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By XogGyux
#15112407
blackjack21 wrote:A lot of what is done in medicine doesn't really need a medical doctor either. As sensors and expert systems improve and get cheaper, the entire medical system could be one of the areas ripe for dramatic restructuring. We didn't get to electronic medical records until the last decade, but that will accelerate things quite a bit as improvements are made.

How cute. Are you trying to scare me off? :lol:
I am fully aware that even medicine will be supplanted. The procedural specialties such as interventional radiology, interventional/structural cardiology, urology, surgery, OBGYN, etc will likely survive a bit longer as well. The fact is, just about everything can be automated and the moment that we come up with an actual artificial intelligence that can compete with our own, 100% of human labor will be fair game for "automation".
From a "selfish" personal point of view, I will be safe. Doctors are not going to be replaced this decade and after that, I do have plans for my passive/investment income to outgrow my wages before then so I am not losing my sleep to this scenario, I am planning for it.
As a less selfish point, I think we should prepare for it as a society so that it does not destroy lives, people's economies, etc. We see the train coming, we should start moving away from the tracks.
Yes, but high IQ has been shown to be one of the main factors in income distribution. Ambition and dedication are also important, and explain why there are also some pretty dumb millionaires out there. However, you don't have many people who are stupid, lazy and unambitious doing well for themselves unless they have a some kind of a government job or protected job, like a postal worker or a toll taker or something. As I noted before, this is one of those things that coronavirus is exposing. Namely, you don't need toll takers on the bridges anymore. They can just snap a picture of your license plate and put it on your car registration bill.

Two points. Education can go a long while to inspire people and to shape their aspirations and ambitions. It is certainly not the answer to everything, and not all educations are created equal. Not everyone needs a college degree. But those people that straight out of high school end up in a mine or behind a booth selling something or cleaning, etc are at high risk of having job instability and/or wages insecurity without the leverage to go into a different field once they do lose their job. Ambition and dedication can be learned, you are not doomed from the moment you are born to some less than imaginative existence.

Yes, but high IQ has been shown to be one of the main factors in income distribution.

True. Smart people generally do better. Mine was just a comment about advanced degrees.

Beware of the causation relationship. Who is it to say that is not high income that leads to higher IQ?
At first, it might seem preposterous, after all, people associate intelligence with genetics but there is also an environmental aspect. Poor mom might be a smoker or an alcoholic and doom the child right from the start. Or the child might not receive enough stimulation during infancy because parents are just working all the time, or perhaps the diet is less than adequate. It is thought that the brain continues to develop until the 3rd decade of life. Certainly, those first 2 decades until college are shaping someone's intellect just as much as education and knowledge.

If you look at the graph above the picture is not pretty. While 15% has an IQ greater than 115 there is another 15% with an IQ less than 85. A very low IQ can cause poverty and it is no surprise that the poverty rate in the USA is around 12%. Assuming a population of 340 million you are looking at roughly a bit more than 51 million people. As we move forward into a high tech future there will be no jobs for this segment of the population.

See what I said about correlation and causation above. Same thing.
Have you ever taken an IQ test? Do you have an idea of what sort of questions they ask?

BTW, medicine is ripe for automation. An IBM Doctor Watson would have the entire medical literature of the world immediately available to make decisions based on sound data.

I am smelling a trend here. I have a theory that you didn't like what I said that Robots will take our jobs and that you are trying to scare me away by telling me it will also take mine. :lol: That's cute.
I already know that. I am not too worry, high education jobs will be replaced by AI/Robots eventually but low skills will be the first to fall victim to this, long before we see engineers, doctors, physicist, dentists, etc.
Let me stop you right there, you or @blackjack21 have zero chances of scaring me with this line of attack. For one, like I said prior, this is not gonna happen in the next 10years, in the next 10 years we will be lucky if we get self-driving cars which is a far simpler task than taking care of patients. In 10 years I will be financially independent and have diverse and passive income sources that will surpass my current wages. Realistically, the sort of AI that could replace doctors is probably a few decades away, I am as certain that it will come as I can be of anything.
By the time those "high education" jobs are threatened, we will have to come up with a socio-economic solution for a population that "doesn't have to work". But before that, which is probably not going to happen prior to the mid-century, we need to ensure that we dont have half our population starving because a vending machine made the cashier obsolete or a tesla truck made the truckdriver unnecessary. Furthermore, clinging to those jobs just for the sake of getting voters is not a good strategy either, that is just allowing another country (china?, japan?, european countries?) to take the driving seat and spearhead this sort of development.
An IBM Doctor Watson would have the entire medical literature of the world immediately available to make decisions based on sound data.

Well, that is the theory. But brute force can only take you so long. In fact, IBM didn't do as well as it was expected.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... -soon.html
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/26/1761 ... re-science
We have robotic surgery operated by the surgeon, but how long before software runs the robot?

