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How is a "work-free world" even possible? There are always problems to solve, who will solve them? Finding and applying solutions is work and one or more peop

by jrapdx3 10y ago

How is a "work-free world" even possible? There are always problems to solve, who will solve them? Finding and applying solutions is work and one or more people must do it. Getting paid is orthogonal to the effort. Even if performed voluntarily there is still work that needs to be accomplished. Even having fun is a hell of a lot of work in all proportion. It's no mystery, work is the implication of existence.

ThomPete 10y ago
The idea is that many of those problems can be solved via technology removing the need for most of the people needing to do work in this world.
- jrapdx3 10y ago
  Yes, that's an understandable idea, but constructing and maintaining the technological means to the end requires at least as much work as ever, though it is work of different kinds. Besides technological solutions create new, unanticipated problems that need to be solved. And this endless cycle is inherent in human existence. We regard present technology as far advanced vs. what there was 2000 years ago, yet we have at least as many problems to preoccupy us as there ever were. Everything changes, technologies in particular, except for one thing, and that's human nature. We can't escape the essence of our being.
  - sp332 10y ago
    requires at least as much work as ever It really doesn't. Machines have been putting people out of work for ages. We could survive it for a while by growing the economy pretty fast, but any time it slows down, things get bad. Look at truck driving alone - it's the most common job in most states, and when that gets even partially automated, it's not going to create that many new problems to be "solved".
    - randyrand 10y ago
      Yet employment has not changed over the ages.
      - sp332 10y ago
        Labor participation has changed radically. http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_LNS11300000_1948_2016_all_period_M05_data.gif http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_... from http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
      - lawpoop 10y ago
        Oh it has radically. The amount of work done, and the ages of those working, has change significantly since we moved from a pre-industrial agraian society to an informational one. Why, these days, it's not uncommon for someone not to be employed for the first /twenty years/ of their life!
      - ThomPete 10y ago
        It actually have plus income have also changed with few jobs paying insane salaries and the rest fighting for the scrapes. Plus cost of living is going up adding to the issues.
    - jwatte 10y ago
      Machines can, ultimately, make for a "two hour work week" (or more like "two year career") But with our current system, someone owns the machines, and the sources of minerals to make then, and make a profit. In the end, this will lead to the ultimate in income inequality. We have to start thinking about the post-work world, at least for non-knowledge workers, and what we want that world to actually look like. Basic income might be a reasonable component of that.
    - jrapdx3 10y ago
      Interesting. As a creator, user and perpetual student of technologies, I've hardly suggested we not have them, yet whenever anyone brings up limitations of technologies, inevitably negative reactions follow, as though it's not OK to reconsider unquestioned faith in the infinite benefits of tech development. Like most here, I have great enthusiasm for new technologies, but we aren't served by uncritical belief while ignoring potential or actual limits and unanticipated effects. IOW we shouldn't be consumed by our biases. Health care is an example of work hugely impacted by technological innovation. Look at imaging, automation of clinical testing, robotics, and pharmaceutical development to name a few. Believe me, these tools are quite astonishing achievements and enormously useful. Yet with all these marvelous advances, the number and proportion of people needing care hasn't decreased, if anything, there are more. One factor is the improvements granted by technologies enable finding more cases, and finer gradations of illness. More patients and findings means there's more work to be done. It follows that greater number and type of treatment options also requires more work to parse and apply treatments. Also worth considering is that technologies might actually produce illness, one familiar example is RSI, "carpal tunnel" problems are common in programmers. Consider the evidence that developed nations have much higher incidence of autoimmune and other conditions vs. developing nations, technological differences being one factor. Currently research is looking at adverse effects of circadian out-of-phase exposure to blue light via LED illumination of devices as a source of metabolic disturbance, etc. Again, the issue isn't whether we'll continue to develop technologies, certainly we will and should. It's equally important to consider unanticipated effects which are inescapable. Sorry to say, but history shows solving one problem more often than not exposes others, and the cycle goes on. That's in no way a criticism of technology or its developers, merely a fact of life.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Yes, that's an understandable idea, but constructing and maintaining the technological means to the end requires at least as much work as ever, though it is work of different kinds. But the point of automation is that it doesn't really. One computer software can eliminate 10,000,000 clerical jobs, and that just needs 100 people to write it, deploy it, etc. You don't suddenly need new and expected jobs to create/deploy that software, and those you do are an order of magnitude less than what where needed before.
