Humanity’s mix of work vs. play has varied over the millennia. Farmers played less less than foragers, and with industry we’ve moved back to, and even past, forager levels of play. In the future, the work-play mix could move in either direction, possibly to extremes.
Given a momentary choice, we tend to choose play over work, and for good reason.
I spent some time in Honduras and that made me think that people generally choose to work more and to have most stuff rather than work less and have more time. We in USA have much more than the typical Honduran and yet we work.
"It is possible to imagine a world in which working to build a bigger future becomes much harder,..."
I can't imagine that world, except in cases of global war (which seems unlikely, though not impossible). And of course terminator machines (the odds of which are hard to calculate at present).
How do you imagine a "world in which working to build a bigger future becomes much harder..."? We've had about 300 years of continuous global GDP growth, and the growth has actually accelerated over every 50-year period from 1700 to 2100:
I know Robin's shtick about ems is that you don't have to understand how the brain works in order to create ems. And so ems will not be modifiable, they will be vanilla human brains running on a different substrate.
I doubt this is how it will work. One will have to learn a LOT about how brains work in order to get them running on electronic circuitry. As a middling analogy, consider the level of understanding required to get a Chevy engine to run in a Ford car. Or to port an app written for Windows in C++ to an app written for Linux in C++. As ONE example of the kinds of things you will have to learn about to do the port: Impact of hormones and other body chemistry on brain state. You will not have a proper emulation unless you have some analogy to the relevant chemicals "washing" over the emulated brain. Which means you will have to know a fair amount about how/when/why these chemicals are produced and effectively what kinds of activities they are required for in the brain.
Which suggests to me, without knowing near enough to build from scratch an electronic creature that competes with an em, I will be modifying the crap out of ems in any economy in which they are getting used much. And what IS the difference between playing a game and working? And how hard would it be to wire-in rewards for work that we normally find showing up for play? Maybe we can't do "Ender's Game" and have the actual job be something the em THINKS is a video game. Maybe we can, though. I have planned cities and rails systems as part of my game playing, after all.
The only reason I can think that ems would not enjoy life is that it was particularly expensive to make them enjoy life. And I suspect that it will more likely be a wash in terms of cost, equally expensive to make them enjoy the things they enjoy and not enjoy the things they don't enjoy. And that design economy would dictate you make them enjoy the things you want them to do and not enjoy the things you don't want them to do.
Indeed, the only reason there is such a gap between human work and human play may be the totally outrageous rate at which our technology has changed compared to the rates of evolution. Did hunter-gatherers experience a distinction between work and play? Or did they just play all the time, and thus feed themselves, make babies, and otherwise thrive?
"Pulling through" is not the same thing as enjoying life. Not wanting to die is not the same thing as feeling more happy than unhappy. Death is scary for most humans. That doesn't mean the experiences of those humans are subjectively good, while they are alive.
Would you want to conceive a child if you knew it would have a sub-5 life on this scale? I personally wouldn't.
Wealth and power are the same thing. The only thing the Drug Lords in Mexico have is wealth from selling drugs. With that wealth they are able to buy police, guns, assassinations, politicians, governments.
They can buy dump trucks, buy people to fill those dump trucks with dead and dismembered bodies, and then buy people to dump those dead and dismembered bodies any where they want.
The Drug Lords don't need dumping permits to dump dead bodies.
The only thing that keeps that from happening in the US is that the wealthy choose to not do so.
I'm not sure it's realistic to stick the "should you bother being alive" cut-off point at 5 out of 10. People in unpleasant situations don't necessarily want to die, even people in misery don't necessarily decide their lives aren't worth it. I wouldn't have concluded that your life isn't worth living if it's below 5, and I find it a peculiar statement. Our evolutionary history should have plenty of sub-5 lives that evidently pulled through.
My hamsters have a mostly-play lifestyle. Their nutritional and hygenic needs are all met by a super intelligent (relatively speaking) 10 year old.A mostly-play future could be a curated future, managed by strong AI. Of course it's hard to predict what would motivate such an intelligence, but in our experience there's little reason to think that anything that intelligent would not "build for the future", whatever future that might be.
I almost agree. Just replace the word "wealthy" with "powerful." History proves beyond any doubt that individuals exercising extreme power are a far greater danger to humanity than those merely accumulating great wealth.
It is possible to imagine a world in which working to build a bigger future becomes much harder, so that even though we are willing to work hard, we aren't willing to work that hard, and so we also don't invest much. For example, imagine an acid rain quickly erodes all machines and permanent structures. Bur running low on oil isn't remotely that big an increase in the difficulty of working to build a future. Our losing our inclination to work for the future, that would have a much bigger effect on whether a future gets built.
There are many people with children who play MMOs like World of Warcraft (still the most popular in the West). Sometimes these people talk about how the game's playerbase has "matured", other times people will talk about how the game is aimed at and attracts a much younger audience than it once did.
This is only one example of "play" but is informative on how people feel that entertainment relates to their life goals.
Of course, the argument of this post is that current problems in the world, such as unemployment, are preventing things like MMOs from maintaining a high quality standard.
A recent post by one of the authors of this blog mentioned flow; does the end of this video suggest that easily available sources of "flow" will lead to abandonment of physical survival or other goals?
>Locally, the possibility of efforts to gain status seem to cause a market failure, as your status gains come at the expense of the status of others.
Counterexample: a retail shop based on commission where all employees do extremely well compared to the corporation's average.
It's happened. Look up the history of Easter Island, for example.
Given a momentary choice, we tend to choose play over work, and for good reason.
I spent some time in Honduras and that made me think that people generally choose to work more and to have most stuff rather than work less and have more time. We in USA have much more than the typical Honduran and yet we work.
