Connection issues, space issues, poor audio codecs in literally every device known to man, and a lack of body language transmission even through video chat are practical issues I can think of off the top of my head. This is before you get into potential mental issues, such as still feeling isolated, feeling like you are paying too much for a simple phone call, anxiety over the call, and the ease of escape via hanging up.
The number of potential issues with therapy-via-phone is so staggeringly high that without a peer reviewed study saying there's no difference in effectiveness, I would find it almost impossible to believe that the therapy is equally effective. I'm not saying it's worse than no therapy or is entirely ineffective, but I'd bet you my house it's not as effective as in-person therapy.
Connection issues, space issues, poor audio codecs in literally every device known to man, and a lack of body language transmission even through video chat are practical issues I can think of off the top of my head. This is before you get into potential mental issues, such as still feeling isolated, feeling like you are paying too much for a simple phone call, anxiety over the call, and the ease of escape via hanging up.
The number of potential issues with therapy-via-phone is so staggeringly high that without a peer reviewed study saying there's no difference in effectiveness, I would find it almost impossible to believe that the therapy is equally effective. I'm not saying it's worse than no therapy or is entirely ineffective, but I'd bet you my house it's not as effective as in-person therapy.
Or to put it more simply, there is a reason why EAP providers, in addition to on call therapists on the phone, have allowances for sessions with local providers.
Basically society's obsession with people working is holding us back.
This is a huge part of it.
People mentioned the whole "computers will have us working less hours" thing earlier and a big reason that didn't happen is because we do alot of make-work busy work. Not because computers didn't make shit more efficient but because we as a society still have this expectation of how much one should work and so the time gets filled.
The second major issue, and probably more relevant to this current discussion, is that robots are alot like computers. They need well formatted inputs. And that's a bit of a pain in the ass in any medium. It's the other big reason we don't see computers decreasing workload. Time that used to be spent writing shit by hand or doing calculations is now spent formatting word documents and filling in excel spreadsheets. We're getting better at this bit but it's still a major issue. Especially since it's so cheap to pay people to do mindless crap that it's hard to get a robot to do.
Automation is not really gonna fit with our current societal model. We need to readjust our expectations. About how people work and how much they work. All the automation in the world won't fix shit bosses or eliminate desperate people willing to do anything for money.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
btw if discussing this with libertarians or general american cons its v important to point out that hayek fkin loved basic income and specifically argued the case for it from a libertarian perspective which is gloriously troll
And now I'm getting flashbacks to the "3D printing will conquer manufacturing" argument I see so often.
That's a neat process, yes, but outside of a few niche uses, it's not really relevant to how robots and automated systems are used in commercial and industrial settings. Nor are businesses anywhere near ready to give robots the authority to make business decisions.
Basically society's obsession with people working is holding us back.
This is a huge part of it.
People mentioned the whole "computers will have us working less hours" thing earlier and a big reason that didn't happen is because we do alot of make-work busy work. Not because computers didn't make shit more efficient but because we as a society still have this expectation of how much one should work and so the time gets filled.
The second major issue, and probably more relevant to this current discussion, is that robots are alot like computers. They need well formatted inputs. And that's a bit of a pain in the ass in any medium. It's the other big reason we don't see computers decreasing workload. Time that used to be spent writing shit by hand or doing calculations is now spent formatting word documents and filling in excel spreadsheets. We're getting better at this bit but it's still a major issue. Especially since it's so cheap to pay people to do mindless crap that it's hard to get a robot to do.
Automation is not really gonna fit with our current societal model. We need to readjust our expectations. About how people work and how much they work. All the automation in the world won't fix shit bosses or eliminate desperate people willing to do anything for money.
You're advocating the destruction of the USA as a modern country because you can't tell that Leave it to Beaver was fiction.
And you're advocating for the Magical Socialist Fairy to rain money down upon the land because you can't tell Player of Games was fiction. There's not going to be a guaranteed basic income. There will never be a guaranteed basic income, outside of the imaginations of drum circles and folk music. This nation barely pays for the needs of the poor, calling for the able-bodied to get free money to sit on their ass at home isn't going to go over well.
We wouldn't even have the money. If no one works, you can't tax them, and giving a few hundred dollars a month to old people takes up almost a trillion dollars a year.
What the hell do you mean Leave It To Beaver anyways? We lost fifty five fucking thousand factories in this country due to automation and NAFTA since 1997, and countless more have been built overseas instead of at home. Every single one of those is a dead town and in most cases a dead union. Every one. And here you people are, joining the choir of libertarians and Scott Walker in praising this and crushing unions.
