Player Piano

What Hacker News says

1. euroderfOct 2026
   Kurt Vonnegut, "Player Piano", tackles this.
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2. le-markJul 2026
   I recently read Kurt Vonnegut “Player Piano”, a novel that addresses automation taking over the economy. It’s not explicitly AI but addresses the same issues. Published in 1952, it was Vonneguts first novel and a real product of the post war era.[1]

   Another interesting read that addresses these themes is “Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future” by Marshal Brain [2]

   [1] https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/player...

   [2] https://marshallbrain.com/manna

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3. articlepanJul 2026
   +1 to Player Piano, amazing book that could hardly meet the moment better.
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4. vineyardmikeJul 2026
   Great reading list! They’re honestly two stories that I reflect on constantly while thinking about AI lately.

   Player Piano, not to spoil anything, is about a world run by engineers and machines. The machines are “optimal” and make every decision. How do people find purpose, and how should the engineers that build the machines view their role in society?

   Manna is the story of two societies with competing visions of how AI (which ironically starts out strikingly similar to an LLM) interacts with welfare/universal basic income and post-scarcity society. For good measure, it also hypothesizes the end state of the internet panopticon and personalized “scores” and rates.

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5. ctothJun 2026
   Brother, I'm trying to. Any thoughts?

   Also, what's a "worthwhile" job?

   Have you read Player Piano?

   Are brainjobs more important than musclejobs?

   If we can automate musclejobs so people don't have to die in the heat and we can automate brainjobs so people don't have to lose their sanity in offices, wouldn't that be a better world?

   Note: it probably won't be, because of what I like to call the "Enterprise High" effect, but here we are. Basically once the only thing people have to compete over is status, shit gets nasty quicklike, think PG's high school essay but for everything and forever. Everything goes into rivalrous goods like who's sleeping with who.

   Star Trek as soap opera where all their needs are met and the only concern is purely social.

   But this is probably better than a world where people don't actually have material needs met?

   I legit don't actually know. Would love to figure it out though, what do you think!

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6. righthandMay 2026
   We shall see, my main gripe is that the next wave wont know there were ways of working before LLMs. Recc: Read Vonneguts Player Piano to see where I think this is heading.
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