22 ms·

The big oversight here is that Priya does not want a job, what Priya wants is an income. The point of life is not working, the point of life is to enjoy it. We

• vixen99 4y ago
  Do we know what Priha does or does not want and what she enjoys?
• atemerev 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    Has communism ever been attempted without severe backlash from entities with capitalistic interests?
  • Aaargh20318 4y ago
    Because the only two options are capitalism and communism ? Communism doesn't work so just let's give up, not try anything else and let the rich exploit the majority of the human race.
    • kdmccormick 4y ago
      Agreed. Universal basic income and capitalism can coexist. If everyone was given an annual stipend suitable for a healthy life, motivated people could still choose to increase their personal wealth by working. The surplus wouldn't need to be owned by the state, like it is under communism. I know that even if I was given $20k a year by default, I'd still work in order to make more.
    • SideQuark 4y ago
      Because wanting income as you put it, without producing value, has never worked very well. This is why capitalism has pulled billions out of poverty and communism (or all the other pie in the sky give me free stuff detached from what I trade back) hasn't. Income is a proxy for you to trade value you create to another that is willing to trade back. So yeah, go ahead and try whatever you think mankind has not invented despite thousands of years and billions of people wanting to have stuff without trading for it. Most such schemes end up hurting people far more than any help. >the majority of the human race ... who has gotten incredibly richer than at any time in history and for more people than ever.
    • rvz 4y ago
      Yeah. 'Real' communism hasn't been tried! /s Everyone here knows the last time it was tried, it ended in complete failure. Just like the previous attempts did. Such hopelessly utopian ideas getting laughed out of the room once again.
    • lazide 4y ago
      What, concretely, do you propose then?
• 10xDev 4y ago
  During lockdowns the rate of depression and all sorts of mental and physical issues went up. Becoming unemployed may not be the exact same thing as a lockdown but less incentive to get up at a reasonable time or to leave the house would still lead to more overweight, lazy and depressed people.
  • jonnycomputer 4y ago
    People were stuck in their homes.
    • 10xDev 4y ago
      >Becoming unemployed may not be the exact same thing as a lockdown
  • lucideer 4y ago
    > less incentive to get up at a reasonable time or to leave the house People have plenty of natural incentives to leave the house ("reasonable time" is a sign of your own biases, but no doubt leaving the house is healthy regardless). The reason people don't do so is because there are strong economic disincentives to do so. This is not just obvious conscious disincentives like "I don't have time because I need to earn money online" & "I will have to pay for X, Y, Z in the city if I go out" but also much deeper more complex systematic disincentives like "I am chronically ill due to years of economically-linked stress and burnout" & "I feel depressed due to economically-linked lifelong trauma" Healthy people don't need employers to incentivise them to leave the house. And unhealthy people don't need work, they need support.
  • namarie 4y ago
    Becoming unemployed may not be the exact same thing as a lockdown during a pandemic? Don't you think people dying in the hundreds of thousands due to disease has more to do with rise in depression than anything else?
    • 10xDev 4y ago
      Countless people die every day to all kinds of horrible diseases and most people were not even affected. Guess what there is even a war going on, tuberculosis, cancer and still covid.
• jzb 4y ago
  That would be great. It’s also not going to happen without a massive uprising. The people profiting off automation have zero intent of sharing the wealth and every intent of hoarding it.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • auggierose 4y ago
    Yep. That's why there WILL be an uprising. When? I don't know. When the pressure becomes too high to bear, and risking your life seems like a good option compared to just hanging in there. But maybe by that time most humans have been genetically engineered to be happy to be serfs, and oligarchy is a genetic condition now.
    • ehnto 4y ago
      I expect we'll adjust the status quo for decades yet. The internet projects a lot of negative sentiment, but I suspect most people are happy scraping by so long as they have a roof and some entertainment. Even proactive people are made to believe they are just one more "rise and grind" away from being a millionaire, they want to be succesful in this society, so they have no desire to tear it down. What could bring the stack of cards coming down I think, is a housing affordability crisis. For anyone who has ended up without a home or even just the threat of losing a place to live, you wake up to that reality real quick. If there is suddenly a majority without work and without a home, that's a bunch of people who just found out the system is broken and will want answers.
