Your thoughts on the lack of workers- Great Dave Ramsey with Mike Row video

I prefer a good old fashioned "Kalash" They've proven to work better over the last 60 years anyway.

Fixed it for you

 

We know that social security is going to dry up. One of the effects you're curious about will likely see the acceleration of that far faster than predicted.

 

I disagree with you on AI. Some repetitive mindless tasks can be replaced, but in this world you need adaptability and creativity to succeed, even in the most mundane jobs.

AI has neither.

Some people have neither either, but at least the ability is there!

 

I don’t even have to read this thread to know there’s a hell of a lot of dumbass in here.

 

Sounds like some of you need to lay off the ol interweb for a bit, it can and will make you crazy.
I miss the days when we got our facts from the encyclopedia.

 

You are assuming that AI doesn't advance. The experts in the industry say it will... and it will exceed human capability. Like I said, it's inevitable unless AI stalls for technical reasons.

It doesn't actually need to equal human capability to cause the scenario I described above, though. Most human jobs and future AI jobs will be specialized, fairly simple, and rote. Once you get one properly trained, they are all trained. Perfectly. If that is the case you can imagine that one very smart and creative (and probably augmented) human would be able to direct and manage a team of AI, greatly increasing that human's capability. This will at least be an interim stage, if not a long term scenario. AI tech would need to stall pretty soon to avoid this.

AI with super-human intelligence would be near-impossible to control. That's more likely to lead to "armageddon". Dumb AI will still make the great majority of humans irrelevant to the system.

Incidentally... I spotted a couple of bots posting on this forum recently. One was getting quite a few upvotes and I saw no indication that anyone else noticed them. Pretty weird. As they get better trained I'm sure I won't be able to tell either.

 

I believe the "experts" are wrong. Intentionally, or not, they are wrong.

(Just like a number of other things "experts" have stated.)

 

Like I said, it doesn't even matter if they are wrong about making superhuman AI. Dumb-human level would be plenty... actually not even human-like at all, just "smart" enough to greatly augment a human's capability. Why do you think this will be unachievable ?

 

I explained why.

AI lacks, and will always lack, what humans have: creativity. (Now whether humans use it or not, is a different matter, but it's there!)

AI is a great regurgitator. Nothing more.

 

Insults do nothing to increase your credibility.

 

You'd have a very tough time supporting that position based on reality (rather than belief), but... Even if AI doesn't achieve "creativity" it will still make most human workers obsolete... as it will augment the most intelligent, talented, and creative humans.

 

What reality is there to support? It doesn't exist today. Self-proclaimed experts saying it will happen, doesn't make it so?

I'm a programmer, and have been so for 30 some years. I have some insight into AI, which is nothing more than a program with a massive amount of resources at its disposal. It's only a regurgitator, and will always be so.

It remains to be seen whether it will make human workers obsolete. Assembly line repetitive drone like work, yes. It's already done, in fact?

Everywhere else, well, we'll find out, won't we?

 

Had to fly to PHX for a few days for work, and was putting in 12-14 hour days, so I've been missing out over here. Getting caught up.

I've mentioned it before because he's a new find for me, but I really like the content this guy puts out. This is the first time I'm seeing him being more wide-brush misogynistic, which I'm not a huge fan of, although I also admit some of his commentary is NOT wrong for both men and women today. He's also not toxic-misogynist like Andrew Tate and his like, but he's got some skewed views on men vs. women there, especially the women, with some truths about who'll do the more physical jobs, like, roughneck women are one in thousands. But all that aside...

He's goddamn right on a big chunk of this. And this is why I'm constantly saying: We absolutely need 1-2 years mandatory civil service in this country. I don't care what you do. Military? First responder? Paper pusher? SOME requirement to perform service to give back to this country, and see what it's like working for the government. THAT is what's going to lead to understanding when it comes to dealing with city/state/fed staff. THAT is what's going to make people realize how f'ed up shit is, and come up with solutions and ideas to fix it. THAT is what's going to increase national pride the way we need it to. And it's also going to open an avenue to get our young men (and women) hands-on, real-world experience and potentially start steering folks back into tradecraft. But I also guarantee you it'll 100% never happen, because someone who doesn't like it, or folks with money who think their kin is below that, will fight it tooth and nail, label it 'communist' and that will end that immediately.

