In what seems to be a less pressing situation, millions of people vote against the plug in the outlet (the fat man, in your example). Lots of people opt to minimally fuel efficient cars in favor of gas guzzlers; millions of people opt to fly to distant vacation sites; millions of people opt for luxury (of one sort or another) over the common good. The consequences for those who pay the greatest price for global warming are not immediately visible (to us), but are none the less real and are becoming more severe over time.

People who are very cognizant of global warming and its consequences still opt for the high-carbon output for their cars, lifestyles, agriculture, and so on. So do I -- I'm not a vegetarian, for instance.

In real life most of us seem to be willing to sacrifice people who are "in our way" especially if the sacrifice is at a distance.

There were 14,000 homicides in the US in 2018 -- situations where someone decided (with little to no deliberation) that someone else was expendable.

The point is, in real life--as opposed to forced-choice moral games--a significant number of people do decide "to kill the fat man" over stakes that are trivial. Collectively, billions of people toss the stick of dynamite.

Are so many people (billions) morally depraved? Maybe a bit dull, not depraved. Most of us will never have to make a forced-choice moral decision of a Trolley or Fat Man Plugging the Exit situation. Our capacity for empathy at a distance is cognitively limited--not absent, just limited.

Fat people are useful in these kinds of forced-choice situations. In the much discussed Trolley Situation, throwing a fat man off the bridge derails the trolley and saves 5 other people.

Suppose the person stuck was actually a gorgeous woman to whom at least several of the hikers were extremely attracted. Would a 'beautiful, sexy she' make the situation more difficult than a 'repulsively fat he'?

I am one of the hikers; I am also the fat man's doctor. I have been telling this guy for years that being as fat as he is eventually is going to kill him. So...

Isn't the point of living an adult life to become as independent as possible? — synthesis

Is it? Yes and no,

I wanted to be as independent from other people's control as possible. I wanted to be independent enough to have executive agency--and the time to use it. A substantial degree of independence can be had, but there are significant sacrifices one must make. One can not buck the system and expect to retire in style. I did buck the system, got more independence than most people have, and paid the price. It was a gamble.

Some people want a lot of security (which usually entails significant dependencies). There are attractive rewards for that particular gamble. Steady work, moderate wealth, comfortable retirement, lots of material options.

The conventional definition of responsible adulthood can be stultifying.

Have you been corrupted by these newfangled ways of not doing anything yourself? — synthesis

Guilty as charged.

I just finished a nice pork chop I cooked myself. I could have raised the pig and butchered it. Too much trouble. I could have gone out to California to fetch some grapes, which I also just ate, but again--highly inconvenient.

I will have to wash the dishes (no dishwasher). Is that not suffering enough?

But what strikes me when I have made remarks to people in conversations recently about totalitarianism, is that many people don't seem to be perturbed by it. — Jack Cummins

They may not have a very vivid idea of what it is you are talking about. Reading a few books about totalitarian states (Hitler's, Stalin's, Mao's, etc.) puts flesh on an otherwise abstract idea. Watching films and reading about how the holocaust unfolded, or how Stalin wiped out a few million Ukrainians makes totalitarianism something one can not be indifferent to. Back in the early 1970s when I was working at St. Thomas College, one day we asked a batch of students what the holocaust was. Most did not know. It isn't that the students were too stupid to know about it--most of them were bright middle class people--they just didn't read much history.

I didn't either. I've been shocked and appalled by a lot of the things I've learned as an adult.

I'm not excusing their indifference or ignorance. As the saying goes, "if you are not worried you are not paying attention." A lot of people aren't very up on global warming either, even though it is already affecting them. Their bandwidth just isn't very wide.

If you are a genetically-determined worry-wort, there is not much you can do about it. I won't tell you to focus on positive topics because such advice never did me much good when I was busy anguishing.

As for moving toward a culture of indifference, nah! It's a perennial condition. People, including educated, aware, sensible people, must, in the end, focus on tending their own gardens, as Voltaire says in the conclusion of Candide.

I always like it when philosophical messages are packaged up in Broadway Musicals: Here's the finale of Candide, the musical, by Leonard Bernstein performed at the 1915 Proms:\

CANDIDE, CUNEGONDE, MAXIMILLIAN, PAQUETTE, OLD LADY, DR. PANGLOSS
Let dreamers dream
What worlds they please
Those Edens can't be found.
The sweetest flowers,
The fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground.
ENSEMBLE (a cappella)
We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow.
And make our garden grow!
(The cow dies)
VOLTAIRE
Ah, me! The pox!

