4 Timeless Productivity Lessons from Albert Einstein

日本人の教養と、根深い西洋コンプレックス

山折哲雄×鷲田清一（その１）

これまで「和魂漢才」と「和魂洋才」で生きてきた日本人。グローバル化が急速に進む中で、日本人はあらためて「日本文明とは何か」「日本人とは何か」を問われている。これからの時代を生き抜くために、日本人に求められる教養とは何か――。宗教学者の山折哲雄氏が、有識者との対談を通して、日本人の教養を探る。 

 第1回目は、哲学者で大阪大学前総長の鷲田清一氏を迎えて、日本の教養の系譜と、西洋の教養との違いを語る。

（企画協力：）

外国人から、心の奥底では軽蔑されている

――近年、日本では教養がブームになっていますが、そこで語られるのは、西洋的な教養が中心です。グローバル化が進展する中で、われわれはあらためて、「日本人としての教養」を見直す時期を迎えているのではないかと思います。西洋の猿マネとは異なる、日本らしい教養というのは、どういうものなのでしょうか。

山折：20年近く前に、東京のある経済団体から依頼を受けて講演をしたことがあります。その後の懇親会で、ある日本を代表する企業の会長さんがひとり出てこられて、突然こう言われたのをよく覚えています。

「自分の会社は海外にいろんなかたちで展開しており、従業員の半分以上は外国人になっている。積極的に外国人を幹部に登用しているし、外国人幹部のほとんどは日本の経済力を非常に尊敬している。しかし、心の奥底でどうも軽蔑されているような気がしてならない」

鷲田：それは海外の人が日本人を？

山折：そう。海外の幹部社員から、自分たち日本人が軽蔑されているということです。明治以降、日本人は近代化に成功したけれども、政治、経済、刑法、憲法などあらゆる制度を西洋から学んできました。近代化に役立つほぼすべてのものが、西洋からの模倣です。そういう状況であれば軽蔑されても仕方がない、というのがその会長の主張です。一種のコンプレックスですよね。

最後に、その会長さんが「日本人は、究極的には西洋人になる以外ないのでしょうか」と聞いてきたので、私は「西洋人になれるわけがないでしょう。あなたがおっしゃるように、日本の近代化の大半は模倣ですが、ひとつだけ例外がある」と答えました。

――その例外とは何でしょうか？

日本人がこれまでつくりだしてきた芸術作品です。芸術の世界だけは、決して西洋にも劣らない。いかなる外国人、西洋の人間たちといえども、軽蔑することはできないはずだと。日本人の伝統的な芸術の中に流れている精神性みたいなもの、つまりは、芸術と精神、芸術と宗教だけはわれわれの誇りになる。

こう話したら、会長さんはしばらく考えて、「よくわかりました」と言っていました。それ以来、私が思っているのは、「日本の知識人やリーダーたちは、日本の伝統文化の中で最も大切なものを忘れている」ということです。そして、ここがおそらく、これからの日本人の教養を考えるうえで、非常に重要な点ではないかと思います。

教養というと、やれカントだ、やれシェークスピアだ、やれゲーテだ、ということになっていますが、これはとんだ誤認のもとです。やはり教養の根幹は、われわれ自身の文化の中にある何ものかですよ。今の日本のリーダー層は、その何ものかに到達できていない。

2017年11月15日(水)
テーマ：

The null set is conceptually similar to the role of the number “zero” as it is used in quantum field theory. In quantum field theory, one can take the empty set, the vacuum, and generate all possible physical configurations of the Universe being modelled by acting on it with creation operators, and one can similarly change from one thing to another by applying mixtures of creation and anihillation operators to suitably filled or empty states. The anihillation operator applied to the vacuum, however, yields zero.

Zero in this case is the null set – it stands, quite literally, for no physical state in the Universe. The important point is that it is not possible to act on zero with a creation operator to create something; creation operators only act on the vacuum which is empty but not zero. Physicists are consequently fairly comfortable with the existence of operations that result in “nothing” and don’t even require that those operations be contradictions, only operationally non-invertible.

