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Work avoidance study
A study in how to make work redundant for the vast majority of people on the planet | |
I believe universities should be studying how to make work
redundant. Inevitably this is a cross-discipline endeavour
incorporating sciences, economics, politics, industrial
automation, automation experts and psychology and
behavioural sciences.
How do you make all work redundant.
The march
of automation is too slow for a human life today
who has to go to work.
How far would a million pounds of investing in the absence
of work take you?
Butlerian Jihad
https://dune.fandom...iki/Butlerian_Jihad [wagster, May 14 2020]
Trekonomics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekonomics Prophetic [8th of 7, May 14 2020]
Half a Life
https://memory-alph...lf_a_Life_(episode) Similar [8th of 7, May 14 2020]
[link]
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I support your idea, but it does not seem like an actual invention [+] |
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This sort of thinking was popular in the 50s and 60s, but turned
out to be premature. |
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What makes you think it's not still premature? |
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There will always be a place for a human doing work,
because stuff breaks down.
BUT, if only a few people have a "job", how do you do fair
distribution of resources? My take is to have everybody do a
little bit of work. Eg: instead of 1 person doing 40 hours per
week, 10 people do 4 hours per week. |
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neutrinos_shadow, The goal would be to eliminate all work
that can be automated so people who work are people who
WANT to be working, almost as if like a hobby. |
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Frankly, I think it will cause so much innovation that is
unprecedented. People would be free to imagine whatever
lifestyle they think should be represented. |
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Where resources are finite, won't many people work to secure a
larger share of those resources for themselves? And won't other
people then be compelled to work in defence of whatever they
consider to be their own share? And isn't this already the
meaning of an increasing proportion of what we now call work? |
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<link> describes your proposal exactly. |
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[marked-for-deletion], not an innovation. |
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This is interesting, but it should include research into
what might happen to a population basically turned
into hothouse flowers. |
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We're designed to do something. If we become life
forms whose sole purpose of existence is to process
food
into fecal matter, well, there might be a downside to
that. |
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There's this movie called "The Matrix", [doc] ... |
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To quote from the Wikipedia article on Trekonomics, "The Star Trek universe is a utopia because people do not have to work, but yet the ones we see on the show are all paradoxically very busy. " |
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"The Time Machine" by Wells explores this too. |
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The analogy I use is, decide that your kid won't ever have
to
walk to get someplace like you did all your life and strap
him to a wheelchair as soon as they're old enough to
crawl. |
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It's a complicated world, that's why I oppose any "slogan
based mono-philosophy" be it "Praise Jesus" or "Orange
Man Bad". Yea, I get it, nice Hallmark greeting card
sentiments, so now what do we do about these 1,000,000
actual complicated problems? |
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Throw them over to an AI and let that fix them. |
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Which probably involves painlessly* euthanasing the entire human population. |
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*Since AIs only feel pain if they choose to, pretty much any cost-effective method will do. |
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> This sort of thinking was popular in the 50s and 60s, but
turned out to be premature. |
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> What makes you think it's not still premature? |
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What do you mean by premature? |
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> The analogy I use is, decide that your kid won't ever
have to walk to get someplace like you did all your life and
strap him to a wheelchair as soon as they're old enough to
crawl. |
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Your children would still go to school and to university and
higher studies. They still have to get places and to
appointments. |
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//Your children would still go to school and to university and
higher studies.//
Why? Sure, some people will want to, but others will be
quite content to vegetate. |
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I support your idea, but it does not seem like an actual invention [-] |
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// me too - the author has seen something in one
place and wants it to be available to everybody, or at
least to him or her, or free, or cheap, without
knowing how to make it free or cheap. |
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//What do you mean by premature?// |
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In 1950, work seemed to be optional because scarcity seemed
to be over. |
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Scarcity seemed to be over because the needs of three billion
people could easily be met through industrial processes based
on the exothermic oxidation of fossil carbon, plus amazingly
cheap and problem-free nuclear power. |
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That's what I mean by premature. |
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// exothermic oxidation of fossil carbon // |
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Is there some other sort of oxidation of carbon, then ? |
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There are applications of oxidation where the exothermic aspect
is somewhat incidental, or at least secondary, viz., metallurgy.
As you very well know. |
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Work is already redundant, taking a long-term view of things. |
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At the end of the day the ice will come, then the planet will be engulfed by the sun, and then after a little while longer there will be the heat death of the universe. Seen in that perspective, all work is futile, and therefore redundant. |
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I think the best thing is to do what work you want to, and don't do what work you don't want to. There are consequences of not doing work, but if the decision not to work is taken consciously then those consequences can be dealt with. |
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What's the definition of "work" here? If nobody did
anything, there would be no food to put on the
tables that never got made, and no one would
deliver that food in the first place. There would
also be no one to make any of the pieces of work I
propose, such as The Right Angled Toaster. |
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I already have a work-avoidance study. I'm sitting in it now,
at my desk, looking at the halfbakery instead of working. |
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ditto, what wags said, but I'm standing, not sitting, because of
crap back. |
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what wags said, except I alternate between standing
and sitting depending on my stress and/or coffee
level |
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The whole premise of this idea or lack thereof is as
flawed as communism, for the same reasons. |
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Hey, wait, what did we just write... ? |
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I'm curious, [8th], as to how you reconcile your strong
aversion to communism with your membership of a
collective governed by a form of hive intelligence. |
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8th, it feels like when the Skekxis and urRu combined.
You didn't just dreamfast did you? |
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The problem with Utopias is their lack of flexibility. Once
you have worked out the Great Infallible System you
become locked to it, and any deviation outside of the
Great Infallible System becomes an Unallowable
Departure, and freedom is gone. |
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Capitalism demands growth. Without growth, it quickly
eats everything in sight, including itself. The only long-
term base answers are to a: to get off this rock, b:
restrict consumption to smaller levels or even rations, or
c: restrict populations to smaller levels. |
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We can assist with a: (for a price) or c: (purely for the purposes of entertainment). |
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As the bumper sticker says, "Earth First: We'll strip-mine the other planets later." |
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How much smaller would you like your planetary population to be (to the nearest couple of billion) ? |
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// how you reconcile your strong aversion to communism with your membership of a collective governed by a form of hive intelligence. // |
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Because the Collective is not "governed" in your sense of the word. We are a single unified entity with a single directing intelligence. We are Many, but we are One. There is no "goal divergence". There is no heirarchy (though we may use individual drones as "representatives" to interface with lesser life forms). We will add you biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. You will be Assimilated. Resistance is Futile. |
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