Report Card for Donald Trump

[David Horn]

This will be my last reply to this, since the number of stripes is out of control.

(01-10-2017, 05:18 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: You again?

... said the one posting to every thread.

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote: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.

Industrial robots had been on the market since 1956.  They started hitting high-growth in the 70s.  Try again.

The PUMA was the first actual robot to be marginally useful, and just barely at that. That was 1983, as your own link indicates. I actually remember the early applications -- primarily fixed welding.

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:How about the near collapse of bricks-and-mortar retailing.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.  The industry is definitely going through a period of contraction after rapid buildout in the 90s and 2000s, but I doubt very seriously that in the future EVERYTHING will come from Amazon or its nearest equivalent.

No, but the landscape will certainly change. Millennials use online ordering far more than I would, but it's their/your world now. My DIL orders her groceries online, and just does a drive-by pickup. My son is worse. He even orders toilet paper from Amazon, because he can get it delivered for free.

Don't discount the natural human tendency to do as little as possible to complete undesirable tasks.

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:Change is never obvious until it happens.

Perhaps later you regale me with tales of the Wright Brother's first flight or the execution of Charles I.  Maybe start with how in God's name bellbottoms ever sounded like a good idea.  Just because things have changed in the past does not mean your claim has been proven. Change != all jobs everywhere will vanish in the near-future.

Fixed that. No, the near future is not going to kill all jobs, unless you have a very long view of the term 'near'. If fact, I'll be willing to bet that the process is both iterative and meandering. People will move from job to job until they can't adjust to the rate of change. As labor fallout grows, solutions to the "growing idle class" will be tried until something works. That takes time. How much? I don't claim to know, but several decades seems to be a minimum. Humans have to adjust mentally to the change before it can be accepted.

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:Smart machines are hard, but they become very viable if conditions are right.

Hand-waving.

The motivation to create machines is directly proportional to the expected cost/benefit ratio. The ability to create them is tied more to cost. iPads to order in a restaurant, and automated carts to deliver the food (in trade for avoiding tips) might fly easily. Apparently, Level 5 automated cars (a much more ambitious project) will also fly, though it should be less likely.

Why is any of this surprising?

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote: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.

As I pointed out in the other thread, it is difficult to do math without numbers.  You'd think as an "engineer" you'd know that.

TBD Stay tuned. The biggest variable: The Donald. I still can't decide what he thinks he's doing, so what he will actually do is still a known unknown.

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote: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.

And yet we CAN build atomic power plants.  We COULD fly to Mars.  We DID build the Space Shuttle.  And yet the mere fact that these things were possible was not sufficient to fulfill every grandiose claim ever made about them.  The existence of all these other issues is exactly the sort of thing I have been pointing out as qualifying your geeking out over the automation thing.

Were you this worked up when the horse-and-buggy industry finally died?

Grandiose claims tend to be the product of people with an agenda. If I run Lockheed-Martin or Boeing, building space toys will get lots of positive press if I can help it. I look for situations that can be justified on cost/benefit terms. Other cases certainly will be pursued, and some that should won't. We're humans; we're quirky.

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:Full automation is inherently viable.

Full automation of what?  Everything?  Is a bot writing these posts of yours?

Yes, assuming enough time and the desire to get there, we can fully automate everything. I doubt we will, but we can ... eventually.

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:We know we can do it.

What, everything?  Define "know".  Please give me an example of "everything automated".

Writing poetry. Being life companions. Neither is in the cards at the moment, or even desirable at this point. So what? Both can happen if that make sense to future generations.

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:And replacing humans with all their needs and foibles is certainly cost-effective.

Do machines not have needs?  Foibles?  Note that I am not asking if they have the same needs, but do they not have needs of their own?  Do these machines install themselves?  Service themselves (as in actually fix themselves/replace themselves when they break, provide their own power, raw materials, etc.)?  Decide what and how many things they are going to build?

Machines have needs, but they can be met without human intervention. That was my point about self-replicating machines.

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote: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.

Meterless power would have been useful, too.  Doesn't mean it happened.

Nor does it mean it won't in the future. Right now, we're still highly capitalistic. If that changes, so will the motivation to charge for things that should be free. Note: power may not be one of those. Power is not available in unlimited quantities, so some limiting factor will always be required.

SomeGuy Wrote:

David Horn Wrote: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 it's certainly not happening at the moment.

So, no, you don't have any comments on "consumer preference, energy usage, relative labor costs, or the like", just a bunch of handwaving.  Got it.

How do any of those issues affect this? Consumer preference is unaffected by who of what delivers the products and services that are preferred. I mentioned energy usage in my last comment, and that will be a factor, but it will be a factor regardless. And relative labor costs are the entire point. When the need for human intervention drops to zero (or close to it), labor by humans becomes nonviable. We may still elect to maintain some specialized human tasks ... or not, but that decision will not be based on cost.