Submitted by Six-headed_dogma_man t3_10hyy60 in singularity
I understand the idea that we won't can't understand what's on the other side.
What I'd like to know if anyone has any ideas for preparedness or what signs to look out for that something is happening, hopefully not a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born?
This is really the key. At some point we have to figure out how to get politicians in who don’t put corporate quarterly profits first on every decision point. The productivity gains of the next 20 years should go to reducing the retirement age down to 30 and increasing retirement benefits to a reasonable standard of living.
Until that happens AI productivity increases will all go to people who at this point have already won capitalism and don’t need more, and a lot of people will find themselves without jobs who have no savings at all to fall back on.
Politicians? Where we're going we don't need politicians.
Instead a revolution of engineers & technicians should take the lead.
That'd certainly be better. Anyone supporting any politician in high office right now is part of the problem. They're all cancers.
I'm not sure politicians exist because they're needed
Says them.
edit: I think I misread that. They exist by duping people.
pretty sure elon musk is gonna need a lot more than a couple hundred billion to build a mars colony, for the easiest example. (i don't actually think building a mars colony would even be productive but there's a lot of related space tech that may be highly relevant and it's also not really my place to say what other people do with money they earn in my worldview).
Elon isn’t building anything. Scientists and engineers are. Elon has money nothing more or less. Nobody needs people like Elon we need more independent scientists and engineers.
> Elon has money nothing more or less
not true. he is actually technically competent and also mentally deranged in a way that has been useful in the situations he has found himself in (tho it did get him fired from paypal and has hurt him on many occassions as well... still john carmack tried to start a rocket company (armadillo aerospace), and he is an ENGINEER's ENGINEER, but he failed, and musk succeeded, cuz musk committed everything) > we need more independent scientists and engineers.
possibly true in the USA. in india or china, engineer is a dime a dozen.
you guys call yourselves elon haters but I have literally shorted tesla in the past (managed to survive tho lol). you know nothing XD
Why don't you go read what actual progressive engineers look like and advocated for. They're anti-capitalism and pro-scientism. Elon musk on the other hand, is one of the most wealthiest people on this Earth. And has spread anti-vaxx rhetoric.
Yes, electric vehicles are good. So is space colonization, brain chips, and vehicle automation. But all this was before Elon showed just how unhinged he really is.
Progress, is taking the means of production out of the hands of capitalists. And placing it in the hands of technicians, engineers, and scientists. Elon has not used his wealth to make this possible. Because he's a businessman.
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And him being anti-leftist (which he is) is laughable when you look at the history of technology movements or the ideologies of utopian sci-fi authors.
His grandfather Joshua Haldeman, was a member in a left-wing movement known as Technocracy. So where do you think his ideas came from? Haldeman eventual left the movement for becoming "to communist" but still, technology enables the workers and musk is grifting off that.
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/technocracy-incorporated-elon-musk
Howard Scott, Thorstein Veblen, Harold Loeb, M. King Hubbert, Jacque Fresco, H. G. Wells, Fred W. Taylor, Julian Huxley, etc. Read what they have to say about inefficiencies or improvement of mankind. Its more radical than Elon Musk's twitter verification.
Makes sense. Considering in the end what matters is positive legacy or investments he did done in the right direction. Investing in space, AI, brain chips and renewable is already enough for one person.
If everyone could have similar impact then we be talking exponential chances across the globe. That's only possible currently with wealth. Because most things are expensive.
We must develop tools so they're no longer that expensive. And everyone can deploy gigaawatts of energy or make skyscrapers, crowdfund O'Neill cylinders or set up shop at Pluto.
Musk wouldn't be able to do what he does if not for modern technologies and infrastructure. in medieval times he'd be at best a patron of knowledge. So wealth alone isn't the key. It's the compounded exponentials.
All his unhinged pandering to political extremism and irrelevant ideologies (such America's culture wars) show a facet of weakness in present society; most people aren't ready for full technocracy. They still yearn for petty conflicts, identity based rivalry and old styled political mindset.
