Secession: If you mean a state trying to leave the US in the next decade, 5%. If you mean a state actually being allowed to leave, I put it at 0%.
Insurrection in the next decade: I’m defining an insurrection as at least 1000 people in the same or closely allied organizations with military weapons taking violent action against the US government: 30%. They’ll lose. It’s certainly possible that my opinion on this is based on reading too much left wing material which is very nervous about the right. On the other hand, 1000 isn’t a lot of people.
All predictions are 10 years out unless otherwise noted.
The rest of the world: Another EU-style organization gets started: 30%. The advantages of having a large population are getting obvious, and it’s astonishing to me to see countries begging for a chance to give up some national sovereignty.
Fabbing: Automated custom shoes: 50%. Possibly wishful thinking—I have feet which aren’t quite in the easy-to-fit range.
On one hand, there’s a massive market. On the other, shoes are a way of signaling status, and it’s probable that I wildly underestimate how hard it is to put a shoe together. And shoes are a way of signaling status, so a custom machine shoe for the general market can’t look much different from the standard shoes.
Custom machine shoes will start out expensive, and be for the athletic market.
Another product: Sous vide cookers (poaching food in vacuum-sealed bags at precisely controlled temperatures: has many good effects and should be especially appealing to geeks) will be down to $200 within 5 years (80%) and half as common as microwaves within 10 years (50%).
Obama will be re-elected unless he is assassinated (5%), there is a major terrorist attack on US soil (I’m not betting on that one, too random, and how he responds will have an unpredictable effect, too), or the economy doesn’t improve (I think it will, but don’t have a percentage).
Just as a check on 0% for a state being allowed to secede, consider this.
What would you put at the probability that there would be sufficient devastation in the eastern seaboard of the US in the next decade from (for example) bio or nuclear attacks or terrorism? If that happened, what would be the probability that the US would be disbanded as a going concern? I realize you would likely assign very small numbers to these possibilities, but possibly > 0%. If you assign >0% to this, then you assign >0% to a state being allowed to secede. (recapitulating an objection voiced to me by Anna Salamon when I made a claim of extremely small probability for some risk or another).
There’s a lot of ruin in a nation. The main axis nations of World War II—Germany, Italy, and Japan—provide some examples of nations that were really, really traumatized and damaged. Out of the three, only Germany split apart, and that only because of competing foreign occupiers. Even then it reunited as soon as it got the chance. I don’t think there’s enough hostility or just plain difference between most of the states west of the Mississippi to cause them to separate, especially under threat of external attack. If anything, I’d expect them to band together as tightly as possible.
I don’t think the US would go away even if the eastern seaboard was nothing but glassy craters and deadly microbes.
That being said, it’s conceivable that some technological or ideological change could weaken the central government to the point that states would be let go, though it’s hard to imagine something that drastic shaping up in as little as 9 years. I’m also not sure what change could happen which would break the federal government while leaving state governments intact.
Ok, though—in a decade, something very odd could happen. I don’t think a lot of people were predicting the dissolution of the USSR before it happened.
Meanwhile, sous vides don’t seem to be a lot cheaper or more popular, but I didn’t put as extreme a probability on that one.
I meant 0%, but you probably have a point that I should present the chance as negligible rather than non-existent. Is there a limit, though? Does it make sense to say that there’s a non-zero chance that a state will propose secession and be allowed to leave by tomorrow morning?
Does it make sense to say that there’s a non-zero chance that a state will propose secession and be allowed to leave by tomorrow morning?
Yep. It even makes sense to say that there’s a non-zero chance that a state seceded last month, and that we haven’t heard about it yet. The word ‘epsilon’ is useful in such cases; it means ‘nearly zero’ or ‘too close to zero to calculate’.
The word ‘epsilon’ is useful in such cases; it means ‘nearly zero’ or ‘too close to zero to calculate’.
“Negligible” is a much better word, in my opinion, since epsilon is (conventionally) an arbitrarily small number, not a sufficiently small number. You could use “infinitesimal”, but nothing in reality is actually infinitesimally small (including probabilities), so again you’d be inaccurate. I always get frustrated when people misuse precise mathematical words that have lots of syllables in them. The syllables are there to discourage colloquial use! I don’t mind if you try to show off your knowledge, but for heaven’s sake don’t screw up and use that precise brainy term wrong!
