Do tell where steam engines (aside from turbines in ships and power plants) are used in our society. I did not say we were taught useless skills.
Fine, do you know how to churn your own butter or butcher your own chickens? My grandfather did all of these things, but my dad (who is still a farmer) has no idea how to do either. And even if you are one of the rare ones who knows how to do those things, I doubt almost all of your generation can.
What your generation forgot about growing your own food is in the same league as what our generation has forgot about how to fix our own appliances.
wrong, we over 50 were taught to fix shit, starting at age 10 in my case. Guys [1] usually fell into two categories, the electrical or mechanical.
Even if I grant you that those who are 50+ can fix things as well as their parent's generation, you can replace the complaining with any other area of life. Perhaps complaints like "eat around the mold, don't waste good food" that I heard my great depression surviving great grandfather say one time he was at our house. I would put complaining about throwing away moldy bread as being similar to complaining about not knowing how to fix your radio today.
I am about 15 years away from 50 so I don't know all of the complaints my great grandfather would have had, but considering all of their complaints about hippies and Elvis and whatever I would bet he had complaints about your generation's work ethic and handyman skills as well.
Wikidata would either have to keep (many) multiple copies of possibly quite large data sets, or keep diffs. How much of a strain does it put on a busy server to generate a dataset from a huge original and lots of large diffs.
First off none of the problems you list are unmanageable; they just make it more expensive and more difficult to design. One technique could be to only store data sets from published papers. Versions cited in published papers and the latest data will be the ones most frequently accessed, and all other versions could be handled with diffs. They may even decide to only use diffs, but keep track of which versions are most frequently downloaded and store them in full. There are many more ways they could architect the system to handle these issues.
Not too many people pay attention to Wikipedia changelogs. If only the current form of the data is easily visible, that's what most people -- especially amateurs and those with political motivations -- will use.
It is perfectly fine for most people to use the most recent data. If someone is trying to build on my research, I would want them to take advantage of any new data that has been added since I did my work. Perhaps the new data invalidates my results. My version of the data could then be used to determine if my methodology was poor, or if it really was the new data that showed my findings were invalid.
And on top of that, holding back new research tools because amateurs and politically motivated groups could misuse them is very scary indeed.
I can't be the only one who thinks that is a terribly bad idea... It would rip the guts right out of repeatability, and confidence that "this" is what $RESEARCHER found.
Um, have you never heard of versioning? It would be pretty trivial to add the statement "Used the XXX v3.5.1 dataset to perform these calculations" to your research paper.
8 time zones? Counting only US states (not Guam and such) there are only 6 time zones.
Last time I checked, there are places in this world which are outside of the US. They even have humans living there, and some of them have electricity and computers.
Plenty of people work with coworkers who live 8-12 time zones away.
The problem I have with global climate change "debate" is not that climate is changing, but that there is an assumption that the net effect will be negative. Some regions will surely become less hospitable, and some will become more hospitable. I'm disappointed that more studies haven't shown which will prevail (or if there will be a net neutral effect). Instead we just get fear mongering about famine and war.
If sea levels rise and destroy hundreds of cities in the process, who really cares if a few Midwest regions get a little longer growing season? People don't waste time talking about pros and cons because the cons outweigh the pros by such a wide margin that it isn't worth talking about.
I'm not anti-nuclear, but requiring other people to agree to your solution before you'll admit the problem exists is pretty pathetic bullshit.
He never said he wouldn't admit the problem exists. He just wants people who aren't interested in real solutions to stop complaining about a lack of action.
Robots might replace pharmacy technicians someday, but we'll always need pharmacists, let alone PharmDs.
I worked as a software developer in the pharmaceutical industry, and I assure you that PharmDs are just as in danger of being automated as pharmacy techs. Perhaps even more so because of their higher pay. Every seminar I sat through where our customers talked about their successes with our software measured success in number of jobs reduced (usually through attrition, not firing, but the net result is the same). One key metric of success was being able to get the same amount of work done with more pharmacy techs instead of PharmDs, thus reducing overall wages.
PharmD jobs are almost the poster child for a high wage career that can be more easily replaced by automation than most low wage work. It is a career that requires very highly skilled workers because of the vast amount of knowledge they need to have. That is exactly the type of work that the new wave of AI is being designed to do. Like another poster already mentioned, Watson really is going to displace a good percentage of your industry's jobs.
Couldn't help but notice the distinct lack of industry in your raving about how wonderful things are for you. I mean, having lots of commerce and residential is great, but how is anybody supposed to pay for it? The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?
