Post: #101

(06-20-2016 09:46 PM)scorpion Wrote:  The average person is more intelligent because of the internet and technology?

Yes, of course. More intelligent in the simplest functional way that always escapes those who think too abstractly.

As in: a plumber takes an iPad along on his job and all of a sudden he has the full installation manual of the dishwasher right there with him along with images and videos that show exactly what a given malfunction looks like. As a result he fixes it in seconds and correctly, instead of in hours or not at all.

Or a nurse takes out a scanner and she is seeing what she's doing on a screen that's right in front of her which is overlaid and annotated with visual instruction. So she performs what would otherwise be a delicate and possibly dangerous medical task correctly and with ease.

You think of intelligence as some abstract quality and you think that some dude is spending half his day jacking off to candy striper porn is being made dumber by his exertions (also false, by the way, but we'll let that be ). But what's more relevant is functional intelligence. And the Internet is making people more functionally intelligent at all times and in the most direct and obvious ways. You just have to stop and look for a second.

(06-20-2016 09:46 PM)scorpion Wrote:  Everything works. Until it doesn't. You're extrapolating a trend from the past into a future that is likely to be far different than anything humanity has previously experienced. Cavalry charges were a staple of warfare for centuries, but they're not so hot against an armored column of tanks. The issue in this case is not a change of degree, but entirely of kind. A buggy whip maker can work in a factory, and a farmer can learn to be a carpenter. But when you have massive employment dislocation occurring across entire industries in the span of just a decade or two, people simply can't adapt quickly enough, especially given the complexity of most marketable skills these days (how long will it take the average 90 IQ truck driver to become proficient at C++? How many retail clerks have what it takes to make it as entrepreneurs?).

This argument is known as "this time is different... trust me". And you know this how, exactly? I mean, given that neither you nor anyone else can foresee the shape that technological advances will take, it's very interesting that something enables you (and others) to know that just this time around the cycle of dislocation from some fields and their replacement by new ones will not work like it always has. Why is that?

To take just one trivial example: the idea that to hold a job in the future you'll have to be "proficient in C++" (or something along these lines). It's far more likely that, in fact, a lot of what goes into being "proficient in C++" will itself be automated. That means that a normal human being will be able to communicate with a device and that device will write the code that would have previously required said C++ proficiency. Which, in turn, makes whatever task that piece of code was supposed to accomplish more, not less, accessible to a normal human being. A very simple idea, but no one ever thinks about this.

(06-20-2016 09:46 PM)scorpion Wrote:  Most people with sub 90 IQs (over 1/3 of the population) could not even make sense of this post you're reading right now.

This I'll agree with . Even some of the over 90 folks don't always get there right away, it seems. But that's OK, because their ability to do their job doesn't seem to depend on it. They're just missing out on some pleasures, but I trust that they have others to pick up the slack.

Post: #102

(06-20-2016 07:04 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  This is how it's been throughout human history -- innovation and technological progress allow the human being to master a certain aspect of its relation to the material world; as that aspect is mastered, the conditions are created for us to address the next challenges. What a "job" really is, at the most basic level, is a way of organizing human activity to enable progress in our struggle to master and control the materials that embody and surround us. Since we are nowhere near the end point of that struggle -- to the extent that it has an end point -- there is absolutely no danger that further progress in automation will create a condition in which "jobs" are absent. As some jobs are eliminated by automation and progress, new jobs -- new kinds of jobs -- will appear, as if by magic (but actually through strict inevitability) that will tackle new tasks that do not even exist in today's world. This is how it was, how it is, and how it will be

“The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature... The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men. Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life. The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.” – Karl Marx, The German Ideology


"Labor is, in the first place, a process in which both man and nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material reactions between himself and nature. He opposes himself to nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labor that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labor power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labor was still in its first instinctive stage. We presuppose labor in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labor process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the laborer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realizes a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman's will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be." – Karl Marx, Capital vol.1


“It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man really proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his active species-life. Through this production, nature appears as his work and his reality. The object of labor is, therefore, the objectification of man’s species-life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created.” – Karl Marx, Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.


“So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life.” – Karl Marx, Capital vol.1


“The real facts, which are travestied by the optimism of economists, are as follows: The labourers, when driven out of the workshop by the machinery, are thrown upon the labour market, and there add to the number of workmen at the disposal of the capitalists.” - – Karl Marx, Capital vol.1


--


"...In short, the animal merely uses external nature, and brings about changes in it simply by his presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals, and once again it is labour that brings about this distinction.
…The mastery over nature, which begins with the development of the hand, with labour, widened man's horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown, properties of natural objects." Friedrich Engels, Dialectcs of Nature.

