alt Hacker NewsThis argument ignores sexual selection and people's desire for status (the two are closely related). In many respects, many of us already have superabundance, in that our basic physical needs are taken care of. Yet we convince ourselves that's not enough and continue to work.
What is the object of that work, usually? The respect of others, exclusive limited resources like land, and to have highly desirable mates. These three are closely related, and that's probably not an accident. Sexual selection has likely been a powerful force in shaping our psychology.
Spending all day alone watching TikTok is low-status and doesn't get anyone's respect, so I predict that it won't actually be the thing that most people end up doing.
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The last part reminded me of this story. "Screen time is a lower class problem."
Covered in the first 2 minutes of this video:
> and to have highly desirable mates
The younger generation doesn't seem to date much, and this appears to be true in most countries.
The objects of status are quite flexible culturally, though. Cultural anthropology shows us a huge variety of ways that different cultures handle status competition. People will definitely still compete for status but what that entails could look very different from our current toxic grindset culture. Much like sports often serve as a substitute outlet for the same instincts that lead to fighting or war, that social selection will find different outlets that don't have to be literal survival battles for much of the population if we can create different material and cultural conditions.
But in the absence of any human driven task that meaningfully improves well being the way to signal status will likely devolve into some form of fighting. The display of status might be narrowed to demonstrating who can kill more. Either literally kill or at best partake in some arbitrarily conceived games or intrigues designed (by AI?) to flag status.
I spend most of my day alone at work reading HN comments while women at work want to talk to me.
Nah, I'd rather read comments like yours.
> In many respects, many of us already have superabundance, in that our basic physical needs are taken care of.
They might be right now, but for most of us they aren't next month. Or next year. Or for the years after retirement
"We convince ourselves it's not enough" completely misses the fact that for most of us it isn't, past the very short term!
> In many respects, many of us already have superabundance, in that our basic physical needs are taken care of. Yet we convince ourselves that's not enough and continue to work.
Almost no one is usa has 'enough' to pay for healthcare. My daughter's nicu bill was 750k, which would've easily bankrupted me.
People at the bottom of the status hierarchy will drop out to live in simulations that give them what they wanted but couldn't get from life. After a while, they'd likely choose to suppress their memories of ever having existed outside the simulation - there's nobody in the experience machine that'll judge you for doing it. With those people gone, the people immediately above them now occupy that bottom level, and the cycle repeats.
Whoever is in charge could try to drag those people back into the real world by force, but it's hard to imagine GPT 12.2 Polaris or Claude 9 Cinematic Universe giving that the green light. The Status Game will end with a single, final winner.