True, nothing is infinite. Though I'd point out the story barely covers a single century (hinted at by the first person narrator living only a single lifetime)- far to short for entropy to be a problem- and includes two major forms of population control, contraceptives in the food of those in terrafoam, and nearly perfect virutal sex being available to those in The Australia Project (some would say this later is already begining to come into existance in some of the more X-rated areas of the online game Second Life). Nowhere does it say that The Australia Project will truly go on forever; if anything, entropy is just delayed (as opposed to being eliminated) by recycling and the reduced resource usage of those who choose to live entirely in VR.
As for The Oregon Project- the point is to set up an infrastructure that handles the transistion from labor scarcity to labor surplus- not solve all the world's woes at once.
A potentialloophole in the system has been found- at least for those who are still middle class. Globalization or automation, either way basing life on the scarcity of labor is a doomed concept, so it's time to start preparing for the next stage, by pooling our resources now to buy up resources to live on when labor cost descends to zero.
Perhaps this is true in China, but I just found out that my India developers are refusing to work tomorrow because of the Good Friday holiday. Turns out that just about every Christian, Hindu, and Muslim holiday is nationally considered a day off. This bones me supremely, because I've got stuff due at the end of the week, and my developers are on vacation starting this morning (thursday) until monday.
Did you remind them that Good Friday, by ancient Christian tradition, does not start until 3pm?
With what goal? To achieve The Matrix? A permanent fantasy? Have you considered the psychological effects of that?
Yes, not only have I, but also the author of the sci-fi story I reference. He actually considers it inevitable that a portion of the population will move into permanent virtual reality fantasy land. I'm not sure it's so inevitable, but having it available will certainly reduce the resource requirements of that portion of the population, so I'm OK with it.
A part of this seems to me that you're concentrating on the needs of the individual- where I'm thinking about the needs of the community. From the standpoint of a community in an economy of labor surplus, entertainment to fill the days of those who are not creative is an absolute neccessity. One that can already be seen addressed in mass transit (airplane in-flight movies spring to mind) and even individual vehicles (DVD players in minivans to keep the kids quiet?). Plus, it gives creative people a large audience for their works, which is also a good thing.
Sex, in the sense of humans having two genders, and evolving in specific ways because of that, is pretty important to understanding human behavior.
And why would a labor surplus change this at all? Sex isn't everything. It is important, and more leisure time will make it more important, but it might surprise you to know there are already human beings who live their entire lives without it.
I reduced it to a throwaway comment about "hot chicks" in an earlier message but that was probably a bad idea for communication, if you're not very familiar with sociobiology. Have you read Dawkins' "Selfish Gene", for example? It sounds as though you want to undo a billion years or so of intra-species evolutionary competition by the application of some machines.
Competition will continue. You don't need to have an economy based in greed and anonymity for competition; in fact in many ways healthy competition requires a LACK of greed and anonymity (after all, if you want to be seen as a desireable mate, what good does it do to hide your actions?) The point of this isn't to eliminate competition, it's to eliminate inequity in resource allocation. Remember the Star Trek Next Generation episode where they thawed out 20th century humans, and the rich guy asked Picard what the point without money or power was? The competition didn't end with the end of scarcity- it just moved to self-improvement.
There's plenty of fiction exploring the consequences of applying machines to control human nature - see Imagining Futures, Dramatizing Fears, particularly the sections about losing our souls, losing control, and supplantation. I've read about a dozen of the books mentioned in the section on losing our souls, for example. Almost all of them seem more realistic to me than Brain's story, which seems mainly to be a happily-ever-after fantasy with little thought for any possible downside or limitations of reality.
I've read much of that kind of dystopian fiction as well. In fact, Brain's story contains such a dystopian warning; where in the capitalist society used machines to control human nature for the good of the minority instead of for the good of the majority. The Better and Better rule prevents this somewhat in the utopia, in that people are freed to be creative. A good real life example is JK Rowling, quite the rich and famous author now. But Harry Potter had to wait until she was on welfare- as a single mom working minimum wage she simply didn't have time to write. The problem with the "losing our souls, losing control, supplanation" people is that they don't realize that the increase in technology is inevitable. There's no way to actually avoid it. We can slow it down, but eventually machines WILL do all of the "menial labor" and "distasteful" jobs for us. Government is one of those neccessary evils; so it will eventually be done by machines. We can either have an infrastructure that promotes human freedom infor
I'm just curious, but exactly what "baby steps" did you take?
So far? Creating a Paypal account, a webpage, and selling somewhere between 3 and 10 shares of stock at $10 a share, for which the only thing investors will get for sure is a PDF with their e-mail, shipping address, and stock number for each share purchased.
