9 ms·

Let us assume, for a moment, that Ray Kurzweil's thesis of accelerating returns is correct. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change#Kurzweil_and_The_La

by 1053r 16y ago

Let us assume, for a moment, that Ray Kurzweil's thesis of accelerating returns is correct. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change#Kurzweil_and_The_Law_of_Accelerating_Returns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change#Kurzweil_an... It therefore follows that as the pace of change increases, the length of time before an education becomes out of date or stale decreases. There is some percentage of the population today who would rather be poor than retrain. It stands to reason that as the rate of change increases, that percentage of the population will also increase. Therefore, we as a society have two choices. 1) Let people be poor. 2) Pay for them to live like human beings not because they deserve it, but because they are alive. This is the crux of the choice. Will the haves (people with relevant education, who are disproportionately represented here of HN) give some of what they have to the have-nots just because they are human?

kiba 16y ago
By the time the technological singularity approach, the human beings who are living might as well be kings to us. So it become less urgent for the have to give to the have-not.
- TheEzEzz 16y ago
  The have-nots of today might as well be kings to those living 1000 years ago. Still, having a strong middle class is good for everyone, regardless of moral imperatives to help others.
- rsheridan6 16y ago
  Why is that? Even if there was enough wealth around to make everyone a king by today's standards, if someone had no marketable skills or capital, why would anyone give anything to him? It would be up to the haves whether they wanted to play Mr Nice Guy or not, and I don't think the choice is obvious.
  - Unseelie 16y ago
    Everyone in the middle class is a king by the standards of the 1950s. I have, as a starving student, more wealth than any emperor of Rome. The assumption that we're not already upstream in the singularity is just bias of perspective
    - rsheridan6 16y ago
      Presumably you have a job, or you have parents with a job that are supporting you, or you live on student loans given to you by people who expect that you will get a job and pay you back with interest. If there's a hypothetical machine that can do your job, then you won't get one, and there's no reason other than charity for anyone to give you money. Until now, if a machine took a job, that just meant that another worker was available for another job that a machine couldn't do. Machines are pretty dumb, so that's not hard to find. A kid with Down's syndrome can sweep the floor at Taco Bell, but a machine can't. That changes with the singularity.
_delirium 16y ago
> Will the haves (people with relevant education, who are disproportionately represented here of HN) give some of what they have to the have-nots just because they are human? Depending on what the ratios of the two are, they might not have any choice. If it gets more towards the extreme of 10% of people having lots of money while 90% starve, then those 10% had better get used to living in fortified enclaves, 18th-century-France style.
- petercooper 16y ago
  A difference between 18th century France and a medium-term future may be that peasants were essential members of the workforce in the 18th century, whereas the "have nots" may, for the first time, be entirely unnecessary to the ruling classes in order to maintain their quality of life. If that situation came about, I doubt they'd need fortified enclaves unless they truly preferred that set up. They could merely wipe out the have-nots and be done with it. Or, if we're going to the distant future and the "haves" are more moral, they could just leave Earth and live elsewhere leaving the "have nots" to fight over dirt.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    Part of my point is that I don't think the rich could win such a struggle of forces if they're a small minority: it would be more likely that the poor wipe them out, or at least confiscate their wealth, than vice versa. The rich currently survive easily basically because the vast majority of Americans support a rule of law that lets them retain their prerogatives; they are not capable of defending their own prerogatives, at least as things are currently set up. If it were angry masses versus rich people hiring private security contractors, I think angry masses win. A big wild card would be which side the government is on. If the government is run by populists interested in redistributing wealth, do you really think a small minority of wealthy could resist the police?
    - DenisM 16y ago
      Well, corrupt third-world countries do live like that and it rarely comes to full-blown riots, usually only when there is little to eat. There doesn't need to be an open confrontation. But you're right in that the poor are still part of the workforce, hence they do wield power, even if poorly organized. This might be not for long. There is an interesting case of Russia which is populated by 142 million people, while the ruling elites only have a need for maybe 10% of that number to maintain their natural gas and oil revenue (plus the nukes to defend the same). It might be worth paying attention to as a model of what's to come.
tomjen3 16y ago
>Pay for them to live like human beings How much exactly is that? I would like to know before I commit myself either way.
- maqr 16y ago
  But since we're talking about Kurzweil... let's define "human" first.
petercooper 16y ago
I've seen economists mulling over your second point a little lately - it's not a new concept though, it's called "basic income": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income A fictional basic income exists in Star Trek TNG in relation to Federation credits. This is achievable because the Star Trek TNG universe is post-scarcity but credits are used to ration non-replicable goods.
