[HN Gopher] Thoughts while watching myself be automated
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       Thoughts while watching myself be automated
        
       Author : 082349872349872
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2024-09-05 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
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 (TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net)
        
       | ok_dad wrote:
       | We get ever closer to software replacing humans in a vast array
       | of jobs, people scream and shout about how we need to solve the
       | problem of all those humans with no jobs, yet all I see is the
       | inextricable march to obsolescence for many people, myself
       | included.
       | 
       | I'll add my shout: What's going to happen to the obsolete humans?
        
         | QuadmasterXLII wrote:
         | We ended up deciding, against all seeming reason, to just stop
         | after nuking each other twice. Perhaps our presidents and
         | dictators can get on the phone and reach a similar agreement. I
         | would quite like them to.
        
         | interstice wrote:
         | The line is that there will always be something to do. But I'm
         | not sure that's true, ultimately each human only has a limited
         | number of needs - once those are met what's the utility in
         | having any excess capacity?
         | 
         | And what are the chances that we are getting close to that
         | capacity already but the production is so inefficient that only
         | some tiny percentage goes to any one persons actual needs
        
         | OkayPhysicist wrote:
         | Liberation from toil ought to be a good thing, but frankly it's
         | looking more and more like the worst jobs will be the last to
         | go.
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | There's one scenario where we expand the idea of citizenship to
         | something more like each adult human owns 1/nth of the country,
         | we claw back mineral rights and companies then have to rent the
         | air, the water, the soil, the minerals, and each citizen is
         | entitled to a share of those proceeds of businesses consuming
         | them.
         | 
         | What they often leave out when talking about how Scandinavia
         | has good social systems is the fact that they have vast mineral
         | wealth that is subsidizing all of these services. That health
         | care is being paid for substantially with oil profits. Which if
         | oil extraction weren't our quickest route to destructive levels
         | of global warming would be awesome. Instead it's kind of mixed.
         | 
         | The tricky bit is finding the maturity to not vote for
         | accelerating extraction now and fucking over your grandchildren
         | in the process. The US doesn't have that - yet - but I'd argue
         | that Scandinavian countries also need a closer examination vis-
         | a-vis the Paris accords.
        
       | interstice wrote:
       | > what if we run out of data or scaling laws break and
       | algorithmic progress stalls? This is a little funny because
       | similar arguments have been made since the dawn of computers.
       | There was even an argument made once that we had almost 'solved'
       | physics. The only constant is change
        
       | Workaccount2 wrote:
       | I don't know if it's hollywood, or hollywood just being a
       | reflection of human's big egos that caused it, but man are people
       | going to have a hard time accepting that emotions and creativity
       | aren't anything particularly special.
        
         | devwastaken wrote:
         | Automation sounds cool until you look at the market and realize
         | that by the time you've tooled it, you need to make different
         | products that require different tooling.
         | 
         | It's not like automating Minecraft and eventually "winning" at
         | not having to do anything.
         | 
         | In order to do this complex process you need humans with
         | emotions and you need iterative R&D that requires creativity
         | not just in the nerdy engineering but across the spectrum in
         | all elements. The human one is especially difficult to get
         | right.
        
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       (page generated 2024-09-05 23:02 UTC)