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Not Online!!! wrote:

Yes, because i have a sense of duty, unlike you it seems.
I did the same when the army conscripted me and made me a Füsilier, i would survive managing a bunch of scraprheaps aswell.

Good for you, but your attitude is not going to be shared with the vast majority of people. Another reason Socialism doesn't work, it assumes that people will all have a sense of duty like that and just go with the flow. But thats not human nature. Human nature is that we are all selfish little jerks looking out for number 1. When you've got options between doing a crap job and having everything you ever wanted, and doing nothing and still having everything you ever wanted, you're going to want to do nothing.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Yes, because i have a sense of duty, unlike you it seems.
I did the same when the army conscripted me and made me a Füsilier, i would survive managing a bunch of scraprheaps aswell.

Good for you, but your attitude is not going to be shared with the vast majority of people. Another reason Socialism doesn't work, it assumes that people will all have a sense of duty like that and just go with the flow. But thats not human nature. Human nature is that we are all selfish little jerks looking out for number 1. When you've got options between doing a crap job and having everything you ever wanted, and doing nothing and still having everything you ever wanted, you're going to want to do nothing.

I edited my last comment, read that.
I never said i'd do it for nothing key is Motivation.
If I live in a society with direct democratic elements i become the government, i have comparativly to you more rights via voting alone, those come with more duties, it's a tradeoff.

 Grey Templar wrote:

I ask you. If you were in a society that gave you all the food you could need, shelter, clothing, as well as free entertainment. Would you be happy if a guy in a suit suddenly showed up one day and said "Hey, you've been chosen by lottery. You gotta go to Robot school and learn how to fix the Toilet Maintenance Robots! You can't play Grand Theft Auto:19 for 16 hours a day anymore. But we'll give you some better food vouchers!"

Would you be happy about that? Heck no you wouldn't. Time would be about the only thing worth anything anymore, and they'd be forcing you to lose a bunch of it to do something you don't want to do.

I think I'd be fine with carrying out socially necessary labour, yes. It likely wouldn't have to be eight hours, five days a week because you could definitely get away with having two shifts of four hours for two people in a society where every need is fulfilled. Profitability and cost of labour are irrelevant, after all. Heck, it could be as little as four hours of work, three days a week. I'd get to do somethng useful and I currently have way less free time than I'd have in this scenario. Videogaming for every waking hour makes you depressed anyway.

Now, of course, a bunch of people would answer "no" to this question for whatever reason. But more than enough people would answer "yes". Having direct responsibility for something useful and getting to do it is a pretty big boost to confidence for a typical human.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Good for you, but your attitude is not going to be shared with the vast majority of people. Another reason Socialism doesn't work, it assumes that people will all have a sense of duty like that and just go with the flow. But thats not human nature. Human nature is that we are all selfish little jerks looking out for number 1. When you've got options between doing a crap job and having everything you ever wanted, and doing nothing and still having everything you ever wanted, you're going to want to do nothing.

Actually, it is human nature to be cooperative and to do things for others because it benefits others. "Crap jobs" such as cleaning and maintenance are really only "crap jobs" because they pay nothing and those who do it are overworked. Being a janitor or a municipality goblin and spending your days picking up trash, sorting through garages, putting up signs and generally doing things that are direct improvements on life in general is very rewarding work. Bringing order and improvement to the world is very satisfying.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Yes, because i have a sense of duty, unlike you it seems.
I did the same when the army conscripted me and made me a Füsilier, i would survive managing a bunch of scraprheaps aswell.

Good for you, but your attitude is not going to be shared with the vast majority of people. Another reason Socialism doesn't work, it assumes that people will all have a sense of duty like that and just go with the flow. But thats not human nature. Human nature is that we are all selfish little jerks looking out for number 1. When you've got options between doing a crap job and having everything you ever wanted, and doing nothing and still having everything you ever wanted, you're going to want to do nothing.

I edited my last comment, read that.
I never said i'd do it for nothing key is Motivation.
If I live in a society with direct democratic elements i become the government, i have comparativly to you more rights via voting alone, those come with more duties, it's a tradeoff.

Just because you got a say in the government doesn't mean you'll be happy with everything the government does or forces you to do.

Even if you voted in favor of forced conscription by lottery to service the Toilet robots, you will probably reconsider your position if you end up being the poor sod who gets chosen to service the Toilet robots.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

I ask you. If you were in a society that gave you all the food you could need, shelter, clothing, as well as free entertainment. Would you be happy if a guy in a suit suddenly showed up one day and said "Hey, you've been chosen by lottery. You gotta go to Robot school and learn how to fix the Toilet Maintenance Robots! You can't play Grand Theft Auto:19 for 16 hours a day anymore. But we'll give you some better food vouchers!"