Do you honestly think that your "Ban all robots and abolish all free trade" is likely to happen?
You're saying that society ever reacting to a lowered need to manual labour is entirely out of the question, but passing sweeping regulations against every single business to force them to stagnate in the 70s is the only viable solution?
You're talking about how I need some magical fairy but your complete and utter decimation of modern capitalism and setting the country back 40 years is a totally realistic goal?
Vast increases in worker productivity are in no way compensated because businesses are actively attempting to prevent workers from being given their due.
We should be working about 8 hours a fucking week at this point.
One of the things slowing things down is actually just the lack of coordination between different types of designers. There's no particular reason you couldn't design a building to be Roomba-friendly (Indeed, if I can ever buy a house, I'll being doing some modifications for that purpose).
Well yeah. The perpetual problem with robotic systems is that goddamn "reality" bullshit where things aren't specifically formatted for you.
It's the same issue talked about with McDonalds above. We aren't starting from scratch and you never are.
Vast increases in worker productivity are in no way compensated because businesses are actively attempting to prevent workers from being given their due.
We should be working about 8 hours a fucking week at this point.
Eh. It's not really that simple or that ... evil.
It's actually a really nasty issue because it's just a general societal wide understanding of "how things work" that is the problem. You aren't fighting against specific people or companies or whatever but against the universal bedrock conception of how the world is.
We aren't working 8 hours a week because we can't really conceive of that idea. We still structure the way we view work as a function of time spent rather then things accomplished. We still view the 40 hour work week as the right amount and anything less as too easy or too lazy. And that shit is hard to change.
The specific arguments against it feel somewhat like anecdotal evidence. This stuff is coming and it's going to come for a large enough portion of society that it could ruin everything else along with it. Truckers alone is going to be a terrible blow and one of the first ones to land.
One of the things slowing things down is actually just the lack of coordination between different types of designers. There's no particular reason you couldn't design a building to be Roomba-friendly (Indeed, if I can ever buy a house, I'll being doing some modifications for that purpose).
Well yeah. The perpetual problem with robotic systems is that goddamn "reality" bullshit where things aren't specifically formatted for you.
It's the same issue talked about with McDonalds above. We aren't starting from scratch and you never are.
Right, and that's why the telephone will never be viable.
One of the things slowing things down is actually just the lack of coordination between different types of designers. There's no particular reason you couldn't design a building to be Roomba-friendly (Indeed, if I can ever buy a house, I'll being doing some modifications for that purpose).
Well yeah. The perpetual problem with robotic systems is that goddamn "reality" bullshit where things aren't specifically formatted for you.
It's the same issue talked about with McDonalds above. We aren't starting from scratch and you never are.
Right, and that's why the telephone will never be viable.
This example doesn't even make sense. I'm not sure you have thought it through very well.
One of the things slowing things down is actually just the lack of coordination between different types of designers. There's no particular reason you couldn't design a building to be Roomba-friendly (Indeed, if I can ever buy a house, I'll being doing some modifications for that purpose).
Well yeah. The perpetual problem with robotic systems is that goddamn "reality" bullshit where things aren't specifically formatted for you.
It's the same issue talked about with McDonalds above. We aren't starting from scratch and you never are.
Right, and that's why the telephone will never be viable.
This example doesn't even make sense. I'm not sure you have thought it through very well.
Starting from scratch is kind of normal for technology.
Yeah, the contemporary tendency to ignore infrastructure improvements slows progress down like crazy, but it doesn't really -stop- it.
Also sometimes you really do still need to spend 40 hours working. Like, simulation software probably does 10 hours of hand calcs or an hour of guesstimation in about a minute at my job, but we use that to design things better and respond more robustly to issues, and can spend more time thiking and doing the "human only" parts of the job. In a lot of cases there is some busy work or slack time added, but a lot of real productivity gains as well because optimization and design can get a lot more work done in a given timeframe.
One of the things slowing things down is actually just the lack of coordination between different types of designers. There's no particular reason you couldn't design a building to be Roomba-friendly (Indeed, if I can ever buy a house, I'll being doing some modifications for that purpose).
Well yeah. The perpetual problem with robotic systems is that goddamn "reality" bullshit where things aren't specifically formatted for you.
It's the same issue talked about with McDonalds above. We aren't starting from scratch and you never are.
Right, and that's why the telephone will never be viable.
This example doesn't even make sense. I'm not sure you have thought it through very well.
Starting from scratch is kind of normal for technology.
Yeah, the contemporary tendency to ignore infrastructure improvements slows progress down like crazy, but it doesn't really -stop- it.
