I think my younger self’s quip was indirectly a reference to Wall’s list of virtues. That said, it’s ambiguous (to me) whether working to avoid work satisfies the first cited definition. It’s simultaneously lazy and non-lazy.

Of course that dichotomy is applied frequently in programming. It could easily be described as “redefining the problem”.

But in my early programming experience it was trading time dedicated to education and hacking in exchange for avoiding manual effort. I learned to programmatically access MP3 metadata so I could update my blog when I posted new songs I recorded, rather than typing out the information directly. That’s literally why I became a programmer, because I got tired of typing some stuff twice (as I had already typed it in iTunes when converting to MP3).

That certainly feels more like what I colloquially understand laziness to mean, than the cleverer reinterpretation used by Wall to describe what I understand as work substitution in programming as a non-novice.

It takes willpower to do something different and raise above the “operational”/“manual typing” level; I can’t see how that’s laziness. Long-term thinking isn’t associated with “laziness” either afaik.

Fixing problems through programming is all about thinking, not typing. If you try to fix something merely by typing, you’re avoiding the main work we’re supposed to do. Otherwise, why even have computers?

This is 99% my point, the only difference I was trying to introduce was that in my initial foray into programming I wasn’t actually a programmer. I didn’t have those insights. I was actually just learning how to make machines let me type less. I had no idea what that impulse would open up for me.

> Laziness is the quality of not being willing to work or use any effort

That’s a description but for all the explanatory power it has, it may as well say “laziness is when you don’t have God with you”.

“I’m not going to pay you tomorrow”

“Then I’m unwillingly to work”

“Being unwilling to work is laziness”.

Or

“Why can’t you get moving on that project?”

“I don’t know”

“Then you must be Godless. Next!”

Calling someone lazy is a lazy dismissive non-explanation.

Might we call laziness the quality of not being willing to work without external motivation? E.g. if you're running, you slow down, your coach yells at you, and you speed up again, vs if you sprain your ankle and are unable to continue no matter how much pressure is applied.

In your case, it has a different meaning than Godlessness from the point of view of a boss, since a lazy person is one who'll only complete a task if you motivate them extrinsically.

I think it's unnecessarily insulting, though being an insult might be part of the motivational power.

Often the one being called lazy is lower status and less powerful who has no intrinsic interest in the work, and the one calling someone lazy is the higher power authority figure who wants the work done.

Runner vs Coach - in school if you're being forced to run and hate it, the coach shouting at you and the threat of punishment keeps you going (is that the same as it removing your laziness? Is hating running really being lazy?). But in the case of an enthusiast competitively running, they might benefit from the coach holding them to a higher standard, but are they really someone who isn't willing to run without external motivation?

You might imagine a couch potato on welfare as a lazy person. Even then they will likely get up to get their welfare money, get food, use the toilet, go to sleep. When they have reasons they care about to do things, they do. If they literally don't get up to use the toilet or eat, we generally call them depressed or mentally ill rather than lazy. So why does the ordinary 'lazy' person watch TV instead of doing something else? Does calling them 'lazy' add any value as a label, or does it obscure whatever is really going on? Is it a Pavlov-dog conditioned situation, where they were disapproved of as a child whenever they did anything, a kind of learned helplessness, a once bitten twice shy situation? Is it that they lack imagination of what other things could be interesting or enjoyable? Is it that they never did anything long enough to get success at it so they have no internal model of that being possible and what it feels like? Is it that they have physical problems or pains, or mental shame and self-hate that make doing things more unpleasant than is visible from the outside?

Imagine you have a horse you don't care about, and it stops walking. For practical purposes it doesn't really matter why your horse won't walk anymore. You want to know one thing: what to do to get it moving again. If lazy means "now is a good time to dig in the spurs", then it's meaningful.

This is not a good way to treat people or horses, and not a nice thing, but it has meaning. Laziness means the spurs will still work. I don't use laziness as a concept because I don't like the mindset that comes with it.

Imagine you had a person with a broken ankle who wanted to stop, and you whipped them so they'd keep moving because you don't care. Does the master's lack of interest prove laziness is real?

It's still a real and meaningful term, even if you don't like what the meaning is and disagree with using it.

You could also offer two zero-pay activities (eg. cooking vs programming) to the same person. The willingness to do one vs the other will be different, yet they could both be considered work. A lot of people will say "you couldn't pay me to do X" while they frequently do Y for free.

This implies that your definition of laziness or Godlessness doesn't describe a consistent personality trait. The exact same personality seems to be more affected by the nature of the "work" than the presence of external motivation.

Everyone is disinclined to work. That's what makes it work, and why you have to pay people to do it. The definition is a tautology.

Some are more disinclined to work though. It is why ADHD exists. Stimulants helps you become more inclined to work, so laziness is at least partially dependent on chemicals.

I mean, if taking a pill can make someone less lazy then laziness must be a thing, right?

I hope you’re not speaking to my up-thread mention of ADHD. A pill has not made me less, or more, lazy. Or +- prone to procrastinating. To the extent it’s helped with executive function it’s just made me less at odds with the world’s assumptions about how I exist.

In a similar way that "broken" is a thing. If you have a device which doesn't work, you can call it "broken" but that doesn't help you do anything about it. It's useful if you want to filter out broken things from functional things, but if you want your device to work again you need more than that.

If you want to avoid lazy employees, and hire motivated self-starters, then "lazy" might work as a description. If a good employee is suddenly having problems and you would prefer to keep them, all "lazy" does is put a non-explanation insult on them, it doesn't tell you anything. "They lost a family member and haven't been sleeping properly and are exhausted" tells you something. "They just saw another team's project get cancelled on a whim" tells you something else. "They feel micromanaged and are frustrated" tells you something else.

That’s really not true. Some people genuinely love their jobs and continue to work well into old age even if the remuneration is basically irrelevant. It’s perfectly possible to love your job to the point where the salary is as much to just pay the bills, and I’ve been fortunate to be in that position several times in my career.