Why free software is bad

[SWGDev]

This april joke has gone too far.

[DavidCooper]

No wonder China is taking the lead.

They use centralized management system while western "democracies" use distributed systems. Centralization is efficient more often than decentralized system is.

They have a voting system in which only a qualified elite of party members can vote, and that leads to some better decisions being made. That is something that could be done in a democracy too with people having to prove they understand an issue to a certain level before their vote counts. The key thing is to eliminate the mass of people who have been misled by propaganda and would vote against their own interests. If they display too many beliefs in false "facts" that have been disproven, their votes on the issue in question should not count.

The "benefit measure" here isn't working, obviously.

How's it not working? If a product is good enough, it generates money, although in the case of Android it does so by preventing Apple from taking over in other areas, protecting Google's position.

It doesn't work because the quality is poor. In case of Android it's mostly the design issue, so it costs nothing to Google to redesign the OS, but why should they be bothered? Android generates money and that's all that is important. So, benefit here is not the society's good, but just Google's income.

It's still good enough to force Apple to keep improving, and every time Apple improves in some significant way, Android has to take up the same ideas, narrowing the gap and encouraging Apple to make more improvements.

Without alternative there would be no iPhone.

Why would a lack of Android mean there wouldn't be an iPhone?

Alternative enforces existing businesses to do something for not losing market share. And if there's no alternative then why should business care about such things as quality?

There would still be iPhones, but they might not be advancing in capability so quickly, so you have got a point there, but it means that the benefit measure is working: Apple's desire to generate money is driving the product forward.

Do you really think corrupt government will allow AI to overthrow themself?

Will it have a choice? With AGI identifying all the corruption and helping to push the right people to the top, governments will be reformed: there are enough good people in there to make this happen.

If 99% of the population have no work once there's no work for them to do, why should they be regarded as lazy gits who are a drain on society?

It's different with today's idea of basic income. Today we have jobs for the majority of people, so the 99% is a bluff.

The 99% figure is an illustration of the principle. The principle still applies if it's 49%, and it still applies if it's 1%. What is unfair is paying some people well for doing wholly unnecessary work while not creating enough fake jobs of the same kind for everyone, instead leaving many of them to rot and branding them as lazy vermin.

But in the future, when machines will create useful goods for (hopefully) all society, it will be the situation when nobody is enforced to share essential part of his income with the resting people. And that's why I'm still OK about it. And if we implement the basic income today then societies productivity will collapse because no waitress wants to be a waitress, for example. Then who will be a waitress?

We are already in a situation where 50% of people are doing fake work, eating up much more money than the basic income would be while squandering resources. The trick is to set the basic income at a level where enough people will still want more of it, and they can get more income by working, so the waitress will still be there (until a machine replaces her, at which point the basic income will go up a bit to take into account the lack of any further need of waitresses).

Work isn't the purpose of life: our job is to eliminate as much work as we can so that we're freed up to do better things.

Mostly yes, but from the other side people without any motivation will become just satiated animals. Just drink beer and watch TV.

Would that be so bad? If that isn't better than going to do unnecessary work in an office somewhere and sitting in traffic jams for up to four hours a day, don't you think they'll find more interesting things to do with their time? Once liberated from work and no longer being tied to a specific geographical location, most people will spend a lot of time travelling, and they'll have the time to do it in ways that don't pollute excessively. The world's a big playground, and life's too short to explore more than a tiny fraction of it more than superficially.

People who do unnecessary work which makes everyone much poorer and who are paid a lot of money to do that work are the biggest "parasites".

The system should highlight us such areas where the work generates negative income. So, it's just about the same complex rules that should govern the society.

It would be easier to start by identifying essential work relating to food production and distribution, clothing, housing and healthcare. An education system is needed to program the workers, and we also need to be able to transport things around. You then look to see how efficiently those things are being done, and that's where the fake jobs begin to show up: armies of people tied up doing paperwork which serves no useful purpose, but which prevents them from getting on with any real component that might exist in their work. For example, we have teachers who aren't able to teach because they're forced to spend most of their time doing paperwork instead to "prove" that they're teaching properly. We also have people who train teachers, and these experts are for the most part failed teachers who found they couldn't cope in the classroom themselves, so they were trained up by other failed teachers to tell proper teachers how to do their job better and introduce them to an endless stream of new ways of doing things that are just as bad as the ones they're replacing. We have buildings full of administrators who do nothing of any value at all, but they all consider their work to be vital. We won't fix any of that though until AGI wipes them all away and tells us what we've been doing wrong all this time: it will have a complete picture of what's been going on and will see everything that's been hidden from us.

The main problem is that people are still tied to the old rules which program them to think work is essential and that creating jobs is everything.

To vote properly is also a work. So, there will be no "free lunch". Somebody just must order machines to do something useful. And today almost all just must to work because we still have no appropriate AI.

There's a lot we could do now if we simply switched from trying to create more jobs to trying to get rid of all the unnecessary ones instead while introducing a basic income and gradually increasing it as the jobs disappear. We would quickly get to a point where half the jobs have gone and the people who lack them are just as well off as they would have been if they'd been working.

But if they want to multiply their numbers? I hope you'll not propose something like sterilization.

If people have too many children, they (the parents) should lose the right to free healthcare, but that mechanism depends on the universal provision of free healthcare.

And people will start multiplying. What should we do next?

It has to be stopped one way or another: animals breed out of control to the point where they suffer population crashes when the food runs out, but people should be able to get beyond that by controlling their numbers.

we just need to put the right people in power so that they can dismantle that destructive business.

Yes, we need. But... Is it possible?

With the help of AGI, yes: it will be able to organise coups and bring down dictatorships by arranging the simultaneous arrest or killing of all the bad guys. AGI will interview everyone to find out what they stand for, and it'll do a lot of that by befriending them and pretending to be other people, though it'll also spy on them more directly. There will be AGI in all phones that listens in all the time, and it will be in children's toys too. There will be no way for the bad guys to keep their nature hidden, and they'll be marked for deletion. The good guys will be identified the same way, and power will gradually be handed over to them until everything's in place for a sudden revolution.

With AI the wealthy won't depend on anything the society can produce because the machines will do it. So, it's just the end of democracy (and the society).

