Report Card for Donald Trump

[David Horn]

(01-08-2017, 07:16 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: It's like a religious thing with you, isn't it?  That link isn't for something in production, it's the wikipedia page of a concept that has more sources from science fiction going back decades than it does current projects.  You keep asserting that "the destructive part" MUST "consistently outpace the creative part", but you never prove why that must be so.  All you do is wave your hands, and completely ignore the long history of those claims, their persistent failure in the past, and the absence of any real evidence in support of why IT's DIFFERENT THIS TIME.

You're young, so you haven't actually witnessed the change that has already happened. Industrial robots were experimental in the 1980s; now they're ubiquitous. Something newer? How about the near collapse of bricks-and-mortar retailing. Change is never obvious until it happens.

Smart machines are hard, but they become very viable if conditions are right. Right now, or sometime after January 20th at least, our political establishment will empower corporations by gutting the regulatory regime, lowering their taxes and putting people like Carl Icahn in the drivers seat. Add money to motivation and subtract any viable opposition. You do the math.

SomeGuy Wrote:Atomic energy was supposed to be "too cheap to meter", and prototypes were built of atomic cars, atomic airplanes, etc.?  What happened there? We landed people on the Moon in 1969, when did we land people on Mars?  The Space Shuttle was supposed to make travel to orbit as cheap and convenient as jet airplane ride?  How did that work out?  DARPA built a walking robot for the US Army for use in Vietnam, and they're still playing around with the idea now.

Safety issues are what killed atomic power: Chernobyl, The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island. Contrary to your opinion, the Space Shuttle was always a kludge and Mars was always a wet dream. DARPA may not have gotten robots right then, but the internet has certainly been a success.

So I'm betting on an automaton wave that will either be beaten back by or cheered-on by the political environment. It can go either way.

SomeGuy Wrote:Just because something can be imagined doesn't mean it can be built.  Just because it can be built doesn't mean it is feasible to use.  Just because it can be used doesn't mean it will be cost-effective to do so compared to the alternatives.  

Full automation is inherently viable. We know we can do it. Automation has been successful everywhere it's been tried. And replacing humans with all their needs and foibles is certainly cost-effective.

It's already happening.

SomeGuy Wrote:You have already acknowledged that this is not an imminent thing, need I quote you to nail you down on that subject?  Given this, what you are instead making is a long-term prediction on technological trends, several decades out.  Do you have any idea what the history of that sort of thing looks like?  You should check out Victorian predictions of the 20th century, mid-century depictions of the early 21th century.  Where are the jet packs, the space colonies, the food pills?  Where was the Internet in any of their predictions?  The very fact that people here at the height of a tech boom are converging on one vision of what the future a few decades out looks like is a pretty solid indicator that that isn't how it is going to be.

Its a huge undertaking, so setting a timeline is hard, but its a lot more sensible than flying cars or jet packs, which never made sense at any level but the emotional. Keep utility at the forefront. Is automation utile? Yes. And asking about the Internet is a bit dumb, since DARPA knew exactly what it was doing. It only lacked the knowledge of how far technology could go in so short a time.

SomeGuy Wrote:Do you actually have a real response to any of these issues I raised as to consumer preference, energy usage, relative labor costs, or the like, or is all you can manage a plaintive "THE MACHINES WILL TAKE OVER BECAUSE SCIENCE!"?

Who said machines will take over? I doubt any of us will be around if and when machine become prescient. This isn't about machines as masters. Its about masters maintaining their mastery through machines they control.

Hoi polio has a small window to get in front of this and stake a claim to the benefits, but its certainly not happening at the moment.