You’re straddling a strange line here. You’re demanding a certain amount of strictness that is itself short of perfect strictness.
There’s no such thing as an “arbitrarily small number”. There are numbers chosen when any positive number might have been chosen. In particular, a given epsilon need not be “negligible”. Really, to conform to the strict mathematical usage, one shouldn’t say “epsilon” without first saying “For every”. Once you’re not demanding that, you’re not using the “precise mathematical words” in the precise mathematical way.
I’m not saying that you’re on some slippery slope where anything goes. But I wouldn’t say that AdeleneDawner is either.
You’re demanding a certain amount of strictness that is itself short of perfect strictness.
Actually, I’m fine with people speaking vaguely, I just don’t want to see terminology misused.
There’s no such thing as an “arbitrarily small number”.
“Through adding zeroes between the decimal point and the 7 in the string ‘.7’, the number we are representing can be made arbitrarily small.” Is this a misuse of the word “arbitrarily”?
In particular, a given epsilon need not be “negligible”. Really, to conform to the strict mathematical usage, one shouldn’t say “epsilon” without first saying “For every”.
The important think about an epsilon in a mathematical proof is, conventionally, that it can be made arbitrarily small. This is a human interpretation I am adding on to the proof itself. If the important thing about a variable in a proof was that the variable could become arbitrarily large, my guess is that a variable other than epsilon would not be used.
“Through adding zeroes between the decimal point and the 7 in the string ‘.7’, the number we are representing can be made arbitrarily small.” Is this a misuse of the word “arbitrarily”?
Your usage is fine, so long as it’s clear that “arbitrarily small” is a feature of the set from which you are choosing numbers, or of the process by which you are constructing numbers, and not of any particular number in that set. This is clear with the context that you give above. It wasn’t as clear to me when you wrote that “epsilon is (conventionally) an arbitrarily small number”.
Suppose that Nancy meant 0% except for a few special cases that she didn’t think should be relevant. Then she could say, ‘0% modulo some special cases’.
I often use epsilon in the same informal way AdeleneDawner does, though I’m perfectly aware of the formal use. Still, I think the informal use of “modulo” is more defensible—it maps more closely to the mathematical meaning of “ignoring this particular class of ways of being different”
Could you explain this in greater detail? This way of using “modulo” bothers me significantly, and I think it’s because I either don’t know about one of the ways “modulo” is used in math, or I have an insufficiently deep understanding of the one way I do know that it’s used.
In modulo arithmetic, adding or subtracting the base does not change the value. Thus, 12 modulo 9 is the same as 3 modulo 9. Thus, for example, “my iPhone is working great modulo the Wifi connection” implies that if you can subtract the base (“the Wifi connection”) you can transform a description of the current state of my iPhone into “working great”.
An EU-style organization—you’ll have to be more specific than that. Every region has a bunch of multinational orgs like the UN. Africa has the Union of African States, Asia has ASEAN, SAARC, BIMSTEC, etc. Maybe you would prefer a prediction like ‘at least 10 nations in Asia/Africa/South America will create a new common currency and switch to it’?
http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1717 & http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1718
I agree that it’s perfectly possible (surely right now) to sell a sous-vide cooker for $200; I question that there is demand enough, and really have no idea about the business environment. Cynicism tells me that there is no enormous revolution in American cuisine in the offing to the point where effectively half the middle-class has a sous-vide cooker, though. I mean come on.
I think it would have been more fair to make my predictions 1. “A state will not try to secede” and “A state will not succeed at seceding”.
Other than that, it’s interesting to see how uncertain I am that some of my predictions are the result of my own thinking rather than emotional effects from people I’ve been reading.
(3) What I had in mind for an EU-style organization was dropping restrictions on trade and travel. At this point, I’m not as optimistic, but that feels more like mood than new information. I don’t know whether dropping restrictions on trade requires a common currency.
(4) Computer-fabbed custom-fitted shoes are a lot easier than AI. If you don’t think that’s at all likely within 10 years, does this affect any predictions you might have for AI? Your answer is about there not being a market for them—I’d say that the market isn’t perceived. Either way, I don’t get the impression that that tech is ready to do it yet.
It might make more sense for a computer to measure the feet and make the pieces, but have human beings put the shoes together. :-/
I’m also assuming shoes would be mailed rather than being shoes on demand—shoes on demand would be another jump in technology.
