Asteroid retrieval by rotary rocket, by Jerome Pearson

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Lucio de Souza Coelho
wrote:

> Since every any other rich country with dramatic population aging in
> the world (like those of Europe) deals with that by importing
> immigrants (which at the same time will not leave the elderly
> without people to help them and helps the aging problem itself),
> which are cheaper, as well as vastly more intelligent, agile and
> smarter than any robot, those statements of Japanese scientists
> sounded completely devoid of practicality or even meaning, so
there > had to be an unspoken reason. Considering the starking ethnic
> uniformity of the population of Japan and some attitudes of
them > that sound xenophobic, that unspoken reason is not so hard
to find.

I think you've accurately assessed the Japanese decision dynamic on
this issue. They look at the fiscal and cultural problems currently
plaguing Europe's immigration situation. They look to the US and see
the increased Hispanization and they simply want to maintain their
cultural diversity rather than create problems for their society.

The issue is further compounded by the nature of work that these
immigrants are sought for. It's pretty much all menial. Japan looks at
how the US solves this problem - the illegals, and then looks at the
$89,000 lifetime taxpayer subsidy that is paid for each and every
immigrant that arrives without a high school education. That's pretty
steep. Then there is the question of the children of the immigrants.
As we see in Europe, the parents arrive and fill the jobs that the
Europeans didn't want to do for themselves. The children of the
immigrants don't want to do those jobs and aspire to the more
"respectable" jobs, but many of them are ill-equipped for such jobs
due to lack of education yet they find the menial jobs demeaning, and
this mismatch in expectations is causing some social upheavel in Europe.

I'll be watching the Japanese as they progress down this path. It'll
be interesting to see whether they can maintain the diversity of their
society and avoid the costly pitfalls that follow from the immigration
of low skilled immigrants.

> By the way, the quite natural immigrant solution remembers a genial
> statement that a colleague of mine at university made when he was
> told by the professor that "the classic ultimate goal of A.I. is to
> develop a being with intelligence comparable to that of a human". My
> friend replied that "If you want to create a being with intelligence
> comparable to that of a human, you only have to make sex" ;-).

I think you'r right, but having more kids is an economically
irrational decision, in that parents assume the majority of the costs
and society receives the majority of the benefits.

> That brings another problem (besides intrinsic technical
> difficulties) for development of human-equivalent robots: taking
> aside Japan, there is no real market need for them, and so little
> incentive for commercial research on them.

I'd agree that there's little market right now for bulky and
rudimentary robots with limited function. However, as their utility
increases I think you'll see demand increase.

> The fact that two of the robots hailed in the article as the
> beginning of a new era - Qrio and Aibo - were "put to sleep for
> good" by Sony less than a year after the article does not look a
> good augury either.

I never thought those two models were anything but proof of concept
that had limited production runs. The engineers set out to solve
design challenges and did so. I expect to see ever more sophisticated
prototypes being revealed, each advancing the art in some significant
fashion.

TangoMan