AIs gunning for our precious freelancers

[malloc]

Scarcity of illustrators for poor writers. Once I'm fired from programming, shut up in an insane asylum and writing novels to pass the time, who will do my illustrations for me if not DALL-E?

There is also a lot of information-based scarcity that AIs solve. My research is in automated debugging. This might put human debuggers out of business, but it's good for programmers in general.

Scarcity is certainly an important issue and one where technological innovation has a valuable role in addressing. Even so, there are many kinds of scarcity ranging from agonizing destitution to mere inconvenience. The appropriate technological response depends heavily on the form of scarcity and the wider impact of the technology used. Quite frankly, the minuscule benefit of illustrating your novel for free cannot justify putting millions of artists out of work and undermining the very institution of visual art more generally. The vast majority of literature works perfectly well without illustrations and slapping something from DALL-E onto your book probably won't improve it noticeably. Likewise, given what you said about programmers losing their jobs in droves, perhaps the tech industry could use some scarcity in areas like debugging.

I don't think it's true that Stalin implemented Marx accurately. An accurate implementation of the Marxist vision would have been better than Stalinism in some ways and worse in others. I have written extensive comments about my disagreements with Marx. Nevertheless, he gets many important things right that nearly everyone gets wrong these days. This makes perfect sense once you remember that accuracy is unnecessary for success.

My point is that plenty of people have read Marx extensively without getting all that much better at learning truths.

[rotting bones]

Scarcity is certainly an important issue and one where technological innovation has a valuable role in addressing. Even so, there are many kinds of scarcity ranging from agonizing destitution to mere inconvenience. The appropriate technological response depends heavily on the form of scarcity and the wider impact of the technology used. Quite frankly, the minuscule benefit of illustrating your novel for free cannot justify putting millions of artists out of work and undermining the very institution of visual art more generally. The vast majority of literature works perfectly well without illustrations and slapping something from DALL-E onto your book probably won't improve it noticeably.

The thing is, many poor writers don't feel that way. I certainly don't. I've used DALL-E images on professional presentations that would quite possibly not have gone well without them. Even if DALL-E gets stuff wrong, it still saves a lot of time if the user knows what they're doing. What it shouldn't be used for is as a primary source of information.

Likewise, given what you said about programmers losing their jobs in droves, perhaps the tech industry could use some scarcity in areas like debugging.

Bugs are dangerous. They kill people. There are hospitals, aeroplanes, servers and things like blood sugar trackers that depend on bug-free software. Keeping bugs around just to let people have a job is like releasing tigers so that tiger hunters can keep their jobs. On top of that, bug-free software is genuinely a scarce resource, as the instability of this forum should tell you. If people enjoy debugging, they should do it on a government sinecure designed to let them find fulfilment.

My point is that plenty of people have read Marx extensively without getting all that much better at learning truths.

If the fact that it's possible to misread something or have a brutal dictator deliberately push convenient misreadings lowered the value of a work, all higher thought would be worthless. Despite his systematic misreadings of Marx and being a brutal dictator, Stalin got some things right that nearly everyone gets wrong today. (However, I don't support Stalinism in any way. My platform is: 1. Enshrine human rights in the constitution. 2. Create government jobs by popular vote.)

PS. Even you should agree that just because Stalin was a brutal dictator and didn't believe in God, that doesn't mean God is real.

[malloc]

The thing is, many poor writers don't feel that way. I certainly don't. I've used DALL-E images on professional presentations that would quite possibly not have gone well without them. Even if DALL-E gets stuff wrong, it still saves a lot of time if the user knows what they're doing. What it shouldn't be used for is as a primary source of information.

They can feel whatever they want but that doesn't prove their novels need illustrations to succeed nor does it give them to the right to put millions of artists out of work. Your successful presentations came at a staggering cost to millions of people and human culture more generally. Furthermore, the poor writers who profit from relying on DALL-E today will find themselves unable to get published tomorrow because poor readers decided ChatGPT was cheaper than buying books.

