Scattershots – 12jun17 (updated 13jun17)

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Scattershots – 12jun17 (updated 13jun17)

12 June 2017

George Rebane

Investigations will cease only after all allegations have been proven – Dictum from The Swamp

The ‘Robot-Human Alliance’ is a hopeful promotion by Dr Kenneth Goldberg, a UC Berkeley engineering professor (here). He sees little to worry about human job markets with the advance of ever more intelligent machines, and bases his sanguinity on discovering that humans and AI machines can still do useful work together, and that AI tools allow some people of more modest skills to get gainful employment. He feels that this is such a significant discovery that it deserves a most inappropriate name with an extremely lame definition – “Multiplicity: diverse groups of people and machines working together to solve problems.” It turns out that early 19^th century threshing machines also supported multiplicity. Professor Goldberg’s problem seems to be one of a limited horizon. Yes, humans and smart machines will be able to work together; and yes, AI based machines can act as a workplace prosthetic for the inadequately skilled, but all this describes is a temporary palliative for the pre-Singularity years in which we find ourselves. With each passing month AIs are able to permanently displace more and more workers, and this replacement pace is increasing. Only government’s regulatory intercession can slow it down using the fiat of the gun. The important problem to solve today is how we will manage a guaranteed national income for the systemically (read terminally) unemployed. The ongoing impact of AI on the workforce is longstanding theme in these pages – see Singularity Signposts.

The Beveridge Curve is the anointed name of a plot of unemployment rate vs job openings rate (see nearby graphic from the 12jun17 WSJ). The curve abets the previous reflection on Goldberg’s multiplicity. This presents a “dissonant reading (that) points to an increasing mismatch between workers’ skills and the roles employers are seeking to fill.” Increasing mismatch indeed, and we ain’t seen nothing yet. (more here) A more detailed discussion of this mismatch problem was presented in these pages here.

George Boardman’s column in today’s (12jun17) Union gives a person pause. In his ‘It’s time to start affirmative action program for campus conservatives’ the man does a solid recounting of liberal bias and suppression of free speech in today’s academe, and goes on to recommend positive measures to correct the situation and expose the resident snowflakes to some heat from opposing ideas (here ). Mr Boardman’s contribution does much to regain the tilt of his perch as that of a mid-roader IMHO – in recent months it had gone a bit wopperjob toward port. Given his words today, I am more interested than ever in learning what are the tenets of his assuredly complex credo. As readers are aware, no one left of the conservetarians here have deigned to reveal any of their core beliefs in a clear list of tenets that define their ideological ontology. (Mine is found in the upper right panel.)

[13jun17 update] The Union’s columnist and mistress of trivia, Ms Hilary Hodge, makes a mighty attempt to elucidate ‘Housing in Nevada County’ in today’s (13jun17) paper. But her attempt goes awry immediately after she once more establishes the nature of her sexuality for the chance new reader. In lieu of serious editorial content, that seems to be the lady’s never-ending message. (Full reciprocal disclosure, I am a lifelong heterosexual.) Her column’s preamble forewarns us that this is but “the first part in a three-part series looking at housing in Nevada County.” Unfortunately, after sliding in the now obligatory “my friend and eventual wife”, the sequel rambles off into the underbrush of her arcane anecdotal archives to retrieve some memories of their moving to Nevada County, snippets (or perhaps the entire opus?) of her vitae, and the subsequently understandable travails of finding employment here. The patient reader departs with the hope that she still has two more chances to at least get a base hit on housing. Nevertheless, given the other more appropriate sections of the newspaper, the question still ignored by The Union’s management – ‘Is our op-ed page really that desperate for content?’

As a relevant afterthought, for substance compare a Hilary Hodge column to The Union’s other prominent women columnists Mses Lynn Wenzel and Terry McLaughlin.

