Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rethinking the Luddites

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 572 posts

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#361

Post by jschveibinz »

Modified3019 wrote: post #346
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.

Both of these comments are excellent. However, countries don’t make decisions. Individuals (that are mentally capable) make decisions, within their economic framework, and the result emerges at the national or global level.

Individuals will decide how to respond to AI, and we will see what happens. My guess, based on past adoptions of work-saving technologies, is that anyone capable of using AI to make their job easier will do so. And that may result in the elimination of other jobs.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#362

Post by davidgoudet »

softg wrote: post #355
davidgoudet wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Do you mean a strike? A very common event in many first-world countries like the US or France ?

Not a strike, damaging machines and planting bombs.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#363

Post by davidgoudet »

Muromec wrote: post #360
davidgoudet wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> important parts of production systems and threaten people's lives Which is fair and proportional if people doing it got their own livelihood threatened by introduction of said systems. Especially in 19th century when not having a work to do meant not having food.

[flagged]

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#364

Post by davidgoudet »

0dayz wrote: post #345
davidgoudet wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everything is political my friend.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#365

Post by jschveibinz »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #34
Animats wrote: post #17

They came for the manual laborers, and I was not a manual laborer, so I did nothing. Then they came for the skilled craftsmen, and I was not a skilled craftsman, so I did nothing. Then they came for the clerks and bookeepers, and I was not a clerk or a bookkeeper, so I did nothing. Now they've come for the chattering classes, and there is no one left to speak for me.

Sort of backwards. First they came for the writers and illustrators, and I did nothing because I'm not a writer or an illustrator. Then they came for the musicians, and I did nothing because I only listen to music. Then they came for the text-dependent professional classes, and I did nothing because I'm not one of those people. They they came for the programmers, and the plumbers sat around laughing saying "and you t…

“They” is “we.”

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#366

Post by davidgoudet »

bbor wrote: post #349
davidgoudet wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who said only rich people are worried about automation? And about the second point, yeah, of course, the Unabomber was not trying to throw the economy into disarray...

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#367

Post by tibbydudeza »

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.

When you are a top dog in a system it is easy to say cute things like this.

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#368

Post by [deleted] »

arp242 wrote: post #71
zlg_codes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many things twisted like this in our living memory and it irritates the hell out of me. How do we deal with it aside from endlessly correcting people? Indeed, Luddites weren't against technology. The McDonald's hot coffee lady case wasn't frivolous. "The customer is always right..."? Yeah, "... in matters of taste." It means you don't sell a customer who wants a green car a red one. The "welfare queen" stor…

For better or worse, in modern parlance "luddite" is the same as "vandal" or "barbarian": actual Vandals weren't really vandalistic, and Barbarians weren't all that barbaric. If the term wasn't "luddite", "vandal", or "barbarian" then it would be something else to describe the same thing. That is: these terms aren't really a source of any sentiment, and merely used to describe it. This is different from e.g. the McDo…

[deleted]

Re: Rethinking the Luddites

#369

Post by tibbydudeza »

davidgoudet wrote: post #363
Muromec wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> important parts of production systems and threaten people's lives Which is fair and proportional if people doing it got their own livelihood threatened by introduction of said systems. Especially in 19th century when not having a work to do meant not having food.

[flagged]

We all have our perspectives - from the top or the bottom and even the middle.
Post reply on HN