“The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history – only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the humanity's leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.” - Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring.

Post: #103

^ Now that is comedy.

Bad guy said X. You said X. Therefore you're talking like a bad guy!

I hear Marx also used to say things like "I'm hungry". I say that too. Oh no I'm a communist!

Hey Liberty, Ghenghis Khan used to ride horses. Do you reckon jockeys are all out to conquer the world?

This debate is rapidly starting to look like adults versus children.

Post: #104

Liberty Sea:

Of course, in so far as they followed and bastardized Hegel, Marx and Engels were more or less correct in their inchoate understanding of these things, as far as it went (which was not very far).

Post: #105

(06-20-2016 10:51 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  ^ Now that is comedy.

Bad guy said X. You said X. Therefore you're talking like a bad guy!

I hear Marx also used to say things like "I'm hungry". I say that too. Oh no I'm a communist!

Hey Liberty, Ghenghis Khan used to ride horses. Do you reckon jockeys are all out to conquer the world?

This debate is rapidly starting to look like adults versus children.

Did I say that I disagree with TLOZ? That's just your assumption. In fact, I agree with TLOZ and Marx on that account. I was the first to like his posts here. I'm just trying to trace the origin of his ideas.
It'll surprise you how much of it can be found in Marx's writing. And Hegel too, of course. Especially in the Master-slave dialectics. But his focus on sensuous life, concreteness and objectivity and critique of abstract Platonism have more in common with Marx than with Hegel. It's basically the basis of Marx's criticism of Hegel.

Post: #106

Liberty Sea,

Can you describe exactly what you take my ideas to be, and how they derive from Marx and Hegel?

I think this would be quite interesting and instructive.

Post: #107

(06-20-2016 11:01 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  Liberty Sea,

Can you describe exactly what you take my ideas to be, and how they derive from Marx and Hegel?

I think this would be quite interesting and instructive.

I'd love to but I don't think that this is the thread for it. Recently I've been thinking about your theory of nihilism as an explanation of contemporary ideologies. I plan to make a thread to discuss it, as well as your metaphysics in general at some point. It's going to be long (I already wrote 15 pages). I think it is going to be a fruitful exchange.

Meanwhile, you may want to take a look at Marx's Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. While you might not have directly found inspiration from it, I think it has quite a few points in common with your ideas.

Post: #108

I will read that Marx text by this weekend.

And I very much look forward to your thread -- I think it will be very interesting indeed and perhaps surprising in some ways when it's all said and done. It will be a great pleasure to see what a brilliant reader makes of these ideas and to give them an extended airing.

Post: #109

The average american IQ is 98, while the average japanese IQ is 106. While simplistic, this would go a long way to explaining a resilience to the effects of automation on unemployment.

Post: #110

Whenever I think of sailing, I think of big wooden ships. And whenever I think of big wooden ships, I think of that creaking noise as the ship lists from side to side. And whenever my mind is being pulled in two directions, over and over again, by two highly intelligent people who disagree with each other, I think of that creaking noise.

Right now TLOZ has a slight edge over scorpion's position, because I don't think the future consequences of UBI are known nor knowable. And my motto, "Why not try something audacious that has never done before?" leads me to support UBI.

Post: #111

Marx may actually be right in this diagnosis. But he is totally wrong in his solution.

Post: #112

(06-20-2016 06:08 PM)scorpion Wrote:  Do you really think everyone has it in them to engage in creative activity or other passion projects to beautify and enrich society? Do you really think that, left to their own devices with no external pressure to provide for themselves in any way, that most people would not just become consumed with laziness and various forms of vice?

There are more external pressures than the pressure to provide. People invest in their homes and communities to make them better places to live and to pass on to their children. This comes from social pressure (and to some extent civil law), which is at best indirectly related to pressure to provide basic needs.

If you drive through a suburban neighborhood in any moderate-income middle class American community that has managed to survive, you won't see exceptional creativity but you'll see lots of positive, if modest, domestic expression. People clear and mow their lawns, paint their houses, and decorate their yards (often with seasonal or holiday flavor). They all take their little bit of responsibility for ensuring their neighborhood is a pleasant and welcoming place.