When that gets to 250 shares sold, I'll take the next step- upping the share price to $1000, and creating a non-profit corporation to own the investment fund, and actually invest in some companies that are working on such technologies. If that investment fund grows to $100,000 (either with stock sales or actual investments) I'll take the next step of looking into combining the technology into automated retail outlets, and investing in those. If the fund ever hits $1,000,000,000 in net worth, then the next step is to start buying up land that has natural resources but for some reason or other isn't profitable to extract those natural resources with human labor. As well as picking a city site for the headquarters. If the fund ever actually builds the city AND has enough robotic labor to build the utopia, at that point the fund will hire detectives to track down stockholders and their heirs- and offer them citizenship, at the rate of one person per share of stock. Other people can still buy their way in of course, and for those who don't want to join at that point, stock can be transfered to other people.
That's the basic concept in a nutshell.
As for the story, it was good, though it lost me a bit in ignoring things like entropy or the ability of computers to be automatically compatible with each other.
How did the story ignore entropy? That's something I missed.
As for the compatibility, well, that will come when you have an AI smart enough to do it's own Enterprise Data Interchange algorithims- which aren't exactly the most complex thing in the world to come up with. Import an Excel Spreadsheet into Access using the built in wizard in Office 2007 and you'll see the start of that.
But it was still interesting, especially in the more "near term" predictions (realities?) concerning retail management.
Those predictions are the important part to me. But I still have a problem with the timeline in the story- I personally think we have a century or two before corporate and government computers join to the point where a blacklisted employee will be automatically rendered over to welfare. I hope anyway. My baby steps won't be much good otherwise- you can't build a utopia without a much larger amount of AI, and you can't build the utopia if all the land is already bought up by the narrowing upper class.
But that's a separate question from whether it's relevant to the Amazon Mechanical Turk process, and my point is just that its relevance is not all that great
I didn't address this before, it just passed me by. But the relevance is entirely the other way around. The Amazon Mechanical Turk Process includes two automated processes that are small algorithims that could eventually turn into something like Manna: Automated rating of past performance, and automated classification of jobs and human resources. With these two- the datamining and advances of Manna become OBVIOUS and INEVITABLE. Whether that will be used to help the majority of humanity, or just those rich enough to be owners in the economy, remains to be seen. My intent is to set up a non-profit corporation with rules that lawy the infrastructure for the first, becase I fear that the second will be the default behavior (just as it has been with every other technological advance made in the last 200 years).
So long as everyone agrees with this, you get your utopia. The problem with this world is that people inevitably want to change the rules.. so what do you do? Program the robots not to let them? Sounds like tyranny to me.
That's one option- myself I'd add one more rule to that. Participation is voluntary. Heirs have the right to reject, transfer, or even sell, their right to be citizens if it's no longer in their best interest to live in the utopia. The bet is that robotic labor will create such a dystopia, that few will choose such an act. But it's actually better for the rest if a few choose to not become citizens- more resources for the rest of the community.
But yes, as a basic, the operating system for the colony would have to reject any requisition of materials and labor that exceeds the total energy/resource budget of the colony, which would enforce the above rules.
Yes, it is a tyranny- but it's one that is rather easy to escape. I suspect Mr. Brain's ideas will influence several competing projects- with slightly different rules. Just choose the one you want to live in, or choose to attempt to live in the default that evolves naturally.
No, it's an economical one. Since robotic labor is free to all in the community, why would they pay a human being to do what a robot can do better and more consistently?
Because after all, the one thing that robots can't provide is anything that's unique to humans.
And what is unique to humans? Or are you back on sex again? Couldn't the robots be programmed to build an artificial environment so convincing that you think you have everything?
Will prostitution be illegal in this society?
No, but neither will it neccessarily be encouraged. If a woman can have all of her physical material needs taken care of by the robots, why would she prostitute herself to somebody else's desires? Already prostitutes have to compete with online porn and immitation human beings; this competition will only get stronger as technology advances.
Won't many people prefer to have interactions with humans for some sorts of services, such as medical care, nursing, teaching, etc.?
Why should they, when information is available for free, and the machines provide error free care without cost (other than, of course, the basic resource cost)? Why put your life into the hands of a fallible human doctor who might mix up medications and kill you, when you have the error-free version available?
Of course, all of these arguments are NOT unique to the community- these are questions we'll all have to face as human labor is slowly replaced with robotic labor. There is nothing a human being can do that a robot can't do cheaper and better; this can be either a blessing or a curse. The intent of The Oregon Project is to set up the infrastructure for it to be a blessing rather than leaving it to the default of being a curse.
Perhaps the creation is an artwork, created without the help of robots.
Perhaps, but then what's to stop somebody from scanning it in on a molecular level, then using the robots to duplicate it for anybody who wants a copy?
