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How can you not think this is great? Freeing humans from menial tasks is the way forward. Remember when people (mostly women) would spend hours washing? Machine

How can you not think this is great? Freeing humans from menial tasks is the way forward. Remember when people (mostly women) would spend hours washing? Machines and automation freed them.

howaboutnope 5y ago
> If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality. -- Stephen Hawking, https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/cvsdmkv https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama...
- willis936 5y ago
  The solution isn't less robots. Automation isn't the enemy, poverty is.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    Poverty will be easier to enforce with emotionless robotic cops.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    Automation solves problems that can be addressed by people in poverty. Automation funnels that money away from people in poverty to property owners. There is no support today, nor is any on the horizon, for people poised to be displaced by automation (in the US). Combine all of these, and you're going to end up with a class of people with an inability to meet their basic needs, and with no support from the government. This historically doesn't end well.
    - willis936 5y ago
      Then those are problems to solve with social policy. Solving poverty by walking technology backwards isn't a solution. Technology is too powerful. Whichever society would be the first to renounce technology would also be the last because everyone else would say "Oh, that's why we like washing machines and self-driving cars". And let's just say we lived in a unified society somehow. The net suffering of all peoples could only be alleviated by progressing technology forward and proper social policy. Removing one doesn't help solve the problem.
      - falcolas 5y ago
        Automation is here. The policies aren't. There's no reasonable policies anywhere on the horizon. The problem is going to hit us all in the face soon, no matter how much we shout "but social policies will fix it" from the rooftops.
    - FredPret 5y ago
      Remove all automation we already have and civilization goes to zero immediately. We already have a ton of automation. And yet, the jobless rate is at record lows, despite the pandemic.
      - falcolas 5y ago
        Basic unemployment rates are at 4.6%, which is not an all time low. A 20 year low would be Oct '19, which was 3.5% Also, if you dig beyond the basic rates (for example, into the "not in the labor force, but want to be"), you will see that it's around 6M, whereas the 20 year low is closer to 4M. I'm not advocating for removing automation. I'm warning that rolling out the automation of even more jobs is going to cause societal problems. Perhaps I'm hoping the right person will read this and start doing something about it, since I'm not that person. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...
        FredPret 5y ago
  - Riseed 5y ago
    I don't think people are saying fewer robots are the solution. What I hear is words of warning, to be mindful of how the resulting gains and "freedom" are distributed. The goal of is (or at least should be) to reduce suffering, not merely reallocate it.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  "__If__ machines produce everything we need..." People have been asserting that machines imply post scarcity since the communist manifesto in 1848. I am not convinced.
  - MontyCarloHall 5y ago
    Even if machines produced all goods, that still doesn’t imply post-scarcity. Some things are inherently scarce: front row tickets to a show, reservations at a hot restaurant, or a certifiably original piece of art.
    - OneTimePetes 5y ago
      A bowl of rice for a day of labour in the rainforrest sawmill that produced the front row seats.
    - dotmacro 5y ago
      Exactly. Even in Star Trek, where (almost) anything can be replicated, there are still restaurants that serve home-cooked meals.
- joey_bob 5y ago
  From the quote, I read: "most people can end up miserably poor" == "ever-increasing inequality" Which begs the question - is the misery of poverty due to the lack of access to important goods or services, or because of the relative wealth standing?
  - daniel-cussen 5y ago
    Lack of being needed.
  - deadbunny 5y ago
    Poor people can't afford to live. This leads to all kinds of shit we should have -as a species - eliminated decades ago; kids with Rickets, parents that skip meals so their kids can eat, foregoing heating so they can eat, working 3 jobs just to pay the rent, having zero healthcare. And that's just in developed countries. Poor people don't care that they will never own a Ferrari (or even a car newer than 15 years old, ever). They care about the basics, food, water, shelter. Once we don't have people in developed (and undeveloped) countries living without adequate food or being one bad week or accident away from homelessness we can come back to see if they are just simply jealous.
    - joey_bob 5y ago
      So if misery of the poor and inequality largely aren't the same, there might be a path where inequality increases while the quality of life of the poor also increases?
      - MontyCarloHall 5y ago
