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The rise of the useless class

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Re: The rise of the useless class

#91

Post by unityByFreedom »

Houshalter wrote: post #75
unityByFreedom wrote: post #67

> "Most of what kids currently learn at school will probably be irrelevant by the time they are 40." I can't help but see this whole "robots are taking over" thing as a Republican position which leads to people not valuing public education. Learning to read and write, do math and science, understand physics and biology, etc, will never be useless. These are core bits of information we have collected over our existenc…

School is already useless. See this essay for instance https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/12/02/contra-robinson-on-sch... How many people use say more than 1% of the knowledge they learn in High School? Hell how many people even remember more than 1% of it? There have been studies done on unschooled kids - that get minimal formal education and are allowed to spend their time however they want. And they do only sightly w…

> School is already useless

I realize there are people who feel that way. I'm not one of them. There are a lot of things I synthesized from school. For me, practicing learning a bunch of different things was useful in itself.

Some people learn better in school, and some find ways to do it on their own.

> There have been studies done on unschooled kids - that get minimal formal education and are allowed to spend their time however they want. And they do only sightly worse than schooled kids

There is a big difference between having a few unschooled kids and changing the whole system to be unschooled.

If unschooled is going to be the way of the future, do it at local levels and let it grow with its success. We need not defund public education to achieve an idealized educational system that isn't going to work for everyone.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#92

Post by unityByFreedom »

dantheman wrote: post #69
unityByFreedom wrote: post #67

> "Most of what kids currently learn at school will probably be irrelevant by the time they are 40." I can't help but see this whole "robots are taking over" thing as a Republican position which leads to people not valuing public education. Learning to read and write, do math and science, understand physics and biology, etc, will never be useless. These are core bits of information we have collected over our existenc…

I think you'd find very few republicans favoring UBI...

You're thinking of the wrong generation. Libertarians support it. They are one option for a future Republican platform.

The tech generation's wealthy view UBI as a way to simplify the tax code, thus saving money.

UBI would cause inflation and lower the lower class. Their buying power would eventually be worth nothing in a capitalist society. One couldn't expect the government to appropriately increase UBI over time.

Stay in school, kids. There's no future where you don't need to do work in order to have the lifestyle you want.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#93

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #67

> "Most of what kids currently learn at school will probably be irrelevant by the time they are 40." I can't help but see this whole "robots are taking over" thing as a Republican position which leads to people not valuing public education. Learning to read and write, do math and science, understand physics and biology, etc, will never be useless. These are core bits of information we have collected over our existenc…

> I find the excitement for UBI concerning. People seem to have already tossed up their hands and said, "well, I'll be useless in the future, I guess I can't work now!".

I wouldn't quite characterize the excitement as giving up. I see it as a form of liberation. Although I doubt society is ready to take such a mental/psychological leap, work/labor does not have to be the primary way in which one derives a sense of self-worth and purpose. I once worked in a mind-numbing, soul-crushing job (it was in the sub-prime credit market, basically screwing people over who didn't understand the concept of compounded interest rates) just to make ends meet.

If I had UBI and didn't have to worry about whether I'd have somewhere to sleep, I would've volunteered working at the local hospital (I ended up quitting and doing this anyway, but only after another 6 months of working)

Re: The rise of the useless class

#94

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

sebringj wrote: post #45

This is short-term pessimism, inline with the common dystopian future of sci-fi. It is really difficult to predict human behaviors and technology in the long term. Humans have the ability to steer things to their advantage so interesting things can happen. Just for kicks here's a more hopeful approach that I've heard...merge AI with the brain like Kurzweil was predicting. Imagine if everyone was a genius and telekine…

> Just for kicks here's a more hopeful approach that I've heard...merge AI with the brain like Kurzweil was predicting

Shouldn't this be the ultimate goal anyway? I know Elon Musk sees the future where there is a merging of man and machine to enhance what he sees as man's limited upload bandwidth (talking, writing, gesticulating, etc.)

