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The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
#41
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
At present, the human machine can work around 5 acres of mixed crops in varied conditions on a bowl of rice, an egg, some of the unmarketable veggies - and copious amounts of water...lol. So that's the efficiency benchmark that automation will have to at least meet before it's commercially viable.

For now I'm content wondering how to arrange the production space so that simple mechanical automation becomes a working feature. The bleeding edge of ag is lightyears away from the reality on the ground. LOL, sad, perhaps. That said, I tend to favor solutions that begin with "can I get the plant to do x" rather than "can I build a machine to do x".
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#42
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
(July 22, 2014 at 12:19 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: This is a real possibility. I'd like to think it can be avoided, that a Star Trek future where people's common material needs are met for free and self-fulfillment is the rule, is possible. And maybe it is. Intelligent machines are electronics and electronics gets less expensive over time. When the common person has that kind of intelligence at their fingertips, they'll come up with things I can't imagine...maybe an economy based on creativity and social connection.

Unlike the Star Trek universe.....there will always be a need for money. I suspect Brands will become even more important to people. Your 3D printer will print either Costco jeans or Calvin Kliens....the Calvin's will cost you a more money as you will need to compensate the designer a little more if you want to be able to manufacture a pair in your home. The Costco jeans will be just as practical as the Kliens of course....but people will have simply decided the Klien's should cost more. Go on a cruise....well an outside cabin with a verandah is going to cost more than an inside cabin with simulated windows. Automation isn't going to change the laws of physics.....not every one can occupy the prime real estate.

(July 22, 2014 at 2:41 pm)Rhythm Wrote: At present, the human machine can work around 5 acres of mixed crops in varied conditions on a bowl of rice, an egg, some of the unmarketable veggies - and copious amounts of water...lol. So that's the efficiency benchmark that automation will have to at least meet before it's commercially viable.

A human needs quite a bit more than rice, eggs, and vegetables. A human needs rice, eggs, and vegetables for their spouse and children too. As well as a house and car and clothes.....and entertainment, medical care, toilet facilities....etc. There is much more that goes into sustaining a human being than you initially think.

All a robot needs energy and maintenance. A robot like ASIMO should be physically capable of doing most of the chores a human can do right now. The part of the puzzle that is missing is the intellect.....and those pieces are being filled in as we speak.
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#43
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
I'm raising a free market fanatic (I hesitate to say fundamentalist because she does see the value of some kinds of regulation). She also spins. ---yes I will get to the point--- Anyway, when I do art fairs she sometimes comes along and spins outside my booth.

An elderly gentlemen approached her at a fair and asked the usual questions about her spinning wheel, and where she gets her wool, and what she does with the yarn. Then he said what a shame it was that modern textile mills put the spinners out of business, how all of those poor displaced persons lost their jobs.

And she hit him with both barrels about how much better off we all are now that people can buy cloth cheaply. And how all of those displaced spinners and weavers went on to learn other trades. And how the economy is not a zero sum game. And how more efficient manufacturing leads to more goods and more jobs in the long run even if there is disruption and unemployment in the short run. (All this from the mouth of a 16 year old).

She's further right than I am. But I really love my daughter.

[Image: SpinningTales-small.jpg]

And in this case she's right (not just right).
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god.  If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
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#44
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
(July 22, 2014 at 9:03 pm)Heywood Wrote: A human needs quite a bit more than rice, eggs, and vegetables. A human needs rice, eggs, and vegetables for their spouse and children too. As well as a house and car and clothes.....and entertainment, medical care, toilet facilities....etc. There is much more that goes into sustaining a human being than you initially think.

All a robot needs energy and maintenance.
All he says....all....lol.....and the desinger, and the r/d budget, and a maintenace bay, and a tech, and his family, and his house, and his car - And the people who work on his car and his......we could go on and on. Robots aren't islands any more than a man might be. I'd be willing to wager, as cool as it would be, that we won't require field laborers by the time we figure out how to make a robotic one. Field laborers are a very specific tool. Bit like designing a robot to work a halyard on a ship of the line - in 2014.

On a more sober note. I don't have to buy the field workers productivity upfront - in the way I would have to pay for the productivity of a robot upfront. That's why, for me, they would have to work better than a standard hammer- all other parameters being equal. I suppose that it;s an easier metric to meet in other occupations - where the gate is human speed, or productivity over time (a robot doesn't sleep) - but ag is actually gated by the biology of the crops. No amount of working faster will make the crops grow faster - and I can already plow an entire county under with time to spare with nothing more than a tractor. That 5 acre marker is subsistence farming with a stick out of a mud hut and no electricity (like the good 'ole days)..lol. Hell, if I were still in florida it would be hut optional.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#45
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
(July 22, 2014 at 10:14 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Hell, if I were still in Florida it would be hut optional.

Well like the Deftones will tell you, "The shade is a tool, a device, a savior". It's too fucking hot down here right now & it's only going to get worse.
"How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does? Because a lame man recognizes that we are walking straight, while a lame mind says that it is we who are limping." - Pascal
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#46
RE: The lady who drove a Mercedes to pick up food vouchers.
(July 22, 2014 at 1:21 pm)Welsh cake Wrote: Mister Agenda, if what you say is true, please explain to me why the UK is doing rather poorly lately with automation?

