't have to get as efficient as they could. These are metrics that work fine for our machines, our code. But h…
Slow down. Life is to be savoured.
Like my favorite counter quote: "Live slow, die whenever."
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
> is there anything interesting or alive in it I watch the robins foraging for worms on mine. I can look out the window and see fat bumblebees lazily weave among the patches of clover in the late morning. In the afternoon, I get to see my child scrambling across it looking for dandelion flowers to make a bouquet. If it were a wild garden, we'd have none of that, and I'd have much worse insect (ticks, mosquitoes) and…
Yeah, I forgot to mention that mowing gets rid of the lyme disease ticks, too.
That may be true, man-made global warming is linked to a large increase in tick populations and disease is rapidly increasing from them.
> The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the number of tick-borne diseases is increasing at a record pace while the geographic range of ticks continues to expand. Lyme disease is the most commonly known tick-borne disease, but other diseases, such as ehrlichiosis and STARI, have been discovered and the list of tick-related illnesses continues to grow.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/05/22/tick-popul...
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nitpick section: > We went to agriculture because otherwise we'd starve. (...) If you think their lives were better because of no machines, I frankly cannot understand that. It's not like that. We were forced to start doing agriculture by competitive pressure; the people who did could conquer the people who didn't. Agriculture essentially gave us everything we consider achievements and civilization, so I'm glad that…
Hunter-gatherers regularly starve, because food resources are inconsistent. When you get too old to follow the herd with the tribe, you get left behind to die. You get a crippling injury, you get left behind to die. Hunting and killing game is always a high risk activity for injury and death. Starvation greatly limited the number of humans. Me, I like consistent, varied, cheap food. I like living in a heated dwelling…
Sure we love it. We get to reap the rewards of sweatshop labor in China, and farms in Africa shipping cheap crop to us at the expense of the locals. On top of that, that lifestyle that gives you all of that, is most likely unsustainable, and largely created by war and hegemony.
> All this complaining about modern technology "dehumanizing" people makes me laugh. It's like complaining about a door ding in your Ferrari.
Yes, I'm sure you'd say the same after reading the effects of weaponized chemicals in World War I, or the advent and use of atomic bombs, or the manufacturing of death in concentration camps.
Technology can be dehumanizing, or very humanizing. It's up to us to curate it properly. Endless advancement in the name of technology will simply destroy the human race.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In an attempt to operate a machine the person has itself to act mechanical and to comply with the interface of the machine rather than the other way around. I remember an article a while back where archaeologists examined the bones of pre-Columbian women in America. The bones showed the signs of long term debilitating, repetitive work from kneeling and grinding, by hand, corn into flour. Just last night I watched a…
>I'd much rather mow my lawn with a mower than a pair of scissors. I think you didn't go far enough with the implications of Carse's statement. It's not just that a machine mows your lawn quicker, it's that you have a homogenous lawn in the first place because it is a thing that can mechanically mowed . For example, why instead of a lawn do more people not have a wild garden, with uneven terrain? Why did everyone fee…
> I think you didn't go far enough with the implications of Carse's statement. It's not just that a machine mows your lawn quicker, it's that you have a homogenous lawn in the first place because it is a thing that can mechanically mowed.
This is a bit like Fussell's observation that glass or mirrored surfaces signal wealth because they imply you don't clean your own house.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#256I'd really like to get better at touch typing, is GNU Typist a solid recommendation, or are there better ones?
If you can find one, a Gregg college typing typing self-study guide.
https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q="gregg...
https://archive.org/search.php?query=Gregg+College+Keyboardi...
Self-taught before secondary school in about six weeks, among my best investments ever.
So long as it's a QWERTY layout, publication year really doesn'y matter.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hunter-gatherers regularly starve, because food resources are inconsistent. When you get too old to follow the herd with the tribe, you get left behind to die. You get a crippling injury, you get left behind to die. Hunting and killing game is always a high risk activity for injury and death. Starvation greatly limited the number of humans. Me, I like consistent, varied, cheap food. I like living in a heated dwelling…
Sure we love it. We get to reap the rewards of sweatshop labor in China, and farms in Africa shipping cheap crop to us at the expense of the locals. On top of that, that lifestyle that gives you all of that, is most likely unsustainable, and largely created by war and hegemony. > All this complaining about modern technology "dehumanizing" people makes me laugh. It's like complaining about a door ding in your Ferrari.…
> farms in Africa shipping cheap crop to us at the expense
farms are not shipping cheap crops to us at their expense. They are trading.
