However, when a scientist says "We're fucked and here's why..." and then plops down 50 years worth of climate data showing there's a direct correlation between our use of fossil fuels, the rise in CO2 levels and the rise in ocean level, ambient ocean temperature and acidification of the oceans. Moreover when other scientists look at different data sets and corroborate those findings. I generally take these person seriously, giant boulder hurling hyperbole aside.
Getting the sign right isn't good enough. 50 years of climate data is not good enough. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What is so hard to understand about that?
It still looks like a case of Pascal's wager to me.
Thank you for your comments. Looks like a good plan. I think eventually job loss to the rest of the world will stabilize, but not during our career lifespans. And your investment strategy should be fairly resistant to inflation (and maybe the ongoing peculiarities of the US tax system) which I think will be a thing for the US over the next few decades.
The people quoted weren't MS employees as far as I could see. Eh, having said that, this does seem like someone playing out their pimp fantasy on the company dollar.
Actually, they don't. That's why driving hasn't already been replaced, unlike say, computing a FFT by hand or screwing on a million bottle caps. For example, in the US we're down to about 11 deaths and 1850 crashes per billion vehicle miles.
It's well documented that Foxconn is only keeping their employees under pressure from the Chinese gov't to avoid causing social unrest.
And it's well documented that the Earth is flat and J. R. "Bob" Dobbs created the universe during an epic drinking binge. The real question here. Is there any evidence, not merely documentation, for your claim?
Oh, and before everybody starts going on about "There'll be all these new jobs in the Server Sector" no, there won't.
I like how you destroy your argument so quickly. Of course, there will be these service sector jobs in addition to these manufacturing jobs.
If nobody has any money nobody will be able to hire people.
Why do you think that's going to happen? There's just unfounded assertion after unfounded assertion.
And as for the Industrial Revolution let's not forget there was 70 years of mass unemployment and misery. The Luddites who lost jobs never say employment again. Their Children didn't either. It wasn't until their grandchildren that we started seeing the new economy and by then the Luddites were dead and buried. Plus a lot of that was solved by shipping people overseas, but there really isn't an 'overseas' anymore. We've already colonized the new world.
And we're retconning history again. The old economy couldn't sustain the population growth Europe experienced. For example, the Irish potato famine didn't happen because of the industrial revolution. Instead, a lot of people died because someone shoehorned most of Ireland into an obsolete farming model that broke badly when the main crop died off. The same would have happened sooner or later for any high population country trying the same obsolete feudal model.
Would it be too much for you to read my post? I still stand by my words.
Pakistan didn't split off from India. It never was part of India and actually came into being the day before India did. Nor was it "two provinces", but parts of several provinces (Baluchistan, Bengal, Punjab, Sindh, Northwest Frontier) and a number of "princely states". Nor did East Pakistan just "become" Bangladesh. It took a quarter century and winning a significant civil war.
In the second, you seem to be justify low wages and bad working conditions because it makes them competitive with a place that provides low wages and bad working conditions. It's called Bangladesh.
And you need to work on your perception. I'll just note that like many important real world things, pretending labor competition doesn't exist, doesn't actually make it go away.
Yea, right. They wouldn't use the same manufacturing techniques as for large scale production. Even throwing in the costs of testing to milspec, they probably would have made significant profit at a tenth the price.
Sexual harassment is all about how you feel personally about a situation.
No, it's not. It's about recurring behavior that can be objectively viewed as sexual harassment. "Leaned to close" is not sexual harassment. But repeatedly leaning too close, after being asked to stop doing that, can be sexual harassment.
The obvious rebuttal is that apparently there is gold in them thar hills. Baiting for heterosexual men probably works profitably to increase sales of games, else they wouldn't do so much of it.
And really, how is this any different from sexuality in movies? What can we say about the professionalism of a major movie studio that might spend millions to market someone's ass?
No, When India gained independence, 2 provinces split off because they were Muslim-majority and didn't want to be under the control of the Hindu majority.
West Pakistan became simply Pakistan. East Pakistan became Bangladesh.
Way wrong. Pakistan and India were created at the same time in 1947. East Bangladesh became independent from the rest of Pakistan in 1971 after a nasty genocide and war, supported by India.
It's because the wage scales and living conditions are at the level that the West is still trying to force its own workers to. It's a true capitalist's paradise, with minimal regulation which can be greased aside if you have enough capital and everyone is constantly looking for new and creative ways to be "entrepreneurial" without much respect for whether they're doing in in a legal manner or not.