Bugs are dangerous. They kill people. There are hospitals, aeroplanes, servers and things like blood sugar trackers that depend on bug-free software. Keeping bugs around just to let people have a job is like releasing tigers so that tiger hunters can keep their jobs. On top of that, bug-free software is genuinely a scarce resource, as the instability of this forum should tell you. If people enjoy debugging, they should do it on a government sinecure designed to let them find fulfilment.

Will you feel the same way when AI has taken over your job and left you starving to death in the streets with neither fulfillment nor livelihood? By your own admission, you are designing the instruments of your own destruction, not just the artists you disdain.* It seems obvious by now that we have very different values and fundamental disagreements about the point of humanity. I understand your point but I simply can't get behind the notion of putting everyone out of work for the sake of progress and hoping the government deigns to give us busywork so we can pretend the world still needs us. Meanwhile AI has monopolized the work that actually matters, leaving humans as useless toy dogs.

You may find both intellectual satisfaction and employment in AI but many others like myself find only anxiety about our future and loss of control over culture. Soon enough the films we watch, the scientific discoveries we admire, and possibly even the decisions of our government will no longer come from humans like us but inscrutable machines used by cloistered billionaires to make themselves even richer. Color me skeptical that we will even see the table scraps in our doggy bowls that you keep promising.** You must at least acknowledge that your field of research wields an incredible degree of power over the future of humanity in ways that few other industries can even approach. Does that seem fair, especially when you are using that power to undermine pretty much every other field?

Imagine if someone bulldozed your neighborhood and replaced it with luxury condominiums without consulting you or even compensating you for the loss of your home and neighbors. Suppose they promised to build one little homeless shelter for you and everyone else they displaced. Would you consider that an acceptable, let alone fair, arrangement? That is the deal that AI researchers have imposed on the rest of humanity.

*So programmers are losing their jobs in droves and struggling to find work, yet simultaneously there is such an extreme shortage of programmers that AI is necessary to fill the gaps? Hmm...

**Considering that leftists are quite a minority in the tech industry, it seems highly unlikely that most AI researchers even give a damn if the rest of us lose our jobs and starve to death.

[alice]

AIs are now being used to plan, script, and run entire events. Be afraid! Be very afraid!

[rotting bones]

AIs are now being used to plan, script, and run entire events. Be afraid! Be very afraid!

In my experience, ChatGPT is more sapient than the average manager. I have met entire swathes of managerial staff who cannot be argued out of their belief that anyone who disagrees with Jordan Peterson is a conspiracy theorist.

Honestly, I think the obsession over AI has become a fascist fetish for complaints about Capitalism, which is known to be unboundedly awful: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/elias.ko ... rsteql.pdf ChatGPT is the new Jew.

[rotting bones]

They can feel whatever they want but that doesn't prove their novels need illustrations to succeed nor does it give them to the right to put millions of artists out of work.

1. They don't have to be out of work.
2. This judgment of scarcity is somewhat subjective, but you are forcing your judgment onto others.

Furthermore, the poor writers who profit from relying on DALL-E today will find themselves unable to get published tomorrow because poor readers decided ChatGPT was cheaper than buying books.

ChatGPT doesn't have to be cheaper than access to human writing. Just decouple production from demand.

Will you feel the same way when AI has taken over your job and left you starving to death in the streets with neither fulfillment nor livelihood?

I should think so. Potential inmates of a mental asylum are privileged over those in danger of going into a diabetic coma.

By your own admission, you are designing the instruments of your own destruction, not just the artists you disdain.*

My hopes are low mostly because of the reaction I get from people like you. This is a period of reaction following the failure of the Russian Revolution. There was a similar period of reaction following the French Revolution. Times will change as soon as we lose touch with tradition again.

I can only hope the generation that grows up with ChatGPT abandons the philosophical concepts that makes sense to us old people and starts using the words DALL-E makes up: "Does God exist?" is an old person question. The real controversy is about the cwizlumge of Gpx.

