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The Education of a Doomer

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Re: The Education of a Doomer

#21

Post by bigfishrunning »

saulpw wrote: post #16
rahulyc wrote: post #4

I'm not sure what happens (I think no one does), but with every other technology, I can opt-out if I don't want to use it. Even if I get unemployed, I don't see how I can opt-out when it comes to everyone everywhere using it. Governments historically have considered humans as assets - it's even called "human capital", and they require us for tax revenue and to run the state. What happens when we aren't needed? Even i…

National governments which can print their own currency don't require people for tax revenue. They use taxes to compel people to acquire their currency to give it value. If they can instead compel AIs to acquire their currency, they won't need humans for that either.

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding you, but the purpose of taxes isn't to "compel people to acquire their currency", it's to remove that currency from circulation and prevent the currency they've printed from inflating itself out of existence.

Re: The Education of a Doomer

#22

Post by rustcleaner »

throwawayk7h wrote: post #8

> if humans are economically useless, the state does not need them. Why pay out UBI to people who have neither economic nor political power? Forgive me if I'm naïve. But wouldn't people just vote for UBI in this case?

Voting has to have the implication of violent force from the polity to dissuade abrogation of the vote. If people need not apply for a functioning economy, and Palantir/Flock like systems reduce the violence potential of the people, then what incentives remain for the state to be subjected to the people's votes?

Re: The Education of a Doomer

#23

Post by EMIRELADERO »

saulpw wrote: post #16
rahulyc wrote: post #4

I'm not sure what happens (I think no one does), but with every other technology, I can opt-out if I don't want to use it. Even if I get unemployed, I don't see how I can opt-out when it comes to everyone everywhere using it. Governments historically have considered humans as assets - it's even called "human capital", and they require us for tax revenue and to run the state. What happens when we aren't needed? Even i…

National governments which can print their own currency don't require people for tax revenue. They use taxes to compel people to acquire their currency to give it value. If they can instead compel AIs to acquire their currency, they won't need humans for that either.

The government is made up of human beings too. I doubt most of them are psycho to such a degree as to let 99% of humanity die for no real reason.

Re: The Education of a Doomer

#24

Post by anon84873628 »

slopinthebag wrote: post #15

Actual AGI might be really bad but thankfully we are not even close to building it and I doubt I’ll see it in my lifetime (imo ofc)

And even then, reaching "I, Robot" levels is unrealistic. Machines are fragile. It would take a very long time to bootstrap the entire automated robot construction and maintenance supply chain, which would also require energy production and resource collection too.

Until then it is vulnerable to disruption. So of course you will need the robot army to forcibly take and defend resources around the world. How will that war turn out?

Robot labor will be more valuable than humans for a very long time. Heck, we still have many towns in the US that have humans running around throwing trash bags into the back of the truck, because they haven't switched to the standardized containers and hydrologic arms. Let's not even get started on the rest of the "developing" world.

Re: The Education of a Doomer

#25

Post by EMIRELADERO »

rustcleaner wrote: post #22
throwawayk7h wrote: post #8

> if humans are economically useless, the state does not need them. Why pay out UBI to people who have neither economic nor political power? Forgive me if I'm naïve. But wouldn't people just vote for UBI in this case?

Voting has to have the implication of violent force from the polity to dissuade abrogation of the vote. If people need not apply for a functioning economy, and Palantir/Flock like systems reduce the violence potential of the people, then what incentives remain for the state to be subjected to the people's votes?

The state is made up of human beings too. I don't see why they would want most of humanity to starve. Even a power-hungry psycho wants to have people to rule over, and I don't think the average politician's neurotic traits are so extreme as to want to eliminate 99% of humanity and inherit the Earth.

Re: The Education of a Doomer

#26

Post by OgsyedIE »

Barrin92 wrote: post #11
paulpauper wrote: post #5

I’ve never had this worry. When I was funemployed last year, I spent my time reading books and writing code and hanging out with friends. If the future is an infinite UBI-funded vacation, I know what I’ll do. “Before the Singularity, read books and throw house parties; after the singularity, etc.” yeah it's obvious the author has a really high IQ who can keep himself busy with intellectual pursuits and a nice social…

Kohei Saito writes about this at length in Capital in the Anthropocene. Most obvious solution is to build an economy around social labor that has traditionally been externalized to households by capital. Start collectively paying people to take care of each other, children, the commons, public infrastructure and so on. As ecological concerns and automation eliminate a large chunk of production it's pointless to maint…

Any steady-state economy without an overlord of some kind keeping a balance (a Potemkin steady-state economy) will have some subset of actors who randomly stumble into scenarios of creative destruction and gain disproportionate rewards from it. Unless the gains are zeroed out repeatedly, this will snowball right back into the kind of mixed economy we have. A good book on the landscape the economy arises organically out of is Beinhocker.

Re: The Education of a Doomer

#27

Post by ghostly_s »

> You might object: if we’re all jobless, who’s paying for everything? This is trivially answered: the state acts like the heart, taxes are venous blood and welfare is oxygenated arterial blood. The government pays Raytheon for missiles, the money cascades down the economy through factories, aluminium smelters, mines, transport companies, all staffed by AIs buying and selling from each other. The government takes a cut of all economic activity, pays out welfare, the unemployed masses buy food and pay rent, the supermarkets, farms, logistics network, etc. are all staffed by AI.

I don't think this person has a firm enough grasp of economics to be writing on the subject.

Re: The Education of a Doomer

#28

Post by skybrian »

> What’s the last major life decision you made without at least consulting an AI?

This seems like asking what's the last major decision you made without at least doing a web search. There's nothing wrong with doing a search. The trouble is when you rely too much on what you read, without checking it.

Re: The Education of a Doomer

#29

Post by anon84873628 »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #23
saulpw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

National governments which can print their own currency don't require people for tax revenue. They use taxes to compel people to acquire their currency to give it value. If they can instead compel AIs to acquire their currency, they won't need humans for that either.

The government is made up of human beings too. I doubt most of them are psycho to such a degree as to let 99% of humanity die for no real reason.

At the risk of being incredibly banal, the current US government shows you absolutely can consolidate enough of such psychos.

Game theory is a helluva thing.

Re: The Education of a Doomer

#30

Post by Prophet6-0091 »

OgsyedIE wrote: post #18
rahulyc wrote: post #4

I'm not sure what happens (I think no one does), but with every other technology, I can opt-out if I don't want to use it. Even if I get unemployed, I don't see how I can opt-out when it comes to everyone everywhere using it. Governments historically have considered humans as assets - it's even called "human capital", and they require us for tax revenue and to run the state. What happens when we aren't needed? Even i…

The 'voice' anybody has is some function of their capital, ability to leverage it and ability to prevent its erosion by theft, fraud, seduction/politics scams and honeytrapping. Humans can still acquire capital in the future in several ways, although their ability to not be parted from it is in doubt. 1: verbal/literary labour with your vocal cords, or the use of an output tool, to playback existing or newly created…

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