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Nonsensical. Are you proud of breathing? No, because everyone can do it. Are you proud of knowing how to swim? No, because it's extremely common to be able to swim. Do you feel more pride over gaining a PhD, or gaining a bronze swimming certificate? Why?
I'll tell you why: The value of something is directly proportionate to how rare it is and how much effort it takes to produce. This is as true for achievements as it is for physical goods.
The near future is going to be strange, computers and robotics will be superior to humans in every endeavor. Will you still take pride in beating other humans? People that play chess do, even though a computer can win easily at this point. Will you be proud of a PhD when an AI has made your PhD worthless as a possible contributor? How about when a human can be augmented to do anything at the best "human augment" level?
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This has nothing to do with how many other people can do it. It's reasonable for, for instance, someone with some physical disability to be as proud at completing a comparatively short run as someone else is at finishing an ultra-marathon, if equal effort was demanded of them. If swimming suddenly and totally fell out of fashion as a thing to learn recreationally, such that fewer people could swim at all than had a PhD, that would not then imply that if I went off and learnt to swim to a bronze certificate standard it would be an achievement to be proud of.
Why wouldn't it? If the cachet of a PhD is that it is something relatively few people can do, then being able to swim to certificate standard when that is rarer than having a PhD is something relatively few people can do, and so is something to be proud of.
If everyone gets a PhD with their box of cornflakes, is that an achievement to be proud of?
The cachet of a PhD might be that, but that doesn't mean that's why one ought to be proud of it. It's only correlated. You should be proud of it because it's hard, and not many people can do it because it is hard. But you shouldn't be proud of it because not many people do it, that's getting the chain of causation the wrong way round. Hence;
No, but not because everyone has one, but because you didn't have to do anything to get it. Which again are correlated - everyone has one because it comes with their cornflakes - but not the same thing.
Here's a perhaps clearer example. If I decided to learn to a very basic level some conversational phrases in an ultra-obscure language for a couple of hours, that would already get me to a level of knowledge rarer in the the general population than having a PhD. But that obviously doesn't mean that I should be prouder of the former than the latter, if for instance I had both.
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This is the wrong comparison. You can feel pride in getting a doctorate degree, but does that mean nobody should be able to get a master's or bachelor's degree?
Saying “there should only be hard mode” is akin to saying “nobody should be allowed to get a bachelor's degree, so I can take pride in my doctorate degree” which is obviously (hopefully) nonsense. The fact that people can get bachelor's degrees doesn't invalidate your doctorate degree at all. Everyone understands that getting a doctorate degree is a bigger accomplishment than getting a master's or bachelor's degree. Why deny others the opportunity to get a lesser degree?
No, it's saying "we should not lower the difficulty of getting a doctorate to the level of graduating high school so that everyone can feel the accomplishment of getting a doctorate"
I'm not. They can go play other, easier, lesser games just fine.
No one is getting "the doctorate" (the hard mode completion) by "graduating high school" (completing easy mode). Besides, of course, blatant game state editing (cheats/hacks/mods).
It might as well be a whole other game.
There are no devalue fields being emanated by easy mode players that can somehow affect your experience of beating hard mode against your will.
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In fact, I am. Not being great at it makes me even prouder, because I can still do it despite being not that great. I never had any ambitions of being a Channel swimmer or Olympic medalist, but stick me in a swimming pool or the ocean, and I won't drown. Go me! Not everybody can swim even that much.
The fact that people like Michael Phelps exist and make me look like a rock doesn't matter one bit to me, and if Michael Phelps derived his sense of self-worth from "I'm way better than FarNear", I'd actually be kinda sorry for him. I'm so far below his level, him complaining that I was allowed in the same pool as he swims in would be less "I am a champion" and more "I am a dickwad up my own arse about how Great I am".
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No, it's because it isn't challenging for me. Whether other people can do it doesn't factor in.
I am in fact mildly proud of knowing how to swim, because it was challenging for me to learn. Less proud because I haven't swam in years and so I've lost the skill somewhat, but I still have reason to be proud of the effort I made.
It's not at all true for achievements.
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