Philosophy Now Forum

Everybody can became an expert in something valuable to society, and in education and our efforts to develop each person through their lives this is the quest of society: to find out what that thing is.

------ PS: I quote myself because it looks cooler than just writing it like normal text.

Do you not agree? Essentially, finding out how we can take a person's uniqueness, and help them shape it into something valuable for themselves and everyone else? And is not value always increased expertise, when an individual's value is measured against society's needs (making the individual an asset and not one in a million foot-soldiers)? The act of paving the path for enabling new better functions in society; like new technology, new ways of solving societal problems, or new improvements upon the old foundations.

As we look to the future, will not the way we must develop each person, be the way of making them experts in increasingly amounts of fields that covers more and more scientific and technological ground? Because manual labour is dying, the mass of individuals is dying because society wants to maximize its production capacity, and to do so, it needs to automate as many functions as possible, moving people unto unautomatable functions, like teachers and doctors (which, although they can be supported by technology, are a far way off from ever being fully replaceable, except in cyborg dystopia and underdeveloped countries). However, at some point, people must be squeezed entirely out of the manual labour market, because you there's no need for everyone to be a teacher or doctor (and indeed, both these will see their functions altered to become more specialized for specific fields), instead, people must become experts -> people whose job it is to maintain and expand upon the capacity for human knowledge, and to best convey the knowledge unto decision-makers as well as be professional decision-makers themselves... don't you think so?

Should not this be where we should steer the future of education and personal development of societies individuals?

The concern over the vanishing field of labor is something that's been weighing on my mind lately. I think an incredibly small number of people have been and ever will be true philosophers, and very few will ever have the inclination to spend their time in philosophic contemplation. Labor, or at least proper labor, seems to serve a useful function in occupying the minds and hands of ordinary people, of whom I consider myself to be a part. (I enjoy reading about philosophy, but it's unlikely that I'll ever become a true philosopher!) Regarding the particular form of labor conducive to happiness, I tend to be sympathetic to the Jeffersonian/Madisonian position that the agrarian life is most preferable. Unfortunately, this area of labor has been gradually diminished ever since the advent of the Industrial Age, and, as you rightly noted, high technology and automation are driving an even larger wedge between it and individual human endeavor.

But I'm not convinced that encouraging people to develop expertise in technological know-how will prove to be a substitute of equal or greater value. Nor am I convinced that the language of "assets" is, in practical terms, so distinct from the language of "foot soldiers," or cogs, or anything else that seems to attach an element of instrumentality to human beings.

I don't know what the future holds for the human race, but I can't think of much in terms of high technology that will lead to levels of true happiness that aren't already obtainable in the here and now.

Technology enables lasting happiness and protection against nature's carelessness, meaning you can be more securely happy and happy longer. Any pursuit of "pure happiness" is very conditioned on the willingness of nature to let you have it, and so philosophies of happiness, found especially in a lot of meditative studies, are pure gambling with the lucks of life, and often very narrowed down to specific individuals who happen to be more suited for different kinds of special lifestyles.

I think the "agrarian dream" is pure romanticism and depends entirely on the individual and the circumstances of their life. Every farmer knows that it's hard and tedious work without modern technology, and even then it's occasionally very hard, and doesn't always earn you a lot, and if too many people giving their efforts to agriculture, we wouldn't have medicine for when we are sick, no entertainment to relieve us of our tedious and often boring work, no logistic system to diversify our lives with exotic wares, letting us develop taste, get important new sources of nutrition, and so forth... food is not all there is to life, and even if it was you can't grow all kinds of food, you usually have a very limited amount conditioned by climate and soil qualities.

The Voice of Time wrote:Because manual labour is dying...

There will always be a need for somebody to sweep the floor; do you want a PhD in physics to do it?

bobevenson wrote:

The Voice of Time wrote:Because manual labour is dying...

There will always be a need for somebody to sweep the floor; do you want a PhD in physics to do it?

Uhm, that's wrong. There are already today robots that clean floors ^^ Do you really expect a futuristic society to have people who cares to do stuff like that?

In what way do you believe that technology enables lasting happiness?

Based on what I think I’ve gathered from your post, you seem to connect happiness with the conquering or control of nature's vagaries. Do you view happiness as being contingent on the absence of hardship?

it's a noble idea but there are just too many people meaning not everyone can excel at what they are good at unfortunately.

"An expert is merely a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very small field."

Niels Bohr.

bobevenson wrote:

The Voice of Time wrote:Because manual labour is dying...

There will always be a need for somebody to sweep the floor; do you want a PhD in physics to do it?

No A' levels would probably be sufficient these days considering the rows about them becoming too easy: A' level is roughly equivalent to graduating school in the US, and 1 up from GCSEs which we get from leaving school at 16.

Incidentally I am good friends with a PhD in neuropharmacology who does litter picking for a living, them guys with the carts who go around picking up fag buts and wot not he's also an authority on the works of Schopenhaur and Nieztsche.