Just as today, we can make duplicates of artwork but they're not as valuable as the original. In fact, in the environment you're describing, I'd say it's extremely likely that it's precisely those things that robots can't do that will be considered valuable, and people will tend to compete for them and value them highly, unless they're somehow prevented from doing so. And the people with more of the desirable services or things or the ability to create them will be considered better mates, and other people will be jealous of them, etc.
So what? If that's the case, then that's the decision of the community; it isn't like you can't just order the robots to recreate exactly the same environment all over again. Sure, some people will be vain enough to want "the original" and "only one", but there's no need for those wishes to constrain somebody else in the community.
I'm pointing out that your system's success depends implicitly on people agreeing not to compete, and your logic appears to be that such competition is unproductive, that cooperation and agreement to live within certain constraints would lead to a better end result. Which may be so -- but the problem is in getting people not to compete. Hence the reference to the Red Queen. If you provide everyone with the same baseline access to resources, all you're likely to do is establish a minimum above which people will strive to rise.
I think you missunderstand- my system's success DEPENDS upon people striving to rise above the minimum. Some will succeed. And their work will be duplicated to raise the minimum. Which in turn will allow others to strive to rise above the minimum. Spiraling upwards. Without inflation in the minimum, the community would merely stagnate.
Another problem is that you're designing for the ultimate situation in which the robots can already do absolutely everything humans can do (with the possible exception of being human) --
This is the exact point that I'm questioning. It's not that I don't like the idea. It sounds great. But I'm saying that it doesn't seem realistic, and that unreality will cause the system to fail. Having an equal and finite amount of resources available to everyone doesn't achieve what you suggest, and that's almost provable. For example, what if I create something or provide a service that other people want?
The robots provide all the services, so you're immediately reduced to creating something other people want.
Can they pay me with their credits?
Why would they, when your original order to the robots is available on the public web and they can just spend their credits drectly with the robots to create duplicates? Now turn it around- what if you design something only you or one or two others want? Also fine, you'll just spend your energy credits with the robots to create it, and you and those one or two others can have it, no problem, no skin off the nose of the rest of the commune who are spending their credits on things THEY want. The credits are only to track demand and prevent the overrun of scarce resources. The robotic labor is in surplus, and thus is basically free. The scarcity is transfered to the resources.
Perhaps, if your utopia is only going to consist of self-selecting people who've all agreed not to compete in (allegedly) unproductive ways, there'd be some limited chance of success - as there are with communes today - but that's likely to imply (a) limits on scalability and (b) if you really succeed, external competition. I look forward to the robot wars!
Both are likely- I'm not the only person with these ideas, which provides (b), and (a) will be due to the $10 cost of the original 250 shares and the $1000 cost of additional shares. But I'm more interested in your idea of "unproductive ways". If labor is in surplus (and this is the only way such a system will work, with a virtually infinite supply of robotic labor and the only real scarcity being in energy and resources, both of which cost credits to access), then what exactly does "unproductive ways" MEAN?
It's not my personal work- just something I ran across. I find the timeline rather troublesome myself- I can't figure out if it is too compact or too loose. I just note that there have been some very interesting developments in the last 5 years that makes the story somewhat prophetic- Amazon's Mechanical Turk method is just the latest of several equally unsettling developments. Another good one is the 1:8 replacement of store checkout clerks with automated checkout stands, which you can now see in a variety of establishments. An automated fast food restaurant isn't that far off either- McDonalds has now replaced fry cooks with robots that can make fries and hashbrowns; the grill isn't that much more complex, and the same stores that have the fry robot already have a drinks robot. Will it happen so fast that people won't be able to retrain for other jobs? We've already got a segment of the population that has been replaced in this fashion.
It's enough that I'm trying another idea from that sci-fi work: Next week I'll be anouncing pre-IPO Angel Investor stock sales for The Oregon Project.
finally they do the thinking for us and keep us isolated.
That's the dystopian part. The last couple of chapters also have a very interesting utopian part, where instead the human beings keep doing the thinking, but create a Roman Citizen type civilization on robotic slave labor as opposed to human slave labor- with goods ordered through a corporate intranet and resources tracked through energy credits to create that resource based on the total energy production capability of the civilization.
If you want your project to succeed, I'd recommend applying some critical thought. The story in question is a fantasy, and I hinted at some of the reasons why. A much more likely scenario is that the utopia and dystopia would evolve towards a similar balance, with some different details, for the kinds of reasons I mentioned. Blaming humanity's ills on the system in use (e.g. capitalist, socialist) is just scapegoating that avoids the real problem, which is human nature.
True enough. But in either case, investing first in the creation of the technology, and secondly on natural resources to support a refuge in a system where labor is in surplus, seems to me to be a good idea. As does removing government from humanity by reducing bureaucratic decision trees down to rules in an expert system (which is how I'm making my money RIGHT NOW in the Oregon Department of Transportation- as time goes on the public demands more road capacity and less human oversight of that road capacity, so we're replacing bureaucrats with computer programs). It's worth throwing a few dollars right now to invest in an investment corporation to think about such things.
