onnoonno

The world (of warcraft?) economy.

They told me they have the full system running with zero binary-only blobs. I think that alone can be quite a selling point nowadays...

I mean, we now know that online forums are subverted and socially engineered to keep 'bad opinions' down.

Add to that the still persisting mass media with known effects - and I slowly start to think of the internet as being very much part of the 'mass media', too.

For example, I noticed a lot of articles in newspapers being written by journalists that have agendas that diverge completely from the opinions of the people commenting on an article. The next step, I'd guess, is to 'properly' police these comments....

:-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hvdc

'Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted as about 3.5% per 1,000 km, which is less than typical losses in an AC transmission system.[16]'

Recently, I think I picked up a lot more articles in the tech circles, on reddit/HN/slashdot etc. that talk about the borders of mental illnesses, the question of the value of the humanities vs. STEM, Buddhism, the meaning of live, and more such fundamental/philosophical topics.

This is purely a gut feeling so far (I didn't do any math on frequencies of posts/submissions or similar), but:

Is this on the increase recently? I do feel some kind of phase transition the last couple of months. I actually posted that at a comment here on HN a while ago, back then I felt it was kind of like a 'collective identity crisis in the west'? Maybe I am just completely projecting my own inner soul searching to the outside world. But I do have the distinct impression that our society is at some kind of inflection point.

If I would try to boil it down to more 'everyday thoughts', I get somewhat of the impression that technology changed society so much that we all collectively begin to realize that we have as many new questions as we gained answers.

No one seems to know what will happen to our now quite-remote-from-the-people-governments, Bitcoin, surveillance, drones, etc.

And I have the impression even most of us are unable to see a clear picture for the future.

If I would look at history, I would expect some kind of mass movement(s?) to form soon.

Is anyone else having similar thoughts?

I mean, we look at evolution and at some point it 'just clicks', we wrap our head around it and see the abstraction clearly everywhere. And we like that we understand.

But we do we like it? Why do we like the explanation?

It also works the other way around: For example, look at the concept of the infinite regress. When one comes up, we actually seem to dislike the ideas that lead to it. Emotionally. There is no logical/rational reason for the dislike. Why so?

It might not be 64ky, but >1ky seems to be very realistic.

Edit: See also the Wikipedia section on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Reserve_estimates

If you agree that it is the abuse of power: Does this need additional complexity to address - or is it simply something to be addressed with (tax) laws?

Also, I think that the idea of 'eliminating human suffering' is a sure sign of an ideology. Human suffering can be reduced, certainly, but 'elimination' is utopian, an unreachable extreme.

For example, I would argue that a large property and luxury tax could alleviate most the problems that unwise wealth causes.

Further down in this thread, the user 'StandardFuture' more eloquently says what I think am trying to say - people are people and they just game whatever system is in place.

I think that in some sense, the idea of 'fixing the damn system' can actually be a trap. It may make one busy trying to think outside the box, to be busy inventing very advanced ideas for solving a problem that in the end boils down to 'people are people'.

What about regular, fission nuclear power?

I believe, as I mentioned above, the idea that 'humans are not rational' is one of the latest such constructs to hide basic reality.

In a way, it is an interesting evolution of delusion, to the point where it gets extremely hard to avoid being drawn into it.

Thinking this line further, maybe the next restart will be rather due to the fact that the complexity is so big that people just accept reality?

As I also wrote in my other post, I think one can easily argue that 'more informed policy' that 'accounts for human's partial rationality' actually creates complexity which makes it even harder for humans to act rational.

*edit: grammar

Thus the question remains: What kind of policy one exactly wants to base on 'human's irrationality'. And whether it is good to base policy on irrational behavior.

It is also important to consider that there will always be people who are more rational in their profit/money/power-maximizing than others.

A policy based upon irrational behavior might create an inefficiency that will be exploited by those with more rational behavior.

That's why I am wary about lines of reasoning along 'people are just irrational'.

I believe it creates system(s) of thought where somehow, we account for people's irrationality and thus make it more just/less cyclic/less prone to capital accumulation.

Yet, those who simply, coolly maximize their own gains, those who sort ideas like 'complex, advanced policy informed by the irrational behavior of humans' into the religion bin etc. will still come out ahead.

In other words: We generate complex systems of thoughts, especially in fields like economic policy. Rational actors will play with those systems, circumvent them, be creative, etc.