Nobody is claiming it will, just that ignoring the effect implementation has makes the robot revolution look much closer and much more total than it probably is.
It's mainly the arbitrary nature of the 40 hours that is the problem.
My most recent job I automated out of irritation and ended up having literally nothing to do on Fridays unless something weird was going on. It caused me an incredible amount of stress just trying to find SOMETHING technically productive to do. If I could just go home when I ran out of work I'd have probably been even more effective at developing said automation because hey what an incentive.
One of the things slowing things down is actually just the lack of coordination between different types of designers. There's no particular reason you couldn't design a building to be Roomba-friendly (Indeed, if I can ever buy a house, I'll being doing some modifications for that purpose).
Well yeah. The perpetual problem with robotic systems is that goddamn "reality" bullshit where things aren't specifically formatted for you.
It's the same issue talked about with McDonalds above. We aren't starting from scratch and you never are.
Right, and that's why the telephone will never be viable.
This example doesn't even make sense. I'm not sure you have thought it through very well.
Starting from scratch is kind of normal for technology.
Yeah, the contemporary tendency to ignore infrastructure improvements slows progress down like crazy, but it doesn't really -stop- it.
Nobody is claiming it will, just that ignoring the effect implementation has makes the robot revolution look much closer and much more total than it probably is.
It's mainly the arbitrary nature of the 40 hours that is the problem.
My most recent job I automated out of irritation and ended up having literally nothing to do on Fridays unless something weird was going on. It caused me an incredible amount of stress just trying to find SOMETHING technically productive to do. If I could just go home when I ran out of work I'd have probably been even more effective at developing said automation because hey what an incentive.
Yes. After you work long enough, if you pay attention, you begin to notice that as much as they claim it's about quality they still judge you on quantity of hours more then pretty much anything. No matter how good a job you do, no matter if you always get all your work done, if you aren't into work on time or if you leave early you are a "bad worker".
But sitting around surfing the net while chair filling? As long as you came in before 9:30 you are gtg!
One of the things slowing things down is actually just the lack of coordination between different types of designers. There's no particular reason you couldn't design a building to be Roomba-friendly (Indeed, if I can ever buy a house, I'll being doing some modifications for that purpose).
Well yeah. The perpetual problem with robotic systems is that goddamn "reality" bullshit where things aren't specifically formatted for you.
It's the same issue talked about with McDonalds above. We aren't starting from scratch and you never are.
Right, and that's why the telephone will never be viable.
This example doesn't even make sense. I'm not sure you have thought it through very well.
Starting from scratch is kind of normal for technology.
Yeah, the contemporary tendency to ignore infrastructure improvements slows progress down like crazy, but it doesn't really -stop- it.
It's not though. Technology fits in to existing society. And is heavily impeded by existing structures.
The telephone is a bad example because it's not like there was a bunch of pre-existing infrastructure that got in it's way. (Though there was a lack of infrastructure to support it and that took a long time to deal with) And that's what I'm talking about. It's what you are mentioning when you say buildings are not designed to be Roomba-friendly. It's what you see in issues like digitizing paper records.
And to say it doesn't really stop it is to embrace the silliness of technological inevitability. Some technologies fail.
I find it interesting that I have free time to read this topic because I am in a highly automated factory and currently no issues/fires to fight. My time spent performing operations or maintenance is very dependant on how loaded the factory is and how well the (automated) line is running, and since things are running well right now....
We (human operators) are under constant threat from automation. The only saving grace right now is every time the process is changed human interaction booms. We cycle enough new processes the automated systems just barely take over mature processes before they become obsolete. On the maintenance side everything is still people power...for now.
The solution to ensuring the poor aren't fighting for scraps is ensuring they have the money and support to not have to. Not have them be cashiers for your own personal enjoyment.
Yes, by having good jobs! The alternative to forcing businesses to raise minimum wage by government fiat is to have them do it themselves by making them compete for labor, raising wages. Automation eliminates jobs, making more workers compete for positions, lowering wages. You're also arguing against job opportunities for young people- the traditional high school and summer jobs are cashiers, baristas, etc. If you have to go to college to find a job then you can't get a job as a teen.
And BS we can't pass stronger welfare legislation. It's happened before and sooner or later it'll happen again.
Okay? I didn't mention welfare at all.
You very much did mention welfare. "...convincing the rich to give a shit about the rest of us" is welfare. We've passed legislation to force the rich to support the rest of the country and can do so again. That is entirely feasible. Your idea of somehow stopping automation so that teenagers can be forced to work shitty jobs not so much. Automation is going to happen whether you want it to or not. The rich aren't going to want legislation against it any more than they'll want taxes raised to support people. And there is no inherent value to having a teenager make you coffee instead of a machine.