Maybe read some sociobiology - for a popular intro, you could try The Red Queen by Matt Ridley. Do you think that the availability of a standard number of credits for everyone is somehow going to stop sexual competition?
No, but why would it matter? The point is to provide a refuge from having your life degraded to increase somebody's stock price, not to cure all the ills of mankind.
To put it crudely, who'll get the hot chicks in your utopia?
The ones who actually care to date the "hot chicks" instead of having a wife like mine, who is pretty plain on the outside but matches my personality on the inside, where it actually counts.
On what basis will people compete?
On whatever basis they want to compete. As long as they don't interfere with my rights to live, why should I care?
Are you sure that control of resources will have nothing to do with it, and if so, why?
The main difference between say, 1930 and now, has been scarcity of labor. Labor has gotten significantly less scarce with automation. This has caused two major changes economically. Control of resources has become more, not less important as labor has become less scarce. And the gap between the rich and the poor has widened.
What this is looking forward to is a time when labor will be in surplus instead of being scarce. Control of resources will become paramount, and the rich will be a minority and the poor will be the majority- just like in every other human society that has ever existed. The only difference- it will be cheaper to hire a robot than a poor person to do your bidding, expanding the gap between the rich and the poor even faster. Thus it makes sense to form a corporation that will allow it's members to share control of resources, and "reserve" a place to live while we still can- before the 2000 families that already own 75% of the world own 99% of the world.
I don't really care if you believe in the scenario or not. I don't really care what the future members of the corporation I create choose to do with that creation. A Utopia is only ONE possible future among many. It's also entirely possible that it will fail. But if I don't try, then it certainly won't succeed.
I have been thinking about this critically for quite a number of years now. I'm not even sure if "energy credits" is the proper way to track demand yet. It may well not be. Smarter people that I will buy into the system- they'll create the operating system of the network. That operating system will determine the "government" of the land the corporation buys up. The only thing I'm smart enough to see is that there is a potential crisis point coming. I don't think for a moment that the commune created by the corporation will solve all of mankind's ills, or even just a small portion of them. But it will eliminate power over your neighbor and greed from the equation, and enforce that with an expert system. Don't like it- don't buy a share. It's that simple.
I should have said it was sci-fi. Or more properly- near future dystopian/utopian (more near future now than it was when it was written- I first came across it a couple of years ago and from the Blog the author runs, it's a bit older than that). I just find it interesting that this is another step towards the technology of this prophetic sci-fi story. He's also right that the real problem to solve is robotic vision and more minitureization, not actual computing power; I've seen AIs that can make these types of very bureaucratic decisions just fine.
A better story would have explored the possible problems: what are the effects of the human competitive spirit in such a scenario? Would some people, having the freedom to create, use their creations as leverage to gain access to more resources than are available to everyone else? To what extent would that devalue the basic credits that everyone gets, turning people who live on only those credits into the equivalent of welfare recipients (albeit wealthier ones relative to those living in terrafoam)? Etc.
I believe in it enough that this week I've taken the first baby steps towards setting up The Oregon Project- because I know enough about the state of the art in AI to see that all of the advances in the story are PROBABLE- though maybe not on that timeline. I may well be dead before The Oregon Project creates it's utopia, or even moves past the point of investing in companies that are working on this technology into investing in land and natural resources. It may take 300 years. But if it saves my descendants from living on welfare in a capitalistic system where labor is in surplus, it's worth me investing a few dollars today.
It's just Manna. Or at least, the bare bones beginings of an automated management program that could take the retail and manufacturing sectors by storm...soon every teenager will be wearing a headset with a button to hit to acknowledge the order or completion of a task.
Plus the costuming was all wrong. What the hell was that tiny second head about? Didn't they read Douglas's original memo which stated that Zaphod was supposed to be double from the penis up (and obviously so)?
Not for those of us who have visual overstimulation induced migraines. This just means that they've stolen several hours of my precious DARKNESS in return for no monetary advantage.
#1- the summary didn't mention Bush's Administration, only the US Congress.
#2- if you weren't personally affected by having to patch Windows systems in a specific order, then you must be lucky enough not to have an administration that insists on using Microsoft from the Exchange Servers all the way down to cell phones (with Outlook along the way) for meeting scheduling.
Slashdot Mirror
True, nothing is infinite. Though I'd point out the story barely covers a single century (hinted at by the first person narrator living only a single lifetime)- far to short for entropy to be a problem- and includes two major forms of population control, contraceptives in the food of those in terrafoam, and nearly perfect virutal sex being available to those in The Australia Project (some would say this later is already begining to come into existance in some of the more X-rated areas of the online game Second Life). Nowhere does it say that The Australia Project will truly go on forever; if anything, entropy is just delayed (as opposed to being eliminated) by recycling and the reduced resource usage of those who choose to live entirely in VR.
