Laziness has been the driver of mankind. But there's a problem

Throughout human history, laziness has been a driving force. Our desire to do less work and achieve ultimate idleness has motivated us to build the world we live in today.

If the goal is to do less work, isn't laziness good?

Bill Gates once said, "I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." the truth is - every human is lazy in their own way.

The past

As we transitioned from hunter-gatherers to settled societies, we discovered the benefits of staying in one place and cultivating crops for sustenance. In order to make farming more efficient, we also invented tools. Running after animals wasn't cool and fun anymore. Because it wasn't easy.

The wheel, it was a genius invention. Made everything easier - from transportation to the movement of heavy objects. It allowed us to be lazy in our physical exertion and conserve energy. The invention of the wheel revolutionized the way we live and work. Laziness, in this sense, drove us to create efficient solutions that made our lives easier.

Every invention ever was made to make our life easier, in the process making us lazier.

Holistic laziness

Now with AI and robotics, creating a perfect human isn’t that far-fetched. Once we build that, the world will work on its own. There won’t be a concept of money, everyone can just do whatever they want. Most will sit at home watching movies and playing games. The world will be lazier. Got a problem? Ask your literal second brain to work on it and solve it.

There will be a few unsolved challenges and very few exceptional people working on solving those. But John Doe will have no reason to get up from his couch or remove his greasy hands from the Doritos packet.

We have been doing this to ourselves

The ironic part is that we have worked so hard to build whatever we have so far. And we’re definitely working super hard to make the future of AI. I think that's cool. The fact that we just ... do stuff?

We have not only been becoming physically lazy, but also, mentally lazy. But here's the catch - In order to be more mentally lazy, we solve more and more complex problems. Right now, we do that with our own intelligence and some computing. Maybe the entire point of trying to make an AGI is so that we can completely move these mentally challenging things (the only thing that had still been pushing us) to computers and neural networks.

This gets us back to Is dependence on technology a bad thing? where the basic conclusion was "Yes, but No.

The point is, don't be John Doe. But let's be lazy in our own ways so we can solve more problems and make our lives more easier. Not so that we can be done with everything and just do nothing. This is also probably why we keep hearing things like "you should have a purpose" and "set some life goals" - because without them, everyone will inevitably become a John Doe, sitting in dark rooms with an Apple AR headset on trying to do business in Minecraft.

Stay curious

Your friends at Smort.in