Hey Rosco, finally read "Lights in the Tunnel" - here's one for ya.

[LJ_Reloaded]

I've actually seen systems like this, on a smaller scale. By now something like this should be fully out in the wild.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

 

[rosco rathbone]

I've actually seen systems like this, on a smaller scale. By now something like this should be fully out in the wild.

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

That's some fucked up shit.

The software would speak to the employees individually and tell each one exactly what to do. For example, "Bob, we need to load more patties. Please walk toward the freezer."

 

[rosco rathbone]

Wow, that story is scary and fucking depressing as hell.

 

[Sean]

Wow, that story is scary and fucking depressing as hell.

And far too fucking plausible to be read comfortably.

 

[rosco rathbone]

And far too fucking plausible to be read comfortably.

The end gets science fictiony, but I'd be surprised if the first couple of chapters weren't coming true very soon.

 

[shy slave]

Plausible, possible?

Probably.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

Wow, that story is scary and fucking depressing as hell.

Now do you understand what I mean when I say a dark ages and a TOTAL collapse of society is good for humanity? It's better than THAT.

It totally crystalizes what I have been saying about the future of economics.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Except it doesn't have to end that way and there is no reason (aside from the fact that Vette and miles get to vote) that it should end up that way. Frankly one thing robots will likely never be able to do is innovate and with us not worrying about the day to day crap more people will be able to innovate. The problem is just figuring out the distribution system and incentives and the such.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

Except it doesn't have to end that way and there is no reason (aside from the fact that Vette and miles get to vote) that it should end up that way. Frankly one thing robots will likely never be able to do is innovate and with us not worrying about the day to day crap more people will be able to innovate. The problem is just figuring out the distribution system and incentives and the such.

Only a handful of people will ever innovate anything that is profitable. 99% of all inventions fail to survive in the market and there's less than 1 million inventors in the entire invention database going back over TWO HUNDRED years.

An innovation economy only works with a very, very small population.

 

[Sean]

The end gets science fictiony, but I'd be surprised if the first couple of chapters weren't coming true very soon.

It's a long way from being well written, but the whole "Manna" concept is very plausible.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Only a handful of people will ever innovate anything that is profitable. 99% of all inventions fail to survive in the market and there's less than 1 million inventors in the entire invention database going back over TWO HUNDRED years.

An innovation economy only works with a very, very small population.

That goes without saying but there is no reason why we couldn't hybridize somehow. Frankly part of the problem here is that we all see the same problem but half of us are talking the solutions and the other half are simplly refusing to enter the discussion with anything shy of "unions/socialism/communism/lazy/poor/workharder" and you can't have a conversation when literally half the population basically refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

That goes without saying but there is no reason why we couldn't hybridize somehow.

Actually, there may be a way out of the Manna-verse.

The disappearance of grunt jobs will be nothing less than catastrophic. Grunt jobs have been around since we got past inventing the wheel. It would mean the automatic rendering of over 99% of humanity to be redundant. And after that 99% is gone the other 1% will suffer mass redundancy because there's no market for their great innovations.

In the scenario of hybridization, of course, the population will be something between 70 million and 7 billion. ANY hybridization scenario, though, puts that "in between" far closer to 70 million than 7 billion.

Ultimately, there is one other issue that might bring Manna-era Earth's economy crashing to the ground in a heap of flames. The entire world is governed by the fractional reserve banking system, an economic system that depends on growth. Even a slow contraction of the world population means growth will slow down because you will have fewer people to sell things to, and inside of a closed economic system, that spells doom.

The fracked banking system can survive it, say, Japan's population shrinks but Africa's population is growing; it can also survive if Japan's population is shrinking but becoming more wealthy per person. But even in your hybridization scenario, the whole world's population is still shrinking and it's because of mass poverty. This means the destruction of the fractional reserve banking system; once the growth stops, its inequities catch up with it.

Basically: if this reserve system crashes, Manna-verse will reach a fatal error state and crash, utterly.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I had something written here. It was smart. Then I re-read your post mostly the last part and it became "oh crap". I completely forget sometimes that our way of banking is fundamentally a trust excercise and just to keep playing we gotta keep adding new players or get far better at trusting each other just to have same effect.

Fuck. I don't like problems that I don't at least have step one of a solution for.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

I had something written here. It was smart. Then I re-read your post mostly the last part and it became "oh crap". I completely forget sometimes that our way of banking is fundamentally a trust excercise and just to keep playing we gotta keep adding new players or get far better at trusting each other just to have same effect.

Fuck. I don't like problems that I don't at least have step one of a solution for.

In the Manna-verse, the crash of the FRB system is not a problem, it is actually a solution.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I've been in enough cars to know that crashing is not a solution to anything. It may at some point become inevitable but it's not a solution.

