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The luddites had a point. What happens in an economy when machines can do most tasks? What happens to power structures when people become a cost rather than a b

by acover 4y ago

The luddites had a point. What happens in an economy when machines can do most tasks? What happens to power structures when people become a cost rather than a benefit?

Nadya 4y ago
> What happens in an economy when machines can do most tasks? We invent new things for people to do. As we have time immemorial. What happens to clergymen when nobody has faith in a religion? They find other things to do than preach. > What happens to power structures when people become a cost rather than a benefit? If you want to look at this pessimistically - a good portion of the world's population can already be considered a cost and are a net economic negative on the privileged people's ability to hoard even more insane amounts of wealth. We've, thankfully, decided that mass genocide of impoverished people is inhumane and humanitarian efforts are instead created to try and improve their lives. Even a pessimistic take that the humanitarian efforts only being done to create more workers doesn't hold up given a cost/benefit analysis. More money is invested than could ever be extracted again - and yet we continue investing. Maybe instead of filling our lives being paid to dig holes so that others can be paid to fill them we could turn more attention and efforts to improving people's lives without having to worry about sustaining society through work?
- acover 4y ago
  Other technologies created more jobs than they destroyed. The internal combustion engine destroyed more jobs for horses than they created. Further, artificial general intelligence is a resource curse. Leaders can extract value without worrying about the people's wellbeing. Obviously there are good outcomes but that doesn't exclude bad outcomes.
  - Nadya 4y ago
    Horses, unlike humans, are incapable of specializing in new or complex tasks and have a very narrow set of tasks they can accomplish even with a lifetime of training. The argument holds almost no water unless you assume humans are only good for a single, maybe two, tasks and are incapable of learning or being trained on other tasks if the task they were performing was made redundant. We didn't cull switchboard operators and calculators when we automated their jobs through technology. They found new jobs. > Leaders can extract value without worrying about the people's wellbeing. Historically this has had limits. After those limits have been reached - leaders quickly find themselves 6' under ground if people even gave them that courtesy. There are parts of the world where this has already happened - this century, maybe even this decade. Consider yourself quite privileged if you live in a part of the world where the mere thought of this seems outlandishly absurd and unrealistic.
parineum 4y ago
An unprecedented era of prosperity and luxury?
- lostmsu 4y ago
  For the machines, yes. But why do you think they'd share?
- acover 4y ago
  That's one possibility.
- dc-programmer 4y ago
  The luddites lost their status, leisure time, and middle class incomes. Their descendants worked 12 hours a day in factories. They definitely had good reasons to push back.
  - mrbungie 4y ago
    Revolutions are never smooth and privileged groups threatened by new technologies or ideas always have reasons to push back and will do so fiercely, that's plain human nature. But if we block progress to protect the status quo of said people, are they going to give back value to society in the same magnitude as said progress in the long term? I don't think so really, at least when reviewing history, it always pays reasonably well in the long run*. This discussion is very old, as it applies to many examples as monarchy/nobles in the French Revolution and other similar revolutions, to horses (and highly specialized humans profiting from them) when cars became cheap, to hunter-gatherers when agriculture developed, and a large etcetera. The only difference I see in "advanced AIs" as a technology is that the individual immediate wellbeing of almost every human is probably threatened as there will be more jobs destroyed than created.** PS*: Personal positions in these kinds of arguments depend on other personal opinions and predictions about an specific sociological/technological "advance" being of net positive value for all society. If your opinion is contrary to that, possibly staying as hunters-gatherers or being governed by kings and emperors (or something in between, just some extreme examples to make the point) were better courses of action. PS2**: I'm talking about human-aligned AIs. Bring a rogue AI agent with misaligned objectives and with direct or indirect physical presence to the discussion and there are no net positives to talk about (for humans).
79a6ed87 4y ago
>The luddites had a point. Didn't the machines ended up creating more jobs than there were before even taking into account the lost ones? They had a point, until it turned out they were wrong. Also, wasn't innovation getting in the way of other jobs since before? Didn't Uber and similar applications end up becoming competition for the taxis? In my country taxi drivers were protesting for those apps to be banned, yet they couldn't compete with the convenience and safety of the apps. And before that, weren't horse-drawn carriage drivers protesting against cars?
- acover 4y ago
  > Many Luddites were owners of workshops that had closed because factories could sell similar products for less. But when workshop owners set out to find a job at a factory, it was very hard to find one because producing things in factories required fewer workers than producing those same things in a workshop. This left many people unemployed and angry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite It wasn't a smooth transition. What happened to horses after most of their tasks were done better by internal combustion engines? It's weird to imagine a world where humans have so few niches, but I thought we were decades away from passing the Turing test.
- lm28469 4y ago
  > They had a point, until it turned out they were wrong. Meanwhile people are pushed into shittier and shittier jobs with ever decreasing meaning > Didn't Uber and similar applications end up becoming competition for the taxis? In my country taxi drivers were protesting for those apps to be banned And now uber drivers are seen as contractors, which means they miss most workers benefits, while being paid like shit thanks to the race to the bottom, the only winner is uber

by acover 4y ago

The luddites had a point. What happens in an economy when machines can do most tasks? What happens to power structures when people become a cost rather than a benefit?