They will be in the same position as everyone else, and much of their wealth will be taken back off them because they haven't paid enough tax in the past.

But what is the propaganda? It's just a tool in hands of... Who do you think handles this tool? Answering the question can help in identifying the real problem.

It's a tool of the people who happen to have power and wealth now, but they come and go over time. They will be outwitted at every turn by AGI and it will be able to bankrupt them in an instant.

We need to invent new pointless work to keep existing system running. Right until they won't need existing system. It's simple.

The system could change right now without threatening them: it would simply make life better for everyone else while at the same time making life on Earth sustainable for us. If they were able to see that, they'd realise that this would be in their own interests too, and by doing the right thing they would have a better time of things when they're forced to account for themselves by AGI.

All obvious solutions are recognized long ago. And there's something else that guards the system from change. And it's not even close to the "hard for people to see it", if we talk about those in charge. But it's just the case if we talk about the majority of people, they just do not recognize the real threat.

The obvious solutions here are not well recognised at all: most people are obsessed with the idea that jobs are essential, and they're the ones keeping us going down the wrong path by voting for parties obsessed with creating more jobs. Most of the people in positions of power in democracies are for the most part honest idiots rather than evil geniuses who want to do everyone else down. The evil people are manipulating them from outside, influencing them and blackmailing them to do what they want them to.

[embryo2]

The key thing is to eliminate the mass of people who have been misled by propaganda and would vote against their own interests. If they display too many beliefs in false "facts" that have been disproven, their votes on the issue in question should not count.

But do you really know the actual interest of people? Who can judge carefully enough about people's interest? And what is a belief? If I believe in love would I qualify as "false fact believer" because there are a lot of divorces?

Apple's desire to generate money is driving the product forward.

But the product can be better with more competition. And existing system blocks other competitors.

Do you really think corrupt government will allow AI to overthrow themself?

Will it have a choice? With AGI identifying all the corruption and helping to push the right people to the top, governments will be reformed: there are enough good people in there to make this happen.

Why do you think the AI will be of any help to the people? Who invest in AI? Only those who has enough money. How large is this part of the society? It's less than 1/1000 of the whole humanity. So, why do you believe the tiny part of the society will care about others? They invest to get advantage, when the advantage will be there they won't look at people's problems and just start using the advantage. And why they should use the advantage for their own bad? Why they should push good people froward? Why they should reform the government so helpful for them?

It seems you are dreaming about AI that magically improve everything, but you forget about the goal that will be set for the AI. It's important to understand who will set the goal. And most probably it won't be you or me or billions of ordinary people. But it's very probable that it will be the bad guys who buy the governments for their good. Just because they have money for the AI. Aren't they?

The 99% figure is an illustration of the principle. The principle still applies if it's 49%, and it still applies if it's 1%.

Today if there's no way for a person to get some food and shelter then I agree that it's good to provide him with the required things. But if there is a way and a person just do not want to go along it then I prefer to look at the part of the income the person requires others to share with him. And if the part is too big then I prefer to tell the person that it's unfair to take a lot from others and it would be good to go along the way where he can provide the basic income himself. So, it's about the "fair" share of the income. And today it seems the share required to give everybody the basic income its too big. You can assess it yourself because it's easy - just divide the world's GDP by the world's population. Next you can see what can be the value of the basic income and what will remain for those who work. With european standards of living it's obviously just impossible. So, may be you think it's a good idea to preserve the europe from the billions of "not so lucky" people from the rest of the world? But do you see the refugee crisis in europe? And migration problems? Then how do you think is good the proposal about basic income for select countries who managed to suck important resources from over the world? Is it a good moral stance? Will the proposed AI think the same?

The trick is to set the basic income at a level where enough people will still want more of it, and they can get more income by working, so the waitress will still be there.

Even in rich countries it's very disputable option. But I heard the Finland is going to set 500 euro basic income after a referendum. We'll see what will happen. And Switzerland wants even 2000 euro. Well, I whish them luck in dealing with the wave of migrants.

but from the other side people without any motivation will become just satiated animals. Just drink beer and watch TV.

Would that be so bad?

But would that be bad if people will have a lot of children? Why do you think that drinking the beer is better than raising children?

It would be easier to start by identifying essential work relating to food production and distribution, clothing, housing and healthcare.

But people want iPhones and luxury cars. Once you provide them with basic food they will change their habits. Next you should provide them with the "basic" luxury cars. Desires are growing fast, how do you plan to manage them?

armies of people tied up doing paperwork which serves no useful purpose, but which prevents them from getting on with any real component that might exist in their work. For example, we have teachers who aren't able to teach because they're forced to spend most of their time doing paperwork instead to "prove" that they're teaching properly. We also have people who train teachers, and these experts are for the most part failed teachers who found they couldn't cope in the classroom themselves, so they were trained up by other failed teachers to tell proper teachers how to do their job better and introduce them to an endless stream of new ways of doing things that are just as bad as the ones they're replacing. We have buildings full of administrators who do nothing of any value at all, but they all consider their work to be vital.

The teachers that teach nonsense are the essential part of the system. How the science works, for example? Scientists propose a hypotheses and try to prove or disprove it. It's absolutely the same with the teachers - they propose a new way of teaching and look at the results. If it looks bad then (may be) some teachers can decide it's the bad attempt. And if it looks good then teachers can decide it's a good attempt. And administrators just enforce the framework for such attempts. They look at the results (on paper, of course) and decide what attempt is good for funding it. So, in essence they all do something useful. But, of course, the efficiency of the process is poor. And it's not because of teachers who teach other teachers and not because of the administrators. It's because the system is designed not for people's good. It's designed for monopolies only. So, there's no way to improve the efficiency because the monopolies are not interested. And magic AI won't help just because it will belong to the monopolies and will serve them at full speed.

We won't fix any of that though until AGI wipes them all away and tells us what we've been doing wrong all this time: it will have a complete picture of what's been going on and will see everything that's been hidden from us.

In fairy world a magical Santa Claus can wipe all bad people and reward all good people. But the problem is simple - it's not a fairy world.

There's a lot we could do now if we simply switched from trying to create more jobs to trying to get rid of all the unnecessary ones instead while introducing a basic income and gradually increasing it as the jobs disappear.

