# Universal Basic Income - Future or nah?



## oc616 (Sep 21, 2017)

Couldn't see a thread relating to this, but it was brought up elsewhere in a ham-fisted way. I think its worth exploring the idea on a separate post.

The current rapid development of AI and automation has made this an increasingly popular topic of discussion. Much of this revolves around what will be an increasing gap of tech knowledge and skills for the working class as each generation goes on (see the latest South Park for an example: "Mining and driving trucks are not jobs of the future"). I won't go into more detail on this scenario, as it leads to its own tangent, but would UBI be an answer to this?

I'll start with how I would perceive a theoretical UBI system, since I see a lot of different interpretations that range from "literally everyone on welfare" to "it shouldn't exist because its wrong". My proposal will use the UK as an example, since it's the place I best know. 

The UK spent a total of £258 billion on Welfare in 2015. What I am proposing, is that Welfare would be erased and used in part towards this UBI system. However unlike other more Socialist leaning suggestions, it does not end there. The amount UBI would pay out will not provide enough to cover rent + food + travelling expenses as it currently does under welfare, but would instead provide an large portion towards basic survival, with the aim of making work a "top up" of wages to dictate what kind of quality of life you will have. What this would mean is your employer would pay you less, whilst your overall income would be the equivalent of what you have in the current system. Lets say your income per year was £18,000 as someone in a call centre. Your employer would pay you only £8000, where the £10,000 would be the basic income. What this would allow is a greater tax on these companies to support UBI on top of the reassigned funding for Welfare, which looks to be more than enough in theory to accommodate the UK's current population.

Now one of the counter arguments I often see to UBI as a whole is quite a "feelsy" one, with understandable concerns, where it would encourage laziness. If UBI was a pumped-up Welfare system everyone could exist on, then yes I believe it would certainly be a danger, however if the money itself is not enough to give you the quality of life you desire (short of Water, tinned bargain beans and no clothes or transport), then there is your incentive to "top up" your income. What you can then dedicate your time to depends on you. If you are a hard working individual who scoffs at the idea of UBI because "lazy people", well congratulations! By your estimate you will be in more demand under this proposed system than you currently are, again with no less income because you will work as you already do. For those who would like using this time to take more risk in an entrepreneurial manner, your risk will no longer mean you hit zero should it fail. Isn't that what the free market (according to the internet) needs more of to save the economy right now? More people taking more risks and keeping the money moving? So those who are more inclined to be "lazy" still end up in the same position they were always in if they were working, or worse off should they choose not to work full stop. Those who work harder will be in more demand, but also have the option of pursuing something else with the time that they work without falling 100% to a risk which too few are willing to make in the current economic climate.

So in short, your income is still the same as it is under our current system, but your employer would pay you less, be taxed more to accommodate for that, allowing you more options to use for your free time from a financial standpoint.

Anyway, that's just my theory on the potential of UBI, which as I said seems to be different to the majority of ideas I've looked into. Maybe you think some of those hold more water? Maybe you think UBI is the work of the devil? I'd like to see some more thoughts.


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## narad (Sep 21, 2017)

One issue off the bat: £10,000 may go a good bit toward surviving in some places of England, but I'd be dead trying to survive on that in London. Does this basic income vary depending on where you live? What about how many children you have? 

It seems a weird mix of private/public -- public gives me funds and suggests it's enough to get by on, while the private services that are needed to survive -- food, shelter, electricity -- are all private operations and can adjust according to demand, which in turn redefines how much is truly needed to survive. As history shows, these adjustments almost always favor the private services!


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## Demiurge (Sep 21, 2017)

It's an interesting idea, but I don't believe that automation or AI will lead society in that direction. Though just as automation has eliminated a certain segment of middle-class-tier blue collar jobs, it's possible that AI will do the same for middle-class-tier white collar jobs, but it's also possible that the outcome of that is the end of the middle class as we know it. The (United States) government is constantly threatening cuts for a very limited slate of benefits, and they'd rather we devolve to feudalism before offering citizens _more_.


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## oc616 (Sep 21, 2017)

@narad: London is a very weird animal. In some respects, it basically IS the UK in terms of financial impact, to the extent where pricing and infrastructure are so vastly separate from the rest of the country. Obviously this concept requires something slightly harder to change and that is the people's attitude towards this, along with the gradual evening out of prices to better match the rest of us.

@Demiurge: Whilst I do believe it will lead society in a direction where something like this will be necessary in our current numbers, that opinion is based on our attitudes towards work and what it means for us remaining stagnant (i.e: Work is important to being human). I'd love to get into the whole "brains in jars/upload our minds to computers" endgame scenario thing where these issues become irrelevant, but it doesn't add to the theory since it goes well past that chronologically. One example I can speak of in the states for the White Collar jobs is for lawyers. They're dropping like mad, all because you can look most things up online now. Does this mean an endgame scenario where lawyers don't exist? No, but a shrinking necessity? Absolutely.


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## narad (Sep 21, 2017)

oc616 said:


> @naradOne example I can speak of in the states for the White Collar jobs is for lawyers. They're dropping like mad, all because you can look most things up online now. Does this mean an endgame scenario where lawyers don't exist? No, but a shrinking necessity? Absolutely.



Not sure this is true. It'd be like saying doctors are a shrinking necessity because people can look up causes of their symptoms online (LUPUS!?). There's always need for an expert opinion, and it will be a long time before AI can be that expert.


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## oc616 (Sep 21, 2017)

narad said:


> Not sure this is true. It'd be like saying doctors are a shrinking necessity because people can look up causes of their symptoms online (LUPUS!?). There's always need for an expert opinion, and it will be a long time before AI can be that expert.



I don't know, I think there's quite a difference between "oh, so that's how I can sort my taxes efficiently and legally" vs "oh, I might have cancer."


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## narad (Sep 21, 2017)

I don't think sorting out your taxes was ever really the majority of legal work for JDs.