Would you be happy about that? Heck no you wouldn't. Time would be about the only thing worth anything anymore, and they'd be forcing you to lose a bunch of it to do something you don't want to do.

I think I'd be fine with carrying out socially necessary labour, yes. It likely wouldn't have to be eight hours, five days a week because you could definitely get away with having two shifts of four hours for two people in a society where every need is fulfilled. Profitability and cost of labour are irrelevant, after all. Heck, it could be as little as four hours of work, three days a week. I'd get to do somethng useful and I currently have way less free time than I'd have in this scenario. Videogaming for every waking hour makes you depressed anyway.

Now, of course, a bunch of people would answer "no" to this question for whatever reason. But more than enough people would answer "yes". Having direct responsibility for something useful and getting to do it is a pretty big boost to confidence for a typical human.

A confidence boost is only going to go so far for motivation.

Videogaming for every waking hour makes you depressed anyway.

Insert any leisure activity of choice.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Yes, because i have a sense of duty, unlike you it seems.
I did the same when the army conscripted me and made me a Füsilier, i would survive managing a bunch of scraprheaps aswell.

Good for you, but your attitude is not going to be shared with the vast majority of people. Another reason Socialism doesn't work, it assumes that people will all have a sense of duty like that and just go with the flow. But thats not human nature. Human nature is that we are all selfish little jerks looking out for number 1. When you've got options between doing a crap job and having everything you ever wanted, and doing nothing and still having everything you ever wanted, you're going to want to do nothing.

I edited my last comment, read that.
I never said i'd do it for nothing key is Motivation.
If I live in a society with direct democratic elements i become the government, i have comparativly to you more rights via voting alone, those come with more duties, it's a tradeoff.

Just because you got a say in the government doesn't mean you'll be happy with everything the government does or forces you to do.

Even if you voted in favor of forced conscription by lottery to service the Toilet robots, you will probably reconsider your position if you end up being the poor sod who gets chosen to service the Toilet robots.

No i don't.
I would hurt my own power by that lack of belief in my right choice for that vote.
Secondly: i imagine a system were everyone has to do the Job atleast once. So that no one can claim unfair treatment.

Edit: so no Vietnam style lottery were the rich could get away.
No one gets away that IS the base requirement.
Would it annoy me?
Probably but considering since everyone has to do it or had to do it i am fine with it.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Even if you voted in favor of forced conscription by lottery to service the Toilet robots, you will probably reconsider your position if you end up being the poor sod who gets chosen to service the Toilet robots.

Toilet robots sound pretty rockin', actually. Just ask any kid what they think about garbage trucks, or any waterworks engineer or plumber what they think about sanitation.

 Grey Templar wrote:
A confidence boost is only going to go so far for motivation.

How about the respect and admiration of your peers? You're doing necessary work, after all. Besides, you're hugely underestimating what a great motivatior "feeling good about yourself" is. The feeling that you have accomplished something, that your day has mattered, is one of the most powerful there is. Never experiencing it is broadly considered an illness and a massive societal problem.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Even if you voted in favor of forced conscription by lottery to service the Toilet robots, you will probably reconsider your position if you end up being the poor sod who gets chosen to service the Toilet robots.

Toilet robots sound pretty rockin', actually. Just ask any kid what they think about garbage trucks, or any waterworks engineer or plumber what they think about sanitation.

 Grey Templar wrote:
A confidence boost is only going to go so far for motivation.

How about the respect and admiration of your peers? You're doing necessary work, after all. Besides, you're hugely underestimating what a great motivatior "feeling good about yourself" is. The feeling that you have accomplished something, that your day has mattered, is one of the most powerful there is. Never experiencing it is broadly considered an illness and a massive societal problem.

That also works, frankly, same situation with our NCO 's generally not many want to do it since it will lead to a longer more in depth training but if you have done it you are generally regarded as a bit above the rest.
Of course only so long you were not a prick torwards your non human non Animal Füsilier underlings.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Robots do not suffer from such a limit, they can be improved indefinitely.

I think this is a fun area to explore and very relevant to this thread. We hear many statements along the lines of the above; but what evidence are they based upon? How can we test their veracity?

There is this general assumption that mechanisation and robotics will continue to improve continually and endlessly; that it will become ever more intelligent/capable, that new innovations will carry on spitting out fresh new components which do the jobs of the older ones marginally better ad infinitum.

But.....says who? How do we not know that there we aren't heading towards a 'hard limit' beyond which we won't be able to improve the processors of computers? Why do we assume that there's a code we'll be able to devise which will mimic sentience sufficiently well to replace people? Where does this unbridled faith in the apparently infinite potential of technology to achieve absolutely anything come from?