Probably a few decades.
But yes, you are not saying something that I don't already know. I have been saying this for a while. Probably all of our jobs can be replaced within the next 100 years. Until now, every time that there is a technology surge there have been some jobs destroyed but others created. For instance the automobile. It destroyed a lot of jobs related to the "horse" business but it created a whole bunch of engineers, mechanics, car washing jobs. But, with AI, we could finally be approaching to a time where we could outsource thinking and design to "computers" (and at this point, I should say artificial entity/life/intelligence), after all, there is a great deal of design that is already computational-based (think Stellarator). Once this thinking is outsourced, that is probably the end of our competitive advantage.
Now, assuming that we can come up with a socio-economic model to deal with this sort of world, we will likely end up poverty all around the world, especially if we also conquer quasi-infinite energy (for instance nuclear fusion or... maybe farther into the future Dyson swarms, but this is centuries away).
User avatar
By Godstud
#15112453
Totally applicable.
Image
User avatar
By Julian658
#15112455
Godstud wrote:Totally applicable.
Image

Image
User avatar
By Godstud
#15112457
The freest countries in the world are countries where Democracy works hand in hand with Socialism, i.e Denmark, Norway, Finland, etc. They also happen to have the best quality of life, education, etc. You're an American speaking from a position of ignorance and ethnocentrism.

Your meme is a massive lie. It's melodrama made to invoke emotion, when the logic and reason aren't to your satisfaction. :knife:
Last edited by Godstud on 10 Aug 2020 02:20, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
By XogGyux
#15112458
Julian658 wrote:Image

Yeah, because all of those countries in Europe that have more progressive approach to governance such as common sense healthcare, unemployment, child care, etc are characterized for being full of miserable, poor people.
User avatar
By Godstud
#15112460
Yes, my poor Norwegian friend who has stunningly massive retirement benefits, because of his government, just complains all the time. :lol:

It's OK. I did a ninja edit. :p
User avatar
By XogGyux
#15112463
Godstud wrote:Yes, my poor Norwegian friend who has stunningly massive retirement benefits, because of his government, just complains all the time. :lol:

It's OK. I did a ninja edit. :p

To fair, it is not the government handing shit out either. He did pay for that in his working age I presume (at least most of them do, I am sure a few escape through the cracks). But that is fine, I rather have that than a bunch of 70-year-old homeless, starving, sick people living under bridges.
User avatar
By Julian658
#15112483
XogGyux wrote:Yeah, because all of those countries in Europe that have more progressive approach to governance such as common sense healthcare, unemployment, child care, etc are characterized for being full of miserable, poor people.

Europe is a lot like America. They are capitalists, but they have better health care system and free or cheap university. They tend to work less hours and have more vacation. I see nothing wrong with that. I favor copying those ideas for America. You are preaching to the choir, do not forget that I am a centrist.

However, everything has a price. My daughter lived in France and was enrolled in the French Health care system by just paying about 120 Euros a month and showing she had a work visa. She was assigned a GP in her neighborhood that worked in an office with no receptionist. The doc comes out to the waiting rea to get the patients. She needed a flu shot and the doc gave her a prescription for the vaccine. She was instructed to purchase the vaccine at the local pharmacy with the prescription and to come back to the office so the GP could give her the shot. The system works, but it slow and a bit clumsy. ON a visit to Paris I wanted to get a nasal steroid spray which is OTC in America. Over there I had to see a doctor and get a prescription.

Universities are not country clubs like in the US. It is just a square building with classrooms and the students live at home with the parents. USA universities are like resorts.

In any event I favor the European system as long as those with more income can supplement the national health plan with private options
User avatar
By XogGyux
#15112484
Julian658 wrote:Europe is a lot like America. They are capitalists, but they have better health care system and free or cheap university. They tend to work less hours and have more vacation. I see nothing wrong with that. I favor copying those ideas for America. You are preaching to the choir, do not forget that I am a centrist.

However, everything has a price. My daughter lived in France and was enrolled in the French Health care system by just paying about 120 Euros a month and showing she had a work visa. She was assigned a GP in her neighborhood that worked in an office with no receptionist. The doc comes out to the waiting rea to get the patients. She needed a flu shot and the doc gave her a prescription for the vaccine. She was instructed to purchase the vaccine at the local pharmacy with the prescription and to come back to the office so the GP could give her the shot. The system works, but it slow and a bit clumsy. ON a visit to Paris I wanted to get a nasal steroid spray which is OTC in America. Over there I had to see a doctor and get a prescription.

Universities are not country clubs like in the US. It is just a square building with classrooms and the students live at home with the parents. USA universities are like resorts.

In any event I favor the European system as long as those with more income can supplement the national health plan with private options


This is not a deal breaker. If anything, universities should be like that, rather than a 50k/year party-resort. There is nothing that telling a young adult. "Congratulations, you just turned 18 and have nothing to your name. Now grab your underwear, go to the university, get 100-200k in debt and by the time you develop a sense of what is financially responsible, you will be regretting for the rest of your life for getting a major in "history of Poland" or "Trombone polishing" or whatever nonsense they are doing nowadays.

