Automation vs Today's Jobs
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@boomzilla said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
Sounds like a pitch for a new Sesame Street monster.
Give him wavy orange hair and it's a hit !
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@boomzilla said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gurth said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
in the end, it's entirely within [the lawmakers’] power to unroll almost all of that complexity.
Not quite. Yes, technically they can make any changes (including vast simplifications) that they want, as long as they can get a majority vote on it. In practice, no matter what change they make, someone will complain. With major changes, a large number of people will usually complain even if the change is clearly for the better in the long run. Politicians tend to keep these sorts of things very much in mind.
That's not much different from sheer laziness and prioritizing short-term benefits over long-term sustainability.
Possibly, but you have to consider that not everyone agrees on what is actually a long term benefit.
I think everyone agrees simpler law has a long-term benefit. We're talking about non-functional changes here.
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@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@boomzilla said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gurth said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
in the end, it's entirely within [the lawmakers’] power to unroll almost all of that complexity.
Not quite. Yes, technically they can make any changes (including vast simplifications) that they want, as long as they can get a majority vote on it. In practice, no matter what change they make, someone will complain. With major changes, a large number of people will usually complain even if the change is clearly for the better in the long run. Politicians tend to keep these sorts of things very much in mind.
That's not much different from sheer laziness and prioritizing short-term benefits over long-term sustainability.
Possibly, but you have to consider that not everyone agrees on what is actually a long term benefit.
I think everyone agrees simpler law has a long-term benefit. We're talking about non-functional changes here.
Yes, but it's never strictly refactoring, where the end result is supposed to be exactly the same thing. It might be close, but it's never the same, and there are bound to be people who strongly disagree with the changes.
Probably another example of concentrated benefit and diffused cost, so the only people with a strong opinion about it are the people losing the benefit.
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@boomzilla I'd find this more believable if there were actual efforts to do that and they actually failed due to opposing voices. As it is, it's more of a convenient excuse to not even try anything than actual concern. I mean, the lawmakers pass much more controversial bills all the time.
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@Gąska again: what's the incentive to do so? There are a lot of people benefiting from all those little edge cases and cutouts, and it's not all the same people. Anger too many of those little groups and you'll find that you're not making the laws any more. It's one of the drawbacks of democracy.
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@jinpa The social credit score in China gives me nightmares. But at least it's overt. Here we hide that sort of slavery behind words like "free enterprise."
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@Zenith said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@jinpa The social credit score in China gives me nightmares. But at least it's overt. Here we hide that sort of slavery behind words like "free enterprise."
I'm confused. I thought you said you were a government employee?
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@jinpa Something similar to this strip may apply.
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@HardwareGeek said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gurth said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
the person receiving benefits must declare they’ve had income, and how much. This is deducted from the next benefit payment. No sliding scales involved or necessary. The problem, as someone else pointed out, is that other things don’t have sliding scales:
That's a problem, but not the only one. Even worse, it disincentivizes earning other income.
Let's say I'm unemployed and get $500/week in Unemployment Insurance. Let's also say I have the opportunity to get a full-time job at somewhat better than minimum wage, but still fairly menial, $10/hour. Would I take it?
Heck no! I'd work 40 hours and earn $400. But $400 would be deducted from the $500 UI benefit, so I'd end up with exactly the same $500 at the end of the week as if I hadn't worked at all.
Except I wouldn't, because I'd no longer be unemployed; therefore, I'd no longer be eligible for the benefit. So I'd have only the $400 I earned, not $500. But it wouldn't even be $400, because it would have taxes, insurance, etc. withheld from it, so I might end up with $300 for a week of menial labor.
$300 for working, or $500 for not working? That's not a difficult question to answer; even high school dropouts can figure that out.
BTDT. The numbers weren't that simple, but when I was unemployed, I calculated that I needed to earn something like, IIRC, $11.50 to equal the loss of UI, not accounting for the withholding.
