Will Work for Free (Documentary on Technological Unemployment)
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Are you implying that we haven't gone through this process as a civilization a hundred times before?
Back in the days when animal husbandry wasn't "a thing", people tended to the fields manually. Then horses came along and dearie me, less work was required to tend the fields. Later on, the first engines were created and hot dang diggidy, we didn't need as many horses anymore - we had tractors. Nowadays, as machines become more and more complex, the need for machine operators declines - they are replaced with computerized systems, it's natural progression. This doesn't mean a catastrophy is imminent, it means that the world is still changing, just like it has been changing for thousands of years. Mmm, I love the smell of progress in the morning.
It's really terrible that in certain industries people rapidly become unemployed, but they become unemployed for a reason - they educated themselves in a narrow sector of the industry in which they weren't even welcome in the first place. These changes are not happening overnight - they're to be expected. As I mentioned earlier, the need for hands-on workers is declining, but at the same time, demand for workers increases on higher levels of the process.
People who "work like machines" are no longer crucial to the industry, but they are not expendable. There is one important factor that differentiates a human from a machine - a human thinks creatively, a machine only follows instructions. Instead of crying bloody murder because "them evil machines took yer jerbs", promote education. Allow those workers to change their focus, provide them with creative skills necessary in different, more open branches of the industry - it's really that simple.
Back in the days when animal husbandry wasn't "a thing", people tended to the fields manually. Then horses came along and dearie me, less work was required to tend the fields. Later on, the first engines were created and hot dang diggidy, we didn't need as many horses anymore - we had tractors. Nowadays, as machines become more and more complex, the need for machine operators declines - they are replaced with computerized systems, it's natural progression. This doesn't mean a catastrophy is imminent, it means that the world is still changing, just like it has been changing for thousands of years. Mmm, I love the smell of progress in the morning.
It's really terrible that in certain industries people rapidly become unemployed, but they become unemployed for a reason - they educated themselves in a narrow sector of the industry in which they weren't even welcome in the first place. These changes are not happening overnight - they're to be expected. As I mentioned earlier, the need for hands-on workers is declining, but at the same time, demand for workers increases on higher levels of the process.
People who "work like machines" are no longer crucial to the industry, but they are not expendable. There is one important factor that differentiates a human from a machine - a human thinks creatively, a machine only follows instructions. Instead of crying bloody murder because "them evil machines took yer jerbs", promote education. Allow those workers to change their focus, provide them with creative skills necessary in different, more open branches of the industry - it's really that simple.
I wasn't implying that we haven't gone through it before, and I'm with you on the pro-education stance. I'm 100% behind technology. I think it's utterly absurd to hear politicians say that they want to "create jobs".
As far as there being some kind of "catastrophe", I don't think there's going to necessarily be one big cataclysmic event. That's something that people tend to get too hyped over.
Instead, I think that the catastrophe has already happened, and continues to happen, spread thin over the bread of time like so much rotten Vegemite. It manifests itself in our absurd behaviors, in which we would not find any other excuse to do outside of "the economy". Like the U.S. Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which had crops, livestock, and other agricultural goods and resources buried, burnt, plowed over, shot, and otherwise destroyed, because destroying them makes so much more sense than actually giving them to the poor or needy. (Nowadays they just cut out the growing part and pay farmers to not produce crops.) Or the phenomena of planned obsolescence, which ensures that electronics break down faster than they must. These are just two symptoms of a societal disease that is the logical result of a system that values the scarcity of goods, no matter how abundant we have the capacity to make them.
If any "catastrophe" should happen, I think it will more or less be slow, painful, drawn out, and analogous to an astronaut finally suffocating in space thanks to a leak in his oxygen tank.
I guess it would be useful to clear something up about my style of communication; I don't really imply anything. I just say what I mean, and I mean no more or less than what I say.
(Also, good to talk to you again, Foxi4. Most people I have these conversations with online just go to TL;DR like the pathetic toddlers they are.)
As far as there being some kind of "catastrophe", I don't think there's going to necessarily be one big cataclysmic event. That's something that people tend to get too hyped over.
