So the one explanation is that such jobs exist but people choose welfare instead. The other explanation is that such jobs don't exist - well at least not enough for everyone.
A third explanation is the one the GP alluded to: such jobs exist, but not locally. Because welfare is (barely) good enough and moving seems like such a risky endeavor, people stay put and get by on welfare.
The purpose of a peer-review system for code isn't to exclude bad code, it's to fix it so that it's good code before it goes in. Maybe when they say "rejects" they mean "receives comments requesting adjustments"? If that's what they're measuring, then I'm still confused. In my experience, assuming you're doing reasonably-thorough reviews, almost every non-trivial change gets some comments, and has to be updated a bit before it can be merged.
The only reason why it's falling is because they count renewables as "fuel". So of course per unit of "fuel" consumed (and remember, solar radiation count as "fuel"), they emit less CO2. It doesn't mean the process of CO2 emitting thermal power plants actually improved.
Actually, it doesn't say that CO2-emitting thermal power plants haven't improved. I strongly suspect that they have, due to the move from coal to natural gas.
That aside, how does counting renewables make the data misleading? It seems to me that *not* counting renewables would be misleading. Of course, ideally, all power sources should include total CO2 emissions, not just production emissions, and it doesn't appear that was done for any of them. Failing to include CO2 emissions from the construction of power plants as well as the production and transportation of fuel does bias the results in favor of renewables, slightly, but it's not significant enough to call the data "misleading".
But I can see it being a huge headache for MS or Linux distros to manage.
As well as being certain to break some number of PCs. If stuff goes wrong and your machine won't boot after you apply a firmware update, that's between you and the maker of your machine / motherboard. If your OS decides to do it, even with your approval, then the OS maker is also on the hook.
I don't see a way out unless we have massive population curbs
Population isn't the problem. The birth rate has has been steadily declining for 30 years, in both per capita and absolute numerical terms. The only reason the global population is growing is because the population distribution skews young. See Hans Rosling's explanation.
It will probably get much worse as people with nothing else to do will spend a lot of time making babies.
Nah. Reproduction is almost completely decoupled from recreational sex in most of the world, and that decoupling is spreading. Sex is fun, but kids are a lot of work. Also, having them is hard and somewhat dangerous for women. When people don't need kids for labor, don't have to worry that their children won't survive and have the ability to have sex without babies, the number of kids they have drops.
There is a big problem coming, but it's not so much about what to do with young people and more about what to do with everyone who doesn't want to work a service sector job, since most other jobs are going away. Actually, young people are better-positioned to adapt to the new economic structure. It's those who aren't in a position to retrain and start a new career who are the bigger problem; people currently in their 30s and 40s. Even if we manage to institute something like a Universal Basic Income quickly enough (I'm pretty sure we'll get there eventually, but it is not going to be quick or easy), current working generations grew up believing that they should support themselves, and living "on the dole" is going to make them very unhappy even if it's adequate. Again, young people are likely to have less trouble with that transition (less, not none).
If there was the political will to fix wealth distribution, we could eliminate poverty today.
Perhaps. Too much redistribution risks destroying production, reducing the wealth available to distribute. There's a balance. Of course, automation will change the balance point.
So, no, AIs will not wipe out poverty. AIs will increase wealth inequality and with it, increase poverty.
What is "poverty"? If you define it as "inequality", then yes, AIs will increase it. If you define it as "not having the basic requirements of life", then I think it will decrease, partly through increased redistribution but mostly by making the requirements of life dramatically cheaper than they are now.
Which do you think is more likely? Distribution of profits to unemployed people, or distribution of profits to wealthy C-level executives and investors?
Most likely, both. It seems very probable that the people who own the capital and the people who design and build the technology will both get much richer, and that their wealth will be taxed and redistributed. Given that highly-automated manufacturing promises to push the cost of goods down, towards the cost of the raw materials (which will also be cheaper, since both extraction and recycling will also be highly automated), distributing a fraction of the incomes of the wealthy will provide a reasonably good living even for those who choose not to work at all. Many will choose to work, though, mostly in service sector jobs that don't presently exist.
I don't expect the end state to look much different that what we've had since the dawn of human history. A significant level of inequality, but overall rising wealth making everyone better off than previous generations. Most people will still work, though jobs will be more specialized and varied. The only significant difference will be that the non-working class will be much larger than it has ever been, or is now.
