6 ms·

I think, like the Bill Gates haters who interpret him talking about reducing the rate of birth in Africa as wanting to kill Africans, you're interpreting it wro

by netsharc 11mo ago

I think, like the Bill Gates haters who interpret him talking about reducing the rate of birth in Africa as wanting to kill Africans, you're interpreting it wrong. The graph says horse ownership per person. People probably stopped buying horses, they let theirs retire (well, to be honest, probably also sent to the glue factory), and when they stopped buying new horses, horse breeding programs slowed down.

bgwalter 11mo ago
Well, in this case corporations stop buying people and just fire them instead of letting them retire. Or an army of Tesla Optimi will send people to the glue factory. That at least is the fantasy of these people. Fortunately. LLMs don't really work, Tesla cars are still built by KUKA robots (while KUKA has a fraction of Tesla's P/E) and data centers in space are a cocaine fueled dream.
JohnMakin 11mo ago
I don’t think you’re realizing that the OP understands this, and that in this analogy, the horses are human beings
- bambax 11mo ago
  In this analogy, horses are jobs, not humans; you could argue there's not much of a difference between the two, because people without jobs will starve, etc., but still, they're not the same.
  - mattmaroon 11mo ago
    There is, at least, a way to avoid people without jobs starving. Whether or not we'll do it is anyone's guess. I think I'll live to see UBI but I am perphaps an optimist.
    - bigfishrunning 11mo ago
      You'd have to time something like UBI with us actually being able to replace the workforce -- The current LLM parlor tricks are simply not what they're sold to be, and if we rely on them too early we (humanity) is very much screwed.
    - snarfy 11mo ago
      It's here today - it's owning stock that produces dividends. That's capitalism.
      - mattmaroon 11mo ago
        Yeah I don't know why everyone doesn't just do that!
  - ToucanLoucan 11mo ago
    One would argue in a capitalist society like ours, fucking with someone's job at industrial scale isn't awfully dissimilar from threatening their life, it's just less direct. Plenty more people currently are feeling the effects of worsening job markets than have been involved in a hostage situation, but the negative end results are still the same. One would argue also if you don't see this, it's because you'd prefer not to. If we had at least a somewhat functioning safety net, or UBI, or both, you'd at least have an argument to be made, but we don't. AI and it's associated companies' business model is, if not killing people, certainly attempting to make lots of lives worse at scale. I wouldn't work for one for all the money in the world.
    - FuckButtons 11mo ago
      UBI will not save you from economic irrelevance. The only difference between you and someone starving in a 3rd world slum is economic opportunity and the means to exchange what you have for what someone else needs. UBI is inflation in a wig and dark glasses.
  - FuckButtons 11mo ago
    Why make the analogy at all if not for the implied slaughter. It is a visceral reminder of our own brutal history. Of what humans do given the right set of circumstances.
    - arowthway 11mo ago
      How is decreasing the number of horses killed every year brutal?
  - jimbokun 11mo ago
    What happened to the horses after they lost their jobs?
- pas 11mo ago
  population projections they already predict that prosperity reduces population and even if AI becomes good enough to replace most humans the economic surplus does not disappear it's a coordination problem in many places on Earth social safety nets are pretty robust, and if AI helps to reduce cost of providing basic services then it won't be a problem to expand those safety nets ... there's already a pretty serious anti-inequality (or at least anti-billionaire) storm brewing, the question is can it motivate the necessary structural changes or just fuels yet another dumb populist movement
  - bee_rider 11mo ago
    Somebody should try a smart populist movement instead. My least favorite thing about my favored (or rather least disfavored) party is that we seem to believe “we must win without appealing to the populace too directly, that would simply be uncouth.”
  - glenstein 11mo ago
    I think the concerns with UBI are (1) it takes away the leverage of a labor force to organize and strike for better benefits or economic conditions, and (2) following the block grant model, can be a trojan horse "benefit" that sets the stage for effectively deleting systems of welfare support that have been historically resilient due to institutional support and being strongly identified with specific constituencies. When the benefit is abstracted away from a constituency it's easier to chop over time. I don't exactly know how I feel about those, but I respect those criticisms. I think the grand synthesis is that UBI exists on top of existing safety nets.
    - gota 11mo ago
      Point (2) seems wrong intuitively. "Chopping" away UBI would be much more difficult _because_ it is not associated to a specific constituency. Not only would there be more people on the streets protesting against real or perceived cuts; there also would be fewer movements based on exclusivist ideologies protesting _in favour of cuts_* * e.g. racist groups in favour of cutting some kinds of welfare because of racial associations
    - 11mo ago
maciejzj 11mo ago
