
The Machine: On our collective efforts to save ourselves - TaylorAlexander
http://www.tlalexander.com/machine/
======
cousin_it
> _Some of the artists sell their art to people in other towns._

Ah ha! The author realized that a village full of artists selling their art to
each other would be nonsense. But didn't stop to notice that a whole world of
people like that would be just as surreal.

That's not just a minor problem, it blows the whole scheme apart. Attention
economies are always very winner-take-all, and become more so as you remove
barriers. If you relieve people of all tasks except showing off to each other,
that will create cutthroat competition for attention where only a small
minority can ever flourish. In my eyes that's much worse than the current
situation, where an uninteresting person can still become worthwhile to others
by doing necessary work.

The monumentally hard part of writing any utopia is fulfilling people's need
to be needed. Writers need to get serious about that challenge, instead of
talking about bread and circuses for the thousandth time.

~~~
ppod
>Attention economies are always very winner-take-all, and become more so as
you remove barriers. If you relieve people of all tasks except showing off to
each other, that will create cutthroat competition for attention where only a
small minority can ever flourish. In my eyes that's much worse than the
current situation, where an uninteresting person can still become worthwhile
to other people by doing necessary work.

I find this very interesting and it sounds correct to me. Did you read it
somewhere? Can you recommend anything?

~~~
cousin_it
Thank you! I can't point to a single source. There were some seed ideas, but
I've been bouncing them off people for a long time and it's morphed a lot. HN
and Reddit are great for building interesting worldviews iteratively.

------
RichardHeart
The machine already exists, it's called Shenzhen. The humans live in the
machine though. You've taken normal human commerce, removed some parts and
called it "the machine" I don't see the value. The questions of labor and
capital distribution have been debated in depth and well for thousands of
years, I don't see the value of this abstraction.

We already have the machines you describe, they just require humans in them
doing the work.

~~~
wishinghand
The value is getting the humans out of the machine, for the most part. And
from turning it from an abstraction to reality.

~~~
RichardHeart
I see that you're focused on mechatronics, so you may well be able to build
machines that replace humans at tasks, that's awesome. I think a more
automated future has already displaced a decent amnt of the work force, to see
in real time what happens, and I think the consensus is that human labor
displacement will continue. Thus there's no reason for the abstract thought
experiment, for the reality that we live in is already the one you're trying
to simulate.

Since I'm made of meat, I'd prefer you work on machines that can repair meat,
perhaps since so many discoveries are made by accident, you could accelerate
the rate accidents occur. I know some companies use giant mix and match
machines to just try things and see what works.

I'm ok with working in the factory while some other machine is figuring out
how to save my life. I prefer that to having my life not saved, but getting to
chill out and watch from a hammock on a hill the machines do my old job.

~~~
wishinghand
Actually, what I'd really like to be focused on is the availability of the
mechanism. The open-source, self-powered, free model is key to this being a
true success, rather than just decentralizing factories but requiring that we
all still work in order to gain their output.

~~~
RichardHeart
That's not accurate. The vast and overwhelming majority of all the good things
we have now is not the result of open-source or self-powered or free. It is
likely the case that for it to be a true success, it needs to be the opposite
of free. Just like nearly every other cool thing that exists. You know, like
rocket ships.

It seems like you want to solve a political/social problem, with a machine.
You'll find out what the inventors of all other machines found out. They will
be used for good, they will be used for evil, and the human politics matter
much more than the tool.

~~~
wishinghand
> it needs to be the opposite of free

It doesn't need to be. And it won't be at first, but hopefully it can
propagate in such a way that it can be. Also rocket ships is a straw man
because they couldn't (and currently can't) be free.

> They will be used for good, they will be used for evil

I agree with you here, so education and peaceful culture will be key. Also a
rapidly propagating cheap/free Machine so that it can start delivering the
needs of those who might otherwise be drawn into malign ideologies based on
inequality.

------
glangdale
40 people isn't a "small town". 40 people is a hamlet. There are likely
economies of scale for "The Machine" if it exists, so having one such machine
for 40 people is outlandish. In any case, who wants to live in a hamlet/town
of 40 people?

This whole treatment manages to ignore the entire service sector (which won't
go away because of a magical "Machine"). Unless we're also positing robot
teachers, doctors, cleaners, masseurs, ... this happily glosses over quite a
large portion of what people actually _do_ in the society we have now. Farming
and manufacturing are not what they used to be.

It's not a bad thing to think about in general, but it's so far off base that
it's a lousy starting point for a thought experiment (or an actual real-world
project).

~~~
willholloway
Agreed. We have the Machine right now, it's called China and the Midwest +
Rail/Tractor Trailer Trucks + Walmart.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Author here.

An important distinction between China and The Machine is that a group of
people can purchase and wholly own The Machine.

If you can't purchase it, you have to agree to the social contract offered by
those who do. For us that means we have to accept the state of the labor
conditions in Bangladesh for example, which I would rather not do.

This is a classic problem with capitalism.

