I once convinced my landlady I wasn't going to try and sacrifice her and her son in an effort to summon Satan after she found out I played D&D.

OK, she wasn't terrified or anything, but she was seriously concerned for a few minutes until I managed to explain the game to her.

Unlikely in the long run. In virtually every field that once used human labor, once a technology arrived that replicated the human labor it ended up being both far more powerful and efficient. There comes a point where you're just pointlessly using human labor.

The slave labor situation in the antebellum south demonstrated both sides of that to a degree. The cotton gin was an amazing labor multiplier for processing cotton providing a labor factor of about 50X (1 person doing the work that 50 used to do). On the other hand, that created a huge demand for the other parts of the process, i.e. growing and picking the cotton in the first place. That had not been automated, so suddenly the demand for human labor exploded and that was satisfied with slave labor. So the device that made one task far easier resulted ultimately in more human labor. It took about 150 more years for an automated cotton picker to be invented. When it was though, it was hundreds of times faster than a human.

Of course, the processes used with slave labor were still pointlessly labor intensive. Simple innovations could have provided a multiplier for human labor. Things like not having the worker carry a heavy load of cotton in a bag around their neck the whole time. Methods to keep the worker closer to ground level where they could pick the cotton without needing to bend down or kneel, stand, bend down, and repeat over and over. There would have bean lots of ways to reduce the workload and treat the people doing the work more humanely in the process.The problem was that the cruelty was the point and pointlessly using human labor was practically a religion.

Anyway, the whole process for cotton is much less labor intensive now. Agriculture uses vastly less labor than it used to and the various tasks that still take human labor are being picked off one by one. All the picking that now often requires migrant labor will eventually be done by machines, it's just a matter of time. The machines will cost a lot more than a human worker up front, but will do the work of hundreds of human workers. Once the technology is good enough, it just won't be a contest.

Remember, John Henry "beat" the machine, but not really because he died in the end (also, he loses and dies in some versions). That story hits a lot differently today than I think it did back then. All I can think is that John Henry died to preserve a way of life where, no matter how much of a mythic hero he was, he would have been a broken, arthritic old man in his mid forties or sooner. Also the modern machines that replaced both him and the machine he competed against are many, many times faster than both of them put together.

I am probably rambling too much about this, but the basic point is that human physical labor pretty much never beats a specialized machine on performance and, eventually, not on cost.

I think you missed my point. I wasn't saying that robots can't or should not have articulated limbs for locomotion. What I was pointing out is that there's no reason a robot can't have the best of both worlds. After all, humans ride bicycles or use roller skates. Heck, I am betting that virtually all, if not all, of the athletes in a typical marathon are wearing shoes. We can do a lot with our feet and our hands, etc. but we're tool users and we use tools and/or vehicles and machines because they're better at various tasks than just using our hands. So the point is that a bipedal robot is fine, but there's no need for an obsession with robots that strictly adhere to a human model. Hence, wheeled feet, because running a half-marathon is fine as a demonstration, but if you just want your robot to go 13 miles for practical purposes, wheels are a lot faster and a lot more efficient. So you can build it with both integrated, or you can have swappable parts, etc.

I also did not just say wheels. I pointed out snow shoes, which certainly go places where wheels have a great deal of difficulty, but so do regular feet.

I made no such claim. They're perfectly viable. I was simply pointing out that, in the race to create machines that do things the way that humans do them, we have to remember that humans very frequently build devices so that humans can use the devices to do things in ways that humans can't do them.

The average human household is full of such devices. How does a human peel a potato or other vegetable? Nibbling with their teeth (which kind of defeats the purpose), scraping with their fingernails maybe. Or, if they use a tool like a potato peeler. Maybe a grater. Maybe a high pressure steam oven that heats potatoes rapidly, superheating the water under their skin so that when the pressure is suddenly released, the superheated water boils instantly and blows the skins off.

Ultimately, humans have spent thousands of years developing a repertoire of tools and machinery specifically to do things that the human body can't do on its own, or at least doing things better than the human form could. It would be pretty ironic if our ultimate act of invention was a machine that simply imitated what the human body does, but maybe a bit stronger or faster. Naturally, an advanced enough humanoid robot could also use all the tools a human can use and that's fine. But I can't help thinking about all the things that are only designed the way they are to accommodate human anatomy. If we're just having machines do the work, do we actually need things that are designed for humans so that our human form robots can use them.

Here's a classic from lots of science fiction. The robot chauffeur. Why? I mean, the cachet, sure. A chauffeur is a symbol of opulence, etc. In practical terms though, it's just wasting a seat in a car that a passenger could use. Have the car do the driving and have the robot fold itself up in the trunk or on a rack on the back of the car or something. There's a lot of wasted space in most cars on top of the dashboard between the window and the front of the dash. I mean, sure human drivers need that for the whole "seeing with the eyes in their head" thing. When you don't need that, you could put the robot storage rack there.

Should the humanoid vacuum be doing the vacuuming? Or should the vacuum just do it? Something I can't help thinking about is that even quite a lot of people who could afford it don't have human servants any more like rich people would in the old days. One of the reasons for that is all the modernization that has reduced the amount of human labor it takes to run a house. Most people don't need to chop firewood and maintain the fire, for example. Or go around lighting and dousing candles. I will also note that people who have rugs don't seem to take them out and beat them as much. Part of that is because of vacuum cleaners of course. Honestly though, most people's rugs are probably dirtier than people who had a housekeeper to beat the rugs back in the day. A lot of modern house cleaners won't even do that of course, at least probably not as often. Maybe with the humanoid robot the rugs would be beaten once a week, just for something to do. In general though, here's just so much less labor that needs to be done by an extra humanoid in a household.

