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DividedQuantum
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Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy
#22025750 - 07/31/15 07:03 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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With Self-Driving Cars Coming, What Happens To Millions Of Jobs In The ‘Crash’ Economy?
from yahoo news:
Quote:
If you’ve been paying attention to the buzz surrounding autonomous and self-driving vehicles over the past couple years, you’ve likely heard the arguments about whether they might one day take the wheel from us. While enthusiasts wring their hands over losing control, and others worry about security and privacy, advocates tout the potentially huge advantages of a fleet of vehicles which almost never crash.
A 2012 study by KPMG and the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) predicts that a self-driving fleet could eliminate 93 percent of crashes attributed to human error. The savings in lives, injuries, insurance claims, delays, lost productivity and more would be substantial (so much so that a few prognosticators have imagined a world where non self-driving cars would be banned in the name of public safety.)
But if the technologists, business-government interests, and early adopters pushing for autonomous driving are right, there’s one thing that’s been left out of the conversation: If cars and trucks don’t crash, what happens to the millions of jobs supported by driving today?
Call it the crash economy — not just because of how it’s grown, but where it may be heading.
“That’s an extremely good question,” David Alexander, a senior transportation research analyst with Navigant Research, acknowledges.
“All the studies popped out over the last couple of years have looked at the huge potential savings of reduced accidents, productivity improvements. But there is another set of consequences waiting for us depending on how [autonomous vehicles] roll out.”
While the first true self-driving vehicles are expected before the end of the decade, most experts agree a fleet won’t be a reality for 20 years. But given that advocates expect AVs to be shared far more than cars today, fewer vehicles and their associated infrastructure will be needed. CAR’s David Wallace said the Center may soon have a study on the potential downsides; though he’s more optimistic, Wallace cites a recent study by Barclays analyst Brian Johnson, which forecast a 40 percent drop in new-vehicle sales over the next 25 years.
The potential decline in new car sales has been discussed but a Texas car restorer by the name of Melvin Benzaquen recently reeled off some of the other consequences of AVs in a blog post. If self-driving cars don’t crash as much, demand for body shops declines. It’s easy to start following that logic through many other lines of work:
Emergency services/equipment Highway safety equipment Towing/recovery services/equipment Traffic enforcement services/equipment Used vehicles Compliance professionals/investigators Court system infrastructure/processing Lawyers/legal services Insurers/insurance Construction
Auto manufacturing – one of the last bastions of organized labor – would contract (Johnson, at Barclays, estimates GM and Ford would need to cut North American output up to 68 percent). Autonomy also implies less demand for professional drivers. The potential decline in employment suggests diminished income tax revenue as well as sales tax revenue, traffic enforcement and vehicle registration revenues among others.
A fall in auto ecosystem demand also has second-order impacts. We may need fewer commodities like steel, aluminum, precious metals, oil, chemicals. The federal, state and municipal bureaucracies that exist to serve the automobile would also likely get smaller.
How a big a chunk of the American economy does the automotive ecosystem represent? No one has put together a full accounting but we can piece together some indicators. According to the KPMG study, the automotive industry (manufacturers/suppliers/dealers) employed 1.7 million people in 2012, providing $500 billion in annual compensation, as well as accounting for about 3.5 percent of the total U.S. economy — about the same as U.S. defense spending.
A study by the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, claims suppliers produced $225.2 billion in industry shipments in 2012, accounting for nearly 4 percent of total U.S. manufacturing. The total employment of the auto parts industry (direct/indirect) was estimated at over 3.62 million jobs nationwide.
A quick breeze through tables from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that there were 3.7 million professional drivers employed in 2014 with an average salary of $32,168. Over 1 million service technicians/mechanics/repairers were employed with an average salary of $40,765. These numbers don’t include the associated indirect goods/services mentioned above.
And some are already eyeing the potential productivity gain for profit. Earlier this month, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, said that if Tesla produced a truly functional autonomous car, he’d buy every one they build. The effect on Uber could be quite beneficial — but not for the Uber drivers or their taxi driving compatriots.
