6 ms·

I agree with you. But typically when people make such an argument, it's about where we spend money.

loceng 9y ago
Money is a human-made construct, productivity is all about people wanting to work on things they are passionate about - whether that's having a healthy family or Elon's escapist plans of colonizing Mars. Once we have UBI and automation in place - which will lead to properly managed capitalism - then everything can become very efficient. The foundation to this working is people being healthy and community being healthy, real community where we have time to have deep discussion not only online but in person - which is currently greatly lacking. What currently keeps most of us engaged is economics, the requirement of a job. Once UBI is in place worldwide then things will really start moving.
- richmarr 9y ago
  Why will UBI and automation lead to properly managed capitalism? And what do you mean by "properly managed capitalism"?
  - loceng 9y ago
    Good questions. The brief of it is that it's known if you increase money available for education, educational institutes will increase their fees- the same goes for landlords and rent - and pretty much everything which leads to inflation; the more of a necessity something is will generally dictate who benefits the most from these cost increases and pressure on systems. There will have to be a floor created for housing, food, transportation, etc. Most of what we need can be automated, heavily automated. We'll have to decide as a society what people should have a baseline for everything. Fitting that new system in the existing system is the tricky part.
- sharemywin 9y ago
  Step 1: UBI you can chase your dreams Step2: well you can't afford real dreams you're on UBI so chase your dreams in VR. plus the clicks will help pay for UBI. Step 3: eat Soylent it's less expensive and you don't need much nutrition your always in VR anyways. besides the system can get more clicks the more time your in VR. Step 4: you can get a more enriched experience if we attach cables to you. besides the system can get more clicks the more time your in VR. Step 5: The system decided to make VR more like real life and add constraints and problems to your life. besides the system can get more clicks the more time your in VR. Shit we ended up in the Matrix....except it turned out to be a giant click farm.
  - CalRobert 9y ago
    Devil's advocate - if the experience of VR is completely indistinguishable from reality, is it not just reality for the consciousness experiencing the VR? We experience sadness, happiness, joy, and despair, based on sensory input, which is supposedly a manifestation of the world around us, but maybe it's the abstractions we build on top of that matter which are important. Maybe the experience of VR fishing with my dad is imperceptibly different from actually going fishing (better, even, since the simulated fish isn't full of microplastics and our two stroke boat didn't poison the water) - If my VR avatar and your VR avatar build full, rich (as far as we can tell) experiences together, and generate real sensations of joy, then I'm not sure it's so different from doing the same thing in reality. In either case we're manipulating atoms in ways we find pleasant; in one case those atoms simply happen to be in a computer. As a thought experiment, say you could build an entire copy of our civilization, but at half the physical size - its experiences would be no less rich, I think. Lower carbon emissions too. Now make it a hundredth the size. Or a billionth. Maybe modeling this inside a computer isn't so different from that scenario. Having everyone hooked up to VR all the time sounds like a hellish nightmare, for the record, but I'm not sure why it bothers me as much as it does.
    - mistermann 9y ago
      Very interesting way of thinking about it, I'd enjoy to read a much longer fleshed out version of this. Also, is there a name for the "persuasion technique" you've used here? The idea of taking an understandable scenario and then reducing it? I have a similar technique that starts with an exaggerated and unavoidably rhetorical question, and then work back towards the topic at hand, when someone has a mental block and simply won't budge. I've always wondered if there's a name for it so I could become more effective at it.
      - CalRobert 9y ago
        I'm not sure, it's just something that's crossed my mind with respect to VR and the nature of reality vs models of said reality. I'd enjoy thinking about it more, or reading about it, if there's a word for this.
- jp555 9y ago
  > money is a human-made construct Like the alphabet, and just a useful.
  - nhaehnle 9y ago
    Usually, people who point out that money is a human-made construct are not trying to say that money is useless. Rather, they're trying to encourage you to question how money is constructed, likely because they think that making some tweaks would lead to it being more useful. Kind of like people who tweak fonts to make them more useful, to stick somewhat close to your alphabet example.
  - loceng 9y ago
    I didn't say it wasn't useful, UBI is using money still? It's all about distribution of resources.
dropit_sphere 9y ago
But even so, the law of diminishing returns kicks in here. The more a field is neglected, the higher the likelihood that there's some low-hanging fruit left unharvested. Article author should go play a few hundred games of Civilization.

