Which part isn't possible? Spaceflight, mining, photovoltaic power generation, or electrolysis? Furthermore, is it physically impossible or merely an engineering challenge? If it is only an engineering challenge, is there a reason why you believe that your suggested course of action (to get over it) is more likely to achieve their objectives than is their plan?
It must suck to be you. I've actually done cool work with NASA specifically because I refuse to "get over it". How about you? Are you enjoying cashiering?
I agree with him in that sense. Leave the "potentially profitable" ventures to private industry, as that's the only stuff you can expect them to go for anyway. Leave the "probably not profitable" stuff, like searching for asteroids that might kill unimaginable numbers of people, to government, because otherwise nobody's going to do it.
Why would you need to do anything else with it? Is being able to undercut the current prices for fuel by several orders of magnitude not enough? You haven't really set forth a convincing argument (or any argument, for that matter) regarding why cheap fuel is insufficient as a motivator. I'll answer your question anyway: you could use it as drinking water for astronauts, or you could use it as shielding against radiation.
What the fuck good is it space?
Fuel is good for moving things around. Water and shielding are good for keeping astronauts alive.
Right, so you can use some of what you mined to make fuel saving on a cost but who are you going to sell all the rest of this stuff to?
I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you suggesting that 15e6 kg of water is more than we will ever need for rocket fuel? Why do you believe that? Nonetheless, the remainder could be sold for other purposes (drinking water, radiation shielding, etc).
What about all the minerals mined? You just going to use them to build houses in space?
Perhaps. This is orthogonal to the discussion, though. If the water-mining operation alone is worthwhile, it doesn't matter what is done with the minerals. They can be discarded and the mission is still economically viable. If they can be put to productive use, or used to build houses in space, then this would only make the mission more attractive.
What good reason is there for mining stuff in space and leaving it space where it's useless to pretty much anyone on earth.
Well, the obvious answer is that one good reason is because it's useful to pretty much anyone not on Earth. Other reasons include basically the same set of good reasons to engage in spaceflight in general. Of course, you seem opposed to spaceflight in general, so you may not agree with those reasons.
It's not like all the stuff mined on earth just gets left where it is. It all needs processing. Okay you might build a processing plant in orbit (ain't going to cheap even if we could) but you're still going to have to bring it back to orbit and keep it there. And then what do you do with it?
Perhaps you missed the part where the whole fucking plan is to do just that. They're talking about mining asteroids in space to provide useful resources in space. Capture an asteroid, move it to Earth orbit, and proceed to mine and refine the resources. And then what do you do with it? Gee, I don't know. Oh, wait, how about this novel never-before-heard idea! How about they electrolyze the water to make rocket fuel? But wait, that sounds familiar... It sounds a lot like the very post you replied to. Excellent reading comprehension skills, friend.
All I'm saying is if they want water, there's plenty right here and it's easier to treat it than go 17,000 miles into space (by Friday) capture it and bring it back times however many trips it will take. If you want water in space it's probably still easier to get it off the earth than to go somewhere else to get it.
It's probably still easier to get it off the Earth than to get it from space? Because... because you have a gut feeling that confirms this? What the fuck happened to slashdot? Explain why you think it's "probably" easier to cut launch costs to anywhere between 1/3 and 1/1000 of current rates than it is to do what these guys are talking about.
Let's say it's essentially solid ice. That would be about 15000 cubic meters of ice, so they're pricing it at at least 4.3 million dollars per cubic meter, or 4.3 dollars per liter. So yeah, pricey water under the best assumption.
Going by 2013 prices, it costs at least $4000/kg for delivery of anything to LEO. If we assume water has a value of 0 dollars per liter on Earth, that's 4000 dollars per liter in LEO. Using your math, the folks from Deep Space Industries are hoping to sell their asteroid water for 1/1000th its current value. I question the intelligence of anyone that describes such a dramatic decrease in cost as "pricey".
Yeah, that's petty expensive water and any value it may be said to have relies on there being a market in space. There is not.