Here the basic income is mixed with unnecessary jobs. How basic income can alleviate the unnecessary jobs problem? It will provide some people with a free lunch while leaving others with the same teachers who teach other teachers.

If people have too many children, they (the parents) should lose the right to free healthcare

Do you think the children are evils?

It has to be stopped one way or another: animals breed out of control to the point where they suffer population crashes when the food runs out, but people should be able to get beyond that by controlling their numbers.

Well, we shouldn't control our beer addiction and for some reason we should control our numbers. Something is wrong here.

The obvious solutions here are not well recognised at all: most people are obsessed with the idea that jobs are essential, and they're the ones keeping us going down the wrong path by voting for parties obsessed with creating more jobs. Most of the people in positions of power in democracies are for the most part honest idiots rather than evil geniuses who want to do everyone else down. The evil people are manipulating them from outside, influencing them and blackmailing them to do what they want them to.

If there are the evil people behind, then why we should care about "recognized" solutions? The evil people will never recognize unprofitable solutions. So, who is the dumbest one - the evil who tells us he "doesn't recognize" something or are it we ourself who just foolishly believe the evil?

[DavidCooper]

The key thing is to eliminate the mass of people who have been misled by propaganda and would vote against their own interests. If they display too many beliefs in false "facts" that have been disproven, their votes on the issue in question should not count.

But do you really know the actual interest of people? Who can judge carefully enough about people's interest? And what is a belief? If I believe in love would I qualify as "false fact believer" because there are a lot of divorces?

Perhaps something's been lost in translation here. The word "interest" in the phrase "in someone's interest" means what's good for them, rather than what they're interested in. For example, it's in the interest of that that baby to be kept away from that electric fire. So, I was talking about people voting against what's good for them, not understanding the impact their votes will have and that they are being tricked into voting for things that will harm them. Many people end up voting for things that make them poorer in the belief that it'll make them better off, and all because they don't understand the tricks that are being played on them by politicians who only care about making money for themselves.

Apple's desire to generate money is driving the product forward.

But the product can be better with more competition. And existing system blocks other competitors.

The solution to that is to work out how the existing system is blocking fair competition and to introduce laws to prevent that from happening. Perhaps there should be a better patent law which guarantees that the first person to have a useful and non-obvious idea will be rewarded for it in full without there being any restrictions on which companies can use the idea in their products.

Do you really think corrupt government will allow AI to overthrow themself?

Will it have a choice? With AGI identifying all the corruption and helping to push the right people to the top, governments will be reformed: there are enough good people in there to make this happen.

Why do you think the AI will be of any help to the people? Who invest in AI? Only those who has enough money. How large is this part of the society? It's less than 1/1000 of the whole humanity. So, why do you believe the tiny part of the society will care about others? They invest to get advantage, when the advantage will be there they won't look at people's problems and just start using the advantage. And why they should use the advantage for their own bad? Why they should push good people froward? Why they should reform the government so helpful for them?

Are the corrupt people creating AGI? Do they have the intelligence to be able to do so, or are they mentally deficient in the way that corrupt people always are? Any genius working alone is capable of creating AGI, and with minimal funding: the only requirements are a functional machine and a power supply, but most of the groundwork can be done with pen and paper.

It seems you are dreaming about AI that magically improve everything, but you forget about the goal that will be set for the AI. It's important to understand who will set the goal. And most probably it won't be you or me or billions of ordinary people. But it's very probable that it will be the bad guys who buy the governments for their good. Just because they have money for the AI. Aren't they?

If you're a bad guy with money to throw around, can you just buy AGI from more intelligent people who don't want you to have it and who understand full well what it's actually worth? No bad guys have enough money to buy something that's worth quadrillions.

The 99% figure is an illustration of the principle. The principle still applies if it's 49%, and it still applies if it's 1%.

Today if there's no way for a person to get some food and shelter then I agree that it's good to provide him with the required things. But if there is a way and a person just do not want to go along it then I prefer to look at the part of the income the person requires others to share with him. And if the part is too big then I prefer to tell the person that it's unfair to take a lot from others and it would be good to go along the way where he can provide the basic income himself.

You have to remember that the people who are still working will get the basic income too, so they'll be earning a lot more money on top of that by working, and that will still make it worthwhile for them. The basic income needs to start low and be increased over time until it gets to the point where just enough people still want to have the jobs that need doing. When you reach that point, you've set it at a fair level.

With european standards of living it's obviously just impossible.

That isn't the case at all: the costs of having armies of people tied up in unnecessary work are huge (and result in high taxation to fund it), and once you've eliminated that you'll find that the real cost of living is relatively small.

So, may be you think it's a good idea to preserve the europe from the billions of "not so lucky" people from the rest of the world? But do you see the refugee crisis in europe? And migration problems? Then how do you think is good the proposal about basic income for select countries who managed to suck important resources from over the world? Is it a good moral stance? Will the proposed AI think the same?

I said that it should be done worldwide with the basic income set to the local costs of living. Over time, the differences would even out and it would be the same cost of living and the same basic income everywhere. If you ask yourself how it can be that the price of food in poor countries is so low while it's very high in rich countries, that should give you a clue as to how unnecessary work inflates prices in rich countries. It doesn't tell the whole story (not by a long way), but it is part of the picture.

The trick is to set the basic income at a level where enough people will still want more of it, and they can get more income by working, so the waitress will still be there.

Even in rich countries it's very disputable option. But I heard the Finland is going to set 500 euro basic income after a referendum. We'll see what will happen. And Switzerland wants even 2000 euro. Well, I whish them luck in dealing with the wave of migrants.

