Post: #26

Interesting video. This is why most Amish people choose to be Amish even when given the chance to leave. Change is terrifying.

Post: #27

I remain unconvinced that computers will be replacing humans in any task that involves creativity, abstract/lateral thought, or ingenuity...

Yes they will inevitably replace a lot of busywork jobs, both unskilled and skilled, and that will have serious economic repercussions, but there is somewhat of a bright side to this that wasn't touched on in that video. In a world where tons of things are automated, the average person's purchasing power will skyrocket, because many goods and services will become monumentally cheaper.

Post: #28

A healthy bought of deflation and ripping apart the social safety nets we have would slow or practically eliminate automation.

Make human labor cheaper and the problem will go away. Why do you think textile work goes to the country with the cheapest labor?

Post: #29

(08-15-2014 04:39 PM)Travesty444 Wrote:  Wow it shocked me how many have your work and employment ingrained as what defines you.

How about your presence, joy, creativity, free time?

If you can't say to yourself "I'm Steve, I'm a well-educated accountant with a nice lifestyle that is striving to be partner at my firm. Hear me roar." You are now useless?

Most people's jobs are a complete joke when you look at the big picture outside of scientific researchers and artists.

Drone talk I tell you. Drone talk.

This is why people need to be hit with this early so they can let that part of their identity be dragged into the woods and shot so it doesn't cause problems.

Until they automate debt all your doing is talking about some utopian dream. A automatic workforce, cool, but your still locked and changed to debt...

Whom is going to pay for it?

That fat trillion and trillion upon trillions America owes in public debt. Whom do you think has to salve to pay that off? The robots!?... Sorry it's you.

All this talk of some day how you will sit on the beach while robots run the world, yet we work more hours for less each year more and more. It's all a sham.

The oligarchs want cheap labour and the ability to have people in bondage over debt. They want Neo-feudalism where you will never make enough money to own anything but just make enough to pay your debts and put some food inside of you. How else can you explain why we are working more and more hours for less a return in real wealth? Each generation is working harder then the last. Maybe your great grandpa had to sweat balls on a farm but I can promise you he had more then 2 weeks holidays to his name each year, and plus for all his hard work tangible wealth was created in crops and/or livestock, lastly he owned his plot of land. We currently spin out wheels for a pay cheque in fiat money which looses value each second.

Be weary of trusting "technology". It was never intended to free humans. Ingenuity that leads to efficiency frees humans, not robots. Look at how a smart phone has debilitated people versus the simple ingenuity of having a modest sized phone to carry around with you. Look at the internet and how it's just a mess of click bait and regurgitated content, versus the free for all of information, content, and data which it was only 5-6 years ago. Technology isn't always all rosy.

Post: #30

Have you all forgotten the Butlerian Jihad?

Post: #31

(08-15-2014 05:07 PM)scorpion Wrote:  I only see three ways for this to play out:

1) Following societal breakdown and collapse, a neo-Luddite movement emerges which limits the use of technology as direct labor replacement...

2) Governments gradually implement a universal income which divorces purchasing power from wages. This would allow citizens to purchase the goods and services the economy produces without needing to find employment. Basically, the majority of society ends up on the dole....

3) Massive population reduction on the order of 75-90%. I rate this as likely. Once technology reaches a certain point most of humanity becomes surplus. Elites will have no need for most people. The only question is how this liquidation will occur. Nuclear war, engineered bio weapons, mass starvation are all candidates. The most humane approach would be to sterilize people through some kind of painless procedure in exchange for government benefits. The population reduction could then be accomplished gradually over a few generations.

It is funny how you assess the very things that being "prophesized" by the real ruling and scientific elite of our world. We are not led as some might be tempted to think by a bunch of semi-literate morons who are just elected via kissing babies and getting kick-backs by corporations. No - the true ruling elite is highly disciplined and plans out decades and even centuries in advance. (For this case I refrain from linking to the many many books, military exposes etc. which back up my observations - might link it up in future threads)

As for the solutions you mentioned:

1) Going Amish won't work because of Global Agenda 21 which is still on the go under different names. Energy prices are to be going up, property taxes are to rise and zone and "environmental" restrictions are supposed to remove most of the population from the rural lands. Many many sources tell that only the super-wealthy will be able to live in the countryside. The rest shall be living cramped in big cities. Essentially they want the peasants off the lands (peasants by the way even single-digit-millionaires).

