How is "health and longevity" in the same obviously nonabundant bin as space and energy? People are obviously able to come up with things they want that require ever more space and energy, but if you get a person staying healthy and alive with future technology that actually pulls that off, you're done. There's no ever-widening physical sinkhole for every person, just a steady upkeep cost.
There are presumably lots of people and we're stuck in a light cone with finite mass and energy that needs to be enough for everyone. You can spread out to reach more stuff but there's a big empty gap after you run out of solar system and need to jump to the next star and a much bigger, emptier gap when you run out of galaxy and need to jump into the next one. And you can think up weird things like accelerating a solar system you're in to 0.999x the speed of light to do relativistic sightseeing that you probably aren't ever going to accomplish even with future supertech.
Regardless of the question of AI impacts, and meaning, it's simply untrue that greater wealth hasn't changed the picture tremendously. Life expectancy has shot up. The idea that being richer didn't matter is bullshit. Yes, it costs $5,000 to save a life today, and we haven't saturated those opportunities. But in 1970, 55 years ago, we were in the middle of smallpox eradication, which like had a cost per life saved likely under $1,000, in current dollars. Oral rehydration therapy was becoming available, and was not yet widespread; it also likely had a cost in a similar range per life saved. And going back further, in the 1920s, Russia was having a massive famine. In 1921–23 there was a relief effort; the American Relief Administration probably saved several million lives as a cost of around $300 per life saved in current dollars.
greater wealth hasn't changed the picture tremendously
I don't think I made that claim anywhere in my piece.
Considering that the prediction was made in 1930, and the labor force participation rate has gone way up since then, the average hours worked per working-age person, rather than per worker, seems to have been flat at best or perhaps slightly increasing.
Mostly agree, although I think you might be wrong on a couple points. For one, people can find purpose without work. We know this because people retire and manage to find meaning in their lives without working (though not all do, to be fair, but if they didn't have the option of work as a crutch maybe they would do the work of figuring out what to orient to, like friends and family).
For another, I don't buy that health and longevity can't be abundant except insofar as they require space and energy, and so may only be non-abundant under high population growth. Same for security.
Will Taliban members in Afghanistan enjoy post-scarcity abundance? No.
Will prison inmates get it? No.
Russians? Drug-addicts? Trump-supporters? People who said Y word 10 years ago?
You get it - many groups of people will not have legal access to the abundance. If we list all such groups, likely most people will not get it. And those who will get it, are already rich.
Many of those groups would have been left to starve to death a century ago. The idea that a rising tide doesn't lift all boats is historically illiterate, and so you would need a more specific argument for it to make sense here in the case of (non-omnicidal) ASI.
My point was that prices are dictated by social structure, not by potential abundance of goods. For example, software and movies can be copied unlimitedly, so we have informational abundance, but still have to pay for them - or become pirates and face potential legal risks.
I think you are right that "humans that want things" will always have more things than "humans that don't want things" (or even replace human with X, see this talk by Joe Carlsmith). You must be much more explicit drawing a line between this and "post-scarcity" - which frame of post-scarcity is it that you are disagreeing with here? You seem half to be making an argument about the inherent nature of competition, and half an argument about the desire of humans for status, which leads to an argument about neither.
I suspect the culture of elites with leverage over AI doesn't want this and will try to achieve something else, but it's at least plausible to me that if you solve some hard research and philosophy problems around alignment you can make wise ASI that is not exclusively obedient to small groups of people and can identify and deliver precisely the goods and automations that would lead to a much better society for ~everyone.
I think it's good to critique people who talk about AI benefits in very vague terms and encourage them to flesh out how those benefits and the power structures that deliver them would look like in detail, but I also think there's an important kernel of truth in AI could plausibly if handled really well make the world extremely better.
I do feel some frustration that many people do not seem to be trying all that much to sketch out detailed good scenarios to coordinate around and I broadly agree that the default power structures of market forces and small committees of military and AI company officials definitely don't seem like they'd empower people by default.