We don't know what the author had in mind, but one has to really be tone deaf to let the weirdness of the discussion go unnoticed. Take a look at the last paragraphs in the text again: > And not very long after, 93 per cent of those horses had disappeared. > I very much hope we'll get the two decades that horses did. > But looking at how fast Claude is automating my job, I think we're getting a lot less. While most of the text is written from cold economic(ish) standpoint it is really hard not to get bleak impression from it. And the last three sentences express that in vague way too. Some ambiguity is left on purpose so you can interpret the daunting impression your way. The article presents you with crushing juxtaposition, implicates insane dangers, and leaves you with the feeling of inevitability. Then back to work, I guess.
- pzo 11mo ago
  > And not very long after, 93 per cent of those horses had disappeared. > I very much hope we'll get the two decades that horses did. Horses typically live between 25 to 30 years. I agree with OP that most likely those horses were not decimated (killed) but just died out and people stopped mass breeding them. Also as other noticed chart shows 'horses PER person in US'. Population between 1900 and 1950 increased from 1.5B to 2.5B (globally but probably similarly almost 70% increase in US). I think depends what do you worry about: 1) `that human population decrease 50-80%`? I don't worry about it even if that happen. 200 years ago human population was ~1 B today is ~8 B. At year 0 AD human population was ~0.250 B. Did we 200 years ago worry about it like "omg human population is only 1 B" ? I doubt human population decrease 80% because of no demand for human as workforce but I don't see problem if it decrease by 50%. There will short transition period with surplus of retired people and work needed to keep the infrastructure but if robots can help with this then I don't see the problem. 2) `That we will not be needed and we will loose jobs?` I don't see work like something in demand. Most people hate their jobs or do crappy jobs. What do people actually worry about that they will won't get any income. And actually not even about that - they worry that they will not be able to survive or be homeless. If there is improvement in production that food, shelter, transportation, healtcare is dirty cheap (all stuff from bottom maslov piramid) and fair distribution on social level then I also see a way this can be no problem. 3) `That we will all die because of AI` This I find more plausable and maybe not even by AGI but earlier because of big social unrests during transition period.
danw1979 11mo ago
I wish the author had had the courage of their convictions to extend the analogy all the way to the glue factory. It’s what we are all thinking.
- jjmarr 11mo ago
  I have a modest proposal for dealing with future unemployment.
  - xg15 11mo ago
    There are too many people in power right now who I wouldn't put it past to take that proposal seriously.
  - sherr 11mo ago
    Ha ha, yes. You should write that up as a pamplet somewhere.
- _DeadFred_ 11mo ago
  Sending all the useless horses to glue factories in that time was so prevalent it was a cartoon trope. The other trope being men living in flop houses, and towns having entire sections for unemployable people called skid row. The AI people point to post 1950s style employment and say 'people recovered after industrial advance' and ignore the 1880s through the 1940s. We actually have zero idea if the buggy whip manufacturer ever recovered or just lasted a year in skid row before giving up completely, or lived through the 2 world wars spurred by mechanisation.
  - tyre 11mo ago
    Horses were killed more often for meat that was used in dog food than for glue. I did a deep research into the decline of horses and it was consistent with fewer births, not mass slaughter. The US Department of Agriculture has great records during this time, though they’re not fully digitized.
    - 11mo ago
everdrive 11mo ago
> Bill Gates haters who interpret him talking about reducing the rate of birth in Africa I'm not up to speed here -- is Bill Gates doing work to reduce the birth rates in Africa?
- netsharc 11mo ago
  For example, interview from 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MMifQvuN08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MMifQvuN08 When the Covid-truther geniuses "figured out" that "Bill Gates was behind Covid", they pulled out things like this as "proof" that his master plan is to reduce the world's population. Not to reduce the rate of increase, but to kill them (because of course these geniuses don't understand derivatives)...
  - everdrive 11mo ago
    Ah, got it. This sounds like more of a "repugnant conclusion" sort of problem where if you care about the well being of people who exist, then it is possible to have too large of a population.
abixb 11mo ago
One could argue that the quality of life per horse went up, even if the total number of horses went down. Lots more horses now get raised in farms and are trained to participate in events like dressage and other equestrian sports.
- netsharc 11mo ago
  Someone said during the hype of "self-driving cars is the future!" that ICE/driver-driven cars will go the way of the horse: they'll be well-cared, kept in stables, and taken out in the weekends for recreation, on circuits but not on public roads..
- _DeadFred_ 11mo ago
  'now instead of being work animals a few of you will be kept like pets by the tech bros'
  - netsharc 11mo ago
    "But only if you're a superior breed..." Epstein was ahead of his times...
- heavyset_go 11mo ago
  Imagine it now, your future descendants existing solely to be part of some rich kid's harem.
- jimbokun 11mo ago
  Oh goody . We will be trained to be the billionaires entertainment.
heavyset_go 11mo ago
Horses are pretty and won't try to kill you for "your" food.

bgwalter 11mo ago

Well, in this case corporations stop buying people and just fire them instead of letting them retire. Or an army of Tesla Optimi will send people to the glue factory. That at least is the fantasy of these people. Fortunately. LLMs don't really work, Tesla cars are still built by KUKA robots (while KUKA has a fraction of Tesla's P/E) and data centers in space are a cocaine fueled dream.