If a group of people can purchase The Machine then they can decide for
themselves what they are willing to accept. And in general if survival is
automated and the knowledge for how to reproduce this is free, we're way less
likely to see people in far off places being exploited for manual labor.

~~~
willholloway
I agree with the goals, and one day the dream will come true. But that day
requires a breakthrough like energy to matter replication.

But I salute you, it's better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Thank you.

I agree it is a difficult challenge and I am looking at 100+ year timescales.

That said we can certainly make machines that for example recycle plastics in
to new mechanical parts and machines that grow food in a fully automated way.
But portions of The Machine are intentionally more fanciful in order to
stimulate good discussion.

------
tetraodonpuffer
besides the Machine discussion, the article also says

\----- There is no crime, because the residents know each other, have what
they need, and do not wish to steal important rare items from their community
members. ... There is no broader government with any power over them. They ask
nothing of anyone outside their village aside from peace, and so no one but a
bully can exercise power over them. \-------

don't mean to be pessimistic, but I find it very unlikely things could ever
work like this in real life. Just because "residents know each other" it does
not mean these towns will automatically become gardens of Eden. Having what
one needs has never prevented people from stepping on other people to get what
they want.

If everybody was content with having what one needs, we wouldn't need a
Machine to have a utopian society, we could set it up quite easily without it.

~~~
germinalphrase
Perhaps the desire to dominate can be turned toward benign tasks - such as
athletics.

Aldous Huxley (in "The Island") suggested rock climbing as a task perfect for
turning the will to dominate others into a benign will to dominate one's self.
As a rock climber this makes a lot of sense to me - your world becomes very
small and focused when you're on a cliff face.

~~~
notahacker
An interesting idea. Current evidence however suggests that people already
effectively living in a post scarcity world - the rich - seldom refrain from
further empire building, politics, gambling or media in order to enjoy outdoor
pursuits.

~~~
filoeleven
Is this generally true? I recall reading that the first generation does all
the things you talk about--it's how they got rich in the first place. But then
the later generations tend more towards the "trust fund baby" stereotype:
living off the wealth generated by their parents without doing much to grow
it.

~~~
ticviking
that failure mode is more what I worry about in a reality with The Machine.
What happens when we can no longer maintain it, and some major threat comes
along.

------
ue_
Leaving aside questions of if it could exist, if such a machine should exist,
in my opinion, it should be used to relieve people of work, not merely to
shift them to another job in the useless search for employment.

For too long has the capitalist replaced humans with machines and rather than
returning the saved value to the labourer he has taken it for himself.

Automation ought to benefit the workers who should no longer need to sell
their labour. Not benefit the "job creator" or "risk taker".

I think the utility of the machine could come three-fold; firstly as a way of
producing with applying very little labour, secondly as a way of providing
what would otherwise be too labour intensive to produce otherwise, thirdly as
a way of ensuring we all really are freed.

~~~
calsy
I dont know where this idea of relieving people from work came from. Humans
are workers, it's a part of our being and their wouldn't be a civilisation
without it.

The idea that everyone really just wants to put their feet up in a hammock and
relax but these damn social constructs are keeping us tied to work is crazy.
If the need to work and strive for something is taken away, I can tell you bad
things will happen.

~~~
burkaman
Just replace "work" in that comment with "jobs". It's about removing the
necessity of work, and working for other people, not getting rid of work as a
concept.

~~~
calsy
The idea of working with other people is also a part of our being. 'I scratch
your back, you scratch mine', we bond as humans by assisting each other,
that's how communities are built.

Humans have a hard time accepting people into their community who do not wish
to work simple because they don't 'feel like it', machine or no machine. It
maybe unfortunate, but people as a whole have always taken a dim view of those
who don't pull their weight in a group.

~~~
ue_
>The idea of working for other people is also a part of our being.

Poppycock. This is tired ideology used to say that humans need unjustified
authority, someone to give the product of their labour to. And it's hardly a
"you scratch mine" relationship when the boss decides who gets how much
profit, despite having little to no involvement in the labour process itself.

Working may be something humans "need" to do (even that is so far unfounded)
but the idea that we need to work for other people is exactly what was pushed
on the serfs during feudalism and it's exactly what's being pushed by the
state, the church and the owners of capital on the labourers of today.

With regard to your second point, humans may indeed have a hard time accepting
people who don't want to pull weight, but that pulling doesn't have to be done
for someone else. It can be, sure - and I feel as though many or most people
would be happy to work for collective good, for whatever motivation, but to
force someone to work in such a fashion is authoritarian. Just as being forced
to sell labour is authoritarian.

~~~
calsy
I should have said 'working with other people' not 'working for other people',
that was my point. Funny how a single word changes my entire point, whoops.

------
TaylorAlexander
Post author here. If you have any questions, ask away.

See also the reddit discussion:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Automate/comments/5o71ew/the_machin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Automate/comments/5o71ew/the_machine_to_free_us/)

~~~
uncleleech
I enjoy your vision, it's unique.

The only real question is how does the innate property of humans, greed, come
into this. Surely this machine would need some interested corporation to
construct it. Whatever company will, in essence be defunct by design and only
exist in the short-term no?

EDIT: I guess other questions emerge, why won't such a power be wielded for
capitalism, it seems pretty easy to create a false-scarcity market if only
corporations owned such a machine.

Again, this is a post-scarcity scenario so I guess the moment that any one
person not happy with keeping the status quo got their hands on one it would
all be over.

