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[McTraveller]

Yes, I'm that pedant:  That pulley system sounds like mechanization, not automation.

[Reelya]

It's probably a good distinction to make, even if a strict line couldn't be drawn.

Otherwise, literally every machine becomes "automation" and the term itself becomes meaningless. Because, if the bed-lift is automation, then so is a wheelbarrow, because the wheelbarrow replaces the need to carry things by hand.

[Frumple]

To go back to the topic of automation and nursing for a sec, aren't some form of electronic harness and pulley systems already in use in some care homes? Friend of the family developed pretty severe dementia and so was placed in a care home, and they used an electronic pulley system to get him out of bed instead of doing it by hand.

This is in the UK, so don't know if that's a thing elsewhere yet.

Quick check has some show up. You're talking hundreds of dollars for a patient lift device (that's pretty large and bulky). Lot cheaper to just wear out next of kin, who's still going to be doing a fair amount of lifting even with that sort of aid. Which is an issue when elder care is already ruinously expensive for a lot of folks.

[MorleyDev]

The ones I know of are used in care homes, like when dealing with patients with the level of dementia that requires constant care and therefore a care home. Doubt they'd be used in situations where at-home care is an option, since that should really mean someone can provide some basic level of survival, and more needs someone to pop over and check than 24/7 support.

Otherwise, literally every machine becomes "automation" and the term itself becomes meaningless. Because, if the bed-lift is automation, then so is a wheelbarrow, because the wheelbarrow replaces the need to carry things by hand.

Except that means you need to hire less people to carry stuff, since one person with a wheelbarrow can do the job of several people without. 100% automation is just another stage in the same process that gave rise to the wheelbarrow, but it is still fundamentally just another continuation of the previous mechanizations. This isn't a new problem, it's an accelerating problem that starting picking up speed with the discovery of the steam engine and the collapse of the cottage industry in the industrial revolution that followed, and got another kick with the invention of the transistor.

[Frumple]

Oh, care homes and whatnot has that sort of thing, sure, I think. When they're not skimping on costs or equipment, anyway. They're funded by violently fucking the finances of their patients and their patients' relatives, though. Plenty of stateside families just... don't have the money to get fucked. Gov't support of extended elderly care is pretty slim, generally an utter bitch to get into (particularly for people having to deal with a person that needs the care while trying to navigate that shit) and, of course, forever being sabotaged by GOP anti-healthcare (and everything else) effots.

You still need people to use the things, though. And to convince the patient to get into them, probably clean varyingly literal shit off the devices, etc., etc. They're more wheelbarrow than automated call service or somethin'.

[MorleyDev]

They're funded by violently fucking the finances of their patients and their patients' relatives, though.

Yeah, from the UK perspective here so...care homes for the elderly who lack the capacity for private funding seem pretty "a thing that state should provide".

[Reelya]

Except that means you need to hire less people to carry stuff, since one person with a wheelbarrow can do the job of several people without. 100% automation is just another stage in the same process that gave rise to the wheelbarrow, but it is still fundamentally just another continuation of the previous mechanizations. This isn't a new problem, it's an accelerating problem that starting picking up speed with the discovery of the steam engine and the collapse of the cottage industry in the industrial revolution that followed, and got another kick with the invention of the transistor.

Still no. Because "automation" comes from the root "automatic", and there's nothing automatic about a wheelbarrow. Just reducing the number of workers, but still having everything done manually isn't "automation", since if the humans stop working, the whole thing stops, hence it isn't automatic. It's just a more efficient, but still non-automated process.

Terms become less useful for discussion when they're too broadly applied. If you take that argument of yours to the logical extreme, virtually anything is automation: a calculator is automation, but so is an abacus, because both allow you to have less people needed to add up figures. But ... so is a pencil and paper since a pencil and paper allows the same exact thing: higher productivity when doing calculations. A stick? Means you need less people to kill prey during a hunt. Literally any tool ever = automation. Which you might argue is "correct", but it doesn't leave you with a very useful term for discussions.

The fact is, a term that means everything effectively means nothing, because you can't then use it to specify things, so it's not a useful definition of the term.

[McTraveller]

elder care is already ruinously expensive for a lot of folks.

Truth.  My father in law burned through $40k in savings in 7 months.  Partly because he's half senile and doesn't know how to budget, but also because assisted living is just expensive.

Incidentally, this is a reasonable health care expense: if you are hiring caregivers, it's straight-up labor cost as a minimum.  Consider if you want 4 hours of care every day of the year, which is pretty minimal (it's basically wake up / bedtime, ensuring meds are taken, meals, some basic hygiene).  This is 1460 hours a year.  Say you get a bargain price of only $20/hour - that's still $29,200 a year or $2433 a month.

And because it's "dedicated" care you can't really spread it around - you'd have to get extra funding from people not using the service for it to be affordable.

POST-PREVIEW EDIT:  This is the core of the US health care system debate actually:  any time you have an expensive service used by a few people, and that service is one you want to guarantee (rather than just have it only available to "the rich"), you have to get payments from a lot of people who don't need the service so the service is affordable for the individuals who do need it.  Thus the arguments about just how much those who won't use the service should pay so that those who need it can have it.  And that's even before you get into price gouging, etc.  Just take the example above with a single wage kind of thing, without any overhead at all.

[MorleyDev]

Just reducing the number of workers, but still having everything done manually isn't "automation", since if the humans stop working, the whole thing stops, hence it isn't automatic. It's just a more efficient, but still non-automated process.