Of course, you have to go to work eventually (if you can find a job), because the benefits are only temporary. And if your budget is based on a usual income that's 4x–5x the UI benefit, there's a strong incentive to get a real job ASAP, regardless. But it does impose a floor on the sort of job you'll apply for.
AIUI, that's UI working as intended. Part of the intention was that it is good for society if people suddenly unemployed have a little bit of cushion so that they can find another job in line with their expertise, rather than having to take an entry level unskilled job just to keep a roof over their heads.
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@boomzilla said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Luhmann said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
This thing ate threes like there was no tomorrow.
Sounds like a pitch for a new Sesame Street monster.
Sounds like the child of Cookie Monster and Count von Count. Too bad they're both male. But that probably won't be an obstacle for long.
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@jinpa In that specific situation, yes. However, it's the same song and dance in the private sector. There are employers that will fire you if they find out you smoke tobacco, drink alcohol, or own a firearm. There are employers that demand access to social media accounts and hold anything on it against you. We hand wave this away as "business is allowed to hire and fire for any reason because free market" but that doesn't change the fact that it's an employer exerting control over your life 24-7-365.
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@Zenith said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@jinpa In that specific situation, yes. However, it's the same song and dance in the private sector. There are employers that will fire you if they find out you smoke tobacco, drink alcohol, or own a firearm. There are employers that demand access to social media accounts and hold anything on it against you. We hand wave this away as "business is allowed to hire and fire for any reason because free market" but that doesn't change the fact that it's an employer exerting control over your life 24-7-365.
I basically agree, but it seems worse when it's the government. At least in private industry, you have the option of saying, "FU, I'm going to work for someone who's slightly less invasive." That wasn't the only reason I left my previous employer, but it was a factor.
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@PleegWat Interestingly enough, if you knew what I knew about voting, you wouldn't trust the vote either. That department doesn't do code review. At all. Well, we did for awhile, but somebody with an associate's in web design refused to make any changes so an enterprisey application duhrector appeased him by saying, and I quote, "review or not, we expect that your team is deploying quality, tested code." And immediately afterward, the system went down for hours due to problems in that code.
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@jinpa One of the things you learn working for government is that it's no more accountable to people than a corporation. Another is that most of the time that you think you're dealing with the state, you're really dealing with a corporation (and, worse still, a foreign owned and operated one).
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@Zenith said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@jinpa One of the things you learn working for government is that it's no more accountable to people than a corporation.
I wouldn't have to work for the government to know that. It's like saying, "One of the things you learn about working in a zoo is that mice are no bigger than elephants."
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@Zenith As I understand, in .nl it's mostly a paper process. The final aggregation is computerized, but totals per voting station are published so that's trivially checked. Probably the most vulnerable place is the individual voting station which (I think) is manned by 3 people for each of 2 shifts.
Or of course public opinion. Public opinion is frighteningly easy to influence in a deniable way if you only need a couple of percent difference.
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@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
That's not much different from sheer laziness and prioritizing short-term benefits over long-term sustainability.
How many modern politicians take a long-term view? Anything that goes much beyond the next election is too far away for them to really bother with, a lot of the time.
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@Gurth said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
That's not much different from sheer laziness and prioritizing short-term benefits over long-term sustainability.
How many modern politicians take a long-term view? Anything that goes much beyond the next election is too far away for them to really bother with, a lot of the time.
I would opine that's the cause of a lot of problems. A politician cannot survive if he does not fix (or appear to fix) certain kinds of problems by the next election. But there are a lot of solutions that have short-term benefits but long-term consequences.
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@jinpa said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
Sounds like a pitch for a new Sesame Street monster.
Sounds like the child of Cookie Monster and Count von Count. Too bad they're both male. But that probably won't be an obstacle for long.
Are you sure? The Cookie Monster?
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@dkf Eggplant cookies? Nope thread is
!!!
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@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
The most ironic thing about our civilization is how bad people are at fractions (both simple and decimal) while having no problem with percents.