        Globally, at least, we appear to be well along that path. The number of people living in extreme poverty has declined precipitously over the last few decades [0]. Philosophically, why is inequality an inherently bad thing? If the poorest among us universally had the standard of living of today’s millionaires, why should we be bothered by the existence of trillionaires or quadrillionaires? For me, it comes to a differential in political power. The greater the magnitude of inequality, the easier it is for the quadrillionaires to put the plebeian millionaires back into abject poverty. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
- Spoom 5y ago
  Manna[1] is a good short story that talks about these two potential futures. I agree that in particular, it seems more likely that the unemployment welfare hellscape might be more likely, unfortunately. 1. https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
RationPhantoms 5y ago
I really want to shout out Maytag for pushing woman's rights forward. Without all that haphazard laundry out of the way, they never would've garnered equal pay or saw themselves as equal in the workplace. Please. To think there are only positives in this change is a naive approach of the future. Sure, there will be some benefits but we are in for a world of hurt if we maintain our current social structures (at least in the US) and decimate the working population.
- MontyCarloHall 5y ago
  With all that haphazard laundry in the way, they would never have even found themselves in a workplace. Have you ever done laundry by hand? My grandmother did. It took literally an entire day of scrubbing.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  > we are in for a world of hurt if we maintain our current social structures and decimate the working population. History has shown that maintaining the status quo until everyone's in a world of hurt is the standard approach.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  Two reductive takes do not a complex one make. Labor saving home appliances, changes in family size, and convenience foods are a pretty big deal for how people of any gender spend their time. Time spent cleaning has decreased, and been replaced with other activities. Parenting has changed a lot and become much more intensive. One did not cause the other, but our modern lives absolutely co-evolved with appliances. https://www.nber.org/digest/oct08/hours-spent-homemaking-have-changed-little-century https://www.nber.org/digest/oct08/hours-spent-homemaking-hav...
username_my1 5y ago
it's not even about that. any large scale, long running space colonies will need huge effort of robots that don't mind the hostile environment, without much much more advanced robots space colonization is a dream and so the end of life as we know it is certain (just wait for a big enough asteroid or a near supernova).
amelius 5y ago
Since automation, almost everything has become lower quality. There's a reason why "handmade" is better.
- danpalmer 5y ago
  My washing machine does a lot better job than I could. My oven is much more reliable at heating than I am at building campfires. My computer is much quicker at maths than I am. My TV is cheaper than going to the theatre. Automation is great when it works well, we just forget about it when it does, so we generally only recognise the bad.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Perhaps, but your dishwasher is probably not be better than a person dedicated to washing dishes. My dishwasher often leaves dirty spots and stripes, which would easily be noticed and removed by a dedicated person.
    - danpalmer 5y ago
      It's orders of magnitude cheaper though, and most people would accept a >90% good enough job for <1% of the price. Also I recommend the Technology Connections videos on how dishwashers work. Most people are probably not using them correctly for optimal results.
      - dharmaturtle 5y ago
        Good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 TLDW: Stop using detergent packs, start using the pre-wash bin.
        FredPret 5y ago
        I saw this but had a huge box of soap packs. So I started putting one in the prewash thingy and two more soap packs in the main section. Now it cleans shockingly well.
guerrilla 5y ago
It really depends on who owns the robots. As it is now, the richer you are the more robots you'll be able to afford and the less labor you'll need. When labor isn't in demand anymore and most people don't have robots, then most people won't have income anymore, forcing them into poverty and revolution. Robot police and military could make successful revolution impossible.
- Gys 5y ago
  I think robots will follow a pattern similar to cars, tv's, kitchen machines, computers and such. First only a few can afford them, but in time prices come down and functionality goes up.
- jjkaczor 5y ago
  Capture them, hack them and re-program them...
- foogazi 5y ago
  Did that happen when washing machines became available? Everyone owns washing machines now - people just move on to do other things
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Washing machines didn't eliminate all demand for labor. It was pretty niche like most applications so far. And yeah, most of the world still doesn't have them, so those positive feedback loops have been there the whole time.
    - redisman 5y ago
      And if your town doesn’t have washing machines, they sure as heck aren’t going to have 100x more expensive robots
    - true_religion 5y ago
      Robots are just portable computers with hands. They will not eliminate all demand for labor anytime soon.

