The future is not: The computers do the boring work and we do the fun work. The future is: the computers do the work and we have hobbies.
> we prefer solipsistic convenience over human relationships
If we would not like to be with other humans, we would not have sex with them, dance with them, play chess with them, go into a restaurant with them, smoke a bong with them, climb on and then basejump from a mountain with them.
I highly doubt that. There is no precedent for people being kept around by their rulers, without getting some (real) use out of them. We'be been engineered into existing or not existing with various policies, one child, no abortion etc. We're manufactured as needed, and we mostly exist on a need basis. This isn't a comfy perspective and people tend to not want to see it this way, but that doesn't change it for what it is.
I personally highly doubt we'll all be kept around without people in power getting some real use/benefit out of us as a whole. Way simpler to "accidentally" wipe a good bit of what in their view would then be "useless eaters".
I wish more people would go beyond the "how it looks" and "negative perspective" and think at the actual risk. Especially with no historical precedent for what they are hoping for.
1) We make a list of things all humans without work need daily, to survive.
2) We calculate how many work hours are needed to make these things.
3) We divide these hours by the number of humans who have no work (and therefore can not buy these things).
4) Every one of those humans works that number of hours to get these things.
5) Over time, we improve the workflow, getting the amount of work hours closer towards zero, but people still get the same things.
6) Above that, free markets and luxury, as people desire, with the usual rules keeping the playing field clean.
The difference to the system we have now is that now the system wants (or needs, due to compound interest) people to work AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. My plan wants people to work AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE BUT AS MUCH AS NECESSARY.
... Nope? You're the one telling us that's the future awaiting us thanks to intelligent computers. Figuring out how we're supposed to be going from an increasingly concentrated wealth and power capitalist society to post-scarcity socialism isn't on me. Short of total economic collapse and humanity suddenly doing a 180⁰ and being able to get along on a global scale, why would the billionaires and authoritarian surveillance states currently holding the power willingly decide to let it go for everyone's benefit?
Pharmacists though? Yeah replace them with face-ID prescription vending machines…
I strongly prefer self-checkout. If self-checkout is available, I will use it. Most people I know have the same preference (to varying degrees, I am a bit extreme in that I will wait for self-checkout even if normal checkout is open and there is no queue).
What? Pharmacists are a pretty important failsafe IMO. I trust the pharmacist as much as the doctor, maybe more in some cases.
> Thus when selling we emphasize human qualities like experience, reputation, trust, relationships, etc., and when buying we want cheap, fast, and convenient.
False. Just obviously false.
> We think of our own work as meaningful, but we think of most everyone else’s work in instrumental terms
Also false!
Every single line becomes drivel because the "truths" the author states in this section should start with "Some percentage of people", if it remotely wants to make grounded propositions.
Who is this absolute misanthrope?