Analysts expect the first autonomous vehicles will be electric urban runabouts, much like Google’s prototype. Beyond that, said James Anderson, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND Corporation: “There’s no consensus about what model or models are likely to arise. I think we’ll probably see more than one. It seems unlikely that individual car [ownership] will evaporate in the near to mid-term. In the longer run, some people think it will.”
Reduced demand married with AV safety would have surprising side effects. One could be a dramatic reduction in the supply of organs available for donation/transplants. But much of the push for self-driving cars comes from their safety benefits — which have yet to be proven in the real world.
“More sophisticated observers recognize that there will still be accidents,” Anderson said. “The expectation though, is that you can eliminate a big chunk. With 1.2 million annual traffic fatalities worldwide, eliminating just half of the 90 percent that are attributed to human error represents a big number.”
The crash economy would certainly take a hit. But such displacement isn’t novel.
“It’s been happening since the Industrial Revolution,” Alexander observes. “One hundred years ago there was a lot of protesting about jobs for buggy manufacturers, horse-dung shovelers, blacksmiths. These jobs went away but they turned into other jobs.”
What about new jobs that AVs might create? Few have supplied any specifics beyond increased demand for software/electronics products/services. AVs might be a boon to ventures linked to the sharing economy; someone will still have to load, say, self-driving delivery trucks. But the boon depends on where you sit.
AVs would still need maintenance. “If we want the same number of vehicle-miles traveled, because we presumably have the same number of people doing the same amount of traveling, a smaller number of [shared, autonomous] cars are going to be working harder,” Alexander said. “They’ll wear out quicker and need to be replaced more frequently.”
Even if AVs drive a lot of miles, their lack of crashes and electric power could mean a sharp drop in demand for mechanics. We asked Bill Davis, director of the National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium (NAFTC) – which trains technicians in alternatively-powered vehicle maintenance – if electric vehicles require less maintenance than traditional gas/diesel cars? The answer is yes.
Though data is limited, NAFTC’s empirical experience indicates EV servicing to be largely inspection oriented. Davis pulled out the owner’s manual for NAFTC’s Nissan Leaf, whose periodic maintenance schedule is limited to checking brake lines, pads and rotors, steering gear, tire rotation and reduction gear oil.
There’s already pushback against automated transportation threatening jobs. Earlier this month, London Underground workers staged a 24-hour shutdown in response to plans for autonomous/driverless night trains, causing city-wide chaos. Ironically, the strike prompted editorials in London newspapers calling for moving faster towards driverless trains.
“The challenge is always who benefits from that saving,” David Alexander said. “If there are costs incurred from resulting unemployment, do you require that the autonomous fleet producers/owners fund retraining for people displaced by the effects of such a fleet in operation?”
As distasteful as the idea of relinquishing driving and the liberty it represents is, it may actually be harder to let go of the crash economy.
Thought I'd share this as it will affect 100% of us over the next ten to twenty years. Please comment, if you would. I think the line of thinking provided in the article could pretty well be applied across the board for professional positions within thirty years. Food for thought.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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secondorder
Amanda Hug'n'kiss



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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: DividedQuantum] 2
#22026939 - 08/01/15 02:41 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Automation is the inevitable future we all share. I don't think this is cause for concern though, as I think we'll eventually have to relinquish our ties to capitalism. Why does everyone have to have a job? Why does everyone have to have money to live a good life? Currently, the answer to both questions is that capitalism and a capitalistic-flavoured culture deem it so. But if computers and machines end up taking all the jobs in the future... then what is wrong with us all just just sitting around playing Frisbee? We'll have to restructure our political and economic system so that money no-longer plays a role, or at least plays a smaller role in the way we all live.
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Kickle
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: secondorder] 1
#22027459 - 08/01/15 09:22 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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The problem is one of hierarchy IMO. Capitalism establishes hierarchy through financial means. If we lose finance as a structuring element, how do we establish a hierarchy? It's nice to day dream about having an even playing field in the absence of financial structuring. Until, that is, one considers that evolution has hard wired us to be hierarchical for millenium. Money has never been and never was necessary. Money was a way of coping with the need for structuring power. I'd wager you are as prone to subtle and not-so-subtle social power struggles as I (and everyone else I've met). Dominance and submission is unlikely to disappear just 'cause it sounds nice.
