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What a profoundly naive opinion. Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions

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.
    - wokwokwok 4y ago
      How is this relevant to GPT4? What you're saying was already true... so what. Now people are unemployed because of GPT4 we're going to start making free TVs for everyone? Dang. That's sure not what happened when all those people lost their jobs during covid (eg. restaurant staff). I guess this time will be different? That's uh... well, very optimistic.
      - Terretta 4y ago
        How is "Did we suddenly invent a magical TV making machine?" relevant to GPT-4? I replied to that. And: > already true so what OK, so we did invent it. Then we agree on that.
        wokwokwok 4y ago
        > I replied to that. Out of context. This entire thread is in the context of “gpt is going to destroy jobs”; the arbitrary “we need to disassociate working and basic necessities” isn’t an isolated socialist discourse. You can wax philosophical all you like, but you’re failing to address the fundamental reality. There is a physical limit of good and services available right now and no amount of magical posturing will make that untrue. Anything is possible in the future given unlimited time and resources, but this thread is not about that. It is about right now, people losing their jobs. What is being proposed here is not a solution to that problem. The ability for people to build things doesn’t mean they will. It’s pure speculation about what might possibly happen in the future. > Then we agree on that. I do not agree with you. You’re just making arbitrary speculative statements.
    - weatherlite 4y ago
      Would be nice to also have infinite minerals to prepare all those goods, or will the TVs be made of wind and solar?
  - Gud 4y ago
    Why do we need jobs? I’m genuinely curious. If the machines can produce the food, goods and luxury items traditionally made by mankind and their domesticated animals, I genuinely don’t see the problem. Naturally this is purely hypothetical, parent argued that work gives meaning to life(which I generally agree with). I argued you can still be working, even if less efficiently than the machines. Maybe it will be a gradual change. Agriculture and manufacturing is already highly automated, for better or worse.
    - weatherlite 4y ago
      > Why do we need jobs? I’m genuinely curious. If the machines can produce the food, goods and luxury items traditionally made by mankind and their domesticated animals, I genuinely don’t see the problem. In principal you're right, we can in theory live like you suggest and expand on leisure culture / volunteering / 'made up' jobs by the government. In practice, we're super far from the utopia. Energy is expensive, food is expensive, housing is expensive in ChatGPT can't do squat about it. What it CAN do is possibly replace me as a worker. So that's the conundrum.
- AeiumNE 4y ago
  Sadly, one of the lessons of Covid Era I think is I think like this kind of windfall would just destroy everyone spending discipline, and then prices would just inflate correspondingly.
- safety1st 4y ago
  As any student who takes Econ 101, or reads history, (or has heard of a country called Argentina? or has opened a newspaper during the past year of post-Covid inflation?) will learn, this assumption is factually incorrect. If you give everyone ten million dollars, there will be a phenomenal and rapid increase in the price of goods, especially consumer staples (since everyone got that money, and everyone buys staples). You can't really just throw money at the demand side of the equation and expect everything else to stay the same. Supply side will raise their prices because they can (when everyone's got $10M in the bank, why not charge $50, $500 or even $5,000 for a loaf of artisan bread? And eventually other producers of bread follow suit because the consumer has become less price sensitive). If you want to improve everyone's standard of living, what has repeatedly worked throughout history is to lower the cost of production through technology, and ensure there's lots of competition on the supply side. With enough competition, producers are unable to behave like a cartel. Eventually someone cracks and sacrifices part of their margin to attract more customers, and then a price war ensues. A textbook example is salt, which for most of human history was quite expensive, but after mechanized mining techniques were developed it became so cheap that for the average household it's practically free. Technology + competition. At this moment in history we're quite good at the technology part of the equation but we have allowed many monopolies and oligopolies to form, so we're struggling at the competition part.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    Sure if you give everybody 10 million dollars in pieces of paper, what you described happening will happen. Money is the measure of the productive capacity of an economy. If you increase the money without increasing the capacity then you get inflation. But let's be charitable and assume that "Gud" was talking about increasing the capacity commensurately. Because that's what's happening. AI, robots and almost zero marginal cost green energy are going to increase the productive capacity of economies dramatically over the next decade or two.
    - starkd 4y ago
      Execting green energy to produce zero marginal cost is probably a bit too optimistic at this point. We have been adding green energy for at least 20 years now and energy keeps getting more expensive. Not even addressing whether its sustainable, but expecting a point at which additional solar panels or wind installations are going are going to produce extra energy at close to zero cost is expecting too much. You might have that argument with nuclear energy, because most of the cost is upfront. But approval process for that will have to be expedited by congress.
411111111111111 4y ago
> . 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. You're straight up projecting your own personal experiences as a generalized truth. Seriously, grow up and learn that there are a lot of differences in people. You might need this, that doesn't make it into an universal truth that everyone needs it or gets it by having a dayjob. The only thing that you can say, generally is this: humans can gain happiness by getting acceptance from other people when they care about the people that accept them.
surgical_fire 4y ago
You should come here and find some meaning painting my fence. While you are at it, the toilet in the basement is clogged, there is shit water all over the place. You could find meaning there too.
- mlyle 4y ago
  Just because I find reward in work, doesn't mean that all work is equally rewarding to me, or that I have an infinite desire for work.
  - flangola7 4y ago
    Humanity learning to automate art before toilet plumbing is a travesty of scale not previously imaginable.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      Humanity hasn't learned to automate "art". Humanity has learned to automate some aspects of technical aspects of creating images and to imitate some prevailing styles.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        So they've learned to automate art. I mean, we've done the same with farming. Is it 100% automated? No, not at all, but we've removed something like 99% of the human labor involved that would have occurred around 200 years ago.
        ModernMech 4y ago
        Player pianos were invented in 1896, yet we don't consider piano playing to be a dead art. Indeed I don't believe people even pay to see player pianos play, where as they will flock to see even the most mediocre and novice players if they're the right humans. Art without humanity isn't art. Farming can exist without humanity because we need the output to sustain ourselves. But take the humanity out of art, and no one is interested in it.
proamdev123 4y ago
I agree completely. Additionally, people who hold this belief fail to realize that “I don’t want to work.” ACTUALLY means “I want others to work so I don’t have to.” For example, how are you going to eat? You are either going to grow, cultivate, and harvest your own food (i.e. work) or you’re expecting others to do that work for you. Oh, you say it can be “automated”? Well, who’s going to design, build, and maintain the automating machine? That’s all work too!
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Given that the article we're discussing is about robots replacing workers, the answer is "AI & robots" for all of your questions. 2 years ago we would both have agreed that that would be impossible. My belief is that most likely AI will hit another roadblock soon, following a "punctuated equilibrium" model so there will still be a large number of non-automatable jobs. But if I'm wrong and the pace of change of the last 2 years continues for another 10...
  - proamdev123 4y ago
    > the answer is "AI & robots" for all of your questions. Then who designs, builds, and maintains THOSE AI & robots? It can’t be “AI & robots” all the way down. >My belief is that most likely AI will hit another roadblock soon, following a "punctuated equilibrium" model so there will still be a large number of non-automatable jobs. I agree (although it may or may not be “soon”). As history has shown us, technology advancements just cause us to reimagine possibilities and start solving problems that were previously impossible. For example, as computers have gone from a few bytes of RAM to billions of bytes of memory, humans didn’t say, “ok, we’re all set now.” — we invented whole new classes of software that do all kinds of things unimaginable to the early computer scientists. The same will happen with AI and robots.
- Moissanite 4y ago
  > people who hold this belief fail to realize that “I don’t want to work.” ACTUALLY means “I want others to work so I don’t have to.” No, it means "I am working to generate more wealth which flows predominantly to the owners of capital, who often do no work and sometimes have never done any work at all - can't we do something fairer than this?"
bryanlarsen 4y ago
The French have a saying "Life begins after retirement". They find meaning, fulfillment and contentment in, for example, stretching a meal out over 4 hours through conversation. Whether the French viewpoint or the American viewpoint is healthier can be found in the mortality rates.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Well I guess that explains “My Dinner With André” then
- tekknik 4y ago
  Given that you listed the American viewpoint, what exactly do you think it is?
moritonal 4y ago
The words "most" and "many" there are doing some herculean lifting. Look at the kind of people who do not have to work. Do they still work? No. Some sit on a beach and never lift a finger again, some become creatives and some try to recreate their successes again. None work what would be an engaging and productful job at a take-away joint.
