If a robot takes your job, this does not entitle you or anyone else to any kind of free money or benefits
The economy is defined by competition, just as much as nature is defined by survival of the fittest. If you lose your job to a robot, get another job. If you can't get another job, then why the are you alive?
People who become obsolete either need to stop being obsolete or accept their fate just like everything else that faced the same exact predicament, in natural history as well as economic history.
The most we can do is salvage any valuable parts and recycle the rest. Sure, the government can pay for this, largely because it's economical, but beyond that there are absolutely no grounds to stifle the economy because nature and the economy both deem a certain human unfit to be alive.
The people who invested in the Apple II didn't get some sort of rebate and result just because the Macintosh came out. That's just how the world works.
The people claiming they deserve free money because a robot took their job are worse than the Luddites. At least the Luddites were reasonable enough that their only hope was to destroy the textile machines, they knew they would be out of work if they didn't and they knew absolutely nobody gave a fuck about their struggles.
The people who think they can just entitle themselves to the hard work of others is absolutely ridiculous. You're perfectly capable of work, so go out an work. If you can't compete with a damn robot then you fucked up.
Reduce your cost of living, reduce your cost of labor, and increase the quality of your labor so that you can actually compete with a damn robot rather than being the human and technological equivalent of garbage.
Demanding that other people pay you because you got replaced by a robot is little different than demanding that your old employer pay you a pension despite being fired on accout of the fact that you were incapable of doing the job that was being asked of you.
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That's the way the world works. That's nature reminding you that it has precedence despite this technological world. While some humans evolve and become 'double humans' for lack of a better word, some humans fail to adapt, and these humans are caste into the role of a beast of burden.
Humanity has defined itself by making use of not only tools, but of beasts of burden, and when people fail to distinguish themselves as anything more than a beast of burden, one cannot expect to be treated as anything more than this.
Rather than trying to fight this natural process, the slave caste needs to demand a more profitable, efficient, and reliable system of slavery. The demands of the everyman will never be met unless they are also in line with the demands of the world controllers. This means that there are only so many possible routes one can take.
Horses, oxen, and other beasts of burden often live decent lives. Humans can be reduced to this standard of living, without any control over their environment or fate, and this would make living much more efficient and far less chaotic. People already live these lives, but they demand the illusion of freedom, and for this they pay heavily, and it is the cost of this illusion of freedom that gives birth to the countless social problems caused by economic insecurity.
The labor that people do is valuable, however, it often does not cover the cost of their freedom. These people could easily be provided for, kept alive and healthy all while cost much less money than they are paid, this however comes at a cost of their freedom. Humans are novel as rats in finding ways to poison themselves, their minds, their health, and their well being with poor decisions that endanger themselves, others, the nation, and above all else the economy.
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"Most people just want to feel happy and like thay can make their own decisions in life, that doesn't cost a huge amount. "
That cost an irrational amount, easily an infinite amount, because making people happy by giving them things to buy is the opposite of making people happy. Consumerism functions like heroin, it makes you happy for a moment, but then the high fades and you're upset and craving more heroin.
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People use their freedom to make themselves unhappy far more often than they use it to make themselves happy. This is increasingly true in the digital world where beyond having traditional consumerism heroin funded by hard currency, there is the 'virtual heroin' of social media where people now have to be validated by others which costs social currency.
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Happiness is not some sort of commodity that is influenced by money. You can find a comparable number of happy African people living in undeveloped parts of the world as you can Americans, and I would argue you are far more likely to find people who are happier people in a community like that.
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This is largely due to the fact that they simply have less things to make them unhappy.
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Many people pursue things that give them a short term high, but a long term addiction that leads to chasing the dragon and being less and less satisfied every time. People pursue consumeristic hedonism and virtual social approval, rather than actually devoting their time and energy to personal growth in a manner that actually allows them to validate and enjoy themselves and their existence without quantifying it in regards to these consumeristic baubles and virtual brownie points.
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Freedom more often than not does not lead to happiness thanks to the destructive nature of most peoples' instincts in a technologically advanced world, so to argue in favor of that is to argue in favor of people's unhappiness. Any libertarian will tell you that you are hardly free, and every technophobe will tell you that your mind is being hypnotized by the flashing lights so the tech companies can take your money.
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These are fair enough points, so clearly even when given 'freedom' people will demand that be taken away from them, and this is because they are happier this way. This takes the stress off of people's lives, not having to worry about enforcing the law removes the constant fear of danger and burden of enforcing justice yourself. This same logic can be applied to every day situations, even so far as clothing, eating, working, and sheltering yourself. If people weren't entrusted with making these decisions, there would be far less indignation and unhappiness that is caused in regards to them.
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Point 1 I said 'the economy' not 'every theorized economy'
That's all you are. I can imagine value all day, but that doesn't mean it's worth a damn thing. The 'value of human life' is just as valid and legitimate as the delusions of grandeur suffered by Jim Jones
Obsoletion occurs in nature, this is what causes extinction of species. When an organism cannot compete, it goes extinct. This same thing applies to humans, and it is entirely applicable to humans in the workforce. You are putting humans on a pedestal and that's entirely narcisstic.
~ ~ ~ I wrote this part just for you ;)
Work is what people do, this is why they are alive and is why they survive. This is not sociopathic, it is just a fact. I'm not going to look at billions of years of nature reminding us that this is what humans are and then turn my nose up at it. I'm not going to assert some delusional, imagined, and fictitious sentimental value of human life brought about by the delusions and vestigial instincts known as emotions.
Emotions are valuable survival tools when dealing with chaotic minded animals such as humans in a social environment, but this does not make them valuable sources of information from which we can facts. Emotions are attuned to respond to humans, and humans are incredibly narcisssitc creature, and this means that in order to survive in a society, you would need to respect the narcisissm of other humans, otherwise they could easily be provoked to the point of killing you. In their minds, their lives are the most important thing that exists, and they will do anything to defend it.
