Ye Olde Videoe Clippe Threade

[infinite monkey]

First thing we do, let's kill all the automation engineers.

I'm too awful for another professional job and too qualified for a factory job (it's not that I think that, I'm gauging that by lack of response.) It's getting very depressing. What's even more depressing is these 'professional' organizations not even bothering to send a 'fuck you' letter. They don't even bother being nice anymore. Don't have to. There will always be someone who will be happy to work for the man.

I don't know what I'll end up doing. It's just awful. Well, that helped my depression.

Well, I haven't hit the real pavement hard, yet. There are a couple places where I can walk in and apply and appeal to them right then and there. I know my spiel; I know my place. "I just want to WORK! I want a physical job. I want to be here every day." I've been so busy doing various jobs for my family I just haven't yet. Next week, when I'm done house-sitting.

But I have spent so much time filling out apps and tweaking my resume. It can take 2-3 hours to sufficiently (in my mind) apply for the public sector jobs I'm used to. I think the whole thing with my last job, reason for leaving, gets me a 'no' right off the bat. That place pretty much fucked up my life, in more ways than one.

Oh it'll work out. It always does.

Sorry, personal tangent, there.

[Griff]

When you start looking hard, you may want to start with temp agencies. You might get enough variation in assignments to get an idea of what you can/want to do or maybe you'd like the temporary gigs.

[infinite monkey]

That's a good idea! Thanks!

[glatt]

I got my current job by temping here 24 years ago and then getting hired because they liked me. Temping can be great.

[Gravdigr]

I got hired into a plastic molding operation from temping there.

The thing I liked about temp agencies, was if I didn't particularly like the current job, I could call them, and unless there was just nothing else, they always had me a different location to go to the next day.


Warning: You will be the lowest form of life to most of the regular employees, regardless of where you temp. Probably. We were.

[Clodfobble]

Temping is awesome! You're never there long enough to get bogged down in office politics. Plus, like glatt said, you can get hired and bumped up the chain to some pretty interesting jobs you never expected. A friend of mine works as a paralegal for a company that makes flight simulators, specializing in the process of international exports of these products, and she started as a temp at the front desk that they liked and hired.

[Undertoad]

When people are peddling fear, just don't buy.

If you want to read the whole thing in one minute, instead of watching a 15 minute video, it's here:

http://www.cgpgrey.com/

(Oh but don't skip over the crowdfunding part, that's the whole point!)

Gist of it all, in case you want to reduce your reading load as much as your video load:

Information workers are going to be automated out just like factory workers.

Reason this is bullshit: Econ 101 tells us that, when the cotton gin was invented, there was a tremendous cry from workers who would be automated out of work. As the video points out, this type of automation has reduced our workload and generated tremendous amounts of wealth. The cotton workers got better and nicer jobs. But now, they claim, there's something different going on because now knowledge workers will be automated.

And then they point out that this has already been happening

And then they fail to point out why this has been bad for us so far

After 150 years of automating the shit out of everything we could possibly automate... including tons of information workers I assure you... we have single-digit unemployment and big screen TVs and work in air-conditioned offices instead of doing back-breaking labor on farms...

So what if the doctors are automated? Won't that mean that healthcare will be much much much cheaper than it is today? I thought from the last decade that healthcare is bleeding the economy dry. What would happen if that gordian knot was disentangled? You say that would be bad now?

Nobody has a real answer to this, because it's unknown and unpredictable. But that's where the opportunity to scare you comes in. Isn't it frightening that we can't actually predict the future? What if it sucks and we're all poor? Well that has never been the case, things have only gotten way way way way way better, and these folks have failed to point out why this would be different, this time. But if you are worried about it just save your money and don't give to their crowdfunding effort.

[glatt]

It's an interesting idea.

If everything becomes automated, then we don't have to work, and the machines will take care of all our needs. Wealth like humanity has never seen it before.

But our economies have always been set up on expecting payment for goods. And we work to get the money to pay for the stuff. If machines do the work, we won't be getting that payment. The only source of money will be owning stock in the companies that own the machines. Or I suppose real estate. You could be a landlord.

I think humanity would have to come up with a different idea of what an economy is.

[Big Sarge]

IM - Temping is a great idea or you could try a government job.

If push comes to shove, you could sit around as a mushroom and sponge off the government. Sometimes you can even get free cheese. It seems to work for me.

