5 ms·

Is that true? The last few centuries have shown a near continuous improvement in the standard of living, particularly at the lower end of the distribution.

pixl97 4y ago
You missed the union wars to ensure that we didn't fall back into a techno-feudalism. I'm sure we're all looking forward for the Amazon Wars with a billion percent more killer drones to put down worker rights.
eropple 4y ago
I think your windows are larger than mine. The Industrial Revolution did not improve standard of living for the people crushed in the gears, both metaphorical and physical. Remember: it was not until the modern age, almost but not quite within living memory, where cities were not a sink for population. Cities were places where normal people died and died ugly for most of human history, and much of the migration to them has historically been out of desperation. Eventually, improvements through both technological means but also political ones (worker action says hi) did make things on-net better, but we live in the now and the now is going to simply vaporize an impossibly large set of jobs, particularly in developing countries. Turning one person into an LLM driver to lay off four or nine is not a net benefit. As just one example: with modern text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and AI parsing, how much of every call center can just go away? Eight of ten? Nine? I have no idea, but it's a lot, and we have neither time nor inclination to prepare, globally or locally, for this. (edit to add: the most appalling part of this oncoming train, as I have mentioned elsewhere in this thread, is just how shitty a future this one wants so desperately to be. A LLM-driven chatbot or phone system doesn't get tired. It doesn't get "too expensive" to continue to obstruct you and to stiff you. Not only is this primed to seriously hurt people who are below the API, but it's going to make the world suck more for the rest of us, too. Like, sure, "it makes writing code marginally easier"--it's going to make getting a refund for a messed-up Comcast bill an exercise in pain. That doesn't remotely net out, code's already easy enough.)
- simonw 4y ago
  "The Industrial Revolution did not improve standard of living for the people crushed in the gears, both metaphorical and physical." Can you expand on that? My impression is that life for the less well-off before the Industrial Revolution was worse.
  - eropple 4y ago
    Depends. How do you measure it and how much further back? Because, in the short term and in some ways, yeah, it was, insofar as small agriculture was kinda collapsing and large agriculture was starting to consolidate. A big driver of the move to cities in the Industrial Revolution was both climate and political/economic forces making even subsistence farming much harder to do than before, which incentivized urban migration. (The political/economic drivers of urbanization are as old as civilization; Roman indigents flocked to Rome because farming was hard and getting harder, when their lands weren't being seized and they weren't being outright turfed out. Egyptian grain becoming the dole of Rome attracted people without any other options. Again--cities as population sinks.) So in some ways, and in the short term, the Industrial Revolution was better than just-plain-starving, sure. But most of the benefits of the Industrial Revolution accrued to everyone else and the mangled limbs accrued to the poor. It wasn't without significant worker action (and the requisite workers-getting-beat-to-shit-and-killed) that their lot improved materially. Is subsistence or subsistence+ farming hard? Absolutely. Mind-bogglingly so. But the Industrial Revolution was fucking bad for the people caught at the bottom. Like--read Dickens. I tend to think we have such global largesse that we could do better. But we won't, and a lot of the commentariat here cheers for never doing better.
- richk449 4y ago
  > Cities were places where normal people died and died ugly for most of human history, and much of the migration to them has historically been out of desperation. I think that captures some of the contradiction in your claims. Yes, cities could be terrible places to live and work. Yet people have moved to them throughout recent history because the alternative is worse. That said, I don’t disagree with your point that there will be pain associated with this technological jump. I dont know of there will be more or less than with previous jumps. There are some interesting considerations. One, this one hits knowledge workers who are in the middle class, instead of hitting those who use muscle or hand labor. That may change the outcome. Two, governments are much more sophisticated and have much better policy tools to deal with disruption. While that doesn’t fix the root, it can help to prevent compounding problems and soften the impact. Three, the tools that are doing the disrupting appear to be near zero marginal cost, which is different than say a factory which improved efficiency with a large up-front capital investment. This factor probably will make it worse, but I can see possibilities of it making this change less painful too. Fourth, it isn’t really clear how this will play out. It kinda feels like we have seen the first demonstrations of a steam engine, and are trying to predict the course of the Industrial Revolution.
cleandreams 4y ago
I once read a shocking statistic that children of the poor in London during the Industrial Revolution were 6 inches shorter than children of the rich. What raised the standard of living was bloody, persistent labor revolt. It wasn't pretty and as your comment shows it has been mostly forgotten.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  And yet families flocked to work in factories because conditions they left were that much worse. Everything is relative, and they can’t judge their situation from yours - they had to choose based on their situation.

