Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair • Hacker News Board

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#291

Post by petra » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:04 PM UTC

gramstrong wrote: post #159

okreallywtf wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educate them with what money? That requires redistribution of wealth because these people will not leave the workforce with the means to retrain and reeducate themselves. How many scientist and engineers can any future workforce support? There will be a limit to how many "production" jobs there can be. By this I mean manufacturing, farming, infrastructure etc. This still leaves many creative endevours that can be pro…

I guarantee you that the majority of Americans are immediately on board with free education once they realize the alternative is a lifetime of welfare. As far as how many scientists and engineers we need? Virtually infinite if you're creative enough. There are plenty of problems left to solve that we haven't even started. The best motivator for finding and solving those problems? Money.

Unlike software, in many fields, the limits to innovation isn't money to pay engineers, but money do stuff: build things, run experiments, etc.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#292

Post by petra » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:05 PM UTC

gramstrong wrote: post #100

cmahler7 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

majority of people simply won't be able to help with the complex problems that push human progress forward. What do you suggest we do with them?

Educate them with all of the free time created from automation, then put them back in to the work force.

Education is just a temporary solution. Soon, we might have machines doing engineering/innovation for us.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#293

Post by marssaxman » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:08 PM UTC

petra wrote: post #280

marssaxman wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your list, except for IOT, which is innovation with negative value.

Thanks. And sure, consumer IOT is bullshit. But industrial IOT is very valuable.

I hadn't heard of such a thing as "industrial IOT", but I can see how there might be a difference - more of an evolutionary development out of ordinary embedded control systems, I imagine. Do you have any examples handy? I'm curious what's going on in that field.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#294

Post by narrowrail » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #246

sbierwagen wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2008, state and local law enforcement agencies employed more than 1.1 million people on a full-time basis, including about 765,000 sworn personnel (defined as those with general arrest powers). So, 1 in 416 people in the US is a sworn law enforcement official. Not great odds for fighting armed revolt.

An armed revolt wouldn't just be going up against law enforcement. At that level of violence, they'd be going up against the National Guard (state militias), the US military (both active duty and reserve). Of course, across all three groups fighting against the revolters there will be both sympathizers and revolters themselves (I'd particularly expect to see this amongst local and state law enforcement and militias,…

The only person I've heard claim the US might suspend Posse Commitatus is Alex Jones. That is a serious supposition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#295

Post by marcosdumay » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

okreallywtf wrote: post #160

marcosdumay wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You tell me. It is wrong to make things worse for everybody just because when it was less worse for a powerful group it was ignored?

The issue is this problem never went away. Minorities are still being punished disproportionately for drug use [1]. I don't think that we should let spite dictate our reaction to the opioid crisis but it indicates maybe its time to stop pretending that the drug war was a necessary evil, especially given we might be about to double-down on it (and most likely continuing to disproportionately convict minorities) [2]. […

So, you think it's wrong and that we should strive to make things better for everybody. I can agree with that.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#296

Post by jdmichal » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:15 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #219

sbardle wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a school where a number of friends were not academic in the slightest. They left as soon as they could often with no qualifications but gradually learnt trades. Many now have their own businesses (one is a plasterer, another a builder) and they earn good money, own their own homes, and have no student debt. The reason? They had supportive parents. Many of the people who are falling into despair tragically c…

I help to look after someone with developmental difficulties similar to what the gp describes, and while I don't want to project my knowledge of one person onto the other, I can tell you that my disabled friend is never going to make it any skilled trade. Look all these 'you can make it other parts of the system, I know someone who had a disadvantage and went onto a great success' is nice, but it's also platitudinous…

I have a question for you, and it's a naive one and I apologize. But you have obviously spent a lot of time here and I value your viewpoint on it, so I want to ask anyway:

What do you think, realistically, are the options available here?