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
    Not to mention, if we stop development today and focus on automating what we have, we: 1) Fall victim to the problems of our own creation- e.g. climate change 2) Never attain the further advancements around the corner Suppose, for example, we decided we had come "far enough" and halted technological advancement just before obtaining the vaccine, or the antibiotic, and never developed that technology. We might be able to automate construction, agriculture, manufacturing- but we are still a fair ways from automating science, research, and development.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    No actually not. It requires less and less. If you want to see proof of this look into how many people are doing software development vs. other industries yet thats where most of the growth is these days. Technology is not just a tool it's very soon a competitor.
tc313 10y ago
Yeah, somebody needs to make the video games. Otherwise, what's the point of not working?
- jeena 10y ago
  Actually, when I don't do work for my employer, I make video games. It still is work, even though I don't get payed in money, but it is also much more fun than playing video games others have created. I even would say it is driven by the same desire.
elros 10y ago
Well, I don't think "work" in this sense is referring to problems to be solved. I think it refers to that which society is structured around and makes most of us have to be somewhere at a certain time, doing a certain thing, regularly and for a long time, in exchange of regular payment, within an operation with a more-of-less clearly defined purpose. There will luckily be always problems to be solved.
coldtea 10y ago
>How is a "work-free world" even possible? There are always problems to solve, who will solve them? Finding and applying solutions is work and one or more people must do it. Dont get caught in pedantic details. A world where only e.g. 10% of the population needs to work on anything, and any other work is all automation, still qualifies as a "work-free world" compared to 100% of human history. >Getting paid is orthogonal to the effort. Even if performed voluntarily there is still work that needs to be accomplished. It's not, because getting paid implies work you do for the wage, and not necessarily because you like it (as is the cases for billions of people. Nobody, statistically, really considers their calling doing 9-5++ accounting, park valet, taxi driving, serving at McDonalds, waiting tables, garbage disposal, transporting goods, digging for coal, and thousands of other jobs). And even if you do like it, you do it under the terms of one or more bosses, company imposed deadlines, etc, just because you also need the money.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  How do we pick the people who have to keep working? The lower class, perhaps, conscripted as farmers so the other 90% of us can live luxuriously off their largess?
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Historically, what you suggest hasn't been far off, whether under slavery or under "free market" forces. It's after all how we "pick" who goes digging for coal or throws the garbage. Force those people through lack of other options.
  - alphapapa 10y ago
    It could turn out that way. It could also turn out that the 10% are the programmers whom we all depend on to keep the machines running. They could end up being like priests, those that work the magic in the machines that mere average people aren't qualified to touch. And good luck if you anger them: who could be safe with an army of machines out to kill you? So it could turn out that the only people who would "work" in such a society are those who aspire to rule over others. And since they would be dependent on no one else in society, what recourse would the rest of society have if the "priests" turned evil? Or what if the "priests" got tired of maintaining mundane machines that take care of "useless" people and decided to have their machines eliminate the rest of the population? Then they could have wide open spaces and peace and quiet, and they could all go live on a beach of their choosing while their machines grow food and deliver it to them. I imagine these ideas have already been done in scifi novels...
jeena 10y ago
I agree that they should have used a different word like "employment", which is different from "work".
shkkmo 10y ago
Well, it all depends on how you define 'work'. The article provides only one definition: “Work is something that you don’t want to do but you have to do.” Given the use of the following quote, this seems to be the defintion the author is working from: "According to Everett, while some might consider hunting and gathering work, hunter-gatherers don’t. “They think of it as fun,” he says. “They don’t have a concept of work the way we do.”" Under that definition, the "work-free world" the Author is discussing is one where all of our problems are being solved by people who want to solve them and thus we don't need to force anyone to solve any problems they don't want to. The article isn't making argument about whether such a world COULD exist, but whether such a world is one we should strive towards.

