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buybuydandavis comments on The progressive case for replacing the welfare state with basic income - Less Wrong
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And a lot more jobs are soon to be automated out of existence.
That's a good thing. For example, the job of swinging a pick at the coal face in the mine has been automated out of existence. Do you really want it back?
Good point. I expressed myself poorly.
A lot of people are soon to be automated out of economic viability as employees.
Arguably, some people are already not economically viable as employees. But I don't know why most of people wouldn't be able to adapt, just like their no-longer-economically-viable peasant ancestors did.
Until now, humans always had multiple competitive advantages in sensing, intelligence, and motor control, and an integrated system for all. That competitive advantage made them the best adaptable machines available.
That advantage is going away, particularly for the less intelligent and less educated.
Horses used to compete for real work in the economy, and win. Their population dwindled in the US as they were competed out of the marketplace by machines. Horse genocide. Their domesticated population has been coming back, but now as pets more than workers, and they're still not near the numbers they used to be.
How many human pets do people want? How many people want to be a pet?
When other things get smarter, cheaper, better, and you don't, eventually you lose. And machines have advantages to employers that people don't.
That's the basic luddite proposition and the problem is that the entire history of mankind says that this is not the way it works. And if you are going to pronounce But This Time It Will Be Different, you need stronger arguments.
Wrong. This proposition has never been tested before. Things were not a threat to be smarter, cheaper, better before.
Humans have dominated the world through their intelligence. It's the most powerful factor of production.
You need a stronger argument than "intelligence is just the same as all other factors of production".
"Cheaper and better" existed before, so you are focusing on "smarter". So what is that which is smarter than humans? Point it out to me.
Computers are already better than us in a ton of intelligence tasks, and that list is only going to get longer and longer.