How can you not think this is great? Freeing humans from menial tasks is the way forward. Remember when people (mostly women) would spend hours washing? Machines and automation freed them.

howaboutnope 5y ago

> If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality. -- Stephen Hawking, https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/cvsdmkv https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama...

willis936 5y ago
The solution isn't less robots. Automation isn't the enemy, poverty is.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  Poverty will be easier to enforce with emotionless robotic cops.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Automation solves problems that can be addressed by people in poverty. Automation funnels that money away from people in poverty to property owners. There is no support today, nor is any on the horizon, for people poised to be displaced by automation (in the US). Combine all of these, and you're going to end up with a class of people with an inability to meet their basic needs, and with no support from the government. This historically doesn't end well.
  - willis936 5y ago
    Then those are problems to solve with social policy. Solving poverty by walking technology backwards isn't a solution. Technology is too powerful. Whichever society would be the first to renounce technology would also be the last because everyone else would say "Oh, that's why we like washing machines and self-driving cars". And let's just say we lived in a unified society somehow. The net suffering of all peoples could only be alleviated by progressing technology forward and proper social policy. Removing one doesn't help solve the problem.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      Automation is here. The policies aren't. There's no reasonable policies anywhere on the horizon. The problem is going to hit us all in the face soon, no matter how much we shout "but social policies will fix it" from the rooftops.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    Remove all automation we already have and civilization goes to zero immediately. We already have a ton of automation. And yet, the jobless rate is at record lows, despite the pandemic.
    - falcolas 5y ago
      Basic unemployment rates are at 4.6%, which is not an all time low. A 20 year low would be Oct '19, which was 3.5% Also, if you dig beyond the basic rates (for example, into the "not in the labor force, but want to be"), you will see that it's around 6M, whereas the 20 year low is closer to 4M. I'm not advocating for removing automation. I'm warning that rolling out the automation of even more jobs is going to cause societal problems. Perhaps I'm hoping the right person will read this and start doing something about it, since I'm not that person. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...
      - FredPret 5y ago
- Riseed 5y ago
  I don't think people are saying fewer robots are the solution. What I hear is words of warning, to be mindful of how the resulting gains and "freedom" are distributed. The goal of is (or at least should be) to reduce suffering, not merely reallocate it.
dahfizz 5y ago
"__If__ machines produce everything we need..." People have been asserting that machines imply post scarcity since the communist manifesto in 1848. I am not convinced.
- MontyCarloHall 5y ago
  Even if machines produced all goods, that still doesn’t imply post-scarcity. Some things are inherently scarce: front row tickets to a show, reservations at a hot restaurant, or a certifiably original piece of art.
  - OneTimePetes 5y ago
    A bowl of rice for a day of labour in the rainforrest sawmill that produced the front row seats.
  - dotmacro 5y ago
    Exactly. Even in Star Trek, where (almost) anything can be replicated, there are still restaurants that serve home-cooked meals.
joey_bob 5y ago
From the quote, I read: "most people can end up miserably poor" == "ever-increasing inequality" Which begs the question - is the misery of poverty due to the lack of access to important goods or services, or because of the relative wealth standing?
- daniel-cussen 5y ago
  Lack of being needed.
- deadbunny 5y ago
  Poor people can't afford to live. This leads to all kinds of shit we should have -as a species - eliminated decades ago; kids with Rickets, parents that skip meals so their kids can eat, foregoing heating so they can eat, working 3 jobs just to pay the rent, having zero healthcare. And that's just in developed countries. Poor people don't care that they will never own a Ferrari (or even a car newer than 15 years old, ever). They care about the basics, food, water, shelter. Once we don't have people in developed (and undeveloped) countries living without adequate food or being one bad week or accident away from homelessness we can come back to see if they are just simply jealous.
  - joey_bob 5y ago
    So if misery of the poor and inequality largely aren't the same, there might be a path where inequality increases while the quality of life of the poor also increases?
    - MontyCarloHall 5y ago
      Globally, at least, we appear to be well along that path. The number of people living in extreme poverty has declined precipitously over the last few decades [0]. Philosophically, why is inequality an inherently bad thing? If the poorest among us universally had the standard of living of today’s millionaires, why should we be bothered by the existence of trillionaires or quadrillionaires? For me, it comes to a differential in political power. The greater the magnitude of inequality, the easier it is for the quadrillionaires to put the plebeian millionaires back into abject poverty. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
Spoom 5y ago
Manna[1] is a good short story that talks about these two potential futures. I agree that in particular, it seems more likely that the unemployment welfare hellscape might be more likely, unfortunately. 1. https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

