The Laborless Society

Originally Posted by Bradylama

Humans are only required to interpret data, not to acquire it. Even then you could theoretically create a machine that can interpret data, and then the only thing humans will be capable of is creativity.

Any reason why you couldn't program a machine to be creative for us?

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Colleges insist that we take classes we don't want to in order to become "well-rounded individuals." Why should we become well-rounded individuals? Because it makes us more competitive in a labor market.

So you mean you've never learned anything useful to your own interests in a course you didn't initially want to take? (Not to mention I'm pretty sure that my next employer isn't going to hire me for the class in the history of urban America I took two years ago.)

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

Somehow I don't think that College Algebra or Calculus is going to further myself as a writer.

No reason that it couldn't teach you a different set of thinking skills. Or maybe get you to understand a little bit more about other people that specialize in other things so you can socialize with them.

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Not really. The only problem is how do you create a creative machine?

I'd imagine you'd do it the same way you'd 'theoretically' make one to interpret data.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

First off, I'm curious where you got that the Laws of Robots actually exist. They were made up by Asimov as a convenient way to describe all robot behavior in his books and would require massive AI undertakings to program into even the simplest robot. How simple do you think it is to say "Allow no human to come to harm?" Will my fast food robot stop me from eating a Big Mac because it's not good for my health? Do we program robots as utilitarians or with Kantian ethics?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

Maybe calculus might be an interesting conversation piece, but College Algebra? =P

Maybe you should have taken that in high school.

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Besideswhich, my main issue with the state of higher learning is that they force you to pay for classes you don't want to take.

How is that really any different from governments forcing you to pay for programs you don't want to participate in? (Or, for that matter, any situation where you pay for a large object and don't get a choice in every little option. Maybe there's some people out there that would opt not to have a catalytic converter on their car, for example.)

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Even if a machine can interpret data, though, that doesn't mean that it's capable of coming up with a solution. Ultimately though, the creative machine problem comes down to issues of emotion. How do you make a machine feel emotion? If it does feel emotions, will it be capable of creating in the arts? Can a machine make the BESTEST VIEDO GAM EVAR!??!?!!11

Well, considering I think humans don't have any creative capacity in the first place, and we're all just machines running on really complex conditional statements, then yeah I believe it's 'theoretically' possible, so if we're assuming these quantum leaps in artificial intelligence to allow machines to do certain things, I don't know why we couldn't say we'd suddenly stop making machines better.

Originally Posted by Watts

Say for example, gold was more abundant then concrete. Everybody would live in gold houses, but some people (the elite) would feel compelled to live in concrete houses for one reason or another. Surely some would be content with their gold houses, but I'm guessing most would not be.

This hurts me as an engineer. ;_;

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

The question was presented for situations that would already require a robot to have advanced reasoning abilities. A McDonalds robot would only be concerned with getting your burger on the counter.

I was using the Big Mac as an exaggeration, how about in situations such as law enforcement? Personally, I don't care how high the standard of living is for everyone, there are still people out there that get their jollies by fucking with other people, so you'll need someone to enforce your laws (which had been passed by robots, apparently) and do it in a manner consistent with what people would like. I'm not sure how much people would like living with Judge Dredd or ED-209 sitting around outside their door.

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Yes, I have pretty much argued against that before.

And yet you were saying earlier how if someone invents something they would only be doing it for the love of the activity of it, not for the profit. What about the people that want to make a new product so they can have more money than everyone else? Are they allowed to restrict the production of their product so as to make themselves (not society) the most money?

And to your question why people haven't hacked car factories before. It's a little absurd to ask that since to this point those factories aren't quite hackable (you know, lack of any form of connectivity to the outside world and everything), but people have hacked just about everything that's possible to go try and hack 'just for the fun of it'.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

These are the popular images, but a law-enforcement machine could be made to be much more non-threatening, even non-lethal.

Of course, the one problem is what happens when someone that's just had fun hacking the local factory decides it would be an even better time to try and hack the local police station? Saying you'll make it hackproof doesn't really mean a whole lot, since a motivated individual could just design a machine to do it for them (and then it just comes down to the skill of individual programmers and, oh wait, we're back at people having to do work ).

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And? So long as people base the economy on money, profit would always be a factor. The difference is now that people don't really need to make a profit, only if they want to.

It's not like today's millionare needs to make a profit, but if they've got a way to raise their consumption compared to everyone else, you can be sure that some of them will do their best to do it, and, during that, will have to deprive other people of wealth in some way.

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Yeah, pretty much. There's no reason that factories can't have closed systems.

My point was that people are going to go after easier targets that have a larger effect than factories do right now. In the future, if they can get a bigger news story out of figuring out a way to hack a factory, don't you think they'd do it?

