Entirely offtopic, but there are few places lovelier than Britain in the Autumn. Ideally I'd have spent the day somewhere like the Yorkshire Dales. But even the suburbs of South Manchester make your heart sing on a day like this.
India already has a larger population than China doesn't it? Or there about equal such that we can measure it.
I honestly don't think we will see another hegemonic power like the United States was after 1945 or certainly between 1990-2010. It was a highly advanced economy when most of the world wasn't and crucially most of the other highly advanced economies were US allies under essentially US global leadership. I doubt that will be repeated and if China thinks it can be replicated they may be in for a rude awakening.
There is some evidence that China's population is overstated, possibly by a tenth or more. The reasons include such things as bureaucrats having an incentive to overstate births in their area, to get more central government funds and the central government wanting the prestige of being (till recently) the world's most populous country.
I don't entirely buy it, but it would reconcile with the theory that China's GDP is overstated by a similar amount or more, based on secondary statistics like electricity consumption.
In the USSR, births were overstated, because births equaled workforce and conscripts for the army.
There is some evidence that Nigerias is too. It is more than 15 years since the last census, and Federal and State politicians have an incentive to exagerrate in order to gain funding and political representation.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
If we're talking about a baseline for use in predicting the next election I think this is correct.
You need 2 things to forecast the GE result - (i) An estimate of the vote share for each party - (ii) How this translates to seats under FPTP.
You get (i) from polls and whatever judgmental adjustment you wish to make. You don't need a baseline.
For (ii) you need to distribute the vote across seats. You can make judgemental adjustments here too but it needs a start point. Which is how the vote shares mapped to seats last time. That's the baseline. The last election.
On topic, it is WAY too soon to write China off. Yes it has major demographic problems, but so does much of the world. And the AI revolution may render such questions irrelevant. We won’t need a trillion workers. The problem will be too many idle hands
And on the upside China has a high average IQ, a hard-working and resourceful populace, notably low crime rates, limited racial issues (they out everyone troublesome in camps) and roughly zero guilt about its past - unlike the Woke crippled west. Tables show Chinese universities fast catching up with the west, maybe they will overtake. And their determination to plan and complete infrastructure is formidable - better than the west
It may be that planned autocratic “state capitalist” economies do better in the ultra-hi-tech world of the 21st century than liberal democracies. We just don’t know
One of China's problems that Alanbrooke cites is that, under Xi's more autocratic rule, anyone who does not toe the narrow state line is crushed. This is perhaps a benefit in the short-term: it increases internal cohesion, for example.
But a high price is paid in lost creative thought, so China is less likely to tap into the rewards of future technology. The slightly more open system that existed before Xi, while still a dictatorship, would have been better able to harness the talents of creatives and innovators. And it was also able to handle the transition from one leader to another.
Xi Jingping is 70. Perhaps he will still be China's dictator in 2040, at the age of 87. But then what? After around thirty years of one-man rule somehow a succession will have to be handled. It is not a recipe for long-term stability.
And where is this paragon of stability, amongst the major powers?
America? Lol Britain? Er France? Bon jour Mme Le Pen Russia? Lol Germany? Heading for permanent decline
Despite everything thrown at it, including the plague and the world’s longest lockdown, China still looks remarkably stable, to me
Britain: The House of Commons and our long history of democracy.
That is our stability and it trumps China by miles.
Putting "stability" in any one individual is a recipe for disaster, as that individual rapidly becomes out of touch/corrupt/incompetent as time goes on.
Our stability is our ability to evolve and have a peaceful handover of powers.
We've had that repeatedly in the last decade and will probably have it again soon. Its why our democracy has lasted centuries, evolving over that time, which is far more stable than any autocratic dictatorship has been.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Even when Italy is grimy and poor - and Catania is certainly that - it still manages to be, well, ITALY
Same with Peterborough. Massive cathedral. One and a half buried queens (Mary Queen of Scots has since been moved). Waterside bars and restaurants. Yet boarded up shops and no money.
Catania may be banjaxed but it absolutely SEETHES with energy in the centre
It is perhaps the most “authentically Italian” city I have ever seen. Even more than Naples. Basically zero tourists
Are you overestimating its poverty ?
Catania is the first economic and industrial hub of Sicily. The city is famous for its mainly petrochemical industry, and the extraction of sulphur. In the year 2000, according to Census, Catania was the 14th richest city in Italy, with a GDP of US$6.6 billion (€6.304 billion), which was 0.54% of the Italian GDP, a GDP per capita of US$21,000 (€20,100) and an average GDP per employee of US$69,000 (€66,100).[75]
...
Today, Catania, despite several problems, has one of the most dynamic economies in the whole of Southern Italy. It still has a strong industrial and agricultural sector, and a fast-growing tourist industry, with many international visitors coming to visit the city's main sights and the nearby Etna volcano. It contains the headquarters or important offices of companies such as STMicroelectronics, and also several chemical and pharmaceutical businesses. There have been several new business developments to further boost Catania's economy, including the construction of Etnapolis,[76] a big shopping mall designed by Massimiliano Fuksas, the same architect who designed the FieraMilano industrial fair in Milan, or the Etna Valley,[77] where several high-tech offices are located.
Tourism is a fast-growing industry in Catania. Lately, the administration and private companies have made several investments in the hospitality industry in order to make tourism a competitive sector in the Metropolitan City. Etnaland, a large amusement and water park located in Belpasso, is in the metropolitan area of Catania, 12 kilometers (7 miles) from the city center. It is the largest of its kind in Southern Italy and attracts thousands of tourists, not only from Sicily, but also from the rest of Italy. According to Tripadvisor (2018) it is the third-largest water park in Europe.[78]
The seaport of Catania is linked to the road-rail distribution hub of Bologna. In September 2020 Mercitalia Logistics opened the first full railway route to link the city to Northern Italy. It replaced an older mixed maritime-railway line.[79]
Entirely offtopic, but there are few places lovelier than Britain in the Autumn. Ideally I'd have spent the day somewhere like the Yorkshire Dales. But even the suburbs of South Manchester make your heart sing on a day like this.
Yes, beautiful walking my pooch in East Leics, though rather muddy underfoot.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
Entirely offtopic, but there are few places lovelier than Britain in the Autumn. Ideally I'd have spent the day somewhere like the Yorkshire Dales. But even the suburbs of South Manchester make your heart sing on a day like this.
One of the joys of my early twenties was driving north along the A6 and into the Peak District, then onto local roads where the trees would exhibit almost every shade of colour imaginable. The New Forest could be rather great in parts as well.
You'd need to time it right though; the display only seemed to last a week or two.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
The issue is the damage it can do when a robot gets it wrong - which means that we're likely to (or at least should) see automated 'AI' systems where the effect of wrong answers is least.
If a robot picks an unripe or bad raspberry one time in a thousand, no-one really cares. If a robot wipes your mouth and feeds your bottom one time in a thousand, it *really* matters.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
Most (many?) Jews in the UK are fully integrated into our society. Integration doesn’t mean that they have to abandon their culture and traditions, faith or beliefs.
I am more troubled by some of the ultra Orthodox communities - I recall a radio programme a few years ago about the suffering of a female member of that community who tried to get divorced from her controlling and abusive husband.
There are fundamental principles that anyone who wishes to live in the UK needs to accept and abide by.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
The thing about Multiculturalism (with the capital M) is that is was supposed to be about each community maintaining its own culture without changing. Separate development. Wonder what that sounds like, in Afrikaans, say.
The rock it foundered on, is that tolerance of other cultures is a two way street. And that without some common ground, you are balkanising society. Finally, liberal social democracy isn’t a common thing around the world.
In order for us to have a functioning society, we need some agreement on common mores. So, while it’s a tough one, people need to give up their traditions. Like owning other people, or hunting Jews.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
Most (many?) Jews in the UK are fully integrated into our society. Integration doesn’t mean that they have to abandon their culture and traditions, faith or beliefs.
I am more troubled by some of the ultra Orthodox communities - I recall a radio programme a few years ago about the suffering of a female member of that community who tried to get divorced from her controlling and abusive husband.
There are fundamental principles that anyone who wishes to live in the UK needs to accept and abide by.
Mind you, they did say FU to the planners, and got an extra storey on their houses…
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
Most (many?) Jews in the UK are fully integrated into our society. Integration doesn’t mean that they have to abandon their culture and traditions, faith or beliefs.
I am more troubled by some of the ultra Orthodox communities - I recall a radio programme a few years ago about the suffering of a female member of that community who tried to get divorced from her controlling and abusive husband.
There are fundamental principles that anyone who wishes to live in the UK needs to accept and abide by.
Mind you, they did say FU to the planners, and got an extra storey on their houses…
Tolerance a 2 way street. I’m willing to adopt that tradition of theirs myself
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
There is a metaphorical "mountain to climb", but that overlooks the fact that mountain climbing is possible, and that five years is a bloody long time to climb that mountain.
Starmer has spent the past 3.5 years since he took over trying to climb it, while the Tories have spent the past couple of years tumbling down it.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
The better point to make is just how fickle the electorate is now, and how that might apply in 2024/5 and in 2028/9.
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
Most (many?) Jews in the UK are fully integrated into our society. Integration doesn’t mean that they have to abandon their culture and traditions, faith or beliefs.
I am more troubled by some of the ultra Orthodox communities - I recall a radio programme a few years ago about the suffering of a female member of that community who tried to get divorced from her controlling and abusive husband.
There are fundamental principles that anyone who wishes to live in the UK needs to accept and abide by.
That is the same as other multicultural communities. Varying integration and customs, and varying integration (if we could even agree on what "integration" or "British Culture" mean).
Why not just be open and say that you don't like Muslims? Or do you also have a problem with Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Irish Catholics etc etc?
Interesting thread. I am not the world's expert on India, but I don't feel that they will ever challenge China for world domination. I feel the culture is way too disparate, family-focused, and 'chaotic' to be corralled into a world dominating power. That's not necessarily a weakness, it can also be a strength - it means their culture can never truly succumb to a tyrant. There were villages surveyed by the post-independence Government of India about the departure of the British, who never even knew the British had arrived.