      • pixl97 4y ago
        Heh, I see we're following the Manna timeline https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
        • akra 4y ago
          Still a potential possibility - sadly IMO more so than the utopia vision of AI; thanks for reminding me of this. We simply become fodder for the things AI can't reasonably do in the "real world" until it can with the owners of the systems living it up. At that point the rich/political class have no need for the "rest of us", live the high life and the rest of the population is a "problem" that has to be managed by the state creating mass inequality.
• jstimpfle 4y ago
  I'm not sure there is objectively a point of life, but what people need is a sense of purpose -- just enjoying life doesn't work. For many, their job is a large source of purpose.
• etrautmann 4y ago
  While true, it seems less likely that we'll somehow solve the myriad political challenges to enable universal income than the possibility that AI tools will cause a further concentration of wealth in a small number of hands. while there's a case for idealism, without some degree of pragmatism we'll be lost on policy or regulation proposals.
  • advael 4y ago
    Yes, policy needs to be pragmatic in how it ensures that trends toward greater inequality are reversed. In particular, anti-trust regulation, non-means-tested social safety nets (IE government services that allow humans to survive), and meaningful investment in real public infrastructure (Not public-private partnerships, as currently run the internet and the electric grid of most of the United States, for example) seem like good places to start. There is only so much concentration of power that can occur before bloodshed becomes inevitable, and proposals of this kind are attempts to solve problems for people on the ground without anyone needing to overthrow the extant society or perish. Attempts to frame such common-sense measures as attempts to overthrow society themselves are done out of profoundly myopic short-termism
• mathverse 4y ago
  Those that envision utopias will soon realize that their work leads to creation of dystopia. we are headed towards Elysium future with billions of humans competing for scraps.
  • gjsman-1000 4y ago
    There’s always the joke about the “Communist Utopia,” but that’s what it was marketed as. The marketing was also so strong people killed their own by the millions to make it happen. It never happened and we remember those eras for atrocities, not Utopian equality.
    • shrimp_emoji 4y ago
      But they couldn't centrally plan economies very well since they lacked AI. ;)
• jonnycomputer 4y ago
  Yes, ultimately it will have to be something like that. If the capitalists (i.e. those who own capital) can live off of ownership rather than labour, maybe someday all of us can. Because the alternative is unthinkable.
• gjsman-1000 4y ago
  > doesn't directly link labour with income Who in their right mind would work if they can get free income, even if small, without having a disability or similar disqualifier? Right now, we are in a worker shortage, and it’s going to get worse as retirements continue. Separating labor from work would cripple living standards and demoralize productive workers.
  • neerd 4y ago
    If this is not decoupled how do you propose people survive when automation makes the vast majority of people permanently unemployable?
    • gjsman-1000 4y ago
      Call me retrograde but I would almost be forced to question the automation part here.
  • efficientsticks 4y ago
    Lots of people prefer comfort above and beyond the necessity: private cars instead of bus, takeaway instead of home cooked meals, country homes instead of small city apartments.
• danielrpa 4y ago
  Jobs often make people feel useful. While many can be the happy unemployed person playing Counterstrike 24/7, many others need some sort of occupation for self-realization. This is actually a common problem, which can even became a major psychological issue, with people entering retirement. Maybe one day we can live in a world where machines are doing all the work and there are fulfilling hobbies for everybody, but I fear this will require more changes, on a much longer time horizon, than the short-term issues just around the corner due to the recent AI advances.
  • tap-snap-or-nap 4y ago
    Anyone who has been unemployed may know how badly it affects a persons self-worth.
    • ResearchCode 4y ago
      That has more to do with discrimination against the unemployed.
      • starkd 4y ago
        Perpetual victimhood is also devastating for one's sense of self-worth.
      • XorNot 4y ago
        Discrimination against poor people, more specifically. No one cares how unemployed you are if you're rich. Or at least well off enough to be reclassified as "eccentric" and thus okay.
        • therealdrag0 4y ago
          Eh I’ve read plenty of essays by people who have retired early and it was not good for their psyche even though they were loaded.
