On avolition in Sapiens Humanus

[Aravisian]

A large general store chain in the USA, which I will leave unnamed in this post has started a new service.
You can order groceries online, then the groceries will be delivered, unpacked and put away in your cabinets; whether you are home or not.
A net search can probably help you find the details.

You can imagine what flooded through my mind when I heard of this. What a dangerous idea.
I mean, the moment a customer cannot find where they misplaced their camera, they will accuse the Grocery Chain that their delivery person committed theft.
And the chain will likely just reimburse the customer because it is easier than trying to investigate or fight it. They won't want to cover that, though, so they factor this shrink into all products costs, making us all pay for it. Our costs Go Up.
And that delivery person may be fired - over something they did not even do.
Not to mention any other threats to the delivery person.
This goes both ways, as well. The delivery person may stalk homes they deliver to.
I can certainly see cases where such a service could be a boon. Retirement homes for example. But as a service geared toward the average person, this seeks to exploit the concept of Convenience.
Convenience is often just another word for avolition. A disinclination to put forth effort.
I see this trend in just about everything. And while certainly, some of them have improved lives and quality of living, many are superfluous.

It's animal nature. It makes sense, from a survival in a harsh land perspective, to follow programming that seeks to conserve energy whenever possible. In humanity, our brains are so large, that the brain consumes in the range of 20% of our daily calories.
People often comment on conserving mental energy.
Yet, look at us... we live in an age of Modern Convenience and Twinkies. We can stand to lose some weight. If you're going to gnaw on all those cheeseburgers and snackycakes, you can well afford to expend some mental energy.
And put your own groceries away.

Which...
Brings us back to Zorin OS.
The purpose behind Zorin OS is to ease the transition from Windows OS to Linux Distributions.
We live in an age where making things easier is the marketing strategy.
It's like "free". What is the real cost?
I am reminded of the movie Wall-E. The costs are visible, right here on this forum.
When users ask for ease and easier more often than not. They have expectations of what they want to receive, while vocalizing a lack of desire to put any of their own effort into it.
How often is it that a member will quite simply say, "I need help with this but don't give me any terminal commands to use." "Don't ask me to do such and such or other because I do not know how."
They enter into it with a defeatist attitude. This is the cost: What has Microsoft done to our fellow people?
Most, with some encouragement and learning, will quickly overcome this limited liability that was taught to them over many years. This demonstrates that our actual underlying nature, is not so lazy after-all.
But when offered avolition, we are more likely to think, "It's easier this way..." and dutifully accept our stunting.

Sapiens means "Wise". To be sure, working smarter and making things easier is certainly not always a bad thing. It can benefit individuals and humanity. We have made global communication easier. This has many great benefits. But to be sapiens, we must be wise and use that wisdom to differentiate between making something easier and making something damaging.
There is a difference between doing something Right and cutting corners. There is a difference between doing something the easy way and doing something the best way.

[citfta]

I agree with what you are saying. What amazes me is that so many many people think it is great to have a device in their homes and cars and on their phones that listen to everything they say. So all they have to do is say "hey google or Alexis or Siri" and their questions are answered or phone calls made. I keep my microphone on my phone turned off and my "assistant" turned off. I am not paranoid about it but it is no one else's business what I say to someone in my home or car. As you said we need to be wise about our choices for convenience. Just my 2 cents.

[Aravisian]

Part of the trouble is that the information heard by Siri, Google etc is collected and sold for target market advertising.
These are the costs of easy.
Alphabet Inc. bought or owns Nokia, Motorola, Nest, YouTube and Boston Dynamics.

What Companies Does Google Own? [Updated for 2022] - Hatchwise

Information collected by gmail and all of Googles products is used as Marketing and Advertising. They offer "free" products because it's far more lucrative to sell our personal data to less scrupulous and greedy parties than it is to sell something to the discriminating individual buyer.
And Google has spread into so many different companies, it is getting harder and harder to avoid its convenient stare.
Google has sought out and acquired the companies that are exposed to peoples personal information. Companies that can Listen In on conversations.

