Cognitive Ability and Employment in the 21st Century

[asta]

Cognitive Ability and Employment in the 21st Century

 

 

A blog post discussing the modern-day equivalents of [...]

 

Aldous Huxley, in his 1935 novel Brave New World, foresaw a world split into two basic castes: the intellectual elite, and the cognitively dull servant class. But even in Huxley’s dystopia, the Epsilons at least had a job to do, even if it was only being a beast of burden. In the real world in the 21st century, a machine can probably do that “strong back†job better and more cheaply than any human Epsilon could.

 

Fascinating. Discuss?

 

 

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[Mom0012]

I guess I'd find it more fascinating if both my kids were strongly in the "intellectually elite" category. If I bought into the author's ideas, I'd simply find it depressing.

 

 

 

[HejKatt]

OP, I know you asked for opinions of the piece but I could not get past the premises. The article contains statements like "For many people, it means a life lived in vain" and "If we assume that useful work provides a person not just with a livelihood, but with dignity and purpose and meaning..".

 

If our evaluation of people is linked to an inadequate lens (person as economic producer) and an imperfect measure (IQ test), that to me is a bigger problem than perceived impending obsolescence. I believe God made us with different gifts and varying levels of strengths, and we have inherent worth aside from them. We cannot write off sections of society; in fact I believe we will answer for how we treat "the least of these", starting from how we view them.

 

Setting aside the strong statements, I do see trends of increasing automation. But I also see trends against the latter, e.g. artisanal products, slow food movement. I also see recognition of the shortcomings of machines, e.g. they expect input in a certain form (e.g. Arstechnica article on why facial recognition failed in the Bostom manhunt) and they can be badly implemented (e.g. algorithm failure led to a stock market drop last August).

[EKS]

I expect that once we're firmly in a post-peak oil world, that the arguments put forth in the article will be irrelevant.