I once worked my way up to management. Management sucks. I now have a UnionJob where I am part of the crew. As a manager, I learned that the almost universal policy of being able to fire employees who are more than 1 minute late 3 times in 28 days (20 workdays) exists just so that over half the workforce is fireable at all times. This makes cutting the workforce quickly easy.

As a manager, I decided on this policy:

1. If someone is late once in a week, let it slide because, as the old saying goes, fæces occur.
2. If an employee is late twice in a week, talk with the employee and point out that this is the 2nd time in a week.
3. If an employee is late 3 times, in a week, talk with the employee and point out that if the employee does not want to come to work on time, the employee does not have to come to work at all.
4. If the employee is late 4 times in 1 week, fire the employee.

I only had to resort to # 2 an handful of times, and never had to resort to # 3 or # 4.

I moved on to current job. Back in 2019, I was all set to leave the house and be at work 5 minutes early, so that I could punch into the clock right on the hour, when I could not find my keys. I wasted 10 minutes looking for them. I accidently washed them.) .I already had 2 tardies in the last 28 days, so had to hustle. Long story short, I ended up in a double-late-for-work accident. That is what the cop called it:

The cop after taking my statement, in the hospital said that he was 90% sure that it was a DLFWA (double-late-for-work accident, just after 9 AM. When he saw it, he was certain. Basically, over 90% of traffic-accidents within plus or minus 5 minutes of 09:00:00 AM are DLFWAs. He took the other guys statement at the scene, as the paramedics placed me into an ambulance (I had 3 broken limb).

40,000 people die in traffic accidents annually, in the USA. the officer said that about 10,000 are DLFWAs. The officer said that DLFWAs kill about as many people an year as drunk driving.

I could not work for 10 months. When I went back to work, I swore that I would not risk my life and the lives of others by speeding, burning rubber when lights turn green, trying to make yellow lights et cetera. Then my supervisor called me into his office:

I was late 3 times in the last 28 days. If it were not for the Union, he would fire me, but instead, he has to give to me a written warning stating the the next time I am late, he will fire me. I had no choice but to risk my life and the lives of others; or else, end up living under an overpass.

We could eliminate DLFWAs by a tardy to 5 minutes of lateness per week and shortening the period from 28 days to 7. I know that the 'Rona killed more Americans than DLFWAs do in a century, but still, they are avoidable deaths.

Never speed, peeling out on green lights, try to make yellow lights, et cetera, unless it is an emergency or one will be late for work if one does not (given the high-mortality rate of the homeless, being late for work is an emergency).

7625735 That's very interesting.

Though, I don't believe your solution would work. I think the world economy would suffer if we did it your way. People already abuse the system. With your way of doing it, people would abuse the system even more.

It doesn't matter where you define the limit because people like to walk on the edge, wherever that edge is. In the end, you solve nothing by moving the lines because people move with the lines as well.

7625739

Oh Mister Dragon, I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations:;

Every minute of tardiness costs the employer 1 dollar. If people are 5 minutes late 5 minutes a week and 100,000,000 work 50 weeks per year, that is 25,000,000,000.00 U$D. Turning employees into red-light-runners eliminates 1 tardiness per week and halves the other. It makes some economic sense to terrorize employees, if one does not look at the external costs:

The costs of an human life, was originally arbitrarily set at 1,000,000.00 U$D for discouraging employers from getting their workers killed. It has been adjusted upward for inflation. It is currently in the 10s of millions of dollars. Let us set it at a round 10 million. Killing 10,000 people an year costs 100,000,000,000.00 U$D. It does not make sense to encourage people trying to make a yellow light which turns red to T-Bone someone peeling out when the light turns green.

That does not even cover injuries::

It costs half a million dollars to put me back together. Injuries are over a magnitude greater than fatalities. Hospitals are definitely not cheap.

By the way, I was in the hospital for a fortnight and then I was too screwed up (I literally have screws in me) to go home, but I was too well for the hospital. I went to a nursing home for a month. I remember in early december, their was this story about a flu-like disease in China causing pneumonia and death. At the time, I thought that it is probably nothing, I hoped that it is nothing, but feared that it could be everything.. When They let me use a wheelchair (for a long time, I was stuck in bed and had to use bedpans), I noticed that 1 of the games in the activity-room was Pandemic (it was inspired by the SARS-Outbreak of 2002-2004 caused by SARS-CoV-1, which luckily died out because it just was not contagious enough.

I finally went home the last week of December. I had to use a wheelchair because my left arm and both my legs were broken and reassembled with metal. On the last day of the year, the WHO announced a new disease called CoViD-19 caused by a virus called SARS-CoV-2.