That's false. We've spent literally millions of dollars on procuring water in LEO. Furthermore, shaving three orders of magnitude off the price will greatly increase the size of this already-existing market if there's any elasticity at all.
Bring it back? Why the fuck would you be bringing it back?
Water can be separated into hydrogen and oxygen (read: rocket fuel and oxidizer) with nothing more than electricity. Coincidentally, electricity is the only resource currently available in Earth orbit. Consequently, asteroid water can easily be turned into fuel in orbit. This is fantastic because having fuel in orbit means we don't need to launch as much from Earth. This is doubly fantastic because the overwhelming majority of a rocket's mass is... fuel.
But you're over here talking about water levels on Earth. Slashdot got real dumb.
Addressed elsewhere in this thread. I should have gone further than to disclaim that I'm not speaking for OP, perhaps even highlighted that I'm commenting on the inconsistency (or more precisely, the arbitrary nature) of their premises, not any logical inconsistency (internal contradiction) per se. To clarify, I agree, creationism is not logically inconsistent, as there are no internal contradictions in the arguments made. However, since the premises are arbitrary and not inherently known to be any more true than the conclusions drawn from them, the argument lacks soundness and resembles circular reasoning.
The post I last replied to was one where you asked "What is logically inconsistent there?" after explicitly quoting me, not WarJolt. Based on context, I interpreted this as you asking me what logical inconsistency there was in believing the Christian Bible to be true and everything that contradicts it to be false. If this is not what you intended to ask (as you now seem to claim), this was not clear to me from your words nor from the context.
So if you're asking what logically inconsistent premises WarJolt believes creationists will state, posting in the thread I broke off into is unlikely to get you a response. I explicitly caveated my response to your initial query with the claim that I am "not sure what GP had in mind". Indeed, my goal was not to highlight logical inconsistencies (internal contradictions) among the premises set forth by creationists, but merely to point out that their premises are arbitrary and facilitate circular reasoning about their claims, which while technically valid, are not persuasive due to the indeterminate truth of the premises themselves.
In other words, the logic is valid, but the argument is not sound. If you feel that my words are not relevant to your question, then I apologize for hijacking this thread.
Please elaborate. How is presupposing the truth of the conclusion not synonymous with question begging? Indeed, if the falseness of the Bible is your basis for arguing that the Bible is not true, that is by definition begging the question. I'm not sure what you mean by "defeat presuppositions" or what you're talking about when you say "show that the derivation does not maintain". Derivation of what? Maintain what?
Nothing. The premises are agreed. You're conflating the word "inconsistent" with the word "contradictory". I never claimed that their premises were contradictory, or that their argument was not logically valid. I claimed instead that they're begging the question, which necessarily implies that I'm acknowledging the logical validity of their argument while dismissing its persuasiveness.
I had a well-considered response crafted, but inadvertantly clicked one of your links again and it vanished. Such is life.
Short version: They seem to point out some known limitations of science and then take a leap of logic from there to "therefore young Earth creationism". I'll grant that they're not making the argument that their god is burying fossils in our backyards just to mess with ye of little faith.
That all evidence not explained by their religion is an elaborate hoax from their god?
No, I believe the premise is that the Christian Bible contains the literal account of origins. Both the proclaimed falsity of evolution through natural selection as well as the inauthenticity of fossil and geological data are the conclusions.
Do all creationists believe this premise, or just a subset? Do you think a creationist would agree with your summary of his position?
As far as I know, all (or nearly all) creationists believe this premise, that the literal interpretation of the Bible is accurate. I think a creationist would agree with my summary, as all creationists I've discusssed this with seem to have done so.
By assuming the veracity of the Christian Bible as the premise, they're begging the question. If we assume the Christian Bible to be true, then we shouldn't be surprised when we conclude that anything that contradicts the Christian Bible is false. My argument, however, relates to the inconsistency in accepting this premise to be true, as opposed to a premise that, for example, assumes the physical evidence found in the natural world to be "true". It seems inconsistent to give such arbitrary benefit-of-the-doubt (understatement of the day) to one text while failing to extend it to other equally-plausible premises.
