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I think it's interesting, but limiting, how he focuses on the creative arts as a solution: "to remind ourselves that the hotel maid who makes up our bed may in

I think it's interesting, but limiting, how he focuses on the creative arts as a solution: "to remind ourselves that the hotel maid who makes up our bed may in fact be an amateur painter? The accountant who does our taxes may well have a screenplay that he works on after the midnight hour?" I'll submit that many, maybe even most, folks do not have these levels of creative aptitude. Moreover, the majority of creative output is crap to the majority of its consumers. I agree that the educational system is primarily ill-equipped to get people out of the current mentalities of employment, but I also think that there will be a certain, possibly large, subpopulation that doesn't have the aptitude or interest to do these sorts of things, even if there were such "magical training" to generate creative output that was valuable and desirable to most other people. Even for the other fields he cited, like engineers, hedge-fund managers, etc., these currently require a high level of education and experience. No amount of training will reach the non-academically-inclined. I think the future of people in the jobs that technology replaces is either to move to the direct service industry, which is much more difficult to automate and becomes more difficult to automate as the service level becomes higher, or abjectly falling out of the economy. Not everyone can paint or write a screenplay, and not everyone wants to.

notarealaccount 8y ago
In the days of old, they would scrub the decks of ships while under sail for no reason than to keep the crew busy to prevent boredom which was considered a cause of mutiny. Perhaps, not having a system where people are working all the time is dangerous for no other reason. I'm a workaholic as it is the only way to maintain my sanity.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  You can't have a revolution if everyone is living paycheck to paycheck and missing even one day could jeopardize their housing. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck...
  - jack9 8y ago
    You definitely can have armed revolution. Some form of "imbalanced economic conditions" is the most common STATED reason for violent revolution, which the starving poor inevitably participate in.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
smadge 8y ago
You are mentioning retraining people who have already been through the education system. Weinstein is advocating restructuring the education system from one that creates docile workers who perform repetitive tasks for a wage to one that encourages creativity and initiative. I also think you underestimate how many people have given up their passion to the reality that they need to plug themselves into capitalism to survive. If given an opportunity to pursue that passion instead of living paycheck to paycheck I think we might see a intellectual and cultural golden age.
- kermittd 8y ago
  I couldn't agree more! I'm really disheartened at the pessimism that some HN members show towards people working low paying/status jobs.
- classichasclass 8y ago
  No, I think you overestimate it. There's this belief that circulates that people's occupations or pursuits are determined by their circumstances; they're bricklayers or plumbers or whatever due to a combination of factors beyond their control, and given the right magical combination of UBI/education/retraining/pixie dust, they'll move to some other job. Meanwhile, my father-in-law was a tradie since he was a kid and even in retirement, supposedly freed of any occupational needs or financial necessity, he still does it because he likes to. I don't see him writing a screenplay or orchestrating a symphony. It's not his bag. I agree that re-education and first education are certainly two different things, and I even agree that we would get more people interested in the creative pursuits if they were inculcated in them at an early age, but I disagree that this is the entire solution or even a substantial part of it because not everyone has that inclination.
  - neffy 8y ago
    Working all your life in physical labour, to provide ungrateful offspring with the chances you never had will do that to you.
  - sewercake 8y ago
    I think you're conflating trades, which often provide solid incomes, and lots of room for creativity, learning, and skill-development, with mind-numbing service jobs like being a cashier, delivery drivers, or call-center employees. There is also some conflation between 'creativity', and 'artistic inclinations'. Lots of things require creativity, artistic practices only being one of them.
lumberjack 8y ago
The solution is to use technology to replace high skilled professions with average Joes. These high skilled professionals can just go do research, and there is always more research to be done. The average Joes will be aided by a combination of technology and human supervision to do a job that is effectively as good as a professional would have done it. For example, a nurse might be retrained to do diagnosis. Instead of learning the corpus of medical literature they will have Internet access to a database and supervision from an MD. So that way we might be able to replace many MDs who will instead go into research. I think that is the sane way forward. And it won't be a solution for everyone, of course. But I think it should be doable.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  That sounds like a recipe for “idoacracy”. What happens when there is an emergency and the system is unavailable? You are literally training people to be button pushers that’s a horrible horrible idea especially when so many innovations come out from the work place when people are faced with challenges.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Would you make the same claim about how we require groups of people for everything we do ? What if we run out of architects ? What if we run out of neurosurgeons (given that we're always saving, saving saving on training such people resulting in their numbers not increasing despite the obvious incentive, combined with idiotic ideas about outsourcing it's becoming a real possibility, certainly for particular geographies)
petermcneeley 8y ago
Until the advent of Hard AI it is possible that many people could be put to work constructing the digital realities and experiences for video games. (even playing actor roles in video games) However I think even for this to be a reality one would still require a UBI.
ScottBurson 8y ago
> Not everyone can paint or write a screenplay, and not everyone wants to. Not everyone can, but I'll bet a lot more people could than are currently doing it.

