I think it's a pretty fair take on what's been happening for my generation (elder Millienial/honorary X) and younger. The vast majority of us have been ushered into a college pipeline exactly as...
I think it's a pretty fair take on what's been happening for my generation (elder Millienial/honorary X) and younger.
The vast majority of us have been ushered into a college pipeline exactly as described, and basically been told we're failures if we don't end up in a high-skill or high-prestige career like doctors, lawyers, or business executives. And as it turns out, there's a bit of a finite cap on available high-prestige careers, and high-skill careers are hard, and also suffering from immense burnout which is not helping.
Anyway, as someone whose job relies on sustained college admissions, kids: Don't go to college. At least, don't go to college fresh out of high school. Maybe go for an associate's degree to broaden your horizons a bit. Otherwise, move to the opposite of what culture you were raised in (urban/rural) and learn a proper trade to keep under your belt: Plumbing, electrical, carpentry, masonry....something like that. It'll broaden your horizons and give you a fairly reliable skillset forever, because home construction robots are likely a century away. After you've learned a trade, that's when to consider going back to school to broaden your academic horizons.
The reason to do this in your 20's is because it's a lot easier to work your way up the income ladder, rather than accidentally land up there then having to cut back your lifestyle (or get stuck there with kids) as you realize you can't afford it once you get burned out.
The problem with k-12 education in the US isn’t that kids who want to learn aren’t learning, its that theres an increasing amount of kids who aren’t being raised by anyone except a smart phone who...
The problem with k-12 education in the US isn’t that kids who want to learn aren’t learning, its that theres an increasing amount of kids who aren’t being raised by anyone except a smart phone who don’t want to learn and are generally disruptive to the ones who do want to learn.
6am - 2pm in a classroom doesn’t even work for some of the kids who are actually being raised by humans but cant function in a brightly lit classroom with 32 other kids, some of which are purposely disruptive.
The issue is that somewhere along the line “educating children” became “ensuring good test scores” because theres no way to easily measure other outcomes and so thats what schools focus on because thats where their funding is decided.
We have people going to college for sociology who could visit the schools personally and determine quality that way, but instead they’re working the night shift stocking groceries.
We have entire small towns of administrative persons who could visit the school personally and determine the quality that way, but instead they’re too busy doing ????? Getting funding I guess.
Because as a society we want the computers to do the work for us so we simplify every problem into something a computer can handle and then we’re all surprised when it ends up like this.
Its as if the computers took over the moment they were invented and they’ve been stringing us along ever since.
An apt description of K-12. The only people who are given any sort of consequences or responsibility for how the students do are the teachers. We go out of our way to makes sure that the students...
An apt description of K-12. The only people who are given any sort of consequences or responsibility for how the students do are the teachers. We go out of our way to makes sure that the students and parents don't have any responsibility for the success or behavior of the student, and admin are beholden to the numbers.
Public education is one of the last surviving public institutions, and as such it has become the lever that gets pulled in every single situation. But schools cannot fix societal/structural problems, and pretending that they can is, generously, burying your head in the sand.
I'd add public libraries to that shortlist, where librarians have been forced into a role of general social support for any adult that walks through the door. We need that as a society! But having...
I'd add public libraries to that shortlist, where librarians have been forced into a role of general social support for any adult that walks through the door.
We need that as a society! But having it grow from the roots of libraries is not necessarily leaning into their core abilities?
I’m not convinced the public school system ever really worked. The kids who do fine would have done fine in any environment and the kids who really need extra support are now in a system that...
I’m not convinced the public school system ever really worked. The kids who do fine would have done fine in any environment and the kids who really need extra support are now in a system that almost seems designed to deny them that support.
This is probably my own bias but I just cant see how cramming all the kids in a whole town into a single building and force feeding them written material is actually the best environment for any human to learn in.
Smaller class sizes, smaller buildings, more teachers, more variety in the available curriculums. Everyone knows this is what we need and no one can do anything.
There's 3d printed houses. I don't think robots building houses is going to happen tomorrow, but looking more than 20 years into the future and predicting stuff is tough.
There's 3d printed houses. I don't think robots building houses is going to happen tomorrow, but looking more than 20 years into the future and predicting stuff is tough.
The term "3D printed" in housing is very much a marketing term. There is a machine that lays down concrete in a manner that looks like FDM printing, but anyone who has built a house before knows...
Exemplary
The term "3D printed" in housing is very much a marketing term. There is a machine that lays down concrete in a manner that looks like FDM printing, but anyone who has built a house before knows that there is much more to building a house than putting up walls - a building without a roof offers no shelter, and that's much more difficult than putting up walls. Beyond that, those concrete walls are not ideal for interior walls because they will block radio signals, so your wifi will not work. They also produce a rather unpleasant-looking layer effect so they aren't great for appearances either, and they still need a bunch of people to operate, supervise, and otherwise assist the machine. This is coming from someone who doesn't know much about construction; there are likely many more disadvantages you could hear about from someone who is more familliar with homebuilding.
