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The thesis of the audio clip appears to be that an unsolved problem with automation is what becomes of the automated workers. My girlfriend works in a governme

by shubb 13y ago

The thesis of the audio clip appears to be that an unsolved problem with automation is what becomes of the automated workers. My girlfriend works in a government job, at a regulator. Most jobs there exist because they insist in dealing with paper forms instead of internet ones - for most employees, half the work is in correcting invalid forms (e.g. no contact address). The other half is in applying rules that they have to know because they have never been codified in a database (instead living in large regulation documents). Recently, they have been downsizing. One of the employees that was fired was primarily responsible for sorting emails that arrive in a centralized inbox, allocating them equally to staff. She also ordered stationary, and watered plants. When she left, she was entirely replaced by 2 Outlook rules, one to allocate the mail, the other to periodically order stationary by automated mail. I wonder what will become of that lady. She had a fear of technology, not even mastering how to send email though it was her primary role for 5 years. She regularly cried in the office, and when asked to do anything outside that small role, approached a nervous breakdown. There are a lot of people who are not able to cope with advanced roles, by which I mean normal jobs a normal person could perform. Either we are willing to pay for them to be comfortably unemployed (as the CEO implies we should be), or we are not. I suspect we are not. So they will be punished, and made to feel terrible, until they are diagnosed with something and can be disabled. At this point, their livelyhood relies on not being able, and this seeps into the soul.

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
Yes, to be provocative about it, here are some options for what to do: 1. Support them comfortably for the rest of their lives, retrain the ones who wish to be retrained. (too crazy?) 2. Euthanize them in a kindly fashion, ie with laughing gas. (obviously ridiculous) 3. Euthanize them in a cruel way, ie humiliate them by making them beg their families for care and resources, starve the ones with no family. Let them die of exposure if they haven't saved a fortune and can't cope gracefully with rapid technological progress. (the way we've been doing it)
- drivingmenuts 13y ago
  #1 won't happen - there's too many people who want to toss unproductive people aside like so much dead wood. Unproductive people cost money and there's a whole school of thought in the US that really, really (and I do mean really) resents that. #3 is already being done and it's working as intended (not that it is a good thing by any means), although it seems to be inefficient as far as that first group of thinkers is concerned.
- wyager 13y ago
  You did a very good job of making it sound as though it is someone else's fault, even intention, when someone fails. Of course, calling failure "euthanization" is ridiculous fallacious bullshit.
  - sbov 13y ago
    We're all just 1 technological improvement away from failure.
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    1. The post was intentionally provocative. I said so in the post. I don't really care about the blame as much as the solution. 2. It is a serious dilemma for me. I've worked in, and now I teach industrial automation. I have probably automated thousands of peoples' jobs away. While I don't believe it is my fault, or my client companies' faults that there are box packers and fruit sorters who are unemployed. I do feel enough responsibility that I should at least advocate for the people's sake. I also don't think it is the fault of the workers. One thing I do know is that wide-scale automation of labor is a potential social disaster if we don't figure out how to handle the transition gracefully. 3. I'll double down and tell you my opinion that "euthanasia" is really too kind a word for what happens to the sick who are also poor in this country. Do I think it is deliberate? Maybe, judging by the priority policymakers have placed on alleviating the problem.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Personally, I love your #3. When you put it that way, it is insane that we think it's cruel to kill someone swiftly and painlessly by giving them drugs, but perfectly reasonable to kill someone slowly and painfully over a period of years by gradually denying them the necessities of life. It boils down to diffusion of responsibility. If you kill someone directly, someone is directly responsible. But if you just let them go out into the world without the means to make a living, everybody is sort of responsible together, meaning no individual is strongly responsible at all.
    - AYBABTME 13y ago
