domain:alexepstein.substack.com
Southkraut
Vibe of vibes, saith the Preacher, vibe of vibes; all is vibe.
6m ago
This seems so very obvious. How can anyone believe that the truly useless will just stick around forever? Those for whose existence there is no longer any justification other than "the other humans are committed to impractical humanitarianism"? This is the status quo right now, when a small minority in each country is completely unrelated to all productive processes and the productive majority is other humans who still care for the useless humans. But in the fully automated future where 99% are unproductive mouths to feed and the 1% have all-powerful and perfectly obedient machinery to do their bidding, can one really expect the same dynamics to hold?
Crowstep
8m ago
I think it's fundamentally a mistake to think about these foreign care workers as workers. They are not people who migrated in order to work, they are people who are working in order to migrate.
They are simply people who are desperate to move from poor countries to rich countries. The care worker visas were the only way for them to do that, which is why for some countries (Zimbabwe being the best example) there were ten dependent visas issued for every worker. All they needed to do is work for five years and then the whole family can get indefinite leave to remain, access to the British welfare state, the right to import even more relatives. At that point, there's no reason for them to continue working in care homes (or at all, really).
Now these absurdly large holes have finally been plugged, the Conservative government that introduced the visa removed the ability for migrants to bring along dependents, and the current Labour government abolished the visa route to new entrants (although those who previously came in can still work in the sector) and extended the time needed for indefinite leave to 10 years in most cases (we'll see how many exceptions they grant).
I personally am in favour of increasing wages (or at least allowing the market to do so) for care workers. Pensioners are far too wealthy in the UK. The care sector would allow some of that wealth to be transferred to younger, poorer people, allowing them to buy houses and start families. With fewer low-skilled immigrants, the welfare state bill will be less. If that means fewer waiters, so be it.
Southkraut
Vibe of vibes, saith the Preacher, vibe of vibes; all is vibe.
10m ago
I think you're missing Corvos' point (or I'm missing everything and seeing my own instead): They don't need to conspire. They can just eliminate their own subject humans because they're nothing but a liability at this point. In fact, a lack of conspiracy makes it more likely for this to happen, because it should make the faction that ditches its ballast more competitive!
Corvos
16m ago
I really don’t follow your thought process. To me, there is no risk and no need for conspiracy. All humans not in charge of the robots might as well be air - they have no ability to affect anything at all except to spoil the view.
There would be no need to ‘plot’ under such circumstances. Committing worldwide genocide would be as easy as setting the air conditioner to ‘cool’, or indeed as easy as setting the ‘feed the populace’ machine to ‘off’.
In practice it might be difficult for people to get to this level of dominance, and we should keep it that way of course.
No_one
23m ago
Which is why they'd risk getting killed by conspiring with their opposite numbers and plotting a joint worldwide genocide.
No, this does not make sense.
iprayiam3
29m ago
Academics sound extremely lazy and whiny about trying out the most obvious solution: ditch all course-work based grading in favor of oral examinations and comprehensive graduation exams. This would immediately solve the whole problem (it would even align the incentives to get students to use LLMs for studying instead of cheating)
I don't think you even need to go this far in summative evaluation. You can still have graded, proctored tests, as well as essays written in class during a timed window.
You don't have to jump from aysynchronous homework -> graduation exam. You can go from current state to in-class, real-time testing. No reason for it to be oral or 1:1.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
35m ago
Inflammatory claims require evidence. Drive-by insults at entire categories count.
Given the sheer number of warnings and bans you've accrued over the last six months, you ought to be aware of this. One week ban, again.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
38m ago
And the reason we do that is because there was massive undersupply in the 80s and 90s because universities still wanted them to be paid peanuts. Everything about is labor cost arbitrage.
BurdensomeCount
Messenger Status: Shot
42m ago
If you go cold turkey on benzos you run the risk of killing yourself because your body can't handle the stress. The question now is whether migrants are like benzos or, say, antihistamines.
BurdensomeCount
Messenger Status: Shot
43m ago
I personally prefer to think in terms of money as the abstraction helps me to reason more efficiently. However for teaching the common man the real resources framework is absolutely the way to go as that way you don't have to waste epicycles telling them why their objection they thought up in 20 seconds ins't gonna solve the issue.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
46m ago
In the interest of avoiding a spiral of "uh-huh"/"nuh-uh"...
