Cat trying out for the Olympics

I may be taking an extreme point of view, partially for fun, but I’m going to hold to it for fun too (don’t assume I fully embrace all this to an extreme as presented…what point is a conversation if I just 100% agree with you? That would be boring, and I love alternative perspectives):

That’s too subjective and arbitrary. Balanced from what time period or standard? Anything that could be said to be “balanced” now would still have been seen as unbalanced pure technological witchery a few decades ago.

There are studies suggesting that even the majority of people alive in the US today (including most people below the poverty line), still have a higher standard of living with more luxuries overall than Billionaires like John D Rockefeller did when he was the richest man in the world. The progress of technological innovation has been dramatically beneficial in uplifting even most of the most needy compared to the past. Why would we want to “balance” that in the reverse instead of continue to improve the standard of living for everyone. Can you imagine if in a few more decades, the “lower class” of the future lives with a higher standard of living and more luxuries, etc than even the richest billionaires today can dream of? If that same standard continues, it seems to be beneficial for most of humanity if technology, automation and such continue on this trajectory. Why wouldn’t I support and push for it to continue? Future generations will likely think “Balance” means something VERY different than anything we could think up right now and would seem extreme to us now. This is how progression works over time and history. I expect it to continue the same because of human nature. As we get older and our brains neural connections wire together in set ways, we generally increasingly develop more cognitive rigidity simply from a biological standpoint. We have less plasticity than newer generations and what we think is balance will always be different from what future groups think of as balance based on their own adaptations. I can’t support enforcing my adaptive rigidity on future generations which will always have better neural plasticity for such adaptation.

Balance is important in some contexts, but it is not necessarily always a universal positive value.

If some people like to commit heinous acts, and others don’t, you don’t compromise with a balance by instituting “The Purge” once a year to allow a “balance” where people can do those horrible things sometimes to whomever they want. That would be ridiculous. (I could come up with more ridiculous “balance” examples if needed). Thus we can agree that “balance” in and of itself is not necessarily an ideal standard in all situations. But even if it were, we would have to define the boundaries of what constitutes as balance or not. I could argue that REAL balance comes from INCREASED technological progression and automation as it frees people up to have more time to do whatever they want instead of just trying to “survive” and meet their “needs”…if we can automate everyone’s needs on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs through technology and automation advancements, then perhaps more people would be able progress up the hierarchy to self-actualization.

Would that not be among the most worthy of goals to progress toward and a kind of “balance”? It may be different than you idea of balance, or what constitute as balance for you, but must we dictate to others what is “balance” for them?

I by no means think a near technological singularity is “inevitable”…but I am a strong supporter of it coming to pass. I don’t think such things should happen overnight though.

Thank you. :slight_smile: I do Not. Want. to be Typical. I do not think this is the thread to elaborate on that, but I take that as a high compliment.


Also, don’t get me wrong, I am partially having fun in this response. I am truly a strong proponent of “Balance”…I actually once totally “unbalanced” my whole life in my 20’s and put myself through utter and complete miserable chaos because of it. Finding “Balance” in areas of my life was utterly critical…though that is a whole different topic and I’m having fun with some thought experiments on semantical interpretations of balance…so don’t take me too seriously :wink:

Regardless, I do TRULY love technology and automations. :slight_smile: This is one reason I am continually pushing Wyze to improve their automation options. The more options the better.

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