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Comment by bbor | Hacker News Reader

  It seems like our careers could just be snuffed out instantly with little recourse available.

You’ve likely heard this sentiment before but it’s the right one so I’ll be the one to post it today: your job is not your purpose, and the economy is not the society. Obviously your whole comment is well founded and relatable, but I think this is the only cure for your anxieties. The world is a beautiful, beautiful place, with many more wonders to offer than the typical laborer is accustomed to. If we eventually have a society where everyone is happy with what they have and there’s no work left to do, that would be a cause for celebration IMO.

This is all assuming that the intelligence explosion people are wrong. If they’re right… well, let’s hope they’re wrong.

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I think this is subjective. I get a sense of purpose from my job. I don't feel like 'just' a labourer, I feel like by working I'm contributing to society and helping others.

I don't want infinite leisure, I want to feel useful. A good day's work is very satisfying. But at the point machines can do my job better than I can, it might be difficult to feel useful.

It's called dignity and it's something people struggle with a LOT when they age.

"Don't worry grandad, I'll mow the lawn".

What happens to your purpose when you get fired, laid off, company goes out of business?

I would be really surprised if there was anything more then a fringe minority that found a sense of purpose from their job.

For me, it's about having a job I enjoy and feel like I'm good at. Which would apply to most of the jobs I've done. So in those circumstances I'd just get a new job, there are lots of roles and industries that interest me.

The problem would occur if I was unemployed and unemployable because my skills (or any new skills I could conceivably learn) were no longer valuable.

What do you suppose we all do during the transition to utopia? How do we feed our families once we've been laid off and while we wait for the arrival of paradise?

People already going through this now.

When large swaths of people no longer can employ themselves based on their skills their political views will start to slide. There will be a new mainstream view that maybe tax base needs to be expanded to take into account the new reality. It will be tough to fight back the majority of this size in a democracy. Maybe even in more authoritarian systems.

When machines can replace most of the low end labor it becomes increasingly unuseful to keep people in poverty. Imagine being one of the few megarich alive, being able to produce teslas like it was a SaaS business, amazing margin, great moat, but 99% of your fellow humans were on poverty not even able to dream about having a car.

There is always the technodystopian path, but to get there is not so easy either. You need to keep people relatively happy for long enough that you have manufactured enough killerbots. Most humans want to preserve civilization.

The idea that your job provides for you is 100% fabricated construction that is great local maxima for this society. When technology changes what is possible we will reorganize the beehive of humanity to take into account that these new machines exist.

I know :(. Sadly/happily the only answer in my eyes is “massive political reform”, which is never done easily or without intense collateral suffering. I feel like humanity is in a deeply reactive, surfing-the-waves-of-circumstance situation, for better or worse.

I’m not sure, there is something meaningful and rewarding in doing even hard work to make life better for the people around you, or creating beautiful things from the sweat of your brow. A future of forced endless leisure sort of sounds like a dystopia honestly.

I agree, but I was trying to imply that I find the “we solve all problems and there’s no way to feel like you’re helping others” scenario to be preeetty unlikely. Much more likely is a future where we continue to sweat from our brow, but without directly tying it to subsistence, and with much more personal autonomy.

I think the term “emotional labor” might be a good tool to hint at what I’m talking about. That’s just a subset of the wider “there’s more ways to be productive than a capitalist job” view

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