Because then everyone dies when the computer fails. Autopilots regularly fail and expect the pilot to take over

I think this depends on your definition of "fail". As far as I know true computer failures where the machine just goes crazy and tries to crash the plane are non-existent. What happens more regularly is the autopilot sees that something weird is happening and chooses to disengage itself - presumably an autopilot program could be written that never disengages and always does the best it can to fly the plane, unless deliberately disengaged.

This is particularly problematic when sensors fail, as they did in AF447, and the computer doesn't know what's going on any more.

No, this is irrelevant. If the planes sensors completely fail then the pilot doesn't know what's going on either, and the plane is probably doomed no matter what. In normal operation these planes are flying in a very small speed corridor between disintegration and stalling. If you don't know how fast your going a stall or overspeed is pretty much inevitable, and if you don't know how high you are even basic visibility problems can cause a crash into the surface. Neither human nor computer can succeed in such a situation.

Finland is in the process of revamping their education system. They are tired of being #1 in the world, and everyone comparing themselves to them, so they have decided to fuck it up.

Wrong. It also says:

"The comparative data on skills attainment and parental education highlight another salient point:
The scores of U.S. millennials do not compare favorably with those of their international peers who
have parents with similar levels of educational attainment. In fact, across all three levels of parental
educational attainment, there is no country where millennials score lower than those in the United
States.48 Additionally, while a relatively large percentage of our millennials (and the parents of millennials)
have pursued post-secondary education when compared to other countries, on average,
the scores for this more advantaged group are still disappointingly low. "

I will *HAPPILY* work on an solar power project!

As long as it get launched into space, where the sunlight is 24/7. Otherwise, come up with a storage system for the 75% of the time ground-based solar won't work as a sole source, or piss off.

Congratulations!

You have just made the "A college degree is not a guarantee of competence, it is a union card substitute". argument. If you don't value your degree more than that, it says a lot about how much effort you put into actually learning from your courses, and it begs the question of why I should value your degree more than that, as well.

And as an employer, my per-employee loading costs go up by 20%.

Tell you what: Go to a single payer health care system, roll unemployment, disability, and retirement into a Basic Guaranteed Income program, and define away poverty because with a BGI, it doesn't exist, and I'll happily split up jobs into as many pieces as you want, down to 20 hours/week/worker, because it won't cost me extra to hire more people, as long as the same number of hours get worked.

Until then, thank your government unfunded mandates and offshoring for current unemployment levels (26%+, according to World Bank numbers, since DOL unemployment statistics only count people receiving unemployment insurance, and vastly underestimate the number of unemployed).

If you want to fix the offshoring problem, I can help with that, too, but you really need to abandon the TPP, modify NAFTA to eliminate the trans-shipment loophole, and eliminate MFN status for China (for starters; there's other things that will need to happen on top of that, but it's the minimum foundational bedrock necessary to move forward).

The bullying comment was specifically in reference to the press bullying tech over something tech is already more cognizant of than any other industrial segment.

In terms of personal bullying, I think a lot of people who enter tech were bullied when they were younger, which has driven them towards technical pursuits, where they are less likely to have to associate with the general population. Perhaps, by implication, more young women should be bullies to address the STEM imbalance? I would not suggest that we should do that, even if it would be successful, since the tradeoffs are simply not worth it.

I maintain, however, social isolation leads to more STEM careers than it does to retail sales positions.

The whole "brogrammer" myth, which I think arose from the movie "The Social Network" and the Winklevii in particular, is pretty much a myth. The only fitness nerds I know in tech these days are fitness nerds because of reaction, not because that's the way they've been their entire life. In fact, most of them do it because they are using it as a means of life extension.

Then why aren't they? The ability to operate at 66% capacity with one person out sick, instead of at 50% capacity? Also, assuming you temporarily 1.5X the hours of the remaining two workers, you operate at 100% capacity, instead of 50% capacity? The answer is that the math does not work out like that; the per employee costs overwhelm any potential benefit to the employer.

People keep saying this, but if you divide the number of employees into the salary of the CEO of McDonals, it comes out to ~$8.65 *PER YEAR* per employee. In most places, where prevailing McDonalds wage is higher than that, they can pick up more money by picking up an our of work.

In terms of "slightly more efficient", they can do that without hiring more people, since the efficiency must come from business process practices anyway.

I find it interesting we are bashing tech (AGAIN).

If you look at the Fortune 500, there are 5.2% women CEOs.
If you look at the Fortune 500 tech companies, there are 8% women CEOs.
If you look at the Fortune 500 non-tech companies, there are 2.8% women CEOs.

(1) Tell me again how this is a tech problem, and not a systemic problem.
(2) Tell me again that tech is not on the right trajectory, compared to all other businesses.
(3) Tell me again how tech is not more progressive than every other business sector.

By all means, lets go back to bashing tech, the only place where this social issue is being redressed in any meaningful fashion. I'm sure there will be absolutely no backlash from beating them up over something they are actually doing something about, while giving everyone else who is doing *NOTHING* about the issue is given a pass.

It's not like tech is full of people who are familiar with how bullying works... the actual bullies *ALWAYS* get a pass.

Actually... No.

You are incorrectly assuming that the per-employee cost for hourly employees to the business for 3 x 30 hr/wk is the same as for 2 x 45 hr/wk. It's not. There is cost loading to the business in the form of unfunded government mandates, such as employer provided medical insurance, workers comp, social security, and so on.

As a specific example, there's a social security tax cap, and employers must match employee contributions. What this effectively means is that if I have 2 employees, my business is out of pocket (2 x CAP) in matching funds, and the rest of my income is mine, whereas if I have 3 employees, I am out of pocket (3 x CAP). This is generally true of all capped max-out-of-pocket employer matching.

Similar capped match values include 401K matching contributions, Medicare.

Other per-employee costs include state unemployment tax, federal unemployment tax, workers compensation insurance, paid holidays, vacations, and sick days, profit sharing plans, direct pension contribution, post-retirement health insurance contributions.

This ignores non-shared resources, like office space for individual employees simultaneously at the business, business equipment costs per employee, furniture, electricity for their computers, and so on.

So it costs a hell of a lot more for a business to employ 3 people than it does for them to employ 2 people.

Your math does not work.

They're not paid a smaller fraction of the proceeds.

(1) The proceeds are "after taxes, medical, and other costs", all of which are higher

(2) A substantial amount of the productivity increase money has gone into subsidizing cost reduction to the eventual consumer. Think "everyday low prices at Walmart"

Thank you for being more productive, comrade; lettuce is now cheaper, and even though you personally don't eat lettuce, know that your efforts are appreciated by those who do.

And since air disasters necessarily depend on extremely low-probability events, this is not an argument for the proposition "therefore this was most likely not the cause".

We know that whatever happened it had an outrageously low probability. This makes speculation in advance of data useless, because there are an almost unlimited number of highly improbable things that could have happened, and anyone who thinks they can imagine their way to the correct one is innumerate: http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=...

As in "The walls will wobble, but they won't fall down"?