This is an unfinished thought, I will come back to it later. --- There is a lot of chatter around whether it is possible to build self-driving cards, to automate cooking or construct a house. Those who argue for its inevitability tend to take a positivist view of the world with a belief that automation will bring material efficiencies that will effectively solve all problems and bring an age of abundance. Others with more interpretivist views often deny this notion and propose changes with smaller assumptions of technological developments, such as that curricula should be changed to prepare students for a changing workspace by focusing on higher-order thinking skills like problem solving, rather than questioning the existence of a workforce. Here, I do not argue the truth of this matter, but to explore what would follow from another perspective that I find often neglected - **the non-positivist believers of automative inevitability**. That is, a perspective that assumes that automation will bring seemingly abundant material efficiencies but finds experiential value as a socially constructed phenomena that is highly subjective, which cannot simply be 'solved' like an engineering problem through the distribution of material efficiencies through [[Universal basic income|universal basic income (UBI)]]. I (try to) argue that changes in the [[Purpose of education|purpose of education]] are fundamental to navigate subjective tensions as a society and make effective use of material resources to live happy flourishing lives. ## Automation does not mean the end of hard-decisions Material resources will allow us to tackle objective (or more so agreed upon) problems pretty well. Utilitarianism can be more justified in turning morality into optimisation problems when there is some objective well-defined goal that can be universally understood and worked towards. However, with material abundance and intelligence, there is no longer necessity to optimise with respect to labour-resource constraints. Rather we can tackle all objective problems by using material efficiencies, but after exhausting this list of problems the vast amount of subjective tensions within our society will become increasingly apparent. Things would be no longer tradeoffs with respect to human-labour resource constraints but **the battling of fundamental ethical values**. These are hard decisions that cannot/should not be outsourced to artificial intelligence, but remain areas that humans should debate and come to conclusions as a society - such as the legality of killing an animal. Given these hard decisions we need a way to organise and educate society to be composed of members that can collectively negotiate meaning - in some sense meaningful participation in this collective negotiation becomes the citizen's job. ## Do not turn the subjective into an optimisation problem There lies a tension at the core of [[Utilitarianism|utilitarianism]] where the maximisation of utility can come to strange consequences if given a poor subjective definition of utility. This has spawned many strains that attempt to define utility in a variety of ways, one of which being negative utilitarianism where Karl Popper argues "it is not only impossible but very dangerous to attempt to maximize the pleasure or the happiness of the people, since such an attempt must lead to totalitarianism" (1945), where the motive to maximising pleasure should be replaced by minimising pain. Generally suffering can be more universally and objectively understood, compared to the strange value-laden constructed land of pleasures (see [[Alchemy exists!|alchemy exists!]]). For example, most can agree that a child dying of malaria should be prevented, which is something that can be minimised without excessively strange consequences. Meanwhile, a more so subjective opinion that the existence of life provides positive utility urges the maximisation of the number of children that society should birth. In the past, the lack of material resources aided in not acting out certain subjective optimisation processes, but the explosion of material efficiencies could open up dangerous opportunities that should be carefully navigated - something that depends upon the societies capacity to socially negotiate meaning, which itself depends on education. ## What should education be for? Unlike the problem of automation which is tackled through objective approaches that value STEM education, the subjective lies in the field of the humanities - an area that is increasingly neglected. Even with our increasing abundance of resources through automation, our society is not shifting to the value-laden areas of how they can be better translated into experiential value, rather attempting to further increase material efficiencies with investment in STEM being higher than ever whilst the arts and humanities are increasingly neglected. These funding decisions effect the public discourse around careers, policy and trickle down to affect student decisions around subjective decisions, with [A-level students in England increasingly dropping humanities and arts subjects in favour of a narrower range of science-based subjects](https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/aug/14/a-level-students-choosing-narrower-range-of-subjects-after-gove-changes). That is to say, if such a transition comes abruptly and we manage to navigate AI safety risks, we would be left with a society of STEM thinkers that have the capacity to manipulate the physical material or virtual computer to solve well-defined problems - something that the automated systems may possess the power to do. However, we would lack the capacity to navigate the subjective. That is, we live in a society with shared spaces that involves the constant mutual negotiation of shared resources irrespective of material efficiencies. We also need to reconcile differences and come to decide what ethical values should be instilled within the political and social systems. Here I see three core themes governing the purpose of education: 1. Developing [[Virtue|virtues]] 2. [[Democracy|Democratic]] governance 3. Becoming [[Alchemy exists!|alchemists]] of experiential value They aim to make effective use of the material efficiencies to minimise suffering on societal levels, and set up conditions that allow for individuals to become alchemists of experiential value, thereby living fulfilling lives whilst minimising suffering. --- # **IN-PROGRESS | ignore below** ### 1. The development of virtues Irrespective of material efficiencies, we live in a society in a shared space that involved interaction and mutual use of shared resources. The development of virtues form fundamental parts of the child's identity, that governs their [[Patterns of operation|patterns of operating]] in the real world, in how honest they are, their empathy, and so on. These qualities form the basis of their decision making on both a micro and macro scale. ### 2. [[Democracy|Democratic]] governance The goal of democracy is ... Dewey, * ### 3. Becoming [[Alchemy exists!|alchemists]] of value I use the term 'value' here as experiential value or utility, not moral values. Gratitude, mindfulness .... Whilst the last theme focuses on the experiential value, which is something that should not be treated as an optimisation process given the subjective nature of it which can result it a variety of outcomes. But nonetheless, by becoming alchemists of value, the child can direct their life in a direction they see as more just. --- TODO: * To some extent the following arguments also hold for today, where we have enormous amounts of societal efficiencies in developed countries, but with poor distribution of resources and decisions that effectively waste resources. Eg. a person buying a BMW to feel pleasure to the status, which is used to drive to and from work, to further increase efficiency ... With the material resources that we have of present, there are much better ways it could be translated into experiential value for the individuals. * Maybe it is moreso that these are fundamental purposes of education, which actually tie to the ancient greek's and their values of education, but it started to take more and more ideals around economic productivity, but in some sense this conclusion is the core set of leftovers that has been present the whole time. * Perhaps frame through a 2 x 2 matrix of (personal/societal) x (happiness/suffering) * Personal happiness - Societal conflicts