Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More Everything Forever

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 321 posts

Re: More Everything Forever

#201

Post by gsf_emergency »

aeturnum wrote: post #47

I am surprised this obviously correct take is so controversial! The problem, essentially, is that the "more everything forever" crowd wants to get paid for the idea of the future today and then will never actually deliver what they promise. They are selling snake oil for the new millennium. Yes, of course I support space travel and settling on mars. I expect that, if we doubled or tripled NASA's budget, we could get…

>wants to get paid for the idea of the future today

One response (also by an abundance crowd?) to a similar sentiment:

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/serbia-limits-academics-...

"Serbia limits academics’ research time to just one hour a day"

Re: More Everything Forever

#202

Post by jorams »

grogers wrote: post #117
janalsncm wrote: post #85

I will say that our discourse is weighted pretty heavily towards people who don’t deserve it. Most genuine experts are careful to only talk about things they know, not bloviate about everything under the sun. I am sure Marc Andreesen is a very intelligent person but he built and sold a web browser. He isn’t an expert on every tech topic. Same with Peter Thiel and the rest of the PayPal mafia. PayPal isn’t revolutiona…

VCs won't be expert level in every area, but they are in a unique position to have a deep knowledge about a lot of different things. It's necessary to be able to invest effectively.

Even if they were, they have absolutely no incentive to tell you their expert analysis. A16Z spent the cryptocurrency mania years pumping and dumping shitcoins. They weren't telling the world these scams were revolutionary because they had any inherent value, but because saying that made them the most money. They are just people with money trying to turn it into more money.

Re: More Everything Forever

#204

Post by arduanika »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #33
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars have killed millions of people. Add to that the consequences of electricity, industrialization, urbanization, and even capitalism itself. But billions and billions of people are not only better off -- living lives of outrageous luxury when measured against recent history -- but they wouldn't have existed at all. Everything good comes with tradeoffs. AI will likely also kill millions but will create and support a…

That's one vision of how things play out. But I do think it's possible that AI ends up killing every last person, in which case I think "everything good comes with tradeoffs" is a bit too much of an understatement.

Ah, so if that's what you mean by AI downsides, then you might find this useful:

https://www.wikihow.com/Leave-a-Cult

Re: More Everything Forever

#205

Post by arduanika »

philipkglass wrote: post #14

This is, loosely speaking, the bundle of ideologies that Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres dubbed TESCREAL (transhumanism, Extropianism, singularitarianism, (modern) cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and longtermism). While these are largely associated with modern Silicon Valley esoteric techbros (and the odd Oxfordian like Nick Bostrom), they have very deep roots, which Becker excavates – like Nikolai Fyodoro…

I think you might have taken this snippet from Cory Doctorow's review, not the NYT article here?

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/22/vinges-bastards/#cyberpun...

The NYT article does not mention the dreaded T word, and is not clear to me whether this notional acronym plays any large role in Becker's book.

Re: More Everything Forever

#206

Post by mikhailfranco »

kazinator wrote: post #148

> [Mars colonists] would require regular shipments of food and water from Earth, presumably via Musk’s company SpaceX Any vessel taking water away from Earth should be shot down with extreme prejudice.

There is water ice on Mars and the Moon.

Solar energy electrolysis can turn water into rocket fuel.

In an emergency, you could burn that rocket fuel to get energy and water.

Re: More Everything Forever

#207

Post by imtringued »

margalabargala wrote: post #87
aeturnum wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think you are under estimating things here. The trip to mars is ~145x longer (at minimum!) than the trip to the moon. Let's say it only takes us twice the time to develop a rocket & ship that can do that (and come back ofc) - so that's 20 years (for 145x the distance). Then you gotta develop structures and building techniques, some of which you can look at with robots, but some of which will need human feedb…

The goal was "get a few humans on Mars". Not the insane goal of "a million in 20 years". Firstly, there's no reason the trip can't be one-way, or at least, temporarily one-way. Secondly, there's not a huge need to develop a new rocket. We've delivered lots of one-way cargo to Mars using the Atlas V; something like the SLS could deliver much more, plenty for a couple humans to get there and not die. We've already laun…

>Firstly, there's no reason the trip can't be one-way, or at least, temporarily one-way.

This is the ultimate admission that it can't be done. Anyone sane would at least propose a free-return trajectory like Artemis 2. Even if you are crazy enough to sacrifice your astronauts on a one way trip, you would still need to practice a lot of free-return trajectories just to train your astronauts and test the hardware.

Re: More Everything Forever

#209

Post by Veedrac »

aeturnum wrote: post #47

I am surprised this obviously correct take is so controversial! The problem, essentially, is that the "more everything forever" crowd wants to get paid for the idea of the future today and then will never actually deliver what they promise. They are selling snake oil for the new millennium. Yes, of course I support space travel and settling on mars. I expect that, if we doubled or tripled NASA's budget, we could get…

These articles which are little more than blind scarequotes peppered with ad hominems invite little more meaningful discussion than more ad hominems. What is the value of a comments section filled with little but "this is stupid and anyone who believes it is a snake oil salesman"?

Re: More Everything Forever

#210

Post by huhkerrf »

ojbyrne wrote: post #188
mikeyouse wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source for any of those claims? It's pretty well known after a few weird political fights that she grew up in a tiny house in Yorktown and that her dad died when she was a freshman in college and that her mom was a house cleaner. [her childhood home: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DhCMERUXUAAY68Z?format=jpg&name=... ]. Hard to square with her family "owning multiple brownstones". Trump's dad gave him millions of dollars…

Wikipedia supports the claim that she was an intern for Ted Kennnedy, but none of the rest. Interestingly she has an asteroid named after her. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez

I'm not an AOC fan, but I was an intern on Capitol Hill, and I'm sure as hell not from an upper crust background. I'm not holding that against her.
Post reply on HN