It is also far from unknown in mathematics. When considering the set of all real numbers as quantities and the operations of ordinary arithmetic, the “empty set” is algebraically the number zero (absence of any quantity, positive or negative). However, when one performs a division operation algebraically, one has to be careful to exclude division by zero from the set of permitted operations! The result of division by zero isn’t zero, it is “not a number” or “undefined” and is not in the Universe of real numbers.

Just as one can easily “prove” that 1 = 2 if one does algebra on this set of numbers as if one can divide by zero legitimately3.34, so in logic one gets into trouble if one assumes that the set of all things that are in no set including the empty set is a set within the algebra, if one tries to form the set of all sets that do not include themselves, if one asserts a Universal Set of Men exists containing a set of men wherein a male barber shaves all men that do not shave themselves3.35.

It is not – it is the null set, not the empty set, as there can be no male barbers in a non-empty set of men (containing at least one barber) that shave all men in that set that do not shave themselves at a deeper level than a mere empty list. It is not an empty set that could be filled by some algebraic operation performed on Real Male Barbers Presumed to Need Shaving in trial Universes of Unshaven Males as you can very easily see by considering any particular barber, perhaps one named “Socrates”, in any particular Universe of Men to see if any of the sets of that Universe fit this predicate criterion with Socrates as the barber. Take the empty set (no men at all). Well then there are no barbers, including Socrates, so this cannot be the set we are trying to specify as it clearly must contain at least one barber and we’ve agreed to call its relevant barber Socrates. (and if it contains more than one, the rest of them are out of work at the moment).

Suppose a trial set contains Socrates alone. In the classical rendition we ask, does he shave himself? If we answer “no”, then he is a member of this class of men who do not shave themselves and therefore must shave himself. Oops. Well, fine, he must shave himself. However, if he does shave himself, according to the rules he can only shave men who don’t shave themselves and so he doesn’t shave himself. Oops again. Paradox. When we try to apply the rule to a potential Socrates to generate the set, we get into trouble, as we cannot decide whether or not Socrates should shave himself.

Note that there is no problem at all in the existential set theory being proposed. In that set theory either Socrates must shave himself as All Men Must Be Shaven and he’s the only man aro
und. Or perhaps he has a beard, and all men do not in fact need shaving. Either way the set with just Socrates does not contain a barber that shaves all men because Socrates either shaves himself or he doesn’t, so we shrug and continue searching for a set that satisfies our description pulled from an actual Universe of males including barbers. We immediately discover that adding more men doesn’t matter. As long as those men, barbers or not, either shave themselves or Socrates shaves them they are consistent with our set description (although in many possible sets we find that hey, other barbers exist and shave other men who do not shave themselves), but in no case can Socrates (as our proposed single barber that shaves all men that do not shave themselves) be such a barber because he either shaves himself (violating the rule) or he doesn’t (violating the rule). Instead of concluding that there is a paradox, we observe that the criterion simply doesn’t describe any subset of any possible Universal Set of Men with no barbers, including the empty set with no men at all, or any subset that contains at least Socrates for any possible permutation of shaving patterns including ones that leave at least some men unshaven altogether.

 I understand your note as if you are saying the limit is infinity but nothing is equal to infinity, but you concluded corretly infinity is undefined. Your example of getting the denominator smaller and smalser the result of the division is a very large number that approches infinity. This is the intuitive mathematical argument that plunged philosophy into mathematics. at that level abstraction mathematics, as well as phyisics become the realm of philosophi. The notion of infinity is more a philosopy question than it is mathamatical. The reason we cannot devide by zero is simply axiomatic as Plato pointed out. The underlying reason for the axiom is because sero is nothing and deviding something by nothing is undefined. That axiom agrees with the notion of limit infinity, i.e. undefined. There are more phiplosphy books and thoughts about infinity in philosophy books than than there are discussions on infinity in math books.