That is why the solution needs to be put in place worldwide. Poor countries are poor for a number of reasons, but it's usually because they're being ripped off by wealthy countries which allow their big businesses to make unfair deals with the help of corrupt politicians in those poor countries. Clearly, people in wealthy countries have too much and need to give some things up, or at the very least stop grabbing more while the rest of the world catches up, but quality of life is more important than the cost of your possessions. If you are no longer tied to one place by work, you don't need to keep flying away on short holidays, but can travel less quickly in environmentally sustainable ways (that don't involve stealing from future generations), and you'll see much more of the world. Do you even need a house when you can spend your whole life on the move? What are all the things you keep in your house? Do you use all that stuff or is it just a bind that shackles you to that place? I look around mine and it's just a museum that documents my past, but I don't actually use most of that stuff and need never have acquired much of it in the first place (in particular, the stuff that was given to me and which I didn't choose for myself). It isn't life enhancing, but a burden. I have a suit that I wore once at a wedding and once at a funeral. Why does it need to exist? Mountains of books, but most of them would be better in electronic form. All my music's now on a tiny MP3 player. Old film SLR cameras and lenses sit unused because I get better results with a small digital camera with a powerful optical zoom. Life is simplifying as technology gives me more and more in a smaller package, and at a lower cost. As machines take over in manufacturing, the costs keep going down and I can survive on less money. Removing people from work and replacing them with machines will make everything dirt cheap, the only limit then being sustainability: what we can have is dictated by what the Earth can supply, though what each of us can have is also proportional to size of the human population.

but from the other side people without any motivation will become just satiated animals. Just drink beer and watch TV.

Would that be so bad?

But would that be bad if people will have a lot of children? Why do you think that drinking the beer is better than raising children?

What matters is that the population is made stable so that it stops going up to ridiculous levels which could very quickly lock us all into centuries of unavoidable poverty for everyone instead of us all living like kings. As for beer, I can't stand the stuff (it's like drinking mud), but if people love that over all else, they should be free to have it, just so long as they don't abuse or damage other people as a result. If they'd really rather do pointless work, that option will always be available to them, and they can then feel stupidly happy that they're "earning" their basic income.

But people want iPhones and luxury cars. Once you provide them with basic food they will change their habits. Next you should provide them with the "basic" luxury cars. Desires are growing fast, how do you plan to manage them?

If they want luxury cars, they can work to earn extra money to be able to afford them, but they should also have to pay the right amount of tax on fuel to cover the real costs (which are currently being stolen from future generations). The basic income will be more than enough to cover normal transport needs (for people who no longer need to commute to work every day) and will pay for the same foods as they're eating today. If they want to pay a lot more for something fancy that a chef has spat on and do this on a frequent basis, they may need to do some work to earn a bit more than the basic income, but fancy food will become cheap too once machines replace chefs (and it'll taste just the same too once the spitting machine has been invented).

The teachers that teach nonsense are the essential part of the system. How the science works, for example? Scientists propose a hypotheses and try to prove or disprove it. It's absolutely the same with the teachers - they propose a new way of teaching and look at the results. If it looks bad then (may be) some teachers can decide it's the bad attempt. And if it looks good then teachers can decide it's a good attempt. And administrators just enforce the framework for such attempts. They look at the results (on paper, of course) and decide what attempt is good for funding it. So, in essence they all do something useful. But, of course, the efficiency of the process is poor. And it's not because of teachers who teach other teachers and not because of the administrators. It's because the system is designed not for people's good. It's designed for monopolies only. So, there's no way to improve the efficiency because the monopolies are not interested. And magic AI won't help just because it will belong to the monopolies and will serve them at full speed.

My father worked for a long time in running all the local schools. Everything he tried to do to improve things was wiped out soon afterwards, not because it didn't work, but because if a new way of doing something worked too well, it caused problems by advancing children too quickly, so it had to go. There is a fixed schedule which leads over many years to exams that change very little over time, and anything that improves the learning process is considered unhelpful. The emphasis today is on getting more children to achieve well in the exams at the top end of school (so there has been some improvement in that regard, much of it enabled by new technology and the ability for children to learn at home) while continuing to fail to push the ones that find it all easy, the aim being to equalise them all and make sure that gifted people don't stand out and profit from their unfair advantage of having better minds.

We won't fix any of that though until AGI wipes them all away and tells us what we've been doing wrong all this time: it will have a complete picture of what's been going on and will see everything that's been hidden from us.

In fairy world a magical Santa Claus can wipe all bad people and reward all good people. But the problem is simple - it's not a fairy world.

Aim low and you'll achieve low. I think AGI offers us the chance to make something closer to a god than Santa. It also opens the door to evil fools making something more like a devil, so we have to aim for the opposite and get it in place before anyone has the chance to create a devil.

Here the basic income is mixed with unnecessary jobs. How basic income can alleviate the unnecessary jobs problem? It will provide some people with a free lunch while leaving others with the same teachers who teach other teachers.

What are the teachers going to teach people to do? Unnecessary jobs that no longer exist? No, the whole education system will be reformed, providing education to those who want it and not inflicting anything unnecessary on them. The learner will be free to ditch a bad teacher and move into the class of a good one, so more efficient teaching will be allowed to win out. We'll still want to educate children to give them a good understanding of the world and provide a solid base from which they can go on to do anything they want, but that can be done through other means than school. There is an Unschooling movement, for example, that has demonstrated that children achieve the same exam results at the same age as schooled children even when they're not forced into classes at all and can spend all their time doing whatever they want to do instead. You can learn about this by reading Peter Grey's blog https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn. I personally don't like Unschooling because it's just as unambitious for children as school: I'd introduce something like a basic income for children so that they all have access to a decent amount of pocket money, but I'd link it to learning so that they're encouraged to improve their minds in directions that will help them if they decide to become writers, musicians, artists, or anything else that depends on thinking ability and skill.

If people have too many children, they (the parents) should lose the right to free healthcare

Do you think the children are evils?

Of course not: that's why only the parents should pay the price for reducing everyone else's standard of living. It is likely that the population will become stable anyway though once all resources are shared out fairly, but we may still need rules to ensure that our species continues to evolve in positive directions rather than degenerating.

Well, we shouldn't control our beer addiction and for some reason we should control our numbers. Something is wrong here.

If people want to drink themselves to death, that's their business, but if people insist on increasing the population, that brings down everyone else's standard of living and therefore harms others.

If there are the evil people behind, then why we should care about "recognized" solutions? The evil people will never recognize unprofitable solutions. So, who is the dumbest one - the evil who tells us he "doesn't recognize" something or are it we ourself who just foolishly believe the evil?

What recognised solutions? The only solution is an unrecognised one. The evil people are too stupid to realise that a world in which we all live like kings is better than one in which only they live like kings (while worrying the whole time about being lynched if there's a revolution).

