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that is the point of Luddism! the original Luddite movement was not ipso facto opposed to progress, but rather to the societal harm caused by society-scale econ

that is the point of Luddism! the original Luddite movement was not ipso facto opposed to progress, but rather to the societal harm caused by society-scale economic obsolescence. the entire history of technology is also powerful business interests smearing this movement as being intrinsically anti-progress, rather than directly addressing these concerns…

scotty79 11mo ago
Somehow modern Luddite messaging doesn't communicate that clearly either. Instead of "where's my fair share of AI benefits?" we hear "AI is evil, pls don't replace us".
- happytoexplain 11mo ago
  >pls don't replace us Yeah, how dare they not want to lose their careers. Losing a bunch of jobs in a short period is terrible. Losing a bunch of careers in a short period is a catastrophe. Also, this is dishonest - nobody is confused about why people don't like AI replacing/reducing some jobs and forms of art, no matter what words they use to describe their feelings (or how you choose to paraphrase those words).
  - Filligree 11mo ago
    That’s false. It’s very easy to become confused about the point, when anti-AI folks in general don’t spend their time attacking companies… What I typically see is: - Open source programmers attacking other open source programmers, for any of half a dozen reasons. They rarely sound entirely honest. - Artists attacking hobbyists who like to generate a couple pictures for memes, because it’s cool, or to illustrate stories. None of the hobbyists would have commissioned an artist for this purpose, even if AI didn’t exist. - Worries about potential human extinction. That’s the one category I sympathise with. Speaking for myself, I spent years discussing the potential economic drawbacks for once AI became useful. People generally ignored me. The moment it started happening, they instead started attacking me for having the temerity to use it myself. Meanwhile I’ve been instructed I need to start using AI at work. Unspoken: Or be fired. And, fair play: Our workload is only increasing, and I happen to know how to get value from the tools… because I spent years playing with them, since well before they had any. My colleagues who are anti-AI, I suspect, won’t do so well.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - candiddevmike 11mo ago
      I've seen enough anecdotes about business productivity lately that LLMs is not the solution to their workload struggles. You can't lay off people and expect the remainder + LLMs to replace them.
    - portaouflop 11mo ago
      Human extinction is not a potential it’s just a matter of time. The conditions for human life on this planet have already been eroded enough that there is no turning back. The human race is sleepwalking into nothingness - it’s fine we had a good run and had some great times in between.
    - suddenlybananas 11mo ago
      They'll replace you too you know
  - serf 11mo ago
    >Losing a bunch of jobs in a short period is terrible. Losing a bunch of careers in a short period is a catastrophe. 'careers' is so ambiguous as to be useless as a metric. what kind of careers? scamming call centers? heavy petrochem production? drug smuggling? cigarette marketing? There are plenty of career paths that the world would be better off without, let's be clear about that.
    - beeflet 11mo ago
      >what kind of careers? scamming call centers? heavy petrochem production? drug smuggling? cigarette marketing? All careers. All information work, and all physical work. Yes. It is better for someone to be a criminal than to be unemployed. They will at least have some minimal amount of leverage and power to destroy the system which creates them. A human soldier or drug dealer or something at least has the ability to consider whether what they are doing is wrong. A robot will be totally obedient and efficient at doing whatever job it's supposed to. I disagree totally. There are no career paths which would be better off automated. Even if you disagree with what the jobs do, automation would just make them more efficient.
  - scotty79 11mo ago
    I would love to lose my job if I got 50% of the value it brings the corp that replaced me.
- freeone3000 11mo ago
  Yes. The workers don't want to be replaced by machines. This is Luddism.
orourke 11mo ago
I think the concern in this case is that, unlike before where machines were built for other people to use, we’re now building machines that may be able to use themselves.
- fragmede 11mo ago
  The concern is the same, people want to be taken care of by society, even if they don't have a job, for whatever reason.
  - beeflet 11mo ago
    In the old times, this was a "want" because the only people without work were those unqualified or unable to work. In the new times, it will be a "need" because everyone will be unemployed, and no one will be able to work competitively.
- Jordan-117 11mo ago