ゼロ除算の歴史：ゼロ除算はゼロで割ることを考えるであるが、アリストテレス以来問題とされ、ゼロの記録がインドで初めて６２８年になされているが、既にそのとき、正解1/0が期待されていたと言う。しかし、理論づけられず、その後１３００年を超えて、不可能である、あるいは無限、無限大、無限遠点とされてきたものである。

An Early Reference to Division by Zero C. B. Boyer

OUR HUMANITY AND DIVISION BY ZERO

Lea esta bitácora en español
There is a mathematical concept that says that division by zero has no meaning, or is an undefined expression, because it is impossible to have a real number that could be multiplied by zero in order to obtain another number different from zero.
While this mathematical concept has been held as true for centuries, when it comes to the human level the present situation in global societies has, for a very long time, been contradicting it. It is true that we don’t all live in a mathematical world or with mathematical concepts in our heads all the time. However, we cannot deny that societies around the globe are trying to disprove this simple mathematical concept: that division by zero is an impossible equation to solve.
Yes! We are all being divided by zero tolerance, zero acceptance, zero love, zero compassion, zero willingness to learn more about the other and to find intelligent and fulfilling ways to adapt to new ideas, concepts, ways of doing things, people and cultures. We are allowing these ‘zero denominators’ to run our equations, our lives, our souls.
Each and every single day we get more divided and distanced from other people who are different from us. We let misinformation and biased concepts divide us, and we buy into these aberrant concepts in such a way, that we get swept into this division by zero without checking our consciences first.
I believe, however, that if we change the zeros in any of the “divisions by zero” that are running our lives, we will actually be able to solve the non-mathematical concept of this equation: the human concept.
>I believe deep down that we all have a heart, a conscience, a brain to think with, and, above all, an immense desire to learn and evolve. And thanks to all these positive things that we do have within, I also believe that we can use them to learn how to solve our “division by zero” mathematical impossibility at the human level. I am convinced that the key is open communication and an open heart. Nothing more, nothing less.
Are we scared of, or do we feel baffled by the way another person from another culture or country looks in comparison to us? Are we bothered by how people from other cultures dress, eat, talk, walk, worship, think, etc.? Is this fear or bafflement so big that we much rather reject people and all the richness they bring within?
How about if instead of rejecting or retreating from that person—division of our humanity by zero tolerance or zero acceptance—we decided to give them and us a chance?
How about changing that zero tolerance into zero intolerance? Why not dare ask questions about the other person’s culture and way of life? Let us have the courage to let our guard down for a moment and open up enough for this person to ask us questions about our culture and way of life. How about if we learned to accept that while a person from another culture is living and breathing in our own culture, it is totally impossible for him/her to completely abandon his/her cultural values in order to become what we want her to become?
Let’s be totally honest with ourselves at least: Would any of us really renounce who we are and where we come from just to become what somebody else asks us to become?
If we are not willing to lose our identity, why should we ask somebody else to lose theirs?
I believe with all my heart that if we practiced positive feelings—zero intolerance, zero non-acceptance, zero indifference, zero cruelty—every day, the premise that states that division by zero is impossible would continue being true, not only in mathematics, but also at the human level. We would not be divided anymore; we would simply be building a better world for all of us.
Hoping to have touched your soul in a meaningful way,
Adriana Adarve, Asheville, NC
…/our-humanity-and-division…/

