Robots providing better shareholder value than CdM

[garbon]

I've never understood why the woman in that picture is topless.

Really?

Sex sells. Shocking, I know.

I just saw an ad for this in subway.  Sexy popcorn!

https://sexypop.us/

[Ideologue]

Fortunately Communism will save us all!  I guess we all need to get training in building and repairing robots.

We desperately need competent roboticians. There seems to be a sort of mini-boom in the automotive industry going on right now and people with the right skills are ridiculously hard to find (ironic in a country with >25% unemployment).

With a bit of luck my employers will see that as an opportunity to pay to train me in the ways of robot-fu, but I'm not holding my breath.

In my current job I'm participating in the ultimate examples of automation. I'm overseeing the commissioning of a high-powered laser worth almost a million bucks. Other than engineers and maintenance folk, just one person is needed to load and unload parts. It can do in minutes a better job than what took a team of experienced welders hours.
My next project involves a press worth probably tens of millions (perhaps over a hundred), that again only one dude operates.

[favorable comment about STEM, negative comment about liberal arts]

[Berkut]

If you extrapolate the trend of human history out, how does it end somewhere other than humans simply not being needed to produce "stuff" anymore?

The number of humans needed to make things has gone down per unit of stuff made consistently since humans learned how to start thinking. Industrial revolution, computers, automation - the long term result must be that human labor as a means of powering anything (whether that be mechanical power or brain power) will forever be a diminishing value.

For a long time (although not that long at all in historical terms) we were able to use the increased productivity to make more stuff to sell to the people helping make more stuff. But at some point, everyone has enough stuff for the most part. The number one health problem of the poor in America is obesity. I think we've reached the point where we have enough stuff, and the ability to produce stuff with less labor isn't going to be handled simply by making yet more stuff, rather it will be used to make the same amount of stuff with less expensive labor.

At some point human labor, in most cases, will simply cease to be valuable.

I think we are starting to see the beginnings of that stage in human social evolution. It will be interesting to see how humans manage the changing realities of human labor becoming nearly valueless, while at the same time we've depleted the bulk of the easily obtainable natural resources on the planet.

I would not all be shocked that this is at least part of the answer to Fermi's paradox - intelligence demands certain traits that result in a social model that has a very difficult time transitioning out of a scarce labor model.

[jimmy olsen]

I think we are starting to see the beginnings of that stage in human social evolution. It will be interesting to see how humans manage the changing realities of human labor becoming nearly valueless, while at the same time we've depleted the bulk of the easily obtainable natural resources on the planet.

Mine the asteroids!

[Ideologue]

Berkut's got a pretty great point there.  There's going to come a point where the wealth of society is going to have to be nationalized, or you're going to have to exterminate eight or nine billion people--who will fight back.

Sometimes I don't really care which.  Whether that point is ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years from now, I'll probably have been dead for a while, and even if I'm not, having a distant satisfaction that I was right and most the people I know are blindered idiots would be truly cold comfort.

[Ed Anger]

Ide's smug ghost haunting our descendants. Truly a nightmare.

[Ideologue]

"Movies were better when I was alive."  "I can't believe 180 pounds is now considered 'thin.' "  "There aren't many jobs for ghosts..."

Edit: and so forth.

[Ed Anger]

 

[The Brain]

Helots can always be culled. A meatbag surplus doesn't really worry me.

[Valmy]

you're going to have to exterminate eight or nine billion people--who will fight back.

That will be no problem for the army of cheaply made Freedom Defense Robots.

[Valmy]

We desperately need competent roboticians.

Damnit I should have been a mechanical engineer.  Oh well too late now.

[Iormlund]

We desperately need competent roboticians.

Damnit I should have been a mechanical engineer.  Oh well too late now.

Engineers who work with robots over here tend to have degrees in Electronics (or Automation if available). You don't really need an engineering degree though, vocational training might suffice. It's one of those skills you can only acquire on the job (awfully hard to get a robot to tinker with otherwise).
However, some knowledge of mechanics comes handy if you want to become a welding expert as well. Someone who is both a good robotician and welder, is the kind of thing that's really hard to find.

[The Brain]

If the chick in Flashdance took some robot courses she would swing seven figures?

[The Minsky Moment]

1. 85 people alone command as much wealth as the poorest half of the world.

This is kind of a silly stat.  There are a lot of people in the world that have zero or negative net worth.  So one could also accurately say that "Valmy commands as much wealth as the poorest 35% of the world" or something like that.

[The Brain]

We already knew he's a monster.