Player Piano - Dystopias and Apocalypses - Extra Sci Fi
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- čas přidán 3. 06. 2019
- Kurt Vonnegut's first novel "Player Piano" explores the long-term consequences of mandatory mechanization and automation, without necessarily arguing against them entirely. Rather, the novel raises important questions about increased classism and job instability for displaced workers.
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The central question of Player Piano is: should we be striving for ever greater efficiency in our world
, or is efficiency something that may be too independent of morality to make it the driving force in our society, much less our world?
Please make video review about the Division 2 🙏?!
Galapagos was a better book for this
Do you think that the piano in "Westworld" is reference to this one?
Or, we upgrade the meat sacks! On a less flippant note, what's your opinion on how Ian M. Banks dealt with the question in the Culture novels. Perhaps we need a series on Utopias? Wink wink nudge nudge
I definitely think the latter is true.
My other favorite scene from Player Piano is when the traveling Mystic goes to a Barber Shop. The Barber talks about how the barber robot was made:
A hairdresser was worried about the increasing automation, so much so that he had nightmares about barber-robots. He relaxed his mind by journaling about how the robot couldn't possibly perform X or Y task. Then he would have another nightmare, but this time the robot was built to perform the barbers task. The man would then think of other tasks the robot couldn't do, and the nightmares grew increasingly more complex.
Eventually, the man realized that he had dreamed up a thoroughly perfect barber-robot, and sold the design for millions.
So, he literally sold his greatest nightmare. Wow.
Thats actually fucking great
Im gonna copyright that
Ya wnana donate to my patroen
Jk
Selling his nightmare for millions.....that's kind of Metal.
"You have become the very thing you swore to destroy!"
Outstanding move
Glad to know there's a book out about the most likely dystopia.
actually, in Brazil at least, the most likely dystopia is Mad Max.
@@gabriel300010 Probably better than the dystopia Brazil.
@@patrickroderick4315 lol true
@@gabriel300010 But Australia already exists?
@@dredlord47 its not only the desertification, but also the gun laws, and the really lax transit laws that we are working to get. (unless I got a serious case of fake news)
I am oddly reminded of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where Charlie's father got a new job at the toothpaste factory, repairing the machine that replaced him...
I don't remember that being in the book.
Even thou Charlies dad didnt have a degree in mechanic.... sound fake
@@bemersonbakebarmen none of the three guys who fix and maintain the couple million dollars of equipment in my shop have a degree
@@IdRatherNotHaveAHandleThankYou it’s in the film….
The back of the book has a quote comparing the book to Willy wonka meets the matrix.
Congratulations Kurt Vonnegut. You officially made the most accurate future dystopia to real life! Sorry Michael Crichton, I really was pulling for those live dinosaurs, instead we only got the part where wealthy tycoons in danger their employees on purpose because it's cheaper.
Alot of this comes from the axiom that people need to work to have meaning. Some people can find and make their own things or continue learning. People will still be needed for certain jobs and aspects, even if the machins have made their jobs redundant, namely out of choice or a different sot of convienence.
The idea is not that they need work to have meaning, but that they need meaning to be happy, and in most cases derive meaning from their work. Yes, there are other ways to make life meaningful, but that isn't always practical - travel is expensive, not everyone enjoys creating art, education for its own sake can be difficult to find, and you still need to put food on the table somehow. Ideally people would still be able to pursue whatever lifestyle or career fulfills them the most even if it's less efficient than an automated alternative, but that would be a hard sell to anyone who stands to profit from efficiency being as high as possible.
@@HPetch When machines do all work, we will have ourselves a post-scarcity world, and cost will be no object to travel, or education, or food. All that will be left is for people to decide what they enjoy most, and do that.
@@Izandaia I really suggest you look up the Eldar (also called Aeldari, and are basically elves in space) from Warhammer 40 000. At the peak of their society they reigned over most of the Milky Way galaxy, with almost everything being automated; whole wars were fight exclusively by their machines and A.I.s. The result was a stagnant society with no real room for growth, so the Eldar sought other ways of bringing meaning to their lives, through art, perversion, substance abuse, and pretty much every other type of debauchery you could imagine. The Eldar themselves began to decline as a people, as ethics and morals began to decay.