Thinking about it a little more, the footprint in stores could be pretty small—just the measuring device. I’m not sure how much support from store staff it would be apt to need at the beginning.
This sort of development is also dependent on how much capital is available, and I’m not feeling optimistic about that.
(5) The conveyor belt for new aspects of food (perhaps unsurprisingly) seems to be more efficient for prepared food and ingredients than for cooking methods. I still haven’t had sous vide food myself, but everything I’ve heard about it makes it sound wonderful. I think there will be a sudden shift with sous vide food becoming available in mid-range restaurants followed by a lot of people wanting to cook it.
ETA: The website didn’t just format the numbers into pretty paragraphing, it “corrected” the numbers.
For 3, a monetary union isn’t necessary; look at the US & Mexico & Canada, thanks to NAFTA. Certainly helps, though. I don’t really see any areas which might do this sort of thing. Open borders and no trade barriers is a very Western 1st World sort of thing to do, and the obvious candidates like Japan don’t really have an incentive to do so. (Japan has no land borders, so having passport checks doesn’t really increase the cost of flying or boating to it.)
For 4: I think custom-fitting is already possible, and has been since the early laser scanners came out in the… ’80s? But like the sous-vide, I’m not confident in their uptake. (It’s kind of like jetpacks and flying cars and pneumatic postal systems. We have them; we just don’t use them.)
ETA: The website didn’t just format the numbers into pretty paragraphing, it “corrected” the numbers.
This is part of standard markdown; you can number each item ‘1.’ if you want! If you want a number item you can escape it with a backslash, or you can do like I did and insert a paragraph after the bullet (newline, and then indent the paragraph by 4-5 spaces).
Damn, on 3 I didn’t say what I meant. The genuinely big deal is freedom to relocate and work.
Do you have a source for computerized custom-fitting of shoes? The big deal isn’t just the fitting, though, it’s reasonably-priced manufacture.
Afaik, jet-packs can be made, but carrying enough fuel for significant travel isn’t feasible.
As for flying cars, it finally occurred to people that there were weather and pilot safety issue.
I don’t see those sorts of considerations applying to sous vide or computerized custom shoes.
The futuristic prediction which seems to be not happening because people just don’t want it is video which shows your face while you’re talking on the phone.
Someone I know has a foot problem. Her orthopedist recommended having a scan done to produce inserts to adjust the shape of her regular shoes, and said if that didn’t work, then entirely custom shoes could be made. So computerized custom-fit shoes do exist, but they’re considered a medical item which makes them expensive.
The futuristic prediction which seems to be not happening because people just don’t want it is video which shows your face while you’re talking on the phone.
That one’s already happened. My new iPhone does video calls, and so does Skype on any computer with a webcam. That wasn’t driven by demand, though, it was more that the technology all became ubiquitous for other purposes and it was easy to stitch it together to provide videophone functionality, even if it isn’t actually used very much.
Do you have a source for computerized custom-fitting of shoes? The big deal isn’t just the fitting, though, it’s reasonably-priced manufacture.
IIRC, I read it a long time ago in a mouldering paperback of Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave. (Or was it Future Shock?) But even without having read about clothes in particular, I have read about 3D models of statues etc. being generated through rotating the object while shining a laser on it; thus obviously one can generate a human model (I think CGI already does this), and fit clothes on that model. I would be deeply shocked if no one has ever used laser modeling to fit garments of some kind.
I don’t see those sorts of considerations applying to sous vide or computerized custom shoes.
Considerations like expense and minimal benefit don’t apply? Mm, well, as Marx said, nous verrons. Figuring out whose perception of reality is clearer is one of the points of recording predictions.
I think what user-specific clothing and shoes currently lacks is sufficiently advanced robotics. If you are doing the obvious, cutting out bits of material and attaching them together you have quite a few problems. You are having to manipulate non-standard sized bits of flexible material. The production line deals with many of the same sized and shaped bits of material so you can change molds/tools dependent upon the size of the shoe.
The knitting machine above removes that consideration as it produces the finished garment in one piece.
The hard part of computerized custom shoes might be designing the shoes rather than measuring the foot. Also note that the shoe has to fit while you’re walking, though that seems like just adding difficulty rather than a whole new problem.
I should have been more precise about the difference I see between flying cars and sous vide cooking. Flying cars include infrastructure and group effects in a way that sous vide cookers do not.