The fact that we've managed to innovate as far as we have is really no guarantee of anything at all. Thinking critically/logically, there must be an end point at which we cannot proceed any further, after all. Where there are no more large discoveries to be made, no great advances in material sciences and engineering left to occur. Why do we presume that this 'hard limit' is going to be at the level of some sort of post-scarcity society? And not say, a hundred years from now?

People in the West in this day and age are raised with the unquestioned assumption that because technology has changed our lives so radically and quickly in comparison to those of our immediate ancestors; that it will continue to do so indefinitely. It's virtually a faith at this point. 'Donate some money, and we can beat -medical condition here- forever'. But...can we? Is it possible that there are diseases we can suffer from which no technology will ever fix? A degree of sentience no machine will ever mimic? Engineering challenges that will forever be out of our reach to execute?

As a corollary; what would that mean for society once we hit that 'hard limit'?

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Yes, because i have a sense of duty, unlike you it seems.
I did the same when the army conscripted me and made me a Füsilier, i would survive managing a bunch of scraprheaps aswell.

Good for you, but your attitude is not going to be shared with the vast majority of people. Another reason Socialism doesn't work, it assumes that people will all have a sense of duty like that and just go with the flow. But thats not human nature. Human nature is that we are all selfish little jerks looking out for number 1. When you've got options between doing a crap job and having everything you ever wanted, and doing nothing and still having everything you ever wanted, you're going to want to do nothing.

I edited my last comment, read that.
I never said i'd do it for nothing key is Motivation.
If I live in a society with direct democratic elements i become the government, i have comparativly to you more rights via voting alone, those come with more duties, it's a tradeoff.

Just because you got a say in the government doesn't mean you'll be happy with everything the government does or forces you to do.

Even if you voted in favor of forced conscription by lottery to service the Toilet robots, you will probably reconsider your position if you end up being the poor sod who gets chosen to service the Toilet robots.

No i don't.
I would hurt my own power by that lack of belief in my right choice for that vote.
Secondly: i imagine a system were everyone has to do the Job atleast once. So that no one can claim unfair treatment.

Edit: so no Vietnam style lottery were the rich could get away.
Now one gets away that OS the base requirement.
Would it annoy me?
Probably but considering since everyone has to do it or had to do it i am fine with it.

The only people who could set up a system like this will be the rich and powerful. They're definitely going to be creating loopholes they can game and take advantage of. Thats why this ideology is so dangerous. People naively believe that everybody involved will be 100% altruistic. Except it is 100% guaranteed that they will game the system for their own benefit.

Heck, you can just game the system by playing dumb and making it seem that you have no capacity to perform any job the state could require of you.

These robots would be insanely complex systems that would require years of schooling to do even basic maintenance. Thats not something you could easily train even a small chunk of your population how to fix. How are you going to sell the idea that everybody should go through a bunch of technical schooling to perform a couple hours of work a week when your only line is "Its for the good of society!" All of the jobs in this society would be like that. Highly technical jobs that would require a lot of training. You're not going to be able to have a fair system of work distribution. You'd have to have a lottery to determine who gets the education, which would be a negative thing for the people doing it, and then a further lottery for who is going to do the job for X time period.

 Grey Templar wrote:
How are you going to sell the idea that everybody should go through a bunch of technical schooling to perform a couple hours of work a week when your only line is "Its for the good of society!".

But everyone is "society". You are, your friends are, your parents are, your cousins, relatives, anyone you can think of are all part of "society". Humans are social creatures who to a great degree define themselves by who they know. When undergoing technical training is obviously, unquestionably for the good of society then people are going to want to do that. It's not a small thing. What makes "It's for the good of society!" an effective piece of mockery is when it's said in reference to something that's actually pointless or only of benefit to a very small group. So using it in cases where it's true and not just a line doesn't work. You're talking about a scenario in which people are fed, clothed and housed, treated for illnesses and accidents, have plenty of spare time and where the only work that exists to do is crucial to supporting the system, and forbidding people from using that as an argument for why the system should be continued.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Yes, because i have a sense of duty, unlike you it seems.
I did the same when the army conscripted me and made me a Füsilier, i would survive managing a bunch of scraprheaps aswell.

Good for you, but your attitude is not going to be shared with the vast majority of people. Another reason Socialism doesn't work, it assumes that people will all have a sense of duty like that and just go with the flow. But thats not human nature. Human nature is that we are all selfish little jerks looking out for number 1. When you've got options between doing a crap job and having everything you ever wanted, and doing nothing and still having everything you ever wanted, you're going to want to do nothing.

This was the situation in ancient Rome. The corn dole provided basic sustenance, so the citizenry often didn't work. The thing is with an automated society we could actually live like that. Before dilettante society had to work on the backs of a servant class, with robots there is no need for that. a society with automated infrastructure and industry and a low employment rate is actually viable. It is just not something we relish seeing right now.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
How are you going to sell the idea that everybody should go through a bunch of technical schooling to perform a couple hours of work a week when your only line is "Its for the good of society!".

