71–80 of 144 posts
I always find it strange to hear people talk about climate change as if it is some sort of tricky challenge we need to solve, like improving education or curing cancer. It is a 'problem' of completely different magnitude. It is on track to end civilization as we know it within two generations. A rational society would think about nothing else. Our children will be astonished and mystified - and furious - to see all t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, learn to accept your mortality. Long term the human race will die. Some think by robots taking over. Some think by earth getting as warm as it has not been a long time much faster than ever (although live was thriving at that time). Some think a bit meteor might hit us or a super volcano could erupt and cause 100 years of darkness. Some think a global nuclear war will end us. Some think humans will just procreat…
As a creature capable of empathy, I am quite upset at the thought of incalculable suffering we are condemning future generations to just because we can't be bothered not to.
The idea that the coming generations are more important than the current is frankly the most unemphatic thing I have heard in a long time.
To be honest, I can't really understand how come there are still people who, when confronted to a world that has been irremediably changed by humans' use of technology (for worst, they say) still believe that an improved technology used by the same humans will make things better. I'm looking at these quotes from the article: > The reason I say that is that if you look at the challenges that confront society: climate…
I think the argument is pretty straightforward: You take the following things as premises: a.) Humans tend to reproduce, often above-reproduction level b.) Humans usually tend to optimize their well-being c.) Well-being of individuals of your own species is more important than well-being of other species The first two should be uncontroversial. The third one is not uncontroversial but still the foundation of most leg…
I think I may want a source for that.
I always find it strange to hear people talk about climate change as if it is some sort of tricky challenge we need to solve, like improving education or curing cancer. It is a 'problem' of completely different magnitude. It is on track to end civilization as we know it within two generations. A rational society would think about nothing else. Our children will be astonished and mystified - and furious - to see all t…
Humans have had to deal with climate change for all our existence and to think that the only problem with regards to the climate is human-made illustrates how absurd the discussion have become. The biggest opportunity to solve, whatever affect humans have is through technological progress, not beliving humans basic instinct and behavior is somehow going to change. Humans are both rational and irrational, mostly irrat…
Not like this: https://xkcd.com/1732/
I always find it strange to hear people talk about climate change as if it is some sort of tricky challenge we need to solve, like improving education or curing cancer. It is a 'problem' of completely different magnitude. It is on track to end civilization as we know it within two generations. A rational society would think about nothing else. Our children will be astonished and mystified - and furious - to see all t…
That's been happening since Generation X kids were old enough to understand what a mess our parents made of the world.
Unfortunately we haven't done a very good job of making a difference. Frankly I'm a little disappointed in my cohort in that regard. We knew things needed to be different, and we were mad as hell about how the preceding generations fucked everything up... and then we got so caught up in the drudgery of every day life that we kept perpetuating the same problems instead of fixing them.
I'm not terribly optimistic that any subsequent generation is going to do a much better job in general. It seems to be a fundamental human failing that we're not good at dealing with issues that span time-periods longer than our lifetimes. :-(
I always find it strange to hear people talk about climate change as if it is some sort of tricky challenge we need to solve, like improving education or curing cancer. It is a 'problem' of completely different magnitude. It is on track to end civilization as we know it within two generations. A rational society would think about nothing else. Our children will be astonished and mystified - and furious - to see all t…
One potential solution is to not have children.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, learn to accept your mortality. Long term the human race will die. Some think by robots taking over. Some think by earth getting as warm as it has not been a long time much faster than ever (although live was thriving at that time). Some think a bit meteor might hit us or a super volcano could erupt and cause 100 years of darkness. Some think a global nuclear war will end us. Some think humans will just procreat…
As a creature capable of empathy, I am quite upset at the thought of incalculable suffering we are condemning future generations to just because we can't be bothered not to.
I don't believe there is: in that regard, humanity is as much in control of its own destiny as a mold colony growing on a slice of bread under a glass dome.
To wit: we have been incapable of solving basic problems like ending hunger or war for our entire history. There is zero reason to believe we can actually do anything about something much harder like global warming.
What will happen is what seem to happen to all form of life on planet Earth throughout history (e.g all life before stromatolites started pumping highly poisonous oxygen into the biosphere, or dinosaurs and whatever put them down, etc...): we will go through a cataclysmic, extinction-level event.
What will come out the other side will likely still be life, but unlikely be human, or if it is, vastly changed.
And you can pump out as much empathy as you'd like. As has been repeated ad nauseam, the physical world doesn't give two hoots.
If a solution exists to global warming, it's expansion, nothing else. Musk is correct in that regard.
> mass inequality — which is getting worse How can presumably smart people still keep saying this? Inequality is decreasing by all measures! And then I'm supposed to believe any other argument this person makes...
Some people think the inequality has gone down significantly (I'm in that camp), but others point out to things like Bezos and a few others owning more assets than 80% of the world combined. Regardless, AI is bound to increase inequality. Just yesterday we discussed this book [1] on probabilistic programming here on HN [2]. That book is, by all definitions, an advanced book about AI. How many people without a PhD can…
From the abstract:
This document is designed to be a first-year graduate-level introduction to probabilistic programming. It not only provides a thorough background for anyone wishing to use a probabilistic programming system, but also introduces the techniques needed to design and build these systems. It is aimed at people who have an undergraduate-level understanding of either or, ideally, both probabilistic machine learning and programming languages.
Thanks to the Internet, how many people who have that prerequisite "undergraduate-level understanding of either or, ideally, both probabilistic machine learning and programming languages" now have access to this material, who otherwise might not have? And thanks to the Internet (Khan Academy, Coursera, OCW, Udacity, Fast.ai, 3blue1brown@youtube, etc.) how many people now have the ability to gain that prerequisite knowledge without investing tens of thousands of dollars in a university degree? Especially people who might not have been able to afford to take time off from working to attend University in the first place?
While in the end you may be right that AI specifically does wind up driving inequality, I think there are strong arguments that technology / the 'net in a general sense also serve to advance equality.
To be honest, I can't really understand how come there are still people who, when confronted to a world that has been irremediably changed by humans' use of technology (for worst, they say) still believe that an improved technology used by the same humans will make things better. I'm looking at these quotes from the article: > The reason I say that is that if you look at the challenges that confront society: climate…
Frankly, I can't really understand how come people believe what you just wrote. Yes, technology created many problems, but we can't solve them by doing less technology, without reintroducing problems we've already solved. We can either not solve them, or try to solve it with more progress (likely introducing new problems as well). In other words: we dug a hole for ourselves with technology, but the only way we can di…