Author: Andrew Sullivan

Exploring the evolution of color perceptions, Elijah Wolfson considers how our ability to see red sets us apart from other mammals:

Most mammals, including most primates, are dichromatic, meaning they can only detect two color wavelengths: green and blue. Certain primates, though, have evolved to see a third: red. It turns out that these primates—humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, to name some—all have one thing in common: bare-skinned faces. Based on this trend, experts have hypothesized that the development of trichromatic vision was, in fact, the result of an evolutionary advantage that certain primates had over others: namely, that it helped our ancestors better understand the emotional states, socio-sexual signals, and threat displays of their brethren.

The upshot was huge. Once we could actually see the red that coursed through our veins, it became a secondary communication tool: ovulating females would redden in the face and in their sexual organs to signal sexual readiness; angry males displayed dominance by reddening in the face. Modern humans might still get red in the face while angry, but we’ve also branched out to using signaling tools like cocktail dresses and soccer jerseys. While the medium has changed, the message remains: displaying red means you’re serious.

Northwestern football players are petitioning the National Labor Relations Board for permission to form a union. Marc Tracy doesn’t see why not:

If the purpose of college is “an education,” then why in some cases do student-athletes have part or all of their tuition paid for on the explicit condition that they play sports? And if they are not professionals, then why the—what do you call it?—extracurricular activity that requires extensive travel, 40-plus hour weeks, and considerable risk to future earning potential? And if they are not  being paid for that—if that tuition shouldn’t count as payment and their participation is in fact “voluntary”—then why allow that tuition to be offered in the first place? What is it even being offered for?

But Jonathan Mahler points out that the players don’t want wages, at least not yet:

The players aren’t actually asking for much. Their “demands,” laid out on the website of the National College Players Association, include making college football safer by limiting contact at practices and adding independent concussion experts at games. They want schools to pay medical expenses related to sports-related injuries. They want athletic scholarships to cover the full costs of attending college, not just tuition but also expenses such as laundry or going home for vacation. They want a small percentage of the huge sums generated by college sports to be invested in continuing education for athletes who go pro before graduating.

He thinks the NCAA should jump at the deal:

College sports are a multi-billion dollar business. If the athletes who make it popular and lucrative — after spending countless hours training, traveling and playing — aren’t “employees,” then what does the word mean? There is growing scientific evidence about the dangers of football, yet the young men who fill their schools’ stadiums and coffers, selling branded merchandise and ensuring generous TV contracts, shouldn’t be given medical coverage and insured against long-term disability as the groundskeepers and athletic directors and coaches are?

Hampton Stevens worries about unintended consequences, noting that pay-for-play can’t be far behind:

How, for instance, would those in charge go about splitting the money? Should players at Alabama and Texas get paid more because their programs generate more revenue? Would starters get paid more than benchwarmers, or does everyone on the roster deserve the same rate? Should a player’s pay be based on performance year-to-year? After all, if college athletes want the benefits of professionalism, they must also expect the drawbacks—like losing salary because of sub-par performance.

What about basketball players, who similarly produce big bucks for everyone but themselves? Don’t they deserve a union, too?  What about sports that don’t produce revenue? Surely swimmers and volleyball players should also have their scholarships protected. And let’s not even get started on the Title IX implications. The legal requirement for gender equality adds yet another layer of bewildering complexity.

John Culhane considers that snowball effect as well:

[A] decision in favor of the Northwestern players will likely explode throughout college football. A tipping point will be reached once enough teams are represented by unions. When that happens, it will be much harder for every school—and the NCAA—to resist meeting players’ reasonable demands, even if players at some universities will be forbidden from unionizing. What elite player will want to attend, say, Oklahoma, if he’s assured of post-career health care at Notre Dame? Top-tier college programs will have to cough up benefits if they want to compete with their football brethren.

Last week, a study identified the jobs most likely to be automated in the future. Derek Thompson looks at how the fastest-growing jobs will be impacted:

Here are the ten fastest-growing jobs and the odds that robots and software eat them:

1) Personal care aides: 74%
2) Registered nurses: 0.9%
3) Retail salespersons: 92%
4) Combined food prep & serving workers: 92%
5) Home health aides: 39%
6) Physician assistant: 9%
7) Secretaries and admin assistants: 96%
8) Customer service representatives: 55%
9) Janitors and cleaners: 66%
10) Construction workers: 71%

These ten occupations account for 3.85 million projected jobs in the next ten years, or 25 percent of the decade’s projected job haul. And six of them are at least two-thirds automatable, based on researchers’ projections of current computing power.

James Bessen takes comfort in historical precedents:

According to 60 Minutes, “Bank tellers have given way to ATMs. Sales clerks are surrendering to e-commerce. And switchboard operators and secretaries to voice recognition technology,” arguing that digital technologies are leading to persistent unemployment. But, in fact, there are more bank tellers, sales clerks and receptionists and secretaries in 2009 than in 1999, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The reason: demand.

For example, it takes fewer bank tellers to operate a bank branch, thanks to the ATMs. This makes it less costly to operate a bank branch, allowing banks to open more of them. With more branches, banks can expand their markets. But more branches mean greater demand for tellers, offsetting the loss in the number of tellers per branch. Bank tellers today perform different tasks than in the past – they do fewer simple jobs like counting cash and more of the customer interaction of “relationship banking.” These tasks require different skills, but ATMs have not eliminated teller jobs.

Miles Brundage joins the conversation:

[T]he tasks that are easy to automate aren’t necessarily the boring and repetitive ones, and the tasks that are hard to automate aren’t necessarily the fun and interesting ones. Consider, for example, the warehouses that power Amazon’s vast supply chains. As shown in a recent BBC documentary and a first-person account in the Guardian, the workers in these warehouses aren’t exactly living the dream—they are under constant pressure by their computerized overlords to meet impossible picking-and-placing targets, are physically exhausted at the end of work each day, and their working conditions may put them at increased risk of mental illness.

From a technological point of view, these warehouses are perfect examples of human-machine symbiosis in action. People have excellent dexterity and perception compared with robots, and computers can schedule workers’ movements around the warehouse efficiently, use their perfect memories to keep track of the locations of items, and set targets to motivate employees. From a subjective point of view, though, many of these workers report feeling like robots themselves.