[p2p-research] [globalvillages] mass production and p2p production, was ecovillage and communities

[Nathan Cravens]

Thank you Paul for defending me even if it may not help you to support me in
some way. You express glimmers of the sort of person I'd like to experience
more of from others. . .

Toward the end you address how research software and things like it have
already removed the need for information work, the last remnant of well paid
jobs. . .

Rodney Brooks suggests we put people back into the factory once more. . .
BLARG!!! (no thanks! ;p)

Rodney Brooks: Remaking Manufacturing With Robotics
http://fora.tv/2009/05/30/Rodney_Brooks_Remaking_Manufacturing_With_Robotics

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 9:08 PM, Paul D. Fernhout <
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

There is a robot that does its own research, in the sense that is asks the
> questions within a limited domain, as opposed to the easier task of just
> answering questions that Nathan pointed to.  You're right the system that
> Nathan cites (one from IBM answering Jeapordy trivia questions) is not
> putting scientists is much danger. :-)  But, this other system has the
> potential to make at least some post-docs nervous, perhaps, in the sense
> that it amplifies what just one scientist do:
> "Video: A Robot That Conducts Its Own Research"
>
> http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-04/video-robot-conducts-its-own-research
> "I've always said that most of what I did as a biology research technician
> would someday be carried out by a robot or well-trained monkey. Most lab
> work involves tasks just begging for a robotic hand: repetitive, technical,
> and exceptionally boring. Some (very well-funded) labs have robots that can
> perform repetitive physical jobs, like screening gazillions of chemicals for
> ones that will be medically useful. But this new robot can do the fun part
> of science, too -- the thinking. Meet Adam, the first robot that has
> independently brought a little nugget of experimental knowledge to the
> world. Adam thought up a hypothesis, tested in the real world, analyzed the
> data, and then, of course, did it all over again, many, many times."
>

It would be better for me to restate that its 'pursuits like DeepQA' that
will enhance the researcher's ability to the degree it is no longer
worthwhile to pursue as a profession. There you another fuzzy window without
uncontested evidence; such is the nature of the 'future focused' mind. I
will do my best to play within the windows of the knowledge of the past, the
practical present, and anticipate future outcomes based on past and present
practical application. We might consider this approach one of the
'post-scarcity futurist' in 'gift' terms (one that is not 'rational' in the
contemporary 'market rationality' meaning of the word) or that of the
'foolish fool' in market rationality terms. . .

(So this mean in the past I have called myself a fool jokingly in an attempt
to establish a 'joking relationship' with my brothers and sisters in the
'struggle' for acceptability. foo-bitch-m'nigga ;)


>
> As with the destruction of the low end manufacturing industry in the USA
> and offshoring more and more stuff to China, when you remove the on ramps or
> first steps at the low end of something (gradually increasing in what you
> replace, like China has gone from cheap toys to all sorts of gadgetry now,
> same as Japan did decades earlier), there is less of a chance for as many
> new people to learn and move into an industry. This robot above does what
> post-docs I knew were doing in the 1990s for most of their day. So, it
> essentially is removing the first rungs of the scientist career ladder in an
> area. Science is supposed to be more than rote stuff, but in practice, the
> way academia is set up as a pecking order, that's the way it is for most
> early career researchers.
>

As this ensures capital exploitation via the ignorance created by
compartmentalization without transparency and uneven permissability; which
will only become more uneven if we adhere to a market rationality as
automation technologies, like the research bot and many others to be
expected, remove the last remaining well paid jobs of the information
sector.

It may create more jobs, but they will be of less quality. This is a
discussion list and not a research paper, so I'm not going to present data
point after graph after data point. . . It would be nice to have a
DeepQA-like thing debunk that statement or not. Wolfram Alpha hints toward
that area. We soon will have the ability to make statements without argument
with argumentation engines as lightly theorized, which is why I'm less
rigorous in one sense, but more creative in another; again; perhaps this is
a response to my hang-over from a consumer mentality; but interestingly;
this vice can become a virtue in terms of demands for automation; which is a
good thing so long as we accept post-scarcity as a preferable goal to make
more feasible by wanting it; (again; no data; but you can determine for
yourself that without interest in the novel nothing happens to surface it as
practice other than the interests already established that were once novel)
then pursuing the questions necessary to develop the solution the problems
that surface to address a post-scarcity outcome. . .


