Bay 12 Games Forum

Doesn't that sort of feed into the point however?

I was pointing out that your "every scientist (individually) with advanced software" model is missing the point. Less and less is going to about some individual person having some insight and more and more is going to be about building systems where no one really knows the internals. We're already seeing a lot of this. Not only are there systems where no person understands everything, there are more and more black-box systems designed by a machine that nobody really knows why they work. It's not just that nobody has taken the time to check them out, these systems have so many variables it's impossible to comprehend everything in there.

It's sort of a religious belief that nothing is too complex for one human to understand, but that's plain bullshit. Dynamic systems with thousands of units, thousands of states per unit and complex rules of interoperation exist, and even experts are often stumped by what comes out of them. These things are optimized by machine learning and nobody really understands what they are doing internally.

Humans also have cognitive blind spots, even the best of us. There are a lot of things that trip humans up, but computers just see right through them.

Stupidity must be punished - why should we care about people as dumb as that?

Quote from: Reelya on April 19, 2015, 06:21:01 pm

Pre-determined handouts are harder to do than you think as well. Try and come up with a set of rations that will do for everyone in an entire country. You obviously want something that doesn't spoil, so any fresh food is a no-no. But what if people don't want what you're handing out. I've had charity food before. About 70% of the weight is food you will never eat.

Also, what about clothes? It's not like you can hand out "units of clothes" in any reasonable way that everyone will want.

Stamps (like the rationing stamps used in Europe during and after the war) would be a solution; but that would just create humongous inefficiencies. Handing out cash is much easier, and more efficient to boot.

A poll conducted by the Trades Union Congress in 2012 found that perceptions among the British public were that benefit fraud was high - on average people thought that 27% of the British welfare budget is claimed fraudulently; however, official UK Government figures have stated that the proportion of fraud stands at 0.7% of the total welfare budget in 2011/12.

People needs jobs. But we already make too much shit. Hence, service jobs are on the rise.

English Wikipedia suggests the True Finns are social authoritarians and economic leftists. This sounds strangely identical to communist policies for a far-right party.

Being useless ain't so bad, y'know? So long as you don't starve and whatnot.

The "thought economy" is a bit of a red herring here. It's not really a thing.

People who do things with their hands aren't being devalued. Unskilled labor is. And only because it's bad value for money. Smarter ways of working lead to more productivity increases for less money than throwing more unskilled manpower at it. It still takes the synergy between the ideas guy and labor.

Ok we should abolish medical care then, i guess your saying?

This idea that people only need services from other people because of some capitalist conspiracy is silly.

I guess we could lock down the entire entertainment industry and only give people rationed goods. But then we're into "Mao Suit" territory with everyone having their state-approved clothing and state-approved outlets for frustration.

I'm guessing you're thinking of "service economy" as only people mowing your lawn or something, but's it's a whole lot more than that.

In economics, a service is an intangible commodity. That is, services are an example of intangible economic goods.

Once upon a time there were psiocrats (can't spell due to smartphone) who insisted these elitist industrial proponents were wrong because everything came back to food and no number of craftsmen would change the amount of food and other farm products grown. And now we live in a world where 2% of the population farms and most of the food is made by a minority of that 2%.