Also, understand. Just because they do it like this in Canada or France does not mean we are destined to do the exact same system in the exact same way. There is nothing to prevent us from experimenting along the way with different private/public systems along the way. In fact, from a pragmatic point of view, it is unlikely that none of this can happen in any other way.
User avatar
By Julian658
#15112485
XogGyux wrote:How cute. Are you trying to scare me off? :lol:
I am fully aware that even medicine will be supplanted. The procedural specialties such as interventional radiology, interventional/structural cardiology, urology, surgery, OBGYN, etc will likely survive a bit longer as well. The fact is, just about everything can be automated and the moment that we come up with an actual artificial intelligence that can compete with our own, 100% of human labor will be fair game for "automation".
From a "selfish" personal point of view, I will be safe. Doctors are not going to be replaced this decade and after that, I do have plans for my passive/investment income to outgrow my wages before then so I am not losing my sleep to this scenario, I am planning for it.
As a less selfish point, I think we should prepare for it as a society so that it does not destroy lives, people's economies, etc. We see the train coming, we should start moving away from the tracks.

Two points. Education can go a long while to inspire people and to shape their aspirations and ambitions. It is certainly not the answer to everything, and not all educations are created equal. Not everyone needs a college degree. But those people that straight out of high school end up in a mine or behind a booth selling something or cleaning, etc are at high risk of having job instability and/or wages insecurity without the leverage to go into a different field once they do lose their job. Ambition and dedication can be learned, you are not doomed from the moment you are born to some less than imaginative existence.



Beware of the causation relationship. Who is it to say that is not high income that leads to higher IQ?
At first, it might seem preposterous, after all, people associate intelligence with genetics but there is also an environmental aspect. Poor mom might be a smoker or an alcoholic and doom the child right from the start. Or the child might not receive enough stimulation during infancy because parents are just working all the time, or perhaps the diet is less than adequate. It is thought that the brain continues to develop until the 3rd decade of life. Certainly, those first 2 decades until college are shaping someone's intellect just as much as education and knowledge.


See what I said about correlation and causation above. Same thing.
Have you ever taken an IQ test? Do you have an idea of what sort of questions they ask?


I am smelling a trend here. I have a theory that you didn't like what I said that Robots will take our jobs and that you are trying to scare me away by telling me it will also take mine. :lol: That's cute.
I already know that. I am not too worry, high education jobs will be replaced by AI/Robots eventually but low skills will be the first to fall victim to this, long before we see engineers, doctors, physicist, dentists, etc.
Let me stop you right there, you or @blackjack21 have zero chances of scaring me with this line of attack. For one, like I said prior, this is not gonna happen in the next 10years, in the next 10 years we will be lucky if we get self-driving cars which is a far simpler task than taking care of patients. In 10 years I will be financially independent and have diverse and passive income sources that will surpass my current wages. Realistically, the sort of AI that could replace doctors is probably a few decades away, I am as certain that it will come as I can be of anything.
By the time those "high education" jobs are threatened, we will have to come up with a socio-economic solution for a population that "doesn't have to work". But before that, which is probably not going to happen prior to the mid-century, we need to ensure that we dont have half our population starving because a vending machine made the cashier obsolete or a tesla truck made the truckdriver unnecessary. Furthermore, clinging to those jobs just for the sake of getting voters is not a good strategy either, that is just allowing another country (china?, japan?, european countries?) to take the driving seat and spearhead this sort of development.

Well, that is the theory. But brute force can only take you so long. In fact, IBM didn't do as well as it was expected.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... -soon.html
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/26/1761 ... re-science

Probably a few decades.
But yes, you are not saying something that I don't already know. I have been saying this for a while. Probably all of our jobs can be replaced within the next 100 years. Until now, every time that there is a technology surge there have been some jobs destroyed but others created. For instance the automobile. It destroyed a lot of jobs related to the "horse" business but it created a whole bunch of engineers, mechanics, car washing jobs. But, with AI, we could finally be approaching to a time where we could outsource thinking and design to "computers" (and at this point, I should say artificial entity/life/intelligence), after all, there is a great deal of design that is already computational-based (think Stellarator). Once this thinking is outsourced, that is probably the end of our competitive advantage.
Now, assuming that we can come up with a socio-economic model to deal with this sort of world, we will likely end up poverty all around the world, especially if we also conquer quasi-infinite energy (for instance nuclear fusion or... maybe farther into the future Dyson swarms, but this is centuries away).


I knew you were aware. Nevertheless you are in the top 15% with regards to IQ so you are fine. BTW, AI has been around forever. The phone answering system in medical offices and most corporations is a crude form of AI that has replaced receptionists.

The so called high end AI. A robot that is humanoid is not happening any time soon. Humans are simply too complex to recreate and hence some professions will remain human.

Once society pays salaries (UBI) to people that do nothing the degree of nihilism will go even higher. The homelessness and drug infestation of SF, Seattle, and every big city in the world will expand. The society will be divided among those that still have a purpose in life and those that just exist with nothing to contribute. We will have massive classism on steroids as well as segregation of those that have value and those that have nothing to offer.
User avatar
By Julian658
#15112486
XogGyux wrote:This is not a deal breaker. If anything, universities should be like that, rather than a 50k/year party-resort. There is nothing that telling a young adult. "Congratulations, you just turned 18 and have nothing to your name. Now grab your underwear, go to the university, get 100-200k in debt and by the time you develop a sense of what is financially responsible, you will be regretting for the rest of your life for getting a major in "history of Poland" or "Trombone polishing" or whatever nonsense they are doing nowadays.

