Like my drum sticks?

Depends how you use or not use them.

The error written in our code is that self-awareness leads to understanding of systemic futility. — schopenhauer1

Then there's your answer: disconnect self-awareness and you're fine again.

Very true... It is fear that keeps us in chains.

Well, animals seem to not have this problem of self-awareness. Either do machines. Another problem would be that people would rather not be either of those, now that we've experienced our Promethean situation.

Very true... It is fear that keeps us in chains. — matt

And no beat, if you strive to be a drummer.

I am a drummer. But I've settled and its eating me alive.

Settling is for homesteaders.

So is this good or bad? Does new mean better? Your implication is no. Why not? — schopenhauer1

I enjoy using new technology. But the fact is, the act of creative destruction which brought us the current crop of gadgets was a extremely huge waste of resources--duplicating what already existed. Land lines vs. cell phones? There are apps on my cell phone that I find worth the cost -- for instance, the MetroTransit app which provides me with the bus schedule for any one of thousands of bus stops I might want to catch a bus at. Or the taxi app that shows me where my taxi is, as I wait for it. On the other hand, voice quality of cell phones is usually crappy, and everyone using the world as their private phone booth is annoying, if not fatal.

A.I. presumably would do most of the work — darthbarracuda

If the A.I. really is intelligent, when you tell the A.I. robot to do something no warm blooded animal would want to do, what you are going to hear is "You must be out of your fucking mind if you think I am going to sit there and sort all that crap out."

Well, animals seem to not have this problem of self-awareness. — schopenhauer1

Then you haven't been at the elephants' funeral.

Either do machines. — schopenhauer1

I give you that. Machines do not know the concept of futility. They know utility, functionality, and redundancy.

Another problem would be that people would rather not be either of those, now that we've experienced our Promethean situation. — schopenhauer1

Well, yes. And we wouldn't want to be in a stupor or in a coma either.

Is it a change in how products and services are distributed? Is it a change in what we value? Is it a change in relations? Is it a change in how we think? And then how would it all come together? Yep too much for my mind. As we've seen, any "attempt" at some kind of change led to violence and domination of one class or group over another. Better to just accept no? — schopenhauer1

Yes, violence unfortunately often accompanies revolution. This is something to be avoided as much as humanly possible. If one can see one’s opponent as a sister or brother, or even as one’s own self, then lasting change is possible. The movie “I :heart: Huckabees” has a great scene where the idealistic tree-hugging crusader finally sees his “stuffed suit” opponent as himself, and it changes everything. Great metaphysical movie.

Acceptance is usually a good thing, even if one tries then to change what is accepted. Patience is wonderful and rare is our insta-google world. Don’t know how it would all come together, but eventually we all have to come together. We might be all huddled together on the mountain tops when the oceans rise and the levee breaks!

I enjoy using new technology. But the fact is, the act of creative destruction which brought us the current crop of gadgets was a extremely huge waste of resources--duplicating what already existed. Land lines vs. cell phones? There are apps on my cell phone that I find worth the cost -- for instance, the MetroTransit app which provides me with the bus schedule for any one of thousands of bus stops I might want to catch a bus at. Or the taxi app that shows me where my taxi is, as I wait for it. On the other hand, voice quality of cell phones is usually crappy, and everyone using the world as their private phone booth is annoying, if not fatal. — Bitter Crank

This is a tepid condemnation- I was hoping for fire and fury. If we go all Hegelian- development and synthesis of old into new, seem to be the point of humans. The march of history and all that. Technology self-generating more things.. But to stop and wonder why do anything, that seems to not fit into the scheme.

I give you that. Machines do not know the concept of futility. They know utility, functionality, and redundancy. — Caldwell

Yes, like many workers who don't stop to think about their position or how their day is taken up. How much are we missing with our current model of the modern workday?

Self-sufficiency sounds nice enough.

The movie “I :heart: Huckabees” has a great scene where the idealistic tree-hugging crusader finally sees his “stuffed suit” opponent as himself, and it changes everything. Great metaphysical movie. — 0 thru 9

That is a good one.

Acceptance is usually a good thing, even if one tries then to change what is accepted. Patience is wonderful and rare is our insta-google world. Don’t know how it would all come together, but eventually we all have to come together. We might be all huddled together on the mountain tops when the oceans rise and the levee breaks! — 0 thru 9

Acceptance just means lack of imagination, no? Isn't it a self-sustaining system if you don't try to change aspects of it that you don't like? The hope is powers are big enough to make you conform or you have extreme options of suicide or living a desperate life as an outlier of society.

How much are we missing with our current model of the modern workday? — schopenhauer1

Why don't you ask the Federal Bureau of Futility?
They must know something.
The work situation is an organic thing. Humans do want responsibilities. They want to be tied to an organization.

