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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWe’re Heading into a Jobless Future, No Matter What the Government Does
Last edited Sat Aug 2, 2014, 09:42 PM - Edit history (1)
(snip)
He echoed the words of Peter Diamandis, who says that we are moving from a history of scarcity to an era of abundance. Then he noted that the technologies that make such abundance possible are allowing production of far more output using far fewer people.
On all this, Summers is right. Within two decades, we will have almost unlimited energy, food, and clean water; advances in medicine will allow us to live longer and healthier lives; robots will drive our cars, manufacture our goods, and do our chores.
There wont be much work for human beings. Self-driving cars will be commercially available by the end of this decade and will eventually displace human driversjust as automobiles displaced the horse and buggyand will eliminate the jobs of taxi, bus, and truck drivers. Drones will take the jobs of postmen and delivery people.
The debates of the next decade will be about whether we should allow human beings to drive at all on public roads. The pesky humans crash into each other, suffer from road rage, rush headlong into traffic jams, and need to be monitored by traffic police. Yes, we wont need traffic cops either.
(snip)
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140731045824-8451-we-re-heading-into-a-jobless-future-no-matter-what-the-government-does?_mSplash=1
There is much more on the link.
My view of the future is not so dire on this subject but it's an interesting article. I do believe this will increase the potential for shorter work weeks.
shraby
(21,946 posts)the human so the human would have spending money to buy what the robot makes for a corporation to sell.
Maybe a pay scale could be worked out so things will be equitable?
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Cut out the bureaucracy and the skimming off the top of social programs by vultures.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/rethinking-the-idea-of-a-basic-income-for-all/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/14/opinion/wheeler-minimum-income/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/02/17/guaranteed_basic_income_the_real_alternative_to_the_minimum_wage.html
edgineered
(2,101 posts)thanks for the answers.
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)leftstreet
(36,112 posts)Phlem
(6,323 posts)just want to play the devil's advocate here and say that it would tough. You can't force someone else to work for you and last time I checked, corporation's are people. There would have to be a major shift in sociology and psychology for the rest of the people to understand what has to be done and unless that happens, I don't see it taking off the ground.
My great hope is for many if not all people see the paradigm shift that needs to occur, and that we're all prepared and organized to make that happen.
I worry it could take a very long time for that to happen because of willful ignorance and the utmost adherence to long held family traditions, like "my daddy always voted Republican and so does the rest of my family!" That's why there's the GOP.
not meant to upset anyone, and used only because it exists in my "extended" family.
But I'm more on the side of "we'll make it happen".
edgineered
(2,101 posts)that we were sold on the potential for shorter work weeks, higher standard of living, more money to spend, etc, etc? It was the beginning of the computer age where mainframes could run the world if we let them. What ever became of those objectives anyway?
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)millions of people. Greed drives trying to capitalize every damn thing in this country for those holding the power and wealth. Eventually, this system is going to break. The economy and associated methodologies need to be retooled for the 21st century, but sadly many politicians in office lack the skills to do this, and many, IMO, the smarts ... and many are driven by the next dollar tossed their way. The system is failing in many areas.
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)For one thing the Computer/Robotic Age especially then and to a lesser degree today was and is prehistoric in its ultimate capability.
Increased globalization being one of those dynamics.
The world was and to a lesser degree still is economically unbalanced, that's why we have to be extremely careful with implementing any free trade agreements and it should be debated openly.
A rising tide may lift all boats but it can drown people on the beach, that's why trickle down economics never worked.
edgineered
(2,101 posts)inspires most. Fortunately some of us do not keep up with what we are being told by the media.
The title of your OP rings true in my ears. Can you provide the link? I would like to read the article.
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)Peace to you, edgineered.
joshcryer
(62,276 posts)Which things like NAFTA, CAFTA, KORUS, T-TIP, and even TPP are all symptoms of the US using slave labor to create cheap goods.
eppur_se_muova
(36,289 posts)Their real purpose was to cheerlead for unfettered survival-of-the-fittest capitalism, helped along by lots of gosh*wow*sense-of-wonder technological show&tell, eventually encouraging voters to vote against their own interests by weakening job protection and social programs. Now that all the jobs have been outsourced or automated, there's no need to maintain the pretense that technological change is exclusively beneficial.
edgineered
(2,101 posts)We stay comfortable within our own belief systems. We also believe that our memories are correct; very few people bother to re-assess anything. Changing the channel at the moment the least bit of discomfort is felt is the most extreme action we as a whole take anymore. So as you said, no need to maintain the pretense...