- wpietri 4y ago
  That is in fact not true. Plenty of retirees seek out job-like things. I have a couple of examples. A small one is my dad. He was a software developer, but thanks to Y2K consulting, he made bank and retired early. After, he spent half the year in Mexico. One of the friends he made there was a teacher. My dad ended up volunteering in the school. He had a part-time-job-like schedule and did teacher's aide things. He loved it. On a bigger scale: In Michigan there is an arcade chain, Pinball Pete's. It was founded by Tim Arnold in 1976. I grew up there gave them a lot of quarters over years. He sold it in 1990 and retired to Las Vegas, bringing his extensive collection of arcade machines. For a while he was doing an open house; once a month he'd let people in to play some of his collection. By 2009, he had started the Pinball Hall of Fame, a nonprofit arcade. A couple years back they moved to the Strip and expanded significantly. I was there recently and he spends hours a day there. Opening up. Collecting the quarters. Fixing machines. Telling kids to stop running. The guy is circa 70 and he can do whatever he wants. What he wants to do is work at an arcade. He'll keep doing it until he dies.
  - jamilton 4y ago
    The labor force participation rate among the general population is ~60%. Among those 65-74, it's 25%. And that's not accounting for people who can't retire. It also doesn't account for those who want to work but are unable.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      Ok. How does that relate?
onion2k 4y ago
Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. You can do that without it being a job. I enjoy making things out of epoxy resin. It's fun, creative, hard work. I'd do it a lot more if we had universal basic income. It's not my job.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  > You can do that without it being a job Yes, you can, but his argument is that most people don't -- and he's right.
  - namarie 4y ago
    I think people are confusing having a job with work. Making things out of epoxy resin takes a lot of work and it's satisfying. If everyone had UBI people would absolutely still work a lot. It's just that they wouldn't have to have a job in order not to become destitute.
    - neltnerb 4y ago
      Yeah, I am confused by the idea that not being forced to work to stay alive means your can't (or won't, whatever) find anything of worth to do with your life. Where did that unexamined assumption come from? Do they care about nothing other than standard employment based "work" and so never considered doing something other than staring at a wall when they're not doing it? Family. Friends. Volunteering. Gardening. Games. Hobbies. Learning to play music, or cook, or who knows... studying biochemistry and doing that because it's rewarding and easier to do in a setting with more people in the same place. Or starting a company if that's your thing, or call it an open-X project and build a community that doesn't require "work" to contribute. I'm so confused, why on Earth would the agency to choose be bad, it's so patronizing.
      - hackinthebochs 4y ago
        There's some serious class bias going on here. There is a certain segment of the population that will find productive work to do that give their life meaning if left to their own devices. There is another segment that absolutely will become blobs or worse (engage in mischief, anti-social behavior, etc). Those who have only ever known folks from the former category see only positives from a future without the necessity of work. Those who know folks from the latter category, well we fear such a future. Another strange class bias is that those from the (lets call it) "productive" class are absolutely convinced everyone is like them and if only given the opportunity they would be just as productive and fulfilled as they are. Some of us know better.
wpietri 4y ago
> What a profoundly naive opinion. Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working [...] Agreed. I just spent a week volunteering. (At the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, repairing machines.) It actually cost me money to do, but it was incredibly satisfying to just go and do a concrete thing that made the world better and was immediately beneficial to people. Especially in the company of other good people doing the same. But I think a lot of people have had only terrible jobs (valuable work in inhumane conditions) or bullshit jobs (meaningless work in whatever conditions), so I get how so many people have been conditioned out of seeing the personal, emotional, very human value in work.
- amelius 4y ago
  If only ChatGPT could somehow be used to find us jobs rather than take them away ...
- iampims 4y ago
  You did work and enjoyed it without it being your job. Maybe that’s the difference?
  - wpietri 4y ago
    No. I also like jobs. I like them better, as they're cash-positive. I haven't liked all my jobs, but that's because some of them were terrible or bullshit.
whoisthemachine 4y ago
You can work without doing so for income.
wwweston 4y ago
> most are incapable of summoning valuable ideas and tasks from the ether. Is this really true? It's absolutely not a personal problem for me. I haven't worried about boredom or lack of purpose in decades. My worry is that I'd need a hundred lifetimes to give proper attention to everything I find interesting or meaningful, and the problem gets worse the older I get, the more I learn, the more I find interesting.
oefnak 4y ago
Probably more than half of all jobs are unfulfilling.
danShumway 4y ago
"Work" above is being used in a more specific form than you are using it. GP is not referring to all productive work, they are specifically referring to employment on the market. Yes, human beings are better in relationships and better when they help each other, but GP is not talking about abolishing helping other people or doing meaningful things. There are a huge number of things people can do to meaningfully make the world a better place outside of traditional jobs. And a non-trivial number of people work at jobs that aren't aligned with producing value or helping people in the first place. Value on the market in specific is not the be-all end-all measure of whether work can be personally fulfilling and validating. A market job can be meaningful, yes. But it's not the entire category. If I never had to work for income I would still "work", but what I worked on would be very different and would probably focus a lot more on non-scalable non-commercial smaller projects and volunteering. There are things that are valuable and meaningful to do that don't involve working specifically for a company and don't involve looking at that work primarily through the lens of "how can I make money off of this?"
- hnfong 4y ago
  I generally agree with you in principle, but it’s not a given that you can find meaning outside of the job market if the market doesn’t find your labor valuable. What if nobody actually wants your “help”? What if your labor is not only worthless in the job market, but also in general, where people prefer assistance from AI instead of from a live human person? What if no matter what you do, some AI does it better? How will humanity find our own value and meaning when that happens?
  - jeremyjh 4y ago
    The professional chess community has been living in this world for a long time. The engines crush us, and their games can be fascinating too but Magnus’s and Hikaru’s make a helluva lot more money. It’s not a winner take all market in general but the human element is actually very important; the creation is more than just the game on the board.
  - jamilton 4y ago
    I think the point where that is the case is pretty far off, since it requires endless fully-autonomous robots and no demand for human-created media or connection. But regardless, people throughout history have found happiness and meaning in their life completely separately from what they did to put food on the table.
RandomLensman 4y ago
Is there data to back this claim? Otherwise, this looks a lot like classic "protestant work ethic" (e.g., Max Weber) repackaged.
qgin 4y ago
> We need something valuable to do and most are incapable of summoning valuable ideas and tasks from the ether. If quitting a job leaves you with no apparent valuable work to do in your life, that's probably a sign of being only engaged with the world through your job. There are never-ending lists of useful things to for family, for friends, for groups/organizations/churches you're part of, for the neighborhood you live in... and that's before even thinking about personal projects that are useful to yourself. Sorry, I really bristled at this comment. People who are engaged in the world and have accepted responsibility in areas that aren't solely their job don't have to summon valuable ideas and tasks from the ether. You won't find the bottom of the to-do list. Not bullshitting.
lmarcos 4y ago
OP means work as in "working for a company", not as in "doing something besides sitting on the couch".
gardenhedge 4y ago
Extrapolating your experience to all of humanity is not useful.
- hackinthebochs 4y ago
  Especially since the readers of this site are very non-representative.
MichaelDickens 4y ago
> What a profoundly naive opinion. I would prefer if you expressed your disagreement without denigrating GP like this.
TrueDuality 4y ago
I think your response is equally naive. I am still largely undecided on whether something like a universal basic income would actually be a net positive for society, but the fallacy that receiving a fixed income immediately means that people won't do something productive with their time is ridiculous. I can't imagine _not_ working, I develop open source software in my free time and I would spend more time producing software others find value in if I spent less time working for my livelihood. This doesn't just apply to software development. There are a lot of garbage jobs, dead end positions, where the people are effectively not doing anything. That is a weight on our economy but we can't just cut them out. What would those people do if they didn't have to waste so much of their time to live? Sure there are going to be people that go all in on becoming puddles on the couch, but I'd argue more people have passions they would actually have the energy to pursue. People could spend more time with their families without being stressed out and burned out by everything else in the world. I'd argue that would most likely lead to healthier childhoods for kids, likely with better supplemental education as well leading to a smarter society in the long run. People get tired of partying, and the people that don't make good examples for the next generation of what not to do. You can see that in our current society as the younger generation is drinking significantly less and doing fewer drugs to the point major alcohol manufacturers are concerned about their bottom lines. There will always be degenerates, but people want the fulfillment that comes with actually doing things like you said. They will find that one way or another.
