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Comment by lawrencechen | Hacker News Reader

> Historically, letting technology eliminate their jobs has been a sacrifice people have made for their kids' sakes. Not intentionally, for the most part, but their kids ended up with the new jobs created as a result. No one weaves now, and that's fine.

- paulg

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1757794178548048117

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Ah perfect, all we have to do is consider a vague analogy to a totally different event in the past and it's clear that there's no worries if AI takes the vast majority of human jobs in the next 50 years.

As a side note I shudder to think how many nightmare fuel cursed videos the researchers must have had to work through to get this result. Gotta applaud them for that I guess.

Sentence 1 seems historically illiterate, and I think pg knows how ridiculous it sounds because he walks it back almost immediately. "Historically people made a sacrifice, but not intentionally, for the most part" is incoherent.

> No one weaves now, and that's fine.

Did horses find new jobs when we moved to steam power? Leave aside the odd horse show and fairground ride. By the numbers, what do you think happened?

> By the numbers, what do you think happened?

They found alternate employment as pack horses in WW1. The problem was solved after that.

I can't imagine Paul Graham actually thought through the scenario he's describing. The kids of the parents who lost their jobs, throwing their lives into disarray and desperation, are not going to be the primary recipients of the new shiny technologically advanced careers.

Ah yes, Paul G, the historian

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