Complaining about a lack of manufacturing jobs in today's economy is little different than complaining about the lack of agricultural jobs. Yes these have historically been sectors of the economy where the majority of people worked, but that is no longer the case. The lack of agricultural and manufacturing jobs are not a sign of a weak economy, they are the sign of a strong one.
Manufacturing and agricultural output are still good metrics for measuring an economy, and the United States is certainly strong there.
Yes, the best way to tell that someone is horrible at board games and rational thought in general is if they think they or someone they know is good at Monopoly. The only way to be good at Monopoly is to play with brain dead opponents (or very young ones), because the game is almost entirely luck. It is good at teaching 7 year olds math, and that is about it.
One group, who did not care for the game, caused me to wonder what the optimum number of players is for this game. Any suggestion(s)?
Two player games are not that fun, but fun two player games are so rare that I still sometimes play it two player.
Three and four player games are both fun and easy, because there is a low chance that anyone will get screwed by someone else's city placement.
Five and six player games are by far the most fun if you are good at the game (IMHO), but there is a high likely-hood that a new player will make a bad early decision and get completely surrounded by opponents. Even with the good "catch up" mechanics, that is impossible to bounce back from and will be very frustrating for that player.
The best games for me have a good deal of strategic depth, but are comfortable for casual players. As an adult it is very hard for me to find a large group of hard core gamers, so casual gamers have to do. But I want to be entertained too.
The best trade-off I have found is a game with a little randomness but not too much, and one that helps players who are losing catch up. This allows the good players to be rewarded for their good play instead of just luck, but also keeps the game competitive until the end.
The best game I have found so far for this is Power Grid. It has simple rules, a good deal of strategy, and many game mechanics that give players a chance to catch up. It is often in a player's best interest to not get too far ahead because they will be too harshly punished by the "catch up" mechanics. And that ultimately just adds more strategic depth to the game.
Headphones don't solve the problem for a large percentage of people (myself included). It is the over-stimulation that affects introverted people, not the noise. Just knowing I am surrounded by people is what gets me anxious while trying to work alone. And not having my back to some kind of wall (a real wall or cubicle wall are both fine) is the worst of all.
Yes, distraction is an issue. But an important part of cognitive function is to be able to filter out distractions when you do need extended periods of hyperfocus. This is pretty easily handled with headphones and some discipline.
I think this way of thinking showcases one reason extroverted people have trouble empathizing with introverted people. They simply think it takes discipline to work within a large group of people, and their coworkers' struggles couldn't possibly be because their brains are wired differently.
I enjoy socializing and am a very vocal member of my workforce. But I am a very strong introvert (which is someone who is more sensitive to stimulation, not a social outcast as is the prevailing opinion). When I really need to get work done, I need my isolation. I have tried headphones but they don't solve the underlying problem. I get antsy when doing work alone but not being alone. Just knowing I am surrounded is enough. And having people working behind me is like someone scratching a chalkboard.
Moving to another room doesn't really solve the productivity problem because I would need two full desk setups (two extra 27" monitors, VOIP phone, headphones/speakers, etc.) Perhaps if an employer were willing to have 1.5 work stations per employee, split halfway between an open setup and closed office / high-wall cubicle, it would be my ideal setup. But otherwise the cubicle setup works much better than an open setup. There is still plenty of communication through the use of conference rooms and just stopping by someone's desk, but people can get their actual work done.
Hell, in my currently open office my coworkers tend to just skype each other instead of head to each other's desk or shout across the room because it doesn't interrupt other coworkers as much.
You make a lot of good points up until your last paragraph where you stop providing a good argument and start making absolute statements. But I still find it hard to believe that the benefits of an open office overcome the downsides.
But here's the catch: that's not the hard part of the job. (almost) anyone could do that. The hard part is the design, architecture, problem solving. Most of the time, those are better done in group.
I would say that these hard tasks are rarely done better in a group. But I agree that when a group is needed, working in that group is far more productive than working alone or trying to work over email / IM chains. Although in those rare cases (which often still happen multiple times per day) a conference room or just meeting in someone's office tends to work just fine.
You also seem to disregard the general wisdom that thought intensive work takes time to ramp up to. The general wisdom I agree with is every interruption takes about 15 minutes to recover from (obviously this is just a guideline and not a scientific rule or anything). It takes time to "get into the zone" when doing work like writing software. Constantly interrupting coworkers to bounce ideas off of them has a really high cost.
