Always wanting to run... away somewhere

[Theorist]

I do try to go on runs everyday, and it is on a nice back path, only problem is it is always the same back. (I do run because I enjoy, but I also do try to run competitively).

But, yeah in my comparative studies class we were discussing the problem with specialization in society.

Before it, people could kind of just do the things the felt like doing, so far as they had enough food, shelter, and water. (Which really didn't take that long, estimates are about 3-5ish hours of work per day in hunter-gatherer societies).

But now, I'm gonna be a mechanical engineer. I'm specializing in it, and that's gonna be my role for a long time to come. It's not that I don't like mechanical engineering, it's just that more than anything I want to go walking through the woods. And that is all really.

So specialization is a bit of a problem in some respects I guess.

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Theorist

But now, I'm gonna be a mechanical engineer. I'm specializing in it, and that's gonna be my role for a long time to come. It's not that I don't like mechanical engineering, it's just that more than anything I want to go walking through the woods. And that is all really.

So specialization is a bit of a problem in some respects I guess.

I don't see why. Specialisation means doing things better and more efficiently. It means not wasting time on things you hate because someone does those for you in return for currency used to facilitate exchange of goods and services

Some might be nice, yes, but others aren't. With no specialisation, you're limited to a radius of maybe 20 miles unless you want to make a multi-day trip, which would of course then mean creating shelter, gathering supplies, etc. While everyone could probably make attempts at gaining food by whatever method is convenient to them, efficiency overall would be down. and the population in its current state could not be supported. It's only because people are good at what they do and what that thing is varies by person that anyone is able to do anything more than basic subsistence.

I do understand what you mean about wanting to know a bit more about everything, but there's a huge leap of practicality between knowing a little and doing it. I always try to get at least a minor depth of knowledge about a very wide range of things, but that's just interest and I would hate to have to do the vast majority of them - I just find it important to understand how others do.

Before it, people could kind of just do the things the felt like doing, so far as they had enough food, shelter, and water. (Which really didn't take that long, estimates are about 3-5ish hours of work per day in hunter-gatherer societies).

It's true, but then there's the question of what else you could do once that was over. Without any specialisation, there's no propagation of innovation and efficiency, which results in stagnation. If techniques must be rediscovered independently, there's no opportunity to build on previous iterations, which is why humanity was static for many thousands of years before the first civilisations. As an example, remember than in the winter, you'd effectively be using all of the day, and there would be no lighting other than a fire to extend the useful range of activity. If you based such a day on no, then yes, it would be significantly more convenient, as in the near-future, 3D printers have the potential to solve a lot of the aforementioned problems of rediscovery, but there still has to be a drive to give back, to merge improvements upstream for others, to take the example of open source. When other people are competitors for the same resources, the same stakes in survival, that suddenly becomes a lot less likely to happen.

Not saying it's impossible as a concept, more that saying "don't specialise" is counterproductive compared to "centralise and automate" to build a base from which a model can be developed in open-source style where accessibility to the same improvements is open to all without the subsistence/competition element.