We already know what a world without work looks like
We know what a world without work looks like
As AI takes over economically necessary labor, predictions of a 'relational sector' echo pre-industrial aristocratic life. Drawing on 18th-century court memoirs and a 1984 ethnography of upper-class women, the essay argues that a post-work society would be defined by social intrigue, status maintenance, and volunteer fundraising rather than meaningful work—and asks whether we can do better.
When the machines can do everything else, our relationships will be what’s left.
- em-bee
the article argues that work will no longer be economically necessary, and that we are capable of organizing ourselves into a community without the need to work for income.
but i disagree. even in the past those rich people had to maintain their wealth, so a lot of what they did was economically necessary.
so i don't think that the economics of work will go away. it will change, but not vanish.
there is a lot of work that should never be replaced by machines. raising children for example, but also caring for the sick, elderly and disabled. yes, some of it will be machine assisted. those will be machines that increase the independence of people. also art and entertainment, while it may use machines for assistance should remain firm in human hands. also government, laws, jurisprudence. science, research, tourism, etc...
much of it can be done machine assisted, but the human touch is not optional, and a good part of that work is still something that people may not want to do without some sort of reward.
today economic benefits are the reward for humans making an effort. in the past it may have been social status, but i don't think it is a good idea to go back to that. social status is what gives rise to prejudice and racism.
work will not go away. the economic necessity for everyone to work just to put food on the table, that may go away, but the need to motivate people to do work that machines can't do on their own will remain.
therefore what changes is the motivation. today pe […]
- webern777
Great stuff. I am really interested in reading some of the books mentioned.
Self involved political gossip that leads to a culture of policing deviant behavior is my worry. It is just hard for me to not see how this all doesn't create a huge bull market in law enforcement. More "crimes" from people having more leisure time, more "crimes" from more surveillance. Most of all though more "crimes" because a culture of policing deviant behavior will start to find more and more behavior as "deviant".
At least the salon had the pretense of high art and philosophy. Our salons would have the pretense of political gossip and the philosophy would be about classifications of deviant behavior.
- erelong
> When the machines can do everything else, our relationships will be what’s left.
I think I saw this posted already and I still didn't read all of it, but this was not really what I thought of when there's no external work needed
There's still a lot of things that can't be outsourced to machines, like exercise, or building one's mental capabilities
I'd also think this would enable more people to spend a lot more of their day in prayer like literal Christian monks as prayer is another thing than the machines cannot do