Comment by galactushonor
17 hours ago
> why mathematicians should widely receive funding for merely understanding things, and how competition for postdoc and tenure positions would work under these circumstances.
This is blinders on thinking. The future we are looking at with the help of AI is full of abundance. Money is not an issue in that world.
> The future we are looking at with the help of AI is full of abundance.
Why would you think that, when the gains of productivity increases haven't been distributed uniformly during the past several decades? What could disrupt the current trend towards more concentration?
Mostly the fact that the ultra-rich always inevitably give in to greed over caution, reach too far, and trigger a revolt.
And in this case it can go as far as "y'all can starve, we don't need you anymore". Which is perfectly true from a pure capitalist point of view, but also I can't think of a better way to get people to move on from Flock cameras to bigger things.
The only question is, how bad it will get before society snaps. And you can already see many prominent figures among the tech elites promoting UBI as a palliative - basically giving people just enough of the wealth that they won't revolt. And it would even work if they kept it up, but, again, greed always wins over prudence in the long term with these people.
North Koreans haven't revolted in what, 3 generations? You would be surprised how bad shit can get and still no revolts.