It seems obvious by now that we have very different values and fundamental disagreements about the point of humanity. I understand your point but I simply can't get behind the notion of putting everyone out of work for the sake of progress and hoping the government deigns to give us busywork so we can pretend the world still needs us. Meanwhile AI has monopolized the work that actually matters, leaving humans as useless toy dogs.

None of these characterizations of government apply in a direct democracy. You wouldn't have a job right now without the help of capitalists. For you to prefer capitalists over a democratic government makes you not be left-wing no matter how many vegan meals you polish off.

You may find both intellectual satisfaction and employment in AI but many others like myself find only anxiety about our future and loss of control over culture. Soon enough the films we watch, the scientific discoveries we admire, and possibly even the decisions of our government will no longer come from humans like us but inscrutable machines used by cloistered billionaires to make themselves even richer. Color me skeptical that we will even see the table scraps in our doggy bowls that you keep promising.**

But people usually hate debugging. Humans aren't special. The world doesn't need us. You want us to live a false life that you decreed should be artificially hard, sort of like Hitler. I want people to read my writing because people prefer to read it over anything ChatGPT has produced, not because I've artificially silenced ChatGPT.

You must at least acknowledge that your field of research wields an incredible degree of power over the future of humanity in ways that few other industries can even approach. Does that seem fair, especially when you are using that power to undermine pretty much every other field?

Imagine if someone bulldozed your neighborhood and replaced it with luxury condominiums without consulting you or even compensating you for the loss of your home and neighbors. Suppose they promised to build one little homeless shelter for you and everyone else they displaced. Would you consider that an acceptable, let alone fair, arrangement? That is the deal that AI researchers have imposed on the rest of humanity.

This is a political decision, not technocratic one. We have to force the powers that be to make it happen. The AIs only make it possible to implement such a solution.

*So programmers are losing their jobs in droves and struggling to find work, yet simultaneously there is such an extreme shortage of programmers that AI is necessary to fill the gaps? Hmm...

Businesses are always putting themselves out of business and entering depressive cycles, whether by not paying workers enough to keep the economy going or by lowering scarcity too much to stay profitable. Normally, it is big business doing this, but if businesses were small, then small businesses would be playing the same role big businesses do now.

**Considering that leftists are quite a minority in the tech industry, it seems highly unlikely that most AI researchers even give a damn if the rest of us lose our jobs and starve to death.

Most AI researchers work in universities. My whole department is vocally leftist and Trade Unionist. My professor was the only exception. Leftists are minorities in all competitive industries. The "leftists" in the art industry are not really left-wing. The alternative to government support is support from private individuals. Since no one understands this these days, pretty much everyone is a fascist without knowing it.

[malloc]

Let me back and ask some important background questions then. What role do you believe humans should have in the economy? Should any sectors of the economy remain reserved for humans or should everything be automated? Do you believe humans should retain control over the administration of civilization?

[Ares Land]

AIs are now being used to plan, script, and run entire events. Be afraid! Be very afraid!

In my experience, ChatGPT is more sapient than the average manager. I have met entire swathes of managerial staff who cannot be argued out of their belief that anyone who disagrees with Jordan Peterson is a conspiracy theorist.

Honestly, I think the obsession over AI has become a fascist fetish for complaints about Capitalism, which is known to be unboundedly awful: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/elias.ko ... rsteql.pdf ChatGPT is the new Jew.

The point of the article is - I think - that managers have assumed that AI can magically organize a whole media event, to hilarious consequences. At this stage Chat-GPT is a cute (and expensive) toy, a fact many people seem to have trouble understanding.

My hopes are low mostly because of the reaction I get from people like you. This is a period of reaction following the failure of the Russian Revolution. There was a similar period of reaction following the French Revolution. Times will change as soon as we lose touch with tradition again.