But everyone is "society". You are, your friends are, your parents are, your cousins, relatives, anyone you can think of are all part of "society". Humans are social creatures who to a great degree define themselves by who they know. When undergoing technical training is obviously, unquestionably for the good of society then people are going to want to do that. It's not a small thing. What makes "It's for the good of society!" an effective piece of mockery is when it's said in reference to something that's actually pointless or only of benefit to a very small group. So using it in cases where it's true and not just a line doesn't work. You're talking about a scenario in which people are fed, clothed and housed, treated for illnesses and accidents, have plenty of spare time and where the only work that exists to do is crucial to supporting the system, and forbidding people from using that as an argument for why the system should be continued.

Again. Most people are not going to think that way. They're only thinking about "How does this benefit me?". And undergoing this vast difficult technical training is not going to have tangible personal benefits for them from their perspective. They're not going to care that it all fits together in this vast machine. All they are going to see is that this is taking away from their leisure time.

They may understand on an intellectual level that it all does work together, but they're not going to be able to see or touch or taste it on a personal level. Thats why people will work for 8 hours a day 5 days a week in the current capitalist system, because they get a tangible payout for those 40 hours a week. They get a paycheck that they use to buy food, shelter, clothing, leisure, etc.. This robot centered Utopia provides no such direct payout. They'll get no paycheck for fixing the robots. They'll just get the same benefits that they would have gotten had they not done anything to the robots. They'll see their neighbor who failed the robot repair exams who never has to go fix robots, but still reaps the benefits.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
How are you going to sell the idea that everybody should go through a bunch of technical schooling to perform a couple hours of work a week when your only line is "Its for the good of society!".

But everyone is "society". You are, your friends are, your parents are, your cousins, relatives, anyone you can think of are all part of "society". Humans are social creatures who to a great degree define themselves by who they know. When undergoing technical training is obviously, unquestionably for the good of society then people are going to want to do that. It's not a small thing. What makes "It's for the good of society!" an effective piece of mockery is when it's said in reference to something that's actually pointless or only of benefit to a very small group. So using it in cases where it's true and not just a line doesn't work. You're talking about a scenario in which people are fed, clothed and housed, treated for illnesses and accidents, have plenty of spare time and where the only work that exists to do is crucial to supporting the system, and forbidding people from using that as an argument for why the system should be continued.

Again. Most people are not going to think that way. They're only thinking about "How does this benefit me?". And undergoing this vast difficult technical training is not going to have tangible personal benefits for them from their perspective. They're not going to care that it all fits together in this vast machine. All they are going to see is that this is taking away from their leisure time.

They may understand on an intellectual level that it all does work together, but they're not going to be able to see or touch or taste it on a personal level. Thats why people will work for 8 hours a day 5 days a week in the current capitalist system, because they get a tangible payout for those 40 hours a week. They get a paycheck that they use to buy food, shelter, clothing, leisure, etc.. This robot centered Utopia provides no such direct payout. They'll get no paycheck for fixing the robots. They'll just get the same benefits that they would have gotten had they not done anything to the robots. They'll see their neighbor who failed the robot repair exams who never has to go fix robots, but still reaps the benefits.

Frankly in such a society i bet 99% of the robots could fix each other without human interference. I'd imagine that you would not have to do much and could fill the gap with volunteers.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
How are you going to sell the idea that everybody should go through a bunch of technical schooling to perform a couple hours of work a week when your only line is "Its for the good of society!".

But everyone is "society". You are, your friends are, your parents are, your cousins, relatives, anyone you can think of are all part of "society". Humans are social creatures who to a great degree define themselves by who they know. When undergoing technical training is obviously, unquestionably for the good of society then people are going to want to do that. It's not a small thing. What makes "It's for the good of society!" an effective piece of mockery is when it's said in reference to something that's actually pointless or only of benefit to a very small group. So using it in cases where it's true and not just a line doesn't work. You're talking about a scenario in which people are fed, clothed and housed, treated for illnesses and accidents, have plenty of spare time and where the only work that exists to do is crucial to supporting the system, and forbidding people from using that as an argument for why the system should be continued.

Again. Most people are not going to think that way. They're only thinking about "How does this benefit me?". And undergoing this vast difficult technical training is not going to have tangible personal benefits for them from their perspective. They're not going to care that it all fits together in this vast machine. All they are going to see is that this is taking away from their leisure time.

