| ▲ | le-mark a day ago |
| I recently read Kurt Vonnegut “Player Piano”, a novel that addresses automation taking over the economy. It’s not explicitly AI but addresses the same issues. Published in 1952, it was Vonneguts first novel and a real product of the post war era.[1] Another interesting read that addresses these themes is “Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future” by Marshal Brain [2] [1] https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/player... [2] https://marshallbrain.com/manna |
|
| ▲ | devindotcom a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| Great book. But if you want some even earlier forward-thinking stuff, look up Forster's "The Machine Stops." It's not a full book, more a novella if it's even that. Extremely prescient! And of course if you haven't read the relevant portions of Butler's "Erewhon," it's remarkable how closely they map onto today's issues. He kind of takes Thoreau's "Lo, men have become the tools of their tools" a few more stops down the line. |
|
| ▲ | euroderf 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Player Piano is great. The ending is kind of upbeat and hopeful: If there's no "work" as such, there's always "hobbies" (or whatever you could call it) - ways to feel AND BE useful and to better the world and the lives of others. |
| |
| ▲ | red-iron-pine 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | Fear and Loathing in the Magic Kingdom touches on this. In a post-scarcity economy, what do you do? Work and hobbies kinda blend. | | |
| ▲ | zebomon 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think you're thinking of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | vineyardmike a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Great reading list! They’re honestly two stories that I reflect on constantly while thinking about AI lately. Player Piano, not to spoil anything, is about a world run by engineers and machines. The machines are “optimal” and make every decision. How do people find purpose, and how should the engineers that build the machines view their role in society? Manna is the story of two societies with competing visions of how AI (which ironically starts out strikingly similar to an LLM) interacts with welfare/universal basic income and post-scarcity society. For good measure, it also hypothesizes the end state of the internet panopticon and personalized “scores” and rates. |
| |
| ▲ | red-iron-pine 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | Manna is arguably starting to happen, in places like Amazon warehouses; DOGE stole all of the SSNs and will build the panopticon, etc. |
|
|
| ▲ | lproven 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Another interesting read that addresses these themes is “Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future” by Marshal Brain As it happens, I recently read Manna, and it is excellent and a good recommendation. |
|
| ▲ | articlepan a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| +1 to Player Piano, amazing book that could hardly meet the moment better. |
|
| ▲ | idontwantthis a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It’s a good book but I didn’t agree that the big problem would be men lacking meaning because they didn’t have to work. They had families, homes and food. They could have devoted themselves to personal improvement, art, sports, their kids, whatever. I’d love to have security and no job. I’d be full to the brim with meaning and satisfaction. |
| |
| ▲ | smallmancontrov a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, and while I'm sure the adjustment wouldn't be seamless (nothing worth doing ever is), anyone trying to hawk the "you need me, your master, to give you purpose!" line should be met with the highest order of immediate suspicion. The kid protagonists on the Cartoon Network wouldn't fall for that shit, I'm shocked by the number of grown adults who take the bait hook, line, and sinker without suspicion. | |
| ▲ | kouru225 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I agree, but the reaction to AI is making me realize that there are a whole bunch of people who don’t know how to find meaning in their lives | | |
| ▲ | Eddy_Viscosity2 a day ago | parent [-] | | They did find it though, and then AI took it away from them. | | |
| ▲ | CamperBob2 a day ago | parent [-] | | They thought they found it, but they didn't. Now the cognitive dissonance is kicking in, and their idea of therapy is to kick the nearest robot. | | |
|
| |
| ▲ | georgemcbay a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I’d love to have security and no job. I’d be full to the brim with meaning and satisfaction. Same. I have plenty of hobbies and could increase the amount of volunteer work I do substantially if I didn't have to work to stay fed and housed. But I've also worked with plenty of people for whom their job and their overall identity are inexorably intertwined. So while I don't see that issue as being a problem for me, it is likely to be a problem for a great number of people. | | |
| ▲ | customguy a day ago | parent [-] | | > But I've also worked with plenty of people for whom their job and their overall identity are inexorably intertwined. Is that an argument for or against jobs? Because one way to look at it is that they didn't develop a personality and identity at all, because they just attached themselves to a job. When that inevitably ends anyway, sooner or later, one way or another, a deep pit of nothing. That's one reason to rip the bandaid off right away. But IMO even more importantly, how much room do people who do what the environment tells them, who let their job tell them who they are, have for inner dialogue? The worst things in the world were and are enabled by people "just doing their job", and if they have no identity outside of their job, there's someone just following orders waiting to happen. So from what would distress them, being rid of a crutch and an ear piece where a person would otherwise grow, follows that it is in their and all of our best interest to pay no mind to it. Their new job will be to get a life and become a person. Maybe someone can print out some papers that make it look official, and they can get a monthly letter telling them they earned N personality dollars this month, good job, keep it up, thanks, company. | | |