Secession: If you mean a state trying to leave the US in the next decade, 5%. If you mean a state actually being allowed to leave, I put it at 0%.
Insurrection in the next decade: I’m defining an insurrection as at least 1000 people in the same or closely allied organizations with military weapons taking violent action against the US government: 30%. They’ll lose. It’s certainly possible that my opinion on this is based on reading too much left wing material which is very nervous about the right. On the other hand, 1000 isn’t a lot of people.
All predictions are 10 years out unless otherwise noted.
The rest of the world: Another EU-style organization gets started: 30%. The advantages of having a large population are getting obvious, and it’s astonishing to me to see countries begging for a chance to give up some national sovereignty.
Fabbing: Automated custom shoes: 50%. Possibly wishful thinking—I have feet which aren’t quite in the easy-to-fit range.
On one hand, there’s a massive market. On the other, shoes are a way of signaling status, and it’s probable that I wildly underestimate how hard it is to put a shoe together. And shoes are a way of signaling status, so a custom machine shoe for the general market can’t look much different from the standard shoes.
Custom machine shoes will start out expensive, and be for the athletic market.
Another product: Sous vide cookers (poaching food in vacuum-sealed bags at precisely controlled temperatures: has many good effects and should be especially appealing to geeks) will be down to $200 within 5 years (80%) and half as common as microwaves within 10 years (50%).
Obama will be re-elected unless he is assassinated (5%), there is a major terrorist attack on US soil (I’m not betting on that one, too random, and how he responds will have an unpredictable effect, too), or the economy doesn’t improve (I think it will, but don’t have a percentage).
Just as a check on 0% for a state being allowed to secede, consider this.
What would you put at the probability that there would be sufficient devastation in the eastern seaboard of the US in the next decade from (for example) bio or nuclear attacks or terrorism? If that happened, what would be the probability that the US would be disbanded as a going concern? I realize you would likely assign very small numbers to these possibilities, but possibly > 0%. If you assign >0% to this, then you assign >0% to a state being allowed to secede. (recapitulating an objection voiced to me by Anna Salamon when I made a claim of extremely small probability for some risk or another).
There’s a lot of ruin in a nation. The main axis nations of World War II—Germany, Italy, and Japan—provide some examples of nations that were really, really traumatized and damaged. Out of the three, only Germany split apart, and that only because of competing foreign occupiers. Even then it reunited as soon as it got the chance. I don’t think there’s enough hostility or just plain difference between most of the states west of the Mississippi to cause them to separate, especially under threat of external attack. If anything, I’d expect them to band together as tightly as possible.
I don’t think the US would go away even if the eastern seaboard was nothing but glassy craters and deadly microbes.
That being said, it’s conceivable that some technological or ideological change could weaken the central government to the point that states would be let go, though it’s hard to imagine something that drastic shaping up in as little as 9 years. I’m also not sure what change could happen which would break the federal government while leaving state governments intact.
Ok, though—in a decade, something very odd could happen. I don’t think a lot of people were predicting the dissolution of the USSR before it happened.
Meanwhile, sous vides don’t seem to be a lot cheaper or more popular, but I didn’t put as extreme a probability on that one.
Surely you mean “my estimate rounds to 0%”?
I meant 0%, but you probably have a point that I should present the chance as negligible rather than non-existent. Is there a limit, though? Does it make sense to say that there’s a non-zero chance that a state will propose secession and be allowed to leave by tomorrow morning?
Yep. It even makes sense to say that there’s a non-zero chance that a state seceded last month, and that we haven’t heard about it yet. The word ‘epsilon’ is useful in such cases; it means ‘nearly zero’ or ‘too close to zero to calculate’.
“Negligible” is a much better word, in my opinion, since epsilon is (conventionally) an arbitrarily small number, not a sufficiently small number. You could use “infinitesimal”, but nothing in reality is actually infinitesimally small (including probabilities), so again you’d be inaccurate. I always get frustrated when people misuse precise mathematical words that have lots of syllables in them. The syllables are there to discourage colloquial use! I don’t mind if you try to show off your knowledge, but for heaven’s sake don’t screw up and use that precise brainy term wrong!
You’re straddling a strange line here. You’re demanding a certain amount of strictness that is itself short of perfect strictness.