2) Yes - in fact most people will be on the dole. And it is not that difficult to finance, since money is being created out of thin air anyway via the central banks and the fractional reserve banking system (in some countries a bank can lend out 100+ the amount it has in reserves). In those cities eternally unemployed Judge Dredd generations will emerge.

3) Depopulation. Ever since Malthus and even before the elite was always obsessed about too many of the wrong kind of people. I guess in a way they are right that technological unemployment makes most people useless in the current system. Depopulation has already started and is on the way. They did not ask for volunteers - they started by destroying the very definition of what a food ingredient is - those changes were combated strongly in the beginning (http://www.doctoryourself.com/history5.html - little story of how the first artificial sweetener was fought against over 100 years ago). The food is toxic via both ingredients as well as new dangerous varieties(GMOs), water is laced with toxic additives which are sold as beneficial, plastic and aluminum containers are toxic, vaccine ingredients are uselessly mega-toxic and there are even credible reports out there which stress that areal geo-engineering to combat "Global Warming" has been started without our consent more than a decade ago. All those things impact life-expectancy since they create cancers in record numbers (no - it was not that bad in previous times - in the 1950s in order to see a kid with cancer doctors had to fly in from all around the country, because it was that rare! Nowadays you seem them in all malls.). Oh - and everything from high electromagnetic radiation (WIFI) mobile networks etc. - it all simply destroys FERTILITY.
Here Teenage pregnancies in the UK:
   

If you truly believe that this is due to the rise of chaste good girls, then you are wrong. Partly it might be caused by extremely obese girls, but those won't live long either.

If I were of the Elite who was concerned about overpopulation I would not bother asking about volunteers. I estimate that by now over 20% of the under 20-year-olds in the West are sterile already. They will just find out in their 30s when they try to create some progeny.

So in the end it will create a mostly unemployed, hyper-promiscuous, cancer-ridden (now 50% of the population is going to get cancer - will rise to 80%+ probably), mostly sterile population that will slowly die out in the rotting cities. Will there be flash-mobs and riots? Yes, but strong pot and maybe even heroin might be legal and cheap - plus lots of entertainment, virtual reality and great Games, so it will make it easier to wait for your end. For those who cannot be drugged away a militarized police and future combat robots & will mop up the rioters.

The rest of the ruling class and the necessary servant classes will be living well in some glittery city-states or in grand estates in the country-side. That is the plan.
_________________________

Solutions? Yes, but unlikely to come by:

1. Change monetary system to interest-free resource & work based.
2. Release the bloody shelved as good as free energy as well as a bunch of other revolutionary but uneconomic technologies (air-energy transmission, Rife high-frequency-ray healing device, various space & air propulsion technologies etc.).
3. With different monetary system in place we can create a different system where 30% of the population is in creative pursuits, 40% in learning, exploring and science, 20% in teaching, 10% in the actual administration, production and implementation of technology. Even our current technology and population level is sufficient to give EVERY FAMILY ON EARTH a house & garden with 1000sqm of land or a roomy apartment - all furnished with appliances that last decades (flat-screen-LED TV, monitor or washing machine can last decades if done well enough).

Now all those things have one problem - the Elite won't be ruling it in the end, so we won't get it.

What is there to do? Enjoy the party while it lasts, maybe reach triple digit millionaire status or beyond, get a invaluable position at a corporation, NGO or government entity and hope for some miracle in the future. I certainly don't see the people rise up in full awareness in the next decades or centuries.

Post: #32

There's a solid movie in this. 'Automation: Humans need not apply'.

Post: #33

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

The singularity will be an interesting time within our lifetimes, I think.

I think we will see dramatic changes. The poor, as usual, will get the shaft, while others try to get by. I predict lots of riots and protests, that end up being silenced by crook, hook or club. The elite and those that invest in this early on will get filthy filthy rich.

I think our jobs will be, as a writer said, 'to help robots to dream up the impossible' . Hope you have a good imagination!

Post: #34

(08-16-2014 06:10 PM)Ziltoid Wrote:  I remain unconvinced that computers will be replacing humans in any task that involves creativity, abstract/lateral thought, or ingenuity...