They may understand on an intellectual level that it all does work together, but they're not going to be able to see or touch or taste it on a personal level. Thats why people will work for 8 hours a day 5 days a week in the current capitalist system, because they get a tangible payout for those 40 hours a week. They get a paycheck that they use to buy food, shelter, clothing, leisure, etc.. This robot centered Utopia provides no such direct payout. They'll get no paycheck for fixing the robots. They'll just get the same benefits that they would have gotten had they not done anything to the robots. They'll see their neighbor who failed the robot repair exams who never has to go fix robots, but still reaps the benefits.

Frankly in such a society i bet 99% of the robots could fix each other without human interference. I'd imagine that you would not have to do much and could fill the gap with volunteers.

And what happens when you end up with not enough volunteers? Or not enough people who volunteer have the necessary technical skill to do the repairs?

Are you going to force people at gunpoint to fix the robots? Whose holding the guns anyway? If you need these people's skills so badly, you can't afford to actually carry out your threat of shooting them, because then nobody will know how to fix them. And then we end up with a post-apocalyptic scenario real quick.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Again. Most people are not going to think that way. They're only thinking about "How does this benefit me?". And undergoing this vast difficult technical training is not going to have tangible personal benefits for them from their perspective. They're not going to care that it all fits together in this vast machine. All they are going to see is that this is taking away from their leisure time.

The mistake you're making here is that you're assuming that the most myopic possible American is the baseline for all human behaviour.

 Grey Templar wrote:
They'll see their neighbor who failed the robot repair exams who never has to go fix robots, but still reaps the benefits.

I posit that this will not be a problem, because while they don't have to go fix robots they don't get to go fix robots.

 Grey Templar wrote:
and heavily automated production is banned so that humans can still have jobs

IOW, a totalitarian state is given full control over the entire economy, micromanaging every detail of production according to some arbitrary standard of "too much automation" and companies are required to hire redundant workers as a service to society rather than because they are required for an optimal business plan. That might not be socialism, but only because you're talking about a Soviet-style planned economy instead of a modern socialist democracy.

You also know damn well that people wanting to return to the 1950s are not including the tax rates in that desire.

Well yes, I know that it's primarily about wanting to return to an era when racism was socially acceptable, it's just funny to see people complain about how high our taxes are when they're as low as they've been in the past 100 years.

 Ketara wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Robots do not suffer from such a limit, they can be improved indefinitely.

I think this is a fun area to explore and very relevant to this thread. We hear many statements along the lines of the above; but what evidence are they based upon? How can we test their veracity?

We have a rough idea of how productivity is improving:

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2018/06/23/the-gap-between-wages-and-productivity/

Sure, productivity might theoretically instantly stop increasing at any point in the future but maybe we should worry about it once there are actual indicators of that happening? As it is now we have all kinds of technological improvements (all the time and in all kinds of industries) that are slowly but steadily making humanity overall more productive even if you can't see an instantly double digit increase in productivity in any one factory.

All that additional value that was created with that productivity could be funnelled into taxes and social services, safety nets, higher wages, less working hours, or any other similar feature but what we got instead is ever increasing wealth inequality. If you are not already rich then you should be asking for higher taxes so that at least some of that wealth that was created in the last decades from the increase in productivity ends up in your hands at some point and doesn't just flow upwards. If the rich had to do it all on their own (without you working for them) then their increase in productivity as individuals wouldn't be worth billions. Why give most of your increased productivity to the already rich? That's not in your interest.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
and heavily automated production is banned so that humans can still have jobs

IOW, a totalitarian state is given full control over the entire economy, micromanaging every detail of production according to some arbitrary standard of "too much automation" and companies are required to hire redundant workers as a service to society rather than because they are required for an optimal business plan. That might not be socialism, but only because you're talking about a Soviet-style planned economy instead of a modern socialist democracy.

Nothing about limiting automation requires a totalitarian regime or a planned economy. It just requires a regulatory organization which enforces standards regarding how much a process can be automated. It could even be a relatively simple set of guidelines. Such as "At least X% of your machinery has to be incapable of doing anything without human input". No requirements about how many humans you need to have, just requirements that you have X% of your equipment be non-automated.

You can still have a mostly capitalist system with this type of regulation. Heck, we have regulations today that are far more invasive and strict than this in other areas.

 Ketara wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Robots do not suffer from such a limit, they can be improved indefinitely.

I think this is a fun area to explore and very relevant to this thread. We hear many statements along the lines of the above; but what evidence are they based upon? How can we test their veracity?

There is this general assumption that mechanisation and robotics will continue to improve continually and endlessly; that it will become ever more intelligent/capable, that new innovations will carry on spitting out fresh new components which do the jobs of the older ones marginally better ad infinitum.

But.....says who? How do we not know that there we aren't heading towards a 'hard limit' beyond which we won't be able to improve the processors of computers? Why do we assume that there's a code we'll be able to devise which will mimic sentience sufficiently well to replace people? Where does this unbridled faith in the apparently infinite potential of technology to achieve absolutely anything come from?