There’s no such thing as an “arbitrarily small number”. There are numbers chosen when any positive number might have been chosen. In particular, a given epsilon need not be “negligible”. Really, to conform to the strict mathematical usage, one shouldn’t say “epsilon” without first saying “For every”. Once you’re not demanding that, you’re not using the “precise mathematical words” in the precise mathematical way.
I’m not saying that you’re on some slippery slope where anything goes. But I wouldn’t say that AdeleneDawner is either.
Actually, I’m fine with people speaking vaguely, I just don’t want to see terminology misused.
“Through adding zeroes between the decimal point and the 7 in the string ‘.7’, the number we are representing can be made arbitrarily small.” Is this a misuse of the word “arbitrarily”?
The important think about an epsilon in a mathematical proof is, conventionally, that it can be made arbitrarily small. This is a human interpretation I am adding on to the proof itself. If the important thing about a variable in a proof was that the variable could become arbitrarily large, my guess is that a variable other than epsilon would not be used.
Your usage is fine, so long as it’s clear that “arbitrarily small” is a feature of the set from which you are choosing numbers, or of the process by which you are constructing numbers, and not of any particular number in that set. This is clear with the context that you give above. It wasn’t as clear to me when you wrote that “epsilon is (conventionally) an arbitrarily small number”.
’Kay.
I’m not the only one you should be ranting at, though—I picked it up here, not in a math class, and I suggested it because it’s in common use.
Yep, it is probably unrealistic to expect random folks to avoid picking up multisyllable terms in the way they pick up regular words.
Don’t forget “modulo”.
Suppose that Nancy meant 0% except for a few special cases that she didn’t think should be relevant. Then she could say, ‘0% modulo some special cases’.
I often use epsilon in the same informal way AdeleneDawner does, though I’m perfectly aware of the formal use. Still, I think the informal use of “modulo” is more defensible—it maps more closely to the mathematical meaning of “ignoring this particular class of ways of being different”
Could you explain this in greater detail? This way of using “modulo” bothers me significantly, and I think it’s because I either don’t know about one of the ways “modulo” is used in math, or I have an insufficiently deep understanding of the one way I do know that it’s used.
In modulo arithmetic, adding or subtracting the base does not change the value. Thus, 12 modulo 9 is the same as 3 modulo 9. Thus, for example, “my iPhone is working great modulo the Wifi connection” implies that if you can subtract the base (“the Wifi connection”) you can transform a description of the current state of my iPhone into “working great”.
(For your amusement: modulo in the Jargon File. Epsilon is there too.)
Edit: Actually, in this case, you would have to add the base, because my Wifi isn’t working, but the statement remains the same.
You can get a hacker sous vide setup for under $200 today. http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=2058982
I think you could when I made the prediction—what I had in mind was a sous vide cooker that you didn’t need to put together.
http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1713 & http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1714
http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1715
An EU-style organization—you’ll have to be more specific than that. Every region has a bunch of multinational orgs like the UN. Africa has the Union of African States, Asia has ASEAN, SAARC, BIMSTEC, etc. Maybe you would prefer a prediction like ‘at least 10 nations in Asia/Africa/South America will create a new common currency and switch to it’?
http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1716 I agree that this one is wishful thinking on your part. :)
http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1717 & http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1718 I agree that it’s perfectly possible (surely right now) to sell a sous-vide cooker for $200; I question that there is demand enough, and really have no idea about the business environment. Cynicism tells me that there is no enormous revolution in American cuisine in the offing to the point where effectively half the middle-class has a sous-vide cooker, though. I mean come on.
http://predictionbook.com/predictions/452 for his re-election
Thanks, mostly.
I think it would have been more fair to make my predictions 1. “A state will not try to secede” and “A state will not succeed at seceding”.
Other than that, it’s interesting to see how uncertain I am that some of my predictions are the result of my own thinking rather than emotional effects from people I’ve been reading.
(3) What I had in mind for an EU-style organization was dropping restrictions on trade and travel. At this point, I’m not as optimistic, but that feels more like mood than new information. I don’t know whether dropping restrictions on trade requires a common currency.
(4) Computer-fabbed custom-fitted shoes are a lot easier than AI. If you don’t think that’s at all likely within 10 years, does this affect any predictions you might have for AI? Your answer is about there not being a market for them—I’d say that the market isn’t perceived. Either way, I don’t get the impression that that tech is ready to do it yet.
