There’s two kinds of people in this world. There’s hammers. And there’s nails. You decide which one you want to be.
- Will Smith, Focus - The Movie
- Will Smith, Focus - The Movie
Friday, March 6, 2015
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Death Is Optional
Now, what we're talking about today is not that computers will be like
humans. I think that many of these science fiction scenarios, that
computers will be like humans, are wrong. Computers are very, very, very
far from being like humans, especially when it comes to consciousness.
The problem is different, that the system, the military and economic and
political system doesn't really need consciousness.
[---]
Yes, the social side is the more important and more difficult one. I don't have a solution, and the biggest question maybe in economics and politics of the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people. I don't think we have an economic model for that. My best guess, which is just a guess, is that food will not be a problem. With that kind of technology, you will be able to produce food to feed everybody. The problem is more boredom, and what to do with people, and how will they find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless, worthless.
[---]
My best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer games as a solution for most ... it's already happening. Under different titles, different headings, you see more and more people spending more and more time, or solving their inner problems with drugs and computer games, both legal drugs and illegal drugs. But this is just a wild guess..
[---]
And I don't know, maybe it's the future, maybe it isn't, but for me, the amazing thing is that you'd have thought, given the biological background of humankind, that this is impossible, yet we see that it is possible. Apparently, Homo Sapiens is even more malleable than we tend to think..
[---]
And looking from the perspective of 2015, I don't think we now have the knowledge to solve the social problems of 2050, or the problems that will emerge as a result of all these new developments. We should be looking for new knowledge and new solutions, and starting with the realization that in all probability, nothing that exists at present offers a solution to these problems.
Brilliant Edge conversation with Daniel Kahneman and Yuval Noah Harari author ofSapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
[---]
Yes, the social side is the more important and more difficult one. I don't have a solution, and the biggest question maybe in economics and politics of the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people. I don't think we have an economic model for that. My best guess, which is just a guess, is that food will not be a problem. With that kind of technology, you will be able to produce food to feed everybody. The problem is more boredom, and what to do with people, and how will they find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless, worthless.
[---]
My best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer games as a solution for most ... it's already happening. Under different titles, different headings, you see more and more people spending more and more time, or solving their inner problems with drugs and computer games, both legal drugs and illegal drugs. But this is just a wild guess..
[---]
And I don't know, maybe it's the future, maybe it isn't, but for me, the amazing thing is that you'd have thought, given the biological background of humankind, that this is impossible, yet we see that it is possible. Apparently, Homo Sapiens is even more malleable than we tend to think..
[---]
And looking from the perspective of 2015, I don't think we now have the knowledge to solve the social problems of 2050, or the problems that will emerge as a result of all these new developments. We should be looking for new knowledge and new solutions, and starting with the realization that in all probability, nothing that exists at present offers a solution to these problems.
Brilliant Edge conversation with Daniel Kahneman and Yuval Noah Harari author ofSapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Quote of the Day
How many meetings have you attended where everyone seemed to agree at the end about what actions would be taken but nothing much actually happened as a result? These are the meetings where there’s no robust debate and therefore nobody states their misgivings. Instead, they simply let the project they didn’t like die a quiet death over time…
- Ram Charan, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
- Ram Charan, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Quote of the Day
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
- Henry David Thoreau
- Henry David Thoreau
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
The Early Retirement Movement
The ERE people have basically shown that a large portion of Americans should have no problem being ready for retirement. We can all think of obvious exceptions--things happen. But MMM has shown that a 30-year working life should be plenty of time to accumulate a lot of savings, even on below-median incomes. ERE is the solution to the retirement crisis, the student loan crisis, and probably a bunch of other crises--at least at the individual level. It's the Garett Jones approach to inequality:
This approach might not be of much help to policymakers, but it's a pretty good solution at the individual level. It might prevent some of this sort of thing.