It is probably not healthy to worry very much about economic collapse or the arrival of a totalitarian regime taking over your country.

Whatever John Maynard Keynes was thinking of, what he said, "In the long run we are all dead" it is certainly true. That's just life, like it or not.

We (the very large collective) should not be indifferent to current developments, of course. Long-term, medium-range, and short-term proactive planning have importance that is often honored in the breach, but we should do what we (collectively) can do.

Granted, to be young, aware, and worried makes life difficult. Being old, aware, and much, much closer to the end of one's life is much easier (something one doesn't feel until one gets here). When I was a young man I worried a lot. What will the next 50 or 60 years be like? How bad will it get? So many things could and seemed to be going wrong. Now I know, and while a lot of what happened sucked, it was endurable. Of course, I didn't live in Rwanda, Cambodia, China, etc. You don't either. You won't have to endure Mao's Cultural Revolution, for instance.

the only people I have ever known from there seem fairly wounded by so much unrest there — Jack Cummins

Literally and figuratively wounded.

For the same reason that 13 States United in the late 18th century--in union there is more power than standing alone.

The answer is ALWAYS more freedom and transparency. Those advocating the opposite are attempting to protect their dirty system. — synthesis

You perhaps think that any large system leads to corruption, opaqueness, tyranny, etc. A brief perusal of history, or group dynamics, will show that one can get the benefits of corrupt, opaque, arbitrary and capricious rule just as well in small groups as in large.

We are quite far apart in this.

However, I do think that everything is in such a state of confusion in Britain that it may result in draconian measures being introduced eventually. — Jack Cummins

My window on Britain's confusion is very small, but it does seem like public policy in the UK is disordered. I thought Brexit was always a colossal error, the consequences of which would unravel for a long time. As someone said, "Politicians are famous for screwing up big projects, but they can screw up small tasks too." At a distance, policy and politics in the UK look chaotic.

Draconian policy might be imposed only to freeze chaos in place.

The EU, composed of a population of something like 440 million, seems to have served people well with regulation, systems, organization, etc. Pulling out of the EU was so stupid... but what's done is done, at least for now.

As for Covid-19, the prudent policies of quarantine, mask wearing, and social distancing when public contact is necessary seem obvious. Now that vaccines are available, getting jabbed (as you say over there) is the obvious response. Somewhere around a 25% to 33% of the US population can be counted on to refuse vaccination. Who are they? Most often they are conservatives and evangelicals--always an unwholesome combination.

Because there is an epidemic of dithering, delay, and denial over prudent public policy, the length of the Covid-19 pandemic is being prolonged, maybe indefinitely. If it's any comfort, Britain isn't the only country having difficulties establishing sensible policy.

Imagine feeding yourself without any "systems": no agricultural system, no transportation system, no financial system... You'd have to do everything yourself. Imagine reading a book without any systems: Where would the book come from, and how would you know how to read it?

LIFE is a 4 billion year old system.

What matters to us is whether the systems we have constructed are working well or not. Neglect the maintenance of the transportation system and it will fall apart. Neglect public health systems and people die. Neglect the postal system and it takes a week for a letter to get from one local post office to another. Corrupt the judicial system and crime flourishes.

It's less "the system" and more "the quality of the system". Excellent systems contribute to our happiness. Bad systems are nothing but trouble.

Vigilance is good. But vigilance without education is paranoia (Q). — James Riley

Absolutely.

Epidemics, attacks, disasters, etc. can be the occasion to ratchet up social control. 9/11 resulted in security measures at airports which have been in place now 20 years. Does it produce safety? Who the hell knows.

We do know that the public health measures instituted in many countries to control C19 are effective IF the public cooperates. If the public doesn't, then the measures are ineffective.

500,000+ people dead in the US from Covid-19 is a significant loss, and without suppression measures, it would be much worse.

On the plus-side of control measures... a lot of operations tend to become sloppy. Without regular intrusive surveillance, public transportation companies would cut safety corners. Without syphilis investigators asking you for a list of who you had sex with, syphilis would be a lot more common -- ditto other sexually transmitted diseases.

During WWII there were many restrictions on activity -- some of them draconian. New and different restrictions were put into place during the Cold War.

