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ShowerGrapes t1_j06k8fr wrote

Reply to comment by green_meklar in The problem isn’t AI, it’s requiring us to work to live by jamesj

>A person living all alone in an otherwise uninhabited universe would be required to either work or suffer.

we need to define what "work" is in this context. and what it isn't. we shuoldn't define it as just doing things, like hunting, or picking mushrooms or even growing your own garden. because people out of work still do things like that. they travel distances and wait in lines, they fix their flat tires and make dinner. they put together furniture and help their friends move. all of this would be considered "work" in your definition here.

the trouble is the word work has many meanings. for it to be work in this context, in what we're talking about here, you have to have an employer. your work will most likely make your employer more money than you personally make from your job. or it's work that your employer does not want to do or can't do well, so he pays you to do it.

can you spot the difference between that type of work and work where you have no employer?

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green_meklar t1_j0ab8l9 wrote

>we shuoldn't define it as just doing things, like hunting, or picking mushrooms or even growing your own garden.

Those sure sound like work to me. Why would you define 'work' so narrowly as to exclude those things? What's the criterion for excluding specifically those things?

>because people out of work still do things like that.

In that sense, everyone was 'out of work' for their entire lives up until, what, a few thousand years ago?

That seems like a bizarre notion of 'work'. It strikes me as doing prehistoric hunter/gatherers a disservice to dismiss their livelihoods as 'not real work', considering how difficult and precarious their lives were.

>for it to be work in this context, in what we're talking about here, you have to have an employer.

So then in what sense does capitalism require everyone to do that?

>can you spot the difference between that type of work and work where you have no employer?

Yes, but I think it's a strange notion of what the word 'work' means and I'm also not sure what the connection with capitalism is supposed to be.

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ShowerGrapes t1_j0abspg wrote

do ants work? do beavers? what about birds? there has to be some baseline where we can talk about work as being separate from other activities. if you define mice as having a job the whole discussion becomes ludicrous. perhaps that is the point of people making these silly arguments.

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green_meklar t1_j0r80kj wrote

>do ants work? do beavers? what about birds?

Colloquially speaking they do. Economically speaking they don't because they aren't economic agents.

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