While predicting stuff is hard, especially 20 years out, there are some pretty safe bets that even things out: Global demand for energy will grow about 4% annually. This has remained constant...
While predicting stuff is hard, especially 20 years out, there are some pretty safe bets that even things out:
Global demand for energy will grow about 4% annually. This has remained constant basically since the industrial revolution.
Physical automation is a hard problem. While software scales almost infinitely, the shear scale of 'things can go wrong' throws a wrench in physical automation quickly, especially once you leave the fairly controlled environment of a factory floor. See the 'trap self driving cars with traffic cones' problem. You could probably build a fancy robot to hammer on a roof... but it'll probably cost hundreds of thousands more and be slower than a small team of well-practiced roofers.
Even if we get automated means of building new housing, that doesn't do much to keep the existing housing stock in good condition.
As technology matures, rate of innovation slows to a crawl. While there's almost always room for more, the science and engineering of housing is a largely-solved problem.
Yes, it's a hard problem but every industry is throwing money at it. "Factory built homes" are already a thing. https://time.com/6237782/modular-homes-affordability/
Yes, it's a hard problem but every industry is throwing money at it.
I recommend reading Construction Physics for a more realistic idea of what new technology can do for building houses. At least in the US, the industry changes slowly. There are promising ideas and...
I recommend reading Construction Physics for a more realistic idea of what new technology can do for building houses. At least in the US, the industry changes slowly. There are promising ideas and company that build houses using them, but these companies often fail, or they find a niche that they’re successful at, but don’t change the industry. Meanwhile all the other developers keep doing it the same way, because they rely on contractors and that’s what contractors know how to do.
Factory-built homes are one such niche. This is an old idea. The mobile home industry was big before it collapsed in 1974. More about that here.
Efforts to modernize this process have traditionally centered around prefabrication - doing as much work as possible in off-site factories. But the most common implementation strategy - a large, centralized factory that achieves economies of scale by maximizing production volume - works against the geographic constraints and high output variation in construction. Centralizing production in an off-site factory adds potential efficiencies, but it also adds transportation costs, as well as overhead expenses that become a liability if (slash when) the market shifts. The most popular prefabrication methods in the US thus tend to be either low-capital, or flexible enough that they can serve a wide output mix, or both (such as wood trusses), which tends to mean simple, low-level components.
The history of ambitious factory-built efforts in the US is one of trying to overcome this dynamic - of trying to crack the nut of getting a large volume of reliable work through your factory. But what would a modernized fabrication method that instead tried to work with it look like? A new class of construction startup has the potential to be that.
Maybe they’ll succeed, but even in the best case it will take many years to change the industry. And what tends to happen is that it can be done, but it turns out not to be cheaper, so it it’s only used when it’s worth the expense. So new homes get better in some way but not cheaper. Success for one company might not look like industry-wide change.
Edit: the Times article is good; it talks about the challenges too.
Costco sells ADU kits including plumbing and electrical, and it’s about $72k for shipping + installation on the largest of them. If we can crack how to do this for multi-story dwellings I think...
Ah looks like the actual page is only available if you’re logged in with a CostCo account. But yeah that link is right, though the CostCo page only has the Signature and Portland series. I didn’t...
Ah looks like the actual page is only available if you’re logged in with a CostCo account. But yeah that link is right, though the CostCo page only has the Signature and Portland series. I didn’t realize they made other, even bigger, ones.
That page is showing, for me to get a 1000sqft model delivered and installed, looking about $380k without a plot of land to put it on. While that's still a fair bit cheaper than typical new-build...
That page is showing, for me to get a 1000sqft model delivered and installed, looking about $380k without a plot of land to put it on.
While that's still a fair bit cheaper than typical new-build prices....it also is still fairly expensive per sqft, especially relative to an older home. Turns out laying a foundation to put the thing on still costs a tremendous amount of money.
Also, and this is important: I don't trust the overwhelming majority of the population to build IKEA furniture without somebody experienced looking over their shoulder, let alone a house that...
Also, and this is important: I don't trust the overwhelming majority of the population to build IKEA furniture without somebody experienced looking over their shoulder, let alone a house that needs to stand up to hurricane-force winds.
And people call me heartless ;) You're not wrong though. Problem being that people who would better be served with a pro assembling the house are likely also the least likely to be able to afford...
And people call me heartless ;)
You're not wrong though. Problem being that people who would better be served with a pro assembling the house are likely also the least likely to be able to afford them doing so.
Also that house's loose wall will end up going through my wall. The wobbly IKEA chair much less likely to do so.
That sounds about right since labor is a huge part of the cost. Doing it yourself will save a lot. But it's easier to do for a shed or an ADU than a full-sized house, let alone an apartment...
That sounds about right since labor is a huge part of the cost. Doing it yourself will save a lot. But it's easier to do for a shed or an ADU than a full-sized house, let alone an apartment building.
It was probably also easier in the old days when Sears would ship you everything needed to build a house, by rail.