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## vilk (Sep 21, 2017)

Let's imagine two line graphs

Line graph #1: Human population over time

Line graph #2: Available jobs over advancement of automation technology and AI

Now, I realize that these line graphs aren't actually visible before your eyes, but do you notice that one line is going up and the other is going down? That's the issue. It has to be addressed, because the lines aren't just going to magically change directions.
What is the best solution? I don't know. It's a really complicated problem. However, one thing that is obviously _not_ a solution is to sit around and do absolutely nothing to address it. I'm not sure if a 'universal income' plan would turn out good or bad, but at least it's something.

My personal idea is to adjust the work week standard. But then again, if we're getting a decent base under universal income, only someone who really wants that cash will have to work 40 hours a week, someone who is happy living at medium standards should be able to get by doing 30 hours. And especially in one of those civilized cultures where there's public health care.


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## bostjan (Sep 21, 2017)

The obvious question with all proposals like this is "Who pays for it?" It's certainly a possible scenario, but without figuring out the front-end of something like this, you can't figure out the other end.

And I don't think the problem is that there aren't enough jobs for humans to do. There are too many shitty jobs that people don't really want, either because they are not fun or they pay very poorly. I think businesses have gotten the idea that people are worth a certain amount of money, and then when stuff gets made wrong or they have whichever quality issues, no one really wants to properly address the fact that paying your workers half of what they are worth leads them to take their jobs only half as seriously as they ought to.


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## coffeeflush (Sep 21, 2017)

There was a discussion about this in India , it wont be implemented anytime soon, but it will be up for review in 2022 again. 
Depending on how the job market turns out, it could be seriously implemented by 2030. 

"The obvious question with all proposals like this is "Who pays for it?" It's certainly a possible scenario, but without figuring out the front-end of something like this, you can't figure out the other end."
Companies need customers, even if entire AI's run their operations, they will need to acquire data, they can either give free services in return or pay the subjects for their data. Money should ideally disappear as a concept. 

Of course this is assuming everything goes ideally, we have North Korea war threat looming, still strong presence of Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan etc and China that behaves like a bully.


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## bostjan (Sep 21, 2017)

coffeeflush said:


> Money should ideally disappear as a concept.



A) I don't understand how that addresses the question, though.
B) If the very concept of money is voided, then isn't this entire discussion also moot?

I don't think the concept of money will go away, though. If I want to eat food, I need access to food to eat. Someone needs to produce that food, though, in any case, so if I offer no incentive to the person producing food for me to eat, then they simply will not give me food. If I offer them some incentive to make food for me, then they are infinitely more likely to do so - I could offer them a service or a physical resource they desire, or else, more conveniently, I could offer them money - a token that they can use to trade to anyone else for goods and services. I just think the money option is the most convenient.

We tried once to switch from government sanctioned moneys to electronic moneys and the world wasn't quite ready for that, but either way, it's still money.

We keep going this direction in the discussion, though, like the general idea people get is "oh well, if a robot can add the value I used to add to something, then not just my profession, but the entire idea of profession becomes obsolete," and there is just not enough logical meat to that argument for it to be taken seriously. There will always be something for people to do. As machines or robots or computers replace us from one task, we need to simply find more interesting tasks to do in their stead. Some day in the distant future, when robots replace us from doing every imaginable thing, if we haven't imagined new things by then, then why should we exist beyond that point?


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## CrazyDean (Sep 21, 2017)

Too much value is given to a single human life.


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## coffeeflush (Sep 22, 2017)

Food outside the US and Europe is actually damn cheap to mass produce. Its the transportation and distribution that costs a lot. 
Converting it into a powdered slop like Soylent can actually help regarding that 
By cheap I mean less than a dollar for a whole day cheap. 

When you decentralize power production, it becomes really cheap. We just have to keep on working on reducing power consumption as we currently are with chips/lighting solutions/pumps etc

Same for water distribution

Energy for heating is a tough one, Germany is struggling still to get rid of coal and other countries have not fared much better. 

With AI coming in, I do agree that lot of jobs will be gone, until recently I was working on site in construction. 90% of what I do, can be replaced by a Microsoft programme that can recognize safety hazards and monitor on site activities, as well as produce bills , calculate quantities of materials etc. Personally I think this is necessary as construction is an inefficient industry and this will bring down prices that have been unnecessarily inflated. 

That being said though, what Bostjan said is correct , there will be jobs for humans too (how man idk, even robots can compose music now and good one at that) and they will be compensated better than they are now.

But I put my money on Humans becoming cyborg hybrids and living with AI as a part of their body and mind. There is an interesting book on the topic if someone cares


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## inaudio (Sep 22, 2017)

coffeeflush said:


> Money should ideally disappear as a concept.



But how will we then decide who gets to have a Daemoness built by Dylan?

I know that sounds a bit like a joke but it's something that came up in a discussion I had with a friend. When there's limited supply of something how would you handle high demand?


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## bostjan (Sep 22, 2017)

coffeeflush said:


> Food outside the US and Europe is actually damn cheap to mass produce. Its the transportation and distribution that costs a lot.
> Converting it into a powdered slop like Soylent can actually help regarding that
> By cheap I mean less than a dollar for a whole day cheap.



They are surmountable, but there are still challenges. Baby formula in China is dirt cheap. But it also contains dirt. And lead. So, even though Chinese baby formula is very cheap, and American baby formula is very expensive. China can rationalize that "well, having a baby is a luxury, so whatever." Other cultures disagree.

