[bumby]

>What do you mean?

I mean there are people who do not think that increases in technology add any additional value. It’s due to the facts that we are all free to choose our own value functions and what adds value to one person will not necessarily add value to another. Having one camera on my phone adds value to me, having 3 more does not add any utility to me personally. Likewise, video games add value for some people more than others. Your stance seems to have a strange egocentric perspective that there is one objective measure of value. My disagreement is that I think there are as many unique value functions as there are humans. No offense intended, but the other perspective comes across as the socially awkward takes that are all too prevalent on HN.

>Please explain why.

For the same reason it was absurd that the head of the patent office claimed 150 years ago that anything of value had already been invented. We can’t foresee what other people will value. More importantly, art can be an end to itself. The idea that everything has to be a means to some end can devolve into treating all human endeavors as inputs into some global maximization functions, reducing humans to cogs in a machine. That feels a bit philosophically bankrupt (and sad) to me.

[Vt71fcAqt7]

Your implicit claim that consumption is jusified by the fact that it is consumed is wrong. No good or service can bring happiness. The only consumption that is justified is that which is nessesary to live or improve general well being such as food, shelter and medicine. Other goods, such as art, are a distraction from life.

>More importantly, art can be an end to itself.

Is life itself not the greatest art? One who lives for art is already dead.

>The idea that everything has to be a means to some end can devolve into treating all human endeavors as inputs into some global maximization functions

Even if all basic needs were fulfiled, art still would not have true value.

>reducing humans to cogs in a machine

Are artists and thier consumers not cogs in a machinine maximizing their pleasure? Not that this framing means anything on it's own.

>That feels a bit philosophically bankrupt

Many philosphies have taken the stance given above, begining in ~500 BC in Buddhism, and reappearing independently multiple times such as in Mohism in 400 BC and still existing in modern philosophies such as some forms of utilitarianism and nihlism. No serious philosphers, meanwhile, beleive that the meaning of life is to look at art.

[TheCleric]

> No good or service can bring happiness.

Going back to art, this is probably false. Art (including music) brings happiness to at least some creators and some consumers. I personally receive great happiness from listening to music.

[Vt71fcAqt7]

>I personally receive great happiness from listening to music.

This is a pretty naive understanding of hapiness. It is widley held by philosophers, religions, and even even many (most) uneducated people that happines is happiness in one's state of being, ie. something like contentment. One who is "happy when he listens to music" is generaly said not to be happy. Not even not "truly" happy but just not happy at all. This can be demomstated from an evoltionary, teleological psychological, or even theological perspective.

[TheCleric]

I can assure you that at least in the theological circles I have traveled in you have it exactly backwards. In those traditions happiness is momentary and fleeting, but a contentedness with a state of being regardless of circumstances would be described as joy.

[bumby]

I get what you're saying here but it's an entirely different argument than saying subjective experience has no value. It comes across as so unwilling to acknowledge the inward experience of others as to appear almost insufferably unempathetic.

[TheCleric]

Oh I know this is just a side trail on a bigger discussion. You're completely correct though, ability to understand that other people's experiences are valid is the very definition of empathy.