Pretty good discussion on woke mind virus and other topics.

At 2.37 mark, Elon mentions the likelihood of "universal high income" where everyone can afford any product or service they want. Dont really see how thats technically possible.

Also, "Sustainable abundance" sounds great for people with purpose and self discipline. But probably would end up being net destructive with so many choosing instant dopamine for little to no effort.

FobTies said:

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Pretty good discussion on woke mind virus and other topics.

At 2.37 mark, Elon mentions the likelihood of "universal high income" where everyone can afford any product or service they want. Dont really see how thats technically possible.

Also, "Sustainable abundance" sounds great for people with purpose and self discipline. But probably would end up being net destructive with so many choosing instant dopamine for little to no effort.

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I think we are trending away from a near-universal middle class in the US to a retrench of fuedalism in a lot of ways. You won't see people tied to land but to handouts until the money is gone. Then **** really hits the fan.

For all of the amazing stuff that comes from Elon's mind...there's a good bit of bat**** crazy stuff too.

aezmvp said:

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FobTies said:

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Pretty good discussion on woke mind virus and other topics.

At 2.37 mark, Elon mentions the likelihood of "universal high income" where everyone can afford any product or service they want. Dont really see how thats technically possible.

Also, "Sustainable abundance" sounds great for people with purpose and self discipline. But probably would end up being net destructive with so many choosing instant dopamine for little to no effort.

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I think we are trending away from a near-universal middle class in the US to a retrench of fuedalism in a lot of ways. You won't see people tied to land but to handouts until the money is gone. Then **** really hits the fan.

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Deport... deport... deport...

Solves a lot of problems.

We are already trending toward having classes of people who are unemployable: special needs, low IQ, convicted felons, and that list will continue to grow if robotics and AI develop as projected. Providing some sort of allowance would provide some stability in that sort of society. Is that good for humans? No, it isn't. As more and more people find it difficult to find employment, I think something might have to give.

Elon seems to think that one day Earth can be the utopia as it is portrayed to be in Star Trek.

"On Earth, there is no poverty, no crime, no war. You look out the window of Starfleet Headquarters and you see paradise" as Captain Sisko described it.

Sometimes, the problem with high achievers, like Musk...is that it's hard for him to comprehend others 'not' having the same mindset.

Some people earn tens/hundreds of millions of dollars, and still end up broke (eg. professional athletes). Some come from nothing, and change the world.

Giving people money doesn't change that fact. I'd argue it only exasperates the problem...but the promise of utopia is too strong of a drug for some people to think practically.

The problem with the Utopian dream is that even if it could be achieved via technological advancement, it would be completely destructive to human psychology. We would self destruct long before the dream was achieved.

We, like most natural things, are wired to work and struggle against scarcity, threats and unmet needs. When you take away our need to work, the presence of all kinds of things start to increase. Violence, mental illness, anxiety, depression - these fill the void of idleness.

There are some rare people who can be satisfied and mentally well while being lazy 100% of the time and living a life without purpose, but not very many.

The point he's making is if they are right about the future of AI, most jobs will not need to exist. Humanity will need a way to function and thrive outside the current economic model (labor for pay) to avoid mass poverty and societal decay.

Most of the major tech bros are pushing the abundance philosophy. If they are right then we will need to invent new economics to make it work.

A lot of the philosophy around this space is centered around human connection, decoupling happiness from work achievement, and focusing on real relationships and experiences with other people. In an ideal world, which I agree probably won't exist, people wouldn't just be sitting around all day. They would use their time to spend time with other people, be creative, engage in human-centered activities, have fun, travel, etc.

FobTies said:

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Pretty good discussion on woke mind virus and other topics.

At 2.37 mark, Elon mentions the likelihood of "universal high income" where everyone can afford any product or service they want. Dont really see how thats technically possible.

Also, "Sustainable abundance" sounds great for people with purpose and self discipline. But probably would end up being net destructive with so many choosing instant dopamine for little to no effort.