What happens when China takes over soylent production and starts using pork byproducts? How are people in Indonesia going to react to that? And what happens when a batch of soylent from Bangladesh ends up with cadmium in it, because the workers there, making less than a penny a day, deprived of sleep and proper nutrition, accidentally swap the industrial effluent streams between the food factory and the nuclear missile factory.



coffeeflush said:


> When you decentralize power production, it becomes really cheap. We just have to keep on working on reducing power consumption as we currently are with chips/lighting solutions/pumps etc



This goes back and forth. Advances in things like wind and solar electricity make localized distribution easier, but then big power companies are always pushing forward research to make big power companies make more money by distributing power further and further away, using bigger and bigger transformers (in terms of MVA ratings) or HVDC. At some point, it'll be cheaper to generate wind where it's windy and solar where it's sunny. We already have strict limitations on where we can generate hydroelectric power. It also makes more sense to transport electricity over long distances than to transport oil, coal, or even natural gas, so building power plants wherever resources are bountiful and extending the distribution grid further into other regions is ultimately the future of infrastructure.



coffeeflush said:


> Same for water distribution



Hmm, this one is real trouble. One thing is that people need water to survive, and there is no way around that. But water is heavy and difficult to transport, compared to just about everything else. Because it's one of the most universal solvents, it picks up contamination from everything it touches, so decentralized water production is going to be key for the future, but, ...how? If I live in the Atacama Desert, where am I going to find something wet to make my water? I think the major major step is to figure out how to turn oceanwater into potable drinking water economically, then perhaps simply abandon places where there is no water and no nearby ocean, like much of Siberia, the central Southwest USA, etc. But several key technologies have to be able to advance, or else the human population of the world will have to cap off when water becomes too scarce.



coffeeflush said:


> Energy for heating is a tough one, Germany is struggling still to get rid of coal and other countries have not fared much better.
> 
> With AI coming in, I do agree that lot of jobs will be gone, until recently I was working on site in construction. 90% of what I do, can be replaced by a Microsoft programme that can recognize safety hazards and monitor on site activities, as well as produce bills , calculate quantities of materials etc. Personally I think this is necessary as construction is an inefficient industry and this will bring down prices that have been unnecessarily inflated.
> 
> ...




No one is ever 100% irreplaceable in the job force. It all boils down to economics, though. If you don't make a crazy high wage, do decent work, don't cause drama, and do something relevant to your company, it's cheaper for them to keep you than replace you with a $100MUSD robot with a $75kUSD/year maintenance budget. The sad part, though, is if your coworkers slag about or cause problems for your employer, you will get canned in solidarity with the rest of them. I think a significant part of why there is so much interest in automated trucking is because a) insurance is too expensive, and b) truckers falling asleep behind the wheel and causing damage to property and human life has become so high-profile. And really a major component of why (a) is a problem is because of (b) as well. So 5% of truckers are essentially responsible for poisoning the well for the other 95%, although, really, the automation was probably inevitable at some point, just like everything else. Everywhere I've ever worked that has gone through some automation project, though, the automation was always very expensive, and the corporate agenda tied back to some issue that everyone agreed was a problem, even if automation wasn't the ideal solution as much as just firing the troglodyte who kept sticking the boss's keys and office supplies in the press/lathe/core/cyclotron/whatever, chuckling like a Beavis and Butthead character all the while. Or, in a lot of cases, replacing a harmful task with a machine. If an assembly line has to hire a guy to bend over and pick up a heavy box/bail/part and lift it onto a conveyor, and the company intends to replace him with another conveyor or a robot arm or hydraulic piston, no one usually complains too much, especially after seeing what a few years on the job does to that employee's back.


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## TedEH (Sep 22, 2017)

I must be the only one who isn't convinced that AI is actually as capable, or ever will be, as people are claiming. AI cannot, and (as far as I can tell) will never be able to replace an actual thinking person in a lot of roles. Automation is a real thing, but that's been around for quite a while, and we're not "obsolete" yet. And people still need to create and maintain these "AIs"- the development life-cycle for most software doesn't generally mean you can create a thing and let it run off into the sunset on it's own. Software is usually not very solid. It's bug-riddled, and full of clever hacks, and assumptions, and compromises. And it doesn't really think for itself, despite calling it "intelligence".


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## bostjan (Sep 22, 2017)

Just for humour-

Imagine a world where essential service workers are replaced by robots. Your home is on fire, and someone has come to save you from the burning wreckage closing in around you...it's...Honda Robotics?







Well, rescue didn't go as planned, let's turn on the firehose!






Well, @!#[email protected]!


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## vilk (Sep 22, 2017)

In these sorts of discussions, I always hear people say things like



bostjan said:


> There will always be something for people to do. As machines or robots or computers replace us from one task, we need to simply find more interesting tasks to do in their stead.



now I'm no math whiz, maybe even the opposite, but in order for people to maintain the same ratio of employment, we'd have to 'invent' one _new job_ for every one job taken by AI/automation. Also keep in mind that ordinarily one robot can take the place of several people. Now unless we imagine a scenario where human population decreases over time, it still seems like there's going to be a serious problem.

To say that "Don't worry, there will never be 100% absolutely NO human labor" seems kind of like a strawman fallacy, because I'm pretty sure no one is actually worried about that. We're worried about what will happen long before we get anywhere near 100%. It makes me wonder, at about what percent will our system as we know it start breaking down? 25%? less? more?


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## bostjan (Sep 22, 2017)

vilk said:


> In these sorts of discussions, I always hear people say things like
> 
> 
> 
> ...



To be fair, though, the entire "robots are taking our jobs!" argument is one big strawman fallacy based off of pure speculation.

Overpopulation actually is a much more real problem for the job market, since many jobs don't scale up in necessity 1:1 with population. I've taken flack for saying this before, but the same goes for outsourcing. You had hundreds of highly skilled automotive engineers, for example, laid off by Chrysler when Daimler bought the company more than a decade ago - because they already had their own German engineers. I haven't heard of any downturns in automotive engineering being blamed on advances in software. Both of those issues (overpopulation and outsourcing) have a much larger impact on the feasibility of Universal Basic Income (which, if we recall, is the topic at hand, after all) than automation anyway.

Take any specific example of something happening now or that happened recently, and go from there, if you want to try to keep an arm's length from the strawmen.


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## TedEH (Sep 22, 2017)

vilk said:


> in order for people to maintain the same ratio of employment, we'd have to 'invent' one _new job_ for every one job taken by AI/automation.


I don't know that the goal needs to be new unique roles- does it not accomplish the same thing to just expand the number of jobs in existing roles? If we have more automation, more AI, then we need more software engineers and things like that. I don't see a need to "invent new jobs" so much as just re-arrange/displace existing ones.