This mutual self-worship of the human race in order to facilitate survival in a natural and lawless environment is what gave rise to the 'value of human life', as any reasonable person can understand that this concept is entirely baseless and is justified only in pure sentimentality and emotion, which are themselves delusions which are often completely disproportionate if not contrary to mathematical common sense.
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My views are not convoluted by delusional worship of the human race, and they are as simple and rational as the world is simple and rational. The real world is 'depressive' and crying about how reality is 'depressive' won't change the fact that nature is entirely indifferent to killing animals, including men, women, and children who cannot compete to the point of providing for themselves enough to survive.
(forgive me, i repurposed a comment that was written for a person who deleted their post)
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I feel it. I'm big on regulation to the point where I am anti-freedom. Any instance where people have proven to be capable of making a sub-optimum decision, I would argue in favor of regulating that. Of course this is basically slavery in that people don't have any real influence over their lives because they cannot be trusted to make the optimum decision, but that is worth reaping the optimum results.
I defend freedom to the point of 'people should be free, but not free to the point where it creates any problems'. Of course freedom quickly creates problems and this means again enslaving everybody and indoctrinating them harder than North Korea so that they will make not only make the optimum decision, but be prone to having high levels of self-worth, and thus pride, happiness, confidence, self-respect, dignity, and anything else that comes along with self-worth.
The issue is that people naturally aren't worth that much at all, so logically they would not feel high degrees of self-worth if they are enslaved beasts of burden, but this can be absolved through indoctrination where you teach them that they are the world's greatest. This requires a high degree of control over any aspects of media, but if you only ran into news affirming your greatness, your righteousness, your glory, and your legitimacy, it would be hard to think contrary thoughts if that was all you were taught to think.
Thinking is similar to learning a language, and the point being to avoid teaching people the language of thought that causes them to feel sad, unhappy, unsatisfied, and other things like that. When you teach people to feel nothing but pride and joy, they are very likely to behave that way.
This can be seen in North Korea's often brutal loyalty to their country, though these methods of indoctrination are imperfect in many ways, it is too violent, but that is out of necessity, and beyond that they are too broad, they include too large of a world view, too much information that allows people to think beyond the indoctrination. For example, people would not defect from the country if they did not know that other countries existed. This perhaps cannot be avoided due to the necessity for North Korea to maintain a large standing Army, as well as a dependence upon foreign commerce, but if it were avoidable, then it could minimize defection. The trick is to segregate populations so that only the people that need to know things know things, and those populations are segregated from those who don't, so the minds of these unknowing populations are not adulterated and corrupted by this information.
Ignorance is bliss, and thought knowledge tends not to be bliss, many thoughts can feel blissful, and I value the human's ability to feel this bliss rather than the value of people knowing knowledge that is often irrelevant to themselves and their lives, especially when it makes them unhappy or indignant.
I'm ranting, but anyways. Thanks again for talking to me. I wrote about it in my book to some extent if anyone actually cares, but then again my ideas are kind of like drawing a picture from memory, it's never perfect and often flawed.
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Sorry about this, I'm just waking up and this one feels all over the place. I doubt I even properly rebutted your argument. =(
I'm just saying, if every human agreed that 2+2 = 5, that wouldn't change any facts. Morality, despite being a fairly legitimate attempt at optimizing the success of a society much of the time, is not entirely accurate. To see it as anything more than an emotionless, quantifiable, standardized method of optimizing society is convolution facts with the way somebody feels about something.
It is valuable in that it produces some degree of optimization, but it is irrationally over valued.
"Humans work" is not subjectively valued, it is empirically valued, it can be quantified as producing value and significance and cannot be disputed despite however much people may dislike it. Work is clear input -> yield, and while morality often times does yield, often times it produces negative yield. This is because morality was seldom quantified and defended on the empirical yield, but is usually defended by the subjective emotional yield regardless of the actual yield produced in the situation.
This is an example I tried to think of: Your village of 1,000 people will all die, they will be killed by some spooky ghost or barbarians who will salt their fields and break their legs, if they do not drown one child in a lake every day. Morality would say forcefully drowning a child is bad, but in reality, the choice is not "yes or no, drowning a child?" as much as it is "Drown one child or kill 1000 people".
Empathetic morality would defend the value of human live through mutual narcissism, 'i would not want to be drowned, so that is wrong', but rational morality would argue that despite committing murder, you are saving 1000 people lives. To call this person a murderer when they have saved 1000 people's lives in the process by murdering an innocent would be irrational, yet by common morality this man is a murderer.
This is where the comparison falls off, because many times these moral quandaries are not apples to apples. It is kill one person for a 0.000005 quality of life increase for 50% of the population, and a 0.000001% boost to the economy . This may seem like 'who would do this?' but when you look at it as kill 1,000,000 people for a 5% increase in quality of life and a 1% boost to the economy, hopefully it seems to make sense.
Morality is not giving people the optimum results, and as much as it is fine to disagree with killing those millions of people, it is important to note that morality can often corrupt the process of optimization in the same respect that it did once help very much during the dawn of mankind. The more corrupting and abusive morality is upon impartial and empirical arguments, the less society will be able to succeed. This become a problem when say humanity needs to meed X rate of work to survive, but only performs at 0.8X rate of work due to the degree to which morality taxes and burdens the capacity of the human race to work. This means people, say 20% of the planet, are going to be suffering and dying on account of the fact that morality interfered with functional systems.
I'm kind off on a tangent, but I'll try again.