Seriously? People barely even understand what percents are. I wouldn't even expect most people to manage to understand that you have to convert percents to decimals before mathing them, and how that works.
If you think people have no problem with percents, try asking them the following:
"This coin gives me a 50% chance of heads each time I flip it. If I flip it twice, what's the chance that I'll get heads at least once?"
Reveal the answer
The answer is not 50% + 50% = 100%.
Nor is the answer 50% × 50% = 25%.
The answer is 75%.If they do get that right, to see if it was just a lucky guess, you can next ask them the following:
"Okay, now I have a ten-sided die. Each time I roll it, there's a 10% chance that it'll roll a 1. If I roll it 10 times, what's the chance that I roll a 1 at least once?"
Reveal the answer
The answer is not 10% × 10 = 100%.
The answer is not (10%)10 = 0.00000001%.
It's 100% - (100% - 10%)10 = ~65%.They might be able to answer simple questions, like "if I roll the die once, what's the probability that I get either a 1 or a 2", or "if I roll the die once, what's the probability that I roll something other than a 1", because those are simple addition and subtraction. But anything more complex than that and I'd expect them to be completely lost.
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@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
If you think people have no problem with percents, try asking them the following:
Except your example is about chance calculus and not percentages. The same issues remain if you frase the questions with decimals
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@Luhmann Percentages are decimals. They're just another way of writing them.
In order to use percentages, you have to understand how they combine. Adding them is pretty easy, but it's probably going to be wrong because there are only specific situations where you can add them. More likely, you should multiply them... which is also pretty easy, if you know that they're decimals. Otherwise, you'll do it wrong.
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@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
Percentages are decimals.
Yes. As I posted. The issue is not with percentages or decimals. It's people's perception of chance.
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@Luhmann What do people have "no problem" with about percentages, if they don't know how percentages work?
As far as I'm concerned, if someone doesn't know how to answer "what's 10% times 10%", then they have a problem with percents. And that's one of the most basic questions you could even come up with.
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@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
As far as I'm concerned, if someone doesn't know how to answer "what's 10% times 10%", then they have a problem with percents.
Most people have no trouble telling how much is 10% of 10%. Yes, the same people who have no clue how to even approach the problem of "how likely I am to get 20 with 2d10 roll". Psychology is an interesting field.
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@Gąska I did not say 10% of 10%, and that was on purpose. The question is whether they know that "times" means "of" (or more properly, "of" means "times").
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@brie there's a much lower chance they'll get "10% times 10%" right than "10% of 10%". And that doesn't prevent them from successfully using percents for all kinds of things in daily life.
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@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
that doesn't prevent them from successfully using percents for all kinds of things in daily life
...such as?
I really don't think that people use percents for much of anything. Not in any exact sense, at least. The closest they come to using percents is a fuzzy sort of analog math based on their "gut feeling".
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@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
As far as I'm concerned, if someone doesn't know how to answer "what's 10% times 10%", then they have a problem with percents. And that's one of the most basic questions you could even come up with.
Yes but that was not the question you asked first. Those two where about chance, a subject that is very counter intuitive.
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@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
I really don't think that people use percents for much of anything. Not in any exact sense, at least.
You've just crafted an excuse to dismiss everything I'm saying, no matter what I'm saying, on the basis that my sense is not exact enough for your tastes. No matter how many examples I'll bring up - loan interests, taxes, nutritients GDAs, polling, etc. etc. ad nauseum - you're going to dismiss each and every one as "not in exact sense", whatever it means. At this point, there's no sense talking to you on this subject anymore.
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@Gurth said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
How many modern politicians take a long-term view? Anything that goes much beyond the next election is too far away for them to really bother with, a lot of the time.
My take is that, even if they wanted to, they cannot afford to take a long-term view. If they did, they'd be lynched by the angry mob way before the end of their term and their successor will promptly undo any possible progress that might have been made, to "fix the damage" of the previous "bad" government and gain populism points.