Re: The rise of the useless class

#95

Post by return0 »

chis wrote: post #84
return0 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of cooking as an example of a surprisingly complicated job. OTOH i can think of many supposedly "creative" jobs that are already ripe for disruption. Anything that has to do with visual arts for example, architecture, industrial design, medical, law etc. These jobs may not be fully automated, but the human supervisor will be relegated to a secondary role.

https://www.logojoy.com/ seems surprisingly close to this. If I were starting a small business I'd probably just get my logo from this type of automated service.

that is awesome

Re: The rise of the useless class

#96

Post by yomly »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #8
yomly wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems convenient to blame technology, and it is definitely going to be the bigger cause in the long term. This said, I am strongly of the opinion that globalization is not a force that benefits everyone (to put it nicely) and it is not constructive that this opinion is not discussed more widely without having to pussyfoot around dirty words like protectionism and nationalism as if they are automatically bad words.

Globalization is centralization: finance is centralized in New York and London; manufacturing is centralized in China and Germany; IT outsourcing is centralized in India. Over the 19th and early 20th century, the benefits of American westward expansion and the development of the industrial Midwest largely accrued to the big banks in New York. The same is occurring, just on a larger scale and accelerated due to leaps…

There's a lot here to discuss. I think you're right: look at the huge tech grab between China and America. Almost all Western Internet + parts of Asia goes through America (Google/Amazon/Facebook) for example.

As for centralization, I agree with you, but what do you do with all the people who didn't back the right industry? They're slowly being displaced. If you subscribe to the concept of social welfare, a government should be ensuring their quality of life. This includes access to employment, education, healthcare and even pleasure.

This is the inconvenient truth of the current world we live in, but frustratingly it took a Trump and a Brexit to happen for the idea to get much coverage, and even still it is mired in unnecessary political complications that are not strictly relevant.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#97

Post by unityByFreedom »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #93
unityByFreedom wrote: post #67

> "Most of what kids currently learn at school will probably be irrelevant by the time they are 40." I can't help but see this whole "robots are taking over" thing as a Republican position which leads to people not valuing public education. Learning to read and write, do math and science, understand physics and biology, etc, will never be useless. These are core bits of information we have collected over our existenc…

> I find the excitement for UBI concerning. People seem to have already tossed up their hands and said, "well, I'll be useless in the future, I guess I can't work now!". I wouldn't quite characterize the excitement as giving up. I see it as a form of liberation. Although I doubt society is ready to take such a mental/psychological leap, work/labor does not have to be the primary way in which one derives a sense of se…

> I wouldn't quite characterize the excitement as giving up

To clarify, the excitement comes from knowledge workers who think they have something in mind that will satisfy displaced laborers. I don't think most laborers would be excited about not working for a lifetime and relying on government payments. I think they'd be concerned about getting scammed at some point down the road.

> work/labor does not have to be the primary way in which one derives a sense of self-worth and purpose

It doesn't for everyone, but it is for some people. UBI is a one-size-fits-all that would replace individually tailored programs.

I don't think "work" is so terrible. Money is just a paper form of trust. You did some work for me, and I know you did that, so I convert your contribution to society into special paper that you can exchange elsewhere for stuff.

A small community wouldn't need money. They'd all know each other. In a larger society, where we each have a specific role, it's one way to ensure people are pulling their weight.

Work connects us, and money smooths the path. We're all working together on something. Some people need more than just money to keep going, so, I don't feel UBI is the right solution. My 2c.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#98

Post by DashRattlesnake »

Anderkent wrote: post #24
DashRattlesnake wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> supermarket cashiers Why do you think they're useless? They certainly aren't currently [1]. Someone has to do their work, either paid employees or unpaid volunteers (i.e. customers). [1] at least until that Amazon fantasy-land store becomes a practical reality, if it ever does

I don't, did you reply to the wrong comment? I explicitly said that's not the useless class right now.

Yep, sorry about that. I meant to reply to the parent.

Re: The rise of the useless class

#100

Post by norea-armozel »

charles-salvia wrote: post #30

I can't help but be skeptical of things like this... historically speaking, humans tend to underestimate just how many things we do that require full "general intelligence" to make "common-sense" decisions. Despite recent advances in machine-learning (i.e. adding more layers to neural networks, i.e. adding more columns to a matrix), we don't really have anything that even approaches an artificial general intelligence…

I think it's more apt to say that with automation that increases in sophistication the fewer labor hours you will need to maintain it and it's successive replacements. Meaning that absent a theoretical breakthrough in AI, we'll still see a permanent dislocation of labor across all sectors over time. It's just inevitable but how we deal with it isn't.
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