You seem trapped in this idea that the only feasible model is having everyone working 40 hour weeks when it's not necessary at all.
Connection issues, space issues, poor audio codecs in literally every device known to man, and a lack of body language transmission even through video chat are practical issues I can think of off the top of my head. This is before you get into potential mental issues, such as still feeling isolated, feeling like you are paying too much for a simple phone call, anxiety over the call, and the ease of escape via hanging up.
The number of potential issues with therapy-via-phone is so staggeringly high that without a peer reviewed study saying there's no difference in effectiveness, I would find it almost impossible to believe that the therapy is equally effective. I'm not saying it's worse than no therapy or is entirely ineffective, but I'd bet you my house it's not as effective as in-person therapy.
Not as effective for some people. For others it's perfectly effective.
That a method isn't absolutely perfect for every person doesn't invalidate it and doesn't change that it costs others jobs.
It's not though. Technology fits in to existing society. And is heavily impeded by existing structures.
The telephone is a bad example because it's not like there was a bunch of pre-existing infrastructure that got in it's way. (Though there was a lack of infrastructure to support it and that took a long time to deal with) And that's what I'm talking about. It's what you are mentioning when you say buildings are not designed to be Roomba-friendly. It's what you see in issues like digitizing paper records.
And to say it doesn't really stop it is to embrace the silliness of technological inevitability. Some technologies fail.
Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it was to actually get all those wires to all of those locations? To this day it is a rather expensive endeavor, even though we're vastly better at it now.
I mean I guess a mountain is not "infrastructure" but it's kind of a bigger obstacle using that day's technology than the changing the shape of bed frames that Ikea makes going forward.
Some technologies fail, sure, and some others fail temporarily and then come back later when it makes more sense.
There are shifts in how buildings are made all of the time. Eventually someone is going to start building factories which are better-designed for automated cleaning. Stores are are already built somewhat in mind for the use of cleaning machines - look at the bottom of a shelf in a major chain and notice the specific choices they made to keep the floor scrubber from tearing shit up. The built environment is really dynamic on the larger scale.
I've always said that the real singularity is not when we invent a hyper-intelligent AI, but when AI and robots eliminate the need for work and money and we evolve into a permanent leisure-class society.
In Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, machines suck nano-particles out of the air and reconfigure them into literally anything. The people all have maker devices in their homes, which can conjure up any item imaginable (including edible food) at the touch of a button, like a 3D printer on crack. That's utopia! Although The Diamond Age still had economic stratification for reasons I don't really remember.
The day we can wake up and do anything we want with our day because all the work is done by robots, and have anything we want conjured out of re-jiggered atoms at the push of a button, is the day we'll have achieved transcendence as a species.
Vast increases in worker productivity are in no way compensated because businesses are actively attempting to prevent workers from being given their due.
We should be working about 8 hours a fucking week at this point.
Eh. It's not really that simple or that ... evil.
It's actually a really nasty issue because it's just a general societal wide understanding of "how things work" that is the problem. You aren't fighting against specific people or companies or whatever but against the universal bedrock conception of how the world is.
We aren't working 8 hours a week because we can't really conceive of that idea. We still structure the way we view work as a function of time spent rather then things accomplished. We still view the 40 hour work week as the right amount and anything less as too easy or too lazy. And that shit is hard to change.
No, we can perfectly conceive of it - look up the Kellogg 30 hour work week sometime. The idea of shorter work weeks wasn't killed by society, but by industrial interests acting intentionally.
It's not though. Technology fits in to existing society. And is heavily impeded by existing structures.
The telephone is a bad example because it's not like there was a bunch of pre-existing infrastructure that got in it's way. (Though there was a lack of infrastructure to support it and that took a long time to deal with) And that's what I'm talking about. It's what you are mentioning when you say buildings are not designed to be Roomba-friendly. It's what you see in issues like digitizing paper records.
And to say it doesn't really stop it is to embrace the silliness of technological inevitability. Some technologies fail.
Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it was to actually get all those wires to all of those locations? To this day it is a rather expensive endeavor, even though we're vastly better at it now.
I mean I guess a mountain is not "infrastructure" but it's kind of a bigger obstacle using that day's technology than the changing the shape of bed frames that Ikea makes going forward.
Some technologies fail, sure, and some others fail temporarily and then come back later when it makes more sense.
There are shifts in how buildings are made all of the time. Eventually someone is going to start building factories which are better-designed for automated cleaning. Stores are are already built somewhat in mind for the use of cleaning machines - look at the bottom of a shelf in a major chain and notice the specific choices they made to keep the floor scrubber from tearing shit up. The built environment is really dynamic on the larger scale.
