I want | Hacker News Reader

I want

dcurt.is

77 pointsericelias46 comments

This is what this post meant to me:

I want to be a soul-less cyborg empress given the ultimate in life by mechanical minions. I want the world in my palm, with no struggle, no meaning to mean. I am _RoboRock_

Haha, I was writing some flowery philosophical disagreement about Curtis' post, but this was way better. Note: I like a great many things he's written, but this just falls flat on its face.

Makes me think of Paranoid Android. Fitter, Happier, more productive.

Paranoid Android is very fitting. I think Curtis has some great ideas - but the things like give me the toaster that 80% of the people in the world favor, just falls flat on its face. What about the other toasters? What happened to choice - to choosing something different, because it might be not as well liked, but better? I know his blog post was moreover a non-analyzed wishlist, not meant to be carefully studied. I can't help but say that the sentiment was eerily deaf and soul-less, with a lack of humanity, a kind of wishing for the uber-human. There have been so many fictional novels based on utopian cyborg scenarios, and well, they don't end well. I will agree with Curtis on one thing, if we can eliminate many menial tasks, we will be freed in time and energy for more important and jovial endeavors. This in fact, relates to the recent article about a default base wage for everyone. Interesting ideas all around, but lets not remove our humanity at the cost of optimization.

I see researching and shopping for toasters as one of those menial tasks that you agree should be eliminated. You can do it yourself and dive into the 1000 choices if it's important to you, but it's nice to be able get a "quite good" result without having to give it much time or attention. Save the energy for making more interesting decisions.

I am tempted to say 'nice try cookingrobot' ;-)

Good point.

However, part of the 'personal shopper' wish beholds capitalism if it is too biased rather than user-specific and understanding of the individual and the variety of ways that humans have preferences - based on aesthetic, ease-of-use, etc. Shouldn't the toaster selection have a bit more intelligence than a straight communist 1-toaster-for-all choice?

Toaster oven, not toaster, but http://thesweethome.com/reviews/the-best-toaster-oven/

I use that site and its sister site for technology whenever I buy something. I could do my own research, but toaster ovens are commoditized enough that spending an extra 10 hours finding a better one than the one recommended is absolutely not worth my time.

I would like the trend towards ever-concentrated power and wealth to be reversed.

I would like people to be able to expect their interactions online to be private instead of operating under the assumption that intelligence agencies are scooping up all of their private information.

On a much more selfish and trivial note, I would also like an plugin-electric 4x4 so I can drive around the woods AND drive a futuristic Tesla-ey thing. Damn you Jeep, cancelling the electric Wrangler. :(

I remember reading a marxist-oriented article about the trend toward apocalyptic movies and books, and the quote that stuck out for me was, "It has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."

I suppose it's possible the things on this list could happen outside the framework of an ultra-capitalist society, but they are so consumer-focused it is hard to imagine them in any other context. In spite of the technical achievements these things would represent, they seem pretty small-bore, really. Is the only better world we can imagine one that resembles the doughy people in Wall-E, floating in their hover chairs with every need attended to?

I would not be surprised if capitalism ends in the united states in our lifetimes, either peacefully or through violence. Consider the rapid onset of robotization, creating a largely unemployed (and unemployable) populace, with the intersection of current republican party attitudes towards the nonwealthy, which I think can be mostly summarized as "fuck you I got mine".

You may find a book called "Does Capitalism Have a Future?" by Immanuel Wallerstein, et al interesting; I did.

   But a favorable alternative may be quite likely: the institutional 
   transformation from capitalism to a noncapitalist system of political 
   economy—an institutional revolution—could come about through peaceful 
   political process. If the crisis of capitalism is severe enough—a majority 
   of the population structurally unemployed, robots and computers doing almost 
   all the income-generating work but owned by a small number of wealthy 
   capitalists, the economy in deep depression—at some point a political party 
   could win electoral power on an anticapitalist program. Some governing party 
   or coalition would have to replace capitalist production, distribution, and 
   finances with a system that redistributes wealth outside the system of labor 
   market and profit-taking.

re-excerpted from: https://www.salon.com/2013/11/24/millennials_rise_up_college...

book: http://www.amazon.com/Does-Capitalism-Future-Immanuel-Waller...