5000年？？？？？

2017年09月01日(金)NEW ! 
テーマ：数学
Former algebraic approach was formally perfect, but it merely postulated existence of sets and morphisms [18] without showing methods to construct them. The primary concern of modern algebras is not how an operation can be performed, but whether it maps into or onto and the like abstract issues [19–23]. As important as this may be for proofs, the nature does not really care about all that. The PM’s concerns were not constructive, even though theoretically significant. We need thus an approach that is more relevant to operations performed in nature, which never complained about morphisms or the allegedly impossible division by zero, as far as I can tell. Abstract sets and morphisms should be de-emphasized as hardly operational. My decision to come up with a definite way to implement the feared division by zero was not really arbitrary, however. It has removed a hidden paradox from number theory and an obvious absurd from algebraic group theory. It was necessary step for full deployment of constructive, synthetic mathematics (SM) [2,3]. Problems hidden in PM implicitly affect all who use mathematics, even though we may not always be aware of their adverse impact on our thinking. Just take a look at the paradox that emerges from the usual prescription for multiplication of zeros that remained uncontested for some 5000 y
ears 0
0 ¼ 0 ) 0
1=1 ¼ 0 ) 0
1 ¼ 0
1) 1ð? ¼ ?Þ1 ð0aÞ This ‘‘fact’’ was covered up by the infamous prohibition on division by zero [2]. How ingenious. If one is prohibited from dividing by zero one could not obtain this paradox. Yet the prohibition did not really make anything right. It silenced objections to irresponsible reasonings and prevented corrections to the PM’s flamboyant axiomatizations. The prohibition on treating infinity as invertible counterpart to zero did not do any good either. We use infinity in calculus for symbolic calculations of limits [24], for zero is the infinity’s twin [25], and also in projective geometry as well as in geometric mapping of complex numbers. Therein a sphere is cast onto the plane that is tangent to it and its free (opposite) pole in a point at infinity [26–28]. Yet infinity as an inverse to the natural zero removes the whole absurd (0a), for we obtain [2] 0 ¼ 1=1 ) 0
0 ¼ 1=12 > 0 0 ð0bÞ Stereographic projection of complex numbers tacitly contradicted the PM’s prescribed way to multiply zeros, yet it was never openly challenged. The old formula for multiplication of zeros (0a) is valid only as a practical approximation, but it is group-theoretically inadmissible in no-nonsense reasonings. The tiny distinction in formula (0b) makes profound theoretical difference for geometries and consequently also for physical applications. T

とても興味深く読みました：

10,000 Year Clock
by Renny Pritikin
Conversation with Paolo Salvagione, lead engineer on the 10,000-year clock project, via e-mail in February 2010.

For an introduction to what we’re talking about here’s a short excerpt from a piece by Michael Chabon, published in 2006 in Details: ….Have you heard of this thing? It is going to be a kind of gigantic mechanical computer, slow, simple and ingenious, marking the hour, the day, the year, the century, the millennium, and the precession of the equinoxes, with a huge orrery to keep track of the immense ticking of the six naked-eye planets on their great orbital mainspring. The Clock of the Long Now will stand sixty feet tall, cost tens of millions of dollars, and when completed its designers and supporters plan to hide it in a cave in the Great Basin National Park in Nevada, a day’s hard walking from anywhere. Oh, and it’s going to run for ten thousand years. But even if the Clock of the Long Now fails to last ten thousand years, even if it breaks down after half or a quarter or a tenth that span, this mad contraption will already have long since fulfilled its purpose. Indeed the Clock may have accomplished its greatest task before it is ever finished, perhaps without ever being built at all. The point of the Clock of the Long Now is not to measure out the passage, into their unknown future, of the race of creatures that built it. The point of the Clock is to revive and restore the whole idea of the Future, to get us thinking about the Future again, to the degree if not in quite the way same way that we used to do, and to reintroduce the notion that we don’t just bequeath the future—though we do, whether we think about it or not. We also, in the very broadest sense of the first person plural pronoun, inherit it.

Renny Pritikin: When we were talking the other day I said that this sounds like a cross between Borges and the vast underground special effects from Forbidden Planet. I imagine you hear lots of comparisons like that…

Paolo Salvagione: (laughs) I can’t say I’ve heard that comparison. A childhood friend once referred to the project as a cross between Tinguely and Fabergé. When talking about the clock, with people, there’s that divide-by-zero moment (in the early days of computers to divide by zero was a sure way to crash the computer) and I can understand why. Where does one place, in one’s memory, such a thing, such a concept? After the pause, one could liken it to a reboot, the questions just start streaming out.

RP: OK so I think the word for that is nonplussed. Which the thesaurus matches with flummoxed, bewildered, at a loss. So the question is why even (I assume) fairly sophisticated people like your friends react like that. Is it the physical scale of the plan, or the notion of thinking 10,000 years into the future—more than the length of human history?