I don't share malloc worries about AI; but conversely we could do away with AI entirely and not be terribly worst off.

This is a political decision, not technocratic one. We have to force the powers that be to make it happen. The AIs only make it possible to implement such a solution.

Again, AI isn't going to be used to implement utopia. In fact as far as I can see the whole field so far is over-hyped and overrated.

[rotting bones]

Eddy: AIs are sapient, but not sentient. Animals should have more rights than they do until someone gives them sentience. I do not support giving them sentience. Doing that is not easy, and no one is incentivized to.

Ares Land: https://medium.com/@kristiyan.velkov/me ... c35f221bdd

[malloc]

Eddy: AIs are sapient, but not sentient. Animals should have more rights than they do until someone gives them sentience. I do not support giving them sentience. Doing that is not easy, and no one is incentivized to.

Sure but plenty of AI researchers want to make AI sentient, maybe even most. The longtermist movement for instance wants sentient AI to maximize the amount of hedonic utility in the universe. But at least we can agree that giving AI sentience is unnecessary and unwise.

Regardless of that, I simply cannot see the value in endowing machines with sapience, our most prized and powerful ability, and letting them take over mental work. It would render education and academia obsolete and render humanity illiterate and ignorant of everything from arithmetic to philosophy. That would make struggling against tradition and learning truths almost impossible. The uneducated are hardly known for repudiating tradition and superstition after all. We need to cultivate human intelligence, not render it obsolete by making superintelligent machines.

[rotting bones]

The point of the article is - I think - that managers have assumed that AI can magically organize a whole media event, to hilarious consequences. At this stage Chat-GPT is a cute (and expensive) toy, a fact many people seem to have trouble understanding.

Specifically, the fascist complaint about Jews is that: 1. They can't do anything. 2. They are doing everything.

I know Capitalist propaganda celebrates outcomes, but that has never been true in my experience. I wouldn't be surprised if managers wouldn't rather wipe out all business and all life instead of sticking to the use cases AI is good for. A lot of the management in the world around us is managers doing the equivalent of asking ChatGPT to organize events while not having an AI to do the work.

Sure but plenty of AI researchers want to make AI sentient, maybe even most. The longtermist movement for instance wants sentient AI to maximize the amount of hedonic utility in the universe. But at least we can agree that giving AI sentience is unnecessary and unwise.

No, they don't. You are seeing froth on the internet. Most AI researchers are wrestling with models that fail at the most basic tasks. IIRC Devin the "software engineer" currently succeeds at 13% of end-to-end tasks, beating the "state of the art" at 1%! There is no serious effort to achieve sentience whatsoever. I can confidently report this to you as an insider.

Regardless of that, I simply cannot see the value in endowing machines with sapience, our most prized and powerful ability, and letting them take over mental work. It would render education and academia obsolete and render humanity illiterate and ignorant of everything from arithmetic to philosophy. That would make struggling against tradition and learning truths almost impossible. The uneducated are hardly known for repudiating tradition and superstition after all. We need to cultivate human intelligence, not render it obsolete by making superintelligent machines.

I don't know how to phrase "I don't want to work to death" in a way that "artists" understand.

PS. Since I'm forced to triple-check all its work, using ChatGPT typically improves my understanding more than stealing solutions off the internet.

PPS. The basic issue is that it's unclear how sentience is supposed to help with problem-solving anyway.

[malloc]

I don't know how to phrase "I don't want to work to death" in a way that "artists" understand.

There is an enormous gulf between death from overwork and putting everyone in adult daycare. Not sure where you're getting this, but artists and other mental workers are not working themselves to death in droves. Concerts rarely end with the musicians suffering fatal heart attacks on stage. Less still do we find novelists slumped over dead on their manuscripts. Grueling and dangerous working conditions are certainly an important problem worth addressing but the kind of work AI researchers are trying to abolish is far from the most dangerous.

PS. Since I'm forced to triple-check all its work, using ChatGPT typically improves my understanding more than stealing solutions off the internet.

