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No Recent Automation Revolution

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Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#311

Post by jonahbenton »

jonahbenton wrote: post #293
tuatoru wrote: post #69

An independent line of evidence looks at the formation of new occupations over time. If automation were taking over jobs, or jobs were being refactored because some tasks are automated, then we'd expect to see new job titles appearing in employment advertising and classifications such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics's. This does happen, as it has happened since the start of the Industrial Revolution. "Social Media…

The assumption that job titles reflect critical features of the job, or aspects of automation impacting the workforce, is...laughably easily falsifiable. What about the replacement of W-2 with 1099 task-oriented roles? Where does that show up in the job title data set? The 2M Uber drivers, just in the US? The tens of millions of jobs offshored that no longer show up in US surveys? That requirements for the job of a C…

Having read the paper, it is based on expert classifications and summaries of job titles...it is like a game of telephone, where

real world -> noisy data collection -> noisy data classification -> noisy expert analysis -> specific study -> paper

leads to something where the paper is just too disconnected from the real world.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#312

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

DangitBobby wrote: post #141
nine_k wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You are not your job" is one thing I keep teaching all my junior colleagues. Your work is not your identity, and should not be seriously attached to your ego. This helps very much at code review and performance review times.

I spend more time doing my job than almost anything else. Sleeping is the only thing I spend more time doing. It might be healthier if I can avoid attaching so much importance and part of my identity to it, but I don't know how that's possible for me. Not only does it dominate my time, but it determines how much money I have for what I need and want and therefor what class of society I fit into and how difficult my l…

I find this really interesting because it's the exact opposite of how I think. I simply can't wrap my head around the concept, even knowing that many people think the same way.

Twenty years ago I had a friend who was a social worker and I offhand mentioned to her that "well, I'm not my job." She stared at me as if I had two heads and then said, slowly, "I completely agree with you, but you have no idea how rare it is to hear a man say that."

I enjoy my job and I'm happy to do it, but it in no way defines who I am for more than the 8-or-so hours per day I spend at it. The thing is, making your work your identity is almost central to the American male experience, and I doubt that's going away any time soon.

I guess you're in good company :-)

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#313

Post by dragonwriter »

stale2002 wrote: post #304
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no modern state without collectively funded education, police, fire service, justice system, military, reseach, environmental protection, FDA,FAA, etc. So where is this magical line, once we cross it, the system suddently becomes oppressive?

The magic line would be when the majority of privately owned businesses are illegal. Or, as the socialists would call it, when they take control of "the means of production". Which is just another way of saying that private businesses are illegal. Collectively funding some services has nothing to do with socialism.

> Or, as the socialists would call it, when they take control of "the means of production".

> Which is just another way of saying that private businesses are illegal.

No, it's not. Private businesses executed through private labor applied to public capital which the business rents from the state are perfectly compatible with socialism in which private ownership of the means of production is prohibited.

It's true that there are “socialist” states and parties that have banned or sought to ban private business, but that's not essential to socialism.

Also, all of those collectively funded services listed upthread tend to feature public capital ownership of the means of delivering the service as well as public operating funds, and often exclude private ownership of some of the means of delivering those services and/or use of privately owned capital to provide the same service, resulting in a domain in which private capital ownership is restricted.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#314

Post by jeffreyrogers »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #255
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of reasons for not supporting those things. Some in-line with what you said. Others not. The issues are more complicated than you're making them out to be.

I used to think that, but over the years, in my cohort, the same group of people oppose any measures at wealth redistribution or anything that helps people who sell their labor. Removing tax advantages of healthcare from employers? Oppose. Removing exempt status or even raising the minimum salary under which an employer has to pay overtime? Oppose. Lowering the cost of education? Oppose. Parental or sick leave? Oppos…

The examples you gave originally (UBI, healthcare for all, etc.) are totally different than the ones you listed here, which are much more tightly scoped.

Edit: I'm not supportive of the first group because the policies as stated are wishes, not actual policies. For example, any real healthcare for all solution has to have a plan for dealing with the millions of people who are employed by the current healthcare system (which admittedly sucks) and who will be replaced by a new one. Similarly for UBI. It requires completely overhauling massive federal and state bureaucracies that have a lot of power.

I agree with you that many people who are against those things are they way you're describing, but many are not as well.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#315

Post by kaybe »

082349872349872 wrote: post #297
kaybe wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rules (in Germany, but also other places) say you either have to offer the cows these brushes or brush them manually. It's not really a choice.

Wasn't the choice between offering the brushes or brushing them manually? Around here I see that farmers find installing a EUR 2'500 brush to be much cheaper than attempting to pay cheap foreign labour to brush cows. (TIL automated pig brushes also exist)

Yes, I meant it's not a choice whether to brush at all. And if you have more than one or two cows the choice between the autobrush and manual seems clear, especially since the cows seem to love them and can use them whenever.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#316

Post by stale2002 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #313
stale2002 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magic line would be when the majority of privately owned businesses are illegal. Or, as the socialists would call it, when they take control of "the means of production". Which is just another way of saying that private businesses are illegal. Collectively funding some services has nothing to do with socialism.

