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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   26080 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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I'm more amused that the same kind of people who were quite happy that all was right with the world and the market was working as intended, when blue-collar labour was losing out to outsourcing, because hey the economy is booming! you can buy cheap smartphones!, are now losing their minds when it's their turn for the chopping block.

That's one hypothesis. But I'm reminded of Heath Ledger's Joker's speech:

Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds.

It's "part of the plan" that the unskilled workers will be having a tougher time. They are less skilled after all. They worked less to get there, and therefore everyone expects them to face more difficulties. When the skilled laborers face this, it might be an indication that there's some deeper or new problem. At the very least, it's not what's expected, and therefore can cause people to seriously freak out.

If manual labour is now more valuable than skilled labour, then perhaps - just perhaps - the value they earned was not down to them being superior in brains and work ethic and willingness to do what it takes, but just that they had the particular knack for what was in short supply at the time. Now, for whatever reason, a different requirement is in short supply, and hence valuable, and they don't have that knack.

That's one hypothesis. Another would be that they have the aptitude to learn many things, and the specifically trained in one skill set for many years, applying their aptitude towards what they were told would be the most lucrative. And they spent many many years and resources on doing that. And now they feel like they've been promised something in exchange for that, and they're not getting it. They're upholding their end of the bargain, and the world failed them.

I'm wondering if, in the post-AI future, the generations after us will look back at the assumption that the "skilled workers" (who may or may not be the PMC) were just plain obviously superior to the unskilled the way we look at past generations' beliefs that aristocrats just were plain obviously superior to the common folk. Being the son of a gentleman and a gentleman yourself meant you were better than the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. You just were because of your blue blood and so forth. There was a whole slew of assumptions going along with your status as a noble or a gentleman about your innate superiority to the common herd, and naturally nobody had to provide evidence that this was so because well, everyone just knows that the viscount/skilled coder is better than the commoner/plumber, don't they?

Post-AI when you don't need any skill higher than "push the button", will our descendants think we were just worshipping a social idol?

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