I quite agree. Trump is a symptom, not the cause. When an obvious moron gets voted in to run the show, then the problem is the voters. The voters cannot be fixed, unfortunately. They will sink the ship now, evermore trying to vote themselves bread and games and glory ("Make America great again!"), unless nothing is left anymore and everything collapses.
To be fair, the US was 2rd world in many regards (infrastructure, medical insurance, education system, legal system,...) before. So the distance is not that big.
However, look to the Brits for an example of how to ruin a country fast because of a small set of huge egos and a general inability to recognize an existential threat when it stares you in the face.
Ah yes, separation of clue and state. I forgot about that one!
That one also has the effect of the clue just leaving when the state goes down the drains. Because while the clue is mobile, the state (and its payload of morons) is not.
And then you talk to an actual expert and find out that technology only provides input for the forecasters. They then take their experience and knowledge of local peculiarities a create an actual forecast from that. In the case of natural disasters, that may be the difference of a few more hours to evacuate, for example. So no, technology is (once again) not nearly as advanced as some people like to think.
Indeed. People have no clue how extremely difficult some things are. Fire these weather experts and you may just lose forecast accuracy for a few decades. And that may kill a lot of people and destroy a lot of property. Since mostly poor people will be hit, I am not surprises the present administration does not care.
Reminds me of the utter stupidity when some Italian earthquake experts got dragged into court because they were wrong. So not more earthquake forecasts worth a damn in Italy. This is inherently a guessing game, but one worthwhile for society to be done well. Punish the experts when they guess wrong and the result is no more experts. Or rather they just move somewhere where the people actually understand the value they provide.
There is a point in any civilization when it separates itself into those with a clue and those too dumb to survive. The smart ones leave when the morons take over. Come to think of it, I now know several US citizens that moved to Europe and do not want to go back.
Obviously these cuts were selected by who is expected to fight back the least, not how critical the work done there is. A sure way into disaster and one prepared by utter incompetents.
Sounds plausible to me. You can actually not get really cheap/bad paper here in shops. No idea whether you could special order it, but nobody seems to do it. The only exception I know is newspaper paper, but that is not suitable for laser printers at all, too thin and rough.
I agree, laser printers and photocopiers are a pinnacle of engineering achievement. The people that design and optimize these are really impressive.
I have to say though that I did not have paper-jams for a very long time now. I think the paper in Europe is better quality though and that may be the reason. Or A4 format just jams less. With the complexity of these things, that may be a possibility.
I think a second reason is that we do not actually need so many developers, but that management usually goes with quantity over quality, because they do not at all understand how developer productivity works. Despite this being basically known since 1975 with "The Mythical Man-Month" by Brooks. Hence cheaper people get hired in high numbers when you would actually need a low number of competent people and the "cheap" people end up being very expensive because a lot of them actually have negative productivity. I run into negative productivity all the time, for example people that give out wrong information (just had this and the person that created the mess does not even understand what he did wrong) and people that write software with no clue what they are doing and that are just fixing flaws that show up in simple tests. This causes a lot of clean-up effort later on.
A secondary effect may be that managers often associate the number of people they manage with their level of importance. As anybody with real data analysis experience knows, counting metrics are pretty bad and quite often worthless.
The IT field is swamped with semi-competent and outright incompetent people. People who have an understanding of engineering that stops at "it worked when we tested it", that do the most outrageously stupid things that cause bizarre failures later on. People that are incapable of reading documentation. People that do not even know the basics about technology they use daily to build applications. And so on.
Retraining will not solve the issue this time. Those that have skills in demand already have them. The others cannot learn them. This needs a different solution, and I fully expect that whole nations will fail to manage and burn as a result.
Now, in principle, there is enough wealth and productivity to allow everybody a decent live. It is just the distribution of that wealth, which has become thoroughly indecent and repulsive and is now slowly becoming an existential threat.
No, it is not. All the "retraining" in the world does not help if there are simply no jobs in the difficulty-spectrum a person can work in. People have limits. Most jobs within the limits of most people are going away.
While this is all dumb "automation", as it turns out large parts of many jobs do not actually need intelligence. Fro example, think of those Amazon warehouse workers that mainly supervise robots and correct the few mistakes they make. 5 robots and one supervisor replace 10 workers, i.e. 9 people out of a job. It is _not_ necessary to at all to fully automate a job for massive numbers of jobs being lost.
So, no, there will be no "self-automation" or "self-programming" anytime soon (and maybe not ever), but that does not fix the problem. Most of the human race will eventually need to live without a job and there needs to be some way this can be done reasonably or things will really go to hell like they never have before in human history.