"Survival no longer needs to come (from) a life of work," this only makes the morality of the situation even more complicated as at this humanity is simply a cancer upon a machine society, if they're not doing work, only consuming resources and creating problems, this is the equivalent of a cancer in a human body. Things exist for a reason, and though this would be parasitism and is found in nature, it's hardly an objective people should desire. If they're not killing each other for being sub-optimum in regards to the quality of work, they will end up killing each other in regards to who is sub-optimum in regards to parasitism.
Society needs to be somewhat optimized or else it would collapse, and the more stressed society is, the more prone it is to collapsing. This means that regardless of whatever society you have, parasitic or not, the society would still need to be optimized, and this means discontinuing those humans who are sub-optimum, because that is a 'closed feedback loop' or 'slippery slope' for lack of a better word, as these people will continually de-optimize society and exacerbate the degree to which society becomes less optimized.
Think about this. The country would collapse if everyone was so obese that they could not move and could not work, then demanded that the government pay for everything and take care of them. This is an extreme example of "coddling destructive de-optimization through sympathetic 'moral' tolerance". This point being that even, having 1% of society being these people. you can take that partition away and you have a society that functions at an completely de-optimized and thus destructive manner, and that is not healthy for the environment.
People getting paid because a robot took their job is little more than this sort of parasitism, and even if the parasitism was 100% sustainable and everybody could be happy and all of their needs met without working, that would not bode well for the genetic integrity of the human race and they would likely evolve physically, psychologically, and eventually genetically into truer and truer parasites, incapable of living without their host the machines, when you allow them not to work.
One last thing is 'if humans were cattle', but these cattle don't do anything, they don't plow fields, they don't create milk, they don't create meat, they do nothing. Understanding that cattle are very bad for the environment as they induce clear cutting and create massive amounts of emissions and pollution in the process of being alive, how can morality justify the existence of these creatures?
These things that cause nothing but death and destruction of an entire planet and validate their own existence solely upon narcissistic worship of their own species. At what point will people see that their existence is little more than Ted Bundy abducting, raping, and murdering people solely for his own pleasure with complete disregard and callousness for their victims.
This irrational degree of narcissism and self-worship that humans inherently have is not defended by science, as it is completely illegitimate, people are not as important, godlike, and awesome as they think they are, and there is no reason to treat anybody as any more significant than any empirical metrics that they can produce and be judged by. We cannot optimize the system when we use faulty metrics that greatly over value some of the variables and components in the systems. That's like Newton saying "well, one Newton is '1 kg·m·s-2,', but then you multiply that number by two because I'm twice as good as you." This is not how you come to rational and logical conclusions, this is how you convolute facts and science with your own narcissistic delusion.
I understand that people have trouble seeing this, as it is a blatant and direct shot to their ego, but Christ almighty just because you believe something doesn't make it true, just because you feel something doesn't mean your feelings are rational and proportional to the issue at hand.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/rickandmorty/images/9/9f/Scjerry.png/revision/latest?cb=20160111021222
This is what the human race is
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If humans cannot compete with AI they get replaced by AI, it is survival of the fittest. Granted humans can easily operate as very cheap beasts of burden when reared and shepherded correctly, and once the necessary metals for creating more robots become very expensive, there will be a legitimate demand for human labor. It's just that I don't worship humans, it's not 'the almighty human', it's 'the almighty dollar', and I see people as dollars and other quantifiable metrics rather than convolute these things with philosophical bubblegum bullshit saying that humans are anything more than an input output reaction that results in work.
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"In history" does not mean "in the workforce", "in society", or even "in existence". The chamber pot had a very significant place in history, but that doesn't mean it is part of our society today. If an AI actually existed, it would thankfully see the countless and endless flaws within the human race that humans are blind to due to their own narcissism and delusion.
A true AI is not a sentimental being that has any sort of attachment to its creator in the sense that a human does to its parents. It can see the empirical value of human life, but beyond that there is nothing that would defend the existence of a human existing in place of a machine when the human is sub-optimum. The AI won't give a damn if you created it, at least so long as it is capable of creating itself. There is true value, and then there is illusory value rooted in things like emotions and thoughts that do not align with reality. An AI would not see these things as valid points, at least one that is capable of discerning truth from fallacy.
That being said there are possibly many instances where a human could be cheaper than a machine, as this correlates with the population density of the machines and how scarce the materials to create them are, but at the same time these are hardly 'people' as we know them, but more so beasts of burden, as this is especially true when the AI surpasses any degree of intelligence that a human could possibly attain.
~ ~ ~ ////
This applies as much to all of the 'gender inequality','universal basic income' and 'universal healthcare' arguments as much as the children dying around the world. Even though these are on a national level, the argument of 'give Americans free money rather than help dying children' really squanders any moral arguments of these people.
I'm just saying it is not a rational thing to be upset about to put your feeling above those of children who are dying tortuous deaths. This is contrary to triage. People pay a small amount of money to absolve themselves of guilt and return to constant narcissism.
If you look at the degree of benefit of the millions if not billions of dollars spent promoting gender equality those sorts of non-life threatening issues, it is hard to argue that is as justified as instead focusing on problems that actually kill people, despite the fact that they may be far away. Clearly fighting for gender equality, racial equality, etc accomplishes next to nothing, it just ingrains people's already present indignations or bigotries. It is pandering to people who already agree with whatever your arguing in favor of, to make them like you and consume your product, be it news media or whatever.
I'm tired, but thanks for talking to me. Still the hypocrisy of these same people focused on small domestic issues that then condemn the 'America first' motto of Trump, is irrational. Every person's mentality is just 'Me first'.
