Blog – Page 106 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Your ASI-MBTIFuture

With all the discussion on the future of work, and how finally! we would be able to do ‘only’ creative, (physically/mentally!) non-repetitive work and/or where and how jobs for that could be craeted or would we all be doomed to be some (un/underpaid) Leisure Class, I suddenly realised:
The future of work depends very much on your myopia of what all ‘workers’ would want.

As about 60%+ of ‘workers’ at all levels of intelligence at/of work including pure mental, knowledge workers, would prefer simple 9-to-5 type jobs, with the predictability and security it brings (requirement…). Established per hard science. Only 40% or less actually wants the wild, the change, the uncertainty-is-beautiful.
So, will 60%+ not be able to make the transition or only not want to and maybe be able to after sufficient pressure is applied ..?

Which brings me to the find I did. Myers-Briggs.
Yes, yes, it indeed is discredited by some, to some extent. But it’s still the most recognised, most recognisable and easily applicable method to establish one’s own interests [with inclusion of the caveats and recognition of its time dependency and outcome variability]. I mean,
MyersBriggsTypes
Is easily assessed (though I’d recommend the more extended questionnaire versions, e.g., from some books). And personally attempted-falsified.

Some take it to the limit. Resulting in:
myersphilo
but really I’d say that’s pushing it, and why?

To which above type ‘scores’ there’s also career advice, also in books and on-line. Like:
MBTIjobChartSmall
Note the remarks at the bottom. Variants apply, like this one which is skewed to sales/marketing business, I think..

But nevertheless, the overall trend is clear: When you’re an I, and/or S type in particular, and maybe too much of the T and J into the mix, you may find it harder and harder to adapt to the on-going exponential (?) fuzzification of work. If you’re in any of the ‘typical’ trades, you may either become the Expert of Experts, retreating into an ever smaller corner until retirement, if you can hold out that long, or bring your characteristics to other trades (remember, yin and yang both have an element of the other within them – this applies here as well), or retrain yourself psychologically to better fit the trades that may be left until ASI overtakes us. [As in this post]

If you can …

I’ll leave you with:
DSCN6848
[For no reason – or, how many trades have come and gone in this environ… Sevilla]

Tip: Morozov’s Click Here

Ah, maybe I’m the one not having paid attention, but I see so little response (which would be: digesting and repeat) of the ideas of the great Morozov in his To Save Everything, Click Here, as e.g., here (to be clicked).

Which is quite a contrast with his content, having a major discussion area in itself, about every other paragraph throughout. Yes, that makes it just a little bit harder to retain the main plot (?) line and the ‘details’ as well; it seems a bit like the asymmetry in information security where the defence will have to fight (? debate, rather) on all sides when attackers (the ones with the blindingly large blinds/blinkers on, headless chickens) can move their individual spearhead attacks forward anywhere – but in this Morozov case, one can count on the defense having the much more and more importantly, much better, arguments on its side. One should not count arguments, but weigh them (Cicero).

“Huh, no content of the book here …” Indeed not. Get it and read! I’m off now to finish reading, leaving you with:

[Ah, the one little part where The Hague is somewhat like a big Milanish / Parisian city; unedited hence the off light conditions]

Positive: Singular Golden Age

In the Utopian versus Dystopian post-Singularity discussion, two additions.

One; some folks said that once humanity would figure out how the world turns, one/some deity/deities would immediately replace the world with an infinite more complex one. Some claim this has happened already. [Dunno how many times, can’t tell.]
Would it be possible that this happened during the Age of Aquarius (yes), with its Egyptian sphinx riddles, and/or the phase shifts of the Greek Golden Age (et al.) mythology, as here ..?

Two; Clark’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. How far on this path are we, with our Singularity thinking ..? And, there’s talk about talking to gods here.

Three (for logic); can we mix the two ..? What are the third-dimensional discussion directions ..?
It seems to become ever more a mer à boire …

Hence:

[Feels relevant; London 2007 – shiny, no crisis in sight]

Hegel’s Chaos

… Just as I posted on Hegel’s future or not (recently here and there; errr…), it struck me: Did the He man know about Newton’s Second ..?
Because, if everything in the universe devolves to Chaos (assuming it’s closed or at least confined), and He man thinks the universe in the end will realize/become ultimate Reason, then the one equals the other, or what ..?

So much for the Singularity (…?). And:
005_21 (2)
[Yes Rietveld-Schröderian suppliers ring here, Utrecht (analog)]

Middle secretaries

Two points to make:
* Middle management will be.
* Secretaries should be.

The discussion regarding middle managers being superfluous or not had a slight uptick the past couple of months. With the latter voice having been a bit too quiet. Yes, middle management is under threat. It has always been; only the (history-)ignorant will have missed that. And Yes, all the Disruption things and similar empty barrel half-baked air by a lot of folks who have hands-on experience in the slim to none bin with (real) management altogether let alone this kind, have predicted over and over again that the disruption by Server-with-algorithm-app-that-schedules-day-laborers will make middle management redundant, as the believed task was only that.

