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Comment by latexr | Hacker News Reader

Other replies have pointed out this is the type of task we could automate, but I’ll assume you’ve taken (what I consider to be) a valid retort into consideration: Yes, we could automate it but machines break and the last option in fixing is always to send in humans, even if just to manually operate other machines to unlock what stopped the automation. Thus jobs.

I don’t know if it would be societally possible to have those people without jobs, but I believe it could happen. Think how many of us love to tinker with and improve complex system for the hell of it (open-source), and would welcome doing more of it for free if only we didn’t have an obligation (a job) which takes us away from it. Even when no one needs to work, many will choose to.

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> Think how many of us would love to tinker with and improve complex system for the hell of it (open-source), and would welcome doing more of it for free if only we didn’t have an obligation (a job) which takes us away from it.

How often are you fixing Wordpress sites where people have been using WYSIWYG editors and now all the content is full of crazy HTML and someone ran a bunch of search and replace with wrong regexps and it's just a terrible mess and someone needs to sort it out and that someone needs to know HTML and JS and they need to be focused on the task at hand to make sure they don't delete something that was supposed to be kept.

In other words: there's a world of work out there and nobody loves to tinker with that because it's not "improving complex systems", it's robbing through the sewers with a plunger. I doubt that you'll find plenty of volunteers for that.

The "we'll automate everything" approach is pretty boring in my opinion: we're nowhere close, yet people are talking about it as if it was a thing that's happening until 2030 and we need to be prepared for the societal consequences of it and we need to make changes now (surprisingly, it's always those changes they intuitively like that we desperately need to enact, otherwise everything will be automated and we'll all starve). Let's talk about that when we can actually see it on the horizon.

If I didn't need to worry about basic necessities (including medical care) I would absolutely volunteer to do these sorts of things.

Do you need to worry about necessities, is total compensation not enough to live on?

I don't see that happening for significant amounts of people. Nobody in Western Europe has to worry about necessities (for a reasonable definition of necessities, if it includes vacations and cars, then this isn't so), yet we don't see the unemployed get super productive and use their free time and energy. Instead, we usually see them degenerate, watch TV all day and slowly wither away. At the same time, it's people with jobs who make the extra time to volunteer and do things.

> we're nowhere close

I agree. If we ever see it, I doubt it will be in my lifetime.

> Let's talk about that when we can actually see it on the horizon.

Being far away in the future or impossible shouldn’t stop us from thinking about it. That’s what science fiction is. Imagining what might be can help us understand the present, and talking about it opens the possibility of listening to other opinions and refine our own.

Sure, but that's a discussion similar to "what happens when the sun has finally run out of juice and it gets dark forever": potentially entertaining, probably highly interesting to academics, but hopefully not weighing in too much on our energy policy for this century.

I don't think "what if we automate everything" helps us understand the present any more than "what if energy was unlimited" or "what if gravity was a social construct": they aren't, so if you're looking to base a decision on that being differently, you're going to be in for a wild ride, and if you're looking for answers to questions like "do all people want to work?", "is all work equally liked?" etc, I'm not sure what insight is to be gained, the answers are "No."

> I don't think "what if we automate everything" helps us understand the present any more than "what if energy was unlimited"

When you imagine the future societal transformation of a particular development, you do so under your understanding of the current zeitgeist. Again, that’s what science fiction is. It helps you formulate your thoughts on the current state of affairs and compare them to what others think.

I’m under no illusion that commenting on an admittedly science fictional scenario on a random web forum will enact societal change. Were I a politician making those points in public, you’d do well to call me out. But I’m not. I’m a random poster on a random website musing on an imagined scenario.

> potentially entertaining

In other words, that’s what I’m doing it for and I see nothing wrong with it. As far as I’m aware I’m not causing harm.

> I'm not sure what insight is to be gained

Respectfully, because you cannot see it does not mean it is not there. Even the simple act of enjoying a conversation is a beneficial outcome. Maybe it will be helpful in the future, maybe it will not, but I don’t think we should only converse when we have a goal in mind. That would be a boring existence.

There are people who literally simulate the entire air traffic control system for fun, so it's not hard to believe someone would want to work on sewer cleaning robots as a hobby.

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