Look, tyranny is always a possibility: one of the slogans of the American Revolution: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. One has to keep an eye on what the government and corporations are up to, and resist if they are brewing tyranny.

I would not take the pill. Death makes life worth living.

Thank you for joining us, and presenting your vision of transhumanism.

The only way I envisage collapse might happen is via full-scale thermonuclear war and a strategic interchange between the superpowers. — David Pearce

A thermonuclear war would indeed be a fine way to ring down the curtain, but perhaps a less efficient method would be sufficiently effective. I am not suggesting a human species-terminating event. Rather, extensive -- and occasionally severe -- environmental degradation could rob the species of the surpluses needed to support a large research and development establishment. In time we may be able to dig ourselves out of the environmental hole we are still busy excavating.

Do you think super-intelligence will be achieved and enjoyed incrementally, or will this happen in a single exceptional leap? Is the present brain capable of being uplifted to super-intelligence, or will it be necessary to design a better biological brain-build before uplift can occur? A bigger, better frontal cortex; a less volatile limbic system, more memory, better sensory processing? Brains much smaller than ours manage remarkably complex behavior (but just skip over philosophy). Can our brains be made a more efficient structure, before we add a practice effect?

I have experienced an unearned but nice level of contentment which has lasted now several years. I locate the source of this contentment in the limbic system. Is it age? I'm 75. Do you see super-happiness as the result of changing our emotion-generating system, or as a result of super-intelligence? Maybe one of the things that makes the God of Israel so angry is his alleged omniscience--The God Who Knew Too Much?

As you know, as most people here know (I hope), sex is the means by which nature conducts reproduction in plants and animals. True, a lot of single celled plants and animals forego sex and simply divide--another successful method. But sexual reproduction is a very efficient way of regularly remixing genetic material between individuals (any species).

From the beginning of life on earth, nature opted for MORE and VARIED species (personalizing nature, here). Among complex plants and animals sex and reproduction have been mandatory, It might be unsuccessful (late frost might prevent fruit trees from being pollinated; mates may not be available this year for xyz species) but the imperative is still there: TRY.

Humans didn't invent having children--obviously. We didn't invent the mechanics by which children get born. We didn't invent the primal urges that drive men and women to mate. We didn't invent the attachment that parents feel for their children. We have behaved as nature led us to behave.

We did invent some ways of not having children. Some people have opted to use those methods. Besides that, some people are/were insufficiently motivated to reproduce, or are/were not fit partners. Gay men like me, for instance, are/were not fit partners for heterosexual women. Some straight men and women were also not fit partners.

Mostly though, not having children is bucking (defying) nature. I think there are too many people on earth, and I wish everyone would buck (defy) nature and reproduce at less than the population replacement level. Fat chance of that happening. When I started high school in 1960, there were about 3 billion people. 60 years later there are close to 8 billion. Too many in Europe; Asia; Africa; and the Americas. Everywhere.

It is now way too late for Zero Population Growth. If we do not shrink our population, nature will eventually find a method for reducing our excess population. Nature has done this before with other species and it will do it to us if necessary (or maybe we will do it to ourselves). I guarantee that we will not like it.

In the grand scheme of things, there are children because sex is very pleasant. That's the most parsimonious explanation.

True enough, some people decide to have no children. They are bucking nature. Some people decide to have several children, and do so quite consciously because they think god wants them to have many. Or they are patriotic, or suffer from some other major delusion.

Mostly though, children are the result of sex, and people like sex--as nature intended.

Nature has always been on the side of more life, a preference it has upheld for billions of years. We've been around a vanishingly short period of time, and we are as bound up in nature as every other species.

Win today, lose tomorrow. That's one angle.

Another angle: Don't take it personally. Just because the Boston Red Sox won, or lost, has no real bearing on you. Your country may have lost the war (or the race to the moon, or whatever...) and that may or may not have affected you directly. Even if it did, "you" didn't lose the war. The collective 'everyone' lost.

Yet another: In the race to the top, most people are losers. There isn't much room at the top, so most people will not win, can not win. Who gets to the top matters on one scale, and doesn't matter on another. I'm content being among the losers (I could be closer to the bottom than I am, though, so to some people I am a winner).

Still, it was probably pretty tough for the average Frenchman to be occupied by the Germans in 1940. It was tough materially, certainly, and it was tough psychologically. But then, who won WWI? France was on the victorious side, even though their northern industrial zone was wrecked, they lost a huge portion of their young men, and they were in bad economic straits. Germany lost WWI, even though their industrial zone remained intact. They also lost a lot of soldiers and fortune.

