Yossarian wrote:

g.man wrote:

My work is anything but drudgery tyvm.

  Fair play. I doubt that most people feel that way about their work.

monkey wrote:

What are we realistically going to do with all the time?

  Whatever you want. Learn an instrument, learn a language, study a subject that you want to learn more about, write a book, try to read every book in your local library, visit every country on the planet. The possibilities are literally endless.

It's true, some people like their jobs and thats great, I would much rather spend my time on my hobbies. For some thats music, arts, whatever. For others its research that could hopefully expand human understanding and technology. 

It will be like Star Trek.

Two quick things:

1) If we all get put out of jobs by robots, it's worth remembering that "all" is quite a lot of people, and that we do in fact hold all the power, but are coerced into not using it for ourselves.

It is (in my opinion) far more in the interests of fat cat capitalists keeping as many as possible in drudge jobs. If robots release us from the nightmare of forced ever-increasing productivity, there will be quite a few people around taking a long look at the state of things and eyeing their pitchfork sheds.

2) Never understood the whole "but if I don't work what will I do?". First no-one says you have to not work. Something like G's skilled labour or creative industries etc will surely need human control for a long time yet. And I find it hard to believe you can't think of enjoyable alternatives to jobs, use your imagination ffs!

It is quite bizarre.

The creative industries are heavily over-subscribed and under-paid as it stands. Skilled artists and creatives can have a really hard time making money. A few people in a few types of quite specialised creative industries can make decent scratch, but they aren't the majority. If you're a musician, a traditional artist, a dancer, a typographer, whatever, then you're skills are effectively worthless. The chances of you managing to support yourself are minimal. You'll almost certainly be better off taking a full-time minimum wage job than trying to make a living from your talent. Those industries aren't going to get any better rewarded when there's even more people plugging away at them because the robots have put them out of a job. 

I don't personally have a problem with a world without work. I really struggle to get bored, there's always something I want to do. Other people are definitely not like that. I've worked with people who don't use up all their holiday because they can't think what to do with themselves, or they get bored at home. I reckon drug abuse, suicide, violence, all that stuff would go through the roof if people had nothing to do.

Even if it's just 10% of people who go nuts, that's still a whole lot of crazy.

Yossarian wrote:

I'm not convinced that more people would go nuts due to not having things to do than currently go nuts due to the pressures of working for most of their lives in jobs that they hate just to survive.

The difference being that work enforces conformity anyway - drink and drug problems, and other naughtiness can't manifest themselves anything like as frequently if someone's got to be up early the next day, stay sober until the evening then just gets a few short hours to themselves. Look at alcoholism rates among the long-term unemployed.

Yossarian wrote:

As for the creative industries, yes it would be harder to make money, in these particular jobs, but then large-scale automation is almost certainly going to lead a major rethink of how wealth is created and distributed if it's to be sustainable anyway.

Well yeah. But its not necessarily going to be one that benefits the majority.

Yossarian wrote:

monkey wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

I'm not convinced that more people would go nuts due to not having things to do than currently go nuts due to the pressures of working for most of their lives in jobs that they hate just to survive.

The difference being that work enforces conformity anyway - drink and drug problems, and other naughtiness can't manifest themselves anything like as frequently if someone's got to be up early the next day, stay sober until the evening then just gets a few short hours to themselves. Look at alcoholism rates among the long-term unemployed.

Drink and drug problems and long term unemployment is a pretty major chicken/egg, IMO. Besides, a large number of these 'problems' are only really problems owing to them preventing people being a contributing member of society. If society can tick along nicely without the input of X number of individuals, does it really matter if they want to get pissed all day long?

Yossarian wrote:

As for the creative industries, yes it would be harder to make money, in these particular jobs, but then large-scale automation is almost certainly going to lead a major rethink of how wealth is created and distributed if it's to be sustainable anyway.

Well yeah. But its not necessarily going to be one that benefits the majority.

This is true.

We shouldn't be having to make money in this kind of automated society.

I'm on board with all of Yoss and hulk posting above. There's essentially a tension between freeing up wealth to be more equitable (this seems like it can only really be done if you completely forget about contributions to society and all the rest of it and just give out a flat rate entitlement of some kind) and this being completely against the interests of the powerful, who would do all sorts of nasty shit to the rest of the human race to carry on carrying on. These are the guys with their hands on the levers of the supply of food, energy, heat, water etc. We're too soft now for rebellion.

It only needs a spark, and someone carasmatic enough to fan the subsequent flame.

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/learn-stop-worrying-love-bots/

It's an advert, an invite, a competition. Of sorts.

Fuck yeah - http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/27/8502421/robots-pull-100-times-their-own-weight

This is awesome...

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/21/408234543/will-your-job-be-done-by-a-machine

It gives a good answer to the same topic we've been discussing for the last few pages...

Isn't Skrillex an automaton?

Because it's so low or so high?

I think surgery will be like self service checkouts. There's be four robots doing four surgeries and one human checking they're doing everything right.

If you're in your 20s or early 30s, you're only hope of remaining employed until standard retirement age is to do something that requires good judgement or creativity. Lawyering, politics and stuff that involves people talking to people seems pretty safe. High-end sales probably the same. 

Teaching sounds likes it should qualify under my criteria but most schools will probably just have some minimum wage 'Learning Supervisor' who presses play on Govt curriculum Youtube videos. Replacing people isn't just the danger, technology is getting better and better at helping employers drive the value out of their employees work as well.  

Then there's artists, writers, etc whose work won't be getting replaced anytime soon, although the renumeration for that work is going to be virtually nil as they'll be competing with everyone else in the world.