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College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

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Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#311

Post by lenerdenator »

QuercusMax wrote: post #186
lenerdenator wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow the money. People over 55 are most concerned about one thing: retirement. Retirement, by definition, requires living off of money that you did not labor for. In the US, you do this by holding assets that yield returns on your investment. Over the last half-century, we've made returning that yield the main objective of publicly-traded corporations to the complete exclusion of everything else. People like Schmid…

Since when does retirement mean living off money you didn't labor for? The whole point is the opposite - you can only retire if you have enough resources/income (pension, 401K, gold bars, etc) that you can support yourself without working. In the US we have a problem that a lot of seniors can't afford to retire.

> Since when does retirement mean living off money you didn't labor for? The whole point is the opposite - you can only retire if you have enough resources/income (pension, 401K, gold bars, etc) that you can support yourself without working.

Since inflation was a thing, so since ever.

If you take the money you labored for and put it in an account without accruing any sort of interest, you will have exactly what you earned to live off of without working.

Since that happens over a span of decades - let's say forty years - that needs to account for the reduction in value brought about by inflation. You offset that using interest generated by loans issued by the institution that operates the account (which is not you laboring) or by returns from owning equities (which is the output of other people's labor).

I suppose the gold bars you mention could rise in value enough to offset inflation without resorting to taking a slice of someone else's economic output, but that's not how most retirement accounts are backed.

> In the US we have a problem that a lot of seniors can't afford to retire.

We also have the problem that a lot of people at the beginning and middle of their lives don't have the standard of living that their parents had despite doing all of the "right" things.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#312

Post by saghm »

lazide wrote: post #302
saghm wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think Trump has gotten where he is because these things are not happening? I don't even understand what you're trying to claim here. As best I can figure out, it sounds like you're saying that Trump made his money from suing people for sexual assault, but that's so absurd I can't even imagine someone trying to claim that as a troll. Even ignoring that, your argument seems to be "people in general are motivat…

Wow, you are indeed quite confused. People with a lot of money often get away with things for several reasons, including; 1) people sometimes attack/slander/harass others for arbitrary reasons hoping to get some of it (even if they never have to actually pay them!) 2) ability to hire people to professionally defend them (lawyers, PR people, etc.) 3) their often extensive networks among people in power (often in group…

> So for most people, especially if they keep getting what they need, it’s not worth rocking the boat. You’re more likely to just get steamrolled/destroyed if you try. some people will even actively encourage it, as long as it seems like it will pay out.

> ...

> Both the complaintant, and the defendant. Why make a scene if it’s in your financial/safety interest not too, after all? Especially if you’ll likely lose.

This is what I'm still stuck on. You're making a strong claim about of what a specific individual's mindset was about a traumatic event based on broad generalizations of social dynamics. It's hard to imagine how you could have such high confidence that someone you've never met has an exact combination of motivation from money and self-preservation to end up acting in ways you'd predict, rather than any number of other plausible explanations.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#313

Post by jedberg »

mikestew wrote: post #198
lenerdenator wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow the money. People over 55 are most concerned about one thing: retirement. Retirement, by definition, requires living off of money that you did not labor for. In the US, you do this by holding assets that yield returns on your investment. Over the last half-century, we've made returning that yield the main objective of publicly-traded corporations to the complete exclusion of everything else. People like Schmid…

Retirement, by definition, requires living off of money that you did not labor for. “Factual statement“, that’s hilarious. Nothing wrong with an op-ed, but with an opening like that you might want to step back and re-examine those “facts”.

OP wrote it poorly, but isn't wrong. Most retires get income from a few places: Social Security, 401K, or rental property.

Social security is a direct transfer of money from people currently working to people no longer working. The amount you get is vaguely based on how much you earned when you worked, but it's not like the money you paid in went into a savings account for you. It went to the people who were already retired. Remember, the first recipients of SS never paid in anything. It's been a long chain of working paying non-working ever since.

401k's are usually based on stocks. The value of stocks is based on the labor of the people who work at the company. The dividends and interest come from that labor too. Once again, at one point you were that labor, but your labor was going to retired people, and now it's "your turn".

And rental income comes from people giving you the money they get from their labor. You used your labor to buy the house, but the current money comes from their labor.

Now the rest of what they are saying is flawed because two of those three would go away if AI replaced all labor. But they are correct in saying that your cashflow in retirement comes from other people's labor, just as your labor went to other people when you were working.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#314

Post by jedberg »

lenerdenator wrote: post #140
romaniv wrote: post #106

GenAI is the first technology that I've ever seen that is actively rejected by young adults and fervently pushed by people over 55. It seems Eric Schmids of the world think they (in their 70s) have more say about the future of these students than the students themselves. That is very unlikely.

Follow the money. People over 55 are most concerned about one thing: retirement. Retirement, by definition, requires living off of money that you did not labor for. In the US, you do this by holding assets that yield returns on your investment. Over the last half-century, we've made returning that yield the main objective of publicly-traded corporations to the complete exclusion of everything else. People like Schmid…

Your argument is a bit flawed though. Most retires get income from a few places: Social Security, 401K, or rental property.

401k's will do great with AI replacing all labor. But social security will disappear and so will rental income, because no one will be able to afford housing anymore.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#315

Post by neutronicus »

overrun11 wrote: post #190
pickleglitch wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But why so anti AI specifically I think maybe AI is just the last straw for many people. If capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, AI represents the ultimate dream of the capitalist: the elimination of the need of human labor entirely. Whether or not it can achieve that is secondary to the goal itself. Grads are facing a brutal job market where much of what they just spent several years of t…

> AI represents the ultimate dream of the capitalist: the elimination of the need of human labor entirely Decreasing human toil for the same level of production should be the dream of _everyone_. If it's only capitalists in favor then that's a massive indictment of the non-capitalists. This reminds me of the famous Bastiat quote: "If, then, the utility of any branch of industry is to be estimated not by the amount of…

Production is only good for me if I get to consume it.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#316

Post by gruez »

romaniv wrote: post #268
gruez wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and fervently pushed by people over 55. Source? I think you're conflating "pushed by CEOs" (which might lean on the older side) with "pushed by people over 55".