Now, the actual end of the Eldar Empire is played up for fantasy (birthing a God of Decadence and tearing a massive whole in the fabric of space), but if you ignore that, it's easy to see humanity filling the Eldar's spot. We seek happiness and satisfaction in our lives, and with no hard work or any major problems to deal with to give that satisfaction, we'd most likely turn to decadence to fill this void.
@@Izandaia I mean there's a number of ways a post scarcity society could turn out. 1984 is a world born from a post scarcity society.
@@HPetch But why should we structure society around people who need to do meaningless work to feel fulfilled? Personally, I hate work, but derive satisfaction from learning and creating. The society described in this "dystopian" novel sounds like a utopia to me.
After you said "three engineers and a priest" I was expecting there to be a "walk into a bar" punchline.
Something something ascension.
Welcome to McDonalds, meatbag, may I take your order?
Yes, I'd like a meatbag meal please.
Yes.
Statement: Your Happy Meal is done, meatbag. For 3 more dollars, I can remove your head...
I'd like a Fillet O Fish with no tartar sauce and can you divide this dollar by zero?
Depends, am I on the menu?
General Forge and Foundry is recognizably General Electric, in Schenectady, New York. Both Kurt Vonnegut and his brother Michael worked for GE once upon a time.
So this is basically "Humans need not apply" before the video became a thing?
Tom Scott reference, nice
Wait, or was that CGP gray?
@@silentdrew7636 my boy cgp
if all known jobs ceased to exist and humans ceased to have a purpose, most of them default to the genetic imperative of survive and reproduce.
@@vinsonli302 I will trade you a Ryan Reynolds for your Emma Watson, and I'll throw in a Bruce Willis!
A video about a book by my favorite author?! Extra Credits, you shouldn’t have!
My dad taught me that I would never think, feel or do anything original, "it's all been done before" just because I had the gall to share with him something I found interesting. That must have been over 20 years ago now and that, and other pearls of wisdom, has made me the horrendously unhappy and dysfunctional person I am today.
What a SAD DAD . . . I must say . . . taking every hope from you . . .
How true, if we look around several businesses are disappearing, replaced by or with technologies, many shops are just gone; services are the few things surviving, anything feeding or grooming human beings.
This is EXPLICITLY the concept I've been grappling with for months now. I'm working towards a carreer in robotics and I'm screaming at the edges of my mind for a solution to THIS problem.
just don't make the robots
@@mewmew8932
The robots already exist. The genie is out of the bottle.
@@ActuatedGearunmake the robots
@@mewmew8932 Unmake sharp rocks.
@@ActuatedGear just dull the rocks
This reminds me of a recent series (scythe) in which a benevolent AI rules over and cares for humanity, nothing matters and people can't even die. It's pretty interesting
here before views
wow! i sure do feel like ive done a lot, missing out on the entire point of a video, and feel a ton of self respect!
I wAs HeRe BeFoRe 1o0o vIeWs
I was here before 7,346,235,000 views.
Get on my level.
published in 1952, this seems outright prophetic
🙌 👏 🙏 🤝 👍
People defining themselves by their jobs is unhealthy and stupid to begin with. So please bring on this dystopia where robots can do all the work and I can maybe finally have enough time to get through my Steam backlog.
Welcome to Earth! "Unhealthy" and "Stupid" are what we do best!
But seriously though, same. In the end, every job I've ever had has been something I tolerate, rather than enjoy. Even the stuff I started out liking.
But if people didn't let their career give them meaning then no one would do the jobs that are completely meaningless like those in the insurance industry?
Just one problem society isn’t built for people no longer needing to work. That just doesn’t fit capitalism so you end up with a situation similar to that of the Great Depression with large economic output but nobody has enough money to buy anything.
Edit: at least that’s what I think will happen. Jeez existential crisis are mind boggling.
@@gearandalthefirst7027 people would still do them for money, wouldn't they?
