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Automation doesn't need to have The Matrix as the end result; it could be a Star Trek utopia. If automation was truly in the spirit of freeing people from havi

by csydas 4y ago

Automation doesn't need to have The Matrix as the end result; it could be a Star Trek utopia. If automation was truly in the spirit of freeing people from having to struggle to survive, imagine a system build around an automated future where because everything is so efficient and there's no need for menial labor, you can just kind of do whatever you want; art, research, gardening, you name it. Freeloaders in the system sum up to a rounding error for the resources needed to support them because the system is efficient. Enough people like the system that they willingly work to maintain it and improve it (it's even exciting for them to study and build new and better ways of providing the resources than the existing way), but ultimately you just have time to do the things you tell yourself right now you can't do because you need to take meetings/clean up the house/work 8+ hours a day to sustain a basic living, etc. It's likely going to be a tough transition as long as we still think in terms of "I as a person must maximize my gains and protect them from everyone else", but automation could easily provide such a life for everyone if it advances enough. That transition is gonna be a hard one though as the habit of personal gain is a tough one to break after living in it for so long.

TomSwirly 4y ago
> Automation doesn't need to have The Matrix as the end result; it could be a Star Trek utopia. In some alternate world, perhaps. In the real world, developing AI is costing capitalists a lot of capital, and they fully expect to capitalize on this technology, at the expense of all the rest of us. > That transition is gonna be a hard one though as the habit of personal gain is a tough one to break after living in it for so long. This is ridiculous. 99% of us simply have no choice. We keep working, not because of "personal gain" but so we can continue to eat food and have shelter over our heads. Our relationship to "personal gain" is simply irrelevant in this equation because we have no power. Only a tiny number of people who are already incredibly rich because of obsessive attention to personal gain will have any say, and of course, they will decide in favor of MORE personal gain. Blaming the rest of us for this is simply victim-blaming.
- csydas 4y ago
  I'm not sure why you're taking this as victim blaming. _Everyone_ needs to change, including the corporations and the very society we live in to make it a goal. If it wasn't implicit in my fantasy world, there is no more class difference. Everyone has a very good baseline, like _VERY_ good. Clothing, food, transportation, energy, housing. When this is all taken care of in a great way, what exactly will corporations have to sell anymore to have the power they have now? Personal gain doesn't just mean exorbitant wealth, it means the entire style of life we've built modern society around. Yes, I work for personal gain because I want to travel, eat cool food, and get nice things to make my life better. Everyone does this because they have to. That's not victim blaming, it's a fact of life that everyone does this. Many have to work harder and struggle more because of the inequality of the system that forces the only means of living as "work towards personal gain." Now just try to imagine for a moment what your life would be like if you didn't have to focus on personal gain, you just implicitly had a guaranteed stable and nice and comfortable life; what would you do? Would you still try to chase only ventures that secure your future further, or would you maybe start to consider more passion projects? To be perfectly clear, I absolutely understand that this is not as simple of a matter of "hey everyone, let's just be nicer" and then we will have utopia. Far from it, I understand there are deeply entrenched systems that force this way of consumption and struggle on the entire planet. The first step towards something better however is to accept that it can be possible; as long as we're telling ourselves it can never be better, naturally it's going to be stuck this way. You can see small examples of this everywhere; municipal ISPs versus the incumbent ISPs are a perfect example of a community saying "hey, the corporation is bullshit, let's do our own thing", and this works out pretty well, results in better and cheaper service for communities, and ultimately weakens corporations as they have to play nicer in order to play at all. What other elements in your life could be improved like this? That is all I'm asking you to think about.
  - philwelch 4y ago
    > If it wasn't implicit in my fantasy world, there is no more class difference. False. There would only be class difference. Even in Star Trek, some people are starship captains who own French vineyards or luxury apartments in San Francisco while other people can only manage to live in a trailer in the desert, or on marginal planets on the border that are surrendered to the Cardassians, and if those colonists try to declare independence from the Cardassians, Starfleet will literally use weapons of mass destruction to make their homeworlds uninhabitable to human beings.

by csydas 4y ago

TomSwirly 4y ago

> Automation doesn't need to have The Matrix as the end result; it could be a Star Trek utopia. In some alternate world, perhaps. In the real world, developing AI is costing capitalists a lot of capital, and they fully expect to capitalize on this technology, at the expense of all the rest of us. > That transition is gonna be a hard one though as the habit of personal gain is a tough one to break after living in it for so long. This is ridiculous. 99% of us simply have no choice. We keep working, not because of "personal gain" but so we can continue to eat food and have shelter over our heads. Our relationship to "personal gain" is simply irrelevant in this equation because we have no power. Only a tiny number of people who are already incredibly rich because of obsessive attention to personal gain will have any say, and of course, they will decide in favor of MORE personal gain. Blaming the rest of us for this is simply victim-blaming.

csydas 4y ago
I'm not sure why you're taking this as victim blaming. _Everyone_ needs to change, including the corporations and the very society we live in to make it a goal. If it wasn't implicit in my fantasy world, there is no more class difference. Everyone has a very good baseline, like _VERY_ good. Clothing, food, transportation, energy, housing. When this is all taken care of in a great way, what exactly will corporations have to sell anymore to have the power they have now? Personal gain doesn't just mean exorbitant wealth, it means the entire style of life we've built modern society around. Yes, I work for personal gain because I want to travel, eat cool food, and get nice things to make my life better. Everyone does this because they have to. That's not victim blaming, it's a fact of life that everyone does this. Many have to work harder and struggle more because of the inequality of the system that forces the only means of living as "work towards personal gain." Now just try to imagine for a moment what your life would be like if you didn't have to focus on personal gain, you just implicitly had a guaranteed stable and nice and comfortable life; what would you do? Would you still try to chase only ventures that secure your future further, or would you maybe start to consider more passion projects? To be perfectly clear, I absolutely understand that this is not as simple of a matter of "hey everyone, let's just be nicer" and then we will have utopia. Far from it, I understand there are deeply entrenched systems that force this way of consumption and struggle on the entire planet. The first step towards something better however is to accept that it can be possible; as long as we're telling ourselves it can never be better, naturally it's going to be stuck this way. You can see small examples of this everywhere; municipal ISPs versus the incumbent ISPs are a perfect example of a community saying "hey, the corporation is bullshit, let's do our own thing", and this works out pretty well, results in better and cheaper service for communities, and ultimately weakens corporations as they have to play nicer in order to play at all. What other elements in your life could be improved like this? That is all I'm asking you to think about.
- philwelch 4y ago
  > If it wasn't implicit in my fantasy world, there is no more class difference. False. There would only be class difference. Even in Star Trek, some people are starship captains who own French vineyards or luxury apartments in San Francisco while other people can only manage to live in a trailer in the desert, or on marginal planets on the border that are surrendered to the Cardassians, and if those colonists try to declare independence from the Cardassians, Starfleet will literally use weapons of mass destruction to make their homeworlds uninhabitable to human beings.