JohnMakin 11mo ago

I don’t think you’re realizing that the OP understands this, and that in this analogy, the horses are human beings

bambax 11mo ago
In this analogy, horses are jobs, not humans; you could argue there's not much of a difference between the two, because people without jobs will starve, etc., but still, they're not the same.
- mattmaroon 11mo ago
  There is, at least, a way to avoid people without jobs starving. Whether or not we'll do it is anyone's guess. I think I'll live to see UBI but I am perphaps an optimist.
  - bigfishrunning 11mo ago
    You'd have to time something like UBI with us actually being able to replace the workforce -- The current LLM parlor tricks are simply not what they're sold to be, and if we rely on them too early we (humanity) is very much screwed.
  - snarfy 11mo ago
    It's here today - it's owning stock that produces dividends. That's capitalism.
    - mattmaroon 11mo ago
      Yeah I don't know why everyone doesn't just do that!
- ToucanLoucan 11mo ago
  One would argue in a capitalist society like ours, fucking with someone's job at industrial scale isn't awfully dissimilar from threatening their life, it's just less direct. Plenty more people currently are feeling the effects of worsening job markets than have been involved in a hostage situation, but the negative end results are still the same. One would argue also if you don't see this, it's because you'd prefer not to. If we had at least a somewhat functioning safety net, or UBI, or both, you'd at least have an argument to be made, but we don't. AI and it's associated companies' business model is, if not killing people, certainly attempting to make lots of lives worse at scale. I wouldn't work for one for all the money in the world.
  - FuckButtons 11mo ago
    UBI will not save you from economic irrelevance. The only difference between you and someone starving in a 3rd world slum is economic opportunity and the means to exchange what you have for what someone else needs. UBI is inflation in a wig and dark glasses.
- FuckButtons 11mo ago
  Why make the analogy at all if not for the implied slaughter. It is a visceral reminder of our own brutal history. Of what humans do given the right set of circumstances.
  - arowthway 11mo ago
    How is decreasing the number of horses killed every year brutal?
- jimbokun 11mo ago
  What happened to the horses after they lost their jobs?
pas 11mo ago
population projections they already predict that prosperity reduces population and even if AI becomes good enough to replace most humans the economic surplus does not disappear it's a coordination problem in many places on Earth social safety nets are pretty robust, and if AI helps to reduce cost of providing basic services then it won't be a problem to expand those safety nets ... there's already a pretty serious anti-inequality (or at least anti-billionaire) storm brewing, the question is can it motivate the necessary structural changes or just fuels yet another dumb populist movement
- bee_rider 11mo ago
  Somebody should try a smart populist movement instead. My least favorite thing about my favored (or rather least disfavored) party is that we seem to believe “we must win without appealing to the populace too directly, that would simply be uncouth.”
- glenstein 11mo ago
  I think the concerns with UBI are (1) it takes away the leverage of a labor force to organize and strike for better benefits or economic conditions, and (2) following the block grant model, can be a trojan horse "benefit" that sets the stage for effectively deleting systems of welfare support that have been historically resilient due to institutional support and being strongly identified with specific constituencies. When the benefit is abstracted away from a constituency it's easier to chop over time. I don't exactly know how I feel about those, but I respect those criticisms. I think the grand synthesis is that UBI exists on top of existing safety nets.
  - gota 11mo ago
    Point (2) seems wrong intuitively. "Chopping" away UBI would be much more difficult _because_ it is not associated to a specific constituency. Not only would there be more people on the streets protesting against real or perceived cuts; there also would be fewer movements based on exclusivist ideologies protesting _in favour of cuts_* * e.g. racist groups in favour of cutting some kinds of welfare because of racial associations
  - 11mo ago

maciejzj 11mo ago

We don't know what the author had in mind, but one has to really be tone deaf to let the weirdness of the discussion go unnoticed. Take a look at the last paragraphs in the text again: > And not very long after, 93 per cent of those horses had disappeared. > I very much hope we'll get the two decades that horses did. > But looking at how fast Claude is automating my job, I think we're getting a lot less. While most of the text is written from cold economic(ish) standpoint it is really hard not to get bleak impression from it. And the last three sentences express that in vague way too. Some ambiguity is left on purpose so you can interpret the daunting impression your way. The article presents you with crushing juxtaposition, implicates insane dangers, and leaves you with the feeling of inevitability. Then back to work, I guess.