Looking back at the Commonwealth games, the one where the bridge collapsed, and all the athletes got dysentery, shows me that India doesn't have the uniformity of will to project an image to the world for the duration of a sporting competition. Contrast that with the Beijing Olympics where the grass was sprayed green and the homeless were swept away to goodness knows where. If it can't do that, I don't think it can hope to dominate the world either, though it will continue to be important.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
The thing about Multiculturalism (with the capital M) is that is was supposed to be about each community maintaining its own culture without changing. Separate development. Wonder what that sounds like, in Afrikaans, say.
The rock it foundered on, is that tolerance of other cultures is a two way street. And that without some common ground, you are balkanising society. Finally, liberal social democracy isn’t a common thing around the world.
In order for us to have a functioning society, we need some agreement on common mores. So, while it’s a tough one, people need to give up their traditions. Like owning other people, or hunting Jews.
Course. But we've never been shooting for Multiculturalism in that sense of encouraging incomers to not integrate. It's a strawman.
This isn't to say, pls note, that I'm of the opinion it's all perfect and there aren't things we ought to be doing to break down barriers and improve cohesion.
Eg - just one example - how about we educate all our children together, no segregation allowed at that very influential time of life.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
Most (many?) Jews in the UK are fully integrated into our society. Integration doesn’t mean that they have to abandon their culture and traditions, faith or beliefs.
I am more troubled by some of the ultra Orthodox communities - I recall a radio programme a few years ago about the suffering of a female member of that community who tried to get divorced from her controlling and abusive husband.
There are fundamental principles that anyone who wishes to live in the UK needs to accept and abide by.
That is the same as other multicultural communities. Varying integration and customs, and varying integration (if we could even agree on what "integration" or "British Culture" mean).
Why not just be open and say that you don't like Muslims? Or do you also have a problem with Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Irish Catholics etc etc?
Entirely offtopic, but there are few places lovelier than Britain in the Autumn. Ideally I'd have spent the day somewhere like the Yorkshire Dales. But even the suburbs of South Manchester make your heart sing on a day like this.
I really like the smell of the leaves turning too for some reason.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
Most (many?) Jews in the UK are fully integrated into our society. Integration doesn’t mean that they have to abandon their culture and traditions, faith or beliefs.
I am more troubled by some of the ultra Orthodox communities - I recall a radio programme a few years ago about the suffering of a female member of that community who tried to get divorced from her controlling and abusive husband.
There are fundamental principles that anyone who wishes to live in the UK needs to accept and abide by.
That is the same as other multicultural communities. Varying integration and customs, and varying integration (if we could even agree on what "integration" or "British Culture" mean).
Why not just be open and say that you don't like Muslims? Or do you also have a problem with Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Irish Catholics etc etc?
I don't like organised religion, and any religionists that put their religion ahead of the law and tolerance of others.
Anyone of any religion who is secular, is not a problem.
Interesting thread. I am not the world's expert on India, but I don't feel that they will ever challenge China for world domination. I feel the culture is way too disparate, family-focused, and 'chaotic' to be corralled into a world dominating power. That's not necessarily a weakness, it can also be a strength - it means their culture can never truly succumb to a tyrant. There were villages surveyed by the post-independence Government of India about the departure of the British, who never even knew the British had arrived.
Looking back at the Commonwealth games, the one where the bridge collapsed, and all the athletes got dysentery, shows me that India doesn't have the uniformity of will to project an image to the world for the duration of a sporting competition. Contrast that with the Beijing Olympics where the grass was sprayed green and the homeless were swept away to goodness knows where. If it can't do that, I don't think it can hope to dominate the world either, though it will continue to be important.
That’s simply about levels of development. Beneath the still thin layers of upper and middle class India is an ocean of poverty. Much as with China until very recently - and China still has lots of poor people.
One of the things that upsets the fundies in Pakistan is the rate at which India is starting to accelerate away from their level. Hence the Mumbai Attacks etc…
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
Once you realise it’s just cupboard space, so instead of stacking dishes in a cupboard….
The cost of a second dishwasher is tiny compared to the cost of a new kitchen.
Yes you lose a lot less cupboard space than you think you will, because in normal use you always have a clean pile of crockery, cutlery, and glassware, in one of the dishwashers.
It’s also brilliant when you have a party, because you can end up with two dirty dishwashers at the end of the night and two clean ones in the morning.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
Most (many?) Jews in the UK are fully integrated into our society. Integration doesn’t mean that they have to abandon their culture and traditions, faith or beliefs.
I am more troubled by some of the ultra Orthodox communities - I recall a radio programme a few years ago about the suffering of a female member of that community who tried to get divorced from her controlling and abusive husband.
There are fundamental principles that anyone who wishes to live in the UK needs to accept and abide by.
That is the same as other multicultural communities. Varying integration and customs, and varying integration (if we could even agree on what "integration" or "British Culture" mean).
Why not just be open and say that you don't like Muslims? Or do you also have a problem with Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Irish Catholics etc etc?
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
Once you realise it’s just cupboard space, so instead of stacking dishes in a cupboard….
The cost of a second dishwasher is tiny compared to the cost of a new kitchen.
Yes you lose a lot less cupboard space than you think you will, because in normal use you always have a clean pile of crockery, cutlery, and glassware, in one of the dishwashers.
It’s also brilliant when you have a party, because you can end up with two dirty dishwashers at the end of the night and two clean ones in the morning.
Never even thought of this, but its such a good idea. When I get my dream home with enough space, that's going into it.
Interesting thread. I am not the world's expert on India, but I don't feel that they will ever challenge China for world domination. I feel the culture is way too disparate, family-focused, and 'chaotic' to be corralled into a world dominating power. That's not necessarily a weakness, it can also be a strength - it means their culture can never truly succumb to a tyrant. There were villages surveyed by the post-independence Government of India about the departure of the British, who never even knew the British had arrived.
Looking back at the Commonwealth games, the one where the bridge collapsed, and all the athletes got dysentery, shows me that India doesn't have the uniformity of will to project an image to the world for the duration of a sporting competition. Contrast that with the Beijing Olympics where the grass was sprayed green and the homeless were swept away to goodness knows where. If it can't do that, I don't think it can hope to dominate the world either, though it will continue to be important.
That’s simply about levels of development. Beneath the still thin layers of upper and middle class India is an ocean of poverty. Much as with China until very recently - and China still has lots of poor people.
One of the things that upsets the fundies in Pakistan is the rate at which India is starting to accelerate away from their level. Hence the Mumbai Attacks etc…
Sure, but there are fundamentals of culture that I believe play a role. China and its people understand that they are on a mission to displace the West, even if that takes centuries.
On topic, it is WAY too soon to write China off. Yes it has major demographic problems, but so does much of the world. And the AI revolution may render such questions irrelevant. We won’t need a trillion workers. The problem will be too many idle hands
And on the upside China has a high average IQ, a hard-working and resourceful populace, notably low crime rates, limited racial issues (they out everyone troublesome in camps) and roughly zero guilt about its past - unlike the Woke crippled west. Tables show Chinese universities fast catching up with the west, maybe they will overtake. And their determination to plan and complete infrastructure is formidable - better than the west
It may be that planned autocratic “state capitalist” economies do better in the ultra-hi-tech world of the 21st century than liberal democracies. We just don’t know
One of China's problems that Alanbrooke cites is that, under Xi's more autocratic rule, anyone who does not toe the narrow state line is crushed. This is perhaps a benefit in the short-term: it increases internal cohesion, for example.
But a high price is paid in lost creative thought, so China is less likely to tap into the rewards of future technology. The slightly more open system that existed before Xi, while still a dictatorship, would have been better able to harness the talents of creatives and innovators. And it was also able to handle the transition from one leader to another.
Xi Jingping is 70. Perhaps he will still be China's dictator in 2040, at the age of 87. But then what? After around thirty years of one-man rule somehow a succession will have to be handled. It is not a recipe for long-term stability.
And where is this paragon of stability, amongst the major powers?
America? Lol Britain? Er France? Bon jour Mme Le Pen Russia? Lol Germany? Heading for permanent decline
Despite everything thrown at it, including the plague and the world’s longest lockdown, China still looks remarkably stable, to me
Britain: The House of Commons and our long history of democracy.
That is our stability and it trumps China by miles.
Putting "stability" in any one individual is a recipe for disaster, as that individual rapidly becomes out of touch/corrupt/incompetent as time goes on.
Our stability is our ability to evolve and have a peaceful handover of powers.
We've had that repeatedly in the last decade and will probably have it again soon. Its why our democracy has lasted centuries, evolving over that time, which is far more stable than any autocratic dictatorship has been.
Systems beat individuals all the time.
China has had a system, of sorts, for a very long time indeed.
Interesting thread. I am not the world's expert on India, but I don't feel that they will ever challenge China for world domination. I feel the culture is way too disparate, family-focused, and 'chaotic' to be corralled into a world dominating power. That's not necessarily a weakness, it can also be a strength - it means their culture can never truly succumb to a tyrant. There were villages surveyed by the post-independence Government of India about the departure of the British, who never even knew the British had arrived.
Looking back at the Commonwealth games, the one where the bridge collapsed, and all the athletes got dysentery, shows me that India doesn't have the uniformity of will to project an image to the world for the duration of a sporting competition. Contrast that with the Beijing Olympics where the grass was sprayed green and the homeless were swept away to goodness knows where. If it can't do that, I don't think it can hope to dominate the world either, though it will continue to be important.
F1 used to race in India, and stopped going because of the ever-changing bureaucracy, taxes, and “taxes”.
There was no-one they could agree to pay them a certain sum of money, to have the show turn up, do their thing, and leave, without any stuff getting held in customs on the say-so of some local official nothing to do with the event.
That’s the sort of thing they need to sort out, the petty bureaucrats who always find a way to say no to things, until you straight up ask them how much it would cost to fix this problem.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
The thing about Multiculturalism (with the capital M) is that is was supposed to be about each community maintaining its own culture without changing. Separate development. Wonder what that sounds like, in Afrikaans, say.
The rock it foundered on, is that tolerance of other cultures is a two way street. And that without some common ground, you are balkanising society. Finally, liberal social democracy isn’t a common thing around the world.
In order for us to have a functioning society, we need some agreement on common mores. So, while it’s a tough one, people need to give up their traditions. Like owning other people, or hunting Jews.
Course. But we've never been shooting for Multiculturalism in that sense of encouraging incomers to not integrate. It's a strawman.
This isn't to say, pls note, that I'm of the opinion it's all perfect and there aren't things we ought to be doing to break down barriers and improve cohesion.