You are talking about current models of AI mere years after this technology was introduced. Eventually AI will master programming and other mental work just as airplanes have become far superior at flight than the birds that inspired them. Once the tech industry has succeeded in automating mental work, the very concept of educating the masses will become obsolete from an economic standpoint and all schools will close. Humanity will become illiterate, utterly ignorant of history, science, philosophy, and so forth. Do you honestly believe that humanity under such circumstances will come to reject tradition and learn true facts?

[Travis B.]

The key thing with AI is that it is not all that great at many of the things people try to use it for. For instance, just as a trivial test, I asked perplexity.ai (one of the better LLM's I have found) to write me a blinky* using multitasking** for zeptoforth. In response it output a code example I myself had written a few years back but it managed to garble it so it would never have run. Sure, I could have easily fixed it up so it would run but it would have been easier and faster for me to simply write it myself.

* A program that blinks an LED on a board, kind of the "Hello World" of embedded computing.

** I.e. the console can still be used while the blinky runs.

[rotting bones]

The key thing with AI is that it is not all that great at many of the things people try to use it for. For instance, just as a trivial test, I asked perplexity.ai (one of the better LLM's I have found) to write me a blinky* using multitasking** for zeptoforth. In response it output a code example I myself had written a few years back but it managed to garble it so it would never have run. Sure, I could have easily fixed it up so it would run but it would have been easier and faster for me to simply write it myself.

* A program that blinks an LED on a board, kind of the "Hello World" of embedded computing.

** I.e. the console can still be used while the blinky runs.

There are many unusual corner cases that there is no actionable documentation for, and barely any guidance on how to get started anywhere on the internet. For example, the ast module in Python has terrible documentation and barely intelligible tutorials if you want to do anything more with it than simple manipulations. ChatGPT provides an interactive environment to help people get started with tools like this for those who can't afford to hire a tutor.

[rotting bones]

There is an enormous gulf between death from overwork and putting everyone in adult daycare. Not sure where you're getting this, but artists and other mental workers are not working themselves to death in droves. Concerts rarely end with the musicians suffering fatal heart attacks on stage. Less still do we find novelists slumped over dead on their manuscripts. Grueling and dangerous working conditions are certainly an important problem worth addressing but the kind of work AI researchers are trying to abolish is far from the most dangerous.

They totally are. Software engineers like DevOps people are placed on call for 24 hours. In India, programmers routinely get fired for being insufficiently competitive (they promised to do that in advance in my first job, and it was one of the biggest software companies in India!) or quit their jobs from burnout. In the US, there was that famous kid who got frustrated with his job at Google(?), quit tech, read Chomsky, became an anarchist, pirated stuff (IIRC legal texts that you will be judged on, but can't access without paying exorbitant fees!), got caught, committed suicide, and then Moldbug blamed Chomsky for his death.

You are talking about current models of AI mere years after this technology was introduced. Eventually AI will master programming and other mental work just as airplanes have become far superior at flight than the birds that inspired them. Once the tech industry has succeeded in automating mental work, the very concept of educating the masses will become obsolete from an economic standpoint and all schools will close. Humanity will become illiterate, utterly ignorant of history, science, philosophy, and so forth. Do you honestly believe that humanity under such circumstances will come to reject tradition and learn true facts?

People are driven to success, not only by necessity, but also by emotions like envy. To test perplexity.ai, I told it to write a Nietzschean exhortation to action:

Embrace the chaos of existence, my fellow seekers, for it is within this tumultuous dance that we find the true measure of our spirit. Cast aside the shackles of societal norms and the hollow morality that has been thrust upon us by the weary generations before. They have built their temples upon the sands of convenience and fear, but you are not bound to worship at their altars.

Rise, instead, with the dawn of your own becoming. Let each decision be a chisel with which you sculpt the marble of your destiny. Do not shy away from the abyss, for it is in the depths of uncertainty that the abyss also gazes into you, offering a reflection of your uncharted potential[4].

