Technological unemployment: Difference between revisions

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The history of the world so far: we solve old problems, usually by accident. Old problem goes away and in its place we find a range up untapped, hitherto unimagined ''possibilities''.  
The history of the world so far: we solve old problems, usually by accident. Old problem goes away and in its place we find a range up untapped, hitherto unimagined ''possibilities''.  


Machines aren’t awfully good at imagining hitherto unforeseeable possibilities, and no, being good at Go or Chess doesn’t falsify that observation.<ref>Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this the {{google2|Ludic|Fallacy}}.</ref>
Machines aren’t awfully good at imagining hitherto unforeseeable possibilities, and no, being good at Go or Chess doesn’t falsify that observation.<ref>Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this the “ludic fallacy”. {{google2|Ludic|Fallacy}}.</ref>


If there were only way you ever could do things, and we had already found it, you technologists, futurologists and millenarians can get your coats. But that’s plainly nonsense. Did DARPA, when it invested the internet, have ''Gangnam Style'' in mind? Did Apple, anticipate all the applications to which you could put an iPhone? Has the internet, or the smartphone iPhone destroyed, or ''created'', commercial activity?
If there were only way you ever could do things, and we had already found it, you technologists, futurologists and millenarians can get your coats. But that’s plainly nonsense. Did DARPA, when it invested the internet, have ''Gangnam Style'' in mind? Did Apple, anticipate all the applications to which you could put an iPhone? Has the internet, or the smartphone iPhone destroyed, or ''created'', commercial activity?