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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
The kitchen assistant, known as 'Flippy', was designed by a startup called Miso Robotics which specializes in "technology that assists and empowers chefs to make food consistently and perfectly, at prices everyone can afford."
[...] Flippy uses feedback-loops that reinforce its good behavior so it gets better with each flip of the burger. Unlike an assembly line robot that needs to have everything positioned in an exact ordered pattern, Flippy's machine learning algorithms allow it to pick uncooked burgers from a stack or flip those already on the grill. Hardware like cameras helps Flippy see and navigate its surroundings while sensors inform the robot when a burger is ready or still raw. Meanwhile, an integrated system that sends orders from the counter back to the kitchen informs Flippy just how many raw burgers it should be prepping.
Source: http://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/burger-robot-flipping-meat-0432432/
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 17 2017, @03:25AM (16 children)
Name the democratic country, I'll point out the ponies that they've already voted for. For example, in the US, Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare are classic examples. Few people seemed to care that future generations would have to deal with the liabilities generated by these programs. Public health care systems and public pension funds are typical landmines in every developed world country.
What needed action? The only countries that are having problems with automation today are the countries that discourage employment. Maybe we should look at the causes rather than the convenient blame targets?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 17 2017, @04:03AM (15 children)
And yet, we're still here. SS itself is working fine, the only problem there is that the program was forced to loan out all the money it needed in reserve to fund useless wars and tax cuts for the rich. As for medicare and medicaid, would you prefer that the people needing it die in the streets or become an unfunded mandate for hospitals? Perhaps you could at least do the humane thing and shoot them in the head rather than making them suffer before they die of completely treatable disease? Perhaps you'd like to do that in front of their grandkids so they learn what happens when you're not a highly productive worker unit? Or perhaps you misspoke when you called that a pony?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 17 2017, @10:24AM (9 children)
SS never had money in reserve. It was always transferred via the virtual bond mechanism to the general fund and spent immediately. And we can see from the "useless wars and tax cuts to the rich" that you don't believe that a good portion of the resulting spending was an investment either.
Would you? Medicare and Medicaid are not sustainable in the long term because their costs grow much faster than the economy does and are projected [washingtonpost.com] to continue to do so as far as the eye can see.
Over the same period, GDP is expected [cbo.gov] to grow a little over 2% per year. Dying in the streets and whatnot will be one of the consequences IMHO of these programs if we do give up on the programs later rather than sooner.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 17 2017, @04:20PM (8 children)
I thought you said there are no problems and that sitting with our thumbs up our asses is a virtue? Now you tell me we're heading for people dying in the streets if we don't take action? Gee, which one is it?
You seem confused. Or like you've argued yourself into a corner and would sincerely like for me to ignore the man behind the curtain.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 17 2017, @10:58PM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 17 2017, @11:49PM (6 children)
But it's there now. Inaction didn't give us control over fire either.
I'm not convinced those are a problem. You claim there are no problems, but in the next breath complain that those are problems. You seem confused again. Also besieged by decision paralysis.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 18 2017, @04:34AM (5 children)
You still playing games here. Social Security is not a one time interference with society, but an eighty year old interference with society. Laissez faire strategy would remove Social Security.
So what? The problems are there whether or not you are convinced. US budgets and demographics is not weather prediction.
I think there's a simpler explanation. You ran out of ammunition. Now we're to the perfunctory, ad hominem, pop psychology stage of the argument. So sounds like time for a review of this sprawling thread.
We first start with your nostalgic post about the vapid promises [soylentnews.org] of youth and those mean regressions with their horrible mental failwaves who are toiling hard to hold you back. This would be excellent troll material BTW should you ever go that route.
I guess from that starting point, it's really hard to have a serious discussion here. My message to take home is that economics is not wish fulfillment. It's not magically generating ponies for everyone. It's not preserving 1964 for all time. It's not vapid promises that you'll never have to exert yourself in the future. When we do try to use economics to create these fantasies we quickly find there are consequences. Even the rather minimal, ongoing interventions of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid has resulted in massive liabilities that the US will either pay or more likely, renege on, without a benefit of corresponding stature.
