ZeV > Recent Status Updates

"Referendums and elections are always about human *feelings*, not about human rationality. If democracy were a matter of rational decision-making, there would be absolutely no reason to give all people equal voting rights--or perhaps any voting rights at all."

"To really achieve its goals, universal basic support will have to be supplemented with some meaningful pursuits, ranging from sports to religion."

"Whichever way you choose to define "basic human needs," once you provide them to everyone free of charge, they will be taken for granted, and then fierce social competitions and political struggles will focus on luxuries. ... if the unemployed masses command no economic assets, it is hard to see how they could ever hope to obtain such luxuries. ... the (wealth) gap might become ... unbridgeable."

Even if there are enough new jobs, workers may not be able to catch up in developing new skills for those jobs.

Nation may not be the right size for addressing the coming issues in view of globalization. "Universal" in UBI isn't really universal enough.

The problem with "universal" in universal basic income is that the main victims of automation may not live in the same nation/municipality where such a scheme gets implemented.

"It is debatable whether it is better to provide people with universal basic income (the capitalist paradise) or universal basic services (the communist paradise)."

"The communist political plan called for a working-class revolution. How relevant will these teachings be if the masses lose their economic value and therefore need to struggle against irrelevance rather than against exploitation?"

"The challenge posed to humankind in the twenty-first century by infotech and biotech is arguably much bigger than the challenge posed in the previous era by steam engines, railroads, and electricity. ... This time around, the failed (social, economic, political) models might result in nuclear wars, genetically engineered monstrosities, and a complete breakdown of the biosphere."

AlphaZero took only four hours to learn chess to beat Stockfish 8.

"The problem with all such new jobs, however, is that they will probably demand high levels of expertise, and will therefore not solve the problems of unemployed unskilled laborers."

"If art is about something deeper than human emotions and should express a truth beyond our biochemical vibrations, biometric algorithms might not make very good artists. But neither do most humans. In order to enter the art market and displace many human composers and performers, algorithms won't have to begin by surpassing Tchaikovsky. It would be enough if they outperform Britney Spears."

"Of all forms of art, music is probably the most susceptible to Big Data analysis, because both inputs and outputs lend themselves to precise mathematical depiction."

"Many doctors focus almost exclusively on processing information ... Nurses, in contrast, need good motor and emotional skills ... Therefore we will probably have an AI family doctor on our smartphone decades before we have a reliable nurse robot. The human care industry ... is likely to remain a human bastion for a long time."

"What we are facing is not the replacement of millions of individual human workers by millions of individual robots and computers; rather, individual humans are likely to be replaced by an integrated network."

"Humans have two types of abilities--physical and cognitive. In the past, machines competed with humans mainly in raw physical abilities, while humans retained an immense edge over machines in cognition. ... However, AI is now beginning to outperform humans in more and more of these skills, ... We don't know of any third field of activity ... where humans will always retain a secure edge."

The "useless" class of people being made irrelevant by the IT/biotech advancement.

"Humans vote with their feet."

The Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were made by people who were vital to the economy but who lacked political power; in 2016, Trump and Brexit were supported by many people who still enjoyed political power but who feared that they were losing their economic worth. ... This may well be a losing battle. It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.

"He had always feared that this would happen, more than he had ever feared death. To die is to lose the self and rejoin the rest. He had kept himself, and lost the rest."