Agreed, also protects us for when the lights go out in the next solar storm event, or pandemic, or asteroid , take your pick from the list of cosmic interventions.

The other aspect of AI I am appreciating is that it could keep me , a senior coder, in employment for longer. I expect I am in cognitive decline, my AI sidekick can help me learn that next framework.

That's a good point.

Maybe we just need a UI change. You can talk to the AI and listen or you can read, but you cant copy the text. Maybe deliver text as an image, that will fox most kids until they figure OCR. I suspect the kids would prefer video these days.

I'd want an LLM trained only on text book data, not all the batshit on the Interweb.

Lol. The Butlerian Jihad started here.

If you get that , you're a Dune fan.

No argument here about the value of work and the need to do it, to take part.

"Were not here to put food in your mouths" , well neither are you most likely. That activity of getting food in your mouth involved a long chain of people we'll never know, you are just paying for it. My guess is like most of us you are turning a small wheel in the big machine somewhere. That's not a bad thing, I do that too, but I recognise its not very satisfying compared to how my ancestors worked.

When I get to experience the result of my work , see its value, the work feels more satisfying and I am happier to do it. I like to cook and bake bread, for example, and the link between effort and a tasty result are very obvious. Washing up tends to suck.

  Part of that satisfaction is seeing personal effort affect personal destiny, and we see that eroded in the tension of paying tax to fund welfare. I hope you are always well enough to work , if you are not, welfare is very useful and a civilised concept. Without it you'd be tripping over starving people on the way to work. So I don't mind paying tax, when the system works properly I am helping my neighbour, but don't take the piss.

I wouldn't be opposed to working for welfare, even one day a week volunteering. Part of the welfare trap is losing the structure and routine of the habit of work and the connection to wider society. I'd orientate the work around community and working toward an obvious result, gardening, picking up litter, caring for elderly, baking in a co-op. To incentivise I'd change the delivery of welfare perhaps, if you contribute you get the freedom of welfare in cash, if you don't you get food stamps.

The other aspect of working malaise is that it is increasingly undervalued. We are working more for less, partly to do with taxation and inflation, but mostly I suspect the costs of supporting a class of rent and dividend seekers, agents and bureaucracy. They drive the cost of up of everything including the welfare bill and taxation. I believe it's called a parasite economy.

... yes you are thinking about it . That water has to be just off the boil and the tea bag is Yorkshire, wars have been fought over less.

Can you name another country that has school shootings we see on the scale of America's?

Granted there are child soldiers around the world, where there is severe poverty and crime, but America is one of the richest countries in the world.

What is it about American Culture that breeds children that shoot each other, at school ?

Only one word for it, Evil.

Yes school kids shooting each other is worse . US is a dangerous place to live . Founded in violence it appears to be ending with it.

I like almost all of the Americans I have met, they have many good qualities I admire. Sadly your radical individualism and capitalism breeds a minority of some of the worlds most selfish greedy people, your Oligarch class who's first loyalty is to their wealth and not their country. Are you happy with that state of affairs? Like a medieval peasant was happy to have a strong lord to pretend to protect them when they were sucking them dry and sending them to die in their wars?

Europe's countries are older and wiser than the Young Punk America. We rejected Kings, your Maga folks appear to want one. Why? Because they are desperate and poor because the same Kings have crushed them either sending their work to China or peddling them addictions, fear and empty promises of Freedom so they can live in luxury.

You cant see the chains you willingly pick up and put on every day. I wish you genuine Freedom. Demand cleaner politics free of corporate lobbying. Demand leaders that are authentically interested in your welfare and not power and wealth. Get a rein on harmful bad capitalism and demand good capitalism that serves your country and not an entitled minority.

Mmm. Do they want to "work" ?

Maybe they want a sense of belonging, reason and purpose, a point-full existence rather than point-less. That seems to be our individual challenge too, find a point and aim at it.

Work is now mostly a mindless economic activity. The industrial revolution robbed us of most livelihoods where people were literally named after their work like all those "Smiths" we have. Trades were passed down generations and traditions. I guess in our commercialism and individualism that sounds like bondage rather that something comfortable and meaningful.

Wow. Your friend is amazing. Stories like this need to be heard by the world's whingers.

Yes, they kinda sound similar.

Dog eat dog or State eat dog, perhaps BBQ'd in your local wet market. Golden Retriever burger anyone? Tastes a bit ruff.

It does feel like Communism embracing Capitalism has created a whole new breed of misery for working people.

We can be grateful for we live in quaint Europe. Don't let political loonies on either side screw it up.

I'm not keen on flying cameras in my personal airspace either. Guess they'll be more room for the state's eyes in the sky. Doh!

And some of the longest working hours , people live at work, and the "party" and oligarchs live in luxury. When the workers get a break on state mandated holidays, leisure prices sky rocket and many lose out.

China has achieved amazing things with an indoctrinated and a fearful work force but it is far from perfect.

China has the same problem as the West, selfish and greedy people who don't want to share wealth. China has the same problem we have in the West and the West is wising up to it.

Greed is a cancer killing the planet and we give it pretty names like aspiration and ambition

Nope. Nope. Nope. Sorry ChatGPT wouldn't trust you with my money as far as I could throw you. You don't know when you get it wrong and your owners have already proved to be crooked, greedy weirdos.

Yup they are wolves. Predators. Need chasing off the ranch.

Who gives a fcuk what the previous one was like? The current president is the problem. What kind of batshit, play ground argument is "the other one was worse". My dad's stronger than your dad. Are you 5 years old?

You sound like a desperately lonely attention seeker. There are better, more positive ways of getting attention.

What kind of president would you like? Surely it cant be King Trump. You are supposed to be a republican. Republics have no kings.

Biden and Trump are old men. Don't you want a younger president for a change? Or maybe get into the 21st century with rest of us and hire a woman, try some oestrogen in the white house, rather than these tired old limp dicks you keep voting for.

Try and be a little less pathetic.