Not sure what GP had in mind, but this came to mind:
Some creationists dismiss the fossil record, geological evidence, and other physical evidence of the claims made by modern science as decoys, an elaborate ruse created by some god in order to mislead those who lack faith. However, few of these same people are willing to acknowledge that a very similar argument could be used against the existence of their god, holy text(s), and/or prophet(s). Is it not equally plausible that Yahweh, the Christian Bible, and the story of Jesus and his homies are all just be an elaborate ruse created by Satan to test his followers? Why the abundant application of skepticism when it comes to everything we can observe in the natural world but total lack thereof when it comes to unverifiable stories that other humans tell us? Seem inconsistent to me.
You working 60-80s a week, I'm sure includes rent, food, employment/business, entertainment, girlfriend/boyfriend, holidays, gifts, child care, education, a vehicle/transportation, cell phone, and lifestyle.
Well let's see. When I was working as a cabbie in Bangor (12 hour shifts, 6 days a week), I was making roughly $30 net per week (in 2007 dollars) after the cost of getting to work and back (80 miles each way). So no, at the time, of the list of expenses you include, I wasn't able to pay rent, and my entertainment consisted of an old copy of War & Peace that I purchased for $5. I didn't have time for a girlfriend, holidays, or gifts. I couldn't afford to support children (so I didn't have any). My school bills were passed on to a debt collection agency. My vehicle had already been paid off, but I was unable to keep up with insurance payments. I didn't have money for a cell phone nor a "lifestyle".
The "poor" as in actual poor people in the US, work less than 20 hours a week, per house hold I might add, and derive most of their resources from gov't handouts.
If you don't think I was "poor" as in actual poor, or that I worked more than 20 hours a week, or that the government refused to give me a single penny in assistance during that time, then you can eat a bag of dicks.
Now for you working your 60-80 hours a week and can only afford a $.25 pack of Raman a day or a potato: That represents maybe $10 a month for food. I call bullshit.
I would buy my Maruchan ramen on sale for $0.13 per packet, which is more like $4 a month. The potatos I got for free when some kind person saw me trying to weigh them out with amusing precision and just bought me a sack out of pity. The remainder of my grocery budget was spent on loose tobacco and rolling papers, as well as the occasional tall boy of Budweiser, so as to retain my sanity.
That is called being part of the "working" poor and you've go no one but yourself to blame for that one.
May you never know the frustration of suffering a debilitating illness and finding your health insurance unwilling to shed a fucking penny in your name, only to be told by fuckwads on the Internet that you've got no one but yourself to blame for that one.
If in your eyes that makes me a pompous dick, fine, but I own my past and have by building a career have earned he right to look down my nose at people who are quitters and whiners.
No, the fact that you think anything gives you the right to look down your nose at people who are quitters and whiners is what makes you a pompous dick. Somewhere along the line, you falsely came to believe that humility is a vice, and that pride is a virtue. We enjoy lives of great priviledge by chance alone, and you've got quite some temerity to boast of your great lifestyle choices that got you born into wealth (most people are born to peasants in India, China, or Africa) and afforded you literacy (1 in 6 don't have that opportunity). I suppose you were too busy pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to notice that.
The reality that the world faces now is we have ALOT of people that cannot come up with constructive or productive things to do with their ENORMOUS amount of free time, and spend it instead of being envious of those that do.
This is rather misleading. I'm very resentful (not envious, because I'm not a hypocrit) of the wealthy, though I have very little (if any) free time. There are quite a few wealthy people (who have more free time than anyone else) that aren't envious of themselves (because that wouldn't make any sense). You're attempting to draw a connection between free time and envy of the wealthy where I don't believe one exists.
Poor people in the US don't starve anymore, nor do they work. They literally have nearly their ENTIRE day to themselves and instead of devoting it to improvement of themselves, their art/craft, or their community they piss it away and then blame society of their lack of progress.
