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I'm trying to make some sense out of this shitshow of a thread, because I will freely admit that I am no expert on this situation. Somebody directly answer this question: Do we expect the rate of technological progress to slow in an appreciable way that will stem the now-centuries-old process of the devaluation of human labor? If not, how can anyone imagine human labor continuing to have value as our technology is increasingly outpacing all human endeavors in terms of productivity, efficiency, and reliability? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/science/century-long-study-will-examine-effects-of-artificial-intelligence.html?_r=1
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Dec 17, 2014 19:07
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ChairMaster posted:I certainly can't. That would be my follow-up question, if technology really will continue its march, as all evidence seems to indicate. We are now close enough to a near-complete devaluation of human labor that it's not just some distant science fiction; it's more in the realm of climate change, namely a thing that is inevitable without immense societal change, likely within our lifetimes. I personally believe that no existing economic framework has a valid answer to the question of what happens when labor no longer has value. Both capitalism and communism and all of their variants are founded on the idea that labor is valuable. If this thread is really meant to ask a question about the unbounded future, then we first have to come to some common ground on whether the value of labor will actually continue, or if the rest of these comments have been pure ideological masturbation about whose current worldview will survive, even though none of them will. As far as I'm concerned, if you can't make a definitive statement defending how human labor will continue to have value, the burden of proof is on you to explain why you're still arguing as if it will. Is it simple short-sightedness, or is it denial? Or do you really have a way to explain how humans will get back into designing computer chips, running stock markets and banks, managing utilities, and of course, doing service work, having displaced their computerized competitors?
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Dec 17, 2014 19:30
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wateroverfire posted:Eh. The idea that we're at or even near the point where human labor will be valueless - even a majority of human labor - is pretty drat sci fi today. Itīll be pretty drat scifi 100 years from now. Well, no wonder this thread is such a mess. You're acting as if none of the things that are happening are happening, and you don't even care to provide any source of explanation, other than to say that the idea of the end of work has to be science fiction. And you really believe that you can project a full century out, and think we'll still be talking about income, and jobs, and arguments about people buying Steam accounts or asparagus? Exactly how sustainable do you really believe our current economic models are, and how did you arrive at that delusion?
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Dec 17, 2014 20:19
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Thank you to Killhour and the rest for responding to HappyHippo in a better way than I could. We are at a unique instant in human evolution at this point. For the past two centuries, we have designed machines in our own image to do our dirty work for us. We are now within sight of the time in which our machines MAY proceed along the same curve we have been observing for sixty years, and in some undefinable way, simultaneously match or exceed human capabilities. It is simultaneously an unsurprising and totally predictable possible future for us as a human race, and one that cannot simply be dismissed and handwaved away by the likes of you. We may very well proceed through the next century and never experience the effects of superhuman machine intelligences. However, the trends pointed out by Killhour and others cannot simply be thrown out as pseudoscience any more. Certainly not when we have the likes of Hawking talking about the possible threats of artificial intelligence. We are asking a perfectly rational question here. Namely: What would happen to us as a human species if the value of our labor were reduced to nothing?
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Dec 19, 2014 05:40
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