One of my biggest problems with this theory is that there's magically enough resources to go around to everyone in the world. Couldn't it be quite possible that there's no way to get everyone's standard of living up to what we'd want?

That, and for someone that's using Asimov's Laws of Robotics in an argument, I'm surprised that you didn't bring up his planet of Solaria in which robots do all the work in the planet and person to person contact is seen as repulsive.

Then again, maybe I just don't like this kinda of utopia because I find the whole idea of it repulsive.

I was speaking idiomatically.

It would probably be replaced by Robotic Insurrection Day.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I don't really have the time to go through quote-wars and read all of the other posts that have happened since then, so I'll just reply to the most important part.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

How so?

I feel that this kind of society would encourage wastefulness and excess luxury which is a problem with America right now. I'm not one of those people that thinks you need to get rid of everything you own in order to be happy; I think that people need to learn to be happy with what they have. I don't think increasing consumption is ever going to increase general happiness of people (as I think you said earlier in the thread, richer people aren't necessarily happier), so we need to try and focus more on what makes people happy than how to give them more stuff.

Also, your plans to grossly increase production kinda appal me from an engineering standpoint since I'm all about sustainability and not increasing the need for using raw materials (mining asteroids doesn't work for me as a long-term solution since it's non-sustainable, eventually we'll run out of asteroids or we won't be able to find certain elements/compounds we need out there).

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Then the solution is to come up with cheaper methods of launching objects into space. Retrieving objects from space is only difficult on a mathematical level. I mean, objects fall into the earth constantly and it doesn't cost us a dime. Retrieval then, is mostly a matter of propulsion, which isn't going to be that hard to figure out.

Also, no, no, bad non-sciency person reading fantasies in sci-fi novels and "scientific" correspondents in non-peer-reviewed magazines. When they say it's "not hard" it means it'll only take someone really fucking smart instead of just holy shit unbelievably smart in order to come up with one part of the solution. Interspace travel is somewhere between grand unification theory and solving world hunger.

FELIPE NO

But, see, you're assuming that more wealth will create more happiness. What I'm asking is if we can look at society and see that people with more money are actually more happy. Are all of these upper middle class drugged-out emo kids that cut their wrists for their livejournal e-buddies actually happy and having a good life?

I feel all these resources you want to put into making machines to take over for society's work would be better put into figuring out ways to getting people to actually enjoy their lives (I don't think giving everyone X dollars will get people to escape from the mentality where they have to keep up with the Joneses since it's not like those people don't have enough money to live happily as it is now).

I think it's human nature to always want more and we would be better suited to control that urge than to just give them more.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

They're not, though if that were the case, then why not make everybody poor so that we have to interact with each other?

If it's not, then why should we concern ourselves at all with how much money we need to redistribute to people? Oh, wait, that's right, making it look like I want everyone to be poor makes my ideas look horrible.

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Avoiding depression and suicide is a matter of changing the social culture. If suicide reaches epidemic levels, then people will probably be encouraged to "get out" more. Besides, I'd argue that depression is a much more beneficial element of society than we presume, as it causes unique characteristics in the people that suffer from it. Look at any extraordinary individual and chances are that they've suffered through severe bouts of depression.

It's just a shame when that depression happens after they've become extraordinary and stops them from continuing to be extraordinary (as it seems to happen quite often).

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I'm telling you, though, people already know how to enjoy their lives. How can you set general goals of achieving overarching happiness in a society of individuals? It seems like you're making more generalizations about people than I am. What makes people "happy" to begin with? Most studies on depression and suicide tend to pin it on human nature as social animals, and I don't think that a bunch of machines working around the clock on fuck all knows what is going to improve that. Ephemeralization doesn't mean anything if it doesn't enable all people to live leisurely. You think there's going to be much point in Fusion power if we still have both parents working jobs just to maintain a desired level of consumtion in low-child households?

I don't really think most people know how to enjoy their lives, they know what they think they need to achieve in order to have a happy life, but then when they get there they realize it's not actually what they wanted.

Also, I don't really know where you get a room full of robots speculating on human happiness, since I don't think I talked about that anywhere along the line.

I also think a life of leisure is a life of waste, so maybe that's part of my problem with this whole plan.

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Everything I've said in this thread is based on reasonable assesments of human nature.

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A minimum "comfortable" standard of living will reduce the want for needless consumtion, if not immediately, because there's no point in it, and that fact will dawn on people as they realize that trying to "outdo" the Joneses isn't getting them anywhere.

Any reason those people haven't realized that outdoing their neighbors hasn't gotten them anywhere yet with our current system?

Jam it back in, in the dark.