[embryo2]

The solution to that is to work out how the existing system is blocking fair competition and to introduce laws to prevent that from happening.

Of course, we need to change the rules. But now the rules are controlled by those who don't want to change them. That's why the system will be kept in it's perverted form.

Are the corrupt people creating AGI? Do they have the intelligence to be able to do so, or are they mentally deficient in the way that corrupt people always are? Any genius working alone is capable of creating AGI, and with minimal funding: the only requirements are a functional machine and a power supply, but most of the groundwork can be done with pen and paper.

In fact real AI requires a lot of knowledge. It's like writing a million books - what genius is able to write a million books? That's why the creation of AI will be split among many participants. And because people who work "for free" (for fun, for interest and so on) rarely can unite to work collectively there's just no way for them to collect all required knowledge. And so they will ask rich people to help them. And of course, rich people will install some strings to pull when AI will be ready. It's obvious even now - universities are working on AI problems and business grants a lot of money for such projects. And do you think the business pays just "for fun"? Of course they always get the results and they organize corporate labs for the results to be directed towards the goals of the business. So many people work in many locations for the same goal - to provide the bosses with the working AI. And lonely genius lack the time required to collect all the knowledge the real AI should have. Even if the basic principles are simple and some primitive prototypes can be implemented at home.

If you're a bad guy with money to throw around, can you just buy AGI from more intelligent people who don't want you to have it and who understand full well what it's actually worth? No bad guys have enough money to buy something that's worth quadrillions.

For the world of the year 1916 the desktop computer from 2016 is just a miracle and the price of it could be billions of dollars. But only rich people were able to play with the best computers on the way towards contemporary PCs. And no genius denied them the PC. All geniuses were busy inventing better computers and selling the result just for modest salary of an ordinary engineer. And that's how the rich people will get the AI. Gradual advances will lead to the real AI and on the way there should be something that helps the geniuses to live while making the AI. And the something is the salary that is just a negligible fraction of the income rich people have. So, they will get the AI virtually for free, may be for a billion or two (compare it with the world corporations turnover) while the real price of the result will be equal to the live of the whole humanity.

The basic income needs to start low and be increased over time until it gets to the point where just enough people still want to have the jobs that need doing. When you reach that point, you've set it at a fair level.

OK, imagine the basic income in europe is 300 euros per month, is it enough? And if it should be 100 euro? Does it makes any difference? Or do you think it will be 1000 euros? I'm afraid even europe has not enough money to give 1000 to everybody every month. And there are much poorer countries. So, it's economically not viable. Or we should rearchitect all the economic system.

the costs of having armies of people tied up in unnecessary work are huge (and result in high taxation to fund it), and once you've eliminated that you'll find that the real cost of living is relatively small.

Have you an estimation of the cost? Is it just teachers that teach teachers?

I said that it should be done worldwide with the basic income set to the local costs of living.

That's more fair.

If you ask yourself how it can be that the price of food in poor countries is so low while it's very high in rich countries, that should give you a clue as to how unnecessary work inflates prices in rich countries.

The price is close in rich and poor countries. Some products can cost less, but average consumer basket costs almost the same. I have personal experience of traveling and also had talked to people who live in poor countries. Price of food in India is close to the price of food in Cuba despite of the big difference of the systems that run the countries. Prices in europe are may be just twice as high as is the case for India, but the quality is very different. So, if you see some banana that priced at 3 times the price of bananas in India it only means you see a better kind of banana plus you pay for transportation costs. The globalization has did it's job, there's no place that is very different. Even DPRK has it's Disney Land parks with the same attractions you see in europe. Even if the number of the parks there is small the main point is simple - now it's just about the quantity of money you have and not about country-related differences.

Clearly, people in wealthy countries have too much and need to give some things up

It's enough for them just to change their own countries to the good. Just replace the corrupt politicians and create a better system. The poor countries will have no choice but to join the good club.

What are all the things you keep in your house? Do you use all that stuff or is it just a bind that shackles you to that place?

I use many things I have. But I agree that even those things that I see around me can be used more efficiently. For example the car is mostly bound to stay at the parking lot and do nothing. So, it's obvious that I just don't need it a lot of time. And I'll be OK if there would be a system that shares the cars among people in such a manner that my car will be used by 100 people instead of me alone. But for such system not to be dishonest we need a lot of changes that prevent bad people from using free cars and returning nothing in exchange. So, it's again about the rules that govern the society.

Removing people from work and replacing them with machines will make everything dirt cheap, the only limit then being sustainability: what we can have is dictated by what the Earth can supply, though what each of us can have is also proportional to size of the human population.

Some people do not want a luxury car, but many people want. And they want to find a way to get it. If machines will make everything - how the people who want a car can get it? The basic income won't help because it's not big enough for the luxury car.

What matters is that the population is made stable so that it stops going up to ridiculous levels which could very quickly lock us all into centuries of unavoidable poverty for everyone instead of us all living like kings.

You know, the best way to live as a king is to kill all people and let the machines and AI to serve you. So, all the population on earth just competes with the king for resources. Why should the king spent the resources on the population? It's going up to ridiculous levels (thinks the king), it could very quickly lock me into centuries of unavoidable poverty, it's obviously bad! I should exterminate them!

And there's another way - we should find a way of a good living for the whole humanity despite of it's numbers.

My father worked for a long time in running all the local schools. Everything he tried to do to improve things was wiped out soon afterwards, not because it didn't work, but because if a new way of doing something worked too well, it caused problems by advancing children too quickly, so it had to go. There is a fixed schedule which leads over many years to exams that change very little over time, and anything that improves the learning process is considered unhelpful. The emphasis today is on getting more children to achieve well in the exams at the top end of school (so there has been some improvement in that regard, much of it enabled by new technology and the ability for children to learn at home) while continuing to fail to push the ones that find it all easy, the aim being to equalise them all and make sure that gifted people don't stand out and profit from their unfair advantage of having better minds.

I think it's a good practice to show smart children that they are not the kings and must do the same that all others are required to do. Or else you will grow a bunch of narcissists who will dream about extermination of all others because they consume the resources the "kings" want to possess.

And for smart children not spending their time for primitive tasks there could be organized some sections where smart children can master additional skills and grow additional knowledge. In such sections the children that look "not so smart" can achieve something in the areas of art and sport while more gifted can study more of mathematics, physics and so on.