Technocracy is by far the best option for mankind. And the toughest one since it requires systemic change in how politics is viewed; not anymore as identity or as popularity contest.
> progressive engineers look like and advocated for. They’re anti-capitalism and pro-scientism.
Engineers are well known for being morons outside of their field. Pretty ironic being “pro-scientism” and being against evidence based economic policy
> Progress, is taking the means of production out of the hands of capitalists.
Why is that progress?
> And placing it in the hands of technicians, engineers, and scientists.
And thereby making them capitalists themselves. What a big brain move. Anyways, pretty much every tech company gives equity as a form of compensation with most of the early employees (mostly all scientists and engineers) became very wealthy if the company is successful.
> Elon has not used his wealth to make this possible. Because he’s a businessman.
And has a masters in Physics, which means he is a scientist owning the means of production
> a left-wing movement known as Technocracy
Singapore is an actual technocracy and is very right-wing
>Engineers are well known for being morons outside of their field. Pretty ironic being “pro-scientism” and being evidence based economic policy
Reality seems to disagree with this point considering our society is built off the wonders of science & engineering.
>Why is that progress?
Because they've created new technology? Which fixes problems, thus progress?
>And thereby making them capitalists themselves. What a big brain move. Pretty much every tech company gives equity as a form of compensation with most of the early employees (mostly all scientists and engineers) became very wealthy if the company is successful.
Being a worker doesn't make you a capitalist. Although Marxists do call scientists "petite bourgeoisie"
>And has a masters in Physics, which means he is a scientist owning the means of production
A dictatorship lacks perspectives of other people. One scientist in charge would obviously fail. The big idea is that everyone whos educated or trained in technical occupations would be making decisions together. Aimed at removing the inefficiencies and waste of capitalism.
>Singapore is an actual technocracy and is very right-wing
Singapore has nothing to do with the movement and is not a technocracy. Neither is China.
> Reality seems to disagree with this point
Really? Being an engineer doesn’t automatically make you an expert in a different field from your own
> Because they’ve created new technology? Which fixes problems, thus progress?
And how is giving them the means of production automatically progress
> Being a worker doesn’t make you a capitalist.
Only the scientists and engineers owning capital would make them the capitalists
> The big idea is that everyone whos educated or trained in technical occupations would be making decisions together.
That’s how every business works, especially tech companies. Teams make decisions together
> Singapore has nothing to do with the movement
All policy in Singapore is crafted by experts in their field. Even in China, all the politburo members (the guys in charge of the country) have STEM degrees. Xi for example is an Industrial Engineer
This entire sub-thread is a wonderful illustration of how ideology is cancer. You're just arguing over which of your cancers is worse.
I am a pragmatist and don’t really have an ideology beyond improving my country
science was great until they invented peer review and transformed it into a public institution.
science has done almost nothing in decades. computer science on the other hand... why do you think stephen wolfram bailed on physics?
vaccines were big pharma ;_; lol. i dont even like them (i hate intellectual property (chinese have almost made clean energy transformation possible by ignoring the f*** out of intellectual property making solar cells and batteries cheap as dirt) but u gotta hand it to them they did that
(just look at r/science it's a joke)
This is the most ignorant thing I have read in a week
i may have been exaggerating slightly.
still, it used to be a lot more efficient of a system, than it is now.
another thing I would say is science/bayes theorem by itself is really no basis for any kind of moral philosophy. it has problems almost as bad as religious appeal to power/authority. not to mention is/ought problem.
freedom or fairness might be. so i think as bad as NAP principle is libertarians at least make a good faith effort whereas scientism doesn't even start from any kind of grounding.
pursuit of truth is somewhat interesting as well, though i think pursuit of falseness is equally interesting, as well as pursuit of computational complexity i guess XD (but that's a level deeper than just empirical experimentation)
What do you mean by morals.
capitalism = capital can be acquired through free trade
you seem to be positing that "pro scientism" will somehow distribute capital via a means other than trade, some form of distribution, which would presumably require making some kind of moral judgement of the form person y deserves amount of capital z.
but i don't see how scientific method has anything to do with making such moral judgements.
