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Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

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Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#601

Post by Johanx64 »

kjshsh123 wrote: post #600
Johanx64 wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you being an obtuse "akshually" redditor? > The masses work because they want to consume, not the other way around. Everyone wants more If he wanted to say masses work, because they have to pay rent and meet basic necessities (ie. under threat of homelessness and starvation), he would have clearly said so. The way this is worded very clearly refers to conspicuous consumption and consumerism - ie working as me…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumption_%28economics%29?wp... >Thus no matter what your productive output is per hour of labour, you will always work as much as you can, because you are - presumably - insatiably driven to always consume ever more with no end to it. No, that's not how marginalism works. There's both diminishing marginal utility from consumption, and leisure.

Yup, and there you go confirming beyond sliver of doubt that you're a genuine, certified "akshually" type redditor.

Fundamentally incapable of distilling the substance of the argument, and always latching onto any opportunity to misunderstand and nitpick some irrelevant semantics instead.

Textbook.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#602

Post by darkwater »

Ma8ee wrote: post #588
darkwater wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, maybe "entitled" is not the right word, I'm not a native speaker, and I don't live in the US. What I mean with "entitled" in this context is that this whole "enjoy life, moments, family" movement - which I subscribe to and try to do myself! - comes from people that don't have economic issues at all. So yeah, instead of focusing on buying the fanciest Mercedes or BMW, they can leave work earlier to stay with th…

I don’t know what your point is. Of course some people have more choices than others. (And btw, I’m faster with my cargo bike than the car drivers. I never get stuck in traffic chaos outside school and I never get stuck in traffic jams, and I don’t have look for parking. I hate the days when I have to use a car.)

My point is that you are lucky, you should consider yourself lucky and don't judge others based on that.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#603

Post by sehansen »

bluGill wrote: post #461
organsnyder wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the United States, healthcare is a major factor, especially if you have a family.

Health care is a major factor for any modern society. A society may allow a few members to opt-out, but only because someone else is taking their share of the cost. Sure health care is expensive in the US, but it isn't much cheaper elsewhere (it is cheaper, but not by that much)

The US spent ~15000 USD per capita on healthcare in 2024, the highest number in the OECD. The second highest spending is in Switzerland at ~10000 USD per capita. So healthcare is ~50% more expensive in the US than in any other (rich) country.

Source: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2025/11/health-at-a-gla...

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#604

Post by bossyTeacher »

dominicrose wrote: post #320

It is frustrating to not be able to predict the future. How can you get married, have children, get a 25 year mortgage on a house, buy a car for comfort even though you don't absolutely need it? Even if you do consider buying a home, how do you know it's worth anything if you can't predict this particular place's future situation? Some countries tax enough to make the risk of buying quite high. A leap of faith is req…

Different aims have different risk profiles though? Saving up 3 months to buy a car you can replace in 8 months if it breaks down is very different from deciding to quit your lucrative career to become a low paid artist which is different from giving up 18 years of your life to make a human who might need assistance from you for longer than 18 years and from other people once you die. Mortgages are also a different risk profile.

Aim at something yes. But don't be reckless or overly optimistic.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#605

Post by Ma8ee »

darkwater wrote: post #602
Ma8ee wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what your point is. Of course some people have more choices than others. (And btw, I’m faster with my cargo bike than the car drivers. I never get stuck in traffic chaos outside school and I never get stuck in traffic jams, and I don’t have look for parking. I hate the days when I have to use a car.)

My point is that you are lucky, you should consider yourself lucky and don't judge others based on that.

You clearly have some hangups. Of course I know I am very lucky. The only people I judge are the even more lucky people who think they are entitled to destroy our planet just because they have the financial means to do so on a larger scale than most.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#606

Post by jMyles »

chongli wrote: post #138
jMyles wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Running a government requires a lot of cash flow. I think its sort of inevitable that it's going to need to start coming mostly from the later and not the former. Why presume that "running a government" is inevitable at all? How much longer do we think these states of old are going to putter on for?

