If we were not spending around $600 billion a year on bombing the middle east and occupying the rest of the world with military bases
That money is intended to secure our oil supply, secure trade corridors, and prevent terrorism at the source. The economic effect of those goals is vast. Now you can argue that the money is not being spent effectively...
And there are certainly crazies on the right. The difference is the center-right ignores them or disavows them and does not give them a platform. No one would ever hear a single idea of David Duke or Richard Spencer if the left and corporate-left media didn't promote them.
Nobody gives them a platform... except when the US president retweets them!
But in the last few decades, real wages for professions outside the university have NOT increased. So why should university wages have to rise to remain competitive with them?
I think anti-depressants and tranquilizers are about the opposite of soma. They take people who are passing time doing nothing (due to mental illness) and make them able to function. In contrast, soma take people who can function (in ways the government doesn't want) and entices them to pass time doing nothing.
This is just one data point - the University of Florida system. It says nothing about how much education costs at other colleges/universities.
Logically, education cost should be highly correlated to class size. Does UoF have smaller engineering than English classes by chance? That would explain the difference. But at the university I went to, English classes were the small and labor-intensive ones.
Full time work at Federal minimum wage ($9/hour) is about $1700/month. I just looked for single apartments in Houston (a large city with a thriving job market). Right away I found lots of apartments for around $500/month, which is under 30% of minimum wage income.
And of course, if you're on a tight budget, having your own apartment is an unnecessary luxury. You should really be sharing with a roommate, which provides further savings.
And minimum wage would still be a living wage, if people 1) only had kids after getting married, 2) took the bus instead of owning cars.
1) is a matter of personal responsibility
2) is only a problem because US land use policy is broken, with supply artificially depressed by zoning laws, and subsidies and tax benefits for building new sprawl rather than rebuilding old areas.
Not really. The Obama administration decided not to enforce the marijuana laws, but they are still on the books. From Wikipedia: "On August 28, 2013, a federal executive agency announced that it would no longer actively pursue marijuana offences taking place in the states that have legalized the small consumption and possession of marijuana." A future president could reverse that.
Isn't card counting such an effective way to win at poker that casinos ban it? And shouldn't a poker AI count cards pretty much by default? So no wonder it's effective.
If you can get into and graduate from a Harvard, Yale, Princeton or similar, the school and its alumni network will not let you fail.
What are you talking about? There are plenty of people from these institutions who fail.
Perhaps everyone who is hired by a "white-shoe" (is that a term?) company went to an elite university. But not everyone who went to an elite university is hired by such a company.
These companies choose people who have the same cultural background as them. But not everyone with that background is chosen.
And it's not like "I think I'm female" is an unusual feeling - it's common to over half the world's population, and in the absence of foetal androgens, everyone would say it.
Is it? I used to think I was male because I have a penis and I'm sexually attracted to people who don't have penises. Now, it turns out those traits have nothing to do with being male. So if you ask me if I'm male, I honestly have no idea how to answer any more. Am I male? Who knows?
the effort to "re-automate" something may approach the level of effort it took to automate it in the first place
Even if this is true (which I doubt - once you've solved a problem, it generally becomes much easier to solve related problems), the "re-automating" will employ a small elite of computer scientists, just like the original automating did. The millions of workers replaced by automation will not be benefitted by re-automation.
Almost everything can be automated, the crucial question is whether it is cost-effective to do so
That's pretty much wrong.
Most humans have jobs that cannot currently be automated. There is currently no machine that can drive a car well enough that people trust it on the road (though this might change very soon), so millions of people work as drivers. There is currently no machine that has the spatial coordination to cook a hamburger or pick a strawberry or sew the the sleeve onto a shirt unattended, so millions of people work in restaurants and farms and garment factories. There is currently no machine that can produce a high-quality translated document, or write a high-quality essay, or invent high-quality jokes, so people work in all those fields (and many other white-collar fields).
But if and when a way to automate these tasks is developed, it will be much cheaper than human labor. The software will only have to be written once, and then it can be used simultaneously everywhere in the world. The mechanical components (like motors and cameras) are already very cheap. Put together, there is little chance of the cost approaching human minimum wage in most fields.
There is little relation between "pollution" and CO2.
When you burn hydrocarbons, those carbon atoms have to go somewhere. The best scenario is that they go to create CO2, which does not cause smog, and is pretty harmless except for the greenhouse effect. US regulations ensure that as much CO2 as possible is created by combustion.
Where there is less regulation, there are motors and fires which run "dirty". Much of the carbon goes to create CO, or carbon dust, or benzene or other random chemicals. Also, in the hot conditions of the motor, other reactions take place and you end up with toxic substances like NO2. The mixture of all these pollutants - NOT including CO2 - is what creates smog.
Slashdot Mirror
More specifically, it's about what you can be persuaded that you need.
If we were not spending around $600 billion a year on bombing the middle east and occupying the rest of the world with military bases
That money is intended to secure our oil supply, secure trade corridors, and prevent terrorism at the source. The economic effect of those goals is vast. Now you can argue that the money is not being spent effectively...
And there are certainly crazies on the right. The difference is the center-right ignores them or disavows them and does not give them a platform. No one would ever hear a single idea of David Duke or Richard Spencer if the left and corporate-left media didn't promote them.
Nobody gives them a platform... except when the US president retweets them!