Where the fuck do you live? I've had some "lean" periods in my life, where I was working 60-80 hours per week and living off one packet of ramen noodles per day. Occasionally, shit would get really bad, and I'd be living off one fucking potato per day. Thankfully enough, these periods were never long enough to kill me. Fuck you for suggesting that poor people in the US don't starve or work. Consider yourself blessed that you can afford to be so out of touch with the reality of poverty, you pompous dick.
Although I'm still hoping that increasing levels of automation bring about a world of abundance where there is no demand for human labor and I don't have to drag my ass out of bed every morning.:)
Indeed, I'm not arguing that automation is a bad thing, nor that it necessarily decreases the demand for human labor in the long term. I agree that my statements hing on the assumption that McDonalds will show now growth of product sales as a result of their move towards automation. It's entirely possible that by McDonalds automating, former burger-flippers will be freed up to become automation engineers, increasing their income and allowing them to buy more Happy Meals, creating a virtuous feedback loop of awesomeness. The reason I'm assuming that this doesn't happen is strictly to limit the number of variables in play. Sure, automation might result in increased (or decreased) sales, or it might result in any number of unpredictable other outcomes. However, to avoid reaching a conclusion like "well, anything could happen, so who know!", I'm specifically looking at local short-term effects, ones which we can discuss with relative certainty.
I'm not arguing that increasing automation can't result in increased demand for labor. It can. Of course, the opposite is just as possible. I'm of the opinion that "it depends" is the best way we can quantify automation's effect on labor demand. I'm merely pointing out that if capital owners didn't think automation would decrease their dependence on labor (including the labor necessary to design/develop/maintain the automation itself), they wouldn't pursue it. Whether or not the laid off cashiers go on to become rocket scientists or welfare queens is immaterial to this point. In terms of short term local effects, automation (or anything that increases productive efficiency) eliminates jobs (which I believe is a good thing). In terms of long term or nonlocal effects, "it depends" is all we can say with any degree of certainty. It's possible that these former-cashiers can go and find other better things to do with their lives (like the unemployed buggy whip makers and farmers before them did), but it's also possible that the pace at which various jobs are being automated away exceeds the pace at which we can retrain workers.
I acknowledge that the economy is more complicated than I'd like it to be, and I don't pretend to know that things won't work out. I'm merely making a very small claim about a very small part of this issue: automation cannot directly create more jobs than it eliminates while still increasing productive efficiency (although in the past, the abundance of labor that resulted from increases in productive efficiency have tended to create entirely new industries and grown the size of the economy as a whole (although this is no guarantee of similar results in the future)).
That $100k engineer is doing far more than replacing 5 $20k cashiers
No, he's not. Reading comprehension. When I said "if you can lay off five $20k cashiers by hiring one $100k engineer to build/maintain/whatever some automation system (that does the work of those five cashiers)", I meant just that. It's my hypothetical, I can define it as I please.
What you're saying is that my hypothetical isn't accurate, and that you can replace more than five $20k cashiers by hiring one $100k engineer. Fundamentally, you're missing the point that I'm making. You focus on this "whole new industry" being created while ignoring the economics. Either automation increases productive efficiency (by definition, decreasing the amount of labor required to generate a given amount of productive output) or it doesn't. If it does, then it necessarily, by definition, decreases demand for labor. If it doesn't, then there is no economic incentive to pursue such automation. You can't have it both ways.
I think this whole discussion is little more than mental masturbation. There's no way expropriation of wealth will be legislated in this country, so talks about how well it would work have no relevance to reality. We'll see French Revolution style unrest before we see our government save us from the wealthy.
Slashdot Mirror
Which part isn't possible? Spaceflight, mining, photovoltaic power generation, or electrolysis? Furthermore, is it physically impossible or merely an engineering challenge? If it is only an engineering challenge, is there a reason why you believe that your suggested course of action (to get over it) is more likely to achieve their objectives than is their plan?
