The Wal-Mart here tried this. When built, about half of the cash out stations were automated. Within about 6 months they were all replaced with regular check out stations. Too much error, theft and fraud, wasn't worth it.
Self-checkout machiens don't like me. At least 1/4th, maybe even 1/3rd times I use one of those it gets some kind of hiccups, have problems with counting coins or outrightly tries to rob me blind (ok, that was once - cashier consulted with overseer and handed me the change and asked me to leave).
I think the problem is that administrators pick up the worst designs - at least once I saw moderately good machine being replaced with different machine with much more incident-prone coin-counting mechanism.
It is true that our understanding of human psychology can allow us to determine if an abnormal human culture is detrimental to the mental health of those people regardless of our experiences living within that culture or not.
There are ways to show that some cultures are inferior if you consider the ability to create high-functioning adults as a standard for a good culture.
Sure, these guys may not mind their culture, but their culture appears to have no imagination.
This culture likely will never produce a scientist.
If your culture is not outputting science, it's pretty much worthless to the species.
That's a rather... biased, materialistic standard of valuation. When Humanity was limited to scattered tribes of a few at most, I'm fairly sure our output of Einsteins wasn't very high either.
On that basis, I guess most animals aren't very valuable to themselves either.
But if anything shows the height of parochial arrogance, it's the idea that our culture is somehow the definition of "normal".
I consider "normal" to be whatever the current human average is.
It shifts, their culture USED to be "normal", but many of us advanced while they didn't and they are now outside of the average. They're an outlier.
Now, one can argue about if we should be using the mean, median, or mode average to determine current norms, but I believe all three of those would point to this culture being a statistical outlier.
The standards of a good culture change as our species advances. Their's was fine hundreds of years ago, now they're just sitting in some forest consuming, not even really growing.
They've become stagnant.
We have a bloody universe to conquer, we don't have time for this. Those children born to this culture are raw material. Life support units for that wonderful ball of fat and electricity between their ears.
That is unused human processing power just going to waste.
Science? in what way does science advance humanity that is not just an advancement of science?
What advances humanity?
Science? Spirituality? Social learning? Psychological growth and learning?
Education and if so, in what fields?
"In what way does science advance humanity?
Well, close your eyes.
Spin a circle.
Open them.
What you're looking at, science made that.
Keep doing it, almost every time you open your eyes you'll be looking at something that science was responsible for.
Your computer.
Any medication you've ever taken.
The entirety of human civilization for the most part.
Without science, we'd still be cave men.
We may not have called it science 10000 years ago, but inventing fire, and the wheel, and that kind of stuff... science.
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Science certainly makes things easier, I'll grant you that. But smarter? By default? I've seen no evidence of that.
Science certainly makes things easier, I'll grant you that. But smarter? By default? I've seen no evidence of that.
I don't believe I said smarter or more intelligent, I believe I said that cultures not outputting science are effectively worthless to mankind, which I stand by.
Take this culture, for example. Imagine it is wiped off the face of the Earth tomorrow. Does anything change for any non-member of that culture?
I don't think it does. Our world continues on much the same.
Now take any high-science producing culture and remove them.
That hurts humankind. We lose the imagination of an entire educated society. We lose possible cures, technologies, or even literature and art.
Does this make them more OBJECTIVELY valuable? No, there's no such thing as objective or inherent value, but it does make them more valuable to us, as humans, as their existence could lead to everyone's life becoming better.
While the continued existence of this tribe appears to be mostly benign. Neither good or bad, just "there".
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Think about the simple act of replacing every cashier with those easy to use automated one. A former workforce of 20 cashiers in a supermarket could be reduced to 5 (1 watching 4 machines each) supervising cashiers watching the machines.They did this at the Kroger across the street, and it failed. Hard. The machines constantly get confused, lock up, misread things, lock up again, and then demand cashier assistance. The one cashier is so busy trying to override and/or repair the first machine that the lines at the other three grow until they stretch around the store.
In the end, a 15-year-old kid can check people out 10 times faster than any number of automated checkout stands.
Welcome to every single grocery in my area. They simply do not care that it takes a customer 20 - 30 minutes in line to purchase one item.
I don't have the same problem in my local store.
They have 4 automated checkouts and about 6 normal ones. One girl monitors the 4 automated checkouts and every time I use them it's quick.
