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points by ShinyLeftPad 22 hours ago | 0 comments

You are very selective. It writes "ways of how people build relationships disappear".

It says: work goes away (no colleagues), studying goes away (no classmates), showing off to potential mates by doing cool stuff goes away (because why bother, anything you make people can just say "it was AI/robots" and they can prompt it), asking knowledgeable friends how to do X goes away because you just ask LLMs. All things true regardless of whether you're online

And you just trigger on that IRC word like only neckbeards in server dungenons ever used it.

[–] watwut 22 hours ago

If work goes away, society breaks down, you live in abject poverty completely dependent on other people. Yes, you will socialize - you will need to form aliances just to get food and protection. And yeah, a lot of that will sux, because you will need to deal with every controlling asshole trying to push his rule on you.

And back in real world, people socialize and talk with others for non-transactional reasons. Not just to get answers. Those non-lonely people and subgroups that is.

[–] ShinyLeftPad 21 hours ago

> If work goes away, society breaks down

The other premise was UBI. It's the article. how much better discussions would be if people read it?

> non-transactional reasons. Not just to get answers

0) i don't know about you but I like asking people about things because I just like hanging out with people, up to a point. how long this will remain true for humanity as a whole is the question, we can't know

1) if you listen to evolutionary biologists then everything we do is transactional for reproductive purposes, it depends on how deep you dig;)

[–] watwut 20 hours ago

Yeah, but UBI is bullshit. It is impossible to buy UBI. The big American capitalists will recreate communism? It just wont happen AI or not. But, if UBI happens, living on UBI will be poverty.

> 0) i don't know about you but I like asking people about things because I just like hanging out with people, up to a point. how long this will remain true for humanity as a whole is the question, we can't know

You can ask people if you like asking people even if AI exists. Chatbot does not make asking people impossible if connection is what you are after.

> 1) if you listen to evolutionary biologists then everything we do is transactional for reproductive purposes, it depends on how deep you dig;)

Anticonception. We do quite a lot to not have kids.

There is evolutionary science and there is ideology using evolution as excuse.

[–] ShinyLeftPad 19 hours ago

> The big American capitalists will recreate communism?

They will do the minimum necessary to keep people from revolting. The minimum will be less and less as time goes by and surveillance/elimination get better/cheaper.

[–] Apocryphon 11 hours ago

Bold of you to assume that they will do the former and not just go all in on the latter.

[–] watwut 13 hours ago

So, we are back at what I said - poverty and aliances fighting for scarce resources.

[–] ShinyLeftPad 13 hours ago

no we're back to UBI. First maybe UHI as Musk called it, later UBI. It's cheaper because people won't bite the hand that feeds you. If there's no hand, people won't fight each other for resources, they'll fight the rich.

[–] lazide 12 hours ago

The entire idea is just a trap, and an illusion sold by folks like musk while they continue to do what they do.

The only way it would be funded is with ‘chains’/conditions.

[–] watwut 11 hours ago

Elon Musk that Doge creator, the guy who pretended to save pennies so that he can cause as much damage to as many people as possible while costing a lot of money and breaking laws?

That guy?

[–] Nursie 21 hours ago

Sorry, but I very much disagree.

Firstly, it made no mention of showing off to potential mates, to my reading. But have no fear, regardless of scarcity people will have ways to signal fitness to find mates and build hierarchies out of it, we're very good at that. It might come down to fashion choices, leisure activity choices, really anything.

Secondly, every example of how this person connects with others is to do with technology and career advancement. He wasn't asking knowledgable friends for advice, he was asking questions to strangers about linux on IRC. He doesn't talk about social groups or sports clubs, he was talking about communities of practice and his professional work. He values learning only for career advancement.

Those ways of building relationships might disappear, but old ladies will still get together to crochet and natter. Middle aged men will still make and drink beer together, or practice woodworking skills. Younger guys and gals will still form sports teams. And people will still learn for the love of learning.

You know, things which already happen away from the screen. Ordinary, everyday human stuff.

tl;dr - touch grass, the article says a lot more about the author's life than our future prospects as humans.

