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More Everything Forever

nytimes.com

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Re: More Everything Forever

#211

Post by johngossman »

ferguess_k wrote: post #151
ivape wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I would say it's similar to politicians. We won't really have your, I don't know, career Costco Manager in political leadership. We'll get AOC or a Vance (staying bipartisan to make the point, moving off this topic next sentence). Th…

I think the ideal foundation of democracy consists of: 1) All citizens get mandatory high education on Math, Science, Language and Logic (what level is high enough is open to debate. I'd say college level), regardless of career -> This is to make sure they have the basic knowledge to participate in meaningful discussions; 2) All citizens are encouraged, and by law mandated to attend and organize political stuffs -> T…

This is pretty much Plato with the (major) caveat that full citizenship was restricted to a subset of the population

Re: More Everything Forever

#212

Post by amanaplanacanal »

dmonitor wrote: post #105
cgriswald wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need AI to scan social media posts for wrongthink. AI may let you go deeper, detecting thoughtcrime based on certain patterns of otherwise acceptable speech. However, AI is already good enough for that and the sort of people who want this don't care about false positives (or really truth at all) and are probably already compiling lists. Historically these sorts of folks just make stuff up against their enem…

I can see the appeal of "colonizing mars as an extinction-proof backup plan", but I'm not convinced that it's a positive-EV play. Attempting to go to mars increases odds of our survival in case of earth going to shit by some amount, but it also increases the odds of earth going to shit due to the waste, energy expenditure, and missed opportunity cost of not solving pressing issues.

Earth would have to go to shit by an unimaginable amount to be as bad as Mars already is.

Re: More Everything Forever

#213

Post by mcosta »

johnea wrote: post #145
margalabargala wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And Zeroly, there's absolutely 0 reason for people to go to Mars, AT ALL. This whole idea is the stupidest thing I've heard people seriously discuss. What would be the point? If you want to experience "life on Mars", bury a cargo container in your back yard, and live in it for a year. If there's some burning need to go live underground, as you would on Mars, why not just do it in Nevada? The grocery store is a lot cl…

And Zeroly, there's absolutely 0 reason for people to go west, AT ALL

- Portugal, 1490

Re: More Everything Forever

#214

Post by amanaplanacanal »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #49
colonelspace wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just making the basic point that we have a wealth of much more hospitable places to live on earth, and somehow they're not viable candidates as "backup plans" for humanity. Going a little further, living in the ocean is easier than living on Mars. As far as I can tell there are no billionaire-funded submarine civilisation programs.

They're not viable candidates as backup plans for humanity because they have the same vulnerabilities to comet strikes, global nuclear war and pandemic as the rest of the Earth. OTOH, if one of those took out human life on Earth, people living on Mars could re-colonize Earth.

Earth after a global nuclear war or comet strike is still more hospitable than Mars.

It's hard to imagine anything that would make Mars a better place to live than simply staying on earth.

Re: More Everything Forever

#215

Post by amarcheschi »

derektank wrote: post #173
foobiekr wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this downvoted? It’s clearly a reference to the zizians and MIRI and Bayesian nutjobs is an absolutely correct assessment.

Stuart Russell and Geoffrey Hinton have both expressed concerns that AI could lead to human extinction and neither are nutjobs

I wasn't explicitly referring to the more "sane" people expressing doubts regarding Ai.

Hinton at least says that other issues in Ai should be dealt with, rather than just being an Ai doomer who only fears Ai takeover he actually realizes that there are other current issues as well

At this point, how many times should we have been dead for eliezer?

Re: More Everything Forever

#216

Post by stevage »

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…

Why "of course" you support colonizing mars? What's your reasoning?

Re: More Everything Forever

#217

Post by rudolftheone »

nektro wrote: post #208

can we invent our way to eliminating billionaires? because that's the common denominator in every problem they claim to be the savior of

We already invented that. It was called the 20th century. Tried wealth caps, nationalizations, revolutions - you name it. Usually ended with gulags, breadlines, or both.

Billionaires are a symptom, not the disease. You don’t cure a fever by smashing thermometers. If we want fewer billionaires, we need systems that don’t reward monopoly power ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: More Everything Forever

#218

Post by lurk2 »

alganet wrote: post #101
lurk2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe Jesus also believed this Jesus predicted his death several times, most explicitly in Matthew 20:17–19. > Now Jesus, going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples aside on the road and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death, and deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge…

It is known that the specifics of the story were modified. The current text is kind of frozen by its own similarities to itself. The use of extracted quotes is probably a mistake. You have to find the same event in a lot of other books beyond Matthew to be able to find a tiny whiff of historical information, very faint, very difficult to do with translated versions.

> You have to find the same event in a lot of other books beyond Matthew to be able to find a tiny whiff of historical information

The same event is described in the book of Mark (10:32-34) and the book of Luke (18:31-34).

There are two other predictions that appear in all three books:

Matthew 16:21-23

Mark 8:31-33

Luke 9:21-22

Matthew 17:22-23

Mark 9:30-32

Luke 9:43-45

Re: More Everything Forever

#219

Post by nitwit005 »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #191
ryandrake wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are places on Earth that are probably 3-5 orders of magnitude less terrible than Mars, and we don't even have a reason to colonize those areas. Let alone a cold, barren, lifeless, radiation-covered, nearly atmosphere-less rock.

One of the cool things about humanity is that we do stuff that doesn't seem to make much sense, like set sail in a direction without any idea if there is even land out there The reason to colonize Mars is to see if we can For a lot of people that's a sufficient reason And frankly it may be worthwhile because if we can colonize Mars we may be able to colonize a large asteroid full of resources that we need, or somethi…

People stopped being interested in the moon landings pretty quickly.

There's a lot of interest in visiting Mars because it hasn't been done. There are a lot of exploration fans. It'll stop being novel once we've made a few visits.

Re: More Everything Forever

#220

Post by anarticle »

johnea wrote: post #145
margalabargala wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And Zeroly, there's absolutely 0 reason for people to go to Mars, AT ALL. This whole idea is the stupidest thing I've heard people seriously discuss. What would be the point? If you want to experience "life on Mars", bury a cargo container in your back yard, and live in it for a year. If there's some burning need to go live underground, as you would on Mars, why not just do it in Nevada? The grocery store is a lot cl…

> I'm an advocate of exploration and science, and in the modern world we have effective automation. There is NO need to send people to Mars, absolutely not in any large number.

Can you write this with a straight face? This feels like the opportunity of a life time for someone who wants to push the envelope on what is possible. Yes it will be expensive, but the tech and lessons we learn will surely be worth more. Consider all the developments from the Apollo program. This level of pessimism always shocks me, shouldn’t we rise to the challenge?

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