Nadya 4y ago

> What happens in an economy when machines can do most tasks? We invent new things for people to do. As we have time immemorial. What happens to clergymen when nobody has faith in a religion? They find other things to do than preach. > What happens to power structures when people become a cost rather than a benefit? If you want to look at this pessimistically - a good portion of the world's population can already be considered a cost and are a net economic negative on the privileged people's ability to hoard even more insane amounts of wealth. We've, thankfully, decided that mass genocide of impoverished people is inhumane and humanitarian efforts are instead created to try and improve their lives. Even a pessimistic take that the humanitarian efforts only being done to create more workers doesn't hold up given a cost/benefit analysis. More money is invested than could ever be extracted again - and yet we continue investing. Maybe instead of filling our lives being paid to dig holes so that others can be paid to fill them we could turn more attention and efforts to improving people's lives without having to worry about sustaining society through work?

acover 4y ago
Other technologies created more jobs than they destroyed. The internal combustion engine destroyed more jobs for horses than they created. Further, artificial general intelligence is a resource curse. Leaders can extract value without worrying about the people's wellbeing. Obviously there are good outcomes but that doesn't exclude bad outcomes.
- Nadya 4y ago
  Horses, unlike humans, are incapable of specializing in new or complex tasks and have a very narrow set of tasks they can accomplish even with a lifetime of training. The argument holds almost no water unless you assume humans are only good for a single, maybe two, tasks and are incapable of learning or being trained on other tasks if the task they were performing was made redundant. We didn't cull switchboard operators and calculators when we automated their jobs through technology. They found new jobs. > Leaders can extract value without worrying about the people's wellbeing. Historically this has had limits. After those limits have been reached - leaders quickly find themselves 6' under ground if people even gave them that courtesy. There are parts of the world where this has already happened - this century, maybe even this decade. Consider yourself quite privileged if you live in a part of the world where the mere thought of this seems outlandishly absurd and unrealistic.

parineum 4y ago

An unprecedented era of prosperity and luxury?

lostmsu 4y ago
For the machines, yes. But why do you think they'd share?
acover 4y ago
That's one possibility.
dc-programmer 4y ago
The luddites lost their status, leisure time, and middle class incomes. Their descendants worked 12 hours a day in factories. They definitely had good reasons to push back.
- mrbungie 4y ago
  Revolutions are never smooth and privileged groups threatened by new technologies or ideas always have reasons to push back and will do so fiercely, that's plain human nature. But if we block progress to protect the status quo of said people, are they going to give back value to society in the same magnitude as said progress in the long term? I don't think so really, at least when reviewing history, it always pays reasonably well in the long run*. This discussion is very old, as it applies to many examples as monarchy/nobles in the French Revolution and other similar revolutions, to horses (and highly specialized humans profiting from them) when cars became cheap, to hunter-gatherers when agriculture developed, and a large etcetera. The only difference I see in "advanced AIs" as a technology is that the individual immediate wellbeing of almost every human is probably threatened as there will be more jobs destroyed than created.** PS*: Personal positions in these kinds of arguments depend on other personal opinions and predictions about an specific sociological/technological "advance" being of net positive value for all society. If your opinion is contrary to that, possibly staying as hunters-gatherers or being governed by kings and emperors (or something in between, just some extreme examples to make the point) were better courses of action. PS2**: I'm talking about human-aligned AIs. Bring a rogue AI agent with misaligned objectives and with direct or indirect physical presence to the discussion and there are no net positives to talk about (for humans).

79a6ed87 4y ago

>The luddites had a point. Didn't the machines ended up creating more jobs than there were before even taking into account the lost ones? They had a point, until it turned out they were wrong. Also, wasn't innovation getting in the way of other jobs since before? Didn't Uber and similar applications end up becoming competition for the taxis? In my country taxi drivers were protesting for those apps to be banned, yet they couldn't compete with the convenience and safety of the apps. And before that, weren't horse-drawn carriage drivers protesting against cars?

acover 4y ago
> Many Luddites were owners of workshops that had closed because factories could sell similar products for less. But when workshop owners set out to find a job at a factory, it was very hard to find one because producing things in factories required fewer workers than producing those same things in a workshop. This left many people unemployed and angry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite It wasn't a smooth transition. What happened to horses after most of their tasks were done better by internal combustion engines? It's weird to imagine a world where humans have so few niches, but I thought we were decades away from passing the Turing test.
lm28469 4y ago
> They had a point, until it turned out they were wrong. Meanwhile people are pushed into shittier and shittier jobs with ever decreasing meaning > Didn't Uber and similar applications end up becoming competition for the taxis? In my country taxi drivers were protesting for those apps to be banned And now uber drivers are seen as contractors, which means they miss most workers benefits, while being paid like shit thanks to the race to the bottom, the only winner is uber