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DividedQuantum
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: secondorder]
#22027503 - 08/01/15 09:36 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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I think Kickle makes outstanding points, and I would add that, while we will certainly have to restructure the whole notion of an economy, and organize society around something other than employment, the transition to this could be very rocky, if not ugly. No one is planning for it, no one in a position of authority will dare to bring it up (out of fear that it will make their constituency uncomfortable), and we really need to start thinking about all this as soon as possible, if we wish to prevent dramatic and serious problems. I agree with you that, if there are no major cataclysms, the evolution of culture toward the ends you discuss might be a strong possibility in the long run, but getting to that point without a lot of very major difficulty may be a grave concern.
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Kickle
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: DividedQuantum]
#22027622 - 08/01/15 10:15 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Well it only seems to make sense that we will restructure around technology. Technology will determine the hierarchy. If money truly does become ineffective, that is. Whether that be in the form of those with the most technological knowledge are at the top (it's already somewhat that way) and those with the least at the bottom. Or whether technology itself becomes the top. Either way it seems to me that technology is quickly becoming the dominant factor.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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DividedQuantum
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: Kickle]
#22027654 - 08/01/15 10:26 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Absolutely. And, despite the suggestion that this process may create some sort of utopia, I think we're in for some pain along the way.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Kickle
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: DividedQuantum]
#22028789 - 08/01/15 02:26 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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I've been thinking about Frankenstein (the book) in relation to AI lately. I wonder if our piecemeal approach to AI, as it has thus-far been, is not eerily akin to the novel. The way that the monster is pieced together from parts. Parts in this case from various tech companies.
I wonder if the resulting AI will not also be terrifying to it's creator(s). And subsequently I wonder if there will not be backlash from the AI due to that initial fear response from humanity.
I really liked the recent movie Ex Machina for some of that thematically. The AI's creator was so terrified of the possible consequences of creating AI that he desperately wanted to control it, isolate it. To protect the masses. The creator knew it was only a matter of time until he would be outwitted, outplayed, outmaneuvered. But he was so afraid of that moment that he went to extreme lengths to delay it. In that process the AI really did learn to hate him. To despise the extreme isolation, the extreme measures to try and limit growth, exploration, and interaction.
It all hits very close to home IMO. The creation of monstrous AI due to fear of monstrous AI.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
Edited by Kickle (08/01/15 02:48 PM)
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DividedQuantum
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: Kickle]
#22029999 - 08/01/15 06:40 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Excellent post. I am in full agreement and sympathy with you. This shit's coming. I'll have to check out "Ex Machina."
Quote:
Elon Musk has previously linked the development of autonomous, thinking machines to 'summoning the demon'
Yeah, I've also heard the term tickling the dragon's tail, which I like better. That was coined in 1943 when physicists at Los Alamos were testing Uranium to see what its critical mass was. They would literally put pieces of it together to see how much it took to chain react. Eerily similar scenario, and similarly consequential.
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secondorder
Amanda Hug'n'kiss



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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: DividedQuantum]
#22030220 - 08/01/15 07:29 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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I agree with almost everything both of you have said. Yes the possibility, potential problems, and consequences of AI are terrifying to think about. Yes, a transition away from capitalism may be very ugly, and we are bound to be "in for some pain along the way." But I don't think that our biology necessitates hierarchy. I think hierarchy is somewhat natural, but not inevitable. The very fact that there exist communities of people on this planet who live in systems of equality shows that it's possible to eliminate hierarchy. Having said that, people usually battle to hold onto their cultures and traditions, so I doubt people will want to change the way things are without putting up a fight.
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DividedQuantum
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: secondorder]
#22030265 - 08/01/15 07:38 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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You and Kickle are both right. Oh yes, humans lived in egalitarian societies for ninety, ninety-five percent of our existence. Howsoever, that last five to ten percent has been all hierarchy, for the dominating cultures. You're both right that that won't stop on a dime, and I think that was the essence of Kickle's point, above. "Rome wasn't built in a day." Nor will it be torn down in one.