Reddit moment
Could you make a video on Stanislaw Lem please, he is my favourite Sci-fi author?
"A future, where, for most jobs, Humans Need Not Apply."
. . . so that they are part of the anonymous mass of unemployed and dependant folks - fed by the state, the dole . . .
Don't know much about the book, sounds very cool. I must say tough, the name feels genius in its own right
"Unemployable dew to no fault of their own" CGP gray
*due
Part of this is a criticism of utilitarianism as a moral framework, something distinct to the capitalist epoch, and really is the motivator here. This is likely why societal transformation should not come from the technical intelligentsia or the capitalist class, but the working masses who are in direct contact with the labor process and production
But what if there are is no labor
@@imaxstingray Come again?
@@imaxstingray Then tories win.
I work on a farm. Many of the tasks I do could be, or have already been automated in larger, more wealthy farms. Planting, harvesting, even pest control can and have been done by machines in a lot of places. While it's unlikely for my particular situation, there is always a nagging fear at the back of my mind that I will just not be needed anymore at some point, and the skills I have honed over the years will be useless and I'll have to start from scratch in a completely different setting. I've had to rebuild my life from a burned-out pile of ash before (quite literally in one case), and it's something that becomes harder and harder the older I get and someday I may just not have the ability to do so anymore.
_The piano player hangs up from piano wire_
_...but the player piano carries on._
Are you going to talk about The Giver by Lois Lowry?
They definitely should.
why not the whole trilogy?
@@Byakurenfan Quartet. Did you miss one? But, yes, that would be great. Especially since "Thug Notes" already did one on "The Giver".
@@macdri Whats after messenger. The last time I read them was in 2012
@@Byakurenfan Ah, yes, that would be when "Son" came out. It's good.
Thanks for covering this often overlooked classic
I am loving this set of videos.
I would say this is one path the US could've taken, instead of automation however corporations are instead more content to shipping jobs to the cheapest places possible and letting the communities built around where the industry once was to rot while megastores like Walmart obliterate the remaining vestiges of whatever local economy was left
You say that but US industrial output is at an all time high. We just don't make a lot of consumer goods. Ironically, one of thing biggest materials we produce are high tech machinery used in advanced manufacturing so our robots are now taking the jobs we outsourced in the past...
I'm a chauffeur. I took engineering. Loved the work, but hated the job. I enjoy driving and I make reasonable $$. I expect self driving cars will take my job before I reach retirement age, but they will pry a steering wheel from my cold dead fingers.
According to uver their soon gonna pay people about 30k a year to let uber use their self driving vars
I wouldn't worry about being replaced with self-driving cars: Even now there are multiple cases of self-driving cars crashing and sometimes killing their occupants.
It's one thing to hear about a crash the COULD have been avoided by a person vs. a crash that SHOULD have been avoided by a robot.
@@nathanbass6843 its much less common than with regular drivers.
Your way more likely to kill yourself whole driving than a bot is.
The bots reads data.
You read cues
Don't worry even if we successfully created a car auto pilot that actually works (dispite the hype we honestly haven't). Professional drivers are still needed. Just look at other modes of transportation with autopilots like airplanes and ships. The machines may be doing the work, but the humans must constantly make sure the machine does it's job correctly and then take control when the unexpected inevitably happens.
@@nathanbass6843 It's only a matter of time, it's not if, but when.
I'm amazed you got through this video without mentioning the words socialism or capitalism.
Man reading this in 2020 with only some changes to certain aspects really resonates.
This honestly sounds like something Killgore Trout would write.
Isn't he the Kurt Vonnegut of Kurt Vonnegut?
@@SimonClarkstone Yep, Trout is Kurt's parody version of himself.
Player Piano aka 10 years from now if not sooner.
Automation has been happening for 200 years or so, depending on what definition you use. And yet unemployment still fluctuates generally between 5 and 10 percent for most countries.
...is exactly what people have been saying for the last 30 years.
I think it's safe to say something like 30 years, but unemployment will probably skyrocket by 2055.
@@nathanpellerito7013 2055? With Climate change, human civilization may have dissolved by then! I'd say 2040!
