[joe_the_user]

I begrudgingly agree, but with the caveat that tending to a vegetable garden in your backyard is also a spiritual pursuit. Mathematics isn’t some special discipline that elevates you beyond other people, as much as it is useful and interesting.

The thing is, if someone had the option to press a button and cause their garden to be weeded and growing perfectly, if most gardeners were using that button instead of growing normally, maybe some people would keep gardening for the spiritual part but they'd certainly feel like the rug had been pulled out from under them.

Edit: As another example, Robert Pirsig in his famous book described motorcycle maintinence as a spiritual enterprise. However, the quality that gave it this was the patience required-for and the uncertainty involved-in the enterprise. And again, if all you have to do is press a button, the spiritual part kind of goes away.

[singpolyma3]

Except agricultural automation does exist. And people do choose to do it by hand because... It's a hobby and efficiency isn't the point

[skeledrew]

> feel like the rug had been pulled out from under them.

Which makes absolutely 0 sense, regardless of where attempt is made to apply the argument. If one really prefers to do X manually, they always can. Even if everyone else around them has fully automated X away.