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This was a good post because the car thing got my attention, but it turned to have a much broader wake of analysis behind it. What do you think about the idea

This was a good post because the car thing got my attention, but it turned to have a much broader wake of analysis behind it. What do you think about the idea that broad-based, multi-sector automation will remove some of the essential challenges in life, and ultimately weaken cognitive abilities? My logic is that as we increase our conveniences, our requirement for physical exertion diminishes and the average body mass grows. So, will the same thing happen to our minds - without the need to exercise them will their performance diminish? If so, will that create a class of knowers and non-knowers, and if so who is responsible for non-knowers? I read a lot of desperation in the comments here and elsewhere while at the same time believing generally that we live in a golden age (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12373014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12373014).

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pm90 10y ago
We already have a lot of automation and it has hardly lead to a weakening of cognitive abilities. Washing machines, dishwashers etc. On the contrary, it has increased productivity, allowing more people to dedicate their lives towards medical research, specifically cognitive research. Its true that future humans may end up as overweight, wheelchair ridden as depicted in Wall-E. But It can also go the other way. Technology has also made fitness to be very popular, for instance. We won't know until it comes to pass. Evolution has generally favored fitness though (e.g. endorphins are released during exercise) so it seems unlikely that the obesity epidemic will spread everywhere or be so complete.
- merb 10y ago
  hm... it could also lead to something like Idiocracy. I mean the more technology you have the less you care about old things, like "how to build a building". Just look at how much worse the whole building industry gotten. The try to be cheaper which also comes with the cost of less trained people.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    How has the building industry gotten worse? What metrics can be used to evaluate it?
    - nkoren 10y ago
      The Empire State building was completed in 1931. It had 103 floors, took 13 months from start to finish, and cost $637M (adjusted for inflation). 83 years later, in the same city, the Freedom Tower was completed. It had one more floor, but took 102 months to build and cost $4B. Obviously that's only two data points, but it's broadly representative of the general trend. Our capacity to build infrastructure has declined dramatically over the past century. Obviously we're still able to do it, but the costs and timescales have increased by orders of magnitude.
      - Eerie 10y ago
        >Obviously that's only two data points, but it's broadly representative of the general trend. NO, IT IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF ANYTHING. So many things changed between 1931 and 2013, and the circumstances surrounding ESB and 1WTC are so different (9/11, for one) the comparison is utterly meaningless.
      - jamiek88 10y ago
        How many deaths and serious injuries in comparison?
        gwright 10y ago
        > According to official records, five people died while constructing the Empire State Building. One was struck by a truck, another fell down an elevator shaft, a third was killed by explosives, a fourth struck by a hoist and the fifth fell from scaffolding. On the other hand it doesn't seem like the Freedom Tower construction had a very good record either (but I couldn't find any info on deaths): > In fact, The News found at least 81 incidents involving dangerous work conditions at the site since construction began in 2003. Through this year, at least 42 of those incidents involved workers falling from a height far enough to seriously injure themselves.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  I disagree with the overweight thing. Go to any trendy city in America now and walk around downtown. You'll see a bunch of upper-middle-class people, and none of them are fat. People now spend time doing physical fitness activities that they didn't in decades past. They also eat a lot better; there's more awareness about some foods being unhealthy. In America, we're seeing a divide between the urban culture and the rural culture, where urban (mostly white) people have good economic success mostly, and are healthier, while rural people are going the other way; hang out with rural people sometime and you'll find they generally have terrible health. They eat cheap, crappy food, and they drive everywhere, and don't spend any time exercising. Ultimately, in the farther future, obesity will be cured by medical means. It's not really that complicated, and there's been a lot of research lately into how gut microbes affect it, and it turns out it's enormous. I predict that pretty soon we'll have gut microbe transplants being used to eliminate obesity, with people having their e.coli eliminated and replaced with versions that are engineered to keep them from getting fat, regardless of exercise. It won't be that long after that that they figure out how exercise affects the body and are able to replicate that with pharmaceuticals.
  - pm90 10y ago
    Lets try and look at facts rather than anecdotal evidence: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/Pages/overweight-obesity-statistics.aspx https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      Your link is bullshit. Go read it: do you see any differentiation between urban and rural people at all? Do you see any differentiation between different regions of the nation? If the answer is no, then it's all bullshit. It's like trying to look for trends among programming language usage by averaging in ALL computer users. Since most computer users don't write any software at all, the clear trend is that no significant number of people use Python, Java, C++, C#, or really any programming language at all, so we should just cut off support for programming languages.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pm90 10y ago

