[miscPerson]

Why would safely and efficiently performing your job be dehumanizing?

I legitimately don’t see how it’s more dehumanizing than say, speech guidelines at retail or standards for how to use a tool in construction.

I pointed and called in a data center as we went through the checklist — because I wanted to do my job correctly, and used the best available technique to do so. That’s what being a professional others can depend on is: doing the silly technique so your work is correct.

I find embracing that much more liberating than being inefficient just so others might not judge my conduct from a position of ignorance. That strikes me as demeaning.

[baddash]

> Why would safely and efficiently performing your job be dehumanizing?

Robots can safely and efficiently perform their job. And do it way better than humans in some areas. Being a cog in a well-oiled machine that works efficiently sounds almost like a perfect example of dehumanization.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I interpret your general stance as: "Doing your job well has merit and value, so it shouldn't be viewed as dehumanizing." As a counterpoint, I bring up robots again: they do their job well, and that has merit and value. However, they have no humanity whatsoever. So what justifies your stance?

[miscPerson]

Just because a robot can do the same job doesn’t make an activity dehumanizing - you seem to merely be justifying a negative view.

You’re also ignoring that the point of pointing and calling is precisely to keep you from responding robotically if something deviates and to maintain your attention on active control/correction. It’s when you don’t point and call that you respond robotically. Your comment about “cog” gets to what I was calling demeaning: most of the jobs people refer to that way require intelligence and active response that machines can’t really master — they’re being done poorly if you’re just being a “cog in a machine”.

Robots are okay, but they’re not really useful for certain jobs (yet) because they’re either not smart enough, not flexible enough, or too costly to respond intelligently to deviations from the norm. Pointing and calling amplifies that human capacity.

Using motion and language to amplify our natural faculties for best effect at a social purpose sounds pretty human to me.

I’m curious, what activity do you view as not dehumanizing?

[baddash]

>Just because a robot can do the same job doesn’t make an activity dehumanizing - you seem to merely be justifying a negative view.

Well, you asked "why would safely and efficiently performing your job be dehumanizing?" as if it somehow the fact that those two qualities are meritorious precludes that characterization. That's why I brought up robots, because they are a clear counter example to your implicit claim. Also, to be fair, I did ask if I was wrong to assume that was indeed your claim...

>You’re also ignoring that the point of pointing and calling is precisely to keep you from responding robotically...

Actually, here you're conflating robotically with habitually or instinctively or carelessly. Consider that robots can respond to deviations as edge cases, in a manner analogous to conditional statements; such a response would have to be robotic, wouldn't it? Robots can very obviously handle deviations if they're programmed to, so that was a bad example.

> Using motion and language to amplify our natural faculties for best effect at a social purpose sounds pretty human to me.

I agree the creative use of this is human, but what I'm asserting is that this can be done to a dehumanizing end. Humanity created robots.

> I’m curious, what activity do you view as not dehumanizing?

Inherently human activities such as creating knowledge of other people.