Utilitarianism tries to frame it into a science based measurement.
Scientism is about solving problems. People starving is a problem. Morals are up to the community.
it seems to me the incidence of effective altrusists is higher amongst ultra high net worth individuals than ordinary people.
(and objectively they seem to have achieved quite a lot e.g. bill gates&rotary club vs polio)
He can’t run Twitter. He’s not building a Mars colony. Could you imagine him banning people from the colony and yeeting them into space for questioning his decisions?
Like Josh Gad in Avenue 5!!!!
lol twitter has cut like over half it's staff and it still hasn't fallen over yet. haven't even really seen fail whales for the most part.
pretty sure their user base has grown
that's a big success from a corporate point of view
edit in response to edit and no i wouldnt want to live on mars (and especially not under musk government) or work for elon musk but I'm not bent on commandeering his money lol (in particular I think if you do commandeer it, it will be in such a way that sets up a bunch of perverse incentives and you'll probably waste almost all of it worse than musk would, by a lot)
wealth tax bad, land value tax good, also land value tax basically taxes "unjust wealth" (maybe eliminate copyright and do pigovian tax like carbon tax and cig tax and their might not even be much if any unjust wealth)
Yup, a business has its revenue from advertising fall 40%+ and you call that a big success from a corporate point of view.
Why do people always defend billionaires. Every penny of their fortune comes from paying a person below a living wage. We are past the point that capitalism doesn’t need all of us to work anymore, and over the next 10 years if we don’t start pulling people out of the workforce by lowering the retirement age and increasing retirement benefits to a living wage the unemployment rate is going to skyrocket.
If we want a mars colony it should be run by the government like any other city. You want corporate cities now? What kind of propaganda have you been watching?
It’s not commandeering his money, it’s fixing our society so it’s not possible to steal quality of living from people anymore. We are capable of providing a living wage.
the government are the baddies. along with landowners©right&ip holders.
billionaires in modern society have paper fortunes. the wealthiest don't even have physical wealth at all almost, all they have is control of the corporations whose profits they drive, there is nothing for you to take from them... except for control.
and once you take that control and hand it over to the government, you will live in squalor.
(source - observation, on the contrary you are the one who is drinking in propaganda, media, including social media, harps on all your talking points 24/7 lol)
The government part was my literal point. You are the one who brought up Elon. Lol. And no, you don’t live in squalor from consumer protection and worker protection laws. That’s not true.
There are lots of countries with better standard of living than USA that have more vacation days, health care, strong minimum wages.
Capitalism tells you every day that doing anything to hurt corporate profits will lower your standard of living while you sit there with a literal low standard of living.
Amazon workers pee in bottles. I’m pretty sure a world where they get proper break is possible. If Jeff Bezos won’t give his employees bathroom breaks what makes you think he will help take care of all the workers that get laid off when all of his fleets flip to self-driving cars?
It’s amazing that people defend billionaires. Do you own your own home? Do you make a living wage? Do you have a six month cushion if you lose your job? If you can’t answer yes to these three questions then why do you defend this?
i also think it's REALLY telling the very first question you ask is do you own your own home?
who do i think are the baddies? well, homeowners mostly lol. landowners in general but that's mostly homeowners and the government, with a little bit of bezos and gates sprinkled in (but only a little)
homeowners interests are not compatible with any kind of productivity. (free example, it KILLS labor mobility)
Homeowners are bad, but landlords are good? I can’t even imagine how one might twist logic to get to this conclusion… and a home can be a condo in a skyscraper too. You don’t need to monopolize a plot of land here. People should own their homes. You are advocating for feudalism here.
NO. Landowners are bad. including homeowners. and also banks (banks effectively own land from issuing mortgages).
But, in an ideal world, probably most people would rent from a "building owner", yes. (because all land rent would be paid directly to the government and any excess after basic functions like public infrastructure and military spending paid out as ubi) (practically speaking, you would have to still have some private land wealth at least at first so you could get a market price for land rent).