I have coworkers ask to "borrow my brain" multiple times per day, but it is almost always by IM or email. They just ask me to either contact them when I'm free or set up a 30 minute calendar invite later in the day. Most of the time I respond right away, but if I'm busy they will just need to wait. They can easily just tell me this one is really urgent if they need to, or just come to my desk if it is really necessary. But at least 9 out of 10 times anything can wait an hour or two. I have never worked in an environment where I have nothing else to work on if I need to wait an hour to ask a coworker a question, so no time is wasted. If you are constantly needing to ask questions for a job task that has to be finished right now, you have very bad time management and project planning skills.
First off, my last post was responding to only the parts of your post I quoted. The two anecdotes you originally mentioned were clearly about people who were being jerks (although we only have one side of each story). I don't condone the way they reacted to you and others that were helping them. I mostly only had an issue with:
For in fact, a very intelligent person who knows how to get their hands dirty is vastly superior to a person who merely thinks.
A person can be a Nobel Laureate, yet if his car blows a fuse in the desert, he'll die just like anyone else who doesn't know how to fix it.
The first statement clearly shows you saying that an intelligent person with blue collar skills is vastly superior to someone with more cerebral skills. Most of my response was arguing against this point. You didn't just say those with hands-on skills were just as valuable, you said they were vastly superior. It was a very egotistical statement. No less egotistical than if I said my ability to write software is vastly superior to a mechanic's ability to fix my car.
Dear sir, you are getting your stories mixed up, not to mention you might want to go back to read what I wrote. [...] And she was an artist, not a Nobel Laureate.
As I said above, I was not referring to your anecdote about the artist. I was only referring to your comments about Nobel Laureates that cannot change their own spark plugs (and don't carry spares while traveling in the desert). I read and understood your post just fine.
There is a major difference between you and I. I have never ever found gaining knowledge of anything to be a waste of my time.
It lacks a lot of imagination to believe gaining knowledge is never a waste of time. Would learning all the cheat codes for all original Nintendo games be a good use of your time? What about if you don't even like video games? If you can understand why that would be a waste of time, you should also be able to see why learning how to rebuild an engine is also a waste of time for someone who hates that type of work. Even if I knew how to do it I would still pay someone else to do it (and simply getting a second or third opinion is more than good enough to stop a mechanic from swindling me).
I am not arguing that learning is a bad thing. My wife's two main complaints about me are that I don't like to clean and that I spend far too much money on books from Amazon. My reading in high school and my 20's was very generalist. But in my 30's it has almost all been targeted at my career. This is still a wide range of topics from Javascript to statistics to business process optimization to concurrency models. But I rarely spend much time reading about economics or history or sociology anymore.
I don't find those topics unimportant now. I just find others more important and I believe they teach me skills that make me more valuable. I don't think my route is more superior than yours, but I resent your implication that your route is superior to mine. I hate working with my hands, other than some hobbyist electronics / robotics work, but I don't think that has any negative impact on my worth. I still think outside of the box just fine and have a very wide range of skills.
I have always engaged the "elite" And if they get too high up on their high horse, I bring them down a few pegs.
For in fact, a very intelligent person who knows how to get their hands dirty is vastly superior to a person who merely thinks. A person can be a Nobel Laureate, yet if his car blows a fuse in the desert, he'll die just like anyone else who doesn't know how to fix it.
You seem to have quite an ego issue. Do you know how to grow all of the food in your diet? Do you know how to make your own penicillin? Could you perform a root canal on yourself or even a loved one? Even if you can do all of those things, I'm sure there are plenty of other skills you lack. Criticizing a Nobel Laureate, who have all probably done more in their lives than you ever will, just because s/he cannot fix their own car is asinine.
I am a software engineer, and have no delusions that my skills are somehow "better" than that of a car mechanic. But learning how to service my own car (other than the basics like changing my own oil) is a waste of my time. I can either be doing work or learning new skills in my area of expertise, which provides far more benefit to both myself and society as a whole. I also pay maids to clean my home each week and a service to do my yard work each week during the warm months. I do not believe myself to be a more superior human being than my maids, but my time is certainly more valuable from an economic standpoint.
I also share your disdain for intellectuals that think they are superior to others, but I hold the same contempt for blue collar guys who think their handyman skills somehow make themselves superior to those who do not share them. Separation of labor is an important thing, and for most people who earn enough to easily pay a mechanic, learning how to repair the windows of their own car is as valuable as knowing how to churn their own butter.
Take a look at documentaries from the 40s to 60s, at the peak of the making-humans-work-like-machines era, marvel at how much utterly monotonous work people used to be forced to do because we didn't have the technology to replace them with EVIL ROBOTS TAKING OUR JOBS! and then marvel again at how, despite replacing all those people with EVIL ROBOTS TAKING OUR JOBS!, most people who want to work can still find a job.
