These are important jobs that are much more meaningful than what you’re doing now
You don’t really know what exactly I’m doing now, but that’s beside the point. I never said they were unimportant, I said there’s not enough challenge to keep my brain occupied. I have pretty severe ADHD. If I don’t get to do something new and interesting nearly every day, I’ll start performing very poorly soon. If the entire planet was dependent on me doing the same exact thing for 8 hours a day and even if I knew it… Well in a few months, we’d all be dead. It wouldn’t be unimportant, it would just not be meaningfully challenging for me and I’d get complacent. It’s how my brain works and even medication doesn’t help a lot. In my first job, I helped displace 2-3 tons of CO2 emissions per day by fixing used laptops slated for landfill, giving them what I’d hope was years of new life. It was great for a while, but it became meaningless for me because it was too easy. 2 years in, I knew that if I had to do it for much longer, I would never recover mentally. I didn’t make it to 3 years at that job.
Being a mindless drone is what you are right now working for a company. You’re an AI in fleshy form.
I mean you don’t really know my situation, I’m actually the sole employee at my company. I decide when, how much and who to work for. I have a few favorite clients that know to give me tough problems rather than boring, repetitive things.
Being stuck in dead-end office jobs working like robots is draining people and society
Well, some people don’t want to be lumberjacks or construction workers. Some prefer knowledge work. Those who get into it just for the money will feel drained, I’m sure. But I know a lot of people like myself who do it purely because they love a good problem to solve. I don’t think many of them would function well within normal “meaningful” jobs in the physical world over the long term.
So yes, take a course, learn something new and take charge.
My point was that anything you’d really need to take a course in, won’t be hiring new junior employees by the time you’re finished. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, interpreters, artists are going to have their numbers thinned HARD. What we’ll have left for young people is manual labor, customer service, cleaning, etc. Jobs where employees become useful fairly quickly as far as the learning curve is concerned and people are paid low enough that they’re not worth replacing with machines. Tradies will have it safe for now, but I’m anticipating that there will be a LOT more competition for those jobs, particularly electricians because that’s less physically demanding and smelly than plumbing or construction. Which means wages in the trades are also going to go down, particularly for fresh employees.
Anyway, as I said before, I already have enough years of experience in my field that I likely still have a future in it. If I wasn’t raising a toddler alone as a single father, I could grind myself to early retirement in 10 years doing 200 hours a month, but currently I’m working more like 40 a month as a “mindless drone” and it’s enough to get by. It’s not me I’m worried about. I’m worried about other people who can’t handle doing boring work day in and day out.
You’re a software engineer. You told me in your first comment. So no, I absolutely know those jobs are more meaningful.
You can still do knowledge work without being a mindless fleshy AI. You don’t need to be a fucking lumberjack. Quit it with the straw man arguments. I will ignore them, so you’re wasting your own time writing them.
And it’s good that you’re worried about other people, but the arguments you make to get there are utter BS. People can and will adapt and there will not just be lumberjacks and electricians. Maybe challenge your mind with that before making such comments.
You’re a software engineer. You told me in your first comment. So no, I absolutely know those jobs are more meaningful.
You literally have no idea what projects I’ve worked on though. Hint: If I’m working on something in special needs care, I’m touching thousands of lives at once, not 10. But you probably equate me with the same people who develop online casinos or targeting systems for Palantir because I have the same job title.
You can still do knowledge work without being a mindless fleshy AI.
You want to call me mindless so much, I think you need to look into yourself. What do YOU do?
I don’t know how you can realize that the goal of the companies that own the AI you’re praising is the abolishment of human knowledge work altogether. Knowledge workers cost money. Look, even before the AI craze, the goal of nearly every company looking to make a profit has been to make work as boring and efficient as possible. I’ve been through it. People get reallocated to bite sized responsibility. Only do one thing and do it like a robot.
What kind of jobs do YOU think will exist in the future that are going to require any sort of complex thought? Because I can nearly guarantee that eventually, the doctors in your hospital will be robots, but the bedpan changers will be human. Nurses will be there to administer IVs and such, but shouldn’t have their own opinions.
And if you’re going to say that doctors, nurses, teachers, etc, are safe because those are government jobs not private company jobs… Well, with an aging populace and an already unsustainable pension system, the government’s gonna have to start saving money too.
Does it matter that AI can’t be held accountable and it makes mistakes a human could spot? No, because it’s significantly cheaper than paying a human that needs to pay rent and buy groceries. You just pay one human to take on the liability for the AI that replaced the other 10.
Mate. You called hospital staff janitors and factory workers that don’t use their brain. I think you need to tone it down a bit here.
