The More Tech = Happiness Fallacy
In the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank and subsequent destabilization of the US banking system, there’s been a lot of finger pointing and anger directed at the tech sector and the venture capitalists (VC’s) that fund it.
In the same vein, there have also been defending arguments like this one by Packy McCormick (I recommend giving it a read if you’re a mental models geek like me!). However, it was the ending of his essay “The Happiness Hypothesis” that struck me:
“Imagine a future in which the tech industry delivers on all of its biggest promises.
Energy is abundant and “too cheap to meter.” We have flying cars and clean water for everyone and locally-grown, vertically-farmed food that rivals anything in today’s Michelin Star restaurants, delivered by drones or through pipes, for less than the cost of a happy meal.
Biotech has gotten so advanced that disease isn’t really a thing anymore. People commonly live to 200 or 300 years old, and rumor is, the cap is about to be lifted entirely. For many, it already effectively is – anyone can upload their brain’s neural patterns into the cloud and download them into robots, a la Robin Hanson’s The Age of Em.
The world’s knowledge isn’t just at our fingertips, but directly piped into our brains, explorable and interpretable in a thought with the assistance of AI nanobots.
Of course, in this future world, nobody has to work. All of the B2B software created in the early 2000s served as a template for the workflow AIs, and the workflow AIs took over from there. Plus, robots can deliver massages better than any human masseuse, haircuts finer than any human barber, and hospitality more doting than any human concierge. Of course, they can take out the trash and build buildings and fight wars and make things on our behalf, too.
People are free to create with their hands or to explore imagined metaverse worlds or sleep or read or ThinkTweet or run or to do, in Asimov’s words, whatever they wish.
Are people happier in this world?
That depends.
I tend to agree with Ernie’s observation that, “This is precisely why people are pessimistic in the face of increasing material progress. They’ve lost their old source of meaning from the struggle to survive, and can’t find their own way forward.”
As technology enables longer lives and more free time and more material abundance, it leaves an equal and opposite opportunity for humans to turn that potential happiness into real happiness.
I won’t pretend to know the answer there — there are probably as many answers as there are people — but I’d love to hear your thoughts.”
Technology ≠ Happiness
So here are my thoughts on technology and happiness:
We don’t need to imagine a future where tech has delivered on all its promises. Many of us already have everything we need to achieve happiness and get off the hedonic treadmill.
As a species, we have succeeded in every objective metric:
Yet, We don't feel that way. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how hard objective data slaps us in the face. It’s our subjective experience that matters. And there are ways to change our perceptions that doesn't require advanced technology.
In fact, the ancients had figured out part of that puzzle 2,000 years ago.
Packy began his essay with this quote from Balaji Srinivasan, the CTO of Coinbase and a VC himself, on the purpose of technology:
“If the proximate purpose of technology is to reduce scarcity, the ultimate purpose of technology is to eliminate mortality”.
The reply from the Stoic Philosopher Seneca might be:
“You want to live—but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying—but tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?”
Upon reaching a certain point on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, everything else is gravy. After shelter, food, drink, and safety is solved (thanks to technology), the priority is to work towards self actualization and identify the things that prevent us from doing so, which ironically could be the very material goods that got us off the lower levels. If anything, we are now innovating in order to solve the problems created by abundance. As Seneca pointed out, it’s not just how long we live, but how we live the time allotted to us.
Perhaps the question we should be asking AI, our most advanced manifestation of technology to date, isn't how to make as much money as possible from $100, but rather how we can build systems that more equitably distribute what we already have to fulfill the lower Maslow levels for more people to pursue their higher levels. To help remind us of how far we've come, of the abundance we have at our finger tips, of our short lives, that nothing matters, and of the things that do. To help us practice gratitude in order to counter our natural tendency to endlessly adapt to the goodness in our lives.
Otherwise, we will always feel poor, even as technology fulfills its promise to reduce scarcity.
I’ll leave you with a hopeful anecdote.
My friend recently vacationed in Shirakawago, a small village west of Tokyo. He was surprised by how rural and primitive everything was since Japan is a rich developed country. Yet everyone he met was warm and happy. They took pride in everything they did, finding purpose in something as mundane as cooking or drawing water from a freezing stream.
Here it was: people who had their basic needs fulfilled, said “enough” to more, and chose a way of life that was fulfilling without advanced technology. Not only that, the Japanese have some of the longest lifespans in the world.
As Wim Hof noted:
“If you seek happiness within your own being, in control over your own life-force, mind, and purpose, nothing else matters. You can be happy unconditionally…It’s already there.”
Some food for thought.
What are your thoughts on tech and happiness?
Tweet or DM at me on Twitter/Instagram @shengsilver.
Make the most of your mind maps
Thanks for reading this article. If you found it useful, you can get a new mind map in your inbox every week. Epiphany is your dose of structured thinking and ordered chaos.