The idea of machines taking over all (or nearly all jobs) is probably more than 10 years ago, but the idea of society treating people like trash if their jobs are taken away by machines is here today.
There is nothing stopping anyone in that society from having meaning in their lives. They just have to find a new variety. Human's are dynamic. We are not ants. Anyone that thinks they are, deserves to be left by the wayside by society. They do not deserve to suffer mind. No one should ever be without food, shelter, education or healthcare. Burt after that, it's up to us. Coal miners need to find a new purpose for example because shortly we will have no need for coal. But we have only one ecosystem. Which is far more important than any one person's desire to mine coal. I will gladly take a society were work is purely voluntary.
🙌 👏 🙏 🤝 👍
This book sounds right up my alley.
This is so fitting for today and our potential future
Possibly one of extras best vids.
This is pretty good and deserves a share.
Telling people at a young age that what they want to do will not amount to much. Yeah seems like my folks were fans of this book lol
Personally I think this fear of mechanisation is a little bit overblown. It's not mechanisation or automatisation we should be worried about, it's how our societies are going to adjust to these changes.
What we do for a living has *always* changed throughout history, and as someone who worked many years with back-breaking physical labour I'm quite in favour of getting machines to do the heavy lifting. What's much more important is that our various social structures can adapt so that everyone still have something meaningful to do (and, you know, the rest of Maslow's hierarchy of needs) as these changes happen.
There are various safety nets we can string together to prevent harm from automatisation. Most of them require actions on a government level and sometimes, due to globalization, even on an international level. The situation isn't hopeless, it just require us to be proactive.
excellent analysis
This one was good , I might read this one like thanks mann
I've experienced that world and its the paucity of human contact that hurt me the most.
🙌 👏 🙏 🤝 👍. . . you´re NOT alone my friend . . . .
5:12 Could that be teasing a future episode, pherhaps?
I'm definately gonna read this
Good pick, thanks.
Please keep doing this
liked, shared 5 times, and now commenting... fantastic video
From this overview and honestly speaking, I'd probably thrive in this world.
I love your animation style
We often have philosophical discussions at work. One of them involved a discussion of replacing everyone with robots. I put forth that just because we can, doesn't mean we should. People are important.
I'm happy to be a darn good aircraft mechanic! :)
Sorry man, but you may be doomed anyway. See "ROBOT SOPHIA and WILLL SMITH" here on yt - and be chilled to the core. And that DAMN BEAST will replace everybody if programmed smart . . .
I did a school report on Kurt Vonnegut so I already knew about this story
dat warhammer miniatures reference
This is he most realistic dystopia I’ve ever heard of. This video sounds like a campaign ad for Andrew Yang.
Ask yourself this (if you have a job): If all your material needs were satisfied, would you still be working your job? Of those very few who say yes, is that job easily replaced with automation?
The best case scenario: The Culture
Globalism may destroy even that.
@@odolwa099 NO ! We won´t allow THAT !!
Have you considered Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler?
Most people in the book do have jobs and purposes; managers and scientists - including politicians - if you're smart enough, the army if you're fit enough, construction - infrastructure maintainence - if youre neither. Dont forget the end of the book EC, it's the most important part
Most of the character featured in the book, yes, but most of the citizens of the society in the book have been replaced with robots.
CZcamsr CGP Grey already did a video a few years back about the rapid approach of this very phenomena. The concept of a 9-5 job is already becoming obsolete and will only become increasingly more so as time goes on.
YangGang 2020!
Lol ubi is the problem described, not the solution.
@@anarchisttechsupport6644 Well I would argue automation is the (unavoidable) problem, and ubi is presented in this book as a far-from-perfect solution - personally I don't think there would be near as many problems if this was actually implemented, but either way I think it's fair to say that not giving any money to the jobless is the worst option as then they would starve and die
This novel is a prophecy.
🙌 👏 🙏 🤝 👍.. . . . coming true right NOW . . . .
Oh, I hope you do Harrison Bergeron too!
Just finished reading this. It's eerily relevant today, in 2024, what with AI and all.
