- Historically, on every jump you mention people moved from BASIC jobs to more COMPLEX jobs that society as a whole could not even afford before (entertainment for instance). That is farming to industry to services to information... etc. We are in essence escaping from the things machines can do better than US. Machines are getting better faster than humans and will surpass our ability to do ANYTHING. Whenever that happens there would be nowhere to jump to.
- Even in an optimistic scenario, transition will be painful. We should not make policy based on the fact that things could become stable eventually.
- You forget that while this process goes along, the rich will continue to gather more wealth. As in, the real estate that is NOT being automated.
- In history, as in investments, past performance is no future guarantee. What happened before tells you for sure that something can happen again. Check the logic. It does not necessarily predict what will happen. As you might have noticed, history has been full of surprises, and we are indeed in the frontier of very disruptive technology.
The important thing is this: do we want to be prepared for the possible changes or just go blindly ahead believing we are safe. Hint: our choice is not going well for global warming at least.
People voluntarily taking a risk with their own money with the hopes of a return is the definition of "the market".
That is 'a' (rather than 'the') definition for market. It is extremely common nevertheless to expected the return for an investment to be monetary profit, not whatever you get in return. Else even NGOs and other non for profit institutions would qualify as "the market". So I'm ok with my use of "market" if most people get my meaning, which is the entire point of language and definitions IMHO.
Except that crowfunding has never been an "investment". You get no shares, you get no money back (certainly not more money that you put in) and the risk would be ridiculously high.
It has always been about trowing a piece of disposable income for a nice idea that you would love to see realized, in the off chance it happens. ESPECIALLY if the market would never attempt such a thing.
Neither the people with the dreams, nor the people that indulge in patronage deserve to be called fools.
I admire your courage and determination, seriously.
Sadly, the truth is that with lack of education and refined propaganda machinery it is not hard to buy vote with money. The problem with democracy is that it puts power in the hands of people, which have little chance to wield it in coordination. An informed vote is hard, almost impossible, since the complexity of society and politics is huge, the number of players huge and any individual's time to catch up and remember history very limited.
And that, without even going into the fact that there is an entire machinery to define the candidates before you get to use the vote you value so much.
So the odds are not in your favor, my friend. That said, I agree that stoping to exercise whatever power you yield, no matter how small, is to give up all power entirely. So keep voting, and, IMHO, vote for the bottom-feeders and shake the status-quo. Even a non-winning candidate that does well can gather publicity and influence that then has a chance to grow over time.
Your vision is too narrow. You mention the dollar as something American will be able to move completely away from if they wanted. This is false. No matter what you call the circulating currency, at the end of the day the rich hold a vast proportion of practical wealth, even more unequal than income. I'm talking houses, land, transportation, farms, infrastructure, mining, etc. All enforced by police and army in established political and geographical boundaries..
Change your money into another denomination all you want, you are most definitely still playing the game.
Want out? You can go trade with other people on deep international waters or in space...
and this chart shows how what was released from Chernobyl compares to all coal and nuclear emissions ever combined.
Just need to point out that it does not. Especially since it only includes things like the effect to a single person, for very narrow times/events. This chart, while amazing, is not comparing total levels of anything!
This also already happens. I'm right now paying the price of deciding to avoid credit and use my own money to live. Turns out the system really wants you to borrow, and through the beauty of credit scores, all manner of daily things become a hassle or downright impossible unless you play along. The tracking of info might appear harmless... till companies and people rely on it and require it. Then your choice is between sheeple or outcast.
Your problem is not too hard to solve, and the fact that a car is your current solution does not mean the only solution. You can replace a whole parking lot with a few lockers. Also, parking is another reason for using these cars as taxis. Not only you avoid it, but also the same car can go serve another customer. Mass adoption would mean a hugely reduced motor pool (and all those benefits).
In my case, knowing and understanding the pain my wife would feel if I betray her is what keeps me in check. I don't thing that falls into "political correctness". That said, I definitely enjoy seeing sensual, beautiful women, without the need to act on it. Sometimes I even comment on a girl I see on the street with my wife present. It is not "a way to cope" or "a release mechanism", it is just a free, casual and harmless passtime, same as I like ice cream for instance. IMHO, this whole sexism thing is often blown out of all proportion.
Sure, but the US is not the place to look at for contraception efficiency. It is cheap by US standards and pretty much available, so I'm not surprised things stabilized. It plays a much higher role on Africa and Asia, were woman still have an average of 5.1 kids, which can be reduced to sustainable 2 yet.
