Would be glad not to be a biological being in that case.

You say everyone being on welfare as if its a bad thing. Another way of looking at it us all being so rich we don't need to work.

One day humans will laugh with incredulity at the idea that having to work to survive or have a decent lifestyle was somehow considered a good thing.

Modern humans have been around for 200,000 years and have been working (for the most part) ever since and it's taken up a lot of time. If there is no work what will ppl do w/ their time? IMO, there's only so much to be gotten out of sitting in a meadow composing poetry or at the edge of a cliff painting the ocean. There is only so much room to sit on a beach and skiing the Alps gets old after a few years. Maybe sit around a hookah at the coffee shop for a decade? Then what? Take up fly fishing? Then there's the question of distributing the bounty. Every utopian fantasy that I've ever read about ends up w/ some group on top followed by the river of blood.

What's going to happen when there is no work and ppl have to do what their overlords demand is not going to be good. I called humans the worst monsters in the known universe for a reason. When they get worked up (and they are always getting worked up) they do the mambo of mayhem. TBH, I'm glad I won't be around to see it.

Lets ignore the overlord bit because that obviously sucks but may never happen and is kinda boring to talk about it.

The rest is interesting because it will almost certainly will happen in some form if humanity survives. We get to the stage where we live lives of plenty with abundant resources freely available, diseases and aging pretty much relics and pretty much anything we can want except perhaps the reality of struggling - and you're concerned it will be a living hell? what's worse is you may well be right.

Maybe heaven is hell. God's final joke?

I'm not sure what the point of education would be in this circumstance.

The only truly good point of education - because it's interesting. But it may not require any effort - just 'plug in' the latest modules.

No doubt there will be a campaign for real education - people saying we should make the effort to learn rather than just know.

And it's a good one. People are surprised when I get to talking about this sort of thing bec I'm not at all dark or moody, I'm usually the one cracking jokes. But on the inside, usually contained in it's corner, I'm



My release is here where most ppl don't shake their heads at me like I'm screwy and tell me to just talk about something else.

Or at least you don't SEE people shaking their heads. Jk

heh. I just came from the dog park where the usual group of cackling hens were cackling away and I took a seat a distance away. One of the hens asked why I didn't join them and I said 'I'm in a reflective mood today.' 'What are you thinking about?' 'The coming robot apocalypse.' Silence. Then 'What's that?' and I gave her the cliffs. She asks 'Are you a Christian?' and I think 'Oh, bleep, here it comes.' 10 minutes and she even stood over me asking if I wanted her to pray for me.

I'm a regular there and have to be polite. It's not that I mock religion but it's not for me. I think I'd have been better off w/ a robot christian that I could just tell to go away.

You've been conditioned throughout your life to feel that people need to work to feel whole.

There will definitely be a generation gap where there is disconnect with living in the new era that nobody right now can envision.

When machines do become the poets, artists, doctors, farmers, delivery/transportation, entertainment providers and much more... Humans will be raised differently as people adapt to a new world.

The weight of morals and human values will shift from what they are today dramatically. Religion may become dramatically more valued or less or non existent.

People very well may discover how to stop aging of cells and living forever may be a possibility.

People will be leaving the planet and may never come back to earth.

I personally side with the idea of Reincarnation over going to Heaven. The idea of Heaven does not excite me at all and I would rather have my mind wiped clean than move to a society where there is nothing to strive for but if I was in a society from the start that was that way... Well I probably wouldn't be writing this post.

edit: Overdramatic ending of post, who knows really but something to strive for would be hard to give up.

I've got this horrible feeling that when ppl wake up in their robot house they will be served a vegetarian breakfast (NO MORE BACON! IT'S BAD FOR YOU!), driven in their robot car to the robot coffee shop where they can only get herbal tea then sit around for a few hours watching the Weather Channel bec that's the only important thing going on, then they go to the robot big box store and find out their allotment of orthopedic shoes has been used up for 6 months.