The article we're commenting on lists several examples of the dynamic and it aligns with my personal experience offline and online. There are also stats like these: https://on.substack.com/p/the-substack-ai-report "Publishers 45 and over were more likely to use AI than those under 45." I can, of course, dig up more supporting data, but that is not as important to me as making sense of what I'm actually seeing. https:…

>"Publishers 45 and over were more likely to use AI than those under 45."

There's probably some skew here where old people in general aren't typically on substack, and therefore of the old people who are on substack, they're more "on the cutting edge" than younger publishers, which don't have such skew.

>"Younger Americans are generally more likely than older Americans to think the increased use of AI will worsen human abilities."

Right but what about actual usage? Young believe social media is bad for them, but nonetheless use it.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#317

Post by lenerdenator »

mikestew wrote: post #198
lenerdenator wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow the money. People over 55 are most concerned about one thing: retirement. Retirement, by definition, requires living off of money that you did not labor for. In the US, you do this by holding assets that yield returns on your investment. Over the last half-century, we've made returning that yield the main objective of publicly-traded corporations to the complete exclusion of everything else. People like Schmid…

Retirement, by definition, requires living off of money that you did not labor for. “Factual statement“, that’s hilarious. Nothing wrong with an op-ed, but with an opening like that you might want to step back and re-examine those “facts”.

It's exactly factual.

Let's say you take 10% of each paycheck, withdraw it as cash, and put it in a safe in my basement from my first paycheck to my last one 40 years later. The safe is a safe. It earns no interest. No one else contributes to the monetary value of the contents of the safe in any way.

The 40 years are up. You need to pay for groceries. You go down to my basement and behold the fruits of four decades of toil. You take some of it to the grocery store... and it takes up a far, far larger percentage of your cash pile than you thought it would.

Inflation got you. In fact, if we're talking about 40 years ending this last April, it shaved 66.6% off of the purchasing power of the money in that safe.

Uh oh.

So how do you deal with inflation? Instead of putting your money in a safe, you put it in a retirement account. That retirement account creates wealth for you by investing your money into equities, bonds, and other assets.

Equities and bonds typically grow in value by backing the asset with the surplus value generated by the labor of the people who are doing work for the entity that issued the equity or the bond.

Could you also invest in assets that don't get their returns off of other people's labor? Of course, but most retirement accounts in the US today do not do this.

So, yes, you're living off of money that you did not labor for, at least after you exhaust the inflation-adjusted value of the principal you put up for your retirement savings.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#318

Post by lenerdenator »

triceratops wrote: post #271
lenerdenator wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow the money. People over 55 are most concerned about one thing: retirement. Retirement, by definition, requires living off of money that you did not labor for. In the US, you do this by holding assets that yield returns on your investment. Over the last half-century, we've made returning that yield the main objective of publicly-traded corporations to the complete exclusion of everything else. People like Schmid…

> Retirement, by definition, requires living off of money that you did not labor for So like you just get handed money to retire without ever working a day in your life? Please tell how this works I want some of that.

You do once you exhaust the value of the retirement account that matches the principal that you invested into it.

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#319

Post by lenerdenator »

jedberg wrote: post #314
lenerdenator wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Follow the money. People over 55 are most concerned about one thing: retirement. Retirement, by definition, requires living off of money that you did not labor for. In the US, you do this by holding assets that yield returns on your investment. Over the last half-century, we've made returning that yield the main objective of publicly-traded corporations to the complete exclusion of everything else. People like Schmid…

Your argument is a bit flawed though. Most retires get income from a few places: Social Security, 401K, or rental property. 401k's will do great with AI replacing all labor. But social security will disappear and so will rental income, because no one will be able to afford housing anymore.

Most 401(k)s are backed by stocks and bonds. At least in the short term, yes, they'll do great as labor costs shrink in relation to the money earned by selling goods and services. However, if you have fewer and fewer people able to consume because they no longer have income, well, then you have the same problem as you do with housing and social security.

People say that universal basic income is a fix, but let's be honest: employers don't pay people more than they absolutely have to right now, and that's with most of the value earned for the employers being provided by people doing actual work for them. What makes anyone think they'll gladly cough up for those who don't work for them, especially at an amount that will allow most people's standard of living to either remain steady or improve?

Re: College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos

#320

Post by lazide »

saghm wrote: post #312
lazide wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, you are indeed quite confused. People with a lot of money often get away with things for several reasons, including; 1) people sometimes attack/slander/harass others for arbitrary reasons hoping to get some of it (even if they never have to actually pay them!) 2) ability to hire people to professionally defend them (lawyers, PR people, etc.) 3) their often extensive networks among people in power (often in group…

> So for most people, especially if they keep getting what they need, it’s not worth rocking the boat. You’re more likely to just get steamrolled/destroyed if you try. some people will even actively encourage it, as long as it seems like it will pay out. > ... > Both the complaintant, and the defendant. Why make a scene if it’s in your financial/safety interest not too, after all? Especially if you’ll likely lose. Th…

People make decisions based on many factors.

I’m just giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming she isn’t a fool.

But hey, maybe I’m wrong and money plays no part in this action between a hundred-billionaire and an ex employee.

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