If you want to know, I’m an MD if it wasn’t obvious and I work with many of the great people you feel the need to insult. I know the work they do with patients and their families. So while no, I don’t know exactly what you do I still think whatever they are doing is much more meaningful than developing software. Even if it has something to do with special needs.
Where am I praising AI? I literally said AI sucks.
Yes, every job will be affected, some more than others. Some sooner than others. Some jobs will remain but will be more efficient using AI. The aging population so far has only meant more work, not less, even though we already use AI.
Mate. You called hospital staff janitors and factory workers that don’t use their brain. I think you need to tone it down a bit here.
I’m saying that’s all that will be left soon. Paying staff that actually needs to use their brains is expensive and inefficient. The routine bits will remain, those are harder to automate and you can pay staff less for doing boring things.
But also I said that because of my severe ADHD, I can’t do boring stuff like that. There need to be problems and I need to come up with solutions, and things need to be done. Like if there’s no visible progress happening towards the end of something, I can’t stay motivated. Since patients need help every single day, something like feeding them is completely mind-numbing to me since I can’t “win” or “beat” it. It’s not meaningless, but it’s not something I’m mentally capable of staying motivated on. Get me? Like I said, my current line of work is basically the only thing I can do that keeps me motivated by being challenging enough, without requiring a degree.
If you want to know, I’m an MD if it wasn’t obvious
Explains the god complex lol.
I could MAYBE stay motivated as an MD, hopefully that wouldn’t get too boring for me. However, I could never finish the education I’d have to go through. I can’t spend 7 years memorizing stuff, I’ll last maybe one semester.
You said in an earlier comment something about people like me existing in olden times before we had computers. Yes, that’s true. Back in the caveman days, someone like me would probably have been a hunter. Later on, a soldier on the front lines. Something where there’s a chance of dying at any moment, to add at least some excitement. But I don’t really want to be a soldier.
I know the work they do with patients and their families. So while no, I don’t know exactly what you do I still think whatever they are doing is much more meaningful than developing software. Even if it has something to do with special needs.
It’s just a couple of patients and their families at a time though. Like I said, my projects affect thousands at a time usually, at a minimum. But that one was just an example, many of my other projects have been in much less meaningful areas of course. I’m just pointing out that the people writing software that you doctors use, usually touch thousands if not millions of lives, but you seem to think their work is meaningless. I’m also personally responsible for saving a few thousand therapists (PT, OT, SLP) and therapy assistants across the US about 10-30 minutes a day on filling out notes by improving their existing EMR system significantly (it was not great, I can tell you that). Try calculating the impact of that on human lives improved in the long term if every one of those providers can see one more patient per day for an example. How many people might get an initial eval appointment a few days earlier to get started managing their pain since the clinic was able to fit in 5 more patients per day? Could be hundreds, maybe thousands of people a year. Not a single life saved by me, but possibly thousands improved marginally.
I’m just saying it’s pretty presumptuous to assume you know how meaningful someone’s work is based on their job title. There are doctors out there helping victims of genocide in Gaza, and there are doctors doing Mar-A-Lago surgeries for rich Trump sycophants. There are software engineers writing medical software and software engineers creating online casinos, surveillance systems, etc.
I also literally never said that those people’s (that you’re talking about) jobs aren’t meaningful to them, or to the people they interact with. I’m saying I personally can’t find meaning in a job that 1) someone else could also easily do, 2) doesn’t challenge me every single day, 3) is a monotonous grind.
Where am I praising AI? I literally said AI sucks.
You were literally saying it’s great that people are losing well-paid jobs:
Good, let ‘em ruin themselves. We need the people in healthcare and education anyway.
Another thing to consider: When there are 500 applicants for 10 positions at your hospital, they’re going to fire some of the existing staff because they’re paid too much and the new people can be paid minimum wage.
After talking to you, I’ve realized why people say doctors develop a god complex. One day when you’re signing off on 300 treatments a day that AI conjured up while barely having time to skim patients’ histories because of horrible KPIs, you’ll realize what I mean when I say knowledge work is being destroyed.
LOL god complex? You’re the one calling people factory workers and janitors and telling me how much better you are than them because your software “touches people” whatever that may be.
I’ve been telling you from the start to stop being so arrogant and that you’re not as special as you think. Might as well just say “no u” and be done with it. Even AI could have thought of that.
Also, where have I ever boasted about myself or my job? Please quote me.
It’s just a couple of patients and their families at a time though. Like I said, my projects affect thousands at a time usually, at a minimum.
Hmm, you were saying god complex?
You were literally saying it’s great that people are losing well-paid jobs.