Post: #113

But Blaster, you said it yourself: it comes from social pressure indirectly related to the pressure of providing for basic needs. These "moderate-income middle class American communities" all grew up and formed in exactly those conditions.

Do you really believe that these nice people mowing their lawns and creating a happy neighborhood for their kids would have turned out the same way if they had all grown up on social security / UBI? Or would it have sapped their drive, cooperative spirit and kindness?

Post: #114

Native American populations have been living, essentially, on UBI for decades. There's little in the way of pursuing passions. Instead, their way of life is eviscerated, they have record levels of alcoholism and suicide is rampant. UBI would have the same effect on any society with once proud men reduced to wards of the state.

Post: #115

LOZ position is just a variant of libertarian dogma.

It's the fallacy of recurring history. It's the same as when some internet wise guy decides to bring up the Socrates quote about how bad the youth is, but that's no argument, maybe the youth really was horrible back then, the Greek empire fell shortly after.

Likewise, LOZ is arguing from a dogmatic perspective, while paradigmic shifts actually do happen. It is no natural law that technological progress creates new jobs, that is some libertarian delusion.

Or rather, there is no guarantee that the new 'employment' will be like it used to be. Technology without intervention would indeed most likely lead to less intelligent people doing service jobs, like in third world countries. Wealth will run up.

There are actual requirements for IQ to use logic for example. Biological limits.

Then we're ignoring likley cataclysmic change in eugenicism. Within 50-100 years the elite will use genetic and hormonal engineering to make themselves all have 150IQ and be 6'6''. Their lifespans will increase to 120 years probably, allowing far greater time to use that higher IQ to separate themselves. I hope you all realize this happens today right? Someone with IQ of 100 and someone with 130 will be quite similar at 15 but at 30 the brighter one will have much greater knowledge and at 50 years old there is a divide that can't be bridged.

You'll have the actual ubermensch walking around. The athletics of an NBA player, the brains of a Harvard professor, while the plebs trudge on with their pedestrian bodies and average intellect.

We can't predict the future because it's due for revolution. Read some good science-fiction, there are plenty of scenarios. What is sure is that using 1900 century analytical models is of no use at all.

Post: #116

(06-21-2016 12:51 PM)SlickyBoy Wrote:  Native American populations have been living, essentially, on UBI for decades. There's little in the way of pursuing passions. Instead, their way of life is eviscerated, they have record levels of alcoholism and suicide is rampant. UBI would have the same effect on any society with once proud men reduced to wards of the state.

This is what I fear, and I don't believe it's predestined to be the result of a UBI, but I believe that it will come part and parcel. Once the government is providing for your needs it takes away an argument to fight for individualism and free enterprise. Why do you need to use the land that way? We are already providing what you need, don't pursue you're own means.

To use an example; the eskimos. Their culture and society was adapted to the environment they lived in. They were nomadic and followed the game, lived in multiple villages that functioned seasonally. One tribe took up huge swaths of land needed to survive in the arctic. Now they're landlocked in permanent settlements and most of the adjacent land is owned by the federal government with the usage restrictions that come with that. They receive free medical, dividends from native owned corporations which is a compromise with capitalism. They no longer have their sovereignty though, and are restricted on how they pursue cultural fulfillment. For example, to subside on game in the arctic without being nomadic requires greater travel. So they have adapted by embracing motorized technology, but they fight the federal government constantly on how and where they can use it. Motorized vehicles are restricted within federally owned waters. So far the natives have been pretty effective at fighting for exemptions that allow them to use the land, but it's an ongoing battle. In an era of civil rights and multiculturalism, entitlements were the carrot that the feds used to entice the natives to open their land for mineral extraction (by others).

A similar "entitlements trade" is being proposed to rescue the dying communities of coal country.

Take the land wars in the western US as another example. Ranchers set up community and economy that relied on local control over land usage, a compromise with the federal government that wanted to own said land in place of states. As time goes on and federal power grows the feds are now dishonoring commitments made to states with local concerns, and becoming much more restrictive in how federal land is used. Now the land is set aside for bird watching and mountain biking only, benefiting those in cities. Trade in your free range beef and family business for some factory grown meat and a job at walmart.

