Today I learned +

[Scribe]

Dusking: The Dutch twilight ritual helping people slow down

A revived Dutch tradition encourages people to sit quietly at sunset and watch the world fade into darkness.

www.bbc.com

 

[Thomas Shey]

Commerce collapses when nobody can buy anything. When commerce collapses, civil unrest rises.

And to be clear, this isn’t about political/economic system types. There is no kind of government that can function without tax revenues, and there can’t be tax revenue if the population is facing inexorable rising unemployment.

Barring ones that sell only to the 1%, companies can't even function when unemployment gets too high, because there's suddenly no one to sell to.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The issue of insufficient workers tends to impact physical labour positions, rather than those easily or cheaply replaced by AI. I don't see ChatGPT picking grapes any time soon.

It might not be as soon, but I wouldn't be in too big a hurry to write off robotics/automation there. Currently the cost-to-benefit just isn't there.

 

[Ryujin]

It might not be as soon, but I wouldn't be in too big a hurry to write off robotics/automation there. Currently the cost-to-benefit just isn't there.

Oh, no doubt they can get there eventually but when it specifically comes to fragile crops, for example, there tends to be far too much wastage when they try automation.

 

[Dioltach]

Dusking: The Dutch twilight ritual helping people slow down

A revived Dutch tradition encourages people to sit quietly at sunset and watch the world fade into darkness.

www.bbc.com

I've been living in the Netherlands for nearly 50 years, and this is the first time I've seen it mentioned. It's not a "thing" here.

 

[Scribe]

I've been living in the Netherlands for nearly 50 years, and this is the first time I've seen it mentioned. It's not a "thing" here.

Yeah I scanned the article earlier, and apparently some author trying to bring it back into being a thing. /shrug

I will say, the concept however resonates with me big time.

 

[Arnie_Wan_Kenobi]

TIL Cochlear Implants were invented in 1957. I was reading a students' paper and it dropped a detail about someone getting them in the 1980s. For whatever reason, I assumed they were a much later development, and external hearing aids were the only available technology until at least the 2010s.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re: robotic harvesting

It’s coming. Most major crops already used highly mechanized harvesting methods.

And if they can’t find a way to harvest delicate crops via farming roombas soon, they’ll simply breed varietals that are more resistant to rough handling.

…just like most major crops have been already.

 

[overgeeked]

Maybe a dedicated future speculation thread is in order.

It's pretty clear that we're headed in an incredibly bad direction. Once the majority of labor is automated, the workers will be left high and dry. No money for anything means millions (billions?) going homeless and starving. It's folly to think the same ruthless and utterly evil billionaires who refuse to pay their workers more than the absolute minimum possible while simultaneously working them into the ground will suddenly develop anything remotely like the conscience they'd need to institute something like universal basic income (UBI) to prevent those without work from starving in the streets.

 

[Ryujin]

Re: robotic harvesting

It’s coming. Most major crops already used highly mechanized harvesting methods.

And if they can’t find a way to harvest delicate crops via farming roombas soon, they’ll simply breed varietals that are more resistant to rough handling.

…just like most major crops have been already.

In some cases it's not the crop itself, that is the most delicate, but the plant. This presents a somewhat more difficult hurdle.