> automation and artifical intelligence

Isn't this supposed to be good for us and make people's lives better? If that's not the case, then it's really something to be worried about.

Life is fundamentally about getting resources to sustain yourself. In that regard, humanity is, more and more dependent on the industry. At the same time, the industry is less and less dependent on humanity, since it is deriving more and more of its power and intelligence from machines.

We will probably reach a point the industry doesn't improve its survival ability by feeding and serving people. If that happens we will have reached a point where we do not have the ability to extract resources on our own since machines do all the critical parts of the job and we won't have the know how/or the access to resources.

Specifically:

- mining, farming and transportation is in the process of being automated away, as is manufacturing.

- in a world dominated by renewable energy, the cost of energy will depend on local weather. To optimize the logistic operations, we'll have to integrate weather predictions and adapt the flux of goods. Humans won't be able to compete with machines for that task, and logistics will also be automated away.

Once that part of the industry can work without human input, we'll be in deep trouble. The rest of the human economy is the result of accidental complexity due to the fact that meatware stems from biology.

This is the natural consequence of optimization and growth seeking. The only way to optimize human labor fast enough to be competitive is to optimize it away. If we're not economically competitive we will not survive. We are in the process of making ourselves redundant, and magic thinking makes us believe that it will end nicely.

Very interesting thoughts. It does seem we're heading towards some kind of technological dystopia, but there is an increasing minority of people who are aware of it. I can see it leading to some kind of schism.

Only if its paired with concurrent wide scale changes to society. That seems unlikely given the worldwide political order.

People still fear the "robots will take all of our jobs!" dialogue. Many societies still have work as a core component of personal value, so the idea of people having to work less doesn't translate to "Great, I can let these robots do the work and I can enjoy myself" but to "I can't find work and so I'm a worthless disgrace."

It's more that most societies have "doing work" as a core component of obtaining money, and requiring money for things like food, housing, ...

That is also true, but that is something that can be mitigated and resolved with government policies. However, that is unlikely to happen effectively in societies that have a work as a core component of personal value as they will say "they're not working? Why should we help them?" At some point the policy changes will NEED to happen, but the societies with that core value will have a very difficult time adjusting as value systems can't be changed overnight like laws can.

It can be mitigated but it isn't being mitigated.

At some point those changes will need to happen, as you say, but it would be better if we didn't reach the point of needing a revolution to get there.

I'm sitting in a McDonald's right now in the Netherlands. There are about 30 unfilled orders on the TV and only 1 cashier. How is that possible? The other cashiers were replaced by touchscreen ordering kiosks, which there are 4 of in this restaurant. This has happened in McDonalds worldwide, easily eliminating hundreds or thousands of jobs. It is only a matter of time before these ordering kiosks become commoditized. I'm surprised I can't already order on a tablet at restaurants.

I hate those tablets, they play ads. Microeconomics states that prices will always fall right down to the edge where it's barely worth manufacturing the product. Maybe there's another rule that says that the user experience in a restaurant will always fall right to the edge of it barely being worth going there.

All of those things were around, and had greater effect in the 70’s and 80’s. Combine with all our jobs going overseas.

> and had greater effect in the 70’s and 80’s

Maybe if you only consider the first three bullet points. The rest of the list (maybe minus brexit) is decidedly more problematic today than it was 40 years ago.

Even then, it's arguable about "pollution". Sure, we've cut pollution greatly, but we're still learning how bad we actually screwed <strike>up our environment</strike> ourselves over and how difficult it is going to be to clean up.

Value of dollar now in comparison to 70s and 80s decreased. We also earn now around 30% less than our parents/grandparents and our money is worth less.

And as dollar value influences pretty much whole world, it can be applied the same way in other countries.

Source: http://www.in2013dollars.com/1860-dollars-in-2017?amount=1

> Value of dollar now in comparison to 70s and 80s decreased.

In comparison to what, exactly? Compared to another currency? Compared to itself?

If another currency, then great! We can sell them more stuff because our stuff is cheaper then their own stuff.

If compared to itself: so what? Inflation is a stated policy of the Federal Reserve. My dollars may be worth less, but I make more. This isn't a problem unless you issue loans and failed to charge enough interest.

To itself. And it really depends whether you make more or less. I would argue you earn alot less because now it is significantly harder to support family of five with a single income, which was pretty normal in 70s, 80s (+you had a mortage for a big house on you, now vast majority of young couples starting families have like zero chance to buy such properties). I would love to find HN post about financial situation of young people now, which pretty much painted it all in black color but google fails me as I dont remember exact topic name.

Are you kidding me? 2.5 billion people still don't have access to proper sanitation, and they're not depressed - and you think it "brave" of young people in the West to deal with the horribleness of _Brexit_?!

The commentary in this thread just blows my mind. I'm astounded in an era of regular travel just how sheltered people in the West are.

I wouldn't overemphasis the troubles of the world. The main issues is that people don't get to enjoy progress to the extent necessary to create a sustainable prosperous society. Decommodifying housing, education and health care would solve 90% of the issue. Almost anything else can then be dealt with. Automation for example isn't a bad thing unless you also have accelerating inequality. Climate change isn't bad unless building a more energy effective society affects some people disproportionally. Etc. That people don't understand this is what will cost them.

Curious what the housing solution your calling for there would be. How do you decomodditize (?) real estate?

It isn't technically hard. What is hard is making it a priority. Many countries have exchanged long term competitiveness for short term gains. Decommodifying housing would impact those who made it their business.

The process itself would be a range of options. From removing undue leverage that make people buy things they can't (or don't want to) really afford so they are reliant on rising property values, to absolute government intervention. Of course the most likely would be somewhere in between. Where the government by allocating resource (whether that is building permits, land or directly with construction) competes with the market.

And this isn't really the market not functioning as such. The market is accurately pricing things like housing high because of its importance. The problem is that eventually the market will also reflect the decreased competitiveness of important things being expensive.

Most of those things aren't really worth getting depressed over however. Economic stagnation? Civilisation was economically stagnant for more than 2,000 years and it wasn't a reason to get depressed. Ditto many other things

Anyone who gets depressed because of Brexit is just looking for a reason to be depressed. It is the lowest-stakes political crisis I could imagine.

Maybe people are getting depressed about those issues; but the solution is read less news and need to get better at filtering out things they can't control. If you consider all the things that can go wrong there never has and never will be an era that isn't depressing.

The only things on the list that are problems are antibiotics, global warming and healthcare - all of which are risks of falling out of the golden age of the last century back towards something that could be considered the normal human condition through most of history. They are also all completely solvable problems.