Wait, isn't that the buddy of our all good friend Mr. Trump?
I guess we should all listen to him.
Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]
51–60 of 125 posts
Re: Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the hardest, but also the most pressing issues is regarding population growth. Should we artificially limit population growth? Can it be done in a way that isn't forceful, but perhaps with the right incentives? Should humanity, as a global society push for quality over quantity in reproduction? Is basic income still feasible in this scenario? It's an ethical and ideological mess and frankly, it'll require some…
For Europe and Japan, population is in decline. US population would be in decline if it were not for immigration. China is expected to max out around 2026. (The one-child policy worked.) India, though, has real problems.[1] Two big problems we expected to have were overpopulation and running out of energy. Neither happened. [1] http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2013/04/05/indias-population-in...
"For Europe and Japan, population is in decline."
For some of Europe the population is declining and in some places it is increasing - when added together the two pretty much balance out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
Of course that data ignores recent immigration trends!
Re: Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]
#53OK, the big theme here is "innovation has slowed down, but this is being masked by all the activity around computers". So let's take a look at that. Way too many smart people are tied up doing rather banal things with computers, or in finance. That's capitalism in action. What isn't being worked on? Thiel is bothered by lack of progress in medicine. Medicine is now working on really hard problems, most of which are c…
The average IQ will always be 100. It will also always be perfectly normally distributed. Because it's designed that way. http://www.michna.com/iq.htm > In truth the IQ is a purely statistical measure. It has no direct relation to brain performance, is not proportional to it, and doesn't even have any linear or otherwise straightforward relation to it. The only thing you can say is that somebody with a higher IQ will…
That's like saying stuff has gotten more expensive over time because of inflation. Yes it's literally true, but everyone knows to control for inflation. In the same way, because of the Flynn effect, average score on 1960-IQ tests is higher than 100. IQ does change over time.
Anyway just because it wasn't designed to have a linear meaning doesn't mean it's useless. It measures what percent of the population scored better and worse than you. That's still a useful fact to know, just like people talk about "the top 1%" instead of specifying exact income brackets.
Re: Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]
#54Wait, isn't that the buddy of our all good friend Mr. Trump? I guess we should all listen to him.
Palantir needs monies bro
Re: Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an interesting TED lecture about the gradual rise in intelligence, how children are usually smarter than their parents.
Well, our parents invented things like nuclear energy and semiconductor physics, while we invented, what, social media?
What a superficial thing to say. Is social media all you can think of? Every generation is born into a context out of its control and contributes what it can to what it was dealt. If you think social media is the pinnacle of the Generation X,Y,Z group, you aren't looking very far.
Re: Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the hardest, but also the most pressing issues is regarding population growth. Should we artificially limit population growth? Can it be done in a way that isn't forceful, but perhaps with the right incentives? Should humanity, as a global society push for quality over quantity in reproduction? Is basic income still feasible in this scenario? It's an ethical and ideological mess and frankly, it'll require some…
For Europe and Japan, population is in decline. US population would be in decline if it were not for immigration. China is expected to max out around 2026. (The one-child policy worked.) India, though, has real problems.[1] Two big problems we expected to have were overpopulation and running out of energy. Neither happened. [1] http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2013/04/05/indias-population-in...
For your information, population in Europe is not in decline [0]. It's still growing at a an annual 0.8%, and has been growing for the past decade (partly due to immigration)
[0] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&l...
Re: Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]
#57This 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 p…
I don't think that computers are anywhere near a stall-point as far as new advances go. I expect to see computers that use very much less energy, more memory but still get much smaller, and CPUs with more special instructions that enable faster neural networks, data structure manipulation a that might enable symbolic AI, etc.
You do make good points, and I up voted you.
Re: Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software that everyone in the world can use simultaneously. Sounds like a pretty good invention to me.
> Software that everyone in the world can use simultaneously Our parents invented the Internet too ...
That's true. Internet is what makes this possible, not social media. Social Media is like a skin on an internet that was developed when gen x was in diapers.
Re: Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]
#59Very interesting talk. I'd love for him to write a history of capitalism type book. "The History of Innovation and Globalization". Start it off with the x-axis=globalization and y-axis=innovation model and go from say 18th century to now. I always enjoy history of economics books. I like the mainstream books but really enjoyed the perspective and research that went into "An Austrian Perspective on the History of Econ…
Zero to One actually has some good material in this vein.
The book does, and is well worth the reading time. I have Zero to One as an audio book and I am on my second way through it.
The concept that zero to one is much more valuable than one to ten helped me understand my own career better. I have always been a risk taker and even though some of my work projects over the last 30 years have failed, my bosses never seemed unhappy with me. I would usually really nail a few new ideas a year. This book helped me to understand why I seemed to get perks (like ocean view window offices at two consequative companies) that none of the other programmers got, even though they seemed to be much steadier workers than I was.
Re: Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The average IQ is only 100 You do realize that's a tautology, right? There's no reason productivity couldn't be increased, and one potential method would be to boost human intelligence.
Some say China is working on this issue with selective breeding etc. You could at increasing IQ in very poor countries where lack of basic micronutrients is causing IQ issues. But I think better group intelligence, using current intelligence in poor countries better, AI, productivity increase with better tools currently makes much more sense.
I think he might be referring to this 2013 article:
http://www.vice.com/read/chinas-taking-over-the-world-with-a...
Selective breeding in a sense of "selecting the zygote" for ideal outcome. Aka designer babies. This was referred to as "selective breeding" in the press when it came out. A misnomer in that selective breeding has meant selective pairing of parents for at least a century before this article was written.
Note: this is also a company in China, not "China" although the distinction is sometimes muddled they certainly aren't regulating it like it has been in the West. Also, with the only one child policy that was recently lifted it is easy to confuse oppressive breeding requirements in China.