> Or, as the socialists would call it, when they take control of "the means of production". > Which is just another way of saying that private businesses are illegal. No, it's not. Private businesses executed through private labor applied to public capital which the business rents from the state are perfectly compatible with socialism in which private ownership of the means of production is prohibited. It's true that…

> private ownership of the means of production is prohibited.

This is a borderline semantic argument.

There is very little difference between banning almost all private businesses, and banning all owenership of private capital.

Everything that everyone does, relates to capital. If I write code, I just produced capital. And now the socialists are saying that I won't own that.

Yes, code is capital. The value of almost all software companies, is not in the server racks, it is in the code that they produced.

As far as I am concerned, banning all private ownership of capital, is only very slightly different than banning private enterprise, given that the main function of many private enterprises is to create capital, and now that capital would be illegal for them to own, even if they produced it.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#317

Post by m12k »

tengbretson wrote: post #292
m12k wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying the aristocracy were the pets of their slaves and serfs? Got it, thank you for adding to the debate.

> So you're saying... > Got it, thank you for adding to the debate. How about don't be such a dick?

Hey, there's no need to resort to name calling. You didn't address my main point, but instead just put up a strawman argument by equating the autonomy of not needing to work with the massive lack of autonomy that comes from being someone's pet, a perspective that my comment had already given a counterexample of with the aristocracy. So yes, I called out your comment for being a one-line, low effort, strawman argument, that didn't actually add to the debate by 1) actually addressing any of the points raised or 2) seriously making and backing up any points of its own. If you have something substantive to add, or any actual counterarguments, I'd genuinely love to hear them.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#318

Post by kaybe »

SkyBelow wrote: post #305
omginternets wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the parent poster does not have Vietnam, nor North Korea, nor even communism in mind. You know this, and we know you know this.

While I would agree they were very unlikely to have Vietnam or North Korea in mind, how does one draw the same conclusion about communism? I've met plenty of people who see communism, or at least a system of government that they would ascribe that label to even if others might not, as being a preferable alternative to capitalism. This leads me to think it is a reasonable assumption that they might have been thinking…

Not that it actually matters for the discussion, just for transparency - I am pretty open about the method.

As long as we all get to do less of the undesirable work, our needs are covered and the profits and power of automation are not concentrated in the hands of a few I'd say we reached the goal. 'Evenish' distribution might be sufficient too.

There is a lot of literature on ideas and theories about it. The systems used so far had a lot of debugging time already, and I'd expect unexpected effects to turn up when implementing anything new, and thus it is hard to advocate for any specific one. Working with our problematic traits (such as laziness, selfishness and hunger for power) instead of against them (or worse, ignoring them) seems advisable though.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#319

Post by jvanderbot »

d3nj4l wrote: post #24
jvanderbot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His assertion that we could always be one discovery away is not false, it's just irrelevant. The article states no evidence that there's been any past effect of "increasing automation" and assumes the near future will look like the recent past. Just inventing AGI wouldn't actually change much the next day, it would just be a new paradigm, and things would eventually change... so I agree with TFA. (Also, AGI would be…

I definitely don't mean it as in "AGI is invented; humans need not apply", but in the point you've covered: > The article states no evidence that there's been any past effect of "increasing automation" and assumes the near future will look like the recent past. My point was that predictions of AGI being so far away may be false, as explained the article I linked. If they were false, and we ended up with AGI, I don't…

The idea that intelligence is disconnected from the "baser" instincts like emotion, need to eat, need to reproduce, need for social recognition, etc is probably just false. Akin to there being a useful measure IQ which predicts ability to solve the worlds problems (hint: Nope). Our story-telling mind can construct all kinds of intelligent hypotheses, but was probably evolved to appear rational to our fellow people and attribute agency where possible. Our wander-through-the-woods mind can visualize and hypothesize about spatial relations and transformations, etc.

There's much to do for AGI, but I believe that motivation-engineering will be the hardest part. Morality is intrinsically connected to our role as sorta-hive-minded monkeys.

Caveat: All the above is poorly presented opinion from the following resources:

- Learning how to learn on coursera

- Buddhism and modern psychology on coursera

- Righteous Mind by Haidt.

- Happiness Hypothesis by Haidt

- Bullshit as an honest indicator of intelligence

Building a machine using our evolutionary history as a prior design is the only way we know how to produce general intelligence, but all the strange, varied, "Emotional" baggage that goes with it means we never would. Why would a computer be afraid of snakes? If what you want is a computer that can come up with solutions you wouldn't have imagined, then you need clever search, problem specification, and significant computation, not general intelligence. If you want to automate something, you may need learning, but don't need intelligence.

Re: No Recent Automation Revolution

#320

Post by kaybe »

barrkel wrote: post #272
shuntress wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The most meaning in life comes from doing things for other people Exactly. So we should set up a system that provides everyone with enough to meet their basic needs. That way they can spend their time and effort to find the way they can most effectively do things for other people rather than finding the local maxima "job I can tolerate that keeps me alive"

The most effective means we have today for determining what we should do for other people is prices. That means capitalism. The downsides are lack of agency in large efficient orgs and unearned profits from capital. I don't know the answer, but I don't think UBI + charity++ is it.

> The most effective means we have today for determining what we should do for other people is prices.

That means markets, not capitalism.

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