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## vilk (Sep 22, 2017)

Maybe I'm confused about how logical fallacies work, because I thought "strawman" means that when faced with an argument, instead of countering that specific argument, making up a new 'bad guy' that's easier to beat and then beating it and acting like you beat the original argument when you technically haven't. So in that regard I don't see how worrying about the fate of society as we can plainly see AI/automation taking away human labor jobs is a strawman. Maybe it could be used in a strawman if the debate was regarding unemployment on account of outsourcing, but that's not what we're talking about...

I was never in the debate club ^^; ...


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## vilk (Sep 22, 2017)

TedEH said:


> If we have more automation, more AI, then we need more software engineers and things like that.



Even if that is true to some degree, it would have to be at 1:1, which was more my point than to suggest we have to make new _kinds_ of jobs. That's actually not even what I was trying to write.


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## narad (Sep 22, 2017)

vilk said:


> Even if that is true to some degree, it would have to be at 1:1, which was more my point than to suggest we have to make new _kinds_ of jobs. That's actually not even what I was trying to write.



Robots are going to be real shit at landscaping for quite a while...


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## narad (Sep 22, 2017)

bostjan said:


> Take any specific example of something happening now or that happened recently, and go from there, if you want to try to keep an arm's length from the strawmen.



Well we'll see how much of a strawman that is when autonomous vehicles takeover the trucking and taxi industries. There's a reason Uber bought basically all of CMU's robotics lab...


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## vilk (Sep 22, 2017)

narad said:


> Robots are going to be real shit at landscaping for quite a while...


Who knows, maybe that will be one of the last human labor positions to be replaced by automation.

For me it's a little bit hard to guess at which things will be replaced next outside of what we already basically know will almost certainly be, like drivers and cashiers. It also has to do with (as bostjan mentioned) what you can outsource. Like, if it weren't for that outsourcing customer service to India is so inexpensive I bet there'd be a lot more going into AI Customer Service bots. I'm pretty sure there already is, but it has to compete with outsourcing. I'll tell you what, for people who aren't good at listening to thick accents over the phone, the AI-CS bots are probably preferable. 

With regards to landscaping, under-payed undocumented Mexican immigrants are sorta like outsourcing... just minus the "out".


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## narad (Sep 22, 2017)

I really don't see outsourcing as the big concern. AI is poised to tackle lots of menial intelligence-based jobs (like online/phone customer service), and once you have one reasonably good AI for a specific customer service job, you have it for almost _all_ customer service jobs. Just one company pushing AI tech to that level immediately replaces millions of jobs with essentially no maintenance cost. I find that far more destructive. How many people work simple call center / tech support?

In contrast, traditional automation, where a machine physically replaces your job, is probably not anything we'll really see in a high-impact way for decades. That's the real strawman, but that's mostly just stemming from a misunderstanding of the manner in which AI will become pervasive in our lives.


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## bostjan (Sep 22, 2017)

vilk said:


> Maybe I'm confused about how logical fallacies work, because I thought "strawman" means that when faced with an argument, instead of countering that specific argument, making up a new 'bad guy' that's easier to beat and then beating it and acting like you beat the original argument when you technically haven't. So in that regard I don't see how worrying about the fate of society as we can plainly see AI/automation taking away human labor jobs is a strawman. Maybe it could be used in a strawman if the debate was regarding unemployment on account of outsourcing, but that's not what we're talking about...
> 
> I was never in the debate club ^^; ...


At the risk of sounding combative, even though that's honestly not my intent here:
So, the topic at the top of the thread is "*Universal Basic Income*"
Which specific point were you arguing against when you first brought up automation?
And then after you brought it up, I said that there would always be other jobs, and you quoted me and said that's a strawman argument. If I can point back to my counterpoint as a direct response to you bringing up automation as a reason to fear for job security, then how is that a strawman fallacy?

----

With regard to AI CSR's on call lines, I think that could actually be great material for SNL or something. Imagine some hard-of-hearing grumpy nothing-is-no-damn-good-anymore octogenarian trying to interact with a VR AI CSR over the phone. It'd humourous for young people to think about it, but now put yourself in the shoes of the old guy. You honestly can't make out what the voice on the other end of the phone is saying, and you are probably calling because something that made perfect sense to you changed with some sort of product, and now it makes no sense at all to you, so you call for help, only to have to interact with a robot over the phone - bitter irony.

Anyway, CSR's essentailly _have_ been automated. When was the last time you called customer service and didn't get an automated system?!


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## vilk (Sep 22, 2017)

bostjan said:


> Which specific point were you arguing against when you first brought up automation?



I wasn't?

I was only saying that in my mind, automation and AI are part of what would eventually create necessity for a universal income system. I also said that I have no idea if a universal income system would even actually be corrective.

I wasn't being facetiously humble; I've really never taken any debate or Logic, so no need to have perceptions of combativeness--I promise I'm probably just wrong.

Are there many people who don't automatically tie together the need to re-organize our monetary/financial system with increasing population and gradual conversion to automated labor?


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## Drew (Sep 22, 2017)

narad said:


> Robots are going to be real shit at landscaping for quite a while...


My buddy's Roomba says otherwise.  

I think automation has been and will continue to be a major source of job losses for the foreseeable future - we've already discussed at length how Trump's claims that manufacturing jobs will come back if we lean harder on companies working overseas are BS because so many of the jobs lost in manufacturing have been as the result of greater automation necessitating fewer human laborers. You're seeing it in other fields as well though, and some less obvious ones - so-called "robo-advisors" are the hot new topic in finance industry disruptive innovation, where computer algorithms are selecting model allocations based on investor questionnaires and then implementing using funds or ETFs, rather than hiring human financial advisors. Meanwhile, equity trading desks have slashed headcount in recent years as algorithmic trading becomes more common, and even fixed income desks are starting to shrink a little. And these are traditional "white collar" and "skilled" occupations. 

