[ExI] labels etc. IQ

[spike]

From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2017 9:26 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: Re: [ExI] labels etc. IQ

 

On Tue, Mar 14, 2017  Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com <mailto:steinberg.will at gmail.com> > wrote:

 

​> ​>…didn't we add the [GOV] tag so we could go to a thread without having to worry whether it would be yet another Trump conversation?

 

​

>…It's odd. I've been on this list continuously for a long time…there was never any hesitation shown about criticizing the sitting president…John K Clark​

 

 

I think we all just beat the life out of the topic in about April and May of 2016.  I don’t see that anyone has managed to beat any life back into it since then.

 

There are topics vaguely related to politics which are of interest to techno-futurists.  Anyone who is paying a modicum of attention can scarcely fail to notice how quickly robots are developing and can easily see their potential in disrupting longstanding traditions and assumptions.  

 

This is a notion I have been toying with recently.  We know that western society has prospered because it is open-minded and adaptable.  We have generally shown that we can gradually dismiss religion, yet get by as a society without it.  We know there are more traditional societies which are struggling with the whole concept of rapid change and are not handling it particularly well.

 

OK sure, we get that.  But what if it keeps accelerating, and we find that western civilization gets to the point where it isn’t adequately coping with change either?  We have some test cases coming in the immediately foreseeable: the driverless cars work.  They will replace millions of low-end jobs.  The mechanical burger-bots work, and are under construction.  Plenty of us will eat there just to watch a machine make our meal; no hostility toward low-end workers at all, just a fascination with the progress of controls engineering (which is perhaps one of the very coolest fields of engineering out there.)  We know that controls tech is rapidly enabling a third field of low-end employment: cleaning.  I haven’t mentioned the harvest-bots because I don’t know much about those and haven’t really followed the progress, but I can vaguely guess where we are now.

 

OK then, regardless of one’s political outlook, one should really ponder: what are the impacts of simultaneously eliminating or reducing two (or more) well-known low-end employers?  There is no point in calling out the names of particular leaders, past, present or future, for they don’t know what to do either, and even if they did, they might not get elected, and even if elected, they might not be able to put their vision to work.

 

spike

     

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20170315/71da0c61/attachment.html>