[--]
A popular rebuttal to the ERE arguments is something like this: That's fine for you, but if everyone did it, the economy would collapse since nobody is buying anything. One of the founders of the movement (he goes by Jacob) has a note in response:
I don't have a problem with the ERE people responding to the consumption question in this way. There is no economic law saying that two thirds of output must be spent on consumption (though some of the secular stagnationists seem to agree with the ERE critics...). But they're ignoring other important channels. ERE isn't just about less consumption; it's about less labor. Labor is a production input! Less labor means capital is less productive in the short run; in the long run, this means less capital as well.
[--]
ERE works great in partial equilibrium. Mr. Money Mustache is very enthusiastic about how technology and general wealth have made his lifestyle possible. But if everyone did it, who would build the gadgets? Who would build and operate the machines that build the gadgets? Who would work for the companies in which MMM owns stock? The key point is this: the ERE world isn't just about people saving more. It's about people working less, and that's what kills it.
ERE works if we're willing to accept lower aggregate output than the counterfactual. I don't get the impression that the ERE people accept that. The robots can make it possible. Until then, it's not in the feasible set.
But that doesn't matter! Because not everyone is trying to do it. You and I can still do it, or at least get as close to it as we want.
- More Here
So let's start training ourselves and our children to delay gratification, to forego that great sound system on the new car, to eat at home a little more often.
This approach might not be of much help to policymakers, but it's a pretty good solution at the individual level. It might prevent some of this sort of thing.
[--]
A popular rebuttal to the ERE arguments is something like this: That's fine for you, but if everyone did it, the economy would collapse since nobody is buying anything. One of the founders of the movement (he goes by Jacob) has a note in response:
It is important to realize that a consumer economy in which people go to work in order to buy stuff is not the only form of economy. It is just the current one.
Money can also be spent on productive assets, art, preserving nature, space exploration, eliminating hunger, maybe even eliminating war. It’s just that we've collectively chosen to spend it on cell phone upgrades, furniture replacements, fashionable vehicles, shoe collections, throwaway electronics, and so on.
I don't have a problem with the ERE people responding to the consumption question in this way. There is no economic law saying that two thirds of output must be spent on consumption (though some of the secular stagnationists seem to agree with the ERE critics...). But they're ignoring other important channels. ERE isn't just about less consumption; it's about less labor. Labor is a production input! Less labor means capital is less productive in the short run; in the long run, this means less capital as well.
[--]
ERE works great in partial equilibrium. Mr. Money Mustache is very enthusiastic about how technology and general wealth have made his lifestyle possible. But if everyone did it, who would build the gadgets? Who would build and operate the machines that build the gadgets? Who would work for the companies in which MMM owns stock? The key point is this: the ERE world isn't just about people saving more. It's about people working less, and that's what kills it.
ERE works if we're willing to accept lower aggregate output than the counterfactual. I don't get the impression that the ERE people accept that. The robots can make it possible. Until then, it's not in the feasible set.
But that doesn't matter! Because not everyone is trying to do it. You and I can still do it, or at least get as close to it as we want.
- More Here
Quote of the Day
Machine learning is the new wave of investing for the next 20 years and the smart players are focusing on it,
- Bridgewater Is Said to Start Artificial-Intelligence Team
- Bridgewater Is Said to Start Artificial-Intelligence Team
Monday, March 2, 2015
When a Man Loves a Pigeon - Nikola Tesla & a White Pigeon
When I come across these amazing bonds which great men seamlessly surpass the species boundaries; needless to say, I smile and this idiot thinks of his bond with Max :-):
Is it ironic or apt that a man who had dedicated much of his life to the future of wireless communication would fall for the ancient, living technology of a carrier pigeon? And is it ironic or apt that a man whose final years as an inventor were dedicated to a fearful direct-energy “teleforce” weapon (dubbed the “death ray” by the press) fell in love with the key symbol for peace?
We cannot know what thoughts or emotions were coiled inside Tesla’s mind and heart as he feared for the life of his nameless, winged mistress, and then mourned her passing as he would a lover. But we can discern, and appreciate, the creaturely affection that he experienced, and ultimately spoke of matter-of-factly, once the race for absolute human technical mastery had been assumed by others. For the man who invented the rotating magnetic field, “animal attraction” or “animal magnetism” was not simply a figure of speech, but an everyday experience and personal responsibility, and one that did not stop at the border between species. As such, this patron saint of the cybernetic triangle—one linking human, animal, and machine—sends us a message from the age of high industry and scientific discovery concerning love itself as the invisible but overwhelming alternating current that animates existence, and can sometimes be explicitly shared among creatures.