No, what worries me is the transition. Previous technology-driven economic restructurings have led to lots of upheaval and concomitant misery, and they were much slower (though no less extensive) than this one promises to be. People are very good at adapting, but they do it on the scale of generations, not years, or months. The plus side is that we have a notion of a social safety net that didn't really exist during previous upheavals. It's inadequate to the task in its current form (especially in the US), but I think we some idea what it must look like to work.
Well, one other thing that worries me is the effect of indolence on human psychology. It seems to me that contributing to the world, at least enough to provide for your own livelihood, is important to peoples' self-image and self-realization. That's always been done through work... originally work that directly generated the stuff necessary for survival, and later less directly. I'm not sure what it will do to humanity when the majority of the species feels like they have a right to existence and even a certain level of luxury, not for anything they do but merely because they are. Maybe that's no different from people who inherit great wealth, but maybe it is, too. I don't know.
But they live in the US under worse living conditions because they know it isn't permanent.
Some, I suppose. The H1-Bs I know very much want to stay.
Meanwhile on this side of the pond I have to support a family.
You're basically saying that you'd like steeper immigration barriers to artificially boost your market value and artificially depress the market value of those who weren't lucky enough to be born here. You're far from alone in that view, but I think it's immoral. I spent some formative years living in another country, with great, smart people who worked their asses off for a standard of living that we wouldn't consider fit for a dog. They deserve a chance to earn something better, and if that means I have to compete harder, or even if it means I have to lower my standard of living, I'm good with that.
To be fair, it's easy for me to say that since I'm pretty comfortable. But I felt the same when I was a poor kid with a young wife and a new baby and I'd just been laid off, so I don't think it's just my relative safety speaking.
So, as I forgot to say, I agree with your solution to the issue as long as prices fall to global averages as well as salaries.
It will equalize globally. Places with low salaries and low cost of living will see both rise. Places with high salaries and high cost of living will see both fall. Standards of living will also equalize, which probably means those who currently have the highest standards will see theirs decline, though not nearly as much as the low standards of living will rise.
This has already happened quite a bit in India, and in China. Labor costs have risen substantially, and cost of living has increased, too. For that matter, the cost of many types of goods has fallen dramatically in the US. Basically anything that can be manufactured overseas and imported is significantly cheaper than it would be otherwise. Clothing, for example, costs less than half what it did, on an inflation-adjusted basis, than it did 30 years ago. Toys, electronics, also dramatically cheaper. In fact, strangely enough, most of those things are actually cheaper to buy in the US than they are to buy in the places they're made!
Note that this equalization won't happen instantly, or painlessly, and there will be winners and losers in the short term. But it's the right thing.
The main problem I have is that the H-1B is not fair because it is enough to replace me as a worker but it is not enough for me to have lower cost of living
That's a potential argument against outsourcing, but not against H-1B. The H-1B worker lives in the US and pays the same prices you do.
So you're saying house builders are free to get carpenters through H-1B?
There's no reason why not. They'd just have to figure out how to satisfy the rather vague requirements of high skill. They'd have to be pretty highly skilled just to justify the effort, though, since it costs several thousand dollars to get a potential employee through the H1-B process.
How can a person ever chose a profession if the most lucrative ones will just have a back door opened to relieve the price pressure?
Just accept that you're competing on a global market. If someone in India, or Romania, or Brazil, or wherever can do my job for less money, I see no reason why they shouldn't do it. I have some enormous inbuilt advantages in my understanding of the culture and language, my access to high quality education, etc., and if I can't leverage all of those to outcompete them, I deserve to lose. Yes, this means Americans can't just coast on their luck at being born here. Boo hoo.
My opinion is that we shouldn't have an H1-B program, instead we should allow anyone who wants to work in the US to do so. If that creates a larger influx than we can manage then we can be selective but we should still take every highly-skilled and highly-educated worker we possibly can. Brain drain the whole world, because that will keep the innovation and progress here, and keep our economy the most powerful in the world. Immigration has always been the engine that drives economic growth in the US. That was true when my ancestors arrived in the early 19th century, it was true when we used all the Nazi rocket scientists to win the space race, and it's true today.
Why is only one industry a candidate for this legal replacement? H-!B should be open to all professions or not at all.
It is. Relevant to this discussion, one of my son's college professors is here on an H1-B visa. She's concerned that Trump's changes to the program may cost her her job. Oh, and she's not a CS/IT prof; she teaches Japanese Literature.
Many if not most employment contracts/agreements have verbiage that states that anything you come up with on company time, belongs to the company.
Many if not most employment contracts/agreements for software engineers and the like have verbiage that states that anything you come up with on company or personal time, belongs to the company.
Read your contract carefully before starting a side business.