pixl97 4y ago

You missed the union wars to ensure that we didn't fall back into a techno-feudalism. I'm sure we're all looking forward for the Amazon Wars with a billion percent more killer drones to put down worker rights.

eropple 4y ago

I think your windows are larger than mine. The Industrial Revolution did not improve standard of living for the people crushed in the gears, both metaphorical and physical. Remember: it was not until the modern age, almost but not quite within living memory, where cities were not a sink for population. Cities were places where normal people died and died ugly for most of human history, and much of the migration to them has historically been out of desperation. Eventually, improvements through both technological means but also political ones (worker action says hi) did make things on-net better, but we live in the now and the now is going to simply vaporize an impossibly large set of jobs, particularly in developing countries. Turning one person into an LLM driver to lay off four or nine is not a net benefit. As just one example: with modern text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and AI parsing, how much of every call center can just go away? Eight of ten? Nine? I have no idea, but it's a lot, and we have neither time nor inclination to prepare, globally or locally, for this. (edit to add: the most appalling part of this oncoming train, as I have mentioned elsewhere in this thread, is just how shitty a future this one wants so desperately to be. A LLM-driven chatbot or phone system doesn't get tired. It doesn't get "too expensive" to continue to obstruct you and to stiff you. Not only is this primed to seriously hurt people who are below the API, but it's going to make the world suck more for the rest of us, too. Like, sure, "it makes writing code marginally easier"--it's going to make getting a refund for a messed-up Comcast bill an exercise in pain. That doesn't remotely net out, code's already easy enough.)

simonw 4y ago
"The Industrial Revolution did not improve standard of living for the people crushed in the gears, both metaphorical and physical." Can you expand on that? My impression is that life for the less well-off before the Industrial Revolution was worse.
- eropple 4y ago
  Depends. How do you measure it and how much further back? Because, in the short term and in some ways, yeah, it was, insofar as small agriculture was kinda collapsing and large agriculture was starting to consolidate. A big driver of the move to cities in the Industrial Revolution was both climate and political/economic forces making even subsistence farming much harder to do than before, which incentivized urban migration. (The political/economic drivers of urbanization are as old as civilization; Roman indigents flocked to Rome because farming was hard and getting harder, when their lands weren't being seized and they weren't being outright turfed out. Egyptian grain becoming the dole of Rome attracted people without any other options. Again--cities as population sinks.) So in some ways, and in the short term, the Industrial Revolution was better than just-plain-starving, sure. But most of the benefits of the Industrial Revolution accrued to everyone else and the mangled limbs accrued to the poor. It wasn't without significant worker action (and the requisite workers-getting-beat-to-shit-and-killed) that their lot improved materially. Is subsistence or subsistence+ farming hard? Absolutely. Mind-bogglingly so. But the Industrial Revolution was fucking bad for the people caught at the bottom. Like--read Dickens. I tend to think we have such global largesse that we could do better. But we won't, and a lot of the commentariat here cheers for never doing better.
richk449 4y ago
> Cities were places where normal people died and died ugly for most of human history, and much of the migration to them has historically been out of desperation. I think that captures some of the contradiction in your claims. Yes, cities could be terrible places to live and work. Yet people have moved to them throughout recent history because the alternative is worse. That said, I don’t disagree with your point that there will be pain associated with this technological jump. I dont know of there will be more or less than with previous jumps. There are some interesting considerations. One, this one hits knowledge workers who are in the middle class, instead of hitting those who use muscle or hand labor. That may change the outcome. Two, governments are much more sophisticated and have much better policy tools to deal with disruption. While that doesn’t fix the root, it can help to prevent compounding problems and soften the impact. Three, the tools that are doing the disrupting appear to be near zero marginal cost, which is different than say a factory which improved efficiency with a large up-front capital investment. This factor probably will make it worse, but I can see possibilities of it making this change less painful too. Fourth, it isn’t really clear how this will play out. It kinda feels like we have seen the first demonstrations of a steam engine, and are trying to predict the course of the Industrial Revolution.

cleandreams 4y ago

I once read a shocking statistic that children of the poor in London during the Industrial Revolution were 6 inches shorter than children of the rich. What raised the standard of living was bloody, persistent labor revolt. It wasn't pretty and as your comment shows it has been mostly forgotten.

fnordpiglet 4y ago
And yet families flocked to work in factories because conditions they left were that much worse. Everything is relative, and they can’t judge their situation from yours - they had to choose based on their situation.