Changing Humanity's Tipping Point

I propose that widespread automation, meaning robots and intelligences working in place of us humans, pushes us out of a tipping point that remained stable for a long time - until we created, through our own dedication, entities that would work for us, increasingly, in more areas.

We were well-balanced in raising children for the labor market, obedient and creative. Marriages maintaining procreation without interrupting the flow of workers going to work. The elderly not bothering those who work too much. We could call this set of behaviors a stable equilibrium.

Parents themselves, always out of the house going to work early, encourage children who, also early on, sit down to study, which is, not coincidentally, a preparation for work just ahead.

If we don't write about this, we can easily think that this -is- life. We get used to it. We balance ourselves.

Even logic, beyond intuition, manages to sense that our encephalic mass is much more elastic than just settling into a single type of social equilibrium. It can adapt to many types of equilibria, can't it? There is no right answer, or right balance, for the trillion synaptic connections that each of us has. Plus the urge to connect. Our set of systems.

These previous paragraphs try to prepare us to conclude that nothing prevents another equilibrium from appearing, to take the place of this previous balance that accommodated us for so long.

But if we created so much in the balance of work, with permanent innovations, why now would the innovation of automation change our social equilibrium? Wouldn't it just be another innovation within the social equilibrium, without changing our social balance, like the innovations of the car, telephone, internet (et cetera) were?

We invented the car and didn't change the balance of studying, working, retiring. Ditto for the telephone. Ditto for the internet (et cetera).

Why would widespread automation change our equilibrium?

I think it changes it.

Why?

Because it breaks with the need for us to work. For real this time.

If this hypothesis is correct, what will this new equilibrium look like?

It doesn't make much difference trying to predict a potential new equilibrium. It just happens. It establishes itself. Futurist texts, more or less correct, rarely manage to influence the new tipping point.

The new tipping point depends very little on abstractions about how it will occur, and much more on the balance of forces that will happen due to it no longer being necessary to work - and, therefore, no longer being necessary to study in order to work; and, therefore, no longer being necessary to leave the elderly in ostracism; and a thousand other interactions of social and cultural forces.

But, for sport, we can try to imagine the direction, who knows at least that much, of this new tipping point.

The basis of the reasoning is that it is no longer necessary to work, or barely work at all, to obtain the thousands of things that increasingly more machines, robots, and artificial intelligences make on their own, for our enjoyment.

We can discard a natural pessimism when facing changes to make the text less predictable, jumping straight into the new future. Children are very good at this: their new brains embrace the new, while previous generations often lament the new.

What will this new tipping point look like, using the novelty-embracing viewpoint of new brains?

The image of grapes being automatically served to us humans, lying down and relaxed, is only new due to the presence of the robot and the theoretical universalization of this happening to everyone.

Culturally, however, we know the image of a human being treated with all possible perks, without the need for much, or any, work in return.

Culturally, this image resembles an (infinitely) wealthy heir.

Except that instead of being served by other humans, now any human would be served by countless robots.

We would be - will we be? - heirs to the generations that, even today, work tirelessly to set up this kind of future.

It matters more to know that this scenario is not new, only the universalization of the scenario is new.

What would a culture be like where we can all be heirs to infinite abundance?

This is one way of looking at automation at a very high degree of application, follow my reasoning with me: like an apple tree produces apples without the need for our intervention, merely transforming sun, water, and nutrients in the air and soil, robots and chips can, increasingly, transform sun, water, and nutrients into things that humans no longer need to work to make available.

High-degree automation works like nature: it lets things fall, "from the sky," as fruits fall from trees, nature skillfully transformed into objects and services that we want to make available.

Also like the example of the apple tree, production occurs in a self-sufficient cycle: the seed grows, creates the fruit that nourishes or falls, fungi decompose, the cycle restarts.

We can suppose that automation does a good cyclical dance with nature, increasingly, with the intelligence of humans working today.

So that the heirs, truly, are surrounded by "apple trees" that produce everything. Not just apples.

Now we reach a question point: what will we want to produce?

Even knowing that everything will be self-sufficient, automatic, what will we want to produce?

This is a more advanced question, which skips the urge we have to manage intermediate problems, such as criticizing pollution, feeling uneasy at even imagining not needing to work to have everything, among other controversies that we love to meddle with - perhaps so as not to see what lies ahead of the controversies.

Beyond the controversies, meaning, with the controversies resolved - let's suppose so we can see? -, we might not want to see what comes next.

Basically, there will be "grapes" while we stay "lying down"?

Perhaps we will begin to realize our prison of senses: sexual desire, the desire to run, play, participate in the dance that relies on the randomness of a ball on sports courts in various sports, the desire for awards, the desire to rest. (Et cetera).

We will end up realizing that our animal DNA is not ready to sit or lie down and receive "grapes" for a hundred years.

We can change our DNA. We can extend how long we live.

But in this case, with the designer's "blank page," what desires will we put into the new species we create?

I advance to this subject because the conclusion of full automation is that we will realize with even greater force that we are animals in the middle of so much abundance. Trapped in animal desires, primate, specifically human, but animal.

What if, then, we change our behavior? Our DNA, our programming, our biology?

Suppose it's possible, just for sport.

In this case, we can leave the "animal prison": desires, competing, envy, anger, sex, irony, laughing.

Who will define the new design? Certainly, consensus will be almost impossible. But someone will boldly design a new race to deal with total abundance.

No more dying, abundant food, abundant products and services.

What biology combines with this type of abundance?

A Buddhist would design a new race without desires. If there were no desires, would we even need so much automation? Would a race without desires die of hunger?

Desire can be a tool not to die of hunger.

But in a world of abundance, so much desire, so much struggle, is no longer necessary to obtain things.

Could we then greatly diminish desire?

I'll stop here, but notice the fertile ground of possibilities.

Notice, also, that my text does not secure or direct this destiny: we work, today, to have this so-called total automation, compatible with nature, meaning permanent.

I don't see humanity doing a U-turn and going back.

Nor do I see how to reconcile our animal side with total abundance - our desires will be left without real objectives - and, likewise, I don't see a new biology designer managing to design something very different from a kind of carbon robot, with almost no desire, to be relaxed amidst so many grapes, apples, abundant products and services, without needing to writhe much, with fewer hormones. The absence of desire drops the need for so much abundance, notably the brands that try to cause envy, power, all tied to great desires.

Shall we observe the transition of times?

The slow transition already offers us hints of new behaviors, every new morning. ☀️