Going with your premise, why should Google and Facebook be permitted to track my usage of other sites?
They can't. Not shouldn't, can't.
What can happen is that when you visit some site that site may tell your browser to load a resource from Facebook or Google, and when your browser does so, they find out about the visit. Your browser even sends them a nice referer header. Alternatively, the site you visit may send a message to Facebook or Google telling them about your visit. Neither of those things require any eavesdropping on traffic not intended for Facebook or Google.
I know every generation thinks the young generation is lazy, etc., but there is real statistical evidence that the Millennial generation actually is starting to work much later. On a more anecdotal basis, I notice a very different approach to work in my kids (late teens, early 20s) and in their peers. My kids have always had to do chores and work around the house so I don't think that's the difference.
They do things like decide they're unhappy with their current employer so they just walk out, without trying to fix the problem and without trying to find another job first. I have never in my life quit a job before finding another, and it wouldn't even occur to me to do so. If my job sucks, by all means I'll make a move, but not until I have something else lined up. That's just one example, but it's typical of their whole approach. I suppose in some ways it's good to be more focused on quality of life and less on income... but not until you're safely self-sufficient.
It concerns me that I'm wandering into "get off my lawn!" territory here... but there really does seem to be a difference, a worrisome one.
Only reason why it's an issue at all is because it sounded good on the campaign trail for Trump's supporters.
More specifically, it appealed to people in one of the regional subcultures (Appalachia) who are often a swing vote. They mostly vote Republican these days, but they've never been closely tied to either of the two major parties, and Trump had to lock them down in order to shore up the fact that his support was weak in other traditionally-Republican subcultures (though he was helped by the fact that his opponent's support was weak in important traditionally-Democrat subcultures).
Slashdot Mirror
So as a married man with no kids, if I move to eastern Kentucky how much welfare can I expect to get? Assuming I simply choose to not work.
How would I know?
So the one explanation is that such jobs exist but people choose welfare instead. The other explanation is that such jobs don't exist - well at least not enough for everyone.
A third explanation is the one the GP alluded to: such jobs exist, but not locally. Because welfare is (barely) good enough and moving seems like such a risky endeavor, people stay put and get by on welfare.
Also, the actual measure was CO2 per BTU, a unit of energy, not a unit of fuel. Yeah, I know, the summary said the other, but read the article.
Not over the entire industry, which includes lots of fuel-consuming components.
What kind of code review system rejects code?
The purpose of a peer-review system for code isn't to exclude bad code, it's to fix it so that it's good code before it goes in. Maybe when they say "rejects" they mean "receives comments requesting adjustments"? If that's what they're measuring, then I'm still confused. In my experience, assuming you're doing reasonably-thorough reviews, almost every non-trivial change gets some comments, and has to be updated a bit before it can be merged.
Because solar radiation, water and wind aren't "fuel".
So?
The only reason why it's falling is because they count renewables as "fuel". So of course per unit of "fuel" consumed (and remember, solar radiation count as "fuel"), they emit less CO2. It doesn't mean the process of CO2 emitting thermal power plants actually improved.
Actually, it doesn't say that CO2-emitting thermal power plants haven't improved. I strongly suspect that they have, due to the move from coal to natural gas.
That aside, how does counting renewables make the data misleading? It seems to me that *not* counting renewables would be misleading. Of course, ideally, all power sources should include total CO2 emissions, not just production emissions, and it doesn't appear that was done for any of them. Failing to include CO2 emissions from the construction of power plants as well as the production and transportation of fuel does bias the results in favor of renewables, slightly, but it's not significant enough to call the data "misleading".
But I can see it being a huge headache for MS or Linux distros to manage.
As well as being certain to break some number of PCs. If stuff goes wrong and your machine won't boot after you apply a firmware update, that's between you and the maker of your machine / motherboard. If your OS decides to do it, even with your approval, then the OS maker is also on the hook.
Yes, at the highest prices/benefit that Amazon can sell.
Is there any retailer that doesn't sell for the highest prices they can get? To do otherwise is stupid.
there was a Canadian slap on the wrist earlier
You should read your link. The "slap" had nothing to do with Amazon's prices.
I don't see a way out unless we have massive population curbs
Population isn't the problem. The birth rate has has been steadily declining for 30 years, in both per capita and absolute numerical terms. The only reason the global population is growing is because the population distribution skews young. See Hans Rosling's explanation.
It will probably get much worse as people with nothing else to do will spend a lot of time making babies.