  Not that much of a difference tbh. If one traditional machine allows one worker to do the work of twenty in half the time, that's still a big net loss in those jobs, even if it technically creates one. The real issue is that AI/robotics are machines that can theoretically replace any job -- at a certain point, there's nowhere for people to reskill to. The fact that it's been most disruptive in fields that have always been seen as immune to automation kind of underscores that point.
johnwheeler 11mo ago
There’s a difference between something and everything though
Kiro 11mo ago
I think we should be careful attributing too much idealism to it. The Luddites were not a unified movement and people had much more urgent concerns than thinking about technological progress from a sociocentric perspective. Considering the time period with the Napoleonic Wars as backdrop I don't think anyone can blame them for simply being angry and wanting to smash the machines that made them lose their job.
- leptons 11mo ago
  >wanting to smash the machines that made them lose their job. Wondering how long before people start setting datacenters on fire.
  - andriesm 11mo ago
    I find it hard to locate my sympathy button for people who smash and burn things built up by other people.
    - saulpw 11mo ago
      Datacenters aren't built by people, they're built by corporations.
      - einsteinx2 11mo ago
        Corporations which are entirely made up of people. Not to mention the people that physically built and maintain the data center. Or did the actual legal fiction of a corporation do it? Maybe the articles of incorporation documents got up and did the work themselves?
        saulpw 11mo ago
        It means that no one cares about the creations except in terms of money. If an Oracle building burns down and no one is hurt, I wouldn't shed a single tear. If an artistic graffiti mural adorned its wall, I would be more upset.
CamperBob2 11mo ago
Would we be better off today if the Luddites had prevailed? No? Well, what's different this time? Oh, wait, maybe they did prevail after all. I own my means of production, even though I'm by no means a powerful, filthy-rich capitalist or industrialist. So thanks, Ned -- I guess it all worked out for the best!
- marnett 11mo ago
  The Amish seem to be doing fine — and I don’t know if their way of life is under as much existential risk of upheaval and change as everyone else’s
  - mock-possum 11mo ago
    Im sorry but - Who do you think, precisely, seems to be doing ‘fine’ among the Amish? White cishet men? I cannot imagine what a hell my life might have been like if I were born into an Amish community, the abuse I would have suffered, the escape I would had to make just to get to a point in my life where I could be me without fear of reprisal. God just think about realizing that your choices are either: die, conform, or a complete exodus from your family and friends and everything you’ve ever known? “The Amish seem to be doing just fine” come on
    - marnett 11mo ago
      I was not super precise in my remark, so I think it suffered from being misconstrued as written. My remark was strictly in the context of the Parent posts remark on Luddites prevailing or not. In the context of Luddite societies or communities of faith, the Amish have been able to continue to persist for roughly three centuries with Luddite-like way of life as their foundation. In fact, they are not strictly Luddite in the technical sense, but intentional about what technologies are adopted with a community-focused mindset driving all decisions. This is what I meant be "fine" - as in, culture is not always a winner-take-all market. The amish have persisted, and I don't doubt they will continue to persist - and I envision a great eye will be turned to their ways as they continue protected from some of the anti-human technologies we are wrestling with in greater society. All of this is to say, we have concrete anthropological examples we can study. I do not doubt that in the coming years and decades we will see a surge of neo-Luddite religious movements (and their techno-accelerationist counterparts) that, perhaps three centuries from now, will be looked back upon in the same context as we do the Amish today. As an aside, if we place pro-technological development philosophy under the religious umbrella of Capitalism, I think your same critiques apply for many of the prior centuries as well. Specifically with regards to the primary benefactors being cis white men. Additionally, I do not think the racial angle is a fair critique of the Amish, which is a religious ethno-racial group in a similar vein of the Jewish community.
case 11mo ago
Glad to see the Luddites getting a shout out here. This is a new / recent book about the Luddite movement and it’s similarities to the direction we are headed due to LLMs: https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/ https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-t... Enjoyed the book and learned a lot from it!

