I read Thiel’s book and he claims that the rise of human level computing intelligence is a problem for the 22nd century. Does anyone know why he thinks that it is so far off?
Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future
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Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future
#12I am personally torn which basically tells me that Thiel is neither right nor wrong but just carves out a useful perspective.
I read his book and I found several points extremely inspiring while other things I find lack introspection.
What important thing is no-one currently building still comes down to some sort of luck but at the same time I find it an inspiring way to think about problems.
However we can't all solve the things no one is building and we certainly won't all be successful if we tried so personally
I am happy that someone actually wants to create a restaurant even if it's shitty despite the fact that it doesn't return great profits and isn't anything close to the value of a Google.
Just like I am happy that someone build a little app for my phone or make an ebook even though it isn't going to do 10X.
The reality is that there isn't and never will be perfect competition just as there will never be perfect monopoly not even a state legislated one cause time changes the underlying premise for these things.
I do agree that we are too many people stepping on each others toes. Too many suppliers of the fundamentally same things. But given time that will change.
Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future
#13This is a very good crystallization of my thoughts when I first heard Thiel's argument. At the end of the day, it's always been about incremental steps, we just look back and see the leaps and bounds that they enabled.
The manhattan project wasn't incremental. Nor was the apollo program nor the hoover dam. It does seem like we (America) have moved into a mode of thinking where instead of asking, "what do we want to build?" we ask, "based on the advances at the edge of iterative academic or technical progress, what is now possible to build?" In short, Thiel's argument that America has mostly transitioned from optimistic determinists…
One doesn't exclude the other. It's perfectly reasonable to claim that the world mostly move in incremental steps while there are some who take quantum leaps. In fact that seems fairly reasonable to be the case. PayPal was in many ways a quantum leap but only really after they merged with Elon. So even Thiel wasn't the only one building what no one else where.
Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future
#14This is a very good crystallization of my thoughts when I first heard Thiel's argument. At the end of the day, it's always been about incremental steps, we just look back and see the leaps and bounds that they enabled.
The manhattan project wasn't incremental. Nor was the apollo program nor the hoover dam. It does seem like we (America) have moved into a mode of thinking where instead of asking, "what do we want to build?" we ask, "based on the advances at the edge of iterative academic or technical progress, what is now possible to build?" In short, Thiel's argument that America has mostly transitioned from optimistic determinists…
Manhattan project, over half a million people working in cooperation to meet one end goal. The Apollo program, over half a million people working in cooperation to meet one end goal. How many people do Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle employ? Combined?
A single individual with a computer can be more productive than 100 individuals from any of those past projects. We walk around with more computer power in our pockets than the entire computer power that got mankind to walk on the moon.
But that is not the point.
The point is that a mooonshot is only a moonshot relative to its time.
In other words, we would need to imagine what a project, that could be accomplished with half-a-million (or more) people working in cooperation toward a single end goal, would look like today.
I can guarantee you that would look something along the lines of a partial terraforming of Mars.
Hacker news complains about the lack of innovation and invention, and yet continues to support a tech-world with a "solo founder" mentality, one man sitting alone in a room coding an app ... You'll never get a moonshot civilization pushing that attitude.
Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future
#15Being right is overrated. We still learn a ton when brilliant people get things wrong.
Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future
#16I read Thiel’s book and he claims that the rise of human level computing intelligence is a problem for the 22nd century. Does anyone know why he thinks that it is so far off?
Because everyone else does?
Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
The manhattan project wasn't incremental. Nor was the apollo program nor the hoover dam. It does seem like we (America) have moved into a mode of thinking where instead of asking, "what do we want to build?" we ask, "based on the advances at the edge of iterative academic or technical progress, what is now possible to build?" In short, Thiel's argument that America has mostly transitioned from optimistic determinists…
Manhattan project, over half a million people working in cooperation to meet one end goal. The Apollo program, over half a million people working in cooperation to meet one end goal. How many people do Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle employ? Combined ? A single individual with a computer can be more productive than 100 individuals from any of those past projects. We walk around with more computer power in our pocket…
You might enjoy the book "Why the West Rules -- For Now" (http://www.amazon.com/Why-West-Rules-Now-Patterns/dp/0312611...)
One of the main premises is that the impact of societies on other societies ("ruling" in the vernacular of the book, as this impact has often been military and brutal in the time scale the book covers) has a lot to do with the kind of social organization they are able to use. There's amplifiers to this of course -- you can either mobilize a huge number of people to build a pyramid, or mobilize a huge number of people to invent cranes and bulldozers and let a few people build the pyramid. But the bottom line, according to Morris, is that this kind of social goal-oriented organization is a key metric of a society's impact.
Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future
#18Was the link in the OP article a joke article? It doesn't seem to have a punch line.... Blood Industry Shrinks as Transfusions Decline - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/business/blood-industry-hu...
No, the point is that we focus too much on the downside. We should be happy that there's lower demand for blood transfusions due to improved medical techniques, but we're just lamenting the lost jobs in the industry. Just like we should be happy that self-driving cars are going to mean more leisure time, safer streets, and lower transportation costs, but we spent a lot of time worrying about people who currently driv…
How much of that is the precondition for that progress (which, mind you, I'm 100% behind) being economic harm to other people?
My guess is that with a stronger social net you'd see fewer doom-and-gloom articles about this sort of progress.
Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future
#19I read Thiel’s book and he claims that the rise of human level computing intelligence is a problem for the 22nd century. Does anyone know why he thinks that it is so far off?
Because everyone else does?
Really? I thought the people like Moravec and Kurzweil were predicting 2030 to 2040? I have not seen any analysis from anyone that would push it off past 2100.
Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future
#20This is a very good crystallization of my thoughts when I first heard Thiel's argument. At the end of the day, it's always been about incremental steps, we just look back and see the leaps and bounds that they enabled.
Alan Kay has a wonderful lecture on this very topic - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAghAJcO1o