"It's terrible, my father lost the job he had for decades. He was replaced by a clever mechanical gizmo just six inches long. And then my mom got one."
It plays on the fear of being emasculated by technology. Maybe that leads us to exaggerate the threat.
Automation is rapidly accelerating into the wall that is identity beliefs at scale, and there is evidence that these belief systems are fairly rigid, making adaption to change challenging to say the least.
The revolution won't be the automation. It'll be in us accepting that the job wasn't who we were/are and it's okay to let it go (caveat systems are in place to ensure quality of life is provided for at an agreed upon floor). It's just a job.
This helps very much at code review and performance review times.
Twenty years ago I had a friend who was a social worker and I offhand mentioned to her that "well, I'm not my job." She stared at me as if I had two heads and then said, slowly, "I completely agree with you, but you have no idea how rare it is to hear a man say that."
I enjoy my job and I'm happy to do it, but it in no way defines who I am for more than the 8-or-so hours per day I spend at it. The thing is, making your work your identity is almost central to the American male experience, and I doubt that's going away any time soon.
I guess you're in good company :-)
I envy your work-life balance %)
facepalm
In addition to automation, I fear there are a lot of bullshit jobs out there right now that people cannot see as their purpose; it's a job, they take it because they need to make money, and because there isn't a living to be made in what they themselves are passionate about.
There's a LOT of people who would love to make a living in the arts - writing, drawing, etc - but there's just not enough money in it because people aren't willing to actually pay for it, so they have to move their passion to a hobby while working a dead-end job where they are just a number in a payroll system - i.e. they are replaceable. McJobs, if you want.
This is perhaps the only thing socialism got right. At least the flavor we had in Yugoslavia and the remnants it left on the psyche of my parent's generation.
You do your job, then you go home and live your actual life. The job exists as a way to "pay your dues" in society, but it isn't your life. Your life is home, family, the house you're building, maybe a little side business. That sort of thing.
My generation growing up in the 90's and 00's tossed that away and went full american. Hustle hustle. Doing your job is not enough. You must love your job or you are a failure.
We have more prosperity and I sometimes wonder if our parents didn't have more life.
When I was younger and naive, I judged the Amish. As I've grown older and wiser, I realize they had the right idea all along. Family, loved ones, community first. Everything else serves those.
So... its probably not all just "friends and family values" in the Amish world. Despite a luddite-based culture and "technically" an 8th grade education, they're probably one of the hardest working people around.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/06...
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They just figured out where to focus their business chops. Organic foods, hand-crafted customized furniture, etc. etc. And the Amish have a huge reputation as among the best craftsmen and freshest foods for these sorts of things.
Their sense of community probably also helps keep the various Amish businesses alive since they help each other so much.
This inherently makes them immune to the majority of the downsides we see in today's tech such as addictive patterns, advertising or "broken by design" tools as they would just not become accepted in the community to begin with.
Given the current, often user-hostile state of technology I think this is an example we should at least consider.
How does anyone have time to have an actual life outside work?
Where America still shines is you can for the most part still go with either mindset as you prefer. Even in SV tech where there's so much "dream job" this and other such talk, BigCos are nevertheless packed full of employees for whom it's just a job. But there are the occasional rather devoted employees who put in much more than 40 hours (not to mention the fudgey to account for time where you're thinking about work topics in the shower, at dinner, before bed...) and that's fine, it can make a nice mix. Now if you start down the socialist path of promoting a universal policy, and there are many (like limiting work hours) that could support making things easier for the just-a-job mentality, what you're actually doing is eliminating an option people prefer, and a huge source of innovation along with it.
My point was that people are competitive, social animals and social status is very important; sure, communism castrated a lot of those impulses and some people claim they were much happier back then, but its mostly bullshit nostalgia.
I was very young back then, but I remember the deprivations, my kindergarten educator slapping me for not applauding "dear leader", my parents just leaving me alone in the flat because they had to go the communist parades, being lectured in kindergarden how my parents jobs(doctors) were in fact less important than the jobs of other coleagues worker-parents jobs who "perhaps" made the syringes my parents could not do without; I remember people having to work on saturdays, night shifts and so on.
Now this is different in other parts of Germany, but it's an interesting natural experiment, because these guys were literally in the same city.
"Money doesn't buy happiness" refers to happiness, which is not simply the lack of sadness.
It means that once all the typical material needs are provided, simply having more money does not make people visibly HAPPY all the time, and most people tend to focus on other goals.
This has been proven again and again by scientific research.
If you are from Romania, as I assume from your username, the experience of socialism there, or other Eastern Bloc countries, does not even compare.
Meanwhile the country still does the same in international rankings as it did during the time of our dear leader. However more of the egalitarianism we had disappeared, and while some enjoy some semblance of prosperity in the heart of the major cities, the bulk of the nation has no job security and no future prospect but to be a cheap labor source for the west.