The fact that we've managed to innovate as far as we have is really no guarantee of anything at all. Thinking critically/logically, there must be an end point at which we cannot proceed any further, after all. Where there are no more large discoveries to be made, no great advances in material sciences and engineering left to occur. Why do we presume that this 'hard limit' is going to be at the level of some sort of post-scarcity society? And not say, a hundred years from now?

People in the West in this day and age are raised with the unquestioned assumption that because technology has changed our lives so radically and quickly in comparison to those of our immediate ancestors; that it will continue to do so indefinitely. It's virtually a faith at this point. 'Donate some money, and we can beat -medical condition here- forever'. But...can we? Is it possible that there are diseases we can suffer from which no technology will ever fix? A degree of sentience no machine will ever mimic? Engineering challenges that will forever be out of our reach to execute?

As a corollary; what would that mean for society once we hit that 'hard limit'?

The flip side of this way of thinking is something called "technological singularity" - if you combine unlimited potential to improve with exponential growth you basically reach a limit of our current comprehension of possible progress in matters of (low) decades. But there are actually no examples of unlimited exponential growth anywhere in nature and every exponential growth period ultimately ends up in a spectacular collapse. Just something to chew on as a side dish to the socialism vs capitalism back and forth that goes on in this thread at the moment.

I think we would continue the transition to a very heavy service related economy much like what the US already has.

People will look more toward health care, education, the arts, and research and development. At this point I would be skeptical that robots would generate original thought to invent or innovate new concepts and designs.

More or less I foresee robots working along side humans to provide both the muscle and database without the creative design or imagination. The amount of factory jobs vs service jobs are already skewed in developed countries as it is.

Just a few opinions.

Obviously Socialism is the idealistic future of mankind.

If we are to continue progressing as a race, some point In the future, we will have to swap over to a socialistic system completely.


This requires a few things for it to feasibly work however.

A. You need some form of non-corruptible government. Most likely in the form of an AI far in the future after we mostly kill ourselves off.

B. A dire reason for everyone to get along. Extinction level event in which we must all cooperate or be no more.

C. A reduction in, or at least a controllable amount, of the human population. This can be done in a few ways (either having smaller self-sustained communities who never leave their communities, or in the case of space travel, fleets consisting of only so much space).




Until we get to this point, Capatilism will still be the "best" way to promote growth in our race, since we are all (i.e. 95%) all greedy humans.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
and heavily automated production is banned so that humans can still have jobs

IOW, a totalitarian state is given full control over the entire economy, micromanaging every detail of production according to some arbitrary standard of "too much automation" and companies are required to hire redundant workers as a service to society rather than because they are required for an optimal business plan. That might not be socialism, but only because you're talking about a Soviet-style planned economy instead of a modern socialist democracy.

Nothing about limiting automation requires a totalitarian regime or a planned economy. It just requires a regulatory organization which enforces standards regarding how much a process can be automated. It could even be a relatively simple set of guidelines. Such as "At least X% of your machinery has to be incapable of doing anything without human input". No requirements about how many humans you need to have, just requirements that you have X% of your equipment be non-automated.

You can still have a mostly capitalist system with this type of regulation. Heck, we have regulations today that are far more invasive and strict than this in other areas.

You absolutely end up with a Soviet economy because your terms are so vague and varied across manufacturing processes. You have to define "automation", "human input", etc, for every single factory and business. Otherwise what is stopping me from, for example, having the human input be one person once per day pressing the start button? To deal with that sort of thing you have to have Soviet-level state control with a goal of maximizing employment over profit and efficiency.

Mario wrote:
Sure, productivity might theoretically instantly stop increasing at any point in the future but maybe we should worry about it once there are actual indicators of that happening?

If you think I'm discussing productivity, there's been a communication failure. I'm not talking about an ability to extract more milk with less moo. I'm talking about the point at which technological improvements and innovation slow down because we've reached the capacity of what we are physically capable of creating on our plane of existence.

Think of it in terms of the space elevator concept (which me and Perry bandied about in the last space thread). Although we have a material now which is technically physically capable of constructing it, the fact that an atom out of place reduces the strength sufficiently to destroy its viability as a space elevator renders it impractical. We briefly discussed how we'd need to wait for another more suitable material to be developed; but that's the crux. What if it never is developed? What if there's no amazing new scientific breakthrough that is physically possible which gives us the material we need of sufficient tensile strength, because no such material exists or ever could? The space elevator becomes impossible, forever.

In the field of robotics alternatively, we assume that we'll be able to program a robot capable of taking over every job we can do at some stage. But what if robotics is fated to stumble in a decade or two, because there are no more substantial physical advances capable of being made in processor power? And that renders it impossible to make robots capable of replacing humans in the workplace en masse in the way imagined elsewhere in this thread?

