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[hector13]

Incidentially, Trump doesn't actually like to fire people (though he will if he has to or theres no other way around it, obviously), which is why he's pulling the tactic that he is doing on Sessions.

Isn't his tactic to declare bankruptcy so he can get away with not paying people?

[smjjames]

Send your resumes* to the White House today! Openings growing every day!

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I doubt many qualified people would respond, it'd be like career suicide at this point.

Yeah, since he's obviously trying to get someone that will fire Mueller, and doing THAT would be career suicide.

Apparently Ted Cruz, of all people, is being considered as a replacement. Given that he might try to aim for the Presidency again, he certainly wouldn't want to stain his record with firing Mueller.

[martinuzz]

Carrier, the company 'saved' by Trump, fires 1300 employees and moves it's labour to Mexico. Fired employees do get a 'farewell bonus', although it's also used as an argument by fired employees to not give their name to reporters. "I still need to get my farewell bonus".

[Cthulhu]

Capitalism is intended to satiate the desires of humans and raise the QoL of humans. If humans are not involved, capitalism has no purpose.

You have what the intergalactic community would call "a very planetary mindset."

As for sentience, we need to define that first because sci-fi has eviscerated its meaning.  Sentience is the capacity for subjective experience.  Sapience is human-level intelligence.  Neither necessarily implies a capacity for suffering, altruism, other evolved human traits that force irrational market decisions.  The coal miner is a great example even if I don't think it actually addressed my question.  Altruism and empathy make us prioritize humane decisions over rational ones, but of course you'll notice that the rise of humane labor standards in the west really just shunted inhumane but rational decision-making to the eastern adn southern hemispheres.  And you'll notice that in sectors that use inhumane labor, it's hard not to.  A smartphone company that didn't use the Congo coltan mines and Shenzhen factories would be outcompeted by the ones that do.

The good question here is would synthetic life (maybe algorithm is the wrong word, it has certain connotations) be rent-seeking.  And I dunno dude.  The combination of extreme pragmatism (maybe algorithm is the right word after all) with human+ analytical ability is a real singularity point, weird shit starts happening and it's hard to predict.  Yudkowsky and Co.'s paper on AI Corrigibility is interesting in that regard. 

On the subject of my challenge, rent-seeking is the only "problem with capitalism" I can think of that I can't say would be solved by getting rid of humans.  It might even be made worse.  Congration, you done it.

I can start a new thread if the subject of robocapitalism outgrows this one.

I'm actually working on two different creative writing projects on this subject, which I might post on here when I'm happy with them.  One is about an r/futurology UBI utopia where robots have full control of the productive apparatus and provide humans the bare minimum requirements of food, shelter, and entertainment, and use remotely-activated contraception implants to keep the population slowly trending towards zero.

The characters wander around their increasingly desolate and run-down city, eating and doing drugs and watching TV, while the protagonist (he was taught to read and think by his parents, who were taught by their parents, and so on, a tradition that dies with the protagonist) tries to make sense of the world through the lens of the books he's managed to scavenge.  Brave New World set in a growing mountain of garbage, basically.

The other one's less traditional, a series of technical documents (memos, corporate training materials, etc.) from a posthuman hyperdemocracy where digitized corporations mass-produce synthetic voters.  The only laws on the books regard the definitions of voting personhood, and the only goal is to adjust those laws to privilege your production and compression methods.  The ends are the means.

[martinuzz]

Trump has appointed a new ambassador to the Netherlands. Pete (born: Piet) Hoekstra, who was one of Trump's candidates for the position of CIA director before, is the new ambassador. 63-year old Pete Hoekstra is known as very conservative, being against abortion, and against gay marriage.
In 2009, he held a speech before Congress on the Dutch resolution, which strongly shows he is still very fond of his country of birth. I guess it's not an illogical pick by Trump.
https://youtu.be/IK-EvNbMjSc

The position for a new ambassador opened up when former ambassador Timothy M. Broas resigned in januari 2016, to spend more time with his family back in the US.

[smjjames]

The economic theory: organic vs synthetic tangent could go in it's own thread. Though I don't think we have an economic theory/philosophy thread.

[Bumber]

I asked for problems with capitalism that aren't related to humans and you start talking about the health of coal miners.  Mining drones controlled by a central server are disposable and the question of earning healthcare is irrelevant.  The server calculates cost of repair vs cost of replacement and makes the rational choice.

I was assuming the algorithms simulated certain human needs. If they don't, then there are far fewer jobs and things to purchase. Either mine for resources, manufacture components, or speculate the stock market. The algorithms exist only to accumulate wealth and seldom spend. The economy eventually grinds to a halt as all cost-effective precious metals are extracted from the surface; stock market crashes. The human analogs hibernate forever to conserve electricity (or begin killing each other for resources,) and probes are sent to other worlds to begin assembling new humanoids on site (because it's cheaper.) They proceed to litter the galaxy with useless machines, and wipe out all biological life that gets in the way.

Communist theory is borne out of awareness of the suffering of humans in a capitalist system (which i'm arguing is a problem with humans, not with capitalism) and a desire to create a more humane distribution of resources.  Those desires are part of humans' evolutionary strategy as a cooperative social animal and wouldn't be present in synthetic lifeforms that didn't evolve from apes.  It's not as much that communism's problems aren't solved by robots, it's that robots have no reason to desire communism.

