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> my point is that I think after driving a tractor for a while, the kid would really struggle to go hoe by hand like he used to, if he ever needed to That's tr

> my point is that I think after driving a tractor for a while, the kid would really struggle to go hoe by hand like he used to, if he ever needed to That's true in the short term, but let's be real, tilling soil isn't likely to become a lost art. I mean, we use big machines right now but here we are talking about using a hoe. If you remove the context of LLMs from the discussion, it reads like you're arguing that technological progress in general is bad because people would eventually struggle to live without it. I know you probably didn't intend that, but it's worth considering. It's also sort of the point in an optimistic sense. I don't really know what it takes on a practical level to be a subsistence farmer. That's probably a good sign, all things considered. I go to the gym 6 times a week, try to eat pretty well, I'm probably better off compared to toiling in the fields.

bluefirebrand 1y ago
> If you remove the context of LLMs from the discussion, it reads like you're arguing that technological progress in general is bad because people would eventually struggle to live without it. I'm arguing that there are always tradeoffs and we often do not fully understand the tradeoffs we are making or the consequences of those tradeoffs 10, 50, 100 years down the road When we moved from more physical jobs to desk jobs many of us became sedentary and overweight. Now we are in an "obesity crisis". There's multiple factors to that, it's not just being in desk jobs, but being sedentary is a big factor. What tradeoffs are we making with AI that we won't fully understand until much further along this road? Also, what is in it for me or other working class people? We take jobs that have us driving machines, we are "more productive" but do we get paid more? Do we have more free time? Do we get any benefit from this? Maybe a fraction. Most of the benefit is reaped by employers and shareholders Maybe it would be better if instead of hoeing for 8 hours the farmhand could drive the tractor for 2 hours, make the same money and have 6 more free hours per day? But what really happens is that the farm buys a tractor, fires 100 of the farmhands coworkers, the has the remaining farmhand drive the tractor for 8 hours, replacing the productivity to very little benefit to himself Now the other farmhands are unemployed and broke, he's still working just as much and not gaining any extra from it The only one who benefits are the owners
- californical 1y ago
  I do think you’re missing something, though. In a healthy competitive market (like most of the history of the US, maybe not the last 30-40 years), if all of the farms do that, it drives down the cost of the food. The reduction in labor necessary to produce the food causes competition and brings down the cost to produce the food. That still doesn’t directly benefit the farmhands. But if it happens gradually throughout the entire economy, it creates abundance that benefits everybody. The farmhand doesn’t benefit from their own increase in productivity, but they benefit from everyone else’s. And those unemployed farmhands likely don’t stay unemployed - maybe farms are able to expand and grow more, now that there is more labor available. Maybe they even go into food processing. It’s not obvious at the time, though. In tech, we currently have like 6-10 mega companies, and a bunch of little ones. I think creating an environment that allows many more medium-sized companies and allowing them to compete heavily will ease away any risk of job loss. Same applies to a bunch of fields other than tech. The US companies are far too consolidated.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    > I think creating an environment that allows many more medium-sized companies and allowing them to compete heavily will ease away any risk of job loss. Same applies to a bunch of fields other than tech. The US companies are far too consolidated How do we achieve this environment? It's not through AI, that is still the same problem. The AI companies will be the 6-10 mega companies and anyone relying on AI will still be small fry Every time in my lifetime that we have had a huge jump in technological progress, all we've seen is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the gap gets bigger You even call this out explicitly: "most of the history of the US, maybe not the last 30-40 years" Do we have any realistic reason to assume the trend of the last 30-40 years will change course at this point?
- hatefulmoron 1y ago
  > When we moved from more physical jobs to desk jobs many of us became sedentary and overweight. Now we are in an "obesity crisis". There's multiple factors to that, it's not just being in desk jobs, but being sedentary is a big factor. Sure, although I think our lives are generally better than they were a few hundred years ago. Besides, if you care about your health you can always take steps yourself. > The only one who benefits are the owners Well yeah, the entity that benefits is the farm, and whoever owns whatever portions of the farm. The point of the farm isn't to give its workers jobs. It's to produce something to sell. As long as we're in a market where we're selling our labor, we're only given money for being productive. If technology makes us redundant, then we find new jobs. Same as it ever was. Think about it: why should hundreds of manual farmhands stay employed while they can be replaced by a single machine? That's not an efficient economy or society. Let those people re-skill and be useful in other roles.