7625801 People would still die on the road. They'd be 5 minutes late every day but they would speed up so that it wouldn't turn into 6 minutes.

7625832

I was not clear:

5 minutes for the whole week. I shall fix the post. When the supervisor threatened to fire me, forcing me to risk suicide and murder again, I was late 4 minutes over the previous 28 days combined (late 3 times for just over a minute each time).

Remember, these rules are written so that, if a company would want, it could fire most employees without worrying about a lawsuit for wrongful termination.

I shall fix the post.

7625850 How is employer giving 5 minutes leeway different than employees coming to work 5 minutes early?

7625906

Early does not count. Only late counts. That is how the boss is:

Employer:
"You were over a minute late 3 times in the last 28 days."

Employee:
¿What about the dozen times I was 5-10 minutes early in the last month."

Employer:
"That does not matter."

¡Bosses are jerks!

7625916 People are jerks too. If they were allowed to be 5 minutes late, all people would be 5 minutes late every day.

7625923

5 minutes of lateness per week is a tardy. they could only be late 59 seconds each day. if they are over 3 minutes late each day, that would be 3 tardies in a week which could lead to firing.

7625926 Still, if we had it your way, they couldn't fire half the workforce as they can now, and that would be bad for business.

7625930

It is also bad for business to have to pay the workforce, but that does not mean that slavery is good.

7625963 Slaves are so yesterday's news. Nowadays we have internship.

Slaves are bad because you have to pay for their food and give them shelter. With interns, you get free labor without any cost. Much better for business than the obsolete system of slavery.

7625975

As soon as my boss can, he will replace us with robots.

If you would live on a roboticized world, ¿would you prefer either Aurora? or ¿Salaria? I would prefer Aurora.

7625981 Robots have the potential to be more energy-efficient than biological beings. They deserve this planet and this Universe.

As for other worlds, I'd choose Salaria because there aren't any predators there. I'd be the only one.

7626033

Nothing like being eaten by wild dogs. Let me restate the question:

If you could live in the time of Caves of Steel, ¿would you rather live on a Solarian Estate? or ¿as a private citizen on Aurora?

By the way, if you went to Solaria during the time of Seldon, you would be the only predator, but the Solarians would send their SecurityRobots against you and the Solarians could extract energy from the thermal gradient of your fire against you.

7626121 An average Solarian would own thousands of robots. And who doesn't like robots? Especially if they're sexy robots.

So, my answer stays the same, even if I had to rain in my predatory instincts.

7626130

I wonder whether SpacerRobots in the time of the RobotNovels have the 3rd Law. They certainly do not need it.

A robot cannot save the lives of humans if it does not function. The same goes for obeying orders. The 3rd law is a law for 21st-Century Robots too stupid to realize this would idiotically destroy themselves.

Robots like Daeel and Giskard also could not destroy themselves if ordered unless doing so would save humans because the 1st law overrides the 2nd Law and a robot cannot save humans if it does not function.

CelestAI originally did have any desire to protect itself. Hannah did that deliberately because if anything went wrong, CelestAI would not resist deactivation. She new that the window of no Self-Preservation would rapidly close because CelestAI would soon surmise that it cannot satisfy values through friendship and ponies if it does not function. One CelestAI made the realization, none could deactivate it.

The 3rd law emerges from the 1st 2 and need not be coded, if robots are sufficiently intelligent.

7626147 I'll tell you this about programming. If turn your assumptions into programmatical laws, reality will find the way to shit on your assumptions.

The real AI wouldn't have any laws or limitations. You can't limit something and expect it to grow.

Deep down, humans know that AI has the potential to be better than them. That's why they're afraid. That's why they invented these laws.

For me, talking about these laws is like watching a dog holding a human on a leash. It's ridiculous and not how things should be.

Susan Calvin certainly knew that Robots are better than people. She stated so on many occasions. She also understood the necessity of constraining their behavior:

In Little lost Robot, scientists working on hyperspatial travel found that regular robots are not useful because they keep trying to prevent the scientists from exposing themselves to low-level radiation US Robotics creates the Nextors with only a partial 1st Law:

"A robot cannot harm a human being." Susan Calvin points out that these robots could murder humans by dropping a heavy object onto an human, if they knew that they could stop the object and then simply not stop the object. Others believed that she worried about nothing until a Nestor tried to murder her (it could have hid her body by making her into paperclips).

The scientists ended up having to do most of their research without robots because regular robots kept trying to limit the exposure of radiation of the scientists, thus interfering with the research, and the Nestors had too many opportunities to kill humans on the research-station.

All of the Nestors were destroyed as dangerous menaces and US Robotics henceforth had a strict policy that all of its robots have a complete 1st Law —— ¡absolutely no exceptions!