My father was on the tail end of that; he built a lot of the house I grew up in, also hiring neighbors as contractors and specialists for things like brick laying and plaster. We moved into a partially-finished house and for us it was fun.
Yeah for an apartment you’d definitely need more. But I think small kit houses probably are doable nowadays, especially with multi splits making you not have to worry as much about ductwork. I’d...
Yeah for an apartment you’d definitely need more. But I think small kit houses probably are doable nowadays, especially with multi splits making you not have to worry as much about ductwork.
I’d probably at least get an electrician to go through and approve my handiwork though, that’s the one thing I wouldn’t want to take chances on. Plumbing I’d be more confident about.
Just wanna say kit houses aren't new. Sears and Roebuck offered them for the Victorians and there was another wave after WW2. "Mobile home" parks are basically another branch of that idea. It's a...
Just wanna say kit houses aren't new. Sears and Roebuck offered them for the Victorians and there was another wave after WW2. "Mobile home" parks are basically another branch of that idea.
It's a good idea, but there's external reasons that it hasn't become the standard.
The main reason is just that basically all houses are kit houses now, just in smaller batches. There’s more efficiencies of scale when an architect designs 5 floor plans and then a developer...
The main reason is just that basically all houses are kit houses now, just in smaller batches. There’s more efficiencies of scale when an architect designs 5 floor plans and then a developer builds 50 homes with those plans across a tract so people building it themselves don’t really get much in the way of financial benefit. In places where that model doesn’t work, like already densely built urban environments, it’s rare to be building a house on green fields, you’re more often gutting an existing structure.
There’s also some permitting issues and general safety/quality concerns with plumbing, electrical, and HVAC that make it more of a pain than it used to be. But the technologies to do a lot of those have improved now to where they’re less complex to set up and maintain. Mini-splits and heat pumps rather than central HVAC for heating and cooling is one example. Instead of a bunch of duct work you just have to drill a few holes onto the exterior walls and run some pipes through.
I saw a video of a house 3d printer that uses cement for the walls and prints the whole house in a couple days. House building robots might be closer than you think
I saw a video of a house 3d printer that uses cement for the walls and prints the whole house in a couple days. House building robots might be closer than you think
If you've got a link, I'd be happy to watch. But in absence of it, I feel like Akir's reply sums it up best...there's a lot more to building a house than laying out some concrete. And I'd also...
If you've got a link, I'd be happy to watch. But in absence of it, I feel like Akir's reply sums it up best...there's a lot more to building a house than laying out some concrete.
And I'd also like to point out: Building a house is the easy part. Maintaining and repairing it for the next 100 years, especially while somebody is living in it, is the hard part.
This is the one I watched before https://youtu.be/vL2KoMNzGTo It's maybe not the best method of building a house at the moment, but I was referring to the fact that this technology already exists...
It's maybe not the best method of building a house at the moment, but I was referring to the fact that this technology already exists and is going to improve, potentially to the point of being the best way to build a house.
And that is true maintenance is going to be a major factor as well
I’m struggling to imagine a context for affordable housing where this is a cheaper or more desirable way to put up a wall than just using Sheetrock. Like you can get more specific shapes and stuff...
I’m struggling to imagine a context for affordable housing where this is a cheaper or more desirable way to put up a wall than just using Sheetrock. Like you can get more specific shapes and stuff so it might be better for custom jobs, but for mass market housing that’s not really the use you’re going for. And with drywall it’s easier to cut into it and patch it if you need to retrofit or to take it down if you need to demo. Maybe for multi-family buildings, but all the examples in the video were single-family homes.
If it can print mass custom designs in just a couple days that seems much easier than trying to do the same thing with conventional methods. It would allow unique layouts as well, more options...
If it can print mass custom designs in just a couple days that seems much easier than trying to do the same thing with conventional methods. It would allow unique layouts as well, more options overall than just cookie cutter floor plans. Since they would take the same amount of time roughly for any design
I think it might be better to read the two articles that this blog post links to separately. But Sam Altman seems skippable. I wouldn't take his word on anything. He's "talking his own book." The...
I think it might be better to read the two articles that this blog post links to separately. But Sam Altman seems skippable. I wouldn't take his word on anything. He's "talking his own book."
The other article is Careerism is ruining college and I won't comment on it because I'm out of touch with what's going on in colleges.
The resentment towards college grads in this article is so thick it’s seeping through my monitor. For all the talk about anti-elitism throughout the writing the predominant sense I’m getting is...
The resentment towards college grads in this article is so thick it’s seeping through my monitor. For all the talk about anti-elitism throughout the writing the predominant sense I’m getting is “How dare they think they’re better than me.” For whatever else it’s doing, it’s a good way to understand the psychology of guys like J.D. Vance I think.
This also isn’t anything new. Finance and consulting were like this when I was in college and the bottom fell out of those after the financial crash. A lot of those same people went into Tech because tech ate those industries. That is also currently bottoming out, and not because of AI but because the business models just become too poorly managed and too demanding. There’s a lot of smart, innovative people out there and people with money are often dumb, so when one industry collapses the smart people will figure out how to collect the dumb money and do the next thing.
