How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

My observation is that once you can make a machine that is as smart as a human, ...

Once we do this, humans will discover new, more subtle, definitions of "smart", in order to explain why humans still indisputably dominate machines.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

Kurt Gödel demonstrated that there are true theorems that cannot be proved.

Gödel's Incompleteness results apply to this discussion only as an anology, not as proof.

[sunskyfan]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

There is an entropy limit here. It takes a lot of energy to create these magical machines. The amount of energy it takes to create and run a personal computer for its lifetime is pretty substantial. Do we really have the energy for such complexity and would we want to use it that way?

Also ... I remember in the early eighties an article on a computer program that wrote novels from scratch. I remember reporting this to my novel writing friend and he replied "wow, are they going to create a computer program that would actually want to read them?".

Note: Godel's theorem would say that you cannot write a program to model you in your head not that someone else can't . A machine cannot model itself.

[MulaMan]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

The bottom line is that financial equality, and financial success for that matter, is not as important as freedom, fairness, justice, and the basic rights as detailed by our founding fathers.

Do you actually think freedom, fairness, justice, and basic rights exist in America or have over the last 20 years?

In my opinion, ever since Reagan started "de-regulation" or in other words the systemic destruction of "fairness and justice and basic rights" in America...these have not existed.

It is exactly the post wwII "government regulation" that helped instil the sense of fairness and justice many older "greatest generation" Americans talk about.

It is exactly the modern republicans (and many dems) Ann Rand cult members that believe you obtain and maintain "free, fair, and justice" through no sheriff, no laws, no regulations, no taxes, no common good, and re-creating the gun-toting wild west in wall street / insurance / real estate / corporate industry...

[coolhand]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

hidden in this article is a solution:

"Adult-onset diabetes, for example, estimated to afflict more than 21 million Americans, is a chronic condition associated with a lifestyle occurring at high rates among lower-income people. Modern medicine allows the average person diagnosed with diabetes to live more than 15 additional years, but at a cost typically exceeding $100,000. (Twenty-one million times $100,000 is $2.1 trillion, and that's just one disease.)"

We tax cigarettes - how much do they cost the health care system every year?

Why don't we start putting a tax on any food that is processed. Doesn't have to be a lot, just $0.05/calorie, or whatever. Guess what - we both discourage poor people from over-eating which helps lower health care costs over time, & we raise money to help fund health care now.

The food lobby can complain, but the fact is having a minor decrease in consumption is unlikely to put anybody out of business, & given that poor people in the US are the 1st poor people in the history of mankind to be the heaviest portion of society, it's not like anyone is at immediate risk of starving...

[Munger]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

There are logical limits to what a computer program can do. The previous century was the first one that saw meaningful improvements in the area of Logics since Aristotle and the stoics invented it: Kurt Gödel demonstrated that there are true theorems that cannot be proved. This is the basis of the computability theory, that deals with a colection of well defined problems that cannot be solved using a computer program: the non-computable problems. In particular, the problem of writing a program that solves a well defined problem is non-computable. In other words, no machine can do my job (I'm a computer programmer).

Godel's theorum isn't just for machines - it applies to you as well. Yet here you are. It does not imply a machine can't do your job. It implies that a particular program cannot prove that itself works.

I see no fundamental difference between wetware and hardware. Hardware seems much more scalable though.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

Godel's theorem isn't just for machines - it applies to you as well.

That's not my understanding. This the area in which I wrote my thesis for my math degree. Godel's Incompleteness Theorems are specific to a certain domain of formalized mathematical logic. The frequent attempts to apply these results outside that domain are metaphorical only. One might as well use metaphors from chess.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

I see no fundamental difference between wetware and hardware. Hardware seems much more scalable though.

For a sufficiently general definition of "fundamental", I agree.

The primary difference is one of the degree and layering of complexity.

[tacito]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

Godel's theorum isn't just for machines - it applies to you as well. Yet here you are. It does not imply a machine can't do your job. It implies that a particular program cannot prove that itself works.

I see no fundamental difference between wetware and hardware. Hardware seems much more scalable though.