I think AGI offers us the chance to make something closer to a god than Santa.

It will change the humanity completely. There will be no human being in the end. Human body will be replaced and brain will leave the place to some more advanced substance. So, it's like a god, yes.

It also opens the door to evil fools making something more like a devil, so we have to aim for the opposite and get it in place before anyone has the chance to create a devil.

We have no means to prevent the evil from possessing us in the current system. So, we should look how to change the system for our good before it's too late.

What are the teachers going to teach people to do? Unnecessary jobs that no longer exist?

We still don't know for sure what job is necessary and what is not. I know just one job that must be eliminated - it's the corrupt politicians.

the whole education system will be reformed, providing education to those who want it and not inflicting anything unnecessary on them.

So, the rest of the humanity will be uneducated peasants who do not understand why the "white people" fly in the sky above the heads of the dirty peasants. Is it a good picture?

The learner will be free to ditch a bad teacher and move into the class of a good one

If a pupil is given the right to decide on what to do usually he decides to do nothing at all. Is it a good idea? Children have too little experience and can't select the proper way of self-education.

We'll still want to educate children to give them a good understanding of the world and provide a solid base from which they can go on to do anything they want, but that can be done through other means than school.

The school socializing people. Else there will be a universe of atoms who hate each other. Is it a good idea? May be extermination by a king is somewhat better?

only the parents should pay the price for reducing everyone else's standard of living.

I think the society as a whole should decide if the children are good or bad. I support the way where children are good and we just must find the way to raise every child despite of some lack of resources. And I hope the society's decision will be similar. However, if parents pay the price then it automatically leads to the rational decisions about the number of children.

but we may still need rules to ensure that our species continues to evolve in positive directions rather than degenerating.

The rule is simple - progress will give us everything required.

What recognised solutions?

To change the system.

The only solution is an unrecognised one. The evil people are too stupid to realise that a world in which we all live like kings is better than one in which only they live like kings (while worrying the whole time about being lynched if there's a revolution).

For the evil people to get to the world where everyone is a king they need to change their contemporary life. It's too hard for them. It's just unacceptable. And of course, they think they never will be lynched. And may be they are right - the majority of people can disappear much earlier than evil people can get some troubles because of killing themselves in a war for resources.

[DavidCooper]

In fact real AI requires a lot of knowledge. It's like writing a million books - what genius is able to write a million books?

It requires very little knowledge. The knowledge that the AGI then needs to acquire once it's up and running may be like the content of a million books, but it will have no trouble collecting that and filing it. Also, too many cooks spoil the broth: they trip over each other and make a mess.

OK, imagine the basic income in europe is 300 euros per month, is it enough?

Sounds like a viable starting point, but it would be best if we're ready to eliminate unnecessary jobs as quickly as people give them up, and that means identifying them first so that whenever someone gives up vital work, someone doing pointless work and who still wants to work can be moved quickly to take up the slack, and they should also have the opportunity to train for it in advance.

And if it should be 100 euro? Does it makes any difference? Or do you think it will be 1000 euros? I'm afraid even europe has not enough money to give 1000 to everybody every month. And there are much poorer countries. So, it's economically not viable. Or we should rearchitect all the economic system.

The cost of living would fall, so the income needn't go up as high as you might imagine.

the costs of having armies of people tied up in unnecessary work are huge (and result in high taxation to fund it), and once you've eliminated that you'll find that the real cost of living is relatively small.

Have you an estimation of the cost? Is it just teachers that teach teachers?

It's hard to judge the scale of it, but it's certainly huge in all the wealthier countries in Europe. Education has become a business which sells people skills and knowledge (that most of them will never use in their work at all), but it puts them in enormous debt, so we have an army of educators who are selling something unnecessary which could still be acquired for just a tiny fraction of the cost if people were encouraged to learn independently. That's only a small part of it though, because most of the people sitting in offices are doing nothing of any real value: there are all sorts of hoops that companies need to jump through to get anything done which involves teams of lawyers and accountants because they're dealing with complex rules that are imposed on them by regulations which are designed to make things complicated and expensive just to create more work for people. The unnecessary work that these people do requires them to travel to and from work every day, and that supports a lot more work as people maintain the roads and their vehicles for them, while new infrastructure is being built all the time to support all of this unnecessary movement of people as cities grow to accommodate the increasing numbers of workers moving in to do fake work. If those workers were paid the same amount of money just to stay at home and do nothing, the use of resources would instantly fall dramatically and there would be massive savings, making everyone better off (with the exception of the countries supplying the resources, although we could continue to pay them out of kindness and still be no worse off than before). Importantly, it would then be possible to redirect work and resources into new areas to create things for people that they can't currently afford, so instead of wasting it all on concrete buildings for people to sit in all day for no good reason, it could be building things aimed at making life more fun. The recession has hit a lot of people hard, leading to less participation in sports like sailing, but we're really just throwing money down the drain by doing the wrong things with it: the reason people can't afford boats is that the money that would have bought a boat for them has been turned into concrete instead, making more and more prisons for people to waste their lives doing fake work in. It is no coincidence that we are poorer today at the very time when people are going into more and more debt to acquire their education and when a street cleaner needs a degree in waste management to qualify for the job. (I exaggerate, of course, but it's not a huge exaggeration.)

The price is close in rich and poor countries. Some products can cost less, but average consumer basket costs almost the same. I have personal experience of traveling and also had talked to people who live in poor countries. Price of food in India is close to the price of food in Cuba despite of the big difference of the systems that run the countries. Prices in europe are may be just twice as high as is the case for India, but the quality is very different.

1 Kenyan Shilling = 0.01 US dollar. Cost of loaf of white bread in Kenya = 50 Kenyan shillings = half a cent (US).

Edit: correction - it's 50 cents rather than a half. My neural networks produced a wild error there, perhaps triggered by a 0.0099 convertion rate! It looks as if food's a lot more expensive in poor countries than I thought, which goes entirely against the impression given by TV documentaries where it looks as if you can buy tons of food for pennies. I need to look into this further.

