For a Stoic you seem to have an incredibly narrow definition of purpose, the ways in which man can find purpose and an even more narrow understanding of history.
Humanity spent more than 98% of its entire existence without modern economics, capitalism, defined jobs or money and we did just fine.
There are absolutely zero indications that pre historic civilisations had lower life satisfaction than modern civilisationa, quite the opposite in fact.
Prehistoric works of art from Caves in France, South Africa to Chile as well as massive earthenwork projects uncovered in Turkey, the Amazon and Russia, all indicate that massive cities already existed, where great labour forces were assembled. All within societies that actively applied administration to avoid the need for money, the acquisition of excessive wealth or power by individuals.
People led very good lives in great numbers without the modern ratrace or the belief in its necessity for progress introduced by Rousseau and his contemporaries to defend European ideas against criticism from natives and their appeal to reason during the enlightenment.
You like Geoffrey Hinton are just a doomer giving in to negativity bias and employing confirmation bias to exacerbate your disproportionate fear.
There is an equal and opposite possibility for a future that is better and far more purpose filled than anything we have today.
Most people do not enjoy their jobs, they are in effect economic slaves to their need to provide for themselves and their offspring.
Ai and Robotics can provide a future in which human labour no longer is the limiting factor in production, nor will it therefore allow to be used as a means of control anymore. We can make a future where we are all truly free, rather than slaves to promises dressed up as 'Rights' to which most of us, in practice, have no real access.
Appreciate your energy, Aragorn, but I think you misread the post and projected too much onto it. Let’s clarify a few things:
- Stoicism isn’t about clinging to purpose, it’s about mastering mindset amidst uncertainty (if you are familiar with the concept of Singularity, you may be able to recognize it's all about that).
- So the piece isn’t about my own sense of purpose, but about how societal meaning collapses when people are economically sidelined and algorithmically numbed. A structural concern, not a personal complaint.
- “We did just fine for 98% of history” --> This is a romantic oversimplification.
I study ancient martial art systems (like ken/kobujutsu) that emerged from centuries of scarcity, war, and social hierarchy. These systems thrived not because life was easy, but because resilience had to be cultivated at the edge of survival. A regular farmer would use their agricultural tools as weapon during wars...
- In fact, the historical baseline was child abuse and mortality, tribal violence, famine, and no antibiotics... and not purpose-driven harmony. "Just fine"? Cherry-picking cave art and earthworks doesn’t negate the brutality of pre-modern life. Also, you seem to fall in the trap of conflating "absence of evidence" with "evidence of absence".
- The burden of proof lies not in imagining a noble past, but in explaining how we preserve sovereignty *now*, with 8 billion people, synthetic cognition, increasing social control, CBDCs, and platform monopolies scaling faster than ethics or law.
I’m not defending the “rat race” or glorifying capitalism. I’m arguing that freedom will not emerge automatically just because labor becomes obsolete. If you believe that AI and robotics will “free” humanity, I’d genuinely like to understand how:
Who owns the machines? Who controls the distribution? What’s your model for transitioning from extractive platform economies to shared abundance without recreating the same historical hierarchies? And the real question is: would you trade freedom for comfort?
So labeling me or Hinton as “doomers” isn’t debate, but just dismissal.
I’m not peddling fear, I’m urging builders, parents, and thinkers to reclaim agency before defaults harden into new dependencies.
If you want to discuss possible futures (post-labor, post-platform, spiritually sovereign) I’m all in. This is the sort of discussion our future needs. And we need people like Hinton (or maybe me) playing devil's advocate. Really appreciate the opportunity to debate with the other side of my hypothesis!
(But please let’s keep it clean: no ad hominem shortcuts.)
For a Stoic you seem to have an incredibly narrow definition of purpose, the ways in which man can find purpose and an even more narrow understanding of history.
Humanity spent more than 98% of its entire existence without modern economics, capitalism, defined jobs or money and we did just fine.
There are absolutely zero indications that pre historic civilisations had lower life satisfaction than modern civilisationa, quite the opposite in fact.
Prehistoric works of art from Caves in France, South Africa to Chile as well as massive earthenwork projects uncovered in Turkey, the Amazon and Russia, all indicate that massive cities already existed, where great labour forces were assembled. All within societies that actively applied administration to avoid the need for money, the acquisition of excessive wealth or power by individuals.
People led very good lives in great numbers without the modern ratrace or the belief in its necessity for progress introduced by Rousseau and his contemporaries to defend European ideas against criticism from natives and their appeal to reason during the enlightenment.
You like Geoffrey Hinton are just a doomer giving in to negativity bias and employing confirmation bias to exacerbate your disproportionate fear.
There is an equal and opposite possibility for a future that is better and far more purpose filled than anything we have today.
Most people do not enjoy their jobs, they are in effect economic slaves to their need to provide for themselves and their offspring.
Ai and Robotics can provide a future in which human labour no longer is the limiting factor in production, nor will it therefore allow to be used as a means of control anymore. We can make a future where we are all truly free, rather than slaves to promises dressed up as 'Rights' to which most of us, in practice, have no real access.
Appreciate your energy, Aragorn, but I think you misread the post and projected too much onto it. Let’s clarify a few things:
- Stoicism isn’t about clinging to purpose, it’s about mastering mindset amidst uncertainty (if you are familiar with the concept of Singularity, you may be able to recognize it's all about that).
- So the piece isn’t about my own sense of purpose, but about how societal meaning collapses when people are economically sidelined and algorithmically numbed. A structural concern, not a personal complaint.
- “We did just fine for 98% of history” --> This is a romantic oversimplification.
I study ancient martial art systems (like ken/kobujutsu) that emerged from centuries of scarcity, war, and social hierarchy. These systems thrived not because life was easy, but because resilience had to be cultivated at the edge of survival. A regular farmer would use their agricultural tools as weapon during wars...
- In fact, the historical baseline was child abuse and mortality, tribal violence, famine, and no antibiotics... and not purpose-driven harmony. "Just fine"? Cherry-picking cave art and earthworks doesn’t negate the brutality of pre-modern life. Also, you seem to fall in the trap of conflating "absence of evidence" with "evidence of absence".
- The burden of proof lies not in imagining a noble past, but in explaining how we preserve sovereignty *now*, with 8 billion people, synthetic cognition, increasing social control, CBDCs, and platform monopolies scaling faster than ethics or law.
I’m not defending the “rat race” or glorifying capitalism. I’m arguing that freedom will not emerge automatically just because labor becomes obsolete. If you believe that AI and robotics will “free” humanity, I’d genuinely like to understand how:
Who owns the machines? Who controls the distribution? What’s your model for transitioning from extractive platform economies to shared abundance without recreating the same historical hierarchies? And the real question is: would you trade freedom for comfort?
So labeling me or Hinton as “doomers” isn’t debate, but just dismissal.
I’m not peddling fear, I’m urging builders, parents, and thinkers to reclaim agency before defaults harden into new dependencies.
If you want to discuss possible futures (post-labor, post-platform, spiritually sovereign) I’m all in. This is the sort of discussion our future needs. And we need people like Hinton (or maybe me) playing devil's advocate. Really appreciate the opportunity to debate with the other side of my hypothesis!
(But please let’s keep it clean: no ad hominem shortcuts.)