Sadly, manu study sociology, African Studies, Latin American History, etc. I get sick when I hear politicians that think they can solve everything with a crappy college education. BTW, there is a shortage of machinists.

Also, understand. Just because they do it like this in Canada or France does not mean we are destined to do the exact same system in the exact same way. There is nothing to prevent us from experimenting along the way with different private/public systems along the way. In fact, from a pragmatic point of view, it is unlikely that none of this can happen in any other way.


This American idea that college is the experience of living away from home for the sake of spending cash on room and board is not practical unless the student is admitted to a college that will provide a unique education and profession. The resort country club stuff needs to go from the universities.

My daughter also worked in Switzerland. They have a high end system that is hybrid. The average Joe Blows get a basic health plan. Those that are achievers can move up and get high end service. We could easily do that here. Medicare for all and anyone that wants more can buy a supplement policy. However, the health care insurance lobby is too powerful. They contribute heavily to the Dems too.
User avatar
By XogGyux
#15112490
Julian658 wrote:I
The so called high end AI. A robot that is humanoid is not happening any time soon. Humans are simply too complex to recreate and hence some professions will remain human.

You are partially correct.
The AI that will replace all of us, is certainly not happening anytime soon. Unlikely during my life, probably by the end of the century or the next. Hard to say because technology tends to grow in an exponential manner. The iPhone that I have in my pocket today is more powerful that my whole gaming computer 10 years ago.
However, "robots" can and will replace many jobs in the next decade, and many more in the decade after that, and so forth until most if not all, are replaced.
It also makes sense, that governments don't artificially interfere to try to save those jobs that simply have no future. In fact, should they interfere, it should be to help the people trapped into doing these jobs find alternative, ideally with a higher income potential and higher degree of security, which often comes with higher education. It is possible that you will find out a dozen 60something people that are not in the greatest shape of their live to go back to school, in some cases it might make more sense to subsidize these people than to artificially allow them to do a job that is no longer needed or is not going to be needed soon.
Lets stick with the miners. You could make a program in which you get the 30-40 years old and train them to become plumbers, electricians, mechanics, etc. Meanwhile, those that are approaching their retirement age, you could allow them to catch SS early and/or provide supplemental pension rather than trying to keep a coal mine open.
Once society pays salaries (UBI) to people that do nothing the degree of nihilism will go even higher. The homelessness and drug infestation of SF, Seattle, and every big city in the world will expand. The society will be divided among those that still have a purpose in life and those that just exist with nothing to contribute. We will have massive classism on steroids as well as segregation of those that have value and those that have nothing to offer.

That excuse is total bullshit. By that logic Warren Buffet, Bezos, and Bill Gates would have jumped from a bridge years ago out of desperation, nihilism, and depression. You seem to have very low expectations of what we can do. It is hard to predict what we will be doing in 100 years but I am certainly extremely skeptical of your view. Once we are liberated of work, I think we would focus on arts, philosophy and exploration. We might explore our oceans, explore our universe, create art. Maybe some will transition to a virtual existence and experiment different parts of our history as we would with a video game, or perhaps live in a fantasy world. Who knows, I bet that the people at the end of world war I would have imagined that we could have an iPhone in our pockets that had the capacity of telling you exactly where in the world you are, able to video call anyone around the world, have the computational capacity of millions of humans (remember no computers around that time), and also works as a flashlight :lol: .
What I can tell you with a very high degree of certainty, is that this idea that as soon as you get "free money" you will descend into a world of nihilism, self-pity, drugs, and vice... well this is extremely unlikely.
User avatar
By XogGyux
#15112491
Julian658 wrote: They contribute heavily to the Dems too.

I am aware of that. That is one of the reasons why I don't think that there is going to be big change anytime soon. That is one of the reasons why all of this fear mongering of "extreme left" is just "extreme propaganda".
For medicare for all to even be in the agenda, we would have needed Bernie to win big, the senate and the house to both get a super majority, and even then it would be hard to pass anything with "centrists democrats", certainly it is unlikely that any republican would do anything.
Since Bernie is not the candidate, and there is zero chance that the democrats would get a super majority in senate anytime soon.... this option is completely out of the question.
With some luck, we see some Obamacare and Medicare/Medicaid expansion and perhaps some regulations towards private insurance. That is the most that I'd expect it to happen for the next 10 years even if democrats get elected for 2 terms.
And I know this is a disappointment to most progressives but this is the reality we live in. There is going to be zero appetites to simply destroy the private insurance business for either party. You would basically have to elect a whole bunch of 35 year olds with no previous office (and thus "no loyalties") for this to happen within a short period of time.
That is not to say that it is worthless to start planting the seeds now. Biden would be a very tiny seed indeed. Trump is more like poison :lol: .
User avatar
By blackjack21
#15112494
Drlee wrote:Putin has played this brilliantly. He is single handed taken down the American system.

Honestly? Do you really believe that? It's the Democrats who are pushing the lockdowns, because they think a bad economy will hurt Trump's reelection chances. If anything, Putin has got to be amazed that Democrats have effectively done what neither Hitler nor Stalin could do--shutdown swathes of the American economy at the stroke of a pen.