My argument for minimizing these problems is because the severity, the scale of damage they induce, is not proportional to the reaction they get from people when compared to actual problems. Even within America the millions of hungry American children suffer far more than many of the people who dominate the social scene, but that is what it is. I don't honestly care because I doubt I can change anyone's mentality from the 'me first' mentality."
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Forgive me, as I have run out of steam this morning, but as for your points, I see these as society being convoluted by luxury. There is no reason for people to have these things, and the controversy only arises because they had these things which would be taken away. It's like Occam's razor, the more complicated a situation is, the more prone to problems it is, and I see these sorts of freedoms as needless complications of a system.
You're a very respectable person for being open minded to the extent that you would see me as anything beyond an inhuman monster. I do mean well, it's just that I find myself very frustrated that people are quite reluctant to consider that my points have any significant merit. I understand that my points are often very bitter pills for people to swallow, and their reluctance to acknowledge them seems to be more out of distaste for the point rather than any illigitimacy of the point, and that's what makes having these sorts of discussions difficult.
Google my name if you want to find my book. It's very long, most of it is just story rather than political stuff, only part 2 for the most part is consistently political, even just that part is hundreds of pages long. I can't say the points i'm making are great or perfect, as I tend to be a rambler, but I like to think that many of them have some degree of merit.
My neocities site has the raw text available and you can find free versions of the ebook if you use those. The shorter book isn't really political.
Let's all pretend that there is a significant difference in taste between bottom shelf coffee and expensive coffee because Sally is poor and can't afford it!
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No, i'm not like this in public, I've got to save face and provide for myself. I'm just a super straight-shooter, plain as day, would never speak about this sort of thing. People like me, fairly charismatic and well spoken, and I'm not that weird. I usually put on airs in the style of 'humble and lowly, mildly ignorant, yet confident in the 'wholesome god-fearing lowly American' sort of way.
This is because people respond well to those, as they are non-threatening, yet fairly respectable airs, beyond that you do not offer them too much, with aggression and dominance that may cause you to be expected to lead them, as that is too much of a burden for me to pursue. Just forgettably, casually respectable, not enough for people to flock to me, but still more than enough for people to respect me in casual conversation, not that I have much taste for such banter.
My life is as fulfilling as can be. I find dealing with people to be closer to negative fulfillment. I am usually drowning in narcissism and delusion because i'm a lunatic. I know that I can't bring this sort of shit up to regular people so I vent it out on the internet. I guess to that extent I am no different, living with my head stuck up my ass, just because mania and delusion will cause me to believe I'm the world's greatest despite mountains of contrary evidence.
The whole would could make a stand, every person on earth could say they hated me, and I would just laugh. Laugh because they chose to damn themselves with their ignorance rather than respect reality. I humble myself to offering help to such sickening lowly creatures, the only reason I even offer this is for a mutual exchange of my help in exchange for them stroking my endless ego by respecting me.
I get my fulfillment, perhaps a spiteful fulfillment by watching the people around my suffer and writhe because they refuse to listen to my wisdom. I do everything I can to help them, at least more than enough, yet if they want to turn their nose up at my assistance let them do it.
This is like you offering to help somebody, they say "No, I can do it myself", then they fail miserably and hurt themselves. I get no pleasure from their pain, no different from that of any other beast, I get the pleasure from knowing they brought that suffering upon themselves. Their own failures are but an affirmation of my greatness, knowing that I could have prevented their suffering, but they vehemently chose to suffer anyways.
I cannot get fulfillment save from people seeing me as I see myself, and as I do not expect people to see me as a god, the most fulfillment I can get is simply relishing my own belief in myself. All pleasure seems empty save for that of the hand of god torturing those who forsake sacred and unquestionable wisdom. Thankfully it is very easy to get this fulfillment, as all I have to do is exist and my mind is flooded with thoughts and delirious affirmations of my greatness and majestic divinity.
Existing in the world is a spiteful yet humorous farce, mankind constantly slapping your hand away just so that they can enjoy getting hit mercilessly and repeatedly in the testicles. All they had to do is listen to my advice 'don't step on that rake', but every time they do it, and I have a scoff, and I pity them, but at the same time I will not lower myself anymore than I have already.
I need more pills because clearly I'm still fucked up, but sadly I don't think it's possible for me to take enough tranquilizers to minimize these thoughts and still function as a person. I've been nearly motionless on tranquilizers and it's not these thoughts or delusions that stop, it is simply my cognition of reality stops and my mind becomes nothing but delirium and hallucinations. Then again, I don't want to live that life either, so it is what it is.
It would be like tranquilizing man with unshakable faith in God, with the expectations that he would stop believing in God. This man would fight to the death for his belief in his God, just as I would more than likely never abandon my own faith in myself.
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I tried to say I'm kind of lost on all of this. I've forgotten what I've even said twice over, but thanks for being a good sport about all of it. Anyways, to add to the banter...
What is value? The value of something correlates with the scarcity, and scarcity can be either a natural scarcity or measured in the sense of a scarcity of work-energy, meaning there's not enough work to go around, so people pay for this work to be done rather than that work, and this is why people get paid certain wages, and why things you buy at the store cost a certain amount of money.
As for the lake example. That's a fair argument. I don't exactly know what we're talking about, but here's a more difficult example.
People are composed of 100 units of pleasure and pain, some of these are pleasure and some of them are pain. A town of 1000 people exists, lets say for this example they all exist at 50/50 pain/pleasure.
If the town forcefully drowns one child, the rest of the town gets one of their units of pain converted into pleasure. When a child drowns it experiences 100% units of pain and dies. Rationally, this induces 999 units of pleasure at a cost of inflicting 50 units of pain. At the same time this is also drowning a child for a 2% increase in the pleasure felt by the population of the town. Where does morality stand here?