Yes they will inevitably replace a lot of busywork jobs, both unskilled and skilled, and that will have serious economic repercussions, but there is somewhat of a bright side to this that wasn't touched on in that video. In a world where tons of things are automated, the average person's purchasing power will skyrocket, because many goods and services will become monumentally cheaper.

You can't even tell a computer to go get a glass from the kitchen.
They're still unbelievably stupid.

I tried to call Apple-- The wealthiest tech company in the world-- and their voice response system can't even allow me to get to a service rep-- or they don't want to.

All this shit is decades away... and guess what... you'll be old.

Self-driving cars will be a pretty big change. And what will people do in them? Text each other and talk about sex.

Even if everything changes, your nervous system can't, it was designed over billions of years. And computers an extension of our nervous systems?

What has that led to for most? Facebook and just the same ancient gossiping, broadcasted.

You know who's actually using the tech?

Academics, LIBRULS, credentialiists, sequencing genes for diseases, fixing things, the smartest people don't waste time portentously foretelling doom, they're working to actually achieve something.

Post: #35

Raising the minimum wage is what causes companies to replace people with automation and technology, the democrats don't seem to get that they're shooting their own in the foot with that nonsense. Unless their goal is everyone on welfare with the 1% footing the bill?

Post: #36

Count me in as one of those who doesn't buy into this doom and gloom for the simple reason that people will always adapt. The human subconscious will never be replaced by a computer. We can create out of nothing. Art. Music. Literature. Can a computer? No, because they can only make what they are programmed to make. They are not aware of their awareness.

I remember the big Y2K scare. A bunch of smart guys with Ph.Ds saying the world was going to end. I didn't buy it then and I don't buy this either. Will automation increase? Sure, maybe, but who cares? New tech is always coming along in unexpected ways. We can't even predict 5 years out much less 30 or 40 or 100.

I laughed when they said computers would write novels. Have you seen a computer write articles for spammers? Yeah, that. LOL. Like I said, they will never replace the human subconscious. It is too damn complex (for good reason, I suspect).

Much ado about nothing.

Post: #37

With all the leisure time that comes with automation I think only 10% of the population will use it towards pursuing art, scientific research and other activities that would be deemed "cultural". The vast majority of the population would just end up resembling the people in Idiocracy: watching the Jack Off Hour on their television, swilling on fast food, and passing their time with cheap thrills. You can already see this happening in modern society. We have more spare time and more automation then ever before in human civilization and what do the vast majority of the population use it for? -Keeping track of sports statistics and what sort of latte Kim Kardashian had this morning.

Post: #38

Why would it matter that people become unemployed? We don't NEED to have a job, only be supported. We only have jobs to support ourselves. So why would it matter that 45% of people become unemployed that are working those trivial jobs. We will simply have that 45% start doing a different job than standing at a cash register. If anything this is a good thing because then we can start having a larger amount of people doing more complicated things. Instead of a teenager working at a food store over summer he'll be working as an engineer. That sounds like an improvement.

Post: #39

Mass Produced Security Robots Introduced in U.S.

Deus Ex and Robocop, here we come.

Creepiest part when it talks at 1:20





http://www.activistpost.com/2014/08/mass...obots.html

Post: #40

(08-20-2014 12:00 PM)Glaucon Wrote:  Mass Produced Security Robots Introduced in U.S.

Deus Ex and Robocop, here we come.

Creepiest part when it talks at 1:20





http://www.activistpost.com/2014/08/mass...obots.html

I would respect a human telling me no waay more than a robot.

"Cease and desist citizen!" Yeah right. I'd walk right past one of these things. I'd love to see someone push it over.

Post: #41

I wonder if inevitable automation suggests post-scarcity society.

Post: #42

(10-07-2014 12:17 AM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  I wonder if inevitable automation suggests post-scarcity society.

Post-scarcity requires (a) inexhaustible resources and (b) human beings obtaining all material goods at the speed of Want. Those we don't have, even taking into account that Malthus was wrong -- and we won't have infinite resources until we are plausibly homo interstellar I would guess.

Although note the observation that it's industrialisation and automation more than anything else that brings third world nations out of poverty. The basic rationale being that the more machinery you have, the less manpower you need to tend to the fields, a.k.a. your wife doesn't need to push ten kids out of her vagina so you've got a workforce big enough to plough the fields. Automation reduces effort and reduces the birthrate, which arguably might make the planet more sustainable. But I'm no supporter of ZPG, I might add: Freakonomics predicts accelerated economic and technological growth the more people you have packed into cities.