Drlee wrote:He has nothing to lose as he will go to jail if he doesn't succeed.

Given how they treated Michael Flynn, I can't say I would blame him. He does have a well-founded fear of persecution, just like anyone who refuses to go along with the establishment.

Drlee wrote:The republicans are so frightened of him that they will do nothing to prevent what will be a coup.

The Republicans are frankly useless. On a policy basis, Trump is a centrist. There's really not much to fear from Trump policy wise if you're thinking he's going to be some kind of dictator. Trump likes Social Security and Medicare and has proven to be every bit the big spender as Obama. The problem for the American people--as usual--is that we're not getting any value for the money spent. If they can spend $1T out of thin air, they could have paved the highways and fixed bridges 10 times over for what they've spent on totally unnecessary economic lockdowns.

Drlee wrote:This will be the last election in which any meaningful voting will occur.

We shall see. I don't think the establishment's assumptions are as well founded as they think. I think working class people are going to turn on the Democrats. "Non-essential" is the Democrat's new n-word.

Julian658 wrote:I will say Biden is more likeable, but we have to see how he behaves in the next three months.

It depends. A small but significant portion of the black vote is well aware of Biden's hand in mass incarceration, Trump's hand in reversing it, and Biden's gaffes with Charlemagne tha God and his latest that blacks, with few notable exceptions, all basically have the same political opinion. Biden doesn't have that shrill angry voice of Hillary Clinton, which just grated on people's nerves I think. That alone makes him more likeable.

Julian658 wrote:As we move forward into a high tech future there will be no jobs for this segment of the population.

That's pretty much already the case. That's one of the things that Jordan Petersen points out: the liberals are wrong, because these people CANNOT learn a marketable skill; and the conservatives are wrong, because it is NOT just a matter of a poor work ethic.

Julian658 wrote:Humans with no purpose are prone to nihilism.

That's the problem with the welfare state right now. Social isolation in rat models shows how they become prone to dissociative drugs and nihilism. Whereas, social inclusion reverses some of that. The left is pushing "diversity and inclusion," but they are trying to make "normal" people feel that "abnormal" people are in fact normal. I think it's not working.

XogGyux wrote:Doctors are not going to be replaced this decade and after that, I do have plans for my passive/investment income to outgrow my wages before then so I am not losing my sleep to this scenario, I am planning for it.

I don't think doctors will go away, but the value proposition will necessarily change. So you have to move to much more personalized medicine--a doctor who actually knows you, has your DNA, scans, blood work, vitals, etc over a longitudinal period.

XogGyux wrote:Poor mom might be a smoker or an alcoholic and doom the child right from the start. Or the child might not receive enough stimulation during infancy because parents are just working all the time, or perhaps the diet is less than adequate.

This is why you just saw Cuomo and Schumer fold on schools reopening. So many poor kids depend on their best meals from school. However, that does not address those early formative issues, and why the welfare system has to stop being just about handouts and vote buying and ensuring people on the margins are not feeling so socially isolated by requiring some community involvement in exchange for benefits. Harry Harlow's experiments on Rhesus monkeys is a classic example of what happens to too many poor kids from broken homes.

XogGyux wrote:I have a theory that you didn't like what I said that Robots will take our jobs and that you are trying to scare me away by telling me it will also take mine.

Studies also show that fairly high IQ people adapt, and low IQ people don't. Some of that is still ambition and work ethic. A computer programmer who thinks they are going to work at the same company for 30 years can find themselves way behind the curve, laid off and unemployable. You have to like ongoing learning, which clearly isn't a problem for a lot of people on a board like PoFo. For so many people, that's simply not the case.

XogGyux wrote:For one, like I said prior, this is not gonna happen in the next 10years, in the next 10 years we will be lucky if we get self-driving cars which is a far simpler task than taking care of patients.

A lot of the self-driving car stuff happened a lot faster than people thought possible. Ray Kurzweil is someone to listen to on that sort of exponential level of change. I remember reading his "Age of Spiritual Machines", and it made an impression on me as did Bill Joy's "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us". Kurzweil laid it out somewhat like Moore's Law, so that you need to be thinking that 10 years from now things may be substantially different. Remember life before Google? Before the internet? I own the Dirty Harry series on Vudu, and a friend and I watched Magnum Force today, and a lot of the discussions were about things like how they knew to call Dirty Harry at someone's house, because back before cell phones, you called to let people know where you were and how to get a hold of you--skills totally lost on today's kids, who look like Nipper the RCA Victrola dog, head cocked and puzzled look, when they hear a dialtone and can't find the send or end button on a landline phone. I took some of that with a grain of salt until I started working on mass storage systems at the petabyte level, which took racks of servers back in 2012, and now can be done easily in under half a rack--like a 4U server chassis. Now I'm working on deploying 10s of thousands of servers from baremetal.

Godstud wrote:The freest countries in the world are countries where Democracy works hand in hand with Socialism, i.e Denmark, Norway, Finland, etc.

You dropped Sweden. Is that because of Covid? By the way, they are also the whitest countries in the world.

Godstud wrote:You're an American speaking from a position of ignorance and ethnocentrism.