Sounds like they just bought some crappy machines, there are really nice ones on the market.
Science certainly makes things easier, I'll grant you that. But smarter? By default? I've seen no evidence of that.I don't believe I said smarter or more intelligent, I believe I said that cultures not outputting science are effectively worthless to mankind, which I stand by.
Take this culture, for example. Imagine it is wiped off the face of the Earth tomorrow. Does anything change for any non-member of that culture?
I don't think it does. Our world continues on much the same.
Now take any high-science producing culture and remove them.
That hurts humankind. We lose the imagination of an entire educated society. We lose possible cures, technologies, or even literature and art.
Does this make them more OBJECTIVELY valuable? No, there's no such thing as objective or inherent value, but it does make them more valuable to us, as humans, as their existence could lead to everyone's life becoming better.
While the continued existence of this tribe appears to be mostly benign. Neither good or bad, just "there".
How does it improve mankind itself then? Just standards of living kind of stuff?
Well the biggest difference would be that there are lot more of us and we'd leave a giant sucking economic hole (and opportunity). Far less of them, so they'd have less effect.Science certainly makes things easier, I'll grant you that. But smarter? By default? I've seen no evidence of that.I don't believe I said smarter or more intelligent, I believe I said that cultures not outputting science are effectively worthless to mankind, which I stand by.
Take this culture, for example. Imagine it is wiped off the face of the Earth tomorrow. Does anything change for any non-member of that culture?
I don't think it does. Our world continues on much the same.
Now take any high-science producing culture and remove them.
That hurts humankind. We lose the imagination of an entire educated society. We lose possible cures, technologies, or even literature and art.
Does this make them more OBJECTIVELY valuable? No, there's no such thing as objective or inherent value, but it does make them more valuable to us, as humans, as their existence could lead to everyone's life becoming better.
While the continued existence of this tribe appears to be mostly benign. Neither good or bad, just "there".
Okay, then let's compare the tribe to Ashkenazi Jews.
They are also a very small population, and they make up the mass majority of Nobel science prize winners.
If we'd lost the tribe, very little difference.
If we'd lost Ashkenazi Jews, we'd be out about half of modern science and most of the world's chess masters.
Science certainly makes things easier, I'll grant you that. But smarter? By default? I've seen no evidence of that.I don't believe I said smarter or more intelligent, I believe I said that cultures not outputting science are effectively worthless to mankind, which I stand by.
Take this culture, for example. Imagine it is wiped off the face of the Earth tomorrow. Does anything change for any non-member of that culture?
I don't think it does. Our world continues on much the same.
Now take any high-science producing culture and remove them.
That hurts humankind. We lose the imagination of an entire educated society. We lose possible cures, technologies, or even literature and art.
I'm sorry this is about as parochial, biased, and simplistic a comparison we could get. If the First World were to vanish tomorrow we'd also lose the bulk of the resource drains and pollution generators on this planet. We'd probably also lose the bulk contributors to C02 build up and potential climate change whose heaviest impact will most likely be on third world countries. We also would have lost the cultures that for the first time developed weapons that could end us as a species.
Our presence on this planet is not an unmixed blessing.
Well put
Fleshgrinder: You missed the point of my question.
Science did advance our culture scientifically.
I question (not personally, as I believe it is true) that this is to bee seen as advancement of humanity by default.
And I certainly question that it is the only way to advance humanity.
Well, what else is there that has evidence that it works?
Spirituality isn't real, so it can't help.
Education just leads to more science.
If almost everything is a function of science, that human advancement is pretty much always an advancement of science.
What else is there other than flights of fantasy and delusion?
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You say that almost everything is a function of science.
Therefore, only science does anything to 'advance humanity'
You could as well say:
'Science is the only advancement there is to humanity, so science must be the only thing that advances humanity'
That is a schoolboo example of a circular argument.
Again, it is a valid opinion but neither proof, nor a real argument.
There is no evidence, scientific advancement does anything regarding humanity besides giving it a scientific advancement.
Works of art give people works of art.
Social advancements give people social advancements
Scientific advancements give people scientific advancement.
You say that almost everything is a function of science.
Therefore, only science does anything to 'advance humanity'You could as well say:
'Science is the only advancement there is to humanity, so science must be the only thing that advances humanity'That is a schoolboo example of a circular argument.
