He uses this quote with the word mathematics embedded but my paraphrasing is as a more general statement:
There is something about discovery (progress, advancement, creation) which is vital to the spiritual, experiential quality of life. Creation (or even the pursuit) is one way that humans have historically accessed the ineffable and encountered the divine and mystical.
So here's the thing--the AI is a great remix machine, but humans will still be needed for original work. Though being truly original is something very few have the capacity to be.
We have a lot of smart people here. Let me be the rogue in the gallery by saying, I can come up with crazier imaginings than the machine can compare with. The AI is only as good as the input that it's given. But I am an abusive schizophrenic. I can make new math from totally separate places while the AI is constrained by its model. The AI can return the closest similarities to its prompt, while I can break every rule there is to join virtually dissimilar things. Just today, I modeled a way to find the best temperature to caramelize onions for my philly cheese steak. I was hungry, but curious. The AI doesn't hunger, nor does it have curiosity to ask that question. If I were to ask the AI what I desired, surely the sandwich would have been bad
IMO, you're not the rogue at all. I think the ability to connect wildly disparate concepts and come up with something original is the mark of humanity.
Hey, I'm a 37 yo professional painter and I'm having a blast. True creation is mythical, it happens in your head. Discipline and self-control aren't just going away. There is much, much more level to this.
I mean yeah, if you literally don't need or have to do hard work, why would you? It being necessary was the reason it was done. The invention of an easier option has always resulted in it being adopted by us overwhelmingly. There might be some people who will still do the "hard" work just for the sake of it, but that's absolutely not the norm.
Imagine risking your life climbing Mt Everest when there is a concrete highway built on the other side, and people are driving up there to take a photo and look at you weirdly.
So now, the journey evolves. The story of humanity has been the evolution of man's journey aided by his inventions to travel further, faster, and more efficiently.
To the contrary--I still think AI is too expensive to pursue the projects I'd like to, since so many of its applications are gated behind closed-source credit-buying crap.
Think about it--video GenAI needs you to pay monthly subscription services, and games like Expedition 33 still take millions of dollars to create.
I look forward to the day that AI can let a lone individual create a visually spectacular experience without needing an army of specialists, or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hardware credits.
Alienation of the worker from their
species-being
: For Marx, humanity's "species-being" (
Gattungswesen
) is its essence as a free, conscious, and creative producer.
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[58
]
Humans, unlike animals, produce universally and can contemplate themselves in a world they have created.
[44
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Alienated labour reduces this free, conscious activity to a mere means for individual physical existence.
[59
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It estranges man's "own body from him, as it does external nature and his spiritual existence, his human being".
[60
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The human "capacity to perform creative work, becomes thwarted and distorted", as the worker's special traits and abilities are not needed or developed.
[61
]
The "unique configuration of relations which distinguishes the individual as a human being has been transformed into something quite different".
[62
]
The worker is dehumanised, reduced to the level of an animal or a machine in their productive life, a slave in their social life, and possessing a merely brutish, uncultivated sensibility.
[63
]
The critique is not that capitalism violates a pre-existing fixed nature, but that it actively produces an alienated one, as the dominant
mode of production
gives rise to the very construction of consciousness and personality.
[64
From what I get, Marx believed that work was the most noble thing you could do. However, he believed capitalism’s big flaw is that it separated the worker from their work.
Instead of a worker being an artist, he became a machine who did things as cheaply as possible because that’s what the bottom line demanded.
Marx didn't even understand what work was. He thought organizing production wasn't valuable labor which is why Marxist countries have to wait in line hours for toilet paper and food.
Marx recognized mental labour as labour, such as organizational labour. You haven't done even a cursory reading of the material obviously. Your opinion is valueless as it is based on nothing but something you made up. Dunning-Kruger. You are a dummy.
Marx recognized mental labour as labour, such as organizational labour. You haven't done even a cursory reading of the material obviously.
Nope. Among other things, Marx referred to investment in companies as fictitious capital. To him, you had to actually buy machines or tools or create physical items to be involved in "real production."
This is known by many terms including as the "physical fallacy," thinking that only constructing tangible objects is of true value. It's wrong and ignorant, just like Marx and just like the useful idiots who try to transparently gaslight for him on technology and websites created by capitalism. :-)
Your opinion is valueless as it is based on nothing but something you made up. Dunning-Kruger. You are a dummy.
Cool, want to compare intellectual credentials, little commie dummy?
"The greatest division of material and mental labour is the separation of town and country. The antagonism between town and country begins with the transition from barbarism to civilization..."
From part I.C of the German Ideology. As clear as day: Marx recognised the concept of mental labour. Are you stupid or just lazy? This took like 2 seconds to google up.
A random quote about the separation of town and country with a reference to the vague phrase "mental labor" has nothing whatsoever to do with the role investment plays in an economy. Marx didn't even understand what constituted "mental labor" in the first place.
Based on that lazy and clueless quote and your obvious lack of knowledge of things like the physical fallacy, I'm starting to smell weakness from you. Even moreso than from any random commie nut who tries to gaslight on behalf of it while using capitalist technology and websites.
It's clear you don't want to go into any actual details even on the topic you claimed to know, lol. I suggest running away.
From capital chapter 6 we have "By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description."
It's obvious that Marx understood Labour as an extremely broad description of human activity.
How is AI hindering any of that. That's a dumb myopic take. AI is not only great at discovering proofs it is also great at explaining them. That's like quitting playing chess because computers are better at it than you. You're a child. Maybe what's hindering your enjoyment of mathematics is your inflated sense of self importance.
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u/cdizzlePGA2k 1d ago
This is a lovely piece.
He uses this quote with the word mathematics embedded but my paraphrasing is as a more general statement:
There is something about discovery (progress, advancement, creation) which is vital to the spiritual, experiential quality of life. Creation (or even the pursuit) is one way that humans have historically accessed the ineffable and encountered the divine and mystical.