bluefirebrand 1y ago

> If you remove the context of LLMs from the discussion, it reads like you're arguing that technological progress in general is bad because people would eventually struggle to live without it. I'm arguing that there are always tradeoffs and we often do not fully understand the tradeoffs we are making or the consequences of those tradeoffs 10, 50, 100 years down the road When we moved from more physical jobs to desk jobs many of us became sedentary and overweight. Now we are in an "obesity crisis". There's multiple factors to that, it's not just being in desk jobs, but being sedentary is a big factor. What tradeoffs are we making with AI that we won't fully understand until much further along this road? Also, what is in it for me or other working class people? We take jobs that have us driving machines, we are "more productive" but do we get paid more? Do we have more free time? Do we get any benefit from this? Maybe a fraction. Most of the benefit is reaped by employers and shareholders Maybe it would be better if instead of hoeing for 8 hours the farmhand could drive the tractor for 2 hours, make the same money and have 6 more free hours per day? But what really happens is that the farm buys a tractor, fires 100 of the farmhands coworkers, the has the remaining farmhand drive the tractor for 8 hours, replacing the productivity to very little benefit to himself Now the other farmhands are unemployed and broke, he's still working just as much and not gaining any extra from it The only one who benefits are the owners

californical 1y ago
I do think you’re missing something, though. In a healthy competitive market (like most of the history of the US, maybe not the last 30-40 years), if all of the farms do that, it drives down the cost of the food. The reduction in labor necessary to produce the food causes competition and brings down the cost to produce the food. That still doesn’t directly benefit the farmhands. But if it happens gradually throughout the entire economy, it creates abundance that benefits everybody. The farmhand doesn’t benefit from their own increase in productivity, but they benefit from everyone else’s. And those unemployed farmhands likely don’t stay unemployed - maybe farms are able to expand and grow more, now that there is more labor available. Maybe they even go into food processing. It’s not obvious at the time, though. In tech, we currently have like 6-10 mega companies, and a bunch of little ones. I think creating an environment that allows many more medium-sized companies and allowing them to compete heavily will ease away any risk of job loss. Same applies to a bunch of fields other than tech. The US companies are far too consolidated.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  > I think creating an environment that allows many more medium-sized companies and allowing them to compete heavily will ease away any risk of job loss. Same applies to a bunch of fields other than tech. The US companies are far too consolidated How do we achieve this environment? It's not through AI, that is still the same problem. The AI companies will be the 6-10 mega companies and anyone relying on AI will still be small fry Every time in my lifetime that we have had a huge jump in technological progress, all we've seen is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the gap gets bigger You even call this out explicitly: "most of the history of the US, maybe not the last 30-40 years" Do we have any realistic reason to assume the trend of the last 30-40 years will change course at this point?
hatefulmoron 1y ago
> When we moved from more physical jobs to desk jobs many of us became sedentary and overweight. Now we are in an "obesity crisis". There's multiple factors to that, it's not just being in desk jobs, but being sedentary is a big factor. Sure, although I think our lives are generally better than they were a few hundred years ago. Besides, if you care about your health you can always take steps yourself. > The only one who benefits are the owners Well yeah, the entity that benefits is the farm, and whoever owns whatever portions of the farm. The point of the farm isn't to give its workers jobs. It's to produce something to sell. As long as we're in a market where we're selling our labor, we're only given money for being productive. If technology makes us redundant, then we find new jobs. Same as it ever was. Think about it: why should hundreds of manual farmhands stay employed while they can be replaced by a single machine? That's not an efficient economy or society. Let those people re-skill and be useful in other roles.