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I will believe that "AI will do all the work" when private prisons stop contracting inmates to do slave labor and employers stop hiring undocumented migrant workers.

Interesting bar.

Interesting way to say "never".

> I will believe that "AI will do all the work" when private prisons stop contracting inmates to do slave labor and employers stop hiring undocumented migrant workers.

The majority of the slave labor in prisons in the US make from nothing at all to 50 cents per hour.

The powers that be will still shamefully be exploiting that labor source long after AI/robots are capable of cheaply doing that work.

> If there is no longer a reason for people to live close together, decentralization is the most likely outcome.

Many people like living next to other people purely for social reasons.

why do you think a bot can't replace that, either?

given all of the issues with people getting attached to their online girlfriend -- it's already happening

Because the social issues happen at a more biological level, hormones and cell signaling and stuff. Robots are at a much higher level. Online girlfriends are cool, but as we all know, not a replacement for physical touch, intimacy, and relationship building. Your body doesn’t release oxytocin from cuddling with your cold computer.

Maybe we can eventually “trick” the human brain, but I think it will be much more challenging than people think. I would imagine if people even just knew someone was a robot, the jig is up. For most people. It wouldn’t be enough to create the perfect humanoid robot. We’d also have to make them hidden in plain sight. Full Ex Machina style.

Did you really mean to write really: "Online girlfriends are cool"

In my humble opinion, they are the epitome of uncool.

I mean cool as in “okay… I guess people can do that”. Not as in “wow that’s rad!” Like, neutral cool.

Wow, that's a different perspective. I should read more of your posts. For me the fact that 30% of men and 20% of women are not having intimacy is quite scary. I guess a revised edition of the book sextinction is in order.

I mean, the fact that relationships are falling apart is a big problem and I have A LOT to say about it. I just generally don't say too much about it, because it's a hard topic and you can't address it without bringing up the role of genderized socialization, the patriarchy, women's progress in the 20th century, the impact of the internet, the rise of the manosphere and similar toxic content, and more. It touches on virtually every aspect of human life, from biological, to social, to political, to technological.

I am also gay, so it's difficult for me to address these things because I completely reject the heteronormitive perspective. I basically believe all gender roles are dumb and should not exist, but generally straight people do not like to hear that. And, I can't blame them, because for them, they often don't have the option to reject gender norms. It's a mind field in the heterosexual dating world because everyone is forced to balance the new-age of gender progression mixed with millennia of gender norms and expectations. I do, however, think it will improve in time. We are very much still in the growing pains era.

I don't think so. At the first chance during COVID people started moving out of big cities. Most people don't need the city, they need a village. We are in cities due to jobs requiring us to be in big cities.

People moved out of the cities during COVID because close physical proximity to large numbers of strangers was a potentially deadly hazard to their health.

I don't think so, a lot of people were just happy that remote work is a thing now and ditched the city for a more comfortable life.

I strongly prefer home office. And also living in city. I get benefits of both that way.

> ...and ditched the city for a more comfortable life

It depends on what you mean by "comfortable."

A lot of people who moved to less populated areas found they weren't fully prepared to live with fewer amenities and choice in every aspect of life, from hospitals to supermarkets to mates.

There was a meaningful post-COVID return to cities and it wasn't driven exclusively by return to office mandates.

the two people i know who moved upstate from NYC have both independently moved back. i think the grass seemed extra green during the long tail of lockdown.

> If there is no longer a reason for people to live close together, decentralization is the most likely outcome.

There will obviously still be reasons for people to live close together: humans are social creatures, and centralization allows for more efficient transportation.

0% chance you're getting a plot of land and happily ever after in the world as described.

People enjoy living in cities, at least some of us do. Personally the thought of everyone living on their own personal homestead manned by robots sounds really boring and lonely?

IMHO cities are way more lonely than homestead structures.

Anyways, there is nobody saying that you can not stay in a big city.

The core of the claim is that people on aggregate will not pay a city premium when it does not come with a job premium.

To your benefit: cities will likely become much cheaper! (and more filthy and crime ridden, but that's another talk).

However, what I think we will see is hyper agglomoration. We will likely see 2 or 3 mega cities where the last interesting jobs will remain along with basically all wealth.