I would say your description of a world where most people are left to "shut the fuck up and enjoy your government handouts or freemium robot butlers or whatever" while the few elites are uploading their consciousness and living in unimaginable luxury is a post-scarcity vision, and it's a fine one. Inequality is only an issue insofar as it includes suffering and poverty. If 1% of the people have 99% of the wealth and status, but they make sure us plebeians all have plenty of food, water, housing, and free time and access to all the tools and supplies within reason we could ask for for our hobbies and recreational pursuits, if for no other reason than to keep us from rioting, that's as damn near a utopia as I can ever imagine human beings building.
Your whole argument rests on an assumption I think is false--that a person's sense of "meaning" in their life must include a sense of significance within the global context. That is an incredibly recent development, and I think in this scenario it would go away as fast as it came and no one will miss it. You can have plenty of meaning and significance, and plenty of existing and competition within our all-important web of weird overlapping status hierarchies, within your smaller social circles of family and friends and localized networks. That's how it has been for most of human history. We all collectively got to pretend that we all had a significant place in a great global status and relationship network for a while after we all got interconnected by the industrial and information revolutions, but if the post-scarcity world takes that illusion away, we'll be just fine, maybe even a little better off. I see no reason to think that in this vision of a post-scarcity world most people couldn't find plenty of ways to fill their lives with meaning and happiness derived from socializing with friends and family, and pursuing hobbies and artistic pursuits. You could still even have an opt-in economy based on luxuries and access to unique artisan products or experiences or personal human interactions and services, which people could participate in as much or as little as they pleased. You seem to assume that the fact that we would all know there were a handful of elites out there wielding unimaginable power and engaging with the singularity in ways we could never dream of having access to would somehow take the meaning and purpose out of the rest of our lives. I don't believe that's true.
Agree. The term 'post-scarcity' focuses purely on instrumental goals: abundant energy, longevity, etc. Transhumanism tends to focus on the same kinds of things: immortality, invulnerability, power. These are instrumental. What are you going to do with all that power and longevity? They're often putting the cart before the horse. Make great art? Pursue truth? Mitigate suffering? Enhance personal rights? The are the ends. Power is the means, but very often it's treated as an end in itself.
We have enough material wealth to provide everyone on the planet with a decent standard of living.
Could you explain why you believe this? Do you mean this in a sense of "if history was different and human nature was different, there could have existed a society with the same population and total material wealth as ours in which everyone has a decent standard of living"? Or that (assuming human nature was different), there exists an "industrial+philanthropy policy" that would move us to the everyone-decent state from our current state without an increase in total material wealth?
A conversation I’ve heard never:
Erma the enthusiast: “Sure, AI will take your job, but it doesn’t matter, because AI will make so much stuff, there will be plenty to go around.”
Norma the normie: “Well, I’m convinced!”
Is “post-scarcity” bullshit?
Yes, yes it is. That’s today’s blog.
OK, let’s dive in!
Post-scarcity
Post-scarcity.
The idea that we are about to enter an age of limitless abundance, where everyone can have their basic needs met and more… and MORE… and MORE!
It’s a compelling and captivating idea, and for many reasons. And I’m not saying it’s impossible. But is it the default outcome? And what even is this outcome we’re talking about? Is it something people actually want? Does post-scarcity not also mean “post-purpose”?
Let’s look at the basic idea of post-scarcity and the case for it before arguing against it: Economic growth has led to massive sustained increases in the standard of living for the average person. This includes, e.g. huge decreases in people suffering and dying from preventable causes like disease and hunger. If this trend continues, future people (that could be us!) will all experience levels of material wealth unimaginable today. Sadly, a lot of people still do die of preventable causes. Not everyone can afford the best medical care, let alone the nicest food, housing, etc. But it’s not just some abstract hypothetical! We’re about to make AI that can do literally all of the work for us, cheaper. And it will be smart enough to unlock advances in medicine and other technologies that would take human scientists lifetimes. In the future, when you want something, you’ll just snap your fingers, and your robot butler will instantly give it to you.
So what’s wrong with this picture? Well, we can start by going back to this thing where people still do die from preventable causes… Why exactly aren’t we preventing that? Like, I think we all agree it sucks. So why are we spending money on fancy clothes and food and cars and so on when $5000 is enough to save a person’s life? We have enough material wealth to provide everyone on the planet with a decent standard of living. Why aren’t we doing it?