I met an ex professor of maths once who was working in a factory and in my last job a PhD in physics was working as lowly ATO which is basically a fancy name for someone who hasn't got enough exam passes to be called an MTO or Medical Technical Officer which apparently requires a degree these days and used to require some experience in an electrical job or you being above the level of brain dead or having at least what was called a HNC roughly equivalent to a smattering of A' levels, which is sort of a technical exam meant to be geared towards a certain type of job rather than academia or research. Sadly these days there are too many chiefs and not enough Indians as the saying goes. Or consequently lots of technical jobs and too many people who are overqualified. Meh you get the point.

i_another wrote:In what way do you believe that technology enables lasting happiness?

The power to create a dependable way of attaining happiness. You can control nature and therefore dodge bad things it throws at you, and the pool of available things you can use to attain happiness increases... this is not to say I think you always need a big pool of things, but sometimes you need access to less ordinary things in order to fix a problem you have, with your health or with your comforts etc.

i_another wrote:Based on what I think I’ve gathered from your post, you seem to connect happiness with the conquering or control of nature's vagaries. Do you view happiness as being contingent on the absence of hardship?

Hmm, I'd have to say yes. While you can certainly get joy from doing hard things... hardship in general decreases your ability to satisfy your needs elsewhere, consuming time and resources from yourself that you need to take care of yourself.

I really like this post Voice! Looking toward the future...like back when the first star treks came out...Now, we have most of their gadgets that they had to make life easier. And I think you are right about robots doing our dirty work...but I am not sure we can move in the direction you are talking about until they perfect them and they are affordable for most (like TV and cel phones).

Also, there is the problem with the few who are experts at politics and rising to power. Not all can be trusted to do the right thing. Some of them think it is their legacy to create hardship in an attempt to control out of fear (of resources or losing power or what have you.) They are the ones who have access to the most intelligent humans and can force them or buy them in order to have the upper hand.

It seems that some are experts at creating hardship. I happen to think they get a certain pride knowing that they had that much effect over others. I would bet it would be the same feeling as creating a ultra cool program, or helping someone out of poverty. It is human nature to take pride in what you do well...even if it is destroying the lives of others.

Well the way I see it politics is not really a real job, it is a fight club with rules. And so a person can not become a proper expert politician, instead, they can become experts in fields such as human resource management, communication, concept development, resource efficiency, ethical problem solving (the act of taking competing ethical viewpoints and creating working and good comprise), and so forth.

Many of these jobs are taken on by politicians today, but politicians today are not experts in those fields, and therefore their opinions become randomized and biased towards whatever affects their own person instead of the subject itself. So about politicians I would say that you'd get less politics and more automated functionality... for instance, instead of dominated public debates where you fight to be the biggest rhetorician. You get experts whose job it is to solve all the different problems individually. For instance, when an ethical problem or a problem of taxation is brought into question, in the first instance you get an expert mediator whose job it is to find a good and working comprise between groups of people, in the second instance you'd get an expert analysing the value of tax money that goes to the state and which the state is to spend for the common good, versus the value taken, in other words, you'd get a tax efficiency specialist, to help resolve whether the current situation needs tweaking in either direction to allow for desired benefits.

I myself have some theory about the efficiency of tax and how you would possibly calculate it. People think the world is such a big chaotic thing, but if you just look for it there's order waiting about the corner, that'll give far more useful answers than the equivalent of bashing each other's heads until either give up.

And I think you are right about robots doing our dirty work...but I am not sure we can move in the direction you are talking about until they perfect them and they are affordable for most (like TV and cel phones).

As for this, I agree to some extent. But you must understand there are still measures we can take today to move a few inches closer to this future, although it depends upon your country. In Norway the living standard is so high, and there's so much money flowing about, that in order to keep things in order, we have to fight to get more people into highly valuable expert fields, because else we'd be very vulnerable should anything happen to the economy, and in order to successfully fight poverty, which exists in Norway though in a different manner to the US or the south of Northern Europe, you have to ensure that the value of the person's labour matches their income so that the person's productive capacity is self-sustaining and doesn't require subsidy (which will drain on both the development budget, like installing and buying technology and constructing better buildings, and the operating income for operating the society).

But it's not just about the money, but also what you get out of the money, because the real value of money is dropping all the time because of inflation and for this reason some countries occasionally get economic growth that is not driven by production and innovation output... the amount of goods available stays about the same, is less or just insignificantly more, but the money keeps growing. And that is a cause for concern.

Blaggard wrote:... Sadly these days there are too many chiefs and not enough Indians as the saying goes. Or consequently lots of technical jobs and too many people who are overqualified. Meh you get the point.

Or more a reflection that industry and science is dying over here so there are no jobs, hence the well-qualified are pressuring downwards. Still, no problem as the proles can all make a fortune in the celebrity 'industry'.