Maybe I'm being a little too "pie in the sky" to think we can have self reliance and freedom to pursue happiness indefinitely, but I don't think so. There are lands that can be opened and used productively, and there will be ways to do it responsibly in a way that can be sustained. New technologies and approaches will be found to restore environments that can be lived in. When power becomes centralized it is no longer balanced, and the federal (or global) elites will dictate usage according to their own vision and motivations. I fear that trend would only be exacerbated with a system of entitlements.

Post: #117

(06-20-2016 10:11 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  This argument is known as "this time is different... trust me". And you know this how, exactly? I mean, given that neither you nor anyone else can foresee the shape that technological advances will take, it's very interesting that something enables you (and others) to know that just this time around the cycle of dislocation from some fields and their replacement by new ones will not work like it always has. Why is that?

I don't know the future any more than you do, obviously we're both speaking from conjecture here. But what I do know is that occasionally it really IS different this time. And this is nowhere more true than in exactly this particular issue: rapid change brought on by technology. I previously used the analogy of cavalry charges, a battlefield staple for millennia, being made obsolete almost overnight by tanks and machine guns. Similarly, following WWII and the invention of the atomic bomb, the idea of total war between major powers - which had just engulfed the entire world a few years prior - became obsolete overnight.

Everything is the same, until one day you wake up...and it's not.

Socially we've see similar radical change brought on in a very short period of time by the internet and smartphones. These technologies have a profound impact on the way we live our lives - for better, inarguably, and perhaps this is mostly the case - but also for worse. It's insanity to ignore the very real drawbacks and even dangers posed by radical technological change, of which massive unemployment and social dysfunction is but one possibility.

Given that the process of UBI has already begun in soft form via the welfare state and automation of millions of jobs, we can clearly see that the employment trend is quite negative overall , and that newly invented jobs aren't even coming close to replacing what's been lost. So again I ask - where all all these futuristic jobs enabled by technology? I simply don't think they exist, and they never will. The very nature of advanced technology by definition entails increased ease of use and decreased human input - eliminating human effort (aka jobs). This, in turn, necessitates some kind of UBI (which I view as ultimately unworkable and undesirable) or mass population reduction (which I think is ultimately inevitable, either induced or accidental). The important distinction here is recognizing between a difference in degree and a difference in kind. Plumbers can use iPads and cobblers can learn to work in factories, but true AI and advanced robotics are game changers we have only just begun to wrap our heads around. We can't say for sure how exactly they will change society, but the implications are potentially massive and hugely disruptive. We must recognize that reality.

Remember that the internet was initially just predicted to be a sort of electronic newspaper and letter service. Powerful technologies have a way of growing in directions we didn't anticipate and radically altering society in profound and permanent ways.

Post: #118

For about sixty years, many of us have believed that if we introduce hapless people (like Africans, Muslims, and Hispanics) to the awesomeness that is American culture, those people will be inspired to become Americans - that is, to become better people by adopting American culture and dispensing with their ancestral culture.

We were so wrong that our American culture is being threatened, and our wrongness makes us believe something we don't say in public: "I dunno man, there's just something about being Mexican, Muslim, or African that makes them immune to the siren call of material wealth, non-violence, and extended lifespan in a foreign land."

On nice days, (99.5% of the days on this forum), we can reliably pin down those "something abouts" as being poor early childhood socialization practices, excess physical abuse among infants (compared to Whites, Asians, and Jews), fundamental disregard for American education stemming from early childhood instruction, significantly lower IQ, and reliance on the welfare state. On really nice days, (100% of our lives outside the forum), we can hold this belief in "something abouts" while also knowing that you shouldn't judge a lone individual based on these conclusions.

----------

As I said earlier, I'm strongly leaning towards TLOZ's optimism. And I noticed that the pessimistic viewpoint espoused eloquently by Scorpion contains a core assumption that all human are the same. All humans, when given excess wealth and idle time, will refuse to aspire to being awesome. (Or, not ALL humans, but significantly more of them that would exist without UBI.)

My counter-argument is something we've never been in a position to observe: "There's just something about White Americans, Asians, and Jews that makes them immune to the temptations that befall the hapless, even when we're given UBI."

Is UBI going to make us non-hapless people beat our kids much more, deliberately choose low IQ mates much more, train our children to hate us much more, and significantly reduce our aspirations? If not, then there is just something about us that makes us immune.

Post: #119

(06-21-2016 07:12 PM)scorpion Wrote:  

(06-20-2016 10:11 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  This argument is known as "this time is different... trust me". And you know this how, exactly? I mean, given that neither you nor anyone else can foresee the shape that technological advances will take, it's very interesting that something enables you (and others) to know that just this time around the cycle of dislocation from some fields and their replacement by new ones will not work like it always has. Why is that?