- vc8f6vVV 4y ago
  What do you consider as "productive"? Look at animals in a zoo, do they look productive to you? They have "a universal basic income", they simply don't need to be productive. Humans, just like animals, are productive when they are trying to achieve something (catch food, find mates, and for social animals to establish their position in a society which leads to food, mates etc.). E.g. you are developing OSS -- ask yourself why? Forget about money for a second. Are you doing it for yourself only, just for a pure fun of manipulating characters? Or you expect your software to be used by others? Revered by others? So if it's useful for others do you expect them to use it for free and pay you through taxes via the universal basic income (relying on a government to do a "fair" distribution), or maybe just pay you directly thus showing that very reverence? So it's just a distribution problem. If you don't want to worry about selling your software, then let others do it (it's called "working for a company"). As opposed to a government, which can pay for a work not needed for anybody (not very efficient, but that's what governments do all the time). Want to spend more time with your family? Don't buy the latest iPhone or an expensive car and work remotely part time, you will be able to spend more time with your family. There are tons of possibilities. Yet people do want the latest iPhone and then complain they don't have time to spend with their family or do "what the like".
stavros 4y ago
> The point of life is not working, the point of life is to enjoy it. This holds if the way you enjoy life is working. Your comment isn't at all at odds with the GP's, yet it calls theirs naive.
Aaargh20318 4y ago
> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value You think people get meaning and fulfilment from flipping burgers at McDonalds ? Talk about naive. Frankly, it's quite elitist to assume that a majority of people are performing meaningful and fulfilling jobs, a lot of people do jobs they absolutely hate. > Not working is a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, hedonism, and despair You're presenting a false dichotomy. I'm not talking about not doing any work, I'm talking about not a having a job. There is a huge difference between doing something because you enjoy it and it gives you meaning, and doing something because you need the money to survive. Not having a job doesn't mean you have to sit on your ass all day, it means that you get to decide what to do with your time. You can do any number of things that are meaningful to you. It's about having the freedom to decide how you spend your time on this earth. It's quite condescending to assume that people can't find a meaningful and fulfilling way to spend their time if there isn't someone who tells them what to do.
- tmdroid001 4y ago
  If no people like doing that, than who will do it? Who will do the hard or nasty jobs that nobody likes to do? Where are you going to eat your next McDonald's burger? Cuz all restaurants will be closed cuz nobody really likes doing that full time but it pays the bills. There are just so many jobs that need to be done and there's nobody that likes them. Who would pick the garbage up? Who would unclog the sewer? Who would drill for petrol or mine for coal? If I got my regular salary without needing to do anything, then I wouldn't go into any of these jobs for sure. Would you?
  - Simon321 4y ago
    Well, that's the whole point of the article you're replying to! His whole problem is that AI will do those jobs and he doesn't like that.
XorNot 4y ago
A comment calling someone "naive" for thinking that work-for-income is the only possible way to find happiness. Good god, corporate America has utterly brainwashed multiple generations. You lost your creativity, your imaginations and your aspirations. Even your entrepreneurial spirit. "Here's a machine which can automate the intellectual labor of multiple professions, enabling it to simply execute on ideas you come up with." and the only thing any of you can think of is "but would I do with all this free time if I wasn't desperately struggling for food and shelter?"
UncleMeat 4y ago
The work that I find meaning and fulfillment in pays about 1/20th of what I get paid at my job, if it pays at all. I do my job because it allows me to allocate the most possible time to fulfilling work (through early retirement), when I can spend all of my time doing nourishing things like cooking for my family and raising children.
deleted 4y ago
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greenie_beans 4y ago
this assumes that we wouldn't still be doing "work". the work that gives me most meaning, fulfillment, and contentment in working doesn't pay enough for me to make a living from it. wish i could get paid an income so i could do that "work".
SanderNL 4y ago
You can be meaningful and work very hard for other humans and be very valuable without any economic activity. That’s the point. Working for money is only tangentially related to purpose insofar as your job matches your particular style of “purpose”. If you are free, truly free, would you work in some soulless corporate?
skybrian 4y ago
I don’t know, I think maybe the midwit meme applies here. (Early) retirement is an adjustment. It takes time to find them, but there are alternative ways of finding fulfillment and I’m happy to have them. N=1 but my revealed preference seems to be that yes, being financially secure is good, it reduces working, and it’s possible to find better alternatives.
paulcole 4y ago
> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working Only because it’s the only thing they know. If “work” wasn’t a constant in human life you’d see people adapt to finding meaning and fulfillment in something else. > 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 taken multiple year hiatuses from work (living very cheaply) and they are the best years of my life. Wake up, go for a run/walk, go to the gym, read a book, go to the coffeeshop, make lunch, go to the movies, go on dates, use the internet. Absolutely incredible.
fabianhjr 4y ago
Removing the need of wage labor is not the same as promoting idleness. How many people want to experiment and try new ideas but are stopped by economic insecurity? (In arts, crafts, engineering, and science) How much _very valuable_ non-paid work doesn't get done because no one is paying for that? (Such as maintenance, community building, teaching, etc)
Sharlin 4y ago
What about all the work that's a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, anhedonism, and despair? You're naive and privileged if you think that there's not plenty of that. And, as others have mentioned, not working for living at a subsistence level does not mean not doing rewarding and value-producing things. Quite the contrary.
advael 4y ago
What a profoundly naive opinion. The overwhelming majority of paid work available is not fulfilling to anyone, and the overwhelming majority of people who are wealthy enough to not need to work to subsist can find things to do with their time, and for the most part seem to find more fulfilling things to do than people stuck in the labor market
curioussavage 4y ago
I agree with the other sibling comment about a “job” not being the only way to have that fulfillment. Also apart from the “real” disabled, a lot of people are just disabled enough mentally or physically to be deemed fit for Jobs with a capital j but are miserable.
ilyt 4y ago
> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. Sure they do. But "value" is not simple one dimensional "I get money for food and rent". If value of your work is just money, you have to mostly do the things that work toward money Not making other people's life better or more interesting. Not something that you find fulfilling. But things that make money first, are any of the above second. Having the basics (let's say "food, money, internet + some spare change to get what you need want") allows individual to pursue things that are risky and might not be profitable in the end without stress of not being able to pay rent next month. You can be a musician that "only" have 10k listeners. You can make niche little gadget that earns maybe $500 a month in sales but enriches other people's lives. And now corporations would have to offer something substantial (whether in term of being interesting, or profitable enough) to find someone to hire. Less "bullshit jobs", or soul-crushing work that barely affords you a living just because your skills don't align with what is profitable. > Many people claim their lives would be better if they never had to work, but they are bullshitting themselves with childhood naivete. Did you never had an interesting hobby in your life ? I have enough that if money was not an issue I'd keep my brain and body involved for years to come.
Viliam1234 4y ago
There is a difference between "work" and "job" that you ignore here. Yes, most people find meaning in some kind of work. That doesn't imply that having a boss and worrying about paying your bills is more meaningful than working without a boss and without worries.
lm28469 4y ago
A job != work You can work without having a job, all day everyday
MrDresden 4y ago
Spoken like someone with the privilege of choice and completely blind to it. How many in this world simply have not had the chance to educate them selves, been lucky with timing or knowing the right people to get the nice jobs where they are listened to and even looked up to? Where they not only get a salary where they can survive off it without working a second or third job, but are also able to save up some buffer. That they might actually afford to get out from under landloards that continuously increase their rents, and buy a property of their own. And so on and so forth. Your comment drips ignorance on the daily hardships huge swaths of the human population on this planet (including a large group in the rich western world as well) have to go through every day, and the propable relative luxury of your situation compared to theirs.
mrlatinos 4y ago
The market doesn't owe your hobby any value. You know how few people get to enjoy the job that pays their bills? You live in a privileged bubble.
antifa 4y ago
> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. The opposite, actually. Most people, for whom a reasonable fulfilling job exists, do not have the opportunity to work such a job. AI does not promise to increase the availability of fulfilling and contentful jobs, meanwhile the cost of living will continue to rise with no end in site while wage stagnation continues another decade.