Is there any reason why for example welfare for all couldn't be implemented just at a lower level than it was in Manna-verse Australia? Like you rate x amount of food and x amount of shelter simply for being alive and if you want more you need to earn it?

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

I've been in enough cars to know that crashing is not a solution to anything. It may at some point become inevitable but it's not a solution.

Is there any reason why for example welfare for all couldn't be implemented just at a lower level than it was in Manna-verse Australia? Like you rate x amount of food and x amount of shelter simply for being alive and if you want more you need to earn it?

The machines are already doing all the "earning" work in that scenario.

Everyone's not going to just sit around buying other people's art. Attrition in that situation is absolutely guaranteed.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Fair point. I guess you could take a random point in time and just knock over the entire house of cards but that still sounds extraordinarily stupid when there has to be a way to get people to a decent point.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Except it doesn't have to end that way and there is no reason (aside from the fact that Vette and miles get to vote) that it should end up that way. Frankly one thing robots will likely never be able to do is innovate and with us not worrying about the day to day crap more people will be able to innovate. The problem is just figuring out the distribution system and incentives and the such.

Who says robots will never be able to innovate? I'm a believer in the coming of strong AI sooner or later.

 

[Sean Renaud]

I might be proven wrong, after all we can only base things on what we know. Nothing I see suggests we'll ever get an AI that can truly "jump the rails" so to speak. To be fair it's rare that humans jump the rails we tend to keep doing the same damn thing even if it's not the most efficient path possible. I'll freely admit I'm wrong when a robot comes up with an answer that (given the parameters, I forget the experiment but there was an AI progran designed to figure out how to walk but "walk" wasn't clearly defined as anything more than getting from point A to point B in an upright position. Apparently several iterations of the program ended with the man doing cartwheels) isn't wrong it's just outside the box I'll officially admit I was wrong. Also like that robot that went on Jeopardy I'll start on a mission to destroy it before it sends a robot back in time to kill Sarah Conner.

 

[rosco rathbone]

I might be proven wrong, after all we can only base things on what we know. Nothing I see suggests we'll ever get an AI that can truly "jump the rails" so to speak. To be fair it's rare that humans jump the rails we tend to keep doing the same damn thing even if it's not the most efficient path possible. I'll freely admit I'm wrong when a robot comes up with an answer that (given the parameters, I forget the experiment but there was an AI progran designed to figure out how to walk but "walk" wasn't clearly defined as anything more than getting from point A to point B in an upright position. Apparently several iterations of the program ended with the man doing cartwheels) isn't wrong it's just outside the box I'll officially admit I was wrong. Also like that robot that went on Jeopardy I'll start on a mission to destroy it before it sends a robot back in time to kill Sarah Conner.

You want to see some creepy shit, brah, go to youtube and search "petman".

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

Fair point. I guess you could take a random point in time and just knock over the entire house of cards but that still sounds extraordinarily stupid when there has to be a way to get people to a decent point.

There isn't a way out at this point besides knocking it all over. They probably thought there was another way out when the Roman and Byzantine Empire collapsed and the Dark Ages ensued.

The problem is the issue of mass hypnosis. Most of the western world, and now much of China and Asia, are drinking the ultra capitalist kool-aid. We have fallen into a mindless obsession with pursuing higher productivity at the expense of any other aspect of existence. In economist think tank circles, if you propose ideas that interfere with increasing productivity you could be as big an outcast as if you came to said meetings with snuff films to play during their lunch break.* In normal society, anything you suggest that runs contrary to the breathless race for higher productivity may be considered on its merits - at least until the Plutocrats and think tanks apply their mass hypnosis, after which your arguments get curb stomped.

What is this mass hypnosis that I speak of? It's called buzz phrases. Six Sigma, "just in time employment" and "right-sizing" for you industrial experts out there; and for the public, it's buzz phrases like:
"do this or else what you buy will become more expensive"
"... or the lazy union workers will get you!"
"... or said company will become uncompetitive" (see: the Prisoner's Dilemma)

It's all about mass hypnosis and appealing to the idea that "you don't want to be an economic girly-man, do you?"

Mass hypnosis has worked before. The only way you ever get out of it is to break the mass hypnosis; and history dictates that this is only ever achieved by the destruction of said nation. Or, in this case, the total ruin of the globalized civilization.

Who says robots will never be able to innovate? I'm a believer in the coming of strong AI sooner or later.

If robots become capable of innovating then we as a species will not live to see the consequences of that.


* In fact, considering that these think tanks are funded by the Plutocrats themselves, you might actually get invited to a golf game for presenting such movies, because MOST of them like snuff films and would be willing to pay you if you could find a way to help them fulfill their fantasies in some place where the law couldn't reach them.

And now you know what job opportunities will be available for select people living in those Terrafoam communities.