In fact, our current system is basically feudalism. Barons (banks&boomer homeowners), guilds (american medical assocation, the bar association, professors&peer review), and serfs (amazon workers). Combined with fascism (federal bureaucracies and public schools and public/private parternships like microsoft, amazon, and lockheed martin).
this all works okay, but it could be a lot better. but if you just totally socialize the corporations idk how you can predict anything but catastrophe. whoever is in charge of distributing the wealth will take their cut and give it out in such a way it will only misalign incentives. incentives are obviously really important.
countries with better standard of living than USA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
Luxembourg *
Liechtenstein *
Singapore *
Ireland *
Monaco *
Qatar *
Bermuda *
Isle of Man *
Switzerland *
Norway
United Arab Emirates *
basically you need oil wealth or to be a tax haven
i agree US healthcare is a shitshow, but it would be way better if it was a free market... also USA ppl are obese partly cuz we have to drive everywhere cuz of zoning regulations, cuz government (which we kind've vote for... sort of, but that's just the tyranny of democracy (which i think is better than autocracy for the record, but I would prefer it if every country had open borders and we could easily switch between countries)
Do you own your own home?
No, and I think home ownership is by far the most toxic part of pretty much every society. We should NOT encourage home ownership. homes are a huge freaking time sink. and you do NOT want to have everyone voting for their land to appreciate. that is why we are in the mess we are in.
Do you make a living wage?
yes
Do you have a six month cushion if you lose your job?
yes
Your own article says it’s a bad measure. That doesn’t account for inequalities in distribution which was the entire point here.
> This is why GDP (PPP) per capita is often considered one of the indicators of a country's standard of living,[3][4] although this can be problematic because GDP per capita is not a measure of personal income
far from "it's a bad measure"
Ah, true. Its the worst measure.
If I have a billion dollars, and you have a thousand friends with nothing, GDP says we're all millionaires.
Yeah nah, one of us is doing fine, the other 999 are living in abject squalor. Which is to say, almost everyone.
Also, there is already a formula for determining QoL, with a dozen or so markers, and the US usually places around 16th or so.
huh, that sounds awful similar, except it puts slightly more emphasis on egalitarianism over raw industrial capacity...
Not sure why you're being downvoted, that's exactly how China works. No separation from corporation and government.
> advertising fall 40%+
temporarily cuz a bunch of leftist controlled corporations (which you seem to hate corporations?) are trying to cancel him lol
> Why do people always defend billionaires.
Correcting misinformation is bad if it is against undesirable people now?
> Every penny of their fortune comes from paying a person below a living wage.
Labor theory of value BS. This has been debunked over a century ago
> We are past the point that capitalism doesn’t need all of us to work anymore
We are not at that point. Maybe by the end of the decade though
> If we want a mars colony it should be run by the government like any other city.
The people on the Mars colony will form their own government, likely a direct democracy since the population will be so low
> We are capable of providing a living wage
Every westerner makes a living wage. You guys are so privileged and don’t realize it
Being able to retire at 30 would be great, but damn if I'd be a bit pissed spending all of my good years working some crappy job retiring at 65 when the gen-whatever gets the good life
That and campaign for allowing more housing developments, control of land and preventing development making housing unaffordable is one way wealthier people are already hurting the majority.
Invest in mutual funds that take in large portions of the market (think S&P 500).
Play with the tools so you have basic familiarity with them and if a creative idea hits you, you can run with it.
Keep an eye on the news, unlike what a lot of folks on here think, this won't happen overnight, but it will be fast.
You don't think AGI will render a ton of those businesses obsolete as it drives towards the singularity? That is what the G there signifies after all.
It will be able to do many of the same functions humans do, but gradually far more competently and at a much greater speed, 24/7.
Businesses won't simply disappear overnight but the writing would be on the wall once we start getting close enough to become more generally understood.
Timing the market for the way out is hard, so while leaving it in a mutual fund for now is fine, at some point we may see great disruption.
