Should we worry about what the LHC is not finding? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20729-should-we-worry-about-what-the-lhc-is-not-finding.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

<comment><USER2> On the contrary, I remember a quote from some physicist before LHC went live saying something like "if the LHC finds nothing that we've been predicting that will be a more incredible find (than proving the Higgs or Graviton), because that means we're completely wrong".

The LHC not finding particles in the areas we're predicting is simply telling us that our predictions were wrong. Time will tell, the LHC is still relatively new and is producing a metric ton of data. What we find in the next few years will radically change our understanding of the cosmos, I'm sure.

<comment><USER3> If the LHC finds nothing it would be interesting but I don't think it would be a good step forward for physics. Of course any step in the right direction is good, but we would have no where to specifically look, and have just blown a lot of funding with no results to show off during the next round of funding.

A much better outcome would be to find something exotic that can spark research in the right direction. At the moment we have many ideas past the standard model but no way to know which to pursue with any seriousness.

Of course, discussion of what would be good or bad doesn't matter much. It will find what it finds (or doesn't)

<comment><USER4> >>and have just blown a lot of funding with no results to show off during the next round of funding

On the contrary, now we can stop wasting man hours on incorrect theorems and start looking for the right ones. This is really interesting because it means that the universe is much different than we imagined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Data not backing up hypothesis is not cause for worry. That's just part of science, and the result is still valuable.

The fact that no gravitons have been found below 2 TeV is data from which useful conclusions can be drawn about their nature, if they do exist.

</comment><comment><USER6> Standard gravitons are already constrained to be almost massless, so i'm guessing the article is referring to Randall-Sundrum type massive gravitons in 5D.

<comment><USER7> Why does their detectability depend on the mass? My understanding is that both the standard and Randall-Sundrum gravitons can only be identified through missing energy; neither are possible to directly detect through any feasible experiment. Does the low upper bound on the mass constrain the cross-section?

<comment><USER6> I believe the main RS discovery channel is looking for a p pbar -> graviton -> e+ e- resonance, where p is a parton (i.e., quark or gluon).

<comment><USER7> Is the following reasoning correct? If the standard graviton is massless, it can't decay into r rbar for any particle r (because of momentum conservation). The standard graviton could have a tiny mass, but the low upper bounds on it means that the cross section is too tiny to be observed. RS gets around this because at LHC energies the RS graviton has a larger high-energy effective mass (because of extra dimesions) while still satisfying the low-energy experimental mass limits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > At the same time, there is no sign yet of gravitons particles that transmit > gravity and are essential...

I never understood how you can explain gravity as 1) a bending of space-time caused by mass and then 2) pretend it's a force transmited by "gravitons".

If 1) is true then it's an effect (phenomena), not a cause (force). If 2) is true than it's a cause (force), not an effect (phenomena).

<comment><USER9> The way physicists understand this is that the curved space-time view of gravity is an approximation that is only valid when you have a lot of gravitons. In that situation you do not see individual gravitons but only the aggregate effect of the 'sea' of gravitons you are in.

This is similar to e.g. fluid dynamics, which is only valid at scales much larger than the atomic scale. But if you look close enough, you will see effects that are not consistent with viewing a fluid as a continuum of matter (e.g. minute specks of dust moving randomly because they are hit by individual atoms).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gravitons are the kookiest theoretical particle I have ever heard of. I had an intuition that they were kooky and contrived when I first heard of them as a child, and now that I know more about them and gravity, I have even more disbelief in them. Why people still believe in them I will never know.

Here's the latest thing I have seen, btw: <http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0785> Pop science interpretation of it: <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html>

<comment><USER11> You know what I'll never know? Why people think they know better than the scientific community after reading a few pop science articles.

If you have a single issue with gravitons that can be expressed _mathematically_ , show us.

<comment><USER10> I didn't say I knew better than "the scientific community" (whomever they are, since there is not a huge amount of consensus around gravitons), I just said I have a lot of doubts. I could be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The picture in the article is eerily reminiscent of scenes from certain movies. (Probably because of the rule of thirds, and the left-to-right directional bias of western audiences.)

<http://www.firsttvdrama.com/funstuff/tarkin/dsgun.jpg>

[http://www.starwars.com/img/theclonewars/guide/episode002/il...](http://www.starwars.com/img/theclonewars/guide/episode002/illo01.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER13> That's actually good news; I mean, it reminds the Michelson-Morley experiment, right?

</comment><comment><USER14> _EDIT_ \- WHY IS THIS STATEMENT DOWNVOTED? REALLY?

There are huge flaws in the art as it is practiced today. They aren't finding what they're looking for because it IS NOT THERE. Go to the following site, and understand the gap between the fantastic but invented idea-chasers that are currently en vogue, and the scientists that are taking measurements and fitting the results to known phenomena.

This will change your view of modern science forever, and I humbly assert that it _should_.

<http://www.electric-cosmos.org/indexOLD.htm>

<comment><USER15> "When confronted by observations that cast doubt on the validity of their theories, astrophysicists have circled their wagons and conjured up pseudo- scientific invisible entities such as neutron stars, weakly interacting massive particles, strange energy, and black holes. When confronted by solid evidence such as Halton Arp's photographs that contradict the Big Bang Theory, their response is to refuse him access to any major telescope in the U.S."

Uh huh.</comment></comment>


Apple Says Jobs Is Taking a New Medical Leave - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/technology/18apple.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> There's an interesting story to be told about what makes someone who's already a billionaire keep on in such a hyper-stressful job/career/calling when facing repeated life-threatening illnesses.

We, of course, won't get that story, and will have to settle for a news cycle of the fiduciary responsibility tourettes brigade vs. the hacks who think they're John Gruber screaming at everyone to leave Steve alone.

<comment><USER3> I seriously think that he is at the company because he likes his job. He probably identifies strongly at the company and feels that it is his responsibility to stay with the company.

<comment><USER4> Considering his monetary pay is $1/year, I think he really enjoys doing something, where he has the resources, and backing, to "do it right".

And when something doesn't come out right, he can breath a little fire (e.g. MobileMe problems a year back or so)

<comment><USER5> it is a joke to think that $1/year salary has anything to do with Job's remuneration which takes place largely in Apple's stock. The better Apple does, the better he does. He's got incentive, regardless of whatever ersatz salary he nominally receives.

So, yeah, i think he's doing it cause he's a control freak who gets high off of being in charge of one of the most important tech consumer companies in the world. But to claim that he's not benefitting massively off of Apple's continued financial success is definitely not true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Tomorrow Apple will announce (suspected to be great and record breaking) finantials [http://www.tuaw.com/2011/01/14/apple-will- announce-q1-2011-f...](http://www.tuaw.com/2011/01/14/apple-will- announce-q1-2011-financials-on-january-18/)

Obviously releasing this note the day before is meant to avoid $AAPL going to much into the red.

<comment><USER7> Just to be pedantic:

What exactly is the value that should be substituted for the _variable_ $AAPL? :P

<comment><USER8> $AAPL is used on twitter to talk about stocks, just like # is used for hashtags. Like $AAPL, $GOOG, $MSFT ... etc

<comment><USER9> Ah, Twitter. What symbol will you appropriate next?

<comment><USER10> Probably %

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Get well soon, Steve.

</comment><comment><USER12> More at: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112128></comment>


"Content submitted to File Exchange may only be used with MathWorks products." - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/1891#issuecomment-56907866

<comment><USER2> I suspect the intent of "Content submitted to File Exchange may only be used with MathWorks products" is that posting software which is an alternative to MathWorks is off-topic for that site and should not be posted there; users should only post code that is related to MathWorks.

The sentence probably isn't intended to mean that they are adding licensing restrictions to anything which is uploaded, as in ("this code must be henceforth bundled an used strictly with MathWorks").

<comment><AUTHOR> How does this work if the code is released under a liberal license?