Communism seeks the most effective distribution of resources (to each according to his need.) Capitalism exists to seek market growth. Exploiting and hoarding wealth can hurt the long-term health of the market, as the elite don't create nearly as much demand as the working classes.

Also self-improving algorithms, lacking altruism and other evolved cooperative strategies, will be naturally competitive in the same way the first organic replicators were.  If capitalism is the allocation of resources to the ones best at exploiting those resources then life itself is capitalistic.

Depends if they're programmed for individual benefit or the benefit of the global economy.

[Max™]

Spoiler: Derail on life and robots and shit (click to show/hide)

I'm actually working on two different creative writing projects on this subject, which I might post on here when I'm happy with them.  One is about an r/futurology UBI utopia where robots have full control of the productive apparatus and provide humans the bare minimum requirements of food, shelter, and entertainment, and use remotely-activated contraception implants to keep the population slowly trending towards zero.

The characters wander around their increasingly desolate and run-down city, eating and doing drugs and watching TV, while the protagonist (he was taught to read and think by his parents, who were taught by their parents, and so on, a tradition that dies with the protagonist) tries to make sense of the world through the lens of the books he's managed to scavenge.  Brave New World set in a growing mountain of garbage, basically.

The other one's less traditional, a series of technical documents (memos, corporate training materials, etc.) from a posthuman hyperdemocracy where digitized corporations mass-produce synthetic voters.  The only laws on the books regard the definitions of voting personhood, and the only goal is to adjust those laws to privilege your production and compression methods.  The ends are the means.

First one sounds like a more serious Idiocracy, second sounds like a spin-off from Accelerando.

Also self-improving algorithms, lacking altruism and other evolved cooperative strategies, will be naturally competitive in the same way the first organic replicators were.  If capitalism is the allocation of resources to the ones best at exploiting those resources then life itself is capitalistic.

>.>

Prior to the mutualistic arrangement where mitochondria became incorporated in proto-eukaryotic cells maybe one could argue this, but afterwards the lack of eukaryotes which diverge from this endosymbiotic route speaks for itself.

[Egan_BW]

Send your resumes* to the White House today! Openings growing every day!

*140 characters maximum

I doubt many qualified people would respond, it'd be like career suicide at this point.

Inb4 Trump has to hire illegal Mexicans to fill White House vacancies because no Amerian in their right mind wants to work for him.

As if there's any shortage of americans outside their right mind.

[Neonivek]

I swear I SWEAR out of EVERYTHING in this campaign, everything that could be chalked up to partisan politics, overbearing news, invented stories.

If Trump pardons his son OR himself... I better not hear ONE word of defense from anyone sensible.

The most I'll accept is "If that was me, I'd pardon my son too" (Or if some REALLY shady stuff goes on in the investigation)

As silly as that sounds that would be the moral event horizon for Trump for me... Even more then crippling several departments with hires specifically chosen to work AGAINST that department's interest... Since that is still party politics that is practically bipartisan at this point

Well unless he calls a hit... and while he did attempt to get the FBI to coerce people for him, it wasn't anything murderous (Sort of >_>.. he has a sort of "Well, I didn't say kill but I am hardly going to correct that assumption" thing going)

[RedKing]

Your moral event horizon is well within the moral Schwarzchild radius, I'm thinking. This whole situation is putting out moral Hawking radiation like a beast.

It may even lead to new cross-disciplinary fields of ethical particle physics, and the discovery of the fabled trumpion -- the only particle which can exist in quantum states of falsehood and is seemingly impervious to all known laws of physics, political science, ethics, and common decency.

[sluissa]

RedKing is right, IMAGINE the new moral physics we could discover if Trump pardoned himself! I mean yeah yeah, there's always the small chance it could destroy all life on earth or tear a hole in morality itself... but it's exciting if it doesn't.

I for one would love to see the moralistic effects of thousands of pitch forks and torches all converging onto a point... Sadly I don't think enough pitch forks exist in the universe anymore. A fear is we'll just get poster board and sharpies again... how boring.

[RedKing]

It could very well destroy the country, imho. A self-pardon would be crossing the Rubicon.

[smjjames]

If he pardoned his son, I'd wonder if he was trying to pardon as a father or as a President, but it'd still be wrong because nepotism and it smacks of the whole 1% thing and rich people getting away with things with minimal consequences.

[Frumple]

I'd mostly be wondering why he was being so cheerful about putting his kid in a state penitentiary, ha. Think I've said it before, but presidential pardons are actually kinda' real goddamn risky.

Admission and exception of guilt on a federal crime can pretty easily mean there's a whole raft of state level ones that suddenly perk their metaphorical ears up and start paying a great deal of (probably rather unhealthy, for you) attention to what you've been doing. At least from what I understand.

Half seem to recall that if you do it at the wrong time (i.e. pardon crimes done previously but before actual conviction), it can even mean double jeopardy clauses aren't in play and state level prosecutors get to have a field day if they're particularly inclined.