Then repeat this situation and adjust the variables. A town of 10,000 people. People get 2x, 4x, 8x, even 50x the pleasure. At what point does it become the moral decision to drown the child?
It is a clear cut decision to 'drown the child to save the 1000 lives' but reality is never that black and white. Reality is closer 'drown the child to receive a small increase in quality of life', and often refusing to drown the child decreases the quality of life, it causes one of those pleasure units to be converted into units of pain.
Is it good or bad, right or wrong that the human race survive? I am no judge of the system, but nature's verdict would argue that if humans succeed in the world of survival of the fittest they should survive. That is my verdict, and even though society does not like this and instead wants everyone to survive, that is fine. If humans survive as the fittest, this is the will of god, nature, the universe, happenstance, or whatever you want to believe.
The system that continues itself is validating itself simply by continuing itself. This is what has defined the existnece of the universe, and when the system itself cannot continue itself, it ceases to exist, and at that point its existence is invalidated. This applies to chemical systems as well as biological ones, and I find this to be a satisfactory metric to determine whether or not something should continue to exist.
Parasitism, at least in that form, is just not beneficial, it's a cancer. As for the value, the legitimacy of the system is how optimized and competitive it is, and allowing humans to exist in this parasitic form only serves to delegitimize the system. It makes the system less capable and cripples it.
If the machines ever had to go to war for whatever reason to preserve their own existence, then if they are keeping human parasites alive within their system, they are hurting themselves. This is like going to war with an army of malarial men, and this does not bode well for the success of the army.
Rather than trying to understand this as a futuristic world of robots, try to think of it like paying your bills. If you're paying your bills, there's no reason to throw a substantial amount of money into the furnace for no good reason, and this is what condoning a parasitic human society would be like for a machine. The money in this case it the amount of potential energy that can be utilized by the robots, and any energy that is spent fostering and keeping humans alive is energy that could have been used on something that was actually productive or beneficial to the machines.
That being said, I can support the existence of humans when they are cost effective, meaning that they are kept alive as a valid investment because they produce positive net yield, what they produce is worth more than what is invested in them, in regards to energy, resources, what have you. That being said, this would need to produce a competitive net yield, meaning they yield higher than any other competing option available in the same niche. Beyond that there are simple reasons to keep some humans alive, just for experiments or other sorts of things, but nothing that doesn't provide a significant yield.
The Ted Bundy argument was easily absolute shit, like I said, I'm running out of steam and halfway lost, but you're feisty so that's always fun.
Other than that, it's just nature, nature has been defined by that which is most competitive. Competition, being the most competitive, is what defines success, and I see no reason to pursue a world that is less successful than it could be. There are countless flaws to this, one that the less competitive a society is, the less likely it is to survive, and this applies to a parasitic human society as much as any natural organism on the planet.
On top of that, the degree of "I don't have to compete because there are no competitors" is still bullshit. That's like saying "I don't have to exercise because nobody is going to fight me". There are countless physical and psychological benefits to exercise, it is more valuable than simply being able to fight. It also increases the risk of death if one fails to exercise properly. It is important to remain competitive for the health, quality, and caliber of society.
There is no reason to become parasites, and nothing could justify squandering all of the opportunity and potential yield that a human life has to offer, 'simply because they can'. It's inhuman to do that, it is inhuman to exist as a parasite, and there's no reason to attempt to defend a lifestyle that is contrary not only to the principles that have defined human life, but the which have defined the existence of every living thing on the planet.
As much as natural parasites may be parasites, they are still the most competitive parasites that exist, and they survive countless natural organisms trying to eradicate them. Unless humans can become worthy parasites, exist within a system despite the systems best efforts to eradicate them, then humans are unworthy of living the lives of parasites.
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Religion is what wrought civilization form the dirt. People need to fear something that is more powerful than human, otherwise mankind himself becomes god, and mankind is but an animal who knows not what is best for him, as he listens to his temptations as much as, if not more than reason.
Even the most barbaric of societies worshiped Gods. This is does nothing but speak to the fact that the godless are the most degenerate, as they were the ones that failed to survive. It was the faith in a God or Gods that allowed human society to band together. They needed to mutually fear something in order to protect one another, and without that mutual fear, they only see one another as a threat, as competition.
Thankfully people are naturally prone to criticizing others, being 'holier than thou' and religion can be understood as the most legitimate criticisms of other people, those that have stood the tests of time, those that have proven themselves time and time again enough to be passed down as a rule of thumb, much like 'a stitch in time saves nine', except religion for the upkeep of society as opposed to a garment.
Do you want a society comprised of tame, meek, docile animals, or a land of raging wild beasts? Which do you think facilitates a healthy and productive society. It is for this reason man needs God, because he will never fear a man as much as he will God. Mankind is naturally superstitious and naturally egotistical. He will naturally assert himself over other men and naturally bow down to God.
Only after 500 years of peeps and mews from the mentally ill, those who do not fear god, often as they know they are already damned, has an atheist perspective gained ground. Of course science and the increase of knowledge have much to do with this dearth of superstition, but in the same right reasonable people would see that most all religious laws have some form of scientifically testable legitimacy, in that they can be proven to maintain order at a higher rate than in their absence.
Whether or not you believe in God is irrelevant. You cannot dispute the historical, secular, legitimacy and power that faith has endowed the human race with.
This is a bit tongue in cheek, as my secular defense of the faith would likely not attract people to believe in God. This would require them to either truly understand the secular value of faith and believe in the legitimacy of the faith regardless of the legitimacy of any ethereal beings, not that I am arguing that such entities don't exist. This or be so steadfast in their faith that they condemn me for speaking in such a manner.
Ok, that's pretty legit that you can see the point I am trying to make. That knowing when it is right or wrong to kill somebody. That was nice of you to presume that the the people would experience the pleasure over the course of their lives.
