Humans Need Not Apply

[El_Machinae]

Robots could produce these public goods more cheaply. It'd be in the interests of anyone getting taxed not to have to support this "workfare" which is a bunch of inefficient government spending. Welfare could work just fine. It's a more efficient solution.

I don't see why it's necessary to try and require people to work. There are already incentives to work, without government forcing anything.
1. The market rewards those who create useful things with economic benefits.
2. Those with economic advantages enjoy social advantages.
3. Working in something you are interested in is fun.

Work is overvalued, imo. Nobody on their deathbed says "I wish I spent more time at the office!"

It's because welfare is utterly hated by too many people. The problem with Automation-Induced Unemployment is that it legitimately puts skilled people out of work and keeps them out of work. But, welfare is still completely hated. You'll find that workfare isn't, though. Look at the political support national defense gets, you can have a serious glut, spending too much, and any individual soldier is still respected. Not so for welfare.

People having jobs is really much better for morale. People having jobs that produces stuff increases the rate of total wealth growth as well, and it maintains a tier of Creative Destruction. Even with AIU and welfare, the market will still under-invest in public goods.

I forward that it's massively more political palatable

 

[Hygro]

Humans want meaningful connection with other humans so if we continue having a society in which your meaningful connection is tied to either your labor or your capital, then we better figure out a way that doesn't skew us from connection.

"In America, 'no money no honey' " my local 7-11 night shift guy has said to me so many times, usually when a girl is buying something for me at 1am. He's from Greece and has genuinely argued that I'm going to hell because I'm not Muslim.

So as long as that's sort of true, as long as you gotta hustle for your mack, and be a mack to smang, a sudden shift towards automation is going to lead to a lot of unemployed folks either having to become really hard AF mfers or really soft easy going folks plugged into the digital stimulation tube.

The things that'll hold back the revolution are porn, video games, raves, and drugs. But the small steady rise of school shootings will tells us it's not working and people are miserable.

 

[Farm Boy]

People need something meaningful to do with their time. When they have nothing useful to build it seems like they take to pulling things down, perhaps to make room to build. Or, like you said Hygro, they just are missing something core.

 

[Smote]

It's because welfare is utterly hated by too many people. The problem with Automation-Induced Unemployment is that it legitimately puts skilled people out of work and keeps them out of work. But, welfare is still completely hated. You'll find that workfare isn't, though. Look at the political support national defense gets, you can have a serious glut, spending too much, and any individual soldier is still respected. Not so for welfare.

People having jobs is really much better for morale. People having jobs that produces stuff increases the rate of total wealth growth as well, and it maintains a tier of Creative Destruction. Even with AIU and welfare, the market will still under-invest in public goods.

I forward that it's massively more political palatable

Sad but true, given current values and rhetoric (especially from Republicans). I forward that it makes no sense from a point of view of maximizing well-being for each individual. (For reasons given by Hygro) Work can be meaningful, but it certainly isn't the sole source of meaning, or even a necessary source of meaning, and trying to force that is a mistake.

It only makes sense as a political compromise between what seems to be the most sensible course of action, and what is politically feasible.

But perhaps welfare can be re-branded into something thats not hated, like "basic income"? Sell that each person has a "natural right" to one's own time.

 

[Sanguivorant]

Humans want meaningful connection with other humans so if we continue having a society in which your meaningful connection is tied to either your labor or your capital, then we better figure out a way that doesn't skew us from connection.

It's funny you mention this, because even now, the connection between other human beings is done through digital means. Just look at this forum.

I take the bus very often, so I am outside plenty of times throughout the day.

If you take any bus, you will notice that perhaps 90% of people are either texting on their phones or they have headphones on. Somehow, people seem perfectly fine with this form of connection where you do not even see the person you are speaking with.

Even in homes it is the same thing. I visited the home of a childhood friend to hang out with him and his family. If you can guess it, we were all sitting together, and everyone was on a phone, even the younger ones and the parent. The room was awkwardly silent more often than it should be.

I talk to a lot of elderly, and they tell me they get frustrated when they get a chance to spend time with their grandchildren, and all they do is look on their screen and "Blind themselves from the world around them."

The amount of digital social interaction is without doubt increasing, while real life social interaction is less done by people.

