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THE PLOW IS GOING TO MAKE THE FARMER OBSOLETE!!! Okay, I'm kidding, of course, and I struggle with this all the time. I mean, if a factor that used to require

by blhack 17y ago

THE PLOW IS GOING TO MAKE THE FARMER OBSOLETE!!! Okay, I'm kidding, of course, and I struggle with this all the time. I mean, if a factor that used to require 1000 people to build cars now only requires 100, or 50, or 1 or 0 or whatever, then what happened to the rest of the workers? They have moved on to auxiliary industries such as engineering (somebody needs to design the robots right). The endgame, however, will be the mechanized production of everything. At that point, energy will be the currency (instead of labor..think about it, paper money is just a unit of time*energy). If we can tap the near-limitless supplies of energy from fusion, we will have achieved a nearly Utopian Society.

donw 17y ago
The issue is the transition; if you continue with our present economic model, as well as the prevailing cultural attitudes in the U.S., more and more workers will be marginalized, and if police and military forces can themselves be swapped out for robot counterparts, a revolution against 'The Man' becomes all but impossible. Of course, you can stop that from happening by creating 'comfortable enough' homeless shelters, and lacing the food with appropriate chemicals. The poor masses will be happy, fed, and clothed for a minimal amount of money, and can be quite easily swept under the rug. I don't think this is terribly far-fetched; culture in the U.S. seems to be highly focused on 'who has more', which is meaningless and self-destructive in a society that can readily satisfy the needs and wants of all of its inhabitants.
- ph0rque 17y ago
  You've just described the plot of the Manna story, to a large extent.
  - ivankirigin 17y ago
    that was his point
ibsulon 17y ago
1. What stops the engineers from becoming obsolete? We're just further down the line. 2. Only a relatively small percentage of the population has the skills for creative scientific and technical work such as programming and engineering. (Let's say 20%.) Once robots can do all of the work of individuals 90IQ and below, what do you do with these people? http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/8/02946/35811 http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/8/02946/35811 has an example of a channenged man being fired from McDonalds. "God, I'm so fucking angry. My brother doesn't care about the pay. He just wants the chance to be out there with people - to feel the same sort of satisfaction that all of us working stiffs experience from knowing we've contributed, however marginally, to the human machine. The kind of satisfaction that only a job can provide. He's upstairs crying right now." (Note: I am not suggesting that anyone is owed a job, here, but rather that there is a dignity involved with being able to contribute to society in some fashion, and that we could see instability with a lack of outlets for individuals.) We already see the problems in Detroit with the lack of jobs and ability to get out. While some of these people could be retrained into other fields, many cannot. We have to figure out how to keep them integrated into society, or present an alternative path. 3. Perhaps we see the example from Elf Sternberg's utopia world -- he presumed that in societies with no need for human production that people would create what they enjoyed and that the system would move to a gift culture. Perhaps. Even with power, however, we're still looking at some way to ration resources...
- hellweaver666 17y ago
  Regarding your first point... Only a stupid engineer would design a robot that could do his job for him. Robots designing robots? Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah... Terminator!
rsheridan6 17y ago
The plow (and other technological advances) did make the farmer (relatively) obsolete. The great majority of farmers have gone out of business in the last hundred years or so. That's why there are so few farmers now. The former farmers found jobs because plows can't work at factories, call centers, KFC, etc. Sufficiently smart robots could. That's why analogies with previous technological advances don't work. A more relevant comparison would be with horses and machines that replaced them pulling plows, hauling stuff, etc. Where are all the horses, mules and oxen now? Were they freed from unnecessary drudgery to specialize in labor where they had a competitive advantage, or did they suffer severe declines in number, surviving essentially as pets and museum pieces?
- donaldc 17y ago
  Once there is no work that humans do better than robots, there will be no work for humans to do. This could be very good, or very bad. We're not yet to that point, however.

by blhack 17y ago

donw 17y ago

The issue is the transition; if you continue with our present economic model, as well as the prevailing cultural attitudes in the U.S., more and more workers will be marginalized, and if police and military forces can themselves be swapped out for robot counterparts, a revolution against 'The Man' becomes all but impossible. Of course, you can stop that from happening by creating 'comfortable enough' homeless shelters, and lacing the food with appropriate chemicals. The poor masses will be happy, fed, and clothed for a minimal amount of money, and can be quite easily swept under the rug. I don't think this is terribly far-fetched; culture in the U.S. seems to be highly focused on 'who has more', which is meaningless and self-destructive in a society that can readily satisfy the needs and wants of all of its inhabitants.

ph0rque 17y ago
You've just described the plot of the Manna story, to a large extent.
- ivankirigin 17y ago
  that was his point

ibsulon 17y ago

1. What stops the engineers from becoming obsolete? We're just further down the line. 2. Only a relatively small percentage of the population has the skills for creative scientific and technical work such as programming and engineering. (Let's say 20%.) Once robots can do all of the work of individuals 90IQ and below, what do you do with these people? http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/8/02946/35811 http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/8/02946/35811 has an example of a channenged man being fired from McDonalds. "God, I'm so fucking angry. My brother doesn't care about the pay. He just wants the chance to be out there with people - to feel the same sort of satisfaction that all of us working stiffs experience from knowing we've contributed, however marginally, to the human machine. The kind of satisfaction that only a job can provide. He's upstairs crying right now." (Note: I am not suggesting that anyone is owed a job, here, but rather that there is a dignity involved with being able to contribute to society in some fashion, and that we could see instability with a lack of outlets for individuals.) We already see the problems in Detroit with the lack of jobs and ability to get out. While some of these people could be retrained into other fields, many cannot. We have to figure out how to keep them integrated into society, or present an alternative path. 3. Perhaps we see the example from Elf Sternberg's utopia world -- he presumed that in societies with no need for human production that people would create what they enjoyed and that the system would move to a gift culture. Perhaps. Even with power, however, we're still looking at some way to ration resources...

hellweaver666 17y ago
Regarding your first point... Only a stupid engineer would design a robot that could do his job for him. Robots designing robots? Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah... Terminator!

rsheridan6 17y ago

The plow (and other technological advances) did make the farmer (relatively) obsolete. The great majority of farmers have gone out of business in the last hundred years or so. That's why there are so few farmers now. The former farmers found jobs because plows can't work at factories, call centers, KFC, etc. Sufficiently smart robots could. That's why analogies with previous technological advances don't work. A more relevant comparison would be with horses and machines that replaced them pulling plows, hauling stuff, etc. Where are all the horses, mules and oxen now? Were they freed from unnecessary drudgery to specialize in labor where they had a competitive advantage, or did they suffer severe declines in number, surviving essentially as pets and museum pieces?

donaldc 17y ago
Once there is no work that humans do better than robots, there will be no work for humans to do. This could be very good, or very bad. We're not yet to that point, however.