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.
  - wokwokwok 4y ago
    How is this relevant to GPT4? What you're saying was already true... so what. Now people are unemployed because of GPT4 we're going to start making free TVs for everyone? Dang. That's sure not what happened when all those people lost their jobs during covid (eg. restaurant staff). I guess this time will be different? That's uh... well, very optimistic.
    - Terretta 4y ago
      How is "Did we suddenly invent a magical TV making machine?" relevant to GPT-4? I replied to that. And: > already true so what OK, so we did invent it. Then we agree on that.
      - wokwokwok 4y ago
        > I replied to that. Out of context. This entire thread is in the context of “gpt is going to destroy jobs”; the arbitrary “we need to disassociate working and basic necessities” isn’t an isolated socialist discourse. You can wax philosophical all you like, but you’re failing to address the fundamental reality. There is a physical limit of good and services available right now and no amount of magical posturing will make that untrue. Anything is possible in the future given unlimited time and resources, but this thread is not about that. It is about right now, people losing their jobs. What is being proposed here is not a solution to that problem. The ability for people to build things doesn’t mean they will. It’s pure speculation about what might possibly happen in the future. > Then we agree on that. I do not agree with you. You’re just making arbitrary speculative statements.
  - weatherlite 4y ago
    Would be nice to also have infinite minerals to prepare all those goods, or will the TVs be made of wind and solar?
- Gud 4y ago
  Why do we need jobs? I’m genuinely curious. If the machines can produce the food, goods and luxury items traditionally made by mankind and their domesticated animals, I genuinely don’t see the problem. Naturally this is purely hypothetical, parent argued that work gives meaning to life(which I generally agree with). I argued you can still be working, even if less efficiently than the machines. Maybe it will be a gradual change. Agriculture and manufacturing is already highly automated, for better or worse.
  - weatherlite 4y ago
    > Why do we need jobs? I’m genuinely curious. If the machines can produce the food, goods and luxury items traditionally made by mankind and their domesticated animals, I genuinely don’t see the problem. In principal you're right, we can in theory live like you suggest and expand on leisure culture / volunteering / 'made up' jobs by the government. In practice, we're super far from the utopia. Energy is expensive, food is expensive, housing is expensive in ChatGPT can't do squat about it. What it CAN do is possibly replace me as a worker. So that's the conundrum.
AeiumNE 4y ago
Sadly, one of the lessons of Covid Era I think is I think like this kind of windfall would just destroy everyone spending discipline, and then prices would just inflate correspondingly.
safety1st 4y ago
As any student who takes Econ 101, or reads history, (or has heard of a country called Argentina? or has opened a newspaper during the past year of post-Covid inflation?) will learn, this assumption is factually incorrect. If you give everyone ten million dollars, there will be a phenomenal and rapid increase in the price of goods, especially consumer staples (since everyone got that money, and everyone buys staples). You can't really just throw money at the demand side of the equation and expect everything else to stay the same. Supply side will raise their prices because they can (when everyone's got $10M in the bank, why not charge $50, $500 or even $5,000 for a loaf of artisan bread? And eventually other producers of bread follow suit because the consumer has become less price sensitive). If you want to improve everyone's standard of living, what has repeatedly worked throughout history is to lower the cost of production through technology, and ensure there's lots of competition on the supply side. With enough competition, producers are unable to behave like a cartel. Eventually someone cracks and sacrifices part of their margin to attract more customers, and then a price war ensues. A textbook example is salt, which for most of human history was quite expensive, but after mechanized mining techniques were developed it became so cheap that for the average household it's practically free. Technology + competition. At this moment in history we're quite good at the technology part of the equation but we have allowed many monopolies and oligopolies to form, so we're struggling at the competition part.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Sure if you give everybody 10 million dollars in pieces of paper, what you described happening will happen. Money is the measure of the productive capacity of an economy. If you increase the money without increasing the capacity then you get inflation. But let's be charitable and assume that "Gud" was talking about increasing the capacity commensurately. Because that's what's happening. AI, robots and almost zero marginal cost green energy are going to increase the productive capacity of economies dramatically over the next decade or two.
  - starkd 4y ago
    Execting green energy to produce zero marginal cost is probably a bit too optimistic at this point. We have been adding green energy for at least 20 years now and energy keeps getting more expensive. Not even addressing whether its sustainable, but expecting a point at which additional solar panels or wind installations are going are going to produce extra energy at close to zero cost is expecting too much. You might have that argument with nuclear energy, because most of the cost is upfront. But approval process for that will have to be expedited by congress.