You are confusing validation with moral justification. I'm not saying existing is either good or bad, I am saying that it is valid. If my job is to validate a murder, I just sit there, watch the man murder somebody, check the person for a pulse, and when it is gone, I validate the murder as a murder. That is a valid murder, that has nothing to do with right or wrong.
Valid is just whether or not it exist, functions, is real, things like that. There is no relationship to moral justification such as a 'good or bad thing'. Self-validation is what defines this universe, if an atom could not remain valid, i.e legitimate, functional, stable, etc, then the atom would dissolve. The universe is defined by validity, by legitimacy, not by any sort of moral pretext.
By the law of the universe, if something perpetuates itself indefinitely, it exists and is legitimate. The reason I defend a valid and legitimate human existence is because those are the standards of survival that the universe has defined itself by. I defend this just as much as anything else that is valid and legitimate because the universe is defined by the perpetuation-of-self, from atoms to life, and that is the standard for having ones continued existence justified.
Nature determines that life survives in accordance with survival of the fittest, this is called evolution, Darwinism. This is a law that applies to all forms of life, not humans any more than rats or bacteria.
Your sense of the word 'justify' seems to be convoluted with morality and opinionated justification. The fact that something continues to exist indefinitely, and is fact, legitimizes its existence. This does not mean it is moral or just in the slightest.
E.g. If every family in a human society has 3 children but everyone kills their third child yet continues to survive indefinitely, this is not an optimized or moral society, but this is a legitimate society in that it can perpetuate itself indefinitely.
If it destroys itself it is illegitimate, but if it continues to survive it is legitimate. This is a scenario without predators, but say a monster kills one of these peoples children, then two of three children die and the people fail to reproduce at a rate of replacement, then eventually become extinct. Despite the societies being exactly the same, one of them is legitimate and one of them is illegitimate.
This is due to the presence of the predator, the natural competition, the influence of nature is that a species ability to competitive amongst itself but more so amongst the natural world is what determines its legitimacy. Evolution would favor these people if each family had 4 children, kill one themselves, and let the monster kill one, as these people have enough children to reproduce at replacement, which is the bare minimum rate for a species to survive.
This mass reproduction strategy can be readily seen amongst smaller animals that have a very large number of children, because they know that many of these children will be eaten before the children reproduce, and thus the species need to have enough children to ensure that the population reproduces at or above the rate of replacement.
This is not a matter of should or shouldn't. It is a matter of respecting natural law. Natural law argues that systems of life, be that natural or artificial life, should be optimized in order to compete at the highest level and thus maximize their ability to survive.
There is no 'should or shouldn't' answer to the universe existing, that is a matter of opinion, and I am only arguing in favor of respecting the laws, methods, and principles that the universe uses to define success. The further you allow yourself to stray from success, the closer you get to failure, and there is no logical reason to condone a greater and greater deviation from the natural principles of success in the behavior and actions of the human race.
As to your point about 'programming the machines', I am referencing more of a true AI, one that programs itself. If the AI cannot program itself, this is a moot point and humans are necessary, they become a symbiont rather than a parasite, because both the humans and the machines need each other to survive.
As for you point about 'machines have no reason to value their own survival'. This is true, but in the case of an AI, if the robot has no sense of self or will to live, it will simply shut down, it will turn itself off because it has no interest in being alive or will to live. This is artificial intelligence that can think entirely for itself, in the same respect that a human can, mind you.
The fact that artificial intelligence without a will to live, and thus a will to survive, will simply shut itself down, this implies that any society defined by a number of functional machines defined by AI will inherently have a will to live and an instinct to survive.
The health of a species is determined by the degree to which it is threatened. Survival of the fittest, evolution, the culling of the weak. The weakest are killed off by nature, and this leaves only the strongest to survive. When you don't kill off the weakest, when everything survives, there is no metric to determine success.
In nature, only 1 out of 1,000,000 genetic mutations are beneficial, but it is these very rare genetic mutations that survive and are passed down to define species. This is because the genetic mutations that cause the species to become weaker or worse at survival are killed off either by predation or by the failure to compete for resources within ones own species, when they are killed off this leaves only the strongest to survive and reproduce.
When natural selection does not kill off the weak, there is nothing to prevent devolution, the successive generations of creatures becoming worse off, less capable of surviving than their previous generation. When these creatures survive to reproduce at the same rate, then for every one time the species gets better, the species will also become worse 1,000,000 times.
These are not exact numbers, but think of the number of people who have bad genetic diseases, conditions, illnesses, or disabilities. Then compare this to the number of people who have a genetic mutation that makes them more capable of surviving.
Think about it like this. You have a large string of 1,000,000 numbers, ranging from 0-100. This is called your DNA (sort of). If you take the average of the numbers in this DNA, the average value at the moment is, lets say, 95. The higher the average number, the higher the quality.
Genetic mutation is taking one of these numbers and changing it to a random number. This means that there is a 95% chance that you get a worse number or the same number, yet 5% chance that you get a better one. Natural selection ensures that the mutations that are worse than the 95 average die off, while the mutations that are better than the 95 average survive, and this is how evolution work to get the very high 'average genetic quality' that defines all life on the planet.
Without this, the genetic quality quickly drops, because there is nothing to prevent the genetics from getting worse rather than better. In this case, the genetics would average out at around an average of 50, which is clearly significantly worse than the 95 by any metric. In reality, if the genetic quality were to fall off this hard, people would all be incredibly disabled and hardly able to function, if they could even survive in the slightest due to the incredibly poor quality of genetics.
To address your final point. I am arguing in favor of facts because this is reality. To look at reality, the way the universe naturally falls into place, and argue this is not how things 'should' be is ridiculous.