> Now, I think that is a good thing in general to automate such work, because
> those biochemicals can be nasty, and post-docs are routinely exploited as
> cheap labor in the biology field. But, is it better to be exploited as well
> as get cancer in twenty years, or is it better to be unemployed with huge
> student loans you can not repay? These sorts of robots are potentially a big
> issue that will more and more affect biotech research. They may mean less
> and less first step opportunities or any employment of many people getting
> biology-related PhDs, considering there is already a glut of them relative
> to the opportunities.
>

Yes. These forthcoming research tools will better enable the researcher, but
not the profession. Its important to address that difference. This form of
automation when shared freely with transparent and accurate data will
benefit and enhance the autonomy of the person and her community.



>
> Computer software and simulation by itself has the same potential, with
> computers looking at lots of simulated possibilities. In that sense, senior
> engineers are also being amplified while at the same time junior engineers
> are replaced to an extent. Again, that is good in one sense, but bad in
> another in a scarcity oriented society where you are either employed or
> destitute.
>

Property rights then become a major issue that's for greater conflict as
projected technical advancements reflected in labor value decline and
capital collapse if market rationalities are not adequately addressed! Read
that line over and over and over again until you get.


>
> Now, one may point to lots of counter examples, but it seems there is the
> beginning of a trend here.  The real issue is, if you have a fixed amount of
> money as a researcher, how much do you want to spend on people and how much
> on machines (robots or fancy computers)? That has always been an issue, but
> as the machines get more capable, the balance may be shifting to more
> technology per researcher. So, a robot like this might not remove the
> "Principal Investigator" anytime soon, but it might obsolete much of the
> supporting PhD staff. That would be a good thing to remove the drudgery if
> there was not essentially a limited supply of funds.
>

And when funds become more limited and staff can no longer become hired at
the line at the fast food assembly line property rights that funds are used
to acknowledge rights to come into greater question; and if the boundaries
set are not questioned as technical abilities advance for the "principal
investigator," such types in these positions, without revision of the map
toward the territory with destroy the periphery that surfaced its core.
(Sources: Wallerstein 2004. Richard Wolff 2009. What can I say, the Marxists
are good are being critical of markets and capitalism. But whether Marxism
is viewed dimly does not refute in itself that the data lacks accuracy even
if the data and conclusions are fuzzy)


>
> By the way, here is why the academic pyramid scheme has failed already,
> even without the robots which just make all this even worse from the
> point-of-view of the would-be researcher starting out:
>  "The Big Crunch"
>  http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
>
> So, there is stuff going on, but again, it is not to the point where
> researchers are all being replaced today. But clearly, they are starting to
> be under pressure. And that is sad, because many people want to do research
> and never get the chance. And researchers often don't cost much money to
> feed (although equipment and lab space can add up in some areas). It is sad
> if our society can not accommodate everyone that wants to make a research
> contribution.
>

You address a valid point that has shadowed the problem: jobs still exist,
the apologists say, but they curiously deny that most people's income in
less and less. The only arguement I recall to counter this is: 'well, things
just get cheaper and cheaper so they can afford it'. That is false, as
outsourcing from the consumer area eventually outstripps the ability for
labor value to afford even the most 'affordable' of goods, no matter how
much bloodshed or hardship (toil) occurred overseas to procure the goods.
Unless a universal socialism or basic income is put into place as property
is renegotiate into a commons as labor value decreases we can only see
the tyrant and fascism to keep the progression toward that more theft driven
market compromise. This is why I find it astounding to have such accusations
of tyrant and fascist made by Herbert, a very smart person. This just blows
my mind!

Paul, perhaps you can attempt to understand why I might seem like a fascist
or a tyrant from an additional third person perspective? I'm passionate and
stubborn, but I'm willing to listen, until I think someone is presenting
something I believe is a detriment to their well being and that of others.
Even if I disagree I will do my best to listen to these views; as they help
to strength the argument Paul and I believe is essential for a fruitful
human outcome.My apologies for getting off topic. ;p

Again, I will state here and repeat myself if need be, that if post-scarcity
is rejected as a primary initiative for the P2P Foundation, it will limit
the ability to have free communication channels that assure transparent and
accurate peer-to-peer communications as technology is used by market
participants to maximize supposed gains or outcomes. The market place should
be second to a post-scarcity outcome! Would you not rather have something
without permission than to ask for it if that thing you wish is what you
feel is appropriate?!