Eg - just one example - how about we educate all our children together, no segregation allowed at that very influential time of life.
That was the explicit aim of those advocating “Multiculturalism” in the 80s and 90s. They promised a future where no one would have to learn English, for example. Quite forgetting that not speaking English in the U.K. puts you at a massive disadvantage.
A favourite was the idea of advocating community “councils” and “parliaments” to isolate communities further.
The aim was to *prevent* an American style melting pot. Which is what common schooling is about, by the way.
This vision of separate development rather died when it became clear just how intolerant other cultures can be.
I can remember the shock and horror of the advocates of this, when lessons on promoting UK values were brought in in the schools etc.
Interesting thread. I am not the world's expert on India, but I don't feel that they will ever challenge China for world domination. I feel the culture is way too disparate, family-focused, and 'chaotic' to be corralled into a world dominating power. That's not necessarily a weakness, it can also be a strength - it means their culture can never truly succumb to a tyrant. There were villages surveyed by the post-independence Government of India about the departure of the British, who never even knew the British had arrived.
Looking back at the Commonwealth games, the one where the bridge collapsed, and all the athletes got dysentery, shows me that India doesn't have the uniformity of will to project an image to the world for the duration of a sporting competition. Contrast that with the Beijing Olympics where the grass was sprayed green and the homeless were swept away to goodness knows where. If it can't do that, I don't think it can hope to dominate the world either, though it will continue to be important.
That’s simply about levels of development. Beneath the still thin layers of upper and middle class India is an ocean of poverty. Much as with China until very recently - and China still has lots of poor people.
One of the things that upsets the fundies in Pakistan is the rate at which India is starting to accelerate away from their level. Hence the Mumbai Attacks etc…
Sure, but there are fundamentals of culture that I believe play a role. China and its people understand that they are on a mission to displace the West, even if that takes centuries.
Which is why they won't succeed.
Authoritarian diktats and agendas ultimately fail because they become insular/out of touch/corrupt etc and there is no ability to easily change course or adapt.
Chaotic evolution beats design over the long term.
If India succeeds in developing then ensuring it develops democratically, with a strong role for families, people, all those elements of chaos, will ensure its a much healthier, deeper, broader and sustainable development than a pillar of success on a narrow, autocratic spray painted green to look good false agenda.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
Most (many?) Jews in the UK are fully integrated into our society. Integration doesn’t mean that they have to abandon their culture and traditions, faith or beliefs.
I am more troubled by some of the ultra Orthodox communities - I recall a radio programme a few years ago about the suffering of a female member of that community who tried to get divorced from her controlling and abusive husband.
There are fundamental principles that anyone who wishes to live in the UK needs to accept and abide by.
That is the same as other multicultural communities. Varying integration and customs, and varying integration (if we could even agree on what "integration" or "British Culture" mean).
Why not just be open and say that you don't like Muslims? Or do you also have a problem with Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Irish Catholics etc etc?
Because it’s not true
Now fuck off
So apart from Muslims, which multicultural communities do you object to?
Interesting thread. I am not the world's expert on India, but I don't feel that they will ever challenge China for world domination. I feel the culture is way too disparate, family-focused, and 'chaotic' to be corralled into a world dominating power. That's not necessarily a weakness, it can also be a strength - it means their culture can never truly succumb to a tyrant. There were villages surveyed by the post-independence Government of India about the departure of the British, who never even knew the British had arrived.
Looking back at the Commonwealth games, the one where the bridge collapsed, and all the athletes got dysentery, shows me that India doesn't have the uniformity of will to project an image to the world for the duration of a sporting competition. Contrast that with the Beijing Olympics where the grass was sprayed green and the homeless were swept away to goodness knows where. If it can't do that, I don't think it can hope to dominate the world either, though it will continue to be important.
F1 used to race in India, and stopped going because of the ever-changing bureaucracy, taxes, and “taxes”.
There was no-one they could agree to pay them a certain sum of money, to have the show turn up, do their thing, and leave, without any stuff getting held in customs on the say-so of some local official nothing to do with the event.
That’s the sort of thing they need to sort out, the petty bureaucrats who always find a way to say no to things, until you straight up ask them how much it would cost to fix this problem.
Exactly. I don't know how they conduct their space programme, I'm sure it's very good, but I wouldn't send anyone I liked up in one.
Again, this isn't an overall rubbishing of the Indian culture - it is a wonderful culture that has enriched our own culture beyond measure. How can you criticise the people without whom we wouldn't have shampoo? But the chaotic aspect of it is a thing.
Interesting thread. I am not the world's expert on India, but I don't feel that they will ever challenge China for world domination. I feel the culture is way too disparate, family-focused, and 'chaotic' to be corralled into a world dominating power. That's not necessarily a weakness, it can also be a strength - it means their culture can never truly succumb to a tyrant. There were villages surveyed by the post-independence Government of India about the departure of the British, who never even knew the British had arrived.
Looking back at the Commonwealth games, the one where the bridge collapsed, and all the athletes got dysentery, shows me that India doesn't have the uniformity of will to project an image to the world for the duration of a sporting competition. Contrast that with the Beijing Olympics where the grass was sprayed green and the homeless were swept away to goodness knows where. If it can't do that, I don't think it can hope to dominate the world either, though it will continue to be important.
F1 used to race in India, and stopped going because of the ever-changing bureaucracy, taxes, and “taxes”.
There was no-one they could agree to pay them a certain sum of money, to have the show turn up, do their thing, and leave, without any stuff getting held in customs on the say-so of some local official nothing to do with the event.
That’s the sort of thing they need to sort out, the petty bureaucrats who always find a way to say no to things, until you straight up ask them how much it would cost to fix this problem.
I spoke to a few of the people on the trade negotiation team for the much touted Indian FTA. Made clear one of the biggest impediments to British businesses operating in India is their ridiculous tax system, and that unless they can renegotiate our double tax treaty to be more OECD-like we’re in an uphill struggle.
But tax is the responsibility of the Treasury and Indian finance ministry, whereas trade is the DBT. So tax isn’t in scope.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
Once you realise it’s just cupboard space, so instead of stacking dishes in a cupboard….
The cost of a second dishwasher is tiny compared to the cost of a new kitchen.
Yes you lose a lot less cupboard space than you think you will, because in normal use you always have a clean pile of crockery, cutlery, and glassware, in one of the dishwashers.
It’s also brilliant when you have a party, because you can end up with two dirty dishwashers at the end of the night and two clean ones in the morning.
Never even thought of this, but its such a good idea. When I get my dream home with enough space, that's going into it.
It’s mad isn’t it! I first heard of it a couple of years ago, listening to a comedy podcast where one of the comics had just bought a new house, and the guy doing up the kitchen told him about everyone in LA now putting in two dishwashers. You don’t lose much space, because you treat the ‘clean’ one as the cupboard it replaces, but more importantly you never need to empty the dishwasher as a task.
Interesting thread. I am not the world's expert on India, but I don't feel that they will ever challenge China for world domination. I feel the culture is way too disparate, family-focused, and 'chaotic' to be corralled into a world dominating power. That's not necessarily a weakness, it can also be a strength - it means their culture can never truly succumb to a tyrant. There were villages surveyed by the post-independence Government of India about the departure of the British, who never even knew the British had arrived.
Looking back at the Commonwealth games, the one where the bridge collapsed, and all the athletes got dysentery, shows me that India doesn't have the uniformity of will to project an image to the world for the duration of a sporting competition. Contrast that with the Beijing Olympics where the grass was sprayed green and the homeless were swept away to goodness knows where. If it can't do that, I don't think it can hope to dominate the world either, though it will continue to be important.
That’s simply about levels of development. Beneath the still thin layers of upper and middle class India is an ocean of poverty. Much as with China until very recently - and China still has lots of poor people.
One of the things that upsets the fundies in Pakistan is the rate at which India is starting to accelerate away from their level. Hence the Mumbai Attacks etc…
Sure, but there are fundamentals of culture that I believe play a role. China and its people understand that they are on a mission to displace the West, even if that takes centuries.
I think there is a large cultural difference between India and China that is fundamental to the speed of progress. China has effectively imposed Han Chinese culture across China and even though there are different ethnic groups the Han culture is completely dominant. There also seems to be a long developed collectivism in Chinese culture.
On the other side India has many cultures that have their different identities and histories and languages. There are great differences between say Rajasthan India and Goa in language, food, dress for example and this is repeated across the different states in the country. Layered onto this is the caste system and until the rise of Hindu nationalism there was not a political dominance across the whole country. Despite being ruled by different empires at various points there are clear micro identities that mean that India might not have that robotic togetherness that China has.
I know the above is a bit of generalisation but there is a clear difference in the two countries in important internal ways.
Haven't been posting much for a couple of days as I caught up with ordinary life post-mid-Beds, but I'd like to join the welcome to Alanbrooke as a hopefully frequent leader-writer. His political outlook is very different from mine but it's a pleasure to read his analyses (with a bit of luck the awful punning headline is someone else's).
Haven't been posting much for a couple of days as I caught up with ordinary life post-mid-Beds, but I'd like to join the welcome to Alanbrooke as a hopefully frequent leader-writer. His political outlook is very different from mine but it's a pleasure to read his analyses (with a bit of luck the awful punning headline is someone else's).
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
Most (many?) Jews in the UK are fully integrated into our society. Integration doesn’t mean that they have to abandon their culture and traditions, faith or beliefs.
I am more troubled by some of the ultra Orthodox communities - I recall a radio programme a few years ago about the suffering of a female member of that community who tried to get divorced from her controlling and abusive husband.
There are fundamental principles that anyone who wishes to live in the UK needs to accept and abide by.
That is the same as other multicultural communities. Varying integration and customs, and varying integration (if we could even agree on what "integration" or "British Culture" mean).
Why not just be open and say that you don't like Muslims? Or do you also have a problem with Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Irish Catholics etc etc?
Because it’s not true
Now fuck off
So apart from Muslims, which multicultural communities do you object to?
Is it OK to object to the likes of the Westboro Baptist Church in America? And any other religionists that that put their religion ahead of the law and tolerance of others?
Secular religions aren't a problem. When people want to go against secularism, that's when problems arise, whether that be Medieval Islam, or Medieval Christians.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
Once you realise it’s just cupboard space, so instead of stacking dishes in a cupboard….