<comment><USER3> That does not conflict in any way. Only code you got from File Exchange is subject to this licensing. You can get the same code from any other source with any other kind of license.

Think about it this way: The copyright holder grants MathWorks the permission to publish their code in a way MathWorks seems fit. MathWorks publishes that code under an "only with MathWorks" license. That does not prevent the original copyright holder to publish the same code under a different license, as MathWorks was not granted exclusive rights.

<comment><USER2> If your interpretation is correct, that means you may not post code to MathWorks to which you do not have such a right: the right to distribute it under an altered license. Mathworks cannot add additional restrictions to the redistribution of GPL-ed code, so if you aren't the author of that code, you simply can't post it there. If you do they have to remove it, or else make an exception for that code. If they just keep it there, then there is no effect on the code; that code is still GPL-ed, since MathWorks has no legal right to change that. The situation is that the person who posted it there violated the terms of their agreement for the use of the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The quote in the title is entirely fabricated.

What was actually said was: 'That is evil!'

<comment><USER5> We changed the title (from 'Holy S#&# Mathworks Is Evil": Can OSS License Nullification Happen?') to a sentence from the post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Works for me.</comment></comment></comment>


Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted to Know - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/02/19/technological-unemployment-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ <comment><USER5> Production just requires land and labor. Capital is output from previous production used as input again, and it is nice to have but not strictly necessary for employment of labor.

Labor can be applied whenever labor has access to land. So the question is why can't people just go to work? Grow their own food to feed themselves, if need be?

The Industrial Revolution put farmers out of work, but not because farming became illegal, and not because they all forgot how to farm. It is simply that farm labor couldn't pay the rent of land anymore.

The mechanisms by which the unimproved value of land rises and falls is the key mechanism that we must understand in order to understand wages and the rate of unemployment. Real wages are not a number. They are the lifestyle you can obtain. They are what is left over after you've paid your taxes and your right to exist in a particular location. (Increasingly, healthcare and education are prerequisites to getting by in the same way.)

Simply giving people money, irrespective of the financing method, as most advocates of the "technological unemployment" thesis argue for, ignores the nature of rent. When there's no rent-free land, rents rise and fall based on the ability to pay. People getting free money have more ability to pay, and landlords will definitely notice.

Thing about land is they aren't making it anymore. Higher demand doesn't just stimulate supply. The supply curve is vertical.

<comment><USER6> Funnily enough, my own (long term) project is aimed at addressing the problem you're pointing out. Given the possibility of remote work, there's no insurmountable reason why the only land worth living in should be concentrated in a few urban centers.

[https://sites.google.com/s/0BzzRwqIB2K0dSWhkTXBSTTltTDg/p/0B...](https://sites.google.com/s/0BzzRwqIB2K0dSWhkTXBSTTltTDg/p/0B9EHSqWgFV7LNUxEVXk0S0ZiMlk/preview)

<comment><USER7> > Given the possibility of remote work, [...] urban centers.

Even HN doesn't yet seem to be discussing the impact of coming VR/AR on people's geographic distribution.

Perhaps it's still too low profile? Eye tracking; facial expression tracking (researchy); foveated rendering reducing GPU requirements; inexpensive laptops with discrete GPUs; HMDs with monitor-like angular resolution; inexpensive finger tracking (hopefully)... perhaps it's easy to not notice these if you're not tracking the tech? Easy to think "remote work, so video conferencing, so limited impact - far better to do open plan offices"? Instead of "the practice and spatial constraints of software development will change dramatically over the next half decade".

<comment><USER8> Or for that matter self driving cars. You could commute for 5 hours a day, spend 2 hours in the office and go home again. All while being productive. That greatly increases the commutable range. Then you have the prospect of self driving Motor homes, moving with the work becomes that much easier.

<comment><USER7> People take commuter buses with wifi, from Pennsylvania to NYC, with a 2 to 4 hour round trip. A few commute Boston to NYC on Amtrak Acela, with a 7-ish hour round trip (you can stand up and walk around, get coffee, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >"Increasingly, banks recognized the value of tellers enabled by information technology, not primarily as checkout clerks, but as salespersons, forging relationships with customers and introducing them to additional bank services like credit cards, loans, and investment products."

Was this written before the Wells Fargo scandal came to light?

Hard to be optimistic when the "silver lining" is that people who were once employed to do necessary work have since been reassigned to trawl for opportunities to make easy money at the expense of the gullible and vulnerable.

Sadly this appears to be yet another theme in technological advancement--the proliferation of scams. Just look at how much social media advertising comes from multi-level marketing schemes.

<comment><USER10> That behaviour describes my biggest pet peeve with banks. I don't want product offers from you. You take my money, make money with it, and pay me interest (a whole < 1%). That's our relationship, fuck off with your "credit card protection free trial period".

<comment><USER11> That "credit card protection free trial period" is _how_ they're making money.

<comment><USER12> originally they made money by the margin between the profit they make on wise investments and the amount they pay in interest for the privilege of investing money for them. those days are long gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It feels like we're moving away from jobs that are purely productive, to jobs that are more creative. I don't mean arts etc, but 50 years ago a company like Facebook/Snap/Gaming/Any digital entertainment really, could not exist because people were occupied work that was required for society to function. Now humans can start focusing on spending their day building things for the entertainment of other humans, and also choosing careers based on what they feel is fun/satisfying for themselves.

<comment><USER14> There can be a substantial difference between what the company and the employee "do."

I walk by a twitter building every day. Probably about 500 people, maybe more. What are they doing in there? They sell ads, manage ad accounts, moderation, data protection audits... stuff that David Graeber wold call BS jobs. Now... I'm not in the same camp as him entirely. I think it's rash to just write off 70% of modern, white collar work as "paperwork" that could just go away.... but I'm not entirely not in his camp too.

Either way, that building is full of "marketing and social media" graduates doing stuff that doesn't need to be done for twitter to be twitter. Twitter was twitter before they had all those people.

You could call what twitter does creative work. That resonates with me. They invented a communication method with all sorts of cultural impact and value. That's creative. But, extending that to the median employee... I think we might divert here.

I think you have your finger on an interesting point, even if I don't know how to articulate it. A generation ago, a lot of the ecoomy could be measured in stuff with value that one could reason about. Cars, tothbrushes, haircuts, podiatrists.... You can count and weigh and value that stuff. Media was always more abscure. The tv viewer mightn't be the customer. The purpose of a paper might be do get a classifieds insert into your hands.

Once you throw in social/user-generate services make the picture more messy. Once you go to Google/FB territory, it's all very obscure. Half of what they do doesn't have any direct economic benefit to them, it's more a way of keeping them in a massively powerful position.

I'm not sure creative is the right word, but here's somethign going on. Ever increasing (already majority) sections of the economy are producing very ethereal things, with obscure business models...

<comment><USER15>
      Twitter was twitter before they had all those people.

Sure, but it can't scale without them. How exactly is Twitter supposed to pay the bills? People use this platform because, for the most part, the basic premise is entirely free. How else can they fund the infrastructure/R&D costs?

<comment><USER14> scaling...it did. That is it had a ton of users using essentially the same product with a much smaller team, at one point.

Paying the bills.., IDK. Presumably they've determined that these people are useful in this regard. Otherwise, why have them? But from a first principles reasoning, it seems possible to sell add without thousands of ad sellers.

<comment><USER16> Selling advertising online could be automated for the most part, unless Twitter really does offer personalised offering to ads buyers—which I'm not sure is the case.

<comment><USER17> At a certain spend level, advertisers want to have a single human that they can call when they need something/something goes wrong ("a single throat to strangle").

Providing this dedicated connection is also an opportunity to upsell them on more ad products.

