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More Everything Forever
31–40 of 321 posts
Re: More Everything Forever
#32This book seems insufferable, at least based on the review. Half of the review is trying to poke holes in why people won't live on mars and the other half is about how people trying to pursue goals such as this are self-serving and corrupt. I'm sure a market exists for this kind of book, but to me it's just exhausting. What's the harm in trying to go to mars if it results in decreasing the cost of space flight by 99%…
I think the final paragraph of the article sums up the issue pretty well. The tech world spends a lot of thought and energy on trying to escape our current existence instead of trying to make it better. There's very real crises that are solvable like climate change and food security. But instead of working hard to fix those, tech billionaires are focusing on space travel, AI, etc. Things that are important and could have a large (currently vague) impact, but don't solve our long term relationship with our own planet.
Re: More Everything Forever
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
The phrase "grift behind AI doomerism" suggests that either the book author or the reviewer (or both) don't have a clue. AI will cause real and huge problems.
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.
Re: More Everything Forever
#34Colonizing Mars is such a dumb idea. I wish it was a strawman, not the stated goal of the world’s richest man.
Anyway, some of the utopian/distopian thinking, I get. We aren’t going to create an AI god, good or evil. That belief is probably a side effect of the facts that Millennials are (finally) grabbing the reins, and we grew up in an era where computers actually got, tangibly, twice as good every 18 months or so, so some sort of divine techno-ascension seemed plausible in 2005 or so.
But we live in the failure path of our plans. So, I’m quite worried that a group will try to create an omnipresent AI, run out of runway, and end up having to monetize a tool that’s only real use is scanning everybody’s social media posts for wrong-think (the type of wrong think that makes you unemployable will invert every four years in the US, so good luck).
Re: More Everything Forever
#35This book seems insufferable, at least based on the review. Half of the review is trying to poke holes in why people won't live on mars and the other half is about how people trying to pursue goals such as this are self-serving and corrupt. I'm sure a market exists for this kind of book, but to me it's just exhausting. What's the harm in trying to go to mars if it results in decreasing the cost of space flight by 99%…
Because the author's worldview requires him to compel other people to do what he wants, and if they're not doing what he wants that's a problem.
Re: More Everything Forever
#36> He encourages us not to get hung up on galaxies far, far away but to pay more attention to our own fragile planet and the frail humans around us. While I don't necessarily agree with the motives of the Silicon Valley billionaires you must have a really basic imagination to hate on the future, and the answers to Man's oldest questions which may be on Mars and beyond. Of course, like a broken record, out comes the tr…
There are large swathes of earth that are too inhospitable, like deserts. They're more accessible and easier to support life in than Mars, and yet no one lives there. The deserts even have breathable air.
I know what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but really? We're going this far with it? It doesn't even exist anymore?
Re: More Everything Forever
#37> He encourages us not to get hung up on galaxies far, far away but to pay more attention to our own fragile planet and the frail humans around us. While I don't necessarily agree with the motives of the Silicon Valley billionaires you must have a really basic imagination to hate on the future, and the answers to Man's oldest questions which may be on Mars and beyond. Of course, like a broken record, out comes the tr…
There are large swathes of earth that are too inhospitable, like deserts. They're more accessible and easier to support life in than Mars, and yet no one lives there. The deserts even have breathable air.
But there are people living in the inhospitable deserts that have useful resources like oil. Or artificial resources like legalized gambling.
Antarctica is even more inhospitable than deserts, and there are people living there for research purposes.
Re: More Everything Forever
#38This book seems insufferable, at least based on the review. Half of the review is trying to poke holes in why people won't live on mars and the other half is about how people trying to pursue goals such as this are self-serving and corrupt. I'm sure a market exists for this kind of book, but to me it's just exhausting. What's the harm in trying to go to mars if it results in decreasing the cost of space flight by 99%…
Because a lot of these stuffs like longevity and advanced AI are going to break the human society?
I'd rather NOT have that kind of technical advancement before we figure out how to make the human society a bit more equal.
With the whole world turning to the right, we are further, not closer, from that objective. I guess not everyone believes in that, but hey I'm just talking about myself.
Re: More Everything Forever
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how solving poverty on earth can't be more important than the endeavor of trying with the current rather limited tech to inhabit an as good as inhabitable planet.
It is more important. We spend > $2T per year fighting climate change. We spend > $10T per year on social welfare programs. We spend less than $10B per year on going back to the moon and trying to inhabit Mars.
And both of these amounts seem to not be enough based on the resulting state of the world.
Re: More Everything Forever
#40This book seems insufferable, at least based on the review. Half of the review is trying to poke holes in why people won't live on mars and the other half is about how people trying to pursue goals such as this are self-serving and corrupt. I'm sure a market exists for this kind of book, but to me it's just exhausting. What's the harm in trying to go to mars if it results in decreasing the cost of space flight by 99%…
I think the final paragraph of the article sums up the issue pretty well. The tech world spends a lot of thought and energy on trying to escape our current existence instead of trying to make it better. There's very real crises that are solvable like climate change and food security. But instead of working hard to fix those, tech billionaires are focusing on space travel, AI, etc. Things that are important and could…
I don't know, my life is made better by electric vehicles, Starlink, Amazon one day delivery and large language models.
What does "working on climate change" look like? The only thing I hear from climate change activists is that the government should extract more money from people and this will somehow change the climate. So I guess rich billionaires should be lobbying for politicians to tax me more?
Again, all this stuff is exhausting. Environment is the biggest problem so everything that uses energy is bad. It's just a formula for mass de-industrialization, making everyone poor, and eventually de-population.
So no, I don't think wealthy people should do more lobbying. I'm happy with them paying their taxes and trying to build tech that makes my life better.