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@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
I really don't think that people use percents for much of anything. Not in any exact sense, at least.
You've just crafted an excuse to dismiss everything I'm saying, no matter what I'm saying, on the basis that my sense is not exact enough for your tastes. No matter how many examples I'll bring up - loan interests, taxes, nutritients GDAs, polling, etc. etc. ad nauseum - you're going to dismiss each and every one as "not in exact sense", whatever it means. At this point, there's no sense talking to you on this subject anymore.
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@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
No matter how many examples I'll bring up - loan interests, taxes, nutritients GDAs, polling, etc. etc. ad nauseum - you're going to dismiss each and every one as "not in exact sense", whatever it means.
How much actual thought do most people put into loan interests, taxes, nutritional recommendations, polling, etc. etc.? They're just numbers on a page. Or a package, in the case of nutritional facts. If you're lucky, they might know how to work their calculator well enough to check that the numbers are correct. But even that's asking a lot.
I suppose I'll concede that most people, or at least a significant number of them, could answer an extremely simple question, like "this cereal has 25% of the recommended daily intake for niacin, so how many servings would you need to eat to consume 100% of the recommended daily niacin intake?"
And that's such a beginner question that I wouldn't call it a working grasp of percents... it's barely even scratching the surface.
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@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
You've just crafted an excuse to dismiss everything I'm saying, no matter what I'm saying, on the basis that my sense is not exact enough for your tastes.
The room seems to be spinning! What's going on here?
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@brie like I said. You're trivializing every case of people actively using percents in their daily lives as "extremely simple" and "barely even scratching the surface", and nothing will ever convince you that those extremely simple, surface scratching surfaces still require a fair deal of understanding of what percents are and how they work. And you're completely ignoring the original point I was making - it wasn't that people are good with percents; it was that they're much better at percents than at fractions (even though they're literally one and the same).
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@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
And you're completely ignoring the original point I was making - it wasn't that people are good with percents; it was that they're much better at percents than at fractions (even though they're literally one and the same).
I'll concede this point, that people are typically much better at percents than at fractions. But what you originally said was that people have "no problem with percents", and I don't agree with that.
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@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
The most ironic thing about our civilization is how bad people are at fractions (both simple and decimal) while having no problem with percents.
Seriously? People barely even understand what percents are. I wouldn't even expect most people to manage to understand that you have to convert percents to decimals before mathing them, and how that works.
If you think people have no problem with percents, try asking them the following:
"This coin gives me a 50% chance of heads each time I flip it. If I flip it twice, what's the chance that I'll get heads at least once?"
Reveal the answer
The answer is not 50% + 50% = 100%.
Nor is the answer 50% × 50% = 25%.
The answer is 75%.If they do get that right, to see if it was just a lucky guess, you can next ask them the following:
"Okay, now I have a ten-sided die. Each time I roll it, there's a 10% chance that it'll roll a 1. If I roll it 10 times, what's the chance that I roll a 1 at least once?"
Reveal the answer
The answer is not 10% × 10 = 100%.
The answer is not (10%)10 = 0.00000001%.
It's 100% - (100% - 10%)10 = ~65%.They might be able to answer simple questions, like "if I roll the die once, what's the probability that I get either a 1 or a 2", or "if I roll the die once, what's the probability that I roll something other than a 1", because those are simple addition and subtraction. But anything more complex than that and I'd expect them to be completely lost.
All perfectly correct, apart from being statistics, which isn't the same as percent, which is just a funky way of writing hundreds fractions.
And most people suck at statistics, including programmers and engineers.
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@Carnage said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
The most ironic thing about our civilization is how bad people are at fractions (both simple and decimal) while having no problem with percents.
Seriously? People barely even understand what percents are. I wouldn't even expect most people to manage to understand that you have to convert percents to decimals before mathing them, and how that works.
If you think people have no problem with percents, try asking them the following:
"This coin gives me a 50% chance of heads each time I flip it. If I flip it twice, what's the chance that I'll get heads at least once?"