      `euthanazia` implies that somebody is doing something to another, in this case that we actively make them suffer a cruel sort with the intention of killing them. It's obviously not my intention, nor do I think it is the intention of most. I believe it is more correct to simply state that human life can be tough walk. If you don't manage to keep your head up, you'll suffer the wrath of some evolutionary conspiration. We as societies can try to alleviate that minimum suffering by choosing to provide basic needs. Some societies decide to do it, some don't. I believe societies who don't are of this opinion because they are blind to the benefits, not because they are evil.
- omgsean 13y ago
  Optional number 4: Turn them into resources in the for-profit criminal justice system when they eventually turn to using and selling addictive drugs.
  - lotyrin 13y ago
    And this is why I often put the concept of basic income in terms of what we could be paying for people to be in jail instead when explaining why I support it to my more economically conservative acquaintances.
- bradleyjg 13y ago
  How many people died of starvation caused by the inability to acquire sufficient calories (i.e. excluding anorexics) last year in the USA? How many people are living on the streets who simply can't find anywhere to spend the night (as opposed to simply too mentally ill to look)? Being first-world poor is certainly miserable and can have deadly consequences but this type of bs exaggeration just hurts the point you seem to be trying to make.
  - Spooky23 13y ago
    Not many starve, but many are homeless. And no, not all homeless people are lunatics off of their meds. Basically, if you don't have a support system and have any of a number of serious events (layoff, dovorce, criminal conviction, medical event, return from military service, etc) take place, you have a high probability of becoming homeless, at least transitionally. Being poor is often miserable, and misery brings on all sorts of bad behaviors. People need to feel some threshold measure of security and control. You can be poor and fulfilled, but modern urban living makes that difficult for many. I find this entire article a little ironic. You have some smug CEO of a company (that offers a glorified messageboard intended to allow companies to provide mediocre customer support) lashing out like a child about a labor dispute and jobs he knows nothing about. I wonder how he'll feel when his business gets blown away by some open source project.
    - bradleyjg 13y ago
      > Basically, if you don't have a support system and have any of a number of serious events (layoff, dovorce, criminal conviction, medical event, return from military service, etc) take place, you have a high probability of becoming homeless, at least transitionally. Homeless under the HUD definition[1], sure. Homeless in the sense the original post in this discussion used it (i.e. at danger of death from exposure) no, that's quite usual in the circumstances you've outlined. Almost always in those cases there's a couch to sleep on or at least a car to stay in. [1] https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/HEARTH_HomelessDefinition_FinalRule.pdf https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/HEARTH_HomelessD...
- AndrewKemendo 13y ago
  This is why the idea of a basic income has taken off within the futurology crowd (including myself). We have to do something about these folks and fairly quickly because it will be upon us soon I think.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  I like how you construct your 123 answers to support your own opinion. You would make a good politician.
- coopdog 13y ago
  Maybe I'm just optimistic but she must be able to do something productive. Even if it's sewing toys together for children or making sure the elderly don't fall over. To me that's one of the benefits of a basic income, to help people find their niche, as humble as it may be for some
chrischen 13y ago
Human ability is not liquid enough. She has already been mistrained/miseducated by the time her skills have become obsolete. Either she's going to end up jobless, poor, and constantly fighting the change that took her job away, or she's going to educate herself enough to join a new career. In the former, there's a loss of economic value because she's going to be working against progress while at the same time not contribute economically because she keeps fighting for keeping the things the same old inefficient way. In the latter, she's being punished for picking the wrong career path that society probably partly encouraged her to pick.
TheRealDunkirk 13y ago
People like this -- and I've known several -- are suffering from an acute case of knowing their situation perfectly well. They know that they don't warrant the salaries they're receiving for the work they do. They fight against any improvement to their systems because the inefficiency is their job security. They feel constantly threatened because they understand that people coming up behind them just don't need them. That's why their nervous and irritable. The biggest problem with these folks is that they grew old between the ears, and think they can't adapt to their changing circumstances. If they would, they could learn to be more valuable in other ways.
rrwhite 13y ago
You're spot on with that thesis. Automation is inevitable. How we react to it is what's going to matter. I tried to encapsulate that here: http://rrwhite.com/on-the-inevitability-of-automation http://rrwhite.com/on-the-inevitability-of-automation

