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It seems that some tech people are prone to ludditism. No wonders here, AI is sharper and brighter than most tech workers usually are. Instead of facing the ne

It seems that some tech people are prone to ludditism. No wonders here, AI is sharper and brighter than most tech workers usually are. Instead of facing the new reality, some people start to talk about the bubbles, AI being sloppy, etc. Which is not generally true; mostly it's the users' psychological projection of their own traits and the resulting fear-induced smear campaigns. The phenomenon is well described in psychology books. Seminal works of Carl Jung worth a ton nowadays.

a3w 1y ago
At least us Luddites are not losing their jobs to AGI, yet.
- garganzol 1y ago
  Rickshaws protesting against motorized vehicles instead of learning to drive them.
steve_adams_86 1y ago
When people mention the Luddites, they almost always do so incorrectly as you have here. Luddites weren't afraid of technology because it was better than them. In fact, it was worse. There was no projection. The phenomenon you're describing here was not a Luddite phenomenon. They were concerned about how machines would disrupt employment, wages, product quality, work autonomy, power imbalances, and working conditions. We should be, too. It's also more nuanced than you seem to think. Having the work we do be replaced by machines has significant implications about human purpose, identity, and how we fit into our societies. It isn't so much a fear of being replaced or made redundant by machines specifically; it's about who we are, what we do, and what that means for other human beings. How do I belong? How do I make my community a better place? How do I build wealth for the people I love? Who cares how good the machine is. Humans want to be good at things because it's rewarding and—up until very recently—was a uniquely human capability that allowed us to build civilization itself. When machines take that away, what's left? What should we be good at when a skill may be irrelevant today or in a decade or who knows when? Someone with a software brain might immediately think "This is simply another abstraction; use the abstraction to build wealth just as you used other skills and abilities to do so before", and sure... That's what people will try to do, just as we have over the last several hundred years as new technologies have emerged. But these most recent technologies, and the ones on the horizon, seem to threaten a loss of autonomy and a kind of wealth disparity we've never seen before. The race to amass compute and manufacturing capacity among billionaires is a uniquely concerning threat to virtually everyone, in my opinion. We should remember the Luddites differently, read some history, and reconsider our next steps and how we engage with and regulate autonomous systems.
- garganzol 1y ago
  Exactly, ludditism revolves around a fear of loosing identity. This phenomenon intersects with narcissism, which in turn is caused by the lack of authenticity. In terms of creative work, we talk about lacking professional authenticity. In simple words, authenticity is the desire to work on mistakes and improve yourself, being flexible enough to embrace the changes sooner or later. If one is lacking some parts of it, one tends to become a narcissist or a luddite, being angry trying to regain the ever-slipping sense of control. To translate to human language: gold diggers who entered the industry just for money do not truly belong to the said industry, while those who were driven by spirit will prosper.
- defgeneric 1y ago
  > How do I belong? How do I make my community a better place? How do I build wealth for the people I love? What remains after is something like the social status games of the aristocratic class, which I suspect is why there's a race to accumulate as much as possible now before the means to do so evaporate.
gaul_bladder 1y ago
[flagged]

a3w 1y ago

At least us Luddites are not losing their jobs to AGI, yet.

garganzol 1y ago
Rickshaws protesting against motorized vehicles instead of learning to drive them.

steve_adams_86 1y ago

When people mention the Luddites, they almost always do so incorrectly as you have here. Luddites weren't afraid of technology because it was better than them. In fact, it was worse. There was no projection. The phenomenon you're describing here was not a Luddite phenomenon. They were concerned about how machines would disrupt employment, wages, product quality, work autonomy, power imbalances, and working conditions. We should be, too. It's also more nuanced than you seem to think. Having the work we do be replaced by machines has significant implications about human purpose, identity, and how we fit into our societies. It isn't so much a fear of being replaced or made redundant by machines specifically; it's about who we are, what we do, and what that means for other human beings. How do I belong? How do I make my community a better place? How do I build wealth for the people I love? Who cares how good the machine is. Humans want to be good at things because it's rewarding and—up until very recently—was a uniquely human capability that allowed us to build civilization itself. When machines take that away, what's left? What should we be good at when a skill may be irrelevant today or in a decade or who knows when? Someone with a software brain might immediately think "This is simply another abstraction; use the abstraction to build wealth just as you used other skills and abilities to do so before", and sure... That's what people will try to do, just as we have over the last several hundred years as new technologies have emerged. But these most recent technologies, and the ones on the horizon, seem to threaten a loss of autonomy and a kind of wealth disparity we've never seen before. The race to amass compute and manufacturing capacity among billionaires is a uniquely concerning threat to virtually everyone, in my opinion. We should remember the Luddites differently, read some history, and reconsider our next steps and how we engage with and regulate autonomous systems.

garganzol 1y ago
Exactly, ludditism revolves around a fear of loosing identity. This phenomenon intersects with narcissism, which in turn is caused by the lack of authenticity. In terms of creative work, we talk about lacking professional authenticity. In simple words, authenticity is the desire to work on mistakes and improve yourself, being flexible enough to embrace the changes sooner or later. If one is lacking some parts of it, one tends to become a narcissist or a luddite, being angry trying to regain the ever-slipping sense of control. To translate to human language: gold diggers who entered the industry just for money do not truly belong to the said industry, while those who were driven by spirit will prosper.
defgeneric 1y ago
> How do I belong? How do I make my community a better place? How do I build wealth for the people I love? What remains after is something like the social status games of the aristocratic class, which I suspect is why there's a race to accumulate as much as possible now before the means to do so evaporate.

gaul_bladder 1y ago

[flagged]