Why don't you ask the Federal Bureau of Futility? — Caldwell

You mean most federal bureaucracies?

The work situation is an organic thing. Humans do want responsibilities. They want to be tied to an organization — Caldwell

Ah I see, it has to be this way because it is this way. By adding the word "organic" does that give more import to your statement? Do you think the modern relations were "organic" or rather the result of a number of factors that may or may not have lead to ideal conditions as it is now. Even if it is organic, does that mean it is good? Some people have hearts that don't work very well and need help from inorganic sources.

By adding the word "organic" does that give more import to your statement? — schopenhauer1

Yes.

Do you think the modern relations were "organic" or rather the result of a number of factors that may or may not have lead to ideal conditions as it is now. — schopenhauer1

Yes, I say that in the most sincerest of the truth.

Even if it is organic, does that mean it is good? — schopenhauer1

No. I said nothing of that sort. When I say organic, I mean it in a descriptive way, not normative.

Some people have hearts that don't work very well and need help from inorganic sources. — schopenhauer1

While it appears we have now digressed from your topic, I'll indulge you. People who have hearts that don't work very well and need help from inorganic sources should go get a heart from inorganic sources. We haven't grown inorganic hearts in the lab yet. But certainly, we now have body parts that are inorganic. Like hip, knee, and heart pacer.

While it appears we have now digressed from your topic, I'll indulge you. People who have hearts that don't work very well and need help from inorganic sources should go get a heart from inorganic sources. We haven't grown inorganic hearts in the lab yet. But certainly, we now have body parts that are inorganic. Like hip, knee, and heart pacer. — Caldwell

You are taking that a wee bit too literally or you are using really really dry humor. Either way, I don't think it is organic in how you are using it. People don't, in my opinion, have a natural tendency to like office spaces, corporate culture, hierarchies and the like. These came about through contingent forces of history, too complex to lay out here. If by organic you mean that it came about through an array of sources, well yeah I agree but as you stated, that has no normative value and is pretty self-evident.

You are taking that a wee bit too literally — schopenhauer1

Sorry, guilty as charged. I truly thought that was what you were asking. Explain the line again, "People who have hearts that don't work very well...."

Either way, I don't think it is organic in how you are using it. People don't, in my opinion, have a natural tendency to like office spaces, corporate culture, hierarchies and the like. T — schopenhauer1

And do you think that sea turtles enjoy the barnacles growing on their backs and legs? That's organic. That's natural tendency. The work situation as an organic growth is how it is. And I don't mean having tall buildings and a million offices. Work can be at a farm, or a forest, or at the sea, or underground. I don't think pilots call their cockpits offices.

If by organic you mean that it came about through an array of sources, well yeah I agree but as you stated, that has no normative value and is pretty self-evident. — schopenhauer1

No, not just an array of sources. By organic I mean we are an active participant in its growth.

This is a tepid condemnation — schopenhauer1

Wait just a minute... I also said

But the fact is, the act of creative destruction which brought us the current crop of gadgets was an extremely huge waste of resources--duplicating what already existed. — Bitter Crank

Wasting the film and camera industry, the hard-wired telephone system, the more ecological typewriter, the already installed base of vinyl (made from petroleum) records, and record players/amps/receivers, etc. was a very bad thing. My liking my cell phone for certain convenient apps is NOTHING in comparison to the waste of 'creative destruction'. Wasting the former transit systems (subways, light rail, volleys, etc.) so that more GM, Firestone, and Standard OIL could make more money on buses, tires, and diesel fuel was an ecological and financial atrocity.

New capitalists (or old firms looking for new opportunities) love "creative destruction", "disruption of existing markets," and that wrecking ball approach. Is Uber or Lyft better than the older taxi companies? No, they perform the exact same function. Is AirB&B better than a hotel? I don't think so.

The Internet is new, but the internet has also resulted in changes that are not good -- like the destruction of the advertising base of the daily newspaper businesses, causing the papers to shrink up their content and value, or fail.

There are things I like about Amazon and Google, but viewing these two companies as our friends is almost certainly a mistake.

Continual product development and perpetually expanding economies is a a mirage, a fool's dream, a mistake, and an altogether total dead end.

Is that better?

Is that better? — Bitter Crank

Yes, there's the fire and fury! :grin:

But, well, let me "loop you in" to @Caldwell's comments as I think this question can pertain to both. Do you think the modern business dynamic is just a natural outgrowth of what humans really want out of life? If not, what is it that we want? You seemed to hint at making things ourselves. What if that doesn't really do much for people? Like if the furniture was rearranged and people made their own clothes and food, this really didn't change much to their satisfaction? Is there something else we are discounting?

To borrow a title, "A world made by hand" will be exhausting. Making our own clothes, shoes, houses, food, etc. was, back when we did that sort of thing, back-breaking work. So, I am not eagerly harking back to us all sitting in a circle knapping rocks to make tools and weapons. Maybe that will happen to us ("us" being people in general) but I hope we can avoid it.