PS: I’d say it’s all three and more. I continue to be amazed by the specificity of the questions asked. Anthropologists ask a completely different set of questions than say, a mechanical engineer or a hedge fund manager. Our disciplines tie us to our perspectives. More than once, a seemingly innocent question has made an impact on the design of the clock. It’s not that we didn’t know the answer, sometimes we did, it’s that we hadn’t thought about it from the perspective of the person asking the question. Back to your question. I think when sophisticated people, like you, thread this concept through their own personal narrative it tickles them. Keeping in mind some people hate to be tickled.

RP: Can you give an example of a question that redirected the plan? That’s really so interesting, that all you brainiacs slaving away on this project and some amateur blithely pinpoints a problem or inconsistency or insight that spins it off in a different direction. It’s like the butterfly effect.

PS: Recently a climatologist pointed out that our equation of time cam, (photo by Rolfe Horn) (a cam is a type of gear: link) a device that tracks the difference between solar noon and mundane noon as well as the precession of the equinoxes, did not account for the redistribution of water away from the earth’s poles. The equation-of-time cam is arguably one of the most aesthetically pleasing parts of the clock. It also happens to be one that is fairly easy to explain. It visually demonstrates two extremes. If you slice it, like a loaf of bread, into 10,000 slices each slice would represent a year. The outside edge of the slice, let’s call it the crust, represents any point in that year, 365 points, 365 days. You could, given the right amount of magnification, divide it into hours, minutes, even seconds. Stepping back and looking at the unsliced cam the bottom is the year 2000 and the top is the year 12000. The twist that you see is the precession of the equinoxes. Now here’s the fun part, there’s a slight taper to the twist, that’s the slowing of the earth on its axis. As the ice at the poles melts we have a redistribution of water, we’re all becoming part of the “slow earth” movement.

RP: Are you familiar with Charles Ray’s early work in which you saw a plate on a table, or an object on the wall, and they looked stable, but were actually spinning incredibly slowly, or incredibly fast, and you couldn’t tell in either case? Or, more to the point, Tim Hawkinson’s early works in which he had rows of clockwork gears that turned very very fast, and then down the line, slower and slower, until at the end it approached the slowness that you’re dealing with?

PS: The spinning pieces by Ray touches on something we’re trying to avoid. We want you to know just how fast or just how slow the various parts are moving. The beauty of the Ray piece is that you can’t tell, fast, slow, stationary, they all look the same. I’m not familiar with the Hawkinson clockwork piece. I’ve see the clock pieces where he hides the mechanism and uses unlikely objects as the hands, such as the brass clasp on the back of a manila envelope or the tab of a coke can.

RP: Spin Sink (1 Rev./100 Years) (1995), in contrast, is a 24-foot-long row of interlocking gears, the smallest of which is driven by a whirring toy motor that in turn drives each consecutively larger and more slowly turning gear up to the largest of all, which rotates approximately once every one hundred years.

PS: I don’t know how I missed it, it’s gorgeous. Linking the speed that we can barely see with one that we rarely have the patience to wait for.

RP: : So you say you’
ve opted for the clock’s time scale to be transparent. How will the clock communicate how fast it’s going?

PS: By placing the clock in a mountain we have a reference to long time. The stratigraphy provides us with the slowest metric. The clock is a middle point between millennia and seconds. Looking back 10,000 years we find the beginnings of civilization. Looking at an earthenware vessel from that era we imagine its use, the contents, the craftsman. The images painted or inscribed on the outside provide some insight into the lives and the languages of the distant past. Often these interpretations are flawed, biased or over-reaching. What I’m most enchanted by is that we continue to construct possible pasts around these objects, that our curiosity is overwhelming. We line up to see the treasures of Tut, or the remains of frozen ancestors. With the clock we are asking you to create possible futures, long futures, and with them the narratives that made them happen.