As for The Oregon Project- the point is to set up an infrastructure that handles the transistion from labor scarcity to labor surplus- not solve all the world's woes at once.
A potential loophole in the system has been found- at least for those who are still middle class. Globalization or automation, either way basing life on the scarcity of labor is a doomed concept, so it's time to start preparing for the next stage, by pooling our resources now to buy up resources to live on when labor cost descends to zero.
Yep- it was so obvious that this was a myth and a lie to begin with. It's very sad that resarch dollars had to be wasted on this.
Perhaps this is true in China, but I just found out that my India developers are refusing to work tomorrow because of the Good Friday holiday. Turns out that just about every Christian, Hindu, and Muslim holiday is nationally considered a day off. This bones me supremely, because I've got stuff due at the end of the week, and my developers are on vacation starting this morning (thursday) until monday.
Did you remind them that Good Friday, by ancient Christian tradition, does not start until 3pm?
Gee, American corporations put profit above every other consideration- call the evening news.
The sad part is it took an actual university study to reveal the lie.
With what goal? To achieve The Matrix? A permanent fantasy? Have you considered the psychological effects of that?
Yes, not only have I, but also the author of the sci-fi story I reference. He actually considers it inevitable that a portion of the population will move into permanent virtual reality fantasy land. I'm not sure it's so inevitable, but having it available will certainly reduce the resource requirements of that portion of the population, so I'm OK with it.
A part of this seems to me that you're concentrating on the needs of the individual- where I'm thinking about the needs of the community. From the standpoint of a community in an economy of labor surplus, entertainment to fill the days of those who are not creative is an absolute neccessity. One that can already be seen addressed in mass transit (airplane in-flight movies spring to mind) and even individual vehicles (DVD players in minivans to keep the kids quiet?). Plus, it gives creative people a large audience for their works, which is also a good thing.
Sex, in the sense of humans having two genders, and evolving in specific ways because of that, is pretty important to understanding human behavior.
And why would a labor surplus change this at all? Sex isn't everything. It is important, and more leisure time will make it more important, but it might surprise you to know there are already human beings who live their entire lives without it.
I reduced it to a throwaway comment about "hot chicks" in an earlier message but that was probably a bad idea for communication, if you're not very familiar with sociobiology. Have you read Dawkins' "Selfish Gene", for example? It sounds as though you want to undo a billion years or so of intra-species evolutionary competition by the application of some machines.
Competition will continue. You don't need to have an economy based in greed and anonymity for competition; in fact in many ways healthy competition requires a LACK of greed and anonymity (after all, if you want to be seen as a desireable mate, what good does it do to hide your actions?) The point of this isn't to eliminate competition, it's to eliminate inequity in resource allocation. Remember the Star Trek Next Generation episode where they thawed out 20th century humans, and the rich guy asked Picard what the point without money or power was? The competition didn't end with the end of scarcity- it just moved to self-improvement.
There's plenty of fiction exploring the consequences of applying machines to control human nature - see Imagining Futures, Dramatizing Fears, particularly the sections about losing our souls, losing control, and supplantation. I've read about a dozen of the books mentioned in the section on losing our souls, for example. Almost all of them seem more realistic to me than Brain's story, which seems mainly to be a happily-ever-after fantasy with little thought for any possible downside or limitations of reality.
I've read much of that kind of dystopian fiction as well. In fact, Brain's story contains such a dystopian warning; where in the capitalist society used machines to control human nature for the good of the minority instead of for the good of the majority. The Better and Better rule prevents this somewhat in the utopia, in that people are freed to be creative. A good real life example is JK Rowling, quite the rich and famous author now. But Harry Potter had to wait until she was on welfare- as a single mom working minimum wage she simply didn't have time to write. The problem with the "losing our souls, losing control, supplanation" people is that they don't realize that the increase in technology is inevitable. There's no way to actually avoid it. We can slow it down, but eventually machines WILL do all of the "menial labor" and "distasteful" jobs for us. Government is one of those neccessary evils; so it will eventually be done by machines. We can either have an infrastructure that promotes human freedom infor
I'm just curious, but exactly what "baby steps" did you take?
So far? Creating a Paypal account, a webpage, and selling somewhere between 3 and 10 shares of stock at $10 a share, for which the only thing investors will get for sure is a PDF with their e-mail, shipping address, and stock number for each share purchased.