Welcome to Poverty 101. Poor people aren't worth much. This means among other things, that anything more than "minimal regulation" kills people through starvation. You can complain about the lower regulations of Bangladesh, but a serious attempt to implement developed world regulation on Bangladesh would destroy the country's economy and many of its people.
And once again, I see an idiot ignoring labor competition. If you're competing with workers who can do your job for a fraction of the cost, you will see a decline in wages whether someone tries to "force" you or not.
Actually, it's not. A ship that can manage constant acceleration, even if the rate of acceleration is low will be able to attain higher velocities than a ship which is limited to short bursts of acceleration. (Hint: short bursts are done because of fuel supply limitations)
Read up on the Oberth effect. A burst of acceleration in a gravity well can be worth considerably more than the same acceleration outside of the gravity well. It won't compensate for massively more delta-v (for example, if your constant acceleration propulsion can provide an order of magnitude more delta-v over the desired trip endpoints).
Look, it get it. Paying people wages and benefits sucks. And your customers are getting poorer and poorer by the generation and you can't sawdust the food anymore. I get that. But please, do not pretend to me that all these fancy gadgets are somehow saving you time or money or resulting in in any way better value for your customers money. You are commiditising your niche of the market and it is the sword you will fall on.
I don't think he's pretending, buttercup. It's interesting how people still push these myths despite half a century in the US that reality doesn't work that way.
That's what he wants to make this about, but in reality his actual reasons for using robotics are
This is just stupid. We all agree that employers will make radical changes in their workplaces just to save money. We also have 50 years of evidence of this in the US. So why is it a stretch to believe that considerable increases in labor costs from regulation and taxes will result in considerable decreases in number employed?
This happened in the industrial revolution when mechanical devices took over automatable tasks. It's just that it's coming for a different class of worker this time.
As noted elsewhere, the majority of people aren't employed. Merely observing that a lot of jobs are replaced by technology misses a huge part of the picture of the past few centuries. Technology also creates jobs.
It's not if people get replaced but when. The only thing that changes is the exact spot in time where the curves cross.
Which in itself is a pretty big deal. We should also remember that this also speeds up adoption of automation to work around the failures of regulation.
But the worst part is that this inhibits new job creation from that technology development. It's stupid to get so fatalistic about new job creation (and then double down with economically destructive policies and regulations), when we have plenty of evidence throughout the world that technology still creates new jobs.
Okay, so what's the plan in 5 years when the machines cost half as much? Or 5 years after that, when the machines cost half as much again?
They can always work other jobs. You know, for centuries, automation meant more employment. It's only when employing people is severely punished, that we don't see a lot of new job creation.
If you really cared, you'd try to make it easier to employ people rather than make things worse.
More than that, if minimum wage employees get pay cuts and job losses like he is threatening... who does he think will have the money to buy his robot-made burgers?
He can always sell to the Chinese and Indians who don't have this problem.
Once again, we see there are consequences to a generation of screwing over employers while ignoring reality. Because you forced Suzie's costs up by another $3 per hour, the employer got a machine instead. This is basic supply and demand. Raise the cost of human labor and the demand for it goes down.
You can babble on about living wages, greed, and similar crap, but that rhetoric doesn't get Suzie that job or feed her. $0 per hour is much further from a living wage than whatever Suzie was making before.
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
What's amazing about it? It's true. And if it comes to societal breakdown so that the gated communities no longer offer sufficient protection, they can hop on a plane and be somewhere else in the world in hours. Your threats are empty.
I get tired of people using the excuse of poverty or worse, some vapid notion of "inequality" to make things worse for everyone.
You spilled it too early, so now there will be copycat movies hitching a ride on your blockbuster. Prepare for Lampreys on a Barge and Rugrats in a Car. Coming to theaters near you!
Slashdot Mirror
So climate data going back to 1966 isn't good enough? What would constitute good enough evidence?
30 years is roughly the minimum scale for climate. The second replier has the right idea with the millions of years of climate proxy data.
Weighing the evidence of human cased climate change against the evidence of god(s) existing, I'll put my money on climate change.
Which climate change? Before, you had very specific effects and consequences. Don't move the goalposts.
