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Wild Ideas

hanson.gmu.edu

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Re: Wild Ideas

#71

Post by kilowatt »

derefr wrote: post #44
gnaritas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because why would I care if I change species if it keeps my consciousness alive?

What is your consciousness, separate from a subsumptive architecture of event loops that react to recognized stimuli in response to goal conditions? Which is to say, if you remove all your goal conditions, all your reference points that could be moved away from center to provoke response -- if you are reduced to http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Orgasmium , in other words -- are you really aware any more?

I like to imagine at least that our consciousnesses are abstract enough, and derive enough pleasure from art, and music, and conversation, etc., that they don't need arbitrary goal conditions like "death is relatively imminent, so get out of bed." Or at least, if they do, we'd be smart enough in the short term to manufacture goal conditions. And that they'd happily exist, and flourish even, in a new substrate.

Re: Wild Ideas

#72

Post by Houshalter »

sthatipamala wrote: post #24
sytelus wrote: post #15

Yes, wild ideas except for the "2100" part. The scientific and engineering breakthroughs have been slowing down dramatically in past 50 years or so. Science fiction from 60s and 70s is embarrassingly filled with predictions such as we would have colonies in space, computers indistinguishable from humans, flying cars on street, humankind without poverty and end of cancer by 2020. How close are we? If we go back in tim…

You're also downplaying the creation of a global communications infrastructure that is nearly ubiquitous and unprecedented in its capacity. Other than that, no progress at all. /s

But how much did the internet actually improve people's lives or change things? The major changes of our time are nowhere near as major as the ones of the last two centuries. Industrialization and mass production and trains and electricity, and massive population growth, and crazy amounts of scientific progress.

Almost all of the major improvements happened early on in the century, not so much in recent times. All the low hanging fruit has been picked. There is never again going to be a single technology that improves people's lives as much as mass adoption of electricity did (short of a singularity at least.) More efficient or even self driving cars compared to today's cars, will be nothing compared to what cars were for horses and trains. No single medical technology is going to have as big of an impact as antibiotics did. Cell phones are not nearly as big of an improvement as the first phones were.

Did the world really change and improve as much between 1970 and now as it did between 1930 and 1970? Did it change as much then as between 1890 and 1930?

Re: Wild Ideas

#73

Post by philh »

sytelus wrote: post #15

Yes, wild ideas except for the "2100" part. The scientific and engineering breakthroughs have been slowing down dramatically in past 50 years or so. Science fiction from 60s and 70s is embarrassingly filled with predictions such as we would have colonies in space, computers indistinguishable from humans, flying cars on street, humankind without poverty and end of cancer by 2020. How close are we? If we go back in tim…

SF from the sixties and seventies is also filled with predictions which were not nearly ambitious enough.

(Two examples that come immediately to mind: I recall one of Heinlein's characters describing something that seemed a lot like a microSD card. It had a capacity of something like a million words. I got the impression that it was quite expensive. And in Neuromancer, "three megabytes of hot RAM" was contraband.)

(I think actually those examples are both from the eighties, but I don't think that's particularly important in this case.)

Re: Wild Ideas

#74

Post by Houshalter »

goldfeld wrote: post #31
wikiburner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an even crazier version: we develop a quantum computer the size of Jupiter with seemingly infinite computational capacity, and "scan" and simulate the earth. Similar to how a sufficiently advanced AI application today could probably take an overview picture of a pool table at any point in a game, and deduce the past shots that had to be taken in order for it to result in it's current state, you might be able t…

That sounds enticing, but I think you could never rewind the state of the Earth without considering the variables external to it. If you couldn't also simulate anything that could alter the course of events, such as exposure to the Sun, I think you'd end up accumulating enough lossy transitions that the simulation would be rendered (ha) worthless in a deterministic sense. If we consider that only simulating the atoms…

If you just make assumptions or guesses about external variables, could this work to get at least close to what the past looked like?

