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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

ycombinator.com

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Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#31

Post by bbctol »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #17
astazangasta wrote: post #10

Of course Elon Musk thinks that AI and brain interfaces are the most important things to work on, that's all that is holding back his raging space boner. Meanwhile, a large part of the world is still using Iron Age technology to get by with the bulk of their lives. The most important work of "How to Build the Future" is political work - reforming our property relations, for example, so that we aren't organizing our e…

The delta from "people die" to "people no longer die" is a massive technological problem. By comparison, once we have that technology, making it available to everyone is many orders of magnitude easier, and much easier to get funding for. Do you really believe, given a cure for mortality, that we couldn't get it to the rest of the world in much less time than it took to develop in the first place? And with that in pl…

Well, we developed an easy way to make insulin, and have been failing at getting it to the rest of the world due to lack of political will or economic pressure. I seriously see no reason why wealthy people who develop immortality will want or be able to share it with the poor. That, and the idea of "once we solve the hard problem, the easier problems become easier" is a terrible logical muddle that can be used to justify literally anything.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#32

Post by paradite »

yyyuuu wrote: post #15
astazangasta wrote: post #10

Of course Elon Musk thinks that AI and brain interfaces are the most important things to work on, that's all that is holding back his raging space boner. Meanwhile, a large part of the world is still using Iron Age technology to get by with the bulk of their lives. The most important work of "How to Build the Future" is political work - reforming our property relations, for example, so that we aren't organizing our e…

I don't know why you are being downvoted. You put forward a valid point. Perhaps the fanboys here could understand the desperation most of the world still lives in, even today!!!

He might have a valid point but the point is off-topic.

Here the context is technology, not politics or economic policies.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#33

Post by drakonandor »

tucaz wrote: post #19
JoshTriplett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The delta from "people die" to "people no longer die" is a massive technological problem. By comparison, once we have that technology, making it available to everyone is many orders of magnitude easier, and much easier to get funding for. Do you really believe, given a cure for mortality, that we couldn't get it to the rest of the world in much less time than it took to develop in the first place? And with that in pl…

I don't have the exact numbers but If I'm not mistaken its said that we need less money to end hunger in the world than what we probably spent trying to get out of earth. So, it seems to me that your point is not really valid because we already have the tech/knowledge/means to end hunger and we didn't so it makes a lot of sense to me to focus some more on political reforms.

We have certainly attempted to end hunger and done a pretty good job, however, certain parties and our own reluctance to meddle prevent us from fully accomplishing our goals.. e.g. we know for a fact that very little of the aid going to NK or Palestine gets to where it should, and instead lines their leaders' pockets, but we haven't done anything meaningful about it yet.

And I'm not saying we should do something drastic, Iraq certainly taught us that - however, we certainly don't deserve the blame for any of the aforementioned examples when we are trying our best but prevented by local warmongers (e.g. Africa) and such.

If everyone refused to better yourself because someone else has it worse, nothing would ever get better.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#34

Post by doneallison »

idlewords wrote: post #12
sandslash wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there. That certainly is inconvenient! Here's a link to the transcript in RTF, and we will definitely note it for future posts: https://goo.gl/kaMMwv

Heh, now it's asking me to sign up to Dropbox. Thanks for noting my request, and consider just including the text in the body of the page. It will blow people's minds.

I didn't notice it at first, but there was a link at the bottom of the popup for me that said "No thanks, continue to download." Clicking it triggered the download.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#35

Post by [deleted] »

idlewords wrote: post #3

I am very happy that there's a transcript. But I just spent two minutes trying to figure out how to cut and paste it into a textfile (Scribd won't let me download it without signing up). My request to YC is to publish transcripts like this as text.

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#36

Post by jwuphysics »

firasd wrote: post #4
idlewords wrote: post #3

I am very happy that there's a transcript. But I just spent two minutes trying to figure out how to cut and paste it into a textfile (Scribd won't let me download it without signing up). My request to YC is to publish transcripts like this as text.

While we're at it, these are great interviews and I'm glad they're being created and published, and I'd appreciate if the series was available as a podcast... I only noticed this new interview because I happened to be on HN right now.

I searched on my podcast app, and found an RSS feed that has the three existing episodes. Who would have known that YC has a SoundCloud account?

https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:24682936...

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#37

Post by petra »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #17
astazangasta wrote: post #10

Of course Elon Musk thinks that AI and brain interfaces are the most important things to work on, that's all that is holding back his raging space boner. Meanwhile, a large part of the world is still using Iron Age technology to get by with the bulk of their lives. The most important work of "How to Build the Future" is political work - reforming our property relations, for example, so that we aren't organizing our e…

The delta from "people die" to "people no longer die" is a massive technological problem. By comparison, once we have that technology, making it available to everyone is many orders of magnitude easier, and much easier to get funding for. Do you really believe, given a cure for mortality, that we couldn't get it to the rest of the world in much less time than it took to develop in the first place? And with that in pl…

Sure it would be easy to manufacture a billion doses of anti-death pill. But how will you guarratee high-quality life for billions of immortals and their descendents ?

It's a really hard problem, it could cause a lot of large scale problems(where usually the poor/weak will suffer).

And i wouldn't be surprised if you asked most poor/regular people if they see this as an important problem for them, the answer would be no.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#38

Post by JoshTriplett »

idlewords wrote: post #20
JoshTriplett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The delta from "people die" to "people no longer die" is a massive technological problem. By comparison, once we have that technology, making it available to everyone is many orders of magnitude easier, and much easier to get funding for. Do you really believe, given a cure for mortality, that we couldn't get it to the rest of the world in much less time than it took to develop in the first place? And with that in pl…

Much more likely than a hotfix for death is a world where there are very, very expensive treatments that allow wealthy people to extend their lives by some significant amount. That's not going to be a fun world to live in, especially if the treatments requires biological raw materials that the destitute can sell.

It's a lot easier to go from "expensive treatment" to "inexpensive treatment" (and/or supporting funding) than to go from "no known solution" to "treatment" (however expensive).

Asking people for funding for a cure for mortality is hard, not least of which convincing them of the problem, and then convincing them that a solution is not only feasible but realistic. Asking people to help make an existing cure available to everyone is much easier, because you've already overcome the fundamental disbelief in the problem and the possibility of a solution.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#39

Post by samstave »

LordHumungous wrote: post #28

>I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on businessy things. But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design. Uh... that's not really a CEO's job though.

Seems to work for him though...

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#40

Post by TeMPOraL »

soufron wrote: post #18

Since when did entrepreneurs decided to speak in scifi-bullshit? "We have a digital tertiary self in the form of out email capabilities, our computers, phones, applications." And also, arrogant to the point of being funny? "Interviewer: Do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs?Elon: Mostly not." LOL.

> Since when did entrepreneurs decided to speak in scifi-bullshit? "We have a digital tertiary self in the form of out email capabilities, our computers, phones, applications."

It's not sci-fi, it's a legitimate view. It's basically the opposite of the common "omg children today are spending too much time with computers, this is unnatural, they should communicate more face to face instead of texting so much" bullshit. The idea is that our tools are a part of us, extensions of our bodies, not something "weird" or "unnatural".

> And also, arrogant to the point of being funny? "Interviewer: Do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs?Elon: Mostly not." LOL.

That seems like a sane view of the current state of scientific process. There are way too many career-PhDs. So many that a lot of research is bullshit. I thought this is widely recognized as an issue.

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