We already have a lot of automation and it has hardly lead to a weakening of cognitive abilities. Washing machines, dishwashers etc. On the contrary, it has increased productivity, allowing more people to dedicate their lives towards medical research, specifically cognitive research. Its true that future humans may end up as overweight, wheelchair ridden as depicted in Wall-E. But It can also go the other way. Technology has also made fitness to be very popular, for instance. We won't know until it comes to pass. Evolution has generally favored fitness though (e.g. endorphins are released during exercise) so it seems unlikely that the obesity epidemic will spread everywhere or be so complete.

merb 10y ago
hm... it could also lead to something like Idiocracy. I mean the more technology you have the less you care about old things, like "how to build a building". Just look at how much worse the whole building industry gotten. The try to be cheaper which also comes with the cost of less trained people.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  How has the building industry gotten worse? What metrics can be used to evaluate it?
  - nkoren 10y ago
    The Empire State building was completed in 1931. It had 103 floors, took 13 months from start to finish, and cost $637M (adjusted for inflation). 83 years later, in the same city, the Freedom Tower was completed. It had one more floor, but took 102 months to build and cost $4B. Obviously that's only two data points, but it's broadly representative of the general trend. Our capacity to build infrastructure has declined dramatically over the past century. Obviously we're still able to do it, but the costs and timescales have increased by orders of magnitude.
    - Eerie 10y ago
      >Obviously that's only two data points, but it's broadly representative of the general trend. NO, IT IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF ANYTHING. So many things changed between 1931 and 2013, and the circumstances surrounding ESB and 1WTC are so different (9/11, for one) the comparison is utterly meaningless.
    - jamiek88 10y ago
      How many deaths and serious injuries in comparison?
      - gwright 10y ago
        > According to official records, five people died while constructing the Empire State Building. One was struck by a truck, another fell down an elevator shaft, a third was killed by explosives, a fourth struck by a hoist and the fifth fell from scaffolding. On the other hand it doesn't seem like the Freedom Tower construction had a very good record either (but I couldn't find any info on deaths): > In fact, The News found at least 81 incidents involving dangerous work conditions at the site since construction began in 2003. Through this year, at least 42 of those incidents involved workers falling from a height far enough to seriously injure themselves.
Grishnakh 10y ago
I disagree with the overweight thing. Go to any trendy city in America now and walk around downtown. You'll see a bunch of upper-middle-class people, and none of them are fat. People now spend time doing physical fitness activities that they didn't in decades past. They also eat a lot better; there's more awareness about some foods being unhealthy. In America, we're seeing a divide between the urban culture and the rural culture, where urban (mostly white) people have good economic success mostly, and are healthier, while rural people are going the other way; hang out with rural people sometime and you'll find they generally have terrible health. They eat cheap, crappy food, and they drive everywhere, and don't spend any time exercising. Ultimately, in the farther future, obesity will be cured by medical means. It's not really that complicated, and there's been a lot of research lately into how gut microbes affect it, and it turns out it's enormous. I predict that pretty soon we'll have gut microbe transplants being used to eliminate obesity, with people having their e.coli eliminated and replaced with versions that are engineered to keep them from getting fat, regardless of exercise. It won't be that long after that that they figure out how exercise affects the body and are able to replicate that with pharmaceuticals.
- pm90 10y ago
  Lets try and look at facts rather than anecdotal evidence: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/Pages/overweight-obesity-statistics.aspx https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    Your link is bullshit. Go read it: do you see any differentiation between urban and rural people at all? Do you see any differentiation between different regions of the nation? If the answer is no, then it's all bullshit. It's like trying to look for trends among programming language usage by averaging in ALL computer users. Since most computer users don't write any software at all, the clear trend is that no significant number of people use Python, Java, C++, C#, or really any programming language at all, so we should just cut off support for programming languages.