The situation over the next few decades will be much different than the last century. In the last century technology was only taking away manual labor jobs. Humans were able to cope because these jobs were replaced with knowledge based work. People aren't complaining that robots will take our jobs just because they are getting better at taking away manual labor jobs. They are worried that knowledge based work is the next to go.
There will still be a bastion of work in creative jobs (creative thinking, not the arts), but there is a real worry that there aren't enough of these creative jobs to go around. And there are worries that not everyone will be capable of these creative jobs. Office work worked great as a replacement for manual labor because most of the jobs did not creative much more intelligence than the jobs they were replacing. But not every factory worker or garbage man is capable of being a senior mechanical engineer, an actuary, or any number of other careers where critical thinking is very necessary.
If you are the type of person who struggled in algebra class in high school, the new economy will probably be a very scary place.
Most iPhone users only have an income of >25k, Since the US median is 60k, that means that the iPhone is sold to basically everyone.
Most iPhone users having over 25k income does not specify how many are in the 25k-60k range. Your source was using those numbers to show that more iPods than iPhones are owned by families with under 25k income. It wasn't saying that a significant number of iPhone owners are poor.
Also, I would assume more iPhones are owned by lower class families than iPads, since the total cost is amortized within their phone bill.
It's not clear that Apple could survive in isolation. A lot of their components are only as cheap as they are because of other lower-margin companies paying a big chunk of the R&D costs. When Apple was using PowerPC processors and were the only customer for IBM or Motorola for a particular chip, they found it very difficult to compete. They're designing their own ARM cores now, but they're benefitting enormously from the thriving ARM software ecosystem.
That is a good point. But generally aren't most R&D costs recouped by early expensive versions of products? Similar to TVs, where early models are very expensive but within 5-10 years they cost 10% of their original price. I am not aware of all the details of ARM development over the past 30 years, but it probably didn't always cater to lower-margin devices. Especially since a significant part of its early development was assisted by Apple and VLSI (neither company is known for catering to the low end market).
Indeed, most people believe that they would literally suffer if they consumed a health-promoting diet devoid of such indulgences. But, it is here that their perception is greatly in error. The reality is that humans are well designed to fully enjoy the subtler tastes of whole natural foods, but are poorly equipped to realize this fact.
Humans are well designed to fully enjoy life without electricity, refrigeration, air conditioning, toilet paper, non-bipedal locomotion, and any number of other modern indulgences. Just saying people can live happy lives without modern technology does not necessarily mean they don't live happier lives with them. While I agree with your basic premise that our lives would be happier if we ate better, I think that is because of other benefits of being healthy (more energy, less chronic health problems, etc). I have lived long periods of my life in both healthy and unhealthy diets, and I never enjoyed the healthier foods more (even when almost exclusively eating healthy foods for periods of a few years).
From what I can tell, because of how our bodies are designed, foods with high levels of fat, sugar, and salt really do taste better and those who give them up really are missing out. Regardless of the benefits they gain from being healthier. Technology that allows us to be perfectly healthy while eating all the junk food we want is obviously the best solution. And I don't just mean eating anything we want without gaining weight, because there are plenty of other health issues with junk food other than weight gain. We aren't there yet, but I am optimistic that we are getting close and may get there in my lifetime.
Nuh uh. I don't trust any entertainment company enough to allow them to zap my brain. Not in a million years.
That's fine; they will make plenty of money from those who are willing. Facebook makes plenty of money without the people who refuse to have a social media fingerprint as well. This will be no different.
I know you are being tongue and cheek, but very recent history is starting to show companies can make plenty of money just catering to the upper middle class. The richest company in the world (Apple) makes products that are only intended for a very small percentage of even a wealthy nation's population (46.3% of households with iPads have income over $100k). While rapid economic growth does need a sizable consumer class, I don't believe it necessarily needs a robust middle class. A much smaller but still sizable upper middle class will probably do just as well.
Of course, there are already large swaths of people who do little to no useful work and have high social status...
There has always been a small percentage of aristocrats in society who do not have to work because of their amassed wealth. Looking at how they spent their time is probably a decent indicator of how most of the population will spend their time 50-100 years from now. My guess is most people will put far more effort into their hobbies, and many of those hobbies will turn into part time jobs. All basic and even most non-basic needs will be covered by social welfare programs paid for by publicly owned mostly-automated industries. People will only work because they want to, and the very few undesirable jobs that can't be automated will pay excessively well.
At least that is the best possible outcome. Their are plenty of dystopian possibilities as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Do tell where steam engines (aside from turbines in ships and power plants) are used in our society. I did not say we were taught useless skills.
