A Scientist Predicts the Future | Hacker News Reader

A Scientist Predicts the Future

nytimes.com

11 pointskseven12 comments

When you don't specify how far ahead in the future you are projecting these things to happen, technological innovations like "Robots Will Be Commonplace" are quite easy to predict. Especially when he appears to be lumping much of AI into the "robots" category.

I would much rather see a long form of this where he further explains why he makes these predictions and when he sees them happening. I'll readily admit I don't know what sells for the times but this opinion piece makes me feel like I just wasted time (I guess I probably shouldn't have commented on it as well to exacerbate the problem).

    10. Intellectual Capitalism Will Replace Commodity Capitalism

So he's predicting a future where we "trade in people"? What of those who are not born into intellectual prowess. Will the divide become even larger than it is today? That doesn't fit in with the tone of the article, which is nauseatingly utopian.

I pessimistically see a much worse future. A kind of cross between:

- Orwell's 1984

- Aldus Huxley's Brave New World

- Philip K. Dick's Minority Report

- Andrew Niccol's Gattica

I see a much more mundane dystopia, where almost no progress happens anymore, as the US Congress clearly intends.

This is Huxley's "Brave New World", full of make work programs, opiates for the people, and no change.

I would love a make work program that paid people at least subsistence.

Both "Brave New World" and "Gattica" have as one of their underlying ideas the genes cultivation, which basically expands the general capabilities of the humankind. That might be a bit dramatic on an individual level (as it is depicted in "Gattica"), but overall why is that "a much worse future"?

You forgot Idiocracy.

Pedantry, but hopefully interesting:

Gattaca is spelled with two A's. The letters in the word are from DNA base pairs: guanine, thymine, adenosine, and cytosine.

Attica is a part of ancient Greece. Also a prison in New York.

Not sure which reference the creator of Gattaca intended. Maybe both.

This author isn't grounded in reality of how systems currently work - seems trapped in purely theoretical thinking.

"Perfect capitalism" can't exist because for-profit businesses create and maintain the frictions mentioned that would be greatly reduced.

There's a whole social/sociology and psychology of human behaviour layer missing from these thoughts.

#8 about aging repair is basically what's in Thor. Godin said they are not God but just living being that can last up to 5000 years. Once in awhile, Godin has to go into hyper sleep or something like that to repair his cells / DNA (I assume).

They are just more advance version of Wolverine who can live hundreds of years.

technology will overcome all problems, solve injustice and everyone will be happy. sure.

no mention of climate change, ever-increasing debts, failing antibiotics or social problems because of differences between people who can buy these "cybermedicine" / body-parts-replacements and those who cannot.

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