Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing • Hacker News Board

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#61

Post by dangerlibrary » Thu, Mar 17, 2016, 2:44 PM UTC

gphil wrote: post #59

tomjen3 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the population having access to most of the worlds knowledge in the palm of their hand is a gigantic boon to society. What we should accept is that the time is approaching where a) it is possible for skill and lucky people to make many millions of times more money than those who are neither and that b) the cost communication has decreased so much that in many cases it no longer makes sense to employ people, i…

I was with you until the last sentence: > This means tax cuts but above all simplifications of the relevant law. How do you pay for the poorest to have tolerable lives with tax cuts? Or are you talking about cutting out regressive taxes on the working poor?

Maybe he believes we're somewhere to the right of the peak of the Laffer curve.

There's literally no evidence whatsoever for that, but evidence isn't what causes people to advocate for tax cuts for people making "many millions of times more money" than those who aren't lucky or talented.

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

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#62

Post by spacehome » Thu, Mar 17, 2016, 2:45 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #29

kristianc wrote: post #8

I'm interested by the classification here. Many backend jobs involve routine work from people who could be doing non-routine work if the CRUD routine job was automated. Within an industry or a profession it seems like there could be a mix of routine and non-routine work. Similarly, how many people's jobs have changed from being routine jobs to non-routine jobs through either retraining or automation allowing them to…

I think you've hit on the right point. I'm also always curious about how far these definitions can and should be pushed. Talking in terms of "automation of routine tasks" sounds reasonably descriptive of how the spread of technology works. But, technology is a concept that is notoriously elusive in economics. That's because it's hard to clearly define in concrete terms useable in the context of economic theories, whe…

> What you have is a more useful mechanic.

The endgame here is that I don't need a mechanic.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#63

Post by bdavisx » Thu, Mar 17, 2016, 2:47 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #13

leereeves wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I touch type ("ten finger system") but I can see a point to the argument that it's not necessary to program well. Typing is only a small part of programming, and touch typing isn't a huge benefit even for that part, considering all the numbers and symbols used, auto-complete for identifiers and keywords, and macros for common idioms. And it painfully overworks the right pinky.

As a self-taught somewhat-ten-finger-system typist that bangs out 120 words per minute in English ... I disagree. Being able to think through my fingers has helped a lot . It's hard to explain so let's use a driving analogy. Think back to how good your driving was when shifting wasn't muscle memory, when you had to think about the clutch every time, or when you had to think about just how much brake to apply and how…

I completely agree, if you have to think about where to put your fingers to type, or look at the keyboard - then you're not thinking about the code you're writing (or at least, you're not 100% thinking about it).

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#64

Post by marknutter » Thu, Mar 17, 2016, 2:49 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #48

atemerev wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luddites were saying the same around 200 years ago, but it turned out better than expected. Lots of new jobs were created, replacing manual labor.

Not for the Luddites. This is one of the most consistently misunderstood and misused historical lessons I run into in tech circles. The true lesson of the Luddites isn't that "things will turn out better than you thought", it is that "there will be casualties". The Luddites were basically correct - they were trading "good jobs" for fundamental unemployment. Demographically speaking the families involved did not on av…

Technological advancements displace jobs at a relatively slow pace. It doesn't happen overnight. And as those jobs get replaced, the demand for the remaining people who can do those jobs goes up because not all companies can afford to automate initially. The "casualties" you mention are more likely the future workers for a particular profession, but they're unlikely to care much having, y'know, not been born yet.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#65

Post by tomjen3 » Thu, Mar 17, 2016, 2:50 PM UTC

mrrrgn wrote: post #11

atemerev wrote: post #2

What's wrong with that? This is called "progress".

Progress implies moving toward a goal. What goal are we moving toward? Our society and economy aren't optimized for scenarios involving large scale unemployment. What use is automation if it only leads to mass human suffering?

Please look out the nearest window that overlooks a street. Then compare with the next couple of minutes of this video (https://youtu.be/uYmbyOrM4gs?t=543). Compare the amount of human suffering. The difference is 116 years of the automation you so hate.

Unfortunately I can't show you what life was like before the industrial revolution, because we don't have images or movies from that time, suffice to say that life then "was short, brutish and hard". Child mortality was rampant, according to Adam Smith it was not unusual that a woman who had had 10 children didn't see any of them grew up to be adults.

There is no goal, but progress is moving as far away from that condition as humanely possible, as fast as possible. This is best achieved with capitalism.

