Comment by crimsonalucard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crimsonalucard | Hacker News Reader

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>I get that people don't like change, but trying to stand still in a moving world only hurts the people standing still.

Eventually the world will move so fast that all of us might as well be standing still.

The factory worker that this initiative affects is a just the first victim. He is a representation of the impending wave that is to consume all of us.

As the technology we create cannibalizes our jobs where does the world go from here? Many theorists talk about crazy things like universal basic income with machines as our servants. However, we all know that these theories rarely ever end up fitting the ideal fantasmical utopias we imagine. The future is unknown.

I feel remorse that people are losing their jobs and I sympathise with individuals taking measures to protect these people with 'job protection' or 'artificial job creation.' When technology inevitably cannibalizes your career, technology will be moving at such a horrifying velocity that no human, programmer, engineer, scientist technologist let alone a factory worker will be able to keep up. During this time not only would you want job protection, you'd be on your knees begging for it.

People have been making these predictions, that machines are going to take away all of our jobs, for 'literally' hundreds of years.

So, have those doomsday scenarios come true? Or, instead, is the world a much much better place because nobody is spending 80 hours a week working on a farm to feed themselves?

Dude. Those factory workers just lost their jobs. Machines literally took their jobs. It's not a prediction, the article literally said it happened.

>So, have those doomsday scenarios come true? Or, instead, is the world a much much better place because nobody is spending 80 hours a week working on a farm to feed themselves?

I'd say that technology has benefited society but has also widened the wealth inequality gap. Technology has benefited us but it is now harder to be employed in jobs that distribute wealth more evenly. My guess in what is to come with technology is that there will be a few mega rich elite people who own that technological real estate while almost everyone else works multiple menial jobs to barely get by.

These arguments don't seem to fit together.

On one hand, technological improvement has deprecated thousands of farm workers over hundreds of years, but you're making the argument that it's only happening now because some factory workers lost their jobs. People have been losing their jobs for a long time. Blacksmiths are very rare now a days, but were very common only a short while ago.

The second argument you make is that people will have to work multiple menial jobs to barely get by, yet you also state that menial jobs like factory work are going to be replaced by machines. If the jobs are replaced, nobody is going to be doing multiple menial jobs as those jobs won't exist.

There's only two options in such a doomsday scenario where all work is done by machines. Either humans will be given some kind of basic income, or the rich will get an army of machines and wipe out all the people they don't want. Or a combination of the two, such as humans given a basic income until the rich get tired of it and then build an army of machines to wipe everyone out.

By menial I mean jobs that can be taken over by machines but aren't. The sort of low paying job that's given out but not really needed. For example in china I once entered an empty restaurant and was waited on by by being encircled by 20 servers when in reality I only needed one. Sign spinners are a good example of this.

>There's only two options in such a doomsday scenario where all work is done by machines. Either humans will be given some kind of basic income, or the rich will get an army of machines and wipe out all the people they don't want. Or a combination of the two, such as humans given a basic income until the rich get tired of it and then build an army of machines to wipe everyone out.

I have to disagree with this. This is a speculative prediction at best, there is no way to narrow down the future into two possibilities given the multitude of possibilities that may occur.

Maybe this time it is different. Maybe the massive capabilities of modern robotics and AI are more transformative than the assembly line and sewing machines. Maybe our society isn't ready to handle mass unemployment from entire categories of jobs being eliminated.

Currently, I see a few ways this could go. One is the bright shiny utopia of robot servants and abundance for all. I don't think it's likely.

The other is a world that clings to jobs as long as it can. A society that demands its citizens' labor to pay for their own basic needs, even as more and more people are unable to cobble together enough part time work and benefits to support themselves. The desolate turn to drugs or suicide, perhaps rioting eventually. People demand industries be brought back, long past the point they're a viable career. Under debt and unemployment, the economy collapses.

I see a lot more political support for the latter.

There's also the possibility that new technology creates new jobs. That seems like wishful thinking to me. Do you think everyone will be AI programmers and robot engineers? I don't see that happening today...but I do see those old jobs being eliminated, right in that article.

Maybe this time IS different.

But if you want to assert that this time is different, there needs to exist evidence.

Such evidence should not be speculation. Such evidence should be things like "These quality of life metrics are going down, for these groups of people right NOW".

If this time is actually different, it should be measurable and provable, through quality of life or economic metrics.

But I don't think thats true. I think that society IS ready to handle the supposed "mass unemployment from entire categories of jobs being eliminated", as proven by the fact that it IS doing so, right now, because quality of life metrics aren't decreasing.

For example, the current us unemployment rate is around 4.1% (source: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=current+us+unemployment+rate)

I think a 4.1% unemployment rate pretty much proves that society is NOT devolving into a mass unemployment where robots take everyone's jobs.

Valid criticism. I posted emotionally. I will further educate myself on actual statistics and put together better edited and sourced posts in the future rather than knee jerk rebuttals. I appreciate you even using the repetition in calling me out, because that's a cheap rhetorical crutch I lean too heavily on.

At this time, I'm forced to admit you're right. The numbers I'm aware don't seem to currently show my bleak predictions of mass unemployment, so it's just a less rational gut-feeling type of belief that is unjustified of the weight I've assigned it. However, I still wanted to respond to this post (albeit a day late) because it was an effective and worthwhile callout. (LMGTFY is always a tad too harsh IMO, but your tone is 100% justified in context of my post's tone, and knocked some sense into me)

In my defense, I have avoided digging further into statistics because, well, if it's "different", can I even trust the numbers? But dammit, I try to be rational and justified. If I think unemployment numbers might be missing wider cases, I need to verify that. If I'm going to hold a belief that inspires strong emotion, there needs to be strong evidence. I can't just blithely imply that "oh no it may already be happening!!1"; I need to bring more to the table to discuss than emotion and rhetoric. Humbly, thanks.

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