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Rethinking the Luddites

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Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#341

Post by watwut »

czl wrote: post #25
lolinder wrote: post #6

This version of the Luddites is the one I was taught in my history classes—in both HS and college my teachers were careful to emphasize that the colloquial usage and the actual movement are only loosely related, and we discussed how the Luddites weren't rejecting technology per se so much as they were acting out of desperation to preserve their way of life. This is certainly something worth learning from today, and a…

> they were acting out of desperation to preserve their way of life Should I have the right to preserve my way of life when it imposes costs on others?

Preserving way of life here means "not starving and my kids have stuff to eat"

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#342

Post by nrr »

WalterBright wrote: post #319
A_non_e-moose wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China and free market in the same sentence is quite a paradox. Did you mean to say they moved from a planned economy to a market economy? A market economy yes they do have, but free? Boy oh boy that it is not. Plenty of western companies wanting to enter that market are finding that out the hard way

Nothing human is ever perfect. Markets work better the more free they are. China went for free markets, and it paid off spectacularly. Socialism gets steadily worse the closer to "true" socialism it gets.

Sorry, I'm not sure I follow. What does socialism have to do with markets or the lack thereof? I always conceived of that as, like, worker cooperatives, not command economies.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#343

Post by davidgoudet »

sakex wrote: post #330

> Today, the word “Luddite” is used as an insult to anyone resistant to technological innovation Interesting, I never thought of the term as pejorative. I always thought of the movement as a kind of working-class heroes trying to navigate an uncertain future where rich people made them obsolete.

It's not pejorative for you if you are a liberal, for me it is pejorative, I see Luddites as people who damage important parts of production systems and threaten people's lives.

I understand your point of view if you're from a first-world country and you never experienced the terror of having people interfering with the means of production.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#344

Post by jillesvangurp »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #332
jillesvangurp wrote: post #315

The best way to prevent the future is to invent it. Paraphrasing Alan Kaye here. There's a certain inevitability to AI. The proverbial cat is out of the bag. Our choices are simply to be part of this revolution or to be left behind while the likes of China and others, not blocked by mildly hysterical ethical activists protesting their own irrelevance, plow ahead. It's really that simple. I call out China here because…

China actually has regulation for safe AI. It's hard to say how "safe" that regulation is. But it's better than what US is doing with OpenAI. Essentially do whatever lol. https://www.lw.com/admin/upload/SiteAttachments/Chinas-New-A...

They also use AI to monitor and police their own citizens. AI serves the common good there and is a tool that is wielded by the elite that dictates what that common good is. Nominally in their subject's name of course. But it's not a democracy.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#345

Post by 0dayz »

davidgoudet wrote: post #343
sakex wrote: post #330

> Today, the word “Luddite” is used as an insult to anyone resistant to technological innovation Interesting, I never thought of the term as pejorative. I always thought of the movement as a kind of working-class heroes trying to navigate an uncertain future where rich people made them obsolete.

It's not pejorative for you if you are a liberal, for me it is pejorative, I see Luddites as people who damage important parts of production systems and threaten people's lives. I understand your point of view if you're from a first-world country and you never experienced the terror of having people interfering with the means of production.

That is not what the prejorative mean, I don't see the point in making this political.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#346

Post by Modified3019 »

WalterBright wrote: post #258

Any country (including the US) that tries to prevent AI from replacing some jobs will find its economy buried by another country that did not.

Conversely, a country that allows AI to replace too many jobs will find itself buried in masses of angry people with little to lose except their devalued lives.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#347

Post by val314159 »

zirgs wrote: post #324
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…

Did anyone care about welders who got replaced, because robots are much better at welding car frames together? Only now when "prestigious" white collar positions are being threatened people are starting to freak out.

check out 80's movies. The dying steel town was a trope.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#349

Post by bbor »

davidgoudet wrote: post #343
sakex wrote: post #330

> Today, the word “Luddite” is used as an insult to anyone resistant to technological innovation Interesting, I never thought of the term as pejorative. I always thought of the movement as a kind of working-class heroes trying to navigate an uncertain future where rich people made them obsolete.

It's not pejorative for you if you are a liberal, for me it is pejorative, I see Luddites as people who damage important parts of production systems and threaten people's lives. I understand your point of view if you're from a first-world country and you never experienced the terror of having people interfering with the means of production.

I don’t think “only rich people are worried about automation” is a very reasonable take. And the scale is a bit different - the luddites weren’t throwing the economy into disarray, they were trying to stop it from changing.
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