~~~
ticviking
More horrifically imagine a few Imortan Joe types seizing control of the
Machines in a large enough area and leaving everyone not useful to them to
starve.

------
sapphireblue
This is very important. It seems that the automation of labor is underexplored
due to political and economical inertia (I know that industrial robots do
somewhat improve, but they still are very costly, very proprietary and require
experts to use them. Could this be done another way? Companies like Rethink
Robotics show that maybe the answer is "yes"). There needs to be more fresh
thinking in this space.

There was an ambitious NASA project 35 years ago: a self-replicating lunar
factory
[http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/library/1982-SelfReplicat...](http://www.nss.org/settlement/moon/library/1982-SelfReplicatingLunarFactory.pdf)
. The engineers tried to design a manufacturing system aiming for almost full
parts closure. The project was too ambitious (e.g. it looked optimistically at
AI's capabilities), and didn't went past design study stage then;

But maybe now, 35 years later, the technology is good enough for something
similar to be viable?

------
philipkglass
I've read a lot of SF with post-scarcity futures and thought a lot about what
approximations to post-scarcity might be available within the real constraints
of physics and engineering. I've yet to see a plausible solution to the
problem of violence.

In the excellent Culture novels of Iain M. Banks, it was safe to have self-
replicating machines and titanic energy sources all over the place, because
omniscient and omni-benevolent AI watched over everything. The Minds could
prevent violence far faster than biological intelligence could initiate it.
Strong, friendly AI _and_ physically impossible Space Opera Science are
required to prevent violence this way.

Authors Marshall Brain and Alastair Reynolds (in _Manna_ and the _Poseidon 's
Children_ trilogy) were more respectful of physics but creepier when they
posited that you could use machine surveillance plus controls wired directly
into the human central nervous system to interrupt violent actions. Even
discounting the creepy-factor, even assuming the biomedical engineering is
possible, it's hard to see how you reach 100% global participation in a scheme
like that.

No doubt crime rates will decline if everyone grows up in a safe, stable
environment and never faces hunger or other serious unmet needs as adults. But
there are other outbursts of violence that have nothing to do with poverty.
Someone who leaves the UK to join ISIS in Syria isn't doing it because they
are hungry. Someone who shoots their ex-spouse and a bunch of the ex-spouse's
coworkers isn't doing it because they want better clothing. Universal
prosperity isn't going to completely eliminate irrational violence. It's going
to be interesting times indeed if someone with an unhinged grudge can fab up a
jug of nerve gas just as easily as Americans today can buy firearms.

------
exratione
I think the general consensus in the futurist community is that this vision
requires molecular nanotechnology, which means first sorting out the basics of
mechanosynthesis in carbon and simple nanoforges. There are groups working on
the foundation technologies, but not many of them in a deliberative way with
nanoforges as a destination (E.g. Zyvex).

Translating the section of the present human-based manufacturing industry
needed to support a modern village into a box that can be built and maintained
by a much, much smaller industry seems hard to do unless said box is something
very similar to a nanoforge.

There are important differences between what you can do with a mature general
purpose rapid prototyping system and a nanoforge. Foodstuffs directly from raw
feedstock, for example. But this has all been debated at great length in
sections of the transhumanist community for decades now. There is a lot of
good writing on this topic out there to be discovered if you go looking.

~~~
lsparrish
I'm not sure why people seem so convinced that MNT is a hard requirement here.
To be sure there are some components that require fine micrometer to nanometer
level precision, but existing mechanical and/or chemical approaches do work,
otherwise we wouldn't have things like computer chips

You can draw fibers, use cantilevers, exploit the wavelength properties of
laser light, electromagnetically control the path of ionized materials in a
vacuum, use piezoelectric actuators that convert current to angstrom level
movements, and so on. Not to mention the many approaches to coating a surface
with a very thin layer: vacuum deposition, spin coating, electroplating, etc.

------
cestith
[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/weeken...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/weekend-
poem-all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/245251/)

------
wishinghand
Reminds me of the end of Manna when the main character gets to Australia which
has a society powered by Machines:
[http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

------
gallerdude
This is a simple idea, but I love it. I think it'll be possible with machines
like Baxter.

And even if you don't want to live in that kind of community, it's nice to
know that those kinds of communities would exist, as sort of fail-safes.

A potential issue is shelter.

~~~
radarsat1
It's a little too simple. Simple as a 100-year-old science fiction story,
which frankly was way more interesting because it explored the cautionary side
of the same idea, instead of being so blindly utopian about it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops)

------
nvus
As much as I love this idea I believe that it's unrealistic with today's
tools. Let's just focus on machine learning/general ai for now.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Well I'm looking on a 100+ year timeline.

But I do think a machine that does a portion of this work, such as growing
food, is totally possible with today's tools.

------
EleventhSun
In the real world, only one person owns the machine, and is able to undercut
everyone else's labor in the name of "fairness".

~~~
TaylorAlexander
This is why The Machine is open source. So no one has to agree to the social
contract presented by one "master owner" of The Machine.