The winners and losers can be hard to sort out.

Some high-profit minded farmers rent their goats out to clear kudzu. They selectively eat it. It's environmentally healthy. And there's the fertilizing pellets.

Will Georgians see you with your shepherd's hook and goat group culling the kudzu?

somewhere in this scheme a large amount of force is lurking — Bitter Crank

Not in my schemes, BC — counterpunch

I wasn't think of you -- more the "super" theorists.

Your example is a good one, and there are many more examples of technological leaders not executing more than token gestures (if that) to achieve reachable improvements in health, sustainable energy, food production, and so forth--never mind super-health.

We can't get large sections of the populations to wear masks, wait in line 6 feet apart, get vaccinated, stay home (for the good of all) and so on.

I have a feeling that somewhere in this super wonderful scheme a large amount of brute force is lurking.

A transhumanist feature I would like to have right now is the 'Language Download' so that I could become an instant fluent French reader, writer, and speaker. I also want the 'Book Chip' which would deliver Jacques Ellul's writings to my memory, instead of to my iPad. I figure it would be delivered at 3:00 p.m., and by 3:30 I could start quoting Ellul, in French of course.

Star Trek (especially, the Second Generation series) set in the 24th Century seems to embody a version of transhumanism. There is a high level of human well-being, empathy, technology, and so on, on earth as well as on board the Enterprise. In the galaxy, not so much.

Do you see technological advances in the next two centuries delivering the conditions of transhumanism, or are you thinking in longer (or shorter) time periods?

What do you think the chances are of environmental collapse in the next 100 years derailing the necessary technical developments to allow transhumanism?

What kind of economic arrangements are most and least likely to advance transhumanist goals? Capitalism is not a good candidate to deliver super well-being to everyone.

So, fromage de chèvre. Provided you bought female goats; provided somebody gets them periodically pregnant; provided Mrs. Hanover milks them twice a day (queue the milkmaid fantasy here). A never-pregnant nanny goat gives no milk. You knew that, right? Will you be keeping the goats in the house?

The goats I raise won't do anything for the betterment of the world — Hanover

Is that because you, in particular, raise them, or because of some other reason? Judas goats have contributed to the betterment of the world by leading the sheep to the slaughter. You like lamb, right? Well, Judas goats help you get it. And of course, a Judas goat could keep your three ladies pregnant. Are you going to eat their children---mmm, young goat!? Goat isn't quite as good as lamb, but goat milk is quite good.

I find this level of ignorance staggering. — Tim3003

What does it take to be knowledgable about general history, general science, current affairs, and the like? It takes lots of reading in these areas, selective TV viewing (mostly PBS), and discussion with others likewise informed. Avoiding the slop troughs of social media is also helpful.

Why don't more people do these things?

Time, for one. As a gay man I've never had the demands of raising children. I have had time to read a lot. I've generally worked at professional service jobs where there were other college educated people. The more one comes to understand, the more one can fit into a better understanding of the world.

Social reward is another. It helps if others appreciate one's knowledge.

On the other hand, we well-informed people should be grateful that most people are taking care of business, and not spending al their time reading.

The only reason I have for believing that things are as they seem to be is that my beliefs "work". I believe most people are good, but some people are definitely not good. So far this has turned out to be true.

What we believe tends to be related to experience. We do not choose a lot of the experiences we have. Consequently, IF a lot of our beliefs are not chosen, they at least have to "work" to support our beliefs. Otherwise, we are up to our necks in cognitive dissonance.

Which part -- that someone has falsely claim belief & allegiance, or the beliefs themselves?

The behavior of people who actually believe in the cited values is--taken as a pattern--different than those who do not actually believe in those values. One would expect more fraudulent behavior, illegal behavior, cruelty, terror, and so on from someone who thinks truth, justice, kindness, democracy, and respect for persons are meaningless words.

As for the meaning of these -- or any other words -- there are reference sources which report how the meanings of these words have been defined in social processes. "Truth" wasn't defined on Mt. Olympus. "Truth" was defined by discussion and by people using the word in ways that others found understandable and acceptable. That's how most words come to have meaning. A few, like using "charm" to name a quark, are arbitrary.