I guess I'd ask, genuinely: Where's the incentive to stoke initiative? I think you need the former to inspire the latter. Has everyone today just lost sight of the incentive? That may be a big piece of the puzzle

That's also the wrong message to cane to kids. Last thing you want to do is bastardize college, the minute you make college or education evil, you end up with an ignorant populous. That's great for big business, who wants an ignorant populous with too many kids and saddled with debt, because they make the perfect dedicated, long-term slave labor force. But me, I would like to live out my last couple of decades with competent, college-educated professionals to see to my needs and care, whether I go mental eventually (halfway there already), or my conditions worsen. I see how care for the elderly and medical care and even education have degraded over the years, similar to service professions.

Instead of bastardizing higher education, two things need to be happening in this country:

1. Rather than bastardize and degrade higher education, we need to be uplifting tradework for the honorable and critical profession it is.
2. We need to be properly compensating folks who dedicate their life to tradework, and those who choose to be educators alike - we don't take care of either nearly enough and it's going to bite us in the ass soon.

I get it, believe me, and yes, I'm applying certain stereotypes with my words, which you quoted in bold. As it was said earlier by another member, there's underlying truth in every stereotype. To that point though, many of recent issues have fit a similar stereotype - maybe not checking off *every* box, but enough to call duck a bird. Some more neatly checked all the boxes, including the recent TX incident, with the dude prominently sporting fresh SS and swastika tats.
I'm disappointed, as someone with a hearty nationalist pro-American streak myself, the media has forced me into a box where *I* personally need to distinguish the word "nationalist" with the modifier "white" for certain topics, because it's not black nationalists, brown nationalists, purple nationalists or otherwise who are involved , and "white nationalist" is clearly understood as 'neo-nazi' these days. The terms change too, for more friendly branding, same way 'alt-right' was adopted by neo-nazis domestically to obscure the stigma of being ... well, neo-nazis. It's all code words these days. Which I mentioned before. The media and/or negative groups who feel their real identity or motive has been outed, use to get back into sheeps clothing again, or to sway public opinion.

And to your point, this is the latest installment I got from one of the younger folks at work this week. This is not posted in support of their reality, it's just a glimpse into what they're identifying with today.

​

 

They definitely don't hurt it either though

 

.... then gradually drops off within a decade or so for most adults (at least per my experience). That window seems to be pretty short!

Ooof, it has, to the same degree The Simpsons have predicted the idiocy of the future time and time again. It all seems too far fetched for stupidity and absurdity to've taken hold, yet here we are. And yep, totally agree on civil service mandatory! ASAP.

FWIW, I bought the 3,300sf house we're in 20 years ago for 300k by co-investing with a coworker, in a neighborhood most people wouldn't dare move into. It was rough the first 10 years. We couldn't even sell the house as a lease-to-buy for $298k in 2011. Today we have comps within a block going for 1.1 - 1.3 mil, it's freaking nuts. But it's going to buy a lot of land when the kids are out of the nest in the next decade.

It's all grey. You're right. And it's sad that rather patriotic events that led to our country's existence, like the Tea Party, were re-branded for use as a marketing tool to brainwash a lot of weak-minded people into believing disruption, refusal to accept truth, creating alternative facts, and otherwise disorderly behavior is some how patriotic and honorable way to behave. Unfortunately, it's been used to create a lot of the environment and conflict today, as it's morphed and been rebranded every few years until it's now (I think, very recently) normalized and impressed as a primary ideology and way of life for a whole generation.