by shubb 13y ago

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago

Yes, to be provocative about it, here are some options for what to do: 1. Support them comfortably for the rest of their lives, retrain the ones who wish to be retrained. (too crazy?) 2. Euthanize them in a kindly fashion, ie with laughing gas. (obviously ridiculous) 3. Euthanize them in a cruel way, ie humiliate them by making them beg their families for care and resources, starve the ones with no family. Let them die of exposure if they haven't saved a fortune and can't cope gracefully with rapid technological progress. (the way we've been doing it)

drivingmenuts 13y ago
#1 won't happen - there's too many people who want to toss unproductive people aside like so much dead wood. Unproductive people cost money and there's a whole school of thought in the US that really, really (and I do mean really) resents that. #3 is already being done and it's working as intended (not that it is a good thing by any means), although it seems to be inefficient as far as that first group of thinkers is concerned.
wyager 13y ago
You did a very good job of making it sound as though it is someone else's fault, even intention, when someone fails. Of course, calling failure "euthanization" is ridiculous fallacious bullshit.
- sbov 13y ago
  We're all just 1 technological improvement away from failure.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  1. The post was intentionally provocative. I said so in the post. I don't really care about the blame as much as the solution. 2. It is a serious dilemma for me. I've worked in, and now I teach industrial automation. I have probably automated thousands of peoples' jobs away. While I don't believe it is my fault, or my client companies' faults that there are box packers and fruit sorters who are unemployed. I do feel enough responsibility that I should at least advocate for the people's sake. I also don't think it is the fault of the workers. One thing I do know is that wide-scale automation of labor is a potential social disaster if we don't figure out how to handle the transition gracefully. 3. I'll double down and tell you my opinion that "euthanasia" is really too kind a word for what happens to the sick who are also poor in this country. Do I think it is deliberate? Maybe, judging by the priority policymakers have placed on alleviating the problem.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Personally, I love your #3. When you put it that way, it is insane that we think it's cruel to kill someone swiftly and painlessly by giving them drugs, but perfectly reasonable to kill someone slowly and painfully over a period of years by gradually denying them the necessities of life. It boils down to diffusion of responsibility. If you kill someone directly, someone is directly responsible. But if you just let them go out into the world without the means to make a living, everybody is sort of responsible together, meaning no individual is strongly responsible at all.
  - AYBABTME 13y ago
    `euthanazia` implies that somebody is doing something to another, in this case that we actively make them suffer a cruel sort with the intention of killing them. It's obviously not my intention, nor do I think it is the intention of most. I believe it is more correct to simply state that human life can be tough walk. If you don't manage to keep your head up, you'll suffer the wrath of some evolutionary conspiration. We as societies can try to alleviate that minimum suffering by choosing to provide basic needs. Some societies decide to do it, some don't. I believe societies who don't are of this opinion because they are blind to the benefits, not because they are evil.
omgsean 13y ago
Optional number 4: Turn them into resources in the for-profit criminal justice system when they eventually turn to using and selling addictive drugs.
- lotyrin 13y ago
  And this is why I often put the concept of basic income in terms of what we could be paying for people to be in jail instead when explaining why I support it to my more economically conservative acquaintances.
bradleyjg 13y ago
How many people died of starvation caused by the inability to acquire sufficient calories (i.e. excluding anorexics) last year in the USA? How many people are living on the streets who simply can't find anywhere to spend the night (as opposed to simply too mentally ill to look)? Being first-world poor is certainly miserable and can have deadly consequences but this type of bs exaggeration just hurts the point you seem to be trying to make.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  Not many starve, but many are homeless. And no, not all homeless people are lunatics off of their meds. Basically, if you don't have a support system and have any of a number of serious events (layoff, dovorce, criminal conviction, medical event, return from military service, etc) take place, you have a high probability of becoming homeless, at least transitionally. Being poor is often miserable, and misery brings on all sorts of bad behaviors. People need to feel some threshold measure of security and control. You can be poor and fulfilled, but modern urban living makes that difficult for many. I find this entire article a little ironic. You have some smug CEO of a company (that offers a glorified messageboard intended to allow companies to provide mediocre customer support) lashing out like a child about a labor dispute and jobs he knows nothing about. I wonder how he'll feel when his business gets blown away by some open source project.
  - bradleyjg 13y ago
    > Basically, if you don't have a support system and have any of a number of serious events (layoff, dovorce, criminal conviction, medical event, return from military service, etc) take place, you have a high probability of becoming homeless, at least transitionally. Homeless under the HUD definition[1], sure. Homeless in the sense the original post in this discussion used it (i.e. at danger of death from exposure) no, that's quite usual in the circumstances you've outlined. Almost always in those cases there's a couch to sleep on or at least a car to stay in. [1] https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/HEARTH_HomelessDefinition_FinalRule.pdf https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/HEARTH_HomelessD...
AndrewKemendo 13y ago
This is why the idea of a basic income has taken off within the futurology crowd (including myself). We have to do something about these folks and fairly quickly because it will be upon us soon I think.
ekianjo 13y ago
I like how you construct your 123 answers to support your own opinion. You would make a good politician.
coopdog 13y ago
Maybe I'm just optimistic but she must be able to do something productive. Even if it's sewing toys together for children or making sure the elderly don't fall over. To me that's one of the benefits of a basic income, to help people find their niche, as humble as it may be for some

chrischen 13y ago

Human ability is not liquid enough. She has already been mistrained/miseducated by the time her skills have become obsolete. Either she's going to end up jobless, poor, and constantly fighting the change that took her job away, or she's going to educate herself enough to join a new career. In the former, there's a loss of economic value because she's going to be working against progress while at the same time not contribute economically because she keeps fighting for keeping the things the same old inefficient way. In the latter, she's being punished for picking the wrong career path that society probably partly encouraged her to pick.

TheRealDunkirk 13y ago

People like this -- and I've known several -- are suffering from an acute case of knowing their situation perfectly well. They know that they don't warrant the salaries they're receiving for the work they do. They fight against any improvement to their systems because the inefficiency is their job security. They feel constantly threatened because they understand that people coming up behind them just don't need them. That's why their nervous and irritable. The biggest problem with these folks is that they grew old between the ears, and think they can't adapt to their changing circumstances. If they would, they could learn to be more valuable in other ways.

rrwhite 13y ago

You're spot on with that thesis. Automation is inevitable. How we react to it is what's going to matter. I tried to encapsulate that here: http://rrwhite.com/on-the-inevitability-of-automation http://rrwhite.com/on-the-inevitability-of-automation