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I find it interesting how many smart people seem to truly believe that things will just work itself out. Kind of like the idealist libertarians or communists, o
by snom380 13y ago
I find it interesting how many smart people seem to truly believe that things will just work itself out. Kind of like the idealist libertarians or communists, only with technology as the solution to every problem.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoMost engineers/technologists probably never see the inside of an ethics or philosophy course.
- Ilverin 13y agoThey generally also believe in the invisible hand of the capitalist market.
- mason240 13y agoThat is something that can only "believed" in or "disbelieved" as much as gravity can be "believed" in or "disbelieved."
- wildwood 13y agoGravity can be tested just by dropping your pencil. The invisible hand takes a lot more faith and fervent wishing, IMO.
- icebraining 13y agoTo test the invisible hand, as described by Smith, you just need to buy something useful from someone who just sold it for money, and not out of any desire of helping people. People just inflate the concept to ridiculous levels, which were clearly not intended by the author.
- ssivark 13y agoOne has to be careful when applying the "invisible hand" idea. You can't just take an "ideal" situation (fixed point) and say that the system will evolve towards that. For an example, I refer to my comment on this HN thread -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6313482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6313482
- qu4z-2 13y agoI believe in the invisible hand, but I also believe it's drunk.
- wyager 13y agoThat's probably because there's no good reason things won't just work themselves out.
- kansface 13y agoEventually, all blue collar jobs will be replace with machines. Only the people who make the machines will remain employable. Eventually, white collar jobs will be replaced too; we're already seeing this in the field of law where an army of clerks is no longer necessary. I'd imagine health care will be a prime target given how outrageously inefficient it is in the US and the percentage of the GCP that flows into it. Its very easy to imagine a society where at least 25% of able bodied, working age people are categorically unemployable not just working itself out.
- wyager 13y agoLook up the luddite fallacy. When we, as a society, reach that point, goods will be so cheap that people won't need to work to live.
- ssivark 13y ago"goods will be so cheap that people won't need to work to live." That sounds like a nice, optimum fixed point. Let's think about how we might get there. It's highly unlikely that things become cheap and then humans lose jobs. It will probably be the other way round. Consider a time slightly before we get to that utopia of yours -- things are not quite cheap enough, but lots of human jobs have been "obsoleted". In such a situation how do the unemployed people survive? How does the system evolve into your utopia, rather than in a direction where the "have-nots" are neglected while the "haves" cater to their own needs? In other words, your utopia looks like a nice fixed point, but it's not a stable or attractive (in the technical sense) fixed point, of this dynamical system. This is an example which shows that correlation is not enough. It is important to keep in mind what the causes and effects are. You can't have the effect happening first and inducing the cause. The causal order is important.