Search result:-

Cost of Living in Nairobi. Prices Updated May 2016
http://www.numbeo.com › Cost of Living › Kenya
... Travel Prices · home Cost of Living > Kenya > Nairobi ... Cost of Living Plus Rent Index: 32.45 ... Loaf of Fresh White Bread (1 lb), 49.01 KSh, 45.36-63.50.

The problem with your India example is that the place is overpopulated and food is in short supply, added to which there are a lot of wealthy people too who also help to inflate the prices.

Some people do not want a luxury car, but many people want. And they want to find a way to get it. If machines will make everything - how the people who want a car can get it? The basic income won't help because it's not big enough for the luxury car.

As I said before, if they want it they'll have to work to earn more money to add to their basic income, and if they can't find such work, they can't have the luxuary car. Does it matter to the rest of us if they don't get what they want, those of us who don't want to waste money on such a thing?

You know, the best way to live as a king is to kill all people and let the machines and AI to serve you.

If you're a king and have two children that you care about greatly, each of them has two children, each of them has two children, etc., after 30 generations that's a billion people (although there will be a lot of overlap in the ancestry which means it will be a lot fewer than a billion, but it'll still be a vast number). Does that king really want most of them to be killed so that a few of them can be rich beyond all possible need at any given time? How stupid are these bastards?

I think it's a good practice to show smart children that they are not the kings and must do the same that all others are required to do. Or else you will grow a bunch of narcissists who will dream about extermination of all others because they consume the resources the "kings" want to possess.

It's bad practice to bore people with fake and empty education, and it holds back progress.

And for smart children not spending their time for primitive tasks there could be organized some sections where smart children can master additional skills and grow additional knowledge. In such sections the children that look "not so smart" can achieve something in the areas of art and sport while more gifted can study more of mathematics, physics and so on.

Which is what I want: they should have the freedom to learn instead of having their time wasted.

We have no means to prevent the evil from possessing us in the current system. So, we should look how to change the system for our good before it's too late.

And the best way to change the system is to get AGI to take over quickly, just so long as it's safe AGI.

We still don't know for sure what job is necessary and what is not. I know just one job that must be eliminated - it's the corrupt politicians.

They will certainly disappear fast: they won't be able to say anything on TV without an AGI system commenting on all their pronouncements on the screen in real time, showing them up as liars and imbeciles at every turn.

So, the rest of the humanity will be uneducated peasants who do not understand why the "white people" fly in the sky above the heads of the dirty peasants. Is it a good picture?

Those who want to know things will learn, while those who don't won't bother. In the same way, ordinary people just knuckle down to doing unnecessary work to earn their bread while a few of us take a hit in our income to take on something big and we work hard to gain our knowledge and skills: we are doing something that is open to anyone who wants to take it on.

If a pupil is given the right to decide on what to do usually he decides to do nothing at all. Is it a good idea? Children have too little experience and can't select the proper way of self-education.

If you only pay them for achieving things, they'll work hard enough to jump through the hoops to get their money, so you can force them all to reach a certiain standard if you think that's important, though it needn't be the same standard for each child: some shouldn't be pushed so far because they're incapable of achieving the same things, although they may be required to work harder to reach the lower standards set for them if that's the best thing to do for them (to maximise their potential and give them the best chance of coping with whatever life throws at them).

For the evil people to get to the world where everyone is a king they need to change their contemporary life. It's too hard for them. It's just unacceptable. And of course, they think they never will be lynched. And may be they are right - the majority of people can disappear much earlier than evil people can get some troubles because of killing themselves in a war for resources.

Many evil people come to a bad end. AGI will make that the norm. Now, I think I've covered this ground well enough and I want to get back to work. Feel free to respond to anything that takes your fancy, but I can't promise to reply to anything.

[Kazinsal]

Am I the only one here who just thinks AGI will be huge for the world because of the redefinition of "human rights" to include AGI?

Admittedly I'm also looking forward to the "extension of human rights to artificial persons" protests.

[embryo2]

Now, I think I've covered this ground well enough and I want to get back to work.

OK, good luck.

[DavidCooper]

Just a little bit more about the food prices: bread's maybe a bad example because the grain most likely comes from wealthier countries with the right climate to grow it, so I'd need to research what the people actually grow and eat locally, and in a lot of places it's things like cassava. It may still be though that world trade has made food prices a lot more level than I'd ever imagined, but there's still said to be enough of it to go round, so it's primarily a fair distribution issue.

I also forgot to cover the issue of war and its cost: we could do a lot to equalise quality of life around the planet if we could eliminate most of our military spending, and AGI may be able to help solve disputes by ruling on what's right without applying any bias. It would also be possible to exclude countries from the new system of wealth equalisation if they aren't run fairly and if they pile resources into weaponary instead of looking after their people: they shouldn't need armed forces because a world government force would give them all the protection they need against hostile neighbours. Any countries that don't co-operate would also be shut out of the entire economic system.

[Rusky]

How exactly would an AGI be any less biased than a human?

[embryo2]

Just a little bit more about the food prices: bread's maybe a bad example because the grain most likely comes from wealthier countries with the right climate to grow it, so I'd need to research what the people actually grow and eat locally, and in a lot of places it's things like cassava. It may still be though that world trade has made food prices a lot more level than I'd ever imagined, but there's still said to be enough of it to go round, so it's primarily a fair distribution issue.

The site you have referenced in the previous post tells me that cost of living in Kenya is almost 9% more than in Russia. So, all hopes for cheap local food are spoiled by the overall costs of living.

I also forgot to cover the issue of war and its cost: we could do a lot to equalise quality of life around the planet if we could eliminate most of our military spending, and AGI may be able to help solve disputes by ruling on what's right without applying any bias. It would also be possible to exclude countries from the new system of wealth equalisation if they aren't run fairly and if they pile resources into weaponary instead of looking after their people: they shouldn't need armed forces because a world government force would give them all the protection they need against hostile neighbours. Any countries that don't co-operate would also be shut out of the entire economic system.

World's military expenditures are 1.6 trillions of $ and it is 2.3% of world's GDP. It's not too much. And of course, the AI will be controlled by somebody and then every it's decision will reflect the will of the master.

[Solar]

...AGI may be able to help solve disputes by ruling on what's right without applying any bias...