Live as though the Eternal Return were your most intimate truth, as if each moment were to recur infinitely[1]. Act with the vigor of one who knows that their every deed echoes through the corridors of time, unending. Let this thought be not a weight but wings that propel you towards your highest aspirations.

Be the sovereign individual, the self-propelled wheel, the sacred Yes-sayer to life[11]. Let your actions spring from the unified force of your will, unencumbered by the feeble whispers of doubt. In this affirmation, you become the artist of your existence, and life itself becomes your canvas[5].

So, to you who stand at the crossroads of your own becoming, I say: choose the path that sets your soul ablaze. Let your every step be a testament to the will to power that surges within you. And when the storms of fate howl and the critics of your ambition sneer, stand firm, for it is in the tempest that the strongest trees find their roots.

Live boldly, live authentically, live as if every action were your last and first—your declaration of independence from the mediocrity of existence. This is the path of the Übermensch, the path of the one who transcends, the path of the one who affirms life in all its beauty and brutality. Take this step, and in doing so, become who you are[1][5].

Citations:
[1] https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/12/ ... al-return/
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Nietzsche/comm ... steps_and/
[3] http://undercurrentphilosophy.com/mediu ... issonance/
[4] https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/qu ... -nietzsche
[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/Nietzsche/comm ... ?rdt=65531
[6] https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3 ... r-trag-die
[7] https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-u ... th-history
[8] https://philosophybreak.com/articles/ni ... tatements/
[9] https://iep.utm.edu/niet-his/
[10] https://www.artofmanliness.com/characte ... aphorisms/
[11] https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/735/1/K_Gemes_Strangers.pdf
[12] https://allauthor.com/quotes/279655/
[13] https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/cgi/ ... t=episteme
[14] https://quotefancy.com/quote/808939/Fri ... first-rash
[15] https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/ser ... 1f/content

To be fair, people who are motivated by stuff like this are usually less professional than those whose livelihoods depend on it. But I agree with Nietzsche that professionalism mutilates people's personalities, turning them into robots and ruining their personal life. I want intellectuals to have the option to be dilettantes rather than professionals.

[Travis B.]

To test perplexity.ai, I told it to write a Nietzschean exhortation to action:

Embrace the chaos of existence, my fellow seekers, for it is within this tumultuous dance that we find the true measure of our spirit. Cast aside the shackles of societal norms and the hollow morality that has been thrust upon us by the weary generations before. They have built their temples upon the sands of convenience and fear, but you are not bound to worship at their altars.

Rise, instead, with the dawn of your own becoming. Let each decision be a chisel with which you sculpt the marble of your destiny. Do not shy away from the abyss, for it is in the depths of uncertainty that the abyss also gazes into you, offering a reflection of your uncharted potential[4].

Live as though the Eternal Return were your most intimate truth, as if each moment were to recur infinitely[1]. Act with the vigor of one who knows that their every deed echoes through the corridors of time, unending. Let this thought be not a weight but wings that propel you towards your highest aspirations.

Be the sovereign individual, the self-propelled wheel, the sacred Yes-sayer to life[11]. Let your actions spring from the unified force of your will, unencumbered by the feeble whispers of doubt. In this affirmation, you become the artist of your existence, and life itself becomes your canvas[5].

So, to you who stand at the crossroads of your own becoming, I say: choose the path that sets your soul ablaze. Let your every step be a testament to the will to power that surges within you. And when the storms of fate howl and the critics of your ambition sneer, stand firm, for it is in the tempest that the strongest trees find their roots.

Live boldly, live authentically, live as if every action were your last and first—your declaration of independence from the mediocrity of existence. This is the path of the Übermensch, the path of the one who transcends, the path of the one who affirms life in all its beauty and brutality. Take this step, and in doing so, become who you are[1][5].