      • i_am_toaster 4y ago
• scarface74 4y ago
  Billions of people throughout history have worked just to live. The biological and evolutionary point of life is to reproduce.
• Entinel 4y ago
  This is a nice thought that isn't going to happen. AI will eliminate jobs and rich people will get richer while also widening the moat so you can't use that same tech to compete.
  • uncleDingle 4y ago
    This is the most likely outcome.
  • oweiler 4y ago
    This is exactly what will happen. There will be no Star Trek like future.
  • akra 4y ago
    Its really a function of who is paying for the tech, who owns it and what do they want to do with it. The only reason the middle class was born was because trained workers could pull their labor and affect upper class wealth. They had power. AI takes that power away.
• netbioserror 4y ago
  What a profoundly naive opinion. Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. Many people claim their lives would be better if they never had to work, but they are bullshitting themselves with childhood naivete. Not working is a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, hedonism, and despair. I've been through some of that before. We humans are not built for it. We need something valuable to do and most are incapable of summoning valuable ideas and tasks from the ether.
  • Gud 4y ago
    You can be working without it being your only source of income. If everybody was given let’s say ten million dollars in capital (and endless social security), those who wanted could work. The rest of us wouldn’t mind letting the machines do the work.
    • wokwokwok 4y ago
      By whom? ...and what will happen when every single person goes and tries to buy a 50" TV? Hm? Did we suddenly invent a magical TV making machine? Come on... this is Real Life, not Magical Fairy Land. We're not talking about a magical cornucopia that generates an endless amount of physical goods that can be used to accommodate the needs of every person. We're very specifically talking here about technological shift that will eliminate a large pool of skilled jobs. People will still need jobs, or they will become homeless / starve / have to leave the country. AI is not going to feed the world any time soon.
      • Terretta 4y ago
        > Did we suddenly invent a magical TV making machine? I mean ... we already have 3D printing, and car making robots, and electronics making robots. Most of the TV is robots. All that's needed is the equivalent of 3D printing that adds an extra step of "TV-making-robot"-making robots. One reason we don't have that is that it turns out the robot making robot costs more than certain as-yet non-globalized labor markets. It's not that we can't, it's that the ROE is bad.
• ryaniscool 4y ago
  Sure, that would be great but history has shown this is a beautiful but naive pipe dream. It doesn't take into account the ambition and greed of humans and their capacity to exploit others.
  • carapace 4y ago
    > It doesn't take into account the ambition and greed of humans and their capacity to exploit others. The talking computers will rapidly become perfect therapists and perfect salesmen. They can talk us "down off the ledge".
    • ihateyouall123 4y ago
      Which means they could also push us over the edge. If the weak-minded are currently influenced by today's bots, it's a matter of time until some are testing humans by "pushing limits" if you will
      • carapace 4y ago
        > Which means they could also push us over the edge. Sure, but that's a separate problem, eh? We split the atom and built both bombs and power plants, it's a choice we have to make: which to deploy? We have (or are about to have) the technology to cure psychological and emotional issues at scale. (A good therapist today runs about (I don't know?) $150/hour? Way out of reach for most of us without insurance or subsidy or something, eh? What if that was e.g. $0.0000015/hour?)
        • tekknik 4y ago
          So push forward and if it destroys humanity then so what? Is that also a separate problem?
• Sirenos 4y ago
  I see this sentiment expressed in almost every venue of discussion, but I never see a concrete plan, or even steps we could take right now to progress towards that future. That's why I'll always remain skeptical about technological utopianism. It simply doesn't work that way in reality.
• bitwize 4y ago
  To the reactionaries answering this post: Read your Kropotkin before posting, please and thank you.
• czbond 4y ago
  i believed people want meaning, and might not need a job until Covid. Many people have no intrinsic drive - and a "get to work to earn it" provides this. The lockdowns, at least in the U.S., caused people to improve themselves surely - but they then had no idea how to fill their time and binge watched TV, watched Tik Tok, etc.
  • namarie 4y ago
    So forcing people to either get a job or be poor is for their own good, then? Just because you don't agree with how people chose to spend their time in a very nerve-wracking situation? This sounds very condescending.