It might seem that this nameless bird was not in a position to reciprocate Tesla’s affections. And yet who could speak for this pigeon of pure white, with light gray tips on her wings? Who could say what she “felt” for the tall, melancholy, strangely dressed creature who fed, nursed, and caressed her? As with the love between two humans, or between Balthus and his cat Mitsou, or a human and an operating system like Samantha in the 2013 film Her, fully symmetrical affection is not the criterion by which we can determine whether love is in effect. We need not invoke the transmigration of souls to account for the connection or recognition that occurred. Nothing mystical need have taken place; no modern Ovid is necessary to account for the romantic sacrilege. Finitude is what all creatures share. No matter how carefully philosophers try to build a semantic or ontological wall between ourselves and other animals, we all perish. We all die. Humans may anticipate their end with more conscious and unconscious dread than do our fellow animals, but we need only see the survival instinct in action to appreciate that all creatures cling to life with furious intensity when the spark of their inexplicable existence is threatened.
Love is the name we give to this furious intensity when we direct it outward, beyond the survival of the self, to the compassionate caretaking of another pulse, pounding fragile and finite, under another skin.
Is it ironic or apt that a man who had dedicated much of his life to the future of wireless communication would fall for the ancient, living technology of a carrier pigeon? And is it ironic or apt that a man whose final years as an inventor were dedicated to a fearful direct-energy “teleforce” weapon (dubbed the “death ray” by the press) fell in love with the key symbol for peace?
We cannot know what thoughts or emotions were coiled inside Tesla’s mind and heart as he feared for the life of his nameless, winged mistress, and then mourned her passing as he would a lover. But we can discern, and appreciate, the creaturely affection that he experienced, and ultimately spoke of matter-of-factly, once the race for absolute human technical mastery had been assumed by others. For the man who invented the rotating magnetic field, “animal attraction” or “animal magnetism” was not simply a figure of speech, but an everyday experience and personal responsibility, and one that did not stop at the border between species. As such, this patron saint of the cybernetic triangle—one linking human, animal, and machine—sends us a message from the age of high industry and scientific discovery concerning love itself as the invisible but overwhelming alternating current that animates existence, and can sometimes be explicitly shared among creatures.
It might seem that this nameless bird was not in a position to reciprocate Tesla’s affections. And yet who could speak for this pigeon of pure white, with light gray tips on her wings? Who could say what she “felt” for the tall, melancholy, strangely dressed creature who fed, nursed, and caressed her? As with the love between two humans, or between Balthus and his cat Mitsou, or a human and an operating system like Samantha in the 2013 film Her, fully symmetrical affection is not the criterion by which we can determine whether love is in effect. We need not invoke the transmigration of souls to account for the connection or recognition that occurred. Nothing mystical need have taken place; no modern Ovid is necessary to account for the romantic sacrilege. Finitude is what all creatures share. No matter how carefully philosophers try to build a semantic or ontological wall between ourselves and other animals, we all perish. We all die. Humans may anticipate their end with more conscious and unconscious dread than do our fellow animals, but we need only see the survival instinct in action to appreciate that all creatures cling to life with furious intensity when the spark of their inexplicable existence is threatened.
Love is the name we give to this furious intensity when we direct it outward, beyond the survival of the self, to the compassionate caretaking of another pulse, pounding fragile and finite, under another skin.
Quote of the Day
One of the biggest problems with the world today is that we have large groups of people who will accept whatever they hear on the grapevine, just because it suits their worldview—not because it is actually true or because they have evidence to support it. The really striking thing is that it would not take much effort to establish validity in most of these cases… but people prefer reassurance to research.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Neil deGrasse Tyson
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Quote of the Day
If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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