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To be fair, I don’t think its so much about white collar jobs being under threat as it is about creative jobs being under threat. Many creative pursuits are vie

To be fair, I don’t think its so much about white collar jobs being under threat as it is about creative jobs being under threat. Many creative pursuits are viewed as an outlet of human expression in a way that other jobs never were, and I think this is what is driving the new wave of the Resistance^TM

Nursie 3y ago
I enjoyed seeing a meme the other day (rare for me to enjoy!) that summed it up as something like - "Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the robots paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind". And I think that sums up the feeling quite well. I do agree that automation in general has not paid off in the way the utopians would predict - instead of freeing humanity from the need to work, we have disenfranchised large portions of the population. That said, more people than ever (in the west) are freed from manual labour, and are working historically shorter hours for better quality of life than ever before. But the fruits of our productivity gains are not distributed equally and it is all too easy to imagine a future in which it is the owners of the smart systems who reap all the rewards, with everyone else fighting for scraps.
- 0thgen 3y ago
  it could just be that freeing humanity from the need to work takes longer than we thought are we worse off than we were before industrial automation? I thought the economics said the opposite (even if we exclude the eastern nations that benefits from western job loss from our utilitarian analysis here -- which we shouldn't) that meme was really good btw
  - taway_6PplYu5 3y ago
    > it could just be that freeing humanity from the need to work takes longer than we thought May I suggest your read Graeber's "The Utopia of Rules"? We've created a society which requires us to spend oodles of hours doing bullshit work and administer hundreds of bullshit services. We could easily feed, house, clothe, entertain, and care for everyone with 25 hour work weeks. We (as a society) just chose not to.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > We could easily feed, house, clothe, entertain, and care for everyone with 25 hour work weeks Assuming zero innovation or growth, yes. If a society is comfortable opting into declining relative living standards, they should have the right to do so. But framing this is a costless trade-off is facile. Better argument: we can afford to feed, house, clothe and care for every American, possibly, almost every human. (The long tail is exhaustingly costly.) But it would come at the expense of some peoples’ lifestyles, majorly, and everyone’s, in small ways. It almost certainly doesn’t occur with a reduced work week and current adolescence/education and retirement expectations.
    - 0thgen 3y ago
      Society's aren't individuals. They are collections of many individuals. I don't think society "chooses" to do or not do things in the same way we assume humans "choose" to do or not do things. I don't think the complexity of human society can be boiled down to "we just choose not be perfect"
- firen777 3y ago
  >"Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the robots paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind" Thank you for this quote! This speaks out the reason for my innate disgust toward the current "creative" AI which I couldn't quite articulate before.
  - hnfong 3y ago
    And this kind of highlights the kind of hypocrisy implied by the original comment. "Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the _______ paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind" For the less fortunate people struggling to make ends meet, it may not matter that much whether it's robots or the aristocracy, or the upper middle class doing the poetry writing. Until the last couple decades, 99% of humanity was always doing doing manual labor to make ends meet. It's just that the literate class throughout history always identified with the 1% rather than the 99%. We're conditioned to think that creative endeavors are always more "noble" than manual labor because that's what nobles did. Ironically the fact that we pay "knowledge workers" more than manual laborers might have contributed to this outcome. If toilet janitors commanded a $500k salary maybe more R&D budget would go to inventing robots that are good at cleaning toilets, instead of AI systems that are good at solving leetcode.
    - nemo44x 3y ago
      I think it’s because of supply and demand in addition to value. A manual laborer, even a very skilled one, is limited by their own output on how much value they can create. A software engineer creates outputs that can generate many multiples of their compensation for doing so.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Distributing the fruits of production equally has been tried several times. The result is everyone becomes equally poor.
  - atoav 3y ago
    Are you sure? Isn't the Scandinavian model essentially "Socialism" by US standards. Last time I checked they were doing quite well compared to literallly everybody else on the planet (excluding other, similar social democracies). The US went like: socialism is bad, let's go for the polar opposite and make the poor poorer and the rich richer. For many that are poor in the US people "being equally poor under socialism" is not the threat you think it is, even for the ones that currently go the authoritarian route. Something is brewing in the US and it is an explosive mixture — you can squeeze out only so much from the people without things going sideways.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Norway sits on an ocean of oil that they use to prop up their economy. > socialism is bad, let's go for the polar opposite and make the poor poorer and the rich richer The US free market moved scores of millions of dirt poor immigrants into the middle class and beyond.
      - defrost 3y ago
        Well, if that's your idea of success: Based on Pew's income band classification, China's middle class has been among the fastest growing in the world, swelling from 39.1 million people (3.1 percent of the population) in 2000 to roughly 707 million (50.8 percent of the population) in 2018. https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class
        WalterBright 3y ago
        China switched to free markets. They also had the advantage of technology that didn't exist in the 1800s. Before China switched to free markets, they had an equal distribution of all income economy. You might want to check it out. So, too, the USSR, Cambodia, Vietnam, Jamestown, Plymouth, etc.
- antupis 3y ago
  I have visited several art exhibitions this year and generally would say that stuff at front page of /r/StableDiffusion/ is just more original and better than some random art exhibition.
  - sambazi 3y ago
    "Stop staring at my hands"

Nursie 3y ago

I enjoyed seeing a meme the other day (rare for me to enjoy!) that summed it up as something like - "Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the robots paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind". And I think that sums up the feeling quite well. I do agree that automation in general has not paid off in the way the utopians would predict - instead of freeing humanity from the need to work, we have disenfranchised large portions of the population. That said, more people than ever (in the west) are freed from manual labour, and are working historically shorter hours for better quality of life than ever before. But the fruits of our productivity gains are not distributed equally and it is all too easy to imagine a future in which it is the owners of the smart systems who reap all the rewards, with everyone else fighting for scraps.