Oops. Obviously, that should have been:
"We've had about 300 years of continuous global GDP growth, and the growth has actually accelerated over every 50-year period from 1700 to 2000:"
"It is possible to imagine a world in which working to build a bigger future becomes much harder,..."
I can't imagine that world, except in cases of global war (which seems unlikely, though not impossible). And of course terminator machines (the odds of which are hard to calculate at present).
How do you imagine a "world in which working to build a bigger future becomes much harder..."? We've had about 300 years of continuous global GDP growth, and the growth has actually accelerated over every 50-year period from 1700 to 2100:
http://markbahner.typepad.c...
I know Robin's shtick about ems is that you don't have to understand how the brain works in order to create ems. And so ems will not be modifiable, they will be vanilla human brains running on a different substrate.
I doubt this is how it will work. One will have to learn a LOT about how brains work in order to get them running on electronic circuitry. As a middling analogy, consider the level of understanding required to get a Chevy engine to run in a Ford car. Or to port an app written for Windows in C++ to an app written for Linux in C++. As ONE example of the kinds of things you will have to learn about to do the port: Impact of hormones and other body chemistry on brain state. You will not have a proper emulation unless you have some analogy to the relevant chemicals "washing" over the emulated brain. Which means you will have to know a fair amount about how/when/why these chemicals are produced and effectively what kinds of activities they are required for in the brain.
Which suggests to me, without knowing near enough to build from scratch an electronic creature that competes with an em, I will be modifying the crap out of ems in any economy in which they are getting used much. And what IS the difference between playing a game and working? And how hard would it be to wire-in rewards for work that we normally find showing up for play? Maybe we can't do "Ender's Game" and have the actual job be something the em THINKS is a video game. Maybe we can, though. I have planned cities and rails systems as part of my game playing, after all.
The only reason I can think that ems would not enjoy life is that it was particularly expensive to make them enjoy life. And I suspect that it will more likely be a wash in terms of cost, equally expensive to make them enjoy the things they enjoy and not enjoy the things they don't enjoy. And that design economy would dictate you make them enjoy the things you want them to do and not enjoy the things you don't want them to do.
Indeed, the only reason there is such a gap between human work and human play may be the totally outrageous rate at which our technology has changed compared to the rates of evolution. Did hunter-gatherers experience a distinction between work and play? Or did they just play all the time, and thus feed themselves, make babies, and otherwise thrive?
"Pulling through" is not the same thing as enjoying life. Not wanting to die is not the same thing as feeling more happy than unhappy. Death is scary for most humans. That doesn't mean the experiences of those humans are subjectively good, while they are alive.
Would you want to conceive a child if you knew it would have a sub-5 life on this scale? I personally wouldn't.
Wealth and power are the same thing. The only thing the Drug Lords in Mexico have is wealth from selling drugs. With that wealth they are able to buy police, guns, assassinations, politicians, governments.
They can buy dump trucks, buy people to fill those dump trucks with dead and dismembered bodies, and then buy people to dump those dead and dismembered bodies any where they want.
The Drug Lords don't need dumping permits to dump dead bodies.
The only thing that keeps that from happening in the US is that the wealthy choose to not do so.
I'm not sure it's realistic to stick the "should you bother being alive" cut-off point at 5 out of 10. People in unpleasant situations don't necessarily want to die, even people in misery don't necessarily decide their lives aren't worth it. I wouldn't have concluded that your life isn't worth living if it's below 5, and I find it a peculiar statement. Our evolutionary history should have plenty of sub-5 lives that evidently pulled through.
To the extent that power is fungible (as in Citizens United), wealth and power are the same thing.
To the extent that monopoly power on necessities is allowed and not regulated, that monopoly power can/will capture all other wealth and power.
My hamsters have a mostly-play lifestyle. Their nutritional and hygenic needs are all met by a super intelligent (relatively speaking) 10 year old.A mostly-play future could be a curated future, managed by strong AI. Of course it's hard to predict what would motivate such an intelligence, but in our experience there's little reason to think that anything that intelligent would not "build for the future", whatever future that might be.
I almost agree. Just replace the word "wealthy" with "powerful." History proves beyond any doubt that individuals exercising extreme power are a far greater danger to humanity than those merely accumulating great wealth.
Yes, eventually either selection or the psychology of poverty would kick in. But it could be a long dark fall before that later return.
The average US adults works 24 hours per week at a job.
It is possible to imagine a world in which working to build a bigger future becomes much harder, so that even though we are willing to work hard, we aren't willing to work that hard, and so we also don't invest much. For example, imagine an acid rain quickly erodes all machines and permanent structures. Bur running low on oil isn't remotely that big an increase in the difficulty of working to build a future. Our losing our inclination to work for the future, that would have a much bigger effect on whether a future gets built.
Growing maybe, but small, and likely to long remain so.
There are many people with children who play MMOs like World of Warcraft (still the most popular in the West). Sometimes these people talk about how the game's playerbase has "matured", other times people will talk about how the game is aimed at and attracts a much younger audience than it once did.
This is only one example of "play" but is informative on how people feel that entertainment relates to their life goals.
Of course, the argument of this post is that current problems in the world, such as unemployment, are preventing things like MMOs from maintaining a high quality standard.
A recent post by one of the authors of this blog mentioned flow; does the end of this video suggest that easily available sources of "flow" will lead to abandonment of physical survival or other goals?
>Locally, the possibility of efforts to gain status seem to cause a market failure, as your status gains come at the expense of the status of others.
Counterexample: a retail shop based on commission where all employees do extremely well compared to the corporation's average.
Also see... http://www.bostonherald.com...
And grade inflation. Accurate standards of achievement are accurate; inaccurate standards are just that.