I'd like to highlight this point, because I think it is emblematic of the way that the educated (and by extension, the liberal Democrats) often handwave away the un-educated: There is definitely a...
I'd like to highlight this point, because I think it is emblematic of the way that the educated (and by extension, the liberal Democrats) often handwave away the un-educated:
Those of us who strive outside the elitist system are thrown away before we even get in the room. Innovation subsumes to desperate monopoly. Picking the right friends matters.
They have food. shelter, belonging, and are at the beginning of a lifetime of opportunity and yet are acting like they will all be homeless unless admitted into the right clubs.
There is definitely a significant portion of the population that sees themselves as "above" doing warehouse or factory work because they went to college, that they went to college explicitly to avoid ever having to do labor. That because society failed to provide them with jobs that their degree trained them for that they're suffering as bad as someone who is physically laboring and barely able to make ends meet.
It's that kind of thing where Democrats tend to lean too hard into "the answer to poverty is education," which sends low-key vibes to the non-college folks that they're the reason that they're "failing" in life, not that nobody is willing to stand up for the rights to pay people proper wages.
I am just not feeling this article. It pits two opposing viewpoints against each other as the only possible truths for a future. With the author in the middle as the reasonable person who didn't...
I am just not feeling this article. It pits two opposing viewpoints against each other as the only possible truths for a future. With the author in the middle as the reasonable person who didn't fall for the “get a degree”, “trap” but with lots of experience to give this all the proper context.
There is just too much nuance missing for me to actually find much in this article. Binary truths often make the world look simple, but it is far from simple.
It just feels like one of those articles that will only serve to further polarize on things that are already polarized. Like the debate about getting a degree or not. As if the only options are for everyone to get a degree or for nobody to get a degree.
I mean it might also be a reflection of a broken US education system. I am not familiar enough with it to comment on that aspect. I do know that here in the Netherlands there is much less of a debate like that. If anything the concern is that higher education is becoming less available. There are multiple reasons I can think of as to why, but they all boil down to speculation about differences in the education system.
Anyway, as far as this article goes. It is an opinion piece, I get that. But I don't think an opinion is worth all that much if it lacks any kind of nuance. The world simply isn't that simple. And extreme hyperboles only serve to trigger emotions without actually contributing much towards a solution of understanding.
One bit of nuance that I haven't seen anybody else explore, myself included, is this particular one: In essence: All of this pushing and shoving is feeding the false narrative of the meritocracy,...
One bit of nuance that I haven't seen anybody else explore, myself included, is this particular one:
Each of them is forced into faking it, striving, proving their value or die judged as unworthy. Service never enters the equation (unless it pads the resume). Any of these kids who get into Wharton are going to feel absolutely entitled to all the cake. They worked so hard beating the rest of us at going to college they'll know, be absolutely certain, they deserve it.
In essence: All of this pushing and shoving is feeding the false narrative of the meritocracy, that people get ahead because they're genuinely better than everybody else....not that the number one factor is that they had a head start and the number two factor is that they got lucky.
The false narrative of meritocracy is one of the most toxic parts of American culture. It's why poor people on food stamps will happily defend letting billionaires pay less on their tax bill.
Big edit:
I would say that the reason there is little to no nuance is because America is broken. While there is often room for nuance, there is no denying that the American higher-education system is utterly broken, as well as (glance) pretty much every other aspect of building a functional and healthy society which facilitates that exploration. Education, healthcare, wages, public safety...it's all an utter shitshow for a staggeringly large portion of the population. And the political systems we have in place to affect change have strangled all semblance of nuance. They have been replaced with bigotry on one side and placating bigotry on the other, but almost always both in service of the almighty dollar. However I will handily admit Biden's administration has been doing leaps and bounds better even than Obama's.
We have a presidential race between a fairly average Democrat, and a bigot liar spewing anti-intellectual anti-immigrant rhetoric. And the race is neck and neck. America is headed for civil war, one that will almost certainly have concentration camps for brown people.
I think that is a very important aspect of the issue of "what to do in the US after highschool". I don't know what options are available in the Netherlands, but presumably they are somewhat...
Like the debate about getting a degree or not. As if the only options are for everyone to get a degree or for nobody to get a degree. I mean it might also be a reflection of a broken US education system. [... H]ere in the Netherlands there is much less of a debate like that.
I think that is a very important aspect of the issue of "what to do in the US after highschool". I don't know what options are available in the Netherlands, but presumably they are somewhat comparable to what we have here in Germany. There are so many different types of vocational schools/courses, ranging from the traditional trades (i.e. electricians like yours truly, masons, plumbers, blacksmith, farriers, generally everything where you do practical things with your hands), to business administrative things (professional clerks, administrators, accountants, etc.), all the way to various creative jobs like designers.
All of those don't require you to university or college, but instead have dedicated vocational schools, all culminating in their own standardized and nationwide recognised "diploma" (not 100% sure if that's the correct word).