The cost of a second dishwasher is tiny compared to the cost of a new kitchen.
Yes you lose a lot less cupboard space than you think you will, because in normal use you always have a clean pile of crockery, cutlery, and glassware, in one of the dishwashers.
It’s also brilliant when you have a party, because you can end up with two dirty dishwashers at the end of the night and two clean ones in the morning.
Never even thought of this, but its such a good idea. When I get my dream home with enough space, that's going into it.
It’s mad isn’t it! I first heard of it a couple of years ago, listening to a comedy podcast where one of the comics had just bought a new house, and the guy doing up the kitchen told him about everyone in LA now putting in two dishwashers. You don’t lose much space, because you treat the ‘clean’ one as the cupboard it replaces, but more importantly you never need to empty the dishwasher as a task.
Doesn’t it require though that you use the same types of crockery and cutlery and glassware for every meal? One night you might be having pasta with the family and so are using pasta bowls and side plates and wine glasses and the next night you are having something that requires plates not bowls and then the night after you require the same kit but it’s dirty in the dishwasher whilst the clean things are the pasta bowls so you have to get another set of plates from the cupboard you don’t have anymore because there is a dishwasher there now full of the dirty plates you need.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
Once you realise it’s just cupboard space, so instead of stacking dishes in a cupboard….
The cost of a second dishwasher is tiny compared to the cost of a new kitchen.
Yes you lose a lot less cupboard space than you think you will, because in normal use you always have a clean pile of crockery, cutlery, and glassware, in one of the dishwashers.
It’s also brilliant when you have a party, because you can end up with two dirty dishwashers at the end of the night and two clean ones in the morning.
Never even thought of this, but its such a good idea. When I get my dream home with enough space, that's going into it.
It’s mad isn’t it! I first heard of it a couple of years ago, listening to a comedy podcast where one of the comics had just bought a new house, and the guy doing up the kitchen told him about everyone in LA now putting in two dishwashers. You don’t lose much space, because you treat the ‘clean’ one as the cupboard it replaces, but more importantly you never need to empty the dishwasher as a task.
There’s a kind of cultural taboo about this because it seems decadent. But a very good idea.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
I had a forum thread about this on Buildhub back in 2019, too. It went on forever, with all the opinions you could wish for, including redesigning the dishwasher itself (why is the cutlery rack not down one side rather than clogging up the middle, why are all the plastic bits not fold down, and why can't they have a simple tray like a commercial one?)
My favourite was "I have plumbing for 2 washers, but only one dishwasher."
Interesting thread. I am not the world's expert on India, but I don't feel that they will ever challenge China for world domination. I feel the culture is way too disparate, family-focused, and 'chaotic' to be corralled into a world dominating power. That's not necessarily a weakness, it can also be a strength - it means their culture can never truly succumb to a tyrant. There were villages surveyed by the post-independence Government of India about the departure of the British, who never even knew the British had arrived.
Looking back at the Commonwealth games, the one where the bridge collapsed, and all the athletes got dysentery, shows me that India doesn't have the uniformity of will to project an image to the world for the duration of a sporting competition. Contrast that with the Beijing Olympics where the grass was sprayed green and the homeless were swept away to goodness knows where. If it can't do that, I don't think it can hope to dominate the world either, though it will continue to be important.
Save for the Kochi Metro last December, I haven't been on an Indian train for over 20 years for a reason!
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Point of order: If the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming isn't this a tick for our multicultural society? Because they didn't used to be before we had one.
And in general re your high bp rhetoric:
"Clash of Civilisations!" "Multiculturalism an unmitigated disaster!" "Silent Majority cowed!"
It reads like hyperbolic nonsense to me. That's my initial instinctive reaction. But I'd first like to check what you actually mean beneath it all. Do you mean that we have in this country too many 'problem' Muslims, ie those who adhere to a set of values (Islamic or otherwise) which are incompatible with life in Britain?
If so, what would you like to ... no, let's stick to clarifying what you mean first.
So is that right, essentially? Ok not just Muslims, I guess, but mainly Muslims. Is this what you're getting at?
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
Once you realise it’s just cupboard space, so instead of stacking dishes in a cupboard….
The cost of a second dishwasher is tiny compared to the cost of a new kitchen.
Yes you lose a lot less cupboard space than you think you will, because in normal use you always have a clean pile of crockery, cutlery, and glassware, in one of the dishwashers.
It’s also brilliant when you have a party, because you can end up with two dirty dishwashers at the end of the night and two clean ones in the morning.
Never even thought of this, but its such a good idea. When I get my dream home with enough space, that's going into it.
It’s mad isn’t it! I first heard of it a couple of years ago, listening to a comedy podcast where one of the comics had just bought a new house, and the guy doing up the kitchen told him about everyone in LA now putting in two dishwashers. You don’t lose much space, because you treat the ‘clean’ one as the cupboard it replaces, but more importantly you never need to empty the dishwasher as a task.
Doesn’t it require though that you use the same types of crockery and cutlery and glassware for every meal? One night you might be having pasta with the family and so are using pasta bowls and side plates and wine glasses and the next night you are having something that requires plates not bowls and then the night after you require the same kit but it’s dirty in the dishwasher whilst the clean things are the pasta bowls so you have to get another set of plates from the cupboard you don’t have anymore because there is a dishwasher there now full of the dirty plates you need.
Yep. Theres a make, Fisher Paykel (sp?) that has two drawers. Reducing the kitchen footprint. Never quite worked. kinda glad when it died.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Point of order: If the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming isn't this a tick for our multicultural society? Because they didn't used to be before we had one.
And in general re your high bp rhetoric:
"Clash of Civilisations!" "Multiculturalism an unmitigated disaster!" "Silent Majority cowed!"
It reads like hyperbolic nonsense to me. That's my initial instinctive reaction. But I'd first like to check what you actually mean beneath it all. Do you mean that we have in this country too many 'problem' Muslims, ie those who adhere to a set of values (Islamic or otherwise) which are incompatible with life in Britain?
If so, what would you like to ... no, let's stick to clarifying what you mean first.
So is that right, essentially? Ok not just Muslims, I guess, but mainly Muslims. Is this what you're getting at?
I got a bit of it from our Georgian guide today. Apparently Georgia is the perfect mix of tolerance and preservation of identity and therefore isn’t like France which has “many Arabs”. My wife went a bit quiet and he moved on.
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
I had a forum thread about this on Buildhub back in 2019, too. It went on forever, with all the opinions you could wish for, including redesigning the dishwasher itself (why is the cutlery rack not down one side rather than clogging up the middle, why are all the plastic bits not fold down, and why can't they have a simple tray like a commercial one?)
My favourite was "I have plumbing for 2 washers, but only one dishwasher."
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
The better point to make is just how fickle the electorate is now, and how that might apply in 2024/5 and in 2028/9.
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
Amazing to think Hartlepool was only 27 months ago, isn't it. If anybody had said then where we'd be now we'd have locked them up.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
Once you realise it’s just cupboard space, so instead of stacking dishes in a cupboard….
The cost of a second dishwasher is tiny compared to the cost of a new kitchen.
Yes you lose a lot less cupboard space than you think you will, because in normal use you always have a clean pile of crockery, cutlery, and glassware, in one of the dishwashers.
It’s also brilliant when you have a party, because you can end up with two dirty dishwashers at the end of the night and two clean ones in the morning.
Never even thought of this, but its such a good idea. When I get my dream home with enough space, that's going into it.
It’s mad isn’t it! I first heard of it a couple of years ago, listening to a comedy podcast where one of the comics had just bought a new house, and the guy doing up the kitchen told him about everyone in LA now putting in two dishwashers. You don’t lose much space, because you treat the ‘clean’ one as the cupboard it replaces, but more importantly you never need to empty the dishwasher as a task.
Doesn’t it require though that you use the same types of crockery and cutlery and glassware for every meal? One night you might be having pasta with the family and so are using pasta bowls and side plates and wine glasses and the next night you are having something that requires plates not bowls and then the night after you require the same kit but it’s dirty in the dishwasher whilst the clean things are the pasta bowls so you have to get another set of plates from the cupboard you don’t have anymore because there is a dishwasher there now full of the dirty plates you need.
Of course you might have a few clean bits and bobs left over, but in practice for most people it happens quite infrequently, especially if you train people to look in the clean dishwasher for stuff before going to the cupboard.
Yes if you get out the one-off pasta bowls once a fortnight, then you’ll probably have to move them back to the cupboard at some point.
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
The Middle East is certainly proof of that old saying, that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
But I'm afraid that Bibi's gonna Bibi, whatever Biden says.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
Once you realise it’s just cupboard space, so instead of stacking dishes in a cupboard….
The cost of a second dishwasher is tiny compared to the cost of a new kitchen.
Yes you lose a lot less cupboard space than you think you will, because in normal use you always have a clean pile of crockery, cutlery, and glassware, in one of the dishwashers.
It’s also brilliant when you have a party, because you can end up with two dirty dishwashers at the end of the night and two clean ones in the morning.
Never even thought of this, but its such a good idea. When I get my dream home with enough space, that's going into it.
It’s mad isn’t it! I first heard of it a couple of years ago, listening to a comedy podcast where one of the comics had just bought a new house, and the guy doing up the kitchen told him about everyone in LA now putting in two dishwashers. You don’t lose much space, because you treat the ‘clean’ one as the cupboard it replaces, but more importantly you never need to empty the dishwasher as a task.
Doesn’t it require though that you use the same types of crockery and cutlery and glassware for every meal? One night you might be having pasta with the family and so are using pasta bowls and side plates and wine glasses and the next night you are having something that requires plates not bowls and then the night after you require the same kit but it’s dirty in the dishwasher whilst the clean things are the pasta bowls so you have to get another set of plates from the cupboard you don’t have anymore because there is a dishwasher there now full of the dirty plates you need.
Of course you might have a few clean bits and bobs left over, but in practice for most people it happens quite infrequently, especially if you train people to look in the clean dishwasher for stuff before going to the cupboard.
Yes if you get out the one-off pasta bowls once a fortnight, then you’ll probably have to move them back to the cupboard at some point.
Though you'd also I imagine need to train people with a system as to which is the clean and which is the dirty one, so you don't get dirty dishes put in the clean dishwasher . . . or take out a superficially clean dish which is actually dirty out of the dirty one.
