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Coders Automating Their Own Job

theatlantic.com

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Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"God wanted them to find it" I think you'll find that most people who 'keep the wallet' are probably not religious and don't think about it the morality of it all that much, whereas those who are regular temple/church/mosque attenders would be among the least likely to 'keep it'.

What do you base that on?

I base that on 40 years of life experience and travel and living in a variety of communities.

But there's overwhelming evidence of it, an BTW I'm not saying 'religious' per say, but 'church attendance' which is a much stronger overlap with conscientious behaviours.

[1] [2] [3]

People who doubt that regular church attenders are more likely to 'return wallets' I think have little exposure to classical religious communities. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I've found so many people who have no exposure to it have weird and cynical ideas about mainline religions. I'm constantly surprised.

In the very example given: Japan, where 'nobody keeps found wallets' - this is a culture of 'strong cultural ('small c') conservatism and communitarianism. Obviously with shades of ethnocentrism. They're not religious in the same way Westerners are, but they have a whole set of super concientious behaviours perfectly consistent with those here who are 'religous service attenders'

The best analogues in the West are basically agrarian communities, who by the way happen to be religious, or at least 'church attenders'. About 2 generations ago, in the West, most people lived in agrarian communities, even if they weren't farmers, they were tied to that lifestyle, attended service, yada, yada. You lose your wallet there, and nobody will steal it.

In my home town, my grandparents generally did not lock the door to their house. My father still generally does not lock his door.

Now - 99% of my grandparents and their peers attended Church, but they were mainline religions (I'm in Canada, we don't have a lot of this Evangelical, Baptist or Mormon kind of stuff) - but they were not what we would not refer to as specifically 'religious'. I mean everyone did it, it's just what people did. Nobody ran around talking about 'Jesus' etc. - rather, it's more or less part of cultural tradition. Watch UK television series that are set in smaller towns to get an idea.

In my cultural background the thought of keeping someone's wallet is unthinkable. It's obviously and clearly immoral. You probably 'know the person' who lost it anyhow.

The oddest thing about making the transition from more agrarian/communitarian cultures to the more urban one's is how self-oriented everyone seems in the city (i.e. how people could possibly consider 'keeping wallets'), but doubly odd is how they are so cynical they can't fathom that there are groups of people for whom 'returning wallets' is normative and moral action, not something of note. And I'm not harping on 'city folk' (I am born and mostly raised urban), and there are many great things here, rather pointing out the agrarian/communitarian's perspective.

Tons of data to support the relationship between religion and low crime, but FYI I think they overstate it a little bit, if you look carefully you find again 'attendance' more of a predictor of low crime than even 'faith' for example. I think it's just as much about conscientious behavior.

[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-briggs/no-time-for-crim...

[2] http://marripedia.org/effects_of_religious_practice_on_crime...

[3] https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article-abstract/78/2/192/30...

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#272

You know how sometimes you love an article so much that you are annoyed you didn't write it? This does a better job than I could have of tieing together a dozen threads of conversation that I've had with various friends for years. I actually believe that there's a culture war implied in this debate; the question of who deserves to reap the gains of automation is more than just philosophy or ethics. The question "is t…

"God wanted them to find it" I think you'll find that most people who 'keep the wallet' are probably not religious and don't think about it the morality of it all that much, whereas those who are regular temple/church/mosque attenders would be among the least likely to 'keep it'.

That's a nice thought, but do you have any evidence to back this up?

The notion that religious people are less likely to do bad things is highly problematic, objectively and logically - and it carries the unfortunate assumption that non-religious people are more likely to do bad things.

People should not need to subscribe to a paranormal belief system to understand that theft, rape and murder are bad.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#273

The article is a red herring. They're asking the question "Is it immoral to fire someone for automating their job?", when the question should be "Why aren't more companies encouraging their employees to automate their job?" Yes, a person can automate their job until they're not doing anything, and yes, a company can punish an employee for sitting idle. But the latter is inherently stupid. Automation both achieves the…

Now look at it from the employees perspective; None of these cases result in the person who did the automation from gaining additional compensation and half of them result in them loosing their job.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"God wanted them to find it" I think you'll find that most people who 'keep the wallet' are probably not religious and don't think about it the morality of it all that much, whereas those who are regular temple/church/mosque attenders would be among the least likely to 'keep it'.

That's a nice thought, but do you have any evidence to back this up? The notion that religious people are less likely to do bad things is highly problematic, objectively and logically - and it carries the unfortunate assumption that non-religious people are more likely to do bad things. People should not need to subscribe to a paranormal belief system to understand that theft, rape and murder are bad.

I mean, he said it outright: “I think you'll find that most people who 'keep the wallet' are probably not religious...”

I don’t think it’s so much a carried or implied assumption as his central thesis, and his justification down the thread is a page of more claims and anecdotes. Call me cynical, but I don’t think there is any “there” there.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#275
It always bothers me how things could be automated better if people just put in a little more thought.

For example, where I work, we use both entity framework and raw SQL scripts. A common chore is to delete all migrations, delete the database, run "add-migration SetupDB", "update-database -script", and save the script (with some added boilerplate) in a specific folder

However, the "update-database -script" command does not pipe the script to output, but instead opens a new window in VS with the script. This is part of the reason why I am not a fan of Microsoft/Windows: relying on a GUI makes automation so much harder.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#276
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the way things are going, I’m not sure learning a little bit of programming will help. Digitization has really begun rolling with RPA, because we now automate system processes for systems with no apis and no direct data manipulation. But even though RPA is mostly screengrapping and macros, we’ve found it impossible to teach to people who aren’t developers. Similar with better BI tools it’s become possible for sq…

What is RPA?

