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You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

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Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#71
post #25

Why is it always space? Space technology requires lots of energy and our society is currently in the middle of realizing that our current way of getting energy is going to kill us. Of course we're not making large-scale investments in energy-intensive exploration. I wish EDS maglev, fusion power or quantum computing generated so much excitement, to say nothing of grid batteries, magnetocaloric heat pumps, or electric…

Why is it always space?

Good question. The best off-earth real estate in this solar system is worse than the worst on-earth real estate. It's easier to build colonies in Antarctica or underwater on the continental shelf than on Mars. Mars is small, cold, and nearly airless.

We're not short of low-value real estate, after all.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#72

I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always…

I truly enjoyed reading Saifedean Ammous ‘Bitcoin Standard’. Among other things he explores the relationship between the soundness of a monetary system, the establishment of the gold standard and industrial revolution and technological progress and what he calls ‘zombie industries’ kept artificially alive by loose money policies. Highly recommended.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#73
Forget mars colonies, i just want robots that can do household chores that don't cost more than a vacuum cleaner (and i think roombas are overpriced), where's Rosie?! That's hard, let's build the 10000th chat app instead, e.g. why did this cost $120 million https://qz.com/1194939/the-us-government-just-gave-someone-a... ? Can't we do better now with 3d printing? I dunno, i think we're getting there : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6xqTcLXXC8

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#74
post #6

I think it's great that there's a renewed discussion about the nature of productivity and growth and that people are starting to become aware that economic profit or consumer demand are not the same as progress on long term fundamental science and manufacturing. For way too long now we have all operated on the mainstream economic view that productivity growth is somehow like manna from the heavens and that we only ne…

What we need is progressively stricter tariffs paired with looser immigration laws. We need to force companies that want to efficiently compete for our consumer demand to in-source process knowledge and manufacturing.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#75
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i m not against facebook , but no, the world was "more" connected before facebook and mobile (which i think both represent a shift in the way internet was used). People were connected in open pseudonymous platforms and engaging in continuous explorative mystery with each other, everyone, not just their friends. It's fair to say i haven't read radical ideas online in a decade, and a lot of the edgy stuff of the old in…

> People were connected in open pseudonymous platforms and engaging in continuous explorative mystery with each other. This also had the effect that most people were way more respectful towards each other because you didn't have an instant "ego comparison" trough shined up social media profiles. Nowadays most discussions quickly turn ad-hominem because all the needed information is readily available: "You said this n…

"Anonymity breeds toxicity" is propaganda pioneered by Facebook whose founder believes in radical unprivacy.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#76
post #73

Forget mars colonies, i just want robots that can do household chores that don't cost more than a vacuum cleaner (and i think roombas are overpriced), where's Rosie?! That's hard, let's build the 10000th chat app instead, e.g. why did this cost $120 million https://qz.com/1194939/the-us-government-just-gave-someone-a... ? Can't we do better now with 3d printing? I dunno, i think we're getting there : https://www.yout…

Thought: is the migration of manufacturing away from western countries part of the problem? Lots of innovation in software in the US or UK, but less in manufacturing - perhaps because the skills aren’t there?

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#78
The problem is Intellectual Monopoly laws.

Imagine you have 8 billion processors but you only provide 8 million of them with disk access.

Very few people have access to the information necessary to build innovative products. Instead of waiting for BillG to solve the energy crisis and healthcare delivery and new kinds of toilets for everybody, let's abolish Intellectual Monopoly laws and unleash the power of all 8 billion processors on solving these hard problems.

#intellectualfreedom #scihub

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#79
post #25

Why is it always space? Space technology requires lots of energy and our society is currently in the middle of realizing that our current way of getting energy is going to kill us. Of course we're not making large-scale investments in energy-intensive exploration. I wish EDS maglev, fusion power or quantum computing generated so much excitement, to say nothing of grid batteries, magnetocaloric heat pumps, or electric…

Isn’t it usually flying cars?

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#80
What is tough about this problem is how hard it is to communicate. We all know something is wrong, even if we don't really realize it. Like the article says, we've been promised all of these incredible things by the advancements we've seen, but we have gotten very few fundamental improvements. I live in the US, so I'm going to speak from that point of view.

We work more than every, are poorer than any time in recent memory, have a broken healthcare system, we're seeing decreases in life expectancy, epidemic levels of suicide, etc. and all of this at a time when the market is at ridiculous highs. There are very few people talking about this in highly coherent ways, one is Eric Weinstein on his podcast The Portal, which focuses on this. What we have seen in the past 50 years is that physics has hit a wall in delivering meaningful real world improvements for people's lives, biology has largely done the same, and chemistry pushes forward at a snails pace in the form of pharmaceuticals. The saving grace that makes everyone feel as though we're progressing is technology, which seems to have hit the same wall in recent years since most of the easy problems to solve with computer science have been solved.

In the soft sciences, economics has some deeply troubling problems down to the fundamentals, our politics/government/public policy is damaged and decaying at the root, academia has exploded in cost with little payoff for most, and has entrenched itself as a inescapable shadow that looms over young people for the rest of their life, all while cannibalizing those who speak out against it.

Many great advancements are threatening to become meaningful, but many more have been doing that for decades. It really seems like we are running out of easy problems to solve, and the systems that we have in place are remarkably bad at solving hard problems, while being remarkably good at concentrating wealth

I often think of the first few lines of a poem by Allen Ginsberg:

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz..."

I'm seeing the best minds of my generation destroyed trying to sell ad space, starved of connection, posting selfies looking for a hollow fix.

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