How is that praising AI in any way, shape or form?
You need to challenge yourself cognitively a little more.
Another thing to consider: When there are 500 applicants for 10 positions at your hospital, they’re going to fire some of the existing staff because they’re paid too much and the new people can be paid minimum wage.
In the US that might happen. I work in a normal country where health care isn’t run by for-profit hedge funds.
LOL god complex? You’re the one calling people factory workers and janitors
And you were calling me a fleshy AI lol.
Mate I’m just saying that the jobs you seem to think are so interesting, are pretty fucking boring. Why did you choose to be a doctor? I can guarantee that the nurses do more work than you do. The janitors that have to wash immobile patients, have even harder jobs. And yet for some reason, you didn’t consider that to be an interesting job, despite the fact that it’s certainly more personal and meaningful to the patient than yours.
Hmm, you were saying god complex?
I’m just trying to illustrate the point that just because someone isn’t directly interacting with patients, doesn’t mean their work doesn’t affect people. This is that medical worker god complex again. There are probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of people whose labor you indirectly depend on to do your job without thinking about it, but since they’re elsewhere in the supply chain, you and your coworkers who are visible to the patient, have the only really meaningful jobs. It’s this sheer arrogance from you that made me want to point out that other people’s jobs can also affect patients’ well-being, even if it’s indirectly.
How is that praising AI in any way, shape or form? You need to challenge yourself cognitively a little more.
If you can’t put two and two together here, I’m not sure it’s my intelligence that should be under question.
In the US that might happen. I work in a normal country where health care isn’t run by for-profit hedge funds.
Idk if you’ve heard about these things called taxpayers, but they tend to not like it when their funds are being misused. Government’s always looking out to cut costs. For an example, my country raised the visit fee from 5€ to 20€ on non-PCP visits so fewer people would visit doctors and they could cut down on healthcare costs. Now imagine if they could pay the employees half as much because there are so many candidates available.
Much of the western world is running into more and more government debt. Finland’s finance ministry released a statement saying their debt’s going to be bigger than their GDP soon. That’s considered a pretty bad sign generally. Here in Estonia we’re cutting costs instead. Some are even talking about privatizing the healthcare system. It’s pretty fucked up. And the biggest cost in healthcare is always salaries, so for healthcare to remain a government affair, those need to be cut soon, for most countries.
Yes. In response to your derogatory remarks. How does that make me have a god complex?
Of course being a doctor is more interesting. And within medicine I also chose a specialty that interested me. I didn’t get the one I initially chose, but I did into the one I am doing now, and in the end I’m happy with it.
Point is: you can’t tell if certain jobs are boring because you’ve never tried them. You’ve never even seen what their day is like. So you’re making shitty assumptions based on your shitty prejudice.
If you can’t put two and two together here, I’m not sure it’s my intelligence that should be under question.
That sounds a lot like something that someone who doesn’t actually have a point would say. So, please humour me.
Idk if you’ve heard about these things called taxpayers
You start a sentence with that and expect me to read the rest of the gibberish a fleshy AI has written down? Again, showing you’re dumber than the AI that’s about to replace you.
You don’t really know what exactly I’m doing now, but that’s beside the point. I never said they were unimportant, I said there’s not enough challenge to keep my brain occupied. I have pretty severe ADHD. If I don’t get to do something new and interesting nearly every day, I’ll start performing very poorly soon. If the entire planet was dependent on me doing the same exact thing for 8 hours a day and even if I knew it… Well in a few months, we’d all be dead. It wouldn’t be unimportant, it would just not be meaningfully challenging for me and I’d get complacent. It’s how my brain works and even medication doesn’t help a lot. In my first job, I helped displace 2-3 tons of CO2 emissions per day by fixing used laptops slated for landfill, giving them what I’d hope was years of new life. It was great for a while, but it became meaningless for me because it was too easy. 2 years in, I knew that if I had to do it for much longer, I would never recover mentally. I didn’t make it to 3 years at that job.
I mean you don’t really know my situation, I’m actually the sole employee at my company. I decide when, how much and who to work for. I have a few favorite clients that know to give me tough problems rather than boring, repetitive things.
Well, some people don’t want to be lumberjacks or construction workers. Some prefer knowledge work. Those who get into it just for the money will feel drained, I’m sure. But I know a lot of people like myself who do it purely because they love a good problem to solve. I don’t think many of them would function well within normal “meaningful” jobs in the physical world over the long term.