Everyone is sitting here assuming that human ingenuity will continue to magically conjure up ever better and more efficient alternatives to present technology, but we have absolutely no idea just how many remain. Everyone is just making assumptions about how much further we can go. It could be we have another thousand years of continual innovation before we hit that 'hard limit', or a hundred. And nobody really knows whether 'pseudo-sentient multifaceted robots which can replace everyone's jobs' are ultimately going to be within the boundaries of 'what is physically possible'.

nou wrote:
The flip side of this way of thinking is something called "technological singularity" - if you combine unlimited potential to improve with exponential growth you basically reach a limit of our current comprehension of possible progress in matters of (low) decades. But there are actually no examples of unlimited exponential growth anywhere in nature and every exponential growth period ultimately ends up in a spectacular collapse. Just something to chew on as a side dish to the socialism vs capitalism back and forth that goes on in this thread at the moment.

The logical corollary of the 'no examples' argument would be that we're aware of no other species that has learnt to manipulate their physical environment in the same way we have. Our rate of technical progress and scientific understanding has increased more in the last fifty years than in the hundred before it, and that hundred moved far far faster than the two hundred before that.

If we keep speeding up at this rate, who knows? We might hit our 'hard limit' of what there is to discover within a century or two. In the field of material sciences, for example, there's only a finite number of elements and ways of combining them at the end of the day. Which means the fact that a 'hard limit' exists is a mathematical certainty. Who can say how close to it we are?

 Ketara wrote:

nou wrote:
The flip side of this way of thinking is something called "technological singularity" - if you combine unlimited potential to improve with exponential growth you basically reach a limit of our current comprehension of possible progress in matters of (low) decades. But there are actually no examples of unlimited exponential growth anywhere in nature and every exponential growth period ultimately ends up in a spectacular collapse. Just something to chew on as a side dish to the socialism vs capitalism back and forth that goes on in this thread at the moment.

The logical corollary of the 'no examples' argument would be that we're aware of no other species that has learnt to manipulate their physical environment in the same way we have. Our rate of technical progress and scientific understanding has increased more in the last fifty years than in the hundred before it, and that hundred moved far far faster than the two hundred before that.

If we keep speeding up at this rate, who knows? We might hit our 'hard limit' of what there is to discover within a century or two. In the field of material sciences, for example, there's only a finite number of elements and ways of combining them at the end of the day. Which means the fact that a 'hard limit' exists is a mathematical certainty. Who can say how close to it we are?

Our rate of progress is the exponential part. The part of exceeding our comprehension comes from the very nature of exponential functions - at some point they progress so fast, that they are practically vertical. We cannot fathom a reality in which human knowledge doubles daily or on per hour basis and that is a logical conclusion of ever speeding progress that already doubles every 15 years. That is why I fundamentally agree with you - there always exist some hard limit for exponential growth. And I'm not talking only about biological species - we do not know about any instances of endless exponential growth - even cosmological inflation had an end to it. The last perfect illustration of how exponential growth leads to inevitable collapse is last years Bitcoin bubble. The only way to go past the exponential era unharmed is if it slows down to some kind of asymptotic growth.

Grey Templar wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

European Thought Police? What the Hell? In what kind of world are you living?

You should try coming back to reality. It is far from perfect but it seems to be a nicer place than wherever you find yourself currently.

People in England have literally been arrested for just stating their opinions on Facebook. They may be despicable opinions, but they should be allowed to have them.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/uk-politics-uncovered/uk-police-arrest-man-for-offensive-facebook-post-about-migrants/890222007758302/

That is Thought Police.

Scotland. Not England. And an article lifted from Breitbart that doesn't follow up on anything that happened. Top evidence!

Additionally, using England (or even Scotland, which is closer) as an example of a socialist could only be made by someone who thinks that the US is any kind of baseline.

Grey Templar wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
How are you going to sell the idea that everybody should go through a bunch of technical schooling to perform a couple hours of work a week when your only line is "Its for the good of society!".

But everyone is "society". You are, your friends are, your parents are, your cousins, relatives, anyone you can think of are all part of "society". Humans are social creatures who to a great degree define themselves by who they know. When undergoing technical training is obviously, unquestionably for the good of society then people are going to want to do that. It's not a small thing. What makes "It's for the good of society!" an effective piece of mockery is when it's said in reference to something that's actually pointless or only of benefit to a very small group. So using it in cases where it's true and not just a line doesn't work. You're talking about a scenario in which people are fed, clothed and housed, treated for illnesses and accidents, have plenty of spare time and where the only work that exists to do is crucial to supporting the system, and forbidding people from using that as an argument for why the system should be continued.

Again. Most people are not going to think that way. They're only thinking about "How does this benefit me?".

Evidence?