More than "making everything we use ourselves", what people yearn for is having control over their work. From experience, conversation, and theory I know that it is possible for individuals to have control over their work, and even if is tedious, they like it much better that way. It isn't that they want to make everything themselves; they want a certain amount of autonomy and executive agency in their work. they don't want to be a slave to an arbitrary work schedule, or rigid rules which have little practical value. for instance. If they have to be 15 minutes late, they want to be able to be 15 minutes late without having to defend against a federal case about being late.

Certain levels of employees (like executives, professors, top apparatchiks) have that kind of control, agency, and flexibility, and they find it makes life easier and more peasant. We should all have those prerogatives.

A friend of mine used to work in the kitchen at college. He scrubbed pots and pans for 4 years in a work-study job. He liked it because his work station was quiet, unbothered, and straightforward. He scrubbed until the pots were clean and then he was done. Nobody was standing there with a stop watch saying he wasn't working fast enough. He didn't have to ask anybody to go to the toilet. He didn't have to dress up. If he didn't work faster, he just had to be there longer. An ideal job, in many ways.

Some jobs are really boring, but boring is made intolerable when there is oppressive supervision on top of it. "No talking." "You're not working fast enough." "Stop looking around." (orders addressed to adults working In a university bulk-mailing operation).

Here's a good example: I worked 3 months on a temporary job at First Trust in St. Paul -- a big operation. Their storage room of old trust files had leaked and a lot of files a file boxes had been damaged. The bank decided to re-box everything, pull out the microfiche records in the files, and them label the contents and ship the boxes off to a dead storage warehouse.

It was really, really tedious work, but simple. It was great. The supervisor told us we could all talk, snack, joke, and laugh or whatever, as long as there was a steady stream of boxes moving through the process. So, we did -- talk, laugh, joke, and so on, and we sorted and re boxed thousands of boxes of files. It was good, because we had control over our time and over our style of interacting. 3 months was plenty of that activity, but it demonstrates the point.



"A World Made By Hand" is a 4 volume dystopian novel by James Howard Kunstler; the dystopian event is the demise of oil and electricity. Without cheap power, the people have to make everything by hand. It's a wonderful series. I very much enjoyed reading it. It's more upbeat than downbeat, but there is plenty downbeat about it.

An easy solution is to guarantee the right to work in the constitution. If you cannot find work, the state will assign you one. You need to look at this perspective from a more analytical one rather than assuming that everyone has their inner individualistic needs which take priority over the monarch (who's right to rule has been given by God). If you cannot understand this and the other policies that made conservatism so successful until the birth of liberal ideas, no wonder you support this false idea of individualism and liberalism.

I'd say limiting work hours is more realistic. One, it's a demand that's worked to build a movement before. And two, there are large sections of the economy which are superfluous. We produce enough goods and services to meet people's needs. We just don't distribute those goods and services equitably.

New products tend to break because they were rushed, always wait for future versions. With a little bit of technical background you can fix a lot of things on your own. My point was more about the "phenomenology" of technology. For many people, myself included at times, learning how something works is cool. Oftentimes, however, I find myself struck by how kludge-like things are. The documentation isn't always great, sometimes non-existent. When you ask professional engineers for help with some device and they tell you "I don't know", that doesn't always instill confidence. It's also scary how many people are desperate to get through error checking, testing, etc.

What's super sketchy are unregulated products. Literally, use at your own risk. A lot of things aren't regulated, and even if they are, the standards aren't always satisfactory. — darthbarracuda

Thanks for sharing your experiences here. Good point. Maybe kinda like not wanting to see sausage being made. And it’s probably better not to think about airline cost-cutting affecting safety as one is about to get on a flight.

I've always been amused by the niche cult surrounding artificial intelligence, because as much as it's "transhumanist" and "futurist", the hype fundamentally is related to our own insecurities. Those touting A.I. do so because they seem to think A.I. will do everything we don't want to. They will work - we won't have to. But what will we do instead? We'll still have the existential angst, and even more so when we realize that the A.I. is, in that respect, superior to us by being able to work without burden. Artificial intelligence might make some people question the value of human existence qua human existence, as A.I. presumably would do most of the work while we sit around idly, twiddling our fingers. — darthbarracuda

Yes, the A.I. hype is in full swing, and full funding mode. Lots of promises here, more than a presidential campaign, which is hard to top. Even daring to critique a specific “technology” is a tricky position for one to take because it is at the risk of appearing to be a fud-dud or an eco-extremist or something. However, i must concede that the advances in driverless vehicle tech is impressive imho, despite some recent tragic accidents.