There are also a wide variety of technical vocations that work the same way.
All of this is to say, there are so many ways that one can have a successful and stable career here in Germany that don't require a university degree that it's honestly kinda staggering. Especially considering how in the higher levels of those paths there are courses that sort of form hybrids between fields or incorporate specialized knowledge from many different fields, all of which have nationwide recognition and regulated final exams.
I mean, I think a big difference between the US and Germany in this respect is cost -- trade school may be cheaper than university in the US, but only because US universities are absurdly...
I mean, I think a big difference between the US and Germany in this respect is cost -- trade school may be cheaper than university in the US, but only because US universities are absurdly expensive. It's also not just about having a system for getting students into training for these career paths, but also the presence or lack of financial support available for students and apprentices while they're learning. For context, for my undergraduate degree I had scholarships and grants that supplied me with $1000 more than tuition per year, and I still graduated with ~$30K in debt that is currently collecting interest (and which I only avoid repaying due to having moved abroad). I don't know as much about learning a trade (it would not have suited me regardless) but even if the actual training itself were free, the US has no system to allow you to get money for basic necessities like food and shelter while you're training if you're not earning enough through work while doing so, so even what exists is often not affordable for someone young without any experience. The Bafög isn't perfect either but holy shit is it better than anything we have in the US.
The way I see it, by the time most white collar workers are automated away we've damn near reached AGI. And with AGI we can solve pretty much any problem purely as a function of energy supply. AGI...
The way I see it, by the time most white collar workers are automated away we've damn near reached AGI. And with AGI we can solve pretty much any problem purely as a function of energy supply. AGI will design fusion reactors, find impossible cures for the CO2 in our atmosphere, boost our food supply, and catapult robotics into an age where no manual labor is required. This could go poorly, but I am optimistic that we'll make it through.
I think that's directionally accurate, but jumping ahead by decades. It reminds me of the dawn of the Internet - we knew it would be big, but dialup Internet was pretty limited. Boosters...
I think that's directionally accurate, but jumping ahead by decades. It reminds me of the dawn of the Internet - we knew it would be big, but dialup Internet was pretty limited. Boosters underestimated how long it would take before the infrastructure was upgraded enough for Internet shopping to take off, let alone online movies and video chat. The effect on productivity statistics was modest - for while, economists were puzzled by why it wasn't happening.
Also, scientific research and engineering usually require trying stuff in the real world to get more information about what works. This loop governs the rate and cost of learning. In many fields, it will continue to be slow and expensive.
You can look at the iteration rate to see how fast technologies develop. Building a new fusion reactor is slow, so the learning rate is slow. Improvements to things like computer chips, solar panels, and batteries can be faster. For driverless cars, the learning rate seems pretty good, but it's still taking a long time.
It's easy to imagine that some new technical advance magically fixes all the other bottlenecks when we aren't thinking in enough detail about what the other bottlenecks actually are. As non-experts, we often don't even know what they are.
Why though? This is quite literally an opinion piece on a personal blog, not a scientific paper. I'd rather have colorful language with imagery than the monotone of a lecture.
Why though? This is quite literally an opinion piece on a personal blog, not a scientific paper.
I'd rather have colorful language with imagery than the monotone of a lecture.
I think it's a pretty fair take on what's been happening for my generation (elder Millienial/honorary X) and younger.
The vast majority of us have been ushered into a college pipeline exactly as described, and basically been told we're failures if we don't end up in a high-skill or high-prestige career like doctors, lawyers, or business executives. And as it turns out, there's a bit of a finite cap on available high-prestige careers, and high-skill careers are hard, and also suffering from immense burnout which is not helping.
Anyway, as someone whose job relies on sustained college admissions, kids: Don't go to college. At least, don't go to college fresh out of high school. Maybe go for an associate's degree to broaden your horizons a bit. Otherwise, move to the opposite of what culture you were raised in (urban/rural) and learn a proper trade to keep under your belt: Plumbing, electrical, carpentry, masonry....something like that. It'll broaden your horizons and give you a fairly reliable skillset forever, because home construction robots are likely a century away. After you've learned a trade, that's when to consider going back to school to broaden your academic horizons.
The reason to do this in your 20's is because it's a lot easier to work your way up the income ladder, rather than accidentally land up there then having to cut back your lifestyle (or get stuck there with kids) as you realize you can't afford it once you get burned out.
The problem with k-12 education in the US isn’t that kids who want to learn aren’t learning, its that theres an increasing amount of kids who aren’t being raised by anyone except a smart phone who don’t want to learn and are generally disruptive to the ones who do want to learn.
6am - 2pm in a classroom doesn’t even work for some of the kids who are actually being raised by humans but cant function in a brightly lit classroom with 32 other kids, some of which are purposely disruptive.
The issue is that somewhere along the line “educating children” became “ensuring good test scores” because theres no way to easily measure other outcomes and so thats what schools focus on because thats where their funding is decided.
We have people going to college for sociology who could visit the schools personally and determine quality that way, but instead they’re working the night shift stocking groceries.