I mean the whole idea is kind of ridiculous but in theory, it might work.

Re: Wild Ideas

#75

Post by frobozz »

enginous wrote: post #51
aasarava wrote: post #13

#2, about health insurance, overlooks a big part of the RAND HIE's findings: people who were sick and poor in the study did have worse health outcomes.

Also, his idea of increasing taxes will mean that even if his statement were true ("[if] people only bought half as much, they would be just as healthy"), a flat increase in drug tax would at best make this effect true on average. Due to higher taxation, low-income individuals would have even less access to medicine than today. Keeping people away from drugs with prohibitive taxation means starving entire demographic…

Only if those low-income individuals have to pay the same for their medicine as those with higher incomes.

If the purpose of taxing medicine is to subsidise the provision of medicine to people who couldn't afford it at cost price, then that would give such people greater access.

Re: Wild Ideas

#77

Post by Houshalter »

babesh wrote: post #54

1. Human cloning 2. Giant solar collectors the size of states 3. Pandemics 4. Self aware computers 5. Tailored assassination drugs to induce swift cancer 6. Colonies on the moon 7. Genetic alteration and enhancement 8. Thought control 9. Man and machine war like the Matrix 1. and 5. are mostly to occur first.

Is there any practical purpose in human cloning short of cloning specific organs for replacement? As for tailored drugs to induce cancer, that is rather specific. There are a lot of ways to kill people, not sure if that would be the most efficient. And if you have that level of technology, there might also be dangers like custom made viruses that are super-contagious and 100% lethal.

Which makes #9 more interesting. A war between man and machines would end very quickly if the AI just designs a super-virus and kills 99% of the population overnight.

Re: Wild Ideas

#78

Post by andrewkreid »

icebraining wrote: post #47
ivanbrussik wrote: post #25

the scariest part of us living in a simulated environment is what happens when the players get bored and decide to turn us off (that thought might have been controlled by one of the players)

Who cares? It's not like we'll notice. The scary part is if their equivalent of 4chan gets a hold of the controls.

There is another theory that states that this has already happened...

Re: Wild Ideas

#79

Post by derleth »

bumbledraven wrote: post #19

1. Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different versions that live in different worlds. True. 2. If medicine were taxed so much that people only bought half as much, they would be just as healthy. False. The "extra" spending in medicine drives innovations so we have better drugs & procedures etc. than we would otherwise. 3. If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make comput…

> If we allowed complete freedom of contract, law could be privatized, to our common benefit.

This Anarcho-Capitalist ideal has never come to pass in any scenario where it could have happened: That is, there have been multiple scenarios where the established government has broken down entirely, and nobody's ever created this system with government-by-contract or anything like it.

We can argument-from-fiction this to death, and many people have, but if it can only happen if it's set up by some external agency it doesn't look like it's ever going to happen, so why bother?

> If even a few of us honestly sought truth, we would not disagree with each other.

Only if everyone starts from the same premises.

For example, does every example of Homo sapiens sapiens count as a human being? If no, then arguing against some plan because those supposed 'non-humans' would be made unhappy by it is worthless. You might as well argue against a plan because gneiss would be put out by it: In the minds of the people you're arguing against, it would be a total non sequitur.

A lesser, but more important, version of this is "Does every human matter equally as much?" Again, if you're arguing against people who hold as axiomatic that some matter more than others (due to tribalism, "racial realism", etc.), certain arguments aren't going to work.

Maybe we'll have to kill everyone who holds those ideas so we can stop having wars. (Your task: Am I being serious?)

Re: Wild Ideas

#80

Post by derleth »

snitko wrote: post #11

The author is obviously some kind of crazy anarchist. Private law system? You mean that all of a sudden people would become customers of multiple legal firms instead of subjects of one big system and will be able to choose laws they like while at the same time not interfering directly with others who chose different laws? You mean that all of a sudden majority would lose its power to dictate minorities how to live th…

If it's so wonderful, why hasn't it happened yet?
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