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I'm more and more convinced that being a cog in some corporate machine is coming to an end. We've collectively refined corporate processes to the point that it

I'm more and more convinced that being a cog in some corporate machine is coming to an end. We've collectively refined corporate processes to the point that it no longer requires human ingenuity or creativity. This has all happened under the guise of making things more efficient so that a stock ticker will be less volatile and will consistently move up and to the right. The candidate tracking software that this article parodies is one example of such an automated and "efficient" system. One gets the sense that the recruiters are almost secondary. Soon a "dog" will really be able to screen candidates for a job. I don't think I'm saying anything new here. The mechanization of such work has been happening for a while now and the smart move is to start planning for that inevitability. Anything that requires basic pattern matching and procedures is pretty much gone. My retirement account I think is currently managed by a "robo advisor". Hiring humans to do such mechanical tasks will start getting more and more expensive relative to tweaking some parameters in some neural network coupled maybe with some domain specific policy/optimization framework. Personally I don't think this is such a bad state of affairs. Why should societal optimization tasks be handled with heroic human effort when we can just do it with math?

troymc 10y ago
While math can be used to optimize some function(s) (for "societal optimization"), math is silent about the question of what to optimize. There's no general agreement about that. (For example, should there be regulations to reduce river pollution?)
- dkarapetyan 10y ago
  Sure but what do you trust more, a properly designed control system with various safeguards to allow for the right amount of river pollution, or politicians arguing about which of their buddies should get the rights to polluting that river the most? In the future I imagine your question about the river pollution is almost nonsensical. That is if we manage to actually get there. Going by current news about the future of earth's ecology we might not actually make it much further. Gotta admit though heroic human optimizations seemed like they got us pretty far but the lag time in reacting to things is a bit too long when humans are in the loop. So the sooner they are out of that critical loop the better. Speaking of which: http://www.sciencealert.com/photos-reveal-more-than-200-bright-blue-arctic-lakes-have-started-bubbling-with-methane-gas http://www.sciencealert.com/photos-reveal-more-than-200-brig...
  - troymc 10y ago
    My example was one many human questions where "math" provides no objective answer, because not every question has an objective answer, particularly some questions of morality, fairness, or personal taste. Some more examples: * Is it okay to jaywalk with children across a busy street? * Is it fair to give the bigger piece of chicken to the boy, rather than the girl, because "he's a boy"? * Which is better-tasting, peaches or plums? (I'm not arguing for moral relativism. There are some moral questions where everyone agrees on the answer.)

troymc 10y ago

While math can be used to optimize some function(s) (for "societal optimization"), math is silent about the question of what to optimize. There's no general agreement about that. (For example, should there be regulations to reduce river pollution?)

dkarapetyan 10y ago
Sure but what do you trust more, a properly designed control system with various safeguards to allow for the right amount of river pollution, or politicians arguing about which of their buddies should get the rights to polluting that river the most? In the future I imagine your question about the river pollution is almost nonsensical. That is if we manage to actually get there. Going by current news about the future of earth's ecology we might not actually make it much further. Gotta admit though heroic human optimizations seemed like they got us pretty far but the lag time in reacting to things is a bit too long when humans are in the loop. So the sooner they are out of that critical loop the better. Speaking of which: http://www.sciencealert.com/photos-reveal-more-than-200-bright-blue-arctic-lakes-have-started-bubbling-with-methane-gas http://www.sciencealert.com/photos-reveal-more-than-200-brig...
- troymc 10y ago
  My example was one many human questions where "math" provides no objective answer, because not every question has an objective answer, particularly some questions of morality, fairness, or personal taste. Some more examples: * Is it okay to jaywalk with children across a busy street? * Is it fair to give the bigger piece of chicken to the boy, rather than the girl, because "he's a boy"? * Which is better-tasting, peaches or plums? (I'm not arguing for moral relativism. There are some moral questions where everyone agrees on the answer.)