Comment by jacquesm

> This was the exact argument made during the Industrial Revolution. Keep in mind that a minority of workers today are in white-collar jobs. We're over a century out from mechanising physical labor, and it's still strongly present.

Yes, but then it was a shift from one kind of labor to another. Now it is a shift from some kind of labor into nothing.

> Drafting spreadsheets by hand was a profession up to teh 1980s. Same for reams of printing and document-couriering services. People adapted.

That's a nice mantra but it doesn't put food on any tables. People adapt to large scale war as well, mostly by dying and people adapt to famine, earthquakes and floods as well, mostly by dying. Whose to say that massive unemployment because there literally is no longer enough work to go around (which technically is already the case!) the income streams of which power all of our collective economies is something that we can 'survive' in any form? You are so sure because it worked in the past but that doesn't offer any guarantees for the future at all. That's the same kind of reasoning that would have someone endlessly pull the trigger during Russian Roulette: it worked so far! Until it doesn't...

> Idk, launch a florist or ski instructing or tour guiding service. Travelling chef. There are so many talented people with zero knack for administration stuck in service jobs.

There is only so much demand for florists, ski instructors, traveling chefs or tour guides and those jobs are mostly taken.

The reason those people are in administrative jobs is because that's where the money is. If that source of income disappears they don't just evaporate, they are now 'unstuck' from their source of income, that doesn't change their needs one bit (and in many ways increases those needs, including psychological needs).

> Not using precedent as proof. Just saying there is precedence for technological revolutions and this very concern. The fact that it's gone pretty much one way elevates the burden of proof for those preaching doom and gloom.

See Russian Roulette analogy above. It's survivorship bias warmed over.

> Another observation: the socieities that best distributed the gains in a way that was win-win were those who approached it with optimism.

Yes, optimism all the way to the polluted and destabilized world that we live in today. We will be dealing with the consequences of that revolution for the next 20 decades or so and that's assuming that the next one isn't going to do us in. The industrial revolution worked out for some parts of the world. But others were left behind without a moment's thought (well, ok, an occasional tear was shed). The number of people that this revolution leaves behind could very well be orders of magnitude larger.

>> it may not work for the majority of the individuals in it

> Sure. I'm not saying the transition won't be hard. But it's not avoidable. And in the long run, precedence shows it should (or at the very least, can) work out. Having excess production and a labour surplus is a champagne problem. That doesn't mean one can't fuck it up.

I'm not sure 'won't be hard' is strong enough and I'm not sure it isn't avoidable, regardless I'm pretty sure that as long as we aren't able to clean up our present day messes that we probably shouldn't be opening more Pandora's boxes unless we have a plan on how we're going to deal with the possible aftermath. Anything less would be - especially given our track record of these things to date - utterly irresponsible.

I know quite a few school age kids. If there is one scary and common thread that runs through what I keep hearing it is that they have universal apathy regarding their future, between 'AI', climate change and various wars why study, why prepare for a world that's changing too fast to keep up with? You may as well enjoy the ride down because the job you are aiming for when you're 14 will no longer exist by the time you hit the job market. And that's a very difficult thing to argue with, and we, the present day tech generation are the ones bringing that about.

I don't have any clear answers either. But I think unbounded optimism is likely to lead to some massive level of disappointment.