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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011·

True, but of course not all minds are created equal. There is also the risk that they put those minds to work on something that is not so meaningful (e.g crime).

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If someone is a fucking idiot, still better to have them say, spend their time in an retirement home talking to and looking after elderly people, than it is to have them feeding groceries to a scanner as some kind of redundant biological link in a machine.

Not sure I would have wanted my late grandmother to be looked after by "a fucking idiot".

This is terrible attitude, and it greatly devalues necessary work. Yes, if you are an engineer, you see stocking grocery store shelves as a technical problem to be solved, but other folks look at it as a way to make a rather meager living. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone can do white collar labor for a reasonable middle class salary.

Don't get me wrong, I think some work certainly could be automated, but at the same time, we need to consider the human cost of automating that work. A glib response of "learn how to write specs" or referring to people that do some tasks as "fucking idiots" does very little to advance the conversation.

That's not my point at all.

I'm saying if someone can't do intellectual work, get them to do something that uses other skills. But let's make that something useful, rather than something we could automate away.

Then you have the problem of identifying what their skills are and also of balancing supply/demand.

I'm saying if someone can't do intellectual work

So anyone who can't do intellectual work is fucking idiot?

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