In full fairness, here's where I'm coming from with this question: You talk repeatedly of a "problem" that society needs to "talk about" instead of "wishing away". But I'm not sure what to even consider, if we are discussing people with disabilities severe enough that they cannot function independently. And if independent living is not a solution, then the only other solution I see is long-term supervised living. And, AFAIK, this is something already provided through disability-based Social Security and Medicare.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#297

Post by Atheros » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:17 PM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #273

Touche wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, economic hardship is at the heart of many of society's problems, drugs included. I don't argue with that. What I am skeptical of is the idea that people, once they reach adulthood and see dim prospects, turn to drugs to cope with that depression. The article you linked to pushes the same idea. From my bubbled existence, most of the people who I went to school with who became drug addicts were always part o…

> What I am skeptical of is the idea that people, once they reach adulthood and see dim prospects, turn to drugs to cope with that depression. Do you really find the idea of people self-medicating depression hard to encompass? I'm having a hard time myself, encompassing the idea that there is anywhere in the world this might seem like a controversial question.

He almost certainly understands that. But he is saying that he wants data that demonstrates that the economic hardship causes the depression rather than drug use causing the depression. Obviously these causes are all intertwined but I think he's saying that it probably isn't particularly unidirectional.

"The man in this article was already an addict before he was old enough to have any perspective on his future potential."

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#298

Post by petra » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:18 PM UTC

framebit wrote: post #205

Touche wrote: post #74

The article doesn't support its conclusion that drug addiction is caused by people's dim prospects. The man in this article was already an addict before he was old enough to have any perspective on his future potential. I think the deeper problem is that kids are not inspired to gain their own ambitions. So many people walk through life with no ambitions beyond what they plan on doing next weekend. I think a huge iss…

Chris Arnade has a lot of first-hand experience witnessing this modern despair. He writes, "What I saw was huge parts of US, more than reported, was filling with drugs. And where there was drug there was despair." Source: https://medium.com/@Chris_arnade/drugs-despair-and-trump-1c6...

Shame it goes from despair, straight to hard drugs. What prevents people from going to marijuana in such cases ?

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#299

Post by marssaxman » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:23 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #282

marssaxman wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your list, except for IOT, which is innovation with negative value.

Consumer IoT is actually pretty appealing, but it's been incredibly poorly executed so far. I would love to be able to get breakfast started while I'm still in bed, or let guests DJ the party from their cell-phone, or have a robot put away my dishes as soon as the dishwasher is done, or automatically transfer the wash when it finishes. Or imagine a product that, when somebody leaves a package on your doorstep, alerts…

I can understand, abstractly, why the scenarios you describe might be appealing, but my actual emotional reaction is horror. Complicated systems fail in complicated ways, and the last thing I want in my home is anything that requires a long, fiddly, debugging process after it abruptly stops working for no apparent reason, as all automated gadgets periodically do. Debugging is most of what I do for a living! I don't want to be doing that kind of work just to keep my home functioning.

Nor can I stand the idea of having devices in my home that send telemetry back to their manufacturers, because we've seen time and time again that any such central control can and will be used for harm. The recent case of the garage-door-opener manufacturer who bricked their inexplicably network-connected controller in retaliation for a nasty review is a perfect example. I don't care how convenient the device might be, if it requires me to maintain an ongoing relationship with its manufacturer, I'm not touching it.

So - much as it might be nice to wake up, yawn, ask the house for coffee, and know that the pot has started brewing over in the kitchen, I most emphatically do not want to actually live in such an environment. I fear that I may be forced to do so, someday, should product manufacturers decide that IOT-encrusted gadgets are so much more profitable that they are no longer willing to sell the ordinary kind.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#300

Post by petra » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:37 PM UTC

marssaxman wrote: post #293

petra wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. And sure, consumer IOT is bullshit. But industrial IOT is very valuable.

I hadn't heard of such a thing as "industrial IOT", but I can see how there might be a difference - more of an evolutionary development out of ordinary embedded control systems, I imagine. Do you have any examples handy? I'm curious what's going on in that field.

Industrial(i.e. commercial) IOT examples:

- waste disposal: system knows trash levels in each bin, allows optimization of routes, saving 30%.

- agriculture: for trees: a bug trap, that measures the bug density in an area - allowing optimization of pesticide. etc for agriculture.

- Smart sensors inside pipes, allowing cities to detect leaks in advance. Same for clogged pipes in restaurants.

- Putting a lot of sensors in manufacturing processes, collection and analysis to see at what conditions there are problems with the product.

- in restaurant chains, putting a lot of sensors, allowing management to keep an eye. also, measuring and tracking everything allows better stock management, critical in high-perishability stuff,