- jsz0 16y ago
  President Nixon mulled over the idea of a guaranteed minimum income for Americans which, IIRC, mutated into the earned income tax credit program. Of course these days no mainstream progressive or liberal would support the idea. Things have changed a lot.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    It used to actually be a quite popular position among libertarian-ish economists, strangely enough: Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman were both in favor of a guaranteed minimum income.
    - dublinclontarf 16y ago
      Really, sounds awfully like something they would be dead set against. Certainly if it was guaranteed by the government. Got any sources for that?
      - _delirium 16y ago
        The three main reasons they gave were: 1) a functioning free market with rational agents voluntarily exchanging goods and services requires non-desperate individuals who can realistically say "no" to proposed economic exchanges; 2) a guaranteed minimum income would make people more autonomous market participants, as they would feel more free to be entrepreneurs, and to break from more cliquish kinds of safety nets like churches and ethnic groups; and 3) pragmatically, direct cash transfers are the least distorting kind of anti-poverty program, so a minimum income will greatly reduce political pressure for more distorting measures, like restrictions on when you can fire employees. Here's one place Hayek discusses it, starting at the bottom of p. 54 and continuing through the middle of p. 56: http://books.google.com/books?id=0HzIUyFkwlYC&pg=PA54 http://books.google.com/books?id=0HzIUyFkwlYC&pg=PA54
dpatru 16y ago
> Will the haves (people with relevant education, who are disproportionately represented here of HN) give some of what they have to the have-nots just because they are human? Do the haves have a choice to "give"? The reality is that in a democratic society with an income tax, if the have-nots outnumber the haves, the haves will be forced to support the have-nots.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Sig, we live in a Republic, not a democracy. Things like that are the reason we do so.
fmora 16y ago
All humans have on average the same intelligence. Why do you assume that there will be a few who will be able to keep up with the pace of retraining oneself. In many poor countries the reason they stay poor has to do with cultural differences rather than IQ differences. i.e. If you teach your kids from a very young age to have good work ethics and good study ethics and teach that anything is possible as long as they work hard then they will grow up to be achievers. If you do not teach your kids this then chances are that they will be poor. Besides, if we ever do achieve the singularity and assuming that we do not destroy ourselves many things that are really expensive now will become extremely cheap in such a way that even the poorest person will still live like a rich person. Singularity will enable us to find solutions to energy much faster than if we tried to do it on our own. It will probably find a way to extract all the energy we need from the sun's rays. Once this happens energy will be as cheap as the oxygen you breath. We'll also have self replicating machines meaning that anything anybody has you will be able to build it in your own home. In fact, poverty may be eliminated all together. Who knows what will become valuable in the new economy. Really, I don't think we can even begin to imagine it. We will probably work to better ourselves and humanity. Yes, we will work maybe even more than before even if we have all the material wealth we can have. Why? Well, because most human beings become depressed if they are not doing anything. We will do what we truly feel passionate about rather than work in a crappy job just to pay the bills because there will be little to no bills to pay. The future is truly Star Trek.
- Unseelie 16y ago
  Or, the future is the most competitive, up to date persons moving into a range of capability which allows them to marginally outcompete their less up to date peers, catching a faster acceleration. Their less up to date peers follow suit, but while they're retraining for their new devices, the leading edge is learning, faster than before, an even newer device. Or, even better, the minds of kurzwiel's singularity are owned, trained, and taught by competitive corporations, who's only job is to make a great deal of money. The best firms are the ones who compete in the harshest manner, and again, the average gets left far behind. I think its far a mistake to assume that more stuff means an egalitarian future.
  - 16y ago
lionhearted 16y ago
> Therefore, we as a society have two choices. 1) Let people be poor. 2) Pay for them to live like human beings This is what's known as a false dichotomy. A similar false dichotomy would read, "Therefore, we as a society have two choices. 1) Let criminals rule the world and have no laws. 2) Execute everyone who commits any crime." There's other ways.
- roel_v 16y ago
  The premise of the choices, which you conveniently left out, was that a significant percentage of people would be unable to provide a sizable income for themselves, because they lack the intellectual capacities. From that the binary answer is quite reasonable; the inbetween would be that people would be able to make themselves non-poor, and we started out by saying that that would not be feasible. Unless you have another middle of the road, which I would be interested to hear about. When claiming a false dichotomy the customary thing to do is to provide a(n) example(s) of other options, however short.

by 1053r 16y ago

kiba 16y ago

By the time the technological singularity approach, the human beings who are living might as well be kings to us. So it become less urgent for the have to give to the have-not.