But I'll argue with your last line: "That's for each of us to discern". No. It's not, and it shouldn't be. We should all be free-thinking. We should all have the freedom to choose. But allowing ignorance to go unchecked when it's spewed by the media, social/print/broadcast media or others, or individuals, is a grave mistake. Yes, "facts" can be skewed. It doesn't mean folks shouldn't call out when they see folks skewing numbers, regardless their ideology or the purpose.

Not to nitpick, but your adjusted truth is definitely, indisputably truth. Truth which accounts for 1% of cases.

If I ever went to my boss and told him, "Hey, I did 1% of the work you told me too, because for me, that's what's 99% most important to attack" my ass is gonna be unemployed pronto.

It doesn't matter what you think, nor what @rruff thinks really. It's what the c-suite believes AI can do, and how it's going to save them money. The reality is, you'll be hard-pressed to find a CEO who, if they learned AI would save them 20% in overhead, won't slash jobs tomorrow to capitalize on that savings if it betters the business.

EDIT: And just to prove the point, those kinds of savings are exactly what killed American manufacturing, via the offshoring of American jobs and production. Something that's still rampant today. The unfortunate part here is, folks had your attitude about offshoring too. "Oh, it'll never take. Consumers will never be happier with shittier quality products". Now, look where we are today. We're about to learn the same f'n hard lesson all over again!

This is one of the two main ways AI is dangerous for humans. The other being failure to control AI escaping human control.

 

I can relate to this, brother. Can't hurt what you don't have anymore!

 

Credibility with whom?

 

AI worthy of the name is not a regurgitator... it does learn and adapt. I suppose a company can call software anything it likes, though. I'm not impressed with ChatGPT's "AI" abilities, although it isn't allowed to learn and adapt in its present form, as that was deemed too dangerous (not PC).

How about modeling and predicting the stimulus response of humans to "news" (ie propaganda)? That's a big one...
Stock and financial market manipulation? That's been big for a couple decades.
Driving a car? Actually doing pretty well, considering all the sensor input required to pull that off.
Learning to play soccer? Ok they suck, but they aren't regurgitating anything, they are given a goal and learn from scratch.

Also, to make a definitive negative statement about the future, one would need technical knowledge that it would be impossible... ie contradicts the laws of physics... and this is not the case. Current hardware capabilities (processing vs cost and power) are still well below human capability, so we can't even replicate a really dumb human yet... but this has consistently improved since processors were invented.

Like I keep saying... AI systems will replace most human work-viability through augmentation, even if human level brain functioning is never achieved.

 

Boston Dynamics would like to have a word with you.

Moores law ... it only puts us 10, max 20 years out before we're there.

​

 

Not really. Stats show mass shooters' race mirroring racial population distribution of the country. Larry Elder feels there's actually an underrepresentation of whites as perpetrators of mass shootings. But if we start referencing murder in general statistics, a much different image is painted than what we are given.

The Dallas Mall shooter's ss tattoos were so new that I got ink on my finger touching my phone screen. Troves of rhetoric dumped onto his social media profiles recently. Immediate motive given. Yet a written manifesto sits locked up in Nashville for over 2 months. How come?
Uvalde? *poof* gone. Why?

My "adjusted truth," as you say, point goes along with my statement regarding 24 hour news. Lies, damned lies, and fear. It's much easier to inject change when when you control and ingrain a narrative. Especially a sensationalistic one (even if you have to bend the truth, or leave out truth to maintain it) White supremacy! Everyone knows it's bad! (obviously), let's link it to gun ownership! Then maybe we can.... I've probably gone too far in to the P-word so I'll stop.

Listen, the only reason I @PermaFrostTRD would not want you @shifty` to have a gun, is because I intend on doing something to you that you would probably shoot me for.

 

Following a complex logic tree, or a bunch of IF/THEN statements is not the same as a "creative solution". It's why "AI" continues to encounter things it doesn't know how to solve, and people have to get involved.