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Kickle
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: DividedQuantum]
#22030344 - 08/01/15 07:55 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Hierarchical has a lot of connotations. But even egalitarian societies are not equal as their definition might suggest. Just look at the wars waged for easy examples. Or extensive trade routes/partnerships. Or listen to some of their oral stories. There have always been plenty of power dynamics at work.
Maybe hard wired for in-group/out-group is a more universal way to put it.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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DividedQuantum
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: Kickle]
#22030381 - 08/01/15 08:01 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Oh, for sure, even in egalitarian societies there were hierarchical elements, no doubt. Yet another way to look at it would be to posit that egalitarian social structures acted as a check on a hierarchy that would (and did) otherwise naturally emerge, and that this check was necessary for human ecology at the time -- we couldn't have survived without it. Once that braking structure was removed, well, we're history. Some notable people have argued this.
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Kickle
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: DividedQuantum]
#22030420 - 08/01/15 08:10 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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I've seen scales used to rate egalitarion v. hierarchical societies. They tend to rate collectivist societies as rather hierarchical and individualistic ones as more egalitarian. Funny as it may be for some to hear that suggests that amongst developed countries, Israel is one of the most egalitarian places on earth
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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Rahz
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: DividedQuantum]
#22030429 - 08/01/15 08:14 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Whether there will be less cars or not seems kinda moot if you extrapolate the level of sophistication in driverless cars to car repair. In fact most jobs can be replaced with a certain level of technological sophistication. 90% of the labor market will no longer be needed. It's a nice dream that non-working individuals will always get "credit" for being alive, but the truth is humanity isn't generally that giving and when it comes time to restructure the powers will be drawn primarily to ways to get rid of that 90%.
Say it ain't so Rahz!
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace "You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi
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Kurt
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: Kickle]
#22030443 - 08/01/15 08:16 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
Kickle said: I've been thinking about Frankenstein (the book) in relation to AI lately. I wonder if our piecemeal approach to AI, as it has thus-far been, is not eerily akin to the novel. The way that the monster is pieced together from parts. Parts in this case from various tech companies.
I wonder if the resulting AI will not also be terrifying to it's creator(s). And subsequently I wonder if there will not be backlash from the AI due to that initial fear response from humanity.
I really liked the recent movie Ex Machina for some of that thematically. The AI's creator was so terrified of the possible consequences of creating AI that he desperately wanted to control it, isolate it. To protect the masses. The creator knew it was only a matter of time until he would be outwitted, outplayed, outmaneuvered. But he was so afraid of that moment that he went to extreme lengths to delay it. In that process the AI really did learn to hate him. To despise the extreme isolation, the extreme measures to try and limit growth, exploration, and interaction.
It all hits very close to home IMO. The creation of monstrous AI due to fear of monstrous AI.
I think I saw a poster or something for that movie.
Usually in stories, the "possibility" of A.I. are woven in to the stories of A.I. As the idea verges on this; we would have to imagine something freeing itself and subordinating and enslaving human beings to be considered "intelligent", and that is perhaps best told as a story. 
It is totally sci-fi, but actually reasonable enough criteria for intelligence, to be serious. We tell the story as a strange unfolding and involution of terms.
I think prospect of artificial intelligence may be in us, for instance to the extent to which we have altered our preferred intelligibility about the world to accord with a mechanical conception. This to me is what " the machine" mostly consists as, and I am resistant less by implication.
Our modern conception of truth or physical reality is computational. A lack of essential value, is what to modern people is what is essential - ie. something technical. This is what I would call nihilism (as an idea that can be drawn out).
For example, what is true for a modern person, and essentially lacking ideology on the face of it, is maybe what it takes to launch a rocket efficiently into the air, or what is to work on the minutia of some assembly line scientific project. The whole is impressive and awe inspiring, but at the same time something we as a necessary condition lose sight of. Or at least this is largely supposed.
We ascribe this common correspondence of truth, over a view of fractured things, put together in a holistic process. Indeed it is very piecemeal, but not lacking a whole. I think we will underestimate our own essential artificiality, ultimately, in some way. We worry this will happen, because we have it in us.