I don't know the future any more than you do, obviously we're both speaking from conjecture here. But what I do know is that occasionally it really IS different this time. And this is nowhere more true than in exactly this particular issue: rapid change brought on by technology. I previously used the analogy of cavalry charges, a battlefield staple for millennia, being made obsolete almost overnight by tanks and machine guns. Similarly, following WWII and the invention of the atomic bomb, the idea of total war between major powers - which had just engulfed the entire world a few years prior - became obsolete overnight.

Everything is the same, until one day you wake up...and it's not.

This in particular is a good argument.

It just dawned on me that here as elsewhere arguments come later and what precede it is some fundamental attitudes and predispositions. TLOZ, more or less optimistic. scorpion, more or less pessimistic.

Because the "this time is different" has been made by TLOZ in the past, ironically, with the greatest eloquence so characteristic of him.

(09-15-2013 06:09 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

(09-14-2013 10:54 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  ______________________
My response to this is:

I agree with some of what you said, but there is nothing wrong with talking about the trajectory of the American empire and where it will end. Make no mistake: the social decay we are seeing today, and the decline of American prestige and power in the world, is real. It may hold together in our lifetime, but we can't know how or when it will end.

You describe us as the "most amazing and greatest society the world has ever known"....I think this highly questionable.
I think you would be surprised to see every empire describe itself in this way. Every single one, from Assyria, to Persia, to Rome, to the Ottomans, etc. Take your pick. Yes, we have some amazing things at this point in history. The greatest level of material wealth, certainly. But I think we have paid for this with a trade off in other areas: spiritual poverty, lack of family cohesion, lack of meaning or purpose, and an increase in isolation, lonlieness, and atomization.

... when you read the accounts of empires past, patterns emerge. All of them think they're unique, special, superior, and everlasting. If you read Livy's account of the history of Rome, it's filled with patriotic asides and nationalistic propaganda that could have been taken out of a Fox News editorial, a statement from a 19th century British imperialist, or from an Assyrian satrap of the 8th century B.C. The cuneiform carvings on an old Assyrian bas-relief all talk about how wonderful and great the king and his people are, and how they brought wisdom and justice to the wretched conquered people, etc. etc. It's all the same. Just change the name of the country--America, Rome, Britain, Assyria--and you have the same thing. All empires come and go...

QC,

It's interesting that you scruple to note about America's destiny that "we can't know how or when it will end", yet everywhere else you speak of America's decline and fall as a certainty that is, somehow, more certain than any other. You speak of American supremacy not as something that might merely be in doubt but as an "illusion", a mere appearance that you've seen through and been disabused of. "Let's not kid ourselves here". It's as if the scales have fallen away from your eyes and you can see things as they really are. You know, somehow, that "The mighty can be brought to their knees far, far more easily than people know". Where does this knowledge, which is somehow the most unquestionable knowledge there is, come from? Why is it that you're more certain of the coming ruination of America and the West than of anything else?
....
Yet it is this supposed knowledge, this projection of a felt despair onto the helpless fear of an unknowable future, that is the true illusion. That is what must fall away from our eyes if we are to see what is right in front of us.

Because in reality, things change, and history does not repeat itself. Over time, certain changes amount to differences in kind. How much do we have to learn from societies that have not walked on the moon or held the library of Alexandria in their palms? Are their lessons, such as they are, really relevant to us? It is the differences in kind that so easily escape our minds. It is easy to recite the names of empires past, but take an Assyrian and transport him to our time, and he would know that he walks on a different planet. And he would be right.
...

You speak of "stalemates and mixed outcomes" in our skirmishes post World War II, but don't you see that the only reason for this is precisely our exceptional, unprecedented, and entirely taken for granted niceness, the unique self-restraint we exercise at all times? Because it is indisputable, as I have also pointed out, that we could have annihilated, say, Vietnam, or any of our other enemies, many times over, and we wouldn't even have needed nukes. All the "muddle" comes from the fact that we choose not to do so.

TLOZ's claim of the mythology of decline was not one of uncertainty. He declared its illusory status with greatest certitude. And with equal certitude, that history does not repeat itself.

