Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]

Redesigning the human metabolism to eliminate aging is a project of such vast complexity as to be far, far beyond our present horizons. Consider that it took a few billion dollars and the last fifteen years to gather a little more knowledge of sirtuins, one very tiny slice of mammalian biochemistry related to the calorie restriction response, the most reliable and well-studied way to slightly slow down aging. The research and development community can't even provide a timeline for mimicking even a small fraction of this natural state reliably and safely. Making a whole new human biochemistry that works more like lobsters or hydra? Not until very late this century, I'd imagine, will this be something plausible as a long-term vision.

Meanwhile there is in fact an easy path to eliminating aging. Aging is damage accumulation at root. The easy path is to periodically repair that damage - the damage is already identified, after all. Sufficiently good maintenance is the road to eliminating aging; let it happen but control it. Maintain the biochemistry we have and that we know works.

http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research

This has a large weight of evidence behind it, and approaches are already being demonstrated in the case of senescent cell clearance, removal of transthyretin and beta amyloids, and averting the consequences of mitochondrial DNA damage. Others will follow as results become more compelling.

Except that it isn't. For example, if everybody in the world opened a single Google Docs document, then the system would break horrendously. This type of software is still very much compartmentalized.

That is a great lecture, and worth linking to (hence this reply), even more so for its lessons about how changes in abstract thinking lead to changes in moral standards and behavior: http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_h...

If one is more interested in discussion of the effect itself, and whether the IQ score changes reflect actual changes in intelligence between generations, Flynn has a longer and more academic discussion on the subject here: http://www.psychometrics.cam.ac.uk/about-us/directory/beyond...

>... nevertheless his endorsement is worth discussing. It's obvious that trump is more aligned with his world view of a more risk taking, long-term planning and less people-pleasing leadership.

Given some of Thiel's views and statements on politics (and without necessarily making a value judgment on those views), I'd honestly put more money on his just wanting to hurt the functioning and credibility of the US government as much as possible by seeing Trump elected.

At least one source[1] reports it as: "'Peter has become an increasing admirer of Trump's public attacks on political correctness, especially what he has been saying about women,' says a close friend of Thiel...."

[1]https://heatst.com/politics/the-real-reasons-peter-thiel-has...

This video is oddly pessimistic, but to me, Thiel is overlooking where the greatest advances are yet to come.

The advances in computers are advances in processing power and connectivity. Every industry uses both of these elements to succeed. Now that computers are reaching a sort of peak development, there is going to be a dispensing of the capabilities that computers offer into other industries.

Its hard for me to put it into words, but I think that computers are simply a stepping stone for real achievements to come.

The car has basically reached peak performance years ago, but we aren't disappointed in the fact that there was a lot of focus improving the car and a giant vehicle industry for many many years. Instead we moved on to building things that can use a car, such as the highway system. Or the mail delivery system, or the thousands of industries that completely rely on highways or mail.

In the same way with computers, we are now going to see industries and technologies appear that rely on having computers that have reached this advanced level of processing power we have today. Once this mighty computer is passed on to the common man, innovation begins to move in different paths again. Like a tree.

I dont know, this may have delved into a bit of a rant but that video made me extremely optimistic :)