My point was that anything you’d really need to take a course in, won’t be hiring new junior employees by the time you’re finished. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, interpreters, artists are going to have their numbers thinned HARD. What we’ll have left for young people is manual labor, customer service, cleaning, etc. Jobs where employees become useful fairly quickly as far as the learning curve is concerned and people are paid low enough that they’re not worth replacing with machines. Tradies will have it safe for now, but I’m anticipating that there will be a LOT more competition for those jobs, particularly electricians because that’s less physically demanding and smelly than plumbing or construction. Which means wages in the trades are also going to go down, particularly for fresh employees.
Anyway, as I said before, I already have enough years of experience in my field that I likely still have a future in it. If I wasn’t raising a toddler alone as a single father, I could grind myself to early retirement in 10 years doing 200 hours a month, but currently I’m working more like 40 a month as a “mindless drone” and it’s enough to get by. It’s not me I’m worried about. I’m worried about other people who can’t handle doing boring work day in and day out.
You’re a software engineer. You told me in your first comment. So no, I absolutely know those jobs are more meaningful.
You can still do knowledge work without being a mindless fleshy AI. You don’t need to be a fucking lumberjack. Quit it with the straw man arguments. I will ignore them, so you’re wasting your own time writing them.
And it’s good that you’re worried about other people, but the arguments you make to get there are utter BS. People can and will adapt and there will not just be lumberjacks and electricians. Maybe challenge your mind with that before making such comments.
You literally have no idea what projects I’ve worked on though. Hint: If I’m working on something in special needs care, I’m touching thousands of lives at once, not 10. But you probably equate me with the same people who develop online casinos or targeting systems for Palantir because I have the same job title.
You want to call me mindless so much, I think you need to look into yourself. What do YOU do?
I don’t know how you can realize that the goal of the companies that own the AI you’re praising is the abolishment of human knowledge work altogether. Knowledge workers cost money. Look, even before the AI craze, the goal of nearly every company looking to make a profit has been to make work as boring and efficient as possible. I’ve been through it. People get reallocated to bite sized responsibility. Only do one thing and do it like a robot.
What kind of jobs do YOU think will exist in the future that are going to require any sort of complex thought? Because I can nearly guarantee that eventually, the doctors in your hospital will be robots, but the bedpan changers will be human. Nurses will be there to administer IVs and such, but shouldn’t have their own opinions.
And if you’re going to say that doctors, nurses, teachers, etc, are safe because those are government jobs not private company jobs… Well, with an aging populace and an already unsustainable pension system, the government’s gonna have to start saving money too.
Does it matter that AI can’t be held accountable and it makes mistakes a human could spot? No, because it’s significantly cheaper than paying a human that needs to pay rent and buy groceries. You just pay one human to take on the liability for the AI that replaced the other 10.
Mate. You called hospital staff janitors and factory workers that don’t use their brain. I think you need to tone it down a bit here.
If you want to know, I’m an MD if it wasn’t obvious and I work with many of the great people you feel the need to insult. I know the work they do with patients and their families. So while no, I don’t know exactly what you do I still think whatever they are doing is much more meaningful than developing software. Even if it has something to do with special needs.
Where am I praising AI? I literally said AI sucks.
Yes, every job will be affected, some more than others. Some sooner than others. Some jobs will remain but will be more efficient using AI. The aging population so far has only meant more work, not less, even though we already use AI.
I’m saying that’s all that will be left soon. Paying staff that actually needs to use their brains is expensive and inefficient. The routine bits will remain, those are harder to automate and you can pay staff less for doing boring things.
But also I said that because of my severe ADHD, I can’t do boring stuff like that. There need to be problems and I need to come up with solutions, and things need to be done. Like if there’s no visible progress happening towards the end of something, I can’t stay motivated. Since patients need help every single day, something like feeding them is completely mind-numbing to me since I can’t “win” or “beat” it. It’s not meaningless, but it’s not something I’m mentally capable of staying motivated on. Get me? Like I said, my current line of work is basically the only thing I can do that keeps me motivated by being challenging enough, without requiring a degree.
Explains the god complex lol.
I could MAYBE stay motivated as an MD, hopefully that wouldn’t get too boring for me. However, I could never finish the education I’d have to go through. I can’t spend 7 years memorizing stuff, I’ll last maybe one semester.
You said in an earlier comment something about people like me existing in olden times before we had computers. Yes, that’s true. Back in the caveman days, someone like me would probably have been a hunter. Later on, a soldier on the front lines. Something where there’s a chance of dying at any moment, to add at least some excitement. But I don’t really want to be a soldier.
