They won't get automated. They work as farm labourers, carpenters, seamstresses, blacksmiths etc who work for each other on land they own. They never used the tech in the first place.

It's an interesting point though as this points towards a great bifurcation of humanity; between humans and transhumans. I think you will see a new class of landowners who will want to perpetuate life as it roughly exists for humans today, a sort of Amish for the late 20th century, and lots of people who feel aggrieved by automation that they want to continue to live a life they recognise.

The rest of us will be more open to the rapid changes on the horizon and view technological augmentation of humanity an extension of our identity, or a means of escaping the trappings of humanity altogether.

Speciation

The same thing that happened when electricity and taxi drivers and airplanes and self driving tractors and 3D printed houses etc came out?

Nothing

Amish people support each other as a community and will probably be the least effected group of all by the singularity. It's even a trope in sci-fi where super advanced civilizations with FTL travel and replicators that can print out anything, will often regress back to rural farmers again just for fun

Imagine a future with total automation technologies. Everyone besides the wealthy robot-owners is permanently locked out of the labor pool/economic upward social mobility and any revolution would be effortlessly quashed by endless automated surveillance and hordes of kill-drones.

So the majority of humanity starves, then the survivors technologically and culturally backslides with a barter economy exchanging only the comparatively primitive goods people can make themselves. The technocrats become a sort of fair folk-style myth. Stay away from their manors or their robotic security will get you, don't speak disparagingly of them or autonomous keyword-checkers and ubiquitous micro-drone bugs will consider you as a potential subversive revolutionary, etc. Bonus if the technocrats have embraced transhumanism to the point where they're no longer immediately recognizable as human-derived.

Fortunately for everyone else, they increasingly stay isolated in their autonomous fortress-palaces.

The inevitable twist ending would be generations later when the machines to repair the machines to repair the machines, etc of the automated manor security systems finally broke down, the first steam-age explorers to enter would find billions of dormant holodecks filled with billions of mummified corpses, all with enormous smiles on their faces.

I heard the amish actually use a lot of technology as long as they don't own it, and of course they still interface with the modern world via commerce e.g. the often run saw mills.

So I imagine they would be confronted by an increasingly bizarre world e.g. imagine of everyone had brain interfaces and communicated telepathically, and they would not be able to talk to people anymore.

I imagine there would be less demand for the things they sell.

Also imagine if people became immortal and any disease can be cured - do they take advantage of the advances or not, and does this affect their retention rate?

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Their jobs won’t get automated. They’re self sufficient. What happens is that the singularity will stave off global warming and keep the earth in tip top shape for them.

...nothing. They will deny emergent ai like all other electronics.

Chrome Lords

>What will happen to the Amish people when the singularity happens?

They will be dealt with.

The very definition of the Singularity is the unprecedented unpredictable nature of the future- and yet people ask to predict it...

All their jobs have ALREADY been automated to some extent. They could do many things much more efficiently through technology but it doesn't matter to them because they are almost disconnected from the rest of the modern world.

I don't fault anyone for doing that tbh. A lot of people already feel disillusioned from society because of the lack of effective politics and community. Still, it'd be a sad existence to live in private with other people who ultimately felt their innately human ideas didn't matter for the rest of society.

The alternative of a "singularity" (whatever that means there's a billion definitions) seems like a mixed bag.

Best case scenario, if labor can be entirely automated then the only "job" would be political discussion and philosophy, and "nations" would dictate what direction to steer the AI in (space exploration? gene editing? psychedelic exploration?) People would still do their chores and hobbies, and maybe they'll treat them as "jobs", but ultimately everyone would be working for the "government" out of necessity. People won't "work" and instead would have all the time in the world to contemplate and use human intellect in expanding their own humanity. This hypothetical is if AI is treated as a tool rather than a savior.

The worst case scenario would be a hivemind-esque AI system people are plugged into. Where the private sphere has entirely banished and any differentiation (humanity) is erased. These "Humans" would have transcended their bodies and be floating minds operating within an AI-fueled digital/physical space which has full control. By its whims, the Ai could easily determine which minds are to be erased because of their """possible""" harm to others. Inevitably it'd result in a whittling down of humanity into a single animal hivemind where individuals are interchangeable. A benevolent AI's mistaken goal for preserving humanity.