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes -- one of the most famous economists of all time -- predicted that his grandkids would work just 15 hours a week. Why aren’t we doing that? Is all of this work and stuff really making us happy? Shouldn’t we be spending more time enjoying life and spending time with the people we’re close to?
These things will always be scarce.
These two questions: “Why are people still suffering in extreme poverty?” and “Why are rich people working so hard?” have two main answers:
People are competing with each other for money, power, status, etc.
People derive meaning from work.
And post-scarcity doesn’t have shit to say about this.
But economics does! “Positional goods” refer to things that function like status symbols -- you having it amounts to someone else NOT having it. That’s the point.
…or maybe it’s just an intrinsic aspect of the situation. Take land for example. There is only so much space on earth (or in the reachable universe for that matter…). If I own all of it, you own none of it. Will your robot butler bring you “the sun, the moon, and the stars”? No, sorry, those are reserved for our platinum post-scarcity members.
Here’s a list of things that are never, ever, going to be “abundant”:
Physical space
Health and longevity
Status
Security
Energy
You know, nothing that important, just (checks watch) the most fundamental things people value and need. I kinda get the feeling that if technology was going to solve this problem, maybe it would’ve by now. Keynes sure seemed to think it would.
This is not the post-scarcity you’re looking for.
It’s not that I think the phrase “post-scarcity” isn’t pointing at a thing. I do believe AI and other technologies have the potential to radically improve everyone’s standard of living. It’s just… that’s far from guaranteed. And on some level, that’s never what this was all about. The meaning of life isn’t having your material needs met. People really, deeply care about things like feeling valuable and valued, and that means having purpose and status. AI robs us of the first, and doesn’t change the fundamentally scarce nature of the latter.
I think the whole idea of “post-scarcity” basically functions to bamboozle people who stand to lose their position and power in society, their access to those positional goods, due to AI. Up-and-coming members of the “permanent underclass”. The reality is, nobody actually has a plan to make this whole post-scarcity thing happen… Like, not for you personally, I mean. Obviously, shareholders of the robot butler company will be fine…
Or will they? Honestly, my money is on “no”. Because it’s not just that there’s not a plan. There’s also not even a goal. What does this post-scarcity society actually look like? Is it just like… robot butlers and cures for cancer? Are we all hanging out making art and engaging in wholesome ? Or giga-coked-out watching ultra-porn?
A friend of mine remarked that people seem to be imagining the future with AI as like “exactly like today, except AI does all of the jobs”. Like, literally, those 5 guys outside fixing the sewers? 5 robots. You, typing up a memo at your computer? Robot typing. Dr. Oz? Dr. Robot Oz.
Transhumanism
And this leads me to another way in which it’s bullshit, which is the elephant in the room, which is transhumanism. I’m sure some people really believe in the “eternal hominid kingdom” version of post-scarcity, but try pressing someone on this and likely enough, before long you’re talking cyborgs and “uploads” and “the glorious transhuman future”. Maybe us lowly humans can actually be satisfied and sated well enough if you just give us material abundance, world peace, etc. But really, the most likely AI futures (that don’t involve AI going rogue and murdering us all) involve surpassing all human limits: intelligence, life-span, and yes -- desires.
Maybe all you need to be happy is your little corner of the universe, your cabin in the woods… what a loser. The winners are over here shipping virtual cabin-maxxing experiences that you can’t even conceive of, and we just acquired your cabin.
But who are these winners? Are they living the good life? Or are they just the ones who most aggressively embraced this new technology and the new reality it brought us? Do they have any time away from the rat race? Or are they just racing ever harder and faster to keep up with the technological curve, never stopping to wonder if they lost something along the way… their “humanity”? (lame). Their ability to ever be, for even a moment, satisfied? Their ability to feel, or experience… anything at all?
The rat race isn’t going anywhere, at least not without major changes to how we organize society. Technological post-scarcity isn’t an end to it. It’s an invitation to stick your head in the sand while we turn this treadmill up to 11. And when we do finish building Real AI and automate y’all away? Shut the fuck up and enjoy your government handouts or freemium robot butlers or whatever; the winners be over here, racing to automate their feet and keeping up with the Joneses. I hear they uploaded and they only take their bodies out for social functions now. I even heard they’re just running low-res versions of themselves in those bodies and are actually using all of their energy and compute speculating on crypto-status markets…
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