The SP500 is the 500 largest businesses. If large companies start to fail and others take their place, the failing companies will drop off the SP500 and be replaced by the successful ones.
A mutual fund is a slice of all, or at most, of them, as one starts its fall, shares will be sold automatically and used to buy its replacement.
This isn’t how it works. Mega corporations are also CVCs and LPs in VC funds.
They’re invested already.
The biggest companies will save tons of money with AI. They won't be out of business they'll be richer than ever. We'll be out of jobs. But they'll be fine.
Unless you can predict with certainty which company will get the crown (and that is a company you can actually invest in), then your best bet is to play the entire market, or at least the entire technology industry.
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Sign up for cryonics, support universal basic income, and advocate for all AI to be open source.
In the short term, If you are in a company and they introduce an AI helper like those that are going to be coming with Microsoft Office, start using it, learn it inside and out. People that eschew it will have worst performance and will be the first on the chopping block.
In the long term, hope alignment is solved and that we don't copystamp the light cone with paperclips or atomic scale smiley faces.
Get enough money to afford brain implants, those that don’t merge with AI cannot produce anything.
It doesn't look at all like we are going to have brain implant by the time AGI gets here, sure we might get some rudimentary thing that allows us to control the mouse cursor or something simple but it just seems way to complicated to get make what people are proposing.
I think we are going to need highly advanced nano tech in order to do BCI's correctly and although this can be done without the help of AI we are too slow off the mark to get it done in time now.
At this point we have something like a catch 22, we need the BCI's to keep up with AI but it really can't be done properly without the help of AGI.
Yeah true, I am just concerned about those who get first access to the BCI’s. It would be great to be a first adopter.
Typically you want to be somewhere around the 3rd generation of adopters. That's usually how long it takes to work out the serious issues.
Alright since most people would think that way i think it would be optimal to wait an additional generation and adopt at the 4th gen
It's just an average. "New" tech that is more of a combination of well-understood pre-existing tech often gets there faster, while genuinely *NEW* stuff can take several. AI might change the whole dynamic. We'll just have to wait and see.
AGI is making it though, you’d imagine it should be nearly perfect considering it’s simulations
Join the capitalist class. Low cost index funds that invest in the entire economy like VTSAX are the best safety net you can build for yourself.
Learn to grow food and self-sufficiency skills
The only real answer
Malthusian doom and gloom is so intellectually lazy. It astounds me how enraptured people still are by apocalyptic narratives even though every generation since Christ has spent the last 2 thousand years screaming their heads off about how the end is nigh as life literally only got better and better.
Let slip the surely bonds of your limbic system and chill out.
I'd say staying current is important. Know and use the tools.
If it destabilizes the economic system, then no investment will work. If it causes riots, you don't have any chance of retaining even homes let alone farms.
Best bet is to have a prepared government that won't destabilize in such scenarios.
Someone been reading about Roko’s basilisk?
I don't think it's ethical to bring this up
🤣
Live your life as if you knew for sure some day you were going to die
For billionaire PhD to fuck you from behind for a tax write off with their army of robots.
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Don't worry, there will always be job openings behind the dumpster at Wendy's.
Regards
Signs to look out for? People leaving their partners for AI.
This is such a great question /remind me
either there is not much you can do in case ai becomes powerful enough to solve most of our problems(just enjoy utopia unfold) or if anarchy hits having a strong network of friends will be crucial so i would try to expand my friend group, cooperation has always been vital and those with better networks were the ones who came out on top throughout history you see even if you were a billionaire with a bunch of land, resources etc, the one determining factor of your survival would be your social status, how many people you can work with and how reliable they are under hectic circumstances so the bottom line is have a strong network of friends who you can trust with your life will be quite advantageous
Start searching for soup kitchens
Invest, speculate and vote for tax cuts on capital gains and for restrictions on immigration of poor people.
turnip_burrito t1_j5bg75e wrote
Campaigning your local elected officials, if they exist, for more progressive policies to help workers displaced by automation.