I did this work at Google for a couple years at the start of my career. They are an exceptionally analytics driven company, and would not employ these kinds of people if there wasn't good ROI

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm somewhat surprised by the article's conclusion, but will accept it, given that Scott is pretty thorough with his sourcing and analysis. Even though he says we're getting the worst outcome (something is happening, but it's not apocalyptic, so people won't notice in time to coordinate at scale), it shifted my internal doomsday countdown ~20 years to the future.

One thing I wonder though, and it's a general concern for such analyses - <USER2> how reliable _are_ the official statistics? Given the unreliability at every level (which I sometimes personally observed) - from people reporting bogus data, data entry people faking it to make their job easier, to bogus statistical analysis and biased reporting at the top - just how much faith we can put in all of this? I get that it's the only thing we have, but I wonder if someone tried to analyze those issues.

<comment><USER19> If I may ask, what was your internal doomsday countdown before reading the article?

<comment><USER18> About 10-15 years before progress makes some members of my family unemployed.

<comment><USER19> Depending on how representative your family is of the overall population, that could mean that the doomsday scenario for most people is already here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A really surprising thing here is that their analysis is also based on an somewhat unrealistically negative datum. They're using the labor force participation rate. The labor force participation rate counts people who are happy to not work, which is not a problem - and probably to be expected as the total number of upper and rich class individuals increases over time as a share of society. A much more useful measurement is the U6 unemployment rate. The U6 counts people who are involuntary part time (want full time work but can't find it) as well as those who want to work but who are no longer actively searching as part of the number.

And the really surprising thing is that even the U6 is reaching record lows [1]. If the current trends with unemployment continue we'll have the lowest 'real' unemployment rate since the U6 started being recorded, 24 years ago. The one 'zinger' I'd add here is that even the U6 does not account for underemployment. Many of the jobs created in recent years have been McJobs and if somebody has e.g. a STEM degree and is serving coffee, then they should probably count as unemployed. Perhaps it's time for a U7. On the other hand, I do not think this would meaningfully change the numbers.

I still do think automation is going to be disruptive since I simply don't see how transportation automation, which is an enormous industry that offers relatively good wages, can end up otherwise. But I've also become less cynical since we've undoubtedly been sending productivity up, and even with the outsourcing of desirable jobs or bringing in workers to fill those roles domestically for lower wages, our economy seems to be doing phenomenally. And that's something I certainly would not have predicted.

[1] - [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/u6rate](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/u6rate)

<comment><USER21> It's really hard to measure underemployment. I mean, I have what most would consider a pretty decent tech job, however many of my peers are Senior Director of this and VP of that, and with my background and experience I know I could be a CTO rather than what I am. Am I underemployed? I feel underemployed, but who's to say I am or am not?

<comment><USER22> A commonly used measure of underemployment is 'years of education not needed for this job'. In this measure, if you'd be qualified to be a CTO but are not, this doesn't count as underemployment, neither does the difference between a junior engineer and a senior one, nor between a mcdonalds franchise manager and mcdonalds CEO.

However, it does count going to a different/lower industry. A STEM grad in McDonalds; a teacher in a cleaning job, etc; where you can clearly point towards some 4 years spent on something that the current job doesn't need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The idea that rising disability is a cause of declining labor force participation is interesting, and fits in with anecdotal data from what family members in medicine have told me. They basically phrase it as: If you're uneducated and poor, why would you work a low paying job with little hope of advancement when you could go on disability and collect a similar amount of money without working?

<comment><USER24> To be fair, many of these people are actually disabled. It's just that previously they _could_ work. Like the article says, their managers cared about them and and had the capacity to let them take lower-impact positions that they were capable of doing.

We don't appreciate how difficult it can be to employ these marginally capable workers. Keeping these people on staff at a small company raises health and operational insurance costs pretty dramatically, so it can be hard to justify keeping them on staff, even if you wanted to.

Disability is also pretty difficult to get, despite how the news makes it out to be easy. My father had multiple heart attacks and cancer, and he's still fighting to get on disability. And when he does, it will take years to come into full-effect.

<comment><USER23> I agree partly, but from what my family members have told me it seems that some people are gaming the system for their own benefit. They've also told me that people who truly would benefit from being on disability (like your father) often have a hard time getting on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Warning: the following is conjecture which I have not researched. Because who has the time?

My main question while reading this article was why is the author so stuck on "manufacturing" jobs being automated away? He does address this very briefly in section III but I cannot help but feel his foundational research is highly skewed.

Sure, robotics are growing in popularity and that technology, specifically, will likely impact manufacturing. Comparatively speaking, however, industrial robots are very expensive. Only the larger manufacturers are going to be upgrading plants with multi-million dollar (or very, very recently hundreds of thousands) equipment to replace a few hundred workers each (if that?).

Fun fact: ~90% of the 5.7 million companies in the US had fewer than 20 employees in 2012. 50% of working Americans were employed by companies of fewer than 500 (source of questionable quality: [https://www.businessinsider.com.au/us-employment-by-firm- siz...](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/us-employment-by-firm-size-has-a- fat-tailed-distribution-2015-6?r=US&IR=T)).

Compare all that to search results for "images of 1950s offices". You get photos of rows and rows of desks of identical configurations - people with paper pads, typewriters or tabulation machines. Look at what all these people are doing. They are accounting departments calculating statements and balance sheets by hand. They are typists writing out form letters one at a time. These are the job categories that have been wiped out in their entirety by spreadsheets and word processors that you can get literally for free. The CEO can do the work of that 1950s accounting department by herself in an hour.

Where did those jobs go? I don't know how many there were to start but it looks significant.

Yes, modern offices have the same configurations but it is fundamentally different. The companies I work in can have an entire business unit (or company!) working out of an office that size. One person at one desk is an entire marketing department, the next person is HR (including payroll/accounts/bookkeeping). The only rows of homogeneous roles you see these days are the grunts building the technology.

In conclusion, I get the feeling a lot of people wondering if jobs are disappearing seem to be suffering from a bit of "out of sight, out of mind". Most of the automated jobs are already gone.

Just my thoughts.

<comment><USER26> This is why the post-recession employment recovery in the US is complete fabrication. The jobs lost in 2008 were careers, the jobs that replaced them were gig work like Uber. The employment figures today discount the tens of millions of NEETs and the tens of millions of people trying to scrape by on gig jobs that provide no healthcare, retirement, stability, and put them below the poverty line.

Per-capita incomes are messed up because the top 1000 incomes inflate as much as the bottom hundred million deflate.

> will likely impact manufacturing

Robotics have _been impacting manufacturing_ for decades. The death of office jobs you mention was another casualty of automation we already felt. Nothing about the impeding automation apocalypse is _coming up ahead_ because its already happening. Its just the low hanging fruit _went_ first, and the tree will keep being picked clean from bottom to top. The economy warps in response to it, in a fleeting attempt to preserve outdated ideology, by fabricating work and creating bullshit jobs out of bureaucracy and artificial complexity to keep society from falling apart. The problem is every single private enterprise resists giving people bullshit jobs to varying degrees, which creates the discontent between workers who lose income over time and employers who keep reaping larger and larger profits.

<comment><USER27> The increase in homeless encampments as detailed in this report are also a stark indication of how false the recovery is. Unfortunately most of the homeless get shipped to California, often with one way bus tickets from municipalities that don't want to deal with the problem. [https://www.nlchp.org/Tent_City_USA_2017](https://www.nlchp.org/Tent_City_USA_2017) (Looks like they need to renew their TLS certificate.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What do I know, I am not very good at this either and I respect the author's willingness to get other people's perspectives and attempt to reach a conclusion.

But I would like to critically consider the "indicative trends" mentality of the author. Entities with ML algorithms that could replace jobs enmasse do not yet exist, so past or current economic trends shouldn't indicate anything. ML algorithms did not gradually takeover Go, for instance - the transition to AI should neither be so gradual. Maybe if someone did micro-studies on Uber's effect on Taxi drivers, it would server as a proxy but even Uber isn't a self driving car company (yet).