To wit: The Navy has littoral combat ships under construction that have been designed to keep manning to a minimum. One of the changes made allow a rhoomba to move freely from compartment to compartment so that people don't have to bother with sweeping. Another was having a single rover with multiple CCTV screens handle a watch that would normally take several bodies.
I don't doubt for a moment that those designs will (probably) be carried on to future ship models. Which means there's no need to have as many to handle menial tasks.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
All this talk of robots replacing people reminds me of a classic Twilight Zone episode from 51 years ago that raised the exact same concerns we're having now.
I've always said that the real singularity is not when we invent a hyper-intelligent AI, but when AI and robots eliminate the need for work and money and we evolve into a permanent leisure-class society.
In Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, machines suck nano-particles out of the air and reconfigure them into literally anything. The people all have maker devices in their homes, which can conjure up any item imaginable (including edible food) at the touch of a button, like a 3D printer on crack. That's utopia! Although The Diamond Age still had economic stratification for reasons I don't really remember.
The day we can wake up and do anything we want with our day because all the work is done by robots, and have anything we want conjured out of re-jiggered atoms at the push of a button, is the day we'll have achieved transcendence as a species.
My bet is that, if you ask the few people with money and power if they want to feed the vast majority of the population, or dispose of them for not being of use anymore, my bet is that dollars for donuts they will choose the latter.
However, even if we do go with the "feed the whole of humanity" plan, what would people spend their days doing? People are prone to getting bored, can't do the same thing over and over without it losing their interest over time, and need goals of some kind. Do we turn everyone into a lotus-eater? Give them some sort of metaphorical hamster wheel to spend their time in? Finding an emotionally and intellectually satisfying task of an indefinite nature is no easy challenge. Perhaps we could get everyone addicted to an MMORPG.
It's not though. Technology fits in to existing society. And is heavily impeded by existing structures.
The telephone is a bad example because it's not like there was a bunch of pre-existing infrastructure that got in it's way. (Though there was a lack of infrastructure to support it and that took a long time to deal with) And that's what I'm talking about. It's what you are mentioning when you say buildings are not designed to be Roomba-friendly. It's what you see in issues like digitizing paper records.
And to say it doesn't really stop it is to embrace the silliness of technological inevitability. Some technologies fail.
Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it was to actually get all those wires to all of those locations? To this day it is a rather expensive endeavor, even though we're vastly better at it now.
I mean I guess a mountain is not "infrastructure" but it's kind of a bigger obstacle using that day's technology than the changing the shape of bed frames that Ikea makes going forward.
Some technologies fail, sure, and some others fail temporarily and then come back later when it makes more sense.
There are shifts in how buildings are made all of the time. Eventually someone is going to start building factories which are better-designed for automated cleaning. Stores are are already built somewhat in mind for the use of cleaning machines - look at the bottom of a shelf in a major chain and notice the specific choices they made to keep the floor scrubber from tearing shit up. The built environment is really dynamic on the larger scale.
To wit: The Navy has littoral combat ships under construction that have been designed to keep manning to a minimum. One of the changes made allow a rhoomba to move freely from compartment to compartment so that people don't have to bother with sweeping. Another was having a single rover with multiple CCTV screens handle a watch that would normally take several bodies.
I don't doubt for a moment that those designs will (probably) be carried on to future ship models. Which means there's no need to have as many to handle menial tasks.
So when someone gets punished do they get told to tell the roomba to swab the decks?
All this talk of robots replacing people reminds me of a classic Twilight Zone episode from 51 years ago that raised the exact same concerns we're having now.
I've always said that the real singularity is not when we invent a hyper-intelligent AI, but when AI and robots eliminate the need for work and money and we evolve into a permanent leisure-class society.
In Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, machines suck nano-particles out of the air and reconfigure them into literally anything. The people all have maker devices in their homes, which can conjure up any item imaginable (including edible food) at the touch of a button, like a 3D printer on crack. That's utopia! Although The Diamond Age still had economic stratification for reasons I don't really remember.
The day we can wake up and do anything we want with our day because all the work is done by robots, and have anything we want conjured out of re-jiggered atoms at the push of a button, is the day we'll have achieved transcendence as a species.
My bet is that, if you ask the few people with money and power if they want to feed the vast majority of the population, or dispose of them for not being of use anymore, my bet is that dollars for donuts they will choose the latter.