Nah. Reproduction is almost completely decoupled from recreational sex in most of the world, and that decoupling is spreading. Sex is fun, but kids are a lot of work. Also, having them is hard and somewhat dangerous for women. When people don't need kids for labor, don't have to worry that their children won't survive and have the ability to have sex without babies, the number of kids they have drops.
There is a big problem coming, but it's not so much about what to do with young people and more about what to do with everyone who doesn't want to work a service sector job, since most other jobs are going away. Actually, young people are better-positioned to adapt to the new economic structure. It's those who aren't in a position to retrain and start a new career who are the bigger problem; people currently in their 30s and 40s. Even if we manage to institute something like a Universal Basic Income quickly enough (I'm pretty sure we'll get there eventually, but it is not going to be quick or easy), current working generations grew up believing that they should support themselves, and living "on the dole" is going to make them very unhappy even if it's adequate. Again, young people are likely to have less trouble with that transition (less, not none).
If there was the political will to fix wealth distribution, we could eliminate poverty today.
Perhaps. Too much redistribution risks destroying production, reducing the wealth available to distribute. There's a balance. Of course, automation will change the balance point.
So, no, AIs will not wipe out poverty. AIs will increase wealth inequality and with it, increase poverty.
What is "poverty"? If you define it as "inequality", then yes, AIs will increase it. If you define it as "not having the basic requirements of life", then I think it will decrease, partly through increased redistribution but mostly by making the requirements of life dramatically cheaper than they are now.
Which do you think is more likely? Distribution of profits to unemployed people, or distribution of profits to wealthy C-level executives and investors?
Most likely, both. It seems very probable that the people who own the capital and the people who design and build the technology will both get much richer, and that their wealth will be taxed and redistributed. Given that highly-automated manufacturing promises to push the cost of goods down, towards the cost of the raw materials (which will also be cheaper, since both extraction and recycling will also be highly automated), distributing a fraction of the incomes of the wealthy will provide a reasonably good living even for those who choose not to work at all. Many will choose to work, though, mostly in service sector jobs that don't presently exist.
I don't expect the end state to look much different that what we've had since the dawn of human history. A significant level of inequality, but overall rising wealth making everyone better off than previous generations. Most people will still work, though jobs will be more specialized and varied. The only significant difference will be that the non-working class will be much larger than it has ever been, or is now.
No, what worries me is the transition. Previous technology-driven economic restructurings have led to lots of upheaval and concomitant misery, and they were much slower (though no less extensive) than this one promises to be. People are very good at adapting, but they do it on the scale of generations, not years, or months. The plus side is that we have a notion of a social safety net that didn't really exist during previous upheavals. It's inadequate to the task in its current form (especially in the US), but I think we some idea what it must look like to work.
Well, one other thing that worries me is the effect of indolence on human psychology. It seems to me that contributing to the world, at least enough to provide for your own livelihood, is important to peoples' self-image and self-realization. That's always been done through work... originally work that directly generated the stuff necessary for survival, and later less directly. I'm not sure what it will do to humanity when the majority of the species feels like they have a right to existence and even a certain level of luxury, not for anything they do but merely because they are. Maybe that's no different from people who inherit great wealth, but maybe it is, too. I don't know.
misleading people through skewed ads and search results
Eh? Does amazon have a search engine now?
They own the very best search engine, from an advertiser's perspective. One that people use to find stuff to buy.
But they live in the US under worse living conditions because they know it isn't permanent.
Some, I suppose. The H1-Bs I know very much want to stay.
Meanwhile on this side of the pond I have to support a family.
You're basically saying that you'd like steeper immigration barriers to artificially boost your market value and artificially depress the market value of those who weren't lucky enough to be born here. You're far from alone in that view, but I think it's immoral. I spent some formative years living in another country, with great, smart people who worked their asses off for a standard of living that we wouldn't consider fit for a dog. They deserve a chance to earn something better, and if that means I have to compete harder, or even if it means I have to lower my standard of living, I'm good with that.
To be fair, it's easy for me to say that since I'm pretty comfortable. But I felt the same when I was a poor kid with a young wife and a new baby and I'd just been laid off, so I don't think it's just my relative safety speaking.
since i will not willingly pay for ads
What do you think the "picks for you" on the Amazon home page are? Targeted ads. Always have been, and even before Prime existed.
So, as I forgot to say, I agree with your solution to the issue as long as prices fall to global averages as well as salaries.
It will equalize globally. Places with low salaries and low cost of living will see both rise. Places with high salaries and high cost of living will see both fall. Standards of living will also equalize, which probably means those who currently have the highest standards will see theirs decline, though not nearly as much as the low standards of living will rise.