Truth.
Justice.
Kindness.
Democracy.
Respect for person. — unenlightened

Those "higher ideals" can mean anything anyone wants them to mean. — baker

Maybe what you mean is that one can falsely claim to hold these values, when in fact one does not.

does the population increase necessitate more advanced technology, or does the advancement of technology necessitate the increase of population? — darthbarracuda

An intriguing question. I can only guess--no definitive answer from me.

The quality of life plays a role here: A population can increase without necessitating more advanced (hardware) technology. It probably can't increase beyond a certain point or improve it's quality of life without more technology. Advancing technology may require more population. The industrial revolution required many new workers drawn from somewhere--hence an increase in the population. Better transportation, more efficient mines, factories, etc. requires more people to consume the bounty of goods produced. If the goods don't get consumed, the economy fails; a given population can consume only so much.

Were we to have a stable world population, we would have to be very careful about what technology was introduced.

Didn't people have a lot more free time back in the day? — darthbarracuda

No. Taking a typical 19th century early 20th century midwestern farm as an example... Back in the day, there were still only 24 hours in a day. Prior to mechanization, farmers milked their cows by hand. This was time consuming and has to be done twice a day, 12 hours apart. Plowing fields, planting, and cultivating fields with horse power took considerably more time than when using a tractor. Making hay; threshing oats, barley, or wheat were all labor intensive and took quite a bit of time. Rather than a multi-day 4 step process to harvest grain back in the day, big combines now do it all in one pass, and keep track of yield by the square yard. Caring for horses, cattle, hogs, birds, or sheep; tending fences; maintaining buildings, etc. were year round projects. Yes, there were lulls in the flow of work--in the winter, especially; then after spring planting there would be a short respite. Once the crop was too high to cultivate, another short respite. Then the harvests would begin, which takes us back to late autumn and winter.

A farmer probably has more free time today. If he has a small not-terribly-profitable farm, he and/or his wife will probably work for a wage in town to balance their budget.

require a more complex society, with everyone working more — darthbarracuda

"Society" was no less complex 100 years ago. Most people generally worked longer hours 100-140 years ago -- between 8 to 10 hours. a day, 5.5 to 6 days a week. Almost everything--housekeeping to manufacturing farm equipment, involved a lot more physical labor. Technology became progressively more complex throughout the 19th century.

People work less per unit of output now than they did 100 years ago, thanks to gains in efficiency, automation, administration, technology, and so on. People seem to be spending at least the same amount of time at work despite more efficiency. [Parkinson's Law corollary: a worker can stretch a given amount of work to fill the available time.]

Compare the dinky horse-powered harvest machine [below] with the John Deere monster. The horse-powered machine increased the farmer's efficiency considerably. The machine was probably manufactured in Chicago, shipped to Minneapolis by rail, might have been sold at a warehouse showroom, then shipped to South Dakota by another railroad, to be picked up by the buyer when he got back home.

The John Deere machine might be purchased by a company providing harvesting services and would harvest many fields of wheat, corn, or whatever crop it was suited for. These machines make no financial sense on a farm of 2 or 3 hundreds of acres. These big machines can mow down thousands of acres a day.

There was a big change in land ownership over the 20th century (to very large acreages) which required these giant machines.

However, self-driving vehicles seem like a sci-fi delusion to me. — Maw

Still, their are companies pursuing what is either a delusion or a premature technology.

Full automation only makes sense if labor is counted as an unnecessary expense. — Bitter Crank

This is sort of the Uber view -- labor is an unnecessary expense. But in reality labor is essential to their model.

What makes Uber and Lyft workable at all is a large enough number of workers with inadequate income and a willingness to spend a lot of time in traffic with no guarantee of enough ride orders to make it worth the time. Lyft and Uber are post-great recession companies, becoming 'popular' about 8 or 9 years ago.

I use Lyft 2 or 3 times a month for trips where public transit takes too long. Maybe taxi companies have acquired the kind of software that makes Lyft workable--knowing how long the car's arrival will be, and knowing how much the ride will cost.

Automation/robots would be created by an immense amount of physical labor by humans. — Zazie Kanwar-Torge

Yes. A technology where robots could replace themselves and produce other machines without involving human labor is imaginable, but is more in the realm of science fiction (at this time). The robots we use have narrow application. We don't have plenipotentiary robots, yet. A robot's fully autonomous production reaches back to mining ores, mining and refining oil, creating complex raw and finished materials, and so on.

