Thank you for the nod to Metamorphosis of the Prime Intellect! I’ve been meaning to revisit it for dog’s years and now I have the impetus :) Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom comes to mind, too [0]…
I think you nailed it with respect to the fading magic of scientific culture, and the power of shared purpose to gloss over social differences.
Even as a plot device, it feels like the notion that {solving material/energetic needs solves existential needs} feels of a piece with a very particular, commoditized, late-industrial type of social climate. That “tea, Earl Grey, hot” would mean the same thing every time, down to the molecule—to an appreciator of tea, no less—always struck me as a dismal proposition.
Everywhere I look, though, I feel like, as soon as one source of friction gets greased, people forge right ahead and find (or create) a new site of friction.
Food security’s largely solved? What a challenge dieting can be! Not to mention toxins and gluten and agricultural monoculture and the livestock’s moral standing!
Magic robot writes all my code for me? Filthy BigAI, limiting my tokenmaxxing strategy to only billions of words of thought per week! And they want me to pay them an amount approaching the cost of a shared desk in an office?! Plus, the robot sometimes makes mistakes that require me to eyeroll _read_ the code…
Or, more benignly: I think of my skater friends. No sooner do they nail one demanding or stupid trick, than they’re reshuffling the obstacles and pushing their flips an extra revolution. A 4-minute mile was revolutionary, now it’s routine. Everest became packaged, so the wealthy seek out lesser but unconquered peaks [1].
No, we’ll have no problem finding and inventing friction and forming ad hoc communities accordingly. To the extent the friction is collectively-initiated rather than imposed by Nature red in tooth and claw, I’d say that’s probably a blessing—just as the unifying friction of the scientific frontier is more wholesome than the unifying friction of war or siege or famine.
> But a convincing replica of art might be all we need to sabotage the real deal, either through spam or demotivating the novice artists.
I share your worry here. I try to reassure myself on both points. On spam, I tell myself that breadth-of-attention isn’t the same as quality-of-attention: I’d imagine orders of magnitude more humans know Justin Bieber’s work than have ever known Mozart’s 6th. And as far as demotivation: I tell myself the frontier has always been a lonely place to operate. Great artists famously die poor and unknown: their urge, their obsession to create, seems to be almost possessing; to irrational degrees. Most people follow, a few lead; the greats in the past did so at even higher cost than those today.
Thank you for your thoughtful writing, here and around HN. Browsing through your comments you seem completely lovely and I’d love to invite you for a meal if we ever find ourselves in the same part of the world :)
[0] in which our hero bemoans his flagging stock of Whuffie. In Kissimmee. https://craphound.com/down/Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_t...
> in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn’t starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented—your personal capital with your friends and neighbors—you more accurately gauged your success.
[1] e.g. https://archive.is/9nuSv (Bloomberg)
I think you nailed it with respect to the fading magic of scientific culture, and the power of shared purpose to gloss over social differences.
Even as a plot device, it feels like the notion that {solving material/energetic needs solves existential needs} feels of a piece with a very particular, commoditized, late-industrial type of social climate. That “tea, Earl Grey, hot” would mean the same thing every time, down to the molecule—to an appreciator of tea, no less—always struck me as a dismal proposition.
Everywhere I look, though, I feel like, as soon as one source of friction gets greased, people forge right ahead and find (or create) a new site of friction.
Food security’s largely solved? What a challenge dieting can be! Not to mention toxins and gluten and agricultural monoculture and the livestock’s moral standing!
Magic robot writes all my code for me? Filthy BigAI, limiting my tokenmaxxing strategy to only billions of words of thought per week! And they want me to pay them an amount approaching the cost of a shared desk in an office?! Plus, the robot sometimes makes mistakes that require me to eyeroll _read_ the code…
Or, more benignly: I think of my skater friends. No sooner do they nail one demanding or stupid trick, than they’re reshuffling the obstacles and pushing their flips an extra revolution. A 4-minute mile was revolutionary, now it’s routine. Everest became packaged, so the wealthy seek out lesser but unconquered peaks [1].
No, we’ll have no problem finding and inventing friction and forming ad hoc communities accordingly. To the extent the friction is collectively-initiated rather than imposed by Nature red in tooth and claw, I’d say that’s probably a blessing—just as the unifying friction of the scientific frontier is more wholesome than the unifying friction of war or siege or famine.
> But a convincing replica of art might be all we need to sabotage the real deal, either through spam or demotivating the novice artists.
I share your worry here. I try to reassure myself on both points. On spam, I tell myself that breadth-of-attention isn’t the same as quality-of-attention: I’d imagine orders of magnitude more humans know Justin Bieber’s work than have ever known Mozart’s 6th. And as far as demotivation: I tell myself the frontier has always been a lonely place to operate. Great artists famously die poor and unknown: their urge, their obsession to create, seems to be almost possessing; to irrational degrees. Most people follow, a few lead; the greats in the past did so at even higher cost than those today.
Thank you for your thoughtful writing, here and around HN. Browsing through your comments you seem completely lovely and I’d love to invite you for a meal if we ever find ourselves in the same part of the world :)
[0] in which our hero bemoans his flagging stock of Whuffie. In Kissimmee. https://craphound.com/down/Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_t...
> in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn’t starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented—your personal capital with your friends and neighbors—you more accurately gauged your success.
[1] e.g. https://archive.is/9nuSv (Bloomberg)