It must suck to be you. I've actually done cool work with NASA specifically because I refuse to "get over it". How about you? Are you enjoying cashiering?
I agree with him in that sense. Leave the "potentially profitable" ventures to private industry, as that's the only stuff you can expect them to go for anyway. Leave the "probably not profitable" stuff, like searching for asteroids that might kill unimaginable numbers of people, to government, because otherwise nobody's going to do it.
What else would you do with it?
Why would you need to do anything else with it? Is being able to undercut the current prices for fuel by several orders of magnitude not enough? You haven't really set forth a convincing argument (or any argument, for that matter) regarding why cheap fuel is insufficient as a motivator. I'll answer your question anyway: you could use it as drinking water for astronauts, or you could use it as shielding against radiation.
What the fuck good is it space?
Fuel is good for moving things around. Water and shielding are good for keeping astronauts alive.
Right, so you can use some of what you mined to make fuel saving on a cost but who are you going to sell all the rest of this stuff to?
I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you suggesting that 15e6 kg of water is more than we will ever need for rocket fuel? Why do you believe that? Nonetheless, the remainder could be sold for other purposes (drinking water, radiation shielding, etc).
What about all the minerals mined? You just going to use them to build houses in space?
Perhaps. This is orthogonal to the discussion, though. If the water-mining operation alone is worthwhile, it doesn't matter what is done with the minerals. They can be discarded and the mission is still economically viable. If they can be put to productive use, or used to build houses in space, then this would only make the mission more attractive.
What good reason is there for mining stuff in space and leaving it space where it's useless to pretty much anyone on earth.
Well, the obvious answer is that one good reason is because it's useful to pretty much anyone not on Earth. Other reasons include basically the same set of good reasons to engage in spaceflight in general. Of course, you seem opposed to spaceflight in general, so you may not agree with those reasons.
It's not like all the stuff mined on earth just gets left where it is. It all needs processing. Okay you might build a processing plant in orbit (ain't going to cheap even if we could) but you're still going to have to bring it back to orbit and keep it there. And then what do you do with it?
Perhaps you missed the part where the whole fucking plan is to do just that. They're talking about mining asteroids in space to provide useful resources in space. Capture an asteroid, move it to Earth orbit, and proceed to mine and refine the resources. And then what do you do with it? Gee, I don't know. Oh, wait, how about this novel never-before-heard idea! How about they electrolyze the water to make rocket fuel? But wait, that sounds familiar... It sounds a lot like the very post you replied to. Excellent reading comprehension skills, friend.
All I'm saying is if they want water, there's plenty right here and it's easier to treat it than go 17,000 miles into space (by Friday) capture it and bring it back times however many trips it will take. If you want water in space it's probably still easier to get it off the earth than to go somewhere else to get it.
It's probably still easier to get it off the Earth than to get it from space? Because... because you have a gut feeling that confirms this? What the fuck happened to slashdot? Explain why you think it's "probably" easier to cut launch costs to anywhere between 1/3 and 1/1000 of current rates than it is to do what these guys are talking about.
That's still 1/3 the current lowest cost of water in LEO. Plenty of room for profit while undercutting the competition.
Let's say it's essentially solid ice. That would be about 15000 cubic meters of ice, so they're pricing it at at least 4.3 million dollars per cubic meter, or 4.3 dollars per liter. So yeah, pricey water under the best assumption.
Going by 2013 prices, it costs at least $4000/kg for delivery of anything to LEO. If we assume water has a value of 0 dollars per liter on Earth, that's 4000 dollars per liter in LEO. Using your math, the folks from Deep Space Industries are hoping to sell their asteroid water for 1/1000th its current value. I question the intelligence of anyone that describes such a dramatic decrease in cost as "pricey".
Yeah, that's petty expensive water and any value it may be said to have relies on there being a market in space. There is not.
That's false. We've spent literally millions of dollars on procuring water in LEO. Furthermore, shaving three orders of magnitude off the price will greatly increase the size of this already-existing market if there's any elasticity at all.