Because automation at the proposed level doesn't exist yet. In ten years there's a good chance that you'll be able to make a shirt for a nickel in five minutes on a 3D printer. THAT's the level of automation under discussion. Ten years past that, general purpose robots that can do almost any kind of labor...and ten years past that you'll be able to get one just like it for less than a new car. But 3D Printers alone can be considered the basis of a new industrial revolution.

(July 22, 2014 at 1:21 pm)Welsh cake Wrote: Please explain why industry is packing up and going abroad where its cheaper?

Because it's still cheaper. It won't continue to be. You do understand we're talking about 'the future', not the 'right now' right? If we outsource to a foriegn company in thirty years, it will be their robots doing the work instead of ours, not their people instead of our people.

(July 22, 2014 at 1:21 pm)Welsh cake Wrote: I don't understand anymore. We've gone from being a major superpower, a big f**king empire, to America's little puppet at best, and a laughing stock, a relic, at worst, as far as the EU, China and Russia are concerned.

No one gets to stay on top forever, looks like we're next. I don't consider the UK a laughing stock. Their current economic woes will pass. The one certainty is that things are going to be very different and it's not going to take very long.

(July 22, 2014 at 1:21 pm)Welsh cake Wrote: You can't tell me automation hasn't played its role in our industrial decline. well, I mean you can, but unless you account for all of the changes and vast unemployment, social and economic woes, I'm not going to accept it.

I would say it's not an industrial decline if you can still make as much stuff as you did before. It's an employment decline, and absolutely automation has played a role in it. Rising unemployment is a serious threat. In the USA, it's estimated that half of current jobs will be obsolete in twenty years. The change is coming, what I'm saying is that we need to be smart about it and that the worst case scenario doesn't have to be inevitable.

(July 22, 2014 at 10:14 pm)Rhythm Wrote:
(July 22, 2014 at 9:03 pm)Heywood Wrote: A human needs quite a bit more than rice, eggs, and vegetables. A human needs rice, eggs, and vegetables for their spouse and children too. As well as a house and car and clothes.....and entertainment, medical care, toilet facilities....etc. There is much more that goes into sustaining a human being than you initially think.

All a robot needs energy and maintenance.
All he says....all....lol.....and the desinger, and the r/d budget, and a maintenace bay, and a tech, and his family, and his house, and his car - And the people who work on his car and his......we could go on and on. Robots aren't islands any more than a man might be. I'd be willing to wager, as cool as it would be, that we won't require field laborers by the time we figure out how to make a robotic one. Field laborers are a very specific tool. Bit like designing a robot to work a halyard on a ship of the line - in 2014.

On a more sober note. I don't have to buy the field workers productivity upfront - in the way I would have to pay for the productivity of a robot upfront. That's why, for me, they would have to work better than a standard hammer- all other parameters being equal. I suppose that it;s an easier metric to meet in other occupations - where the gate is human speed, or productivity over time (a robot doesn't sleep) - but ag is actually gated by the biology of the crops. No amount of working faster will make the crops grow faster - and I can already plow an entire county under with time to spare with nothing more than a tractor. That 5 acre marker is subsistence farming with a stick out of a mud hut and no electricity (like the good 'ole days)..lol. Hell, if I were still in florida it would be hut optional.

Yeah, that's why agricultural machinery like harvesters and tractors never caught on.

(July 22, 2014 at 1:50 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Which makes a prediction of some future government welfare state based upon such advanced automation a non-starter. Who is the government taxing, and what are they taxing (in order to foot the welfare bill) - when anyone could simply create what they required with their own privately controlled means of production?

People requiring less money to survive will make a basic free income more affordable.

(July 22, 2014 at 1:50 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Further, if they have such means - what would the welfare be needed for - even if they had the fund to accomplish it, which, as above...I don't see how they would.

A post-scarcity society can't be built in a day. The transition period could be decades long. Many, many people will need assistance to weather the part where machines take their jobs but not everybody has personal universal manufacturing capability yet.

(July 22, 2014 at 1:50 pm)Rhythm Wrote: If, just as an example, the government were to tax energy (wondering where the user would get the funds to pay the tax still......)commensurate with a rate that would allow for some basic income to citizens - why not cut out the automated middleman, and just have the people continue to perform those functions and receive that wage for that service?

You mean deliberately handicap ourselves competitively and let those jobs be outsourced instead of taken over by our own automation? I don't think that's in the cards, nor do I think it is wise.

(July 22, 2014 at 1:50 pm)Rhythm Wrote: That sort of automation is not the beginning of a welfare state - but the end of money (possibly even the end of commerce by any means), and thusly the end of any need for welfare. Everybodies all good, the robots have "got this"
(Somebody please say they've read some Ian Banks...lol?)

Eventually it should be the end of welfare states because basic necessities will literally be dirt-cheap. There's a long distance between there and here, though. It won't be the end of money because money is a symbol for resources. You may have heard that time is money? And home manufacturing won't give you free real estate. My imagination may fail to anticipate all the things we will still use some form of money for, but millions of people will be thinking of ways to increase their status, and acquire more of the resources that still aren't effectively free.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
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