Again, it is a valid opinion but neither proof, nor a real argument.
There is no evidence, scientific advancement does anything regarding humanity besides giving it a scientific advancement.
Works of art give people works of art.
Social advancements give people social advancements
Scientific advancements give people scientific advancement.
No evidence?
How about our increased life expectancy.
Increased health values across the board.
Everything computing has ever done for us.
Our ability to fly from continent to continent.
Cars.
Any technology.
Without science we'd be cave men.
What other advancement is there?
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Increased life expectancy and increased health lead to more people on earth - most of them aren't scientists, you said most labor could be done by machines now/soon, so those additional people would, if I follow your earlier argument about the lack of worth of non - scientists for humanity, mean no advancement for humanity.
Everything else is pretty much just an advancement of science (how did cars advance humanity, how did flying from continent to continent advance humanity, the list goes on and on)
People are still dying from hunger.
People are still caught in their little worlds of racial/social/religious supremacy.
People still steal, rob, rape and murder.
People still die in wars for reasons unfathomable to many.
The numbers for this haven't even decreased notably with the advancement of science (you may argue less people are dying from deseases, but then, plagues have always been spikes in the numbers through the centuries and quite a few experts believe we are more or less waiting for the next big hit, so that argument might be right, it might also be wrong), so does the advancement of humanity through science show somewhere?
Science makes life for many easier, sometimes more enjoyable, even longer. But is this an advancement of humanity as a whole?
I get it you see scientific advancements as advancements of humanity. I can relate to that up to a point.
It just does not prove your point, it is not the all accepted definition of 'advancement of humanity'.
All I wanted to do is to put your thoughts into perspective (mainly show you that they stem from your perspective, not some universal truth).
This culture sounds like some marriages I've heard of.
Tell me about it.
Who's read Vonnegut's Player Piano?
The numbers for this haven't even decreased notably with the advancement of science (you may argue less people are dying from deseases, but then, plagues have always been spikes in the numbers through the centuries and quite a few experts believe we are more or less waiting for the next big hit, so that argument might be right, it might also be wrong), so does the advancement of humanity through science show somewhere?
That entire paragraph is entirely false.
Between 1800 and now all measurable metrics of human well being have increased.
Today is the greatest day in human history to be alive.
You are less likely to die today than any other time in human history. You are less likely to be enslaved, to starve, to live under tyranny, to be under educated, etc.
Yes, bad things still happen, but those bad things have reduced in frequency exponentially over the last 200 years.
We are on track by 2025 to have not a single human being on earth living on less than 1 dollar a day. An achievement in the fight against poverty.
Science is driving us toward Utopia.
We are on track to DEFEAT HUMAN MORTALITY.
Science will make us gods.
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Read up on numbers concerning crimerates, wars and genocides in history.
Try to get some notion of the world out there beyond science journals and utopian hopes.
People have thought that tey were reaching utopia, before, but unless they kept their utopia well hidden from the rest of the human race, they failed.
Hippie communities thought they presented a new mankind and the end of all wars.
German war criminals thought their plans to create a new, better man through eugenics and enforced dominance is a sad chapter in the history of the 20th century.
I see no reason to believe we are closer to that utopia now then ever before.
Putting ourselfs on high towers of proud supremacy over every other generation, thinking that we, above all other live in the best of times isn't exactly new either, sadly it is more a sign of ignorance and perhaps arrogance than of advancement.
I do read numbers concernings crime rates, wars, and genocides in HISTORY.
Today is not history, today is today, and many of the horrors of history have been DECREASING.
Look at our wars today. We lose A FRACTION of the people we used to lose in war.
We lose 1000 soldiers and we freak out, we used to lose millions.
And it has nothing to do with "thinking we're the greatest generation"
Today is OBJECTIVELY better than the past.
Every possible bad thing that can happen to you is less likely to happen in 2012 than it was in the past.
That's what people are missing. The news obscures it, makes it seem like we live on some planet falling apart.
But we're not falling apart, we're getting stronger every day.
In the last 50 years most of the wars we've had have been so tiny, with so little loss of life that you'd barely be able to see those wars on a population graph.
Stop watching the news, they sell you fear that's not real.
Look at the STATISTICS, the HDI, human death rates, infant mortality, education.