ダ・ヴィンチの名言 格言｜無こそ最も素晴らしい存在

ゼロ除算の発見はどうでしょうか： 
Black holes are where God divided by zero： 

再生核研究所声明371（2017.6.27）ゼロ除算の講演―　国際会議　 
 

1/0=0、0/0=0、z/0=0 
 
1/0=0、0/0=0、z/0=0 
 
1/0=0、0/0=0、z/0=0 
 

ソクラテス・プラトン・アリストテレス　その他 
 

ドキュメンタリー 2017: 神の数式 第２回 宇宙はなぜ生まれたのか 
 
〔NHKスペシャル〕神の数式 完全版 第3回 宇宙はなぜ始まったのか 
&t=3318s 
〔NHKスペシャル〕神の数式 完全版 第1回 この世は何からできているのか 
 
NHKスペシャル 神の数式 完全版 第4回 異次元宇宙は存在するか 
 

再生核研究所声明 411(2018.02.02): 　ゼロ除算発見4周年を迎えて 
 

再生核研究所声明 416(2018.2.20): 　ゼロ除算をやってどういう意味が有りますか。何か意味が有りますか。何になるのですか　－　回答 
再生核研究所声明 417(2018.2.23): 　ゼロ除算って何ですか　－　中学生、高校生向き　回答 
再生核研究所声明 418(2018.2.24): 　割り算とは何ですか？　ゼロ除算って何ですか　－　小学生、中学生向き　回答 
再生核研究所声明 420(2018.3.2): ゼロ除算は正しいですか，合っていますか、信用できますか　－　回答 

2018.3.18．午前中　最後の講演：　日本数学会　東大駒場、函数方程式論分科会　講演書画カメラ用　原稿 
The Japanese Mathematical Society, Annual Meeting at the University of Tokyo. 2018.3.18. 
 より

*057 Pinelas,S./Caraballo,T./Kloeden,P./Graef,J.(eds.): Differential and Difference Equations with Applications: ICDDEA, Amadora, 2017. (Springer Proceedings in Mathematics and Statistics, Vol. 230) May 2018 587 pp. 

再生核研究所声明 424(2018.3.29): 　レオナルド・ダ・ヴィンチとゼロ除算

Title page of Leonhard Euler, Vollständige Anleitung zur Algebra, Vol. 1 (edition of 1771, first published in 1770), and p. 34 from Article 83, where Euler explains why a number divided by zero gives infinity.

私は数学を信じない。　アルバート・アインシュタイン / I don’t believe in mathematics. Albert Einstein→ゼロ除算ができなかったからではないでしょうか。

1423793753.460.341866474681。

Einstein’s Only Mistake: Division by Zero

ゼロ除算は定義が問題です：

再生核研究所声明　１４８（2014.2.12）　100/0=0,  0/0=0　－　割り算の考えを自然に拡張すると　―　神の意志 

再生核研究所声明１７１（2014.7.30）掛け算の意味と割り算の意味　―　ゼロ除算100/0=0は自明である？

Title page of Leonhard Euler, Vollständige Anleitung zur Algebra, Vol. 1 (edition of 1771, first published in 1770), and p. 34 from Article 83, where Euler explains why a number divided by zero gives infinity.

私は数学を信じない。　アルバート・アインシュタイン / I don’t believe in mathematics. Albert Einstein→ゼロ除算ができなかったからではないでしょうか。1423793753.460.341866474681。

Einstein’s Only Mistake: Division by Zero

#divide by zero

TOP DEFINITION

A super-smart math teacher that teaches at HTHS and can divide by zero.

Hey look, that genius’s IQ is over 9000!

by  October 21, 2009

Dividing by zero is the biggest  known to mankind. It is a proven fact that a succesful division by zero will constitute in the implosion of the universe.

You are dividing by zero there, Johnny. Captain Kirk is not impressed.

Divide by zero?!?!! OMG!!! Epic failzorz

3

 by  is undefined.

Divide by zero is undefined.

by  October 28, 2006

1) The number one ingredient for a catastrophic event in which the universe enfolds and collapses on itself and life as we know it ceases to exist.

2) A mathematical equation such as a/0 whereas a is some number and 0 is the divisor. Look it up on  or something. Pretty confusing shit.