scotty79 11mo ago

Somehow modern Luddite messaging doesn't communicate that clearly either. Instead of "where's my fair share of AI benefits?" we hear "AI is evil, pls don't replace us".

happytoexplain 11mo ago
>pls don't replace us Yeah, how dare they not want to lose their careers. Losing a bunch of jobs in a short period is terrible. Losing a bunch of careers in a short period is a catastrophe. Also, this is dishonest - nobody is confused about why people don't like AI replacing/reducing some jobs and forms of art, no matter what words they use to describe their feelings (or how you choose to paraphrase those words).
- Filligree 11mo ago
  That’s false. It’s very easy to become confused about the point, when anti-AI folks in general don’t spend their time attacking companies… What I typically see is: - Open source programmers attacking other open source programmers, for any of half a dozen reasons. They rarely sound entirely honest. - Artists attacking hobbyists who like to generate a couple pictures for memes, because it’s cool, or to illustrate stories. None of the hobbyists would have commissioned an artist for this purpose, even if AI didn’t exist. - Worries about potential human extinction. That’s the one category I sympathise with. Speaking for myself, I spent years discussing the potential economic drawbacks for once AI became useful. People generally ignored me. The moment it started happening, they instead started attacking me for having the temerity to use it myself. Meanwhile I’ve been instructed I need to start using AI at work. Unspoken: Or be fired. And, fair play: Our workload is only increasing, and I happen to know how to get value from the tools… because I spent years playing with them, since well before they had any. My colleagues who are anti-AI, I suspect, won’t do so well.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - candiddevmike 11mo ago
    I've seen enough anecdotes about business productivity lately that LLMs is not the solution to their workload struggles. You can't lay off people and expect the remainder + LLMs to replace them.
  - portaouflop 11mo ago
    Human extinction is not a potential it’s just a matter of time. The conditions for human life on this planet have already been eroded enough that there is no turning back. The human race is sleepwalking into nothingness - it’s fine we had a good run and had some great times in between.
  - suddenlybananas 11mo ago
    They'll replace you too you know
- serf 11mo ago
  >Losing a bunch of jobs in a short period is terrible. Losing a bunch of careers in a short period is a catastrophe. 'careers' is so ambiguous as to be useless as a metric. what kind of careers? scamming call centers? heavy petrochem production? drug smuggling? cigarette marketing? There are plenty of career paths that the world would be better off without, let's be clear about that.
  - beeflet 11mo ago
    >what kind of careers? scamming call centers? heavy petrochem production? drug smuggling? cigarette marketing? All careers. All information work, and all physical work. Yes. It is better for someone to be a criminal than to be unemployed. They will at least have some minimal amount of leverage and power to destroy the system which creates them. A human soldier or drug dealer or something at least has the ability to consider whether what they are doing is wrong. A robot will be totally obedient and efficient at doing whatever job it's supposed to. I disagree totally. There are no career paths which would be better off automated. Even if you disagree with what the jobs do, automation would just make them more efficient.
- scotty79 11mo ago
  I would love to lose my job if I got 50% of the value it brings the corp that replaced me.
freeone3000 11mo ago
Yes. The workers don't want to be replaced by machines. This is Luddism.

orourke 11mo ago

I think the concern in this case is that, unlike before where machines were built for other people to use, we’re now building machines that may be able to use themselves.

fragmede 11mo ago
The concern is the same, people want to be taken care of by society, even if they don't have a job, for whatever reason.
- beeflet 11mo ago
  In the old times, this was a "want" because the only people without work were those unqualified or unable to work. In the new times, it will be a "need" because everyone will be unemployed, and no one will be able to work competitively.
Jordan-117 11mo ago
Not that much of a difference tbh. If one traditional machine allows one worker to do the work of twenty in half the time, that's still a big net loss in those jobs, even if it technically creates one. The real issue is that AI/robotics are machines that can theoretically replace any job -- at a certain point, there's nowhere for people to reskill to. The fact that it's been most disruptive in fields that have always been seen as immune to automation kind of underscores that point.