We must begin to trust people and nurture their individual judgment and
present alternatives in complement with the interests pursued within that
person's community!  The evidence for this is berried in anthropology text
(Mauss' and Hyde's 'The Gift'; Marshall Sahlins; David Greaber) and in
alternative education texts (such as John Taylor Gatto) and your mother's
"irrational" behavior for caring for you without receiving a paycheck for
"services rendered!!" (If you think your mother should have received an
hourly wage; that's really disturbing! You are overwhelmed with a market
rationality that will tear your soul apart until you destroy the world or
yourself. That's called poetic prose and I will not diminish it by citing
supporting evidence; you see? I've destroyed it. Those words are the result
of the market rationality I refer to.)


> The more general issue is that while everything you say is right about
> being clear on issues of imagination, dream, and reality, one does need to
> be clear on trends, too. :-) And as with that "big crunch" essay above
> written by the Vice Provost of Caltech, sometimes trends are not obvious to
> look at until many years after you are living in the implications of them
> (in that case, it was the end of most academic growth in the 1970s for the
> USA while production of PhDs in vast quantities continued, a fact that
> thirty years later academia still refuses to acknowledge or deal with). Even
> ten years ago, it was known the "half-life" of a science PhD was less than a
> decade:
>  "Careers close to critical mass"
> http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=107362&sectioncode=26
> "What does a scientist's career have in common with a radioactive element
> like tritium? They both have a half-life that is measured in years, not
> decades. In the case of tritium, it has a half-life of just over 12 years,
> but the "career half-life" of the typical biomedical scientist may be only
> half as long. The half-life of tritium is how long it takes before 50 per
> cent of the atoms have decomposed, but in the case of a group of scientists,
> their career half-life is how long it takes before half of them have left
> the profession, which may be as little as six years. Lawyers and doctors, on
> the other hand, can generally look forward to a career that lasts until
> retirement."
>

This is a good approach to arguing for post-scarcity. Toward the end of the
1960s onward labor value decreased rapidly as the end of 'Treaty of Detroit'
represents in the United States. Paul, we must observe the technologies or
approaches used that caused a direct or indirect effect on labor value. Then
we must argue why that will continue with the liklihood full automation of
people will continue to the degree it cannot feasibly pay anyone enough in
labor value terms. That will not mean, as our critics will point out, that
our work will be less appreciated, that is if it is sincere. The issue then
is that work today is not sincere, but a duty, and fulfilling this duty
regardless of personal prefers is regarded a quality, but that long held
tradition is overwelmingly obsolete with each advance.

Creative destruction, build-it obsolescence, automation, outsourcing, call
it what you want, it destroys the very theortical fabric of libertarianism
as it is defined today; and libertarians will just have to get over that or
becoming sassier and more biligerent as technical advances make that
romanticised individual (the Descartes 'mind alone'), one that may have
served it purpose well to procure the 'fruits' we have today, but it will
only kill the 'tree' that birthed it, so it is therefore stated here a
notion of a bygone era, even if that era has yet to rest, it must do so
quickly with the appropriate alternatives to fill its place for the benefit
of a greater individual, greater because she listens to her community and
adopts a variety of things that work without resorting to narrow ant-prone
toil or the toilscape that once reinforced it.

Look to your Industrial dwelling today. Your madness is reinforced. Those
operations you see all around you are a lie. Admit it. And then act in the
ways that better empower others so you might empower yourself in whatever
way you can. I am doing what I can to do the same relative to my desire for
sanity, spontaneity or creativity. You do what you believe is right even if
it is the opposite to what I am saying, but that doesn't mean I have to
reduce myself to those standards, and so I am doing what I can so anyone can
live to the standards they appreciate without affecting my own.


> So, add automation to that situation, and we may well be seeing the end of
> entire areas of research in academia done by PhDs and post-docs, at least in
> some areas of biochemistry, given the machines are cheaper and they have not
> yet unionized.
>

hehe. ;p If they get that smart, they'll create little drones for us to play
with while they go off into fantasies of their own; unless someone else
would like for the machines to destroy them--that's their business.
I'm imagining Hugo de Garis here interacting with a machine smarter than
himself with amusement. He might say something like, "So since you're so
much better than us, why don't you just kill us?" My argument is, why kill
us if its know we birthed them and they have the ability to create as
many universes as they so please? (Hehe, since we're in the world of
prophecy, let's have some fun with what assumptions we might grasp. ;p)


>
> And, I'd point out, the sciences were considered the *good* and *safe*
> PhDs:
>

I got a PhD just so I could tell people I know what I'm doing and to stop
questioning me and to stfu! (Okay, so I don't really have a PhD, but isn't
that funny?)


