Complex Numbers

Idle Ideals

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/08/virtual-reality-religion-robo...

The meaning of life in a world without work

Okay, I'm thinking, this should be good. I haven't done "work" in about a decade, and I almost never miss it.

As technology renders jobs obsolete, what will keep us busy? Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari examines ‘the useless class’ and a new quest for purpose

"Usefulness" is overrated, anyway. So is "purpose."

The same technology that renders humans useless might also make it feasible to feed and support the unemployable masses through some scheme of universal basic income. The real problem will then be to keep the masses occupied and content.

I'm not going to turn this post into a discussion of UBI. Just know that I'm sure that it has positives and negatives, and I'm even more sure that here in the US, we will fuck it up royally.

People must engage in purposeful activities, or they go crazy. So what will the useless class do all day?

Must we? Must we, really? I guess if that's true, then I'm officially crazy. Well, that shouldn't come as any surprise.

One answer might be computer games. Economically redundant people might spend increasing amounts of time within 3D virtual reality worlds, which would provide them with far more excitement and emotional engagement than the “real world” outside.

Ah. Well, that explains me.

This, in fact, is a very old solution. For thousands of years, billions of people have found meaning in playing virtual reality games. In the past, we have called these virtual reality games “religions”.

Ooooooh! BURN.

Muslims and Christians go through life trying to gain points in their favorite virtual reality game. If you pray every day, you get points. If you forget to pray, you lose points. If by the end of your life you gain enough points, then after you die you go to the next level of the game (aka heaven).

Okay, look, I'm no fan of organized religion, but even I think this may be taking things a bit too far.

The idea of finding meaning in life by playing virtual reality games is of course common not just to religions, but also to secular ideologies and lifestyles. Consumerism too is a virtual reality game. You gain points by acquiring new cars, buying expensive brands and taking vacations abroad, and if you have more points than everybody else, you tell yourself you won the game.

Okay, now you're stretching. Fine, I can see that some people think of things this way, but I'm not convinced.

In the end, the real action always takes place inside the human brain. Does it matter whether the neurons are stimulated by observing pixels on a computer screen, by looking outside the windows of a Caribbean resort, or by seeing heaven in our mind’s eyes? In all cases, the meaning we ascribe to what we see is generated by our own minds.

Saved. Now the author has come back around to what I've been saying for a long time: there is no meaning to life, save that which we impose upon it.

In any case, the end of work will not necessarily mean the end of meaning, because meaning is generated by imagining rather than by working. Work is essential for meaning only according to some ideologies and lifestyles. Eighteenth-century English country squires, present-day ultra-orthodox Jews, and children in all cultures and eras have found a lot of interest and meaning in life even without working. People in 2050 will probably be able to play deeper games and to construct more complex virtual worlds than in any previous time in history.

And that is an interesting point. I've never been on board with the Protestant work ethic, partly because I've never been Protestant, and partly because to me, the only purpose of work is to accumulate enough money to live with all the basic necessities and a few luxuries (with the luxuries becoming more and more important with time).

Problem is this: Back in the 1970s, when computers started to insert themselves into our daily lives, promises were made. These promises took the form of something like: "As computers become more prevalent, our productivity will increase. Paperwork will become a thing of the past, and we could work for no more than 10 hours a week."

Oh, you sweet summer disco children... how wrong you were. Okay, maybe paperwork has become more electronic, but instead of maintaining our 1970s productivity with a reduction in time spent working, we've expected greater and greater productivity... and, worse, we're expected to work more than the standard 40 hours a week to get shit done.

So I take projections like this with a grain of salt. Society, especially a society as rooted in Puritanism and work-worship as ours is, won't let its members have significant downtime. "Idle hands do the devil's work," as the saying goes. No, this utopian vision of the future will never pan out.

Besides, we probably won't be around long enough to give it a chance to do so.