Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We've made the world too complicated

user8.bearblog.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 496 posts

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#321

Post by qsera »

Levitz wrote: post #306
qsera wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? we don't have sickness now? Or an ever increasing amount of sickness? We now have kids with diabetes now! Childhood cancer anyone? We don't have Dysentry for kids, but we have diabetes, and cancer for them now. They can now happily live a 100 years in a hospital! Congratulations! What a win!

Grab a coin right now, try to call the result. If you fail, your child dies before age 10. That was REALITY in the XII century. If you like that better by all means, contact a therapist as soon as possible.

>Grab a coin right now, try to call the result. If you fail, your child dies before age 10.

And today's reality is that the child would not die, but with a similar chance (may be not right now but in the near future) will have some disease that would make the child's and the families life hell until they run out of resources...and then child dies anyway....

Do you like that better?

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#322

Post by everdrive »

HN will suggest we solve this complication problem with yet another layer of technology. This sort of complication like a ratchet; it only goes one way. I am with the author here, but so many people love this complicated world. If they could be more packed in, more distracted, have even greater abundance most people would choose that option every time.

For individuals, all you can choose to do is simplify your home life. This is an imperfect solution, but the world around you will only be moving in the other direction.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#324

Post by qsera »

wallst07 wrote: post #309
qsera wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? we don't have sickness now? Or an ever increasing amount of sickness? We now have kids with diabetes now! Childhood cancer anyone? We don't have Dysentry for kids, but we have diabetes, and cancer for them now. They can now happily live a 100 years in a hospital! Congratulations! What a win!

You are still stretching, nobody is claiming suffering doesn't exist. But to compare modern medical care and nutrition to even 100-200 years ago and say it was better in the past is quite... insane. You can't cherrypick specific problems now and then compare to the entire existence in whatever before times you think were better. To put it another way... I would easily trade being below average income/class now, to to…

>But to compare modern medical care and nutrition to even 100-200 years ago and say it was better in the past is quite... insane.

No one is saying that though. I am saying that if the price for that is that everyone is more sick, then it is not a better thing.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#325

Post by wallst07 »

antonvs wrote: post #164
argee wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be if they hadn’t asked that question at the end, which is a fair question.

Well, Zen tries to build a whole religion around the idea, losing the spirit of simple easily comprehensible advice that can be expressed in a single sentence. So one answer to “what new” could be “delivering the advice without unnecessary complication”. Although I can’t really tell if the advice above covers the whole of Zen, which is part of the issue.

Zen doesn't have to be a religion, it can be whatever you want it to be.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#326

Post by derangedHorse »

> Honestly, I've wanted to snap my laptop right at the hinge so many times. To throw my phone into the sea. I've wanted to walk out of my school or office and never return. I want to never pay with money or read a written word again. But to do so would leave you alone and a lunatic.

I think it's normal to want to stop doing things you dislike, but I don't think that this feeling stems from "complexity." Instead, human progress has given us the option to stop doing things we dislike at a relatively low cost. For example, if you didn't want to hunt, migrate, or battle in prehistoric times, the consequence for those things would be death.

> To look at the birds, feel the wind and the water in our own hands, and ... nothing more. Eat when we are hungry, laugh when we are happy, cry when we are empty. And maybe that is the greatest gift to ourselves as well.

I believe those things sound nice and worthwhile, but looking at the birds and feeling the wind and water in our hands require safety and surviving requires us to utilize our biological advantages (like our complexity-generating brains). Eating when we're hungry require us to find food, laughing comes from finding safe things to laugh about and/or people to laugh with, etc.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#327

Post by probablypower »

everdrive wrote: post #322

HN will suggest we solve this complication problem with yet another layer of technology. This sort of complication like a ratchet; it only goes one way. I am with the author here, but so many people love this complicated world. If they could be more packed in, more distracted, have even greater abundance most people would choose that option every time. For individuals, all you can choose to do is simplify your home l…

every solution engineers a greater problem. Solving horse poop with cars -> Climate change

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#328

Post by wallst07 »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #93
_nxwj wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read many accounts of the lives of mostly hunter-gatherer tribes living far more care-free and convenient lives. Yes they had no way of treating most diseases, facing natural disasters, and preventable deaths, but from what I understand the reports of scarcity and constant danger are far overblown, at least within certain periods. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2025/09/anthropological-summer/

Wasn't the whole point, to get so good at things we got back to that eventually? I don't even understand what the point/goal/target is anymore? Like we forgot society should be getting better every year. Or it used to be the conservative towns that had beautiful tree lined streets, but now it's conservative to NOT plant anything for the future. What is it all for at this point?

What do you mean you don't understand the goal? The goal for you or for humanity?

The goal is to figure it out for yourself and add meaning, to help your friends and family, the people you love and support.

For humanity, there is no goal, its for each to figure this out. There never was or will be. This isn't Star Trek.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#329

Post by pyrale »

hariseldom wrote: post #305

> I used to want to do many things. Make great art, build great machines, solve important issues. Maybe our greatest gift to the world is to do as little as possible. To look at the birds, feel the wind and the water in our own hands, and ... nothing more. Eat when we are hungry, laugh when we are happy, cry when we are empty. And maybe that is the greatest gift to ourselves as well. This is not always true, it depen…

I guess the issue is that, on average, our society looks more like Phillip Morris or Meta than it looks like a school or an hospital. And, most of all, the people our society promotes to steer itself tend to be the kind that thrives at Meta rather than in a school.

Re: We've made the world too complicated

#330

Post by moichael »

probablypower wrote: post #327
everdrive wrote: post #322

HN will suggest we solve this complication problem with yet another layer of technology. This sort of complication like a ratchet; it only goes one way. I am with the author here, but so many people love this complicated world. If they could be more packed in, more distracted, have even greater abundance most people would choose that option every time. For individuals, all you can choose to do is simplify your home l…

every solution engineers a greater problem. Solving horse poop with cars -> Climate change

"AI will solve climate change" -> Datacenters that cause more climate change
Post reply on HN