Monday, September 3, 2018

Labor Day Thoughts; Publix' new state-of-the-art in Eastern Guilford County will likely employ relatively good paying truck driver and robot mechanics, but not very many warehouse workers, until they can replace most human labor

"FedEx announced it is ratcheting up its commitment to augmenting employees with mechatronics.

The cargo hub is a shining example of the synthesis of humans and machines.

...the shipper is using Vecna’s autonomous “tuggers” or rovers to move odd-shaped cargo through its North Carolina distribution center.

Galen Steele, FedEx senior manager at the North Carolina facility, remarked, “I understand people thinking this will take their jobs.

https://www.therobotreport.com/here-come-humanoids/

Good paying manufacturing jobs are being taken by robots

"Honeywell and Carnegie Mellon University will use artificial intelligence and robotics to improve productivity and order fulfillment in distribution centers...

The Platform will deploy advanced robotics in unpredictable, ever-changing environments "to enable critical decision-making capabilities, intelligent motion, collision avoidance and reliable sensing."


https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/Honeywell-Carnegie-Mellon-robotics-distribution-center/531346/


Complexity increases the likelihood of complication

"With bright yellow paint, high ceilings and robots zipping across sprawling floors, Amazon's newest distribution center in Salt Lake City evokes a tech Wonka factory.

When in operation, 6,000 "drive units," robots that look like oversized orange Roombas, will carry the stacks of yellow pods to Amazon's workers.

"We'll have associates working at stations like this," Taylor said, motioning to fenced off workstations with computer screens, "to either store that inventory, or to pick it for a customer order."

From there, [an] elaborate distribution maze, ending with spiral slides that drop packages into the hands of workers to place on trucks..."


https://www.ksl.com/article/46375515/with-operations-to-begin-in-weeks-amazon-shows-off-new-distribution-center

The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change…
…so, in a month's time
a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen
or maybe one that wasn't going to happen does

Ian Stewart
The Mathematics of Chaos

Why have so many people shown up in the last 262 years?

10,000 BC.1 million semi modern humans
8000 BC...5million, or five times more in 2,000 years
6000 BC...10,000,000...x2
4000 BC...20,000,000...x2 +10,000,000 in 2000 years
2000 BC...35,000,000...x1.5
1.........200,000,000...x5.7
1750......791,000,000...x3.95 in 1750 years
1900......1,650,000,000
2000......6,070,581,000...x30.35 in 2000 years
2005......6,453,628,000...+383,047,000 in 5 years
2008......6,700,000,000...x33.5 in 2008 years
11/2011...7,000,000,000...+929,419,000+ in 11 years
4/2016....7,416,900,000...+426,900,000+ in less than 5 years
9/2018....7,647,344,879...+647,344,879 in less than 11 years

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Non-random events cause random effects

Inside Alibaba's new kind of superstore: Robots, apps and overhead conveyor belts

Alibaba is also opening robot-using restaurants, where food is ordered entirely through an app and delivered by machines.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/inside-hema-alibabas-new-kind-of-superstore-robots-apps-and-more.html

Economic unreality leads to higher levels of real instability

"March 18, 2018; KERNERSVILLE, N.C. — As soon as the first robot arrived at a FedEx shipping hub in the heart of North Carolina tobacco country early last year, talk of pink slips was in the air.

Workers had been driving the “tuggers” that navigated large and irregular items across the vast concrete floor of the 630,000-square-foot freight depot since it opened in 2011.

Their initial robotic colleague drew a three-dimensional digital map of the place as it tugged freight around. A few months later, three other robots ...arrived...

In a recent report, the McKinsey Global Institute, a business research organization, predicted that about one-third of workers in the United States will have to switch occupations because of technology-driven automation by 2030.

“What people underestimate is the time needed for this to happen,” said Michael Chui, a partner with McKinsey.

...more than 80 percent of packages move across the facility through a system of conveyor belts, scanners and sorters that needs no human labor.

...When a truck filled with packages arrives, workers load the bulky items onto trailers hitched to a robot. Once these trailers are full, they press a button that sends the vehicle on its way.

...FedEx is already exploring the use of robotics in the concrete yards outside its hubs, where workers move freight with forklifts and other vehicles

...On the second floor of the North Carolina hub, where most packages race down conveyor belts, the company is preparing to install a system that can automatically recognize packages that need special handling. In the past, that also required a paid worker."