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)got kicked upstairs to the board of directors.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)Seems like they are off to a start in the middle East and Africa. Unemployed people cause trouble. Starving people might not obey the propaganda.
edgineered
(2,101 posts)Those who try are debunked and the sheeple find them silly.
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)the people are waking up to it and from this struggle a better world will emerge.
It won't be easy but nothing worthwhile seems to be.
joshcryer
(62,276 posts)They are mostly financial service sector leeches. Only a few of them are actually specialists and most of those are giving all their money away, anyway.
Basically, it's the difference between a Koch and a Gates, a Romney and a Buffet.
CBHagman
(16,987 posts)What's the source of the quotation?
progressoid
(49,999 posts)I found it here but don't know where it originated.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vivek-wadhwa/were-heading-into-a-jobless-future_b_5607094.html
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)airplaneman
(1,240 posts)Yes technology was going to bring the 32 hour work week and we would all have more leisure time to enjoy. Actually it really did happen but not in a fair way. There are a huge number of people working more than 40 hours a week. (I work two jobs totaling 70 hours a week and I have a friend who works two full time jobs. We have both been doing this for 20+ years.) Then there is the huge pool of the unemployed but they have no money for leisure (I have no time for leisure - heck neither I or my 80 hour a week friend have very much money either)
-Airplane
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)GeorgeGist
(25,323 posts)bhikkhu
(10,724 posts)without a whole lot of labor involved. That's been an ongoing development since at least the introduction of the mold-board plow in the 1100's. It has accelerated quite a bit in the past hundred years. Used to be a family running a farm could feed two families, food was expensive and most people were involved in agriculture. Now a family running a farm can feed hundreds, food is cheap and most people are involved in other things...
What worries me less is that people continue to enjoy the company and services of other people. If I had more money, I'd love to go out to eat more, have someone else do my taxes, work on my house, be more involved in the community and so forth. If a small minority are required to produce what most people need, then what is left is the fair distribution of income; the result of a fair distribution is a reasonably prosperous society where people still have plenty to do.
eppur_se_muova
(36,289 posts)(I know, I know -- so she can be paid 23% less. It's a rhetorical question.)
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)Response to eppur_se_muova (Reply #24)
1000words This message was self-deleted by its author.
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)eppur_se_muova
(36,289 posts)edgineered
(2,101 posts)First he wanted a bot with two vests, but his writing on the order form was bad. Now they had a bot with breasts. Should he use pocket protectors or pasties now? It was a real dilemma. He decided to just 'bot'y paint her. He told the dyslexic artist to cover them up, maybe put a vine on her breast. The problem was he wrote down 'vein' in his notes which created another problem.
In an attempt to please the boss he explained that a defective bot is only worth 55 cents on the dollar as compared to a perfect bot getting the whole 77 cents. In a brief conference they agreed to use the $18 they saved every week on payroll for something meaningful instead of seeing it wasted on clothes or kids.
I hope this (sarcasm) helps to explain things???
cstanleytech
(26,319 posts)also the flying cars and the FTL drive.
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)Mr.Bill
(24,319 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)It was made into tv series which I'd never seen in 2011. But it was in the UK. And it was for entertainment, although Wikipedia describes it as a documentary series. What I found there is critical of it, but still interesting.
Just putting the whole thing here for the DU to read, Wikipedia is not copyrighted. There are a lot of links following the text:
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (TV series) is a 2011 BBC documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis.[1] The series argues that computers have failed to liberate humanity and instead have "distorted and simplified our view of the world around us".[2] The title is taken from the 1967 poem of the same name by Richard Brautigan.[3] The first of three episodes aired on Monday 23 May 2011 at 9pm on BBC2.
Episodes
Love and Power
In the first episode, Curtis tracks the effects of Ayn Rand's ideas on American financial markets, particularly via the influence on Alan Greenspan.
