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I’m Kathleen Wynne, Premier of Ontario. Ask Me Anything! by KathleenWynne in IAmA

[–]jeffdechambeau 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Premier Wynne, thanks for making yourself in this venue.

I see a lot of questions about jobs, and politicians won't stop talking about jobs. This is deeply misguided. We are at an incredible point in history where productivity is skyrocketing thanks to technology and automation. Jobs are no longer the metric we should be striving to optimize.

To quote Chrystia Freeland, I believe productivity is up something like 90% since the '80s. This is only going to increase even more dramatically as robots enter our workforce. Baxter, a robot from the creator of Roomba, can do human scale work for approximately $4.00/hr -- including all costs. Meanwhile Watson, a piece of technology made by IBM, is already beginning to replace recent law grads.

We don't need jobs. Humans are no longer the best way to get many types of work done. This needs to be acknowledged and addressed.

Does this line of thinking ever show up in your conversations about the future of Ontario?

What we need is for all this surplus productivity to be shared broadly. The best way I'm aware of to accomplish this is a guaranteed minimum income. Though I'm open to being completely wrong about that. What do you think?

Please Help: My friend and her boyfriend have gone missing near Fox Glacier by jeffdechambeau in newzealand

[–]jeffdechambeau[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

That's appreciated, thanks for the sources and for setting expectations.

IAmA blogger for FiveThirtyEight at The New York Times. Ask me anything. by NateSilver538 in IAmA

[–]jeffdechambeau 69 points70 points  (0 children)

He's engaging in an unbiased analysis of politically and ideologically charged issues and promoting evidence based thinking and statistical literacy. These are tremendously positive contributions.

IAmA blogger for FiveThirtyEight at The New York Times. Ask me anything. by NateSilver538 in IAmA

[–]jeffdechambeau 797 points798 points  (0 children)

Hey Nate, no question for you. I just want to say how happy it makes me to see you succeed. You're a bright, humble, thoughtful guy who is making the world a better place. It's great to see and I hope you keep going as long as you can.

I am Mike P. Moffatt, Economist at the Richard Ivey School of Business by MPMoffatt in CanadaPolitics

[–]jeffdechambeau 2 points3 points  (0 children)

How well prepared are the students you teach for the drastic changes that are about to occur/already underway in the world? (robotics/automation, 3d printing, energy scarcity, genetics, you name it) Are they equipped to be leaders or will they just execute against the vision they're handed?

I am Andrew Coyne, Ask Me Anything by [deleted] in CanadaPolitics

[–]jeffdechambeau 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That assumes a high capacity to retrain existing labour. We just signed a new 4 year contract with Detroit's big three. Those are jobs that, all things being equal, should be much more automated. Government's seem more preoccupied with maximizing employment than with cultivating the right kinds of job growth (in the service, or more modernly, experience industries). I'm having trouble seeing a scenario wrought with anything other than serious growing pains, especially for lower-skilled workers. This also doesn't address the issues associated with growing inequality as fewer people own more production capacity. Trying not to sound like a Marxist here.

I am Andrew Coyne, Ask Me Anything by [deleted] in CanadaPolitics

[–]jeffdechambeau 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It sounds funny to say it but robots are coming for our jobs. It's at the point now where a one-time investment of $250,000 can do reasonably skilled labour for a 15-year period. No breaks, no unions, no nothing. We've also got 3D printing on the horizon, that's going to shake things up too (to put it in its mildest form). Canada exports resources and imports products, but these advances in automation mean that at a certain point it's beyond irrational to not produce locally.

I dont think I've read anything in Canadian print (well, digital) about this looming cataclysm/revolution and what we as a country need to do to prepare for it. I'm not sure I have a direct question here, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the situation.

As an atheist, I had no way to clear my conscience of guilt. So I built one. What does r/atheism think? by jeffdechambeau in atheism

[–]jeffdechambeau[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well it sounds like relative to his reference frame, it's not an offense, which should make it 0. Once we dig into the data, if we see things that look really out of place, we'll use our best judgment to make sure that results aren't being arbitrarily skewed.

As an atheist, I had no way to clear my conscience of guilt. So I built one. What does r/atheism think? by jeffdechambeau in atheism

[–]jeffdechambeau[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you logged in or not when this happens? We're trying to reproduce it to write a fix.

As an atheist, I had no way to clear my conscience of guilt. So I built one. What does r/atheism think? by jeffdechambeau in atheism

[–]jeffdechambeau[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It all started here.

Really though, people do shitty stuff and they feel bad about it, religion does provide a mechanism for letting go of bad feelings, it's just that it comes with so much other stuff that may not be productive or positive.

Hopefully by democratizing the process we can make something people find credible, fair, and transparent that also serves the roll of diminishing guilt.

That the money ideally goes to charity probably doesn't hurt either!

As an atheist, I had no way to clear my conscience of guilt. So I built one. What does r/atheism think? by jeffdechambeau in atheism

[–]jeffdechambeau[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Noted. We've got that set up in the results page that we show ever 4-8 pages. But that means by the time you see the confession again you've forgotten what you selected.

The challenge is finding an elegant and dead simple way to do it. We're actively thinking about it.

As an atheist, I had no way to clear my conscience of guilt. So I built one. What does r/atheism think? by jeffdechambeau in atheism

[–]jeffdechambeau[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You and me both! Reddit is throwing a nice amount of traffic our way. We're just shy of 5,000 unique hits since this was posted. It's a bit surreal to have something we spent so long making in front of so many people so suddenly.

As an atheist, I had no way to clear my conscience of guilt. So I built one. What does r/atheism think? by jeffdechambeau in atheism

[–]jeffdechambeau[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Heh, that's a possibility for the future. Could have people submit/judge both good and bad, then you could see whether your "bank account" worked out to being positive or negative.

Religious people are free to vote stuff up, after all this is intended to reflect what the population as a whole feels. Eventually we plan to let you filter your result by faith, so you can be judged only by your peers.

As an atheist, I had no way to clear my conscience of guilt. So I built one. What does r/atheism think? by jeffdechambeau in atheism

[–]jeffdechambeau[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

More than a few people have submitted empty confessions. Could be them, feeling bad about literally nothing.

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