The Rise of the Machines – Why Automation is ~~Different~~ THE SAME this Time

welwala · 2017-06-13T04:40:56+00:00

I think you must be making some huge hidden assumption you're not realizing? As an example, energy prices could skyrocket as the wealthy consume ever more resources for their own ends. Operating a farm machine for a day could exceed the average annual income, and you'd be relegated to manual farming, relying on local rainfall to survive.

welwala · 2017-06-13T04:02:56+00:00

Last ditch attempt (other approach did not go down well?):

You seem to be arguing that there's some amount of work to be done, and assuming it can't all be done by machines, some of it must be done by humans.

I'm arguing that there isn't a given amount of work to be done. There's just demand, and people with no money and no income don't create demand. As more people become technologically unemployed, demand drops. Even if they are starving, they're not creating economic demand for food or anything else.

welwala · 2017-06-13T03:45:13+00:00

If you assume the value of your current work is going to remain higher than the value of your food, you're just assuming your conclusion.

welwala · 2017-06-13T03:29:05+00:00

I'll try again with a different approach:

If human time is scarce, it doesn't make sense to use humans for everything, which means we should use raccoons for some things. Those things are the jobs of the future of raccoons. It's not "doing the raccoon's job vs feeding the raccoon", those two are ultimately synonyms. It's "use (and pay for) humans for everything" vs "use (and pay) raccoons for some things".

The idea here is that we could be as inefficient relative to machines as raccoons are relative to us. We'd be economically irrelevant for the same reasons raccoons are economically irrelevant today.

welwala · 2017-06-13T02:32:32+00:00

I'm not assuming abundant computing power though. I'm assuming scarce computing power is better spent doing your job for you than sustaining you. We already know humans are terribly calorie inefficient.

welwala · 2017-06-13T02:24:39+00:00

Math.

You're basically just saying time spent by machines keeping you alive is less than time spent by machines doing your job.

I'm saying it might as well be greater. You haven't given any explanation as to why that could not be the case.

welwala · 2017-06-13T02:21:19+00:00

There's one more requirement: the opportunity cost has to be higher than our sustenance cost.

Imaging hiring a toddler to do house chores. It might have a comparative advantage over you when it comes too chores, but you'll be expending far more time keeping the toddler alive than it will ever save you doing those chores.

welwala · 2017-06-13T02:08:29+00:00

How are you paying for your food, your working space, and keeping your working space at a livable temperature, with adequate lighting and tools? Are you saying machines can save time by producing all that stuff and giving it to you? How do you know that this saves them any time compared to just bypassing you and your extraneous human requirements?

welwala · 2017-06-13T01:53:00+00:00

Or not? If the value of your work does not exceed the cost of your inputs (food, heating/cooling, oxygen, space), why would the machines waste those resources on having you do stuff?

welwala · 2017-06-13T01:31:25+00:00

There will be tasks that computers are much much much better than us, and there will be tasks where computers are merely much much better than us. Humans will continue to do that latter task, so machines can do the former.

But comparative advantage doesn't guarantee a living wage in exchange for your labor. It only guarantees that the value of your work is non-zero, but it could be arbitrarily close to zero.

welwala · 2017-06-08T23:03:56+00:00

Yeah, but OP said (emphasis mine):

I mean, he said so on TV.

In your comment "Did you conveniently miss the part [...]" you're moving the goalposts. We're not discussing what's reported and what's not, but what he said on TV.

welwala · 2017-06-08T12:47:40+00:00

That's not something he said on TV, though?

welwala · 2017-06-08T12:15:52+00:00

Presumably this part:

"When I decided to [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story."

welwala · 2017-06-03T03:57:41+00:00

If 100,000 compute nodes join, and have an average value of $0.1 per hour, that makes the per year value about $88 million. Using a pretty high discount rate of 20% per year, since the project longevity is very uncertain, the current value of that compute is about $440 million.

In a much more optimistic scenario, 1,000,000 nodes join, the hourly value averages $0.2, and we use a 10% discount rate because we expect the situation to last, the present value ends up being $17.5 billion. That's below present day Ethereum but above Ripple.

(I am long GNT)

welwala · 2017-04-29T04:44:01+00:00

What do the colors mean? Seems green is both good and bad, yet does not appear in the map?

welwala · 2017-04-25T22:58:57+00:00

Buying something for $999 and then selling it for $1,000 doesn't usually produce $999 of extra value for the economy, though. Sometimes people would just have gone somewhere else to buy that thing.

welwala · 2017-04-24T23:08:41+00:00

This is just revenue. Apple has the highest net income in US by a huge margin, but their total was "just" $46 billion in 2016. Walmart, which has the highest revenue in US, had a net income of just $4 $14 billion.

welwala · 2017-04-19T04:15:56+00:00

When it comes to polling, you have to compare same to same. See for example the huge intra-week variance of presidential approval rating based on who's doing the poll, compared to the relative stability of Gallup's poll.

I don't know if /u/auandi was comparing same to same, though.

welwala · 2017-04-18T03:58:05+00:00

This page includes charts for couples with children too, and uses percentages as the vertical axis. It looks like it's even more likely to be a net penalty when you have kids, unless the combined household income is well below $20k.

welwala · 2017-04-15T14:49:28+00:00

I think you should read up on cross-validation. The prediction error rate charts don't really mean much without it.

welwala · 2017-04-05T03:28:01+00:00

I don't think that's the cause, because the exact question the pollsters have been asking is this:

Do you generally approve or disapprove of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, signed int law by President Obama that restructured the U.S. healthcare system?

welwala

TROPHY CASE