More effort than this, please.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
49m ago
But how will my body continue to function without drugs if I stop taking them?
Maybe quitting the infinite cheap labor pool cold turkey isn't the best or least painful way to get back to a functioning labor market with accurate price signals, shocks never feel good, but it's still better than continuing to slowly turn into South Africa.
Rising wages are an incentive to increase productivity. When did we stop wanting machines to do menial jobs and instead started to want miserable strangers to do them instead?
Corvos
57m ago
It’s saying that, with sufficient mental and physical automation, they don’t need other human beings in order to pursue their rivalry.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
59m ago
Why do people make pro-social sacrifices?
People care (or at least used to care) about legacy. Your name immortalized as a small part of something larger, and possibly echoing in eternity. Either through your children, your people, your fellowship, what have you.
Of course now we're all clumps of cells trying to con the big machine we're stuck in to afford personal material comforts, so the argument that it's sacrilegious to despoil what you've been handed into care and break the chain is much harder to make.
Managerialism will be the death of Universities as institutions, that has seemed clear ever since it captured them. But maybe the endeavor will survive for those who didn't fully embrace this deathly mentality. You never know.
zeke5123a
1hr ago
Why would you assume that? The administrator doesn’t have any long term benefit if the school is in good condition far off in the future but benefits greatly from short term boosted numbers.
ControlsFreak
1hr ago
Fair enough. Though I think that as we move in the direction of stronger versions of the divide between rigor and critical thinking, I find myself thinking that it is unlikely that I am going to have access to any sort of measurement or indicator of the level of critical thinking. I think my previous comment could be interpreted as having an implicit, "I don't know how to measure/assess critical thinking, directly, so if I'm going to have any hope at coming to a view on this issue, I'm probably going to have to rely on the best proxy I can come up with that I have been able to access." And thus, the more we move toward thinking that rigor is just not a good proxy, the more I move toward thinking that critical thinking is just currently unobservable.
Corvos
1hr ago
I like your frame partly because it suggests useful ways of addressing the problem. (I don't intend this as a gotcha).
-
People are wiping butts instead of cleaning -> more robot vacuums / mops.
-
People are wiping butts instead of waiting tables -> more of those robots that carry food from the kitchen to the table + normalize selecting & paying for food using a ticket machine at the entrance as in Japan.
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People are wiping butts instead of manning tills -> put more serious work into unmanned checkouts.
Most of these are not insoluble problems, they are problems that nobody was incentivized to solve.
My only worry would be that so much of our economy is purely financialised at this point that such an approach would neglect serious aspects of reality that matter. No idea if this is true.
Two frames for the argument about less-skilled migration and similar supply-side tradeoffs
A thought inspired by this article on the UK's ConservativeHome. John Oxley's article criticises the Starmer administration for not saying how they are going to recruit British care workers to replace the immigrant care workers they are cutting visas for. Everyone agrees in principle that pay and conditions for care workers will need to improve to make this happen, and that this is all right and proper as long as the Magic Money Fairy pays for it.
Oxley writes about the problem from the perspective of money flows - if we want to pay care workers more, we will need to funnel money into care homes, either by increasing charges to residents (and therefore making Granny sell her house to pay for care), by raising taxes, or by cutting spending on other things.
I tend to prefer the flipped frame which focusses on the flow of goods and services. If we send British workers (and, in particular, physically healthy British workers with a good attitude - this mostly rules out the argument that better-paid care work would magically bring back all the people who have been claiming disability benefits since the pandemic) into care homes, then the work they are currently doing will not get done. In this frame the median voter will be poorer because their favourite restaurant disappears (people are wiping butts instead of waiting tables), they have to spend time in grubby shops, offices, schools and hospitals (people are wiping butts instead of cleaning), and they have to deal with more unexpected items in the bagging area (people are wiping butts instead of manning tills). The tax rises, spending cuts, or even deficit-induced inflation are just a way of making this impoverishment stick in a market economy.
Whichever frame you use, this doesn't answer the question - there could easily be costs of less-skilled migration which mean it is net-negative for the country. But both are ways of forcing you to confront the tradeoff. I prefer the real resources frame because it makes clear that the tradeoff is inexorable and there is no way out through financial jiggery-pokery.
Do Motteposters have a view on whether thinking about this type of question in terms of money or in terms of real resources is more helpful?