[–] ShinyLeftPad 21 hours ago

> He wasn't asking knowledgable friends for advice, he was asking questions to strangers about linux on IRC.

A stranger is a friend you haven't made yet. Asking strangers is one good way to make friends.

[–] gherkinnn 21 hours ago

Then ask strangers about identifying birds instead of Linux.

[–] ShinyLeftPad 19 hours ago

The stranger will tell you just ask a model.

[–] Hamuko 21 hours ago

Isn't that exactly the kind of thing that would be offloaded to an AI? If you can just take a picture, record the sound, or vaguely describe a bird and it instantly gives you an answer.

[–] Nursie 20 hours ago

It's true, but it's far from the only way to break the ice.

Really on top of the particularly narrow viewpoint the OP has on life and human relations, I find the core notion itself absurd - "In the future because of X, Y and Z, why will people bother to socialise?"

Because ... people like socialising.

[–] ShinyLeftPad 19 hours ago

I think they like socializing decreasingly less

https://www.derekthompson.org/p/the-death-of-the-american-ho...

[–] Nursie 19 hours ago

I think there are some valid points to be made about how people's socialising patterns are changing in the light of modern interactions with tech, but also about using US social habits as a proxy for everyone else's. I've rarely entertained people in my home even during my most sociable times, pubs, clubs and restaurants much more frequently figure in my calendar.

All that and the author of this article still needs to get out and touch grass.

[–] ShinyLeftPad 16 hours ago

I think these stats are true for most western developed countries

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-sees-loneliness-epidemic-among...

Telling people to touch grass doesn't magically invert trends.

[–] Nursie 3 hours ago

These are somewhat orthoganal - young people are lonelier != everyone else has a fixed supply of friends and can never make more.

Nor does it change the fact that the author, who clearly does want to socialise, would benefit from doing something outside of their tech bubble and widening their horizons beyond "things that could conceivably further my career".

[–] gherkinnn 22 hours ago

Oh for fucks sake. Again. Go outside, take a dancing lesson and get laid. Grow some vegetables, build a castle, anything. HN is comically narrow minded sometimes.

[–] tarpitt 12 hours ago

>take a dancing lesson

This is gonna be boring as hell, especially if you can download justdance.exe to your brain.

>get laid

It's not possible or desirable for many thanks to the current state of sexual involution. I suspect that the hyperintelligent sex robots might also may make this inviable as a source of human-human connection.

>Grow some vegetables, build a castle, anything

You need land ownership, which, as one of the few limited things in a post-scarcity society might just explode in value. But I admit it would be pretty cool if the post-scarcity world is basicially just like minecraft creative mode do whatever you want type of environment. Still, with some limitations still in place, I imagine it will look more like 2b2t.

[–] Apocryphon 11 hours ago

> especially if you can download justdance.exe to your brain.

A lot of Singularity fiction was babbling about life extension technologies and mind uploads long before LLMs existed. I've always been skeptical - maybe there's just fundamental biological (and in the case of stuff like cheap fusion or FTL travel - physical) constraints that will keep even a superintelligence from inventing magical Clarketech.

[–] tarpitt 7 hours ago

I think you make a good point. If BCI is limited or impossible then then the future may be very intricate - perhaps Dune-like in the sense that natural human capability becomes the measuring stick for achievement. Humanity will become a beautiful anachronism like mechanical watches or bonsai trees or something. We will become dedicated to the art and science of our own self-cultivation.

On the other hand, If BCI is possible and useful, life will be miserable and we will borg ourselves just to keep up with the cost of living. We will be brains in jars on server racks solving captchas or something. We'll be the solution to AI hardware prices- the paperclip machine will be capitalism and nature itself.

[–] Personability 15 hours ago

You shouldn't have to compromise on the things you like to do.

[–] tarpitt 12 hours ago

The way I see it, we have two good options here. We can let go or be dragged.

[–] ShinyLeftPad 21 hours ago

Anything to keep shareholder value going up!