Real Yang Gang Hours lmao
Kind of another ad for Yang2020.
UBI is the problem described, not the solution.
@@anarchisttechsupport6644 , but Yang is also against over-automation. He's trying to find a solution to both problems.
DO MORE VONNEGUT!!!
God I hope you guys do Hyperion. One of the best sci fi books ever!
Who wants to see Extra Credits Detective Fiction?
Robert Jackson Bennett's The Company Man would be a good one to start with
Oh, or "Murder must Advertise" which makes some interesting observations on western capitalism.
You have to have Agatha Christie
@@dakrakenz5314 Oh, definitely. Not only did she write good stories, but you have to love a mystery writer who writes a recurring secondary character who IS a female mystery writer; but not as a heroine, instead she is a bumbling, slightly inept nosy parker. You got to wonder if that is how she saw herself or if she was poking fun either at herself or someone similar that she knew.
Voyage From Yesteryear addresses this more positively.
Wonder if youll cover "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster
See also The Midas Plague by Fred Pohl
This maybe the future
Our pepole should be to serve each other, and to serve life! This shall be done by giving to each other out of the joy of giving, and loving each other! Once robots have given us all of the materiale things we need, we give each other compassion and joy, and love!
I think the problem is not with the Automatization itself but the lack of hand made alternatives.
Mainly like a hobby but the actual trouble is that kids are told that their talents are useless because a machine can make the same thing better. Hand made stuff should still exist in that world, maybe just as a hobby
Very relevanttoday
Um, this is the current world. So far the solution has been satisfaction questionaires, that machines might use to build the perfect world for us. The question of how we earn our society credits though is still afloat. And the divide is increasingly who is able or willing to take advantage of the situation economically, and who isn't... And of course the usual politics.
Mi libro favorito
What about creating jobs in cyber space? What kind of world could that be?
So basically, "Learn to Code".
Yeah, the journalists snidely said that to all the blue collar workers losing jobs in the Rust Belt during the Obama administration.
Now those same journalists are losing their jobs, and can't handle being told "Learn to Code" themselves.
Pride goeth before the fall.
This an issue that is being talked about more and more lately given that their jobs that are being mechanized or worse just dying off. We put a lot in defining who we are and our worth from the work we do, it's kind of sad in away. How were are as workers has more meaning than how we treat family, friends or strangers for that matter. If you don't work your a bum and worthless, but if if you but in forty hours awake you are good hard worker.
Only forty? What planet do you live on?
i am kind of sure that we are hitting the point of automation already or we will hit it in the next 10-15 years. Most jobs in developed countries are in the service area and these can also be reduced. Take a look at mcs, where you only one guy is left giving you your meal, bc you now order on a computer and not in front of a person.
I really disagree with Vonnegut's notion that people can only derive meaning from work. There is so much more to life than just selling your labour.
It's not about selling the world, it's about providing the service.
Work isn't just selling your labor. Work is the product of force and displacement, work is staying warm on a cold night, work is raising a child, or writing a novel. Humans derive a lot of meaning from their work.
I think there are three ways people find meaning in life:
The creative, by expressing your inner world and giving back to the world (where work ideally falls into)
The experimental, by exploring the world and the other, finding out its hidden beauty.
And the attitudal: the attitude you hold when life kicks you down.
Everything people find meaningful I've seen falls under one of these three.
I don’t think he’s saying that’s the only thing people derive meaning from, he’s saying that the scenario in the book would be the result of everyone thinking that way.
🙌 👏 🙏 🤝 👍
I really hope Red Rising gets covered in this series. It's a very modern sci-fi series, but has a lot of opposites to this episode.
Nice
goddamn your telling me il have unimaginable wealth without doing much work? goddamn i dont care man id do alot with that time and money
🙌 👏 🙏 🤝 👍
The only solution is for us all to own the machines, collectively, so that we're all entitled to our share of what they produce. Then, there's no need for make-work jobs, and people can devote themselves to the things that so many want to do but don't for fear that they won't be able to make a living: art, music, science, travel, writing, philosophy, etc.
Hell yea.