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
Clearly The IDF were caught by surprise, so probably have limited intelligence or up to date plans for a land invasion of Gaza. Time is ticking away too. How long can Israel keep so many reservists mobilised?
Surely they will go in soon, but perhaps not very surgically.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
The better point to make is just how fickle the electorate is now, and how that might apply in 2024/5 and in 2028/9.
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
Indeed. Neither are at all popular and members choosing their leaders makes it worse, as does the shift to social media. It is likely too late for a shift in 2024 but Labour could be in disarray a couple of years in to power as well.
"Ukrainian reconnaissance spotted what they claim to be a Polutorka, a 1930s pre-WWII GAZ AA truck, used by Russians to assault Ukrainian positions south of Avdeevka."
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Multiculturalism is how we have a distinctive Jewish community. Or should we have forcibly converted them to Protestantism in the 19th Century?
The thing about Multiculturalism (with the capital M) is that is was supposed to be about each community maintaining its own culture without changing. Separate development. Wonder what that sounds like, in Afrikaans, say.
The rock it foundered on, is that tolerance of other cultures is a two way street. And that without some common ground, you are balkanising society. Finally, liberal social democracy isn’t a common thing around the world.
In order for us to have a functioning society, we need some agreement on common mores. So, while it’s a tough one, people need to give up their traditions. Like owning other people, or hunting Jews.
Course. But we've never been shooting for Multiculturalism in that sense of encouraging incomers to not integrate. It's a strawman.
This isn't to say, pls note, that I'm of the opinion it's all perfect and there aren't things we ought to be doing to break down barriers and improve cohesion.
Eg - just one example - how about we educate all our children together, no segregation allowed at that very influential time of life.
That was the explicit aim of those advocating “Multiculturalism” in the 80s and 90s. They promised a future where no one would have to learn English, for example. Quite forgetting that not speaking English in the U.K. puts you at a massive disadvantage.
A favourite was the idea of advocating community “councils” and “parliaments” to isolate communities further.
The aim was to *prevent* an American style melting pot. Which is what common schooling is about, by the way.
This vision of separate development rather died when it became clear just how intolerant other cultures can be.
I can remember the shock and horror of the advocates of this, when lessons on promoting UK values were brought in in the schools etc.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Point of order: If the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming isn't this a tick for our multicultural society? Because they didn't used to be before we had one.
And in general re your high bp rhetoric:
"Clash of Civilisations!" "Multiculturalism an unmitigated disaster!" "Silent Majority cowed!"
It reads like hyperbolic nonsense to me. That's my initial instinctive reaction. But I'd first like to check what you actually mean beneath it all. Do you mean that we have in this country too many 'problem' Muslims, ie those who adhere to a set of values (Islamic or otherwise) which are incompatible with life in Britain?
If so, what would you like to ... no, let's stick to clarifying what you mean first.
So is that right, essentially? Ok not just Muslims, I guess, but mainly Muslims. Is this what you're getting at?
I got a bit of it from our Georgian guide today. Apparently Georgia is the perfect mix of tolerance and preservation of identity and therefore isn’t like France which has “many Arabs”. My wife went a bit quiet and he moved on.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia both occupied by Russia since 2008.
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
That excerpt doesn't actually explain why it would be a terrible mistake, other than shattering various illusions.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
There is a metaphorical "mountain to climb", but that overlooks the fact that mountain climbing is possible, and that five years is a bloody long time to climb that mountain.
Starmer has spent the past 3.5 years since he took over trying to climb it, while the Tories have spent the past couple of years tumbling down it.
Yes if what you're chasing turns around and runs towards you it helps quite a bit.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
The better point to make is just how fickle the electorate is now, and how that might apply in 2024/5 and in 2028/9.
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
Good point, but here is a qualification. The electorate isn't in fact fickle. Look at each GE, say, from 1992. In each case, I suggest, the electorate has voted consistently in such a way as to put into effect, as well as opportunity permits, the desire to have a parliament and government that combines centrism and competence. The polls clearly indicate that this is still the case.
In 2017 neither quality were available and we got a mess of a government even worse than usual.
The fickleness has been is parliament and government, and their inability to perform even minimally well.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
I had a forum thread about this on Buildhub back in 2019, too. It went on forever, with all the opinions you could wish for, including redesigning the dishwasher itself (why is the cutlery rack not down one side rather than clogging up the middle, why are all the plastic bits not fold down, and why can't they have a simple tray like a commercial one?)
My favourite was "I have plumbing for 2 washers, but only one dishwasher."
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
The Middle East is certainly proof of that old saying, that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
But I'm afraid that Bibi's gonna Bibi, whatever Biden says.
"An Eye for an Eye" was actually a way of limiting retaliation, so it wasn't a life for an eye. It was rather a lot of progress in its time.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
The better point to make is just how fickle the electorate is now, and how that might apply in 2024/5 and in 2028/9.
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
Good point, but here is a qualification. The electorate isn't in fact fickle. Look at each GE, say, from 1992. In each case, I suggest, the electorate has voted consistently in such a way as to put into effect, as well as opportunity permits, the desire to have a parliament and government that combines centrism and competence. The polls clearly indicate that this is still the case.
In 2017 neither quality were available and we got a mess of a government even worse than usual.
The fickleness has been is parliament and government, and their inability to perform even minimally well.
Offering the electorate extremism combined with incompetence is certainly an unusual approach.
Mussolini made the trains run on time. The Tories have spent tens of billions on a train line that will never run at all.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
Once you realise it’s just cupboard space, so instead of stacking dishes in a cupboard….
The cost of a second dishwasher is tiny compared to the cost of a new kitchen.
Yes you lose a lot less cupboard space than you think you will, because in normal use you always have a clean pile of crockery, cutlery, and glassware, in one of the dishwashers.
It’s also brilliant when you have a party, because you can end up with two dirty dishwashers at the end of the night and two clean ones in the morning.
Never even thought of this, but its such a good idea. When I get my dream home with enough space, that's going into it.
It’s mad isn’t it! I first heard of it a couple of years ago, listening to a comedy podcast where one of the comics had just bought a new house, and the guy doing up the kitchen told him about everyone in LA now putting in two dishwashers. You don’t lose much space, because you treat the ‘clean’ one as the cupboard it replaces, but more importantly you never need to empty the dishwasher as a task.
Doesn’t it require though that you use the same types of crockery and cutlery and glassware for every meal? One night you might be having pasta with the family and so are using pasta bowls and side plates and wine glasses and the next night you are having something that requires plates not bowls and then the night after you require the same kit but it’s dirty in the dishwasher whilst the clean things are the pasta bowls so you have to get another set of plates from the cupboard you don’t have anymore because there is a dishwasher there now full of the dirty plates you need.
Of course you might have a few clean bits and bobs left over, but in practice for most people it happens quite infrequently, especially if you train people to look in the clean dishwasher for stuff before going to the cupboard.
Yes if you get out the one-off pasta bowls once a fortnight, then you’ll probably have to move them back to the cupboard at some point.
Though you'd also I imagine need to train people with a system as to which is the clean and which is the dirty one, so you don't get dirty dishes put in the clean dishwasher . . . or take out a superficially clean dish which is actually dirty out of the dirty one.
They have this is the kitchen at work - 2 dish washers and a Clean/Dirty switchable sign on each
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
The better point to make is just how fickle the electorate is now, and how that might apply in 2024/5 and in 2028/9.
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
Good point, but here is a qualification. The electorate isn't in fact fickle. Look at each GE, say, from 1992. In each case, I suggest, the electorate has voted consistently in such a way as to put into effect, as well as opportunity permits, the desire to have a parliament and government that combines centrism and competence. The polls clearly indicate that this is still the case.
In 2017 neither quality were available and we got a mess of a government even worse than usual.
The fickleness has been is parliament and government, and their inability to perform even minimally well.
Offering the electorate extremism combined with incompetence is certainly an unusual approach.
Mussolini made the trains run on time. The Tories have spent tens of billions on a train line that will never run at all.
He didn’t.
According to the detailed reports of the British Ambassador, they made a small number of express services run on time for a short while. By cancelling lots of other services and having spare trains waiting.
It was so much hassle that after a few weeks, the Fascist government went back to the standard ways of running things. But ordered the newspapers to lie about the trains running on time.
Perfect example of Fascist government - a stupid piece of propaganda, followed by fuckup and then lying about it.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
The better point to make is just how fickle the electorate is now, and how that might apply in 2024/5 and in 2028/9.
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
Good point, but here is a qualification. The electorate isn't in fact fickle. Look at each GE, say, from 1992. In each case, I suggest, the electorate has voted consistently in such a way as to put into effect, as well as opportunity permits, the desire to have a parliament and government that combines centrism and competence. The polls clearly indicate that this is still the case.
In 2017 neither quality were available and we got a mess of a government even worse than usual.
The fickleness has been is parliament and government, and their inability to perform even minimally well.
Offering the electorate extremism combined with incompetence is certainly an unusual approach.
Mussolini made the trains run on time. The Tories have spent tens of billions on a train line that will never run at all.
He didn’t.
According to the detailed reports of the British Ambassador, they made a small number of express services run on time for a short while. By cancelling lots of other services and having spare trains waiting.
It was so much hassle that after a few weeks, the Fascist government went back to the standard ways of running things. But ordered the newspapers to lie about the trains running on time.
Perfect example of Fascist government - a stupid piece of propaganda, followed by fuckup and then lying about it.
British Airways used to do something like that for years with Concorde. A ‘hot spare’ aircraft waiting in both London and NY, because it would be too much bad PR to cancel the flight if the scheduled aircraft was unserviceable. Cost them a fortune.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
I had a forum thread about this on Buildhub back in 2019, too. It went on forever, with all the opinions you could wish for, including redesigning the dishwasher itself (why is the cutlery rack not down one side rather than clogging up the middle, why are all the plastic bits not fold down, and why can't they have a simple tray like a commercial one?)
My favourite was "I have plumbing for 2 washers, but only one dishwasher."
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
The better point to make is just how fickle the electorate is now, and how that might apply in 2024/5 and in 2028/9.
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
Good point, but here is a qualification. The electorate isn't in fact fickle. Look at each GE, say, from 1992. In each case, I suggest, the electorate has voted consistently in such a way as to put into effect, as well as opportunity permits, the desire to have a parliament and government that combines centrism and competence. The polls clearly indicate that this is still the case.