I appreciate the optimism, but I find the idea of "we will be cause we need to" to be extremely naive. It ignores a history full of fallen civilizations and makes broad future predictions with no evidence whatsoever. Also, it seems to calm any worries without involving any particular push to action nor plan to follow. Mankind's epitaph could well be "they did what they needed to survive, till they failed".
On the other hand the idea of reducing population seem very sound. It involves practical plans with some evidence of good results (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Family-Planning), and I don't know anyone that actually proposes to kill people (yes, China used draconian measures but that does not mean other options are not possible). If we added BILLIONS of people over 50 years (say, from 3bn in 1960 to 7bn in 2012) thinking of reversing the trend in another 50 doesn't seem to me the aberration you seem to believe. Overall, it makes the statement that many of our current, social, economical and environmental problems seem to come from too many wanting to consume more, so reducing the number of people that needs to be supported helps diminish said problems. Also, reducing serious organizations (like the UN http://unfpa.org/swp/2009/en/ch6.shtml) and serious people to "these naysayers" hardly gets us to a better understanding.
With all due respect, I consider the fact that you were modded insightful kind of dangerous.
You seem to be forgetting that the tsunami was a disaster in its own right http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17219008. I think it is weird how people decouple Fucushima from the larger picture at the moment, as if it is an expected part of any reactor's lifetime.
I would argue the opposite: federal power is a symptom, not the disease. There is so much federal power precisely because we are willing to sell it for money. Until money is not taken away to avoid making politics a market, this will not change.
It depends. Theism in general is not incompatible, but plenty of particulars from this religion or the other are not compatible with scientific knowledge and/or logic. So they are not complete opposites, but they are not orthogonal either. Hence much of the confusion.
I would be curious though as to what would happen if you acquired an obvious patent and tried to sue a politician with it
The obvious would happen. You would lose, but it would probably not change much for the common guy. The main problem on your train of though is that you are expecting a rational, constitutional, response. Real life allows for solutions that are neither.
Sincerely, I doubt it would work. First, you are adding yet another middleman, increasing practical costs and bureaucracy for no reason. Second, there is a huge incentive for the USPTO to reject things to cash the fee. Third, it would imply a process of appeal that will never be used by the little guy.
I mean, the end result might well be less patents, but the mechanism is equally flawed and a burden for those who should get one. I would love to see less patents around, hell, after reading this long paper on the topic I'm convinced no patents are needed at all, even for pharmaceuticals. But unless you abolish patents completely, you need some system that minimizes abuse.
I would love a good conversation about this. It is hard to tell if the result will be a dystopia or an utopia. I believe it will be both, in that order. Humans will make a mess of things and pay dearly before learning the lesson and starting moving in the right direction.
On a different note, I don't think only jobs for smart people will remain, just less work in general. There are smart people doing not so smart things now and automation potential does not correlate with intelligence 100% (ask chess players). Two good solutions for this would be less work for each person, or less persons in total. Big families were a survival necessity at some point, I hope population reduction will gain traction now that the scales are tipped differently.
Actually what you describe works flawlessly for me. I know that getting styles right is complex, but my point is that it is eventually worth it, as you can restrict the document to those styles once ready (avoiding other people messing with formatting) and reuse the template time and again. Let me share and example: http://www.filedropper.com/generictemplate-nocover
Word could actually improve a lot by separating style definition from content, and making the first one vastly easier and more accessible.
Hope it helps:-)
That's what "restrict" is for. It simply does not ALLOW other to mess it up.
I have given my templates to others who had never seen styles and after a 10 second surprise at not being able to hit the "bold" button and 30 seconds of explanation they usually love it. And I'm not talking technical people at all. So it is not about styles being beyond what users can understand, on the contrary, it is a fairly easy concept to grasp IMHO. It is just that interfaces could do a much better job on facilitating more productive and less error-prone techniques.
I agree though, that Latex is beyond most people and I personally hate it. While the idea of context-style separation is good, actually changing styles is excruciatingly complex (that's why everyone mostly just downloads something) and event content requires excessive syntax and a CS mentality. Once styles are defined, WYSIWYG is irreplaceable. Same with additional tools like reviewing, spell and grammar checks, easily adding other media, etc. Learning curve is extrmely high and it fails on the old HCI mantra: "recognition instead of recall" (same reason why consoles have poor usability). Nevertheless, deficiencies in Latex should not mean that the whole idea of content-style separation is flawed or advanced.
Slashdot Mirror
Some quick counter-arguments:
- Historically, on every jump you mention people moved from BASIC jobs to more COMPLEX jobs that society as a whole could not even afford before (entertainment for instance). That is farming to industry to services to information... etc. We are in essence escaping from the things machines can do better than US. Machines are getting better faster than humans and will surpass our ability to do ANYTHING. Whenever that happens there would be nowhere to jump to.