Bring it back? Why the fuck would you be bringing it back?
Water can be separated into hydrogen and oxygen (read: rocket fuel and oxidizer) with nothing more than electricity. Coincidentally, electricity is the only resource currently available in Earth orbit. Consequently, asteroid water can easily be turned into fuel in orbit. This is fantastic because having fuel in orbit means we don't need to launch as much from Earth. This is doubly fantastic because the overwhelming majority of a rocket's mass is... fuel.
But you're over here talking about water levels on Earth. Slashdot got real dumb.
I think he meant pants-wearer, not portabella.
Well that's no fair, you must've RTFA!
Ted? The text editor? Or did you mean Theo?
Addressed elsewhere in this thread. I should have gone further than to disclaim that I'm not speaking for OP, perhaps even highlighted that I'm commenting on the inconsistency (or more precisely, the arbitrary nature) of their premises, not any logical inconsistency (internal contradiction) per se. To clarify, I agree, creationism is not logically inconsistent, as there are no internal contradictions in the arguments made. However, since the premises are arbitrary and not inherently known to be any more true than the conclusions drawn from them, the argument lacks soundness and resembles circular reasoning.
Context, good sir! Context!
The post I last replied to was one where you asked "What is logically inconsistent there?" after explicitly quoting me, not WarJolt. Based on context, I interpreted this as you asking me what logical inconsistency there was in believing the Christian Bible to be true and everything that contradicts it to be false. If this is not what you intended to ask (as you now seem to claim), this was not clear to me from your words nor from the context.
So if you're asking what logically inconsistent premises WarJolt believes creationists will state, posting in the thread I broke off into is unlikely to get you a response. I explicitly caveated my response to your initial query with the claim that I am "not sure what GP had in mind". Indeed, my goal was not to highlight logical inconsistencies (internal contradictions) among the premises set forth by creationists, but merely to point out that their premises are arbitrary and facilitate circular reasoning about their claims, which while technically valid, are not persuasive due to the indeterminate truth of the premises themselves.
In other words, the logic is valid, but the argument is not sound. If you feel that my words are not relevant to your question, then I apologize for hijacking this thread.
Please elaborate. How is presupposing the truth of the conclusion not synonymous with question begging? Indeed, if the falseness of the Bible is your basis for arguing that the Bible is not true, that is by definition begging the question. I'm not sure what you mean by "defeat presuppositions" or what you're talking about when you say "show that the derivation does not maintain". Derivation of what? Maintain what?
What is logically inconsistent there?
Nothing. The premises are agreed. You're conflating the word "inconsistent" with the word "contradictory". I never claimed that their premises were contradictory, or that their argument was not logically valid. I claimed instead that they're begging the question, which necessarily implies that I'm acknowledging the logical validity of their argument while dismissing its persuasiveness.
I had a well-considered response crafted, but inadvertantly clicked one of your links again and it vanished. Such is life.
Short version: They seem to point out some known limitations of science and then take a leap of logic from there to "therefore young Earth creationism". I'll grant that they're not making the argument that their god is burying fossils in our backyards just to mess with ye of little faith.
What is the premise?
That all evidence not explained by their religion is an elaborate hoax from their god?
No, I believe the premise is that the Christian Bible contains the literal account of origins. Both the proclaimed falsity of evolution through natural selection as well as the inauthenticity of fossil and geological data are the conclusions.
Do all creationists believe this premise, or just a subset? Do you think a creationist would agree with your summary of his position?
As far as I know, all (or nearly all) creationists believe this premise, that the literal interpretation of the Bible is accurate. I think a creationist would agree with my summary, as all creationists I've discusssed this with seem to have done so.
By assuming the veracity of the Christian Bible as the premise, they're begging the question. If we assume the Christian Bible to be true, then we shouldn't be surprised when we conclude that anything that contradicts the Christian Bible is false. My argument, however, relates to the inconsistency in accepting this premise to be true, as opposed to a premise that, for example, assumes the physical evidence found in the natural world to be "true". It seems inconsistent to give such arbitrary benefit-of-the-doubt (understatement of the day) to one text while failing to extend it to other equally-plausible premises.