TheEzEzz 16y ago
The have-nots of today might as well be kings to those living 1000 years ago. Still, having a strong middle class is good for everyone, regardless of moral imperatives to help others.
rsheridan6 16y ago
Why is that? Even if there was enough wealth around to make everyone a king by today's standards, if someone had no marketable skills or capital, why would anyone give anything to him? It would be up to the haves whether they wanted to play Mr Nice Guy or not, and I don't think the choice is obvious.
- Unseelie 16y ago
  Everyone in the middle class is a king by the standards of the 1950s. I have, as a starving student, more wealth than any emperor of Rome. The assumption that we're not already upstream in the singularity is just bias of perspective
  - rsheridan6 16y ago
    Presumably you have a job, or you have parents with a job that are supporting you, or you live on student loans given to you by people who expect that you will get a job and pay you back with interest. If there's a hypothetical machine that can do your job, then you won't get one, and there's no reason other than charity for anyone to give you money. Until now, if a machine took a job, that just meant that another worker was available for another job that a machine couldn't do. Machines are pretty dumb, so that's not hard to find. A kid with Down's syndrome can sweep the floor at Taco Bell, but a machine can't. That changes with the singularity.

_delirium 16y ago

> Will the haves (people with relevant education, who are disproportionately represented here of HN) give some of what they have to the have-nots just because they are human? Depending on what the ratios of the two are, they might not have any choice. If it gets more towards the extreme of 10% of people having lots of money while 90% starve, then those 10% had better get used to living in fortified enclaves, 18th-century-France style.

petercooper 16y ago
A difference between 18th century France and a medium-term future may be that peasants were essential members of the workforce in the 18th century, whereas the "have nots" may, for the first time, be entirely unnecessary to the ruling classes in order to maintain their quality of life. If that situation came about, I doubt they'd need fortified enclaves unless they truly preferred that set up. They could merely wipe out the have-nots and be done with it. Or, if we're going to the distant future and the "haves" are more moral, they could just leave Earth and live elsewhere leaving the "have nots" to fight over dirt.
- _delirium 16y ago
  Part of my point is that I don't think the rich could win such a struggle of forces if they're a small minority: it would be more likely that the poor wipe them out, or at least confiscate their wealth, than vice versa. The rich currently survive easily basically because the vast majority of Americans support a rule of law that lets them retain their prerogatives; they are not capable of defending their own prerogatives, at least as things are currently set up. If it were angry masses versus rich people hiring private security contractors, I think angry masses win. A big wild card would be which side the government is on. If the government is run by populists interested in redistributing wealth, do you really think a small minority of wealthy could resist the police?
  - DenisM 16y ago
    Well, corrupt third-world countries do live like that and it rarely comes to full-blown riots, usually only when there is little to eat. There doesn't need to be an open confrontation. But you're right in that the poor are still part of the workforce, hence they do wield power, even if poorly organized. This might be not for long. There is an interesting case of Russia which is populated by 142 million people, while the ruling elites only have a need for maybe 10% of that number to maintain their natural gas and oil revenue (plus the nukes to defend the same). It might be worth paying attention to as a model of what's to come.

tomjen3 16y ago

>Pay for them to live like human beings How much exactly is that? I would like to know before I commit myself either way.

maqr 16y ago
But since we're talking about Kurzweil... let's define "human" first.

petercooper 16y ago

I've seen economists mulling over your second point a little lately - it's not a new concept though, it's called "basic income": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income A fictional basic income exists in Star Trek TNG in relation to Federation credits. This is achievable because the Star Trek TNG universe is post-scarcity but credits are used to ration non-replicable goods.

