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Well thanks to that hyper-efficiency lot of people are going to be jobless. And giving people various routes to purpose is a good thing. I feel we will/should s

by op03 6y ago

Well thanks to that hyper-efficiency lot of people are going to be jobless. And giving people various routes to purpose is a good thing. I feel we will/should see many more such projects.

hosh 6y ago
... because the efficiency at which products are produced and value is extracted is not the only way to live and relate to the world. An alternative is to invert value extraction to value contribution, linked into intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation. A purpose-driven life feels more fulfilling than being treated as a cog in a value extraction machine. Maximizing value extraction ends up squeezing the life out of people.
hirundo 6y ago
> Well thanks to that hyper-efficiency lot of people are going to be jobless. This is false. It's the same argument behind the Luddite handloom weavers who burned mills and factory machinery. It leads to labor arguments like saying we should stop using bulldozers and require workers to use spoons instead to create more jobs. But in fact jobs come from people with resources who decide that they want to reshape the world in some way, often to gather more resources. That impulse to change the world has never been scarce and likely never will be as long as there are people.
- op03 6y ago
  Yes I agree ambitious people obsessed with their empire building aren't going to stop being born. And yes I agree their empires will generate jobs. But they will be increasingly crappy and mindless as people are used to fill in the gaps that Automation and AI cant. You can see that playing out in Amazon warehouses as workers try to keep pace with robots and get injured, or in Zuckerbergs content moderation farms as the mods suffer brain damage from what the AI systems miss. So expect lot of people to say no thanks. And if those people don't find any other purpose expect them to start burning things down. In that context, orgs that provide routes to purpose are doing a good thing.
  - scrollaway 6y ago
    Crappy mindless jobs tend to be the first ones to be automated. The less complexity, the more mindless it is. The less complexity, the easier it is to automate. Unless you think cashier, burger flipper or product labeler is a top-job type thing.
    - op03 6y ago
      Not the reality at all. I work in process automation. There are thousands of issues and bugs in our systems that require mindless human activity to work around. Eg- Where our voice rec models fail we have hundreds of people sitting the whole day listening to boring snippets of context less conversation and correcting it. Most hate that work. Where robots malfunction on the line some guy has to just wheel in a new machine and push 2 button. That's all he does. That's what I mean by ppl being used to fill in the gaps. They do it for a few years and end up having no great qualification after the bugs get fixed so they getoved to the next crappy filler job. There is no great dignity to it or satisfaction. And they end up laughing at Obama's speeches abt reskilling cause they know the reality and end up voting for Trump.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Dave Graeber, "Bullshit Jobs" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
- blix 6y ago
  > It's the same argument behind the Luddite handloom weavers who burned mills and factory machinery. It leads to labor arguments... The Luddite labor unrest arose from a very real decrease in living standards for many, many people which lasted for decades. Rural/semi-rural artisans lost out to factories staffed by smaller numbers of children who could be paid far less than adults. Many had no choice but to move to cities to fight for whatever jobs they could, and the squalid conditions and extreme labor surplus inspired communist thought. So yes, this in many ways is the same argument, but I think it would be unwise to dismiss the 'labor arguments,' because while the industrial revolution in Britain did eventually raise everyone's living standards, it took about a century and the social unrest during that time (in Britain and other industrializing nations) provoked far-reaching, unintended consequences. If you are interested in this subject, The Technology Trap by Frey has an interesting comparison between the first and second industrial revolutions and the ongoing labor shifts in the modern era.

by op03 6y ago

Well thanks to that hyper-efficiency lot of people are going to be jobless. And giving people various routes to purpose is a good thing. I feel we will/should see many more such projects.

hosh 6y ago

... because the efficiency at which products are produced and value is extracted is not the only way to live and relate to the world. An alternative is to invert value extraction to value contribution, linked into intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation. A purpose-driven life feels more fulfilling than being treated as a cog in a value extraction machine. Maximizing value extraction ends up squeezing the life out of people.

hirundo 6y ago

> Well thanks to that hyper-efficiency lot of people are going to be jobless. This is false. It's the same argument behind the Luddite handloom weavers who burned mills and factory machinery. It leads to labor arguments like saying we should stop using bulldozers and require workers to use spoons instead to create more jobs. But in fact jobs come from people with resources who decide that they want to reshape the world in some way, often to gather more resources. That impulse to change the world has never been scarce and likely never will be as long as there are people.

op03 6y ago
Yes I agree ambitious people obsessed with their empire building aren't going to stop being born. And yes I agree their empires will generate jobs. But they will be increasingly crappy and mindless as people are used to fill in the gaps that Automation and AI cant. You can see that playing out in Amazon warehouses as workers try to keep pace with robots and get injured, or in Zuckerbergs content moderation farms as the mods suffer brain damage from what the AI systems miss. So expect lot of people to say no thanks. And if those people don't find any other purpose expect them to start burning things down. In that context, orgs that provide routes to purpose are doing a good thing.
- scrollaway 6y ago
  Crappy mindless jobs tend to be the first ones to be automated. The less complexity, the more mindless it is. The less complexity, the easier it is to automate. Unless you think cashier, burger flipper or product labeler is a top-job type thing.
  - op03 6y ago
    Not the reality at all. I work in process automation. There are thousands of issues and bugs in our systems that require mindless human activity to work around. Eg- Where our voice rec models fail we have hundreds of people sitting the whole day listening to boring snippets of context less conversation and correcting it. Most hate that work. Where robots malfunction on the line some guy has to just wheel in a new machine and push 2 button. That's all he does. That's what I mean by ppl being used to fill in the gaps. They do it for a few years and end up having no great qualification after the bugs get fixed so they getoved to the next crappy filler job. There is no great dignity to it or satisfaction. And they end up laughing at Obama's speeches abt reskilling cause they know the reality and end up voting for Trump.
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Dave Graeber, "Bullshit Jobs" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
blix 6y ago
> It's the same argument behind the Luddite handloom weavers who burned mills and factory machinery. It leads to labor arguments... The Luddite labor unrest arose from a very real decrease in living standards for many, many people which lasted for decades. Rural/semi-rural artisans lost out to factories staffed by smaller numbers of children who could be paid far less than adults. Many had no choice but to move to cities to fight for whatever jobs they could, and the squalid conditions and extreme labor surplus inspired communist thought. So yes, this in many ways is the same argument, but I think it would be unwise to dismiss the 'labor arguments,' because while the industrial revolution in Britain did eventually raise everyone's living standards, it took about a century and the social unrest during that time (in Britain and other industrializing nations) provoked far-reaching, unintended consequences. If you are interested in this subject, The Technology Trap by Frey has an interesting comparison between the first and second industrial revolutions and the ongoing labor shifts in the modern era.