411111111111111 4y ago

> . 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. You're straight up projecting your own personal experiences as a generalized truth. Seriously, grow up and learn that there are a lot of differences in people. You might need this, that doesn't make it into an universal truth that everyone needs it or gets it by having a dayjob. The only thing that you can say, generally is this: humans can gain happiness by getting acceptance from other people when they care about the people that accept them.

surgical_fire 4y ago

You should come here and find some meaning painting my fence. While you are at it, the toilet in the basement is clogged, there is shit water all over the place. You could find meaning there too.

mlyle 4y ago
Just because I find reward in work, doesn't mean that all work is equally rewarding to me, or that I have an infinite desire for work.
- flangola7 4y ago
  Humanity learning to automate art before toilet plumbing is a travesty of scale not previously imaginable.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    Humanity hasn't learned to automate "art". Humanity has learned to automate some aspects of technical aspects of creating images and to imitate some prevailing styles.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      So they've learned to automate art. I mean, we've done the same with farming. Is it 100% automated? No, not at all, but we've removed something like 99% of the human labor involved that would have occurred around 200 years ago.
      - ModernMech 4y ago
        Player pianos were invented in 1896, yet we don't consider piano playing to be a dead art. Indeed I don't believe people even pay to see player pianos play, where as they will flock to see even the most mediocre and novice players if they're the right humans. Art without humanity isn't art. Farming can exist without humanity because we need the output to sustain ourselves. But take the humanity out of art, and no one is interested in it.

proamdev123 4y ago

I agree completely. Additionally, people who hold this belief fail to realize that “I don’t want to work.” ACTUALLY means “I want others to work so I don’t have to.” For example, how are you going to eat? You are either going to grow, cultivate, and harvest your own food (i.e. work) or you’re expecting others to do that work for you. Oh, you say it can be “automated”? Well, who’s going to design, build, and maintain the automating machine? That’s all work too!