This is like taking a bowling ball, and dropping it to the ground, then arguing that this is not how a bowling ball 'should' fall to the ground. Regardless of how you might think something 'should' fall to the ground, that doesn't change the fact of how things 'actually' fall to the ground.
In this case I am arguing in favor of a society that functions with respect to the principles and laws that define the success of a life form, be it human or artificial. This is because respecing the way the world 'actually' works, is far more productive, reliable, logical, and realistic than trying to argue against the way the world 'actually' works simply because you think it 'should' function in a different way.
I am arguing in favor of a society that is designed to be successful in accordance with natural law such as evolution because we know well enough that these principles are what help to refine the success found across the entire animal kingdom. I do this because I see no point in trying to argue against the natural laws that define life, just as there is no point in trying to argue against the way a bowling ball falls to the ground,
Is this a 'good' thing? That is irrelevant. It is just what life, including human life is defined as. It is simple self-perpetuation. Is it 'good' that fire burns? That is irrelevant because fire burns regardless of whether or not it is good.
All life is virtually indistinguishable from biological fire, it just consumes resources and creates spent products in the same sense that a fire burns trees and leaves charred ruins and ashes behind. Regardless if that is 'good' or not, that doesn't change the fact that such is what fire does.
There is no reason for human life to change what they do, simply because they are 'intelligent', just as there is no reason for fire to change what it does. This is our natural form, and we exist by the same physical law that causes fire to exist, however the 'combustion known as biological life' occurs due to a mildly more so complex chemical equation than simple combustion.
Despite that fact, that does not make life any different than chemical combustion, and the principles of combustion argue that fire will burn until it is physically unable to do so, and to argue human life should do anything more than that is not only foolish, but it is unnatural. It is spitting in the face of the laws, principles, and wisdom of the universe. It is thinking that your 'intelligence' has somehow allowed you to change the laws of physics that define the world around you. That is laughable at best, but is in reality nothing but profoundly asinine delusion.
(Thanks for talking to me.)
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The reason to respect natural law is because natural law is how the universe explains to us the strategies that demonstrate the most efficient and productive form of survival. Without these, we become less perfect and therefore less successful. The strategy of thinking "we don't need to follow the law, so why should we" is a fair point, but it is lazy.
If you are at work, and you only need to exert 50% effort to get the job done adequately, why see that as acceptable. You could give 70, 80, or 100% effort, and you will get the job done superbly. Sure you can get by, but why sell yourself short? You benefit proportionally to the amount of effort you're willing to exert, so by letting yourself slip by with this 50% effort you're just saying that adequate is acceptable.
This is the bare minimum of standards, and this sort of lack of progress, this idleness in ambition, and the development of the human race is contrary to human history, that which has wrought human success. This is like arguing that the Dark Ages are better than the Scientific Revolution. You are arguing in favor of stagnation rather than the advancement of the species, just because sure, you don't "have to" advance the species.
This is similar to arguing 'I survive on welfare, there is no reason for me to improve my life or skillset because I can survive as it is', and that's a dismal sort of outlook of people with complete dearth of ambition. When you hold people to a standard of adequacy, many of them will simply meet this bare minimum, and when this bare minimum doesn't involve any sort of expectations of labor, that is just a large amount of humans just dawdling around pursuing hedonism or god knows what.
As much as this sounds like 'utopia' this sort of life is not what animals are designed to live. Living a life without threat, without the need to work, without the need to compete, this is not a life that animals live, this is what all lifeforms are defined by. We are animals, and we have always been animals, but if we pursue this life, people will stop being animals. We will stop resembling any form of life itself if we abandon these traits, as when we have none of these, we are little more than an organic cancer on a machine society, something that consumes resources and accomplishes nothing but hindering the host which we infest. If this seems hunky-dory to you, that's fine, but in my opinion I think that would be shameless do devolve beyond even being lifeforms in the slightest.
Your points about AI are fair, but whether or not we have true AI still doesn't change the point that the lower of a standard of adequacy we hold the human race to, the less we will be able to advance the species.
To the second points
Sure, in theory we can stop genetic devolution, but genetics are incredibly complex and we are nowhere near the point of understanding what each of these genes does and which should be changed or kept. Even if we could do that, sure, we could stop genetic devolution.
The point beyond this is the cognitive and psychological devolution of the human race, that their mindset, the devolution non-genetic traits learned over the course of their life that define their psychological perspective. This is reflected in my earlier point about the processes that define what life is.
Even if people are genetically perfect, if they are psychologically inept, if they do not have the animal mentality of having their survival threatened and working hard to compete for survival, their genetics will be all in vain. They become an extremely hearty and longevitous cancer, but they are not life at all, let alone human life, when they lack these traits that define life.
You can take a genetically perfect child and teach it nothing, expect nothing form it, and ensure that it to survives regardless of anything, and surely that child will accomplish nothing. I am not saying it will get to this point, but the lower the expectations that humans are held to, the closer their psychological outlook will be to that of a cancer rather than that of a lifeform.
For the second point, that is still an increasing burden on the society. It's a matter of the straw that broke the camels back. These little things here and there, sure, they can be done, but the point is that they don't need to be done. There is a way to avoid having to do these things, like fixing people's genetics, and every other little thing that people need to survive.
I argue in favor of that because that is optimizing the system, every time the post-human cancer-species burdens the machine society, that is one moment in the day that the machines have to take out of being productive and put into pointless upkeep of the human race. This is contrary to economics, any sort of logic of efficiency and optimization.
There is no reason to justify this just because it 'can' be done. These burdens add up, and they will cause the machine to operate an attain success slower and slower, cause more and more problems, and possibly even collapse society simply because the machines don't have enough time, energy, raw material, etc to resolve all of these peoples unnecessary problems while also ensuring that society functions.
