4 ms·

One problem is how fast change is coming. We can adapt to change but we can't at the speed that it is happening. People are talking about giving everyone free m

One problem is how fast change is coming. We can adapt to change but we can't at the speed that it is happening. People are talking about giving everyone free money to help with the transition. OK. But that leaves millions of people with more free time that they can healthily use. The quote "an idle mind is the devil's workshop", is absolutely right. Look at people that have lots of free time. See how hard they work towards killing themselves, through dangerous activities. Now imagine a whole society where the majority of members are bored because they have exhausted their entertainment. Yikes! Or just as bad, a population that is plugged into constant entertainment. Neither is good.

advael 2y ago
So your position is that people who have free time mostly do awful things and your support for this position is like... a misquoted aphorism from the bible ("idle hands are the devil's workshop")? I don't find that particularly compelling at all. People find things to do with their time when they don't have external pressure on them. Most of those things are "useless" but also pretty harmless, and make them happy. Often people spend their free time building community with other people, which can often be valuable to others as well. Sometimes they do stuff like discover laws of physics or write novels. To claim that there is some great evil that comes from merely giving people more leisure time is an extraordinary claim that to me seems to lack even a modicum of evidence. Sure, some people do harmful things and we should stop them from doing those things. To attribute this to people being able to pursue their own interests is not even wrong, it's completely incoherent
- WheelsAtLarge 2y ago
  There is no absolute proof of how people will behave. People are just too inconsistent from moment to moment. But we can get an idea from past activities. The COVID lockdown was a small view into people's behavior when they have too much idle time. I remember riots, protests, and crimes, to name a few, and that was a small amount of time. Also, when do people start to get into trouble? When they have too much time. It does have to be everyone, not even the majority, for it to be a huge problem. Even you talk about it as a "useless" use of time. It may be great for the individual at the given moment. A dopamine hit always feels good. But it's not great for society. How is that a plus for the future? Thousands of years of societal evolution just to have people figure out what to stream next. Boy, AI will lead to a great future. Happy and fruitful times are on their way. :-( AI's future is all speculation. There's no way to know until it happens but I don't see it as a plus.
  - advael 2y ago
    If we purport that human labor has no economic value, people being useless in their idleness has no bearing on the future. Also, the COVID pandemic was not people having free time, it was people being ordered to stay at home, many people being excluded from this due to being "essential workers", society doing damn near nothing to adjust to this state of affairs and thus keeping people in the "normal", stressful state of having to labor to live, and also in fear of a deadly disease, and often socially isolated and prevented from pursuing many of their interests. This seems like a poor comparison. If your experience of the global pandemic was just "I had a bunch more free time" it seems like you're already of the subset of the population experiencing something closer to the post-scarcity reality that all possible valuable human labor being cheaper to automate could be, and I assume you weren't doing crimes or whatever, right?
pzo 2y ago
On top of that I doubt every country can afford to give everyone free money. US maybe can for their own citizens but will they give money also to e.g. Malaysians? (they currently do a lot of hollywood vfx and postproduction). I highly doubt that and there is only US, China and maybe France in AI race game right now.
- advael 2y ago
  Money is an abstraction. If AI can't produce enough value to support humans, then clearly there's stuff humans value that AI can't do. If AI can produce enough value to obsolete human labor, then human labor is unnecessary and money need not represent it
  - WheelsAtLarge 2y ago
    Money will survive. We humans don't just use it for physical goods. Think about all the monetary exchanges where no physical or virtual goods are exchanged. In Japan, you can rent a friend. An example of an out-of-the-ordinary transaction. Yea, you may be able to have an AI but I'm sure there will be stuff it won't be able to fulfill. People will have use for money.
    - advael 2y ago
      I agree that this is a more likely path for the human economy to take, and one that would disproportionately benefit from people being able to operate independently, as if stuff like social companionship become the kinds of things humans value in each other, and money is exchanged on that basis, the existence of a class of people who can be compelled by desperation to that kind of service seems kind of rife for abuse to say the least, and not really fruitful to let people hoard wealth to an indefinite degree. That said, any future economy in which humans value services from each other (in a monetary sense) is one in which humans have not been outcompeted by AI in all possible value-generating endeavors, so by some people's standards it might negate the premise that "AI has replaced all human labor" Either way, if people really believe something like "AI is obviating the contributions of humans in a way that will eventually increase to 100%" I think it's kind of hard to justify an equilibrium where no one does anything an AI can't do better but we still have societal losers who can't do anything to better their station and don't have autonomy and security. I think no loser in that scenario is likely to accept it, so we're talking about either killing or enslaving a whole lot of people or doing some "wealth" (whatever that means in a post-scarcity world) redistribution