We have entire small towns of administrative persons who could visit the school personally and determine the quality that way, but instead they’re too busy doing ????? Getting funding I guess.
Because as a society we want the computers to do the work for us so we simplify every problem into something a computer can handle and then we’re all surprised when it ends up like this.
Its as if the computers took over the moment they were invented and they’ve been stringing us along ever since.
An apt description of K-12. The only people who are given any sort of consequences or responsibility for how the students do are the teachers. We go out of our way to makes sure that the students and parents don't have any responsibility for the success or behavior of the student, and admin are beholden to the numbers.
Public education is one of the last surviving public institutions, and as such it has become the lever that gets pulled in every single situation. But schools cannot fix societal/structural problems, and pretending that they can is, generously, burying your head in the sand.
I'd add public libraries to that shortlist, where librarians have been forced into a role of general social support for any adult that walks through the door.
We need that as a society! But having it grow from the roots of libraries is not necessarily leaning into their core abilities?
I’m not convinced the public school system ever really worked. The kids who do fine would have done fine in any environment and the kids who really need extra support are now in a system that almost seems designed to deny them that support.
This is probably my own bias but I just cant see how cramming all the kids in a whole town into a single building and force feeding them written material is actually the best environment for any human to learn in.
Smaller class sizes, smaller buildings, more teachers, more variety in the available curriculums. Everyone knows this is what we need and no one can do anything.
There's 3d printed houses. I don't think robots building houses is going to happen tomorrow, but looking more than 20 years into the future and predicting stuff is tough.
The term "3D printed" in housing is very much a marketing term. There is a machine that lays down concrete in a manner that looks like FDM printing, but anyone who has built a house before knows that there is much more to building a house than putting up walls - a building without a roof offers no shelter, and that's much more difficult than putting up walls. Beyond that, those concrete walls are not ideal for interior walls because they will block radio signals, so your wifi will not work. They also produce a rather unpleasant-looking layer effect so they aren't great for appearances either, and they still need a bunch of people to operate, supervise, and otherwise assist the machine. This is coming from someone who doesn't know much about construction; there are likely many more disadvantages you could hear about from someone who is more familliar with homebuilding.
Yes, my point is that no one is safe from automation
On the flip side, human labor is surprisingly cheap. The cost to move to robotics is probably significantly higher than most people would assume.
While predicting stuff is hard, especially 20 years out, there are some pretty safe bets that even things out:
Yes, it's a hard problem but every industry is throwing money at it.
"Factory built homes" are already a thing.
https://time.com/6237782/modular-homes-affordability/
I recommend reading Construction Physics for a more realistic idea of what new technology can do for building houses. At least in the US, the industry changes slowly. There are promising ideas and company that build houses using them, but these companies often fail, or they find a niche that they’re successful at, but don’t change the industry. Meanwhile all the other developers keep doing it the same way, because they rely on contractors and that’s what contractors know how to do.
Factory-built homes are one such niche. This is an old idea. The mobile home industry was big before it collapsed in 1974. More about that here.
Maybe it will revive? Here is an article about why it’s difficult:
Maybe they’ll succeed, but even in the best case it will take many years to change the industry. And what tends to happen is that it can be done, but it turns out not to be cheaper, so it it’s only used when it’s worth the expense. So new homes get better in some way but not cheaper. Success for one company might not look like industry-wide change.
Edit: the Times article is good; it talks about the challenges too.
Costco sells ADU kits including plumbing and electrical, and it’s about $72k for shipping + installation on the largest of them.
If we can crack how to do this for multi-story dwellings I think we’d be in good shape.
I get "not authorized" when visiting that page. Based on the URL, I think this might be the company that makes them.
Ah looks like the actual page is only available if you’re logged in with a CostCo account. But yeah that link is right, though the CostCo page only has the Signature and Portland series. I didn’t realize they made other, even bigger, ones.
That page is showing, for me to get a 1000sqft model delivered and installed, looking about $380k without a plot of land to put it on.
While that's still a fair bit cheaper than typical new-build prices....it also is still fairly expensive per sqft, especially relative to an older home. Turns out laying a foundation to put the thing on still costs a tremendous amount of money.
I think those prices include installation. If you build it yourself I think it ends up costing 1/2 to 1/3 of that.
Also, and this is important: I don't trust the overwhelming majority of the population to build IKEA furniture without somebody experienced looking over their shoulder, let alone a house that needs to stand up to hurricane-force winds.
Maybe we’d all be better off if able-bodied people who couldn’t assemble IKEA furniture didn’t survive the hurricane.
And people call me heartless ;)
You're not wrong though. Problem being that people who would better be served with a pro assembling the house are likely also the least likely to be able to afford them doing so.
Also that house's loose wall will end up going through my wall. The wobbly IKEA chair much less likely to do so.
That sounds about right since labor is a huge part of the cost. Doing it yourself will save a lot. But it's easier to do for a shed or an ADU than a full-sized house, let alone an apartment building.