Says the man who just ticked off Nordic countries where the blond-haired blue eyed people live... :roll:

XogGyux wrote:Yeah, because all of those countries in Europe that have more progressive approach to governance such as common sense healthcare, unemployment, child care, etc are characterized for being full of miserable, poor people.

It didn't help with the Wuhan coronavirus. All those systems are funded on tax receipts, which collapse if you shut down the economy.

Godstud wrote:Yes, my poor Norwegian friend who has stunningly massive retirement benefits, because of his government, just complains all the time. :lol:

I can't speak for Norway, but California's public employee retirement system is on the precipice and coronavirus undoubtedly could be a tipping point for these systems. I have a Californian friend who makes $120k a year doing janitorial work for BART, who will retire with 90% salary at 55--a job someone could do for $50k with no education, and instead it goes to a middle class white guy with a graduate degree.

XogGyux wrote:To fair, it is not the government handing shit out either. He did pay for that in his working age I presume (at least most of them do, I am sure a few escape through the cracks).

Pay as you go doesn't work that way. Norway is a different situation, because they have oil resources to back it up for a small population--same reason Kuwaitis are rich. Hint: socialism isn't what really underpins these benefits.

Julian658 wrote:The phone answering system in medical offices and most corporations is a crude form of AI that has replaced receptionists.

Right. And you know how that started? Feminism. More specifically, it was the notion of pay equity. Receptionists--mostly female--claimed that they were underpaid relative to jobs typically done by men, like HVAC work. So they did a study that came to the conclusion that HVAC work and receptionist work was similarly skilled and that receptionists should be paid like HVAC workers--much like the push for the $15 minimum wage now. What happened? Automated receptionists and call routing, followed by offshoring once global crossing laid fiber down on the ocean floor. Now you've got some Indian working the graveyard shift from an auto-answered, auto-routed call that automatically loads your records and keeps you on hold until they are ready for the next available person. I'm always amazed by highly intelligent people not seeing the driving forces behind automation.

Julian658 wrote:Once society pays salaries (UBI) to people that do nothing the degree of nihilism will go even higher.

That's why welfare to a significant degree has to be replaced with community service, community parent-infant training, etc. to keep people socially interacting. Otherwise, everyone's going to become a heroin addict.

Julian658 wrote:BTW, there is a shortage of machinists.

There is a shortage of skilled auto-body workers.
User avatar
By XogGyux
#15112497
blackjack21 wrote:Honestly? Do you really believe that? It's the Democrats who are pushing the lockdowns, because they think a bad economy will hurt Trump's reelection chances. If anything, Putin has got to be amazed that Democrats have effectively done what neither Hitler nor Stalin could do--shutdown swathes of the American economy at the stroke of a pen.

Nonesense. Your hypothesis doesn't carry any more truth than 2+2=5.

For one, this "close down shit" approach is not something that democrats invented. This is what the countries that successfully dealt with this shit did and unlike whatever non-sense conspiracy theory you guys are cooking, Pelosi and Schumer nor the "deep state" or the "establishment" or whatever nonsense you subscribe nowadays, have any power on what Europe does, on what Asia does, what Canada, new Zealand, etc. These countries didn't do anything to "harm trump" or because "the democrats are asking for it" or any of that nonsense. They used logic and science to deal with a real natural disaster.
Meanwhile, our orange natural disaster is doing whatever the fucks he wants to do. Politically the best thing that he could have done was "to agree with science" (what a shocker" which in turn would have put him, and lets face it, the rest of the republicans, aligned with the democrats). This in essence would have destroyed the politicization of the virus straight up.

You cannot politicize icecream because both republicans and democrats largely agree that icecream is tasty. Likewise, if Trump had done the right thing from the start, he would not be facing politicization for this crap. Possibly, depending on how well we would have done, he could have had a surge in popularity (rally around the flag kind of thing) and take the bullet out of the democrats that complained that he would fail in case of a national emergency.

Instead, he proved that he does not follow science or facts, that he only cares about himself, that he is an inept idiot, and that his attention span is the duration of a sean hanity segment.

Now he is looking at the prospect of going into the election with 200-300k American deaths. I suspect that for the last 2 weeks prior to nov3 all that we will see on Texas, Arizona and Florida is going to be adds of how much better other countries are doing and how many deads we have.

Studies also show that fairly high IQ people adapt, and low IQ people don't. Some of that is still ambition and work ethic. A computer programmer who thinks they are going to work at the same company for 30 years can find themselves way behind the curve, laid off and unemployable. You have to like ongoing learning, which clearly isn't a problem for a lot of people on a board like PoFo. For so many people, that's simply not the case.

The point is, a large portion, not all of it, but a large portion nonetheless, can be influenced by education and training. What we understand for IQ was not developed to measure actual intelligence, and what we abstractly understand for intelligence has many subcategories, most if not all of them can be learned.
Ambition, sense of purpose, inspiration... all of that shit can be learned.
I am not naive enough to believe that this will catch everyone, but you shouldn't be cynic enough to pretend there is nothing we can do.
It didn't help with the Wuhan coronavirus. All those systems are funded on tax receipts, which collapse if you shut down the economy.

