Wow, there’s a lot of meat here but I’ll respond and again if anyone wants this
thread to die in list management I’m happy to comply.
For openers, I think you make excellent points about the Singularity. We have
a hard enough time seeing what happened before the Singularity that created the
universe or beyond the singularities in the centers of blackholes so seeing one
in the future surely is more tricky.;). Timing the singularity is probably like
timing the market, a fool’s errand.
I would also agree that 20 years seems to soon as I understand the time
line but if you would have asked me would everyone have the world’s resources
in their pocket in 1995 I might have said the same thing if you told me it
would happen in 2007.:). I just think that things I was told or learned were
impossible have a way of happening. This happens more frequently now as well.
I remember as a young man it might have been once or twice a year you heard
about something that was thought to be impossible being accomplished. Now it
tends to be a monthly occurrence. When we can build on our successes things
have a way of growing more rapidly than we predict.
As for it even being possible, put me down in the camp that thinks it
is. We’re just starting to build hardware with the computational power of
what’s between our ears and while the software is still lacking there’s so much
work going on in various types of intelligence that I would think there should
be a convergence at some point. Some of these intelligent systems already do
unpredictable things. Primative maybe but unpredictable. I also think heading
down this path of tensor processing is going to yield good results in this
area. That’s how our brains work so we should have fun results when we try to
build the same in digital form.
As for your points on replication, Relativity supports the creation of
such a device. If E = MC squared then to reach M you just need your E in
order.:). Ok, grossly over simplified but that’s the rough concept, energy and
matter are interchangeable. This replication technology would be closely
adjacent to teleportation technology and that research is underway as we speak.
IBM has “beamed” or teleported very simple individual photons and I believe
some simple individual atoms of elements. You of course have the Heisenberg
uncertainty problem but IBM is splitting the information stream from the
particle stream and sending them separately. My understanding is one of the
biggest challenges in this area is computational. The ability to track the
information for the billions and trillions of particles in even the most simple
of materials is daunting. But hey it used to be daunting to send a movie over
the public network so you never know, that’s a solvable problem given time and
resources.
I think we’re a long way from needing a universal income but I agree
that it may be possible. That’s what I meant when I said that we’ll need a new
economic model. I can see a time, not next week but further down the road:)
where enough of the work is replaced by machine that we’ll need to do something
different. Even to use your Star Trek example they had to make changes. Money
really wasn’t a thing because with unlimited energy everything had changed. I
think that will be a big disruption but may down the line be necessary.
I’m concerned that you feel geographically limited and you have a
degree in computer science. One would think that you could earn a good living
remotely. Maybe you do I don’t get that from your message but I’m not the
brightest bulb in the package so may have missed some of your points. I would
think that with recent events though that the idea of remote workers is going
to become an even larger deal than it is today. As an example we just
virtualized our whole call center business. We’ve got 1500 agents now working
from their homes, still earning a living, and able to keep our business afloat.
Some on our team are asking why we need big expensive call centers at all now
since we’ve proved that we can deliver the goods effectively by using talent
that’s in their own home and remote access technology like virtual desktops and
soft phones etc.
I my self have been on a work from home arrangement for several months
now. I occasionally hit the office for meetings or just to show people I’m
still alive:) but for the most part I work from my home office. I would think
we could find something similar for you. Maybe we should investigate that
angle more? I’m always in need of talent or know someone who is, it’s just
hard to find folks with the qualifications. With this down time and being held
up in my compound here in the woods trying to avoid the virus I’m thinking it’s
a good time to try to start learning something new. Part of me is thinking to
dive in to Azure cloud because my employer uses it along with AWS but then part
of me is thinking of taking piano lessons so I don’t know yet but it seems like
a good time to learn some new skills.
Regardless of all the high level economic and societal concepts we’re talking
about here, if you are trying to make a change or feel stuck out there let’s
see what we can do. If you have a degree and your skills are up to date I
don’t see why you shouldn’t be employed. Of course we need to clear this virus
thing and the economic shutdown but once life returns to normal a bit I think
we can figure something out.
How’s that?
