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Comment by hackinthebochs | Hacker News Reader

>I do expect the next comment would be something like "work is a path to godliness"

And you think these kinds of maxims formed out of vacuums? They are the kinds of sayings that are formed through experience re-enforced over generations. We can't just completely reject all historical knowledge encoded in our cultural maxims and expect everything to work out just fine. Yes, it is true that most people not having productive work will fill the time with frivolous or destructive ends. Modernity does not mean we've somehow transcended our historical past.

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> And you think these kinds of maxims formed out of vacuums?

Do you think they've always existed in all human cultures throughout time?

The pro-work ethic is fairly new in human civilization. Previous cultures considered it to be a burden or punishment, not the source of moral virtue.

> Yes, it is true that most people not having productive work will fill the time with frivolous or destructive ends.

And that's fine! A lot of people fill their time at work with frivolous or destructive ends, whether on their own or at the behest of their employer.

Not all work is productive. Not all work is good. It isn't inherently virtuous and its lack is not inherently vicious.

> They are the kinds of sayings that are formed through experience re-enforced over generations.

Sure, but the whole point is that the conditions that led to those sayings would no longer be there.

Put a different way: those sayings and attitudes were necessary in the first place because society needed people to work in order to sustain itself. In a system where individual human work is no longer necessary, of what use is that cultural attitude?

It wasn't just about getting people to work, but keeping people from degenerate and/or anti-social behavior. Probably the single biggest factor in the success of a society is channeling young adult male behavior towards productive ends. Getting them to work is part of it, but also keeping them from destructive behavior. In a world where basic needs are provided for automatically, status-seeking behavior doesn't evaporate, it just no longer has a productive direction that anyone can make use of. Now we have idle young men at the peak of their status-seeking behavior with little productive avenues available to them. It's not hard to predict this doesn't end well.

Beyond the issues of young males, there's many other ways for degenerate behavior to cause problems. Drinking, gambling, drugs, being a general nuisance, all these things will skyrocket if people have endless time to fill. Just during the pandemic, we saw the growth of roving gangs riding ATVs in some cities causing a serious disturbance. Some cities now have a culture of teenagers hijacking cars. What happens to these people who are on the brink when they no longer see the need to go to school because their basic needs are met? Nothing good, that's for sure.

What exactly do you think would happen? Usually wars are about resources. When resource distribution stops being a problem (i.e, anyone can live like a king just by existing), where exactly does a problem manifest?

All the "degenerate activities" you mentioned are a problem in the first place because in a scarcity-based society they slow down/prevent people from working, therefore society is worse off. That logic makes no sense in a world where people don't need to put a single drop of effort for society to function well.

>All the "degenerate activities" you mentioned are a problem in the first place because in a scarcity-based society they slow down/prevent people from working

This is a weird take. Families are worse off if a parent has an addiction because it potentially makes their lives a living hell. Everyone is worse off if people feel unsafe because of a degenerate sub-culture that glorifies things like hijacking cars. People who don't behave in predictable ways create low-trust environments which impacts everyone.

I would say that those attitudes are 99% caused by resource-related issues. There's a reason why drug abuse (and antisocial behavior generally) is mostly found among the lower classes.

If I could pick between the world we are in now and one where all the problems societies face that are related, directly or indirectly, to the distribution of resources are eliminated, I would pick the latter in a heartbeat. The "price to pay" in the form of a possible uptick in "degeneracy" during the first few months/years is worth it, not to mention that I doubt that problem would arise at all.

It's a dangerous fantasy to think that all societal problems are caused by uneven distribution of wealth and that they will be solved by redistribution. No, some people just aren't psychologically suited to the modern world, whether that involves delaying gratification or rejecting low effort, high dopamine stimulation. The structure involved in necessary work and the social structures that lead people down productive paths are one way we collectively cope with the incongruence between our society and our psychology. Take away these structures and the results have the potential to be massively destabilizing.

So... manufactured poverty?

You're just saying it's desirable that some people be at the bottom even in a scenario where the opposite could be feasibly achieved. All on some theory that the human mind (or at least some instances of it in the population) simply... won't be able to take it without going insane?

We should need a much, much higher standard of proof for what could result in unnecessary pain and suffering for years. Especially when this:

> some people just aren't psychologically suited to the modern world, whether that involves delaying gratification or rejecting low effort, high dopamine stimulation.

...is not a proven fact, and is, with respect to social media, highly contested and inconclusive.

>You're just saying it's desirable that some people be at the bottom even in a scenario where the opposite could be feasibly achieved.

What's wrong with having people at the relative bottom? Trying to force equality onto society does not have a good track record. We can raise the absolute bottom past the point of poverty while also not upending social structures that have served us well for centuries.

>All on some theory that the human mind... simply... won't be able to take it without going insane?

I'm saying transformative change across the whole of society shouldn't be undertaken lightly. I don't need to prove that a world where human labor is obsolete would be damaging to the human psyche. Those who want to rush ahead just assume things will be just fine. They have the burden of proof. We've seen how bad things can get when the social engineers get it wrong. We're at a local peak in human flourishing for a large part of humanity. Why should we pull the lever on the unknown in hopes that we will come out ahead?

> And you think these kinds of maxims formed out of vacuums?

No, they formed in societies where it WAS necessary for most people to work in order to support the community. We needed a lot of labor to survive, so it was important to incentivize people to work hard, so our cultures developed values around work ethics.

As we move more and more towards a world where we actually don’t need everyone to work, those moral values become more and more outdated.

This is just like old religious rules around eating certain foods; in the past, we were at risk from a lot of diseases and avoiding certain foods was important for our health. Now, we don’t face those same risks so many people have moved on from those rules.

>those moral values become more and more outdated.

Do you think there was ever a time in human societies where the vast majority of people didn't have to "work" in some capacity, at least since the rise of psychologically modern humans? If not, why think humanity as a whole can thrive in such an environment?

Our environment today is completely different that it was even 100 years ago. Yes, you have to ask this question for every part of modern society (fast travel, photographs, video, computers, antibiotics, vaccines, etc), so I am not sure why work is different.

Part of the problem is that we don't ask these questions when we should be. Social media, for example, represents a unique assault on our psychological makeup that we just uncritically unleashed on the world. We're about to do it again, likely with even worse consequences.

What would "asking these questions" entail? Would you have a committee that decides what new things we would allow? Popular vote? I get the idea, I just know see how you could ever actually do anything about this issue unless you completely outlawed anything new.

I don't think its plausible to have a committee to approve all new technology. But it is plausible to have a committee empowered to place limits on technology that we can predict will cause a social upheaval the likes of which we've never seen in modern times. It's not like we haven't done the equivalent of this before with e.g. nuclear and bioengineering technology. The difficulty is that the speed in which AI is being developed makes it so government bureaucracies are necessarily playing catchup. But it can be done. We just need to accept that we're not powerless to shape our collective futures. We are not at the mercy of technology and the few accelerationists who stand to be the new aristocracy in the new world.

I find this comment to be completely shortsighted.

We now have western societies with a growing population of homeless people, that despite having access to tons of resources at their disposal, still can't get their shit together. A great majority are doing drugs and smoking/abusing alcohol.

And it's enough to have 20 crackheads to destroy a neighborhood of 10000 hard-working, peaceful people.

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