>  "Wanted: Really Smart Suckers: Grad school provides exciting new road to
> poverty"
>  http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-04-20/news/wanted-really-smart-suckers/


Smartr da bettr. ;) Accumulate without return, sucker.


>
> "Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads.
> For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands
> superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment.


Folk may have had fewer articles of clothing then; but the quality was
superb! You can see the degradation in clothing by viewing photographs from
the Victorian era, on. I noticed this after looking at photos taken of
Albert Einstein. His suits got shabbier and drabbier along with
everyone else's. Surely its not because I admire the tastes of the Victorian
any moreso? The cloth itself looks better the further back you go, right?


> Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the
> focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting
> specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read.
> Then it's time for advancement: Apply to 50 far-flung, undesirable
> locations, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of being offered any position at
> all. You may end up living 100 miles from your spouse and commuting to three
> different work locations a week. You may end up $50,000 in debt, with no
> health insurance, feeding your kids with food stamps.


Yeah, but if they didn't earn it, they don't deserve to live anyway, right?


> If you are the luckiest out of every five entrants, you may win the
> profession's ultimate prize: A comfortable middle-class job, for the rest of
> your life, with summers off. Welcome to the world of the humanities Ph.D.
> student, 2004, where promises mean little and revolt is in the air. In the
> past week, Columbia's graduate teaching assistants went on strike and
> temporary, or adjunct, faculty at New York University narrowly avoided one.
> Columbia's Graduate Student Employees United seeks recognition, over the
> administration's appeals, of a two-year-old vote that would make it the
> second officially recognized union at a private university. NYU's adjuncts,
> who won their union in 2002, reached an eleventh-hour agreement for health
> care and office space, among other amenities. Grad students have always
> resigned themselves to relative poverty in anticipation of a cushy, tenured
> payoff. But in the past decade, the rules of the game have changed. Budget
> pressures have spurred universities' increasing dependence on so-called
> "casual labor," which damages both the working conditions of graduate
> students and their job prospects. Over half of the classroom time at major
> universities is now logged by non-tenure-track teachers, both graduate
> teaching assistants—known as TAs—and adjuncts. At community colleges,
> part-timers make up 60 percent of the faculties."
>

They just aren't doing enough. They're lucky to have a job I do so kindly in
giving them the right to have! ;p


>
> Again, computers have the potential to automate the humanities PhD
> student's work as well. I say "work" in the sense of what PhDs are generally
> paid to do as research assistants, teaching assistants, and lab assistants,
> not "work" as in what they love to do in their own original research for a
> PhD thesis or whatever. So, computers make it easier for existing
> professorts to grade assignments, search for references, write letters,
> check for plagiarism, and so on, thus eliminating the need for most of the
> jobs that humanities PhDs have been paid to do (not to mention many academic
> secretaries). Obviously, I feel it is wonderful that a humanities PhD
> student talks about things like literature with undergrads, discusses the
> meanings in life and all that, and does original research -- but in an age
> of tightening budgets and a glut of people with PhDs and lots of computers,
> there is pressure to cut what can be cut, and grad students are historically
> the weakest players. Not to mention other pressures on them:
>  http://www.disciplined-minds.com/


That's right and with people being lazy these days we got to put in
computers or whatever it takes to compensate for the loses and earn
ourselves enough to stay afloat! My mansion and Ferraris are in disrepair!
That's not fair at all after what I've done for them!!