- Even in an optimistic scenario, transition will be painful. We should not make policy based on the fact that things could become stable eventually.
- You forget that while this process goes along, the rich will continue to gather more wealth. As in, the real estate that is NOT being automated.
- In history, as in investments, past performance is no future guarantee. What happened before tells you for sure that something can happen again. Check the logic. It does not necessarily predict what will happen. As you might have noticed, history has been full of surprises, and we are indeed in the frontier of very disruptive technology.
The important thing is this: do we want to be prepared for the possible changes or just go blindly ahead believing we are safe. Hint: our choice is not going well for global warming at least.
People voluntarily taking a risk with their own money with the hopes of a return is the definition of "the market".
That is 'a' (rather than 'the') definition for market. It is extremely common nevertheless to expected the return for an investment to be monetary profit, not whatever you get in return. Else even NGOs and other non for profit institutions would qualify as "the market". So I'm ok with my use of "market" if most people get my meaning, which is the entire point of language and definitions IMHO.
Except that crowfunding has never been an "investment". You get no shares, you get no money back (certainly not more money that you put in) and the risk would be ridiculously high. It has always been about trowing a piece of disposable income for a nice idea that you would love to see realized, in the off chance it happens. ESPECIALLY if the market would never attempt such a thing. Neither the people with the dreams, nor the people that indulge in patronage deserve to be called fools.
Sadly, the truth is that with lack of education and refined propaganda machinery it is not hard to buy vote with money. The problem with democracy is that it puts power in the hands of people, which have little chance to wield it in coordination. An informed vote is hard, almost impossible, since the complexity of society and politics is huge, the number of players huge and any individual's time to catch up and remember history very limited.
And that, without even going into the fact that there is an entire machinery to define the candidates before you get to use the vote you value so much.
So the odds are not in your favor, my friend. That said, I agree that stoping to exercise whatever power you yield, no matter how small, is to give up all power entirely. So keep voting, and, IMHO, vote for the bottom-feeders and shake the status-quo. Even a non-winning candidate that does well can gather publicity and influence that then has a chance to grow over time.
Can you make the parallel with the 7D experience I get at the cinema? The fact that I'm still missing 3 or 4 dimensions pisses me off!
...but you really only need 10 ;-)
The universe: it goes all the way to 11!
Your vision is too narrow. You mention the dollar as something American will be able to move completely away from if they wanted. This is false. No matter what you call the circulating currency, at the end of the day the rich hold a vast proportion of practical wealth, even more unequal than income. I'm talking houses, land, transportation, farms, infrastructure, mining, etc. All enforced by police and army in established political and geographical boundaries.. Change your money into another denomination all you want, you are most definitely still playing the game. Want out? You can go trade with other people on deep international waters or in space...
and this chart shows how what was released from Chernobyl compares to all coal and nuclear emissions ever combined.
Just need to point out that it does not. Especially since it only includes things like the effect to a single person, for very narrow times/events. This chart, while amazing, is not comparing total levels of anything!
This also already happens. I'm right now paying the price of deciding to avoid credit and use my own money to live. Turns out the system really wants you to borrow, and through the beauty of credit scores, all manner of daily things become a hassle or downright impossible unless you play along. The tracking of info might appear harmless... till companies and people rely on it and require it. Then your choice is between sheeple or outcast.
Your problem is not too hard to solve, and the fact that a car is your current solution does not mean the only solution. You can replace a whole parking lot with a few lockers. Also, parking is another reason for using these cars as taxis. Not only you avoid it, but also the same car can go serve another customer. Mass adoption would mean a hugely reduced motor pool (and all those benefits).
In my case, knowing and understanding the pain my wife would feel if I betray her is what keeps me in check. I don't thing that falls into "political correctness". That said, I definitely enjoy seeing sensual, beautiful women, without the need to act on it. Sometimes I even comment on a girl I see on the street with my wife present. It is not "a way to cope" or "a release mechanism", it is just a free, casual and harmless passtime, same as I like ice cream for instance. IMHO, this whole sexism thing is often blown out of all proportion.
Sure, but the US is not the place to look at for contraception efficiency. It is cheap by US standards and pretty much available, so I'm not surprised things stabilized. It plays a much higher role on Africa and Asia, were woman still have an average of 5.1 kids, which can be reduced to sustainable 2 yet.
I appreciate the optimism, but I find the idea of "we will be cause we need to" to be extremely naive. It ignores a history full of fallen civilizations and makes broad future predictions with no evidence whatsoever. Also, it seems to calm any worries without involving any particular push to action nor plan to follow. Mankind's epitaph could well be "they did what they needed to survive, till they failed".
