271–280 of 400 posts
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He's making fun of the buzzwords, not the message itself. Frankly, if you think "catalyzing paradigms" is a good way to say something, I'd recommend taking an English literature class.
"catalyze a shift in the world's thought paradigm" is the quote, so it sounds like you're the one who needs to be careful of language.
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Okay, let's attach numbers to the scenario. Assume there are 1 million people in Group A and 990 million people in Group B. By voting no, you just condemned 900,000 people in Group A to eventually die, simply because you wanted to prevent them from becoming the ruling elite. Stated differently, you had the power to prevent 900,000 deaths (and in fact many more than that, moving forward), and you chose not to because…
There have been several times in human history where the majority have decided it would be best if the 'elite' should have their lifespans shortened. Arguably with positive results.
Most of the world suffers from the health problem of never even reaching a ripe old age, and much of the rest from the problem of not being able to afford it, and increasingly so. This is not about making the world a better place. This about allowing the elite that can afford it to live forever.
Unfortunately this is most of the politics that drives health care in the USA. Most people in the US don't even get close to old age because they don't have access to adequate healthcare. Bill Gates is saving thousands of lives by trying to wipe out diseases that generally affect poor people for very little money per life saved. While in the US millions is spent per person to provide longer lives for a few people.
What? The average life expectancy in the US is 79 years old... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expec...
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Two words: compound interest.
> Two words: compound interest. Compound interest works intergenerationally as well as within a lifetime, so that doesn't seem to be much of an argument.
Remember, this is a scenario where we're talking about 1% of the population getting life-extension while everyone else remains stuck with 80-120 years of maximum lifespan. Those indefinite folks are going to get very wealthy very quickly (as in, within one century), because they can afford to wait for long-term investments to pay off in a way nobody else can.
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catalyze a shift in the world's thought paradigm Absolutely. The goal should be to enact a vector of a new paradigm, as proactive team players synergize an out-of-the-box strategy of functionality and infotainment, re-engineering the learning curve framework of your dotted-line relationship.
Personally I hope that Google is humble enough to morph cross-platform mindshare in addition to growing killer channels and facilitating bleeding-edge infrastructures. This approach will surely recontextualize best-of-breed vortals, implement world-class research and innovate value-added technologies by embracing impactful infomediaries. Imagine how much longer we'd live if we leveraged sticky e-services, brand user-…
The fact they open Calic makes me hate them. They could have gone in every sector, but not in the one that is there to actually improve our life. They will algorithmically help kill much more people efficiently. Money powers the healthchare system.
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That whole article is incredibly creepy -- 'War on Aging' -- do we really need more 'War on X' rhetoric? Regarding the fact that we know that we eventually die, he states > So soul-destroying has this knowledge been, for almost everyone, that we have constructed our entire society and world view around ways to put it out of our minds'. Absolutely ridiculous. Besides the fact that I think a 'soul' is a poorly-defined…
It's part of being a biological organism thus far . There's nothing to say we can't do better. To the rest -- in particular, the notion that wanting people not to die is "infantile" -- I reply with a link: http://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified/
You know, as opposed to not tiling the universe in anything.
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Like with anything else, the question isn't whether the rich will be able to afford it, the question is how much progress can we make in making it cheap, how quickly, to get it to how many people? It is a moral imperative to make sure that short-sighted class warfare does not cut off the nose to spite the face by destroying this work under the guise of egalitarianism, because we can not turn on a dime and immediately…
Sorry, but no . Transhuman-level stuff is not safe or even morally allowable for our current society. No. Just freaking no . I was born in a world where two things in life got to everyone: death, and taxes. They've already "relieved" the elite of taxes, and now they're looking to do the same for death. No. We are not their cattle, and they are not our shepherds. You want immortality, robots, and post-scarcity awesome…
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> Two words: compound interest. Compound interest works intergenerationally as well as within a lifetime, so that doesn't seem to be much of an argument.
And lo and behold! When we fail to implement estate taxes, compounding investments ensure that the bloodlines of the well-off and long-lived become the rich elite! Remember, this is a scenario where we're talking about 1% of the population getting life-extension while everyone else remains stuck with 80-120 years of maximum lifespan. Those indefinite folks are going to get very wealthy very quickly (as in, within one…
Right, so compound interest isn't magic as long as you have taxes (and, actually, compound interest per se is rarely a problem when you have taxable interest, appreciation of capital assets that works like interest but isn't is the problem -- and it comes about specifically because of the choice to give tax-favored status to long-term capital gains.) Estate taxes are a mechanism that works to mitigate the problems caused by favoring capital income when death is a reliable periodic effect, but you could acheive much the same effect in a progressive income tax system, without sensitivity the frequency of death, by simply not giving long-term capital gains a tax-favored status, and treating income as income, especially if you add more upper-range marginal tax brackets for super-high-end incomes.
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It's part of being a biological organism thus far . There's nothing to say we can't do better. To the rest -- in particular, the notion that wanting people not to die is "infantile" -- I reply with a link: http://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified/
Yes, let's all listen to the man warning us that something will tile the universe in something other than humans . You know, as opposed to not tiling the universe in anything.