0thgen 3y ago
it could just be that freeing humanity from the need to work takes longer than we thought are we worse off than we were before industrial automation? I thought the economics said the opposite (even if we exclude the eastern nations that benefits from western job loss from our utilitarian analysis here -- which we shouldn't) that meme was really good btw
- taway_6PplYu5 3y ago
  > it could just be that freeing humanity from the need to work takes longer than we thought May I suggest your read Graeber's "The Utopia of Rules"? We've created a society which requires us to spend oodles of hours doing bullshit work and administer hundreds of bullshit services. We could easily feed, house, clothe, entertain, and care for everyone with 25 hour work weeks. We (as a society) just chose not to.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > We could easily feed, house, clothe, entertain, and care for everyone with 25 hour work weeks Assuming zero innovation or growth, yes. If a society is comfortable opting into declining relative living standards, they should have the right to do so. But framing this is a costless trade-off is facile. Better argument: we can afford to feed, house, clothe and care for every American, possibly, almost every human. (The long tail is exhaustingly costly.) But it would come at the expense of some peoples’ lifestyles, majorly, and everyone’s, in small ways. It almost certainly doesn’t occur with a reduced work week and current adolescence/education and retirement expectations.
  - 0thgen 3y ago
    Society's aren't individuals. They are collections of many individuals. I don't think society "chooses" to do or not do things in the same way we assume humans "choose" to do or not do things. I don't think the complexity of human society can be boiled down to "we just choose not be perfect"
firen777 3y ago
>"Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the robots paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind" Thank you for this quote! This speaks out the reason for my innate disgust toward the current "creative" AI which I couldn't quite articulate before.
- hnfong 3y ago
  And this kind of highlights the kind of hypocrisy implied by the original comment. "Having to do manual labour to make ends meet while the _______ paint and write poetry was not the future I had in mind" For the less fortunate people struggling to make ends meet, it may not matter that much whether it's robots or the aristocracy, or the upper middle class doing the poetry writing. Until the last couple decades, 99% of humanity was always doing doing manual labor to make ends meet. It's just that the literate class throughout history always identified with the 1% rather than the 99%. We're conditioned to think that creative endeavors are always more "noble" than manual labor because that's what nobles did. Ironically the fact that we pay "knowledge workers" more than manual laborers might have contributed to this outcome. If toilet janitors commanded a $500k salary maybe more R&D budget would go to inventing robots that are good at cleaning toilets, instead of AI systems that are good at solving leetcode.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    I think it’s because of supply and demand in addition to value. A manual laborer, even a very skilled one, is limited by their own output on how much value they can create. A software engineer creates outputs that can generate many multiples of their compensation for doing so.
WalterBright 3y ago
Distributing the fruits of production equally has been tried several times. The result is everyone becomes equally poor.
- atoav 3y ago
  Are you sure? Isn't the Scandinavian model essentially "Socialism" by US standards. Last time I checked they were doing quite well compared to literallly everybody else on the planet (excluding other, similar social democracies). The US went like: socialism is bad, let's go for the polar opposite and make the poor poorer and the rich richer. For many that are poor in the US people "being equally poor under socialism" is not the threat you think it is, even for the ones that currently go the authoritarian route. Something is brewing in the US and it is an explosive mixture — you can squeeze out only so much from the people without things going sideways.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Norway sits on an ocean of oil that they use to prop up their economy. > socialism is bad, let's go for the polar opposite and make the poor poorer and the rich richer The US free market moved scores of millions of dirt poor immigrants into the middle class and beyond.
    - defrost 3y ago
      Well, if that's your idea of success: Based on Pew's income band classification, China's middle class has been among the fastest growing in the world, swelling from 39.1 million people (3.1 percent of the population) in 2000 to roughly 707 million (50.8 percent of the population) in 2018. https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class https://chinapower.csis.org/china-middle-class
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        China switched to free markets. They also had the advantage of technology that didn't exist in the 1800s. Before China switched to free markets, they had an equal distribution of all income economy. You might want to check it out. So, too, the USSR, Cambodia, Vietnam, Jamestown, Plymouth, etc.
antupis 3y ago
I have visited several art exhibitions this year and generally would say that stuff at front page of /r/StableDiffusion/ is just more original and better than some random art exhibition.
- sambazi 3y ago
  "Stop staring at my hands"