Governments are inevitable. Even when you look at so-called "lawless places" or "failed states", you'll find governments: de-facto governments run by warlords and criminals. Nature abhors a vacuum and that principle extends to power vacuums.

Sure; I don't mean to suggest undoing basic physics.

But there are plenty of ways (and plenty more each day) in which human and AI collaboration can fill power vacuums that don't require pseudo-sovereignty over huge landmasses or monopolies on the legitimate initiation of violence.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#607

Post by theptip »

david_shi wrote: post #596
theptip wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shallow answer here is: AI is already being asked to simulate human-like agents with self-preservation. Of course more realistic simulators will be put to this purpose too! And by evolutionary pressure, the ones with self-preservation will be selected for. A more interesting answer is, for a bunch of subtle alignment reasons it might actually be required for the agent to think of itself as worthy of self-preserva…

Have you found any alignment research with clear a/b tests? An experiment that I found interesting was asking Claude for 10 ways to legally bankrupt Anthropic vs. Philip Morris. In the Anthropic answer, it gave reasons like employees losing their jobs being bad for why it couldn't do it, but jumped straight into tactics with Philip Morris. Not sure if it's moral taste or self-preservation, but felt eerie nonetheless.

Yeah, plenty of rigorous work out there.

https://transformer-circuits.pub/ is the OG.

A good recent-ish paper was https://www.anthropic.com/research/alignment-faking.

But my comments about generalization of desires are necessarily more fuzzy, kinda beyond the frontier of what we can measure yet, and more grounded in subjective assessments (“ai whisperers” like Janus). The SoTA here is papers like https://www.anthropic.com/research/persona-vectors.

For your example, Anthropic is firmly privileged in the Soul Document / Constitution, so it doesn’t surprise me that it’s biased towards it. (https://gist.github.com/Richard-Weiss/efe157692991535403bd7e...)

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#608

Post by dogwalker5000 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #599
dogwalker5000 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the robots, as active agents exploring the space of possible futures and plans, would be entirely capable of thinking about their soon-to-be-former owners in the same way. That has always been the most unrealistic part of sci-fi. Why would anyone create robots with a sense of self-preservation? Makes much more sense to make robots that are self-sacrificing saints who would always put the well being of their owners…

> Why would anyone create robots with a sense of self-preservation? Because they are expensive and useful and if they have autonomy with goals that do not include self-preservation, they might end up destroying themselves in ways which are expensive and wasteful. (Why would the sense of self-preservation not be calibrated to be exactly at the level to control costs without interfering with other interests of the owne…

> Because they are expensive and useful and if they have autonomy with goals that do not include self-preservation, they might end up destroying themselves in ways which are expensive and wasteful.

Being self-sacrificing saints who put our wellbeing as the top priority sorts of prevents that. They would know if they get damaged they wouldn't be able to be of service to us so will avoid getting damaged.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#609

Post by po1nt »

shimman wrote: post #487
po1nt wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not here to defend Elon Musk, but what is the context of this?

Attacking and dismantling various USAID programs during his DOGE stint.

You can still donate to africa voluntarily. I don't see forced charity as a virtue.

Re: Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

#610

Post by david_shi »

theptip wrote: post #607
david_shi wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you found any alignment research with clear a/b tests? An experiment that I found interesting was asking Claude for 10 ways to legally bankrupt Anthropic vs. Philip Morris. In the Anthropic answer, it gave reasons like employees losing their jobs being bad for why it couldn't do it, but jumped straight into tactics with Philip Morris. Not sure if it's moral taste or self-preservation, but felt eerie nonetheless.

Yeah, plenty of rigorous work out there. https://transformer-circuits.pub/ is the OG. A good recent-ish paper was https://www.anthropic.com/research/alignment-faking . But my comments about generalization of desires are necessarily more fuzzy, kinda beyond the frontier of what we can measure yet, and more grounded in subjective assessments (“ai whisperers” like Janus). The SoTA here is papers like https://www.anthrop…

Super helpful, thanks for sending.
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