SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Today's 6th graders will hit their prime working years in 2030.
By that time, the "robot apocalypse" could be fully upon us. Automation and artificial intelligence could have eliminated half the jobs in the United States economy.
Or, plenty of jobs could still exist, but today's students could be locked in a fierce competition for a few richly rewarded positions requiring advanced technical and interpersonal skills. Robots and algorithms would take care of what used to be solid working- and middle-class jobs. And the kids who didn't get that cutting-edge computer science course or life-changing middle school project? They'd be relegated to a series of dead-end positions, serving the elites who did.
Alternatively, maybe Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the other big names ringing the alarm are wrong. A decade from now, perhaps companies will still complain they can't find employees who can read an instruction manual and pass a drug test. Maybe workers will still be able to hold on to the American Dream, so long as they can adjust to incremental technological shifts in the workplace.
Which vision will prove correct?
30 years into the Information Revolution and schools are only just now realizing they should teach kids how to code...
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday December 15 2017, @12:05PM (7 children)
Wow, guilty by association much? There might be a correlation between impaired empathy and antisocial behavior but that doesn't make all such people antisocial. What you are proposing is de facto persecuting thoughtcrime.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @02:58PM (5 children)
You won't let a blind person drive a car. You wouldn't hire a quadraplegic to be the center on your basketball team. But you would put a sociopath in charge of a company or polity upon which thousands of normal, healthy people rely, because you trust his judgement?
Me, I think that's a big part of the breakdown we're seeing now, which is that the seats of power in our society have accumulated too many sociopaths. But maybe you got yours already and don't think there's a problem, as the other 99% of the population does.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday December 15 2017, @07:34PM (2 children)
Apples and oranges. A blind person is incapable of driving. A sociopath is capable of reasoning and determining what is amoral.
I didn't say that, what I disagree with is (a) your assessment of the root of the problem and (b) your proposed solution.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @08:46PM (1 child)
Not apples and oranges at all. Both are examples of impairment that preclude the performing of their respective functions; that is why I chose them. In neither case is it their fault, but they are impaired. A sociopath is impaired in that he cannot understand the empathy required to make moral decisions. Test: Would you leave your infant in the care of a sociopath? If not, why not? If not, why would we leave a thousand infants in the care of a sociopath? Why would we trust one to hold the power of life and death over any of us?
Me, I'd much prefer leaders who are humans, not sociopaths. A leader should understand very well the morality of his decisions and carefully weigh their impact upon citizens.
Is it that you think politicians, MBAs, and bankers are moral humans who are doing the absolute they can for humanity, and that concentrating all wealth and power into the hands of an extreme minority is a good thing, or something else like the result of their decisions and policies just accidentally concentrate all wealth and power into the hands of an extreme minority of them?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday December 15 2017, @10:43PM
This is objectively false. If you instruct a blind person to drive a car, he would be physically incapable of following the road. If you instruct a sociopath not to harm a puppy, he would be able not to kick it. Were you for example to present me with a blind person who through some means is capable of demonstrating the ability to drive at the same proficiency we expect from everyone else, I will be more than happy to drive on the same roads they do.
Your assumption that people with impaired empathy will necessarily commit atrocities is factually incorrect, although a sociopath is specifically defined as a person who exhibits antisocial behavior, that doesn't mean that people who have the same fundamental brain condition are incapable of acting morally of their own volition. It is just as bigoted to assume that everyone who matches your thoughtcrime detector will exhibit antisocial behavior, as it is to assume that everyone who matches a certain skull shape would.
No, I think we shouldn't allow for the existence of power structures in which runaway power accumulation is possible. The greatest failure of modern politics and economics is the fact we don't have a negative feedback effects into them, and thus the second million is just as valuable as the first million. If the laws of physics worked like our laws of economics, the universe would spontaneously combust. Is it any wonder that we keep seeing one economic crisis after another?
(Score: 3, Informative) by t-3 on Friday December 15 2017, @09:11PM
A sociopath may be the best person for the job. Leadership generally requires some sociopathic tendencies to be effective (and this is why I will not be surprised when sociopathy is shown to be an epigenetic adaptation in response to social/population cues similar to homosexuality) Being nice and caring about others is a crippling flaw in many hard-choice situations.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @06:38AM
I certainly wouldn't put you in charge. There is worse than sociopathy at work here. Sociopathy doesn't make someone unfit to run a business. But people who get the idea that poorly understood medical tests can find thoughtcrime should be removed from such responsibilities quickly before they destroy something.
Create incentives that reward sociopathic behavior and you get more sociopathic behavior.
(Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Friday December 15 2017, @08:55PM
Fuckoff these people ruin the whole world for everyone and then scare the peons into giving them more power. They'd be the first in line to tell you life isn't fair if you were the one getting fucked and not them.