Re: Skyscrapers & High-Rise Architecture
Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2021 2:17 am
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This guy makes a good argument against building skyscrapers:
There won't be rent - when we reach a high enough level of AI and automation we'll have to become a post-money society. Housing and food will be a human right freely distributed.funkervogt wrote: ↑Sun Jul 03, 2022 11:21 amThis guy makes a good argument against building skyscrapers:
I think he's right. If making shorter buildings is the more economically sensible thing to do, then a future where AGIs call the shots will not be one of gleaming skyscrapers; it will be one of boring low- and mid-rise buildings. But rent will be cheap.
In the video I posted, the man makes it clear that skyscrapers are more expensive to build than shorter buildings, and not just because the skyscrapers are bigger. The higher up you get, the more expensive it gets to add an extra story to the building. Adding the 100th floor to a building is much costlier than adding the 2nd floor.Vakanai wrote: ↑Mon Jul 04, 2022 12:11 amThere won't be rent - when we reach a high enough level of AI and automation we'll have to become a post-money society. Housing and food will be a human right freely distributed.funkervogt wrote: ↑Sun Jul 03, 2022 11:21 amThis guy makes a good argument against building skyscrapers:
I think he's right. If making shorter buildings is the more economically sensible thing to do, then a future where AGIs call the shots will not be one of gleaming skyscrapers; it will be one of boring low- and mid-rise buildings. But rent will be cheap.
Edit: I also don't ever see AGI "calling the shots" outside an apocalyptic Skynet scenario. It will be put in charge of a lot, things like handling all the frustrating bureaucratic crap, and it will be a guide and assistant to helping us make better decisions, but ultimately humans will still want to have final say in a democratic process.
If you read my post, I never argued against that - my only points were eventually after AGI rent, and money itself, won't exist. There'll be no place for humans in the workforce, and UBI will only get us so far since no one will be paying tax to the governments to fund UBI. Basically the only ones making money at all are the corporations who own the AGIs and automation, an untenable situation. In effective post-work and post-scarcity money and rent will just have to go. And the other point was that outside of a rogue AGI antagonistic of humanity, it'll never be left up to the AGI - humans will demand final say, even if it is only to go with the machine's superior logic.funkervogt wrote: ↑Mon Jul 04, 2022 1:58 pmIn the video I posted, the man makes it clear that skyscrapers are more expensive to build than shorter buildings, and not just because the skyscrapers are bigger. The higher up you get, the more expensive it gets to add an extra story to the building. Adding the 100th floor to a building is much costlier than adding the 2nd floor.Vakanai wrote: ↑Mon Jul 04, 2022 12:11 amThere won't be rent - when we reach a high enough level of AI and automation we'll have to become a post-money society. Housing and food will be a human right freely distributed.funkervogt wrote: ↑Sun Jul 03, 2022 11:21 am
This guy makes a good argument against building skyscrapers:
I think he's right. If making shorter buildings is the more economically sensible thing to do, then a future where AGIs call the shots will not be one of gleaming skyscrapers; it will be one of boring low- and mid-rise buildings. But rent will be cheap.
Edit: I also don't ever see AGI "calling the shots" outside an apocalyptic Skynet scenario. It will be put in charge of a lot, things like handling all the frustrating bureaucratic crap, and it will be a guide and assistant to helping us make better decisions, but ultimately humans will still want to have final say in a democratic process.
Higher construction costs have to be amortized, which means higher rent for the people living inside the skyscraper vs. people living inside the short building.
Even in a post-scarcity society, there would be limits on available resources, and it would be more difficult for the economy to bear it if humans were housed in tall skyscrapers instead of shorter buildings. An AGI that was using logic to optimize resource use wouldn't build skyscrapers for housing. In fact, it might not build them for any reason.
There won't be unlimited resources, either. Not everyone who asks for a 10,000 square foot penthouse suite on top of a 100-story building will be able to have one, and there will be some mechanism to limit a person from taking 10,000 calories of food each day and throwing most of it in the trash. Whether humans or AGIs are in charge, some attention will be paid in even a post-scarcity society to rationing resources and preventing waste.There won't be rent - when we reach a high enough level of AI and automation we'll have to become a post-money society. Housing and food will be a human right freely distributed.
Other scenarios could lead to AGI control. A "non-apocalyptic Skynet scenario" is possible, in which the machines violently take over Earth with relatively few deaths and little destruction of infrastructure. Humans would realize the situation was hopeless and surrender.I also don't ever see AGI "calling the shots" outside an apocalyptic Skynet scenario. It will be put in charge of a lot, things like handling all the frustrating bureaucratic crap, and it will be a guide and assistant to helping us make better decisions, but ultimately humans will still want to have final say in a democratic process.
On a long enough timeline, humans like us lose the final say, either de jure or de facto, and there are more routes to that situation than the one you mention. For example, by the year 2500, only 1 million Homo sapiens like us might be left, vs. 100 billion radically evolved posthumans and intelligent robots that vastly out-vote the remaining natural humans.And the other point was that outside of a rogue AGI antagonistic of humanity, it'll never be left up to the AGI - humans will demand final say, even if it is only to go with the machine's superior logic.
Why? A medium of exchange is essential to the functioning of an economy larger than a village. I don't see why this would stop being true in a post-scarcity society. Even if everything were "free" for humans, there would still be invisible prices attached to all goods and services we consumed. Someone would be monitoring it.money itself, won't exist
It's a mistake to assume current demographic trends will hold for decades. Look at population growth projections from 30 or 40 years ago and see how inaccurate they were.Now factor in declining birthrates across the developed and even much of the developing world, add in the many deaths coming from the mix of famine, war, climate change, pandemics, and other disasters that'll be more prevalent in the next few to several decades, and we might actually be looking at fewer humans that'll need housing, not more.
SOME people like living in cities and seeing skyscrapers dominating the horizon. Many other people like living in the countryside, in small towns where the tallest building is three stories, in the suburbs, or in trendy city neighborhoods consisting of low-rises.And people like a skyline with skyscrapers, especially over the alternative of a sea of low level housing for as far as the eye can sea - fewer floors up means more ground space required. Cities will need to grow out instead of up, and while that might be more optimized, people are starting to get sick and nauseous of seeing us bulldozing nature around us for more buildings.
I think this is the best point you made, even if I think it might turn out wrong. COVID-19 accelerated the global switch to telework by at least a decade, but I think it might have overshot the mark a bit, and that organizations will soon start demanding their employees show up in the office at least once a week. Also, not every office skyscraper can be converted to residential use. People like having windows in their houses, and giving every unit access to a window means creating a building whose footprint resembles an elongated rectangle. A lot of office buildings have square or circular footprints, meaning there's a lot of volume in the middle that would be unsuitable for human habitation.In the future we won't need office space, since we won't need to work, so most skyscrapers actually will be just housing in the future unlike today. Imagine if people were actually living on all 100 stories instead of most of it being used for office space (a trend we're already beginning to see now with remote work finally making headway - many skyscrapers are struggling to find businesses to lease all this empty office space to).