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The third great wave

economist.com

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Re: The third great wave

#11

Post by cromwellian »

chroma wrote: post #8
thrownaway0000 wrote: post #2

The one thing a magazine like The Economist won't dwell on is the wars that these sorts of disruptions have triggered in the past. Wars like the French and American revolutions were fueled by an upheaval in weaponry and technology that rendered arrangements like feudalism obsolete. Primitive phalanx and cavalry style engagements could not suppress ordinary commoners anymore, if they had enough muskets and gun powder.…

What's next? Drones. No matter how strong one's industrial base, warfare has always been limited by the number of boots on the ground. Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages. There will be no flag-draped coffins to discourage a nation with a fully automated army. War will become a purely financial drain. As technology advances and drives drone costs to the…

Drone War seems like it will tend towards the Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon", no one wants to go nuclear, and no one wants direct confrontation with boots on the ground, so fleets of drones will fight it out and bomb strategic and tactical targets with conventional weapons while the civilian populations can do nothing but count the destruction.

Re: The third great wave

#12

Post by kissickas »

Chinjut wrote: post #6
simonsarris wrote: post #5

Humanity used to be optimistic about this moment, didn't it? In 1900 people hoped their work would be replaced by robots. Today people fear their work will be replaced by robots. Hmm.

In fairness, even prior to 1900, quite a lot of people were upset at these sorts of changes, at least when it was their particular livelihood on the line; consider the historical Luddites, for example. Or the subculture behind the tale of John Henry.

When I was in elementary school, I distinctly remember an optimistic perspective in response to automation of labor. Now, I highly doubt that children are being taught that this is a good thing and it seems to be mostly doom and gloom (although perhaps I'm just too separated from this point of view, having no children myself).

What changed? Certainly people during the past industrial revolutions were not all optimists, especially in the time before unions when labor was considered almost 100% disposable. But in the last few decades, hasn't there been some shift in what we expect out of this "new wave"?

I think about this almost daily, and all I can come up with is some sort of improved welfare system that depends on a very cheap, automated production of food. And I imagine we will have to shift (already!) back to single-earner households as the economy just isn't made to provide so many jobs anymore. If anyone could point me in the direction of some actually decent reading material on the topic I would be grateful.

Re: The third great wave

#13

Post by vinceguidry »

chroma wrote: post #8
thrownaway0000 wrote: post #2

The one thing a magazine like The Economist won't dwell on is the wars that these sorts of disruptions have triggered in the past. Wars like the French and American revolutions were fueled by an upheaval in weaponry and technology that rendered arrangements like feudalism obsolete. Primitive phalanx and cavalry style engagements could not suppress ordinary commoners anymore, if they had enough muskets and gun powder.…

What's next? Drones. No matter how strong one's industrial base, warfare has always been limited by the number of boots on the ground. Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages. There will be no flag-draped coffins to discourage a nation with a fully automated army. War will become a purely financial drain. As technology advances and drives drone costs to the…

> Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages.

That seems to me to be quite an oversimplification of what wins wars. Every war tech has had edge cases that motivated adversaries managed to overcome.

For example, despite the Vietcong's gross disadvantage in terms of technology, it's leaders managed to force over time the US's withdrawal. We didn't run out of men. We ran out of political will. The battle over political will is vastly different than the battle to save and destroy men. The Vietcong eventually came to realize this and optimized their strategy around it, and none of our horrific technological marvels could defeat that tailored strategy.

In fact, if you're just looking at body count, the North Vietnamese should have lost before we withdrew. We optimized around body counts but were unable to attain our military goals. These days, men won and lost are, if not the least of our concerns, are definitely not the most.

Re: The third great wave

#14

Post by chroma »

vinceguidry wrote: post #13
chroma wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's next? Drones. No matter how strong one's industrial base, warfare has always been limited by the number of boots on the ground. Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages. There will be no flag-draped coffins to discourage a nation with a fully automated army. War will become a purely financial drain. As technology advances and drives drone costs to the…

> Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages. That seems to me to be quite an oversimplification of what wins wars. Every war tech has had edge cases that motivated adversaries managed to overcome. For example, despite the Vietcong's gross disadvantage in terms of technology, it's leaders managed to force over time the US's withdrawal. We didn't run out of men…

I think you misunderstand me. The sides can have different thresholds for "too many body bags." The american threshold was lower, because the americans weren't fighting in defense of their homeland. Had the war been a purely financial expense for the US, they would have stuck around for much longer.