These cities will be incredibly exclusive.

Likely one city in the US and one city in Asia somewhere.

The EU will likely be the big looser.

"If there is no longer a reason for people to live close together, decentralization is the most likely outcome."

Umm what? Humans are social animals and many people LIKE living in cities in close proximity to other people and close to amenities. I do not see a future where we decentralize and spread out because of AI.

We have also seen this play out with WFH/Covid. The recall into centralized structures, regardless of the technology available to mitigate the need, was fast and broadly applied.

Our current social structure is actively resistant to decentralization and I don't see that changing unless there is some forcing function to break that hold and keep it broken for new norms to settle into expectations.

Humans like cities.

It brings people together for mating.

It wasn't only industrialization.

Even today, before AI, once you find a mate, THEN, you move to the suburbs.

They're also much cheaper from an infrastructure perspective to maintain

Life in the city is more expensive, in my experience though. Richer, with vastly more options, sure - but more expensive overall.

In the US it's a supply and demand problem. America chose redlining. White flight. More cars, less public transit. They largely stopped building desireable new mixed use medium density neighbourhoods after WW2.

It wasn't even industrialisation - it was agriculture. Do people really like cities? I am not so sure - certainly many do, but many also hanker for the village and there are a bunch of interesting theories about us working well at 'village scale' (I could be easily convinced that no-one hankers for the suburbs..) I think if the economic opportunities were not so heavily weighted towards cities we would see much reduced urbanisation.

"do people really like cities? I am not so sure"

Just look at real estate prices in New York, SF, Boston, etc. Yes, people REALLY like cities. Even the wealthiest people who can afford anything still choose cities

How much of this is because that's where the jobs are? Take that away and where would people choose to live? Wasn't there a notable exodus from SF, for example, during covid when many jobs went remote?

I'm genuinely surprised that you don't know lots of people who enjoy living in a city for its own sake and not only because something is keeping them there.

Well, nice to meet you, I'm a city dweller who works from home and can technically live where ever I want. I choose the city because I like it and I want my family to have nice things. I like walking to the kid's school and not owning a car and being close to amenities.

I didn’t express an opinion, I asked questions. Did you reply to the wrong comment maybe?

I live in a city too, but I do not think that makes me very unique ;)

Most of the stuff people do in cities was shut or severely degraded during Covid, not just the jobs. If you can't take a quick walk to your favorite cafe in the morning or stop by a cool art event in the evening, yeah, city living gets relatively less appealing.

That's a pretty unhinged idea you've presented; feels completely autobiographical.

People move out to the suburbs after they're married with kids? How is that unhinged?

It's just a strange comment; feels off. Like you're an Easterner imitating an American or something. Very odd.

Or AI. No telling.

Peoples talking styles are being changed by AI. Son online, you get real people, AI slop, and real people that are adapting.

But generally, the migration to the suburbs is a pretty studied thing. I assumed it was just a known phenomena.

So

There was farms to city. For few decades.

Then city to suburbs. for few decades. (cities deteriorated)

Then Covid, and here you are correct, some people that lived in cities for jobs, did migrate to 'smaller cities' when they could work remote.

And now? Seems like people are building little mini-cities? Where they can live, work, and walk to shops. People want the city feel, without the large city hassle? Like a village? But, not just a small town, its like new planned small towns. Back to the village.

I had a particular feeling about it and I looked into his other posts and he appears to constantly say explicitly "I'm an American, I'm from America, as an American" (a sentence I've probably never once said in my life) with constant China apologia; very odd.

Believe it or not, it's quite straightforward to get laid (abundantly) and find a mate (and a chain of replacements) in the suburbs, too.

But your ordering works well for remote thinly populated areas. Hungering for a mate there is like waiting on the floor of an ocean trench for a sinking whale corpse.

Yes. Maybe we're going back to the old ways of life and social structures, but now with robots to help. Who needs states and cities when you can have everything you need without them?

Absolutely right about war and technology too. Also right about plans being mostly useless.

Amazing analysis, thanks for this comment!

You'd better hope Bill Gates stops buying up all the farmland then.

He's running out of time, he better step it up. He's only at 0.03%.