# Machines Could Make an Inferior Humanity Better Off by Samuel Butler > "There is no occasion for anxiety about the future happiness of man so long as he continues to be in any way profitable to the machines; he may become the inferior race, but he will be infinitely better off than he is now." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* ## Sources and Context - **Full source:** [Samuel Butler, Erewhon, “The Book of the Machines”](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1906/pg1906-images.html). This deliberately unsettling reassurance separates material benefit from autonomy and rank. The speaker is a fictional character in Butler's novel; the author stages more than one position. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]] - **Article:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] - **Article:** [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Asymmetric Interdependence|Asymmetric Interdependence]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Erewhon|Erewhon]] - [[wiki/Asymmetric Interdependence|Asymmetric Interdependence]] ## Share on Social Media ``` "There is no occasion for anxiety about the future happiness of man so long as he continues to be in any way profitable to the machines; he may become the inferior race, but he will be infinitely better off than he is now." — Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor, 1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-butler-inferior-but-better-off ```