 

[Kozmos]

I don't see increased digital interaction as a bad thing, it means I spend more of my time socializing with people I like instead of wading through seas of human garbage to find a few people that fit my personal parameters.

 

[madviking]

nothing will ever beat face-to-face physical interaction. i hate talking to people online because the physical aspect is so important in communication.

 

[Hygro]

But perhaps welfare can be re-branded into something thats not hated, like "basic income"? Sell that each person has a "natural right" to one's own time.

Niiiiiiice.

It's funny you mention this, because even now, the connection between other human beings is done through digital means. Just look at this forum.

I can't help but feel it's moving us away from connection and toward validation. Digital mediums can be used to make real life relationships, even if they remain digital. But often it allows us to get that bzz bzz of someone rewarding you with attention and decouples what is better the holistic, all senses in-person interaction.

I don't see increased digital interaction as a bad thing, it means I spend more of my time socializing with people I like instead of wading through seas of human garbage to find a few people that fit my personal parameters.

Most humans aren't garbage... this post reinforces my feelings I wrote to Sanguivorant.

 

[Sanguivorant]

You're right, it's a great thing. It makes it much easier for us to find the people who share like minds. I read this weird article somewhere that the internet is allowing societies to balkanize. I don't have much to say about that.

 

[Kozmos]

Most humans aren't garbage... this post reinforces my feelings I wrote to Sanguivorant.

Like everything else in life, the more you get acquainted with something the more you find the majority of it to be abhorrent. Your tastes in stuff gets more refined and you realize ninety percent of everything is crap. Including people. Now, we can say you don't pick your family, your genetics, your environment or your circumstances so I don't really blame anyone for being the way they are. Hell you don't even pick who you fall in love with. What you can choose is who are your friends or if not that, who you actually consider a friend. Life shouldn't be wasted on bad people. And I don't mean valuing people on their net worth or success in life. Plenty of garbage there too.

 

[Hygro]

A lot of what people think is depth of taste or insight is just depression. Jadedness is a coping mechanism.

Like everything else in life, the more you get acquainted with something the more you find the majority of it to be abhorrent. Your tastes in stuff gets more refined and you realize ninety percent of everything is crap. Including people. Now, we can say you don't pick your family, your genetics, your environment or your circumstances so I don't really blame anyone for being the way they are. Hell you don't even pick who you fall in love with. What you can choose is who are your friends or if not that, who you actually consider a friend. Life shouldn't be wasted on bad people. And I don't mean valuing people on their net worth or success in life. Plenty of garbage there too.

You are in control of much of your tastes and interests.
I'm not sure why you collapse your personal tastes into what is good/bad/abhorrent. That's the opposite of refinement, no?

Pop music is something easy to make your claims about, but many musicians of various sorts—who know music much deeper than the jaded critics who claim to know better than the masses—find much brilliance hidden inside pop music while still enjoying the pop side of it. It's really up to you.

 

[Kozmos]

That doesn't even make sense. Depression basically makes you not care. Jadedness is more of a resigned, everything is crap, might as well not bother engaging feeling. I'm more of the notion that there is great stuff in LifeTM, the Grand Game, you just have to navigate through the generic NPCs and mindless fetch quests to find the well made things.

You are in control of much of your tastes and interests.
I'm not sure why you collapse your personal tastes into what is good/bad/abhorrent. That's the opposite of refinement, no?

Pop music is something easy to make your claims about, but many musicians of various sorts—who know music much deeper than the jaded critics who claim to know better than the masses—find much brilliance hidden inside pop music while still enjoying the pop side of it. It's really up to you.

Hardly so, your tastes and interests usually depend on what you are exposed to early on. That depends more on your environment, family and financial circumstances. I've had better access to stuff I've might ended up in biochem instead of CompSci and playing the piano instead of shooting rifles. Though I would probably still love rifles.

Pop music exploits the brains fondness of correctly guessing what comes next. I personally hate guessing and being right because everything becomes predictable and that's recipe for boredom to me. Same with movies, literature and even people.

 

[Commodore]

People need something meaningful to do with their time. When they have nothing useful to build it seems like they take to pulling things down, perhaps to make room to build. Or, like you said Hygro, they just are missing something core.