What about political change? Learning languages? Making loving relationships? Protecting and exploring our natural world? Traveling farther into our solar system? Eliminating poverty, oppression, or eradicating disease?

Perhaps his imagination is already capped. In a world of mind-boggling convenience, access to data, and cross-country mobility, he wants more of the same--with less human interaction and less reflection. Lots of these ideas have fantastic benefits, but lots of them inflict obvious harm. "I want," he says; less thought for others and more for himself.

I'd rather design things that help people start meaningful discussions with caregivers, not eliminate them. I'd rather enjoy the journey, not anxiously await the destination. I'd rather reduce the stream of useless (but entertaining!) data coming at me from my devices and focus on that tiny percentage of content that shows me things worth knowing.

In the future, maybe we will be able to stuff ourselves with guilt-free calories, buy shit we don't need when computers tell us to, and have our hedonistic wishes instantly gratified by swarms of flying robots, as Curtis suggests. In the meantime, I'll keep dreaming about technology's potential for true good--and teaching myself to be happy with what I have.

I want things like Uber, Lyft, and Taskrabbit to exist in my city.

I want services like Pandora and Google Music to not be restricted in my country.

I want people around me to understand what's possible with today's technology.

I want the industries in my city to move to Excel rather than tons of paper.

For now, all I want is the present to be evenly distributed.

I want my government to be looking to the future, not denying climate change and slowing down broadband. (Australia).

I agree with everything in your post.

Minor warning, people need to be taught a little bit of ~database like ideas before using Excel, otherwise it's gonna be a printer-fest backfire.

It's so absurd it made me numb, but when people interact through Excel they accumulate very large matrices of redundant rows and columns that are unsuited for LCD/keyboard interactions thus ending up killing trees again.

You want to move to San Francisco.

I want to know why a random blog post is on HackerNews and why people are voting for it.

I want to know if people remember that the author claimed and tried to justify why Apple's iPhone screen size of 3.5 inches was perfect, large screens were a stupid idea, and of course only Apple could have figured it out.

http://dcurt.is/3-point-5-inches

It's on HN because someone posted the link, and people are voting for it because they found it "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." [1]

If you don't like it or the author, why bother posting?

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't want to die of natural causes. I would love to live for 1000 years, and spend my days programming, inventing, writing music, and learning everything.

>I want to take a pill every morning that restricts my body’s ability to process more calories than it needs during the day. I want this pill to enable my body to dispose of any junk chemicals or excess calories that exceed the ideal, healthy amount.

Does anyone else remember Olestra? Woo boy.

I want this blog post to be the #1 result when you search Google for "first world problems."

Dustin Curtis is seriously overrated. Everything Dustin asks for in this post makes no real change, it's all entitled things that forgo other more important things. Essentially it appears Dustin wants a future with even further less human interaction

I want fresh food to last ten times longer than it does now, with no reduction in taste or nutrition — I want a future where countries without access to fresh food or where food is virtually non-existent no longer starve to death while us gluttonous obese humans stuff our faces and waste.

I want mass-produced products to be locally manufactured just-in-time in dark, human-less warehouses by robots, and not made in far-away lands — This is called insourcing and it is an approach many companies are taking nowadays, but you know who loses out here? The people in those "far-away lands" are people living below the poverty line and once those jobs are taken away, they have nothing.

I want doctors to be way less involved with practical medicine, and for computers to diagnose and treat disease — because a computer wouldn't make mistakes, right? Computers will never truly understand humans nor feel compassion, nor will they be a cure-all for everything.

I want nuclear reactors or some other clean technology to power the entire world’s electrical grid, safely. — Dustin successfully used clean and safely in the same sentence as "nuclear reactors" did he not hear about what happened in Japan and what is very much an ongoing thing? Who said nuclear reactors were clean or safe? The waste products of nuclear fission are far more damaging to the environment if they get out than coal is...

Every single idea presented is merely a toy and serves to only please those who have the luxury of being able to afford half the things listed in this article; food, electricity, shelter and basic medical services. Where are the ideas for bettering the lives of the entitled and untitled? Where are the ideas that don't require you to have hundreds or thousands of dollars to fork out on expensive gadgets you need to upgrade yearly?