When that gets to 250 shares sold, I'll take the next step- upping the share price to $1000, and creating a non-profit corporation to own the investment fund, and actually invest in some companies that are working on such technologies. If that investment fund grows to $100,000 (either with stock sales or actual investments) I'll take the next step of looking into combining the technology into automated retail outlets, and investing in those. If the fund ever hits $1,000,000,000 in net worth, then the next step is to start buying up land that has natural resources but for some reason or other isn't profitable to extract those natural resources with human labor. As well as picking a city site for the headquarters. If the fund ever actually builds the city AND has enough robotic labor to build the utopia, at that point the fund will hire detectives to track down stockholders and their heirs- and offer them citizenship, at the rate of one person per share of stock. Other people can still buy their way in of course, and for those who don't want to join at that point, stock can be transfered to other people.
That's the basic concept in a nutshell.
As for the story, it was good, though it lost me a bit in ignoring things like entropy or the ability of computers to be automatically compatible with each other.
How did the story ignore entropy? That's something I missed.
As for the compatibility, well, that will come when you have an AI smart enough to do it's own Enterprise Data Interchange algorithims- which aren't exactly the most complex thing in the world to come up with. Import an Excel Spreadsheet into Access using the built in wizard in Office 2007 and you'll see the start of that.
But it was still interesting, especially in the more "near term" predictions (realities?) concerning retail management.
Those predictions are the important part to me. But I still have a problem with the timeline in the story- I personally think we have a century or two before corporate and government computers join to the point where a blacklisted employee will be automatically rendered over to welfare. I hope anyway. My baby steps won't be much good otherwise- you can't build a utopia without a much larger amount of AI, and you can't build the utopia if all the land is already bought up by the narrowing upper class.
That's scary- and all the more reason to invest in them. Technology is a sword that cuts both ways.
But that's a separate question from whether it's relevant to the Amazon Mechanical Turk process, and my point is just that its relevance is not all that great
I didn't address this before, it just passed me by. But the relevance is entirely the other way around. The Amazon Mechanical Turk Process includes two automated processes that are small algorithims that could eventually turn into something like Manna: Automated rating of past performance, and automated classification of jobs and human resources. With these two- the datamining and advances of Manna become OBVIOUS and INEVITABLE. Whether that will be used to help the majority of humanity, or just those rich enough to be owners in the economy, remains to be seen. My intent is to set up a non-profit corporation with rules that lawy the infrastructure for the first, becase I fear that the second will be the default behavior (just as it has been with every other technological advance made in the last 200 years).
So long as everyone agrees with this, you get your utopia. The problem with this world is that people inevitably want to change the rules.. so what do you do? Program the robots not to let them? Sounds like tyranny to me.
That's one option- myself I'd add one more rule to that. Participation is voluntary. Heirs have the right to reject, transfer, or even sell, their right to be citizens if it's no longer in their best interest to live in the utopia. The bet is that robotic labor will create such a dystopia, that few will choose such an act. But it's actually better for the rest if a few choose to not become citizens- more resources for the rest of the community.
But yes, as a basic, the operating system for the colony would have to reject any requisition of materials and labor that exceeds the total energy/resource budget of the colony, which would enforce the above rules.
Yes, it is a tyranny- but it's one that is rather easy to escape. I suspect Mr. Brain's ideas will influence several competing projects- with slightly different rules. Just choose the one you want to live in, or choose to attempt to live in the default that evolves naturally.
Does this include the chemicals they used to make exploding laptops?
Is that a legal constraint?
No, it's an economical one. Since robotic labor is free to all in the community, why would they pay a human being to do what a robot can do better and more consistently?
Because after all, the one thing that robots can't provide is anything that's unique to humans.
And what is unique to humans? Or are you back on sex again? Couldn't the robots be programmed to build an artificial environment so convincing that you think you have everything?
Will prostitution be illegal in this society?
No, but neither will it neccessarily be encouraged. If a woman can have all of her physical material needs taken care of by the robots, why would she prostitute herself to somebody else's desires? Already prostitutes have to compete with online porn and immitation human beings; this competition will only get stronger as technology advances.
Won't many people prefer to have interactions with humans for some sorts of services, such as medical care, nursing, teaching, etc.?
Why should they, when information is available for free, and the machines provide error free care without cost (other than, of course, the basic resource cost)? Why put your life into the hands of a fallible human doctor who might mix up medications and kill you, when you have the error-free version available?
Of course, all of these arguments are NOT unique to the community- these are questions we'll all have to face as human labor is slowly replaced with robotic labor. There is nothing a human being can do that a robot can't do cheaper and better; this can be either a blessing or a curse. The intent of The Oregon Project is to set up the infrastructure for it to be a blessing rather than leaving it to the default of being a curse.
Perhaps the creation is an artwork, created without the help of robots.
Perhaps, but then what's to stop somebody from scanning it in on a molecular level, then using the robots to duplicate it for anybody who wants a copy?