It’s just a couple of patients and their families at a time though. Like I said, my projects affect thousands at a time usually, at a minimum. But that one was just an example, many of my other projects have been in much less meaningful areas of course. I’m just pointing out that the people writing software that you doctors use, usually touch thousands if not millions of lives, but you seem to think their work is meaningless. I’m also personally responsible for saving a few thousand therapists (PT, OT, SLP) and therapy assistants across the US about 10-30 minutes a day on filling out notes by improving their existing EMR system significantly (it was not great, I can tell you that). Try calculating the impact of that on human lives improved in the long term if every one of those providers can see one more patient per day for an example. How many people might get an initial eval appointment a few days earlier to get started managing their pain since the clinic was able to fit in 5 more patients per day? Could be hundreds, maybe thousands of people a year. Not a single life saved by me, but possibly thousands improved marginally.
I’m just saying it’s pretty presumptuous to assume you know how meaningful someone’s work is based on their job title. There are doctors out there helping victims of genocide in Gaza, and there are doctors doing Mar-A-Lago surgeries for rich Trump sycophants. There are software engineers writing medical software and software engineers creating online casinos, surveillance systems, etc.
I also literally never said that those people’s (that you’re talking about) jobs aren’t meaningful to them, or to the people they interact with. I’m saying I personally can’t find meaning in a job that 1) someone else could also easily do, 2) doesn’t challenge me every single day, 3) is a monotonous grind.
You were literally saying it’s great that people are losing well-paid jobs:
Another thing to consider: When there are 500 applicants for 10 positions at your hospital, they’re going to fire some of the existing staff because they’re paid too much and the new people can be paid minimum wage.
After talking to you, I’ve realized why people say doctors develop a god complex. One day when you’re signing off on 300 treatments a day that AI conjured up while barely having time to skim patients’ histories because of horrible KPIs, you’ll realize what I mean when I say knowledge work is being destroyed.
LOL god complex? You’re the one calling people factory workers and janitors and telling me how much better you are than them because your software “touches people” whatever that may be. I’ve been telling you from the start to stop being so arrogant and that you’re not as special as you think. Might as well just say “no u” and be done with it. Even AI could have thought of that.
Also, where have I ever boasted about myself or my job? Please quote me.
Hmm, you were saying god complex?
How is that praising AI in any way, shape or form? You need to challenge yourself cognitively a little more.
In the US that might happen. I work in a normal country where health care isn’t run by for-profit hedge funds.
And you were calling me a fleshy AI lol.
Mate I’m just saying that the jobs you seem to think are so interesting, are pretty fucking boring. Why did you choose to be a doctor? I can guarantee that the nurses do more work than you do. The janitors that have to wash immobile patients, have even harder jobs. And yet for some reason, you didn’t consider that to be an interesting job, despite the fact that it’s certainly more personal and meaningful to the patient than yours.
I’m just trying to illustrate the point that just because someone isn’t directly interacting with patients, doesn’t mean their work doesn’t affect people. This is that medical worker god complex again. There are probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of people whose labor you indirectly depend on to do your job without thinking about it, but since they’re elsewhere in the supply chain, you and your coworkers who are visible to the patient, have the only really meaningful jobs. It’s this sheer arrogance from you that made me want to point out that other people’s jobs can also affect patients’ well-being, even if it’s indirectly.
If you can’t put two and two together here, I’m not sure it’s my intelligence that should be under question.
Idk if you’ve heard about these things called taxpayers, but they tend to not like it when their funds are being misused. Government’s always looking out to cut costs. For an example, my country raised the visit fee from 5€ to 20€ on non-PCP visits so fewer people would visit doctors and they could cut down on healthcare costs. Now imagine if they could pay the employees half as much because there are so many candidates available.
Much of the western world is running into more and more government debt. Finland’s finance ministry released a statement saying their debt’s going to be bigger than their GDP soon. That’s considered a pretty bad sign generally. Here in Estonia we’re cutting costs instead. Some are even talking about privatizing the healthcare system. It’s pretty fucked up. And the biggest cost in healthcare is always salaries, so for healthcare to remain a government affair, those need to be cut soon, for most countries.
Yes. In response to your derogatory remarks. How does that make me have a god complex?
Of course being a doctor is more interesting. And within medicine I also chose a specialty that interested me. I didn’t get the one I initially chose, but I did into the one I am doing now, and in the end I’m happy with it.
Point is: you can’t tell if certain jobs are boring because you’ve never tried them. You’ve never even seen what their day is like. So you’re making shitty assumptions based on your shitty prejudice.
That sounds a lot like something that someone who doesn’t actually have a point would say. So, please humour me.
You start a sentence with that and expect me to read the rest of the gibberish a fleshy AI has written down? Again, showing you’re dumber than the AI that’s about to replace you.