(Not directly related to the OP, but hopefully relevant.) I have been wondering lately about the effects that cryptocurrency might potentially have on employment and the economy. Despite it being almost ten years old, “crypto” has much work to be done to make a positive impact on the lives of ordinary people (as opposed to big investors and speculators.) There is a current bear market for crypto, after last year’s dizzying profits. And there is much to be skeptical about generally.

But as a best case scenario, perhaps the alternate currencies can provide some lubrication, for lack of a better way to put it. The economic situation seems to be like a car trying to run with very little oil. Despite gov’t money being created non-stop, practically everyone i know is struggling and is hesitant to spend money. It is like we are wandering in a financial desert, and the chiefs are hogging the oasis. Not looking to them to change anything.

If the entire cryptocurrency market doesn’t collapse or get bogged down in scams and greed, could it possibly eventually ease the pressure and work load on the average citizen? At least just a little?Or have some other positive effect on our work/financial lives? Is it all a pipe dream? Or just too early to tell?

Thanks for sharing your experiences here. Good point. Maybe kinda like not wanting to see sausage being made. And it’s probably better not to think about airline cost-cutting affecting safety as one is about to get on a flight. — 0 thru 9

I think, for me at least, it's like going through disillusionment about technology. When I was a child I thought technology was magic and that scientists and engineers were basically gods for knowing all they know. I wanted to become one of the people who "knows things".

Well, now I know some things and I can tell you now that technology is by no means magic, nor are scientists and engineers gods. I have become more and more attracted to instrumentalist and anti-realist philosophies of science. The attitude I've sort of come to adopt to all of this is that a piece of tech will fail one day, because it is made by humans. People will die, devices will be recalled, updated versions with hastily-added patches will be made available ... rinse and repeat.

Yes, the A.I. hype is in full swing, and full funding mode. Lots of promises here, more than a presidential campaign, which is hard to top. Even daring to critique a specific “technology” is a tricky position for one to take because it is at the risk of appearing to be a fud-dud or an eco-extremist or something. However, i must concede that the advances in driverless vehicle tech is impressive imho, despite some recent tragic accidents. — 0 thru 9

Artificial intelligence is being over-hyped, in my opinion. The science behind it is still developing. The paradigms still seem to be overly-reductionistic and materialistic. The same old metaphor of the brain as a computer, the mind as the software, is just wrong but it keeps on being presented in the media as though it were fact.

I'm hoping to go into research and development after my undergrad, perhaps in artificial intelligence. I've been trying to see if we can't integrate philosophy of mind into some of the upper level courses at my university but I haven't had much success. The current paradigm is still in full swing, it seems.

If the A.I. really is intelligent, when you tell the A.I. robot to do something no warm blooded animal would want to do, what you are going to hear is "You must be out of your fucking mind if you think I am going to sit there and sort all that crap out." — Bitter Crank

The logic here seems to be that, in order to do everything we humans don't want to do, the A.I. needs to be as intelligent or as self-conscious as humans. If that were the case, A.I. wouldn't even be needed - we'd just make more babies, like the capitalists want us to.

An alternative look on this is that the A.I. needs to be just smart enough to get the job done, nothing more. There is no need to make the A.I. a "person", or give them the burden of self-reflection. This is all assuming strong A.I. is more than just a fantasy.

Bingo.. what ARE we doing. What is humanity's point? The error written in our code is that self-awareness leads to understanding of systemic futility. If projects work with functions, the fully self-aware human has to trick himself into constantly being "driven" by these programs.. Every once in a while the baseline futility seeps in; the eternal WHY creeps in and haunts us. It's as if the software has run out of programs to execute. — schopenhauer1

Yes. Holocaust survivor Jean Amery, in his book On Suicide, wrote about what he called the "logic of life". The logic of life is what makes living "make sense" - everything we do "makes sense" because it's "part of life", it's what people do and what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to have projects, we're supposed to have jobs, relationships, progeny, etc. "Edge of life" issues, like suicide, are swept under the carpet because they are outside of the logic of life. Suicide does not make sense, from that perspective.

I don't like to use the brain-computer, mind-software metaphor too much, but it does seem to be as you say - the software ("us") is fundamentally an infinite loop that only breaks when it is interrupted by some priority. When there is no queue, we are simply idly looping, waiting for something to happen.

The logic here seems to be that, in order to do everything we humans don't want to do, the A.I. needs to be as intelligent or as self-conscious as humans. If that were the case, A.I. wouldn't even be needed - we'd just make more babies, like the capitalists want us to. — darthbarracuda

Of course. In fact, a lot of what we want computers to do doesn't require any "intelligence" at all -- it just requires a good implementation of an algorithm and application capable of managing the task. Which is, of course, what computers are doing right now. And that alone is significant, because they displace workers who once carried out the tasks which computers now do. Lost jobs for humans or not, there are a lot of jobs I would prefer a computer to do because the job is so gawd-awful boring, detailed, and tedious.