pucas946

The literal pitch these guys have been using is:

* We've built a technology that has obliterated entry level hiring

* That technology might obliterate all the other "normal" person white collar jobs. The kinds of jobs you can clock in and out and not think about them outside of that. Instead, every new job will be a managerial one working with 500 agents.

* Loaning all the money to build these data centers and train these models costs so much it cranks rates through the roof, so we've frozen the real estate market and nobody can move or buy in

* The past 10 years of American politics have been defined by how the last time we did a broad replacement of labor event like that for a group of people. Their standard of living permanently shrunk (the NAFTA disrupted working class), and we may end up doing that to you guys again. The only solution is that the government is going to have to do some sort of UBI or redistribution (which the last time they did during COVID, it was followed by the greatest inflation we've seen in our lifetimes)

* This technology might literally destroy the world in the next 10 years, and we keep accidentally releasing it into the world like its Skynet. But we are not responsible for it, and by the way its unavoidable with this technology. Somewhere on the other side, utopia will arise (No really your standard of living will actually go up after losing your job this time unlike everyone else, trust me.)

Then half the people in this thread is smugly are acting baffled at why people don't want this, and going "Hey they don't know that much about data center logistics but still oppose this. What is up with that?." Forget about if a data center actually ends up being a net drag if its near you and the standard nimby stuff. Even if it weren't, what benefit does marching towards this future have for anybody not in the top 10%? Sure, you can make a bunch of economic theory arguments: growth is always good, stagflation, Luddites, etc. But in practice, economic advancement and technology over the past 30 years has advanced so fast people can't even comprehend it, and in return everybody is becoming stupider, more unhappy, polarized, and the median standard of living has dropped as rich people have 20x their net worth. Why would a normal person want more of this?

I think if you look at Median wage trends over the past 50 years, it should be your default assumption that the surplus induced from productivity gains will go towards people who are already wealthy, and not the median person. People who consume services downstream of cheaper intelligence are likely to benefit somewhat, companies that produce those services massively, and the people who work at those places probably almost not at all.

I have dated a number of Chinese women, and had friendships with many men. I think these observations ring quite true, but I want to point out how a lot of these things are downstream of economic realities. Admittedly my age demographic targets my experience to 20 - 35 year old Chinese.

A lot has been said about outdated scarcity mindset, and those beliefs being difficult to shake in this thread. But honestly, I whole heartedly disagree. The mindset around these kind of Dark Triad behaviors, fixation on social standing and wanting to raise China up stem from the current day reality that China might be the MOST competitive society in the entire world, other then south Korea. To literally just get into a good school and have a good job requires competition and dedication that students here have to do to get into Harvard. And failure along any of the steps up towards these goals in most cases will simply not be recovered: you will be part of the permanent underclass. It is a death battle that takes up every waking moment of your entire life.

I one time was dating a civil engineer who had managed to go to school and work abroad in my country. When I described how I thought the act of helping people, even when your own future was uncertain was a primal act of human dignity and greatness, she began crying. We talked a little bit after as she calmed down, where she explained that she was upset to hear me even talking about helping strangers instead of myself of her. "My whole life has been competition. How can you think about anybody else". It was an eye opening moment to say the least.

The unfortunate thing is that resource and job scarcity I think is increasingly driving everywhere in the world to have more of these mindsets. While people often complain about mass immigration and demographics, at current pace I believe the world will be a lot culturally similar to China 20 - 30 years from now, simply because of economic realities. Especially in a truly AI future where there just aren't enough high paying jobs left for anybody but the intellectual and economic super elite.