Reveal the answer
The answer is not 50% + 50% = 100%.
Nor is the answer 50% × 50% = 25%.
The answer is 75%.If they do get that right, to see if it was just a lucky guess, you can next ask them the following:
"Okay, now I have a ten-sided die. Each time I roll it, there's a 10% chance that it'll roll a 1. If I roll it 10 times, what's the chance that I roll a 1 at least once?"
Reveal the answer
The answer is not 10% × 10 = 100%.
The answer is not (10%)10 = 0.00000001%.
It's 100% - (100% - 10%)10 = ~65%.They might be able to answer simple questions, like "if I roll the die once, what's the probability that I get either a 1 or a 2", or "if I roll the die once, what's the probability that I roll something other than a 1", because those are simple addition and subtraction. But anything more complex than that and I'd expect them to be completely lost.
All perfectly correct, apart from being statistics, which isn't the same as percent, which is just a funky way of writing hundreds fractions.
And most people suck at statistics, including programmers and engineers.I would classify probability as related but not really the same as statistics.
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@Carnage said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
most people suck at statistics
Lies, damn lies, and ...
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@HardwareGeek most people suck at lying.
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@boomzilla said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
I would classify probability as related but not really the same as statistics.
Well, true I guess.
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@ixvedeusi said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
My take is that, even if they wanted to, they cannot afford to take a long-term view. If they did, they'd be lynched by the angry mob way before the end of their term and their successor will promptly undo any possible progress that might have been made, to "fix the damage" of the previous "bad" government and gain populism points.
And that’s why I think a little less democracy than we have now, is a good thing. Not do away with the system entirely, as that would probably result in a bad thing, but people shouldn’t expect the government to respond to their (and only their) every whim immediately. Popular referenda are (in this respect anyway) probably the worst idea that people are still trying to push as if it’s a good one.
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@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@HardwareGeek most people suck at lying.
Why then are there so many careers based entirely on lying convincingly: acting, sales, marketing, advertising, lawyers, politics, $Foo Studies?
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@HardwareGeek for the same reason why there are so many careers based entirely on statistics.
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@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
that doesn't prevent them from successfully using percents for all kinds of things in daily life
...such as?
I really don't think that people use percents for much of anything. Not in any exact sense, at least. The closest they come to using percents is a fuzzy sort of analog math based on their "gut feeling".
I think people use percentages to calculate tips on a regular basis. At least in the U.S.
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@jinpa said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
that doesn't prevent them from successfully using percents for all kinds of things in daily life
...such as?
I really don't think that people use percents for much of anything. Not in any exact sense, at least. The closest they come to using percents is a fuzzy sort of analog math based on their "gut feeling".
I think people use percentages to calculate tips on a regular basis. At least in the U.S.
With our tax rates, it's easier to just double the sales tax (in this area, typically around 9%)
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@jinpa said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
that doesn't prevent them from successfully using percents for all kinds of things in daily life
...such as?
I really don't think that people use percents for much of anything. Not in any exact sense, at least. The closest they come to using percents is a fuzzy sort of analog math based on their "gut feeling".
I think people use percentages to calculate tips on a regular basis. At least in the U.S.
Nowadays, many restaurants have POS terminals that give you a choice of precalculated tip amounts (all of which are higher than the traditional 15%).
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@HardwareGeek said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@jinpa said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@brie said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
@Gąska said in Automation vs Today's Jobs:
that doesn't prevent them from successfully using percents for all kinds of things in daily life
...such as?
I really don't think that people use percents for much of anything. Not in any exact sense, at least. The closest they come to using percents is a fuzzy sort of analog math based on their "gut feeling".
I think people use percentages to calculate tips on a regular basis. At least in the U.S.
Nowadays, many restaurants have POS terminals that give you a choice of precalculated tip amounts (all of which are higher than the traditional 15%).
There is a coffee shop that opened nearby recently that does not accept cash. I do not know if this is part of a trend.
