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Rethinking the Luddites

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Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#181

Post by jmye »

fatherzine wrote: post #121
mulmen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a nice sentiment but labor doesn’t create value in a world of robots. We need a radically different system of wealth allocation.

Or, we need a system in which labor intrinsically creates the lion share of value.

Why? Should we demand that Ford shuts down its assembly lines and instead hires tens of thousands of people to manually machine and assemble all of the parts of the car? If not, why is that labor unimportant, but other labor is vital and supremely valuable?

There’s this weird place some of you have ended up, wherein all prior automation is good and fine, but future automation must cease immediately, solely to preserve people’s current work exactly as is.

I don’t get it.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#182

Post by chii »

epolanski wrote: post #134
rossriley wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People bring the value that they generate for an economy. Once they can be replaced with AI/Robots then that labour can be reallocated further up the value chain which in turn makes our economies and culture richer and more productive. Imagine if we were all working 18 hour subsistence farming jobs now just to survive, it's ridiculous to argue that eschewing automation for anything is detrimental, it only serves to e…

> People bring the value that they generate for an economy. Nurses, teachers? Those bring insane value but get little recognition, in all senses, for that.

> Those bring insane value

but those value is not privately captureable by them, but is instead captured by the students, or the patients etc.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#183

Post by robbomacrae »

lolinder wrote: post #51
coolhand2120 wrote: post #14

People are happy to use tech like wix to build a web page because building web pages is hard. Virtually every designer, artist, writer, and musician, were all very happy to use wix even though it cost the jobs of legions of developers. “Finally I can do what these nerds can do without their help”. I really don’t see the difference.

When a dollar store moves into an area, it provides most products for cheaper than an independent grocer possibly can, inevitably putting the local grocer out of business. It's sad for the grocer, but surely it's for the benefit of the community as a whole, right? Everything is cheaper! Except that the dollar store doesn't sell produce, and it just put the store that did out of business. I see a similar trend with au…

This is a really good argument. One that I haven't heard before. Is there a name for it? It seems to cover some of the backward steps we take when meandering (hopefully) forwards that I for one hadn't considered.

I suspect it's not worth pausing anything over due to the inevitable if we won't they will excuse and also because its part of the re-invention of business that goes with new technology. The things you want that have gone are now an opportunity for someone else to figure out. If I was an entrepreneur keeping my ear to the ground I'd weigh up starting a boutique produce delivery services, a human agency dedicated to dealing with companies on your behalf, a wix plugin market, a book review site etc.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#184

Post by harerazer »

paxys wrote: post #170

It's telling that this anti-automation and anti-AI movement is finally reaching its crescendo now that creative and white collar jobs are under threat. These same people writing books about the evils of AI sat back over the last few decades as countless factory jobs, farm jobs, retail jobs and even "lower class" intellectual jobs (like bookkeepers, travel agents and telephone operators) were automated away. "It's jus…

To be fair, I don’t think its so much about white collar jobs being under threat as it is about creative jobs being under threat. Many creative pursuits are viewed as an outlet of human expression in a way that other jobs never were, and I think this is what is driving the new wave of the Resistance^TM

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#185

Post by adolph »

jstarfish wrote: post #146
pydry wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) We need a radically different one now - one that shifts the burden *off" labor and back on to asset owners - especially land owners (there is literally only an economic upside to taxing them more). 2) somebody still has to fix those robots. 3) if control over the economy were wrested from oligarchs and were put under democratic control, the economy wouldnt be geared towards frittering away billions on trying to de…

> 2) somebody still has to fix those robots. This argument always gets made, but I don't think it works. If 10 factory workers are replaced with 1 robot, the technician job created will not go to any of the people displaced by the robot. It goes to someone privileged enough to have gone to robot-mechanic school. We then avoid all mention of those 10 factory workers and pretend they never existed. We tell ourselves th…

> he earned painting fucking lightposts

On what planet are lightposts painted?

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#186

Post by cm2012 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #176
failuser wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 oligarchs can own everything and trade among each other to fulfill their megaprojects. Does a pharaoh care who built his pyramid? Or spaceship? The workers will still be needed to laugh at their suffering. Unless robots get better than humans even at that.

Where are the pharaohs today? That sort of social imbalance leads inevitably to revolution. Always has. It's not sustainable.

Yep. The most powerful demographic in America today don't even have jobs, it's people 60+ voting to keep social security and Medicare and kicking away the ladder.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#187

Post by zone411 »

Here's a random tweet that I believe foreshadows the future:

"I hate AI but also I've had the most insightful conversations with it about writing. It has been more honest, helpful and playful in workshopping story ideas than any real human I know. It's like chatting with a room full of actual writers and the value of that can't be ignored."

I've seen similar sentiment from a few digital artists. Those who are very anti-AI will get left behind and be outcompeted by more productive AI users. There will be a lot of disruption. We should think how to best support people whose jobs will be irreplaceably lost because of AI. There is only so much content that the market wants. Eventually we should get some form of UBI as more and more people are affected.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#188

Post by cm2012 »

The only thing that ever makes the human condition better in the long run is increased productivity. If luddites were left in charge we'd all be living like the 1800s.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#189

Post by nico »

JohnFen wrote: post #78
w_for_wumbo wrote: post #3

There's plenty of rhetoric about whether technology advancements will be a good thing or not. But I think that distracts from the core message, that the most important matter is not whether we use technology, but how we treat our fellow humans. By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. We have a mandate for us…

> By replacing labour with robots and not compensating them, you're sending a clear message that you don't respect people and the value that they bring. Companies already send that clear message even without AI. That's why there's fear here: we expect companies to behave as they always have, and that is with a level of contempt for human workers.

> Companies already send that clear message even without AI.

Companies are people. You are saying people running those companies are doing that to other people

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#190

Post by adolph »

zlg_codes wrote: post #48
its_ethan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd find that, on average, "as poorly as they can get away with" actually does mean that they treat people quite well. I'm not sure what hierarchies you've been a part of where people actively trying to treat people poorly leads to their success - I'd wager those are few in far between in reality, and over represented in media. Maybe you're cynical about a few high profile companies or how U.S. politics app…

Walk into any office in the United States and you'll find this. There's even a phenomenon associated with it that has a name: The Peter Principle. Within any organization, you will have the sociopaths who want the glitz and title and power but have no respect for those they'll have to knock down to get there. That is what we're talking about.

I think maybe you are confusing Gervais with Peter.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

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