However, even if we do go with the "feed the whole of humanity" plan, what would people spend their days doing? People are prone to getting bored, can't do the same thing over and over without it losing their interest over time, and need goals of some kind. Do we turn everyone into a lotus-eater? Give them some sort of metaphorical hamster wheel to spend their time in? Finding an emotionally and intellectually satisfying task of an indefinite nature is no easy challenge. Perhaps we could get everyone addicted to an MMORPG.
I think everyone has their "I'll do this someday" things that they don't get around to because they have to work every day. Learning new skills, crushing those book/movie/TV/game/music backlogs, travel, creative impulses, and so on. I don't believe in WALL-E's prediction that we'll all become sedentary blobs if we aren't forced to work.
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IlpalaJust this guy, y'knowTexasRegistered Userregular
Hell, I thought it was the stereotype that people didn't exercise BECAUSE they didn't want to use their limited non-working hours doing that.
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Fuck Joe Manchin
What industrialization did to slavery, automation and robotics will do to general labor
citation required.
This is the huge jump that is needed before you can make such a broad assumption. There are many jobs that would require something approaching full Artificial Intelligence before they became viable. Others can be done now without people, but counter service with a person is still largely preferred to a vending machine. Technology hasn't reduced the number of people working in the world. On the contrary, increased productivity has increased labor participation overall in the last 100 years. Transitional problems in labor distribution don't herald fundamental paradigm shifts.
Global unemployment is already insane due to global economic stagnation and income disparity. We could be looking at an unemployment rates akin to the late Roman empire.
This is simply untrue. The global unemployment rate is near a historic low and the global labor participation rate is largely unchanged over the last 30 years. And given that a generation or two ago the number of women in the workforce was much smaller, it should be obvious that this is untrue.
Also citing the Roman Empire should probably make you take a step back and examining how grandiose your claims are and how narrow. The Roman Empire as something that "fell" and ended civilization is a myopically Western Euro-centric and discredited vision of history.
JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
One thing about work is that it provides an external motivator. A lot of people have trouble with maintaining structure solely for themselves. Having things that you need to do is beneficial.
I would hesitate to completely eliminate work. Work is beneficial for humans and provides structure on which to build further structure. But that doesn't mean we need to work 40 hours a week for the rest of our lives. Working half that should be enough to get the benefits, and indeed many people in the Netherlands work part-time while not having dependants to care for.
Amazon is an interesting example because of how many people who get paid fuck all to work their asses off in their DCs.
Sticking unexpectedly sized thing into other things is difficult to automate.
As a rule, people underestimate how good people are at things that are simple to us that are actually algorithmically very very hard. Picking random stuff up and putting it in a container is hard to automate. Seeing things and comprehending them is a very very very hard thing to automate.
It's the other big reason we don't see computers decreasing workload.
This isn't really true either. Computers are decreasing workload, its just people are asked to do more. That's an economic thing (and if wages were tied to increased profit/productivity as they used to be, it would result in either fewer hours or higher overall pay).
One thing about work is that it provides an external motivator. A lot of people have trouble with maintaining structure solely for themselves. Having things that you need to do is beneficial.
I would hesitate to completely eliminate work. Work is beneficial for humans and provides structure on which to build further structure. But that doesn't mean we need to work 40 hours a week for the rest of our lives. Working half that should be enough to get the benefits, and indeed many people in the Netherlands work part-time while not having dependants to care for.
There's a pretty big difference between "I need to get out of the house" and "work or die". You also need a sense of pain to function, doesn't mean you need the pain.
If the internet grants us visibility into anything, it's that we're pretty good at coming up with ways to pre-occupy ourselves. What that would look like in a world where we can provide basic necessities to everyone would be quite an amazing thing.
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Not really?
I mean yeah some people definitely need a heartbeat in the room, but you're mostly just talking through stuff in many cases.
The number of potential issues with therapy-via-phone is so staggeringly high that without a peer reviewed study saying there's no difference in effectiveness, I would find it almost impossible to believe that the therapy is equally effective. I'm not saying it's worse than no therapy or is entirely ineffective, but I'd bet you my house it's not as effective as in-person therapy.
Or to put it more simply, there is a reason why EAP providers, in addition to on call therapists on the phone, have allowances for sessions with local providers.
This is a huge part of it.
People mentioned the whole "computers will have us working less hours" thing earlier and a big reason that didn't happen is because we do alot of make-work busy work. Not because computers didn't make shit more efficient but because we as a society still have this expectation of how much one should work and so the time gets filled.
The second major issue, and probably more relevant to this current discussion, is that robots are alot like computers. They need well formatted inputs. And that's a bit of a pain in the ass in any medium. It's the other big reason we don't see computers decreasing workload. Time that used to be spent writing shit by hand or doing calculations is now spent formatting word documents and filling in excel spreadsheets. We're getting better at this bit but it's still a major issue. Especially since it's so cheap to pay people to do mindless crap that it's hard to get a robot to do.