Ayn Rand was born in Russia and moved to America in 1928. She worked for Cecil B. DeMille, where she received inspiration for what would later become The Fountainhead. Later, she moved to New York and set up a reading group called The Collective where they considered her work. On advice from a friend, Greenspan (then a logical positivist) joined The Collective.
When published, although critically savaged, Rand's Objectivist ideas were popular and influenced people working in the technology sector of California. The Californian Ideology, a techno-utopian belief that computer networks could measure, control and self-stabilise societies, without hierarchical political control, and that people could become 'Randian heroes', only working for their own happiness, became widespread in Silicon Valley.
Rand entered into an affair with Nathaniel Branden, another married person in The Collective, which she proposed to justify in terms of her value of "rationality", and with the approval of his wife. After several years, the affair ended violently and it was revealed to the rest of The Collective, which broke up. Rand ended up alone in her New York apartment, although Greenspan continued to visit.
Greenspan entered government in the 70s, and became Chairman of the Federal Reserve. In 1992 he visited the newly elected Bill Clinton. He persuaded him to let the markets grow, cut taxes, and to let the markets stabilise themselves with computer technology, to create the New Economy. This involved using computer models to predict risks and hedge against them, in accordance with the Californian Ideology. However, by 1996, the production figures had failed to increase, but profits were nevertheless increasing; and Greenspan suggested that it wasn't working. After political attacks from all sides, Greenspan changed his mind and decided that perhaps the New Economy was real, but that it couldn't be measured using normal economic measures, and so the apparent boom continued.
In 1994 Carmen Hermosillo published a widely influential essay online, "Pandora's Vox: On Community in Cyberspace",[4] and it began to be argued that the result of computer networks had led to, not a reduction in hierarchy, but actually a commodification of personality and a complex transfer of power and information to companies.
Although the Asian miracle had led to long-term growth in South Korea and other countries Joseph Stiglitz began warning that the withdrawing of foreign financial investment from the Far Eastern economies could cause devastation there. However, he was unable to warn the president, being blocked by Robert Rubin, who feared damage to financial interests.
The 1997 Asian financial crisis began as the property bubble in the Far East began to burst in Thailand, causing large financial losses in those countries that greatly affected foreign investors. While Bill Clinton was preoccupied with the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Robert Rubin took control of foreign policy and forced loans onto the affected countries. However, after each country agreed to IMF bailout loans, foreign investors immediately withdrew their money, leaving the tax payers with enormous debts and triggering massive economic disasters.
After his handling of the economic effects of 9/11 Alan Greenspan became more important, and in the wake of the Enron scandal he cut interest rates to stimulate the economy. Unusually, this ostensibly failed to cause inflation. It seemed that the New Economy was working to stabilise the economy.
However, in reality, to avoid a repeat of the earlier collapse, China's Politburo had decided to manage America's economy via similar techniques to those used by America on the other Far Eastern countries; by keeping China's exchange rate artificially low, they sold cheap goods to America, and with the proceeds, had bought American bonds. The money flooding into America permitted massive loans to be available to those that would previously be considered too risky. The belief in America was that computers could stabilise and hedge the lending of the money. This permitted lending beyond the point that was actually sustainable. The high level of loan defaulting led ultimately to the 2008 collapse due to a similar housing bubble that the Far Eastern countries had previously faced.
Curtis ends the piece by pointing out that not only had the idea of market stability failed to be borne out in practice, but that the Californian Ideology had also been unable to stabilise it; indeed the ideology has not led to people being Randian heroes but in fact trapped them into a rigid system of control from which they are unable to escape.
The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts
In the 1960s, an idea penetrated deep into the public imagination that nature is a self-regulating ecosystem, there is a natural order," Curtis says. "The trouble is, it's not true as many ecologists have shown, nature is never stable, it's always changing.
This episode investigates how machine ideas such as cybernetics and systems theory were applied to natural ecosystems, and how this relates to the false idea that there is a balance of nature. Cybernetics has been applied to human beings to attempt to build societies without central control, self organising networks built of people, based on a fantasy view of nature.
