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The dead economy theory

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Re: The dead economy theory

#621

Post by themafia »

fsckboy wrote: post #347
graemep wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industrial revolution was enabled by more efficient agriculture feeing labour to do other work.

> The industrial revolution was enabled by more efficient agriculture feeing labour to do other work you're not wrong, but that's not exactly what happened. Agriculture itself was mechanized by the industrial revolution, affordable tractors (tillers, farrowers, etc.) and harvesters. mechanized railroads put more perishable agricultural goods "closer" to urban areas, etc. if you look at the growth industry before that…

Farm labor demands wax and wane with the seasons with harvest typically being the most labor intensive; so, it was actually stationary motors that did the most to reduce labor demands. Tractors mostly helped farmers eliminate the need for horses on a farm.

Re: The dead economy theory

#622

Post by horns4lyfe »

threetonesun wrote: post #423
marshray wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk chopped an awful lot of headcount at Twitter, right, and proved it was overkill, has that panned out? Has X-Twitter released a single new feature since?

You can buy blue checks, I guess. On the other hand they shut off embeds and access to replies unless you were signed in so it's functionally dead as a "website". Oh and sometimes there's child porn? So I guess it was overkill unless you care about things like moderation and safety. Anyway, excited to see how it very fairly handles the next US elections! I'm sure most of the remaining devs have invested their time th…

So is it a dead app or is it influencing elections? I know Elon makes you mad, but try to be objective

Re: The dead economy theory

#623

Post by treis »

idopmstuff wrote: post #601
treis wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The construction worker it replaces isn't going to start managing a team of robots construction robots Some of them will. You've slashed construction labor cost to 5% of what it was before. With that and a similar reduction throughout the supply chain means we're going to start building a lot more stuff.

Even if we start building a lot more stuff, you still don't need those construction workers. You have a GC to manage the whole project, aided by an AI who's handling scheduling/operations/logistics. You have a detailed plan to build against. So why do you need former construction workers to manage the robots? Why can't the GC and management AI run the whole thing? Maybe there's some scenario where you still need some…

That's pretty far away from where we're at. If things do get that far it's not going to be a problem. Eventually the robots will murder us in our sleep and our worries will be over.

Re: The dead economy theory

#624

Post by deepsun »

crote wrote: post #351
deepsun wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every country subsidies their agriculture for national security purpose. You don't want an enemy to starve you in case of a big war.

Name one country which is fully self-sustaining. Agricultural subsidies exist primarily due to lobbying, the "we don't want to starve" argument is nothing more than an excuse used to justify the fortunes handed out to corporate-scale farmers.

You're moving the goalpost from "prevent starving" to "fully self-sustaining".

You don't need 99% variety of cuisine in case of a big war, you need calories. A lot of calories.

UPDATE: and BTW, if world population is growing (no global starvation), then it's clearly self-sustaining, no? So some countries must be self-sustaining just by math. At least one country must produce more than it consumes, otherwise, if everyone produced less, then we would have global starvation.

Re: The dead economy theory

#625

Post by fitsumbelay »

"It’s utterly desiccating to log onto spaces seeking a live mind to joust and think with, and find a relentless stream of slop"

Am I in the minority for going online to learn stuff, download stuff and having zero point zero zero zero interest in jousting and co-thinking?

As I'm scanning the rant (and tbh the last two paragraphs hoping for some TL;DR summarization-love) I'm thinking "mans will find universal basic income quite upsetting", then I text-search "universal" and wouldn't you know the assumption was proven correct with a straw-man shaped cherry on top ("They’ll paint. They’ll garden. They’ll finally write that novel.")

What's the value -- like the real-ass human satisfaction -- of debating and hand-wringing over inevitabilities to anyone outside of the set of all authors provoking debate and hand-wringing over inevitabilities?

Re: The dead economy theory

#626

Post by walrus01 »

Animats wrote: post #248

India has the problem with farming that the US is starting to have with AI. Farming in India is still far too labor intensive by world standards. 43% of workers still work in agriculture. [1] For the US, that number is under 2%. China is at 22% as of 2023, and dropping steadily. This inefficient agricultural system is not by accident. It is supported by heavy subsidies. Attempts to cut the subsidies resulted in riots…

> Farming in India is still far too labor intensive by world standards. 43% of workers still work in agriculture. [1] For the US, that number is under 2%. China is at 22% as of 2023, and dropping steadily.

Question about farming in India. How much of the process of mechanizing and scaling up agriculture in India is predicated on something like the more widespread use of diesel or other oil/fossil-fuel powered tractors? To replace manual hand labor. If energy costs continue to rise as they are, and all-electric/battery based systems remain costly and out of the reach of the purchasing power of many small to mid sized farmers, what will happen?

Re: The dead economy theory

#628

Post by jes5199 »

marshray wrote: post #407
rootusrootus wrote: post #226

I know this isn't exactly related, so maybe a low value comment, but it itches in my mind. Years ago I talked with a recruiter at Facebook and they bragged about how many floors of developers they had working on Messenger in just one location (Seattle). What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger? I mean, really? I feel like in a way, AI just adds to that weird situation of overcapacity. M…

> Musk chopped an awful lot of headcount at Twitter, right, and proved it was overkill, has that panned out? Has X-Twitter released a single new feature since?

no, but they weren’t exactly churning out new features in the 2010s either

Re: The dead economy theory

#629

Post by chadgpt3 »

VinLucero wrote: post #445
hax0ron3 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's all so obscene. Instead, why don't we try to protect human dignity and move towards a more humane future? I think the Darwinian logic of reality might make this hard. If society A and society B are both developing AI and one of them stops in order to protect humans, society B may continue to develop AI and then it might either outcompete society A economically to the point of reducing it to poverty (it is theor…

Yeah, it’s the same problem as nuclear proliferation. We see what happened with Ukraine when they gave up their nukes in exchange for a promise of protection. The same could be true of countries who forgo AI development directly in exchange for promises.

More poignantly we saw it in Iran.

Re: The dead economy theory

#630

Post by biztos »

m463 wrote: post #510
Animats wrote: post #248

India has the problem with farming that the US is starting to have with AI. Farming in India is still far too labor intensive by world standards. 43% of workers still work in agriculture. [1] For the US, that number is under 2%. China is at 22% as of 2023, and dropping steadily. This inefficient agricultural system is not by accident. It is supported by heavy subsidies. Attempts to cut the subsidies resulted in riots…

I liked reading "The Box" about the transition to container shipping. It was interesting to see this totally-unrelated-to-our-times process from the outside. From our place in time, container shipping is obvious. At the time, to people who wanted to ship something, it was ridiculously hard and expensive and risky. If you were shipping something from cleveland to paris, you might just give up. Say you were shipping al…

They seem to have made their peace with standards, but now a lot of them don’t want robots. “Automation hurts families” is a common slogan.

https://youtu.be/hr-isyMV1y8?si=grnJqn8AOEuIwkRw

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