Automation is not really gonna fit with our current societal model. We need to readjust our expectations. About how people work and how much they work. All the automation in the world won't fix shit bosses or eliminate desperate people willing to do anything for money.
And now I'm getting flashbacks to the "3D printing will conquer manufacturing" argument I see so often.
That's a neat process, yes, but outside of a few niche uses, it's not really relevant to how robots and automated systems are used in commercial and industrial settings. Nor are businesses anywhere near ready to give robots the authority to make business decisions.
There's advantages and disadvantages.
Nonverbal communication is more difficult in both directions. Some therapists meet in person first to get a better feel
People are more comfortable at home, without stressing to get there on time and deal with a waiting room full of people.
Business killed attempts to shrink the work week in the US.
Do you honestly think that your "Ban all robots and abolish all free trade" is likely to happen?
You're saying that society ever reacting to a lowered need to manual labour is entirely out of the question, but passing sweeping regulations against every single business to force them to stagnate in the 70s is the only viable solution?
You're talking about how I need some magical fairy but your complete and utter decimation of modern capitalism and setting the country back 40 years is a totally realistic goal?
We should be working about 8 hours a fucking week at this point.
Well yeah. The perpetual problem with robotic systems is that goddamn "reality" bullshit where things aren't specifically formatted for you.
It's the same issue talked about with McDonalds above. We aren't starting from scratch and you never are.
Eh. It's not really that simple or that ... evil.
It's actually a really nasty issue because it's just a general societal wide understanding of "how things work" that is the problem. You aren't fighting against specific people or companies or whatever but against the universal bedrock conception of how the world is.
We aren't working 8 hours a week because we can't really conceive of that idea. We still structure the way we view work as a function of time spent rather then things accomplished. We still view the 40 hour work week as the right amount and anything less as too easy or too lazy. And that shit is hard to change.
Right, and that's why the telephone will never be viable.
This example doesn't even make sense. I'm not sure you have thought it through very well.
Starting from scratch is kind of normal for technology.
Yeah, the contemporary tendency to ignore infrastructure improvements slows progress down like crazy, but it doesn't really -stop- it.
Nobody is claiming it will, just that ignoring the effect implementation has makes the robot revolution look much closer and much more total than it probably is.
My most recent job I automated out of irritation and ended up having literally nothing to do on Fridays unless something weird was going on. It caused me an incredible amount of stress just trying to find SOMETHING technically productive to do. If I could just go home when I ran out of work I'd have probably been even more effective at developing said automation because hey what an incentive.
I have been not-ignoring it since page 1.
So.
Whut.
Yes. After you work long enough, if you pay attention, you begin to notice that as much as they claim it's about quality they still judge you on quantity of hours more then pretty much anything. No matter how good a job you do, no matter if you always get all your work done, if you aren't into work on time or if you leave early you are a "bad worker".
But sitting around surfing the net while chair filling? As long as you came in before 9:30 you are gtg!
It's not though. Technology fits in to existing society. And is heavily impeded by existing structures.
The telephone is a bad example because it's not like there was a bunch of pre-existing infrastructure that got in it's way. (Though there was a lack of infrastructure to support it and that took a long time to deal with) And that's what I'm talking about. It's what you are mentioning when you say buildings are not designed to be Roomba-friendly. It's what you see in issues like digitizing paper records.
And to say it doesn't really stop it is to embrace the silliness of technological inevitability. Some technologies fail.
We (human operators) are under constant threat from automation. The only saving grace right now is every time the process is changed human interaction booms. We cycle enough new processes the automated systems just barely take over mature processes before they become obsolete. On the maintenance side everything is still people power...for now.
You very much did mention welfare. "...convincing the rich to give a shit about the rest of us" is welfare. We've passed legislation to force the rich to support the rest of the country and can do so again. That is entirely feasible. Your idea of somehow stopping automation so that teenagers can be forced to work shitty jobs not so much. Automation is going to happen whether you want it to or not. The rich aren't going to want legislation against it any more than they'll want taxes raised to support people. And there is no inherent value to having a teenager make you coffee instead of a machine.
You seem trapped in this idea that the only feasible model is having everyone working 40 hour weeks when it's not necessary at all.
Not as effective for some people. For others it's perfectly effective.
That a method isn't absolutely perfect for every person doesn't invalidate it and doesn't change that it costs others jobs.
Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it was to actually get all those wires to all of those locations? To this day it is a rather expensive endeavor, even though we're vastly better at it now.