It's all getting better in every country, even the poorest ones.
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I rest my case. meet you when we are immortal and moving around the universe by pure force of will.
BTW: I did quite a bit of work on social statistics of various sorts for several classes.
While I don't necessarily believe everything I hear/see/read in the news (and here in Germany the news are not quite as fearsome as the news I see on american channels), I don't believe ignoring the news will put me in a better place to understand the world around me.
Where do you get your numbers?
Where do you get your knowledge of the world?
It seems to be a very different source than the ones I have been using through the last few years.
I particularly like the way you adjust the time scale we need to look at depending on what you want to prove.
The genocides and displacements of the mid-twentieth century were on a scale that has never been matched in the past, but that's ok because we've gotten better in the last 50 years.
Things that have gotten worse in the last 50 years are ok because they've still gotten better over the last 200.
Things like pollution and environmental damage that have gotten worse over the last 200 years are ok because we'll get better eventually or at least they won't kill us all off and some of our descendents will eventually be better off.
And even CONSIDERING those horrible genocides, things HAVE STILL GOTTEN BETTER.
Over the last 200 years, which includes 2 world wars, at least two well known genocides and several lesser known genocides, all the stats STILL KEEP RISING.
And when I collapse the timescale to 50 years, it's to show you that we're still getting better.
Our wars are getting more efficient, we're killing less people overall with them.
World War 2 really was the last great war, as all our wars since have been extremely small in comparison and the trend is continuing in a positive direction.
You guys can choose to see the world however you choose, I choose to focus on the MASSIVE positives and not get too worried about the very small problems that exist in comparison.
Yes, 20 000 children still starve to death everyday... in a world of 7 billion. Those 20 000 starving children represent 0.00028% of the population.
The US lost 6300ish troops between Iraq and Afghanistan... pretty terrible, right? 0.00206% of the US population.
The micro only looks bad when you don't look at the macro.
Can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs, eh?
It's a true statement, despite the horrible ramifications of it.
People die, it sucks, but we're reducing the number of people who die every day.
You can't save everyone right now, so you can do two things:
Try to save everyone before we have the technology to do so, spreading our resources and slowing our progress.
or
Forge ahead as fast as we can hoping to hit something like Norman Borlaug's breakthroughs in agriculture and THEN save who we can.
I vote for the forge ahead as fast as we can method, as I see the other method as just a kind of slow torture.
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We are on track by 2025 to have not a single human being on earth living on less than 1 dollar a day. An achievement in the fight against poverty.
This is a really bizarre factoid.
First and foremost, there are people without income. $0/day is less than $1/day.
I suspect that there is instead some statistic you have found stating that no one will be working for less than $1/day.
Given rates of inflation and the recent devaluation of the dollar relative to other currencies, this statistic is an inevitability which has no corrolation whatsoever with any improvement in quality of life.
I would much rather try to live on $.75/day in 1900 than $1.25/day in 2012.
That's not to diminish any of your other statistics. I would just stop throwing this one around as some evidence of a grand improvement in the quality of life for the poor.
The website "Iraq Body Count" uses the number 117k as their maximum possible civilian casualties in Iraq. Considering this is an anti-war site, this is possibly inflated so I think it's a good number to use as it would actually help your point to use the highest number possible.
Iraq has a population similar to my own country, 33 million.
Iraq civilian body count is 0.36% of their population.
Not even a full half a percent of Iraq's population.
0.0016% of the world's population.
And humans will survive global warming, as will other creatures that adapt and evolve.
As you said, we have several extinction events on the fossil record, some of which makes the dinosaur extinction look mild... but life continued every time.
Sure, maybe we have to live very differently than we do today. We'll have to move inland and congregate in larger cities (something I think is a good thing anyway), we may be forced to grow our meat, something we can already do.
Humanity is dug in like a cockroach my friend.
We may stumble, we may falter, but we always seem to get back up.
And if not us, then life itself on this planet will continue without us.
Some other intelligent form of life will likely evolve when we leave the niche for it to fill.
We're like mold... once we're in, we're hard to get out.
Add in all of the people who died in Gulf War I and the million or so people who died from the starvation blockade and what do we get, Computer?
And how come dead Iraqi soldiers don't count?
