There must be a cap where quality of life is good enough though, right? Or do you propose it should go up indefinitely?

Air conditioning is quite nice if you find yourself living in a hot environment, for example. But do we really all need smart watches? Or cameras everywhere? Or LLMs, for that matter?

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iso1631 an hour ago | parent [-]

Do smart watches and cameras and llms increase quality of life?

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_heimdall 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

That depends entirely on how you measure quality of life. Though I'd argue that if quality of life measures didn't noticeably increase after those products were released, then I'd say no.

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iso1631 27 minutes ago | parent [-]

I'd argue quality of life is down since the invention of smartphones

> There must be a cap where quality of life is good enough though, right?

Maybe in some hypothetical future, but even the fantastical world Star Trek TNG has improvements on quality of life that could be made.

I think part of the problem of today lands on the post-cold war and certainly post-911 media landscape. There just aren't optimistic future. Distopia is more popular and certainly more numerous than Utopia.

	▲	_heimdall 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'd argue that we have to find some level of "enough" when it comes to quality of life, likely a balance between incremental improvements vs the costs to get there. Effectively all history of life was focused entirely on finding food, water, maybe shelter and safety, and breeding. Where do we draw the line and stop making new things just because we can? I have nothing to base this on so its just a hunch, but I'd expect quality of life would increase for many people today by removing, rather than adding. Work a little less, buy a little less, have fewer distractions, etc.