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>those jobs are never coming back Does it make anyone else sad to hear this? I see posts about robots/AI/etc automating away jobs and I try to be happy about t
by ancarda 10y ago
>those jobs are never coming back
Does it make anyone else sad to hear this? I see posts about robots/AI/etc automating away jobs and I try to be happy about that (who wouldn't want to never have to work again?) but I guess I'm saddened by some perceived loss of interesting opportunities.
If I wanted to get my hands dirty or get away from the world for a bit, before robots I could work on an oil rig for a bit. Now, that's not really an option.
Does anyone else have this sort of thought pattern? What replaces work you find enjoyable/exciting if it's not something you can do at home or by yourself in a post-AI, post-UBI world?
- hkjgkjy 10y agoYup. The invisible hand is ruthless in that regard.
- arjunnarayan 10y agoThis probably isn't something that appeals to the Hacker News community in general, but the first thing that comes to mind is large scale art projects, of the sort that take weeks/months to prepare (such as the big Burning Man installations).
- mattnewton 10y agoI agree wholeheartedly, the only trick is getting those workers in a position where they can do such art projects (which are always massive money sinks in my experience)
- maverick_iceman 10y agoMaybe something we can't even imagine at this point? Think about trying to explain animation to people in the late 19th century.
- abecedarius 10y agoActually that's a pretty fun topic in tech history. You could buy short animations cheaply then, as flipbooks, and there were fancier types: viewed through a spinning cylinder, or projected. There were even 3d animations. See samples on youtube. Checking my memory just now I learned something interesting: the magic lantern was invented by Huygens in the 1600s, and he probably had a simple animation in mind -- he sketched a sequence of Death removing his own head.
- SEJeff 10y agoPlease do consider reading the entirety of Ian M Banks's Culture Series. It is some fantastic Scifi that literally explores humanity in a post resource scarcity world.
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoIf anything, it seems to me like IMB doesn't even begin to scratch the surface in imagining the true impact of ASI.
- SEJeff 10y agoCare to elaborate? He does a pretty good start.
- msandford 10y agoIs it true post-scarcity like everyone has their own mostly automated Starship Enterprise / Battlestar / Star Destroyer? I always get kind of agitated at the notion of post resource scarcity because if you took someone from 1000 years ago and dropped them into today they'd be amazed at how much everyone has. If everyone had 11th century desires but 21st century technology we'd be there. But we're definitely not. I sincerely doubt we ever will be.
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoIt's a battle between supply and demand. Or, to put it in more blunt terms, between production and greed. We always seem to want more "stuff" for some reason. Without some changes in the way we think and feel, we may never reach true post-scarcity.
- stale2002 10y agoThis isnt true though. For example, air is currently a post scarcity good. You don't pay for the air you breath. But do spend your day trying to collect more and more air? No. Because you can have as much air as you want.
- brbrodude 10y agoI think collecting the scraps of the ruined civilization will probably be a great pastime.
- mattnewton 10y agoThose were hazardous jobs. I imagine the adventure would get old after a year. Nothing is stopping you from getting away from the world and farming/hunting in the mountains, but it would not be economically viable (or fun after a point, I imagine). The real cost isn't in the work itself imo, but in the contract those people had with society, which now needs to be renegotiated, and the workers are at a substantial disadvantage this time.
- bduerst 10y agoOnly if you infer the zero-sum labor fallacy. The demand for labor isn't fixed, and is influenced by the supply. These specific jobs are not economically feasible, but that opens up labor demand for new, sometimes hard to imagine jobs.
- Avshalom 10y agoThe demand that has opened up is entry level retail at or near minimum wage though.
- knieveltech 10y agoI'm guessing you're being downvoted because you've advanced a notion that goes across the grain of tech industry orthodoxy that is not supported by anecdotal observation from a position of privilege in the tech industry. A quick scan of labor statistics backs your claim however.
- InitialLastName 10y agoAnd medical services: https://www.nurse.com/blog/2016/02/16/u-s-still-headed-for-nurse-shortage/ https://www.nurse.com/blog/2016/02/16/u-s-still-headed-for-n...
- 09bjb 10y agoI'm glad someone is bringing this up. I see so many "X job getting automated, jobs are lost, oh no!" portrayed as some novel scenario where jobs are automated and no new jobs are ever made. Automation of routine jobs has been happening for thousands of years, and historically hasn't affected the unemployment rate AT ALL because new hard-tp-imagine jobs replace them. The more I read dig it, the more I don't believe in technological unemployment (i.e. a technology automates a person out of a job, and that person remains forever unemployed). Instead, recently, something seems wrong with the re-hiring process in the global economy. Very lucid discussion (found on HN no less) here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hh4/the_robots_ai_and_unemployment_antifaq/# http://lesswrong.com/lw/hh4/the_robots_ai_and_unemployment_a...
- 10y ago
- Alex_Butters 10y agoI have tons of lab work you can do for me if you want to get your hands dirty, your pants wet, and your skin dyed for weeks. Desk job versus hands on both have pros and cons. Luckily I'm half/half each so it makes both good and both bad. There is plenty of science and engineering jobs tat let you do both.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoYep, I know a lot of researchers would be over the moon if they can have qualified unpaid labour.
- pizza234 10y ago>> those jobs are never coming back > Does it make anyone else sad to hear this? I think that to associate automation with what is ultimately a shrinkage of the GdP is a serious, although easy, misrepresantation. Those jobs are lost, but money is saved for a part of the population, which will spend it, and ultimately create a demand for new jobs. So it's not just "jobs lost". Now this transition of course happens in the long term, and that's the problem, but it's different from interpreting automation as net loss. edit: turns out there is a name for this, which is the "Lump of labour fallacy"; of course, as written, the transition does represent a problem.
- clock_tower 10y ago> money is saved for a part of the population, which will spend it The money mostly goes to the capital-owning class, i.e. the established rich, who spend relatively little of their incomes. They tend to buy high-quality items with a high purchase price and a low total cost of ownership (Terry Pratchett has an interesting passage on boots), and once you've got enough income you just can't spend it all -- so they spend a much smaller percentage of their incomes on job-producing things than the poor. (Here, "the poor" includes the middle class and noveaux-riches, who tend to squander money on mortgages -- and on gaudy short-lived consumer goods, like Teslas). The rich tend to reinvest money instead of spending it, and typically live well within their means. It's not a bad way to live, as an individual (although you need some self-control and relatively modest tastes); but it has problems when most income goes to people who live this way. A lot of money ends up chasing few investment opportunities -- a situation that should sound familiar from the financial news.
- pizza234 10y ago> The money mostly goes to the capital-owning class In a free (and not colluded) market, end prices will go down. Profits will depend on the market, not differently from the effects of economies of scale in general. > The rich tend to reinvest money instead of spending it Investing money and spending it is practically the same, from the perspective of the economy.
- ghurtado 10y ago> If I wanted to get my hands dirty or get away from the world for a bit, before robots I could work on an oil rig for a bit. Now, that's not really an option. It's also no longer an option to go work for the King's Master Blacksmith making armor for the Knights of the round table, but if that sort of thing tickles your fancy, you may be able to make do with setting up a small anvil and furnace in your garage.
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoFarriers make excellent money.
- bluGill 10y agoThe Luddites were worried about this in the 1810s. You should look them up - there is a large amount of philosophy and debate around the topic. For myself I fall in the optimists camp: technology does destroy some jobs, but it opens up many more.