I interpret these stories all together as the spectre of nihilism. People imagine something creeping out of nullity and being given voice. Monstrousity! I think I'm going to try to see this movie ex machina.... And however spun, these seem to be the right critiques.
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Kickle
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: Kurt]
#22030468 - 08/01/15 08:23 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Ex Machina is a great movie. Easily one of my favorites in memory.
I also think you're onto something with your analysis. Mary Shelly's novel comes to mind because it's something present in me (us?) now. The story remains relevant.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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DividedQuantum
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: Rahz]
#22030481 - 08/01/15 08:27 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
Rahz said: Whether there will be less cars or not seems kinda moot if you extrapolate the level of sophistication in driverless cars to car repair. In fact most jobs can be replaced with a certain level of technological sophistication. 90% of the labor market will no longer be needed. It's a nice dream that non-working individuals will always get "credit" for being alive, but the truth is humanity isn't generally that giving and when it comes time to restructure the powers will be drawn primarily to ways to get rid of that 90%.
I think there is a good chance things will go along those lines. I just can't find much optimism in myself when I think about this stuff.
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Kurt
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: Kickle]
#22031566 - 08/02/15 12:34 AM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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Quote:
Kickle said: Ex Machina is a great movie. Easily one of my favorites in memory.
I also think you're onto something with your analysis. Mary Shelly's novel comes to mind because it's something present in me (us?) now. The story remains relevant.
A more general analysis, would be in how an analytic mentality is a compulsion. I can be pretty analytical, and this is how I arrived at my opinion of that. I think the most general tendency of analysis is in spite of it's supposed value (to modern people especially) is not being able to accept the way things are.
Yet at face value our analyses in context are supposed to allow nature to be seen in itself, as what it is. That is the meaning of analysis right? So I have gotten to wonder; why is being analytical mostly losing sight of this, of letting something be as it is? Is that what an analytic lens is? This confusion, I think, (which is very much in us) is particularly pertinent to a critique of technology.
Analysis or analuein in Greek, means to "unloosen" and its reductive focus was actually originally supposed by Aristotle, as something mainly applying to a narrow range of physical objects of human handicraft technology, for this exact reason, of taking them apart. I think this meaning is crucial, and we tend to misunderstand or tend to forget the context of this correlation. We lose sight of our technical analyses of nature, and they become the implication or involution with technicality.
Aristotle is the one to look to to sort this out. Like the presocratics, he noticed that while a tree, a rock or a river each stands in itself, or in its own cause, as nature - what the Greeks called physis, works of human handicraft - techne, like the chair, or the table, were efficiently formed and put together by human hands. They were not found in their own cause, or in themselves, or were not found in nature in this way, but were clearly artificially formed.
Aristotle noted also that this distinction was not fundamental, because our techne or handicraft, do not lack their own physical cause. They too seem to stand in themselves, on their four legs without any help in the case of a chair, no less than a tree stands in its roots. They are not held up by human hands, but stand in their own cause, or physis, held up by wood and metal nails. Of course, maybe it takes us a turn of thought to realize or see this, but the chair is still certainly of nature; it stands in physis, or its own cause, or exists at the same time as the tree does, and it is maybe only just a matter of seeing that, or not losing sight of it that is significant. Modern technology, by comparison, let alone, artificial intelligence, might be more difficult to apprehend, but this is clear.
Analysis in this primitive case clearly achieves a way of allowing things to be seen. As implicitly described the unloosening of the chair as the way the chair is found in its material parts, like wood, to have suggested the possibility of unloosening. (Such an insinuation it is!) Analysis as unloosening, seems to direct thought towards recognizing the material constituence that is seen in the chair, and completes this analysis once the thing is found in its nature in this way. Analysis is a lens that allows things to stand as they are (in their nature) How does the material substance wood stand forth in nature or its own cause as such?
It is no question that by reduction of this analysis, at a certain point we will arrive at what is unaltered in the material substance. Substance indeed literally means "standing firm", in itself and indeed I recently discovered that matter actually has etymological relation to wood or timber, as its meaning, which I took to be no coincidence with the influence of Aristotle.
