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There's an approximately fixed number of jobs in time periods meaningful to humans. My rent is not going to wait for new fields to blossom in the wake of "progr

There's an approximately fixed number of jobs in time periods meaningful to humans. My rent is not going to wait for new fields to blossom in the wake of "progress".

lmm 3y ago
> There's an approximately fixed number of jobs in time periods meaningful to humans. Bullshit. I've got relatives who can remember when call centers weren't a thing.
the_only_law 3y ago
> My rent is not going to wait for new fields to blossom in the wake of "progress". Don’t worry, you wouldn’t even be qualified for the new jobs anyway, unless ofc they’re low skilled in which case you might barely scrape by on rent.
Legend2440 3y ago
If we didn't do "progress" we'd both still be farming in the dirt and washing our clothes by hand. It's kind of hypocritical to ask for it to stop as soon as it starts inconveniencing you.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  This is literally an excuse for anything I can label "progress." Random citations of examples of hard work, capped off with an accusation of hypocritical selfishness. The word "progress" is not a justification, any more than the word "reform."
- hackinthebochs 3y ago
  The benefits from past progress do not imply all future progress will be similarly beneficial. Our culture takes it as axiomatic that more efficiency is good. But its not clear to me that it is. The principle goal of society should be the betterment of the lives of people. Yes, efficiency has historically been a driver of widespread prosperity, but it's not obvious that there isn't a local maximum past which increased efficiency harms the average person. We may already be on the other side of the critical point. How the benefits from increased efficiency are distributed matter to how much progress benefits average people. Historically, efficiency increases from technology were driven by innovation that brought a decrease in the costs of transactions. This saw an explosion of the space of viable economic activity and with it new classes of jobs and a widespread growth in prosperity. But crucially, the need for human labor kept pace with the expansion of wealth creation. This largely avoided the creation of a new distribution problem. But this time is in fact different. The expanding impact of AI on our economy will create a serious distribution problem as wealth creation becomes more and more decoupled from human labor. It is extremely narrow-minded to ignore this problem. It is not something that will just work itself out.
  - mr_toad 3y ago
    > But this time is in fact different. Said by people throughout history.
    - matthewdgreen 3y ago
      If we actually build machines that are as capable as human beings (meaning, real AGI) then it actually will be different. Past automation efforts didn’t obsolete human workers, but that’s not some law of nature you can rely on. It’s simply evidence that past automation efforts were imperfect. Hopefully this new round will be as well.

There's an approximately fixed number of jobs in time periods meaningful to humans. My rent is not going to wait for new fields to blossom in the wake of "progress".

lmm 3y ago

> There's an approximately fixed number of jobs in time periods meaningful to humans. Bullshit. I've got relatives who can remember when call centers weren't a thing.

the_only_law 3y ago

> My rent is not going to wait for new fields to blossom in the wake of "progress". Don’t worry, you wouldn’t even be qualified for the new jobs anyway, unless ofc they’re low skilled in which case you might barely scrape by on rent.

Legend2440 3y ago

If we didn't do "progress" we'd both still be farming in the dirt and washing our clothes by hand. It's kind of hypocritical to ask for it to stop as soon as it starts inconveniencing you.

pessimizer 3y ago
This is literally an excuse for anything I can label "progress." Random citations of examples of hard work, capped off with an accusation of hypocritical selfishness. The word "progress" is not a justification, any more than the word "reform."
hackinthebochs 3y ago
The benefits from past progress do not imply all future progress will be similarly beneficial. Our culture takes it as axiomatic that more efficiency is good. But its not clear to me that it is. The principle goal of society should be the betterment of the lives of people. Yes, efficiency has historically been a driver of widespread prosperity, but it's not obvious that there isn't a local maximum past which increased efficiency harms the average person. We may already be on the other side of the critical point. How the benefits from increased efficiency are distributed matter to how much progress benefits average people. Historically, efficiency increases from technology were driven by innovation that brought a decrease in the costs of transactions. This saw an explosion of the space of viable economic activity and with it new classes of jobs and a widespread growth in prosperity. But crucially, the need for human labor kept pace with the expansion of wealth creation. This largely avoided the creation of a new distribution problem. But this time is in fact different. The expanding impact of AI on our economy will create a serious distribution problem as wealth creation becomes more and more decoupled from human labor. It is extremely narrow-minded to ignore this problem. It is not something that will just work itself out.
- mr_toad 3y ago
  > But this time is in fact different. Said by people throughout history.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    If we actually build machines that are as capable as human beings (meaning, real AGI) then it actually will be different. Past automation efforts didn’t obsolete human workers, but that’s not some law of nature you can rely on. It’s simply evidence that past automation efforts were imperfect. Hopefully this new round will be as well.