Off Topic Thread 4.0

troyzer wrote: »

Constructing nuclear power plants gives you a net gain though, solar panels don't. They require enormous amounts of energy to build, they last 20-30 years and never break even and then they're dumped in Ghana.

That doesn't make any sense to me at all - solar panels don't give you a net gain in terms of energy production? How are you measuring that?

The claim that Governments are ignoring climate change ignores a fairly major failure of personal responsibility. Repeated Eurostat studies in Ireland show that while we all think Climate Change is important, we think it is the responsibility of business to solve.

The disconnect between peoples lifestyles and their concerns about Climate is nuts

Zzippy wrote: »

This claim about salmon farming is industry spin. It's complete hogwash. They refer to 1kg dry weight. This requires several kg input of fish harvested from wild fisheries.. It is physiologically impossible for an animal to convert 1:1 input to growth. Not to mention the huge (20-50% average) mortality rate which is not factored in to that claimed efficiency ratio.
Fish are cold-blooded animals so they are naturally more efficient at converting feed than cows, but sustainably managed wild fisheries would be a far better use of the ocean resources. I won't even go into the long list of damaging environmental impacts of salmon farming here, we could be here a very long time!

Exactly. The point I was making is that eating cows is very costly in terms of energy in vs energy out. And as you say it's largely down to the physiology of the animals (a point I also touched on when I mentioned methane, etc). I'm not advocating people only eat fish farmed in Norway by any stretch.

stephen_n wrote: »

And according to this Electric cars are more environmentally damaging than Diesel. Though I think reading it, that the research is flawed, in that it takes into account the sourcing of the raw materials of electric cars, and the Co2 involved in that. Yet ignores the Co2 emissions involved in recovering and processing crude oil. Only focusing on the actual emissions from the engine.

The underlying point is interesting though. We tend not to think where our energy solutions come from. Electric batteries rely on copper. Copper is found through an extractive and not great process. Also, there hasnt been a significant copper find in years.

There is a big push on biomass, but we dont and are unlikely to ever have the resources required to supply our domestic needs.
Even the push for heat pumps through the SEAI, ignores the fact that to make them work in an older home (most of our housing stock) is completely uneconomical when compared to an efficient gas boiler which is tooled for renewable gas.

Thanos is a rugby fan, it turns out

irishbucsfan wrote: »

Thanos is a rugby fan, it turns out

Thanos was a pussy!

errlloyd wrote: »

It's a pretty niche debate, but with AI potentially about to make a chunk of the workforce redundant we should be able to maintain current levels of economic output with fewer people. Perhaps a classic luddit fallacy kicks in and jobs are displaced rather than replaced by AI, but I think this period of skills redeployment has less headroom for job creation than the industrial revolution did.

The biggest problem with being reliant on AI replacing workforce is the tax taking. In theory a taxi driver will pay around 35% income tax, VAT, plus a bunch of other taxes associated with owning a car (I am not sure how many of those he can write off tbh). A self driving UBER will pay VAT and Corporate tax at whatever the lowest rate some tax haven (let's face it probably us) is offering.

You're describing communism by the way. Not that I have an issue with that, I just find it ironic that people are coming to the realisation Marx had 170 years ago about a post scarcity world. He didn't quite grapple with automation obviously but Keynes recycled the idea and thought that we'd eventually become so productive individually that scarcity would be abolished and boredom would be the main concern of day to day life.

Both of them underestimated our voracious appetites for consumerist ****.

Either way, we do need to seriously start talking about societal dividends and robot taxes.

troyzer wrote: »

You're describing communism by the way. Not that I have an issue with that, I just find it ironic that people are coming to the realisation Marx had 170 years ago about a post scarcity world. He didn't quite grapple with automation obviously but Keynes recycled the idea and thought that we'd eventually become so productive individually that scarcity would be abolished and boredom would be the main concern of day to day life.

Both of them underestimated our voracious appetites for consumerist ****.

Either way, we do need to seriously start talking about societal dividends and robot taxes.

Perhaps a 'Logans Run' solution. 😉

Full blown AI automation (or singularity) is a lot further away than people think.

The next step over the next decade or two will be the larger scale introduction of AI assistance, where menial tasks are all completed by low level machines, and low risk. Machines will augment human workflows, not entirely replace, for the reason being they're not self-regulated and for the large part aren't adaptive enough unless the environment they work in is highly regulated and stringent.

errlloyd wrote: »

For argument's sake - will you be calling a plumber, or will smart pressure sensors and humidity sensors enabled by IOT identify a problem earlier and call the plumber on your behalf. The plumber may well still be human but his / her job may become significantly easier (but also more technical) as less / no damage will have been done before the problem was identified and sorted out? Plumbers charge inflated rates because they respond to emergencies, what if they're simply responding to maintenance issues.