Money is a human-made construct, productivity is all about people wanting to work on things they are passionate about - whether that's having a healthy family or Elon's escapist plans of colonizing Mars. Once we have UBI and automation in place - which will lead to properly managed capitalism - then everything can become very efficient. The foundation to this working is people being healthy and community being healthy, real community where we have time to have deep discussion not only online but in person - which is currently greatly lacking. What currently keeps most of us engaged is economics, the requirement of a job. Once UBI is in place worldwide then things will really start moving.

richmarr 9y ago
Why will UBI and automation lead to properly managed capitalism? And what do you mean by "properly managed capitalism"?
- loceng 9y ago
  Good questions. The brief of it is that it's known if you increase money available for education, educational institutes will increase their fees- the same goes for landlords and rent - and pretty much everything which leads to inflation; the more of a necessity something is will generally dictate who benefits the most from these cost increases and pressure on systems. There will have to be a floor created for housing, food, transportation, etc. Most of what we need can be automated, heavily automated. We'll have to decide as a society what people should have a baseline for everything. Fitting that new system in the existing system is the tricky part.
sharemywin 9y ago
Step 1: UBI you can chase your dreams Step2: well you can't afford real dreams you're on UBI so chase your dreams in VR. plus the clicks will help pay for UBI. Step 3: eat Soylent it's less expensive and you don't need much nutrition your always in VR anyways. besides the system can get more clicks the more time your in VR. Step 4: you can get a more enriched experience if we attach cables to you. besides the system can get more clicks the more time your in VR. Step 5: The system decided to make VR more like real life and add constraints and problems to your life. besides the system can get more clicks the more time your in VR. Shit we ended up in the Matrix....except it turned out to be a giant click farm.
- CalRobert 9y ago
  Devil's advocate - if the experience of VR is completely indistinguishable from reality, is it not just reality for the consciousness experiencing the VR? We experience sadness, happiness, joy, and despair, based on sensory input, which is supposedly a manifestation of the world around us, but maybe it's the abstractions we build on top of that matter which are important. Maybe the experience of VR fishing with my dad is imperceptibly different from actually going fishing (better, even, since the simulated fish isn't full of microplastics and our two stroke boat didn't poison the water) - If my VR avatar and your VR avatar build full, rich (as far as we can tell) experiences together, and generate real sensations of joy, then I'm not sure it's so different from doing the same thing in reality. In either case we're manipulating atoms in ways we find pleasant; in one case those atoms simply happen to be in a computer. As a thought experiment, say you could build an entire copy of our civilization, but at half the physical size - its experiences would be no less rich, I think. Lower carbon emissions too. Now make it a hundredth the size. Or a billionth. Maybe modeling this inside a computer isn't so different from that scenario. Having everyone hooked up to VR all the time sounds like a hellish nightmare, for the record, but I'm not sure why it bothers me as much as it does.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Very interesting way of thinking about it, I'd enjoy to read a much longer fleshed out version of this. Also, is there a name for the "persuasion technique" you've used here? The idea of taking an understandable scenario and then reducing it? I have a similar technique that starts with an exaggerated and unavoidably rhetorical question, and then work back towards the topic at hand, when someone has a mental block and simply won't budge. I've always wondered if there's a name for it so I could become more effective at it.
    - CalRobert 9y ago
      I'm not sure, it's just something that's crossed my mind with respect to VR and the nature of reality vs models of said reality. I'd enjoy thinking about it more, or reading about it, if there's a word for this.
jp555 9y ago
> money is a human-made construct Like the alphabet, and just a useful.
- nhaehnle 9y ago
  Usually, people who point out that money is a human-made construct are not trying to say that money is useless. Rather, they're trying to encourage you to question how money is constructed, likely because they think that making some tweaks would lead to it being more useful. Kind of like people who tweak fonts to make them more useful, to stick somewhat close to your alphabet example.
- loceng 9y ago
  I didn't say it wasn't useful, UBI is using money still? It's all about distribution of resources.

dropit_sphere 9y ago

But even so, the law of diminishing returns kicks in here. The more a field is neglected, the higher the likelihood that there's some low-hanging fruit left unharvested. Article author should go play a few hundred games of Civilization.