*Mikhail Gorbachev wants to know your location*
Sure. Two ways this leads to disaster :
1) "Collectively" means all the machines are owned by the governement. Which means we own nothing and the governement owns everything... oh wait that is the Soviet Union :o
2) "Collectively" means we let the machines run themselves, and that's asking for trouble :D
You guys should do some on economics.
You touch on a long term economic dystopian fear of mine: that with automation the balance of value between capital and labor will be broken, that labor will become worthless and the value of capital infinite.
But that's great. We just have to be smat enough to find something else to do.
@@helicongremory8480Great ? Realloy ? I doubt it. Only VERY few will survive that kind of WAR (SIC !!) Because only noble few have s k i l l s, any robot can NOT do - at the given moment. And these are obviously v e r y VERY few tasks . . .sorry to say that . . .
Sounds like good, interesting story idea. But what it seems to boil down to is that too many people identify their purpose in life with their work, when they really need to define their purpose and meaning in broader ways, or ways outside of their jobs.
And this is relevant, because in spite of all the moaning about the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer, the simple fact is there's more wealth and more of almost everything available to almost all of us, and many people are having trouble handling it all. They need help on focusing on what's truly important to themselves.
this book sounds too much like my day-to-day life o_o
I find the primes rather strange, as while work is meaningful, it's not the only thing of meaning in our lives. Otherwise why would people actively choose to be stay at home mothers and fathers and love what they do? That's just one example off the top of my head.
1:50 everyone came back home? I think most of them took the enemy down with them
Good video, but I feel you missed the critique at some point. You see, Kurt Vonnegut is not arguing that we should reinsert people into society when automation has taken their jobs, or that just employing them somewhere else would be a solution. No, what he criticizes is how this system's main goal is not the well-being of the workers, but the production of commodities to gain profit. The fact that someone owns the robots that replace workers, while the workers can't do anything because the only thing they have is their labor, that is the problem. If the workers, society as a whole, would own the robots, then that would not be a problem because society can be sustained by automation.
In other words, the problem is that the proletariat does not own the means of production, and automation replaces them so the capitalists at the top can profit without working, leaving them not just unemployed, but unemployable. Retraining into another job is a temporary solution when every job could be replaced by a robot. The solution is to seize the means of production form the bourgeoisie.
Vonnegut was very critical of American politics and argued for Socialism, which is what I just described above. I don't know if you're avoiding politics, or if you missed the point altogether, but you can't talk about this novel without politics. Good video anyway
I haven't read the book, but it sounds like it might not be too bad. You mention the poor still maintain a higher standard of living then before, but with less work. In that case, do the poor have sufficient time to pursue artistic endeavors or further their educations? That would at least allow the possibility of that wealth disparity evening out over time.
Ai can now do art at the click of a button
Ai literally renders all and every single human endeavour worthless.
It's the death of humanity. Our complete reduction to worthless meat, where even our minds are evolutionary baggage compared to that of the machine.
Why learn when your knowledge matters little?
Honestly I want to live there if done correctly i´m just tired of trying to impress people for a part time job that doesn´t require much, I´m tired of studyng stuff for laboral purposes rather than because interests me, I
Indeed. I just finished reading this book and I couldn't help thinking that the real problem was the dystopian two-tier society they had built around machines, not the machines themselves.
Y’all should check out Andrew Yang he’s actually talking about a lot of these problems
Yang proposals don't solve the increasing power inequality, do they?
@@DiThi yes they do
Yeah that sounds pretty much exactly like what's happening.
Well, my sense of pride and accomplishment comes from my ability to avoid loot boxes.
we're too good at our jobs, maybe computers will figure out something we can do to make us feel useful
But would we just create another dystopia where machines tell us what to do
@@LegoCookieDoggie Is that really so different from what we have now? The only difference would be that your boss thinks in binary.
That's exactly what happens in Iain M. Banks' Culture series: it's a post-scarcity, non-profit based economy. AIs run the show, but since they aren't out to maximize their own gain, they have no reason not to let humans work if that makes them happy.
I think this was the Vonnegut book that killed off a cat within the first few pages.