However, when a scientist says "We're fucked and here's why..." and then plops down 50 years worth of climate data showing there's a direct correlation between our use of fossil fuels, the rise in CO2 levels and the rise in ocean level, ambient ocean temperature and acidification of the oceans. Moreover when other scientists look at different data sets and corroborate those findings. I generally take these person seriously, giant boulder hurling hyperbole aside.
Getting the sign right isn't good enough. 50 years of climate data is not good enough. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What is so hard to understand about that?
It still looks like a case of Pascal's wager to me.
Sure, lots of factories spin...
It's a lot easier than getting gravity in free fall.
things you assume like piling stuff up and moving it with conveyor belts require gravity
They require acceleration. You can get that by spinning your structure slightly. You also have cheap access to vacuum.
What's more relevant about that statistic? What does that tell us about how competent US drivers are?
Thank you for your comments. Looks like a good plan. I think eventually job loss to the rest of the world will stabilize, but not during our career lifespans. And your investment strategy should be fairly resistant to inflation (and maybe the ongoing peculiarities of the US tax system) which I think will be a thing for the US over the next few decades.
The people quoted weren't MS employees as far as I could see. Eh, having said that, this does seem like someone playing out their pimp fantasy on the company dollar.
Napoleon was only the, some say inevitable, aftermath of the rein of terror after the French Revolution.
And some say the Moon is made of green cheese. Just because Napoleon might be inevitable doesn't mean he had to be competent.
But this was a corporately funded event specifically for the employees
You sure? Sounds like it was open to GDC attendees which mostly weren't MS employees.
Once FoxNews gets into the news space all other news sources cease to exist.
Humans suck at driving.
Actually, they don't. That's why driving hasn't already been replaced, unlike say, computing a FFT by hand or screwing on a million bottle caps. For example, in the US we're down to about 11 deaths and 1850 crashes per billion vehicle miles.
And Jevons paradox - which explains why human labor is desired more than ever, due to its increased productivity.
It's the disinterested customer that costs the money. The contractor will bill whatever they can get away with.
It's well documented that Foxconn is only keeping their employees under pressure from the Chinese gov't to avoid causing social unrest.
And it's well documented that the Earth is flat and J. R. "Bob" Dobbs created the universe during an epic drinking binge. The real question here. Is there any evidence, not merely documentation, for your claim?
Oh, and before everybody starts going on about "There'll be all these new jobs in the Server Sector" no, there won't.
I like how you destroy your argument so quickly. Of course, there will be these service sector jobs in addition to these manufacturing jobs.
If nobody has any money nobody will be able to hire people.
Why do you think that's going to happen? There's just unfounded assertion after unfounded assertion.
And as for the Industrial Revolution let's not forget there was 70 years of mass unemployment and misery. The Luddites who lost jobs never say employment again. Their Children didn't either. It wasn't until their grandchildren that we started seeing the new economy and by then the Luddites were dead and buried. Plus a lot of that was solved by shipping people overseas, but there really isn't an 'overseas' anymore. We've already colonized the new world.
And we're retconning history again. The old economy couldn't sustain the population growth Europe experienced. For example, the Irish potato famine didn't happen because of the industrial revolution. Instead, a lot of people died because someone shoehorned most of Ireland into an obsolete farming model that broke badly when the main crop died off. The same would have happened sooner or later for any high population country trying the same obsolete feudal model.
Pakistan didn't split off from India. It never was part of India and actually came into being the day before India did. Nor was it "two provinces", but parts of several provinces (Baluchistan, Bengal, Punjab, Sindh, Northwest Frontier) and a number of "princely states". Nor did East Pakistan just "become" Bangladesh. It took a quarter century and winning a significant civil war.
In the second, you seem to be justify low wages and bad working conditions because it makes them competitive with a place that provides low wages and bad working conditions. It's called Bangladesh.
And you need to work on your perception. I'll just note that like many important real world things, pretending labor competition doesn't exist, doesn't actually make it go away.
Yea, right. They wouldn't use the same manufacturing techniques as for large scale production. Even throwing in the costs of testing to milspec, they probably would have made significant profit at a tenth the price.
Sexual harassment is all about how you feel personally about a situation.
No, it's not. It's about recurring behavior that can be objectively viewed as sexual harassment. "Leaned to close" is not sexual harassment. But repeatedly leaning too close, after being asked to stop doing that, can be sexual harassment.
The obvious rebuttal is that apparently there is gold in them thar hills. Baiting for heterosexual men probably works profitably to increase sales of games, else they wouldn't do so much of it.
