Singularity Scattershots – 5aug12

George Rebane

The report of the latest employment numbers underlines our deep and abiding national innumeracy.  So-called balanced reports of ‘on this hand, but on the other hand’ completely miss the amassing evidence for the systemic labor problem in these pre-Singularity years.  Here there is no ‘on the other hand’ – the creation of 163,000 jobs in July is not positive in any sense as the unemployment rate notched up to 8.3%.  No one seems to understand the real news is that another approximately 70,000 new people were added to the chronically unemployed rolls, in addition to more people coming out of the woodwork to look for jobs and finding none.  Keep in mind that every year about 4.3M young people exit (not necessarily graduate) our educational system.  Almost all of them enter the workforce which now numbers about 156M, and of which only about 63% are working. Today there are over 40M Americans un- and underemployed, and that number is climbing inexorably.

In ‘New People, New Jobs’ I summarized three areas of technology that could help job creation in developed countries with legions of under-educated and dated-skills workers.  But the bugaboo of the Great Doubling is still there with the taunting refrain ‘anything you can do, we can do cheaper’.  While  pandering his supporters with other fairy tales, part of Obama’s stimulus monies to improve US infrastructure are going to Chinese companies like this one reported by ABC that is building highways and bridges in Texas, California, and other states.

And now there is a new initiative to use advanced algorithmics to farm out even more jobs overseas, and there create any new jobs that come along.  The field is called crowd-sourcing, in which a complex task is broken up into hundreds (thousands?) of simple ‘micro tasks’ which are then farmed out all over the world and managed by an intelligent control algorithm.  The algo divides the task up, parcels it out to human workers (with redundancy), checks and integrates results, parcels out more bite-sized tasks, until the job is done and the results output.

New start-ups like Crowdflower and CrowdSource are building software to operate on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk online odd-job system.  Worldwide workers are paid a pittance for their efforts depending on in which country they live.  Even US workers in such efforts can get paid only $1-2 an hour.  Such workers are really not employees of any company, but simply log on and start following instructions for pay.  More here from MIT Technology Review which proclaims “foreign recruits are the newest cogs in the new crowdsourcing machine”.

Finally, if you’re all done with this frustrating veil of tears and ready to contemplate something more permanent, or at least long lasting, then consider the increasing interest in the study of human immortality (think ‘mind uploading’) and its related area, the hereafter – do not confuse the ‘hereafter’ with ‘immortality’.  The John Templeton Foundation is the latest source for funding such work, having given $5M to UC Riverside’s philosopher John Fischer “to undertake a rigorous examination of a wide range of issues related to immortality.” (more here)

Among the questions also to be considered are – “Is immortality potentially worthwhile or not? Would existence in an afterlife be repetitive or boring? Does death give meaning to life? Could we still have virtues like courage if we knew we couldn’t die? What can we learn about the meaning of our lives by thinking about immortality?”

I’ll take a cut at the first question; make me immortal and I promise to provide a thoughtful and definitive answer.

Comments

[billy T]

Immortality. Would someone with diabetes and Hep-C and heart disease want to live forever? What about "what you sow is what you reap"? Interesting questions proposed by Dr. Rebane. Guess urgency would go out the window. The movie 300 has replaced Road Warrior as my current favorite movie. My favorite line in 300 is when the hero told the hunch backed traitor "I hope you live forever." Perhaps the best curse anyone could wish upon another. Here is a quote I found recently: "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming–WOW–What a Ride!" Unknown

[TomKenworth]

I tried Mechanical Turk once. The question was to look at a photograph and identify whether or not there was a boatyard in the image. I have huge experience in this area, both in being able to read photographs, and in knowing what signs to look for to identify a boatyard, from yachting through oil tankers. I once almost had a five year contract for Raytheon to document new ships being built, and then Congress cut the funding, back in the early 1980's.

Suffice it to say, I know my stuff. I carefully examined and classified over 100 images, in about 46 minutes, I earned about 35 cents as a result, and have never been back since. More effective for me to grow/raise my own food, than to attempt to work at that pay rate.

Finally we get a glimpse of what all the trash talking and smear campaigns against public school are about. A brand new profit center! http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/us-usa-education-investment-idUSBRE8710W220120802

Will they get any better results? I doubt it, not without an antidote for all the advertising and "news" about education and the lack of value and respect for teachers being put in place and promulgated for an equivalent number of years.

[George Rebane]

re billyT 920am - Immortality, in the sense considered by technology and promised by Christianity (and other faiths teaching transcendence), does not include suffering a broken body into the indefinite future or eternity. (BTW, fundamentalists view eternity as time extended to infinity. More deeply studied in the various faiths view transcendent life as not being body or time based, no matter how well the body is subsequently put into good repair.

But technological immortality does include the human psyche re/placed into a vessel that does contemplate an existence where time is experienced indefinitely. Heinlein contemplated such lives in his series on the life and times of the technologically immortal Lazarus Long (q.v.). It was not always a pretty picture. 'Time Enough for Love' starts with Lazarus, having lived beyond endurance, hiding himself so that he can die quietly and alone.

[billy T]

Thank you Dr. Rebane. I was trying to follow the thread "do not confuse the ‘hereafter’ with ‘immortality’" in your post. My thoughts are this. If this is all there is to life, then I am a man most miserable. I choose to believe in the Christian afterlife where time does not exist. Where we say good-bye our worn out bodies and all things negative and have new bodies and a new earth and where there is no male nor female nor tears and pain and suffering will be remembered no more. A "place" were I partake freely of the Tree of Life and drink from the River of Life and sorrows are no more. Funny, I was just discussing Lazarus last night. Hey, maybe we got a bonded thing going, lol.

[Ian Random]

TomKenWorth,

Great link, I hope it continues. Non-profit driven stuff like the public schools need some motivation, otherwise they all turn into DMV like places. I remember my high school math teacher that proudly displayed her math books from college. Turns out that she had no more math than available at our local community college.

[George Rebane]

TomK 928am - Not sure I understand what your opposition is to the outsourcing of school functions to outfits that can deliver higher performance (according to government metrics) at lower cost.

Isn't it worth a try since we know what government schools can't do at the world's highest level of education funding?

[billy T]

I would hazard to say that public education in America has been a complete failure, an abortion of education if you prefer. The defenders of the status quo want more decades and money to keep doing what they have been doing for decades. I suppose if folks saw one little green sprout or hope that the downward trajectory was beginning to level off, many would be more sympathetic to its udder disgrace, aka a cow that does not give milk. Public education is a real milk dud. Americans believe in personal choices. We believe in the 1st Amendment and the freedom to travel and associate with whom we choose. We strongly believe and cherish the freedom to choose and make our own choices. We believe in a competitive marketplace. So, why does that not that apply when taking about government run education? Why is choice a bad thing? Some of us believe in results rather than intentions. Why not judge the abomination called public schools on their results and why continue to oppose choices to set the slaves free? After all, its about our children and the future of the free world. Become Pro-Choice. Fight for the freedom to choose your school.

[billy T]

let my people go: Fire all the staff from the Principal to the janitor: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203315804577209471485459132.html

[TomKenworth]

Hey, their motivation is to make a buck. Once they've complete the sale, who cares where the test scores go. The problem is in the culture of the USA as a whole, not in the classroom teachers, certainly not such that firing the whole lot makes any sense at all. Other than bringing in folks from overseas, where would you find replacements? Mechanical Turks?