This reminds me of the EU's toying with the idea of leveeing payroll taxes on robots - not only does it make human labor and investment in technology more equivalent from a tax standpoint, if we ever get into a future where there simply aren't enough jobs to go around, the tax base would be gutted as employment shrinks, and in theory this could be used for some form of universal basic income. 

Of course, the devils are in the details, so I won't get any further into UBI other than merely stating I haven't seen a proposal that would really be workable. I like the idea of a basic income freeing people to work in areas they might otherwise be if they didn't have to worry about making a living - I probably wouldn't be a financial analyst if I didn't have to worry about making a living - but providing everyone enough money to live on without doing serious economic damage along the way is sort of a challenge. I mean, if you have perfect universal basic income, and everyone's income is being fully provided by the government, then income taxation is by definition not going to be enough to generate enough revenue to pay that income, you know?


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## coffeeflush (Sep 22, 2017)

bostjan,
I am in the middle of travelling so cannot reply in detail, highly suggest you check the book out. 

but , AI is monstrously smart already. It can do lot of things that humans can and it does not demand insurance, indulge in office politics of workers unions etc. Most manufacture jobs, low scale labour, but also advanced stuff like management will go to AI. Its already happening in the US on a massive scale. 

Bostjan, ill skip the energy answers for now, but world population is expected to decrease sometime halfway through this century. Decrease strongly at that. Future problem wont be feeding the masses, it will be lack of masses.


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## coffeeflush (Sep 22, 2017)

*World population growth rate 1950–2050*


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## Drew (Sep 22, 2017)

coffeeflush said:


> bostjan,
> I am in the middle of travelling so cannot reply in detail, highly suggest you check the book out.
> 
> but , AI is monstrously smart already. It can do lot of things that humans can and it does not demand insurance, indulge in office politics of workers unions etc. Most manufacture jobs, low scale labour, but also advanced stuff like management will go to AI. Its already happening in the US on a massive scale.
> ...





coffeeflush said:


> *World population growth rate 1950–2050*


Um, not to nitpick, but that's a chart of the population _growth rate_, and not a chart of the world _population_. While yes, the growth rate has been slowing and will likely continue to do, by 2050 the growth rate is still forecast to remain positive, at maybe 0.42% or so. Doesn't seem like much, but compound 0.42% for 50 years and you have 23.3% total growth. 

Barring catastrophe, changes in family planning, war, or major disease, the earth's population will continue to rise over the next century, based on existing forecasts.


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## narad (Sep 22, 2017)

And by 2090 or so we'll have a projected 0% growth rate! Seems like a super accurate plot!


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## PunkBillCarson (Sep 22, 2017)

I've been in a factory for 9 years, which is relatively not very long compared to industry but what I have observed in our factory is that automation rarely eliminates jobs where I work. If anything, all it does is make it necessary for one more troubleshooter/coordinator and a couple of more people than before to operate it. There was a job that was automated not long ago that had one person performing the task beforehand, and then afterwards, it ended up being four people. I won't deny that they would try to eliminate a person if they could to save money, but from what I've observed my company has been more interested in getting the most out of production. 

Automation doesn't necessarily always mean elimination, especially since AI is nowhere near where these big bosses would like it to be. I won't go into detail about what I specifically do at my place of work, suffice it to say that AI simply is not ready for it. Hell, my bosses don't even like getting new parts for 100 year old machines that are broken down, to say nothing of spending an ungodly amount on shit that won't work any better, or rather near as good as a rational person can.


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## bostjan (Sep 22, 2017)

coffeeflush said:


> *World population growth rate 1950–2050*



That might be, but 2090 is a long way away, and that is when the world human population, according to that model, should peak. Not to mention that the five years of data from 2010-2015 showed faster population growth than the projection you posted, already. This model might be right, but it's a projection based off of a projection, based off of the idea that people in Asia will continue to not have children, and that people in Africa will start not having children. I don't really think the evidence these studies cite is anywhere near conclusive enough to guess the change in the growth rate as a constant.

This is a sort of calculus problem, like if you looked at a car's acceleration and then guess where it would be 40 years from now, based off of that. Not very concrete. For example, if I saw a car go from 0-60 mph in 15 seconds, does that mean that three minutes from now, the car will be going 720 miles per hour?! Would the car be 64800 miles away by that time? That's a ridiculous kind of projection, but it's analogous to these sorts of studies.


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## coffeeflush (Sep 24, 2017)

True that slight variations will produce different results. How exactly it will end up, none of us can say. 

As far as Asia goes, there are not enough qualified people to go around but there are lot of jobs. Despite recent slowdown, there are lot of people who have wealth and a hunger for first world lifestyle, this means more development, more goods to be purchased etc. 

Good thing is, solar is growing, there is a push for electric vehicles too, much bigger than in the USA for example. 

AI might be feasible in the US, but it will take sometime to come to India and other parts of asia, that still have skewed access to high bandwidth Internet (though a friend in the US recently told me that its not like the US is much better off in this regard)

There was already an example of a company , where the entire management was replaced by AI. I can't find it at the moment, made the last post half asleep,so pasted wrong graph etc. 

Anyways,here is a relevant article. 
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/


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## CrazyDean (Sep 24, 2017)

bostjan said:


> This is a sort of calculus problem, like if you looked at a car's acceleration and then guess where it would be 40 years from now, based off of that. Not very concrete. For example, if I saw a car go from 0-60 mph in 15 seconds, does that mean that three minutes from now, the car will be going 720 miles per hour?! Would the car be 64800 miles away by that time? That's a ridiculous kind of projection, but it's analogous to these sorts of studies.



I got 18 miles using algebra. Even using your final velocity of 720mph, you only get 36 miles in three minutes.


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## Drew (Sep 25, 2017)

coffeeflush said:


> True that slight variations will produce different results. How exactly it will end up, none of us can say.


As far as walk-backs of "I just realized the chart I posted shows the opposite of what I thought it said," this is pretty damned inspired.


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## bostjan (Sep 25, 2017)

CrazyDean said:


> I got 18 miles using algebra. Even using your final velocity of 720mph, you only get 36 miles in three minutes.


