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random3 | 13 days ago

arguably the history of humanity was about automating humanity.

- teeth and nails with knives (in various shapes from bones to steel)

- feet with carriages and bicycles and cars

- hands with mills and factories on steam engines to industrial robots

Literaly every automation was meant to help humans somehow so, this naturally entailed an automation of some human function.

This automation is an automation of the human brain.

While the "definition" of what's human doesn't end here (feelings, etc.) , the utility does.

With loss of utility comes loss of benefits.

Mainly your ability to differentiate as a function of effort (physical or intellectual) gets diminished to 0. This poses some concerns wrt to ability to achieve goals and apsirations - like buying that house at some point or ensuring your childrens future, potentially vanish for large swaths of the population — the "unfortunates" - which are these it's hard to tell, but arguably the level of current resources (assets) becomes a better indicator of the future for generations to come, with work becoming less to none.

By freezing utility based on own effort you arguably freeze the structure of society in time. So yes, every instance sucked for the displaced party, but this one seems to be particularly broader (i.e. wider splash damage)

discuss

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NonHyloMorph|13 days ago

The term you're looking for is externalisation not automation. Check out "the fault of epimetheus"; & on the alienation of the machine by automation ca. 19late7s one of its intellectual predecessors: gilbert simondon

random3|13 days ago

Thanks, both! Glad to get the explicit names for the things I'm "gesticulating" at. I haven't done any explicit reading on the topic, except for adjacent stuff like Analogia (Dyson), The coming wave (Suleyman) and saw talk by Terry Winograd that I thought was on point https://www.youtube.com/live/LcvYYXdXF8E. I have and do want to read Superintelligence and will check out both Stiegler and Simondon.

plastic-enjoyer|13 days ago

I mean, if he is a reader of Nick Land, automation may be right.