Fine, do you know how to churn your own butter or butcher your own chickens? My grandfather did all of these things, but my dad (who is still a farmer) has no idea how to do either. And even if you are one of the rare ones who knows how to do those things, I doubt almost all of your generation can.
What your generation forgot about growing your own food is in the same league as what our generation has forgot about how to fix our own appliances.
wrong, we over 50 were taught to fix shit, starting at age 10 in my case. Guys [1] usually fell into two categories, the electrical or mechanical.
Even if I grant you that those who are 50+ can fix things as well as their parent's generation, you can replace the complaining with any other area of life. Perhaps complaints like "eat around the mold, don't waste good food" that I heard my great depression surviving great grandfather say one time he was at our house. I would put complaining about throwing away moldy bread as being similar to complaining about not knowing how to fix your radio today.
I am about 15 years away from 50 so I don't know all of the complaints my great grandfather would have had, but considering all of their complaints about hippies and Elvis and whatever I would bet he had complaints about your generation's work ethic and handyman skills as well.
Wikidata would either have to keep (many) multiple copies of possibly quite large data sets, or keep diffs. How much of a strain does it put on a busy server to generate a dataset from a huge original and lots of large diffs.
First off none of the problems you list are unmanageable; they just make it more expensive and more difficult to design. One technique could be to only store data sets from published papers. Versions cited in published papers and the latest data will be the ones most frequently accessed, and all other versions could be handled with diffs. They may even decide to only use diffs, but keep track of which versions are most frequently downloaded and store them in full. There are many more ways they could architect the system to handle these issues.
Not too many people pay attention to Wikipedia changelogs. If only the current form of the data is easily visible, that's what most people -- especially amateurs and those with political motivations -- will use.
It is perfectly fine for most people to use the most recent data. If someone is trying to build on my research, I would want them to take advantage of any new data that has been added since I did my work. Perhaps the new data invalidates my results. My version of the data could then be used to determine if my methodology was poor, or if it really was the new data that showed my findings were invalid.
And on top of that, holding back new research tools because amateurs and politically motivated groups could misuse them is very scary indeed.
I can't be the only one who thinks that is a terribly bad idea... It would rip the guts right out of repeatability, and confidence that "this" is what $RESEARCHER found.
Um, have you never heard of versioning? It would be pretty trivial to add the statement "Used the XXX v3.5.1 dataset to perform these calculations" to your research paper.
8 time zones? Counting only US states (not Guam and such) there are only 6 time zones.
Last time I checked, there are places in this world which are outside of the US. They even have humans living there, and some of them have electricity and computers.
Plenty of people work with coworkers who live 8-12 time zones away.
He could have made the same point without acting like a jerk.
Agreed.
The problem I have with global climate change "debate" is not that climate is changing, but that there is an assumption that the net effect will be negative. Some regions will surely become less hospitable, and some will become more hospitable. I'm disappointed that more studies haven't shown which will prevail (or if there will be a net neutral effect). Instead we just get fear mongering about famine and war.
If sea levels rise and destroy hundreds of cities in the process, who really cares if a few Midwest regions get a little longer growing season? People don't waste time talking about pros and cons because the cons outweigh the pros by such a wide margin that it isn't worth talking about.
I'm not anti-nuclear, but requiring other people to agree to your solution before you'll admit the problem exists is pretty pathetic bullshit.
He never said he wouldn't admit the problem exists. He just wants people who aren't interested in real solutions to stop complaining about a lack of action.
Robots might replace pharmacy technicians someday, but we'll always need pharmacists, let alone PharmDs.
I worked as a software developer in the pharmaceutical industry, and I assure you that PharmDs are just as in danger of being automated as pharmacy techs. Perhaps even more so because of their higher pay. Every seminar I sat through where our customers talked about their successes with our software measured success in number of jobs reduced (usually through attrition, not firing, but the net result is the same). One key metric of success was being able to get the same amount of work done with more pharmacy techs instead of PharmDs, thus reducing overall wages.
PharmD jobs are almost the poster child for a high wage career that can be more easily replaced by automation than most low wage work. It is a career that requires very highly skilled workers because of the vast amount of knowledge they need to have. That is exactly the type of work that the new wave of AI is being designed to do. Like another poster already mentioned, Watson really is going to displace a good percentage of your industry's jobs.
Couldn't help but notice the distinct lack of industry in your raving about how wonderful things are for you. I mean, having lots of commerce and residential is great, but how is anybody supposed to pay for it? The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?