Arthur Tansley had a dream where he shot his wife. He wanted to know what it meant, so he studied Sigmund Freud. However, one part of Freud's theory was that the human brain was an electrical machine. Tansley became convinced that, as the brain was interconnected, so was the whole of the natural world, in networks he called ecosystems, which he believed were inherently self-stable and self-correcting and which regulated nature as if it were a machine.
Jay Forrester was an early pioneer in cybernetic systems, who believed that brains, cities and even societies live in networks of feedback loops that control them, and he thought that computers could determine the effects of the feedback loops. Cybernetics therefore viewed humans as nodes in networks, as machines.
The ecology movement adopted this idea also and viewed the natural world as systems as it explained how the natural system could stabilise the natural world, via natural feedback loops.
Norbert Wiener laid out the position that humans, machines and ecology are simply nodes in a network in his book Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, and this book became the bible of cybernetics.
Howard T. Odum
Howard T. Odum and Eugene Odum were brothers who were both ecologists. Howard collected data from ecological systems and built electronic networks to simulate them. His brother Eugene then took these ideas to make them the heart of ecology, and the hypothesis then became a certainty. However, they had distorted the idea, and simplified the data to an extraordinary degree. That ecology was balanced became an unexamined and unscientific assumption.
Buckminster Fuller
Meanwhile, in the 1960s Buckminster Fuller invented a radically new kind of structure, the geodesic dome which emulated ecosystems by being made of highly connected, relatively weak parts. His other system based ideas inspired the Counterculture movement. Communes of people considering themselves as nodes in a network, without hierarchy, and applied feedback to try to control and stabilise their societies, and used his domes as habitats. These societies mostly broke up within 3 years.
Also in the 1960s Stewart Brand filmed a demonstration of a networked computer system with a graphics display, mouse and keyboard that he believed would save the world by empowering people, in a similar way to the communes, to be free as individuals.
In 1967 Richard Brautigan published the poetry work All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace which called for a cybernetic ecological utopia consisting of a fusion of computers and mammals living in perfect harmony and stability. This part of the documentary appears to borrow from, or the arguments closely echoed, in Andrew Kirk's 2007 environmental history of the California appropriate technology movement and Stewart Brand, "Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catolog and American Environmentalism".
By the 1970s new problems such as overpopulation, limited natural resources and pollution that couldn't be solved by normal hierarchical systems had arrived. Jay Forrester stated that he knew how to solve this, and applied systems theory to the problem and drew a cybernetic system diagram for the world. This was turned into a computer model, which predicted population collapse. This became the basis of the model that was used by the Club of Rome, and the findings from this were published in The Limits to Growth. Forrester then argued for zero growth, to maintain a steady state stable equilibrium within the capacity of the Earth.
Jan Smuts
However, this was opposed by many people within the environmental movement, since the model didn't allow for people to change their values to stabilise the world, and they argued that the model tried to maintain and enforce the current political hierarchy. Arthur Tansley who had invented the term ecosystem, had once accused Field Marshal Jan Smuts of the abuse of vegetational concepts. Smuts had invented a philosophy called holism, where everyone had a 'rightful place', which was to be managed by white races. The 70s protestors claimed that the same conceptual abuse of the supposed natural order was occurring, that it was really being used for political control.
At the time, there was a general belief in the stability of natural systems. However cracks started to appear when a study was made of predator-prey relationship of wolf and elks. It was found that wild population swings had occurred over centuries. Other studies then found huge variations, and a significant lack of homeostasis in natural systems. George Van Dyne then tried to build a computer model, to try to simulate a complete ecosystem based on extensive real-world data, so as to show how the stability of natural systems actually worked. To his surprise the computer model did not stabilize like the Odums' electrical model had. The reason for this lack of stabilization was that he had used extensive data which more accurately reflected reality whereas the Odums and other previous ecologists had "ruthlessly simplified nature." The scientific idea had thus been shown to fail, but the popular idea remained, and even grew as it apparently offered the possibility of a new egalitarian world order.
In 2003, a wave of spontaneous revolutions swept through Asia and Europe. Coordinated only by the internet, nobody seemed to be in overall charge, and no overall aims except self-determination and freedom were apparent. This seemed to justify the beliefs of the computer utopians.