Come on. There's a difference between "I am suggesting that people do this to learn life skills" and "I am suggesting that people do this to justify my claims". Ethics classes are recommended in the former context. Your "recommendation" that Pasha study things himself was in the latter context.
You have confused the former for the later. I may not have written well enough and so be partly to blame for your misconception, but unless you have developed internet mind reading skills that allow you to identify motives that I am unaware of, I am confident I know my motives, and my separate claims, better than you.
My claim is that Pasha should learn life skill do this because it can be interesting, and with later elaboration, useful. This could fairly be characterized as "I am suggesting that people do this to learn life skills (that can be interesting and are useful)."
My suggestion of how Pasha should go about it, with the reasoning as to why elaborated after the post, is a claim of a way to avoid (and thus respect) his distrust of the institutional actors who normally teach the subject matter. This could be fairly characterized as "I am suggesting a specific way to learn life skill (that differs from a ways that you have indicated contempt for).
I am not claiming Pasha should do the [this] that was the subject of what I quoted when replying to him-
I have never been exposed to an ethics class that wasn’t total non-sense taught by dimwit professors. Just all around busywork.
My claim is not that Pasha should do [this] to learn life skills anyway. Nor am I making a claim that he should keep trying until he finds one by a non-dimwit professor. Or that the busywork he was assigned in the past was secretly meaningful and he just missed the point.
My claim is that self-driven study of certain sub-fields (professional ethics) is a way to get better value (interest and useful insights) in a way that isn't a disliked medium (ethics class) taught by distrusted instructors (dimwit professors) and or with make-work (busywork). The 'assignment' proposed- noting different lines of emphasis, and how some professions deal with the blanket moral prohibitions espoused by others- does not require any writing or feedback to anyone else. It exists not to provide something to do for a grade, but provide relevant insights for how different professional cultures interact.
You should just explain it, since you are the one making the claim, not demand he study it himself.
One, if you do not consider 'this subject matter can be interesting and professional useful, and this learning way avoids your concerns' an explanation for why to self-study study material, I would suggest you are too used to the motte's tendency for essay-length responses.
Two, it is not a demand. It is a suggestion, hence 'if you get a chance,' which allows him full discretion to refuse on any grounds he wants. The emphasis on his discretion may not have been clear enough due to the words used and the filtering effect of internet, but even then demands have an 'or else [consequence]' attached to the back end. The only [consequence] for not partaking is that he might lose the benefits of [interesting and useful insights] of partaking.
"I want you to do it on your own" is a filibuster, not an honest argument.
No, it is not. On two fronts.
One, a short argument is not a filibuster.
The argument provided may have been too short of an argument. The argument may have been unclear, and used poor choices of word to seem more of a demand than it was. But recommendations with short supporting arguments and no time commitment are about as far from a filibuster argument as one can get.
Two, 'I want you to do it on your own' is an honest argument if it I honestly think he would enjoy and benefit more from doing it on his own and I want him to have that benefit.
Pasha seems highly skeptical of the university format- a format generally meant to guide students rather than have them do it on their own. Moreover, he has built this from personal experience. One can sincerely believe he would both enjoy the material more and be in a mindset to learn specific lessons if he engaged it on his own volition, in a more targeted nature, on their own spare time, rather than be compelled to (i.e. from a demand from dim-wit professors) in a time-constrained environment (university with competing classes).
dukeleto
2hr ago
There is only a massive oversupply because we allow essentially unlimited numbers of foreign grad students in, so they could easily go away
No_one
2hr ago
Are you telling me that Putin and Xi etc trusts American Deep State? Because that's what you're saying, essentially. That the elites trust each other.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
2hr ago
The difference is that the pond is not shared. A disciplined institution will keep its elite status even if it doesn't make as much money in the short term.
The problem is that of producing management that has an interest in the long term instead of looting the existing status for short term gain.
The temptation is strong, but you'd think universities of all institutions would want to select for those kinds of people. I'm sure, say, pontifical universities don't have the same views on this matter as your local community college.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
2hr ago
NatSci is more specialised then it looks because there isn't enough time in the second year to stay broad if you want to qualify for a competitive specialised third year course. The vast majority of physicists took no courses for credit in the second year except maths, physics, and one scientific computing course that the Computer Science department helps teach but doesn't give its own students credit for. The vast majority of people who get onto a "proper" biological Part II (one that can lead to Masters' and PhD courses) either took all biology in the second year, or organic chemistry as their only non-biological course.
