Also: basic income, or whatever it is that will make sense when there aren't enough jobs to go around, won't be preemptive.

No question about that. As someone who back in the day paid thousands for business software that is now almost always free, money went from our company to a company that had employees, sales people, programmers who made a living off the software that was being offered. Not to mention obviously the people that we didn't need anymore as a result of that software. (Bookeepers, anyone?)

What does your company do with that extra money now? Throw it in a barrel and burn it?

Right. Which isn't to say we shouldn't be considering it. The short term matters - we spend a lot of time there.

"The parent made it sound like the loss of jobs was going to collapse the economy."

Well, there's nothing to say the money is redistributed to labor, and it's hard to run a consumer economy when only a few people have any money to pay for anything. That said, I don't really get that vibe from the parent comment in the first place...

Seems like this is really his point, if it isn't going to be preemptive, then (he feels) we should stop the jobs from going away.

We can't stop anything from going away. Technology progress by and large has always been incremental. Large changes haven't occurred since the time of Industrial revolution. And I guess the next one won't occur until we get Artificial general intelligence. Until then affairs of the world will go on as they always have.

AGI would alter the very course of economy in a way the whole concept of a job and a income would be very largely irrelevant. Heck you may not even need a basic income, because you only need to bootstrap a few machines and from there on they are going to do every single thing for you.

Indirectly, perhaps. Application-level software projects do tend to have the "automate people's jobs away" effect, but AFAIK, Stallman has been mostly involved in infrastructure-ish "enable some people to work (on automating away other people's jobs)" projects.

Great point. It's hard to quantify though. OSS gives companies access to a quality software stack for minimal cost. On the other hand, those companies are not now buying software from proprietary vendors. I don't know which is more: jobs created by having access to inexpensive quality software, or jobs lost due to less spending on application code.

This. There's far more to his argument than merely "lets prevent people from losing jobs."

Can you elaborate on the divide between his claim and my interpretation, operating under the extremely obvious assumption that the world is not switching to universal basic income tomorrow? I honestly don't see it.

For the record, I also advocate strongly for basic income. But I don't think that robots taking jobs leads to particularly poor outcomes. For example! Driving a car 17 hours a day (or at all!), as described in the Uber article, is a needlessly dangerous activity for a human to be performing.

Uber is not automating its fleet tomorrow, either.

Why? It's quite inevitable that it will, unlike all previous eras, there won't be new jobs for humans because it's human thinking that's going to be automated. Robots destroy jobs, that's a fact; sometimes, that creates new jobs, but it's usually always far less jobs for far more skilled humans and that pattern is and must come to an end. Jobs that require smarter humans don't work for the vast majority of barely capable humans that exist.

Mass unemployment is coming, the masses aren't capable of knowledge jobs and labor jobs are being taken over by machines, what other possible outcome do you see?

Anecdotally, most of my extended family couldn't write a line of code if their lives depended on it; nor could they design a serious science experiment or write a novel. They aren't trained for those things, and that training has to start young or come with serious motivation, time, and effort. Not one of those people have any interest in learning those things.

I think it's possible to have a knowledge based economy, but we would have to drastically redesign our education systems and our culture in ways that I find it hard to even imagine how we would do so.

But, I think it's only a matter of time before we gain more skill in writing programs that automate out even the most complex knowledge based jobs. Watson is already showing the potential to be a better doctor than any human. The program named "Emily Howell" can already write symphonies that pass whatever the musical version of the Turing Test is. How long before we apply those things to all the other knowledge based jobs? What'll be left? More automation and maintenance programmers? How many of those will we even need?

If you accept that certain jobs[1] to be performed at a worthwhile level require a certain degree of general intelligence, or at the very least, the vast majority of people performing certain jobs have a measurable general intelligence above a certain level, and you accept that things like general intelligence, height, and other observable, measurable phenotypic traits of a species occur on a more or less normal('bell-curve') distribution, two things that are pretty much taken as a given outside the PC deluded, "I love me some outrage!," "Wow, just wow." crowd, then there is your answer. Is it not?

You might think you're doing good for the world by saying 'everyone is equally capable,' but you'll probably have more success in doing good for the world by understanding the world as it presents itself upon clear-eyed observation.

[1]"Software is an IQ business." -Bill Gates

It's a question that CS has struggled with for decades and I haven't heard anyone give a compelling definition, certainly not one that could be tested with any confidence.

I was refering to the 'general intelligence' that is an attribute of human beings, what iq tests measure basically.[2][3]

It is a matter that has undergone much study since the early 20th century, and there is indeed agreement on what it is among those who study it.[4]

certainly not one that could be tested with any confidence.

Why so certain? It can indeed be tested and has been. Taking intelligence to mean 'ability to deal with complexity,' and taking something complex like say, life on earth, people with higher IQs on average make more money, and live longer. Not to say the amount of money one makes is wholly indicative of successful living of course, but it can be used as a rough proxy since it is something many people seek to do in the complex environment that is Earth and the Universe.

Also, I think the ability to 'live sucessfully' and to find out what doing so entails is an ability spread evenly throughout the population.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) [3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient

[4]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intellige...

Perhaps in 50 years, maybe 100, but I see the writing on the walls.

Humans seem almost universally have this hubris that says that machines will never be able to take their place, think as us, be as smart or creative as us. They almost certainly will, but it will take time, perhaps a long time. After all, biology and evolution has had(and used) billions of years to create the human brain, and we've only been building computer for less than a 100.

Wouldn't it be an ethical imperative for all taxi drivers to quit their jobs rather than use non-free software?

Uber seems to be the cool company to hate, but when I talk to Uber drivers that unanimously seemed to think it was a good gig. The talked about the money(how it was much better than what they were doing), they talked about the hours(whenever they would like to work), and they talked about the pleasure of working for themselves.

When the switch to robotic cars comes, in it will impacts the world over, and Ubers interaction with the robotic car revolution will be a very small part of the impact self driving cars have, in my own humble opinion. I'm not even convinced Uber can hold onto it's market share when self-driving cars take over, the space will seems ripe for competition.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-uber-ly...

but I think that Lyft and Uber still have a chance to appeal the ruling...

He said "let's ban this," with this referring to Uber. Secondly even if he said "let's ban ANY techno...," he did add "Unless/until every ..," which is more than a valid argument.