Except if you apply so strict a definition then nothing is automated yet, since humans are still involved at various points in every pipeline that presently exists. Even if it's just one person pressing the button to start and stop, or a person whose job is to keep the options up-to-date with the current processes they integrate with.

The problems aren't automating things, it's
* Job losses due to reducing requirement on human labour in one field requiring retraining infrastructure for a new field and the temporary unemployment rates that creates
* If the reduction in human labour increases faster than capacity to produce fresh labour increases. so total possible employment decreases.

This is a problem common to all replacement of human labour with mechanically automatic alternatives, not just 100% replacement with perfect automation. So limiting the discussion just to a hypothetical idealised form of automation isn't useful when discussing the socio-political-economic consequences and management therein.

A wheel-barrow is just as extreme a poor example as a 0% human interaction system would be, when the discussion really needs to focus on the consequences of up-coming and near-future-tech tools that reduce active human participants in that form of labour, whilst mechanised equipment that can allow one person to perform a lifting operation that may have required multiple people is exactly that kind of job-reducing equipment.

[Reelya]

No, that's not correct.

You push a button, some actions happen automatically. Those actions are automated. Therefore, a washing machine is automation, but a manual washboard is not. You're trying to argue that it's all or nothing, that if any human interacts with the system at any point, it's not "automation".

But, wouldn't that include a client ordering a product from an automated factory? After all, the product wouldn't get produced by the factory unless a client ordered it. So, that logically is the same as having a person standing there who pushed the "start" button of the automated factory.

So, we can say that automation is when you replace actions of a person with a machine that does those actions instead of a person. Thus, an abacus isn't automation, since a human must push the beads, but a pocket calculator is automation, since it performs the steps of the algorithms needed to do the basic calculation: it replaces the need for the human to know how to perform the task.

[MorleyDev]

Except that you still need a person to load and unload the washing machine, so the whole washing process is not automated. It reduces the total time and therefore labourers required, but does not eliminate them.

Would it still be automated if a human needed to turn a crank to spin the washing? What if that one human could still wash more clothing faster than 5 people with washboards? Automation is a type of mechanisation, and the ideal type of mechanisation, but the political-social-economical consequences of it are just going to be the most extreme manifestations of the consequences of mechanisation.

[Reelya]

Just because the "whole" process isn't automated doesn't mean that some part of it isn't automated. You're arguing against a straw man.

And anyway, even if the machine loaded and unloaded itself, that still requires a human to give it the order. So you could say that giving the verbal order is a task that was needed to be done manually, so it's still not automation by that standard.

An automated process is one that carries on without human intervention once you set it off. I'd argue that a washing machine washing clothes fits that bill.

You don't have to assume that loading and unloading the machine is part of that automated process. Whether you push a button, give a command or load a machine to start it doesn't change whether what the machine does after you did that is automated or not.

You're just arbitrarily saying that the "washing clothes" process must include the larger context of processes in which it's embedded, and if any of those outer processes aren't automated, then none of the parts can be automated, which isn't actually a coherent argument. It's like saying that a peanut butter sandwich doesn't contain peanuts, on the basis that the bread isn't peanuts.

[MorleyDev]

Just because the "whole" process isn't automated doesn't mean that some part of it isn't automated. Your arguing against a straw man.

My point is that the socio-political-econical consequences of automation are not because automation is special, but because automation is a subcategory of mechanisation. Reducing the effort put into the labour to reduce the total number of people who do the labour is what mechanisation does, wholly automated steps just remove more effort than a wheel barrow or mechanical lifting apparatus, but the considerations you need to put into handling the consequences on jobs and labour markets are the same because the consequences, gradual reduction in total labour required, are the same.

If anything, you need to pass *through* mechanisation and partial automation to reach 100% automation. You aren't going to wake up one day and find all of nursing is done by robots, just that gradually more and more of it is aided by machines and so less people are needed to achieve greater production.

[Reelya]

But now you're changing the entire nature of your argument. We were just argument about the definition of the specific word, but now you're talking about socio-political value systems. That's a non-sequitur.

you talk about the "socio-political-econical consequences of automation" and then point out that this is not that different to the My point is that the socio-political-econical consequences of mechanization". But ... that's entirely besides the point of what we were discussing. Whether or not two different things have some of the same issues associated with them doesn't have any bearing on whether the words mean the same thing or different things.

Just because the consequences of improved tools and the consequences of automation are similar doesn't means improved tools equals automation. Automation is when a process runs without human supervision, no matter how long or short that period is. If a human must manually operate the machine at all time periods, it's not automation, regardless of the "social consequences" being similar.

[MorleyDev]

But now you're changing the entire nature of your argument. We were just argument about the definition of the specific word, but now you're talking about socio-political value systems. That's a non-sequitur.

I think we misunderstood what each other was referring to initailly.

The discussion I was referring to originally was about the automation-and-nursing discussion, which was about how nursing is or isn't automation proof. I thought you objected to my referral of the pulley systems as an example of that lack-of-automation-proofing not being true because there is room for mechanical aide because it isn't 'true' automation.

As I understand it, when we talk about 'automation replacing jobs', all we're really talking about is that process of steps/sections of labour being gradually replaced with ever-increasing mechanisation that ends with it being primarily mechanised with minimal human input required and therefore lowering labour requirements and therefore available jobs vs output over time.

My point was that, isn't the pulley system an example of one such 'mechanisation' which leads to the process that ends in automation?