Elon Musk on How to Build the Future • Hacker News Board

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#501

Post by tim333 » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 10:11 PM UTC

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #420

metaphorm wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you should read some Taleb on this subject. ignoring low probability outcomes is not a good risk/success model.

I ask as someone who is vaguely familiar with Taleb's ideas but didn't read the book: That is a really fascinating point, especially considering this is literally a case where you are "betting your (future) life" on the low probability outcome event. I mean, what is your hedge in that case? Does Taleb talk about that too?

I guess a hedge in that case would be to try to arrange things so they come out OK if you miss the goal. Like if you want to be president aim for the fail case being a successful lesser politician. Not sure what Taleb says.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#502

Post by joe563323 » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

Its sad that Elon does not have confidence on immortality. He is even thing about dying.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#503

Post by jakub_h » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 10:48 PM UTC

petra wrote: post #104

TeMPOraL wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought he was like John Carmack or something, but at the end of the day he's mostly a sales guy with big dreams. The self-taught rocket engineer stuff is mostly self-promotion. Where do you get that impression? Except maybe from not following anything about him. Unless you think that the following quote from this interview is an outright lie: "I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media o…

Musk isn't the most reliable source of information about himself: ' Musk sells himself as a singular mover of mountains and does not like to share credit for his success. At SpaceX, in particular, the engineers “flew into a collective rage every time they caught Musk in the press claiming to have designed the Falcon rocket more or less by himself,” ' https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539861/techs-enduring-gre...

Funnily enough, I've yet to see him do that. The logical next question is obviously "so what are these other people for?".

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#504

Post by asdfologist » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 11:07 PM UTC

johnloeber wrote: post #351

I am surprised that YC would make this page so remarkably mobile-unfriendly. I don't have the time to listen to the interview, I just want to read the transcript. They could have just pasted it in a reader-friendly format, but instead it's in an annoying Scribd applet. I don't want to sign up for their service or download the app, not to mention that it's a terrible mobile reader anyway. This was very disappointing.

Scribd is desktop-unfriendly. Not sure what's so horrible about just including the text directly in the page.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#505

Post by tim333 » Fri, Sep 16, 2016, 11:11 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #312

byebyetech wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess Kurzweil and Elon spend some time on WhatsApp. But since Elon thinks in terms of first principles. He probably has this reasoning: 1. Are the any laws of physics that stop us from creating AI ? Answer is No. Nature already built it so its possible. 2. Is it possible to improve AI significantly ? Yes, because if we can build AI, AI can build better AI. 3. How soon can it happen? Since the trend is exponential.…

I guess the entire cognitive dissonance com from this line: > How soon can it happen? Since the trend is exponential. It can happen within 100 years. Some people think "well, it's likely to happen within 100 years -> it's up to us to be prepared". Other people think "well, it's unlikely to happen within 10 years -> it's not worth it to begin to prepare". I don't even know if one of those is wrong!

Not a boy scout then. Always be prepared!

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#506

Post by djokkataja » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 12:47 AM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #468

Planet diversification and renewable energy are good priorities, and that not doing them narrows future options dramatically, but the other things on this list are pure sci-fi fandom. Cyborgs and whatnot will probably come around eventually bit I see no reason to hasten them. I'd like to fix our current problems before these things make them more intractable: - inequality - workaholism of upper classes skewing cultur…

Cyborgs are desirable because they solve the "control problem" of AGI. Essentially, if you create a superintelligent AI, how do you make sure it doesn't outwit you and all other humans in order to do terrible things? There aren't any plausible methods that I'm aware of to accomplish that goal. So you sidestep it by not making any AI that's more intelligent than humans. Unfortunately there also aren't good ways to make sure that no one makes AI that's more intelligent than humans (plus arguably superintelligent AI could be an extremely good thing if it doesn't turn into Skynet). So the remaining obvious option is increasing human intelligence at the same time as we improve AI -- or even better, merge humans and AI together.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#507

Post by djokkataja » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 1:11 AM UTC

ksashikumar wrote: post #389

Anybody know why the first approach to Mars is 20 light minutes? Musk mentioned that the fastest approach to Mars is 4 light minutes!

Earth is 8 light minutes from the sun, Mars is 12 light minutes from the sun. So when Earth and Mars are closest to each other, they're 4 light minutes away from each other, and when they're farthest from each other (on opposite sides of the sun), they're 20 light minutes away from each other.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#508

Post by projektir » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 1:27 AM UTC

sheer_horror wrote: post #429

projektir wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that, Musk has that effect on some of the best people, and his effect, due to his status, is very strong. I'm actually highly concerned about Musk's overall effect on society, specifically due to the kind of people he'll have that effect on.

I don't understand why you would be concerned and not elated by his effect on society. Tech has been stuck for 40 years in most major industries, and in a time when it seems impossible to overcome the entrenched incumbents of those industries, here comes a person who shows us that it is in fact possible. Now people have hope that our future will be decided not by frail, unmoving conglomerates, but instead by nimble a…

Because the message of "only superhumans who work 80 hour weeks can accomplish great things" is not the kind of effect I want on society. We have enough of that as it is. We need less of it, not more.

Does it not concern you that tech has been stuck for 40 years? That space has been stuck for however many years? Despite all this hard work everywhere? I'd rather resolve those problems at the core than address the symptoms or possibly worsen them by betting everything on one person and hope they will bring us salvation.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#509

Post by feralmoan » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 6:23 AM UTC

This was a lot less insightful than I was hoping for. I understand he's naval gazing on the 'human condition' from a billion dollar vantage and trying to rationalize investment in his personal academic fetishes... but really? The world is burning and he's pontificating an ego expression of 1950's atomic age. No 1% left behind. Ridiculous.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#510

Post by babyrainbow » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 8:23 AM UTC

iMuzz wrote: post #2

Question/Answer I found interesting: Sama> How should someone figure out how they should be useful? Elon> Whatever this thing is you are trying to create.. What would be the utility delta compared to the current state of the art times how many people it would affect?

> utility delta

I get a feeling that this phrase is going to be popular among Elon fanboys.