In 2017 neither quality were available and we got a mess of a government even worse than usual.
The fickleness has been is parliament and government, and their inability to perform even minimally well.
Offering the electorate extremism combined with incompetence is certainly an unusual approach.
Mussolini made the trains run on time. The Tories have spent tens of billions on a train line that will never run at all.
He didn’t.
According to the detailed reports of the British Ambassador, they made a small number of express services run on time for a short while. By cancelling lots of other services and having spare trains waiting.
It was so much hassle that after a few weeks, the Fascist government went back to the standard ways of running things. But ordered the newspapers to lie about the trains running on time.
Perfect example of Fascist government - a stupid piece of propaganda, followed by fuckup and then lying about it.
In an authoritarian regime its much easier to make the press report the trains are running on time, than to actually have them do so.
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
That excerpt doesn't actually explain why it would be a terrible mistake, other than shattering various illusions.
Some people just really don't like to have their shibboleths challenged.
The outpouring of anti-semitism we have seen, the fear that British Jews are feeling, the utter unkindness - to put it at its absolute mildest - of stopping a van showing the pictures of hostages, of tearing down posters showing their faces and names - barely days after a vicious, violent and cruel pogrom is shameful. It should shame the perpetrators. It shames me that this should be happening here and that my Jewish friends, neighbours and relations are fearful and worried. Those who excuse it or do the usual whataboutery or turn a blind eye to it are, frankly, little better than those perpetrating it. What have we become?
I hope and believe that the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
Point of order: If the vast mass of the British population are tolerant and welcoming isn't this a tick for our multicultural society? Because they didn't used to be before we had one.
And in general re your high bp rhetoric:
"Clash of Civilisations!" "Multiculturalism an unmitigated disaster!" "Silent Majority cowed!"
It reads like hyperbolic nonsense to me. That's my initial instinctive reaction. But I'd first like to check what you actually mean beneath it all. Do you mean that we have in this country too many 'problem' Muslims, ie those who adhere to a set of values (Islamic or otherwise) which are incompatible with life in Britain?
If so, what would you like to ... no, let's stick to clarifying what you mean first.
So is that right, essentially? Ok not just Muslims, I guess, but mainly Muslims. Is this what you're getting at?
I got a bit of it from our Georgian guide today. Apparently Georgia is the perfect mix of tolerance and preservation of identity and therefore isn’t like France which has “many Arabs”. My wife went a bit quiet and he moved on.
Abkhazia and South Ossetia both occupied by Russia since 2008.
They are very aware of that. But Abkhazia in particular is more complicated. They wanted separation at a time the entire Georgian state apparatus was in collapse. They are a distinct ethnic-linguistic group. Georgia went in heavy handed in 1992, and at that point Russia intervened. But then Abkhazians (assisted by Russia) went about ethnically cleansing the - majority - Georgian population who largely fled into Svaneti and further East.
So, rather like the original Nagorno-Karabakh Karabakh war, and Israel-Palestine, and unlike Ukraine, both sides unfortunately have a legitimate grievance.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
The better point to make is just how fickle the electorate is now, and how that might apply in 2024/5 and in 2028/9.
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
Good point, but here is a qualification. The electorate isn't in fact fickle. Look at each GE, say, from 1992. In each case, I suggest, the electorate has voted consistently in such a way as to put into effect, as well as opportunity permits, the desire to have a parliament and government that combines centrism and competence. The polls clearly indicate that this is still the case.
In 2017 neither quality were available and we got a mess of a government even worse than usual.
The fickleness has been is parliament and government, and their inability to perform even minimally well.
Offering the electorate extremism combined with incompetence is certainly an unusual approach.
Mussolini made the trains run on time. The Tories have spent tens of billions on a train line that will never run at all.
He didn’t.
According to the detailed reports of the British Ambassador, they made a small number of express services run on time for a short while. By cancelling lots of other services and having spare trains waiting.
It was so much hassle that after a few weeks, the Fascist government went back to the standard ways of running things. But ordered the newspapers to lie about the trains running on time.
Perfect example of Fascist government - a stupid piece of propaganda, followed by fuckup and then lying about it.
British Airways used to do something like that for years with Concorde. A ‘hot spare’ aircraft waiting in both London and NY, because it would be too much bad PR to cancel the flight if the scheduled aircraft was unserviceable. Cost them a fortune.
I don't think they can always have has a hot spare at both NY and London, given they had only seven aircraft in total and they had NY (3x/day) , Washington (1x) and seasonal flights. And, of course, the planes were often off the line for maintenance.
I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that I doubt they could have had almost a third of the fleet hot ready all the time.
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
That excerpt doesn't actually explain why it would be a terrible mistake, other than shattering various illusions.
Some people just really don't like to have their shibboleths challenged.
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
That excerpt doesn't actually explain why it would be a terrible mistake, other than shattering various illusions.
Read the rest of the article. Friedman is Jewish, and genuinely loves Israel, so it is heartfelt advice.
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
That excerpt doesn't actually explain why it would be a terrible mistake, other than shattering various illusions.
Some people just really don't like to have their shibboleths challenged.
When you read about how "shibboleth" came to be in the language, it was rather genocidal.
Judges 12:6
4 Jephthah then called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, “You Gileadites are renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh.”
5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,”
6 they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth.’ ” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.
I visited China in 2005, and in hindsight that looks roughly like the high point of the country from the point of view of freedom and attempting to become more like a Western country. Most people had access to things like the internet and mobile phones at that time, but it was before technology was being used to perform surveillance on the population.
I was there 1990, the year after Tianamen Square.
If China was ever going to be a free society 1989 was the year.
While I take @Alanbrookes header about the demographic problems of China, these are even more true of the other developed countries of the region. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore are all in the same boat, while the less developed countries of SE Asia are somewhat better off.
Worth noting that the fertility rate of UK and Europe is somewhat better, it is due to significantly higher fertility in migrant communities.
The demographic challenge is a worldwide one, and even the places with historically very high fertility rates are dropping estimates of peak population. Nigeria was forecast to reach 918 million people by 2100, but now only 564 by UN estimates.
The solution to the greying world population is redistribution by immigration, but also lengthening working lives through better health and lifelong learning.
Again you completely ignore the overwhelming impact of AI. It is hurtling towards us
This is not personal, everyone on PB ignores it, when futurecasting
Yuval gets it
“We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth,” Yuval Noah Harari says of AI in a guest essay. “We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation” econ.st/3QpeE4w 👇
AI is not going to be wiping bums an putting old people to bed nor washing and dressing them in the morning.
Actually, one of the areas that is being looked at, in depth, is robotics to assist elderly people. The current “AI” models can help there.
Imagine a dog like robot, for instance, which trots along, faithfully, behind its owner. Built in location beacon for family. If the owner becomes tired, they can sit on it. Carries water. If the owner falls down or us taken ill summons emergency services. Carries shopping as well. Built in phone as well.
That is in the near future. There are already experiments in robots to lift patients in and out of beds… once you have seen a robot picking raspberries, you can easily imagine a robot helping people dress, wash etc.
Unless things have changed, I think that's a dead-end. Japan was seriously into nursing robotics a decade or two ago, but it ran out. It's not a case of "It's not possible", it's more a case of "It's expensive, there's a steep leaning curve, and migrants are cheaper"
From a technological point of view, twenty years ago, you would have had to program in the robot's every move. It's about as sophisticated as a forklift truck. Now, the reason Boston Dynamics robots move fluidly and like us, is motion capture based on our movements, machine learning, plus trial and error, run millions and millions of times on simulations that are now possible because of exponentially greater computing power.
From a cost point of view, how many bits of tech can you think of that were costly and hard to manufacture twenty to forty years ago that have become ubiquitous and infinitely more powerful and useful today? DIgital cameras cost a fortune and were crap compared to film 20 years ago, solar panels were expensive and inefficent, now they're some of the cheapest power out there, mobile phones could only be afforded by Gordon Gekko types in the 90s and were the size of a brick, etc.
Not being incredibly dim, I do know that. But my point is we're not there yet. I am sympathetic to the argument we are in the Trough of Disillusionment in the hype cycle, and it may be that in 10-20 years we may have nursing robots in the same way as we now have deployed battlefield drones and lasers.
But we aren't there yet, and it's not a next-five-years thing.
A lot of that “failed” effort created a whole raft of stuff concerning actuators, gait analysis/structure. The problem was, as said above, generalising actions.
What the rather limited true capabilities of “AI” offers is generalised solutions to such problems. Hence a robot that can pick raspberries by sight, better than a human.
You won’t get generalist robots for quite a while. But a robot that can do the dishes, vacuum etc? That’s coming.
Machines that can wash dishes have existed for decades.
I'm more interested in when a machine can pack away clean dishes and that's far more of a unique challenge.
Rich Americans have come up with a solution for that already - two dishwashers!
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
Entirely offtopic, but there are few places lovelier than Britain in the Autumn. Ideally I'd have spent the day somewhere like the Yorkshire Dales. But even the suburbs of South Manchester make your heart sing on a day like this.
There’s the great Caucasus foothills in upper Svaneti:
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
That excerpt doesn't actually explain why it would be a terrible mistake, other than shattering various illusions.
Some people just really don't like to have their shibboleths challenged.
When you read about how "shibboleth" came to be in the language, it was rather genocidal.
Judges 12:6
4 Jephthah then called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, “You Gileadites are renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh.”
5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,”
6 they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth.’ ” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.
Circling back to my point that any organised religion can be horrific.
If anyone behaved like that today, I would oppose it.
Thankfully Judaism nowadays is generally far more enlightened and secular.
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
That excerpt doesn't actually explain why it would be a terrible mistake, other than shattering various illusions.
Some people just really don't like to have their shibboleths challenged.
When you read about how "shibboleth" came to be in the language, it was rather genocidal.
Judges 12:6
4 Jephthah then called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, “You Gileadites are renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh.”
5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,”
6 they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth.’ ” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
That excerpt doesn't actually explain why it would be a terrible mistake, other than shattering various illusions.
Some people just really don't like to have their shibboleths challenged.
When you read about how "shibboleth" came to be in the language, it was rather genocidal.
Judges 12:6
4 Jephthah then called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, “You Gileadites are renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh.”
5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,”
6 they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth.’ ” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.
"Only" 4,200 Palestinians so far...
According to the same sources that reported 500 deaths from a hospital bombing . . .
