He smelled like herb.
It was the spring party evening at my daughter's school tonight, where the older kids put on a bit of a play of some kind, and there were a few songs and the like. However, as the parents were shuffling in, a father passed me and there was a very, very strong smell of herb. I would have been fine if it was weed, but it was oregano! It was like he had bathed in it and for the entire hour and a half, I could smell it, even though he was standing some five meters away from me.
Since I was at the back and short, I didn't see much of the show on stage. Not that it mattered, because I didn't understand most of what they were saying anyway, as it was in Finnish. Still, it is always nice to see kids who like to perform, performing. Since the school has a lot of music nerd kids, there are also quite a few future theatre nerds.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens in the future of performance art, because AI is already replacing actors and is getting hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify, because they don't have a filter to filter AI-generated music out - which is pathetic. But it is only going to become more mainstream and since some people are already falling in love with and committing suicide over their AI "companions", it is going to get far worse.
I think that just like how people underestimated the impact of AI on creative pursuits like art and music, they are now underestimating how quickly it will go into the physical areas through robotics. Yes, it is going to take time to crawl under the sink and unclog a drain, but there are going to be heaps of other areas that are currently done by humans and a robot driven by AI with hundreds of sensors, will do it better.
It is going to get weird.
But because of this inevitable continuous encroachment until we are obsolete, I constantly question what we are going to do with ourselves and if there will be anything to "do" at all. I can't think of anything worse than sitting around for a lifetime with nothing to do. A lot of people I talk to think that it means we can do "anything" we want, but I suspect that a lot of the joy we get comes from doing something useful, and when there is no point to do it at all, the desire to continue disappears. Many behavioural studies back this view up also.
And that is of course if we work out the economics of it. As currently, we need to earn in order to be able to consume, and the earning positions will dwindle, so consumers will dwindle. It doesn't matter how efficient a company can produce its product, if there are no consumers able to buy it. The economy is made to continually grow profits, but even now the only way to do that is to pump in inflation. When there aren't enough people earning to make businesses viable, they all collapse.
As I was saying with a client yesterday, the vast majority of the supply chains are used on relatively useless consumer goods and services so we can be entertained. Crap is dug out of the ground, processed, machined, assembled and sold, so we can watch AI-generated TikTok videos. Cut out all of the entertainment related supply, and 80% of the economy disappears. So what happens when we can't even afford food?
The numbers don't add up.
But hey, the laws of economics don't matter. And they don't really, if we are able to change the way we organise ourselves so that money is no longer the driving force required to be a consumer. I don't know what the trade will be, but there is always a cost involved.
Always a trade-off.
We have been heading on this path for decades, but it is clear that the trade-off we are making for convenience, is our humanity. We are losing the ability to interact with each other, or even build our own skillset. Yet, time and again, I hear from people who are adamant that it will all work out for them, because they assume that their job is safe, or they have enough in the bank to ride it out, like an economic recession. But this isn't a wave that will pull back to sea, it isn't going anywhere except forward.
There is no riding it out.
It is either learn to ride it as a species, or be wiped out as a species.
Taraz
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I spent many years as a librarian encouraging people to be digitally savvy and build practical hands-on skills. Know how to make and fix stuff. Choose to buy things you can repair. Be more than a mindless consumer. As with preaching political and economic ideas outside the binary of partisan talking points, I feel like Jeremiah just trying to find the remnant, with no real hope of helping the majority.
The majority are lost abd the majority of us are in the majority. I really don't see how there are going to be changes quick enough to save humanity, let alone have it thrive healthily. Survival isn't enough.
FWIW, some people swear by oregano as a treatment for the common cold, even making tinctures of it.
I’m retired now and find plenty of things to do with my time. But many of them are related to having an income to do those things.
At least some subset of the billionaire class is expecting the rest of us to die, so there’s that.
An oregano tincture sounds good for my pizza.
When the majority of us die, is the world of the billionaire better? Maybe, but I suspect that a lot of the value they derive (from the misery of others) disappears too.
You think you wouldn't mind smelling weed all the time until it becomes legal in your state and everyone is smoking it, even in public where it is still illegal. Or you work down the road from four different grow operations. 😛
The AI music on Spotify drives me crazy. I have been saying for a while now they need a way to differentiate it from real music. Some of it is actually really good and always fools me.
If the streaming platforms don't give a filter soon, they are going to lose support. I can have an AI create personalized music for me.
I wish they legalized weed here. In Finland it is treated like it is crack cocaine.
I do think that is a bit overboard, but I do think there are some drawbacks to legalization that many people don't consider. Besides the grow operations filling our playground with odor when the wind comes from the west, I don't think it would be so bad if people were just a bit more responsible and courteous. I think we know that is unlikely though.
Ai is so good that it is scary. We need real wealth to ride it out until the end of our day's and then hopefully we will figure it out for our kids...
I think 95% of people or more, don't have the wealth it will take. They are looking at it as if costs will remain equal, but the math doesn't add up on that. It is going to be heavily disrupted and that includes the investments and retirement funds.
Voltaire said it best in Candide, we must cultivate our own garden! I know that's the thing that frustrates me most about living in a city without earth underneath me is being able to afford space to grow food. I feel so detached from my food supply, even though there are markets on almost every other corner around my neighborhood!
I would love to have a fungus locker and grow all kinds of fancy mushrooms. Dabble in some sprouts and microgreens, everything indoors under LEDs. AI is still mostly absent from the front-end of my life!
I have wondered how much o could grow myself on my block of land and have come to the conclusion, not enough.
I am still yet to experience any fungus worth experiencing. One day perhaps.
Have you tried Lions Mane? Those fluffy white balls of fungus have an almost seafood-like taste to them. I typically flavor them how I would treat shrimp and then slice & grill them how I would treat steak!
Never tried it before. Looks cool though!
I remember being a theatre kid once, it is a lot of fun XD Okay maybe not so much a "kid", I was a young adult at uni by that point. Did you get up to any of that kind of nonsense in your youth? Or is this all new? :)
I got up to none of it. Two different drama teachers one at primary and one at high school tried to rope me in, but I wasn't having a bar of it. I am terrible in front of people doing that kind of thing.
Would you consider taking up amateur theatre as a hobby now?
LoL I'm the opposite, I have no problem being up in front of a crowd when I'm acting and in fact find it fun, but the second I have to be myself (public speaking etc) it's rolling panic attacks and I will avoid it at literally almost any and all cost (I say almost as there was a couple of times I got summoned as a witness for a court case and I could have done without the complete waste of time that was and the residual panic attacks that followed for the next couple of days).
It was one of many things that had to go and that I will probably never pick up again because time.
I wonder how we can balance technology and human skills to preserve that unique spark.
I think the opportunity has passed.
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STOPYou need full of your focus towards the show kids are playing to understand what they're saying or doing;
I did school for some months and hold one annual prize distribution for child who got top positions in their respected classes, I was the trainer for some shows but while they're on stage they did exceptional performance.
I was here and there because of being in the management team, I didn't understand their performances but after seeing recordings I found them performing the exact way I teach them even the way they perform was exceptional.