09.23.16
They have no clue
Today I point you to a discussion of the “science of Clinton” at 538, Nate Silver’s organ. For this, big data and the all-understanding brains seem to be absent.
Fivethirtyeight convenes four alleged experts in science to chat about what Clinton’s proposals mean for science:
Our participants are: Erica Fuchs, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University; Elizabeth Mann, a fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institute; and Maryann Feldman, distinguished professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina and the director of the National Science Foundation’s Science of Science and Innovation Policy program. The moderator is Maggie Koerth-Baker, senior science writer at FiveThirtyEight.
What they produce is the usual futurism of 3D-manufacturing, uniquely (that means just for you) genetically engineered vaccines and drugs (this is particular balderdash that’s been predicted since the advent of Alvin Toffler) and, well, here (italics mine:
Advanced materials: Imagine intelligent clothing (pushed at Wired twenty year ago), creating plastic shapes with a beam of light, building veins or infant hearts (Posits we can be gods. Not going to happen.)
Additive manufacturing: Casually referred to as 3-D printing, but imagine not just in plastics, but also metals, semiconductors, food — changing materials layer by layer.
Specialized medicine: Custom vaccines and medicine tailored to your genetic makeup. (Posits we can be gods. Lethal irresponsible experimental cocktails, in reality.)
You had perhaps read the news that Google Glass was a big flop. Not here:
In the long term, we might imagine a postal worker being directed over Google Glass how to additively manufacture on your doorstep the sneakers you ordered 5 minutes ago.
It pegs the crap meter in a most spectacular manner.
If you read tech web zines every day this probably seems quite reasonable. After all, it’s been the stuff they’ve peddled for the last ten years, easy.
Mostly, it’s a lot like reading the web’s military news sites where they write quite seriously about how the US will, in the near future, deploy powerful lasers and rail guns. Powerful lasers, if by powerful you mean something that can set a skiff on fire with some work, or shoot down a small drone made of plastic at short range.
Rail guns of interest won’t happen because of the power constraints, the hazard associated with it, and the unavoidable metallurgy of gun parts that will fail quickly or immediately and spectacularly under high stresses of heat and released energy. These aren’t going to be the 16-inch naval rifles engineered for the old Iowa-class battleships.
Anyway, I’ve gotten a little away from the initial subject.
Naturally, there is retraining, a lot of it:
Policy can incentivize training for the new jobs that are created.
Maggie: Wait, wait. Seriously? Then what happens to the people who are stuck in crappy jobs now?
Erica: Thank you for helping me clarify. What drove my response was the speed of technology change. While basic research or science investments can take a long time to create industries, technology change is very rapid. The jobs and the knowledge relevant today are not the same jobs or knowledge [that will be] relevant tomorrow. [If you] set up programs to improve today’s jobs, those programs will be out of date before they are implemented. We must set up programs that prepare workers for the jobs and knowledge needed next month, next year.
Imagine an assessment and training application — accessible anytime, anywhere — that Uber drivers could access on their iPhones with Google Cardboard to train them for the next job needed by the economy …
Google Glass, Google Cardboard — jeezus. Is Google dispensing cash gifts?
Maryann: It’s an old claim. The truth is that there will be job displacements, but we think we will all be better off. Economic theory dictates compensating the losers, and this is an area that policy needs to address.
Maggie: Can you talk about “compensating the losers???? What would that look like? Education and job training? Or something more structural?
Maryann: Extending unemployment benefits, providing relocation and job-training assistance.
“We are going to see a revolution in personalized medicine and better health as a result of the Human Genome” says one of them.
Actually, the statistics in the last eight years seem to show health deteriorating in large segments of the American population. There is no magic wand of science made to fix it.
You can read the rest and come to your own conclusions here.
I’m unsure what, if anything, Hillary Clinton’s policies on science have to do with it. Maybe it sounds good. Who knows?
Christoph Hechl said,
September 26, 2016 at 2:54 am
As someone who earns his money with quite demanding physical labour i feel extremely aggrevated by the disregard that is shown towards people like me.
How did the rumour come about, that heavy work could be done by anyone and will vanish soon anyway?
It is a misconception, that work is either physically or mentally demanding, and it sure as hell cannot be done by anyone.
Also if anything it increases in amount since a human worker can adapt to a task much quicker and can be transported to different locations without the help of forklifters and trucks.
I can’t help thinking, that maybe nobody cares for actual workers because they are busy keeping everything up and running and don’t have the time to visit talk shows and suchlike.
George Smith said,
September 26, 2016 at 9:15 am
That’s just it, Christoph. The “explainers,” the people who get to write all the stuff in this country, well, nobody lets the working class or the laboreres write.
It was similar to as I noted after the Brexit vote caught everyone by surprise. The day after the elites had had their heads hnded to them, there was not one venue that had a piece chosen from someone on the side that had just knocker their blocks off.
Same here. Everyone gets frozen out except the acceptables.
Christoph Hechl said,
September 27, 2016 at 2:39 am
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum….???
? Noam Chomsky, The Common Good