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Indian reservations come to mind

Hayek, Friedman and Sowell:

No incentive to work and everyone has plenty of money…too bad there will be nothing to buy including food

Rapier108 said:

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Elon seems to think that one day Earth can be the utopia as it is portrayed to be in Star Trek.

"On Earth, there is no poverty, no crime, no war. You look out the window of Starfleet Headquarters and you see paradise" as Captain Sisko described it.

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And as all Star Trek nerds know, the dreamers are forgetting about the nuclear and eugenics wars that took place before Earth could rebuild civilization to the point of being accepted by the Vulcans.


But Khan never forgets.

Rapier108 said:

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Elon seems to think that one day Earth can be the utopia as it is portrayed to be in Star Trek.

"On Earth, there is no poverty, no crime, no war. You look out the window of Starfleet Headquarters and you see paradise" as Captain Sisko described it.

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And here we, at the same expected life span as stated in Psalms 90:10 written over 4000 years ago.

Elon is trending toward a false prophet…beware.

AtticusMatlock said:

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A lot of the philosophy around this space is centered around human connection, decoupling happiness from work achievement, and focusing on real relationships and experiences with other people. In an ideal world, which I agree probably won't exist, people wouldn't just be sitting around all day. They would use their time to spend time with other people, be creative, engage in human-centered activities, have fun, travel, etc.

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across the Western World post WWII we basically have multiple generations of underclass that have their bottom layers of Maslov's hierarchy of needs met by others. I don't think we're seeing any evidence of increased human oriented engagements and an unleashing of creativity.

Guess Elon is making the rounds. This is another good long form podcast.

Theoretically you could achieve such high productivity and general abundance that the vast majority of people are broadly satisfied and most aren't having to compete for limited amounts of what they want to enjoy or experience. I don't know that it is possible with 8 billion people but with 0.8 billion and very efficient production, maybe. But I think it is too idealized and too difficult to practically achieve and it discounts some fundamental human deficiencies and weaknesses. Some of us are psychopaths or narcissistic or greedy and will go out of their way to take from others just to do it, not out of need.

Essentially the idea in Star Trek is that in the future money is (largely but not completely) replaced by the energy that a society can produce and have access to. So you don't have unlimited wealth and things aren't free but because of the abundance of energy, it would be like if today at the start of every month you got half a million dollars deposited to your bank account. Could you blow through it? Of course but as long as you're reasonably responsible you can live a very comfortable life free of most material wants.

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across the Western World post WWII we basically have multiple generations of underclass that have their bottom layers of Maslov's hierarchy of needs met by others. I don't think we're seeing any evidence of increased human oriented engagements and an unleashing of creativity.

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You have to accept graffiti and murals as art. And, uhm, diss tracks?

FrioAg 00 said:

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There are some rare people who can be satisfied and mentally well while being lazy 100% of the time and living a life without purpose, but not very many.

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AtticusMatlock said:

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The point he's making is if they are right about the future of AI, most jobs will not need to exist. Humanity will need a way to function and thrive outside the current economic model (labor for pay) to avoid mass poverty and societal decay.

Most of the major tech bros are pushing the abundance philosophy. If they are right then we will need to invent new economics to make it work.

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We already have a bunch of people living this "abundance philosophy". For example, my 44 yr old brother-in-law, who switches between living off his mommy and living off his girlfriend.

We all see how well that works out for society.

(Edited to give the complete bad picture.)

This is not going to happen anytime soon. But what is about to happen is a society of rich and poor. A bifurcation like pre WWIi and a return to the normal human condition.

People will largely marry within their social class and only the exceptional will have a real chance at upward mobility.

And it will still be orders of magnitude better than every other economic system.

We can make it to post scarcity for a while with enough humanoid AI

AtticusMatlock said:

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A lot of the philosophy around this space is centered around human connection, decoupling happiness from work achievement, and focusing on real relationships and experiences with other people. In an ideal world, which I agree probably won't exist, people wouldn't just be sitting around all day. They would use their time to spend time with other people, be creative, engage in human-centered activities, have fun, travel, etc.