However, the freedom from these revolutions in fact lasted for only a short time. Curtis compared them with the hippie communes, all of which had broken up within three years at the most, by "the very thing that was supposed to have been banished: power." Aggressive members of the group began to bully the weaker ones, who were unable to band together in their own defence because formal power structures had been prohibited by the commune's rules, and even intervention against bullying by benevolent individuals was discouraged.
Adam Curtis closes the piece by stating that it has become apparent that while the self-organising network is good at organising change, it is much less good at what comes next; networks leave people helpless in the face of people already in power in the world.
The Monkey In The Machine and the Machine in the Monkey
This programme looked into the selfish gene theory which holds that humans are machines controlled by genes which was invented by William Hamilton. Adam Curtis also covered the source of ethnic conflict that was created by Belgian colonialism's artificial creation of a racial divide and the ensuing slaughter that occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is a source of raw material for computers and cell phones.
William Hamilton went to Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of the Congo while the Second Congo War was raging. He went there to collect Chimpanzee faeces to test his theory that HIV was due to a medical mistake. Unfortunately he caught malaria, for which he took aspirin, which caused a haemorrhage and he died. However, his selfish gene theory lived on.
In 1960 Congo had become independent from Belgium, but governance promptly collapsed, and towns became battle grounds as soldiers fought for control of the mines. America and the Belgians organised a coup and the elected leader, Patrice Lumumba, was kidnapped and executed, creating chaos. The Western mining operations were largely unaffected, however.
Bill Hamilton was a solitary man, and he saw everything through the lens of Darwin's theory of evolution. When he wanted to know why some ants and humans gave up their life for others, he went to Waterloo station and stared at humans for hours, and looked for patterns. In 1963 he realised that most of the behaviours of humans was due to genes, and looking at the humans from the genes' point of view. Humans were machines that were only important for carrying genes, and that it made sense for a gene to sacrifice a human if it meant that another copy of the gene elsewhere would prosper.
In the 1930s Armand Denis made films that told the world about Africa. However, his documentary gave fanciful stories about Rwanda's Tutsis being a noble ruling elite originally from Egypt, whereas the Hutus were a peasant race. In reality they were racially the same and the Belgian rulers had ruthlessly exploited the myth. But when it came to create independence, liberal Belgians felt guilty, and decided that the Hutus should overthrow the Tutsi rule. This led to a blood bath, as the Tutsis were then seen as aliens and were slaughtered.
John von Neumann in the 1940s
In 1967 American George R. Price went to London after reading Hamilton's little known papers and discovering that he was already familiar with the equations, that they were the equations of computers. He was able to show that the equations explained murder, warfare, suicide, goodness, spite, since these behaviours could help the genes. John von Neumann had invented self-reproducing machines, but Price was able to show that the self-reproducing machines were already in existence, that humans were the machines.
This had a bad effect on Price, and Price began to believe that these equations had been given to him by God, even though the equations disproved the existence of God.
In Congo, a civil war was ongoing, and Dian Fossey, who was researching gorillas was captured. She escaped and created a new camp high up on a mountain in Rwanda, where she continued to study gorillas. She tried to completely protect the gorillas, which were very susceptible to human diseases, and with the best of intentions, terrorised the local people and became hated.
In 1973, after converting to extreme Christianity, as a last chance to disprove the selfish gene theories' gloomy conclusions Price decides to start helping poor and homeless people all his possessions in acts of pure altruism, influenced and inspired by Christian religion.
In the Congo, Mobutu Sese Seko changed the Congo's name to Zaire and looted millions of dollars and let mines and industries collapse, killed his opponents and stopped a liberal democracy from forming.
While this was happening, at Fossey's camp, Digit, her favourite gorilla had been killed, and later she was too.
Price's attempt to disprove Hamilton's theory had utterly failed, and he comes to believe he is being followed by the hound of heaven. He finally reveals, in his suicide note, that these acts of altruism brought more harm than good to the lives of homeless people.
Richard Dawkins took the equations and popularised them and explains that humans are simply machines created by the selfish genes; and in a sense reinventing the immortal soul, but as computer code in the form of the genes.