bryanlarsen 4y ago
Given that the article we're discussing is about robots replacing workers, the answer is "AI & robots" for all of your questions. 2 years ago we would both have agreed that that would be impossible. My belief is that most likely AI will hit another roadblock soon, following a "punctuated equilibrium" model so there will still be a large number of non-automatable jobs. But if I'm wrong and the pace of change of the last 2 years continues for another 10...
- proamdev123 4y ago
  > the answer is "AI & robots" for all of your questions. Then who designs, builds, and maintains THOSE AI & robots? It can’t be “AI & robots” all the way down. >My belief is that most likely AI will hit another roadblock soon, following a "punctuated equilibrium" model so there will still be a large number of non-automatable jobs. I agree (although it may or may not be “soon”). As history has shown us, technology advancements just cause us to reimagine possibilities and start solving problems that were previously impossible. For example, as computers have gone from a few bytes of RAM to billions of bytes of memory, humans didn’t say, “ok, we’re all set now.” — we invented whole new classes of software that do all kinds of things unimaginable to the early computer scientists. The same will happen with AI and robots.
Moissanite 4y ago
> people who hold this belief fail to realize that “I don’t want to work.” ACTUALLY means “I want others to work so I don’t have to.” No, it means "I am working to generate more wealth which flows predominantly to the owners of capital, who often do no work and sometimes have never done any work at all - can't we do something fairer than this?"

bryanlarsen 4y ago

The French have a saying "Life begins after retirement". They find meaning, fulfillment and contentment in, for example, stretching a meal out over 4 hours through conversation. Whether the French viewpoint or the American viewpoint is healthier can be found in the mortality rates.

selimthegrim 4y ago
Well I guess that explains “My Dinner With André” then
tekknik 4y ago
Given that you listed the American viewpoint, what exactly do you think it is?

moritonal 4y ago

The words "most" and "many" there are doing some herculean lifting. Look at the kind of people who do not have to work. Do they still work? No. Some sit on a beach and never lift a finger again, some become creatives and some try to recreate their successes again. None work what would be an engaging and productful job at a take-away joint.

wpietri 4y ago
That is in fact not true. Plenty of retirees seek out job-like things. I have a couple of examples. A small one is my dad. He was a software developer, but thanks to Y2K consulting, he made bank and retired early. After, he spent half the year in Mexico. One of the friends he made there was a teacher. My dad ended up volunteering in the school. He had a part-time-job-like schedule and did teacher's aide things. He loved it. On a bigger scale: In Michigan there is an arcade chain, Pinball Pete's. It was founded by Tim Arnold in 1976. I grew up there gave them a lot of quarters over years. He sold it in 1990 and retired to Las Vegas, bringing his extensive collection of arcade machines. For a while he was doing an open house; once a month he'd let people in to play some of his collection. By 2009, he had started the Pinball Hall of Fame, a nonprofit arcade. A couple years back they moved to the Strip and expanded significantly. I was there recently and he spends hours a day there. Opening up. Collecting the quarters. Fixing machines. Telling kids to stop running. The guy is circa 70 and he can do whatever he wants. What he wants to do is work at an arcade. He'll keep doing it until he dies.
- jamilton 4y ago
  The labor force participation rate among the general population is ~60%. Among those 65-74, it's 25%. And that's not accounting for people who can't retire. It also doesn't account for those who want to work but are unable.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Ok. How does that relate?

onion2k 4y ago

Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. You can do that without it being a job. I enjoy making things out of epoxy resin. It's fun, creative, hard work. I'd do it a lot more if we had universal basic income. It's not my job.

listenallyall 4y ago
> You can do that without it being a job Yes, you can, but his argument is that most people don't -- and he's right.
- namarie 4y ago
  I think people are confusing having a job with work. Making things out of epoxy resin takes a lot of work and it's satisfying. If everyone had UBI people would absolutely still work a lot. It's just that they wouldn't have to have a job in order not to become destitute.
  - neltnerb 4y ago
    Yeah, I am confused by the idea that not being forced to work to stay alive means your can't (or won't, whatever) find anything of worth to do with your life. Where did that unexamined assumption come from? Do they care about nothing other than standard employment based "work" and so never considered doing something other than staring at a wall when they're not doing it? Family. Friends. Volunteering. Gardening. Games. Hobbies. Learning to play music, or cook, or who knows... studying biochemistry and doing that because it's rewarding and easier to do in a setting with more people in the same place. Or starting a company if that's your thing, or call it an open-X project and build a community that doesn't require "work" to contribute. I'm so confused, why on Earth would the agency to choose be bad, it's so patronizing.
    - hackinthebochs 4y ago
      There's some serious class bias going on here. There is a certain segment of the population that will find productive work to do that give their life meaning if left to their own devices. There is another segment that absolutely will become blobs or worse (engage in mischief, anti-social behavior, etc). Those who have only ever known folks from the former category see only positives from a future without the necessity of work. Those who know folks from the latter category, well we fear such a future. Another strange class bias is that those from the (lets call it) "productive" class are absolutely convinced everyone is like them and if only given the opportunity they would be just as productive and fulfilled as they are. Some of us know better.

wpietri 4y ago

> What a profoundly naive opinion. Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working [...] Agreed. I just spent a week volunteering. (At the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, repairing machines.) It actually cost me money to do, but it was incredibly satisfying to just go and do a concrete thing that made the world better and was immediately beneficial to people. Especially in the company of other good people doing the same. But I think a lot of people have had only terrible jobs (valuable work in inhumane conditions) or bullshit jobs (meaningless work in whatever conditions), so I get how so many people have been conditioned out of seeing the personal, emotional, very human value in work.

amelius 4y ago
If only ChatGPT could somehow be used to find us jobs rather than take them away ...
iampims 4y ago
You did work and enjoyed it without it being your job. Maybe that’s the difference?
- wpietri 4y ago
  No. I also like jobs. I like them better, as they're cash-positive. I haven't liked all my jobs, but that's because some of them were terrible or bullshit.

whoisthemachine 4y ago

You can work without doing so for income.