It was probably also easier in the old days when Sears would ship you everything needed to build a house, by rail.
My father was on the tail end of that; he built a lot of the house I grew up in, also hiring neighbors as contractors and specialists for things like brick laying and plaster. We moved into a partially-finished house and for us it was fun.
Yeah for an apartment you’d definitely need more. But I think small kit houses probably are doable nowadays, especially with multi splits making you not have to worry as much about ductwork.
I’d probably at least get an electrician to go through and approve my handiwork though, that’s the one thing I wouldn’t want to take chances on. Plumbing I’d be more confident about.
Just wanna say kit houses aren't new. Sears and Roebuck offered them for the Victorians and there was another wave after WW2. "Mobile home" parks are basically another branch of that idea.
It's a good idea, but there's external reasons that it hasn't become the standard.
The main reason is just that basically all houses are kit houses now, just in smaller batches. There’s more efficiencies of scale when an architect designs 5 floor plans and then a developer builds 50 homes with those plans across a tract so people building it themselves don’t really get much in the way of financial benefit. In places where that model doesn’t work, like already densely built urban environments, it’s rare to be building a house on green fields, you’re more often gutting an existing structure.
There’s also some permitting issues and general safety/quality concerns with plumbing, electrical, and HVAC that make it more of a pain than it used to be. But the technologies to do a lot of those have improved now to where they’re less complex to set up and maintain. Mini-splits and heat pumps rather than central HVAC for heating and cooling is one example. Instead of a bunch of duct work you just have to drill a few holes onto the exterior walls and run some pipes through.
I saw a video of a house 3d printer that uses cement for the walls and prints the whole house in a couple days. House building robots might be closer than you think
If you've got a link, I'd be happy to watch. But in absence of it, I feel like Akir's reply sums it up best...there's a lot more to building a house than laying out some concrete.
And I'd also like to point out: Building a house is the easy part. Maintaining and repairing it for the next 100 years, especially while somebody is living in it, is the hard part.
This is the one I watched before
https://youtu.be/vL2KoMNzGTo
It's maybe not the best method of building a house at the moment, but I was referring to the fact that this technology already exists and is going to improve, potentially to the point of being the best way to build a house.
And that is true maintenance is going to be a major factor as well
I’m struggling to imagine a context for affordable housing where this is a cheaper or more desirable way to put up a wall than just using Sheetrock. Like you can get more specific shapes and stuff so it might be better for custom jobs, but for mass market housing that’s not really the use you’re going for. And with drywall it’s easier to cut into it and patch it if you need to retrofit or to take it down if you need to demo. Maybe for multi-family buildings, but all the examples in the video were single-family homes.
If it can print mass custom designs in just a couple days that seems much easier than trying to do the same thing with conventional methods. It would allow unique layouts as well, more options overall than just cookie cutter floor plans. Since they would take the same amount of time roughly for any design
I think it might be better to read the two articles that this blog post links to separately. But Sam Altman seems skippable. I wouldn't take his word on anything. He's "talking his own book."
The other article is Careerism is ruining college and I won't comment on it because I'm out of touch with what's going on in colleges.
The resentment towards college grads in this article is so thick it’s seeping through my monitor. For all the talk about anti-elitism throughout the writing the predominant sense I’m getting is “How dare they think they’re better than me.” For whatever else it’s doing, it’s a good way to understand the psychology of guys like J.D. Vance I think.
This also isn’t anything new. Finance and consulting were like this when I was in college and the bottom fell out of those after the financial crash. A lot of those same people went into Tech because tech ate those industries. That is also currently bottoming out, and not because of AI but because the business models just become too poorly managed and too demanding. There’s a lot of smart, innovative people out there and people with money are often dumb, so when one industry collapses the smart people will figure out how to collect the dumb money and do the next thing.
I'd like to highlight this point, because I think it is emblematic of the way that the educated (and by extension, the liberal Democrats) often handwave away the un-educated:
There is definitely a significant portion of the population that sees themselves as "above" doing warehouse or factory work because they went to college, that they went to college explicitly to avoid ever having to do labor. That because society failed to provide them with jobs that their degree trained them for that they're suffering as bad as someone who is physically laboring and barely able to make ends meet.
It's that kind of thing where Democrats tend to lean too hard into "the answer to poverty is education," which sends low-key vibes to the non-college folks that they're the reason that they're "failing" in life, not that nobody is willing to stand up for the rights to pay people proper wages.
I am just not feeling this article. It pits two opposing viewpoints against each other as the only possible truths for a future. With the author in the middle as the reasonable person who didn't fall for the “get a degree”, “trap” but with lots of experience to give this all the proper context.
There is just too much nuance missing for me to actually find much in this article. Binary truths often make the world look simple, but it is far from simple.
It just feels like one of those articles that will only serve to further polarize on things that are already polarized. Like the debate about getting a degree or not. As if the only options are for everyone to get a degree or for nobody to get a degree.