This doesn't necessarily mean fewer jobs, those sensors have to be made somewhere, programmed somewhere, monitored somewhere.

Someone above suggested my robot taxes were communism, they're really not. We do have to increase taxes on corporations and the owners of corporations. But we don't have to redistribute it to their peers in society. The greater tax taking is just to offset the greater proportion of society that is going to be above the retirement age, and unfortunately the greater costs we will incur as we find more complex ways to keep them alive.

There was a suggestion above that deviating from the normal population pyramid to a reduction in population model would cause economic catastrophe, but it doesn't have to if we just make the working populace more efficient. AI should do that.

Your robot taxes perse aren't communism. But the future you describe in general where automation and post scarcity would allow us to live better lives with less time spent at work is straight from Marx.

errlloyd wrote: »

For argument's sake - will you be calling a plumber, or will smart pressure sensors and humidity sensors enabled by IOT identify a problem earlier and call the plumber on your behalf. The plumber may well still be human but his / her job may become significantly easier (but also more technical) as less / no damage will have been done before the problem was identified and sorted out? Plumbers charge inflated rates because they respond to emergencies, what if they're simply responding to maintenance issues.

This doesn't necessarily mean fewer jobs, those sensors have to be made somewhere, programmed somewhere, monitored somewhere.

Someone above suggested my robot taxes were communism, they're really not. We do have to increase taxes on corporations and the owners of corporations. But we don't have to redistribute it to their peers in society. The greater tax taking is just to offset the greater proportion of society that is going to be above the retirement age, and unfortunately the greater costs we will incur as we find more complex ways to keep them alive.

There was a suggestion above that deviating from the normal population pyramid to a reduction in population model would cause economic catastrophe, but it doesn't have to if we just make the working populace more efficient. AI should do that.

In the case of the plumber, he'll just complete more preventative maintenance work than he would have previously done in his work week.

AI won't eradicate jobs, it'll simply make them more efficient, but the job roles themselves will evolve and instead of people spending less time at work etc, they'll get more done in the hours they'll work. Companies won't be cutting hours down for all their employees, they'll simply use the hours they clawed back to pump out more work.

Take for example the software development world. A company I used to work for put in place an automated framework for development of a certain product. Cut delivery deadlines of a project by about 30%, as rather than code the majority of the program from scratch, the rules engine now parses a simplified configuration file and generates a lot of this code. Same thing is happening across a lot of platforms.

But rather than say "hey, we can cut down the hours of our employees" what they do now is the developers that previously wrote the code from scratch are now writing those configuration files, and the company are pumping out more projects than we previously able to before.

The same will be done across a lot of industries, where automation will just enable companies/employees to complete their job much faster, which will be used to increase the production volume.

I do a lot of 'Business Transformation' consultancy as part of my job is with large companies, and almost every single company has the general same question of "how can we help our employees be as productive as possible, and get through more work". I've rarely seen a case where a solution has been put in place that has led to people being let go, unless it's someone who's job was completely menial and they'd been getting away with it for years.

errlloyd wrote: »

For argument's sake - will you be calling a plumber, or will smart pressure sensors and humidity sensors enabled by IOT identify a problem earlier and call the plumber on your behalf. The plumber may well still be human but his / her job may become significantly easier (but also more technical) as less / no damage will have been done before the problem was identified and sorted out? Plumbers charge inflated rates because they respond to emergencies, what if they're simply responding to maintenance issues.

This doesn't necessarily mean fewer jobs, those sensors have to be made somewhere, programmed somewhere, monitored somewhere.

Someone above suggested my robot taxes were communism, they're really not. We do have to increase taxes on corporations and the owners of corporations. But we don't have to redistribute it to their peers in society. The greater tax taking is just to offset the greater proportion of society that is going to be above the retirement age, and unfortunately the greater costs we will incur as we find more complex ways to keep them alive.

There was a suggestion above that deviating from the normal population pyramid to a reduction in population model would cause economic catastrophe, but it doesn't have to if we just make the working populace more efficient. AI should do that.

Surely the parts and sensors will be manufactured by robots in automated plants controlled by AI? They will be the first jobs to go.

stephen_n wrote: »

Call me a nerd, but that thing google did with thanos and clicking the gauntlet made me laugh out loud. Very cool.

Someone in work pointed it out to me, made my day. Only found out later you can click it a second time.

I wonder is this peak avengers. I know they plan on going on, but I figure it'll lose momentum now.

I know the difference between not liking something personally and thinking something is bad (I think). And the avengers isn't my thing. My problem with it is that my mates only ever went to the cinema irregularly, and now a huge percentage of those visits are Avengers films.