It’s a macro you program to use it systems through the UI. People already mentioned blueprism, uipath and automationanywhere, there’s a few others.

It’s an immensely valuable digitization too in enterprise setups where you operate s lot of closed and/or legacy systems. Like we operate around 600 it systems, and very few of them talk to each other.

So if you want to transfer data from one system to another, you’d need to have someone manually do it. Or you could automate it by using RPA software.

Basically it’s what will do to the office space what the assembly lines did to factories.

It’s also really terrible, because it breaks when the UI changes. But when companies refuse to sell open apis, it’s what you have to work with. The most ironic part is the IT companies that now sell RPA solutions for their own shitty software, but that’s the world we live in.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#277
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the history of religious thought in the US, it's not the Protestant work ethic per se, but in large part the "prosperity gospel" or prosperity theology [1] -- this belief that God will reward the right kind of Christians with material wealth. There are strong currents in Protestantism that posit that rewards are for the afterlife and that one may have to endure poverty in this earthly life and that's ok. […

It's cultural and more pragmatic. Those who work hard, a positive outlook, maintain themselves and their families, are resourceful ... will likely be healthy and abundant. The farmer who idles away doing not much will have a bad crop. The farmer who is responsible and diligent, mends his fences, ploughs well, keeps his equipment clean and proper and minds the livestock ... will likely do well. Except in case of disas…

My only gripe is everyday the system seems more rigged.

The farmer can work their hands to the bone, but still can't compete with the wealthy farmers surrounding their farm.

Are the wealthy farmers just better workers?

I get what you are saying, but it was probally more relavant 40 years ago, at least in the USA?

And the wealthy always go back to their humble beginnings.

I've only heard one, or two wealthy boys admit; without daddy's money, I'd probally be just scraping by.

I find it very depressing.

And yes--there's the occasional Horatio Alger.

If I had a child, I would try to steer them into protected parts of the economy--like a doctor. Actually, with my bad genes, I'm glad I never had a child.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"God wanted them to find it" I think you'll find that most people who 'keep the wallet' are probably not religious and don't think about it the morality of it all that much, whereas those who are regular temple/church/mosque attenders would be among the least likely to 'keep it'.

That's a nice thought, but do you have any evidence to back this up? The notion that religious people are less likely to do bad things is highly problematic, objectively and logically - and it carries the unfortunate assumption that non-religious people are more likely to do bad things. People should not need to subscribe to a paranormal belief system to understand that theft, rape and murder are bad.

See my comments below for links to articles.

There is overwhelming evidence that religious people, particularly those who attend services are less likely to be involved in criminal activity.

Your assertion that the religious or church attenders are mostly about 'belief in paranormal activity' is really quite missing the ball, to the point that it's almost offensive - though it's a common misunderstanding.

Most classical Churches, Synagogues etc. are basically old-school community centers, where morality, behavior, contentiousness is passed on from generation to generation. Devotion to 'a higher purpose' and 'the community' is basically paramount and instituted into all ideals.

FYI - it's actually not that much about 'belief', funny enough it's mostly about 'behaviour' which is highlighted in the research that hints that 'attendance' is the strongest predictor, less so 'faith'. (Sorry, I tried to find that specific article and could not).

I'm not some kind of 'holy roller' or whatever, I'm just constantly shocked at the odd misunderstanding many super secular types have about religion. The original posters bit about 'God wanted me to keep the wallet' triggered me because that's basically the opposite of what most religious people would instinctively think: to most service attenders, that the 'wallet belongs to someone' is a most obvious observation. Most mainline religious groups are like 'boy scouts' and 'girl guides'. A little conservative, generally very conscientious.

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#279
post #251

This article really highlights how odd our methods of valuing output are. Ultimately if someone is idling for 6 years because they've written a program to do their job for them, who cares? They are delivering the same output which hopefully the company deemed was valued at X amount BECAUSE it delivers Y amount of profit/returns. This article is actually touching on a deeper level of dysfunction in how we do things li…

> If the salary for each person was X, I asked for a salary bump of 3X [and they didn't]. ... And from that point on, I stopped treating my job as an extension of my identity or fulfillment of purpose. Indeed, the best work is done when you do it for yourself. People basically sign their brains away when they go to work for Facebook and Google. Those companies will be likely to get B players no matter how many seemin…

Liked the reply but MIT, my alma matter, grades on a 5.0 scale

Re: Coders Automating Their Own Job

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nice thought, but do you have any evidence to back this up? The notion that religious people are less likely to do bad things is highly problematic, objectively and logically - and it carries the unfortunate assumption that non-religious people are more likely to do bad things. People should not need to subscribe to a paranormal belief system to understand that theft, rape and murder are bad.

I mean, he said it outright: “I think you'll find that most people who 'keep the wallet' are probably not religious...” I don’t think it’s so much a carried or implied assumption as his central thesis, and his justification down the thread is a page of more claims and anecdotes. Call me cynical, but I don’t think there is any “there” there.

" Call me cynical, but I don’t think there is any “there” there. "

I provided links to three articles of data to support my primary thesis, moreover, if you do a Google search you will find overwhelming research in support of the fact that 'those who attend regular service are less criminal'.

My 'anecdotes' are there to help contextualize it for you.

So the 'there' is so obviously 'there' ... the question is, why, even when faced with actual data to people keep doubting? That's the interesting bit.

And to be clear I'm not religious nor do I attend services.

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