Re: The third great wave

#15

Post by dragonwriter »

chroma wrote: post #8
thrownaway0000 wrote: post #2

The one thing a magazine like The Economist won't dwell on is the wars that these sorts of disruptions have triggered in the past. Wars like the French and American revolutions were fueled by an upheaval in weaponry and technology that rendered arrangements like feudalism obsolete. Primitive phalanx and cavalry style engagements could not suppress ordinary commoners anymore, if they had enough muskets and gun powder.…

What's next? Drones. No matter how strong one's industrial base, warfare has always been limited by the number of boots on the ground. Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages. There will be no flag-draped coffins to discourage a nation with a fully automated army. War will become a purely financial drain. As technology advances and drives drone costs to the…

> Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages.

More accurately, eventually one side perceives the cost of continuing as outweighing the expected benefits. Battlefield casualties are usually a significant factor in generating that perception, but other costs are also often factors, and more importantly shifting perception of what can actually be achieved by continuing the war is usually a factor.

> There will be no flag-draped coffins to discourage a nation with a fully automated army.

Only true if the other side exclusively targets the automated army. Which is one reason that won't happen.

Re: The third great wave

#16

Post by toomuchtodo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #15
chroma wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's next? Drones. No matter how strong one's industrial base, warfare has always been limited by the number of boots on the ground. Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages. There will be no flag-draped coffins to discourage a nation with a fully automated army. War will become a purely financial drain. As technology advances and drives drone costs to the…

> Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages. More accurately, eventually one side perceives the cost of continuing as outweighing the expected benefits. Battlefield casualties are usually a significant factor in generating that perception, but other costs are also often factors, and more importantly shifting perception of what can actually be achieved by cont…

You don't need a sky full of drones to attack another country that has an army of drones. You need only a nuclear warhead delivered via cargo container to a strategic port by cargo ship.

Re: The third great wave

#17

Post by pas »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #16
dragonwriter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Eventually, one side sees enough body bags (or simply runs out of draft-eligible men) and disengages. More accurately, eventually one side perceives the cost of continuing as outweighing the expected benefits. Battlefield casualties are usually a significant factor in generating that perception, but other costs are also often factors, and more importantly shifting perception of what can actually be achieved by cont…

You don't need a sky full of drones to attack another country that has an army of drones. You need only a nuclear warhead delivered via cargo container to a strategic port by cargo ship.

That's just a scaremongering clishé, in reality you don't need anything other than good old TNT or a lot of magnesium to cut the ship in half.

Blow the port. You have just wrecked at least a digit percent of that nation's GDP, the cargo ship (net present value of its production capacity loss), especially if you can manage to get your container at the bottom of the stack, you disabled the port (if you blow it in a narrow place you cut off the port until they remove the wreck and/or dredge a new deep enough way).

And even if you don't achieve any of this, do it a few times and insurance premiums will rise considerably, people will be demanding "ACTION", and so on.

Of course, in a war, effective home propaganda can stifle these sentiments and you might be shooting yourself in the foot indirectly if you turn the civilian population against yourself.

Re: The third great wave

#18

Post by hsuresh »

Animats wrote: post #4

This is a poor article about an important subject. A more useful way to look at it is to make lists of jobs humans can do, and those which machines can do better. Over time, the second column grows. The first column, not so much. What's different this time is that computers are so general purpose, and so cheap. If a computer can do it at all, it can do it more cheaply than a human.

CGPGrey did a video on this subject recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU. But even this video isn't too optimistic about the number of jobs left to humans.

Re: The third great wave

#19

Post by draggnar »

Animats wrote: post #4

This is a poor article about an important subject. A more useful way to look at it is to make lists of jobs humans can do, and those which machines can do better. Over time, the second column grows. The first column, not so much. What's different this time is that computers are so general purpose, and so cheap. If a computer can do it at all, it can do it more cheaply than a human.

Alvin Toffler wrote a book about this in a much broader context, also called the Third Wave.
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