johnwheeler 11mo ago

There’s a difference between something and everything though

Kiro 11mo ago

I think we should be careful attributing too much idealism to it. The Luddites were not a unified movement and people had much more urgent concerns than thinking about technological progress from a sociocentric perspective. Considering the time period with the Napoleonic Wars as backdrop I don't think anyone can blame them for simply being angry and wanting to smash the machines that made them lose their job.

leptons 11mo ago
>wanting to smash the machines that made them lose their job. Wondering how long before people start setting datacenters on fire.
- andriesm 11mo ago
  I find it hard to locate my sympathy button for people who smash and burn things built up by other people.
  - saulpw 11mo ago
    Datacenters aren't built by people, they're built by corporations.
    - einsteinx2 11mo ago
      Corporations which are entirely made up of people. Not to mention the people that physically built and maintain the data center. Or did the actual legal fiction of a corporation do it? Maybe the articles of incorporation documents got up and did the work themselves?
      - saulpw 11mo ago
        It means that no one cares about the creations except in terms of money. If an Oracle building burns down and no one is hurt, I wouldn't shed a single tear. If an artistic graffiti mural adorned its wall, I would be more upset.

CamperBob2 11mo ago

Would we be better off today if the Luddites had prevailed? No? Well, what's different this time? Oh, wait, maybe they did prevail after all. I own my means of production, even though I'm by no means a powerful, filthy-rich capitalist or industrialist. So thanks, Ned -- I guess it all worked out for the best!

marnett 11mo ago
The Amish seem to be doing fine — and I don’t know if their way of life is under as much existential risk of upheaval and change as everyone else’s
- mock-possum 11mo ago
  Im sorry but - Who do you think, precisely, seems to be doing ‘fine’ among the Amish? White cishet men? I cannot imagine what a hell my life might have been like if I were born into an Amish community, the abuse I would have suffered, the escape I would had to make just to get to a point in my life where I could be me without fear of reprisal. God just think about realizing that your choices are either: die, conform, or a complete exodus from your family and friends and everything you’ve ever known? “The Amish seem to be doing just fine” come on
  - marnett 11mo ago
    I was not super precise in my remark, so I think it suffered from being misconstrued as written. My remark was strictly in the context of the Parent posts remark on Luddites prevailing or not. In the context of Luddite societies or communities of faith, the Amish have been able to continue to persist for roughly three centuries with Luddite-like way of life as their foundation. In fact, they are not strictly Luddite in the technical sense, but intentional about what technologies are adopted with a community-focused mindset driving all decisions. This is what I meant be "fine" - as in, culture is not always a winner-take-all market. The amish have persisted, and I don't doubt they will continue to persist - and I envision a great eye will be turned to their ways as they continue protected from some of the anti-human technologies we are wrestling with in greater society. All of this is to say, we have concrete anthropological examples we can study. I do not doubt that in the coming years and decades we will see a surge of neo-Luddite religious movements (and their techno-accelerationist counterparts) that, perhaps three centuries from now, will be looked back upon in the same context as we do the Amish today. As an aside, if we place pro-technological development philosophy under the religious umbrella of Capitalism, I think your same critiques apply for many of the prior centuries as well. Specifically with regards to the primary benefactors being cis white men. Additionally, I do not think the racial angle is a fair critique of the Amish, which is a religious ethno-racial group in a similar vein of the Jewish community.

case 11mo ago

Glad to see the Luddites getting a shout out here. This is a new / recent book about the Luddite movement and it’s similarities to the direction we are headed due to LLMs: https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/ https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-t... Enjoyed the book and learned a lot from it!