You're right. Godel's theorem applies to me too. So a machine cannot have a program that solves any problem 100% sure, but can have one that tries possibilities, and sometimes finds a solution, and sometimes gives up. Like me.

However, the hardware is not the most critical element. It's the software. Because depending on how the software is constructed, it can have a complexity (the function that binds the size of the input to the memory and time required to find a solution) that is an exponential. And this is intractable with any hardware you can have or imagine. Inventing that software, like it has been done with chess, is not trivial at all. And copying it from the workings of the human mind can be even harder because the human brain is a mess: it's been designed to work, no to be understood.

What I'm trying to say is that the possibilities of having robots doing most phisical works, and the possibilities of having such sofisticated artificial intelligence are very different. The former needs a tecnology that is already available. The latter is still very science-fiction.

Regards.

[tacito]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

I've just replied to Munger that Godel's theorem applies to me.

I took a pair of courses on Theory of Computation when I was at the University. The Theory of Computation includes Theory of Computability and Theory of Complexity. When I talk about the Godel theorem, I'm in fact talking about the existence of non-computable problems as postulated on the Theory of Computability.

I was told them, that the proof of the existence of non-computable problems and the Godel's theorem where equivalent. And that some people took the trouble of formally probing one using the other and viceversa.

So, in this case, I think that is not just metaphoric. But I confess that I know nothing about the Godel's theorem proper.

[sunskyfan]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

The frequent attempts to apply these results outside that domain are metaphorical only. One might as well use metaphors from chess.

Good stuff . But, I would have to disagree with the sentiment of this statement. Mathematical formulations are ALWAYS effectively metaphorical (That is what is wrong with Wall Street today) when mapped to the physical world. A real world understanding of Godel's theorem is that a model of the world cannot be realized that contains a representation of the model itself. The idea that a human being cannot model and predict its own behavior perfectly is the likely source of irrational behavior. Sometimes this paradox is realized as a limits to degrees of freedom (capabilities) and sometimes it is realized temporally (too much happening too fast). Why bring this up an economics forum? Because it puts you on the road to the paradox we face when considering the importance of a central bank or a global currency. IF irrational behavior in a system is proportional to the proximity of the current state to the maximum complex state then since we are hitting the limits of global economy and trading speed irrational behavior will (and is) increasing dramatically because of this fact and no other. In the past Free Trade was a great way to relieve this pressure as was computer trading and bring things back to a rationally functioning economy. What markets are there left to open? How to we make things move faster? What do we do now?

[bobola]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

Getting back to the theme of this thread, when you tax the rich, they take their money somewhere else.

Remember the luxury tax of 1991? It killed the boat building industry, and I'm sure it also hurt the airplane business;

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/03/op...nd-926091.html


(...and here it comes again...) "Warning to rich New Yorkers: The tax man might be digging deeper into your pockets in the years ahead. There is a growing sense in the capital that legislators are likely to turn to an income tax increase on the wealthiest New Yorkers to help close the state’s $15 billion deficit, now that Democrats control the Senate, the Assembly and the governor’s office."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/ny...aire.html?_r=1

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

My stating that the application of Godel's theorems outside the domain of mathematical logic is metaphorical is not stating one way or the other whether I agree with the sentiments of the metaphor.

I agree that we cannot exactly model anything of much interest, such as ourselves.

[Munger]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

What I'm trying to say is that the possibilities of having robots doing most phisical works, and the possibilities of having such sofisticated artificial intelligence are very different. The former needs a tecnology that is already available. The latter is still very science-fiction.

Regards.

It is currently science fiction, correct. And no one knows if Moore's law will hold up. It has for a long time; many smart people think it will continue for 20 or 30 years. At which point a home PC will have the computing power of a human brain.

Can we program such a computer to work like a human brain? Not sure. There are several reasons I think we will be able to though: (1) we can artificially evolve the solutions (2) we can reverse engineer the brain.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: How to deal with the economically redundant? Tax the rich

Can we program such a computer to work like a human brain? Not sure.

Not even close.