[Big Sarge]

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by glatt

But our economies have always been set up on expecting payment for goods. And we work to get the money to pay for the stuff. If machines do the work, we won't be getting that payment. The only source of money will be owning stock in the companies that own the machines. Or I suppose real estate. You could be a landlord.

I think humanity would have to come up with a different idea of what an economy is.

Payment for goods or services, including most importantly, entertainment. Like that horse analogy that they used in the video... the horses aren't all dead, it's just that now we ride them for fun instead of work. On beaches and dude ranches and camps for children. You can easily rent half a dozen ponies for a child's birthday party.

Think about the incredible variety of media we have today, compared to 100 years ago. I can choose from an ever-deepening matrix of movies and TV shows that appeal to my very specific, nuanced tastes. I don't care how good the machines get, we are a long, long way off from artificially-generated live-action films. And that music that we were supposed to be impressed was composed by a computer? It wasn't that great, and more importantly it didn't involve voice, which is what the majority of people want in their music.

On the one hand, the video is right to point out that the majority of creative types aren't making a living at it. On the other hand, the number who are making a living at it is exponentially higher than it used to be. Jobs which will not be automated in the upcoming revolution:

Videogame designer
Interior designer
Fashion designer
Live performers
Musicians
ALL movie jobs
Massage therapist
Childcare
Eldercare
Dentistry
Teachers (professors may go, but studies have shown again and again that screens are useful but fundamentally cannot compete with human interaction for young children.)
Chef (the luxury of quality food ingredients and preparation is already making a comeback)
Judges/Jurors (grand jurors already get paid, and I can see a time where they fully professionalize this arena)
Trial lawyers (maybe a computer can do discovery and write boilerplate briefs, but a computer cannot give an impassioned speech over guilt and innocence.)

[Gravdigr]

I'd agree with most of that...

...except maybe for musicians. A good deal of those are somewhat automated already.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Like that horse analogy that they used in the video... the horses aren't all dead, it's just that now we ride them for fun instead of work. On beaches and dude ranches and camps for children. You can easily rent half a dozen ponies for a child's birthday party.

First world problem... equine pets are very expensive, and most people can't keep them at home, yet there are plenty of horses. So someone has disposable income, or they're spending the kid's college money in grade school.

I don't care how good the machines get, we are a long, long way off from artificially-generated live-action films.

You don't feel Pixar's films have been worthy. I picture an A level arch-criminal sitting at a console with Tony's wall of optical goodness, and one of those big old studio mics, dictating the plot to the computers, which are generating the movie on the fly.

Teachers (professors may go, but studies have shown again and again that screens are useful but fundamentally cannot compete with human interaction for young children.)

Since when does what's best for Sam and Susie enter into equipment/staffing/budget decisions? After the pool of right-out-of-school-will-work-cheap dries up They'll give the machines another gander. At first they will be there to assist the teacher, like just another piece of AV equipment, but soon the robots will be such a big help, the teacher can handle two classrooms. Then Koch brothers proclaim the robots are people and get two votes each. Maybe my imagination is too far in the future... but


Aside ~ This pdf breaks down the horse population by everything from what states have the most horses/race horses, to h\oaw many are pregnant.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

You don't feel Pixar's films have been worthy. I picture an A level arch-criminal sitting at a console with Tony's wall of optical goodness, and one of those big old studio mics, dictating the plot to the computers, which are generating the movie on the fly.

Oh, absolutely. But look at the credits for rendered films, there are three times as many creative types working on them, maybe more. The secret to those films is that no one person comes up with all the stuff that makes them great. Even successful sitcoms and dramas require entire teams of writers. And more than that, the storyline, the jokes, the character design, everything is going to be dependent on current culture in order to strike a chord with audiences, which computers will never be able to keep up with. A computer might figure out that a puffy blue bear captures kids' eye contact more than a skinny red bear, but it will never understand why making it dance the Macarena is hilarious, but the Charleston falls flat. Or why that maybe reverses in another 50 years when no one remembers the ironic club dance, but ironic swing dancing is making another comeback.

[busterb]

IM. I did some temp work for Man power years ago while going to electronic school. I did a few jobs for one company and then bypassed man power and contracted the work.
I think that was for Stein mart, setting up new stores.