Complaining about a lack of manufacturing jobs in today's economy is little different than complaining about the lack of agricultural jobs. Yes these have historically been sectors of the economy where the majority of people worked, but that is no longer the case. The lack of agricultural and manufacturing jobs are not a sign of a weak economy, they are the sign of a strong one.
Manufacturing and agricultural output are still good metrics for measuring an economy, and the United States is certainly strong there.
Yes, the best way to tell that someone is horrible at board games and rational thought in general is if they think they or someone they know is good at Monopoly. The only way to be good at Monopoly is to play with brain dead opponents (or very young ones), because the game is almost entirely luck. It is good at teaching 7 year olds math, and that is about it.
I also cannot think of a worse board game.
One group, who did not care for the game, caused me to wonder what the optimum number of players is for this game. Any suggestion(s)?
Two player games are not that fun, but fun two player games are so rare that I still sometimes play it two player.
Three and four player games are both fun and easy, because there is a low chance that anyone will get screwed by someone else's city placement.
Five and six player games are by far the most fun if you are good at the game (IMHO), but there is a high likely-hood that a new player will make a bad early decision and get completely surrounded by opponents. Even with the good "catch up" mechanics, that is impossible to bounce back from and will be very frustrating for that player.
The best games for me have a good deal of strategic depth, but are comfortable for casual players. As an adult it is very hard for me to find a large group of hard core gamers, so casual gamers have to do. But I want to be entertained too.
The best trade-off I have found is a game with a little randomness but not too much, and one that helps players who are losing catch up. This allows the good players to be rewarded for their good play instead of just luck, but also keeps the game competitive until the end.
The best game I have found so far for this is Power Grid. It has simple rules, a good deal of strategy, and many game mechanics that give players a chance to catch up. It is often in a player's best interest to not get too far ahead because they will be too harshly punished by the "catch up" mechanics. And that ultimately just adds more strategic depth to the game.
People who find it distracting put on headphones.
Headphones don't solve the problem for a large percentage of people (myself included). It is the over-stimulation that affects introverted people, not the noise. Just knowing I am surrounded by people is what gets me anxious while trying to work alone. And not having my back to some kind of wall (a real wall or cubicle wall are both fine) is the worst of all.
Yes, distraction is an issue. But an important part of cognitive function is to be able to filter out distractions when you do need extended periods of hyperfocus. This is pretty easily handled with headphones and some discipline.
I think this way of thinking showcases one reason extroverted people have trouble empathizing with introverted people. They simply think it takes discipline to work within a large group of people, and their coworkers' struggles couldn't possibly be because their brains are wired differently.
I enjoy socializing and am a very vocal member of my workforce. But I am a very strong introvert (which is someone who is more sensitive to stimulation, not a social outcast as is the prevailing opinion). When I really need to get work done, I need my isolation. I have tried headphones but they don't solve the underlying problem. I get antsy when doing work alone but not being alone. Just knowing I am surrounded is enough. And having people working behind me is like someone scratching a chalkboard.
Moving to another room doesn't really solve the productivity problem because I would need two full desk setups (two extra 27" monitors, VOIP phone, headphones/speakers, etc.) Perhaps if an employer were willing to have 1.5 work stations per employee, split halfway between an open setup and closed office / high-wall cubicle, it would be my ideal setup. But otherwise the cubicle setup works much better than an open setup. There is still plenty of communication through the use of conference rooms and just stopping by someone's desk, but people can get their actual work done.
Hell, in my currently open office my coworkers tend to just skype each other instead of head to each other's desk or shout across the room because it doesn't interrupt other coworkers as much.
You make a lot of good points up until your last paragraph where you stop providing a good argument and start making absolute statements. But I still find it hard to believe that the benefits of an open office overcome the downsides.
But here's the catch: that's not the hard part of the job. (almost) anyone could do that. The hard part is the design, architecture, problem solving. Most of the time, those are better done in group.
I would say that these hard tasks are rarely done better in a group. But I agree that when a group is needed, working in that group is far more productive than working alone or trying to work over email / IM chains. Although in those rare cases (which often still happen multiple times per day) a conference room or just meeting in someone's office tends to work just fine.
You also seem to disregard the general wisdom that thought intensive work takes time to ramp up to. The general wisdom I agree with is every interruption takes about 15 minutes to recover from (obviously this is just a guideline and not a scientific rule or anything). It takes time to "get into the zone" when doing work like writing software. Constantly interrupting coworkers to bounce ideas off of them has a really high cost.