I mean it might also be a reflection of a broken US education system. I am not familiar enough with it to comment on that aspect. I do know that here in the Netherlands there is much less of a debate like that. If anything the concern is that higher education is becoming less available. There are multiple reasons I can think of as to why, but they all boil down to speculation about differences in the education system.
Anyway, as far as this article goes. It is an opinion piece, I get that. But I don't think an opinion is worth all that much if it lacks any kind of nuance. The world simply isn't that simple. And extreme hyperboles only serve to trigger emotions without actually contributing much towards a solution of understanding.
So yeah...
One bit of nuance that I haven't seen anybody else explore, myself included, is this particular one:
In essence: All of this pushing and shoving is feeding the false narrative of the meritocracy, that people get ahead because they're genuinely better than everybody else....not that the number one factor is that they had a head start and the number two factor is that they got lucky.
The false narrative of meritocracy is one of the most toxic parts of American culture. It's why poor people on food stamps will happily defend letting billionaires pay less on their tax bill.
Big edit:
I would say that the reason there is little to no nuance is because America is broken. While there is often room for nuance, there is no denying that the American higher-education system is utterly broken, as well as (glance) pretty much every other aspect of building a functional and healthy society which facilitates that exploration. Education, healthcare, wages, public safety...it's all an utter shitshow for a staggeringly large portion of the population. And the political systems we have in place to affect change have strangled all semblance of nuance. They have been replaced with bigotry on one side and placating bigotry on the other, but almost always both in service of the almighty dollar. However I will handily admit Biden's administration has been doing leaps and bounds better even than Obama's.
We have a presidential race between a fairly average Democrat, and a bigot liar spewing anti-intellectual anti-immigrant rhetoric. And the race is neck and neck. America is headed for civil war, one that will almost certainly have concentration camps for brown people.
I think that is a very important aspect of the issue of "what to do in the US after highschool". I don't know what options are available in the Netherlands, but presumably they are somewhat comparable to what we have here in Germany. There are so many different types of vocational schools/courses, ranging from the traditional trades (i.e. electricians like yours truly, masons, plumbers, blacksmith, farriers, generally everything where you do practical things with your hands), to business administrative things (professional clerks, administrators, accountants, etc.), all the way to various creative jobs like designers.
All of those don't require you to university or college, but instead have dedicated vocational schools, all culminating in their own standardized and nationwide recognised "diploma" (not 100% sure if that's the correct word).
There are also a wide variety of technical vocations that work the same way.
All of this is to say, there are so many ways that one can have a successful and stable career here in Germany that don't require a university degree that it's honestly kinda staggering. Especially considering how in the higher levels of those paths there are courses that sort of form hybrids between fields or incorporate specialized knowledge from many different fields, all of which have nationwide recognition and regulated final exams.
I mean, I think a big difference between the US and Germany in this respect is cost -- trade school may be cheaper than university in the US, but only because US universities are absurdly expensive. It's also not just about having a system for getting students into training for these career paths, but also the presence or lack of financial support available for students and apprentices while they're learning. For context, for my undergraduate degree I had scholarships and grants that supplied me with $1000 more than tuition per year, and I still graduated with ~$30K in debt that is currently collecting interest (and which I only avoid repaying due to having moved abroad). I don't know as much about learning a trade (it would not have suited me regardless) but even if the actual training itself were free, the US has no system to allow you to get money for basic necessities like food and shelter while you're training if you're not earning enough through work while doing so, so even what exists is often not affordable for someone young without any experience. The Bafög isn't perfect either but holy shit is it better than anything we have in the US.
The way I see it, by the time most white collar workers are automated away we've damn near reached AGI. And with AGI we can solve pretty much any problem purely as a function of energy supply. AGI will design fusion reactors, find impossible cures for the CO2 in our atmosphere, boost our food supply, and catapult robotics into an age where no manual labor is required. This could go poorly, but I am optimistic that we'll make it through.
I think that's directionally accurate, but jumping ahead by decades. It reminds me of the dawn of the Internet - we knew it would be big, but dialup Internet was pretty limited. Boosters underestimated how long it would take before the infrastructure was upgraded enough for Internet shopping to take off, let alone online movies and video chat. The effect on productivity statistics was modest - for while, economists were puzzled by why it wasn't happening.
Also, scientific research and engineering usually require trying stuff in the real world to get more information about what works. This loop governs the rate and cost of learning. In many fields, it will continue to be slow and expensive.
You can look at the iteration rate to see how fast technologies develop. Building a new fusion reactor is slow, so the learning rate is slow. Improvements to things like computer chips, solar panels, and batteries can be faster. For driverless cars, the learning rate seems pretty good, but it's still taking a long time.
It's easy to imagine that some new technical advance magically fixes all the other bottlenecks when we aren't thinking in enough detail about what the other bottlenecks actually are. As non-experts, we often don't even know what they are.
Why though? This is quite literally an opinion piece on a personal blog, not a scientific paper.
I'd rather have colorful language with imagery than the monotone of a lecture.
Not the same person, but I do share the sentiment and expanded on it in this comment