This has already happened quite a bit in India, and in China. Labor costs have risen substantially, and cost of living has increased, too. For that matter, the cost of many types of goods has fallen dramatically in the US. Basically anything that can be manufactured overseas and imported is significantly cheaper than it would be otherwise. Clothing, for example, costs less than half what it did, on an inflation-adjusted basis, than it did 30 years ago. Toys, electronics, also dramatically cheaper. In fact, strangely enough, most of those things are actually cheaper to buy in the US than they are to buy in the places they're made!
Note that this equalization won't happen instantly, or painlessly, and there will be winners and losers in the short term. But it's the right thing.
The main problem I have is that the H-1B is not fair because it is enough to replace me as a worker but it is not enough for me to have lower cost of living
That's a potential argument against outsourcing, but not against H-1B. The H-1B worker lives in the US and pays the same prices you do.
So you're saying house builders are free to get carpenters through H-1B?
There's no reason why not. They'd just have to figure out how to satisfy the rather vague requirements of high skill. They'd have to be pretty highly skilled just to justify the effort, though, since it costs several thousand dollars to get a potential employee through the H1-B process.
How can a person ever chose a profession if the most lucrative ones will just have a back door opened to relieve the price pressure?
Just accept that you're competing on a global market. If someone in India, or Romania, or Brazil, or wherever can do my job for less money, I see no reason why they shouldn't do it. I have some enormous inbuilt advantages in my understanding of the culture and language, my access to high quality education, etc., and if I can't leverage all of those to outcompete them, I deserve to lose. Yes, this means Americans can't just coast on their luck at being born here. Boo hoo.
My opinion is that we shouldn't have an H1-B program, instead we should allow anyone who wants to work in the US to do so. If that creates a larger influx than we can manage then we can be selective but we should still take every highly-skilled and highly-educated worker we possibly can. Brain drain the whole world, because that will keep the innovation and progress here, and keep our economy the most powerful in the world. Immigration has always been the engine that drives economic growth in the US. That was true when my ancestors arrived in the early 19th century, it was true when we used all the Nazi rocket scientists to win the space race, and it's true today.
Why is only one industry a candidate for this legal replacement? H-!B should be open to all professions or not at all.
It is. Relevant to this discussion, one of my son's college professors is here on an H1-B visa. She's concerned that Trump's changes to the program may cost her her job. Oh, and she's not a CS/IT prof; she teaches Japanese Literature.
Many if not most employment contracts/agreements have verbiage that states that anything you come up with on company time, belongs to the company.
Many if not most employment contracts/agreements for software engineers and the like have verbiage that states that anything you come up with on company or personal time, belongs to the company.
Read your contract carefully before starting a side business.
Going with your premise, why should Google and Facebook be permitted to track my usage of other sites?
They can't. Not shouldn't, can't.
What can happen is that when you visit some site that site may tell your browser to load a resource from Facebook or Google, and when your browser does so, they find out about the visit. Your browser even sends them a nice referer header. Alternatively, the site you visit may send a message to Facebook or Google telling them about your visit. Neither of those things require any eavesdropping on traffic not intended for Facebook or Google.
I know every generation thinks the young generation is lazy, etc., but there is real statistical evidence that the Millennial generation actually is starting to work much later. On a more anecdotal basis, I notice a very different approach to work in my kids (late teens, early 20s) and in their peers. My kids have always had to do chores and work around the house so I don't think that's the difference.
They do things like decide they're unhappy with their current employer so they just walk out, without trying to fix the problem and without trying to find another job first. I have never in my life quit a job before finding another, and it wouldn't even occur to me to do so. If my job sucks, by all means I'll make a move, but not until I have something else lined up. That's just one example, but it's typical of their whole approach. I suppose in some ways it's good to be more focused on quality of life and less on income... but not until you're safely self-sufficient.
It concerns me that I'm wandering into "get off my lawn!" territory here... but there really does seem to be a difference, a worrisome one.
Remember Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
Millennials are starting to work later than previous generations, so they plan to make up for it by retiring earlier.
Only reason why it's an issue at all is because it sounded good on the campaign trail for Trump's supporters.
More specifically, it appealed to people in one of the regional subcultures (Appalachia) who are often a swing vote. They mostly vote Republican these days, but they've never been closely tied to either of the two major parties, and Trump had to lock them down in order to shore up the fact that his support was weak in other traditionally-Republican subcultures (though he was helped by the fact that his opponent's support was weak in important traditionally-Democrat subcultures).