Completely understandable. The only reasons you would do this is patriotism and caring about your fellow human beings. Both are not qualities usually required or expected from business owners these days. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to insult you. I am just pointing out the mechanisms at work here. Of course, you cannot spend a lot of your business's money altruistically, if your competition does not do it too. That would just bankrupt you. And if you spend a little altruistically and your competition does not, that is not going to make any real difference.
As to personal advancement, that is not the root-cause of the problem. Sure, a lot of people today have not used most of the opportunities they had in life so far. A lot of potential employees seem just incredibly dumb, as you probably have noticed when hiring people. But that is not because they are lazy or do not care. That is because they literally have no clue what is important and what is not and are fundamentally confused by a world that grows more and more complex. It is also because people have rather hard limits with regards to what they can actually learn to do. Being limited in what you can do does not mean you do not have a right to eat or to find some happiness in your life. A purely humanitarian PoV is one thing that dictates this. The other thing is that any country where that does not happen is going to burn.
And we are most definitely going to see some countries burn in the next few decades for exactly this reason.
>Nearly Three-Quarters of Adults in US Believe AI Will Eliminate More Jobs Than It Will Create
In the short term, we're in for epic disaster levels of unemployment. Only the owners of capital will be immune to the worst effects.
No. The largest class that will be immune are those with skills that are hard to come by. Unfortunately, there will be no "safe" jobs. You will need to have those skills that are hard to come by and you will need to be really good at them. That excludes most people, whether they are plumbers or software engineers, with plumbers being on average probably much better at what they do.
It will not happen. The ones that concentrate all the money on their persons will know how to prevent it. Could be another off-shoring wave, could be making sure to have a president that puts money first. The second state now only needs to be maintained. Basically around 80% of workers are screwed.
Slashdot Mirror
I quite agree. Trump is a symptom, not the cause. When an obvious moron gets voted in to run the show, then the problem is the voters. The voters cannot be fixed, unfortunately. They will sink the ship now, evermore trying to vote themselves bread and games and glory ("Make America great again!"), unless nothing is left anymore and everything collapses.
To be fair, the US was 2rd world in many regards (infrastructure, medical insurance, education system, legal system, ...) before. So the distance is not that big.
However, look to the Brits for an example of how to ruin a country fast because of a small set of huge egos and a general inability to recognize an existential threat when it stares you in the face.
Ah yes, separation of clue and state. I forgot about that one!
That one also has the effect of the clue just leaving when the state goes down the drains. Because while the clue is mobile, the state (and its payload of morons) is not.
And then you talk to an actual expert and find out that technology only provides input for the forecasters. They then take their experience and knowledge of local peculiarities a create an actual forecast from that. In the case of natural disasters, that may be the difference of a few more hours to evacuate, for example. So no, technology is (once again) not nearly as advanced as some people like to think.
Indeed. People have no clue how extremely difficult some things are. Fire these weather experts and you may just lose forecast accuracy for a few decades. And that may kill a lot of people and destroy a lot of property. Since mostly poor people will be hit, I am not surprises the present administration does not care.
Reminds me of the utter stupidity when some Italian earthquake experts got dragged into court because they were wrong. So not more earthquake forecasts worth a damn in Italy. This is inherently a guessing game, but one worthwhile for society to be done well. Punish the experts when they guess wrong and the result is no more experts. Or rather they just move somewhere where the people actually understand the value they provide.
There is a point in any civilization when it separates itself into those with a clue and those too dumb to survive. The smart ones leave when the morons take over. Come to think of it, I now know several US citizens that moved to Europe and do not want to go back.
You seem to be incapable of understanding relative measures. Given whom you defend, not a surprise.
Obviously these cuts were selected by who is expected to fight back the least, not how critical the work done there is. A sure way into disaster and one prepared by utter incompetents.
Sounds plausible to me. You can actually not get really cheap/bad paper here in shops. No idea whether you could special order it, but nobody seems to do it. The only exception I know is newspaper paper, but that is not suitable for laser printers at all, too thin and rough.
"Paper Cartridge: Load letter-sized paper, please". Simple.
I agree, laser printers and photocopiers are a pinnacle of engineering achievement. The people that design and optimize these are really impressive.
I have to say though that I did not have paper-jams for a very long time now. I think the paper in Europe is better quality though and that may be the reason. Or A4 format just jams less. With the complexity of these things, that may be a possibility.