pzo 11mo ago
> And not very long after, 93 per cent of those horses had disappeared. > I very much hope we'll get the two decades that horses did. Horses typically live between 25 to 30 years. I agree with OP that most likely those horses were not decimated (killed) but just died out and people stopped mass breeding them. Also as other noticed chart shows 'horses PER person in US'. Population between 1900 and 1950 increased from 1.5B to 2.5B (globally but probably similarly almost 70% increase in US). I think depends what do you worry about: 1) `that human population decrease 50-80%`? I don't worry about it even if that happen. 200 years ago human population was ~1 B today is ~8 B. At year 0 AD human population was ~0.250 B. Did we 200 years ago worry about it like "omg human population is only 1 B" ? I doubt human population decrease 80% because of no demand for human as workforce but I don't see problem if it decrease by 50%. There will short transition period with surplus of retired people and work needed to keep the infrastructure but if robots can help with this then I don't see the problem. 2) `That we will not be needed and we will loose jobs?` I don't see work like something in demand. Most people hate their jobs or do crappy jobs. What do people actually worry about that they will won't get any income. And actually not even about that - they worry that they will not be able to survive or be homeless. If there is improvement in production that food, shelter, transportation, healtcare is dirty cheap (all stuff from bottom maslov piramid) and fair distribution on social level then I also see a way this can be no problem. 3) `That we will all die because of AI` This I find more plausable and maybe not even by AGI but earlier because of big social unrests during transition period.

danw1979 11mo ago

I wish the author had had the courage of their convictions to extend the analogy all the way to the glue factory. It’s what we are all thinking.

jjmarr 11mo ago
I have a modest proposal for dealing with future unemployment.
- xg15 11mo ago
  There are too many people in power right now who I wouldn't put it past to take that proposal seriously.
- sherr 11mo ago
  Ha ha, yes. You should write that up as a pamplet somewhere.
_DeadFred_ 11mo ago
Sending all the useless horses to glue factories in that time was so prevalent it was a cartoon trope. The other trope being men living in flop houses, and towns having entire sections for unemployable people called skid row. The AI people point to post 1950s style employment and say 'people recovered after industrial advance' and ignore the 1880s through the 1940s. We actually have zero idea if the buggy whip manufacturer ever recovered or just lasted a year in skid row before giving up completely, or lived through the 2 world wars spurred by mechanisation.
- tyre 11mo ago
  Horses were killed more often for meat that was used in dog food than for glue. I did a deep research into the decline of horses and it was consistent with fewer births, not mass slaughter. The US Department of Agriculture has great records during this time, though they’re not fully digitized.
  - 11mo ago

everdrive 11mo ago

> Bill Gates haters who interpret him talking about reducing the rate of birth in Africa I'm not up to speed here -- is Bill Gates doing work to reduce the birth rates in Africa?

netsharc 11mo ago
For example, interview from 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MMifQvuN08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MMifQvuN08 When the Covid-truther geniuses "figured out" that "Bill Gates was behind Covid", they pulled out things like this as "proof" that his master plan is to reduce the world's population. Not to reduce the rate of increase, but to kill them (because of course these geniuses don't understand derivatives)...
- everdrive 11mo ago
  Ah, got it. This sounds like more of a "repugnant conclusion" sort of problem where if you care about the well being of people who exist, then it is possible to have too large of a population.

abixb 11mo ago

One could argue that the quality of life per horse went up, even if the total number of horses went down. Lots more horses now get raised in farms and are trained to participate in events like dressage and other equestrian sports.

netsharc 11mo ago
Someone said during the hype of "self-driving cars is the future!" that ICE/driver-driven cars will go the way of the horse: they'll be well-cared, kept in stables, and taken out in the weekends for recreation, on circuits but not on public roads..
_DeadFred_ 11mo ago
'now instead of being work animals a few of you will be kept like pets by the tech bros'
- netsharc 11mo ago
  "But only if you're a superior breed..." Epstein was ahead of his times...
heavyset_go 11mo ago
Imagine it now, your future descendants existing solely to be part of some rich kid's harem.
jimbokun 11mo ago
Oh goody . We will be trained to be the billionaires entertainment.

heavyset_go 11mo ago

Horses are pretty and won't try to kill you for "your" food.