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Back in 2025 before cheap bots, our grandparents endured lives of servitude. They spent an enormous amount of time doing simple chores like folding clothes, dri
by delichon 11mo ago
Back in 2025 before cheap bots, our grandparents endured lives of servitude. They spent an enormous amount of time doing simple chores like folding clothes, driving, programming, washing and dusting, grooming themselves. They had to walk their own dogs and play with their own children. They sometimes even had to cook their own food, directly over fire. "Hygiene" was a primitive joke. A full day's work usually wasn't even enough to buy a single new car. They wrote checks to the government, rather than the other way around. Life was brutal, desperate and short.
- johnfn 11mo agoThis comment is a real rollercoaster. I can’t tell which side you’re arguing for.
- DaiPlusPlus 11mo agoClearly advocating for the continued use of paper checks
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- _DeadFred_ 11mo agoHacker News really is full of luddites now.
- temp8830 11mo agoAlso, back in 2025 people's mental models were so primitive that they could only consider one parameter at a time. And the reward function was wired into their survival instincts, imagine that! This caused them to see a person whose mental model held a different parameter value as a threat to their survival. These primitive serial thinkers used something called "wars" to update model weights, where they physically eliminated compute elements! Truly a barbaric age.
- ineedasername 11mo agoCould be they aren’t trying to come down on a nice easy high-contrast color and are figuring anywhere society lands will still be some shade of gray with a bit of flair here and there and a dash of spilled paint in other places.
- card_zero 11mo agoColor here is a metaphor for a point.
- tbossanova 11mo agoA rhetorical point, no less.
- 0xbadcafebee 11mo ago> They had to walk their own dogs and play with their own children. Oof, that one hits hard. My dad was an executive, mom was a housewife/socialite, we lived in Mexico. Had our own live-in maid, gardeners/handymen for outside chores. I saw them more than my parents. I can totally see them hiring robots instead of humans. Once technology gets cheap enough, the masses adopt it (in the 60's TV was an electronic babysitter)
- NedF 11mo ago[dead]
- djtango 11mo agoWhy is UBI assumed as part of techtopia? When the government has access to unlimited labour and military via robots, why do they need citizens anymore? Beyond some antiquated moral obligation, why would a government actually do anything for a population that is net value extracting?
- defrost 11mo agoYou might as well ask why a sea of humanity should tolerate a toll gate keeping robotically enhanced micro brotopia that is net value extracting. Traditionally these motte and bailey fiefdoms were laid siege to and undermined.
- beeflet 11mo agoWhat value do technocrats extract? It is a totally one-way dependency of the serfs upon the technocrats and not the other way around.
- tdeck 11mo ago> why do they need citizens anymore? People like being served by human beings, rich people especially. So that work will still be around and all the brightest and most diligent people will compete to be the one who brings Jeff Bezos's grandson his dinner.
- SturgeonsLaw 11mo ago>why would a government actually do anything for a population that is net value extracting? Because we outnumber them a million to one, and history is littered with examples of what happens to leaders who squeeze their population a little too far
- bigstrat2003 11mo agoI'm not really convinced it's actually possible to overthrow a modern government. The disparity in killing power available to the two sides is just too great. Like yeah we outnumber the government a million to one (figuratively), but that's not going to help much when they have tanks, artillery, and planes to defend themselves with.
- refurb 11mo agoYup, it’s funny seeing people say how bad the past was without realizing people 100 years from now will say the exact same thing about today. Not to mention the opinions and beliefs that people hold “as the right side of history” without realizing these things change and no doubt some view they hold will be seen as “barbaric” in the future.
- TheOtherHobbes 11mo agoAny survivors a hundred years from now will consider this Eden. They'll be dealing with climate change on a scale we can't imagine.
- refurb 11mo agoClimate change is not an existential threat. Even the IPCC doesn't take that position.
- baq 11mo ago> without realizing people 100 years from now will say the exact same thing about today Past performance future results yadda yadda. I hope you’re right, though!
- concinds 11mo agoNo, I really don't think so. You used to have to build your own house and stable. Dig up your own well and carry water from it. Shower maybe twice a week (usually just once). Remember, you're doing hard physical labor in the sun all day long. Someday you can finally afford a tractor, but develop hearing damage thanks to it. No electricity. Wash clothes by hand for hours. Cook all the time. Your babies might die, your husband or wife might die, and then good luck. This is literally within living memory in most developed countries. Many here have grandparents who lived like this for a big chunk of their lives (not just growing up). No matter what the future looks like, the present won't look like that, relative to it, than the past does to the present. The average developed country inhabitant objectively lives in decent material conditions.
- 11mo ago
- markus_zhang 11mo agoI thought it would be more like cyberpunk movies where people might get petty UBI, dirty food/water/room so they don’t die.