Post: #43

(10-07-2014 12:27 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

(10-07-2014 12:17 AM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  I wonder if inevitable automation suggests post-scarcity society.

Post-scarcity requires (a) inexhaustible resources and (b) human beings obtaining all material goods at the speed of Want. Those we don't have, even taking into account that Malthus was wrong -- and we won't have infinite resources until we are plausibly homo interstellar I would guess.

Although note the observation that it's industrialisation and automation more than anything else that brings third world nations out of poverty. The basic rationale being that the more machinery you have, the less manpower you need to tend to the fields, a.k.a. your wife doesn't need to push ten kids out of her vagina so you've got a workforce big enough to plough the fields. Automation reduces effort and reduces the birthrate, which arguably might make the planet more sustainable. But I'm no supporter of ZPG, I might add: Freakonomics predicts accelerated economic and technological growth the more people you have packed into cities.

The post scarcity argument is that with sufficiently good technology we could recycle pretty much everything, the only cost is electricity - which we get from the sun/renewable resources.

Agreed on the drop in birth rate, but for a diff reason - When women become economically self sufficient, they have less children - less than the replacement rate. That's the story of every advanced economy as people age and there aren't young people to take their places.

WIA

Post: #44

Creativity is already exhausted.
How many completely new movies/music/art has come out in the last...100 years?
not much...
We just recycle the same stories over and over again
except it's different now
We can always see/hear/experience the older version
So the "freshness" of the "new" old, recycled story/song/poem lasts less and less time

We've already reached the end of creativity
it'll just become more and more obvious as time goes by.

Post: #45

(10-07-2014 03:24 AM)Muk Wrote:  Creativity is already exhausted.
How many completely new movies/music/art has come out in the last...100 years?
We just recycle the same stories over and over again
not much...
except it's different now
We can always see/hear/experience the older version
So the "freshness" of the "new" old, recycled story/song/poem lasts less and less time

We've already reached the end of creativity
it'll just become more and more obvious as time goes by.

That's the money minded creativity of Hollywood, where it pays to be non-creative. Same thing happens with popular music.

But there's plenty of music, books, literature, poetry, tuvan throat singing, comics, visual art, dance, architecture...et cetera that is just as good, if not better than what is popular and promoted.

On top of that there are entire cultures outside of America that do not get the same attention. Canadians, Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, Nigerians - a whole world of English speakers with stories that percolate up from their cultures and experiences that are essentially alien to Hollywood and American MSM. Throw in the other 190+ nations out there...

WIA

Post: #46

If the mass of the population doesn't work when robots start taking over jobs, then the people who own the robots will have no demand for their products. A big chunk of that excess utility must go to the masses.

Somewhere online is a good economic explanation for why the rise of the robots will be great for the masses. On EconLog somewhere if I remember right.

Post: #47

While it does present something quite possible, I find it to be a bit of a 'click-bait'.

Humans do need to apply - apply to robotics jobs and apply themselves to the task of creating this automation.

It's humans who will be needed to design and build these robots, and to repair and maintain them. So, if this is getting bigger and bigger, the thing to do now is to learn the trade and study and work towards becoming that 'robot tech expert'.

I remember years ago there were Lego Mindstorms, robots that you can build from scratch and program. Now there are drones and many other types of robots.

My question is - what is the best path of learning to get this skill/expertise? A mechanical engineering degree or self-taught by tinkering around building your own?

Post: #48

Also, this automation and technology will create new jobs. I just watched a show about Second Life and that there's a whole new economy inside it where people are making money designing clothes and body parts for users to buy to improve the look of their avatars.

People will just have to adapt and learn new skills just like the horseshoe metalsmiths when the automobile came around.

As for the low wage, low skill migrants working in the US - it's mostly because Americans don't want to do that type of work. When this becomes fully automated (there are already machines that harvest), then the demand for them goes down, these types of jobs go down and then the amount of migrants go down. Second and third world countries are decades behind so they will go thru the cycle of adapting and finding opportunities and jobs just like job seekers in first world countries did decades ago.

Post: #49

because we couldn't simply use robots to fix other robots...

Post: #50

Looks like McD's cashiers are no longer required in Europe. . .

http://www.cnet.com/news/mcdonalds-hires...-cashiers/