Oh please. Governments have plenty of ways to deal with that shit. From deficit spending to printing money. We are not ignorant to that shit either. Our country has spent trillions in just a few months, all of that in deficit + printing and we will likely end up spending twice as much if not more by the look of things.

Right. And you know how that started? Feminism. More specifically, it was the notion of pay equity. Receptionists--mostly female--claimed that they were underpaid relative to jobs typically done by men, like HVAC work. So they did a study that came to the conclusion that HVAC work and receptionist work was similarly skilled and that receptionists should be paid like HVAC workers--much like the push for the $15 minimum wage now. What happened? Automated receptionists and call routing, followed by offshoring once global crossing laid fiber down on the ocean floor. Now you've got some Indian working the graveyard shift from an auto-answered, auto-routed call that automatically loads your records and keeps you on hold until they are ready for the next available person. I'm always amazed by highly intelligent people not seeing the driving forces behind automation.

LOL this is silly logic.
For one, as a society we should not feel sad if we can replace any job by a machine. I can understand how the INDIVIDUAL will feel sad for losing the job but that is besides the point. It is not beneficial to sabotage progress in the name of artificially creating some menial jobs. If your job can be done by a roomba, it is better to have the roomba and have you do something else.
You throwing sexism into the picture is irrelevant to the point. They got what they deserved? Is that the conclusion of your point? I don't think they deserved losing their job, but I don't think it is unfair that technology progressed to such point that their job was no longer required. These women were also a victim of their time. A time where women receiving education and/or participating in the "boys" club was either not allowed, or frown upon. "Their greed" for demanding a fair wage was not at blame, progress perhaps had some blame but the biggest culprit of all was our misogynistic society of the time, the very reason for which they demanded equal pay.
That's why welfare to a significant degree has to be replaced with community service, community parent-infant training, etc. to keep people socially interacting. Otherwise, everyone's going to become a heroin addict.

ROFL nonsense.
There is a shortage of skilled auto-body workers.

Don't they just replace every broken panel nowadays that cars are made out of plastic? :lol:
User avatar
By Godstud
#15112515
blackjack21 wrote:You dropped Sweden. Is that because of Covid? By the way, they are also the whitest countries in the world.
I am talking about Socialist policies, not skin colour. Racist much?

blackjack21 wrote:Says the man who just ticked off Nordic countries where the blond-haired blue eyed people live... :roll:
I am not talking about skin colour or eye colour. I am talking about Socialism.

For racists, it all comes down to that, doesn't it, @blackjack21? You ignore everything else, in an attempt to pretend you're NOT racist. Fail.
By Doug64
#15112566
I was going to post this in the Wuhan virus thread where I’ve been posting my weekly updates, but it’s really more about the elections, especially the presidential election:

Democrats question Trump's coronavirus relief orders, stop short of filing court challenge

    Democratic leaders on Sunday dismissed President Trump’s attempt to sidestep stalled coronavirus relief talks, saying his executive actions to delay payroll tax payments and extend federal unemployment benefits are false promises.

    The party’s leaders fanned out on the Sunday talk shows to question the legality of the moves and insist the only path forward is for the White House to go back to negotiations that stalled out last week.

    Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said on ABC that the president’s Saturday moves were “a big show, but it doesn’t do anything.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, called the four actions “absurdly unconstitutional.

    “The kindest thing I can say is he doesn’t know what he’s talking about or, something is wrong there. Something is very, very wrong there,” she said on “Fox News Sunday.”

    But Democrats seemed unsure of their next step.

    Neither Mrs. Pelosi nor Mr. Schumer said they would challenge the actions in court, and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin all but dared them to try.

    “If Democrats want to challenge us in court and hold up unemployment benefits to hardworking Americans who are out of a job because of COVID, they’re going to have a lot of explaining to do,” he said on Fox.

    Mr. Trump announced the moves at a press conference in New Jersey on Saturday.

    He said he was deferring payroll tax collections for those with incomes up to $100,000, starting in September; renewing enhanced unemployment benefits, though at $400 a week — down from the $600 that was in the March coronavirus package that cleared Congress; deferring student loan payments and forgiving interest accrued; and renewing a moratorium on housing evictions.

    Mr. Trump also said he was weighing additional income tax relief and capital gains tax cuts.

    The moves left some Republicans uneasy about Mr. Trump’s expansive claims of power.

    Sen. Ben Sasse, Nebraska Republican, compared the payroll tax deferral cut to President Obama’s 2012 DACA policy, when the Democrat claimed power to halt deportations and grant some taxpayer benefits to potentially millions of illegal immigrants.

    “The pen-and-phone theory of executive lawmaking is unconstitutional slop,” he said.

    Mr. Obama justified his policy on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals by saying he had tried to negotiate with Congress but was stymied. Mr. Trump offered the same justification Saturday for his own executive actions.

    Democrats, who cheered Mr. Obama in 2012, were far less eager about Mr. Trump’s moves.

    “This is no art of the deal. This is not presidential leadership,” presumptive Democratic nominee Joseph R. Biden said in a statement released by his campaign. “These orders are not real solutions. They are just another cynical ploy designed to deflect responsibility. Some measures do far more harm than good.”

