Jeff Bezos and the New Pharoahs
joebot.substack.com
joebot.substack.com
"Earth rotates around the Sun? Who is this Galileo, a Sun-worshipper??"
Lucky for him, in this timeline he survives to adulthood to write his Substack blog, rather than dying of polio, smallpox and/or the plague. He lives beyond the wildest dreams of a pharaoh and takes it utterly for granted.
New Pharaohs indeed.
Death is an evolutionary mechanism, it's a fundamental part of renewal of the species. Biological life dies to introduce novelty, in a cultural sense it is what gives urgency to human action, creating new life. Human immortality is the same thing as the suppression of forest fire. Fires are bad for some individuals but they're vital for the ecosystem. It's the natural version of creative destruction. If you dislike the idea of an immortal company or an immortal government you should be wary of the idea of immortal individuals. One of the longest lived species on earth is the sponge. It is no accident that they're not a very dynamic species.
Good ideas always survive, Galileo's contribution to mankind exists without Galileo, but as scientists often point out, science advances one funeral at a time. And that can be taken quite literally.
I don't know what category I fall into right now, but I do understand that there might be potentially huge (bad) changes because of this that can stagnate the whole species rather than pushing forward. These possible scenarios are based on the real world, so they must be taken into account.
If you're saying immortality shouldn't be allowed because it could lead to negative change, well...feel free to opt out should the option arrive. To paraphrase Cory Doctorow, no one need convince you...simply outlive you.
However, I don't think you would. I think you'd opt in and deal with the consequences later, since at least you'll be alive to experience them. We accept change all the time without considering consequences if the individual gain is strong enough.
I'm not saying it shouldn't be allowed, but that is a huge leap in one's understanding of the world. The possible effects of leap should be thoroughly studied before making those leaps, because it can backfire due to unseen consequences. Blindly following immortality as a way to live isn't a right way in my opinion.
> We accept change all the time without considering consequences if the individual gain is strong enough. Not all changes are equal and arguably immortality would be the biggest change humanity has ever faced, so I don't think this is a matter of "We'll see things afterwards", but of "let's first study the possible good and bad consequences of that and then decide if we want to do this or not". Advancement for the sake of advancement isn't a right way to go in my opinion, especially not when majority of changes will now affect ALL the people on Earth as we're all connected now.
On the topic of, will I opt in? It depends on the consequences. I would prefer not to be a tester of such thing, so I won't opt in if I'm in the trial batch or even first public batch. Feel free to do so if you want to, but try not to say "what you think others will do" based on an internet comment because that again is based on the mental model you have right now which is a narrow slice (same for everyone). Now, would I like to live a good life (90-100 years)? Yeah sure, but I really don't feel like I want to live beyond that. I might want to extend that life if I find some purpose later in life, but even after that I don't think I'll ever want to live forever.
I get the impression he unironically is asking that like a Douglas Adams character.
"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans."
Bezo's achievements are not "mankind's" achievements
Why not? If we made it to Mars on Musk's ship... I'd be happy to declare it both his and our win.
Back then an equivalent article would have targeted the church, and its author probably would have suffered greatly for doing so, sort of like our friend Galileo... Your obsequiousness, especially pathetic in this age when the stakes are so much lower, would have spared you from facing any similar repercussions I'm sure.
But unlucky for us.
This is a universal human fear for the entire recorded history of everything and is one of the fundamental drives behind everything people do. The author is clearly familiar with the Pharoahs, did he think that at some point between then and today that the fear of death stopped being a motivator? Did the author feel like it also applying to Jeff Bezos is some sort of big tell? Is the next piece going to be "man admits to requiring oxygen?"
What they definitely didn't do was build a Ziggurat to cryofreeze their corpses in or put their heads in jars. I don't think the kind of ego that is required to engage in these immortality ventures is that common, that's just yet another thing that Bezos et al tell themselves
was that an option? what you attribute to lack of ego, could also be lack of funds.
What I have read of Jeff Bezos reminds me somewhat of the fictional Walter Faber, the main character in the novel Homo Faber by Max Frisch. [1] Walter starts an affair with a much younger woman partly in an effort to recapture his youth. Controlling the world through technology is a leitmotiv in the story. To the extent his motivations are similar, Jeff Bezos is certainly far from the only real character to express this idea.
p.s., I recommend Homo Faber very highly. Along with Faust by Goethe it is invaluable reading for anyone interested in technology and the human condition.
Actually the name of the rag is “MIT Technology Review”; it’s a private effort that licenses the name from the Alumni association. I guess they pay some cash, and also agree to send every alum a copy of the magazine with an alumni news section bound into the back. I was able to cancel the paper copy but I assume they still do this.
It’s historically been such a terrible magazine (a friend calls it “the magazine of things guaranteed never to happen”) that I’m surprised the Institute hasn’t shut it down. People do get the impression that it is somehow the opinion of MIT (whatever that would mean)
I really don’t understand why a reputable institution would sell their name that way, unless strapped for cash.
I am a paying member of the alumni association (well, the Northern California chapter) so I suppose I am marginally complicit in this fraud. Sorry!
And it Amazon sells immortality as a service I don’t think reasonable people will be all that bent out of shape about him skipping a few hundred billion in taxes.
I mean… FFS that’s like 1/2 a year we couldn’t invade a country and bomb its populations. Maybe we should be giving Jeff a medal for avoiding taxes for all the bombs he’s kept from getting dropped.
Just because people do things differently to you and make different decisions to the ones you would, doesn't automatically make them bad or a narcissist.
You spend your time commenting on websites, moaning about people doing things differently to you. You could spend the same time volunteering to help society in all manner of things.
Not paying your fair share of tax to help society as a whole and not spending your spare time to help society, are not that much different.
I'm actually a quite malicious person ...but commenting on HN doesn't rank high in my list of Antisocial behaviors :P
Careful what you wish for I guess?
Bezos is Bezos I'm not going to comment on that, but I definitely get the impression that the author has done zero research into Milner's other efforts.
Yuri genuinely thinks science can push humanity forward, he's putting a pile of money into science projects with little expectation of clear success and his manifesto just comes across as earnest and "humanist" if a little naive if you ask me (the universal story is a natively humanist concept that implicitly paves over the details by way of trying to build a single view of everything when many topics contain two diametrically opposed views that may not be reconcilable)...
It feels like the author has some decent points about Bezos and an axe to grind, and will level that axe at anyone that associates with him.
Rich guys want to live longer. Yawn.