jsz0 16y ago
President Nixon mulled over the idea of a guaranteed minimum income for Americans which, IIRC, mutated into the earned income tax credit program. Of course these days no mainstream progressive or liberal would support the idea. Things have changed a lot.
- _delirium 16y ago
  It used to actually be a quite popular position among libertarian-ish economists, strangely enough: Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman were both in favor of a guaranteed minimum income.
  - dublinclontarf 16y ago
    Really, sounds awfully like something they would be dead set against. Certainly if it was guaranteed by the government. Got any sources for that?
    - _delirium 16y ago
      The three main reasons they gave were: 1) a functioning free market with rational agents voluntarily exchanging goods and services requires non-desperate individuals who can realistically say "no" to proposed economic exchanges; 2) a guaranteed minimum income would make people more autonomous market participants, as they would feel more free to be entrepreneurs, and to break from more cliquish kinds of safety nets like churches and ethnic groups; and 3) pragmatically, direct cash transfers are the least distorting kind of anti-poverty program, so a minimum income will greatly reduce political pressure for more distorting measures, like restrictions on when you can fire employees. Here's one place Hayek discusses it, starting at the bottom of p. 54 and continuing through the middle of p. 56: http://books.google.com/books?id=0HzIUyFkwlYC&pg=PA54 http://books.google.com/books?id=0HzIUyFkwlYC&pg=PA54

dpatru 16y ago

> Will the haves (people with relevant education, who are disproportionately represented here of HN) give some of what they have to the have-nots just because they are human? Do the haves have a choice to "give"? The reality is that in a democratic society with an income tax, if the have-nots outnumber the haves, the haves will be forced to support the have-nots.

tomjen3 16y ago
Sig, we live in a Republic, not a democracy. Things like that are the reason we do so.

fmora 16y ago

All humans have on average the same intelligence. Why do you assume that there will be a few who will be able to keep up with the pace of retraining oneself. In many poor countries the reason they stay poor has to do with cultural differences rather than IQ differences. i.e. If you teach your kids from a very young age to have good work ethics and good study ethics and teach that anything is possible as long as they work hard then they will grow up to be achievers. If you do not teach your kids this then chances are that they will be poor. Besides, if we ever do achieve the singularity and assuming that we do not destroy ourselves many things that are really expensive now will become extremely cheap in such a way that even the poorest person will still live like a rich person. Singularity will enable us to find solutions to energy much faster than if we tried to do it on our own. It will probably find a way to extract all the energy we need from the sun's rays. Once this happens energy will be as cheap as the oxygen you breath. We'll also have self replicating machines meaning that anything anybody has you will be able to build it in your own home. In fact, poverty may be eliminated all together. Who knows what will become valuable in the new economy. Really, I don't think we can even begin to imagine it. We will probably work to better ourselves and humanity. Yes, we will work maybe even more than before even if we have all the material wealth we can have. Why? Well, because most human beings become depressed if they are not doing anything. We will do what we truly feel passionate about rather than work in a crappy job just to pay the bills because there will be little to no bills to pay. The future is truly Star Trek.

Unseelie 16y ago
Or, the future is the most competitive, up to date persons moving into a range of capability which allows them to marginally outcompete their less up to date peers, catching a faster acceleration. Their less up to date peers follow suit, but while they're retraining for their new devices, the leading edge is learning, faster than before, an even newer device. Or, even better, the minds of kurzwiel's singularity are owned, trained, and taught by competitive corporations, who's only job is to make a great deal of money. The best firms are the ones who compete in the harshest manner, and again, the average gets left far behind. I think its far a mistake to assume that more stuff means an egalitarian future.
- 16y ago

lionhearted 16y ago

> Therefore, we as a society have two choices. 1) Let people be poor. 2) Pay for them to live like human beings This is what's known as a false dichotomy. A similar false dichotomy would read, "Therefore, we as a society have two choices. 1) Let criminals rule the world and have no laws. 2) Execute everyone who commits any crime." There's other ways.

roel_v 16y ago
The premise of the choices, which you conveniently left out, was that a significant percentage of people would be unable to provide a sizable income for themselves, because they lack the intellectual capacities. From that the binary answer is quite reasonable; the inbetween would be that people would be able to make themselves non-poor, and we started out by saying that that would not be feasible. Unless you have another middle of the road, which I would be interested to hear about. When claiming a false dichotomy the customary thing to do is to provide a(n) example(s) of other options, however short.