Man vs. Machine | Hacker News Reader

Man vs. Machine

economix.blogs.nytimes.com

47 pointspointillistic18 comments

This reminds me of a talk by economist Robin Hanson: http://www.vimeo.com/9508131

Although his presentation is pretty futuristic, a good chunk of it focuses on the economics of machines replacing people in tasks.

His argument goes like this: There's a range of tasks that need to be done in an economy. Some of them are more efficiently done by machines and some by humans. Together, all these tasks grow the economy, and over time machines have been able to do a greater portion of these tasks efficiently. Also, machines can be mass-produced, while it takes longer to scale and train people. While the growth of machines has augmented humans for most of history, it's certainly possible for machines to replace humans in many tasks, such that the per-capita income of humans goes down even as the economy grows.

By machines, he mostly means simulated brains. I've always thought that a robotic singularity would result in an concentration of income in the hands of the capitalist/owner/shareholder since demand for human labor would diminish.

But I think he is saying that it's likely these robotic-simulated-brain-people would multiply rapidly and would displace us fleshy-brain-people, much like humans displaced their humanoid for-bearers.

The fact that somebody can make a living going around and giving talks like that is interesting. It is so incredibly obvious that this is the way that things are, but it seldom gets said (with a few exceptions).

And, along that line, this is a red flag when put to PGs "What You Can't Say" essay. It's somehow impolite to say something like this Hanson fellow is saying, despite the fact that it is both obvious AND true. Ought we not stare at this straight in the face to better understand how we can best remedy the situation?

it seems my ability to write coherently decreases significantly after a single drink...

What I was trying to say was that it is quite interesting that something like this is "news" and moreover, that we find it surprising.

If we can be just as productive as we were in the 90s, when we were all doing better (seemingly), why can't we have a similar quality of life?

This all reminds me of an old story posted on HN: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in...

Record profits and increased efficiency seem like they ought to lead to an improved quality of life. Shouldn't they?

This is THE most salient story about the 21st century economy

It's not just the machines but also the machine driven outsourcing. But guess what, people have to eat and it will hit the fan soon enough.

If only our policymakers accepted this. Unfortunately, they are still clinging to economic models which reduce the economy to 2 variables (occasionally a few more) and simple calculus.

Not that they even pay attention to the predictions of those 2 variable models...

So if you had their attention what would you tell them? If there is a solution to this problem that lets us all retire without the economy collapsing, I'd be curious to hear it. As it is we can put off that day for some time, but eventually you will get to the point where the "thinking machines" have all the knowledge of how to run our companies. Then the only jobs left will be those that can't be learned. I don't see all of us becoming artists, and even if we did, how would we con the machines into paying us for it?

If there is a solution to this problem that lets us all retire without the economy collapsing, I'd be curious to hear it.

There is - replacing human labor with robotic labor.

And then what will occupy the time of energetic, testosterone-driven young men (mostly) with a wired-in urge to prove their manhood, to better themselves, to leave their mark on the world?

We already know part of the answer: Street gangs. Drug cartels. Maritime piracy. Violent jihad.

Yeah, that's why our current recession, chock full of unemployed men, has caused a crime wave.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/01/07/us-usa-crime-idUST...

The U.S. has a social safety net that buffers these tendencies. It's not hard to find countries that don't.

Interesting story: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

What about the 20th century economy? And the 19th? Healthcare costs aren't going to rise like that for the entire century.

Hasn't the story begun much earlier than the 21st century? Any human invention that made a task easier probably played a part.

You mean the story of "John Henry" perhaps?

No, even before that. Like when the axe was invented, chopping trees became so much easier, so lots of wood choppers probably lost their "jobs". Even in the stone age this has been going on.

While the overall message of this article is probably true, I couldn't get over the fact that her diagrams are stupid and are almost meaningless, because she is comparing percent changes. A 1% rise in equipment spending doesn't mean the same as a 1% rise in labor spending. It would've been much smarter to compare the actual changes in dollars. I just can't take an article like this seriously.

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