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

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

#71

Post by jimmysdown »

return0 wrote: post #67
jimmysdown wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Thiel started openly calling for the deportation of Muslims? Or if he started calling non-white people rapists? Or made grossly misogynist comments? Would it be alright to tell him to take a hike then? At some point, if a person is supporting values that are antithetical to your culture, then you're going to ask them to leave. This may or may not be that time for Thiel.

You can't judge people with "what if they did X". Many of the immigrants who arrive to a western countries have antithetical cultural views. Do you find it appropriate to tell them to take a hike? Isn't it better to act as grown ups instead?

> You can't judge people with "what if they did X".

What I'm saying is that at some point, someone's behavior will become toxic to "your group" (not the whole US - here, the "tech community" however you want to define that) and then they get asked to leave.

This is actually the mature thing to do, to part ways, as opposed to escalating conflict where the same thing happens in the end but the participants are left bloodied and hurting after the in-fighting.

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

#72

Post by ThomPete »

someguydave wrote: post #21

THIEL: "one other way of interpreting the AI boom is that on the surface, it is about extreme optimism about the potentialities of computer technology, and the beneath the surface, it is simultaneously, perhaps, a great deal of pessimism around the possibilities in other technologies that will be developed by humans, and deep pessimism about the possibility of what humans can do." This is what I think about whenever…

So you are ready to believe that physics and chemistry created simple organism which through the process of evolution become more complex organism eventually turning into us.

But you can't believe that this evolution will continue?

Perhaps it's exactly because their argument is empty of spiritualism that they see the world more clearly.

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

#73

Post by return0 »

Animats wrote: post #7

OK, 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…

> Medicine is now working on really hard problems

It's not about "what" is being worked on, but how. I think he 's referring to the lack of major centrally-planned projects like the US space program, or the LHC. I think its true that the way scientific funds are being allocated favors short term but unambitious goals. As an example, both the BRAIN initiative and the human brain project have set rather vague goals that point to incremental steps rather than giant leaps.

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

#74

Post by api »

adrianN wrote: post #65
amelius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, our parents invented things like nuclear energy and semiconductor physics, while we invented, what, social media?

We build the LHC, we landed on a comet, we decoded the human genome...

Evolutionary, not revolutionary. We haven't discovered anything really new in a while. CRISPR-CAS9 and the like may qualify but still I'm not sure they stack up next to the discovery of DNA itself.

All that happened from about 1945 until 1970. Then it stopped. I find it impossible to believe that we learned everything there is in 25 years. Something is broken.

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

#75

Post by return0 »

jimmysdown wrote: post #71
return0 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't judge people with "what if they did X". Many of the immigrants who arrive to a western countries have antithetical cultural views. Do you find it appropriate to tell them to take a hike? Isn't it better to act as grown ups instead?

> You can't judge people with "what if they did X". What I'm saying is that at some point, someone's behavior will become toxic to "your group" (not the whole US - here, the "tech community" however you want to define that) and then they get asked to leave. This is actually the mature thing to do, to part ways, as opposed to escalating conflict where the same thing happens in the end but the participants are left blo…

Not if the debate is conducted in civil terms. There is no indication that thiel will start shouting and calling names. However you're suggesting that people should be preemptively removed from debate. That's evil.

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

#76

Post by return0 »

adrianN wrote: post #65
amelius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, our parents invented things like nuclear energy and semiconductor physics, while we invented, what, social media?

We build the LHC, we landed on a comet, we decoded the human genome...

Not really, the LHC was designed in the 80s. Genome project launched in 1990. It's true that current generations work on incremental problems. The blockchain and social media are something of note.

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

#77

Post by return0 »

hellofunk wrote: post #55
amelius wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We 're listening.

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

#78

Post by jimmysdown »

return0 wrote: post #75
jimmysdown wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't judge people with "what if they did X". What I'm saying is that at some point, someone's behavior will become toxic to "your group" (not the whole US - here, the "tech community" however you want to define that) and then they get asked to leave. This is actually the mature thing to do, to part ways, as opposed to escalating conflict where the same thing happens in the end but the participants are left blo…

Not if the debate is conducted in civil terms. There is no indication that thiel will start shouting and calling names. However you're suggesting that people should be preemptively removed from debate. That's evil.

Thiel is though actively supporting someone for POTUS who has made jingoistic, racist and misogynist comments and stands by them. It's a discussion worth having. Saying that is "evil" is a bit over the top - Thiel is a rich and powerful person by any definition; he can more than handle some criticism.

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

#79

Post by CyberDildonics »

Houshalter wrote: post #53
LionessLover wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bet…

> just because it wasn't designed to have a linear meaning doesn't mean it's useless.

He didn't say that it was

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

#80

Post by virmundi »

return0 wrote: post #37

He reiterates many of the things he 's been saying for a while and written in his book. It's worth reiterating them, probably because things have not changed. He makes a distinction of computers as the "one field that has progres", but, is it really true that IT is not stuck in a rut as well? What are the new paradigms developed recently? Computer vision, machine learning were established in the 80s , despite only be…

I agree that there doesn't seem to be much advancement over the 80s (I'm trying to learn emacs for Clojure right now). I don't agree that commercial success is not an indicator of real progress.

For example, LISPs did not run well on 80s computers. The Japanese, amongst others, had to create special computers to control their trains. Rules based programming performed poorly too. May other such paradigms and tools fall into this category.

For the most part the old, neat tools of now have the hardware necessary for them to be useful. The JVM provides great performance for Clojure. Over the last 30 years, multi-threaded concepts coalesced too. Now they're built into mainstream languages. Provided people stop trying to solve already solved problems like task management, we could possibly be on the verge of productivity improvements.

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