Who's read Vonnegut's Player Piano?I've read every piece of Vonnegut I could get my hands on. I remember meeting him at Rutgers in '82. He told his audience that he refused to get a computer because he did not want to fire the nice old woman who typed up his manuscripts for him. I also have Slaughterhouse 5 on laser disc. I've read up enough on his bio to know where the title came from.
I saw him lecture in '86 or so. He was promoting Galapagos. I haven't read everything, maybe 5 or 6 of his books. What I've read, I like. He could really provoke thought and discussion through his work.
294 coalition troops in Gulf War 1, not worth calculating as it would obviously be an incredibly small percentage.
Slightly over 100k civilian deaths, with a population of the time of 18ish million. 0.57%, a full half percent and a bit.
I am unaware of which starvation blockade you're speaking of. Do you mean Israel and Palestine?
I was 9 or 10 when GW1 broke out, so if I missed some important event I apologize.
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I blame ST:TNG for this.
Another improvement I just noted.
Gulf War 1, 2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991, 100k civilian deaths 6 months.
Current Iraq war, March 2003 - Present, 117k civilian deaths in 11 years.
The US has been there 22 times longer but only 17k extra civilians have died when compared to the Gulf War 1.
I call that a hell of an improvement.
I am unaware of which starvation blockade you're speaking of. Do you mean Israel and Palestine?
Between the two wars.
After looking at some articles, I must say, Iraq is one fertile place.
Another improvement I just noted.
Gulf War 1, 2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991, 100k civilian deaths 6 months.
Where are you getting these stats for GW1? I'm only seeing around 35k.
I saw him lecture in '86 or so. He was promoting Galapagos. I haven't read everything, maybe 5 or 6 of his books. What I've read, I like. He could really provoke thought and discussion through his work.Who's read Vonnegut's Player Piano?I've read every piece of Vonnegut I could get my hands on. I remember meeting him at Rutgers in '82. He told his audience that he refused to get a computer because he did not want to fire the nice old woman who typed up his manuscripts for him. I also have Slaughterhouse 5 on laser disc. I've read up enough on his bio to know where the title came from.
Oh, and, yeah, Vonnegut's the shiznit, son!
I never met him or saw him, but I'm pretty sure I read everything up until Timequake. One of my all-time faves.
Where are you getting these stats for GW1? I'm only seeing around 35k.Another improvement I just noted.
Gulf War 1, 2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991, 100k civilian deaths 6 months.
The wikipedia page on the gulf war
An investigation by Beth Osborne Daponte estimated total civilian fatalities at about 3,500 from bombing, and some 100,000 from other effects of the war
It was triple sourced
Robert Fisk, The Great War For Civilisation; The Conquest of the Middle East (Fourth Estate, 2005), p.853.
"Toting the Casualties of War". Businessweek. 6 February 2003
Ford, Peter (9 April 2003). "Bid to stem civilian deaths tested". Christian Science Monitor.
It may be counting the starvation blockade since it's counting "other effects of the war."
Anyway, I must admit that I was surprised at what a small percentage of the Iraqi population was killed after 2 decades of imperialist invasion and starvation blockade.
It's getting better all the time!
EDIT: Now I see it, thank you.
Remember to control your irreverant tone, CK234. Our robot overlords won't be forgiving. But you'll be happy!
Did I say that this post global warming world would be worse than ours today?
No.
I think centralizing our population in massive metropolis cities that are laced with as much green technology as possible is a good thing. I think it will be better than now.
I think growing meat is better than killing animals for it, I think this would be superior... not to mention cleaner, and the meat we grow can be void of contaminants, hormones, or other crap we have in meat now.
The world of the future will be warmer, maybe extremely warm, but I still believe humanity will be happier and more comfortable than we are now.
Not to mention scientists are already coming up with weather and climate modification techniques that may allow us to reverse the damage we've done.
The "there's nothing we can do" attitude is a little funny when you keep up on modern climate science.
We're preparing an experiment where we're going to release a special particulate into the air that will basically do the opposite of a greenhouse effect, we're going to intentionally try to create a pollution based cooling effect.
Even gods take baby steps.
We're preparing an experiment where we're going to release a special particulate into the air that will basically do the opposite of a greenhouse effect, we're going to intentionally try to create a pollution based cooling effect.
This statement has had the opposite effect intended, I believe.