4) Given all the food that is carelessly disposed of, I'm not sure if this is desirable in all cases.

6) Cutting down involvement by doctors to such a degree sounds unrealistic. You better trust the machines very well, or else: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

7) Currently being implemented.

9) I'm pretty sure this already exists? But public opinion is a very volatile and unreliable thing, as we all know.

10) Already possible, for the most part.

12) Currently being implemented as the Internet of Things. I hope you enjoy having your poorly secured door locks and light switches ending up on SHODAN, as is already occurring with connected everyday appliances.

14) Potentially vulnerable to the fallacy fallacy and the cognitive bias bias.

I'd go further:

- I want everyone to own an amount of clever metal molecules that group together to form the object I need right now: need a bowl to eat rice, molecules migrate to form a bowl in a few seconds. Need a helmet? Here it is. A knife? here you go. That's the christmas tree machine without the waste.

- I want to project movies, music and books inside my head, so I can watch movies or read books eyes-closed, hear music in my head without headphones.

- I want to be able to teleport in my friend's eyes/glasses when they party and I cannot attend.

- Ultimately, I want my self to be able to migrate in a newborn soul, and re-live, when my body will be too old to support me.

- However, I do not want to eat pills to avoid fat, that's cheating.

Nice list of shiny things, some that are entirely attainable and may very well come true soon. One nitpick, though:

"I want my watch, glasses, toaster, light switches, thermostat, and door locks to use connectedness to make the world a better place–by reducing energy usage, decreasing waste, and improving my happiness and convenience."

If you think that your toaster is going to improve your happiness, well, I'd have to say, be prepared to be unhappy with the results. Buying more junk, however technologically advanced, may certainly bring convenience and reduce energy use and waste, but it is not going to make you happy.

That depends on the person, I suppose http://dcurt.is/the-best

Sure. We really have to dissect what happiness (or "liberation") really means here, to answer the question. There seems to be a conflation between convenience/lack-of-frustration and happiness. I don't believe that happiness (the real, sustainable kind) can come to anyone from the feeling that the flashlight they own is bright enough, or that the fork they own touches their teeth in the right way. Having reliable stuff can certainly make life convenient like he notices—but happy? Seems like wishful thinking.

Just take the classic HN thread "how did your life change after FU money?" (http://bit.ly/1dEVs7x). PG writes that "a lot of annoyances are removed" which seems like the same realization that Dustin has here in many fewer words—that money can buy him nice silverware and he never again has to be annoyed at failing silverware. Take a look at Aaron's comment and you'll find more concisely what I am trying to say:

"My sense is that it bears out what the happiness research says: dispositional factors are much more important than situational ones. PG was an abnormally happy person before he got rich and he's still abnormally happy. I was pretty miserable before and I'm still miserable."

I want Dustin Curtis to spend some time reading http://gatesfoundation.org and then rethink his I Want list.

Seems that many of these have to do with working around the limitations of a physical body.

It's worth distinguishing between absolute goods and relative goods. When everyone has a fashion stylist, for instance, it becomes a necessity rather than a perk.

I'd take the retina data input further, and say that I want a bypass for all nervous system communication to my brain, in both directions, in order to achieve all of

1. Unlimited augmented reality 2. Perfect virtual reality 3. Automated body exercise (while in virtual reality).

That said, I also want this to not have any unintended negative consequences, either personally or societally...

i want my body to always work as well tomorrow as it did today.

let's start there.

Immortality by induction. Clever.

I would like people to appreciate that expecting 40% of your life to be spent on trivial entertainment and artificially introduced challenges is unreasonable and unsustainable.

I would like the homogenization of culture reversed.

I would like everyone to be taught how to be interested in understanding things and to pursue their passions above all else.

His point about the curated product list, some friends of mine did this 5 years ago. They lost interest due to not having enough time (the affiliate commissions from amazon weren't big enough). http://kallow.com/ was the site

Awesome. However, I am 100% certain that there can be no one toaster that 80% of the world would agree is the best. So I think to some extent we are stuck doing our own resource (directly or indirectly), since only we know what we want. (There's no perfect spaghetti sauce.)