Philosophy is subject to the laws of reason.
Creationism isn't.
Not sure what GP had in mind, but this came to mind:
Some creationists dismiss the fossil record, geological evidence, and other physical evidence of the claims made by modern science as decoys, an elaborate ruse created by some god in order to mislead those who lack faith. However, few of these same people are willing to acknowledge that a very similar argument could be used against the existence of their god, holy text(s), and/or prophet(s). Is it not equally plausible that Yahweh, the Christian Bible, and the story of Jesus and his homies are all just be an elaborate ruse created by Satan to test his followers? Why the abundant application of skepticism when it comes to everything we can observe in the natural world but total lack thereof when it comes to unverifiable stories that other humans tell us? Seem inconsistent to me.
I used to wear Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars.
You working 60-80s a week, I'm sure includes rent, food, employment/business, entertainment, girlfriend/boyfriend, holidays, gifts, child care, education, a vehicle/transportation, cell phone, and lifestyle.
Well let's see. When I was working as a cabbie in Bangor (12 hour shifts, 6 days a week), I was making roughly $30 net per week (in 2007 dollars) after the cost of getting to work and back (80 miles each way). So no, at the time, of the list of expenses you include, I wasn't able to pay rent, and my entertainment consisted of an old copy of War & Peace that I purchased for $5. I didn't have time for a girlfriend, holidays, or gifts. I couldn't afford to support children (so I didn't have any). My school bills were passed on to a debt collection agency. My vehicle had already been paid off, but I was unable to keep up with insurance payments. I didn't have money for a cell phone nor a "lifestyle".
The "poor" as in actual poor people in the US, work less than 20 hours a week, per house hold I might add, and derive most of their resources from gov't handouts.
If you don't think I was "poor" as in actual poor, or that I worked more than 20 hours a week, or that the government refused to give me a single penny in assistance during that time, then you can eat a bag of dicks.
Now for you working your 60-80 hours a week and can only afford a $.25 pack of Raman a day or a potato: That represents maybe $10 a month for food. I call bullshit.
I would buy my Maruchan ramen on sale for $0.13 per packet, which is more like $4 a month. The potatos I got for free when some kind person saw me trying to weigh them out with amusing precision and just bought me a sack out of pity. The remainder of my grocery budget was spent on loose tobacco and rolling papers, as well as the occasional tall boy of Budweiser, so as to retain my sanity.
That is called being part of the "working" poor and you've go no one but yourself to blame for that one.
May you never know the frustration of suffering a debilitating illness and finding your health insurance unwilling to shed a fucking penny in your name, only to be told by fuckwads on the Internet that you've got no one but yourself to blame for that one.
If in your eyes that makes me a pompous dick, fine, but I own my past and have by building a career have earned he right to look down my nose at people who are quitters and whiners.
No, the fact that you think anything gives you the right to look down your nose at people who are quitters and whiners is what makes you a pompous dick. Somewhere along the line, you falsely came to believe that humility is a vice, and that pride is a virtue. We enjoy lives of great priviledge by chance alone, and you've got quite some temerity to boast of your great lifestyle choices that got you born into wealth (most people are born to peasants in India, China, or Africa) and afforded you literacy (1 in 6 don't have that opportunity). I suppose you were too busy pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to notice that.
After graduation, Haselton worked on Visual Basic at Microsoft for seven months.
Yet another reason to hate him. Fuck.
The reality that the world faces now is we have ALOT of people that cannot come up with constructive or productive things to do with their ENORMOUS amount of free time, and spend it instead of being envious of those that do.
This is rather misleading. I'm very resentful (not envious, because I'm not a hypocrit) of the wealthy, though I have very little (if any) free time. There are quite a few wealthy people (who have more free time than anyone else) that aren't envious of themselves (because that wouldn't make any sense). You're attempting to draw a connection between free time and envy of the wealthy where I don't believe one exists.