RationPhantoms 5y ago

I really want to shout out Maytag for pushing woman's rights forward. Without all that haphazard laundry out of the way, they never would've garnered equal pay or saw themselves as equal in the workplace. Please. To think there are only positives in this change is a naive approach of the future. Sure, there will be some benefits but we are in for a world of hurt if we maintain our current social structures (at least in the US) and decimate the working population.

MontyCarloHall 5y ago
With all that haphazard laundry in the way, they would never have even found themselves in a workplace. Have you ever done laundry by hand? My grandmother did. It took literally an entire day of scrubbing.
alpaca128 5y ago
> we are in for a world of hurt if we maintain our current social structures and decimate the working population. History has shown that maintaining the status quo until everyone's in a world of hurt is the standard approach.
dougmwne 5y ago
Two reductive takes do not a complex one make. Labor saving home appliances, changes in family size, and convenience foods are a pretty big deal for how people of any gender spend their time. Time spent cleaning has decreased, and been replaced with other activities. Parenting has changed a lot and become much more intensive. One did not cause the other, but our modern lives absolutely co-evolved with appliances. https://www.nber.org/digest/oct08/hours-spent-homemaking-have-changed-little-century https://www.nber.org/digest/oct08/hours-spent-homemaking-hav...

username_my1 5y ago

it's not even about that. any large scale, long running space colonies will need huge effort of robots that don't mind the hostile environment, without much much more advanced robots space colonization is a dream and so the end of life as we know it is certain (just wait for a big enough asteroid or a near supernova).

amelius 5y ago

Since automation, almost everything has become lower quality. There's a reason why "handmade" is better.

danpalmer 5y ago
My washing machine does a lot better job than I could. My oven is much more reliable at heating than I am at building campfires. My computer is much quicker at maths than I am. My TV is cheaper than going to the theatre. Automation is great when it works well, we just forget about it when it does, so we generally only recognise the bad.
- amelius 5y ago
  Perhaps, but your dishwasher is probably not be better than a person dedicated to washing dishes. My dishwasher often leaves dirty spots and stripes, which would easily be noticed and removed by a dedicated person.
  - danpalmer 5y ago
    It's orders of magnitude cheaper though, and most people would accept a >90% good enough job for <1% of the price. Also I recommend the Technology Connections videos on how dishwashers work. Most people are probably not using them correctly for optimal results.
    - dharmaturtle 5y ago
      Good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 TLDW: Stop using detergent packs, start using the pre-wash bin.
      - FredPret 5y ago
        I saw this but had a huge box of soap packs. So I started putting one in the prewash thingy and two more soap packs in the main section. Now it cleans shockingly well.

guerrilla 5y ago

It really depends on who owns the robots. As it is now, the richer you are the more robots you'll be able to afford and the less labor you'll need. When labor isn't in demand anymore and most people don't have robots, then most people won't have income anymore, forcing them into poverty and revolution. Robot police and military could make successful revolution impossible.

Gys 5y ago
I think robots will follow a pattern similar to cars, tv's, kitchen machines, computers and such. First only a few can afford them, but in time prices come down and functionality goes up.
jjkaczor 5y ago
Capture them, hack them and re-program them...
foogazi 5y ago
Did that happen when washing machines became available? Everyone owns washing machines now - people just move on to do other things
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Washing machines didn't eliminate all demand for labor. It was pretty niche like most applications so far. And yeah, most of the world still doesn't have them, so those positive feedback loops have been there the whole time.
  - redisman 5y ago
    And if your town doesn’t have washing machines, they sure as heck aren’t going to have 100x more expensive robots
  - true_religion 5y ago
    Robots are just portable computers with hands. They will not eliminate all demand for labor anytime soon.