Oil = modern food

Money = Oil and other finite physical resources

You won't read it in the paper

"Conveyor belts, scanners, and even autonomous rovers are ultimately built to maximize employee output, but humanoids are expressly created to replace humans. 

...long-term goal of making “robots that have mobility, dexterity, perception and intelligence comparable to humans and animals, or perhaps exceeding them,”

The government of Japan envisions an even more robotic future of replacing its dying citizens with machines, particularly humanoids, to maintain its current standard of living and care for its geriatric citizens.



The economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment,
not the other way around.

Gaylord Nelson

If fossil fuel, pesticides, fertilizers, genetically modified seed, 
irrigation, exponentially productive technology, arable land and fresh water
created enough food to keep pace with population growth so far,
is Earth’s industrialized civilization dependent 
on ever increasing supplies of what appears to be finite resources?

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency,
the second is war.

Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. 

But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

Ernest Hemingway

If some economies fall like dominoes, with wealth transferring away from instability,
while large, relatively younger populations descend into more chaotic times,
what could happen 
if a generation of underemployed, underpaid, educated and indebted young adults
become disillusioned by their elders’ financial mismanagement
and seek to remedy the predicament?

Think of the Earth as a living organism…being attacked by billions of bacteria,
whose numbers double every forty years.

Gore Vidal


Resource consumption, food production, population, and fiat money creation,
all rose faster in the last 50 years than the preceding 5,000,
as we consumed more than replenished.


Zugzwang is when a chess player at a disadvantage
is forced to choose between two or more moves, 
all of which end in a severely weakened position.

Mark Hartzman

Do fewer Gazelles = fewer Cheetahs?

If Gazelles need water and grass
and Cheetahs need water and Gazelles
and an abundance of sustenance leads to more Gazelles,
should more Gazelles and water lead to more Cheetahs?

If too many Gazelles relative to water and grass lead to fewer Gazelles,
do fewer Gazelles = fewer Cheetahs?

There are probably already too many people on the planet.

We need to continue to decrease the growth rate
of the global population.

The planet can't support many more people.

Dr Nina Fedoroff
National Medal of Science Laureate
Professor of Molecular Biology
Science and Technology Advisor
to the US Secretary of State 

Mold continues to multiply after eating half a piece of cheese
and eventually eats the cheese and itself until there isn't any mold or cheese left.

If human beings are the mold and Earth is the cheese,
we appear to have past the point of possible sustainability
and now there are too many who want relatively high advertised standard of livings,
meaning globally, it's down to who get’s what’s left, who gets cut off when
and how and where who is most likely to survive.

As mold can't collectively prevent the procreation of a larger generation
that can’t be fed by the remaining cheese,
the human population of Earth appears to have done the same.

People who have what they want 
are fond of telling people who haven't what they want,
that they really don't want it.

Ogden Nash 

If need is sustenance and a temperate climate,

don't do what you don’t want done to you unless you need to.


You're captives of a civilizational system
that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live.

Daniel Quinn
Postulated correlations between population growth and natural resource consumption

What do you do if you possess a brief case that may contain either $0 or $1,000,000
and are offered $200,000 for the case?

What if the majority of a civilization collectively chose the case and lost
but most don’t know?

Have most revolts been instigated by some with less who want more
against those with more?

Have the educated underemployed caused most rebellions?


I’ll tell you what war is all about

You’ve got to kill people, 
and when you’ve killed enough, they stop fighting

General Curtis LeMay

If technological civilization has advanced more
in the last 10,000 years than the previous 1,000,000
the last 1,000 than the previous 10,000
the last 100 than the previous 1,000
including industrialization and exponential population expansion
and the last 20 compared to the last 100
now what?


The major advances in civilization
are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.

Alfred North Whitehead

If non-material want can provide a high quality of life,
while material want doesn’t necessarily create happiness,
is it better to be miserable with a high standard of living
than unhappy and poor?


Two fundamentally different stories have been enacted
…during the lifetime of man.

One began... some two or three million years ago by the Leavers,
and is still being enacted by them today, as successfully as ever.

