Comment by songism | Hacker News Reader

Comment by songism | Hacker News Reader

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I have a habit of overestimating the capabilities of modern technology, but I really don't understand why more of the underlying processes of our civilization aren't automated (e.g. food production, food transportation, food preparation, human transportation).

Maybe the problem is history. Maybe, if we were given the chance to start over and plan a brand new city from the ground up, we could eliminate a lot of unnecessary elements that currently occupy a lot of our time and energy.

Would it be possible -- with our current technology -- to build a giant, self-sustaining field of photovoltaic modules? Thousands of automated machines and robots could maintain and repair this system. Massive amounts of free power could effectively fuel a developing city.

And if our basic needs were taken care of, we could each start to focus on what matters to us, instead of what merely ensures our survival. I think it's about time for us humans, collectively, to move past worrying about having enough money for food and a place to live.

I think you're overestimating technology. Robotics is still incredibly primitive. There is ongoing work in automated driving ( see DARPA's grand challenge and Willow Garage) and automated cooks ( see Anybots), but all of these efforts are in the very early stages.

Even with car companies, I think I read somewhere that Toyota uses much less robotics than GM, and that's a reason why Toyota is more successful. GM bought to much into the robotics, over invested, and it ended up costing more and hurting quality. As for solar, it's still very expensive in terms of resources to build panels.

Automated driving doesn't seem like it would be very hard if you had the ability to do whatever you wanted to the roads / cars on the road. Of course we're not in a situation anywhere near that ideal.

I share the opinion that a lot of things that should be automated are not. For instance - fast food. If fast food places are going to exist, I do not think that they should be part of what some people have to do to keep a roof over their (and their kids) heads, and food in their stomachs. They are repetitive, soul-sucking jobs that don't require a human.

The reasons for why our society is how it is are complex. I'd say that the reasons that we still have people working fast food jobs for a living are mainly the economic and power structures that we have in place right now.

I mean, on the idealistic side of things, if everyone suddenly realized just how silly our organizational / economics / power structures are, and what we can currently accomplish with technology - and what we'd be able to accomplish if we were devoting most of our resources to making the world a better place for humans (and hopefully all its other residents) and not on economic pissing matches.

We could colonize space - probably within my lifetime - if we wanted to, etc.

We should form a secret society or whatever ;)

Question. Why did we (human beings) spend so many resources and so much effort developing the LHC when it seems obvious that a comparable amount of effort and resources could have dramatically improved our way of life?

I mean, if people didn't have to work for a living, wouldn't we see like a ten-fold increase in people pursuing the arts and sciences?

Btw, I've thought the same thing about fast food chains for a while.

One of my dreams is to create a completely automated restaurant. Touchscreen menus embedded into each table. Food is prepared in the basement and rises up through the center of each table. The only thing actual humans would have to is feed the machines unprepared food :)

It's slogan could be:

Reliably tasty food

or

The same exact food made my the same machines every day

Question. Why did we (human beings) spend so many resources and so much effort developing the LHC when it seems obvious that a comparable amount of effort and resources could have dramatically improved our way of life?

That's a complicated question, the stuff of long-winded conversation. I'd say that it boils down to (very overgeneralized here) we didn't, a certain set of people did - who happened to be able to get the funding needed to undertake a pretty amazing thing.

Sometimes I think I just read too much Asimov as a kid, I think that there's a pretty big under-use of technology for the purposes of making everyone's life better. When I think about the reasons for that, my head starts to boggle after a while. I do think that another large reason for the state of things right now is that our ability to do really, really awesome things for humankind has only recently become very apparent.

If you ever open your resturant, I'd recommend using both slogans. "The exact food made by the same machines every day" in fine-print, or something.

I share the opinion that a lot of things that should be automated are not. For instance - fast food. If fast food places are going to exist, I do not think that they should be part of what some people have to do to keep a roof over their (and their kids) heads, and food in their stomachs. They are repetitive, soul-sucking jobs that don't require a human.

For an old school baby step towards this idea, see this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=317028 where people are wondering why the hell I thought to submit the article. :)

No. The reason we have people working fast-food jobs is that they need the money and it's still cheaper than full automation, but the industry working on it. Have you seen what goes on in McDonald's these days? They automate everything they can and they are constantly trying to increase this to get costs down and increase speed.

My brother in law is an executive in fast food: it's amazing how much they try to reduce the in-store labor. I should really talk to him about business opportunities in that field.

The reason we have people working fast-food jobs is that they need the money and it's still cheaper than full automation

Right, that would be part of what I view as a larger problem with society (at least in the US) at the moment. People should no longer have to generate money for food and roofs, or if they do, they should not have to resort to doing repetitive, boring, brainless work all the time.

Unfortunately, there is no simple solution to this, and most feasible solutions require an overhaul of most of our economic structures, not to mention the education system, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Edit: I somehow missed the "still cheaper than full automation" part. I can see that - but certainly having one or two humans at the resturant, with almost full automation would be cheaper?

but certainly having one or two humans at the restaurant, with almost full automation would be cheaper?

If you believe this, why don't you raise some money and start a company to out compete traditional restaurants? If it's really so easy to automate as you think it is, you'll be raking in the dough.

I very well may, although that's only one example of what I view as a much larger issue. I currently make less than 10K a year though, so I'm sort of focusing on that first.

EDIT: Clarification.

I suggest that Brave New World would be an interesting read for you. The hierarchy of intelligence classes in there I think does hit at a real problem: most work in society is mindless.

I've read Brave New World. And yeah, most work in society is mindless. Ideally, I don't think people should have to work at all anymore, but there are a whole lot of problems stopping that from happening.

Really expanding on this stuff takes a lot of writing, I'm not quite up for it yet (but I'm working on it).

But on the other hand they talk about an Island where they tried to eliminate all mindless work - but the people got bored. They should have set up an Island without mindless works and only "Alphas".

As I recall, they did that, and the alphas ended jockeying for status and killing each other.

OK, have to read it again.

Full automation will eventually be cheaper; right now it isn't.

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