If some negative patterns have happened in the past, and someone claims "This is how it's been throughout human history" - he will ask "how do you know it'll be the same?", and then he claims: this time it's different, due to colossal technological advance.

If some positive patterns have happened in the past, he will say it will happen again. "This is how it's been throughout human history". And if someone contends that this time it's different, due to colossal technological advance, he will question "how do you know it's different?"

TLOZ denied that he was some sort of Panglossian optimist but I'm afraid that he might just be guilty as charged, as lovable and refreshing as it is. His ad hoc conviction in the bright future brought about by technological advance is practically unassailable, rooted more in his metaphysics than in empirical evidences, and even more so in his fundamentally optimistic, life-loving disposition.

Due to my disposition, I remain positive and hopeful for better future, and found much to agree with TLOZ in this case, but to be fair, the "This is how it's been throughout human history" argument is not a particularly strong one. We can do better than that.

Btw, I won't charge you with crypto-nihilism if you aren't as optimistic.

Post: #120

LS,

Actually, not only is there no contradiction between what I wrote in that post to QC and what I wrote in the more recent post to scorpion, but they make essentially the same point in different contexts. And "optimism" and "pessimism" have nothing to do with it.

Technological and scientific progress is the one unchanging aspect of the human condition because it is, by its nature, cumulative and results in ever greater mastery and control of materials by the human being. This progress introduces certain differences in kind in the conditions of life which can moot the supposed lessons of ancient history. That is what I was pointing out in the post to QC.

America is not destined to suffer the fate of ancient empires because the so-called cycles of ancient history (which are in any case very dubious extrapolations from a very few examples) are largely irrelevant under current conditions. That's not to say that America is guaranteed to remain a dominant power forever -- although our military superiority does guarantee it for the foreseeable future -- but only that these ostensible lessons of ancient history do not apply in that context, and that the desire to apply them is animated more by emotional and ideological motivations than by a realistic appraisal of the likelihoods.

What we are discussing in this thread is entirely different because we are talking about the nature of technological and scientific progress itself. It is a part of the logical structure, or the essence, of what constitutes this progress that as it advances our ability to control and manipulate the materials that embody and surround us, it sets the stage for the next set of tasks. Like I said in one of the earlier posts in this thread, a "job" is really just a way of organizing human activity to further advance our ability to control the material world. Such activities are necessarily -- logically -- catered to the abilities of the human being as it is, and to the way that its capacities are extended by existing technology. We do not create jobs that we cannot accomplish -- that is not the result of some magical felicity, but of what the point of a job is in the first place.

The idea that we will run out of jobs for normal human beings to do is akin to the idea that mathematicians will run out of new theorems to prove; it is an idea that is based on a misunderstanding of something that fundamentally characterizes a certain activity. The fact that new jobs appear as a result of technological innovations that make other jobs obsolete is not just some happy coincidence that we're about to run out of; it is a part of what technological innovation is in its essence. That is why "this time is different" arguments do not apply here.

Again, I can understand how tempting it is to dismiss what you take to be my ideas as mere artifacts of style or temperament (sunny or otherwise); it is far easier and less disquieting to deal with an aesthetic novelty than with a cognitive difference in kind. I appreciate the move but I'm afraid it just won't do. The arguments are what they are, and the cognitive difference in kind will out in the end. You cannot dismiss it, deny it, or sweep it under a pleasant aesthetic rug.

And just by the by -- I'm in no particular way an "optimist" in any practical sense. It is true that I do not accept the universally subscribed to mythologies of decline -- but that is simply because I realize that they are false and based on a set of confusions. Otherwise, there is nothing especially "optimistic", let alone Panglossian, about the way I see the world. Let's just say that I'm not the guy convinced that Trump is guaranteed to win in a landslide come November, and leave it at that.

Post: #121

LOZ,

How do you think about the changes from children having to participate in the provision of necessities to the life of today's children?

How about in the past most people working until they died, whereas retirement of 10+ years is now expected by most?

Post: #122

@TLOZ:

Oh, alright, thank for clarifying it. It is much clearer now.

Quote:the desire to apply them is animated more by emotional and ideological motivations than by a realistic appraisal of the likelihoods.

