Hacker News Reader

Comment by shshshsbe | Hacker News Reader

I know it’s tough, but I am not a fan of elitism. Mathematics is no different from all other branches which themselves are just intellectual labor which is again just a special type of labor. There is nothing magical about it and if computers can trivialize it, so be it.

Where were all the mathematicians and academics in general when “regular joe” was automated? Now it’s hitting close to home and their foreheads are starting to get sweaty. I’d say let them. Tough luck. Make mathematics as “cheap” as possible. Nobody owes them any favors.

Let’s commoditize “being smart” and let go of arbitrary divisions between us.

View on HN

I'd prefer the reverse approach. Let's value the "regular Joe" instead of cheapening everyone.

Yes, but in practice that doesn’t happen. Again, I did not hear a loud protest against automation of all types of labor from the intelligentsia in the past.

In practice automation is great, as long as it doesn’t hit “the ones that matter” (a label which they themselves assign). I find it very hard to not imagine the smallest, tiniest violin playing the saddest song for them.

Again, “respect for mathematicians” and “their work”.. please. Just produce results. That’s all that ever mattered and let’s not change the rules of the game just because they don’t suit you anymore.

Protests against automation, or for the restructuring of society to accommodate automation without causing suffering of laborers, etc, is literally one of the largest and most extensively discussed topics in modern history.

This is what the Ludites were trying to accomplish with an (armed) uprising.

Go back 100 years and 15 percent of the population was "Farmer", and 30 percent were in some sort of "domestic" work.

Most modern jobs are a product of the fact that technology continues to advance. And by all measures it does not look like "ai" is going to change that.

If everybody is "valued", nobody is.

The concept of value implies exclusivity by design.

that's an incredibly narrow view of what's happening.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com