The Software Revolution • Hacker News Board

Re: The Software Revolution

#231

Post by yellowapple » Mon, Feb 16, 2015, 9:25 PM UTC

maw wrote: post #200

lkrubner wrote: post #198

I disagree with this: "The previous one, the industrial revolution, created lots of jobs" That industrial revolution caused massive unemployment in India, in the Ottoman empire, in China... almost everywhere that had once been a famous textile center. The idea that the industrial revolution did not cause unemployment is an illusion that is caused by looking at only one nation state. But Britain was the winner of the…

My advice: if you start learning about history don't stop.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Those who can remember the past are condemned to watch everyone else repeat it.

Re: The Software Revolution

#232

Post by MagicWishMonkey » Mon, Feb 16, 2015, 9:26 PM UTC

peapicker wrote: post #58

"Trying to hold on to worthless jobs is a terrible but popular idea." I'm not sure I agree with this proposition. When I was in India, I noticed a large amount of roadwork was being done by men with shovels and other fairly low tech. I asked about it, and was told, to paraphrase, "Sure, we could do it better and faster with machines, but it is better for society to provide employment to those who would otherwise be u…

"If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing." - John Maynard Keynes

Re: The Software Revolution

#233

Post by rayiner » Mon, Feb 16, 2015, 9:29 PM UTC

joesmo wrote: post #194

"Trying to hold on to worthless jobs is a terrible but popular idea." It's terrible sure, but it's popular only because our economy requires it. That is the basis for the whole economy. It's not like people are clamoring to serve McDonalds for minimum wage or clean shit out bathrooms. They have no other choices in this economy. The economy demands it. While those jobs might be necessary, most middle management and of…

> While those jobs might be necessary, most middle management and office type jobs are incredibly redundant and frankly, pointless.

This is a conceit of software folks that's not borne out by reality. Those "worthless" jobs continue to exist because software can do 90% of what those folks do, but shit the bed when faced with the other 10%. Software generally isn't reliable, predictable, or robust in the face of unusual circumstances, which is why humans continue to do these jobs.

Re: The Software Revolution

#234

Post by lukeschlather » Mon, Feb 16, 2015, 9:31 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #33

jnbiche wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income. People may scoff, but this is one of the extremely rare ideas that can draw significant support from both sides of the isle in the US. There are pockets of strong opposition to the idea on both the right and the left, but I can only hope that the far left's opposition to basic income continues. That opposition in and off itself makes most politicians in this country take a serious look at the idea.

I'd say it's one of the rare ideas that almost no one supports. The right obviously objects to redistribution. The left prefers inefficient redistribution. It's hard to say there's much tangible opposition on the far left or that opposition causes consideration or that most politicians are taking a serious look. I think you might have just gone 0 for 5.

> The right obviously objects to redistribution.

This is inarguable.

> The left prefers inefficient redistribution.

This is an obvious strawman. The current inefficient solution is a compromise between the left (who want the government to help the poor) and the right (who don't want the government to help the poor, but can be persuaded if you mix in enough penalties for perceived sin.)

In order to have an efficient solution you need a majority of people voting to agree on what the goal is.

Re: The Software Revolution

#235

Post by joesmo » Mon, Feb 16, 2015, 9:32 PM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #209

joesmo wrote: post #194

"Trying to hold on to worthless jobs is a terrible but popular idea." It's terrible sure, but it's popular only because our economy requires it. That is the basis for the whole economy. It's not like people are clamoring to serve McDonalds for minimum wage or clean shit out bathrooms. They have no other choices in this economy. The economy demands it. While those jobs might be necessary, most middle management and of…

synthetic biology does exist, just look at this: http://www.genomecompiler.com/ Also look at this: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-... It's only been since 2010 that we've known how to actually do it, but the technology exists. Pandora's box has been opened. AI development isn't science fiction either. GPU's + convolutional neural networks have been enabling radical developments in the are…

Yes, but at least in the case of AI, it's so primitive and so far away from being any type of intelligence that the only intelligence is in the name. Sorry, that doesn't count, especially when you're talking about putting valuable resources into something that may never materialize: real AI. I suspect that the same applies to synthetic biology at this point, though I'm no expert on that.

Re: The Software Revolution

#236

Post by mtbcoder » Mon, Feb 16, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

aceperry wrote: post #151

mtbcoder wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not following how the "service sector" is any kind of answer to the problems and issues we are facing with regards to automation and labour.

It's not necessarily the answer, or even a good answer. But the service sector has been growing for a long time. And it has become one of the huge growth areas due to the software revolution. Just look at the types of jobs produced by Uber/Lyft/et al, and the many delivery services that are popping up. They're mostly low paying jobs for the most part, which in my mind, is not the answer to the destruction of jobs hap…

I agree, but I'm not questioning whether or not the service sector is growing. The rise of the freelancer/contractor in any given industry seems to have grown exponentially just in the last decade alone. If we assume this to be the "answer" the free market has, I simply do not see how this is sustainable on a large scale. It seems to me that we would rapidly have an excess of service providers in an ever-shrinking pool of service consumers. Furthermore it would introduce a whole new set of issues from exploitation to underbidding/cutting.

