Not buying it - we have specialization and professionalization in part to maintain quality of work. Everyone cannot be, and should not be, an artist.
Anyways, if no one had to work, most people would just do drugs.
And when people do have to work, they just alternate between drugs that make them better workers, and drugs that let them forget work.
Unless we change the blueprint in a massive way, we won't do well in a life of complete leisure.
But not if there's nothing to do at all.
Most of my sense of self comes from overcoming obstacles, and I'm sure a lot of people would agree with that sentiment. I'm all for automation and AI doing the grunt work, but I don't want to live in a zoo. We should take the benefits of automation and continue to struggle and exert ourselves, and seek out greater challenges than we could before. Automation as an escape from work? I'll pass.
Well, that's the status quo.
> Most of my sense of self comes from overcoming obstacles, and I'm sure a lot of people would agree with that sentiment. [...] Automation as an escape from work? I'll pass.
You would be welcome to work as much as you like, of course. Obstacles would be self-selected, not assigned by chance or force.
If you live in my hypothetical utopian society and truly feel that humanity must suffer so that you can derive meaning from "the struggle", you might have to emigrate to a polity of like-minded masochists.
People were saying the same things in the Edwardian era about progress solving all of life's problems. Then we started World War I to a large degree because people were bored and wanted stimulation. This is just another utopian prediction that won't come true.
The work we do is not arbitrary bullshit. Civilization takes work to maintain and grow.
I don't think there will be robots to do all the housework for everyone. And there are many areas in the world where it will just not be worth it to automate many things unless you have robots that are as cheap to make and run as humans, and want to exist there by their own right, and also behave like biological beings in the face of environmental influences (sea spray, I'm looking at you).
So take away the hard work in large-scale agriculture, production, research, medical care..., and you are still left with a large amount of things to do. Also, there is a lot that just gives satisfaction from doing it yourself, like making clothes, a house, or cooking. I don't have to make the best meal ever to find it worth it.
Though, I must say that I subscribe to the notion that creating AI will very likely be the last big impact we will have on history. We will just live while AI will thrive.
The people whose hobby is farming, building or something else of the sort would be quite able to keep doing that in a post-scarcity robot utopia (assuming we really get there). It would just not be something they do for commercial gain.
Why let them thrive uncontested? What's stopping us from using our own resources for self improvement of our mental facilities. I don't necessarily want to be a Jupiter Brain, I'd be willing to settle for a intergalactic iron man suit with brain enhancement, interfaces, or reworks.
True, but that might actually be the challenge. There's too much space out there.
I live in California. Let's say the Sun is a soccer ball right here next to me. Then the Earth is a large grain of sand a few meters away. Jupiter is a marble a few blocks down the road. Speed of light is like an ant running.
And the nearest star is another soccer ball way out in Greenland. Think about that for a second.
http://florin.myip.org/blog/i-had-no-idea-just-how-big-solar...
To get out of the confines of the solar system, we need some massive breakthrough. Probably entirely new physics.
I'm not saying we'll never make it. I'm saying the magnitude of the effort is enormous. In a sense, Sart Trek and Star Wars have done a disservice to space exploration by making it seem so easy.
The scales of energy, time, and complexity involved are colossal.
But if we have to go through intermediate point where 50% of humanity needs to be on the job to keep the lights on and the other 50% can live the life of leisure, how do we decide who's in which 50% without dangerous social upheavals?
[1] Assuming we don't kill ourselves or get sent back to the stone age with nuclear weapons or AI run amok.
1. https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/
2. http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/02/news/economy/sweden-6-hour-w...
An obvious first step is a basic income, paid for by military spending cuts and increase on corporate, capital gains and high earner taxes. This will show people that such an idea is sustainable, so they can prepare their mind for the coming utopia.