Posted in Critical Thinking & Numeracy, Our Country, Singularity Signposts, Web/Tech

5 responses to “Scattershots – 12jun17 (updated 13jun17)”

George Boardman

12 June 2017

One of my favorite writers–the late, great crime novelist Elmore Leonard–once detailed his “10 rules for good writing.” No. 10 was the following:
“Try to leave out the parts readers tend to skip.”
That would include any attempt to elucidate my personal political philosophy for readers of The Union or anything else.
(For those who are interested, here are all 10 rules: https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/elmore-leonard-10-rules-for-good-writing)

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George Rebane

12 June 2017

GeorgeB 231pm – Au contraire Mr Boardman. I venture that there are many of us who are very interested in learning the basis for the views you communicate through your columns. I’m pretty sure there is a coherent foundation to your writings that cover an often surprising ideological range. Please share as much of it as you can, we are interested.

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Bill Tozer

12 June 2017

Well, Boardman looked around and said “that ain’t right” concerning the non diversity of thought and squelching of contrary opinions on today’s campuses. I agree. That just ain’t right. The ole herd mentality, group think, and Identity Politics have evolved into OUR way or the highway. I tend to blame the educators more than the subjected pupils without fully developed frontal lobes in a captive situation. They were taught this.
Told ya segregation was coming back and our youth are fighting FOR it on campus. But Boardman’s piece is on diversity of thought (freedom of expression?), not diversity of race, creed, ethnicity, and all that stuff.
As a man thinketh, so is he. Whether he can say it without being driven out of the city to the outer Wastelands is another story. “That’s not who we are, be gone with your kind”.
I see much of the intolerance and harshness akin to “teen courts”, i.e., peer courts that are a high school civics exercise in conjunction with our real courts for a day. The students sit as judge and jury of their peers’ offenses of breaking some rule. Without exeception, the young people hand down a penalty much more punitive than a “real court” would.
This is repeated daily on campuses when student review committees investigate and dispense justice to those accused of violation some social justice creed, be it a benign hand gesture taken as a micro-aggression to saying something that may hurt someone’s feeling or run counter to another’s sensibilities. Too harsh. The student mobs and demonstrators outside of the SJ review committees on campus also dispense are very harsh and strict dispensation of “justice”. Intolerance really, but they always rationalize their herd mentality to justify their actions. Banishment is the punishment. Banishment from the group and the offender is rarely, if ever, forgiven. Banishment for the crime of breaking from the pack. There is to be no divergence from Group Think. That ain’t right.
Hope of this ending good is found in the rest of the story to Dr. Rebane’s post on decriminalizing being a member of the Communist Party while employed by the State. California Communists was the heading or something like that. Sure, old rules on the books and the bill was working its way through our State Legislature…..until it got dropped by the sponsors. Why? Because it appears that some old Nam vets in the sponsors’s districts said that it hurt their feelings and made then sad. So, it was dropped right there and then. Not because of hiring Commie Bastards hell bent on the overthrow of the USA, but because of hurt feeling, ROFLMAO. The legislatures must have realized they violated some Social Justice rule they learned in our fine institutions of higher thinking. If they said such hurtful things on campus, they would have been called all sorts of unflattering names, spat on, followed, had their personal property vandalized or destroyed, and, of course, been promptly reported to the Thought Police, aka, The Committee”. It’s all about feelings, no arguments allowed.
Good thing it is easier to take over and run a campus with an Iron Fist than it is to control other institutions and entities off campus. Otherwise the legislators who sponsored the rescinding of barring of Commies being hired by the State would have been sent off to SJW reeducation camps. Yep, always a silver lining.

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Bill Tozer

12 June 2017

Echoing Boardman’s opinion piece. Er, make than Mr. Boardman’s opinion piece.
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/san-diego-state-university-defends-administrator-who-called-gop-an-extremist-terrorist-organization/?mod=sm_fb_post
This just ain’t right.

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Bill Tozer

13 June 2017

Most of HH’s columns are just her diary or autobiography. I, too, felt let down by the heading about housing in Western Nevada County only to read her antidotal personal story once again. But, as Dr. Rebane pointed out, it (mustn’t assume one’s gender) has two more spellbinding columns to elobrate on housing in Nevada County.
Maybe a story about her venture into home ownership would be nice. Charity begins at home so I will say perhaps it is just trying to add a personal touch to another Nevada County housing story. What, like we don’t read at least one or two Nevada County housing stories 52 weeks a year already? Maybe we will hear something new. Bee keeping is kinda cool, but most rentals here do not offer that amenity. .

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