Report Card for Donald Trump

[David Horn]

(01-04-2017, 01:43 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Once upon a time, food was pretty much the only good that people worried about.  Now, we have near zero cost of production for food, and yet somehow large numbers of people remain employed, producing things that weren't even dreamed of in agrarian times.

Why would we think that's different for whatever we're producing now?

Moore's law does not really help your case.  Exponential growth does not lead to a singularity; in fact, it's self similar at any point in progression.  And word processors are not really any more effective now than they were 30 years go, despite 20 doubling periods of Moore's law.

It may be wise to interject Maslow at this point.  There is a hierarchy of needs that cannot be fully met by production.  Emotional needs are hard to satisfy through interaction with a machine, unless you wish to believe that Ex Machina is actually a future history. Other than that, machines are doing things today that are all too human: writing poetry and music for example.  I have no doubt that the end-of-life support systems my grandchildren will employ will be robotic rather than human. 

Find me an area of human endeavor that is not susceptible to replacement by an artificial agent.  Other than emotional needs, I can't find any myself.  We may elect to place the arts in a special category reserved for humans, but that will be a choice.