But in the last few decades, real wages for professions outside the university have NOT increased. So why should university wages have to rise to remain competitive with them?
I think anti-depressants and tranquilizers are about the opposite of soma. They take people who are passing time doing nothing (due to mental illness) and make them able to function. In contrast, soma take people who can function (in ways the government doesn't want) and entices them to pass time doing nothing.
This is just one data point - the University of Florida system. It says nothing about how much education costs at other colleges/universities.
Logically, education cost should be highly correlated to class size. Does UoF have smaller engineering than English classes by chance? That would explain the difference. But at the university I went to, English classes were the small and labor-intensive ones.
That's a giant exaggeration.
Full time work at Federal minimum wage ($9/hour) is about $1700/month. I just looked for single apartments in Houston (a large city with a thriving job market). Right away I found lots of apartments for around $500/month, which is under 30% of minimum wage income.
And of course, if you're on a tight budget, having your own apartment is an unnecessary luxury. You should really be sharing with a roommate, which provides further savings.
Would it be sustainable if you had an electric car? Little maintenance expense, less fuel expense.
Of course you'd have to be able to afford the car in the first place, but electric cars are gradually getting cheaper.
And minimum wage would still be a living wage, if people 1) only had kids after getting married, 2) took the bus instead of owning cars.
1) is a matter of personal responsibility
2) is only a problem because US land use policy is broken, with supply artificially depressed by zoning laws, and subsidies and tax benefits for building new sprawl rather than rebuilding old areas.
Not really. The Obama administration decided not to enforce the marijuana laws, but they are still on the books. From Wikipedia: "On August 28, 2013, a federal executive agency announced that it would no longer actively pursue marijuana offences taking place in the states that have legalized the small consumption and possession of marijuana." A future president could reverse that.
Federal laws automatically override all state laws. So these laws will have no effect.
Isn't card counting such an effective way to win at poker that casinos ban it? And shouldn't a poker AI count cards pretty much by default? So no wonder it's effective.
Innovation (tm)!
Is this method patentable?
Native Hawaiians are Polynesians, not natives of North/South America.
No connection except that they are both "brown".
If you can get into and graduate from a Harvard, Yale, Princeton or similar, the school and its alumni network will not let you fail.
What are you talking about? There are plenty of people from these institutions who fail.
Perhaps everyone who is hired by a "white-shoe" (is that a term?) company went to an elite university. But not everyone who went to an elite university is hired by such a company.
These companies choose people who have the same cultural background as them. But not everyone with that background is chosen.
And it's not like "I think I'm female" is an unusual feeling - it's common to over half the world's population, and in the absence of foetal androgens, everyone would say it.
Is it? I used to think I was male because I have a penis and I'm sexually attracted to people who don't have penises. Now, it turns out those traits have nothing to do with being male. So if you ask me if I'm male, I honestly have no idea how to answer any more. Am I male? Who knows?
It's "deep learning". The kind that sea animals usually do several hundred meters under water.
Do you think it's coincidence that the first widely available commercial application AI happens to be autonomous road vehicles?
You're lumping a bunch of different fields together as if they are all "AI".
Autonomous vehicles require computer vision.
AI doctors most likely require natural language processing.
Those are independent problems. It so happens we're making more progress on computer vision these days. Apparently it's an easier problem.
the effort to "re-automate" something may approach the level of effort it took to automate it in the first place
Even if this is true (which I doubt - once you've solved a problem, it generally becomes much easier to solve related problems), the "re-automating" will employ a small elite of computer scientists, just like the original automating did. The millions of workers replaced by automation will not be benefitted by re-automation.
Almost everything can be automated, the crucial question is whether it is cost-effective to do so
That's pretty much wrong.
Most humans have jobs that cannot currently be automated. There is currently no machine that can drive a car well enough that people trust it on the road (though this might change very soon), so millions of people work as drivers. There is currently no machine that has the spatial coordination to cook a hamburger or pick a strawberry or sew the the sleeve onto a shirt unattended, so millions of people work in restaurants and farms and garment factories. There is currently no machine that can produce a high-quality translated document, or write a high-quality essay, or invent high-quality jokes, so people work in all those fields (and many other white-collar fields).
But if and when a way to automate these tasks is developed, it will be much cheaper than human labor. The software will only have to be written once, and then it can be used simultaneously everywhere in the world. The mechanical components (like motors and cameras) are already very cheap. Put together, there is little chance of the cost approaching human minimum wage in most fields.
How many airports could you build with $68 Billion ?
None. Nowhere in the Bay Area is there enough contiguous undeveloped flat land for a new airport.
If she's telling the truth there.
For the same reason they backed Hillary, who also had a history of failures.
(Tokenism)
If only I could mod this higher than +5...
There is little relation between "pollution" and CO2.
When you burn hydrocarbons, those carbon atoms have to go somewhere. The best scenario is that they go to create CO2, which does not cause smog, and is pretty harmless except for the greenhouse effect. US regulations ensure that as much CO2 as possible is created by combustion.
Where there is less regulation, there are motors and fires which run "dirty". Much of the carbon goes to create CO, or carbon dust, or benzene or other random chemicals. Also, in the hot conditions of the motor, other reactions take place and you end up with toxic substances like NO2. The mixture of all these pollutants - NOT including CO2 - is what creates smog.