Just as today, we can make duplicates of artwork but they're not as valuable as the original. In fact, in the environment you're describing, I'd say it's extremely likely that it's precisely those things that robots can't do that will be considered valuable, and people will tend to compete for them and value them highly, unless they're somehow prevented from doing so. And the people with more of the desirable services or things or the ability to create them will be considered better mates, and other people will be jealous of them, etc.
So what? If that's the case, then that's the decision of the community; it isn't like you can't just order the robots to recreate exactly the same environment all over again. Sure, some people will be vain enough to want "the original" and "only one", but there's no need for those wishes to constrain somebody else in the community.
I'm pointing out that your system's success depends implicitly on people agreeing not to compete, and your logic appears to be that such competition is unproductive, that cooperation and agreement to live within certain constraints would lead to a better end result. Which may be so -- but the problem is in getting people not to compete. Hence the reference to the Red Queen. If you provide everyone with the same baseline access to resources, all you're likely to do is establish a minimum above which people will strive to rise.
I think you missunderstand- my system's success DEPENDS upon people striving to rise above the minimum. Some will succeed. And their work will be duplicated to raise the minimum. Which in turn will allow others to strive to rise above the minimum. Spiraling upwards. Without inflation in the minimum, the community would merely stagnate.
Another problem is that you're designing for the ultimate situation in which the robots can already do absolutely everything humans can do (with the possible exception of being human) --
This is the exact point that I'm questioning. It's not that I don't like the idea. It sounds great. But I'm saying that it doesn't seem realistic, and that unreality will cause the system to fail. Having an equal and finite amount of resources available to everyone doesn't achieve what you suggest, and that's almost provable. For example, what if I create something or provide a service that other people want?
The robots provide all the services, so you're immediately reduced to creating something other people want.
Can they pay me with their credits?
Why would they, when your original order to the robots is available on the public web and they can just spend their credits drectly with the robots to create duplicates? Now turn it around- what if you design something only you or one or two others want? Also fine, you'll just spend your energy credits with the robots to create it, and you and those one or two others can have it, no problem, no skin off the nose of the rest of the commune who are spending their credits on things THEY want. The credits are only to track demand and prevent the overrun of scarce resources. The robotic labor is in surplus, and thus is basically free. The scarcity is transfered to the resources.
Perhaps, if your utopia is only going to consist of self-selecting people who've all agreed not to compete in (allegedly) unproductive ways, there'd be some limited chance of success - as there are with communes today - but that's likely to imply (a) limits on scalability and (b) if you really succeed, external competition. I look forward to the robot wars!
Both are likely- I'm not the only person with these ideas, which provides (b), and (a) will be due to the $10 cost of the original 250 shares and the $1000 cost of additional shares. But I'm more interested in your idea of "unproductive ways". If labor is in surplus (and this is the only way such a system will work, with a virtually infinite supply of robotic labor and the only real scarcity being in energy and resources, both of which cost credits to access), then what exactly does "unproductive ways" MEAN?
It's not my personal work- just something I ran across. I find the timeline rather troublesome myself- I can't figure out if it is too compact or too loose. I just note that there have been some very interesting developments in the last 5 years that makes the story somewhat prophetic- Amazon's Mechanical Turk method is just the latest of several equally unsettling developments. Another good one is the 1:8 replacement of store checkout clerks with automated checkout stands, which you can now see in a variety of establishments. An automated fast food restaurant isn't that far off either- McDonalds has now replaced fry cooks with robots that can make fries and hashbrowns; the grill isn't that much more complex, and the same stores that have the fry robot already have a drinks robot. Will it happen so fast that people won't be able to retrain for other jobs? We've already got a segment of the population that has been replaced in this fashion.
It's enough that I'm trying another idea from that sci-fi work: Next week I'll be anouncing pre-IPO Angel Investor stock sales for The Oregon Project.
finally they do the thinking for us and keep us isolated.
That's the dystopian part. The last couple of chapters also have a very interesting utopian part, where instead the human beings keep doing the thinking, but create a Roman Citizen type civilization on robotic slave labor as opposed to human slave labor- with goods ordered through a corporate intranet and resources tracked through energy credits to create that resource based on the total energy production capability of the civilization.
If you want your project to succeed, I'd recommend applying some critical thought. The story in question is a fantasy, and I hinted at some of the reasons why. A much more likely scenario is that the utopia and dystopia would evolve towards a similar balance, with some different details, for the kinds of reasons I mentioned. Blaming humanity's ills on the system in use (e.g. capitalist, socialist) is just scapegoating that avoids the real problem, which is human nature.