If you want full scale employment just create another world war, so that we can draft everybody and piss all our wealth away.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#66

Post by netcan » Thu, Mar 17, 2016, 2:52 PM UTC

spacehome wrote: post #62

netcan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've hit on the right point. I'm also always curious about how far these definitions can and should be pushed. Talking in terms of "automation of routine tasks" sounds reasonably descriptive of how the spread of technology works. But, technology is a concept that is notoriously elusive in economics. That's because it's hard to clearly define in concrete terms useable in the context of economic theories, whe…

> What you have is a more useful mechanic. The endgame here is that I don't need a mechanic.

Yup, potentially. In that case what you have is a more useful car, or cloud transport service.

But endgame, where it's "robots" as we all imagine it is always a moving target. Mechanics weren't needed 200 years ago either. So far, we've needed new professions. Maybe that will end.

My point was just that automation is a fairly fuzzy way of explaining what is going in.

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#67

Post by awinter-py » Thu, Mar 17, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

mziel wrote: post #53

awinter-py wrote: post #42

Scary parallel here with the recent jeff dean talk about NN. He claims he won't let his team touch any 'research task' that takes more than a week, and prefers to stick to experiments that take under a day to set up and run -- that there's so much low-hanging fruit that every ML project should be simple. Very very scary if tech that most of us still haven't touched is also in a sense routine. I hope I'm misquoting hi…

Could you post a link to this talk?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSaZGT4-6EY

Tech Talk with Jeff Dean at Campus Seoul

'deep learning for building intelligent computer systems'

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#68

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Mar 17, 2016, 2:54 PM UTC

bdavisx wrote: post #60

tomjen3 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the population having access to most of the worlds knowledge in the palm of their hand is a gigantic boon to society. What we should accept is that the time is approaching where a) it is possible for skill and lucky people to make many millions of times more money than those who are neither and that b) the cost communication has decreased so much that in many cases it no longer makes sense to employ people, i…

I think we need to be careful about what "tolerable lives" means too. I've seen "guaranteed income" proposals talking about something in the $25,000 USD range or similar. That's basically poverty level - and while that's better than nothing, it probably won't work as more and more jobs go away. Imagine a world (or the US) where 75% of the people are at the poverty level and 25% are "rich". How long do you think that'…

$25,000 is a very reasonable existence for a single person, as long as it's present buying power and after tax.

You can rent for less than $1000 and should be able to do utilities for ~$300.

That leaves about $200 a week, which is certainly not the lap of luxury, but it's plenty for food and necessities (I've done 2 people eating well enough for ~$100 a week so I really don't feel full of shit saying that).

There's no planning for the future in that, but part of the idea of a basic income is to de-risk things like that no?

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#69

Post by tomjen3 » Thu, Mar 17, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

gphil wrote: post #59

tomjen3 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the population having access to most of the worlds knowledge in the palm of their hand is a gigantic boon to society. What we should accept is that the time is approaching where a) it is possible for skill and lucky people to make many millions of times more money than those who are neither and that b) the cost communication has decreased so much that in many cases it no longer makes sense to employ people, i…

I was with you until the last sentence: > This means tax cuts but above all simplifications of the relevant law. How do you pay for the poorest to have tolerable lives with tax cuts? Or are you talking about cutting out regressive taxes on the working poor?

I meant tax cuts and simplifications for the poor. Mostly the tax cuts would come as a result of the simplifications (eg if you import something with small import duties we can just do away with them, which will make them a little more money but mostly saves them time in not having to fill the paperwork and figure out which laws they fall under).

Large companies can afford the complexity but small companies typically can't. More importantly a neighborhood printshop isn't a complex business (it doesn't, for example, have overseas income on intellectual property taxes).

Re: Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing

#70

Post by maratd » Thu, Mar 17, 2016, 3:10 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #69

gphil wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until the last sentence: > This means tax cuts but above all simplifications of the relevant law. How do you pay for the poorest to have tolerable lives with tax cuts? Or are you talking about cutting out regressive taxes on the working poor?

I meant tax cuts and simplifications for the poor. Mostly the tax cuts would come as a result of the simplifications (eg if you import something with small import duties we can just do away with them, which will make them a little more money but mostly saves them time in not having to fill the paperwork and figure out which laws they fall under). Large companies can afford the complexity but small companies typically…

> Large companies can afford the complexity but small companies typically can't.

I love the idealism, but that's not how it works. Small or large, you will hire a company that specializes in customs to handle all the paperwork for you. It's about as complex as paying a bill for a small business.

The same applies to accounting, taxes, legal issues, etc. all businesses outsource this work to specialists.

The problem is that all facets of business have become so complex and specialized that you now need a specialist for everything. This isn't a burden on the business, since all businesses have to pay it and handle it in the same way.

It's a burden on the employees and consumers. They pay for all this complexity through lower salaries and higher prices.