by jrapdx3 10y ago

ThomPete 10y ago

The idea is that many of those problems can be solved via technology removing the need for most of the people needing to do work in this world.

jrapdx3 10y ago
Yes, that's an understandable idea, but constructing and maintaining the technological means to the end requires at least as much work as ever, though it is work of different kinds. Besides technological solutions create new, unanticipated problems that need to be solved. And this endless cycle is inherent in human existence. We regard present technology as far advanced vs. what there was 2000 years ago, yet we have at least as many problems to preoccupy us as there ever were. Everything changes, technologies in particular, except for one thing, and that's human nature. We can't escape the essence of our being.
- sp332 10y ago
  requires at least as much work as ever It really doesn't. Machines have been putting people out of work for ages. We could survive it for a while by growing the economy pretty fast, but any time it slows down, things get bad. Look at truck driving alone - it's the most common job in most states, and when that gets even partially automated, it's not going to create that many new problems to be "solved".
  - randyrand 10y ago
    Yet employment has not changed over the ages.
    - sp332 10y ago
      Labor participation has changed radically. http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_LNS11300000_1948_2016_all_period_M05_data.gif http://data.bls.gov/generated_files/graphics/latest_numbers_... from http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
    - lawpoop 10y ago
      Oh it has radically. The amount of work done, and the ages of those working, has change significantly since we moved from a pre-industrial agraian society to an informational one. Why, these days, it's not uncommon for someone not to be employed for the first /twenty years/ of their life!
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      It actually have plus income have also changed with few jobs paying insane salaries and the rest fighting for the scrapes. Plus cost of living is going up adding to the issues.
  - jwatte 10y ago
    Machines can, ultimately, make for a "two hour work week" (or more like "two year career") But with our current system, someone owns the machines, and the sources of minerals to make then, and make a profit. In the end, this will lead to the ultimate in income inequality. We have to start thinking about the post-work world, at least for non-knowledge workers, and what we want that world to actually look like. Basic income might be a reasonable component of that.
  - jrapdx3 10y ago
    Interesting. As a creator, user and perpetual student of technologies, I've hardly suggested we not have them, yet whenever anyone brings up limitations of technologies, inevitably negative reactions follow, as though it's not OK to reconsider unquestioned faith in the infinite benefits of tech development. Like most here, I have great enthusiasm for new technologies, but we aren't served by uncritical belief while ignoring potential or actual limits and unanticipated effects. IOW we shouldn't be consumed by our biases. Health care is an example of work hugely impacted by technological innovation. Look at imaging, automation of clinical testing, robotics, and pharmaceutical development to name a few. Believe me, these tools are quite astonishing achievements and enormously useful. Yet with all these marvelous advances, the number and proportion of people needing care hasn't decreased, if anything, there are more. One factor is the improvements granted by technologies enable finding more cases, and finer gradations of illness. More patients and findings means there's more work to be done. It follows that greater number and type of treatment options also requires more work to parse and apply treatments. Also worth considering is that technologies might actually produce illness, one familiar example is RSI, "carpal tunnel" problems are common in programmers. Consider the evidence that developed nations have much higher incidence of autoimmune and other conditions vs. developing nations, technological differences being one factor. Currently research is looking at adverse effects of circadian out-of-phase exposure to blue light via LED illumination of devices as a source of metabolic disturbance, etc. Again, the issue isn't whether we'll continue to develop technologies, certainly we will and should. It's equally important to consider unanticipated effects which are inescapable. Sorry to say, but history shows solving one problem more often than not exposes others, and the cycle goes on. That's in no way a criticism of technology or its developers, merely a fact of life.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Yes, that's an understandable idea, but constructing and maintaining the technological means to the end requires at least as much work as ever, though it is work of different kinds. But the point of automation is that it doesn't really. One computer software can eliminate 10,000,000 clerical jobs, and that just needs 100 people to write it, deploy it, etc. You don't suddenly need new and expected jobs to create/deploy that software, and those you do are an order of magnitude less than what where needed before.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  Not to mention, if we stop development today and focus on automating what we have, we: 1) Fall victim to the problems of our own creation- e.g. climate change 2) Never attain the further advancements around the corner Suppose, for example, we decided we had come "far enough" and halted technological advancement just before obtaining the vaccine, or the antibiotic, and never developed that technology. We might be able to automate construction, agriculture, manufacturing- but we are still a fair ways from automating science, research, and development.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  No actually not. It requires less and less. If you want to see proof of this look into how many people are doing software development vs. other industries yet thats where most of the growth is these days. Technology is not just a tool it's very soon a competitor.