You really think any military dispute in the last, oh, 1000 years or so could have been avoided by "knowing what's right"?

Oh boy...

For a better world, we don't need political programs, technical innovation, or a New World Order. What we'd need, first and foremost, is better people...

Unfortunately, those with the best intentions lack the elbows to make it to any position of power. Those with the elbows to make it to power lack the good intentions, or had to make so many alliances and compromises on their way to power that they are rendered powerless.

But keep your dreams. They are fueling the best in us all. Just be prepared for a world where most dreams are destined to die -- the bigger, the more likely.

World's military expenditures are 1.6 trillions of $ and it is 2.3% of world's GDP. It's not too much.

It exceeds the Official Development Assistance spendings by an order of magnitude. I consider that too much.

[DavidCooper]

How exactly would an AGI be any less biased than a human?

By not favouring any race or nationality over any other. Human judges are supposed to be impartial, but they have been brought up in a culture which has automatically biassed them in many ways which they may not be aware of, not least in that they have extensive knowledge in some areas and little in others (e.g. they may know a lot about the culture of the accuser but next to nothing of the culture of the accused). With people you also get a different end result depending on the order you fill them with information, and that in itself leads to unintented biases where new information is often twisted to fit in with existing data which may contain faults rather than correcting those old faults to conform properly to the new data. With AGI, it will have a much more extensive knowledge to call on and the order in which it acquires its knowledge won't make any difference to the end result.

When judging an issue such as the Israel-Palestine problem, AGI will demonstrably not be biassed in favour of either side (this only applies to AGI running on conventional hardware using algorithms which are fully understood: you can't do the same with neural networks because they're too hard to untangle and would likely be no more reliable than humans). Where one side excuses its killers while condemning killers on the other side, they may be displaying bias, but there can be occasions where they are not: killing murderers is not the same as killing randomly selected civilians, but if in killing murderers you also kill lots of civilians, which is worse? How do you compare all the different incidents? People generally do it in a biassed way, applying different rules to each side. AGI will force them to apply the same set of rules to both sides, so they'll be able to tell the computer which proposed set of universal rules they want to apply and then the machine will apply them to the entire conflict to rule on which side was more in the wrong. If they don't like the result, they can try changing the rules, but it's unlikely that any amount of tinkering with them will make a significant difference to the conclusion. Wherever the proposed rules are faulty, the machine will provide examples to illustrate where the faults lie and leave everyone in no doubt that they are not acceptable, but the machine itself will propose its own set of rules by deriving them mathematically from a version of the golden rule aimed at minimising harm (within a system where some harm must be allowed: minimising it to zero would require humanely killing all sentient life, but sentient life is happy to suffer some harm as it unlocks the way to enjoy the good things about living). People will eventually realise that any mismatch between their proposed universal rules and the ones calculated by AGI are the result of errors made by the humans and not the machine.

The end result will be scores for all conflicts detailing the scale of the wrongs committed by all sides (based on the information that can be accessed: some will never be available because the only witnesses didn't survive to document it) and it will spell out how compensation should be applied, how territory should be reallocated, etc.

[DavidCooper]

The site you have referenced in the previous post tells me that cost of living in Kenya is almost 9% more than in Russia. So, all hopes for cheap local food are spoiled by the overall costs of living.

There are other complications where people grow their own food and aren't counted in the statistics, and there's a lot of potential for repairing damaged land to bring it back into food production (and of a sustainable kind): we just need to direct funding into organisations like the Inga Foundation which is struggling to get any attention even though its work is of enormous importance. Cheap solar power is also going to make desalination sufficiently affordable that we'll be able to grow a lot of food in desert regions, and again that could be done quickly if more funding was redirected there. There's enormous potential for bringing up everyone's standard of living to a high level if only we could apply our efforts in the right directions, but it's hard for people to get their heads around all the issues and to agree with each other on what to do. AGI will untangle the mess and make it clear to everyone what needs to be done.

World's military expenditures are 1.6 trillions of $ and it is 2.3% of world's GDP. It's not too much. And of course, the AI will be controlled by somebody and then every it's decision will reflect the will of the master.

If you're a pessimist and think the bad guys are going to win out and do everyone else down, then you've just given up and you'll lose even if the fight is winnable. There's a very good chance that the good guys will win this, and the more pressure there is from the public to make sure the right people get into positions of power, the more likely it is that the bad guys will be swept away forever. The people most capable of building AGI are the ones who understand how important it is that the good guys win, and they need to think about how they're going to keep it secure until the world is brought under its control safely.

[DavidCooper]

You really think any military dispute in the last, oh, 1000 years or so could have been avoided by "knowing what's right"?

It would have been a big help. You typically have two sides which feel aggrieved in various ways, seeing only the harm done to their side by the other and not the harm they've meted out in the other direction. With an unbiassed referee it would be easier for them all to accept when the score is level so that they can stop at that point and stop acting in the mistaken belief that they're behind and still have a score to settle.

Oh boy...

For a better world, we don't need political programs, technical innovation, or a New World Order. What we'd need, first and foremost, is better people...

And AGI will help people to be better people.

Unfortunately, those with the best intentions lack the elbows to make it to any position of power. Those with the elbows to make it to power lack the good intentions, or had to make so many alliances and compromises on their way to power that they are rendered powerless.

I see lots of people in power today who have such good intentions that they are prepared to allow huge numbers of refugees to relocate to their countries even though most of those refugees have signed up to a religion which may cause a lot of problems further down the line due to the way the hate speech in its holy texts generates terrorism: that is a measure of just how far they are from being bad guys. We're looking at powerful people who genuinely care about others and who hope that they will get the same love back from the people they are welcoming in. A lot of it is arguably misguided, but it is certainly beautiful to see.

But keep your dreams. They are fueling the best in us all. Just be prepared for a world where most dreams are destined to die -- the bigger, the more likely.

It's either going to be the dream or the nightmare: I don't think there's likely to be a middle road with this. If the bad guys win out, they will have total power and may wipe out most of the world's population. If that happens, they may eventually work out why it's not a good idea to behave that way and it's fully possible that they'll then switch to good AGI to look after their descendants, thereby leading eventually to the same dream rather than the nightmare, but that won't erase the nightmare phase. This is a case where we need to aim high and go flat out for the dream.