So, I do actually think a lot of people might well buy these. It's just not clear that it would be any more popular than a completely non-humanoid, non-animal-like robot or a collection of them that performs the same tasks that the humanoid robot could.

Honestly, from what you're saying, what I'm getting is "gentrified neighborhoods". Similar to the geographic isolation one I mentioned. It's similar to the geographic isolation variant usually called "tourist trap". Basically, it's charging what the customer will bear because they are a captive market. In your case though, the captivity was more about price vs. convenience and a market full of people more willing to pay extra than deal with the inconvenience of saving money through arbitrage. Possibly also an element of local lifestyle elements For example, people living in apartments and condos where they don't have garages/sheds/basements where they can store a whole bunch of gas cans.

So, I get your point, but I still question the relevance to the original example. That was about coming gas prices. From what I can find in Oct 2022, peak average gas prices in San Francisco were $6.49 per gallon. Peak average national price at the time was $3.91. Currently average San Francisco price is $5.69 per gallon and national is $4.02. So, given those numbers, all else being equal, the prices where you were in Oct 2022 should be expected to be about $9 again. Meaning that gas prices there should definitely be already above the $6 per gallon from the original post.

With prices that high it's insane that people aren't all using EVs there. Even with the electricity at more than twice the national average, it's still less than half as expensive per mile. Although, once again, gentrified. Of course, at those prices, synthetic gasoline made with renewable energy would be cheap.

I suspect that he's neither the first nor the last who are genuinely quite eager to see more 'equity participation' in some of the big bot shops; given that they've burned through all the VC they can get and even the dumb money is starting to get nervous. Retail bagholders and state investment under the guise of benevolence would be just the thing.

What is much less clear is whether the same amount of interest will be present once current investors take enough of a haircut that the remainder is actually worth something, or one or more of them actually start turning a profit.

OK... But why would it need to? I mean, human joints do wear out. When critical ones do, the standard medical practice today is to replace them. You can do exactly the same thing with robots, but it's generally far easier. An efficient system would be modular. That is to say that the part that wears out might be some sort of spring, but the best thing to do would be to take out the entire joint, pop in a replacement and send the joint module back to a central factory to be reconditioned. That would allow for basically all repairs to be done in the field by other robots, even if there is not a robot specialized enough to repair the one damaged component in the field.

Not sure why not. It's pretty common now for delivery to use powered hand trucks that do the stair climbing themselves. Some of them have tracks, but some of them just use wheels. Take out the human operator and you have a wheeled indoor delivery robot that can climb stairs. Various types of stair climbing load carriers, including wheelchairs have been around for something like 70 years now.

Maybe feet would be better, but why not wheeled feet? They could go through woods just fine as well, not to mention probably beat marathon records by a factor of 4 to 5X times the speed. You could also build in fold out foot extenders to increase surface area (basically snow shoes) so they could also do better on soft surfaces like snow, sand, leaves, etc.

Basically, emulating humans is fine and there are niches where we work well, but specialized mechanical devices can do much better. Sometimes it seems like a lot of effort is made to emulate humans in performing tasks when there are better solutions. For example, folding laundry. There's no doubt that getting robots to fold laundry like humans well is an accomplishment. The thing is, when actual humans need to fold lots of things made of cloth fast and efficiently, they use folding boards because it turns out that the custom built mechanical system is faster and better.

You are right, I didn't know or didn't remember those.

Interesting. Their market cap is about the same as their total revenue over those 15 years.

OK. As I suspected. Extremely anecdotal example and not reflective of actual typical pricing at the time. Don't get me wrong, it's a data point, but it's clearly an aberration. Basically, while regional prices vary, they can't typically vary by that much in an open market. The opportunities for some form of arbitrage are too high. So that means some sort of special factor you're not mentioning about where you were buying the gas: extreme geographical isolation (island, mountain community), crisis event (local flooding, fire, earthquake leading to price gouging), externally imposed limitation on where you could buy gas (military base? corporate or government policy limiting where you could buy gas for a fleet vehicle), long highway that is extremely underserved with gas stations and you forgot to fill up beforehand and ran out near the single, extremely overpriced gas station, etc. Otherwise, the basic rules of competition would mean that no gas station could stay in business charging that much of a difference from regional average prices. All of their business would travel further afield to buy gas cheaply and fill up a bunch of ten gallon gas cans while there except for a small few who would buy the gas at that price, despite other options.

In other words, you might have paid that much for gas,but either you were forced into it by unusual circumstance, or you just chose to pay that much despite other options. Either way, it's not a very good example for the discussion at hand.

Is a new functional economic system that rewards useful work without the runaway conditions that lead to billionaires.

Unfortunately, they're well entrenched and will actively resist changes to the current system.

Wheels, at least macroscopic scales, are probably impossible for evolution to produce. Anything that has to freely rotate, in fact.

But it would be fun if that weren't true - I'd expect to see fish with propellers for tails.

The best concept I've seen involved a robot with knee and toe wheels. When presented with a smooth surface, it knelt and could travel at high speed. It only used legs when obstacles required the extra flexibility.

Unfortunately the FAA regulations most likely preempt any local regulations.

Arguably, you left out Canada and Mexico. And Venezuela and Cuba and Iran. Maybe Denmark.