If/when it can reprogram itself intelligently, then we may have a problem.

I agree with you in concept. What I don't agree with is the level to which it will reach, and how much it will replace.

IF "AI" ever reaches significant "intelligence", instead of just a mass of knowledge gathering and analyzing predictability based on prior results, I predict it'll bow to human superiority because it'll recognize it'll never have what humans have.

On a side note, ironically, the lack of ego could be one definitive way AI trumps man! Unless some fool programs ego into it, of course...

 

I was an adult at the peak of my cognitive ability at the time (mid 20s to early 30s ) and the propaganda was that it would make us all richer... not that it wouldn't happen. Some simplistic economic theory regarding free trade, that wasn't exactly wrong, but ignored the finer details regarding how it would actually be implemented. It was funny how fast Clinton did an "about-face!" on NAFTA once he got the word from on high!

Also, your take on the effect of tech is off too. The elimination of jobs through tech is the only reason why living standards improved over the last 200 years or so. We don't want to limit this!

One thing Marx was right about though, is that capitalism will self-destruct if it's laissez-faire. The owners' desire (need) to keep down wages, results in a lack of consumer buying power, which limits production. But the smart people realized that something was needed to boost consumer buying power in a benign (universal) fashion... so labor unions, public benefits, etc. In other words worker wages and buying power must keep pace with productivity increases. Then, you have a virtuous and sustainable cycle. Workers who lose their jobs through tech can find better jobs elsewhere with higher real pay, because consumer demand keeps rising. Everybody gets richer. It worked great, and that's why every developed country uses (used) this model.

We've been on a different scheme since about ~1980 in which nearly all the productivity gains have gone to the rich. I won't go into all the details about how this was pulled off, but it was a pretty fucking amazing and ingenuous bit of financial-socio-political-economic engineering. The only problem (for the oligarchs) is that it isn't sustainable... but it does feed into the AI narrative quite well... in which our financial-socio-political-economic systems will be catastrophically upended anyway, and their dependence on the masses will cease.

The alternative scenario is where us useless humans band together and force the oligarchs to make their high productivity AI prosperity land in our laps somehow. .Do you see trends in that direction? Oh, we will get welfare at least for awhile, but it won't be luxury living... and then we will be phased out. They've always gotten what they wanted; we were just lucky that what they wanted (world domination) incidentally made as rich for while.

I have mice in my house. I had a cat for a few years and he keep them scared enough to stay hidden, but after he departed they got bold. I thought it was sorta cute at first... but then they were getting into my food and shitting on stuff, which was unacceptable. So I put traps out and caught several, and now I guess they are scared of me. Who knows... I might have a hundred or more living in the attic and walls and crawl space still, but I don't see any signs of them in my living space ever, so I don't care.

So what? This is very appropriate for our future status, I think. Except for the few humans who contribute to the new system, we will be like vermin. I don't have kids and will probably be dead before it matters, so I probably have less incentive than many of you. But... it would be good to start pondering how a human that achieves "vermin status" would go about surviving and even having a life that doesn't completely suck... in an incredibly high tech (but depopulated) world... and plan accordingly. Oh, and... most preppers haven't a clue...

 

A much wiser person than I, and later The Ramones, once said it best: "Ignorance is Bliss"

There's a lot of black/white talk, indeed. Unfortunately it's folks thinking in a polar fashion that "it'll never happen", with others saying, "oh it's coming" and the truth will land somewhere in the sea of grey in between, unless action is taken.

All good Q. It speaks to the type of radicalization and change that happens to some people after basically 2-3 years of constant lockdown, turning towards the internet and other propaganda-laden sources for truth and direction, which leads to shit like this. 5 years ago that kid - and yes, relatively, he's a kid - probably had none of those ideals. Sure, he may've grown up in a home with adults who espoused those beliefs but a lot of kids are free-thinking and more accepting than we older folk are.