That certainly does a play a part, as I said of disposition. Cognitive limitation also does, and not only to the extent that it is limited by such emotional motivation. My observation is that the notion that empires come and go strike many intelligent men as true, whether or not they believe that life is meaningless, whether they come before or after Nietzsche. It does take a nihilist to believe that it's more likely for an empire to decline/collapse at some point than to hold eternal dominance. This has a logical appeal, more so than an empirical-inductive appeal. Men intuitively get it, but they're not used to deal in logical deductive argument, so they're prone to employ inductive arguments - and in combination with some sort of emotional motivations, head to exaggerated conclusions. In QC's case this feeling is also amplified by an extended exposure with ancient texts.

Anyway that's an argument we should save for later. I agree that America is not doomed to imminent collapse. Let's move onto this thread's topic:

Quote:We do not create jobs that we cannot accomplish -- that is not the result of some magical felicity, but of what the point of a job is in the first place.

Well, of course. But it's not guaranteed that we won't mostly create jobs that only a portion of the populace can accomplish. It's not a logical necessity that with advanced technology we are also required to create jobs for the entire populace who don't need jobs to survive. There is no logically-guaranteed, technical survival or even progress-driven pressure for the owners of the means of production (technology) to create jobs for the majority of people in working age. From the standpoint of logic, future progress can be carried on just fine with an elite portion.

A mathematician seeks out theorems to prove mainly because he finds great pleasure and fulfillment in doing so, not because there is an economic demand for it (much of advanced mathematics have no (immediate) practical application until much later on). Not everyone has such an interest in creative, challenging enterprises.

So in the condition of super-advanced technology, it remains largely up to the disposition of the future populace whether they will embark on such enterprises once they are released from the grip of necessity, i.e the demand to work to acquire favorable living condition.

The reason I believe that a large part of (perhaps mostly white, Jewish and Asian) men will continue to work is partly because I observed that they are more likely to be concerned with more than the necessities of life, they crave for accomplishment - whether due to innate disposition or socio-cultural pressure, to mark themselves in the world, or to find higher, more deeply satisfying fulfillment; and partly because of my optimistic disposition. I've high hope of men.

Yeah, I readily admit that I'm a pretty optimistic guy. But of course one's argument cannot be dismissed on the basis of one's temperament. You would never do that, and never would I.

Post: #123

(06-21-2016 09:58 PM)Different T Wrote:  LOZ,

How do you think about the changes from children having to participate in the provision of necessities to the life of today's children?

How about in the past most people working until they died, whereas retirement of 10+ years is now expected by most?

Well, both of these are obvious byproducts of the material wealth generated by technological progress. We live longer lives and can set time aside for both education and retirement. Our lives are divided into distinct phases that give them a more interesting and rounded arc than most lives of the past could ever achieve. Civilization introduces greater variety and differentiation into every aspect of life, and the differentiation of times of life is a part of this proliferation of variety.

I am certainly not denying the fact that progress will continue to make our lives, on the whole, easier, more comfortable, more pleasant and more various -- only the misconception that it will lead to an enforced idleness, either because there will be "nothing left to do" as a result of automation, or because all the available jobs will require a level of skill or intelligence that normal human beings will not be equal to.

Post: #124

(06-21-2016 10:16 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  I am certainly not denying the fact that progress will continue to make our lives, on the whole, easier, more comfortable, more pleasant and more various -- only the misconception that it will lead to an enforced idleness, either because there will be "nothing left to do" as a result of automation, or because all the available jobs will require a level of skill or intelligence that normal human beings will not be equal to.

The thing is, the jobs that do not require a particular high level of intelligence will increasingly be automated.

Quote:It's far more likely that, in fact, a lot of what goes into being "proficient in C++" will itself be automated. That means that a normal human being will be able to communicate with a device and that device will write the code that would have previously required said C++ proficiency. Which, in turn, makes whatever task that piece of code was supposed to accomplish more, not less, accessible to a normal human being.

Advanced devices will be made accessible for human consumption, of course. But it's not the same with production. Why do you need a "normal human being" to handle such code-writing device for production at all, if such handling can also be automated? What is it that a normal human being can do that automation can't do, and how do you know it?

The argument boils down to: if you are to prove that as a logical necessity derived from the inherent structure of technological progress most people will continue to be in productive employment, you will need to show that in a super-advanced technological condition, there will necessarily still be universal economic demand for the involvement for the average persons in productive processes.

Post: #125

Quote:Advanced devices will be made accessible for human consumption, of course.

Why are you sure of this? What are consumers trading in this arrangement?

Assuming we agree that public education, social security, welfare, etc. were created by the elite in response to certain pressures; do similar pressures exist today?