I have coworkers ask to "borrow my brain" multiple times per day, but it is almost always by IM or email. They just ask me to either contact them when I'm free or set up a 30 minute calendar invite later in the day. Most of the time I respond right away, but if I'm busy they will just need to wait. They can easily just tell me this one is really urgent if they need to, or just come to my desk if it is really necessary. But at least 9 out of 10 times anything can wait an hour or two. I have never worked in an environment where I have nothing else to work on if I need to wait an hour to ask a coworker a question, so no time is wasted. If you are constantly needing to ask questions for a job task that has to be finished right now, you have very bad time management and project planning skills.
First off, my last post was responding to only the parts of your post I quoted. The two anecdotes you originally mentioned were clearly about people who were being jerks (although we only have one side of each story). I don't condone the way they reacted to you and others that were helping them. I mostly only had an issue with:
For in fact, a very intelligent person who knows how to get their hands dirty is vastly superior to a person who merely thinks.
A person can be a Nobel Laureate, yet if his car blows a fuse in the desert, he'll die just like anyone else who doesn't know how to fix it.
The first statement clearly shows you saying that an intelligent person with blue collar skills is vastly superior to someone with more cerebral skills. Most of my response was arguing against this point. You didn't just say those with hands-on skills were just as valuable, you said they were vastly superior. It was a very egotistical statement. No less egotistical than if I said my ability to write software is vastly superior to a mechanic's ability to fix my car.
Dear sir, you are getting your stories mixed up, not to mention you might want to go back to read what I wrote. [...] And she was an artist, not a Nobel Laureate.
As I said above, I was not referring to your anecdote about the artist. I was only referring to your comments about Nobel Laureates that cannot change their own spark plugs (and don't carry spares while traveling in the desert). I read and understood your post just fine.
There is a major difference between you and I. I have never ever found gaining knowledge of anything to be a waste of my time.
It lacks a lot of imagination to believe gaining knowledge is never a waste of time. Would learning all the cheat codes for all original Nintendo games be a good use of your time? What about if you don't even like video games? If you can understand why that would be a waste of time, you should also be able to see why learning how to rebuild an engine is also a waste of time for someone who hates that type of work. Even if I knew how to do it I would still pay someone else to do it (and simply getting a second or third opinion is more than good enough to stop a mechanic from swindling me).
I am not arguing that learning is a bad thing. My wife's two main complaints about me are that I don't like to clean and that I spend far too much money on books from Amazon. My reading in high school and my 20's was very generalist. But in my 30's it has almost all been targeted at my career. This is still a wide range of topics from Javascript to statistics to business process optimization to concurrency models. But I rarely spend much time reading about economics or history or sociology anymore.
I don't find those topics unimportant now. I just find others more important and I believe they teach me skills that make me more valuable. I don't think my route is more superior than yours, but I resent your implication that your route is superior to mine. I hate working with my hands, other than some hobbyist electronics / robotics work, but I don't think that has any negative impact on my worth. I still think outside of the box just fine and have a very wide range of skills.
I have always engaged the "elite" And if they get too high up on their high horse, I bring them down a few pegs.
For in fact, a very intelligent person who knows how to get their hands dirty is vastly superior to a person who merely thinks. A person can be a Nobel Laureate, yet if his car blows a fuse in the desert, he'll die just like anyone else who doesn't know how to fix it.
You seem to have quite an ego issue. Do you know how to grow all of the food in your diet? Do you know how to make your own penicillin? Could you perform a root canal on yourself or even a loved one? Even if you can do all of those things, I'm sure there are plenty of other skills you lack. Criticizing a Nobel Laureate, who have all probably done more in their lives than you ever will, just because s/he cannot fix their own car is asinine.
I am a software engineer, and have no delusions that my skills are somehow "better" than that of a car mechanic. But learning how to service my own car (other than the basics like changing my own oil) is a waste of my time. I can either be doing work or learning new skills in my area of expertise, which provides far more benefit to both myself and society as a whole. I also pay maids to clean my home each week and a service to do my yard work each week during the warm months. I do not believe myself to be a more superior human being than my maids, but my time is certainly more valuable from an economic standpoint.
I also share your disdain for intellectuals that think they are superior to others, but I hold the same contempt for blue collar guys who think their handyman skills somehow make themselves superior to those who do not share them. Separation of labor is an important thing, and for most people who earn enough to easily pay a mechanic, learning how to repair the windows of their own car is as valuable as knowing how to churn their own butter.
Take a look at documentaries from the 40s to 60s, at the peak of the making-humans-work-like-machines era, marvel at how much utterly monotonous work people used to be forced to do because we didn't have the technology to replace them with EVIL ROBOTS TAKING OUR JOBS! and then marvel again at how, despite replacing all those people with EVIL ROBOTS TAKING OUR JOBS!, most people who want to work can still find a job.