On Mar 21, 2020, at 4:26 PM, Mewtamer <mewtamer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm not sure the singularity is even possible, and if it is, I put
little stock in any attempt to predict when it'll happen or what a
post-singularity world will look like. The systems involved are just
too chaotic to predict with any kind of reliability.
That said, I think cog in the machine style manual labor is largely
obsolete and what tasks haven't been handed over to a machine yet are
only because they've yet to build a machine that can do it or because
the initial cost of the machine is still more expensive than the human
workers it would replace. It's a good thing that a single farmer
driving a combine harvester can clear many acres in a fraction of the
time an army of farm hands can clear a single acre with sickles. It's
a good thing that a book can be uploaded to the internet and
distributed to millions of readers in less time than it takes a scribe
to make a single copy by hand. It's a good thing various types of mass
production equipment allow a single operator to produce thousands of
units with consistent quality in less time than it takes a skilled
artisan to make one. If not for advancements like these, most of us
would probably still be living on small, family farms and working from
dawn to dusk most of the time just to keep food in our bellies and
clothes on our backs.
Granted, as much as such advances make modern living possible, I'll
admit they aren't always good for those who made a living doing the
work now done by such machines, and while it's easy to say "just learn
to program", not everyone has the right mind set to do so, need a
means of feeding themselves in the meantime, and with how technology
advances, training skills that are marketable now is no guarantee of
finding a job when you finish whatever training program you enroll in.
Still, I think the problem isn't so much technology eliminating
trudgery as society insisting people work for even the most basic of
human needs and being quick to dismiss those who don't work as lazy
when the reason they don't work is that there's no local demand for
their skills and they lack the means to either move where the demand
is or to retrain in skills that are in demand. I'm personally in favor
of a Universal Basic Income or other social programs to ensure
everyone can meet at least their survival and safety needs and can put
their time towards more personally meaningful endeavors instead of
wasting most of their waking hours at a job they hate because it's
what will keep food on the table and bill collectors off their backs,
but setting aside the logistics, good luck convincing the powers that
be that helping people stuck in wage slavery and the unemployable is
something worth doing.
On the more positive side, technology has made it easier than ever for
artisans to make their goods available. With computers and various
software, an author, artist, or musician can create their work
digitally, easily make corrections to find details or even produce
variations of the same work all without need of paper, ink, paint,
brush, or any of other myriad materials. With the Internet, they can
upload their work and reach a large audience for little to no cost and
without the need of a publisher to mass produce prints or records.
With 3-D printing, sculptors and inventors can hold physical copies of
their work in hand without needing to know how to make it themselves
or needing to find a crafter who does. Actually making a living at
these is still hard, but the barrier to entry is much lower than it
was in the pre-digital days, and one no longer needs to either
bewealthy or have the backing of a patron or publisher to reach an
audience, and even if the audience is small, digital distribution both
allows the consumer to pay less and the creator to get a larger share
of the price without the middle man of publishing and the cost of
making physical copies.
Also, while mass production and rapid prototyping are nice, allowing
for goods to reach the masses and creators to design without the
limitations of working actual material, I do think there is still
value in hand-made goods even with the slight imperfections that tend
to crop up when even a master crafter tries to make two of the same
item.
In an ideal world, we'd all have Star Trek style replicators, all
refuse would be broken down to be used by the replicators, and we'd
have a robust enough Fusion-powered grid that everyone could use their
replicator as much as they like without needing to pay anything to a
profit-oriented electric company, but assuming such replicators are
even possible, the technical issues to reach that point are staggering
and the political nd cordinational issues might make the technical
issues look easy.
For the record, I say this as a degree holding Computer Scientist
living in an area with no tech jobs and who is very grateful to
recieve enough in disability benefits he doesn't have to resort to
retail, food service, or manual labor to make ends meet. Aside from
computers, my hobbies include writing and crafts, the former which
nets me a little extra cash, the latter I'd like to turn into a
money-making or at least self-sustaining hobby, but my locale makes
selling face-to-face hard, and the logistics of selling material goods
online intimidate me.
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