In 1994 the ruling Hutu government set out to eradicate the Tutsi minority. This was explained as incomprehensible ancient rivalry by the Western press. In reality it was due to the Belgian myth created during the colonial rule. Western agencies got involved, and the Tutsi fought back creating chaos. Many flooded across the border into Zaire, and the Tutsi invaded the refuge camps to get revenge. Mobutu fell from power. Troops arrived from many countries, allegedly to help, but in reality to gain access to the country's natural resources, used to produce consumer goods for the west. 4.5 million people died.
Hamilton by this point was well-honoured. However, by now he supported eugenics. He heard a story that HIV had been created from an accident with a polio vaccine, which it was thought could have been infected with a chimp virus. This supported his idea that modern medicine could be negative as he thought medicine opposed the logic of the genes. So he travelled to eastern Congo to look for the virus, through the midst of the murder and chaos. He died, and later research disproved the idea that HIV had come from a medical accident.
Curtis ends the piece by saying that Hamilton's ideas that humans are computers controlled by the genes have been accepted. But he asks whether we have accepted a fatalistic philosophy that humans are helpless computers to explain and excuse the fact that, as in the Congo, we are unable to improve and change the world.
Interviews and reviews
In May 2011, Adam Curtis was interviewed about the series by Katharine Viner in The Guardian,[5] by the Register[6] and by Little Atoms.[7]
Catherine Gee at the Daily Telegraph said that what Adam Curtis "reveals is the dangers of human beings at their most selfish and self-satisfying. Showing no compassion or consideration for your fellow human beings creates a chasm between those able to walk over others and those too considerate or too short-sighted to do so."[8]
John Preston also reviewed the first episode, and said that although it showed flashes of brilliance it had an "infuriating glibness too as the web of connectedness became ever more stretched. No one could dispute that Curtis has got a very big bite indeed. But what about the chewing, you ask. There wasnt any or nothing like enough of it to prevent a bad case of mental indigestion."[9]
Andrew Anthony published a review in The Observer and The Guardian, and commented on the central premise that we had been made to "believe we could create a stable world that would last for ever" but that he doesn't "recall ever believing that 'we' could create a stable world that would last for ever", and noted that: "For the film-maker there seems to be an objective reality that a determined individual can penetrate if he is willing to challenge the confining chimeras of markets and machines. Forget the internet tycoons. The Randian hero is Curtis himself."[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_%28TV_series%29
My objections fall in the realms of the environment and human rights. The ecosystem cannot support this as such things are made with toxic materials that not only harm humans but the rest of the planet's life.
IMO, there will be a more stratified society, ruled by a minority who will be priviledged to get the benefits of this technology and those who will be required to work as robots... just like now. And will be discarded as they are now, when their ability to work is over.
I don't see equality coming out of this, and not because I wouldn't want to see persons who want to live that way get a chance. Perhaps their life could help life on Earth survive.
There is another aspect of which Kaku goes into, of post-human cyborg creations that contain data from the humans who are granted such.
They'll have little in common with humans and other creatures by their very nature. They will consume less in terms of food but organize to keep their supply of what they need to live indefinitely at all costs for their group.
In the video Kaku discussed the possibility of living forever in these bodies and the group of scientists, I presume, and all were very young, cheered. IDK if they thought or cared about the potential loss of the spectrum of things that we consider living.
In other words, this may not be benign for all of Earth. But then, look at what we are doing now.
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)Bill Hamilton was a solitary man, and he saw everything through the lens of Darwin's theory of evolution. When he wanted to know why some ants and humans gave up their life for others, he went to Waterloo station and stared at humans for hours, and looked for patterns. In 1963 he realised that most of the behaviours of humans was due to genes, and looking at the humans from the genes' point of view. Humans were machines that were only important for carrying genes, and that it made sense for a gene to sacrifice a human if it meant that another copy of the gene elsewhere would prosper.
logic dictates the largest possible pool of genes would more likely insure survival of the human species across all lines of race and species.
So I believe there is something more to self-sacrifice than saving another gene copy.
Peace to you.
SummerSnow
(12,608 posts)self serving cashiers...replaced human cashiers
robots replace teachers
your man
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)a2liberal
(1,524 posts)A great short story about a workless future: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)Thanks for the link, a2liberal.
a2liberal
(1,524 posts)Crabby Appleton
(5,231 posts)published in 1952, he describes this new world remarkably well.