Grey Templar wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
and heavily automated production is banned so that humans can still have jobs

IOW, a totalitarian state is given full control over the entire economy, micromanaging every detail of production according to some arbitrary standard of "too much automation" and companies are required to hire redundant workers as a service to society rather than because they are required for an optimal business plan. That might not be socialism, but only because you're talking about a Soviet-style planned economy instead of a modern socialist democracy.

Nothing about limiting automation requires a totalitarian regime or a planned economy. It just requires a regulatory organization which enforces standards regarding how much a process can be automated. It could even be a relatively simple set of guidelines. Such as "At least X% of your machinery has to be incapable of doing anything without human input". No requirements about how many humans you need to have, just requirements that you have X% of your equipment be non-automated.

 Ketara wrote:
In the field of robotics alternatively, we assume that we'll be able to program a robot capable of taking over every job we can do at some stage. But what if robotics is fated to stumble in a decade or two, because there are no more substantial physical advances capable of being made in processor power? And that renders it impossible to make robots capable of replacing humans in the workplace en masse in the way imagined elsewhere in this thread?

The difference is that, unlike the space elevator case, we're talking about incremental improvements to existing technology rather than speculating about something we don't even know is possible. Again, looking at the company I work at mass replacement of humans isn't that far off. We know we can build a robot that is capable of removing parts from a machine and moving them to the next one, it's just currently cheaper to hire a minimum-wage unskilled temp worker to do it. So all we need for those people to be replaced is for the well-established trend of current technology becoming cheaper over time to continue. Once the existing robot becomes cheap enough (or the humans become more expensive via, say, increasing the minimum wage) those jobs are gone forever. Same thing with a lot of other situations, the job is doing routine processes of the sort that robots are good at and the only obstacle is waiting for the price to come down a bit more.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

European Thought Police? What the Hell? In what kind of world are you living?

You should try coming back to reality. It is far from perfect but it seems to be a nicer place than wherever you find yourself currently.

People in England have literally been arrested for just stating their opinions on Facebook. They may be despicable opinions, but they should be allowed to have them.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/uk-politics-uncovered/uk-police-arrest-man-for-offensive-facebook-post-about-migrants/890222007758302/

That is Thought Police.

There is a difference between having an opinion and stating an opinion.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There is a difference between having an opinion and stating an opinion.

And an even bigger difference between stating an opinion and posting threats/hate speech/etc. I don't think it's at all a coincidence that the article (from a 100% unbiased and objective source) doesn't post the original content so we can evaluate whether or not it should have been shut down. For all we know it could have been " these immigrants, we need to kill all of the s" and the police were 100% justified in arresting the person who posted it.

 Peregrine wrote:

The difference is that, unlike the space elevator case, we're talking about incremental improvements to existing technology rather than speculating about something we don't even know is possible.

Are we? Perhaps you specifically were (without re-reading the thread I couldn't say); but the overall premise of the thread is robots taking 'ALL' the jobs. Not just some. The lot. And it's that concept (or anything close to it) that I'm addressing here.

I think we can both agree that robots being able to perform any and every function better than a human can do for cheaper is far beyond a mere re-application of existing technologies. Incremental advances and refinements only take you so far. It would require extremely considerable advances; both from a knowledge perspective and a material sciences one. Certainly farmoreso than the question of the space elevator (which really isn't that far away as compared to previous jumps in material sciences over the last two centuries).

nou wrote:Our rate of progress is the exponential part. The part of exceeding our comprehension comes from the very nature of exponential functions - at some point they progress so fast, that they are practically vertical. We cannot fathom a reality in which human knowledge doubles daily or on per hour basis and that is a logical conclusion of ever speeding progress that already doubles every 15 years. That is why I fundamentally agree with you - there always exist some hard limit for exponential growth. And I'm not talking only about biological species - we do not know about any instances of endless exponential growth - even cosmological inflation had an end to it. The last perfect illustration of how exponential growth leads to inevitable collapse is last years Bitcoin bubble. The only way to go past the exponential era unharmed is if it slows down to some kind of asymptotic growth.

So what do you imagine would be the logical consequence of it in the field of technology (in the broader academic sense)? Speculating broadly, there would inevitably be a levelling off as actual invention gave way more to innovation (it will take some time to re-consider/refine everything from several angles and squeeze every last bit of knowledge juice and utility from discoveries made). But what does it mean for society when it hits?

The improvements don't even have to be incremental.

IBM have this week unveiled the System One Q, a commercially available (eventually) quantum computer.

It's in a 9' tall glass cabinet, it needs a lot of space much like early conventional computers, but if the development of quantum follows the evolution of binary, we could be seeing home machines, and then handheld devices as normal before the next century.

Once that tech becomes more robust and portable, AI and robots will make a massive (quantum?) leap forwards.