That said, I really enjoyed reading about what is causing unemployment or the loss of jobs. It's an interesting observation that disabilities is rising as the reason for unemployment in the US. But again, attribution of these trends is always difficult.

Anyways, thanks to the author for doing the explorative work.

<comment><USER29> He touches on the idea of humans having the past laid out before them, with the future to their backs. But then, as you say, fails to get to the realization that paying attention to the present isn't going to give us any predictions for how strong-AI, or even non-routine AI is going to change the job prospects for humans. Robots are expensive, but servers aren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Regarding the horse example, there US horse population is 9 million. The demand for horses never went away despite automation and has remained steady. If one tried to extrapolate the early 20th century horse population trend to the future, there should presently be no horses alive.

Although the labor force participation rate is falling, the total labor force size has not (although it has flattened in recent years).

Rather than the total elimination of jobs, a more probable concern is the bifurcation of the labor force by IQ, with those with an IQ below a certain threshold barely getting by, stuck with low-paying jobs that barely pay ends meet. Due to economic and technological factors, this IQ threshold will likely gradually keep rising. [http://greyenlightenment.com/two-nations-within-a- nation/](http://greyenlightenment.com/two-nations-within-a-nation/)

This is why the decline of manufacturing jobs has not hurt the overall labor market size, because such semi-skilled, medium-IQ jobs are being replaced by service sector jobs. However, the pay for these jobs is not as good.

Often what happens is the new technology will coexist with the older one, as the bank teller example shows. Other times the implementation is so slow that it is not a concern. I remember in 2007 McDonald's, Jack in the Box, and other fast-food chains began to install self-order machines, but the adoption was really slow, the machines were often broken, and the machines didn't replace the role of the cooks and cashiers. People needed help using the machines, necessitating staff. Same for those food store self-checkout machines. Rather than the machines eliminating the cashiers, they coexist. Some people like machines, but others don't. Machines break and someone has to supervise the machines in case someone needs help or tries to fool the machine by imputing the incorrect weight or item.

Overall, I am not too worried but I can see some cause for concern. Regarding post-scarcity and UBI, entitlement spending has been on an unstoppable rise for the past 50 years. We're already headed in that direction. SNAP, medicaid, disability, and section 8 housing is pretty close to a UBI and post-scarcity. The future is one where the government assumes a greater paternal role in helping those who are unable to keep up with an increasingly competitive economy.

<comment><USER31> Right: like with horses[1], the problem isn't that humans will die out entirely, but that only a tiny subset of them will "earn a keep" beyond subsistence -- i.e. be able to sell labor whose market value is more than the amount needed to keep them alive.

The only horses that stayed around were the ones that could perform a novelty (racing/entertainment) or low-demand-niche role (short trips on rugged terrain).

[1] A really, really underappreciated and overdismissed analogy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> One of the problems is that most jobs (95%) created from 2005 up until now are temporary jobs[1]. That is in itself not necessarily a problem as it could mean that people just become freelancers. But for the US it opens up for two major issues.

1) Freelancers have to pay their healthcare themselves. 2) Most jobs created are forced freelance contracts i.e. even if you work at an accounting company they will try and put you on a freelance contract.

My personal belief is that while globalization is still growing we will not see the underlying changes until it' too late. That's why I think all governments should assume that most of their population will be without a job sooner or later and plan accordingly.

[1] [https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs- created...](https://qz.com/851066/almost-all-the-10-million-jobs-created- since-2005-are-temporary/)

<comment><USER33> I wonder if that creates more volatility in the economy, business is much more likely to reduce or end a freelancers hours than a full time employee in a downturn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> [warning: unfinished thoughts]

On the far end of the "technological unemployment" worry spectrum are those who really believe that AI techniques will yield robots that can do essentially all human work better/faster/cheaper than a human could.

When discussing that possibility, I wonder if our current statistics and vocabulary are really sufficient? After all when you talk about employment, wages, productivity, etc we're thinking about governments and corporations. We cannot forget that governments and corporations are human power structures and one of the biggest forces pushing them forward is the desire of the rich and powerful to become richer and more powerful.

If AI really begins to threaten the supremacy of its human masters, don't you think those same masters will suppress the AI and try to keep the status quo? After all a CEO with a billion dollars in the bank doesn't come to work just to collect his/her paycheck, they come to work to be the boss.

Modern humans have been shown to be strongly, and possibly entirely, motivated by relative wealth and power. The millionaire among billionaires feels poor, the wage earner among the unemployed feels rich.

So maybe, however inefficient, we will continue to employ each other only because it feels good for the employer to retain power over the employee? Maybe we will reject a super-efficient robot-produced future because we don't know how to form a society unless it's founded on a human power structure. Maybe we'll find things for each other to do just so that we can make each other do them.

I agree that if you enumerate all of my current material desires it's possible that a future robot will be able to fulfill them. But I cannot anticipate the societal evolution of desires and how much power over other people plays into that.

<comment><USER35> I don't think many managers and executives enjoy their jobs because of the power they have in the organization. I think they enjoy their jobs by being proficient at their work and getting rewarded for it, like the rest of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Did he really show a graph of increasing employment in women, decreasing in men, and then say "Let's ignore the women. Why on earth could male employment be going down?"

Erm.... maybe because... women were taking their jobs?

<comment><USER22> Because in the period of interest (2005+) the female job participation rate was declining as well; female employment reached the peak at around 2000.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> >The report linked above is from Ball State University, and argues that, while manufacturing has thrived, automation has reduced the need for workers so much that lots of them have been laid off:

>Had we kept 2000-levels of productivity and applied them to 2010-levels of production, we would have required 20.9 million manufacturing workers. Instead, we employed only 12.1 million.

>The report gets summarized in a few places as "13% of job loss is due to trade, 87% is due to increasing productivity/automation", which seems like a fair summary of some of its claims.

It's a fair summary of Michael J. Hicks and Srikant Devara's _claims_ , but if you take a closer look at the study's model, they conflate cost savings from offshoring with cost savings from automation, which would naturally make job losses from automation seem relatively larger.

They also lobby for a reduction in corporation tax on page 7.

</comment><comment><USER38> Great article that seems to leave the question unresolved.

If technological unemployment is not a large factor; but inequality within advanced economies is rising, then what other factors are at play? Are the changes necessary to deal with those causes the same changes that would be needed to deal with an all-knowing AI in 2150?

<comment><USER39> inequality is rising because some people are simply more skilled than others.

<comment><USER40> More data supports the hypothesis that inequality is rising because some people _have more money_ than others, and currently it's easier to earn significant returns from capital than from labor. Of course, not everyone agrees, but Piketty et al have some evidence for the hypothesis. Is there anyone with data-driven support for the claim that changes in overall inequality are primarily driven by divergence in high-skill vs. low-skill labor incomes? To be clear, I obviously know there _is_ a difference in high- skill vs. low-skill labor incomes, but it's not clear its magnitude is enough to account for the changes seen in macro-scale indicators like the Gini index.

<comment><USER41> Interesting question.

I'm not sure, but there have been a lot of economists who disagree with Piketty and written about where he goes wrong. I assume that this implicitly proves the other direction, that capital growth isn't larger than wage growth, or whatever, so it might be a good idea to look there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> So, one issue I had with this is that a big part of the argument is that "when I see shocks to employment, I don't see shocks to LFPR", but we do definitely see shocks in unemployment rates, and I don't think it's crazy to think that these shocks to employment may transfer to LFPR over long periods of time as different people face different levels of success finding adequate work.

I think the strongest argument we can make is that whatever is going on with LFPR has been going on for 50 years, and it does seem to indicate a more difficult job market where people are finding that the jobs available are not better than the alternative.

</comment><comment><USER43> He may be misreading stagnant productivity growth.