Re: The Software Revolution

#237

Post by nostrademons » Mon, Feb 16, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

alexqgb wrote: post #197

shin_lao wrote: post #127

"The previous one, the industrial revolution, created lots of jobs because the new technology required huge numbers of humans to run it." That's not that simple. The industrial revolution initially destroyed a lot of jobs because it replaced human labor with steam machines. It created new qualified jobs, it is true, because these new intricate machines would require advanced skills to be maintained - a reminiscence o…

One of the most notable differences between the Industrial and Information revolutions is that wealth from the former was underwritten by a surge in energy. Wealth from the latter depends on extracting greater value from (more or less) existing supplies. In other words, it's largely about the sudden redistribution of output, as opposed to a change in the underlying supply. (Relatively) enlightened governing philosoph…

No, the two revolutions are a lot more similar than you think. The industrial revolution was fueled largely by the technology to harness huge quantities of fossil fuels to power modern machinery. The underlying supply of energy didn't change - those fossil fuel reserves had been built up over hundreds of millions of years, as we're now learning (to our chagrin) a hundred years later. What did change is our ability to extract that energy from the world around us. After the industrial revolution, we woke up and found out that we had previously been literally scratching the surface of the resources available to us on this planet.

Similarly, the Information revolution has been fueled by a huge increase in our ability to collect and process data. That's allowed new means of production that use existing resources in a much more efficient way. No, there's no new energy flowing into the system - but there wasn't with the Industrial Revolution either, we just figured out how to use energy that was previously believed to be useless.

There are theoretical limits to the amount of energy our planet can generate, but if you study physics you'll see that the amount of energy extracted by human beings is roughly 1/1000th of the energy available to us [1]. The limiting factor is our technology, not the raw resources in the environment.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

Re: The Software Revolution

#238

Post by juliangregorian » Mon, Feb 16, 2015, 9:36 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #203

Why is it so common to fear developments obsoleting jobs? Wouldn't it be just awesome to automate everything? No jobs at all? I could easily fill several lives with interesting things, no need for a job. Granted, the transition period may be quite tough.

Your last sentence says a lot. Given our track record it's likely that people left without means of acquiring money are pretty much told to go fuck themselves.

Re: The Software Revolution

#239

Post by yellowapple » Mon, Feb 16, 2015, 9:37 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #180

shin_lao wrote: post #127

"The previous one, the industrial revolution, created lots of jobs because the new technology required huge numbers of humans to run it." That's not that simple. The industrial revolution initially destroyed a lot of jobs because it replaced human labor with steam machines. It created new qualified jobs, it is true, because these new intricate machines would require advanced skills to be maintained - a reminiscence o…

The problem is that it was relatively easy to master the technologies of the industrial revolution. It isn't the same for the software revolution. You can take virtually any adult from any part of the world and teach him how to work in a factory within a few months of study. You can't take any random adult and teach him how to code. It requires way higher intellect and time to master coding. I think of myself as rela…

> You can't take any random adult and teach him how to code. It requires way higher intellect and time to master coding.

True, but that's not the only job that will be in high demand in this here "software revolution", nor is programming the best comparison to factory workers in the first place.

In the short term at least, I figure we'll see high demand for help desk and field repair technicians - two realms that are ultimately necessary for software to revolutionize anything. Eventually, the global population will likely become increasingly technologically-literate and be less dependent on human interaction in order to request support; should this occur, there will then be a shift of employment away from help desk, but I expect field repair technicians will continue to be in high demand for a very long time.

That is, until sufficiently-advanced synthetic intelligences become reality, but at that point we're all screwed, so it's kind of a moot point worrying about that :)

Re: The Software Revolution

#240

Post by cwp » Mon, Feb 16, 2015, 9:38 PM UTC

briholt wrote: post #213

ghostly_s wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your arrogance is showing. Sure, you could learn how to operate a lathe on an assembly line in a matter of weeks; in just the same way nearly any adult of average education could learn in a matter of weeks to write WordPress templates, or cobble together SQL queries, or etc. etc. To become a master machinist, the kind who can do anything with a lathe that a lathe can be asked to do? Years of dedication and expertise.

In the scope of factories in the industrial revolution, I think he's clearly referring to low-skill assembly line work, which made up the vast majority of jobs. You're referring to master craftsman. The problem with software is that there's no known way to create assembly-line-style software with lots of low skill labor. It can only be made by at least semi-skilled craftsman. Being able to cobble together an SQL quer…

Yeah, but the software revolution doesn't require everyone to be coders, just as the industrial revolution didn't require everyone to be lathe designers.

There are definitely non-coding jobs being created by the software revolution. Cobbling together SQL queries, bashing spreadsheets together, creating graphs, cleaning up data for further processing. These are exactly the kind of things that low(ish) skilled people will be doing in the future.