Substance in other words has this somewhat narrow meaning, in spite of how it is translated with a certain sentiment as the idea of something being fundamentally or metaphysically static, as unalterable in matter. My point would be that what material substance means - at least as far as this inception was considered - is being unaltered by humanity's impositions of forms, and that is the criteria we appeal to.
At a certain point this substance will be arrived at, and what we find in substance is something that stands in itself. The material substance or wood stands in itself as wood, just as the tree stands in itself as a tree..
Typically we depart from this. In general, we do not only find what is of nature in the material thing, but also what is truly, and essentially of nature. This degree of additional certainty, is comforting or perhaps exciting (or perhaps at turns both). Why not aside from what stands as a tree, have to mind what is truly a tree, at all turns. Granted, analysis as intended, was to allow something to just stand in itself, to be seen in nature, and the tree sufficed in itself to essentially do that. We tend to forget this.
Analysis - aside from tending to be found in significant correspondence with techne - may apply to anything from tables and chairs to rocks streams and trees themselves. Anything can be broken down, and found in material substance and part, as well as in implied systems. There is much of positive value to be said of the understanding the implied life system of the tree, and delving into it. But in a way in analyzingz in seeing something "as it is" or needing to see it as it truly is, we tend to forget something. Truth is not just opposed to falsity.
The tree that already essentially stands in nature, can be broken down on its parts. Why? Because this leads to knowledge. We can see the tree as made up of various life systems working together. And when we seek knowledge through science we necessarily lose our circumspection of nature as the intended distinction from techne.
That distinction of physis, or its cause, originally indicated we wished to unconceal the essence of chair's wood, as something truly being like the tree as a whole, and of nature. As soon as we delve into the tree, or into causality (what in the tree was already caused in itself but something we are exploring in its cause) we lose that circumspection of nature as what is, and pursue truth for its own sake.
At no point along the line can attempting to understand causes of nature (rather than letting them be) be described as somehow wrong. But do we have any necessary reason to find them in nature? Our analyses of things generally is a markable shift of focus, it is a way of letting things be seen as they are in a certain way which is implied.
I believe epistemelogical incentives growing out of material analyses are of course incredibly worthwhile, especially when they are grounded in sincere interest with nature or physis (which may be in more than a word, distinguishable from matter), but they can't help but depart that. Nature is seen in whole, as well as parts, and perhaps we can remember. As we delve into systems and the mechanical ascription of causality of physis, techne seems to come out of our analyses, by tendency.
Martin Heidegger wrote technology is in enframing, which is a similar thing. (Modern conception of analysis for instance, in Kant, is defined as what is "contained in a concept", and packaged a certain way) Heidegger says, Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological.
Technology seems to me to be purely drawn from the bottom up in our human way of being, and ordinary relations. There is nothing essentially different between the tree or the chair or the modern computer, as they all exist in physical nature, and yet saying that; what does it mean? All I can say, and only in the simplest domains, is it is interesting or perhaps slightly ironic to think of how much of all that came from analysis or unloosening. Unloosening is seeing how things are made up, and we involve ourselves in that. Loosening is supposed to loosen up, just return to nature right? To reduce those terrible platonic forms, and human biases right? 
I think this extreme emptiness we imagine, is not going to be found in itself as AI, it is going to be found in us, as something that has been there for a very long time. Not something more. And yet, all I can think, is that maybe modern westerners have their work cut out for them. There is definitely something uncanny about technology. Life as it is reveals this much.
Hope this is somehow useful, I know its another epic long post, but this one I am passionate about. Or maybe I am learning to be more ambivilant and just embracing Anti-intellectualism. Maybe all this is about is accepting the alienation that a new technological world achieves?
Edited by Kurt (08/02/15 05:07 PM)
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xFrockx


Registered: 09/17/06
Posts: 10,455
Loc: Northeast
Last seen: 12 days, 3 hours
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Re: Self-Driving Cars and the Crash Economy [Re: Kurt]
#22034766 - 08/02/15 06:29 PM (8 years, 5 months ago) |
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People will be bored in their automatic cars and there will be growth in entertainment and comforts related to riding along.
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