notarealaccount 8y ago

In the days of old, they would scrub the decks of ships while under sail for no reason than to keep the crew busy to prevent boredom which was considered a cause of mutiny. Perhaps, not having a system where people are working all the time is dangerous for no other reason. I'm a workaholic as it is the only way to maintain my sanity.

prolikewh0a 8y ago
You can't have a revolution if everyone is living paycheck to paycheck and missing even one day could jeopardize their housing. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck...
- jack9 8y ago
  You definitely can have armed revolution. Some form of "imbalanced economic conditions" is the most common STATED reason for violent revolution, which the starving poor inevitably participate in.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

smadge 8y ago

You are mentioning retraining people who have already been through the education system. Weinstein is advocating restructuring the education system from one that creates docile workers who perform repetitive tasks for a wage to one that encourages creativity and initiative. I also think you underestimate how many people have given up their passion to the reality that they need to plug themselves into capitalism to survive. If given an opportunity to pursue that passion instead of living paycheck to paycheck I think we might see a intellectual and cultural golden age.

kermittd 8y ago
I couldn't agree more! I'm really disheartened at the pessimism that some HN members show towards people working low paying/status jobs.
classichasclass 8y ago
No, I think you overestimate it. There's this belief that circulates that people's occupations or pursuits are determined by their circumstances; they're bricklayers or plumbers or whatever due to a combination of factors beyond their control, and given the right magical combination of UBI/education/retraining/pixie dust, they'll move to some other job. Meanwhile, my father-in-law was a tradie since he was a kid and even in retirement, supposedly freed of any occupational needs or financial necessity, he still does it because he likes to. I don't see him writing a screenplay or orchestrating a symphony. It's not his bag. I agree that re-education and first education are certainly two different things, and I even agree that we would get more people interested in the creative pursuits if they were inculcated in them at an early age, but I disagree that this is the entire solution or even a substantial part of it because not everyone has that inclination.
- neffy 8y ago
  Working all your life in physical labour, to provide ungrateful offspring with the chances you never had will do that to you.
- sewercake 8y ago
  I think you're conflating trades, which often provide solid incomes, and lots of room for creativity, learning, and skill-development, with mind-numbing service jobs like being a cashier, delivery drivers, or call-center employees. There is also some conflation between 'creativity', and 'artistic inclinations'. Lots of things require creativity, artistic practices only being one of them.

lumberjack 8y ago

The solution is to use technology to replace high skilled professions with average Joes. These high skilled professionals can just go do research, and there is always more research to be done. The average Joes will be aided by a combination of technology and human supervision to do a job that is effectively as good as a professional would have done it. For example, a nurse might be retrained to do diagnosis. Instead of learning the corpus of medical literature they will have Internet access to a database and supervision from an MD. So that way we might be able to replace many MDs who will instead go into research. I think that is the sane way forward. And it won't be a solution for everyone, of course. But I think it should be doable.

dogma1138 8y ago
That sounds like a recipe for “idoacracy”. What happens when there is an emergency and the system is unavailable? You are literally training people to be button pushers that’s a horrible horrible idea especially when so many innovations come out from the work place when people are faced with challenges.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- candiodari 8y ago
  Would you make the same claim about how we require groups of people for everything we do ? What if we run out of architects ? What if we run out of neurosurgeons (given that we're always saving, saving saving on training such people resulting in their numbers not increasing despite the obvious incentive, combined with idiotic ideas about outsourcing it's becoming a real possibility, certainly for particular geographies)

petermcneeley 8y ago

Until the advent of Hard AI it is possible that many people could be put to work constructing the digital realities and experiences for video games. (even playing actor roles in video games) However I think even for this to be a reality one would still require a UBI.

ScottBurson 8y ago

> Not everyone can paint or write a screenplay, and not everyone wants to. Not everyone can, but I'll bet a lot more people could than are currently doing it.