Humans are fully capable of doing all these things--and, of course, have been doing them for a long time.

Full automation only makes sense if labor is counted as an unnecessary expense.

A very large problem of capitalists eliminating labor in production--but maintaining ownership of all the factories--is 'how would the market of goods continue to exist when the people had no income to buy'?

Yes: automated factories producing goods to satisfy the needs of people, rather than for producing profit, would liberate us to pursue fulfillment rather than dreary work (work is not always dreary, but it usually is, sooner rather than later).

Actually, I don't see any reason for capitalists to automate all production (which they alone would control) because their wealth is extracted from the workers. Unemployed workers can't buy much, and several billion unemployed workers is a hazard they would not prudently allow.

Unless, of course, they could eliminate workers altogether. Capitalism is perfectly capable of disposing of workers. The American rust belt has been the site of large scale worker disposal. It's not pretty. These people have sunk into poverty rather than seize the means of production. (Had they seized anything they probably would have been shot.).

Capitalists could operate the worker-free factories to meet the minimum needs of the unnecessary workers--as protection, not out of the goodness of their hearts--but why would they if they they could find a long-term solution to the existence of unneeded workers?

If we grant that there is a tendency toward automation (which there seems to be) and that this does reduce the amount of productive* labour required for the reproduction of the working class as much as it can, that still leaves open the possibility that there is a lower limit of that process of production - a non-zero asymptotic socially necessary labour time for the labourer's good basket, which suffices to sustain the dynamics modelled by the labour theory of value long term - keeping the engine of capitalism going. — fdrake

Eliminating all labor through automation would be a colossal blunder on the part of capitalism. We are aware, are we not, that capitalists are perfectly capable of Colossal Blunders? They would destroy the model that creates their wealth and power--without another model in sight. They might fantasize a world of Alpha Plus people (Brave New World) without the plague of betas, deltas, and epsilons, but achieving it would be inordinately messy.

↪darthbarracuda So there must be more people maintaining farm equipment today than there used to be people farming then, no? — Pfhorrest

↪Pfhorrest Indirectly, yes. — darthbarracuda

Back in the day when farms were shifting from horses to machines, about 1/3 of the population was engaged in farming--32,000,000. Today there are about 2,000,000. Are you saying that there are many millions of people repairing the machinery used by 2 million farmers? That just doesn't seem plausible.

In any town in agricultural areas one will find a few equipment sellers and a number of people engaged in service and repair--not a large number in absolute or relative terms. Of course, farmers do some repair themselves.

Is the reason crime rates are decreasing because nobody is calling the police? — Huh

There is nothing even an extremely competent police force can do about many petty crimes in a large city. With that understanding, many minor property crimes do not get reported--perhaps out of a concern that such a call would result in wasted police time.

However, local crime waves are often the work of a small number of people; competent policing can, with community cooperation, apprehend the culprits. That means, among other things, reporting.

More serious crime, though, does get reported. (I'm excepting domestic abuse and rape which are not always reported.).

Just because machines do the labor doesn't mean that labor isn't the source of wealth. — Pfhorrest

Ricardo and Marx, primitives that they were, referenced actual live human labor, not automated machines. It is true, though, that machines impart some of their cost and value to the goods produced.

Probably this t-shirt took half time to made it but imagine is made of good cotton and with hands of professional. This is forced to be more expensive than the hat. — javi2541997

To use an English expression, one can make a purse out of silk or make it out of a sow's ear. Or to be more precise, try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Moving on from the pig pen...

The thing is, whether it is a fine Egyptian long-fiber cotton T shirt or a ratty polyester one, a certain amount of time is required to make it. Same for the hat, whether it is $9.99 hat or a $99 hat, depending on time/labor inputs.

It seems to me that a large portion of the world's work force will be increasingly irrelevant as automation, robotics, AI, and the like advance. I've had some clerical jobs that I would have happily handed over to a machine to do. (I hate detail work)

How much extra would you pay to have an actual bartender mix your drink rather than a very reliable drink-mixing machine? Is beer better if you can chat with a live bartender? I'd say, definitely -- live person, please.

I, for one, do not understand what conclusion you are trying to reach. Say more about your objective, if you would.

I've never read a book on philosophy in my entire life — Huh

You said it.

Nietzsche insists that there are no rules for human life — Huh

A quote from Nietzsche and 50¢ won't get you a cup of coffee.