Manufacturing productivity is measured in dollars[2], and prices of manufactured goods have been going down[1] (largely from China competition):

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/price-changes-in- consumer...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/price-changes-in-consumer- goods-and-services-in-the-usa-1997-2017)

[2] [https://www.bls.gov/lpc/faqs.htm#P03](https://www.bls.gov/lpc/faqs.htm#P03)

</comment><comment><USER44> We have three sectors, agriculture, industry and service.

Technology has replaced people in agriculture, at the same time industry jobs exploded. Most people were shifted.

Technology has replace people in industry, but there were services to provide - lower paying - jobs. Most people were shifted.

Now technology replaces jobs in services. There is no "next" sector.

</comment><comment><USER45> Employment is only a result of an individual wanting someone else to do something for them, because they don't have the time or skill to do it themselves. In exchange for someone doing this thing for them, they compensate them with something of value, normally payment in the form of currency. When you consider employment from this angle, I find it extremely hard to believe that a day will come where the majority of humans on this planet won't want help from other humans to accomplish their goals as they go about their daily lives. Yes, employment in the form of large corporations giving out biweekly paychecks may not exist anymore, but employment as a way to help your fellow human will never cease to exist.

<comment><USER46> > I find it extremely hard to believe that a day will come where the majority > of humans on this planet won't want help from other humans to accomplish > their goals as they go about their daily lives.

If robots are better at helping people accomplish those goals then why would people ask other humans for help rather than robots? I already choose to book my holidays with machine rather than human assistance, pay for my groceries via machine rather than human.... For the moment I pay humans to do some things (cleaning, food preparation, art production, ...), but it seems entirely conceivable that machines could get better at all of those as well.

<comment><USER37> >I already choose to book my holidays with machine rather than human assistance, pay for my groceries via machine rather than human

It's funny you should mention this. My last job was at an OTA (online travel agent). They started out with a website to book holidays and an intent to streamline the crap out of the process catering to individuals like yourself. They hired a skeleton call center staff to deal with unforeseen problems with an intent to rely upon them as little as possible.

Over time they realized that a lot of people were calling up to do bits and pieces of the booking over the phone that they could have done online.

Initially they tried to steer them back to the website but they realized that they were mostly dropping out of the sales funnel.

It turned out a lot of people actually wanted to talk to a _human_ when spending $1,500 on a holiday. Shocker.

So, they changed tack and ramped up call center staffing, advertised a free phone number on the every page and let people essentially decide themselves where in the sales funnel they wanted to talk to a human - the whole way through or, like you, not at all.

This company had a really smart approach in other areas too about when to use automation and when not to.

>For the moment I pay humans to do some things like cleaning

You say that as if there has been a multitude of advances in home cleaning technology since the 1950s. I'm skeptical of the notion that Roombas took anybody's job or that I'm about to get a toilet cleaning robot any time soon.

<comment><USER46> > It turned out a lot of people actually wanted to talk to a human when > spending $1,500 on a holiday. Shocker.

I'm surprised, and I wonder what the age breakdown of those people looks like.

> I'm skeptical of the notion that Roombas took anybody's job

It must have on the margin, surely? I was on the fence about getting a cleaner for a long time; it wouldn't've taken much to push me into not doing so (and many of my friends in similar circumstances, some of whom have Roombas, don't).

> or that I'm about to get a toilet cleaning robot any time soon.

Toilet cleaning will probably be one of the last things to go as the worst- case scenario there is pretty bad, but I read some interesting blog posts a year or two back about a robot that can pick up clothes from the floor and run a laundry cycle (with the help of a QR code sticker on the washer). I don't expect a robot to replace a human cleaner immediately, but I do expect the gradual automation of more and more domestic cleaning tasks, which will push more and more people across the line where it doesn't make sense to hire a human cleaner.

<comment><USER37> >I wonder what the age breakdown

Skewed, but not skewed towards the elderly nearly as much as you clearly think it was.

Not everybody is like us.

>It must have on the margin, surely?

Not necessarily. It might just mean that, on balance, people who were never going to employ a maid in the first place live in slightly less filthy houses.

>Toilet cleaning will probably be one of the last things to go as the worst- case scenario there is pretty bad

I can't actually see any evidence that anybody's even trying. It's not like driverless cars where we're being told every year that they're, like, 5 years away tops. Who is even working on this? As far as I can tell, nobody.

<comment><USER46> > Not necessarily. It might just mean that, on balance, people who were never > going to employ a maid in the first place live in slightly less filthy > houses.

But, like, there's no massive discontinuity in how likely people are to employ a cleaner (is there)? I'd expect that distribution to be a bell curve like anything else, with lots of people on the margin (and I'm pretty sure I was one of them), and the introduction of the Roomba shifts where that line is slightly.

> I can't actually see any evidence that anybody's even trying. It's not like > driverless cars where we're being told every year that they're, like, 5 > years away tops. Who is even working on this? As far as I can tell, nobody.

I'm not aware of anyone working on toilets, but I think that's the highest hanging fruit. You already mentioned Roombas, and I mentioned LaundryBot or whatever it's called; I'd expect us to progress gradually from there to things like dusting, window cleaning, oven cleaning and toilets in that order or close to it.

<comment><USER37> >But, like, there's no massive discontinuity in how likely people are to employ a cleaner (is there)? I'd expect that distribution to be a bell curve like anything else

Even if it was a bell curve (and I see no reason why reality ought to be that neat), there's no reason to suppose it doesn't just lead to slightly cleaner houses rather than fewer maids.

> You already mentioned Roombas, and I mentioned LaundryBot

Roombas are singularly unimpressive as a means of cleaning your house (I know of nobody who actually owns one, and the reviews on amazon are... only really impressiveif you are without stairs and have a pet hair problem). Googling laundrybot gives me some japanese thing invented in 2015 that costs $280,000 and, product-wise, doesn't seem to have gone anywhere since then.

It's almost as if the automation hype isn't matching reality.

I wouldn't be surprised if in 20 years time nothing has really changed in this space either. Roombas came out in 2002 - 16 years ago. Significant potential I'll be dead by the time a robot that can clean my toilet exists and I'm not exactly old.

<comment><USER46> > there's no reason to suppose it doesn't just lead to slightly cleaner houses > rather than fewer maids.

If we assume people's willingness to hire a cleaner is a function of how dirty their house is (and how could it not be?) then the two are equivalent. The only way roombas could _not_ be putting people out of work on the margin is if there's some sort of mysterious discontinuity, and why would we assume such a thing?

<comment><USER37> >If we assume people's willingness to hire a cleaner is a function of how dirty their house is (and how could it not be?)

Because:

a) lots and lots and lots of people clean their own house and maybe they're the ones buying the vast majority of the roombas, not people with maids.

b) just because your roomba cleans up your pet hair really well upstairs doesn't necessarily mean you will want your cleaner to stop coming on tuesdays.

c) tolerance for dirt to me seems like a textbook example of something that has a high demand elasticity

<comment><USER46> > lots and lots and lots of people clean their own house and maybe they're the > ones buying the vast majority of the roombas, not people with maids

Surely the one substitutes for the other. The thought "I'm spending longer than I want to cleaning, and my house still isn't as clean as I'd like, and I've had more money lately, I can afford to..." could be completed "hire a cleaner" or "buy a roomba".

> tolerance for dirt to me seems like a textbook example of something that has > a high demand elasticity

What do you mean? Different people will have their threshold in different places, certainly, and the amount they're willing to pay will vary, but I don't see how that changes anything.

I'm generally struggling to understand what your model is here. Are you saying people make the decision about whether to hire a cleaner when they're born and then never change it?

<comment><USER37> >Surely the one substitutes for the other.

If a roomba approximated a maid, perhaps. It very much does _not_.

>I'm generally struggling to understand what your model is here. Are you saying people make the decision about whether to hire a cleaner when they're born and then never change it?

