Comment by xixi77 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xixi77 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It's an interesting list... To me, improving provision of medical service and education definitely seems possible, as a lot of current problems are due to the fairly artificial constraints in the system. Removing them, or going around them, can really do a lot.

Things like child care and finance are not as obvious to me though: these are already competitive industries, with very price-sensitive clients too, and (IMO) mostly sensible regulations, so if something both cheap and competitive was possible, why hasn't it happened yet?

Also, as for "Equally credible alternatives to university education": I'm not sure if I get this one right, wording is a little confusing -- you mean the problem being that people feel forced to spend lots of $$ to study things they won't actually need for their jobs? IMO, to answer that, we also first need to answer why exactly is it the case currently: e.g. no government sponsorship of community colleges is going to help if the reason is that education is primarily used as a signaling device... (Edit: I see your response to another question -- namely a startup offering an independent alternative to screening on education -- and I agree that this can be promising. Not easy, but promising.)

Childcare is dying for some automation. 1 person can care for ~3 very young children(<15mo) which is freaking expensive. That grows to ~8-10 starting at ~4 years old.

Worse, these are all minimum numbers. You need extra staff to cover someone being sick, or turn people away.

Why is child care something that should be automated? Doesn't it make sense to spend a lot of high-value human attention on small children?

Humans are not a product. They are an end in themselves. It's like trying to automate your friends or your spouse.

No, it doesn't make sense to spend lots of high-value human attention on small children. For a pretty huge part of the day, small children are better off exploring the world on their own, and making social connections on their own. What's needed is safety, comfort, and some degree of monitored structure.

Again: once your kid turns 5 (4, if you're rich and you send your kid to private all-day preschool), you're generally sending them somewhere where one adult will watch as many as 30 kids concurrently, all the while educating them to the point where they can creditably pass standardized tests. That's a harder job than just making sure kids are happy and engaged, and yet we pay far less for it than we do for child care.

Child care is a huge part of why people get crappier jobs than they might. You can't go back to school if you have no savings and need to pay at least $15/hr for child care; in fact, you can't even speculatively take a lower-paying job for career advancement if that job doesn't pay enough to offset child care.

This is one of the scariest posts I have read. Infants and small children definitely need high-value human attention. I don't even know where to begin, just wanted to let the world know that I'm horrified by your comment.

High-value human attention, but not High-value human attention 24/7.

Sure, if we want to subsidize stay at home parents for young children that's a reasonable choice. But, pushing daycare out of reach of most low income family's pushes people into poverty which also has significant long term negative impacts on those same children.

"Any sufficiently advanced AGI is indistinguishable from parent" just crossed my mind and I wanted to share.

Are you horrified by all the parents who put their kids in day care while they work?

Not who you're asking, but this is clearly a problem for infants and young toddlers (the data is fairly strong for under 18 months, and gets less clear the older you get from there), though it still gives the children the human interaction they need.

Results are best when there is a single primary care-giver and a small number of other regular care-givers, and day-care tends to not allow for this.

Things get much worse, however, when the staff of the day-care is either too few or too neglectful, as human contact and interaction is so important for early development.

It is possible that we could create a sufficient facsimile of a human to allow for automated care of a child that would fulfill these needs, but there is a creep factor in that, and there remains the question of how one would ethically test the efficacy of such a system.

And who takes care of the kids in the day care, robots?

I'm horrified by a economic systems that works out to requiring that, yeah. Aren't you?

You state things with conviction but no evidence. There is a big difference between the brain and therefore needs of a 4-5 year old and a 0-3 year old. I'm not sure why you assume you can infer anything about the needs of a toddler based on the way school works for older kids.

Here in Australia child care is also very expensive, and I agree this is a problem for disadvantaged families (there is some means-tested subsidisation but it only helps to a degree). However: the government has recently lowered the required educator:child ratios, despite the extra cost, because research shows it is important for education (and health, not just when young but into later life). More than this: the research suggests these improvements are most significant for disadvantaged kids.

For more info start here: http://archive.acecqa.gov.au/research-and-publications/.

It might not make sense to you, but do a little research and you'll find your conclusion is unfounded.

By law (usually state), the ratio of caregiver to child is much lower when the child is under 5. There's documented rationale for it too.[0] Also, there is a ton of research now suggesting the importance of education at that age as a function of interaction of words with parents.[1] So to suggest that "small children are better off exploring the world on their own, and making social connections on their own" is IMHO a very dangerous conclusion without understanding all of the implications associated with it.

[0] - http://cfoc.nrckids.org/StandardView/1.1.1

[1] - https://www.versame.com/research/

Direct personal interaction is how small children acquire language. This is the only way that children can acquire language, and a language-rich environment is crucially important for children. This is something that simply cannot be automated.

People often automate human interaction. Getting an email reminder a few days before a wedding anniversary or a friend's birthday is hardly dehumanizing. If a scheduling assistant means a daycare worker can care for 4 infants instead of just 3, that's a huge savings for many working families.

How about dippers that can wireless notify you when there wet? Or for something that exists, a baby monitor so a caretaker can keep up with a crying child while another sleeps.

PS: Don't forget it's not just daycare workers who can use assistance, actual parents are also run raggid while caring for infants.

Yea, automating social coordination is fine, and technology and automation clearly enables use to increase our level of communication. Which is great.

That's different from automating the content of our relationships. It is dehumanizing to have to navigate an automated phone tree rather than speak to an actual person. Now, sometimes it is more efficient to not deal with people, but when you are talking about real human relationships, then dealing with real human people is the point.

Child care isn't just changing the diapers, it's about talking, interacting, and playing with children. Personal interaction is the only way that infants acquire language and language skills, for example.

The regulatory bar for childcare is absurdly high, and I can't imagine how much of it serves a constructive purpose (source: my sister, who is a teacher, once looked into opening a daycare center). But like the "war on terror", it's regulation we can't get rid of because nobody wants to be the guy who made kids less safe.

This is obvious, right? A K-12 teacher handles ~30 kids at a time, starting at age 5-6. Their job is more rigorous than the one a child-care professional does. Meanwhile, most parents are happier about the time their kids spend in school than they are about the time they spend in childcare.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com