I used to wonder if a Butlerian Jihad was plausible or just an interesting plot device. Now, it seems more plausible every day.
Let’s be honest; capital wants to eliminate all labor, and damn the consequences. People are not going to willingly give up lives of comfort for abject squalor. This will not go well.
On top of that, I agree that capitalists continue to eliminate jobs but I also think they create jobs in other sectors. The reason I don't buy into doomsday scenarios is I don't believe they will eliminate all the jobs at once.
I only happen to be a software engineer. If I was born 250 years ago, I'm sure I would've found a creative innovation outlet through another industry.
As for artisans, they'll do fine, but the point is that it's a much smaller niche, so very few people who have jobs today will be the lucky ones to squeeze into it.
That attitude is the equivalent of a frog in a boiling pot going, "I won't leave until you have a better idea of where to go."
Value is - and always will be - subjective. Whenever society forms a centralized definition of value, it is immediately gamed and exploited by those who seek profit and power. Currency and profit are extreme forms of Goodhart's Law, the civilizational equivalent to "Tickets Closed" or "Lines of Code Written" KPIs.
To demand objective measure of subjectivity is to fight a fool's battle.
Which would be a fair counter-argument to have if so many of you (and people like you) weren't also trying to drag those of us looking to escape back into the fucking pot.
If you want to sit and boil, fine, but for chrissakes let those of us who wish to try anything other than boiling alive go do that. Your staunch refusal to confront reality is your problem, but your insistence on harming others so you don't have to confront reality should be criminal.
Ok? Who is stopping you? Nobody here is prohibiting you from continuing to write code by hand and doing whatever you wish. Certainly if you're going to assert that that's criminal, of course I'm not interested in your vinegar.
Look, as a programmer I also love writing code by hand, however it's childish to suggest that if I can no longer make a living doing so because automated code production is more profitable that that's equivalent to boiling in a pot or suffering from air pollution.
There are substantiative risks with AI, such as a potential for a singularity, that would make for an actual compelling argument. Some engineer's desire to make a living writing code by hand does not. That's a luxury.
Sure, I can believe that, but...
> doing anything of value for their own self-preservation
Even your own comment relies on some metric of value.
I agree that profit motives are not an ideal metric of value but as your comment suggests, we as a species do rely on some metric of value. I'm not infuriated until there's a better metric.