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The Poison We Pick

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Re: The Poison We Pick

#141

Post by guntars »

sgentle wrote: post #120

Rather than place the blame on a lack of structure, community or spirituality, I see this as just a natural consequence of a system optimised at every turn for economic output. I've heard a lot about a singularity doomsday scenario where a paperclip-maximising AI realises people are much less useful as paperclip constructors than they are as paperclip ingredients. Surely it can't be so hard to see that the productivi…

I like the comparison of the economy with an optimizing AI, but the value function isn't max(paperclips), but whatever people will pay for. So it's not really the fault of the AI that people have fucked up priorities - the AI itself is value neutral.

If you can get a large enough group to say: "Enough, the AI doesn't represent our values, let's change it!", it will already have happened because the same people will have already changed their buying habits.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#142

Post by calt »

smogcutter wrote: post #136
sgentle wrote: post #120

Rather than place the blame on a lack of structure, community or spirituality, I see this as just a natural consequence of a system optimised at every turn for economic output. I've heard a lot about a singularity doomsday scenario where a paperclip-maximising AI realises people are much less useful as paperclip constructors than they are as paperclip ingredients. Surely it can't be so hard to see that the productivi…

Enter UBI: an allowance from our masters, so that people can continue to consume when there's nothing left for people to produce.

Or perhaps UBI can set people free to live as they see fit, cultivate themselves spiritually, artistically, and communally without needing to consume nearly as useless garbage.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#144

Post by Jesus_Jones »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #129
slfnflctd wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> curious to see what America's 3.5 million truck drivers do when they lose their jobs over the next ten years That is a rather optimistic projection of the rollout of Level 5 autonomy. The total number of heavy trucks sold worldwide was less than 400k in 2014, and no one has full Level 5 yet (if it can even be done large scale at a profit), so I would adjust those expectations. Most 'displaced' truckers should be ab…

> Most 'displaced' truckers should be able to find work unloading automated long-hauls into smaller short-hauls and driving them during a lengthy transition period. If a million truckers lose their long-haul trucking jobs, how do a million short-haul trucking jobs simultaneously come into existence? Many long-haul truck already go to distribution centers on the outskirts of metro areas so the long->short-haul transfe…

Exactly - we'll lose the long haul easier to automate truck driving jobs first and that will decimate the employment of the field. That's the easy part.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#145

Post by clarkmoody »

ArcticUnicorn wrote: post #58

"It’s been several decades since Daniel Bell wrote The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, but his insights have proven prescient. Ever-more-powerful market forces actually undermine the foundations of social stability, wreaking havoc on tradition, religion, and robust civil associations, destroying what conservatives value the most. They create a less human world. They make us less happy. They generate pain." Thi…

I would argue that the public school system is the strongest force in weakening "tradition, religion, and robust civil associations." Much of the schooling experience is designed to suppress individuality and encourage conformity to the state's ideals. And of course capitalism (the non-crony type) doesn't really play any role in the public school system.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#146

Post by emiliobumachar »

andrewjl wrote: post #138
foxbarrington wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to rat park[0], there's also been an amazing study wrt to Viet Nam vets[1]. Only 5% of soldiers relapsed to heroin use in the first year of returning home. Compared to a traditional 90% relapse rate when addicts treated in the US return to their homes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/05/3718949...

I find the rat park experiment intriguing, but have there been any further studies or attempts to replicate the results?

From http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/25/against-rat-park/, slightly paraphrased to disambiguate the references. I do highly recommend this blog post if you're interested in the topic.

"Two studies (1, 2) tried and failed to replicate the results. Another two (3, 4) tried and mostly succeeded. There’s some concern that the rat strain involved might have various substrains that the different experiments didn’t control for. But a result that can’t survive a change in rat substrains has pretty dismal prospects for applicability to humans."

[1] http://sci-hub.io/10.2466/pr0.1996.78.2.391

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2616610

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3696469

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18463628

Re: The Poison We Pick

#148

Post by base698 »

overthemoon wrote: post #84
dnomad wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a very disingenuous reading of history would lead to the conclusion that our society is less "objective" than the past. What has been lost is widespread confidence and faith in those institutions that previously served as the pillars of society -- the church, the king and the nobility. Now people are completely on their own for their worldview. What's become abundantly clear is that people are very, very bad at…

It could be that mere freedom from discomfort isn't enough to call life good. Anyway, by what measure is a life spent slaving away for twelve hours on a farm worse than 12 hours spent playing video games? Both seem demeaning to human dignity, and the fact that one was "chosen" and one was (maybe) not is missing the point--both states of being are inflicted from without, whether slavery (wage or actual) or alienation.…

On the farm you can at least tell yourself you're supporting society and that people would starve without your labor. Video games give you no such delusions.

Re: The Poison We Pick

#150

Post by Jesus_Jones »

Retric wrote: post #60
dkural wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If black people don't count, sure. I would argue that the US has not been a full democracy until Civil Rights. Jim Crow laws were in effect until 1965. Also, black people could not exercise their vote, were not allowed to attend university, eat in the same restaurants, or even sit on the same section of the bus. As far as black people were concerned, the US was not a democracy.

Even then 4 million Americans don't get a vote because they don't live in states. Residents of DC, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa all get Taxes without representation. Thus, America is still not an actual Democracy.

Those people are free to move to the us, free to petition to join as states. How do you think Hawaii and Alaska did it? I can move to those places. A better argument might be that poor people are actively disenfranchised by people they don't politically support.
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