True enough. But in either case, investing first in the creation of the technology, and secondly on natural resources to support a refuge in a system where labor is in surplus, seems to me to be a good idea. As does removing government from humanity by reducing bureaucratic decision trees down to rules in an expert system (which is how I'm making my money RIGHT NOW in the Oregon Department of Transportation- as time goes on the public demands more road capacity and less human oversight of that road capacity, so we're replacing bureaucrats with computer programs). It's worth throwing a few dollars right now to invest in an investment corporation to think about such things.
Maybe read some sociobiology - for a popular intro, you could try The Red Queen by Matt Ridley. Do you think that the availability of a standard number of credits for everyone is somehow going to stop sexual competition?
No, but why would it matter? The point is to provide a refuge from having your life degraded to increase somebody's stock price, not to cure all the ills of mankind.
To put it crudely, who'll get the hot chicks in your utopia?
The ones who actually care to date the "hot chicks" instead of having a wife like mine, who is pretty plain on the outside but matches my personality on the inside, where it actually counts.
On what basis will people compete?
On whatever basis they want to compete. As long as they don't interfere with my rights to live, why should I care?
Are you sure that control of resources will have nothing to do with it, and if so, why?
The main difference between say, 1930 and now, has been scarcity of labor. Labor has gotten significantly less scarce with automation. This has caused two major changes economically. Control of resources has become more, not less important as labor has become less scarce. And the gap between the rich and the poor has widened.
What this is looking forward to is a time when labor will be in surplus instead of being scarce. Control of resources will become paramount, and the rich will be a minority and the poor will be the majority- just like in every other human society that has ever existed. The only difference- it will be cheaper to hire a robot than a poor person to do your bidding, expanding the gap between the rich and the poor even faster. Thus it makes sense to form a corporation that will allow it's members to share control of resources, and "reserve" a place to live while we still can- before the 2000 families that already own 75% of the world own 99% of the world.
I don't really care if you believe in the scenario or not. I don't really care what the future members of the corporation I create choose to do with that creation. A Utopia is only ONE possible future among many. It's also entirely possible that it will fail. But if I don't try, then it certainly won't succeed.
I have been thinking about this critically for quite a number of years now. I'm not even sure if "energy credits" is the proper way to track demand yet. It may well not be. Smarter people that I will buy into the system- they'll create the operating system of the network. That operating system will determine the "government" of the land the corporation buys up. The only thing I'm smart enough to see is that there is a potential crisis point coming. I don't think for a moment that the commune created by the corporation will solve all of mankind's ills, or even just a small portion of them. But it will eliminate power over your neighbor and greed from the equation, and enforce that with an expert system. Don't like it- don't buy a share. It's that simple.
I should have said it was sci-fi. Or more properly- near future dystopian/utopian (more near future now than it was when it was written- I first came across it a couple of years ago and from the Blog the author runs, it's a bit older than that). I just find it interesting that this is another step towards the technology of this prophetic sci-fi story. He's also right that the real problem to solve is robotic vision and more minitureization, not actual computing power; I've seen AIs that can make these types of very bureaucratic decisions just fine.
A better story would have explored the possible problems: what are the effects of the human competitive spirit in such a scenario? Would some people, having the freedom to create, use their creations as leverage to gain access to more resources than are available to everyone else? To what extent would that devalue the basic credits that everyone gets, turning people who live on only those credits into the equivalent of welfare recipients (albeit wealthier ones relative to those living in terrafoam)? Etc.
I believe in it enough that this week I've taken the first baby steps towards setting up The Oregon Project- because I know enough about the state of the art in AI to see that all of the advances in the story are PROBABLE- though maybe not on that timeline. I may well be dead before The Oregon Project creates it's utopia, or even moves past the point of investing in companies that are working on this technology into investing in land and natural resources. It may take 300 years. But if it saves my descendants from living on welfare in a capitalistic system where labor is in surplus, it's worth me investing a few dollars today.
And I think they have invented This, which is even more scary.
It's just Manna. Or at least, the bare bones beginings of an automated management program that could take the retail and manufacturing sectors by storm...soon every teenager will be wearing a headset with a button to hit to acknowledge the order or completion of a task.
Just read Marshall Brain's take on the future if a system like Mechanical Turk became the standard for Management in US corporations.
Welcome to Manna. Come to my journal if you want to invest in The Oregon Project, just in case....
Plus the costuming was all wrong. What the hell was that tiny second head about? Didn't they read Douglas's original memo which stated that Zaphod was supposed to be double from the penis up (and obviously so)?
Not for those of us who have visual overstimulation induced migraines. This just means that they've stolen several hours of my precious DARKNESS in return for no monetary advantage.
#1- the summary didn't mention Bush's Administration, only the US Congress.
#2- if you weren't personally affected by having to patch Windows systems in a specific order, then you must be lucky enough not to have an administration that insists on using Microsoft from the Exchange Servers all the way down to cell phones (with Outlook along the way) for meeting scheduling.