The only consolation is that there will likely be robot spouses available that you can exchange when you get tired of the look and that will go stand quietly in a closet when commanded.

People are working on meat that is grown in laboratories.
It tastes nothing like meat that contains fat but they probably will be working on tasty meat next.

I'm sure nobody will be freaking out when GF confesses that she is actually a robot.

Laboratory bacon. 'Nuff said, jfc.

People seem to enjoy retirement just fine. Its only drawback is you generally have to work too long to get it. It would be better if you could retire at about 18 years old or so. If you have the funds and get the chance, try not working for a few years. I think you'll find you like it.


PairTheBoard

I haven't worked in 20 years. And I'm bored to tears.

Have you tried taking opiates? You could stare at the ceiling and not be bored. This is the future, opiate addicted masses and robot servants administering opiates and preventing OD's. The only problems will come from religious right as they rage against the hedonism and commit mass morality killings.

I like the way you think.

Supported. Work per se is overrated. Glad for the machines, at least nobody is feeling slaves are needed (like in Rome)

the future?

only thing I'm still working on is training my dog to bring me a Heineken when my mouth gets too dry from the opiates...

For sure.
It's sad to hear people only getting an education because they want to get a good job. They often do courses and find out later that they have no interest in and instead of dropping out, they try to stick it out, like pissing in the wind.

It's also sad that college has become synonymous with huge debt in some countries from what I hear like the US (Canada?). That shouldn't last too much longer when people realise there are no jobs out there for graduates, so college isn't worth the huge debt. (If there are public colleges that aren't redic expensive in the US, someone can enlighten me.)

Greek geometry, for example?

Like on Joe 90.

I did a quick search for the main effects of the Industrial Revolution on education, but I couldn't find them. Not sure how relevant that is, anyway. Would any of these effects have been reversed, or undone, in your dystopia?

I literally worry about this everyday. I know a virologist who did this for Nipah's protein coat. I asked him if what would have stopped him from doing the whole thing, and he said that at the time he did it, nothing.
He said that gene synthesis companies won't allow you do to this now, but to me this is just a matter of time.

I'd note we shouldn't use the word "terrorists" to describe Isis, but I feel that both that topic (and my response) are derailing the thread, so I'll stop at that.

I will then settle for calling them "People that shouldnt exist. Antimatter was born for them!"

Using the word "robot" is misleading.
I think we're experiencing permanent unemployment from the likes of Walmart, Amazon, Google, Uber/Lyft, etc.
The economy is doing well enough that a common debate is whether we're in a bubble / how close it is to bursting, but a lot of unemployment measures are still high.
Obviously, this a pretty murky issue, but it's very plausible to me that we're much deeper into the "jobless economy" than we think.

I think your post is outlining some ideas that are important, but I'd like to give a few counterpoints.

Calling "Machine Learning" AI is Confusing

I think we're still far away from "AI," and what we currently have is pretty "dumb." Our state of the art in pattern recognition is really different from intelligence, and I'd argue this even applies to stuff like Deep Learning.

I think much of the popular perception of "machines replacing jobs with AI" is misleading, and what we're seeing is information technology enabling lean companies (with workers around the planet) to replace less efficient (and better employing) companies (e.g., Uber versus traditional cab companies).

Furthermore, robotics is still pretty expensive. Yes, a lot of robotics companies are "hot" right now and getting purchased by the likes of Google, but robotic janitors / surgeons are VERY far away. Interacting with reality is really hard.

I think this is a serious issue.

However, despite this, I think you're seriously onto something.

I think we're not going to get sentient machines anytime soon, but we don't need sentient machines to see a massive disruption of labor. I know this is weird, but we might begin taking some socialist ideas (e.g., living wage) really seriously in the next 25 years as we watch the definition of full employment shrink to unacceptable levels.

I realize this implies something very dark about the nature of labor.