    • czbond 4y ago
      Work and purpose is good & a necessity. I'm suggesting through large cultural observation, many are poor at finding purpose in anything besides work and become destitute and negatively influence themselves. A large number of retirees find themselves in this bucket as an example - if it happens there, why would it not happen no matter the life stage?
      • feydaykyn 4y ago
        As a fellow pessimistic person, I'd like to share the idea that obstacles are not the end, they just mean one needs to be look harder. I hope to switch you a bit from problem-finding to problem-solving mode. You have identified some risks, great! Now let's qualify and find solutions for theses in order to move forward. For instance: - assumptions check: young people adapt quicker than older people, so the retirees may not be representative of the others life stages - solution proposal alpha1: education could teach people to look for purpose instead of teaching them a job What are your solutions to the issues you've raised ?
• IIAOPSW 4y ago
  The big issue is the transition. What happens when we still need around 30% employment to keep things going. Neither enough automation for everyone to take permanent holiday nor enough labour to go around for everyone to make the current way sustainable. I have no good answer for how to address this middle point.
  • carapace 4y ago
    I think you start with a kind of non-profit member-owned "general automation corp." that supplies a level of basic QoL: clean water, food, shelter, clothing, energy, internet, medical, etc. per-member, at a set rate, say US$300 per month. That is, you pay in $300/mo. and that covers your rent, food, utilities, health insurance, etc. Over time the rate you pay falls to zero and remains there for the rest of your life. The task of the corporation is to supply the above goods and services efficiently, in environmentally regenerative ways, while meeting or exceeding minimum quality standards. - - - - It's kind of like a new economic regime developing within the old one, the way a crystal precipitates out of a saturated solution, eh? A sort of phase change?
    • namarie 4y ago
      Why do it through a corporation rather than through government?
      • carapace 4y ago
        You don't have to convince people to vote for it, you can just get started right away with who ever is interested.
        • tekknik 4y ago
          So forced adoption? If they wanted it they would vote for it. You don’t see a problem with forcing people to do something they don’t want? This is scary, some people seem to be so gleeful at the idea of AI taking over everything they’re willing to resort to force to make it happen.
• yucky 4y ago
  You want to increase depression, this is how you do it. People need shit to do, and as much as we lie to ourselves that everyone is a budding artist who if only freed from the bounds of work would create the worlds next masterpiece - that is just not reality. Most people would actually sit around getting high/drunk, playing video games, watching porn and being miserable.
• AlexAffe 4y ago
  I agree! The problem is not with the fact that AI will make a lot of people unemployed, the problem is how we treat people who are unemployed. I love what I do, but I love the fact even more that I don't have to do it to live a good life (or worse: survive). I do it out of pure curiosity or maybe altruism. Maybe even social status, but not for the money.
• chii 4y ago
  > find a way to a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income. that system was called communism, and so far, it has not had any of the success that those envisioning it had wanted. I cannot see how ownership of the output of automation and AI could be distributed evenly. At best, the people being made obsolete would be given food stamps and the barest of life's necessities so they don't die in the streets (and even that, is getting hard as earth runs out of resources). Until the day humanity discovers how to obtain a post-scarcity society, all income must directly be linked to labour.
  • kelseyfrog 4y ago
    > Until the day humanity discovers how to obtain a post-scarcity society, all income must directly be linked to labour. What are you talking about? Our economic system's very name describes who gets income without they themselves doing labor. The entire point of capitalism is that the capital-owning class gets to profit from the labor of others. So no, we don't have all income linked to labor. The income of capitalists sure as heck isn't.
    • chii 4y ago
      > The income of capitalists sure as heck isn't. but where did the capitalists first got their capital? Why with labour of course! Their own labour, or their family's, or their grand-parent, etc.
      • kelseyfrog 4y ago
        I don't think that has any bearing on the response.