Instead, I think that the catastrophe has already happened, and continues to happen, spread thin over the bread of time like so much rotten Vegemite. It manifests itself in our absurd behaviors, in which we would not find any other excuse to do outside of "the economy". Like the U.S. Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which had crops, livestock, and other agricultural goods and resources buried, burnt, plowed over, shot, and otherwise destroyed, because destroying them makes so much more sense than actually giving them to the poor or needy. (Nowadays they just cut out the growing part and pay farmers to not produce crops.) Or the phenomena of planned obsolescence, which ensures that electronics break down faster than they must. These are just two symptoms of a societal disease that is the logical result of a system that values the scarcity of goods, no matter how abundant we have the capacity to make them.
If any "catastrophe" should happen, I think it will more or less be slow, painful, drawn out, and analogous to an astronaut finally suffocating in space thanks to a leak in his oxygen tank.
I guess it would be useful to clear something up about my style of communication; I don't really imply anything. I just say what I mean, and I mean no more or less than what I say.
(Also, good to talk to you again, Foxi4. Most people I have these conversations with online just go to TL;DR like the pathetic toddlers they are.)
We have a very similar problem in Poland where the government hands out grants to farmers, buying out their crops and meat that they were unable to sell during the season and stockpiling them in the event of a sudden and unexpected disaster which never comes and since it's government property, they cannot hand these resources out to the needy - once the produce reaches its expiration date, they have to burn it.
Naturally this produces a sick precedence - more people educate themselves as farmers, more crops are harvested and more livestock is being slaughtered because they realise that whatever happens, the government is going to buy them out from the deepest of s*itholes, stimulating the market with additional grants instead of shaping it to reflect the actual demand for products.
As a result, each year the piles of wasted, burned food grow taller and taller and you can't help but wonder who thought this was a good idea. Food produce continues to be expensive, but it's only expensive because the demand for it is completely artificial - if anything, we have more produce than we can possibly go through and we're already exporting the excess. What a crazy, crazy world.
Fortunately, the problem is being partially mended by the European Union which also gives grants, but for something else entirely. The idea is to pay farmers to not farm and... plant forests instead. They're getting hefty sums for planting your average pinetrees on their fields and not doing anything which solves the excess produce issue, generates more lumber for the future and improves air quality. Basically they're transforming farmers into land owners - smart.
Naturally this produces a sick precedence - more people educate themselves as farmers, more crops are harvested and more livestock is being slaughtered because they realise that whatever happens, the government is going to buy them out from the deepest of s*itholes, stimulating the market with additional grants instead of shaping it to reflect the actual demand for products.
As a result, each year the piles of wasted, burned food grow taller and taller and you can't help but wonder who thought this was a good idea. Food produce continues to be expensive, but it's only expensive because the demand for it is completely artificial - if anything, we have more produce than we can possibly go through and we're already exporting the excess. What a crazy, crazy world.
Fortunately, the problem is being partially mended by the European Union which also gives grants, but for something else entirely. The idea is to pay farmers to not farm and... plant forests instead. They're getting hefty sums for planting your average pinetrees on their fields and not doing anything which solves the excess produce issue, generates more lumber for the future and improves air quality. Basically they're transforming farmers into land owners - smart.
Machines are slowly replacing the humans that do "machine" work.
Logical thing is that those humans become the "machines" that replace parts in the machines.
Problem solved c:
Honestly tho, it's progression, you can't stop it.
Progression and capitalism.
Yes capitalism cause a machine costs less then an actual human.
Plus production is increased which also increases profit.
Logical thing is that those humans become the "machines" that replace parts in the machines.
Problem solved c:
Honestly tho, it's progression, you can't stop it.
Progression and capitalism.
Yes capitalism cause a machine costs less then an actual human.
Plus production is increased which also increases profit.
Kinda stopped watching right from the start. Difference of beliefs, I guess. But for me, life is not about survival; it's about salvation. I've survived, and it's not enough.
...Huh?
Sorry, but you said something that kind of confuses me.
You stopped watching something...because it has a message that's different from what you believe?
...I don't mean to be insulting or rude, but...I cannot understand this action. As someone who values the truth and believing in true things to the best of my ability, I do not, cannot, hold my own beliefs sacred, since there is always the possibility of being wrong.
Ah, perhaps this will be of assistance in understanding what I mean...
http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/
http://lesswrong.com/
I suppose on a more simple level, I could just say, "Wouldn't you want to know if you were wrong?".
I think you either read too much into my reply or assumed too much from it. I don't consider my beliefs sacred. But they're my beliefs. You can't prove beliefs wrong. You can prove facts wrong. You either believe something or you don't. It's a state of being. At least...that's what I believe.
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