Another cost becomes clear: By targeting individuals based on their habits, interests and communications, individuals are becoming more and more divided from each other and isolated in small spheres of influence.
While promising to enrich us with easier life, Google, FaceBook et al has in fact made much of life much harder: People no longer are tolerant of opinions and ideas not aligned with their own. We are shielded in growing bubbles of interest that shelter only the view we want to see.
If someone shows no interest in a topic, it is no longer shown to them. Even if they need to see it.
As voters. As citizens. Our media has indeed become biased, not by a biased media, but by a conglomerate capitalizing on people wanting things the easy way.
We Fed This.
And it consumed all that we offered in the praise of convenience.

Knowledge is power. And @citfta , your 2 cents are priceless.
Even though our society acknowledges the power of knowledge frequently, people often will turn to the promise of ease instead of knowledge.

When we think about the purpose that Zorin OS serves, as a distribution, I think we need to ask the hard question.
How easy do we want it?
If I cannot lift a gallon of milk to place it in the fridge, has too much ease weakened me to the point of disability?

I did not make this thread or posts to rant. I include no TL;DR.
This is here to remind us all to encourage learning and growth.
Independence.
To want to be empowered, not pampered.
That when a user joins and says, "Can I do this in an easy way?"
That we remember to say, "Well... you can do this..."
Free and easy has costs. Knowledge and effort has rewards.

[Hackgets]

My concern right now is the bloat of web standards and web browsers: every time the W3C adds a new feature to a web standard, the resources needed to develop a web browser increase, and I believe this is allowing Chrome to monopolize the market.

You can create a new browser by forking Chromium. However, if more Chromium-based browser developers are involved, this will encourage the development of Chromium, and the results will be used for Chrome.

While the multifunctionality of web browsers may improve user convenience, it would harm the user's interests if it prevents market competition.

[Frog]

I think the grocery idea came from the idea to help handicap and seniors ..... but of coarse being in today's society you may not discriminate against anyone for any reason ...... with some exceptions (which we shall not get into at this time) ..... so there for anyone can avail of these services ..... I personally think the delivery idea is a good thing but putting away is kind of iffy ......

While some may need that feature there are those couch-potatoes who will be more than happy to lay on their couch and have someone put their stuff away ..... and while they are at it why not cook the food and feed it to them also .....

I personally don't like people in my house ...... other than the cable tech of which I have no control of as I can't fix my cable myself but I do everything possible to try before I call for help .....

We live in a society where we are being relieved of more and more opportunities to do things ourselves and have to rely on other people to do them for us ..... things are just to darn complicated and sophisticated that the average Joe is left in the dust .....

I have seen a lot of change in my 77 years on this earth and not all have been helpful or good for mankind but then some would say I'm just an ol' stick-in-the-mud .... not keeping up with the times ..... but I remember how things used to be before the on-slot of all these better ideas we simply have to have .....

So do I live in a cave .... drink water from a creek ..... cook over an open wood fire ..... walk everywhere ...... raise all my own food etc. .... nope ..... but at least the things I have I chose myself I was not so called forced by society .... peer pressure or other force to make these changes ..... but there are lots of things I refuse to have .... use or take part in .... but like I said the choice was and is mine ..... Zorin being one of them by escaping from the dominating clutches of M$ .....

[strixpanahu]

I like your analogy to Wall-E; as simple as it seems, it really does align as a 1:1 comparison. To me, the end-user expectation of processes being obfuscated is both intentional and sought after. In the PC realm, its prevalent with the ethos of the Apple community and the way it perceives the rest of the computing world.

However, it's certainly a trend in larger society, with vehicles being another example. Where manufacturers are making general maintenance increasingly difficult and selling us solutions to problems they created in the first place. More often then not, in hopes of planning obsolescence.

The whole discussions brings to mind Agent Smith's monologue, "The Matrix was redesigned to the peak of your civilization. And, I say your civilization because as soon as we started thinking for you, it really became our civilization."

My only solution at the moment is to support & participate in alt-tech, because it's most compatible and palatable to the general public. I feel that people consciously or subconsciously understand there's a problem. But can't bring themselves to be the change themselves.