Imagine if you will, if a group of almighty aliens gave humanity near limitless power, sci-fi replicators, and intelligent robots that could do any sort of menial or taxing job.
The experiment is to see what humanity would do in truly post scarcity, high automated life.
How would this work in the small scale such as a town? Or a whole planet? It stands to reason people like researchers, artists, and politicians would still exist but what would the layman do?
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Powerful people would seize control of the devices and tightly control them. They would live like Kings and the rest of humanity would starve.
Humans, being humans, would destroy themselves almost overnight.
But to what end? If everyone could live like Kings then why?
It's what the ruling class are doing already as we speak. Not with science fiction magic replicators but with wages. We are more productive than ever yet regular people are being conditioned to become wage slaves. Give it 50 years and we'll all be actual slaves.
Power
they want docile cattle to rule over, not people
if they can't use a crying child as a footstool and bedwarmer, they will make it so they can
If we keep creating humans, we'll keep creating scarcity.
Everytime a new technology comes along and gives the race some breathing room (higher food yields, better medicine, etc.), we quickly overpopulate ourselves back into scarcity.
Also, there is a fixed amount of land to own. It is a deflationary currency, it gains value when the population gains numbers. We might start burrowing underground to create some more room, or start living on the ocean in boats/floating cities.
Off-world colonies are the only escape.
Hmmm, so in a world of infinite resources, there is still finite space. Land, territory, housing. Even presuming people have fantastical VR programs and replicators that can recreate the illusion of whatever they want, there is still only so much real life space.
So space and room becomes valuable. How would this value be doled out among individual people?
except this is outright wrong, assuming post scarcity heavy automation and fusion power the number of people the planet can support is incredible due to arcology and its extenuation ecumenopolis. I think(?) issac arthur has a youtube video on it with some quick and dirty examples of why this is true
Video of Calhoun's famous experiment and chilling results:
Your answer is already out there. Just look at Australian aborigines. If your basic needs are met, what comes next? The basis of Trek is that humans are now highly intelligent and want to better themselves. That's not the humans where I live today in this 1st world country.....
The thing is Star Trek doesn't just cater to basic needs, which is easily achievable today.
It outright does so in a way that is universally cheap to the point of having a negligible cost, with literal replicators that can produce whatever you well like within reason from a sirloin steak to a new TV.
Add in robots to do all the housework and help people stay clean, build and maintain nice looking housing, hell, brush their bloody teeth for them.
Wouldn't those aborigines be better if they were all dressed nicely, were clean, and lived in good well kept homes?
Rampant alcoholism and other substance abuse because people feel worthless, being the idiots that they are.
Bump.
Hoping that someone might point to good theoretical examples of an "ideal" post scarcity, highly automated society.
What would probably happen: Society would have to fundamentally change to accommodate it. All jobs would come from the service industry, entertainment industry, and from scientists who will be working to reverse engineer the new technology given to them. This isn't an insignificant amount of jobs still needing to be done, but for most people that means they won't have the skills needed to do the remaining jobs or there won't be enough jobs to go around. THe solution to this would be a work week reform where all the still needed jobs like police officer and such will have a max number of hours and days a week people can work and the workload will just be spread around. Civilization would likely degenerate for the vast majority and mirror Calhoun's experiments creating huge social unrest as large swaths of society are left without purpose and without a mate.
Ideally? People use the free time to focus on whatever they are passionate in, whether that is art, or research, or whatever. Then we have large areas where these people can congregate to collaborate on such things, while most people live a techno Hobbiton. However, most people aren't driven internally so this seems like a pipe dream.
>pot scarcity
good luck with that
haven't you heard? Its 7/11 Armageddon.
try to enjoy the hell we bought with heaven
So you are talking about C O M M U N I S M.
I dunno, explore the space, duh.
You do know that an elite class will still exist in a post-scarcity society and it will wield power for its own benefit.
Well, when they have been given free housing, food and entertainment they still abuse their children, murder each other and produce nothing of worth to society. Muh noble savage meme is one of the most insidious memes to become mainstream in western thinking.
>But to what end? If everyone could live like Kings then why?
Some people have a need to be superior to others. That need can drive us to be our best, or it can drive us to sabotage our peers so we achieve more than them. Then there are those who do both, they try their very best to sabotage everyone else. It's how they measure their success.
Think of it this way, if everyone lives like kings, then the definition of "living like a king" would no longer hold the same meaning. Moving goalposts and all that.
In a society where everything is instantly replicated for you upon request, status would be given to those who had the freshest clothing. Freshest as in replicated most recently. If you could replicate your clothing every 30 minutes you'd be better than the guy who only replicates his clothes once a day. People may try to place restrictions or limitations, or some form of control on how often people could replicate clothing, in order for them to maintain that status quo of their clothes being freshly replicated every 30 minutes, and everyone else only once a day. All to satisfy their egos and sense of personal achievement.
Post scarcity isn't a resource problem, it's a psychological/idealogical one.
I think its less likely they will post restrictions and more likely the elite will figure out ways to live even more extravagantly.
If you think about it today, the average person DOES live like a medieval king. Refrigerators stocked with food we can get at any time, cool air conditioned housing, a washing machine, a microwave, grocery stores filled with food and spices on demand, media entertainment. This would have made Kings jealous in the past.
In turn, it can be said that the elite of today live like Gods. Flying in jets upon the sky drinking the finest nectar and spirits, traveling from one edge of the world to the other in a day, plucking beautiful women for their beds from around the world whenever they want.
While I agree in spirit that the elite will find ways to surpass the dross, its more likely they'll push the boundaries rather than limit others.
To keep the humans optimised for tasks that they would have to complete if the automised machines should ever fail they should all be forced to attend highly detailed simulations of various incidents and disasters throughout history including theoretical scenarios and math/science exams for emergencies and medicine etc etc coupled with a time dialstion drug we may even be able to pump 1000 years of learning into a man/woman in 8 hours using the right simulation hardware.
Time dialation drug***
Also if the subject was willing of course...2.5 petaflops per brain user...
Rise of the electric eldars.
Praise the omnissiah.
>Some people have a need to be superior to others.
Psychopaths, yes. However much of their power stems from employees not being free to leave. In a post scarcity world they would, leaving the psychopaths stranded.
Hopefully with CRiSPR/Cas9 their genes will be deleted from the gene pool.
Oh and I am still celebrating having witnessed against my psychopathic former boss in a trial. It just feels fantastic.
>Using the right combination of animals you can take the DNA and modify it slightly to make fucking dragons.
>Psychopaths will be removed from the genepool.
No user...
CRISPr is a psychopaths dream.
>Powerful people would seize control of the devices and tightly control them. They would live like Kings and the rest of humanity would starve.
/thread
We can tell by how people already live. Right now people have access to almost all human knowledge. In their increasing free time, they could learn a new language, learn to paint or code, read novels, truly enrich themselves.
But we know they dont. They dick around, watch porn and drink beer.
>pump 1000 years of learning into a man/woman in 8 hours using the right simulation hardware.
Ever see what happens to an overclocked computer without proper cooling?
>Imagine if you will
alright so lets play pretend
tg
you first-onlykidding!