Poor people in the US don't starve anymore, nor do they work. They literally have nearly their ENTIRE day to themselves and instead of devoting it to improvement of themselves, their art/craft, or their community they piss it away and then blame society of their lack of progress.
Where the fuck do you live? I've had some "lean" periods in my life, where I was working 60-80 hours per week and living off one packet of ramen noodles per day. Occasionally, shit would get really bad, and I'd be living off one fucking potato per day. Thankfully enough, these periods were never long enough to kill me. Fuck you for suggesting that poor people in the US don't starve or work. Consider yourself blessed that you can afford to be so out of touch with the reality of poverty, you pompous dick.
Nope, no apologies needed. Good talk.
:)
Although I'm still hoping that increasing levels of automation bring about a world of abundance where there is no demand for human labor and I don't have to drag my ass out of bed every morning.
Indeed, I'm not arguing that automation is a bad thing, nor that it necessarily decreases the demand for human labor in the long term. I agree that my statements hing on the assumption that McDonalds will show now growth of product sales as a result of their move towards automation. It's entirely possible that by McDonalds automating, former burger-flippers will be freed up to become automation engineers, increasing their income and allowing them to buy more Happy Meals, creating a virtuous feedback loop of awesomeness. The reason I'm assuming that this doesn't happen is strictly to limit the number of variables in play. Sure, automation might result in increased (or decreased) sales, or it might result in any number of unpredictable other outcomes. However, to avoid reaching a conclusion like "well, anything could happen, so who know!", I'm specifically looking at local short-term effects, ones which we can discuss with relative certainty.
I'm not arguing that increasing automation can't result in increased demand for labor. It can. Of course, the opposite is just as possible. I'm of the opinion that "it depends" is the best way we can quantify automation's effect on labor demand. I'm merely pointing out that if capital owners didn't think automation would decrease their dependence on labor (including the labor necessary to design/develop/maintain the automation itself), they wouldn't pursue it. Whether or not the laid off cashiers go on to become rocket scientists or welfare queens is immaterial to this point. In terms of short term local effects, automation (or anything that increases productive efficiency) eliminates jobs (which I believe is a good thing). In terms of long term or nonlocal effects, "it depends" is all we can say with any degree of certainty. It's possible that these former-cashiers can go and find other better things to do with their lives (like the unemployed buggy whip makers and farmers before them did), but it's also possible that the pace at which various jobs are being automated away exceeds the pace at which we can retrain workers.
I acknowledge that the economy is more complicated than I'd like it to be, and I don't pretend to know that things won't work out. I'm merely making a very small claim about a very small part of this issue: automation cannot directly create more jobs than it eliminates while still increasing productive efficiency (although in the past, the abundance of labor that resulted from increases in productive efficiency have tended to create entirely new industries and grown the size of the economy as a whole (although this is no guarantee of similar results in the future)).
That $100k engineer is doing far more than replacing 5 $20k cashiers
No, he's not. Reading comprehension. When I said "if you can lay off five $20k cashiers by hiring one $100k engineer to build/maintain/whatever some automation system (that does the work of those five cashiers)", I meant just that. It's my hypothetical, I can define it as I please.
What you're saying is that my hypothetical isn't accurate, and that you can replace more than five $20k cashiers by hiring one $100k engineer. Fundamentally, you're missing the point that I'm making. You focus on this "whole new industry" being created while ignoring the economics. Either automation increases productive efficiency (by definition, decreasing the amount of labor required to generate a given amount of productive output) or it doesn't. If it does, then it necessarily, by definition, decreases demand for labor. If it doesn't, then there is no economic incentive to pursue such automation. You can't have it both ways.
I think this whole discussion is little more than mental masturbation. There's no way expropriation of wealth will be legislated in this country, so talks about how well it would work have no relevance to reality. We'll see French Revolution style unrest before we see our government save us from the wealthy.