I'm not sure if you are trying to be funny of if you simply missed the point I was trying to make.


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## CrazyDean (Sep 25, 2017)

bostjan said:


> I'm not sure if you are trying to be funny of if you simply missed the point I was trying to make.



I'm not trying to be funny. I felt like your post was pretentious. You are aware that most of the people on this forum known little to nothing about calculus or data modeling. Trying to use big words to make yourself feel better or more knowledgeable than others is rude. I was simply pointing out that your calculations were wrong.


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## bostjan (Sep 25, 2017)

CrazyDean said:


> I'm not trying to be funny. I felt like your post was pretentious. You are aware that most of the people on this forum known little to nothing about calculus or data modeling. Trying to use big words to make yourself feel better or more knowledgeable than others is rude. I was simply pointing out that your calculations were wrong.


I wasn't clear when I said "by that time," but that wasn't my point.
You can take my knowledge as good or bad, if you like, but, either the point I made was right, wrong, or irrelevant.


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## TedEH (Sep 25, 2017)

CrazyDean said:


> Trying to use big words to make yourself feel better or more knowledgeable than others is rude.


Using big words is not 'rude'. Realistically, lots of people on this board are legitimately intelligent and knowledgeable. Lots of people here are much smarter than me- I don't take it as offensive, I take it as an opportunity to learn something.


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## bostjan (Sep 25, 2017)

TedEH said:


> Using big words is not 'rude'. Realistically, lots of people on this board are legitimately intelligent and knowledgeable. Lots of people here are much smarter than me- I don't take it as offensive, I take it as an opportunity to learn something.


I see the board the same way. We all have different areas of strengths and weaknesses. I used to think I was smart, then I went to college and hung around with actual smart people. Then I thought I was halfway decent at guitar, and then I started hanging out here with real guitar players. Even if it does absolutely nothing for my self esteem, maybe it at least makes me a little better at doing the things I'm interested in doing.
I guess it doesn't help with my social skills, though, if I still come off as pretentious everywhere I go. I really don't mean to be that way. I guess I should find a board for people with halfway decent social skills and hang out there for a little while.


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## AngstRiddenDreams (Sep 26, 2017)

CrazyDean said:


> I'm not trying to be funny. I felt like your post was pretentious. You are aware that most of the people on this forum known little to nothing about calculus or data modeling. Trying to use big words to make yourself feel better or more knowledgeable than others is rude. I was simply pointing out that your calculations were wrong.



The idea is it's not valid to assume that growth (in the case of a car it's acceleration) is going to be constant. Calculus is all about rates of change. Speed is the rate of change of position and acceleration is the rate of change of speed. The car example is saying that a car may be accelerating 0-60 in 15 seconds but it's acceleration will change as it approaches 60, likely becoming zero. So the acceleration is not constant.
I think that's what he's saying about population growth. While we can look at the rate of change right now, it doesn't mean it's going to be constant forever.
It's not something that algebra can encompass. A straight line going up in the Y as it changes in X will have a constant rate of change. But things like a parabola (think U shaped thing, sometimes upside down) have varied rates. Figuring out that rate is what calculus does.


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## Drew (Sep 26, 2017)

CrazyDean said:


> I'm not trying to be funny. I felt like your post was pretentious. You are aware that most of the people on this forum known little to nothing about calculus or data modeling. Trying to use big words to make yourself feel better or more knowledgeable than others is rude. I was simply pointing out that your calculations were wrong.


Wait, we're having a conversation about data modeling the world population growth rate, and you think it's pretentious to introduce concepts like _data modeling_?


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## tedtan (Sep 26, 2017)

I agree with the prior several posters - bostjan's analogy was neither pretentious nor self serving. In fact, it was an appropriate response to the graph it referenced.


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## CrazyDean (Sep 26, 2017)

A good example needs good data to back it up. The numbers given didn't look right to me so I worked out the problem myself. The mistake that bostjan made was not converting the units from seconds to hours.

And yes, the solution to the given example was calculable using algebra. I didn't take a single derivative. I just used the position formula for an object moving in one dimension with no air resistance:

x_f = x_i + v_i*t + (1/2)(a_i)*t^2 .

The above formula can be derived using calculus if you so choose. However, it can also be derived algebraically. Anyway, it is irrelevant because the formula itself is quadratic algebra.

Also, there was no change in acceleration stated. It must be assumed that acceleration is constant because the only example given was a simple one of 0-60mph. Therefore, the problem would be unsolvable if you considered a change in acceleration.

At first I was just pointing out the mistake, but as usual, nobody can be bothered to check the math themselves. It's just easier to assume it was right and that I'm an asshole for correcting him.


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## vilk (Sep 27, 2017)

for making assumptions and calling someone pretentious for having an uplifted vocabulary*


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## bostjan (Sep 27, 2017)

CrazyDean said:


> A good example needs good data to back it up. The numbers given didn't look right to me so I worked out the problem myself. The mistake that bostjan made was not converting the units from seconds to hours.
> 
> And yes, the solution to the given example was calculable using algebra. I didn't take a single derivative. I just used the position formula for an object moving in one dimension with no air resistance:
> 
> ...



That is correct, the problem can be solved using algebra. Actually any problem can be solved using algebra if you have an algebraic formula for that problem.

If you know position is half of acceleration multiplied by time squared, then:

t = 40 years
a = 60 mph in 15 s

Converting units to mks:

t = 1262269440 s
a = 0.0011111... mi/s²

1/2 a t² = 1/2 * .001111111... mi/s² * 1262269440 s = ~1.77 trillion miles. (about 650 times the distance between the Earth and Neptune, or about 1/14th of the distance between the Sun and the next nearest star)

I apologize for the sloppiness. My point was not the mathematics of the example, though, rather how the mathematics work with a sloppy example such as that. I thought that was clear, but obviously not, since we are still discussing it days later.

