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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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Sure. And at that point we are discussing hypothetical scifi futures. Like in Accelerando when the Hello Kitty artificial intelligence explains to newly created people that things like monster trucks are free and they can have as many as they want.

But I'm not very concerned about all human labor being made irrelevant soon. Maybe some portion of it. And that won't be very conformable for some people. Like English clothing makers when machine looms were first made. A hard time, but society did not collapse or suffer permanent unemployment. They only had to slaughter a small number of people to stop them from destroying clothing factories. And clothes are now a tiny fraction of the cost. I'd say a clear net good. I'm hoping when HR drones are replaced with software we can figure out how to deal with them more peacefully than British soldiers dealt with Luddites. I have been told that Excel put most accountants out of business and we navigated that without bloodshed and social upheaval.