The situation over the next few decades will be much different than the last century. In the last century technology was only taking away manual labor jobs. Humans were able to cope because these jobs were replaced with knowledge based work. People aren't complaining that robots will take our jobs just because they are getting better at taking away manual labor jobs. They are worried that knowledge based work is the next to go.
There will still be a bastion of work in creative jobs (creative thinking, not the arts), but there is a real worry that there aren't enough of these creative jobs to go around. And there are worries that not everyone will be capable of these creative jobs. Office work worked great as a replacement for manual labor because most of the jobs did not creative much more intelligence than the jobs they were replacing. But not every factory worker or garbage man is capable of being a senior mechanical engineer, an actuary, or any number of other careers where critical thinking is very necessary.
If you are the type of person who struggled in algebra class in high school, the new economy will probably be a very scary place.
Most iPhone users only have an income of >25k, Since the US median is 60k, that means that the iPhone is sold to basically everyone.
Most iPhone users having over 25k income does not specify how many are in the 25k-60k range. Your source was using those numbers to show that more iPods than iPhones are owned by families with under 25k income. It wasn't saying that a significant number of iPhone owners are poor.
Also, I would assume more iPhones are owned by lower class families than iPads, since the total cost is amortized within their phone bill.
It's not clear that Apple could survive in isolation. A lot of their components are only as cheap as they are because of other lower-margin companies paying a big chunk of the R&D costs. When Apple was using PowerPC processors and were the only customer for IBM or Motorola for a particular chip, they found it very difficult to compete. They're designing their own ARM cores now, but they're benefitting enormously from the thriving ARM software ecosystem.
That is a good point. But generally aren't most R&D costs recouped by early expensive versions of products? Similar to TVs, where early models are very expensive but within 5-10 years they cost 10% of their original price. I am not aware of all the details of ARM development over the past 30 years, but it probably didn't always cater to lower-margin devices. Especially since a significant part of its early development was assisted by Apple and VLSI (neither company is known for catering to the low end market).
Indeed, most people believe that they would literally suffer if they consumed a health-promoting diet devoid of such indulgences. But, it is here that their perception is greatly in error. The reality is that humans are well designed to fully enjoy the subtler tastes of whole natural foods, but are poorly equipped to realize this fact.
Humans are well designed to fully enjoy life without electricity, refrigeration, air conditioning, toilet paper, non-bipedal locomotion, and any number of other modern indulgences. Just saying people can live happy lives without modern technology does not necessarily mean they don't live happier lives with them. While I agree with your basic premise that our lives would be happier if we ate better, I think that is because of other benefits of being healthy (more energy, less chronic health problems, etc). I have lived long periods of my life in both healthy and unhealthy diets, and I never enjoyed the healthier foods more (even when almost exclusively eating healthy foods for periods of a few years).
From what I can tell, because of how our bodies are designed, foods with high levels of fat, sugar, and salt really do taste better and those who give them up really are missing out. Regardless of the benefits they gain from being healthier. Technology that allows us to be perfectly healthy while eating all the junk food we want is obviously the best solution. And I don't just mean eating anything we want without gaining weight, because there are plenty of other health issues with junk food other than weight gain. We aren't there yet, but I am optimistic that we are getting close and may get there in my lifetime.
Nuh uh. I don't trust any entertainment company enough to allow them to zap my brain. Not in a million years.
That's fine; they will make plenty of money from those who are willing. Facebook makes plenty of money without the people who refuse to have a social media fingerprint as well. This will be no different.
I know you are being tongue and cheek, but very recent history is starting to show companies can make plenty of money just catering to the upper middle class. The richest company in the world (Apple) makes products that are only intended for a very small percentage of even a wealthy nation's population (46.3% of households with iPads have income over $100k). While rapid economic growth does need a sizable consumer class, I don't believe it necessarily needs a robust middle class. A much smaller but still sizable upper middle class will probably do just as well.
Of course, there are already large swaths of people who do little to no useful work and have high social status...
There has always been a small percentage of aristocrats in society who do not have to work because of their amassed wealth. Looking at how they spent their time is probably a decent indicator of how most of the population will spend their time 50-100 years from now. My guess is most people will put far more effort into their hobbies, and many of those hobbies will turn into part time jobs. All basic and even most non-basic needs will be covered by social welfare programs paid for by publicly owned mostly-automated industries. People will only work because they want to, and the very few undesirable jobs that can't be automated will pay excessively well.
At least that is the best possible outcome. Their are plenty of dystopian possibilities as well.