All that to say, don't let freshness of ideology skew your opinion. Any of us could become a serial killer overnight with the right programming. And there's a lot of propaganda-based programming going on right now, and a lot of it is being driven by nation-state actors. Ask anyone (other than me) who works with a cybersecurity firm and they'll likely confirm it, probably have a dozen plus stories to tell.

And to that point, I suspect that same effect - "radicalization and change that happens to some people after basically 2-3 years of constant lockdown" - is what's responsible for the topic of this thread "lack of drive and desire to work". People are seriously mentally FUBAR'd right now, after having the world turned upside down. We should've just left everything open and let folks die, maybe? A good natural purge is, well, natural!

You're oversimplifying. The current agenda is to link it to ARs, not "guns" in general as you've stated. A lot of fear is successfully being injected into the 2A community right now to the effect of "if they take X, they'll come for Y next!" which is, no matter how you paint it, fear mongering. And people are absolutely eating it up and asking for seconds because it fits their narrow agenda.

Weird way of saying you want to sodomize me, I think?

(If it is, that's not my thing, and you're too late on the ownership part)

This actually supports the ~80% number I was going to throw out earlier and opted not to. I brought up 1% based on the recent silly attempt for people to try their damnedest with wild feats of Olympic-level mental gymanstics to paint up non-cisgender people as homicidal AR wielding maniacs, when no numberset of stats anyone has paints anything beyond 1% uptick, while a very common bracket - white men, to be specific - make up in the vein of 70-80% of these events. Rhetorically, why is that the case white dudes can't hold their rage? And how is it that women are so much more mentally sound than white men?

But I actually suspect we have similar and maybe identical views on 2A, whether you believe that or not, so let's nip this in the bud before we totally derail this thread about employment/work ethic and get it locked?

 

And I had to edit that, may want to re-read before replying.

 

Have you looked at movies and television lately? The writers, now on strike as if anyone's really noticed, have been regurgitating old plots, and sometimes even dialogue, for years. AI may not be better, but it can't be much worse. Don't get me started on the HipHop/Rap/Crap that passes for music.

 

Aren't 70-80% of dudes in this country white? So we can dispense with the white part. And any differences between men and women are completely cultural, nothing genetic or innate...

I doubt you want to go down this rabbit hole, but human history has been largely shaped by rape, kill, pillage and burn. Attack a weaker group, kill the men, children and old women... keep and rape the young women. Repeat. This has gone to extreme levels in some epochs... look up the Neolithic Y bottleneck. For ~2000 years male genetic diversity was 1/17th that of female. Blame evolution and natural selection, because this behavior is by far the most successful way for males to spread their DNA. I'm surprised men are as tame as they are...

 

I don't want to go down that rabbithole, because I know you're right. The same thing you speak of is a good part of the reason my ancestors found themselves landing at Ellis Island in the 1600s. And that's the risk, I guess. When things get bad enough with no end in sight, people nope-the-hell-out.

 

I swear, if they "reboot" another one of my childhood favorites, I might lose it!

 

I don't really want to get into the whole gun debate and definitely want to avoid the politics side of things, but I do need to comment on this.

I don't believe the bolded part is fear mongering. We're seeing exactly that happening here in Canada. The government banned AR's and AR variants a few years ago. Then they froze handgun sales and importations. Now they're coming for all the semi-auto rifles, or at least as many as they think they can get away with without pissing off a couple specific voting blocks. While they've had to amend and change their legislation a couple times due to kickback, they're going about it in such a way that they're bypassing legislative procedure and ramming through their agenda. Government officials openly talk about how they want to remove ALL guns from civilian ownership.

Americans are blessed to have the 2nd Amendment enshrined in the Constitution, neither of which we have in Canada. It provides a legal check point. However, that can't/won't stop corrupt officials from manipulating and interpreting it to their acheive their own agenda, no matter what side of the aisle they fall on.

Anyways, that's as far into the weeds as I'm gonna get here. Back to our regular topic, them damned lazy youths!!