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
That excerpt doesn't actually explain why it would be a terrible mistake, other than shattering various illusions.
Some people just really don't like to have their shibboleths challenged.
When you read about how "shibboleth" came to be in the language, it was rather genocidal.
Judges 12:6
4 Jephthah then called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, “You Gileadites are renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh.”
5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,”
6 they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth.’ ” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
The better point to make is just how fickle the electorate is now, and how that might apply in 2024/5 and in 2028/9.
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
Good point, but here is a qualification. The electorate isn't in fact fickle. Look at each GE, say, from 1992. In each case, I suggest, the electorate has voted consistently in such a way as to put into effect, as well as opportunity permits, the desire to have a parliament and government that combines centrism and competence. The polls clearly indicate that this is still the case.
In 2017 neither quality were available and we got a mess of a government even worse than usual.
The fickleness has been is parliament and government, and their inability to perform even minimally well.
Offering the electorate extremism combined with incompetence is certainly an unusual approach.
Mussolini made the trains run on time. The Tories have spent tens of billions on a train line that will never run at all.
He didn’t.
According to the detailed reports of the British Ambassador, they made a small number of express services run on time for a short while. By cancelling lots of other services and having spare trains waiting.
It was so much hassle that after a few weeks, the Fascist government went back to the standard ways of running things. But ordered the newspapers to lie about the trains running on time.
Perfect example of Fascist government - a stupid piece of propaganda, followed by fuckup and then lying about it.
British Airways used to do something like that for years with Concorde. A ‘hot spare’ aircraft waiting in both London and NY, because it would be too much bad PR to cancel the flight if the scheduled aircraft was unserviceable. Cost them a fortune.
I don't think they can always have has a hot spare at both NY and London, given they had only seven aircraft in total and they had NY (3x/day) , Washington (1x) and seasonal flights. And, of course, the planes were often off the line for maintenance.
I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that I doubt they could have had almost a third of the fleet hot ready all the time.
IIRC it was 2x per day to NY. They had no problems cancelling any other flight, but there was always an aircraft available in London and NY if required. Most of the time, they’d do it by keeping one on the ground for a few hours to stagger them. So if the aircraft landed in NY at 10am and 6pm, you’d expect the 8pm departure to be the 6pm arrival, but it was actually the 10am arrival that left at 8pm. Of course, the 6pm could do it if required, but would need two unserviceable aircraft to cancel the flight. They weren’t particularly reliable when first put into service!
The next day’s midday departure would be the 6pm arrival from the night before, which gave them enough time to get one over from London if they couldn’t fix it. They basically used an extra half an aircraft for the route.
They stopped doing it after a few years, because it was too inefficient a use of the rare aircraft, and they’d instead find all sorts of ways to deal with 100 stranded VIPs, from first class flights on the regular 747 to some very nice hotels, plus refunds, credits, air miles etc. this freed up more time for the charters and Barbados etc flights.
On topic, another excellent article from @Alanbrooke. And there's not a lot I can add.
Except perhaps for two things:
(1) I think there is a more innovative work going on in China that @Alanbrooke probably gives them credit for. The speed at which they have been able to replace Western/Taiwanese/Korean supply chains in the smartphone space being one area.
(2) As China population ages, and as the government needs to provide for its population, the less they will run massive trade surpluses, and the less room there is for China to throw their weight around economically. They are going to find themselves constrained in a way that just isn't the case right now.
This is pretty misleading really. Three or four points.
That the election of 2019 is the baseline for the 2024 one is just a fact. It just was the last GE. Full stop.
The suggestion that it shouldn't be is predicated on the idea that the election was in some way abnormal. It wasn't. All election are particular and unique to their circumstances. There isn't a normal to be had. Some are boring, some not. Them's the breaks.
If looking for weirdness, 2017 in many ways beats 2019 as the election where the detail of the outcome bore uniquely little relation to expectations at the start.
Go back further to 2015, 2010 etc. All that is pre: Referendum, Brexit, Trump, Covid, Ukraine, Hamas/Gaza. Numerically it is recent, but in fact it is so past it is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
2019 is the baseline. Swing looks like it's going to be humungous. But remember 2017.
I don't necessarily agree with @Heather and Sophy's point. In many ways they are just explaining away a high amplitude swing to Labour.
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
Yes it's just a way to combat in argument the 'mountain to climb' point. And it works fine in that way. The 'baseline' in the technical forecasting sense is 2019.
The better point to make is just how fickle the electorate is now, and how that might apply in 2024/5 and in 2028/9.
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
Good point, but here is a qualification. The electorate isn't in fact fickle. Look at each GE, say, from 1992. In each case, I suggest, the electorate has voted consistently in such a way as to put into effect, as well as opportunity permits, the desire to have a parliament and government that combines centrism and competence. The polls clearly indicate that this is still the case.
In 2017 neither quality were available and we got a mess of a government even worse than usual.
The fickleness has been is parliament and government, and their inability to perform even minimally well.
Offering the electorate extremism combined with incompetence is certainly an unusual approach.
Mussolini made the trains run on time. The Tories have spent tens of billions on a train line that will never run at all.
He didn’t.
According to the detailed reports of the British Ambassador, they made a small number of express services run on time for a short while. By cancelling lots of other services and having spare trains waiting.
It was so much hassle that after a few weeks, the Fascist government went back to the standard ways of running things. But ordered the newspapers to lie about the trains running on time.
Perfect example of Fascist government - a stupid piece of propaganda, followed by fuckup and then lying about it.
British Airways used to do something like that for years with Concorde. A ‘hot spare’ aircraft waiting in both London and NY, because it would be too much bad PR to cancel the flight if the scheduled aircraft was unserviceable. Cost them a fortune.
I don't think they can always have has a hot spare at both NY and London, given they had only seven aircraft in total and they had NY (3x/day) , Washington (1x) and seasonal flights. And, of course, the planes were often off the line for maintenance.
I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that I doubt they could have had almost a third of the fleet hot ready all the time.
IIRC it was 2x per day to NY. They had no problems cancelling any other flight, but there was always an aircraft available in London and NY if required. Most of the time, they’d do it by keeping one on the ground for a few hours to stagger them. So if the aircraft landed in NY at 10am and 6pm, you’d expect the 8pm departure to be the 6pm arrival, but it was actually the 10am arrival that left at 8pm. Of course, the 6pm could do it if required.
The next day’s midday departure would be the 6pm arrival from the night before, which gave them enough time to get one over from London if they couldn’t fix it. They basically used an extra half an aircraft for the route.
They stopped doing it after a few years, because it was too inefficient a use of the rare aircraft, and they’d instead find all sorts of ways to deal with 100 stranded VIPs, from first class flights on the regular 747 to some very nice hotels, plus refunds, credits, air miles etc. this freed up more time for the charters and Barbados etc flights.
On topic, another excellent article from @Alanbrooke. And there's not a lot I can add.
Except perhaps for two things:
(1) I think there is a more innovative work going on in China that @Alanbrooke probably gives them credit for. The speed at which they have been able to replace Western/Taiwanese/Korean supply chains in the smartphone space being one area.
(2) As China population ages, and as the government needs to provide for its population, the less they will run massive trade surpluses, and the less room there is for China to throw their weight around economically. They are going to find themselves constrained in a way that just isn't the case right now.
Should I bring up Zeihan on Chinese Demographics again? Yes. yes, I think I should
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
That excerpt doesn't actually explain why it would be a terrible mistake, other than shattering various illusions.
I would argue that the danger for Israel is that there comes a time when it can no longer rely unconditionally on the support of the US.
Right now, Israel is a wealthy - but not exceptionally so - country on the banks of the Mediterrenan. It has an incredible military, with great training, but - while there is some indigenous production of planes and the like - it is highly dependent on US supply chains for some sensors and electronics.
The danger to Israel is that the Arab world gets equipped by China, while Israel can no longer able to rely on the West to supply it with the latest equipment.
That I would posit is the danger, unwritten as it is in the NYTimes article. The danger is that there cease to be many votes in backing Israel.
On the face of it the SVP look to be doing remarkably well. Is this a function of the counting where areas where they are stronger tend to count earlier and we should see a big swing away later or is it a genuinely good result for them?
On topic, another excellent article from @Alanbrooke. And there's not a lot I can add.
Except perhaps for two things:
(1) I think there is a more innovative work going on in China that @Alanbrooke probably gives them credit for. The speed at which they have been able to replace Western/Taiwanese/Korean supply chains in the smartphone space being one area.
(2) As China population ages, and as the government needs to provide for its population, the less they will run massive trade surpluses, and the less room there is for China to throw their weight around economically. They are going to find themselves constrained in a way that just isn't the case right now.
Should I bring up Zeihan on Chinese Demographics again? Yes. yes, I think I should
Comments
You need 2 things to forecast the GE result - (i) An estimate of the vote share for each party - (ii) How this translates to seats under FPTP.
You get (i) from polls and whatever judgmental adjustment you wish to make. You don't need a baseline.
For (ii) you need to distribute the vote across seats. You can make judgemental adjustments here too but it needs a start point. Which is how the vote shares mapped to seats last time. That's the baseline. The last election.
That is our stability and it trumps China by miles.
Putting "stability" in any one individual is a recipe for disaster, as that individual rapidly becomes out of touch/corrupt/incompetent as time goes on.
Our stability is our ability to evolve and have a peaceful handover of powers.
We've had that repeatedly in the last decade and will probably have it again soon. Its why our democracy has lasted centuries, evolving over that time, which is far more stable than any autocratic dictatorship has been.
Systems beat individuals all the time.
There is always a minority of ill-wishers, so home-grown and others who have moved here since immigration policy was dramatically loosened some 20+ years ago.
The issue is that the silent majority have been cowed by the noisy shrieks of “racists” and “Islamaphobe” when they raise concerns about cultural norms and differences.
There is a clash of civilisations. Multiculturalism has been an unmitigated disaster for the west. If people want to move here they must accept our values and integrate into our society.
You'd need to time it right though; the display only seemed to last a week or two.
If a robot picks an unripe or bad raspberry one time in a thousand, no-one really cares. If a robot wipes your mouth and feeds your bottom one time in a thousand, it *really* matters.
"Game changers in Ukraine - Evaluating ATACMS, Lancet & systems that changed the war (or didn't)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z630Rt1mTs
It certainly looks like it will be a very different Commons next time. Perhaps half will be complete rookies.