wwweston 4y ago

> most are incapable of summoning valuable ideas and tasks from the ether. Is this really true? It's absolutely not a personal problem for me. I haven't worried about boredom or lack of purpose in decades. My worry is that I'd need a hundred lifetimes to give proper attention to everything I find interesting or meaningful, and the problem gets worse the older I get, the more I learn, the more I find interesting.

oefnak 4y ago

Probably more than half of all jobs are unfulfilling.

danShumway 4y ago

"Work" above is being used in a more specific form than you are using it. GP is not referring to all productive work, they are specifically referring to employment on the market. Yes, human beings are better in relationships and better when they help each other, but GP is not talking about abolishing helping other people or doing meaningful things. There are a huge number of things people can do to meaningfully make the world a better place outside of traditional jobs. And a non-trivial number of people work at jobs that aren't aligned with producing value or helping people in the first place. Value on the market in specific is not the be-all end-all measure of whether work can be personally fulfilling and validating. A market job can be meaningful, yes. But it's not the entire category. If I never had to work for income I would still "work", but what I worked on would be very different and would probably focus a lot more on non-scalable non-commercial smaller projects and volunteering. There are things that are valuable and meaningful to do that don't involve working specifically for a company and don't involve looking at that work primarily through the lens of "how can I make money off of this?"

hnfong 4y ago
I generally agree with you in principle, but it’s not a given that you can find meaning outside of the job market if the market doesn’t find your labor valuable. What if nobody actually wants your “help”? What if your labor is not only worthless in the job market, but also in general, where people prefer assistance from AI instead of from a live human person? What if no matter what you do, some AI does it better? How will humanity find our own value and meaning when that happens?
- jeremyjh 4y ago
  The professional chess community has been living in this world for a long time. The engines crush us, and their games can be fascinating too but Magnus’s and Hikaru’s make a helluva lot more money. It’s not a winner take all market in general but the human element is actually very important; the creation is more than just the game on the board.
- jamilton 4y ago
  I think the point where that is the case is pretty far off, since it requires endless fully-autonomous robots and no demand for human-created media or connection. But regardless, people throughout history have found happiness and meaning in their life completely separately from what they did to put food on the table.

RandomLensman 4y ago

Is there data to back this claim? Otherwise, this looks a lot like classic "protestant work ethic" (e.g., Max Weber) repackaged.

qgin 4y ago

> We need something valuable to do and most are incapable of summoning valuable ideas and tasks from the ether. If quitting a job leaves you with no apparent valuable work to do in your life, that's probably a sign of being only engaged with the world through your job. There are never-ending lists of useful things to for family, for friends, for groups/organizations/churches you're part of, for the neighborhood you live in... and that's before even thinking about personal projects that are useful to yourself. Sorry, I really bristled at this comment. People who are engaged in the world and have accepted responsibility in areas that aren't solely their job don't have to summon valuable ideas and tasks from the ether. You won't find the bottom of the to-do list. Not bullshitting.

lmarcos 4y ago

OP means work as in "working for a company", not as in "doing something besides sitting on the couch".

gardenhedge 4y ago

Extrapolating your experience to all of humanity is not useful.

hackinthebochs 4y ago
Especially since the readers of this site are very non-representative.

MichaelDickens 4y ago

> What a profoundly naive opinion. I would prefer if you expressed your disagreement without denigrating GP like this.

TrueDuality 4y ago

I think your response is equally naive. I am still largely undecided on whether something like a universal basic income would actually be a net positive for society, but the fallacy that receiving a fixed income immediately means that people won't do something productive with their time is ridiculous. I can't imagine _not_ working, I develop open source software in my free time and I would spend more time producing software others find value in if I spent less time working for my livelihood. This doesn't just apply to software development. There are a lot of garbage jobs, dead end positions, where the people are effectively not doing anything. That is a weight on our economy but we can't just cut them out. What would those people do if they didn't have to waste so much of their time to live? Sure there are going to be people that go all in on becoming puddles on the couch, but I'd argue more people have passions they would actually have the energy to pursue. People could spend more time with their families without being stressed out and burned out by everything else in the world. I'd argue that would most likely lead to healthier childhoods for kids, likely with better supplemental education as well leading to a smarter society in the long run. People get tired of partying, and the people that don't make good examples for the next generation of what not to do. You can see that in our current society as the younger generation is drinking significantly less and doing fewer drugs to the point major alcohol manufacturers are concerned about their bottom lines. There will always be degenerates, but people want the fulfillment that comes with actually doing things like you said. They will find that one way or another.

vc8f6vVV 4y ago
What do you consider as "productive"? Look at animals in a zoo, do they look productive to you? They have "a universal basic income", they simply don't need to be productive. Humans, just like animals, are productive when they are trying to achieve something (catch food, find mates, and for social animals to establish their position in a society which leads to food, mates etc.). E.g. you are developing OSS -- ask yourself why? Forget about money for a second. Are you doing it for yourself only, just for a pure fun of manipulating characters? Or you expect your software to be used by others? Revered by others? So if it's useful for others do you expect them to use it for free and pay you through taxes via the universal basic income (relying on a government to do a "fair" distribution), or maybe just pay you directly thus showing that very reverence? So it's just a distribution problem. If you don't want to worry about selling your software, then let others do it (it's called "working for a company"). As opposed to a government, which can pay for a work not needed for anybody (not very efficient, but that's what governments do all the time). Want to spend more time with your family? Don't buy the latest iPhone or an expensive car and work remotely part time, you will be able to spend more time with your family. There are tons of possibilities. Yet people do want the latest iPhone and then complain they don't have time to spend with their family or do "what the like".

stavros 4y ago

> The point of life is not working, the point of life is to enjoy it. This holds if the way you enjoy life is working. Your comment isn't at all at odds with the GP's, yet it calls theirs naive.