So, back to my point, you cannot take the rate of change of the rate of change in something that is known to not have a constant second derivative and extrapolate accurately out tens of years. Specifically, knowing the population, instantaneous rate of change of population, and the instantaneous rate of change in population growth does not mean that one can accurately predict the population 80 years from now (~4 generations). It might be the closest you can get, but my point is that you just cannot know with any certainty - in 80 years, there could be world war, nuclear war, genocide, climate change, global famine, plague, having the machines take over violently, etc., or, in that time, it is also possible that we could have breakthroughs that allow even more population, like a genetically altered resilient staple crop, space colonization, underground cities, etc.

So what we do know is that right now, the world's population is huge, and is still growing rapidly. Overpopulation is already a concern in many places, and it's going to get worse in the near future, from a global perspective. Even if it corrects itself in the next generation, we still have a problem to deal with it now.

I know I'm not seeing the whole picture, but I still propose that as a valid point. If not, let's discuss.


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## CrazyDean (Sep 27, 2017)

bostjan said:


> That is correct, the problem can be solved using algebra. Actually any problem can be solved using algebra if you have an algebraic formula for that problem.
> 
> If you know position is half of acceleration multiplied by time squared, then:
> 
> ...



Sorry for being an asshole, then. If you don't express your math clearly, it's hard to tell if you're being sloppy or you're pulling it out of your ass.

Annnnywayyy, a UBI is something to aspire to, but as of right now, it won't work in the US. Minimum wage isn't really enough to live on, so UBI would need to be so close to it that working at McD's wouldn't be worth it.

Say you are an adult with no skills who lives at home and only needs a part-time job so you can go out to a movie or whatever. In this case, the $7.25/hr that McD's pays is worth working 20-30 hours/week because it's all spending money. If your UBI was 80% of that, there's not much reason to get a job.

Change is scary, but this isn't the first time machines have claimed jobs. There used to be a job position called "knocker-up" who went around with a long stick and knocked on people's windows before the alarm clock was available to the masses. There are also no more milkmen. Before refrigeration, there was a job of cutting and selling ice in large bricks so that people could keep their food cold. 

I expect that we will get through the tech boon just as we have in the past. New technology creates new job titles. However, the good jobs that require little education are drying up. We need to focus on education as opposed to UBI.


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## narad (Sep 27, 2017)

CrazyDean said:


> Change is scary, but this isn't the first time machines have claimed jobs. There used to be a job position called "knocker-up" who went around with a long stick and knocked on people's windows before the alarm clock was available to the masses. There are also no more milkmen. Before refrigeration, there was a job of cutting and selling ice in large bricks so that people could keep their food cold.
> 
> I expect that we will get through the tech boon just as we have in the past. New technology creates new job titles. However, the good jobs that require little education are drying up. We need to focus on education as opposed to UBI.



I don't view these as comparable. Previous tech replaced manual labor. Current/future tech is replacing intelligent behavior. Sure, this creates _some_ jobs to develop and improve such technology, but the scale of new jobs vs the jobs they're replacing should be staggering.


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## bostjan (Sep 27, 2017)

CrazyDean said:


> Sorry for being an asshole, then. If you don't express your math clearly, it's hard to tell if you're being sloppy or you're pulling it out of your ass.
> 
> Annnnywayyy, a UBI is something to aspire to, but as of right now, it won't work in the US. Minimum wage isn't really enough to live on, so UBI would need to be so close to it that working at McD's wouldn't be worth it.
> 
> ...



I appreciate the opportunity to clarify 

I think your first point is a very strong one. There are jobs that are designed to be for high school kids saving up for a car or people living in mom's basement/on a friend's couch, trying to get on their feet. These jobs are *not designed to ever be a part of a career.* But since manufacturing jobs that kept people gainfully occupied in the 20th century are essentially gone now, for whatever reason we don't want to argue anymore about, a lot of young adults started working at McD's/BK/RiteAid/whatever, not knowing what the hell else to do.

But, at the same time, I'm kind of pissed. Do you know how many electrical grid engineers there are? 70% of the ones I know (and I work with a ton of them across the US, Canada, Mexico, and even Europe) are from India or China, as in, they went to school and got their first jobs there and then moved here, because no one here wants to do that job. 25% of them are retiring soon or recently retired. That means 5% of them are domestically educated and under the age of 60. If people want a career, there's an option right there. And, yes, I am aware that if every unemployed and underemployed person went into this field, it'd be a thousand times oversaturated, but if a couple hundred people made this career move, I think they'd all be pretty secure for the rest of their lives.

In this geographical area, we also have a near vacuum in the medical profession. Our local hospital is usually run by a skeleton crew, just because there are not enough trained workers to do any more than that. Family doctors and specialists have waiting lists of patients that backlog for several months. From the numbers I've seen, it's not common everywhere in the USA, but it is common generally in the USA, meaning that if you are willing to move, and you have some training in a medical field, you should be secure.

With where we are right now, it's hard to say that there are not decent jobs, but it is hard to say that there are decent jobs people can just jump into right away. The examples of window-knockers, paperboys, ice deliverers, etc., just goes to show that general labour jobs are always changing - but then, I mean, honestly, what do you want? You are doing a non-specialized job that requires little training, so it kind of sits at the bottom of the proverbial totem pole, in terms of career security. As tech moves forward, those jobs will definitely change.

But I do think that most unskilled jobs don't pay what they are worth. I think most jobs, in general, don't really pay what they are worth. If the CEO of a failing company is making 100x what the average worker is making, then he's getting too much and/or they are making too little. And the scenario I brought up is not atypical.


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## TedEH (Sep 27, 2017)

bostjan said:


> These jobs are *not designed to ever be a part of a career.*


This has always been a part of my gut reaction whenever I hear someone say that they're upset about not being able to make a living a particular way - maybe it's from an entry level job, or wanting to make a living from music or another hobby or something. I've never thought of the purpose of an entry level job to be to sustain a person on it's own. Ideally, those jobs are there to provide extra money, help people pay for school while living at home, help to instill work ethic into people who have never been employed before, etc.- then once you're past that point, you go and do something that will actually sustain you. If what you're doing doesn't pay the bills, then do something else. I recognize that this is an ideal situation that doesn't happen as often anymore, though. It worked out for me, but I'm not a single parent, or someone who's without employable skills, or (and I hate to put it this way) I'm not old (I imagine employment opportunities slim as you get old), or something like that.



narad said:


> Current/future tech is replacing intelligent behavior.