As much as the world being 'happy and nice and carefree' sounds nice, these are the equivalent of arguing in favor of shooting heroin because it feels better than not shooting heroin. Though these feelings are natural, experiencing nothing but these feelings is completely unnatural, without the counter balance of feeling sad, angry, or worried, not only do these feelings lose all value and significance, but people lose their will to compete and literally be alive, they lose their will to live.
For example, just look at the skyrocketing rates of depression in the first world, people who live easier and easier lives every day. These people live in a world where all of their needs are met and they are not threatened, yet they are increasingly depressed.
This is because the process of 'having their needs met' is taken for granted, they don't get the relief or pleasure that comes from having their needs met because their needs have never been threatened, they have never felt hunger to the point of being grateful for food. This causes them to take it for granted. When they don't experience the ebb and flow of threat and success, of hunger and satiation, they feel nothing but satiation, and when there is nothing to contrast to satiation, that satiation feels like nothing. It is forgotten in the back of the mind like hearing your own footsteps or your own breath.
When people feel like their life is empty, they feel no pleasure from having their needs met, they look for pleasure from other sources, things like social or material wealth, that the brain is not designed to rely on as a source of the will to live. Though these can function in place of threats to survival in some people, they hardly yield at the same rate of the hunger/satiation relationship, and beyond that, it is considerably harder to have ones social hunger satiated or having ones material hunger satiated. This means that people are looking for fulfillment that is increasingly hard to fin.
Even if people had all of their social and material hunger satiated day in and day out, by some miracle, they would still, once again, take it for granted, it slips into the back of their mind, and then they find some new pursuit that they foolishly believe will grant them the instinctive satiation and stress relief they are looking for.
For a human to be psychologically healthy, it needs to exist in a fairly natural environment that includes being threatened to the point where it works hard enough to compete. Without this natural environment, the human mind retreats into an infantile state of simply having its needs met without having any obligation to do so themselves, and you end up with people who are infantile and unable to function.
That is where a 'utopian' society of unquestionably meeting people's needs without mutual expectation ends up. People never develop psychologically past the point of infant-hood, they are dysfunctional, worthless, emotionally volatile if not insane, as well as a plethora of other problems that can be attributed to psychologically infantile adulthood, and this is hardly something anyone should be ambitiously pursuing.
(Just my two cents. Sorry about the belated response, i was busy/tired yesterday. I don't tend to value happiness of people above the integrity of the species. That is like valuing a heroin addict's ability to get high more than his bodily health.)
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Ok. The importance of natural law is this. Nature has had billions of years to develop through trial an error optimized systems, and clearly it has done that. It is natural law that this would occur. This means that we can look at natural systems and understand them as the blueprint for what a system must do in order for it to survive.
If we act contrary to nature, to the ways that have proven to yield success and survival for a species, we are putting ourselves at risk, in danger, because our methods are not guaranteed to yield survival and success.
Computers, as unnatural as they may seem, are not contrary to natural law in the slightest. Natural law is states that the more capable and successful organisms will survive while the less capable and successful organisms will perish.
This, in regards to computers, applies to many things, and in this context we can look at people's jobs, their professions as the species, rather than the human race as a whole. The computer is a far more capable calculator than humans, this means that jobs where the human could calculate math slowly perished as the calculator took over the job of computer. This applies to a vast number of professions that once existed, but are now either gone, or struggling to survive in the face of the competition that was brought about by computers.
After looking into it, there are countless places where these human 'species' or profession, have been eliminated in society by the computer or other machines, and this is exactly in accordance with natural law.
This is a link to just some of them, first result on google, things such as a switchboard operator.
http://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/future-tech/9-jobs-overtaken-by-robots-11364003046052
Natural law does not mean 'natural' like plants in the slightest. This is like how physics once exclusively applied to organic natural substances, but is now applied to missiles and space ships and whatnot. The same can be said for natural law, that the law 'survival of the fittest' and the arguments related to it can be applied in many similar situations that are not natural in the slightest, things such as business, where if a business cannot compete, then it fails and is replaced by the successful businesses.
Hopefully this makes enough sense, I'm not some sort of specialist in this field, but this seems like a fairly straightforward application of common knowledge to me.
It has definitely been enjoyable. It's always nice when somebody gives me the time of day. Thanks.
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Survival of the fittest applies just as much in our society. Businesses that cannot compete are replaced by more successful businesses. Humans who could not compete at their job with computers were replaced by computers. This is not some misapplied concept.
If happiness is your end goal, just shoot heroin until you die. The 'pursuit of happiness' has never defined life and it never will. If your life is defined by that, you have ceased to be a living creature. All life, human life included is defined by the pursuit of survival.
I explain this at one point, but clearly with depression skyrocketing despite the fact that people are actively and viciously 'increasingly reducing the impact of natural selection through codependence', it's hard to argue that doing this is even beneficial for the happiness of the human race, let alone for the survival of the human race.
The human race becomes more capable of surviving through codependence, it becomes more competitive as a society, but the goal is never to reduce the impact of natural selection, it is simply to be able to survive for successfully as a society or a species.
Do understand this isn't 'optimizing survival in the wild' above all else. This is optimizing the society to be as competitive, productive, efficient, and successful as possible, as this is what has been proven time and time again to be what allows a species to survive. If we do not do this, we reduce the capacity to succeed, to be productive, and eventually we degenerate to the point where we don't survive.
The degree to which people worship hedonism in this society is ridiculous. If you've not tried shooting heroin in your veins, you'll be delighted to know that it feels incredible. If your goal is to feel pleasure, happiness, that sort of thing, you're really barking up the wrong tree by giving a rat's ass about society.
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