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[Starver]

https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/10/23/0310200/a-british-supercomputer-can-predict-winter-weather-a-year-in-advance

Here's another nice one. Using improved climate models and supercomputers, as well as decades of data, the British have a program that could have forecast the weather one year in advance with a 62% success rate, going back to 1980 data.

It's not just any weather, it's British Weather...  Our weather is so complex that we can have hosepipe bans and extreme flooding at the same time. And whilst the six foot snowdrifts in the north cause a few minor delays to rural bus sevices, the millimetres of snow barely sitting in the crook of the kerbstone edge of London streets causes even the Underground trains to be brought to a halt...

Fear our computing power, for we are all powerful! ! We are omniscient!!!! We are thinking it looks like it might just spit it down a little shortly, and are wondering whether to bring the washing in...

[Max™]

Well, 62% accuracy on predicting the behavior of the NAO isn't bad, not quite the same as a high resolution weather prediction though.

[Reelya]

so capitalism will save us from the robot menace

Actually, I think the opposite can be glean from that.

3man75 was talking about a hypothetical situation where you can't get a job because robots, but you own a robot and send that out to work for you. My point was how that isn't actually going to work. Your mom-and-pop robot labor operation isn't competing with the Roboto-Renta-Corp conglomerate. Sure you can get shares, but I dun messed up and left off the last step: you're also competing for the share of production with all other investors. So without a job, you're screwed on share investment as a way to avoid poverty.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

If there are enough robots that a vast majority of people will be out of work, we will have entered a golden age with enough resources to not need to work.

[Reelya]

I don't know that the fun old times when nobody has a job are a given. There's a difference between not needing to work, and not being needed to work.

Not being needed to work could be like the freedom that farm cows would achieve in the great golden future when they're not longer being eaten. They'll be free, but they won't exist.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

Large numbers of people are already not needed for work in the rust belt of the United States.

[3man75]

I didn't mean to say buy a personal robot that can do your job for you...but kay.

What I mean is why would people support other huamans being ALIVE if they can all be replaced by bots? I know this is silly but if Hitler could replace everyone he killed with bots for his factories then theoretically the Germans would have lasted much longer. However, he coudn't. An after all of the political purges before and after taking power Hitler's Germany had manpower shortages.

Now this is theoretical but what if the 1% decide the world isn't big enough for the 99%? That's the question. Can they get away with letting us die or would they still need us to buy/consume products and services?

[redwallzyl]

what happens it the entire capitalistic system collapses for want of a point of existing anymore.

[alway]

In a capitalist system, you don't need people to consume unless you need something they produce. When labor is no longer necessary to produce capital, laborers are worth nothing despite having a cost to maintain, and so will be optimized out of the system.

Or in short: it's you or capitalism, take your pick.

[SalmonGod]

Agreed.  Either capitalism becomes obsolete or most people do.

[Reelya]

Agreed.  Either capitalism becomes obsolete or most people do.

Playing devil's advocate here for a minute here, just because people's roles become obsolete doesn't mean the person themselves become obsolete. e.g. we didn't literally gas the weavers to death when the Jacquard loom was introduced. People saw their job ending, saw it as the end of the world, but they moved to new roles, which were also labor roles. Now, people see the "labor" role itself ending, they also see that as the end of the world. But might there not already be perfect valid roles that are outside of the "labor" worldview that people will move into?

Economic disruption is not really proof of being permanently screwed by changes. We've seen economic disruption countless times before and people have come out ok. "rust belt" problems seem insurmountable because they're current. But they may not be as insurmountable as the Great Depression of the 1930s, which America pulled out of fine. We'd really have to see how the Rust Belt looks like in a generation or two, once the stories of having your job shipped to China are grandpa's old stories which nobody really gets.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

In a capitalist system, you don't need people to consume unless you need something they produce. When labor is no longer necessary to produce capital, laborers are worth nothing despite having a cost to maintain, and so will be optimized out of the system.

Or in short: it's you or capitalism, take your pick.

Okay. It seems like we're missing the big picture here. Which is what I was trying to say earlier. If we have LITERALLY ENOUGH ROBOTS TO MAKE ALL HUMAN LABOUR UNNECESSARY, why would there even be an economy? We would literally live in Utopia where all of our needs were provided for.

[SalmonGod]

Exactly.  To both.  We get over the idea that employment is necessary to justify survival, which is basically abandoning modern capitalism as we know it, or a lot of people find they're unable to justify their survival.

Unless we turn to the entire economy being driven by mandatory participation in hobbyist arts & crafts trade.

[Reelya]

... and that, is actually what I've deduced Marx meant by Communism.

Marx wrote that advanced capitalism would lead to widespread automation of production, making labor obsolete, and that this would lead to a situation where nobody needs to work. At this point, goods would no longer be allocated on a "work done" basis, because such a basis wouldn't make any sense, any more than it would make sense for New York to shift to a "conch shell based economy" similar to historic pacific islands.

From this understanding, you can see that "communist nations" had it backwards. A communist nation guaranteed 100% employment, and prevented your job being automated. e.g. it froze labor relations in time. Thus actually preventing the very conditions Marx talked about that would be necessary for a Communist Economy.

Also, Marx's theory was Historical Materialism, he wrote that phases of economic growth follow each other out of necessity. e.g. it was a given that it would evolve from feudalism -> mercantilism -> capitalism. Marx said that Socialism would inevitably arise out of the conflicts in capitalism, and we do in fact see the most advanced economies moving towards social democracy. And that communism would be a state after this in which automation frees us from labor, and we allocate based on need. If you automate a modern society then expand welfare or put minimum basic income in place, you have virtually the exact thing Marx said would happen to capitalism.

Thus the development from one stage to the next is not about choices or singular events, but about tipping points where one system inevitably phases out another.

[Max™]

Yeah, obviously capitalism needs to die, but there is a certain inertia to it, and corporations are entities which exist specifically to keep themselves existing. There is a lack of sanity in a corporation which means there is no reason to expect them to acquiesce to the death of capitalism quietly.

... and that, is actually what I've deduced Marx meant by Communism.

Marx wrote that advanced capitalism would lead to widespread automation of production, making labor obsolete, and that this would lead to a situation where nobody needs to work. At this point, goods would no longer be allocated on a "work done" basis, because such a basis wouldn't make any sense, any more than it would make sense for New York to shift to a "conch shell based economy" similar to historic pacific islands.

From this understanding, you can see that "communist nations" had it backwards. A communist nation guaranteed 100% employment, and prevented your job being automated. e.g. it froze labor relations in time. Thus actually preventing the very conditions Marx talked about that would be necessary for a Communist Economy.

The communist revolution is indeed supposed to take place over generations.