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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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We're in a dysfunctional codependent relationship with the festering undying corpse of our industrial civilization, the needy monstrosity that has to be fed our lifetimes. It's nice for people who feel happy with their «jobs» I suppose, but in the end, for the vast majority a job is something you wouldn't do if not paid for. If our tools fix all problems that require payment to make people bother, what will be left? Truth, perhaps. High-grade challenge that is somehow not amenable to automation. Relationships we actually want be part of and care about. Games. Self-expression. Contemplation. Philosophy. Things people turned to whenever they managed to escape the peasant-civilization hell for more than one generation. And new things too: things we are afraid to think of now because of how brow-beaten we are into normality.

Death. What will be left is death. As you phrased it, the ultimate solver is also the ultimate solvent, and it will dissolve us. Not by its malice or our ennui, but by our obsolescence - once we cease to be relevant to the production of value and remain as merely consumers, we will be gone sooner rather than later. Other posters have pointed out that automation and unemployment aren't to be feared, that other avenues can be found for human utility, that humans are kept alive even though they cease to contribute to the whole edifice, but I think there is a limit to these things. I think it has been as it was so far because even unproductive humans are very similar to productive ones, and can theoretically become productive, and are enmeshed in relations with productive ones. Once AGI produces all value, once humans are entirely separate from the source of value, we will go out. With no justification for our existence, the universe will find a way to wipe us out.

A very German thing to believe. I weep for your people, but really you've been cooked since before both of us were born, so this revolution adds nothing.