Item — HN Reader

Every time pro-AI people bring up the Luddites I have to laugh, because they've clearly not had their magic little boxes actually tell them anything about the Luddites.

They argued the exact opposite, they wanted proper training on how to use the "damn machines" as people were literally dying because of being untrained in their usage. They were also then beset upon by hired thugs and mercenaries that proceeded to beat and even kill the Luddites for daring to speak out against horrible worker conditions in the factories.

It's pretty funny, the anti-luddites being exactly like the anti-luddites of yore.

1 comments

> They argued the exact opposite, they wanted proper training on how to use the "damn machines" as people were literally dying because of being untrained in their usage.

That's very interesting to hear, and also very unfortunate due to the loneliness your personal belief reflects. For example, your personal belief contrasts with what's clearly stated and supported in Wikipedia's article on Luddites. Is that because the whole world around you is wrong and you are the only lonely chap who is burdened by the truth?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

The interesting detail you are either unaware or chose to omit is that "training" only registered as a concern as industrialization completely eliminated the competitiveness and consequently need to what at the time represented high-skilled albeit manual labor. Luddite's arguments regarding training was not that industrial mills didn't had training, buy that "produced textiles faster and cheaper because they could be operated by less-skilled, low-wage labourers." This is a direct citation, not something that "magic little boxes" spit out. That's what motivated uprisings against these "magic little boxes": the threat that automaton posed to their livelihood for their once irreplaceable skillet being suddenly rendered useless overnight.

So, people like you who are uninformed and ignorant of history should spend some time trying to gather insights onto the problem to have a chance if understanding what's right in front of your nose. As Mark Twain said , history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes. Luddites represent those who failed to understand the impact that automation had on humanity, refused to understand what changes were placed upon them, and misplaced their energy and ultimate frustration and anger onto futile targets. The key factor is ignorance and unpreparedness. Fooling yourself with creative exercised covering up militant levels of ignorance does not change this one bit.

But you do you. The universe has this tendency to self correct.

> Luddites represent those who failed to understand the impact that automation had on humanity

You contradict yourself in your prior paragraph here. Were they failing to understand the impact of automation, or did they realize "the threat that automaton[sic] posed to their livelihood for their once irreplaceable skillet[sic] being suddenly rendered useless overnight"?

From your same Wiki article, since we're pulling quotes here:

> 12,000 government troops, most of them belonging to militia or yeomanry units... which historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote was a larger number than the British army which the Duke of Wellington led during the Peninsular War.

> Four Luddites, led by a man named George Mellor, ambushed and assassinated mill owner William Horsfall of Ottiwells Mill in Marsden, West Yorkshire, at Crosland Moor in Huddersfield. Horsfall had remarked that he would "Ride up to his saddle in Luddite blood".

> I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey; but never, under the most despotic of infidel governments, did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return, in the very heart of a Christian country.

Does this sound like the response you'd have against ignorant rabble who don't know what's coming for them? Or is it exactly because the luddites were proven 100% correct that the government felt it was needed to send out an army against them in order to quash their movement?

And if history rhymes as Mark Twain so succinctly put it, then it follows that we're at the same exact stanza as the luddites found themselves in back then, where the industrialists are seeking to automate away the livelihoods of large swathes of skilled people overnight. Except this time, the automation we're talking about will, at least in theory if you believe the AI hypesters, take away everyone's jobs, other than those "lucky" enough to be doing physical labor of some sort that we for now can't seem to get the robots to do. Oh, and of course conveniently the C-levels that are pushing this whole AI movement are irreplaceable as well.

> The universe has this tendency to self correct

Is the universe here going to self-correct back into, and I quote again from the same Wiki article:

> In the 19th century, occupations that arose from the growth of trade and shipping in ports, also as "domestic" manufacturers, were notorious for precarious employment prospects. Underemployment was chronic during this period,[40] and it was common practice to retain a larger workforce than was typically necessary for insurance against labour shortages in boom times.

Also, none of what you said goes against what I said in my original comment. The Pro-AI people are exactly the same as the anti-luddites back then, except for some inexplicable reason there's a subsection of the populace who are excited about getting replaced overnight and being forced back into squalor and horrific working conditions. Hell, they're the ones building the damn replacement machines in the first place! They're practically chomping at the bit to let AI eat the entire world, I guess because of some vague notion of "progress" that doesn't reflect for anyone other than the likes of Musk and Bezos who are ultimately the ones that reap the benefits of everyone else's sacrifices, all in the name of "progress" of course.