| ▲ | wbl a day ago | parent [-] | | Jobs are things people are willing to pay money to have done and thus are important to society. It's not surprising people find purpose in them. | | |
| ▲ | customguy 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | I know what a job is, the problem is rather that you don't seem to know that "finding purpose in something" and "making it your identity" are completely different things. |
|
|
| |
| ▲ | tclancy a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Try to remember the time it was written in though. Now, male mental health is actually talked about and therapy is not seen as something shameful. I mean, unless you’re trying to sell bootcamps to incels. | |
| ▲ | foxglacier a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Are you sure you would thrive without a job long term? I know it's very easy to feel that way when you're working because your pay is proof that you're doing something valuable, the requirement to do your job even when you don't feel like it ensures you don't fall into a spiral of laziness, and you don't have to face the inevitably worse reality of actually doing those things you want instead of just imagining them. What direction would you even go in and what force would continue to drive you even after your kids have grown up and there's nothing of value you can do for another human? Personal improvement in what direction? Be better at coping without external validation? There are sayings like "If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it" and "success breeds success". I have plenty of life experience that appears to confirm these in myself and others I know. | | |
| ▲ | ctoth a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > what force would continue to drive you even after your kids have grown up and there's nothing of value you can do for another human? Building things I'm interested in with and for people I care about. That might look like code or gardening or relationships or all sorts of things. There's so much to do. So many things to want to get out of bed for, and for the days when there aren't, slow cozy mornings are nice too. Why do you suppose there will be nothing of value you can do for another human just because the machines are better/faster at most things? Just caring about someone without being programmed to will seem to become quite the most valuable thing? | | |
| ▲ | foxglacier 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, caring for people might be the one thing that remains. I can't imagine gardening or programming would be very satisfying in post-scarcity-land where you're inevitably doing something entirely useless compared to what machines would do. | | |
| ▲ | ctoth 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | But ... I'm already not a very great gardener? Certainly not compared to an industrial megafarm? No where near as efficient? And it is still fun! We already live in the world where machines (or at least cyborgs, man + machine) garden better than humans, and yet there are human gardeners out here pulling weeds by hand, digging in the dirt for fun, happy to share our often funky-looking vegetables with friends. |
|
| |
| ▲ | Nursie a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Outside of work I am a hobby brewer, I have a lot of home maintenance that needs doing, and landscaping that uses up a lot of my time. Give me stability and no job, I'm still going to be a busy person. These things have value and satisfaction for me. | | |
| ▲ | foxglacier 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | You say "will" but have you been without work for many consecutive years and continued to do those things? Unemployed people tend to neglect their homes! It's much easier to imagine doing that work than to actually do it. I know. I've been on both sides of the coin. It's shocking how abundance can destroy motivation. | | |
| ▲ | Nursie 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I’ve taken six+ months off between contracts before, it’s been amazing. Time to spend with friends doing outdoor pursuits like cycling, time to do all the things work stops me doing. I don’t believe being in a state of unemployment, which is crushing because you can't provide for yourself, is the same thing as not working because you don’t need to work. I already do a lot of home maintenance and landscaping, I have an house that needs work and 5 acres to maintain, more or less solo. I spend lunchtimes and most weekends in it and wish there was more time in the day. There’s no imagining going on here. So yes, I believe ‘Will’ is correct for me. |
|
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | Nursie a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I don't think I've read Manna in about 20 years now, it was a gem to stumble across in the early 00s. Now that I live in Australia, unfortunately I don't think that utopia will happen here when we have idiot politicians making up bullshit science off the cuff to justify rolling over and begging for AI datacentres - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jul/23/austr... I mean seriously, wow. |
| |
| ▲ | Terr_ a day ago | parent [-] | | I assumed that the author's Australia choice was not so much about politics but about the geographical mood, so that the Slightly-Better-Promise(d) Land could plausibly be an autarky with natural borders. | | |
| ▲ | Nursie 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah I'm sure you're right, it's just used as a "Meanwhile, somewhere with a different take on how this could all play out...." TBH I was just looking for an excuse to share that link because the stupidity on display there has blown my mind. |
|
|