I think people only need something meaningful to do with their time because we are conditioned to think we need something meaningful to do with our time. Stop beating it into people's heads that they have to do something productive and that mindset will go away.

Take domesticated dogs for example. They aren't forced to produce anything or even put forth any effort for their survival since their human caretakers take care of everything they need. Do you see dogs trying to tear down their surroundings because they have nothing meaningful to do? No because they have not been conditioned to think they need to do something productive or meaningful.

I think a fully automated society can create a similar relationship between humans and machines. One in which they take care of us and keep us happy and entertained and we will just laze about all day doing whatever we please, much like the family dog.

 

[JollyRoger]

Pop music exploits the brains fondness of correctly guessing what comes next.

Are you posting pop music?

 

[Zack]

nothing will ever beat face-to-face physical interaction. i hate talking to people online because the physical aspect is so important in communication.

I can think of 10,703 reasons you're lying.

 

[madviking]

I can think of 10,703 reasons you're lying.

oh yea and check out my sig

 

[aelf]

To come out of self-imposed lurkerhood for a brief while: isn't this what some bearded dude from the 19th century wrote a lengthy tome about (rather ahead of his time)? Resident reds, where are you when you're needed?

It's partly because this hasn't really worked so far that many Reds prefer direct action rather than waiting for some technological revolution. If you look around, there are articles recently about why and how Keynes got it wrong when he predicted that people in our time would only work a few hours a day and only if they really wanted to. These articles give you an interesting economic take on why we don't work much less than we used to.

Then there's the political/ideological aspect, which is where the Frankfurt School comes in. Why did the drive for revolution falter and fail in modern capitalist societies? This is the challenge that proponents of direct action face. This is also why there's skepticism that more machines doing our work won't make work any less necessary for our survival - people just won't let that happen, for ideological reasons (but certainly materially-driven for the involved members of the ruling class). These ideological reasons are often dressed up in the language of necessity or biology and are taken as immutable. And, as what any good Marxist will say, they might as well be if we think they are!

I don't know whether to be optimistic. I think there's hope. Like others said, the long transition period might be catastrophic, but perhaps inadvertent economic catastrophe will be what drives the revolution - a much delayed crisis of capitalism that Marx predicted. That is, unless we have another world war that destroys enough to keep the capitalist growth engine going, which is another possibility.

i said it in the other thread, and i'll say it again: any 'art' created by a machine cannot be meaningfully called art.

You should have a conversation with Oda Nobunaga (the CFC poster, not the Japanese warlord). There will be fireworks.

 

[Farm Boy]

I think people only need something meaningful to do with their time because we are conditioned to think we need something meaningful to do with our time. Stop beating it into people's heads that they have to do something productive and that mindset will go away.

Take domesticated dogs for example. They aren't forced to produce anything or even put forth any effort for their survival since their human caretakers take care of everything they need. Do you see dogs trying to tear down their surroundings because they have nothing meaningful to do? No because they have not been conditioned to think they need to do something productive or meaningful.

I think a fully automated society can create a similar relationship between humans and machines. One in which they take care of us and keep us happy and entertained and we will just laze about all day doing whatever we please, much like the family dog.

Well, if you can keep them amused constantly they might do ok. But I don't think it's conditioning. It's the difference between boredom and satisfaction and goals.

 

[El_Machinae]

It only makes sense as a political compromise between what seems to be the most sensible course of action, and what is politically feasible.

Yes. One major issue for me is that I think that this is a real problem, and it's really rearing its head soon. We're going to need politically viable solutions, because AIU can cause some real human suffering where none need exist.

Workfare will also caused increased wealth vs. a basic income. So, in (say) 2100, we'll be wealthier if we followed aggressive workfare projects. The will also be larger market forces at play, since companies will form in order to pursue workfare contracts and produce innovations along those lines, as well as the 'standard' market incentives to chase consumer dollars. The more bread and the more knives are made, the more likely it is that sliced bread will be invented.

 

[classical_hero]

Is the analogy with horses a good one?

No, because horses became not as useful in relations to humans, since they were replaced generally by cars, but not all uses have disappeared for them. The same will go for machines in that how useful they to humans and not the other way around.