And really, how is this any different from sexuality in movies? What can we say about the professionalism of a major movie studio that might spend millions to market someone's ass?
No, When India gained independence, 2 provinces split off because they were Muslim-majority and didn't want to be under the control of the Hindu majority.
West Pakistan became simply Pakistan. East Pakistan became Bangladesh.
Way wrong. Pakistan and India were created at the same time in 1947. East Bangladesh became independent from the rest of Pakistan in 1971 after a nasty genocide and war, supported by India.
It's because the wage scales and living conditions are at the level that the West is still trying to force its own workers to. It's a true capitalist's paradise, with minimal regulation which can be greased aside if you have enough capital and everyone is constantly looking for new and creative ways to be "entrepreneurial" without much respect for whether they're doing in in a legal manner or not.
Welcome to Poverty 101. Poor people aren't worth much. This means among other things, that anything more than "minimal regulation" kills people through starvation. You can complain about the lower regulations of Bangladesh, but a serious attempt to implement developed world regulation on Bangladesh would destroy the country's economy and many of its people.
And once again, I see an idiot ignoring labor competition. If you're competing with workers who can do your job for a fraction of the cost, you will see a decline in wages whether someone tries to "force" you or not.
Actually, it's not. A ship that can manage constant acceleration, even if the rate of acceleration is low will be able to attain higher velocities than a ship which is limited to short bursts of acceleration. (Hint: short bursts are done because of fuel supply limitations)
Read up on the Oberth effect. A burst of acceleration in a gravity well can be worth considerably more than the same acceleration outside of the gravity well. It won't compensate for massively more delta-v (for example, if your constant acceleration propulsion can provide an order of magnitude more delta-v over the desired trip endpoints).
Look, it get it. Paying people wages and benefits sucks. And your customers are getting poorer and poorer by the generation and you can't sawdust the food anymore. I get that. But please, do not pretend to me that all these fancy gadgets are somehow saving you time or money or resulting in in any way better value for your customers money. You are commiditising your niche of the market and it is the sword you will fall on.
I don't think he's pretending, buttercup. It's interesting how people still push these myths despite half a century in the US that reality doesn't work that way.
That's what he wants to make this about, but in reality his actual reasons for using robotics are
This is just stupid. We all agree that employers will make radical changes in their workplaces just to save money. We also have 50 years of evidence of this in the US. So why is it a stretch to believe that considerable increases in labor costs from regulation and taxes will result in considerable decreases in number employed?
This happened in the industrial revolution when mechanical devices took over automatable tasks. It's just that it's coming for a different class of worker this time.
As noted elsewhere, the majority of people aren't employed. Merely observing that a lot of jobs are replaced by technology misses a huge part of the picture of the past few centuries. Technology also creates jobs.
It's not if people get replaced but when. The only thing that changes is the exact spot in time where the curves cross.
Which in itself is a pretty big deal. We should also remember that this also speeds up adoption of automation to work around the failures of regulation.
But the worst part is that this inhibits new job creation from that technology development. It's stupid to get so fatalistic about new job creation (and then double down with economically destructive policies and regulations), when we have plenty of evidence throughout the world that technology still creates new jobs.
Okay, so what's the plan in 5 years when the machines cost half as much? Or 5 years after that, when the machines cost half as much again?
They can always work other jobs. You know, for centuries, automation meant more employment. It's only when employing people is severely punished, that we don't see a lot of new job creation.
If you really cared, you'd try to make it easier to employ people rather than make things worse.
More than that, if minimum wage employees get pay cuts and job losses like he is threatening... who does he think will have the money to buy his robot-made burgers?
He can always sell to the Chinese and Indians who don't have this problem.
You can babble on about living wages, greed, and similar crap, but that rhetoric doesn't get Suzie that job or feed her. $0 per hour is much further from a living wage than whatever Suzie was making before.
I'm always amazed that the rich think they can hide in their gated communities and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
What's amazing about it? It's true. And if it comes to societal breakdown so that the gated communities no longer offer sufficient protection, they can hop on a plane and be somewhere else in the world in hours. Your threats are empty.
I get tired of people using the excuse of poverty or worse, some vapid notion of "inequality" to make things worse for everyone.
You spilled it too early, so now there will be copycat movies hitching a ride on your blockbuster. Prepare for Lampreys on a Barge and Rugrats in a Car. Coming to theaters near you!