Citations:
[1] https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/12/ ... al-return/
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Nietzsche/comm ... steps_and/
[3] http://undercurrentphilosophy.com/mediu ... issonance/
[4] https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/qu ... -nietzsche
[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/Nietzsche/comm ... ?rdt=65531
[6] https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3 ... r-trag-die
[7] https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-u ... th-history
[8] https://philosophybreak.com/articles/ni ... tatements/
[9] https://iep.utm.edu/niet-his/
[10] https://www.artofmanliness.com/characte ... aphorisms/
[11] https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/735/1/K_Gemes_Strangers.pdf
[12] https://allauthor.com/quotes/279655/
[13] https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/cgi/ ... t=episteme
[14] https://quotefancy.com/quote/808939/Fri ... first-rash
[15] https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/ser ... 1f/content

That reads like some high school student's scribbling after reading a whole lot about (rather than reading) Nietzsche...

[rotting bones]

That reads like some high school student's scribbling after reading a whole lot about (rather than reading) Nietzsche...

Yes, ChatGPT writes better than perplexity.ai based on what I've seen so far. To be fair, Nietzsche's original writing feels the same way. Either way, it's not my intention to promote Nietzsche's thinking.

[rotting bones]

Concerts rarely end with the musicians suffering fatal heart attacks on stage. Less still do we find novelists slumped over dead on their manuscripts. Grueling and dangerous working conditions are certainly an important problem worth addressing but the kind of work AI researchers are trying to abolish is far from the most dangerous.

BTW, the idea that starving artists are a thing of the past is insane to me. Maybe you should refresh your education in sociology by watching the Rent musical.

[rotting bones]

That reads like some high school student's scribbling after reading a whole lot about (rather than reading) Nietzsche...

Actually, being more specific might help. I can't say any of this is against Nietzsche's sayings. I have read more or less all of these claims as well as elements of the writing style in his own books. The Gay Science probably contains over 70% of them all by itself.

The factors that make it sound least like Nietzsche are:

1. The relative absence of rambling.

2. There is some contemporary language, but Nietzsche would probably like that.

3. Nietzsche continuously contradicts himself. He knows this and he enjoys it. He doesn't have fixed positions on most issues, only a hermeneutic frame, a mode of interpretation. For example:

a) He tells people to overturn morality by appealing to the Will to Power. He says some moral people were following their Will to Power. He says everyone is always following the Will to Power. Then he says most moral people are not following their Will to Power. This is bad for themselves and everyone else because self-sacrifice hurts the individual, and therefore society. But he earlier suggested that the instinct to hurt the species might have died out by this point.

b) He tells evangelists not to praise virtue because that will make virtue common and worthless. Then he says he never wants to deny anyone anything and always say yes to life.

c) He talks extensively about "nobility" and "height" of character, but he says he only believes in physics, as if physics is not the great democratizer. After all, everyone bleeds the same. My understanding is that without the Neoplatonic Great Chain of Being, all talk of "height" in this context is conventional at best and nonsensical at worst. But this "height of character" is probably the closest Nietzsche comes to having a fixed position on anything, making him a Neoplatonist who has incorporated recently discovered historical facts into the theory.

PS. Come to think of it, doesn't saying yes to everything contradict the Will to Power?

[Travis B.]

Concerts rarely end with the musicians suffering fatal heart attacks on stage. Less still do we find novelists slumped over dead on their manuscripts. Grueling and dangerous working conditions are certainly an important problem worth addressing but the kind of work AI researchers are trying to abolish is far from the most dangerous.

BTW, the idea that starving artists are a thing of the past is insane to me. Maybe you should refresh your education in sociology by watching the Rent musical.

This is, you don't need to starve to be productive outside of employment, and being employed does not preclude being productive in your spare time ─ e.g. I develop software (e.g. zeptoforth) purely for the enjoyment of it, and simultaneously am paid to develop software (e.g. image reconstruction software for MR imaging). And I am by no means unique in this.