> we will all have the dignified life of middle class westerners
What a sad irony. If he was a highschool teacher in the US as now he could be struggling to pay rent and medical bills and get more or less the same "respect".
Striking a balance between the two is subtle I suppose.
In a society where "you are your job" you already have huge problems even if there is full employment.
And memes like the dignity of labor, the just world fallacy (that wealth and poverty have inherent moral dimensions) and welfare (or leftist/secular ideology) breeding laziness definitely have their basis in Christian influence. I've seen people quote the Bible directly ("If a man will not work, he shall not eat") when criticizing UBI.
The just world fallacy in particular is going to hit people hard. People who believe society owes them safety, stability, a job and a living wage simply because they worked hard and obeyed the law are going to be hit with a rude awakening when they realize how capitalism actually works.
Opposition to UBI (as well as healthcare for all, proper schooling for all, nutritional food for all, etc) is about not wanting to pay higher taxes and maintaining a competitive edge in being able to obtain resources over others in society (or the world).
Those with more wealth (or who think they are capable of gaining more wealth) want to prevent others from having it, predictably.
Removing tax advantages of healthcare from employers? Oppose.
Removing exempt status or even raising the minimum salary under which an employer has to pay overtime? Oppose.
Lowering the cost of education? Oppose.
Parental or sick leave? Oppose.
Outlawing non competes? Oppose.
There's always some reason, which I believe to be a façade. The consistency and fervor with which they do not want labor to gain negotiating power is revealing. And, of course, always in support of tax cuts.
Edit: I'm not supportive of the first group because the policies as stated are wishes, not actual policies. For example, any real healthcare for all solution has to have a plan for dealing with the millions of people who are employed by the current healthcare system (which admittedly sucks) and who will be replaced by a new one. Similarly for UBI. It requires completely overhauling massive federal and state bureaucracies that have a lot of power.
I agree with you that many people who are against those things are they way you're describing, but many are not as well.
The big ideas seem like wishes, but I think it’s completely doable. But a sizeable portion of the population opposes even the baby steps I listed, and I can’t deduce any reason other than they like to imagine themselves in the owner class and want to keep down labor.
Mark Miller
Sally Baker
etc...
There are, and has been, hundreds of different cultures. Some have similarities, some are profoundly different.
(I'm not trying to dismiss your whole point: I agree with everything else you wrote)
These cultures didn't emerge from a vacuum completely in isolation from one another. Their similarities and commonalities are what form the basis for these categories, broad though they may be.
It's about stability. You carved a nice spot where you found joy and financial ... well .. stability. And now your life might go to the toilet. There's no guarantee that your next job will be
1. Fulfilling in itself
2. Provide the same income
3. Provide the same secondary benefits (colleagues, hours, boss, etc)
And.. automation is not even a guarantee that what your were producing is gonna improve (lots of chances it may but it can go the other way too: cheap commoditization)
> 1. Fulfilling in itself
> 2. Provide the same income
>3. Provide the same secondary benefits (colleagues, hours, boss, etc)
Given how the job market is trending in favour of uber/postmates-style gig work (for people who aren't working in specific skilled trades) , I'd say it is guaranteed to be worse in all three aspects.
"This summer, Elon Musk spoke to the National Governors Association and told them that “AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.” Doomsayers have been issuing similar warnings for some time, but never before have they commanded so much visibility.[...]AI redesigns itself to be more effective, it might decide that the best way to maximize its output would be to destroy civilization and convert the entire surface of the Earth into strawberry fields"[...]
"This scenario sounds absurd to most people, yet there are a surprising number of technologists who think it illustrates a real danger. Why? Perhaps it’s because they’re already accustomed to entities that operate this way: Silicon Valley tech companies."[...]
"The idea of superintelligence is such a poorly defined notion that one could envision it taking almost any form with equal justification: a benevolent genie that solves all the world’s problems, or a mathematician that spends all its time proving theorems so abstract that humans can’t even understand them. But when Silicon Valley tries to imagine superintelligence, what it comes up with is no-holds-barred capitalism."
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-dang...
The mistake here is the nature of capitalism. In reality, when you see a bunch of companies beginning to turn everything into "a field of strawberries", something is going extremely right. Why? Because capitalism is working based on needs, and it means it found a way to satisfy a very deep (or very wide) need. At the end of the long chain there are people that are more satisfied with their lives than before.
As for being afraid of this? Hogwash. In nature every exponential curve is the beginning of a logistics curve. And the more complex the system, earlier the curve flattens. If you burn a forest it'l taper only when it has nothing left to burn. If you try something similar in a human society, it will find blockers long before that.
And that's why we should be more afraid of AI - there is the chance (small, true) that to an AI our society is as uncomplicated as a dry forest, and the feedback mechanisms that hold us in place just don't apply to it.