Comment by lkey
9 hours ago
If you could press a button and obliterate the joy experienced by every professional at their work, in exchange for a 1% boost in marginal productivity for the next 2 quarters, would you do it?
9 hours ago
If you could press a button and obliterate the joy experienced by every professional at their work, in exchange for a 1% boost in marginal productivity for the next 2 quarters, would you do it?
More to the point, what if the button gives a 10% quarterly boost in productivity for the next 100 quarters. But 80% of the professionals get fired and the other 20% have harder jobs that feel more managerial. Then, yeah I would press it.
What is your plan for the 80% of people losing their jobs in this scenario? Tough luck?
Do you think all those professionals are going to be grateful to finally know the secrets of the universe despite being jobless?
By the time we know the secrets of the universe, the concept of "jobs" would be an ancient, vestigial footnote in our evolutionary history. I mean, if I knew the secret to faster-than-light travel I'd not be hunched over here pecking away at computers! ;-)
In fact, I suspect most of the "jobs" left eventually would be around extracting those secrets out of the universe and making them work for humanity. Which is probably a much better use of human intellect than pretty much anything we do today.
That may be the future we want to end up in, but we'll only get there eventually. Unfortunately, in today's world we neither know the secrets of the universe nor can we survive without jobs. So until society reorients itself towards that future, we are going to have a lot of upheaval.
2 replies →
I think more than you imagine while understanding that it’ll be detrimental to their living.
I'm afraid this only serves to more vividly depict scientists as rent-seeking
I'd do it in exchange for nothing, the sooner human labor is rendered obsolete the better.
Human labor is the only thing keeping us peons alive. When there are no more jobs then the wars start to cull the herd and prevent revolution.