        • chii 4y ago
          the capital that a capitalist spends is just unconsumed labour. It is directly related to the production of output (and thus income), just like labour is, because it _is_ another form of labour - let's call it solidified labour. a system that doesn't directly link labour with income is basically describing welfare (a basic income for example). The income given to someone receiving this welfare did not produce any output that counterbalances the resources they received - aka, they are a net consumer. Without post-scarcity, there cannot be many net consumers, for what they consume, must be produced somehow by another (who is not a net consumer).
• lovelearning 4y ago
  I agree with the principle, but I feel there's a bit of post hoc rationalization here. It would have been more believable if Altman and co had proposed a practical income system first, started its rollout, and only then released the GPTs.
• calibas 4y ago
  > a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income Wish granted. You now have a system where income is only vaguely linked to labor, and a handful of people make insanely more money than anybody else despite doing the same amount of labor (or less). Income is now linked to existing wealth and personal connections much more than it is to labor. A system where income is directly linked to labor would be a step up from what we've got now.
  • selfmodruntime 4y ago
    > You now have a system where income is only vaguely linked to labor, and a handful of people make insanely more money than anybody else despite doing the same amount of labor (or less). Income is now linked to existing wealth and personal connections much more than it is to labor. Didn‘t you just describe exactly what we have now?
    • tzot 4y ago
      > > You now have [snip] > Didn‘t you just describe exactly what we have now? Calibas started with the words “You now have” and proceeded with describing what we have now. Your question suggests you tried to read between the lines before reading the lines first.
• thih9 4y ago
  This is a nice goal, but sounds unobtainable to me. Transformation of the job market and creation of new jobs based on the fresh demand sounds easier.
• hestefisk 4y ago
  But how will she enjoy life if she doesn’t make an income anymore? Fairly naive post.
• Nifty3929 4y ago
  Yes, exactly! Imagine as a thought experiment that we can produce everything we do today, but with zero labor due to automation. This would be a miracle for humanity! For one thing, we could use all our free time however we want, including working to produce still more stuff, or just go hiking. The real problem is how to distribute the goods and services produced - and there a UBI is probably the right answer. Machines do all the (necessary) work, UBI ensures that everybody benefits, and humans are left to do as we please. What's not to love?
  • s__s 4y ago
    As soon as you rely on UBI to live you’ve lost all control of your own life. Your a child with an allowance. The state has absolute authority over you. The government is already controlled and influenced primarily by nefarious interests. I can’t even begin to imagine how nasty it gets when the entire population relies on them for mere sustenance.
    • Nifty3929 4y ago
      It doesn't have to be that way. For one thing, you don't need to means test it. Just give the same amount of money to everyone. Then if you work you still end up ahead. So no dis-incentive to work. For another, if implemented properly the amount would go down if production declined, or up if production increases. This way it's self-correcting in the aggregate. As people leave the workforce, the UBI goes down, nudging some people at the margin to go back to work. But this still leaves people free to choose for themselves, without interference from the government.
      • s__s 4y ago
        Yes. That’s why UBI is a neat idea as a replacement or enhancement for welfare, and other social services. That’s not the context in which we’re discussing it though. We’re discussing it as an alternative to work in a world where almost all human jobs have been automated. In that context it’s not a good solution, and in fact it’s dangerous because it leaves everyone reliant (and obedient) to the government, and a select few mega corps.
• phkahler 4y ago
  >> The point of life is not working, the point of life is to enjoy it. We should strive to eliminate as many jobs as we possibly can, the less we have to work the better it is. As humans we have not found a way to allow people not to work. Anyone not working is either living off money from their own prior work or benefitting from the work of someone else. Let's see and validate such a system before we run off eliminating jobs.
• dragonelite 4y ago
  If not working means government given subsistence living no thank you. If it means I can have the same living standard for 24,32 hours which now takes like 40 hours sure. But there isn't an surplus of non-big tech developers in the world.
• phkahler 4y ago
  >> To make this possible we need to find a way to a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income. What is income? What is it used for? Answers: it's a reward for work. And it is used as an incentive to get others to work.
  • Aaargh20318 4y ago
    > What is income? What is it used for? Money is a proxy for resources. If you boil it down to the essentials, income is the way we allocate the resources available to us to different individuals. It is not intrinsically a reward for work. It isn't even directly linked to work anymore in our capitalist system. The people who work the hardest don't have the highest income. The way the system currently works is that those with the most resources get the most additional resources, simply because they already have a lot of them.