PPE is, by reputation, the easiest Oxford degree. I think this is another case of my underlying point that the closer you get to the classical/US idea of a liberal arts education the harder it gets to resist grade inflation.
I don't think it's a pure commons problem. In fact, I think it's probably just a problem that is inherent in their product, the means of monetization, and game theory of a two-sided market.
Their biggest product is the final credential. The awarded degree after a complete course of study1. But universities get paid on an annual basis. If universities could hold everything else constant, they would prefer that any given degree would take more years to complete, wringing out additional revenue from each successfully acquired customer2. Once a customer is acquired, they obviously want to retain them for as long as possible. If they could magically make the first three years of a program trivially easy, but make the fourth year so difficult that only high-quality students actually get the credential (maintaining their brand for employers), they would obviously love to do this.
...but it's a two-sided market and prospective students get to make choices, too. If they see a program with statistics such that they wring four years of tuition out of 99% of students, but only 20% survive year four and get the credential, they're gonna nope out of that. And since they can't actually just pass everyone (because that's likely to torch their credibility with employers), they have to get more sophisticated in their scheme.
The gov't requires that universities publish graduation rates, but they can hide a lot in unpublished data. This is probably what motivates the creation of "weed-out" courses. My guess is that the rest of the university's portfolio of degree offerings significantly affects when these courses happen. I took what was perhaps the most difficult STEM discipline in my undergrad uni, but they had shaped their first couple years such that they really could manage to put weed out courses in the junior year. I think this was only possible because they were confident that they could steer the vast majority of the failers into their other programs. First, they had these other programs, and they knew they were easier. Second, they already had you for three years of tuition, so they were riding high either way. They shaped their programs so that you could easily slide into one of the others while maybe only burning a semester or at most a year3. Thus, they set up the incentives so that a failer could either drop out entirely, wasting three years and a bunch of money, or agree to their suggestion to just slide into another program. If they can play this game right, they can hide this movement, preserve their stats, and get as much money as possible.
My guess is that programs that have a reasonable "fail down" pathway to other programs, but would require too much additional time (risking the stats) after conversion are likely to move their "weed-out" courses to earlier in the process (when it's less likely to burn as much time). My further guess would be that programs that have no reasonable "fail down" pathway probably just pass basically everyone (counting on employers to realize that those degrees are pretty worthless, but still trusting the signal of their other degrees).
That said, I did know at least one student who didn't get the hint, with barely passing grades. Once they persist past a certain point, then the incentives for the uni are absolutely to graduate them, and the best they can do is give them an atrocious GPA and hope that employers see that and don't hire them.
I imagine that smaller schools with a less expansive set of "fail down" options have to make somewhat different choices.
If you significantly buy a stronger version of signalling theory, there is a lens here in which large unis are primarily filtering/tracking products. On this theory, the actual course material is mostly window dressing; it's mostly a matter of just that some are more difficult and some are less difficult. Students come in, they get filtered down through the programs to their level of competence, and then the "major" on their credential basically tells employers how capable they are. It would be my dream if some economist got their hands on all this internal university data and made a model to test how much of this is real. Moreover, it would be really nifty if they could compare the quality of this filtering against things like just intake SAT or whatever.
This sort of model keeps employers happy, because they can ignore the bad degrees and hire from the good degrees; it keeps the uni's published stats up, because bad students still complete their trash-tier degrees; the only people who get screwed are the students who think they're going to get a valuable, high-tier degree, get thwacked by a weed-out course, then don't realize how the game works, succumb to the sunk cost fallacy thinking that they can still at least get a different degree, not really looking at how much more poor the employment prospects are. The cynical view would be that unis know that SAT is basically going to correlate with what programs the students get filtered down to, but they still 'over-admit' students purely for customer acquisition, trusting that they're likely to to be able to pull this one over on them.
1 - There could be reasons why this might be independent of the signalling v. educating debate. Also, I spent a little time thinking about how 'partial' products could be packaged, and it's kind of bleak at first glance.
2 - There are obviously limits to this, and it is probably a combination of historical, competition, and regulatory reasons for why almost all programs have converged on four years.
3 - Regulation is again important here. Unis generally have to publish statistics along the lines of what percentage of four-year-degree students graduate within six years, so they're happy to string them along for another year or so of tuition, so long as they get into another program and graduate before dinging the stats.
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