[mft_]

I want us to automate food production and distribution. I want us to automate creation of building materials and creation of buildings. I want us to automate power generation, and see the marginal cost of power drop to zero. I want us to automate clean transport. I want us to automate cleaning up the planet.

[camgunz]

Beyond the face that these are all already highly automated, this isn't what TFA is saying. People aren't angry there are planting machines or whatever; they're angry they're forced to forego anything you can't put in a DB, like their jobs or the texture of their lives. Ironically, you have a huge case of software brain.

[mft_]

> Beyond the face that these are all already highly automated

Nonsense. To take first two examples:

Power plants may run mostly automatically, but humans decide how/where/when to build new plants, and humans build them. I'll be satisfied when we see 100% automated manufacture, transport, erection, and maintenance of solar farms (or similar) and all associated power storage and transmission.

Humans are still hugely in the loop on food production despite machine assistance, and the current world's systems are hugely wasteful in sharing out food production. I'll be satisfied when we have 100% automated farms, and automated transport and distribution of food such that we use what we've grown efficiently, and no-one can even imagine food shortage ever again.

> they're angry they're forced to forego anything you can't put in a DB, like their jobs or the texture of their lives. Ironically, you have a huge case of software brain.

Maybe you're missing the point.

I'm strongly aligned with this famous-ish tweet: "You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction. I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes."

I just have a vision far beyond laundry and dishes. Automation (with or without AI) offers us a chance of a future utopia. Unfortunately, the current direction seems to be a corporate-owned AI-driven dystopia. I want the Culture, not Robocop.

[camgunz]

100% agree. These are the kinds of things I would love to work on, not like, "never schedule a haircut appointment again!"

[fennecbutt]

Well ultimately I want human beings to not be so tribal and apathetic so that they'd actually care about the things above and learn to compromise.

But that ain't happening anytime soon.

[psadauskas]

Human beings mostly are. People mostly support their neighbors, and selflessly help each other in times of crisis.

The problem is the 5% of us are sociopaths. We let them have all the money and power because they're the only ones that want it. Then we let them use that money and power to convince us that the "REAL" problem is the people with no money or power in the neighboring political region (the border having been drawn by a sociopath).

[Legend2440]

You should read up on the banality of evil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem

Regular people, not sociopaths, are responsible for most of the evil in the world. There is no tiny minority of 'evildoers' that we could root out and be pure from.

Other bad things happen because of unintended consequences or the collective behavior of many people. Climate change or deforestation are not caused by greed or scheming CEOs; it's a side effect from the actions of billions of people individually trying to better their lives.

[psadauskas]

I'm familiar with it. The "banality of evil" in that book isn't about regular people, it was about the leadership of the Nazi party willing to go along with the Holocaust for personal power, then trying to get out of responsibility for it by claiming they were "just following orders". Those aren't regular people, those are sociopaths.

Regular people don't all independently decide to "do evil". There is banality in the ones that agree to go along with it, to save themselves from being ostracized or mildly inconvenienced. Do they perpetuate evil? For sure. But are they the villains responsible for it?

The "evildoers" are the tiny minority of sociopaths doing the convincing, because it nets them more personal power, and they don't care who they hurt along the way.

There is a huge amount of injustice in the world, morally speaking I should be out there fighting against it with everything I have. But I'm also the sole breadwinner for my family and I have a mortgage, so I mostly keep my head down and try to survive. Does that make me an evildoer? I sure hope not.

[applied_heat]

Power generation is largely automated !

[smallmancontrov]

I'd like to not die of Baumol's Cost Disease along the way, though.

[Legend2440]

Baumol's cost disease also benefits you, because it makes your wages go up even if you haven't increased productivity.

[smallmancontrov]

Maybe on doctornews, but this is hackernews. To us, Baumol's disease means your job, which has increased productivity, disappears, while your costs, which don't have increased productivity, go up.

[kilroy123]

Same here. Then let's automate building vast O'Neill cylinders and habitats we can live in.

[whattheheckheck]

Why

[Dig1t]

Why not? Humans are awesome and should colonize the universe. There is much science to do and there are many things to build.