No, I'm saying that:

A) building a neoclassical economic model on this _at all_ is pointless because of the assumptions you'd have to make. You've just tried to make about four assumptions in order to build your model and they weren't just poor assumptions, they were cringeworthy assumptions.

B) the total number of people who actually own roombas or roomba like devices suggests to me that the effect on cleaner employment is likely, in any case, to be < noise.

<comment><USER46> > If a roomba approximated a maid, perhaps. It very much does not.

It fulfils some of the same functions, some of what some buyers are buying for. A milkshake is not a close approximation to a muffin, but McDonalds found that they did substitute for each other in terms of what people bought for breakfast.

> A) building a neoclassical economic model on this at all is pointless > because of the assumptions you'd have to make. You've just tried to make > about four assumptions in order to build your model and they weren't just > poor assumptions, they were cringeworthy assumptions.

You're essentially saying "give up trying to understand the world", to which I can only respond "no" (compare the opening quote on [http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/24/probabilities- without-m...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/08/24/probabilities-without- models/) ). I think all the assumptions I gave were true and reasonable; if you can actually make a case for why any of them is wrong I will listen, but just dismissing them is not constructive.

<comment><USER37> >A milkshake is not a close approximation to a muffin

I would say it is. They have similar calorific content, they are similarly portable and they are similarly stuffed full of sugar.

>You're essentially saying "give up trying to understand the world"

...and now you're using a cringeworthy straw man.

I'm saying "if you're going to make a claim like "roombas are killing jobs", it probably shouldn't be based on a model that makes 4 _really_ reaching assumptions, each of which are completely unproven and quite likely wrong.

Oh, but the New York Times and a few economists thinks robot kills jobs, so this fits in with everybody's groupthink, so that's ok, right?

>I think all the assumptions I gave were true and reasonable; if you can actually make a case for why any of them is wrong

This is reminding me of the conversation I had with my vicar who asked me to disprove god's existence if I thought I was so smart.

>just dismissing them is not constructive.

I disagree. I think it's _very_ constructive to dismiss unproven assumptions that are probably wrong, but neatly fit into some kind of groupthink. It's how a lot of science is advanced.

<comment><USER46> > I would say it is. They have similar calorific content, they are similarly > portable and they are similarly stuffed full of sugar.

Exactly - they're superficially very different, but what they provide to the buyer is very similar. Just as with Roombas and cleaners.

> it probably shouldn't be based on a model that makes 4 really reaching > assumptions, each of which are completely unproven and quite likely wrong

So put up or shut up: which assumption do you think is wrong, and what do you think the appropriate replacement is?

> This is reminding me of the conversation I had with my vicar who asked me to > disprove god's existence if I thought I was so smart.

It's reminding me of the tortoise who denies modus ponens - if you deny the ability to make inferences then where do we even go from there?

> I disagree. I think it's very constructive to dismiss unproven assumptions > that are probably wrong, but neatly fit into some kind of groupthink. It's > how a lot of science is advanced.

Saying "groupthink" as a meaningless buzzword isn't constructive either. Science advances by questioning assumptions but you have to actually do the work of considering an alternative; science doesn't advance by people introducing a question like "but what if effects didn't follow causes" and then just stopping there.

<comment><USER37> >what they provide to the buyer is very similar. Just as with Roombas and cleaners.

Roombas do not deep clean carpets, cannot traverse stairs, can't clean bathrooms _at all_ , are blocked by clothing and other heavy objects, closed doors, etc. and cannot clean anything that is not on a floor.

That is not what I would qualify as "similar to a person".

>So put up or shut up

Why? I am not the one trying to advance an agenda of "roombas are clearly putting maids out of business". I'm the skeptic.

I think it's entirely possible that _all_ of your assumptions are wrong and probable that at least half of them are.

>if you deny the ability to make inferences then where do we even go from there?

I might start with questionnaires asking roomba owners about their cleaner hiring practices in order to confirm or deny one of the key assumptions underpinning your thesis. It'd be a good topic for research, but not one I have seen pursued.

>Saying "groupthink" as a meaningless buzzword

It is not a meaningless buzzword. The idea that robots destroy jobs is commonly accepted because it is popular. I could find 20 or so articles in a couple of minutes advancing the idea, whereas the skeptic's view - that it doesn't, is barely represented in the media.

Most of what appears in the media advancing this agenda is unsourced and the little that is sourced comes from things like that junk study from Ball State U.

I mean, does that not sound like groupthink to you? It does to me.

>Science advances by questioning assumptions but you have to actually do the work of considering an alternative

Well, if you're really interested in proving your point - why not fire off some questionnaires to roomba owners - did they have a cleaner before they bought the roomba? did they fire the cleaner after? did they cut the cleaner's hours? This seems like a more productive line of enquiry - reality is usually more accurate than shit models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This reminds me of the old joke that GDP goes down when a man marries his maid. But this article manages to not only make that error, but ignore how clearly the data suggest that there are a fair number of men who are housekeepers and are going off the labor market for similar reasons.

</comment><comment><USER48> Come back when the retirement age drops below 50.

At the moment it is going the other way.

</comment><comment><USER49> The difference I see is that historically automation was used to increase productivity. I don't see that in the current wave of "AI"-based automation. There's an emphasis on speed, accuracy, and working with more unknowns, but there isn't any talk of getting more work done. That makes it scary.

<comment><USER50> >The difference I see is that historically automation was used to increase productivity.

Is this true? The stocking frame (and the reactionary group of Luddites that it incited) didn't really increase productivity. It just did work humans were doing for less money than a human salary.

I guess I also just don't see much difference. All that will happen will be again a shift away from many kinds of jobs (the easily automatible ones) to different kinds.

I mean, there are all kinds of jobs now that didn't exist 50 years ago (software engineer, social media manager, influencer, etc. etc.)

<comment><USER51> >Is this true? The stocking frame (and the reactionary group of Luddites that it incited) didn't really increase productivity. It just did work humans were doing for less money than a human salary.

Mechanisation of the textile industry led to vast increases in the quantity of production. Prior to the industrial revolution, most peasants would have owned only one set of clothes and replaced them only when they were entirely beyond repair. Cheap cloth created demand for wardrobes and dressers, because a lot of people were now in the peculiar position of owning more clothes than they could wear at once.

The luddites were ultimately wrong because of Jevons paradox - <USER3> efficiencies in the textile industry vastly increased the demand for their product, and with it their demand for labour. Hand-loom weavers didn't lose their livelihoods to the power loom, they just made ten times as much cloth for twice the wage.

Automation and mechanisation in other manufacturing sectors likewise stimulated vastly increased consumer demand, contributing to a virtuous cycle of increasing profit, wages and living standards. Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, the efficiencies of mass-manufacturing gave ordinary people secure employment and access to a dizzying array of consumer goods. The more stuff we made, the more stuff we could afford to buy.

I don't see AI/ML following the same pattern. A lot of tech-heavy businesses seem to be startlingly close to zero-sum. Uber has decimated the taxi industry, but it doesn't seem to have vastly increased overall ridership - <USER4> most generous figures I've seen suggest perhaps a 40% increase in some markets. Google and Facebook have become multi-billion dollar companies through advertising revenue, but the overall growth of ad spending across all media has barely outpaced inflation, with the newspaper industry being the most obvious casualty. I can't think of many major tech companies that didn't kill an industry.

I'd love to be proven wrong.

<comment><USER50> >I don't see AI/ML following the same pattern.

AI/ML which can mine through sports footage to create highlight reels and funny clip collections, etc will create tons of consumer goods (videos) which can all be monetized on Youtube. Just one example.

How about Netflix? They use AI/ML quite a bit. It seems to have driven quite a lot more people to watch movies and tv than before.

Amazon uses AI/ML in its Echo, which was quite a high-selling consumer good last holiday season.

<comment><USER52> > How about Netflix? They use AI/ML quite a bit. It seems to have driven quite > a lot more people to watch movies and tv than before.