I am more troubled by some of the ultra Orthodox communities - I recall a radio programme a few years ago about the suffering of a female member of that community who tried to get divorced from her controlling and abusive husband.
There are fundamental principles that anyone who wishes to live in the UK needs to accept and abide by.
The rock it foundered on, is that tolerance of other cultures is a two way street. And that without some common ground, you are balkanising society. Finally, liberal social democracy isn’t a common thing around the world.
In order for us to have a functioning society, we need some agreement on common mores. So, while it’s a tough one, people need to give up their traditions. Like owning other people, or hunting Jews.
Starmer has spent the past 3.5 years since he took over trying to climb it, while the Tories have spent the past couple of years tumbling down it.
You take clean plates out of one, and put the dirties in the other after the meal. When the ‘clean’ one is empty and the ‘dirty’ one full, the latter goes on and they swap roles. Easy.
https://www.arielicustomhomes.com/blog-feed/2019/5/16/designing-your-dream-kitchen-make-room-for-a-second-dishwasher-heres-why
The Conservatives and Labour have swapped around huge leads over each other over the last 6 years several times.
Once you realise it’s just cupboard space, so instead of stacking dishes in a cupboard….
The cost of a second dishwasher is tiny compared to the cost of a new kitchen.
Why not just be open and say that you don't like Muslims? Or do you also have a problem with Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Irish Catholics etc etc?
Looking back at the Commonwealth games, the one where the bridge collapsed, and all the athletes got dysentery, shows me that India doesn't have the uniformity of will to project an image to the world for the duration of a sporting competition. Contrast that with the Beijing Olympics where the grass was sprayed green and the homeless were swept away to goodness knows where. If it can't do that, I don't think it can hope to dominate the world either, though it will continue to be important.
This isn't to say, pls note, that I'm of the opinion it's all perfect and there aren't things we ought to be doing to break down barriers and improve cohesion.
Eg - just one example - how about we educate all our children together, no segregation allowed at that very influential time of life.
Now fuck off
Anyone of any religion who is secular, is not a problem.
One of the things that upsets the fundies in Pakistan is the rate at which India is starting to accelerate away from their level. Hence the Mumbai Attacks etc…
It’s also brilliant when you have a party, because you can end up with two dirty dishwashers at the end of the night and two clean ones in the morning.
There was no-one they could agree to pay them a certain sum of money, to have the show turn up, do their thing, and leave, without any stuff getting held in customs on the say-so of some local official nothing to do with the event.
That’s the sort of thing they need to sort out, the petty bureaucrats who always find a way to say no to things, until you straight up ask them how much it would cost to fix this problem.
A favourite was the idea of advocating community “councils” and “parliaments” to isolate communities further.
The aim was to *prevent* an American style melting pot. Which is what common schooling is about, by the way.
This vision of separate development rather died when it became clear just how intolerant other cultures can be.
I can remember the shock and horror of the advocates of this, when lessons on promoting UK values were brought in in the schools etc.
Authoritarian diktats and agendas ultimately fail because they become insular/out of touch/corrupt etc and there is no ability to easily change course or adapt.
Chaotic evolution beats design over the long term.
If India succeeds in developing then ensuring it develops democratically, with a strong role for families, people, all those elements of chaos, will ensure its a much healthier, deeper, broader and sustainable development than a pillar of success on a narrow, autocratic spray painted green to look good false agenda.
Again, this isn't an overall rubbishing of the Indian culture - it is a wonderful culture that has enriched our own culture beyond measure. How can you criticise the people without whom we wouldn't have shampoo? But the chaotic aspect of it is a thing.
But tax is the responsibility of the Treasury and Indian finance ministry, whereas trade is the DBT. So tax isn’t in scope.
On the other side India has many cultures that have their different identities and histories and languages. There are great differences between say Rajasthan India and Goa in language, food, dress for example and this is repeated across the different states in the country. Layered onto this is the caste system and until the rise of Hindu nationalism there was not a political dominance across the whole country. Despite being ruled by different empires at various points there are clear micro identities that mean that India might not have that robotic togetherness that China has.
I know the above is a bit of generalisation but there is a clear difference in the two countries in important internal ways.
Secular religions aren't a problem. When people want to go against secularism, that's when problems arise, whether that be Medieval Islam, or Medieval Christians.
Ukrainian BMW X3 towing a MT-12 100mm antitank gun.
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1716107194368655499
My favourite was "I have plumbing for 2 washers, but only one dishwasher."
https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/11461-two-dishwashers/
And in general re your high bp rhetoric:
"Clash of Civilisations!"
"Multiculturalism an unmitigated disaster!"
"Silent Majority cowed!"
It reads like hyperbolic nonsense to me. That's my initial instinctive reaction. But I'd first like to check what you actually mean beneath it all. Do you mean that we have in this country too many 'problem' Muslims, ie those who adhere to a set of values (Islamic or otherwise) which are incompatible with life in Britain?
If so, what would you like to ... no, let's stick to clarifying what you mean first.
So is that right, essentially? Ok not just Muslims, I guess, but mainly Muslims. Is this what you're getting at?
Theres a make, Fisher Paykel (sp?) that has two drawers. Reducing the kitchen footprint. Never quite worked. kinda glad when it died.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/opinion/biden-speech-israel-gaza.html
… While the president expressed deep understanding of Israel’s moral and strategic dilemma, he pleaded with Israeli military and political leaders to learn from America’s rush to war after Sept. 11, which took our troops deep into the dead ends and dark alleys of unfamiliar cities and towns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, from everything I have gleaned from senior U.S. officials, Biden failed to get Israel to hold back and think through all the implications of an invasion of Gaza for Israel and the United States. So let me put this in as stark and clear language as I can, because the hour is late:
I believe that if Israel rushes headlong into Gaza now to destroy Hamas — and does so without expressing a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority and end Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank — it will be making a grave mistake that will be devastating for Israeli interests and American interests.
It could trigger a global conflagration and explode the entire pro-American alliance structure that the United States has built in the region since Henry Kissinger engineered the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
I am talking about the Camp David peace treaty, the Oslo peace accords, the Abraham Accords and the possible normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The whole thing could go up in flames.
This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does. This is about doing it the right way — the way that does not play into the hands of Hamas, Iran and Russia...
https://www.fisherpaykel.com/uk/dishwashing/contemporary-dishwashers/double-dishdrawer-dishwasher-sanitise-dd60dchx9-82348.html
Yes if you get out the one-off pasta bowls once a fortnight, then you’ll probably have to move them back to the cupboard at some point.
But I'm afraid that Bibi's gonna Bibi, whatever Biden says.
Surely they will go in soon, but perhaps not very surgically.
"Ukrainian reconnaissance spotted what they claim to be a Polutorka, a 1930s pre-WWII GAZ AA truck, used by Russians to assault Ukrainian positions south of Avdeevka."
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1716118591827751064
In 2017 neither quality were available and we got a mess of a government even worse than usual.
The fickleness has been is parliament and government, and their inability to perform even minimally well.
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1715848616059756720
I expect this not to be reported by much of our media. Warning: do not click on the link if you are at all squeamish.
Mussolini made the trains run on time. The Tories have spent tens of billions on a train line that will never run at all.
According to the detailed reports of the British Ambassador, they made a small number of express services run on time for a short while. By cancelling lots of other services and having spare trains waiting.
It was so much hassle that after a few weeks, the Fascist government went back to the standard ways of running things. But ordered the newspapers to lie about the trains running on time.
Perfect example of Fascist government - a stupid piece of propaganda, followed by fuckup and then lying about it.
Also PB: two dishwashers! Kewl!
So, rather like the original Nagorno-Karabakh Karabakh war, and Israel-Palestine, and unlike Ukraine, both sides unfortunately have a legitimate grievance.
I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that I doubt they could have had almost a third of the fleet hot ready all the time.
Friedman is Jewish, and genuinely loves Israel, so it is heartfelt advice.
Judges 12:6
4 Jephthah then called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites struck them down because the Ephraimites had said, “You Gileadites are renegades from Ephraim and Manasseh.”
5 The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,”
6 they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth.’ ” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.
If anyone behaved like that today, I would oppose it.
Thankfully Judaism nowadays is generally far more enlightened and secular.
Secular religions are not a problem.
Seaborn: It’s a catch-phrase, isn’t it?
Lyman: … a cliche (?)
Bartlett(don’t ask me what version he is quoting): Comes from the bible. “Then said now unto him, ‘say now shibboleth’, and he said, ‘sibboleth’, for he could not frame to pronounce it right.” It was a password, a way the army used to distinguish true Israelites from imposters sent across the Jordan river by the enemy. I’m having one of the Chinese refugees flown here. I’ll meet with him tonight.
See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqkaBEWPH18
The next day’s midday departure would be the 6pm arrival from the night before, which gave them enough time to get one over from London if they couldn’t fix it. They basically used an extra half an aircraft for the route.
They stopped doing it after a few years, because it was too inefficient a use of the rare aircraft, and they’d instead find all sorts of ways to deal with 100 stranded VIPs, from first class flights on the regular 747 to some very nice hotels, plus refunds, credits, air miles etc. this freed up more time for the charters and Barbados etc flights.
https://twitter.com/SussexFriends/status/1716128598057185749
Except perhaps for two things:
(1) I think there is a more innovative work going on in China that @Alanbrooke probably gives them credit for. The speed at which they have been able to replace Western/Taiwanese/Korean supply chains in the smartphone space being one area.
(2) As China population ages, and as the government needs to provide for its population, the less they will run massive trade surpluses, and the less room there is for China to throw their weight around economically. They are going to find themselves constrained in a way that just isn't the case right now.
Right now, Israel is a wealthy - but not exceptionally so - country on the banks of the Mediterrenan. It has an incredible military, with great training, but - while there is some indigenous production of planes and the like - it is highly dependent on US supply chains for some sensors and electronics.
The danger to Israel is that the Arab world gets equipped by China, while Israel can no longer able to rely on the West to supply it with the latest equipment.
That I would posit is the danger, unwritten as it is in the NYTimes article. The danger is that there cease to be many votes in backing Israel.
On the face of it the SVP look to be doing remarkably well. Is this a function of the counting where areas where they are stronger tend to count earlier and we should see a big swing away later or is it a genuinely good result for them?