"I want to have something to eat, to go to school, and healthcare" said a lot of other people.

I want smoking to be illegal. At a minimum in public places and around children.

Since we're talking about a semi-magical future, why not make smoking harmless?

Sadly it's more probable to make smoking harmless than expect governments to prohibit it. I guess your suggestion is more feasible.

And farting, too?

Seriously, if you want even more restrictions on what your fellow human beings are allowed to do and enjoy, you should be very happy in North Korea and I can only invite you to prepare your visa application papers. Wait, US citizen are not allowed in NK. Hope you are not US citizen?

Hey there, Captain Overreaction.

Cigarettes are something that have nothing but negative consequences - for the smoker, for those in the vicinity of the smoker, and for the impact on the health system supporting the smoker.

It defies reason that these small poison sticks are still sold, especially to younger people who have not yet developed the crippling addiction held by those who have been smoking for years. It's really quite sad that people still seem to be stupid enough to volunteer for this long-form suicide.

Farting, on the other hand - is great. And, the release of hot air that's mildly annoying to others, faintly humorous, and quickly forgotten seems to be something that you certainly would relate to.

If they had nothing but negative consequences, no one would smoke them. Obviously the people who do smoke them are getting some kind of value from them.

It's fair to say they have nothing but negative consequences for people in the vicinity, I think.

It would be fair to say the same about farting.

Yea and I want a pony.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

  -- Alan Kay

Here are some important questions:

0. What does it take for a person to exist?

1. What does it take to keep a person in existence?

2. What does it take to keep a person alive?

3. What does it take to keep a person conscious?

4. What does it take to keep a person in control of his mind?

5. What does it take to keep a person in control of his body?

6. What does it take to keep a person happy?

We need to answer to all of them, in the right order. The answer to every question is necessary for the next.

0. It doesn't really matter to me, as it's not something that requires maintenance. I either exist or I don't. It looks like I exist, so this question will never matter to me (assuming I'm selfish and others don't have to exist).

1. I prefer my body to be preserved than not. Hopefully, we will reach the point where I can be revived.

2. Being alive is nice and all, but it's not pretty exciting. Want to be in a coma all your life? Probably not. Still, it's easier with current technologies to bring consciousness to someone in a coma than to bring life to a dead "preserved" body.

3. Now you're talking. I like being conscious. Without it, it's like I don't even exist. But passively feeling the world has its limits.

4. Control of my mind changes everything. I'm no longer limited by the external world, I can imagine my own. However, this also brings the ability to suffer, which I don't believe is present with consciousness alone (a world in which there's no good or bad). In that state, The Matrix would be enough to entertain me for a while. Unless it's not.

5. Well, now I can actually change how the world works. Sure, you could argue that I already could when I was able to communicate with The Matrix, and you would be right. But I make a distinction here, just because. At this point, you have some control over the above, and you can actually be in control of your fate, life and future. This is probably where you reach a point where you start automating the above conditions, and build the infrastructure to keep you alive/conscious/active/etc.

6. Now that's the hard question. To exist, to be alive, to be conscious, it's not really subjective. Most people would agree about what it takes for these conditions to be met. But happiness, that's a hard one. Excluding all of the above from the scope of happiness might help. Being healthy, conscious, able to think, are all necessary for happiness to ever be considered, so we don't have to think about them. We must think about art, love, family, etc. These are all things that are not necessary to exist, being alive, being conscious, having control over his body, etc. Why do we need them? Why can't we be happy once 1-5 are fulfilled? Is there a need to reproduce, as a backup in the case that the system fails and people cease to exist? Are we more happy when we're more people? Are we more happy when we have more resources to maintain the conditions above? Should we measure happiness as the predicted time left to live? Is living in 2013 worth less than living in 2020 (in which case, it would make sense to cryogenize someone and defrost/revive him in the future)? Don't we do it because it's too risky (we still don't know what might happen when we lose control)? Is loss of control the main fear we have?

I want to live in a world where 1-5 are taken care of. They're objective conditions, they don't change from person to person. At this point, we will be able to reflect on life, and build a future where we can be truly happy. If that's possible.

I want to eliminate the work required to go from idea to implementation.

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