... and the word 'cable cutters' is being thrown around with a lot more intensity, plus various charts of rapidly declining cable TV viewership.

> Amazon uses AI/ML in its Echo, which was quite a high-selling consumer good > last holiday season.

[gestures at the latest brick-and-mortar bookstore news with B+N on the rocks and Borders in its grave ... given AMZ got it's start as a bookseller.]

A pessimistic response to be sure (and one that I'm reluctantly making), but there's coincidence, and then there's a pattern that starts emerging whenever a disruptor unicorn cements its place into an industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I do not want to be employed. I want to do with my time what I want, and when I want. I do not want to continue living in the age of want, I want to live in the age of plenty. I think it's fair to assume this wish is pretty universal.

So I do not give a rats arse about 'productivity', and neither does anybody else, what we want is to live in paradise, today.

Paradise, for me, is when I can have all of the below as a matter of basic human convenience, 'free' as we call it now in the age of want:

* min 4000 calories of excellent and varied nutritious food whenever I want it

* 1kl of 60℃ water / day to my exclusive disposal, I will generally lie around in it

* 1l of alcoholic beverage, typically high hopped beer, I'm not fussy

* sex on demand with a like minded individual, I'm not fussy, hotness would be nice but I'll be happy with someone less ugly than me

* I want to be able travel to any place in the solar system that humans have built homesteads, on demand, by getting on the nearest bus to Titan

* I want to live as long as I please, in excellent health until life literally bores me to death and I decide to die of some ancient crippling disease as an expression of art, or some other bullshit like that.

Now, if I can have the above, you may own all the AI and tech you want, no worries.</comment>


Time management tips that actually work - <AUTHOR> http://jamesclear.com/time-management-tips

<comment><USER2> Dang, just got distracted from my work by looking at this website!</comment>


From Zero to Rabbit in 30 Days - <AUTHOR> http://wiredcraft.com/posts/2013/11/20/from-zero-to-rabbit-in-30-days.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, this is timely. I was just looking at these two yesterday for a distributed computing framework I am building.

After some research I decided to go with RabbitMQ as well, but mainly because of the out-of-the-box support for authentication.

</comment><comment><USER3> I always thought that just using protocol buffers and ZeroMQ and the speed advantage that buys you over having to go through a broker made it worth just using ZeroMQ.

<comment><USER4> That speed might not be an advantage. If RabbitMQ is fast enough then why would you pay the price of the more complex ZeroMQ in order to get more speed? In any case, I have built applications that used both RabbitMQ and ZeroMQ for different roles. For instance a bunch of processes using AMQP to communicate about their core work but all of them also use ZeroMQ to report their status to a supervisor process which managed them. And there was a db server that I built which used a ZeroMQ version of the memcache protocol to persist data short term.

ZeroMQ works great but when you need a message queue, be aware that there is NO message queue in ZeroMQ and that is why it is called _Zero_ MQ</comment></comment>


The same guy who predicted collapse of USSR, is predicting the collapse of U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html

<comment><USER2> As an American who was born in the USSR, I can confidently say that this prediction is completely based on the typical Russian misunderstanding of the culture of the United States.

He seems to think that the United States is exactly like the USSR in 1990, which couldn't be further from the truth.

Just look at his map. Its hilarious.

The USSR was a conglomeration of formerly separate countries who were culturally distinct, constantly bickered and fought. This was was mostly because the USSR wasn't around long enough for people to forget what independence for their country was like.

So yes, at the first sign of weakness of the central government each previously independent country eagerly broke away. They even had their old government systems to dredge up and fall back on when they wanted.

The 50 states, on the other hand, have never been separate countries (with one or two minor exceptions).

The Texans, while they might complain about the Californians, do not consider themselves a different ethnicity.

And the map's ideas of what countries will control what parts? Is he kidding me?

How can China possibly control the west coast? Its insane. The language and cultural barrier is insurmountable. And Mexico controlling Texas and the south east? Are you kidding me?

This shows a complete ignorance of the cultural issues of the region.

<comment><USER3> I'm involved with a business that does quite a lot of work in Russia and neighboring countries (or did until credit markets collapsed there this fall). What I've learned is that Russia fundamentally misunderstands the US, and the US fundamentally misunderstands Russia.

Our biggest mistake is that we both project our own experiences on the other. This article is a great example of this, as lionheart points out. In the other direction, we were wrong in thinking that the most likely alternative in 1991 to Soviet communism was US-style democracy.

While this guy's ideas are laughable, I understand how they could spread. I can imagine a similar book being written in the US about the Muslim world - playing on our fears, outlining some crazy scenario for the Middle East with no real basis in reality, and completely misunderstanding the differences between Iran and Egypt, Palestine and Turkey, etc.

<comment><USER4> I couldn't agree more. There are lots of Americans who thinks of Europe in the same way as the US. Just because most of western Europe is in the EU and share a continent, doesn't mean that you can say something about one country just because you have visited another. And we're talking about Europe here. I can only imagine the kinds of misconceptions we (both Europeans and Americans) have about the Middle East

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Actually, your title is not correct. Igor Panarin predicts the collapse of the US. Emmanuel Todd predicted the collapse of the USSR in 1976. They are two different people.

<comment><USER6> I'm French and I know Todd, the title sounds correct to me. Todd predicted the collapse of USSR (when it was a minority position among intellectuals), and it has been several years he is "predicting" the collapse of the U.S (way before the current crisis). His main prediction is the collapse of the U.S dollar.

A very important thing to note is that he believes the U.S is gone as the sole superpower. What he really means by collapse is about the same fate that endured the British Empire.

<comment><USER7> Is anybody actually _predicting_ the US will remain the sole superpower for... crud, I can't even come up with a decent time specification for this question... 100 years?

Even assuming the US doesn't have anything called a "collapse", it's obvious to anybody with eyes that there are a number of countries that will inevitably grow to superpower status over time. This is normal, and arguably good, since the alternative ("everybody stays poor") is probably bad. Singulatarians would argue that tech is moving such that people, or at least small collections of people (on the order of tens of people), may become "superpowers" by modern standards.

Even the most optimistic predictions of continued US success don't have it coming at the expense of other success, and the economic phenomenon that less developed countries have much more low-hanging fruit, allowing them to grow to modern standards much faster than the leaders, will not stop anytime soon.

Seems to me the question of whether the US will "collapse" is distinct from the question of whether it will be the "sole superpower" across any timespan past 10 or 20 years. (Slightly later edit: And the collapse of the US won't make China a superpower, it will mean there simply isn't one for a while. Superpower is ill-defined, but it definitely has something to do with being able to project force around the world, and China can't do that yet, except with nukes, and if that makes a superpower, than they are already there, along with numerous others.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Eh. The thing with predictions is that all you have to do is have tons of people making predictions about every imaginable frightening, unlikely scenario and some of them will eventually wind up coming true. Predicting that a country in a recession will "collapse" is a pretty reasonable thing to do if you're in the business of making wild predictions no one is going to call you on if they turn out to be incorrect.

<comment><USER9> Excellent point. This dynamic has also led to doomsday sayers such as Peter Schiff being heralded as the genius that saw what noone else saw, when in reality he might just have been lucky. There are probably 100 Peter Schiff's out there whose predictions didn't hold up, and who we subsequently don't herald as heroes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The American people are too united by a love of their nation for this to occur.

While Soviets often had a patriotic admiration of their country, it was often framed in the sense of the USSR being better than someone else, rather than on its own merits. Also, people were more locally pariotic: Russians were more Russian and Ukrainians more Ukrainian than Soviet.

Do Americans strongly identify themselves by their home state? In my experience (as an outsider) they do in a somewhat relaxed manner, but nowhere near the extremes of their pride and hope in the United States of America as a country. The strong inter-state migration also appears to support this.