I mean I guess a mountain is not "infrastructure" but it's kind of a bigger obstacle using that day's technology than the changing the shape of bed frames that Ikea makes going forward.
Some technologies fail, sure, and some others fail temporarily and then come back later when it makes more sense.
Roomba hasn't really failed: http://www.irobot.com/
There are shifts in how buildings are made all of the time. Eventually someone is going to start building factories which are better-designed for automated cleaning. Stores are are already built somewhat in mind for the use of cleaning machines - look at the bottom of a shelf in a major chain and notice the specific choices they made to keep the floor scrubber from tearing shit up. The built environment is really dynamic on the larger scale.
In Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, machines suck nano-particles out of the air and reconfigure them into literally anything. The people all have maker devices in their homes, which can conjure up any item imaginable (including edible food) at the touch of a button, like a 3D printer on crack. That's utopia! Although The Diamond Age still had economic stratification for reasons I don't really remember.
The day we can wake up and do anything we want with our day because all the work is done by robots, and have anything we want conjured out of re-jiggered atoms at the push of a button, is the day we'll have achieved transcendence as a species.
No, we can perfectly conceive of it - look up the Kellogg 30 hour work week sometime. The idea of shorter work weeks wasn't killed by society, but by industrial interests acting intentionally.
To wit: The Navy has littoral combat ships under construction that have been designed to keep manning to a minimum. One of the changes made allow a rhoomba to move freely from compartment to compartment so that people don't have to bother with sweeping. Another was having a single rover with multiple CCTV screens handle a watch that would normally take several bodies.
I don't doubt for a moment that those designs will (probably) be carried on to future ship models. Which means there's no need to have as many to handle menial tasks.
My bet is that, if you ask the few people with money and power if they want to feed the vast majority of the population, or dispose of them for not being of use anymore, my bet is that dollars for donuts they will choose the latter.
However, even if we do go with the "feed the whole of humanity" plan, what would people spend their days doing? People are prone to getting bored, can't do the same thing over and over without it losing their interest over time, and need goals of some kind. Do we turn everyone into a lotus-eater? Give them some sort of metaphorical hamster wheel to spend their time in? Finding an emotionally and intellectually satisfying task of an indefinite nature is no easy challenge. Perhaps we could get everyone addicted to an MMORPG.
I think there will be a lot of art, and slightly more invention. Really crazy good itty bitty restaurants.
So when someone gets punished do they get told to tell the roomba to swab the decks?
I think everyone has their "I'll do this someday" things that they don't get around to because they have to work every day. Learning new skills, crushing those book/movie/TV/game/music backlogs, travel, creative impulses, and so on. I don't believe in WALL-E's prediction that we'll all become sedentary blobs if we aren't forced to work.
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This is the huge jump that is needed before you can make such a broad assumption. There are many jobs that would require something approaching full Artificial Intelligence before they became viable. Others can be done now without people, but counter service with a person is still largely preferred to a vending machine. Technology hasn't reduced the number of people working in the world. On the contrary, increased productivity has increased labor participation overall in the last 100 years. Transitional problems in labor distribution don't herald fundamental paradigm shifts.
This is simply untrue. The global unemployment rate is near a historic low and the global labor participation rate is largely unchanged over the last 30 years. And given that a generation or two ago the number of women in the workforce was much smaller, it should be obvious that this is untrue.
Also citing the Roman Empire should probably make you take a step back and examining how grandiose your claims are and how narrow. The Roman Empire as something that "fell" and ended civilization is a myopically Western Euro-centric and discredited vision of history.
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I would hesitate to completely eliminate work. Work is beneficial for humans and provides structure on which to build further structure. But that doesn't mean we need to work 40 hours a week for the rest of our lives. Working half that should be enough to get the benefits, and indeed many people in the Netherlands work part-time while not having dependants to care for.
As a rule, people underestimate how good people are at things that are simple to us that are actually algorithmically very very hard. Picking random stuff up and putting it in a container is hard to automate. Seeing things and comprehending them is a very very very hard thing to automate.
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This isn't really true either. Computers are decreasing workload, its just people are asked to do more. That's an economic thing (and if wages were tied to increased profit/productivity as they used to be, it would result in either fewer hours or higher overall pay).
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There's a pretty big difference between "I need to get out of the house" and "work or die". You also need a sense of pain to function, doesn't mean you need the pain.
If the internet grants us visibility into anything, it's that we're pretty good at coming up with ways to pre-occupy ourselves. What that would look like in a world where we can provide basic necessities to everyone would be quite an amazing thing.
Even in Trek there are still human run restaurants