3) A reason for an error in programming

Hey, I divided by zero! …Oh shi-

a/0

Run-time error: ’11’: Division by zero

by  September 08, 2006

When even math shows you that not everything can be figured out with math. When you divide by zero, math kicks you in the shins and says “yeah, there’s kind of an answer, but it ain’t just some number.”

It’s when mathematicians become philosophers.

:
Let’s say you have ZERO apples, and THREE people. How many apples does each person get? ZERO, cause there were no apples to begin with

 because of dividing by zero:
Let’s say there are THREE apples, and ZERO people. How many apples does each person get? Friggin… How the  should I know! How can you figure out how many apples each person gets if there’s no people to get them?!? You’d think it’d be infinity, but not really. It could almost be any number, cause you could be like “each person gets 400 apples” which would be true, because all the people did get 400 apples, because there were no people. So all the people also got 42 apples, and a million and 7 apples. But it’s still wrong.

by  February 15, 2010

Artificial intelligence could replace high-status roles known more for their creativity than cold empirical judgments, such as buying and merchandise planning.

One of the best-selling T-shirts for the Indian e-commerce site Myntra is an olive, blue and yellow colorblocked design. It was conceived not by a human but by a computer algorithm — or rather two algorithms.

The first algorithm generated random images that it tried to pass off as clothing. The second had to distinguish between those images and clothes in Myntra’s inventory. Through a long game of one-upmanship, the first algorithm got better at producing images that resembled clothing, and the second got better at determining whether they were like — but not identical to — actual products.

This back and forth, an example of artificial intelligence at work, created designs whose sales are now “growing at 100 percent,” said Ananth Narayanan, the company’s chief executive. “It’s working.”

Clothing design is only the leading edge of the way algorithms are transforming the fashion and retail industries. Companies now routinely use artificial intelligence to decide which clothes to stock and what to recommend to customers.

And fashion, which has long shed blue-collar jobs in the United States, is in turn a leading example of how artificial intelligence is affecting a range of white-collar work as well. That’s especially true of jobs that place a premium on spotting patterns, from picking stocks to diagnosing cancer.

“A much broader set of tasks will be automated or augmented by machines over the coming years,” Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tom Mitchell, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist, wrote in the journal Science last year. They argued that most of the jobs affected would become partly automated rather than disappear altogether.

The fashion industry illustrates how machines can intrude even on workers known more for their creativity than for cold empirical judgments. Among those directly affected will be the buyers and merchandise planners who decide which dresses, tops and pants should populate their stores’ inventory.

A key part of a buyer’s job is to anticipate what customers will want using a well-honed sense of where fashion trends are headed. “Based on the fact that you sold 500 pairs of platform shoes last month, maybe you could sell 1,000 next month,” said Kristina Shiroka, who spent several years as a buyer for the Outnet, an online retailer. “But people might be over it by then, so you cut the buy.”

Merchandise planners then use the buyer’s input to figure out what mix of clothing — say, how many sandals, pumps and flats — will help the company reach its sales goals.

In the small but growing precincts of the industry where high-powered algorithms roam free, however, it is the machine — and not the buyer’s gut — that often anticipates what customers will want.

StitchFix sends customers boxes of clothes selected using a combination of personal stylists and algorithms | Source: StitchFix

That’s the case at Stitch Fix, an online styling service that sends customers boxes of clothing whose contents they can keep or return, and maintains detailed profiles of customers to personalize their shipments.

Stitch Fix relies heavily on algorithms to guide its buying decisions — in fact, its business probably could not exist without them. Those algorithms project how many clients will be in a given situation, or “state,” several months into the future (like expanding their wardrobe after, say, starting a new job), and what volume of clothes people tend to buy in each situation. The algorithms also know which styles people with different profiles tend to favor — say, a petite nurse with children who lives in Texas.

Myntra, the Indian online retailer, arms its buyers with algorithms that calculate the probability that an item will sell well based on how clothes with similar attributes — sleeves, colors, fabric — have sold in the past. (The buyers are free to ignore the projection.)

All of this has clouded the future of buyers and merchandise planners, high-status workers whose annual earnings can exceed $100,000.