The other began to be enacted here some ten or twelve thousand years ago
by the Takers,
and is apparently about to end in catastrophe.

Ishmael, a wise fictional gorilla

Sunday, March 27, 2016; There are too many people

http://greensboroperformingarts.blogspot.com/2016/03/there-are-too-many-people.html

Too many people and at some point, not enough food

http://greensboroperformingarts.blogspot.com/2016/08/too-many-people-and-at-some-point-not.html


We are in the first age since the dawn of civilization
in which people have dared to think it practicable
to make the benefits of civilization available to the whole human race.

Arnold Toynbee

When the industrialized world's population growth slows, 
and economic activity can't be increased with ever greater consumption
by larger numbers of actual people,
central bank intervention, debt based fiscal policy etc...
become the means to placate the masses and preserve power at the top


Once off the cliff, there is still hope if you keep running.

By running ever faster you may not fall.

Wyle E. Coyote

If Earth became uninhabitable,
and 'we' had a spaceship big enough for some people and enough supplies
that could go 250,000 miles per hour,
and it would take about 11,276 years without stopping or hitting anything 
to get to the nearest star, 
where the chances of there being a habitable planet may be at most 
one tenth of one percent, should we take better care of what we have?

The opposite of a fact is falsehood,
but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

Niels Bohr

If Earth is spinning at about 1,043 mph at the equator
revolving around the sun at about 66,660 mph
moving around the Milky Way Galaxy at about 489,600 mph
headed towards Andromeda at about 180,000 mph
while the Local Group of galaxies is pulled toward the Local Super Cluster at about 540,000 mph
how fast are we surfing through the cosmos?

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star.

But we can understand the Universe.

That makes us something very special.

Stephen Hawking

If Earth is spinning at about 1,043 mph at the equator
revolving around the sun at about 66,660 mph
moving around the Milky Way Galaxy at about 489,600 mph
headed towards Andromeda at about 180,000 mph
while the Local Group of galaxies is pulled toward the Local Super Cluster at about 540,000 mph
how fast are we surfing through the cosmos?


Were you to board a spaceship,
head out from earth at 99.999999 percent of light speed,
travel for six months and then head back home at the same speed,
your motion would slow your clock, relative to those that remain stationary on Earth,
so that you’d be one year older upon your return,
while everyone on Earth would have aged about 7,000 years.

Brian Greene

We are in the process of failing to provide our offspring a better chance to succeed 
than our grandparents gave our parents
and our parents gave us.


Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.

Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.

Thomas Robert Malthus
Suggested populations could increase faster than food supplies


The wants of a few who know outweighed the needs of many that didn’t 
until the majority figures it out

The natural cycle of laissez faire capitalism
which is supposed to revolve between risk and aversion
has been pervertred by intervention via government and the 1%
to forestall short term economic pain


Nations are not ruined by one act of violence
but quite often, gradually, and almost imperceptibly
by the depreciation of their currency through excessive quantity

Nicolas Copernicus
Discovered Earth was not the center of the Universe

A few stabilized financial markets in the short term 
to defend political legacies and financial interests
by sacrificing more severe long term consequences for everyone else

Corruption of our political, capitalist and information systems negatively influenced behavior
through legislation, budget appropriation, regulation and taxation
which has benefited a select few at the expense of many

The economic and political leadership of both major political parties
in the greatest nation in the history of the world
sold our children's economic future in exchange for a more pleasant present
as most politicians pacified the electorate with platitudes
while delivering legislated benefits to the status quo
at everyone else's expense

It was not justifiable for the baby boom 
to promise themselves trillions worth of unfunded benefits
like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for future generations to pay for,
but it happened anyway, and we are going to have to pay a price for it at some point

Today's older generations
covertly confiscated our younger generation's wealth

Most economic and political leaders bailed themselves out of mistakes
with trillions of debt and newly created money
to be handed down to the unaware of following generations across the globe


The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly,
is to fill the world with fools.

Herbert Spencer
Coined the phrase “Survival of the fittest”

It's just a question of time when rebellions start occurring
in the debt riddled welfare nations
whose populations have been pacified with artificial stability and unsustainable subsidies.

"Normal" jobs with benefits are increasingly harder to acquire.

Corruption is rampant.


