121–130 of 176 posts
He was 63 and wrote this a few years ago, “You’ve Had Your Turn –The Case for Euthanizing Everyone at Age 65” https://marshallbrain.com/youve-had-your-turn-the-case-for-e...
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> The only clear distinction between the utopia and the dystopia is on wealth distribution. A utopia where everyone is starving vs a dystopia where some people are fabulously wealthy but almost everyone has basic healthcare and education and opportunity to succeed? Inequality isn't anywhere near as important as the baseline of what most people have available to them.
That is not the shape of the world in the story under discussion. Within the story, the dystopia crams the masses into cheap housing, they have no jobs nor possibility of jobs, no freedom even to leave as they are apprehended by robots if they try; and the utopia has no need for jobs, but gives out UBI credits to be spent on whatever you want the machines to make for you, and lets you live out a fantasy life.
He was 63 and wrote this a few years ago, “You’ve Had Your Turn –The Case for Euthanizing Everyone at Age 65” https://marshallbrain.com/youve-had-your-turn-the-case-for-e...
This is likely satire along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal . The main giveaways are the directness of the language and the time of writing (on the tail of covid when people were unironically making such proposals).
They were? I remember a lot of awful stuff about those years, but this isn't one of them. I remember people making somewhat mean-spirited but understandable comments about (some) older people getting killed off by Covid due to their own actions (refusal to take the threat seriously and take precautions, leading them to catch it, and then have much worse outcomes due to the fact that the disease was much more deadly for unhealthy and older people).
Oh man. Sad to hear that. I remember in the early '2000s before Wikipedia printing out those tutorials to read before I'd take these long bus rides out of town to work at the meat (slaughter) plant. I was trying to educate myself so I would not have to work at the meat plant for long. That job kinda sucked but at least it got my mind straight. I was debating whether or not to save up for college. Working there for a…
Wow, thanks for sharing this story! As a long time friend of Marshall’s it’s fascinating to hear folks share their encounters with his work. What are you up to now?
My condolences about Marshall.
Very thankful for his work.
Very sorry to hear that Marshall died :( I just went on howstuffworks.com and I see two articles on astrology on the home page. For real? I thought it was a science-based website.
Sad to hear a brilliant man decided to take his own life. He seemed increasingly dark on his later takes, and it's a testament to the evils of unrestrained high-IQ and no guard rails.
He wrote an essay about people being euthanized after age 63 in order to relieve the environmental strain of the high population. I don't know if he really believed that, but if he did and saw his health and quality of life deteriorating rapidly, then it is possible that he literally was trying to serve as a role model to people of how to be a good citizen and fight climate change.
I personally hope that we don't have to resort to such things as a society. But I believe that resource constraints and climate or other challenges are much more severe than people understand. I hope that we will be able to leverage technology to avoid disaster.
Intelligent people are able to understand and solve problems. That's why they don't ignore them and hope they will go away, like many less intelligent people. Brain might have been demonstrating a "last-resort" but effective solution to these types of global challenges.
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I'm going to disagree here, slightly. If anything I think Manna is something closer to AGI; and its capabilities certainly imply that it's Turing Complete. Which means the owners will constantly be playing whack-a-mole with edge cases and emergent properties that they couldn't anticipate from a prior fix. This is what would destabilize the dystopia; though that doesn't imply more freedom. It could just mean replacing…
Almost everything* is accidentally Turing complete — I know the guy who proved that Magic the Gathering is Turing complete, even helped play-test and then bought a copy of his board game. So yes, the fictional AI in that story would, in reality, have all kinds of edge cases and emergent properties. But Vertebrane would also have to be Turing complete, just to be able to function. * I jest, but not by much
I’m struggling to see it with Vertebrane.
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> And each of those questions comes from a highly confused state about what religion is, about what prayer is, about what God is. No need for goalpost moving. The holy book claims that God answers prayers. This is, in fact, a lie. Some people aren't yet fully convinced of this, and reading the website helps them along. (see uncle comments)
I think you overlook that holy book says “only” God answers prayers. And pray to God for he will answer. The answer doesn’t necessarily have to be the answer you think is correct. A leg amputated is a leg lost and the journey of a test and struggle that begins next. That’s an answer. Not a lie. Once again, the writer doesn’t understand God, prayer, religion, and the purpose of man. And he cannot make sense out of thi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost everything* is accidentally Turing complete — I know the guy who proved that Magic the Gathering is Turing complete, even helped play-test and then bought a copy of his board game. So yes, the fictional AI in that story would, in reality, have all kinds of edge cases and emergent properties. But Vertebrane would also have to be Turing complete, just to be able to function. * I jest, but not by much
I don’t mean the AI. I mean a Manna-driven society is itself turing complete. I’m struggling to see it with Vertebrane.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not the shape of the world in the story under discussion. Within the story, the dystopia crams the masses into cheap housing, they have no jobs nor possibility of jobs, no freedom even to leave as they are apprehended by robots if they try; and the utopia has no need for jobs, but gives out UBI credits to be spent on whatever you want the machines to make for you, and lets you live out a fantasy life.
Sounds pretty good compared to the current state of things in many places for many people. At least they 1) don't need to slave away at grueling, pointless jobs, 2) have their own housing, and 3) aren't starving.
> Instead of giving people a welfare check, they started putting welfare recipients directly into government housing and serving them meals in a cafeteria
> It was a lot like an old-style college dorm. Each person got a 5 foot by 10 foot room with a bed and a TV — the world’s best pacifier. During the day the bed was a couch and people sat on the bedspread, which also served as a sheet and the blanket. At night the bed was a bed. When I arrived they had just started putting in bunk beds to double the number of people in each building.
I've visited an apartment in one of the poorer (but not literally slum) areas of Nairobi that was bigger than that.
I can't remember exactly where now, but it had these kinds of vibes on the outside, and it was still better than the government housing in the story: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y8DAByJPfCiRtQmm6?g_st=ic