I don't think it really is though. I mean, something like taking your order at a McDonalds is not "intelligent behavior". Maybe I've not read far enough into which jobs are actually being replaced, but I haven't heard of any real AI taking a thinking job yet. I think people are paranoid of the whole "master control program" type AI taking all the thinking jobs, but I don't see what's happening right now as being very different than any other automation-taking-peoples-jobs.


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## narad (Sep 27, 2017)

TedEH said:


> I don't think it really is though. I mean, something like taking your order at a McDonalds is not "intelligent behavior". Maybe I've not read far enough into which jobs are actually being replaced, but I haven't heard of any real AI taking a thinking job yet. I think people are paranoid of the whole "master control program" type AI taking all the thinking jobs, but I don't see what's happening right now as being very different than any other automation-taking-peoples-jobs.



On the contrary, it's probably the general public perception that AI will replace cashiers (maybe because we've already experienced the transition to self-checkout and self-ordering sorts of setups), but it's more the white collar financial services / paralegal types of jobs that are probably at high risk. Any sort of job that's basically taking an in-domain set of rules and where expertise is defined by being familiar with all the relevant rules, and then providing assistance to the regular person -- those are high risk for AI replacement with virtual agents.

This is in addition to basically all transport / distribution jobs.


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## TedEH (Sep 27, 2017)

narad said:


> On the contrary[...]


Yeah, that makes sense when you put it that way.


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## tedtan (Sep 27, 2017)

CrazyDean said:


> A good example needs good data to back it up.



bostjan already clarified the math, but I still want to reiterate that his analogy had nothing to do with the exact math involved. The basic premise was that the rate of change in population level is no more constant over an extended period of time than a car's rate of acceleration over an extended period of time is (a car CAN'T continue accelerating at that rate for long, even that fastest jet powered cars used to set the land speed records). The exact math was not relevant in this case, the concept was.


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## CrazyDean (Sep 27, 2017)

tedtan said:


> bostjan already clarified the math, but I still want to reiterate that his analogy had nothing to do with the exact math involved. The basic premise was that the rate of change in population level is no more constant over an extended period of time than a car's rate of acceleration over an extended period of time is (a car CAN'T continue accelerating at that rate for long, even that fastest jet powered cars used to set the land speed records). The exact math was not relevant in this case, the concept was.



Ok, let's keep talking about it then.


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## jaxadam (Sep 27, 2017)

For that graph, let's let E be the function associated with the plot, let m be the slope, and c be the parabolic curve. I get E = mc^2.


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## bostjan (Sep 27, 2017)

"A = pi r²"
"But pie are generally round?"

Imagine that joke being told by a robot to a nightclub full of robots. Would any of them find it funny?

I guess I could see where AI might be developed to come up with jokes. AI generated jokes might become a controversial thing. With all of the joke-stealing accusations going around the stand-up circuit, synthetic jokes might be more easily traced.

"Hey Electro, tell joke #AG05016, that's my favourite!"


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## jaxadam (Sep 27, 2017)

I think one of my favorites is still:

What is the integral of [d(cabin)/cabin]? Log cabin.


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## TedEH (Sep 28, 2017)

bostjan said:


> "But pie are generally round?"


I legit told that same joke to someone yesterday. Small world, and all that.


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## tedtan (Sep 28, 2017)

I heard it a bit differently, but it's still the same joke.

A farm boy from Indiana was the first on either side of his family to go to college, and after finishing the first semester of his freshman year, he went back home to visit his parents for the Christmas and New Year holidays. While there, he went pheasant hunting with his dad and brothers. While waiting for the dogs to flush a bird, his dad asked him what he had been learning at school. He responded "pi r²".

Furious, his dad told him to drop out of school immediately and get back home to help out on the farm. "Pie aren't square, boy!" his dad admonished. "Everyone knows that pie are round. Cornbread are square!"​
Obviously, he should have learned the formula for the area of a circle LONG before college, but I like the overall set up.


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## TedEH (Sep 28, 2017)

This is my favorite thread derailment yet.


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## bostjan (Sep 28, 2017)

tedtan said:


> I heard it a bit differently, but it's still the same joke.
> 
> A farm boy from Indiana was the first on either side of his family to go to college, and after finishing the first semester of his freshman year, he went back home to visit his parents for the Christmas and New Year holidays. While there, he went pheasant hunting with his dad and brothers. While waiting for the dogs to flush a bird, his dad asked him what he had been learning at school. He responded "pi r²".
> 
> ...



http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/Localgov/Second Level pages/indiana_pi_bill.htm

In Indiana, Pi = 3.2. It was almost passed as a state law as such.


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## tedtan (Sep 28, 2017)

bostjan said:


> http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/Localgov/Second Level pages/indiana_pi_bill.htm
> 
> In Indiana, Pi = 3.2. It was almost passed as a state law as such.



Damn. Maybe that's why the farm boy was from Indiana in the joke, but I didn't have a clue about that until you just posted, so if it was, it went over my head.


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## TedEH (Sep 28, 2017)

Wasn't there another place that tried to pass a law that PI would be exactly 3?


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## bostjan (Sep 28, 2017)

TedEH said:


> Wasn't there another place that tried to pass a law that PI would be exactly 3?


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-squires/republicans-introduce-leg_b_837828.html (satire)
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Pi_equals_exactly_three (satire satire)
I think there is a snopes on it, too, but I'm blocked from snopes here.


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## Petar Bogdanov (Sep 29, 2017)

bostjan said:


> "A = pi r²"
> "But pie are generally round?"
> 
> Imagine that joke being told by a robot to a nightclub full of robots. Would any of them find it funny?
> ...



Anyone can learn to write jokes, it's fairly algorithmic even, but the character and delivery are what makes a joke effective and we're far away from synthetic personalities. Unless Nazi teenagers count.


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