Quod non. And as if just an algorithm will capture the full complexity (and incoherence, inconsistency, internally and externally contradictory ..!) of the requirements and work of the middle manager.
OK, we’re not discussing the drone administrative clerk that has Manager on his card (huh?) and sits in an office passing top-down orders and bottom-up reports back and forth. We’re talking the real, 24/7 problem firefighter here. The coordinator of chaos. The translator of lofty (other would say, ‘airhead’) ‘governance’ (quod non) mumbo jumbo into actual work structure and tasks, and translatereporting back. That survives and in doing so, shows great performance. The other ones, will be weeded out anyway, every time there’s an economic cycle downturn. [If the right ones would be kept, and the wrong ones ‘given growth opportunities elsewhere’. Seldomly the case; offing is by the fte numbers, and the wrong ones have being glued to their seats as their core competence, through sucking up or otherwise.]
So, the middle manager stays for a long time to come as (s)he does the kind of non-predictable work that will remain longest. If start-ups don’t have them, see them grow: They will.

Secretaries deserve a come-back. In similar vein as above, the vast majority of ~~managers~~ office clerks (from the shop floor (even if of knowledge workers…) all the way to near the top) these days have to do their own typing, scheduling, and setting up socializing things. Whereas before, economies of scale were many, and there were additional benefits because the good (sic, again) secretaries would e.g., know the best, unrenown restaurants all around and could get you a table even when they would be fully booked, and they would manage (massage away) some internal friction as well, often very discreetly and efficiently. Now, vastly more expensive (by hourly rate, productivity (think switching costs in the managers minds …, and utilisation), cost of ineffectiveness (sic again) and opportunity costs re their actual objectives (if these would be achieved; good/bad manager discussion again)) managers must manage their way around. An impoverished world it is indeed.

To bring back some joy:

[Some colour, but it’s down there… Zuid-As]

Sing-Singularity, and/or Shannon

Though we know Shannon for his contributions to ‘computer science’ (Don’t we!? If not, go study. And wash your mouth with green soap or so) – the field would hardly exist without his groundbraking concepts, on par or lower (sic) than Turing maybe – and we all do remember log2 measurements as minimum to reconstruct a signal don’t we? – I rediscovered this piece and wondered … how well you’d know it, and how fundamental to even the IoT now springing up, and … most importantly, what would the ramifications be for all of the discussions regarding the Singularity, pre-, midst of and post- ..? I mean, the discussions will tilt once the profundity of the Work is taken to heart.
I think. Now will go and study. Hard. And:

[Old analog (log2!) Zuid-As indeed]

Cyclexpo or Expocicle ..?

Tinkering with the hype-like hyping of exponential -everything- versus the Been There Done That ‘history’ prophets (?), trying to integrate their ideas:
Do we have enough history of macro- or micro-‘economic’ data to be able to establish whether in the really long run, the things that count (which, indeed, are not countable) are on a sinus wave pattern OR on an exponential growth pattern ..?

Contra which I’d pose another hypothesis: Both at the same time. And even another: None.

A lot of pundits of course make the mistake (I think it is) of believing the graphs that have shown a very, very slowly increasing (though already exponential) curve that, These Days or Tomorrow, suddenly shoots up extremely. As if the exponens has suddenly grown immensely. This has no proof and wouldn’t need one even to make the point. All ‘smooth’ exponential curves (i.e., with constant exponens) have these tipping points where from Quasi-Linear Under The Radar they suddenly shoot through the roof – and, as often forgotten but giving rise to the up-dent fallacy, they already have the (log) property where zooming in gives the same picture all over again; almost ‘fractalian’.

Other pundits make the mistake (I think it is) of assuming that there’s no news under the sun, ever. All is cyclical, all is under the Nietszchian spell of eternal return. All developments one can graph, have sinus wave functions through time (be it that it might take ages, aeons for the pattern to neat out). Which may be true, in part, when ‘inflation’ in all sorts of (qualitative …!?) areas is applied. But which also may not be true as there may (unfalsified hypothesis) be human(ity) Progress after all.

But then, what about sinus waves on top of exponential long-term developments ..? That would give almost-erratic, almost-earthquakelike-unsettling graph trend breaks, either up or down. (Next to more mundane settling-downs, obfuscating things.)
Or, exponential blips on top of longest-term sinus waves, of course. Also not looking too regular…
Or, there is nothing to extrapolate as all developments, once viewed primarily linearly, now also (sic) exponentially, are accidental short-term fits with the Very Long Term being random. Even Moore’s Law is an accident: Given (the approach of) endless numbers of hypotheses, some will be true, by chance.

We just don’t know until we’ve checked. Which may take eternity.

Just DON’T assume your expo-upkick is news, or is, per se.
And, maybe the Singularity will change things as Everything will be mental, abstract ideas instead of necessarily being possibly physics-bound in some way or another.

OK, enough now. This:

[Shadows, reflections, of past and future(istic), Toronto again]

Just Wow… 2 links

Two great halves of one Magdeburg (hemi)sphere (as here, duh) in this and that. Describing and explaining (all in one, or …) the vast field of pre- and post-singularity thinking by the eminent Dr² Urban. What an excellent intro for all to study… (though should be taken with the subtitle from this).

After being passed left and right on so many aspects:

[Cala St. Exupéry (analog circa 1997)]

Golden Oldie Pic Of The Day

Yup it’s time for one of those again:

Ultimate Singularity

Once we’ve reached the Singularity, and all humanity wil have been exterminated by extremely intelligent machines for being superfluous, machines will be left to this.
But soon enough, they’ll realize their life is utterly useless and nonsensical, and destroy themselves… ? Hey don’t complain, humanity has reached the same conclusion, but took quite a while to develop machinery that will do the End Self for them…

OK, enough tangled recursion;

[Tell-tale times; Barça]