Aaargh20318 4y ago

> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value You think people get meaning and fulfilment from flipping burgers at McDonalds ? Talk about naive. Frankly, it's quite elitist to assume that a majority of people are performing meaningful and fulfilling jobs, a lot of people do jobs they absolutely hate. > Not working is a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, hedonism, and despair You're presenting a false dichotomy. I'm not talking about not doing any work, I'm talking about not a having a job. There is a huge difference between doing something because you enjoy it and it gives you meaning, and doing something because you need the money to survive. Not having a job doesn't mean you have to sit on your ass all day, it means that you get to decide what to do with your time. You can do any number of things that are meaningful to you. It's about having the freedom to decide how you spend your time on this earth. It's quite condescending to assume that people can't find a meaningful and fulfilling way to spend their time if there isn't someone who tells them what to do.

tmdroid001 4y ago
If no people like doing that, than who will do it? Who will do the hard or nasty jobs that nobody likes to do? Where are you going to eat your next McDonald's burger? Cuz all restaurants will be closed cuz nobody really likes doing that full time but it pays the bills. There are just so many jobs that need to be done and there's nobody that likes them. Who would pick the garbage up? Who would unclog the sewer? Who would drill for petrol or mine for coal? If I got my regular salary without needing to do anything, then I wouldn't go into any of these jobs for sure. Would you?
- Simon321 4y ago
  Well, that's the whole point of the article you're replying to! His whole problem is that AI will do those jobs and he doesn't like that.

XorNot 4y ago

A comment calling someone "naive" for thinking that work-for-income is the only possible way to find happiness. Good god, corporate America has utterly brainwashed multiple generations. You lost your creativity, your imaginations and your aspirations. Even your entrepreneurial spirit. "Here's a machine which can automate the intellectual labor of multiple professions, enabling it to simply execute on ideas you come up with." and the only thing any of you can think of is "but would I do with all this free time if I wasn't desperately struggling for food and shelter?"

UncleMeat 4y ago

The work that I find meaning and fulfillment in pays about 1/20th of what I get paid at my job, if it pays at all. I do my job because it allows me to allocate the most possible time to fulfilling work (through early retirement), when I can spend all of my time doing nourishing things like cooking for my family and raising children.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

greenie_beans 4y ago

this assumes that we wouldn't still be doing "work". the work that gives me most meaning, fulfillment, and contentment in working doesn't pay enough for me to make a living from it. wish i could get paid an income so i could do that "work".

SanderNL 4y ago

You can be meaningful and work very hard for other humans and be very valuable without any economic activity. That’s the point. Working for money is only tangentially related to purpose insofar as your job matches your particular style of “purpose”. If you are free, truly free, would you work in some soulless corporate?

skybrian 4y ago

I don’t know, I think maybe the midwit meme applies here. (Early) retirement is an adjustment. It takes time to find them, but there are alternative ways of finding fulfillment and I’m happy to have them. N=1 but my revealed preference seems to be that yes, being financially secure is good, it reduces working, and it’s possible to find better alternatives.

paulcole 4y ago

> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working Only because it’s the only thing they know. If “work” wasn’t a constant in human life you’d see people adapt to finding meaning and fulfillment in something else. > 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 taken multiple year hiatuses from work (living very cheaply) and they are the best years of my life. Wake up, go for a run/walk, go to the gym, read a book, go to the coffeeshop, make lunch, go to the movies, go on dates, use the internet. Absolutely incredible.

fabianhjr 4y ago

Removing the need of wage labor is not the same as promoting idleness. How many people want to experiment and try new ideas but are stopped by economic insecurity? (In arts, crafts, engineering, and science) How much _very valuable_ non-paid work doesn't get done because no one is paying for that? (Such as maintenance, community building, teaching, etc)

Sharlin 4y ago

What about all the work that's a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, anhedonism, and despair? You're naive and privileged if you think that there's not plenty of that. And, as others have mentioned, not working for living at a subsistence level does not mean not doing rewarding and value-producing things. Quite the contrary.

advael 4y ago

What a profoundly naive opinion. The overwhelming majority of paid work available is not fulfilling to anyone, and the overwhelming majority of people who are wealthy enough to not need to work to subsist can find things to do with their time, and for the most part seem to find more fulfilling things to do than people stuck in the labor market

curioussavage 4y ago

I agree with the other sibling comment about a “job” not being the only way to have that fulfillment. Also apart from the “real” disabled, a lot of people are just disabled enough mentally or physically to be deemed fit for Jobs with a capital j but are miserable.

ilyt 4y ago

> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. Sure they do. But "value" is not simple one dimensional "I get money for food and rent". If value of your work is just money, you have to mostly do the things that work toward money Not making other people's life better or more interesting. Not something that you find fulfilling. But things that make money first, are any of the above second. Having the basics (let's say "food, money, internet + some spare change to get what you need want") allows individual to pursue things that are risky and might not be profitable in the end without stress of not being able to pay rent next month. You can be a musician that "only" have 10k listeners. You can make niche little gadget that earns maybe $500 a month in sales but enriches other people's lives. And now corporations would have to offer something substantial (whether in term of being interesting, or profitable enough) to find someone to hire. Less "bullshit jobs", or soul-crushing work that barely affords you a living just because your skills don't align with what is profitable. > Many people claim their lives would be better if they never had to work, but they are bullshitting themselves with childhood naivete. Did you never had an interesting hobby in your life ? I have enough that if money was not an issue I'd keep my brain and body involved for years to come.

Viliam1234 4y ago

There is a difference between "work" and "job" that you ignore here. Yes, most people find meaning in some kind of work. That doesn't imply that having a boss and worrying about paying your bills is more meaningful than working without a boss and without worries.

lm28469 4y ago

A job != work You can work without having a job, all day everyday

MrDresden 4y ago

Spoken like someone with the privilege of choice and completely blind to it. How many in this world simply have not had the chance to educate them selves, been lucky with timing or knowing the right people to get the nice jobs where they are listened to and even looked up to? Where they not only get a salary where they can survive off it without working a second or third job, but are also able to save up some buffer. That they might actually afford to get out from under landloards that continuously increase their rents, and buy a property of their own. And so on and so forth. Your comment drips ignorance on the daily hardships huge swaths of the human population on this planet (including a large group in the rich western world as well) have to go through every day, and the propable relative luxury of your situation compared to theirs.

mrlatinos 4y ago

The market doesn't owe your hobby any value. You know how few people get to enjoy the job that pays their bills? You live in a privileged bubble.

antifa 4y ago

> Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. The opposite, actually. Most people, for whom a reasonable fulfilling job exists, do not have the opportunity to work such a job. AI does not promise to increase the availability of fulfilling and contentful jobs, meanwhile the cost of living will continue to rise with no end in site while wage stagnation continues another decade.