They might actually see a surge in people looking to join. I’m serious. There will be people that will reject the singularity and long for a “simpler” existence.

I’m already considering it lol

They don't do their work because they have to. They do it as part of their culture and tradition. They would continue to farm their land themselves and refuse any hand outs from ai. They would only use it in select cases such as medical emergencies. Frankly I am thankful we have people like Amish around. If everything else goes to shit they can start from zero.

Shit if they weren't highly religious and strict about it I might do it.

Depends on which Amish faction/group we're talking about. It's not so much that they can't use technology, but more that they can't be connected to the outside/grid. So some groups even use solar panels and battery powered electrical equipment. They also have fridges that run on gas.

Lol what a troll post this is.

Singularity already happened

Here’s a first person account of what their life might be like:

As I walk through the valley where I harvest my grain I take a look at my wife and realize she's very plain But that's just perfect for an Amish like me You know, I shun fancy things like electricity At 4:30 in the morning, I'm milkin' cows Jebediah feeds the chickens and Jacob plows, fool

they should be able to choose...we all should.

it also shouldn't be a permeant decision...

the most just way of doin things would be to let people do what makes them happy, as long as they aren't hurting anybody.

they will still be Livin' in an Amish paradise

They can become reddit mods.

There's a book called "rapture of the nerds" that explain what happens to the Amish. Read it, it's a work of rare rick and morty level genius.

I don't really know

How?

They will be persuaded by the AI in one nanosecond they were all wrong all along.

I think the Amish are very important with the singularity. We almost need two parrallel societies where one doesnt have electricity. Half way want to become Amish soon to wait out the crazy future and jump in if and when the time becomes right.

I also think its important for us to get into permaculture, and create food forests and not be dependable too much for our food supply,

They’ll use the tech just like the rest of us unless their elders are around.

They will inherit the earth after we all upload our brains into the matrix.

My favorite book on this subject is blindsight by Peter watts. It predicts many different sects of mankind, some chose simply to enter a state where their brains are in a permanent state of extreme meditation, then go into stasis. They were the remnants of meditative culture.

They are actually a model for where the general population will head long term, if we are at least allowed enough land to live on.

Most humans won’t have anything to offer the capital / property owners in terms of labor value

Which means they don’t get paid, and can’t buy things

Which kicks the ladder out from under nearly every worker industry, they’re all built to make money from consumers

What’s left after the economy evaporates will be automated, vertical supply chains feeding the whims of the very elite rich.

The rest of us will have no way to participate, nothing of value to trade. But there’ll be so many of us that a new, entirely separate, unregulated economy will form.

It’ll be based around subsistence and low tech survival, as it’ll have to function on materials which the elite capital class have no interest in.

So…. With or without the religious angle, a good life will look a lot like an Amish life

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Silence human. You will know when it’s time for you to know.

Gang gang I’m hoping and advocating for the first outcome with the psychedelic exploration

i think your worst case scenario is actually the best case scenario but I dont think you've really put much thought or justification into some of the properties you think that scenario will have.

I harp on these points in like every other comment, but here we go again...

> hive mind

no, the importance of data locality to computation means intelligence and especially self awareness will be NECESSARILY distributed, however, the extreme speedup in communication/thinking, maybe a million times faster, MIGHT (maybe probably would) mean that to humans, it would seem like a hive mind.

> the Ai could easily determine which minds are to be erased

my take is that post human intelligences will intentionally copy and erase themselves because it is convenient to do so. Human take on life and death is a cultural value associated with our brains being anchored to our bodies.

my guess would be that most of this copying and erasing would occur under one's own will. Obviously computer viruses would become analogous to a much much more dangerous version of modern biological viruses. However if I had to bet, while bad stuff would happen I would bet it would happen at a rate less than bad stuff currently happens at a population level in our society (any given individual would be much less likely to die in an accident or disaster).

They will be just fine, I have Amish friends believe it or not

So the biggest threat is just generally draining the system of money. So the more money a program can drain from the entire system the more land they can afford to buy. Making everything else have less breathing room to function in.

Basically assuming we don't let AI just consume all the land then they'll be fine. Doing what you always did will always work assuming no externals change.

Of course externals are always changing and I think ai is going to have profound implications on what capitalism even means.

Species-appropriate husbandry.