I’m equally disheartened by the people who dismiss job losses as unlikely because “AI can’t automate entire jobs”.
What do you suggest happens when you automate half of 10 people’s jobs? Do you expect they want to pay for 10 people to operate at 50%, or would someone be more likely to just keep 5 people to do the part they couldn’t automate (yet)? Do you think CEOs will want to add 5 more heads back later, or do you think they will add the minimum necessary and still seek a cheap alternative to fill remaining gaps?
I absolutely agree with you that it COULD make people’s jobs easier, but unless that directly translates into revenue for the company, a relaxing easy day of work isn’t generally the goal of profitable companies.
(Belatedly) yes. Kind of a big argument to grapple with, but let's start by considering everything. I mean, all the stuff, the abstract stuff, that's out there objectively in the universe and in the future, waiting to be discovered. I believe there's quite a considerable amount of it. It's all potentially of interest to us eventually, and only a teeny tiny part of it is comprehensible to us now. That part is at the leading edge, the cutting edge of our enquiries, and in order for us to see and comprehend and even care about that part, it has to relate to us. It has to be oriented to us and our thoughts and things we can use.
You see what I'm getting at? Humans don't really like abstract things. Mathematicians seem to, but I doubt that even mathematics truly has an objective abstract quality that's distant from human concerns. I reckon humans do human mathematics, and it probably has fashions, too, it's probably modern and current, that is, of its time and place.
So you could accept that, but still claim that music relates strongly to mathematics as we know it. Of course there's such a thing as the mathematics of music. I could dispute the value of that to the quality of the music, as being too abstract and niche compared to the evocative qualities of music, where it evokes things in our physical world: the sounds of hitting things with sticks, heartbeats, tones of voice, meaningful instruments such as bugles evoking battles, mazy noodling around evoking contemplative thoughts (is that abstract?) ... but either way, the point is that we live in a sort of parochial Bag End, if Middle Earth represents everything abstractly possible, and so we only understand hobbit things and only appreciate hobbit art. So to speak.
Cool, but isn’t this “the next time”, after “the next time”, after “the next time” already? These companies have been threatened, sued, and incentivized in numerous ways over many years, which has yet to be successful, and yet it seems like you are suggesting “just one more time” will be the impetus for change…this time…you swear…probably?
Note: I don’t disagree or agree, rather, I’m pointing out how flawed the logic is that just one more time will be what it takes.
> isn’t this “the next time”, after “the next time”, after “the next time” already?
No, it’s the time that it worked. The cable company upgraded. That’s all that matters. Whether it’s happened many times or not is irrelevant. The next time will come next time.
> which has yet to be successful
OP said they laid the fiber. It was literally successful. Preëmptively striking your service provider because they might screw you in the future is silly.
Why not just click the “unsubscribe” button on any of those emails you complained about getting? Seems like blaming marketing for a lack of self-agency to opt-out, but I suppose we each have our own metrics. I’ve donated, got emails, clicked one button, stopped getting emails. Guess it just seems the complaint is very solvable, but I do partially understand your point.
> Why not just click the “unsubscribe” button on any of those emails you complained about getting
Because I work in software and I've known plenty of people in this industry that treat the unsubscribe button as a "there's a real user getting these emails" button
I really appreciate their comment describing their overreaction on a post about people overreacting when asked for donations. Goes a long way to prove TFA's point
I tend to mark them as spam (and hope that it causes them problems send email) if I didn't explicitly sign up for them. I'm not going to be polite about it if they aren't.
I think looking at every carmaker’s lineup should make it obvious that they don’t give a crap what powers a car, they are just trying to sell what’s popular. EVs were trendy for a couple years and a margin-subsidizing $7000 was available so everybody enthusiastically brought out EVs. Now they’re less popular so they’re all pulling back. Arguably even Tesla is doing so, given that Musk has intimidated that he didn’t really think Tesla was going to keep selling cars forever.
When the demand is sufficient, the cars will be sold in numbers to match it. Demand will increase as it becomes practical to own an EV for more people. This mainly has to do with charging infrastructure at every level, which is capital intensive for both individuals and governments.
Do you suggest we ignore or include in this history the original contributions of the first electric cars from all the way back in the single digits of the 1900s?
There was a long time between those cars and the modern electric car where the only thing electric was "golf carts" (not general purpose cars), or homemade conversions. The EV1 was the first commercial car in the memory of most people alive today. The 1900s ones were fun/interesting historical things, but not practical.
Eh, it’s mostly for the trillionaires to keep their wealth after death. For everyone else, you will inevitably eventually end up driving a garbage truck. Don’t believe me? Your digital copy runs on a server doing important work! Company goes out of business. Assets get auctioned. Garbage truck.
Or another? The trust you set up ran out of money because all of the fees continued to increase and outpaced certain economic downturns. More and more people drew money off of your remaining static assets. You run out of money. Estate sale. Garbage truck.
Just remember, you’ll have all of time to end up there.
One of the many details of Altered Carbon (Netflix) that they got right. Digitized minds would become so numerous as to be considered little more than fancy trash.
> That delay is due to special regulatory protections that are intended to encourage innovation by extending a brand-name drugmaker’s monopoly.
Pure profit protection when they make back enough money to fund every one of their drugs off a single patent that they continue to renew for 20 years by slightly modifying the syringe to now have an amazing new innovation like an integrated safety cap, or some other drug-irrelevant bs.
Both Copyright and Patents in the US need 21st century reform to something that is reasonable for the speed of modern technology.
And that mechanism can be tweaked and repeatedly patented.
One of the positive cases for patents on medicines is that they are often chemicals. It's fairly simple to tell whether a chemical is the same or different. "Good fences make good neighbors". You infringe the patent or you don't, and you know that in advance.
But if you want to introduce a similar mechanical device to deliver your definitely patent free generic, now you have to roll the dice that the dozens of patents they've taken out on different delivery mechanism don't affect your approach.
This is fascinating, thank you. Do you think that with approval of oral options this becomes less of an issue, since pill design is so far out of patent across the board?
What do you suggest happens when you automate half of 10 people’s jobs? Do you expect they want to pay for 10 people to operate at 50%, or would someone be more likely to just keep 5 people to do the part they couldn’t automate (yet)? Do you think CEOs will want to add 5 more heads back later, or do you think they will add the minimum necessary and still seek a cheap alternative to fill remaining gaps?
I absolutely agree with you that it COULD make people’s jobs easier, but unless that directly translates into revenue for the company, a relaxing easy day of work isn’t generally the goal of profitable companies.
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