The Second Machine Age Is Upon Us: Time To Reconsider The Luddites?

[Maggot_with_halitosis]

Your Job Taught to Machines Puts Half U.S. Work at Risk

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How many man hours to comb through all those documents?

At the bottom, robots are flipping better burgers. At the top, sophisticated Bayesian inference engines analyse securities and can potentially offer better risk/reward than star fund managers.

The future doesn't look too bright for unskilled workers. Or anyone else, for that matter. Significant change is faintly in the air. Bring it on.

[scepticus]

By definition the Universe must be able to manifest all possible states of itself

Not so. The Universe includes every material object in existence. That is all.

Since all possible states are therefore available to it whatever state it does manifest is-by definition- the state it prefers to manifest.

Not so. There is no necessity for this. The Universe is quite possibly constrained by the nature of its material composition. 'Preference' is only associated with living organisms. There is no evidence that the Universe is alive.

I assume your definition of 'Universe' includes not only material objects but also metaphysical ones. It is not necessary that the metaphysical aspects can control the physical ones. All the evidence suggests that we are constrained by the nature of our physical being - in the Universe we inhabit . One day this may change, but there is no evidence for it as yet.

Thanks for that concise rebuttal of Wonderpups position, nicely stated.

With regard to "The Universe is quite possibly constrained by the nature of its material composition. ", I also agree. For example, a large quantity of very low entropy matter with very high energy density has been stored in the earths crust for many millennia before us humans came along. Without us, who knows how long it may have languished there?

The point being, the universe can get trapped in 'local minima' in which it gets trapped locally in some low entropy state which - without some kind of complex local evolution could persist for a very long time. This is what I would characterise as a constraint of material composition.

[scepticus]

There's no global arrow of complexity in nature! In an ever changing fitness landscape complexity will peak locally and decline elsewhere.

No, over time if conditions permit (access to free energy) complexity will increase. The history of the earth is a case in point.

Its quite possible that once fossil fuel stocks are gone human complexity will disappear (in which case one could posit that in universal terms, the purpose of humanity was to degrade that fossil fuel store which otherwise would have lain dormant as a false minima of entropy for a very long time). Alternatively, some form of complexity we built could slip the confines of the gravity well and go on to make a mess in the rest of the solar system and beyond, in the process dissipating local low entropy situations in the wider universe which are analogous to the fossil fuel stock.

In any case progress of that nature would be in fits and starts - not a straight line, but not random.