On the other hand the idea of reducing population seem very sound. It involves practical plans with some evidence of good results (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Family-Planning), and I don't know anyone that actually proposes to kill people (yes, China used draconian measures but that does not mean other options are not possible). If we added BILLIONS of people over 50 years (say, from 3bn in 1960 to 7bn in 2012) thinking of reversing the trend in another 50 doesn't seem to me the aberration you seem to believe. Overall, it makes the statement that many of our current, social, economical and environmental problems seem to come from too many wanting to consume more, so reducing the number of people that needs to be supported helps diminish said problems. Also, reducing serious organizations (like the UN http://unfpa.org/swp/2009/en/ch6.shtml) and serious people to "these naysayers" hardly gets us to a better understanding.
With all due respect, I consider the fact that you were modded insightful kind of dangerous.
You seem to be forgetting that the tsunami was a disaster in its own right http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17219008. I think it is weird how people decouple Fucushima from the larger picture at the moment, as if it is an expected part of any reactor's lifetime.
I agree on many of your points, but you are underestimating the potential impact of contraception: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_pregnancy#Incidence
I would argue the opposite: federal power is a symptom, not the disease. There is so much federal power precisely because we are willing to sell it for money. Until money is not taken away to avoid making politics a market, this will not change.
It depends. Theism in general is not incompatible, but plenty of particulars from this religion or the other are not compatible with scientific knowledge and/or logic. So they are not complete opposites, but they are not orthogonal either. Hence much of the confusion.
No. But skepticism is a great start.
I always wonder about soda cans. It should not be too difficult to create a slashing implement with them...
I would be curious though as to what would happen if you acquired an obvious patent and tried to sue a politician with it
The obvious would happen. You would lose, but it would probably not change much for the common guy. The main problem on your train of though is that you are expecting a rational, constitutional, response. Real life allows for solutions that are neither.
Sincerely, I doubt it would work. First, you are adding yet another middleman, increasing practical costs and bureaucracy for no reason. Second, there is a huge incentive for the USPTO to reject things to cash the fee. Third, it would imply a process of appeal that will never be used by the little guy.
I mean, the end result might well be less patents, but the mechanism is equally flawed and a burden for those who should get one. I would love to see less patents around, hell, after reading this long paper on the topic I'm convinced no patents are needed at all, even for pharmaceuticals. But unless you abolish patents completely, you need some system that minimizes abuse.
It's not that society doesn't support FLOSS; it's that people expect too much out of life.
Yours seem like a reasonable and happy life to me. So people expect too much what? Stuff, Fame, Money? Probably. Actual life? Probably not.
I would love a good conversation about this. It is hard to tell if the result will be a dystopia or an utopia. I believe it will be both, in that order. Humans will make a mess of things and pay dearly before learning the lesson and starting moving in the right direction.
On a different note, I don't think only jobs for smart people will remain, just less work in general. There are smart people doing not so smart things now and automation potential does not correlate with intelligence 100% (ask chess players). Two good solutions for this would be less work for each person, or less persons in total. Big families were a survival necessity at some point, I hope population reduction will gain traction now that the scales are tipped differently.
Cheers! I do exactly the same, wish more people did... ok, being wishfully thinking already, I really wish the TSA wouldn't exist.
Actually what you describe works flawlessly for me. I know that getting styles right is complex, but my point is that it is eventually worth it, as you can restrict the document to those styles once ready (avoiding other people messing with formatting) and reuse the template time and again. Let me share and example: http://www.filedropper.com/generictemplate-nocover Word could actually improve a lot by separating style definition from content, and making the first one vastly easier and more accessible. Hope it helps :-)
That's what "restrict" is for. It simply does not ALLOW other to mess it up.
I have given my templates to others who had never seen styles and after a 10 second surprise at not being able to hit the "bold" button and 30 seconds of explanation they usually love it. And I'm not talking technical people at all. So it is not about styles being beyond what users can understand, on the contrary, it is a fairly easy concept to grasp IMHO. It is just that interfaces could do a much better job on facilitating more productive and less error-prone techniques.
I agree though, that Latex is beyond most people and I personally hate it. While the idea of context-style separation is good, actually changing styles is excruciatingly complex (that's why everyone mostly just downloads something) and event content requires excessive syntax and a CS mentality. Once styles are defined, WYSIWYG is irreplaceable. Same with additional tools like reviewing, spell and grammar checks, easily adding other media, etc. Learning curve is extrmely high and it fails on the old HCI mantra: "recognition instead of recall" (same reason why consoles have poor usability). Nevertheless, deficiencies in Latex should not mean that the whole idea of content-style separation is flawed or advanced.