tc313 10y ago

Yeah, somebody needs to make the video games. Otherwise, what's the point of not working?

jeena 10y ago
Actually, when I don't do work for my employer, I make video games. It still is work, even though I don't get payed in money, but it is also much more fun than playing video games others have created. I even would say it is driven by the same desire.

elros 10y ago

Well, I don't think "work" in this sense is referring to problems to be solved. I think it refers to that which society is structured around and makes most of us have to be somewhere at a certain time, doing a certain thing, regularly and for a long time, in exchange of regular payment, within an operation with a more-of-less clearly defined purpose. There will luckily be always problems to be solved.

coldtea 10y ago

>How is a "work-free world" even possible? There are always problems to solve, who will solve them? Finding and applying solutions is work and one or more people must do it. Dont get caught in pedantic details. A world where only e.g. 10% of the population needs to work on anything, and any other work is all automation, still qualifies as a "work-free world" compared to 100% of human history. >Getting paid is orthogonal to the effort. Even if performed voluntarily there is still work that needs to be accomplished. It's not, because getting paid implies work you do for the wage, and not necessarily because you like it (as is the cases for billions of people. Nobody, statistically, really considers their calling doing 9-5++ accounting, park valet, taxi driving, serving at McDonalds, waiting tables, garbage disposal, transporting goods, digging for coal, and thousands of other jobs). And even if you do like it, you do it under the terms of one or more bosses, company imposed deadlines, etc, just because you also need the money.

sliverstorm 10y ago
How do we pick the people who have to keep working? The lower class, perhaps, conscripted as farmers so the other 90% of us can live luxuriously off their largess?
- coldtea 10y ago
  Historically, what you suggest hasn't been far off, whether under slavery or under "free market" forces. It's after all how we "pick" who goes digging for coal or throws the garbage. Force those people through lack of other options.
- alphapapa 10y ago
  It could turn out that way. It could also turn out that the 10% are the programmers whom we all depend on to keep the machines running. They could end up being like priests, those that work the magic in the machines that mere average people aren't qualified to touch. And good luck if you anger them: who could be safe with an army of machines out to kill you? So it could turn out that the only people who would "work" in such a society are those who aspire to rule over others. And since they would be dependent on no one else in society, what recourse would the rest of society have if the "priests" turned evil? Or what if the "priests" got tired of maintaining mundane machines that take care of "useless" people and decided to have their machines eliminate the rest of the population? Then they could have wide open spaces and peace and quiet, and they could all go live on a beach of their choosing while their machines grow food and deliver it to them. I imagine these ideas have already been done in scifi novels...

jeena 10y ago

I agree that they should have used a different word like "employment", which is different from "work".

shkkmo 10y ago

Well, it all depends on how you define 'work'. The article provides only one definition: “Work is something that you don’t want to do but you have to do.” Given the use of the following quote, this seems to be the defintion the author is working from: "According to Everett, while some might consider hunting and gathering work, hunter-gatherers don’t. “They think of it as fun,” he says. “They don’t have a concept of work the way we do.”" Under that definition, the "work-free world" the Author is discussing is one where all of our problems are being solved by people who want to solve them and thus we don't need to force anyone to solve any problems they don't want to. The article isn't making argument about whether such a world COULD exist, but whether such a world is one we should strive towards.