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Who is the wise guy that gave water the ability to think

Unlike every previous invention that improves productivity, It is making every form of labor redundant.

AIUI, in most lines of work AI is being used to replace/augment pointless paper-pushing jobs. It doesn't seem to be all that useful for real, productive work.

Coding may be a limited exception, but even then the AI's job is to be basically a dumb (if sometimes knowledgeable) code monkey. You still need to do all the architecture and detailed design work if you want something maintainable at the end of the day.


real productive work like what? What do you think all this hubub with robotics is about?

I mean, I know what you are getting at. I agree with you on the current state of the art. But advancements beyond this point threaten everyone's job. I don't see a moat for 95% of human labor.

There's no reason why you couldn't figure out an AI to assemble "the architecture and detailed design work". I mean I hope it's the case that the state of the art stays like this forever, I'm just not counting on it.


Robotics is nothing new, we had robots in factories in the 1980s. The jobs of modern factory workers are mostly about attending to robots and other automated systems.

> There's no reason why you couldn't figure out an AI to assemble "the architecture and detailed design work".

I'd like to see that because it would mean that AI's have managed to stay at least somewhat coherent over longer work contexts.

The closest you get to this (AIUI) is with AI's trying to prove complex math theorems, where the proof checking system itself enforces the presence of effective large-scale structure. But that's an outside system keeping the AI on a very tight leash with immediate feedback, and not letting it go off-track.


> It doesn't seem to be all that useful for real, productive work.

Even the most pointless bullshit job accomplishes a societal function by transferring wages from a likely wealthy large corporation to a individual worker who has bills to pay.

Eliminating bullshit jobs might be good from an economic efficiency perspective, but people still gotta eat.


The logic of American economic policy relies on a large velocity of money driven by consumer habits. It is tautological, and it is obsolete in the face of the elite trying to minimize wage expenses.

How is it obsolete? If everyone is unemployed and a few AI barons are obscenely wealthy, the velocity of money will be low because most people will be broke.

Seems to me like that's still a worthy target if chasing it fights that outcome.


How is it obsolete? If everyone is unemployed and a few AI barons are obscenely wealthy, the velocity of money will be low.

Seems to me like that's still a worthy goal.


If the only point is distributing money, then the pointless bullshit job is an unnecessary complication.

It's not unnecessary to the person who uses it to pay their bills.

I think GP meant that the money could be distributed directly without the job in between, i.e. UBI.

Of course that comes with its own set of problems, e.g. that you will lose training, connections, the ability to exert influence through the job or any hope of building a career.


That's certainly true.

But one is well-advised to inflate and test the new lifeboat before jumping out of the current one, not after.


ROFL, this is what I surf the web for. To be fair it doesn't really have limbs

In 3D modeling, there are parametric files where the end user is expected to modify the input parameters to fit their needs. So for example, if you have multiple parts that need to fit together, you may need to adjust the tolerances for that fit, because the physical shape will vary depending on your printer settings and material.

Making tiny modifications isn't just a method of circumvention, it's like part of the main workflow of using a 3d model.


You could require that all acids are also dyed pink

they also didn't have 3d printers in the 1700s, so I figure the 3d printer doesn't add much if it requires all of these post-processing steps like molding, casting, and finishing

If anything, ghost guns should be decriminalized to protect people from the rising danger of ghost-related deaths in NYC. Now that is a startup idea I can get behind.

Who does it benefit? Not me. Maybe it benefits Mastercard and Visa.

Yes it benefits the consumer through lower prices, and in the case of cashless specifically, less tax fraud, etc

Most businesses near me offer lower prices to people paying with cash.

High interchange fees?

https://www.clearlypayments.com/blog/interchange-fees-by-cou...

or tax fraud, otherwise cashless is obviously cheaper


what the fuck extra checks and scrutiny could they possibly need? They already go through an x-ray machine and get molested before we get on the plane, "real ID" or not.

There are more criteria to get through security than "not carrying prohibited items". Several of those are dependent on identity, which is why they verify identity.

It seems to me that all those other consideration only matter for international travel, while for domestic travel its an obvious waste of time from every angle.

Why would you think that? All four of the hijacked flights that led to the creation of the TSA were domestic flights.

And how many of those would additional federal ID have prevented?

Pre 9/11 you didn’t even need an ID to board a flight. And you could take a knife with you.

Having a reliable ID system is only useful if you have a security apparatus to check them, which literally did not exist then.


What difference does it make if it's a foreign or domestic terrorist on a domestic flight? If you're a foreign terrorist and you get can get in the USA, you've probably have some excuse to be in the US, whether that's as a tourist or with a work visa or something. So you can probably board a domestic flight either way.

The justification for all of the security theatre after 9/11 was that it would stop terrorist attacks. Makes no difference what passport they have as long as you can determine they're not smuggling a bomb up their ass.

Not to mention that you can't take down a plane with a box-cutter anymore. The only way the 9/11 hijackers were successful is that the remaining passengers thought that the hijackers were pirates. It's a burned 0-day.

You could just enact a policy of shooting down all planes within a certain radius of large buildings. I wouldn't be surprised if the annual cost would be orders of magnitude less than the annual cost of TSA. As long as you could ensure that aircraft couldn't be weaponized against major infrastructure, hijacking a plane would be no more dangerous than hijacking a train.


looks like objective data to me. Look at our democracy number, it's lower than a ton of other countries!

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