The "repair" is a lie. There is no repair. What you get is a discount on a new one.
Just remember that you are the product here and these things spy on you by design.
I think a second reason is that we do not actually need so many developers, but that management usually goes with quantity over quality, because they do not at all understand how developer productivity works. Despite this being basically known since 1975 with "The Mythical Man-Month" by Brooks. Hence cheaper people get hired in high numbers when you would actually need a low number of competent people and the "cheap" people end up being very expensive because a lot of them actually have negative productivity. I run into negative productivity all the time, for example people that give out wrong information (just had this and the person that created the mess does not even understand what he did wrong) and people that write software with no clue what they are doing and that are just fixing flaws that show up in simple tests. This causes a lot of clean-up effort later on.
A secondary effect may be that managers often associate the number of people they manage with their level of importance. As anybody with real data analysis experience knows, counting metrics are pretty bad and quite often worthless.
The IT field is swamped with semi-competent and outright incompetent people. People who have an understanding of engineering that stops at "it worked when we tested it", that do the most outrageously stupid things that cause bizarre failures later on. People that are incapable of reading documentation. People that do not even know the basics about technology they use daily to build applications. And so on.
Retraining will not solve the issue this time. Those that have skills in demand already have them. The others cannot learn them. This needs a different solution, and I fully expect that whole nations will fail to manage and burn as a result.
Now, in principle, there is enough wealth and productivity to allow everybody a decent live. It is just the distribution of that wealth, which has become thoroughly indecent and repulsive and is now slowly becoming an existential threat.
That is, incidentally, what keeps a society functioning. Stop it and things go up in flames.
No, it is not. All the "retraining" in the world does not help if there are simply no jobs in the difficulty-spectrum a person can work in. People have limits. Most jobs within the limits of most people are going away.
While this is all dumb "automation", as it turns out large parts of many jobs do not actually need intelligence. Fro example, think of those Amazon warehouse workers that mainly supervise robots and correct the few mistakes they make. 5 robots and one supervisor replace 10 workers, i.e. 9 people out of a job. It is _not_ necessary to at all to fully automate a job for massive numbers of jobs being lost.
So, no, there will be no "self-automation" or "self-programming" anytime soon (and maybe not ever), but that does not fix the problem. Most of the human race will eventually need to live without a job and there needs to be some way this can be done reasonably or things will really go to hell like they never have before in human history.
Completely understandable. The only reasons you would do this is patriotism and caring about your fellow human beings. Both are not qualities usually required or expected from business owners these days. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to insult you. I am just pointing out the mechanisms at work here. Of course, you cannot spend a lot of your business's money altruistically, if your competition does not do it too. That would just bankrupt you. And if you spend a little altruistically and your competition does not, that is not going to make any real difference.
As to personal advancement, that is not the root-cause of the problem. Sure, a lot of people today have not used most of the opportunities they had in life so far. A lot of potential employees seem just incredibly dumb, as you probably have noticed when hiring people. But that is not because they are lazy or do not care. That is because they literally have no clue what is important and what is not and are fundamentally confused by a world that grows more and more complex. It is also because people have rather hard limits with regards to what they can actually learn to do. Being limited in what you can do does not mean you do not have a right to eat or to find some happiness in your life. A purely humanitarian PoV is one thing that dictates this. The other thing is that any country where that does not happen is going to burn.
And we are most definitely going to see some countries burn in the next few decades for exactly this reason.
>Nearly Three-Quarters of Adults in US Believe AI Will Eliminate More Jobs Than It Will Create
In the short term, we're in for epic disaster levels of unemployment. Only the owners of capital will be immune to the worst effects.
No. The largest class that will be immune are those with skills that are hard to come by. Unfortunately, there will be no "safe" jobs. You will need to have those skills that are hard to come by and you will need to be really good at them. That excludes most people, whether they are plumbers or software engineers, with plumbers being on average probably much better at what they do.
That "automation" wave (I refuse to call this "AI") is going to burn itself out pretty fast. Just as every other hype has.
More like 10% Eloi. And a "Morlock"? What is that?
And how is that supposed to work? Bomb the rest of the world first, so offshoring is not possible anymore?
It will not happen. The ones that concentrate all the money on their persons will know how to prevent it. Could be another off-shoring wave, could be making sure to have a president that puts money first. The second state now only needs to be maintained. Basically around 80% of workers are screwed.
Well, true. But why are people using them? If these sites would see a massive drop-off in views, the Flash-problem would be solved pretty fast.
Talk about having a death-wish...