> reap the rewards of sweatshop labor in China
These "sweatshops" brought them out of poverty in rural areas - they would've been a subsistence farmer and had less wealth. It feels unfair for them to only be paid pennies for an object that retail for over 50-60 bucks, but that's still better than not having those pennies.
And eventually, as their wealth accrue and they invest it wisely, their productivity and standards of living grows, and they will no longer accept pennies. I don't see why that's so wrong, and the people complaining about this problem just conveniently ignores that almost all of their wealth of products and services comes from this process.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is pretty much my life to the extent of how much I can control it in society. I never do any singular thing with the exception of work. I won’t leave the house unless I can divide and group that time into multiple objectives thus spreading the overhead of time lost against many achievements. If not in a meeting I have my pleasureable conversations via car phone when I commute some where. If I’m not in a meeting…
How did you justify writing this comment? No snark intended, I’m just actually curious how one justifies time wasted commenting on this site.
Great question - if I feel like taking leisure time I take it. Easy as that. I justify it by kicking ass and optimizing everything else as best as I can. That is what brings me peace. Knowing I do my best. It's a good balance for me, I naturally found a circle of successful people that do the same(birds of a feather). I don't think one should try to be this way if you are not and I do realize its a bit different. But for me its worked great and truly feel like I'm living a better life every day.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure we love it. We get to reap the rewards of sweatshop labor in China, and farms in Africa shipping cheap crop to us at the expense of the locals. On top of that, that lifestyle that gives you all of that, is most likely unsustainable, and largely created by war and hegemony. > All this complaining about modern technology "dehumanizing" people makes me laugh. It's like complaining about a door ding in your Ferrari.…
> farms in Africa shipping cheap crop to us at the expense farms are not shipping cheap crops to us at their expense. They are trading. > reap the rewards of sweatshop labor in China These "sweatshops" brought them out of poverty in rural areas - they would've been a subsistence farmer and had less wealth. It feels unfair for them to only be paid pennies for an object that retail for over 50-60 bucks, but that's stil…
> farms are not shipping cheap crops to us at their expense. They are trading.
I misplaced a word - at the expense of more local options in need of food. Either way I'd hope that'd be assumed, but I fixed it to not leave it to chance.
> These "sweatshops" brought them out of poverty in rural areas - they would've been a subsistence farmer and had less wealth. It feels unfair for them to only be paid pennies for an object that retail for over 50-60 bucks, but that's still better than not having those pennies.
Make no mistake, they're still in poverty. Go ahead, trade with them. I doubt you would. Your life is almost guaranteed to be far better. It wasn't the sweatshops that brought them out of poverty. What brought workers out of poverty in the 1st world was unions and workers rights - not the jobs themselves.
> And eventually, as their wealth accrue and they invest it wisely, their productivity and standards of living grows, and they will no longer accept pennies. I don't see why that's so wrong, and the people complaining about this problem just conveniently ignores that almost all of their wealth of products and services comes from this process.
This assumes endless growth - an ideal, and assumes that everyone shares in that wealth equally. We know that is definitely not true. Eventually if everyone says "we shall all be paid as our 1st world counterparts", the cost of goods increases, less people buy, and the wealth vanishes, largely because it has been centralized.
This attitude also ignores the impending doom of climate change. People think everything is fine until it's not. It's foolish to think there will not be war, disease, famine in the 21st century. And technology will make it deadlier than ever.
Re: Time is the only real currency we have
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hunter-gatherers regularly starve, because food resources are inconsistent. When you get too old to follow the herd with the tribe, you get left behind to die. You get a crippling injury, you get left behind to die. Hunting and killing game is always a high risk activity for injury and death. Starvation greatly limited the number of humans. Me, I like consistent, varied, cheap food. I like living in a heated dwelling…
It's no surprise that you like what you have; people like whatever it is that they have, whether they originally wanted it or not: https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_the_surprising_science...
> It's no surprise that you like what you have
Of course, as I've gotten rid of stuff I don't like and replaced it with stuff I do.
As a hunter-gatherer, though, I wouldn't have such options.