> But naturally arising UBI? Where people have jobs, feel purpose, contribute to something larger than themselves even if that contribution is mostly fictional? That's genius. That's a system that preserves human dignity while distributing resources.
> The real question isn't when AGI will arrive or how we'll implement UBI. It's how long we can maintain the beautiful fiction that keeps society functioning.
I don't know what the author's experience is, but based on actual research about people's work satisfaction, and particularly David Graeber's work written up in Bullshit Jobs [0], most of these jobs have been psychologically bad for people, who know that what they do most of their waking hours has no (or even negative) utility to society.
First, the website should be able to load without JavaScript. It's really just text. Well, probably more trackers than text, even.
> This started before AI. It started when the internet created so much real value that we could afford massive inefficiency elsewhere.
That's pretty uninformed. The economic growth is purely related to abundant fossil fuels. Internet is just the advertising platform. Google and Meta print money because they sell ads (by abusing everybody, see enshittification).
> I'd estimate 60% are doing jobs that don't need to exist.
I genuinely wonder how many friends one has, when one pulls estimations like this out of their hat and shares them. Then goes on criticising executives who presumably do the same.
> There's a woman who creates internal training materials that no one reads. She spends months crafting beautiful PowerPoints for compliance trainings that people click through as fast as possible.
The point of making internal training materials is that employees should be trained. The fact that the employees actively fight against the training doesn't mean that the idea is worthless. Many people refuse to learn about phishing "because they are not stupid", and get phished.
> There's a team of six people who generate reports. The reports go to managers who generate summary reports. Those go to executives who make decisions based on gut feel anyway.
Why would that mean that the reports are useless? The problem may be those executives who don't read them.
That's certainly not the case. Fossil fuel consumption in the US has been flat for 50+ years, and falling on per capita basis, which didn't stop the economy from growing. It's even more pronounced for the world as a whole. From 1974 till today, output per joule of fossil fuels consumed increased 1.9x worldwide and 3.2x in USA.
It's even more pronounced on a global level. Per capital fossil fuel consumption increased only 14% since 1973 and then, 2/3 of worldwide population regularly starved, now only around 8% do.
> The real question isn't when AGI will arrive or how we'll implement UBI. It's how long we can maintain the beautiful fiction that keeps society functioning.
I don't know what the author's experience is, but based on actual research about people's work satisfaction, and particularly David Graeber's work written up in Bullshit Jobs [0], most of these jobs have been psychologically bad for people, who know that what they do most of their waking hours has no (or even negative) utility to society.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
> This started before AI. It started when the internet created so much real value that we could afford massive inefficiency elsewhere.
That's pretty uninformed. The economic growth is purely related to abundant fossil fuels. Internet is just the advertising platform. Google and Meta print money because they sell ads (by abusing everybody, see enshittification).
> I'd estimate 60% are doing jobs that don't need to exist.
I genuinely wonder how many friends one has, when one pulls estimations like this out of their hat and shares them. Then goes on criticising executives who presumably do the same.
> There's a woman who creates internal training materials that no one reads. She spends months crafting beautiful PowerPoints for compliance trainings that people click through as fast as possible.
The point of making internal training materials is that employees should be trained. The fact that the employees actively fight against the training doesn't mean that the idea is worthless. Many people refuse to learn about phishing "because they are not stupid", and get phished.
> There's a team of six people who generate reports. The reports go to managers who generate summary reports. Those go to executives who make decisions based on gut feel anyway.
Why would that mean that the reports are useless? The problem may be those executives who don't read them.