Item — HN Reader

> It's basically like someone in the pre-industrial age complaining that the industrial revolution will lead to the permanent underclass of people who currently live on welfare in developed countries. But this is surely a wonderful outcome from the pre-industrial peasant's perspective - even poor people in the western world live better than middle age kings!

Wow, it took more than a century to get to live better than middle age kings. Do you think the people that lost their means to make a good living in 1800s care that we live so much better today ? It is incredible how so many tech people lack empathy for how regular people think or want to live.

I liked the Culture series too, but how they got to the presented post scarcity world is never described. How many generation lived a worse life than their predecessors? Do you think the current or future bi and trillionaires are willing to pay everyone a decent wage to live through this transition period ?

1 comments

> Wow, it took more than a century to get to live better than middle age kings. Do you think the people that lost their means to make a good living in 1800s care that we live so much better today ? It is incredible how so many tech people lack empathy for how regular people think or want to live.

I noticed that comes more from a place of not imagining themselves being the subject of the possible terrible consequences.

Many tech people think in abstract terms, they look back in history without thinking much about how the life of a normal person during a major transitional period was impacted, it's just a sequence of facts, not a collection of human stories.

It's sad because it completely detaches many of these folks from having empathy, yes, change is the only constant but if our aim is to progress as a species we should also be progressing on how to make inevitable changes less miserable for those impacted. I see a lot in tech people the thinking of technological advancement for the sake of technological advancement, not for building a better world for every human, humans tend to get in the way of major technological changes so in their minds they prioritise the advancements without caring much about the human aspect.

It's quite baffling to me because those are usually smart people, I'd expect smart people to have better holistic thinking.