I don't care if I follow your rules, if you can cheat, so can I

I won't let you beat me unfairly, I'll beat you unfairly first

Ender Wiggin

Fictional Military Strategist

Dissent the highest form of patriotism

On the famine inflicted by the Soviet Union on Ukraine, 1932-1933


"Japan's sustainable society in the Edo period (1603-1867)"

http://hartzman.blogspot.com/2014/05/japans-sustainable-society-in-edo.html

I don't have a clue of what weapons
will be used in World War III
but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones

Albert Einstein

The Great Thanksgiving Hoax, by Richard J. Maybury


Thanksgiving


Is attachment suffering?

If most believed Earth was the center of the universe
before Copernicus theorized otherwise in 1514
and most people didn’t know the Milky Way was made of stars
before Galileo theorized in 1609
and most didn’t know about dinosaurs before 1855
while most were unaware of other galaxies before 1923
and we found the first planet outside our solar system in 1992,
do we probably not know much more than we think we know?

There is a theory which states
that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here,
it will instantly disappear and be replaced
by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001),
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

If life on Earth were one day...,
land based plants showed up around 10 P.M., or about 450 million years ago,
or at about 90.1% of Earths’ age,
asteroids big enough to cause large losses of life has hit about every 3 minutes,
or about once every 9.48 million years,
insects showed up around 10:30 PM, Dinosaurs - 11 PM,
'Humans' since somewhere between 200,000 to 2,500,000 years, about .04% of the age of the planet, 
about 20 seconds before midnight
while ‘Modern’ humans go back about 10,000 years, or about 0.0001% of Earth’s age,
...and what started everything showed up,
would he/she/it be very happy with what we’ve done with the place?

When they discover the center of the universe,
a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.

Bernard Bailey

If about 50 million years after Earth formed about 4.55 billion years ago
an asteroid about the size of Mars crashed into Earth
leaving the moon, which is about a quarter the size of Earth,
led to different kinds of  non 'air' breathing life about 3.9 billion years ago
until something started excreting oxygen, like our current vegetation,
which killed off whatever couldn’t adapt,
and about 99% of the thirty billion or so different kinds of everything that has ever lived on Earth 
doesn't exist anymore and left no descendants,
what are the chances of modern humans lasting how long?

Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes…but things vary, and adopt a new form.

Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this,
yet the sums of things remains unchanged.

Ovid (43 BC - 17 AD), Metamorphoses

If most 'everything' is made of many atoms
which may have very possibly been around before this universe,
which may continue to exist after the current universe is gone,
when something living dies or when an inanimate object disintegrates,
do the atoms become part of everything else?

Every atom you possess
has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms
on its way to becoming you.

Bill Bryson

If all the atoms in a human body are completely replaced with other atoms about every 9 years
and a child gets about half its DNA from each parent,
a quarter from each grandparent, an eighth from each great-grandparent and so on,
and the genetic code of everything alive and has ever lived is essentially the same only different, 
is everything on Earth relatively interconnected?

Is everything everything?

So when we say that 80% of the population can expect to be ancestors of all surviving individuals,
we are talking about their 22nd great-grandchildren…
[or] one four-millionth part.

Richard Dawkins
Professor of the Public Understanding, Oxford

If the genetic code of everything alive and has ever lived on Earth
is fundamentally the same but a little different,
did every living thing  basically come from the same beginning?

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe
is that none of it has tried to contact us.

Bill Watterson
Calvin and Hobbes

If there is more unknown than known
like what started everything and why or if what started everything is still around,
and we don’t know for certain what happens before life or after death,
what is the purpose of cognitive existence?

Should we be able to think and do what we want
as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone else doing the same?

The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot

Don’t think you know what you don’t, conclude what you want because you want to,
say you can if you cant, obfuscate or say you’re going to do and don’t.

Don’t self fulfill prophesy.

The true measure of a man
is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Samuel Johnson

Do the right thing when no one’s looking,
leave others better off for having known you and the world a better place than you found it.

Forget what you give, value what you get,
return what you borrow, replace what you break and forgive quickly.

Hope everything happens the way it does
and leave unanswered questions.

Have as much fun as soon as possible
with the least risk for as long as you can
while leaving others better off for your having existed

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Ralph Waldo Emerson