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Good lord you're naive

AtticusMatlock said:

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The point he's making is if they are right about the future of AI, most jobs will not need to exist. Humanity will need a way to function and thrive outside the current economic model (labor for pay) to avoid mass poverty and societal decay.

Most of the major tech bros are pushing the abundance philosophy. If they are right then we will need to invent new economics to make it work.

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And I think it's bull***** How does AI solve scarcity which is the foundational rule of Economics?

Unless he's assuming AI will solve fusion, or some other equivalent unlimited resource tech for us, then this is a pipe dream.

Fact. It's already happening.

When you have 8 billion people and nothing for them to do, no competitive commerce, no exchange of money for goods and services, what you'll have is mass die-off

ANYBODY that thinks UBI is a viable solution should not be taken seriously

Y'all have been watching too much tv and cinema

I think Elon is envisioning a future after hyper-productivity brought on where we're at the point of autonomous robot factories staffed primary by autonomous robots that can make every other factory also autonomous. The number of humans needed to sustain that future will be vanishingly small. I presume he believes those humans will be compensated well, but there would be government intervention to distribute all these products to everyone. So, in that sense, everyone is living as if they had a high income to own all the luxuries most could want that far exceed just basic needs.

I know that's not exactly what Elon said, but many times with Elon, you have to do that further analysis and wonder if that was what really was inside his head when he said the thing that he said.

That last part applies similarly to Trump, even though Trump weaves it into a troll at the same time.

Elon also thinks we are going to have something like 1/10th of the global population that we have now as soon as the next 50 years or so. We are definitely going to have depopulation. The math says we are but his projections of how fast that will happen are wild.

Thus, he's banking his futurist thoughts on that we will adjust to that.

Elon the GOAT

YouBet said:

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Elon also thinks we are going to have something like 1/10th of the global population that we have now as soon as the next 50 years or so. We are definitely going to have depopulation. The math says we are but his projections of how fast that will happen are wild.

Thus, he's banking his futurist thoughts on that we will adjust to that.

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Yep

De-population is the key to ALL of this

Genocide, inflicted starvation, whatever it takes

That is their vision

Probably the greatest testament to capitalism is that you could take the richest person (Rockefeller) from a century ago and almost no one reading this today would trade places with him.

You would not give up modern technology or your loved ones extended life expectancy for Rockefeller's life in 1925.

So, we are already living in a world of "universally high income" by the standards of 100 years ago.

It is reasonable to believe that the next hundred years will bring an even greater improvement in quality of life.

Democrats focus on uplifting the poor.

The reality is that by the standards of what human progress can achieve in the next hundred years, we are all poor today.

As long as government lets free markets and human innovation continue to drive progress like the last 100 years…

Our grand children / great grandchildren will be living in "ultra abundance" by our current standards.

Elon has a bit better visibility on what that ultra abundance will look like than most of us. I don't think what he's saying is off target.

Universal High Income is the dumbest idea ever. Why not just have the government declare that $1 dollar bills are worth $1MM dollars? See, poverty solved.

The problem with AI is that they want it to be good enough to where there will be no *labor* scarcity, driving down wages of those still skilled enough to be employed and ultimately replacing all humans in the labor force.

The road map is to get to Artificial General Intelligene (AGI) within the next few years. AGI means a system that can perform all cognitive and nonphysical tasks as well as any highly intelligent human.

Then they want to use clusters of AGIs to help them build a SuperIntelligence system that is smarter than all humans.

As this is happening, they are developing advanced robotics which will eventually be embedded with these AGIs and SIs. When that happens, AI will be free to mine, build, create, and invent without human input at all. Think robots making new robots made from parts built by robots sourced from robots. A robot can work without breaks for no pay. What good is a human at that point? The hive mind figures out limitless power sources and advanced space travel. Robots mining asteroids and planets.

There is a race to get to AGI and SI first.

And no this makes no sense in our current consumer driven economic model. Thats why UBI gets floated around as a solution.

There is a fear among AI pushers that an SI would view humans as superfluous and in the way and that it would kill us, so UBI probably won't matter.