    But the president, returning to Washington on Sunday night from his golf club in New Jersey, said Democrats “are much more inclined to make a deal now.”

    “It was time to act. … We have to get money out to the people,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “We’ve gotten much of what we wanted without having to give up anything.”

    Earlier in the day, Democrats criticized Mr. Trump’s plan to shift some of the burden for additional unemployment benefits to cash-strapped states and warned that the president’s payroll tax halt would siphon money from Medicare and Social Security. The payroll tax funds both federal programs.

    Mr. Mnuchin said states can pull their 25% match for unemployment benefits from aid allocated in previous coronavirus legislation. Or, he said, Mr. Trump could waive their share.

    “We’ve been told by the states they can get this up and running immediately,” the secretary said.

    He defended the $400 level as a “fair compromise.”

    Democrats wanted to renew the full $600-a-week federal plus-up, which is on top of whatever states already pay. But Republicans on Capitol Hill suggested $200 a week, arguing that some people are making more money sitting out of the job market than they did when they were working. Republican lawmakers wanted to offer a return-to-work bonus to get the workers back.

    Mr. Mnuchin said Mr. Trump will try to make sure Social Security and Medicare don’t suffer from the deferral of payroll taxes.

    The secretary said Mr. Trump, if he wins reelection in November, plans to turn the delay into a full payroll tax cut, similar to what Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats approved after the Great Recession.

    “He’s going to go to the American people and tell them that when he’s re-elected he will push through legislation to forgive that. So in essence it will turn into a payroll tax cut,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “There would be an automatic contribution from the general fund to those trust funds. The president in no way wants to harm those trust funds. So they’ll be reimbursed.

    “We’ll deal with the deficit when we get the economy back to where it was before,” he added.

    The president took his unilateral approach after the jobs report Friday showed the unemployment rate dipped to 10.2% in July, far better than 14.7% in April but higher than at any other time since 1983.

    Employers added a better-than-expected 1.763 million jobs last month, although job growth slowed from 4.8 million in June.

    On Sunday, the U.S. surpassed 5 million total COVID-19 cases, according to the John Hopkins University tracker, with 162,455 deaths and more than 1.6 million recoveries. The U.S. population stands at 328 million.

    A recent uptick in cases has state and local governments in some areas struggling to navigate how to reopen safely, particularly with the school year starting.

    The high unemployment rate and struggling economy have Democrats and Republicans calling for renewed negotiations for a more comprehensive relief bill that provides for schools to reopen and more testing resources.

    Sen. Susan M. Collins, Maine Republican and one of the co-authors of the initial Paycheck Protection Program that gave aid to struggling small businesses, lamented that the program expired on Saturday. Mr. Trump did not find a way to extend that by executive action.

    “Congress must act quickly. There are constitutional limits on what the president can do to help through executive orders,” Ms. Collins said in a statement.

    Talks involving Mrs. Pelosi, Mr. Schumer, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Mr. Mnuchin stalled Friday after virtually no progress over the course of two weeks.

    All sides say they want assistance for schools, some version of extended unemployment benefits and direct stimulus payments to the public, but the overall price tag is a major hurdle.

    Democrats put forward a $3.5 trillion proposal, and Republicans offered about $1.5 trillion. Republicans also insist on liability protection for companies grappling with the coronavirus. Democratic leaders oppose that.

    Instead, they are pushing for money to help states fund elections, pushing mail-in voting and curtailing states’ voter integrity rules. That’s a nonstarter for Mr. Trump.

    Democrats also want to assist the financially struggling U.S. Postal Service, boost food assistance and provide nearly $1 trillion to help state and local governments balance their budgets.

The last time I posted on this in the other thread, I said the Democrats had three options—1) complain about what the president did but come back to the negotiating table and make a deal that provides Congressional authorization for his EO’s, 2) sue to prevent the president’s EO’s from going into effect, or 3) complain and continue to refuse to get a deal done. It seems to be option three, though it’s early days yet and could turn out to be option one. But so far at least, option two is off the table.

The Democrats done shot themselves in the foot this time, whatever they do is going to make Trump look good—either appear to dance to his tune with the obvious question of why they didn’t do this earlier, appear to be standing aside and not only doing nothing but keeping the Republicans in Congress from doing anything while Trump acts, or appear to be actively trying to prevent Trump from providing support to a suffering nation. Their optics are terrible.

Mind, this has nothing to do with whether they are actually right, that Trump’s decision to follow Obama’s “I have a phone and a pen and I’m not afraid to use them” example is as unconstitutional as DACA is, but that’s actually a matter of substance rather than perception. It’ll only end up in front of a judge if someone sues, and so far it doesn’t seem that’s going to happen.
User avatar
By Drlee
#15112584
Armed Trump supporters attacked and assaulted BLM protesters in Colorado. They were wearing all black and armed. This is how it starts.

Republicans will be proud of this. They do not believe in the constitution.
User avatar
By jimjam
#15112589
Julian658 wrote:Image


Thank God for Democrats. Because of them I get in my old age a monthly Social Security check and medical care. From the Republicans I get predatory capitalism and ( :lol: ) trickle down tax cuts for billionaires.
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