At more conventional retailers, a team of buyers and support workers is assigned to each type of clothing (like designer, contemporary or casual) or each apparel category, like dresses or tops. . Some retailers have separate teams for knit tops and woven tops. A parallel merchandise-planning group could employ nearly as many people.

Buyers say this specialization helps them intuitively understand trends in styles and colors. “You’re so immersed in it, you almost get a feeling,” said Helena Levin, a longtime buyer at retailers like Charlotte Russe and ModCloth.

Ms. Levin cited mint-green dresses, a top seller earlier this decade. “One day it just died,” she said. “It stopped. ‘O.K., everything mint, get out.’ Right after, it looked old. You could feel it.”

But retailers adept at using algorithms and big data tend to employ fewer buyers and assign each a wider range of categories, partly because they rely less on intuition.

At Le Tote, an online rental and retail service for women’s clothing that does hundreds of millions of dollars in business each year, a six-person team handles buying for all branded apparel — dresses, tops, pants, jackets.

Brett Northart, a co-founder, said the company’s algorithms could identify what to add to its stock based on how many customers placed the items on their digital wish lists, along with factors like online ratings and recent purchases.

Bombfell, a box service similar to Stitch Fix catering only to men, relies on a single employee, Nathan Cates, to buy all of its tops and accessories.

The company has built algorithmic tools and a vast repository of data to help Mr. Cates, who said he could more accurately project demand for clothing than a buyer at a traditional operation.

“We know exactly who our customers are,” he said. “We know exactly where they live, what their jobs are, what their sizing is.”

For now, at least, only a human can do parts of his job. Mr. Cates is obsessive about touching the fabric before purchasing an item and almost always tries it on first.

“If this is a light color, are we going to see your nipples?” he explained. (The verdict on a mint T-shirt he donned at the company’s headquarters in New York? “A little nipply.”)

There are other checks on automation. Negotiations with suppliers typically require a human touch. Even if an algorithm can help buyers make decisions more quickly and accurately, there are limits to the number of supplier relationships they can juggle.

Arti Zeighami, who oversees advanced analytics and artificial intelligence for the H & M group, which uses artificial intelligence to guide supply-chain decisions, said the company was “enhancing and empowering” human buyers and planners, not replacing them. But he conceded it was hard to predict the effect on employment in five to 10 years.

Experts say some of these jobs will be automated away. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects employment of wholesale and retail buyers to contract by 2 percent over a decade, versus a 7 percent increase for all occupations. Some of this is because of the automation of less sophisticated tasks, like cataloging inventory, and buying for less stylistically demanding retailers (say, auto parts).

There is at least one area of the industry where the machines are creating jobs rather than eliminating them, however. Bombfell, Stitch Fix and many competitors in the box-fashion niche employ a growing army of human stylists who receive recommendations from algorithms about clothes that might work for a customer, but decide for t
hemselves what to send.

Trunk Club stylists with a customer at their headquarters in Chicago 

“If they’re not overly enthusiastic upfront when I ask how do you feel about it, I’m making a note of it,” said Jade Carmosino, a sales manager and stylist at Trunk Club, a Stitch Fix competitor owned by Nordstrom.

In this, stylists appear to reflect a broader trend in industries where artificial intelligence is automating white-collar jobs: the hiring of more humans to stand between machines and customers.

For example, Chida Khatua, the chief executive of EquBot, which helped create an exchange-traded fund that is actively managed by artificial intelligence, predicted that the asset-management industry would hire more financial advisers even as investing became largely automated.

The downside is that work as a stylist or financial adviser will probably pay less than the lost jobs of buyers and stock pickers. The good news, said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at M.I.T. who studies automation, is that these jobs may still pay substantially more than many positions available to low- and middle-skilled workers in recent decades.

And these jobs may be hard to automate in the end.

“If I’m the customer explaining what I want, humans need to be involved,” Mr. Khatua said. “Sometimes I don’t know what I really want.”

By Noam Scheiber. This article originally appeared in The New York Times and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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