81–90 of 152 posts
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If you asked the population if they would want immortality, the common answer wouldn't be "no".
Is it? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/americans-... https://www.newscientist.com/article/2179928-only-one-in-fiv...
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What's so common-sense about it? Or even commendable? Earth's carrying capacity is a problem to be solved, there are many viable solutions that can be executed in parallel, and it doesn't really sound like a big challenge relative to getting life extension working in the first place. Really, it's just bewildering to me that having a death wish is considered common-sense, normal viewpoint.
I think Woz's point is that no matter how much the carrying capacity of the Earth (or even the entire solar system, or galaxy) is increased, it will always be finite. It's possible that we might be lucky enough to live through a great era of spaceward expansion during which even our best efforts at population growth are slower than the than the even faster growth of population capacity, and that would be amazing. Tha…
It's crazy that Jobs passed over 12 years ago already
It's crazier that Dennis Richie passed right around the same time as Jobs, and didn't get any of the fanfare, despite having far more meaningful contributions to the field (to say the least), while being a humble, decent, human being.
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cool sentiment, but becoming increasingly harder to do. So many people an too many to not discount that some crazies will pop in. Few public/semi-public figures can just keep their contact info around freely. Even if it all is in good faith, they will just get so many mails about business inquiries, recruits, media reqesting interviews, academia, etc. Very hard for little Timmy to ask a quick question via email these…
emailing famous people or their handlers is kind of a hobby of mine. over about a hundred emails i've received about 30 replies. the surprising thing to me is that their level of 'fame' has little to do with whether or not they reply to me. I've received replies from some famously impressive people, and have been ignored by some real 'niche' ones. I have a suspicion that there is a bit of a bi-modal distribution betw…
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I think Woz's point is that no matter how much the carrying capacity of the Earth (or even the entire solar system, or galaxy) is increased, it will always be finite. It's possible that we might be lucky enough to live through a great era of spaceward expansion during which even our best efforts at population growth are slower than the than the even faster growth of population capacity, and that would be amazing. Tha…
Extended to the limit, it's a fair point, but this type of thinking is arguably far from common-sense (since it's uncommon for people to engage in universe-scale hypotheticals), and arguably a problem for the future - i.e. for when we start outgrowing the galaxy or something.
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It's surprising to me that such an obviously common-sense viewpoint is being treated as if it's extraordinary. Nonetheless, it's commendable that he hasn't succumbed to the delusions of grandeur and immortality.
What's so common-sense about it? Or even commendable? Earth's carrying capacity is a problem to be solved, there are many viable solutions that can be executed in parallel, and it doesn't really sound like a big challenge relative to getting life extension working in the first place. Really, it's just bewildering to me that having a death wish is considered common-sense, normal viewpoint.
It's not getting solved though, it's getting worse day by day because of climate change making increasingly large amounts of space uninhabitable, soil erosion, the aftereffects of pollution with all kinds of crap (PFAS, microplastics, nitrates from fertilizer runoff, ...) and over-exploitation below replacement levels (e.g. in fish).
> there are many viable solutions that can be executed in parallel, and it doesn't really sound like a big challenge relative to getting life extension working in the first place.
We barely understand how our body works in detail. We know a bit on how to do genetic manipulation, but at the moment no one seriously works on manipulating germ cells out of ethical reason - even something as "simple" as cloning a human is widely seen as unethical, and completely forget about using something like CRISPR to manipulate the genetics of a live human outside of people for whom this is the only chance at getting a few years out of some fatal disease.
> Really, it's just bewildering to me that having a death wish is considered common-sense, normal viewpoint.
Memento mori.
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It's surprising to me that such an obviously common-sense viewpoint is being treated as if it's extraordinary. Nonetheless, it's commendable that he hasn't succumbed to the delusions of grandeur and immortality.
What's so common-sense about it? Or even commendable? Earth's carrying capacity is a problem to be solved, there are many viable solutions that can be executed in parallel, and it doesn't really sound like a big challenge relative to getting life extension working in the first place. Really, it's just bewildering to me that having a death wish is considered common-sense, normal viewpoint.
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> the Woz is one of the few figures that many of us in the tech industry look up to and aspire to be like. Relatable. My Woz story is from junior high school (middle school) in the late 1990s. I was writing a report on him and read two different biographies that seemed to report conflicting information. So I emailed him asking what actually happened back at a childhood science fair. And he actually responded and reca…
cool sentiment, but becoming increasingly harder to do. So many people an too many to not discount that some crazies will pop in. Few public/semi-public figures can just keep their contact info around freely. Even if it all is in good faith, they will just get so many mails about business inquiries, recruits, media reqesting interviews, academia, etc. Very hard for little Timmy to ask a quick question via email these…
There was a time in HS when I had several to-fro with DMR about Unix philosophy without fully realizing what a giant he was in our CS galaxy. I truly miss him.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's so common-sense about it? Or even commendable? Earth's carrying capacity is a problem to be solved, there are many viable solutions that can be executed in parallel, and it doesn't really sound like a big challenge relative to getting life extension working in the first place. Really, it's just bewildering to me that having a death wish is considered common-sense, normal viewpoint.
Is it really a death wish? Immortality being a curse is a common trope. Hell, even surviving to 90 or 100 can be its own kind of hell for those whose life is being unnaturally preserved for the sake of those who can't or won't let go.