    • phkahler 4y ago
      >> The people who work the hardest don't have the highest income. This is the one thing I find most strange. In some cases we pay more for higher skills that are harder to come by, but that seems far from the only thing causing this.
      • Viliam1234 4y ago
        That's because the actual thing we are paying for is scarcity. If there are 100 people willing to work hard, but we only need 90 of them, they will get paid little, because any of them can be easily replaced. If there are 90 people with some rare skill, and we need 100 of them, they will get paid a lot, because any of them can easily find a new job. (In theory. In practice, the employers will take some coordinated action to prevent this.) Ironically, doubling the productivity of the people with the rare skill could dramatically reduce their income, because now there are still 90 of them, but we only need 50.
        • pacifika 4y ago
          If 50 people work twice as fast the scope will increase beyond 2x to accommodate the resourcing. As well as to meet increased expectations
• tharne 4y ago
  > To make this possible we need to find a way to a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income. As others have pointed out, this is an incredibly naive opinion. Labor is tied to income precisely because it happened organically, not because a group of self-appointed individuals decided to develop a "system". Most attempts to develop alternative (read: non-organic or top-down) systems for organizing human societies have either failed entirely or have been short-lived.
• nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  > The point of life is not working, the point of life is to enjoy it. We should strive to eliminate as many jobs as we possibly can, the less we have to work the better it is. I would go fucking insane if I didn’t have a purpose. Jobs are necessary part of life.
  • leros 4y ago
    You could replace your job with pursuits of person interests. I would rather devote my life to a plethora of hobbies than a career.
    • nextlevelwizard 4y ago
      > would rather devote my life to a plethora of hobbies than a career. Such as?
      • leros 4y ago
        Gardening, wood working, painting, flying, traveling, hiking, just to name a few
  • famahar 4y ago
    You haven't found a fulfilling purpose outside of a job then. There was a period in my life where I didn't need to work for a year. I spent it reading books, supporting my friends, exploring my city on bike, learning an instrument, and creating art (which I would show at monthly events). It was way more fulfilling than any job I've had.
    • nextlevelwizard 4y ago
      Sometimes I get this feeling that most people here are not actually interested in tech, it is just a paycheck. Difference is that I would do my job even if I wasn’t paid anything at all.
      • 4y ago
• kypro 4y ago
  Good luck trying to tax AGI companies 95% of profits. Perhaps you could strike but you'll be unemployed. I guess we'll just have to cross our fingers that Sam Altman and friends will pity us enough to give us some pocket money to survive. That's assuming the AGI created is aligned with our values. I mean, we can keep hoping that AGI will be a good thing with zero evidence or we can take action to slow progress now so we can proceed with caution.
  • zamnos 4y ago
    In the history of political movements, have there been any that have been successful with slowing progress? The Luddites failed to. stop the industrial revolution, despite all the looms they broke. The cat's been released from BagGPT, and even if all the world's countries ban AGI research (somehow), that's just going to drive the work underground, and the first ones to get usefully further along the curve will be able to outcompete any who haven't. It's a real life prisoners dilemma, with 8 billion prisoners, and the first one to defect get to decide what the fate of the rest of humanity looks like.
    • ilyt 4y ago
      Let's just try to tax the progress so the billions of profits from making people's jobs obsolete won't just go back to billionaires again
      • tekknik 4y ago
        So then they move to another country, who maybe wants to use it for nefarious reasons, who won’t tax them.
        • ilyt 4y ago
          Yeah, that's kinda the problem, same with tax evasion; at worst the company would make a subsidiary in country and only make it cost center on balance sheet with all profits going to the tax-haven company
    • 4y ago
• za3faran 4y ago
  According to whom is the point of life is to enjoy it? There are different cultures and societies in the world. According to my faith and traditions, the point of life is to worship God. Of course we still strive to avoid suffering and to make things nice and appealing and safe and and, but we know that at the end of the day, we are all being tested and it can all be taken away from us at any moment, no matter how much we achieve.