advael 2y ago

So your position is that people who have free time mostly do awful things and your support for this position is like... a misquoted aphorism from the bible ("idle hands are the devil's workshop")? I don't find that particularly compelling at all. People find things to do with their time when they don't have external pressure on them. Most of those things are "useless" but also pretty harmless, and make them happy. Often people spend their free time building community with other people, which can often be valuable to others as well. Sometimes they do stuff like discover laws of physics or write novels. To claim that there is some great evil that comes from merely giving people more leisure time is an extraordinary claim that to me seems to lack even a modicum of evidence. Sure, some people do harmful things and we should stop them from doing those things. To attribute this to people being able to pursue their own interests is not even wrong, it's completely incoherent

WheelsAtLarge 2y ago
There is no absolute proof of how people will behave. People are just too inconsistent from moment to moment. But we can get an idea from past activities. The COVID lockdown was a small view into people's behavior when they have too much idle time. I remember riots, protests, and crimes, to name a few, and that was a small amount of time. Also, when do people start to get into trouble? When they have too much time. It does have to be everyone, not even the majority, for it to be a huge problem. Even you talk about it as a "useless" use of time. It may be great for the individual at the given moment. A dopamine hit always feels good. But it's not great for society. How is that a plus for the future? Thousands of years of societal evolution just to have people figure out what to stream next. Boy, AI will lead to a great future. Happy and fruitful times are on their way. :-( AI's future is all speculation. There's no way to know until it happens but I don't see it as a plus.
- advael 2y ago
  If we purport that human labor has no economic value, people being useless in their idleness has no bearing on the future. Also, the COVID pandemic was not people having free time, it was people being ordered to stay at home, many people being excluded from this due to being "essential workers", society doing damn near nothing to adjust to this state of affairs and thus keeping people in the "normal", stressful state of having to labor to live, and also in fear of a deadly disease, and often socially isolated and prevented from pursuing many of their interests. This seems like a poor comparison. If your experience of the global pandemic was just "I had a bunch more free time" it seems like you're already of the subset of the population experiencing something closer to the post-scarcity reality that all possible valuable human labor being cheaper to automate could be, and I assume you weren't doing crimes or whatever, right?

pzo 2y ago

On top of that I doubt every country can afford to give everyone free money. US maybe can for their own citizens but will they give money also to e.g. Malaysians? (they currently do a lot of hollywood vfx and postproduction). I highly doubt that and there is only US, China and maybe France in AI race game right now.

advael 2y ago
Money is an abstraction. If AI can't produce enough value to support humans, then clearly there's stuff humans value that AI can't do. If AI can produce enough value to obsolete human labor, then human labor is unnecessary and money need not represent it
- WheelsAtLarge 2y ago
  Money will survive. We humans don't just use it for physical goods. Think about all the monetary exchanges where no physical or virtual goods are exchanged. In Japan, you can rent a friend. An example of an out-of-the-ordinary transaction. Yea, you may be able to have an AI but I'm sure there will be stuff it won't be able to fulfill. People will have use for money.
  - advael 2y ago
    I agree that this is a more likely path for the human economy to take, and one that would disproportionately benefit from people being able to operate independently, as if stuff like social companionship become the kinds of things humans value in each other, and money is exchanged on that basis, the existence of a class of people who can be compelled by desperation to that kind of service seems kind of rife for abuse to say the least, and not really fruitful to let people hoard wealth to an indefinite degree. That said, any future economy in which humans value services from each other (in a monetary sense) is one in which humans have not been outcompeted by AI in all possible value-generating endeavors, so by some people's standards it might negate the premise that "AI has replaced all human labor" Either way, if people really believe something like "AI is obviating the contributions of humans in a way that will eventually increase to 100%" I think it's kind of hard to justify an equilibrium where no one does anything an AI can't do better but we still have societal losers who can't do anything to better their station and don't have autonomy and security. I think no loser in that scenario is likely to accept it, so we're talking about either killing or enslaving a whole lot of people or doing some "wealth" (whatever that means in a post-scarcity world) redistribution