>
> I predict we see more and more automation in those humanities areas, since
> computers are getting better and better at analyzing rote text. Example of
> just the beginning of replacing humanities PhDs:
>  "Professor Develops Essay Grading Software"
>
> http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2005/05/09/professor-develops-essay-grading-software
> "Ed Brent, University of Missouri professor of sociology invested six years
> into developing Qualrus, using the last two years to test it on his
> students. Brent said the program is sophisticated enough to analyze sentence
> and paragraph structure and is able to judge the flow or arguments and
> ideas. Keywords and concepts are pre-entered by the teacher. Students can
> upload their papers on the Internet and receive instant feedback and scores.
> Numeric scores are based on whether the writer addressed the most important
> elements of the assignment. The idea is to save teachers the tedium of
> reading scores of essays on the same topic. According to Brent, he himself
> has shaved off 200 hours of paper grading."
>
> Note, I'm not saying you can replace a humanities professor with that. But
> you can replace the first career steps to become a humanities professor with
> that, and the net effect may ultimately be the same.
>

People must go into education because the subject matters and not the ration
unit received from such work. Our critics do not see any reason for the
professor that refuses a salary to receive access to resources that would
assure her life without these little rights of passage known as money. We
must better address how resource access is to be had as labor value and the
capital that reinforced it diminishes a lands onto the commons the
activities surfaced from and around the P2P Foundation and related water
coolers will create!


>
> Already faculty are graying. In the same way automation lets old Japanese
> keep from importing young foreigners to help them, graying faculty may turn
> to automation instead of new hires to hang on to their jobs:
> "Graying of US academia stirs debate: Some cite brilliance; others see lost
> opportunity in hiring"
>
> http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/12/27/graying_of_us_academia_stirs_debate/
> """
> This year, 9.2 percent of tenured professors in Harvard's Faculty of Arts
> and Sciences are 70 or older, compared with none in 1992. Other universities
> have seen jumps in the percentage of older professors, although the actual
> number remains small on many campuses. The graying of university faculty has
> stirred vigorous debate. Some in higher education, including Glauber's
> students, say many older professors are brilliant researchers and riveting
> teachers with plenty to offer. But some academic leaders say the abundance
> of older professors is plugging the pipeline, making it harder to hire young
> faculty members and bring fresh ideas into labs and the classroom. At the
> worst, they worry that the perseverance of older professors will crowd the
> young out of scholarly professions altogether. ... The slower pace of
> retirements in the sciences is one of the reasons that young scientists are
> spending more years in low-paid postdoctoral fellowships and the average age
> for a scientist to get his or her first major research grants from the
> National Institutes of Health has risen from 37 to 42 in the last 25 years.
> """
>
> So, in a way, this is even a "transhumanism" issue, as old professors with
> tenure and relative affluence are turning themselves into transhumans with
> computers, Borg-like collaborative social networks, hearing aids, glasses,
> and insulin shots, and with all that augmenting technology they are crowding
> out the young and poor would-be professors who just can't compete. :-)
>

Yes, but our critics may dismiss us if we call it "transhumanist"


>
> Add robots that do their own research and paper-grading computer AI
> software programs into this mix, things that will mainly be only available
> to the old and relatively wealthy professors who are already established,
> and who knows what will be happening soon to grad students? :-)
>
> So, all that is one thing driving the Pro-Am revolution:
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_amateurs


;) I


>
> As well as the "Blue Collar" scholar:
>
> http://unconventionalideas.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/blue-collar-independent-scholar/
> "People with scholarly interests should take a long hard look at the
> possibility of a blue collar career. On the surface this may sound
> ludicrous, but I’ve found blue collar work actually enables me to pursue
> intellectual interests far more than any white collar job I ever had. Here’s
> how it all happened:.. "
>
> Or, perhaps, in my case, doing child-care part of the time for my child
> while also writing stuff and programming free software, I guess that makes
> me a "Pink Collar" scholar. :-)
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink-collar_worker
> At least for a time.
>

The morality embedded in that term is questionable.


>
> Note: I think there are plenty of resources on our planet to allow anyone
> of any age to be a researcher or professor, so I don't think the solution is
> mandatory retirement. It's a basic income, rethinking education vs.
> schooling, massively increased R&D spending by government, and things like
> that, IMHO.
>

*hiss* socialist *hiss* ! ;p


>
> So, there are actually several trends that are changing the nature of
> academic research as we know it. :-) And peer-to-peer, in part bypassing the
> academic journal system (like this mailing list), is fueling some of them.
> As is automation. :-)
>
>
I'd like to have the research capacities of you and Michel automated, that
would be wonderful ;p


Anyway, this is all not to disagree with your general point. You are right
> to call for clarity about what categories ideas and information fall into.


I think it is good that Franz and Michel have standards, but I only suggest
they continue to question them where appropriate.


Nathan
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