It might make more sense for a computer to measure the feet and make the pieces, but have human beings put the shoes together. :-/
I’m also assuming shoes would be mailed rather than being shoes on demand—shoes on demand would be another jump in technology.
Thinking about it a little more, the footprint in stores could be pretty small—just the measuring device. I’m not sure how much support from store staff it would be apt to need at the beginning.
This sort of development is also dependent on how much capital is available, and I’m not feeling optimistic about that.
(5) The conveyor belt for new aspects of food (perhaps unsurprisingly) seems to be more efficient for prepared food and ingredients than for cooking methods. I still haven’t had sous vide food myself, but everything I’ve heard about it makes it sound wonderful. I think there will be a sudden shift with sous vide food becoming available in mid-range restaurants followed by a lot of people wanting to cook it.
ETA: The website didn’t just format the numbers into pretty paragraphing, it “corrected” the numbers.
For 3, a monetary union isn’t necessary; look at the US & Mexico & Canada, thanks to NAFTA. Certainly helps, though. I don’t really see any areas which might do this sort of thing. Open borders and no trade barriers is a very Western 1st World sort of thing to do, and the obvious candidates like Japan don’t really have an incentive to do so. (Japan has no land borders, so having passport checks doesn’t really increase the cost of flying or boating to it.)
For 4: I think custom-fitting is already possible, and has been since the early laser scanners came out in the… ’80s? But like the sous-vide, I’m not confident in their uptake. (It’s kind of like jetpacks and flying cars and pneumatic postal systems. We have them; we just don’t use them.)
This is part of standard markdown; you can number each item ‘1.’ if you want! If you want a number item you can escape it with a backslash, or you can do like I did and insert a paragraph after the bullet (newline, and then indent the paragraph by 4-5 spaces).
Damn, on 3 I didn’t say what I meant. The genuinely big deal is freedom to relocate and work.
Do you have a source for computerized custom-fitting of shoes? The big deal isn’t just the fitting, though, it’s reasonably-priced manufacture.
Afaik, jet-packs can be made, but carrying enough fuel for significant travel isn’t feasible.
As for flying cars, it finally occurred to people that there were weather and pilot safety issue.
I don’t see those sorts of considerations applying to sous vide or computerized custom shoes.
The futuristic prediction which seems to be not happening because people just don’t want it is video which shows your face while you’re talking on the phone.
Someone I know has a foot problem. Her orthopedist recommended having a scan done to produce inserts to adjust the shape of her regular shoes, and said if that didn’t work, then entirely custom shoes could be made. So computerized custom-fit shoes do exist, but they’re considered a medical item which makes them expensive.
That sounds to me as though the inserts are customized, but the custom shoes would be made by humans.
That one’s already happened. My new iPhone does video calls, and so does Skype on any computer with a webcam. That wasn’t driven by demand, though, it was more that the technology all became ubiquitous for other purposes and it was easy to stitch it together to provide videophone functionality, even if it isn’t actually used very much.
IIRC, I read it a long time ago in a mouldering paperback of Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave. (Or was it Future Shock?) But even without having read about clothes in particular, I have read about 3D models of statues etc. being generated through rotating the object while shining a laser on it; thus obviously one can generate a human model (I think CGI already does this), and fit clothes on that model. I would be deeply shocked if no one has ever used laser modeling to fit garments of some kind.
Considerations like expense and minimal benefit don’t apply? Mm, well, as Marx said, nous verrons. Figuring out whose perception of reality is clearer is one of the points of recording predictions.
You don’t have to be shocked. Here is one.
I think what user-specific clothing and shoes currently lacks is sufficiently advanced robotics. If you are doing the obvious, cutting out bits of material and attaching them together you have quite a few problems. You are having to manipulate non-standard sized bits of flexible material. The production line deals with many of the same sized and shaped bits of material so you can change molds/tools dependent upon the size of the shoe.
The knitting machine above removes that consideration as it produces the finished garment in one piece.
I found this pdf on customized shoe production from 2001 (requires login) while trying to find some videos of shoe manufacturing to confirm my ideas. I don’t have time to look into it, but seems relevant to the discussion.
The hard part of computerized custom shoes might be designing the shoes rather than measuring the foot. Also note that the shoe has to fit while you’re walking, though that seems like just adding difficulty rather than a whole new problem.
I should have been more precise about the difference I see between flying cars and sous vide cooking. Flying cars include infrastructure and group effects in a way that sous vide cookers do not.