For me, history is a guide to what will happen with these calls to "do something" about automation, globalism, etc. They will eventually fail in a way that threatens society just as these past programs have done for US society. I certainly don't trust you or anyone who favors your viewpoint to manage a successful basic income scheme, for example. It'll just be another screw up in a long lineage of screw ups. At the very least, some consideration of how to prevent failure should be baked into the system from the start.
For example, there's going to be more voters who would directly benefit from raising a basic income arbitrarily than not. That in turn would lead to a lot of harmful economic destruction which is completely ignored by proponents of basic income. I don't want a system that pays people to destroy society by voting themselves more money without limit.
So to conclude, I don't want to hear about how people with different opinions are holding you back or how the economy should be about supporting your magic assumptions. I want to hear how you're going to deal with the inevitable problems that come from taking stuff from some people and giving it to others in order that we're supporting society (particularly its future!) rather than creates a destructive positive feedback loop of economic cannibalism. It's a reasonable thing to ask!
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday September 18 2017, @04:52AM (4 children)
I did not go ad hominem. I pointed out an inconsistency IN YOUR ARGUMENT. That is completely fair and in bounds for debate. You made two diametrically opposed claims. You, however did go ad-hominem rather than attempt to defend either position. Very telling.
You like sitting in shit with your thumbs up[ your butt, so kindly go off into a corner and do just that with the other degenerates.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 18 2017, @05:38AM (3 children)
And saying something doesn't make it so. I corrected your misimpression by pointing out that my view was not inconsistent. Laissez faire doesn't not presuppose that active interference continues. Thus, it's not out of the ordinary for a laissez faire strategy to involve removal of active interference.
The ad hominem is in "You seem confused again. Also besieged by decision paralysis." Consider in particular the latter accusation. What are the choices that I'm alleged to be paralyzed about? You have yet to come up with it.
Strong indication you aren't ready to think about these things. Perhaps later?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday September 18 2017, @07:15AM (2 children)
You claimed at one point that things are fine as they are (not as they would be if we undid things) and then claimed we have a problem that requires an action. That certainly seems confused, and such wishing and washing is common to decision paralysis. Your walk-back above really doesn't explain that at all.
If you're going to start using alternative definitions of words, there's no point in talking at all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 18 2017, @11:33AM (1 child)
Context. I was speaking of different things - for example global labor markets versus unintended consequences of some US feelgood initiatives of the past 80 years.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday September 18 2017, @03:14PM
Nope, my memory is better than that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 17 2017, @12:25PM (4 children)
Let us also note that Social Security is expected [cbo.gov] under current law to exhaust its imaginary trust funds by 2030. By then, it'll be spending about 30% more than it takes in revenue. That's less than 15 years.
Nor is this something out of the blue. People have been warning about the coming default of SS for decades. For example, we have this bit from the 1936 Republican Party platform:
Wow, a bunch of political hacks from 1936 were able to figure out one of Social Security's little flaws. If only someone had been paying attention over the past 80 years to fix that. Let's add to your list of economic illiteracies, the inability to think 15 years ahead.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 17 2017, @07:27PM (3 children)
Now isn't the first time we've had a republican dominated congress with a republican president, yet somehow the issue never got addressed?
We could easily solve it inflation free by ordering banks to up their reserve to 20% and as they "unprint" money, the treasury re-prints it and pays it to retirees.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 17 2017, @11:00PM (2 children)
That would only work once, if it works at all. Then you'd be back there again in a decade or two. Cutting benefits is the only long term solution.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 17 2017, @11:46PM (1 child)
Nope, after that, we'll be past the population bubble that was the boomers and we'll have foreigners paying in but not elligable to take out later. Or, we could scrap SS entirely once the basic income is in place.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 18 2017, @03:44AM
Get them to pay for Trump's Wall while you're at it.
Let us keep in mind the key reason I brought up SS in the first place. That it exhibits a bunch of problems that a basic income scheme would have to surmount in order to be viable in the long run.