<comment><USER11> Separate from the collective mind of Americans is the status of the US Dollar as a "reserve currency", i.e. one that people are happy to hold in times of trouble. If that goes then, given the USA is bankrupt, it'll be in trouble. It's only because it's a reserve currency that the USA can afford to chuck bills from helicopters; elsewhere, doing that has caused the currency to fall dramatically, e.g. that idiot Gordon Brown in the UK.

China holds quite a few dollars and is wary of the USA's plans on trying to spend its way out of this recession in case their value slumps. There's an argument that all these rescue plans are just prolonging the inevitable, just as the boom was stretched by Greenspan's actions making it a huge bust to mirror the huge boom. What's needed is a hard crash in asset prices, houses, stocks, commodities, etc., until buyers are convinced that a hard bottom has been found. Then they'll be interested in buying again. And companies going to the wall in that time is a good thing; it culls the weak. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction>

There's still worried talk of deflation. I think they're over concerned. There's some things I must buy, even if they're a bit cheaper tomorrow, e.g. food, and if my TV breaks, I'll replace it. By over-compensating for fear of deflation, we're facing high double-digit inflation in a year or so.

Reminds me of that old matra: For deflation, hold cash. For inflation, hold gold. For hyper-inflation, hold guns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The WSJ is officially yellow journalism.

This map is a real trip. South Carolina splitting from Georgia? Mexico owning New Mexico but not Arizona? If he's going to prop up ridiculous fantasies, at least he could try harder.

What pains the the Russians to no end is that the very idea of the nation state is disentigrating in the US, Europe, and South America. Only their backward, so-called "democracy" and a handful of nations in east Asia take it very seriously anymore, while the concept is used to pit regions against one another in Africa (see the US interference in Ethiopia and Somalia for a good case study). Make no mistake, "India vs. Pakistan" and "Iran vs. the Middle East" are culture wars with borders providing the necessary tension.

<comment><USER13> Nah, it's not yellow journalism -- it's from the WSJ's middle column, a place for quirky character profiles (which this story is) and human-interest stories. Previous topics have included truck-driving competitions and the wild-boar infestation of Berlin.

<comment><USER14> "Nah, it's not yellow journalism -- it's from the WSJ's middle column, a place for quirky character profiles (which this story is) and human-interest stories. Previous topics have included truck-driving competitions and the wild-boar infestation of Berlin."

Good point. CONTEXT, CONTEXT, CONTEXT. The article was published to start interesting conversations like the one in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Although based on his "map"....I have no idea how anyone is taking him seriously.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, it looks pretty dumb.

On a somewhat related note, if we folded the federal government and signed a free-trade and migration pact between the 50 states, would we miss anything?

<comment><USER16> Well there are economies of scale when you only have to maintain one standing army rather than 50 separate ones.

<comment><USER17> Actually, you only need 2, one for each coast. The Founding Fathers did not approve of expeditionary warfare.

<comment><USER7> As much as I love me some Founding Fathers, when they lived, 40 minutes got you a few miles away if you traveled with all available speed. Today, the other side of the world is only 40 minutes away on a ballistic trajectory. (And I'm not even counting information warfare where it's less than a second away.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For some reason ex-Sovient Union population still thinks US is out to get them.

I know because I grew up there and still talk to old friends.

Wake up, Cold War ended decades ago and we live in a global economy now. No matter what you see in movies you don't know anything about this country. You need to live here for at least, I would say, 3 years to understand it.

The article is silly.

</comment><comment><USER19> Texas alone would be more powerful than Mexico.

</comment><comment><USER20> I predicted that a tower I made out of toothpicks would collapse a few years ago. And it did.

Now I'm predicting that the Empire State Building will collapse. I must be right, I've done it before.

Even if he is the guy who predicted the USSR's collapse, that's meaningless now.

Also, Mexico is nowhere near powerful enough to control/influence that much of the US, so that part is clearly wrong.

The other parts are at least theoretically possible but still pretty unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER21> The guy seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of "how stuff works" and seems to have predicted a future similar to the fate suffered by the USSR although the circumstances under which each was forged are completely different.

I also like how he tries to deliver this theory as completely devoid of anti- American sentiment.

</comment><comment><USER22> Bullshit.

I don't think I need any reason to support my claim. Anyone who read the article will know why.

<comment><USER23> I like that he's asking you to accept a theory of his, but I want to hear both sides. Preferably, with evidence that makes sense, not just preconceived notions.

Nations have fallen to civil wars and dissolution before. I'm a little skeptic to just think that we're vulnerable to that, but at the same time, we're not invincible either. It would be silly to think that nothing bad could happen to the US.

Right now, it's just speculation based on classified information that may or may not be true.

<comment><USER24> We've been through a Great Depression before. Economic and social lines were at least as strong then as they are now. At least we don't have Jim Crow laws now. Now, we have two coasts that are considered urban, not one, so it's actually somewhat less of an urban vs. rural divide (remember that whole Manifest Destiny thing?).

As a nation, the U.S. is more uniform than it is then so any such theory would have to explain how this is to our detriment, how an increase in similarity can actually provoke serious infighting, because the psychology research shows that people who are more similar tend to get along together in the long run. More than that, we just elected a uniter, who seems to pick good advisors no less.

So in all, I really want to see this classified information, because we've been through pretty bad times before (that's pretty good evidence, yes?) and this country didn't break up then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> quote: _But it's his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis._ EOQ

I agree that the article is more 'fun' than 'news', but is the WSJ implying in the sentence above that USA has nothing to see with the mentioned issues?

</comment><comment><USER26> "The professor says he's convinced that people are taking his theory more seriously. People like him have forecast similar cataclysms before, he says, and been right."

I was going to say that this is obviously rubbish and if the professor is spouting it then it reflects very badly on his hypothesis. But then I thought about what I would say if some journalist asked an insightful question like 'this is all rubbish and can't possibly be true, right?'

The most charitable way of looking at it is: maybe he was trying to remind people how wide the bounds of possibility are and that ruling out the prediction without examining his methods would be premature.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wasn't this a Choose Your Own Adventure novel in the 80s?

<comment><USER28> Or a Children's Film Foundation film?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The New York Times on the Russian natural gas monopoly, Gazprom:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/business/worldbusiness/30g...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/business/worldbusiness/30gazprom.html)

"That Russia's largest state-run energy company needs a bailout so soon after oil hit record highs last summer is a telling postscript to a turbulent period. Once the emblem of the pride and the menace of a resurgent Russia, Gazprom has become a symbol of this oil state's rapid economic decline."

</comment><comment><USER14> I think Russia will win the race to the bottom.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia>

</comment><comment><USER29> There's an old joke about economists predicting 11 of the last 3 recessions... Should we do it now for nations failing?

</comment><comment><USER23> "He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says."

How credible is his source?

<comment><USER30> Impossible to say, since he doesn't tell us who they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Supposing this happened: what part of the country would you choose to live in?

</comment><comment><USER32> Huey Newton predicted the collapse of the nation state long ago, since he correctly foresaw that the global economy would become more important than particular nations. I live in Texas now, but I may well move to California, in light of all this. A China controlled California would be economically better off I would think than a Mexico controlled Texas Republic. Nothing against Mexico, but I am just thinking in which of these new Republics I can get iPods at a reasonable cost.

</comment><comment><USER33> Methinks somebody has spent too much time reading Shadowrun novelizations.

</comment><comment><USER34> It would be OK if Russia gets Alaska, as long as they take Palin too.</comment>


China launches "Operation Green Fence" to stop recycling American junk - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/82640/china-doesnt-want-your-trash-anymore-and-that-could-spell-big-trouble-for-american-cities/

<comment><USER2> "If China customs found a syringe, even if it's just one, in a bale of plastic, it's considered medical waste and the whole shipment would get rejected,"

and just how many used syringes does this guy think you need before you should refuse the bag? i mean honestly, a syringe here and there is just par for the course, surely?</comment>