To turn the argument around: Given that human's rational behavior is limited, is it a good idea to create complex policy that makes it even less likely for humans to understand it and act rational?

I think I now heard this meme/statement/mantra/whatever way too often. Sorry.

First of all, I fundamentally do agree that this is the case. Deep down, I cannot fully figure out my emotions, that what drives me, in a completely rational sense. I like certain things, and I dislike others.

BUT I would still argue that using the idea 'human beings are not rational' in the generic form I see it being used and for any form of policy is very dangerous. Although I believe we cannot completely figure out who we are and what we want, we CAN certainly reflect on our thoughts and actions rationally.

Using this statement is very often basically saying: Humans believe 1+1=3, therefore we have to make policy x/y/z.

Agreeing to this statement in this blanket form often thus means:

a) Humans are not rational

b) Therefore anyone discussing this statement is not rational

c) Any rational argument about policy is essentially lost in this weird post-modernist black hole, by jumping back to a)

Addendum: Or, said in a more concise way: We finally figured out that we are simply stupid primates (as if that is news at all). Because we are stupid primates, we cannot think. Because we cannot think, we have to base our policies on that.

Isn't it surreal that one can appear to use deductive reasoning in this kind of 'argument'?

I think the observation that power accumulates in one way or the other, capitalism or not, seems to hold in any society.

Being naive and not an economist, I would still believe that money is a form of distributed trust and thus power. Lots of money means lots of power, in the sense of causing a lot of change (negative as well as positive).

And I do not think that there is necessarily something wrong with that. We all seem to praise the billionaire Elon Musk here on HN for making space flight more efficient. And I think he is a very capable individual who amassed a lot of power/money and is thus able to effect a lot of change. Why should I complain about this?

I would argue that the only things that hurt a society when it comes to accumulation of wealth/power is actually _using it in a detrimental_ sense.

Things such as: - luxuries - buying laws in your (corporations) favor - using a lot of resources (ore, land) inefficiently

The more I think about it, and having recently read another person here on HN mention it, the more I think something that broadly falls under the idea of 'Geolibertarianism' would bring us closer to a more just society. And, no I am not talking about 'solving our problems' here, because I think having problems is inherent to being a human.

Actually taxing the bad effects of money instead of owning/moving/etc. money itself would also solve e.G. the problem on how to deal with the existence crypto-currencies without resorting to draconian measures.

Finally, I think that we as humans tend to shy away from even just criticizing the actual bad effects of power. I think this is as much a problem as the people with power misbehaving in the first place. Most of us, myself included, simply seem to have a very strong 'follow the leader' emotion, and we rather argue about secondary issues than the real problems. Or we invent powerless utopias and start to believe in them (Marxism, Feminism, ...), actually becoming controllable by the malevolent powers.

But maybe I am just naive.

*edit: typo(s)

I am a bit confused. My impression so far was that something like this would be commonly seen as a decentralized scenario?

-x86_64 -x86 -arm -mips -or32 -avr

and so on. Yeah, I guess that requires a couple recompiled GCC binaries :D

I think that would be enough time to figure out fusion. Or put wind and solar everywhere.

But we seem to be stuck, paralysed in our fight to solve everything with impossible requirements.

Fight AGW, NO nuclear, and keep the standard of living (or even increase it). All at the same time.

Personally, I would rather relax the second requirement.

(I am not affiliated in any way)

I think his ideas about us humans are brilliant. Still are very relevant. We didn't change. I believe Nietzsche turned out to be extremely far-sighted.

Would Zarathustra be the opposite of your scumbag description?

I have the impression that there has been/there is a society-wide phase transition, recently. More and more people seem to realize now that being in front of the net all day isn't really fulfilling, either.

Maybe we're just slowly being converted (or converting ourselves) into the borg. And it isn't brutal, it is cozy, nice, a little bit dull maybe, because we are working on losing our ape-like rawness. If it would be brutal, it wouldn't be efficient, and we highly value efficiency! We have the drugs for 'fixing people', and the neuroscience progresses. Maybe we'll simply end up as some kind of big, self-aware, computing foam covering the whole planet. Which many here would describe as 'dystopian', yet it is interestingly close to the simple idea of 'utopia' from, let's say, the movie 'Avatar'.

I think, given these philosophical ideas, we anthropomorphize if we even think in terms of good/evil about any AI. I believe if there is ever any abrupt change due to vastly better AI, it is more of the _weird_ kind than the good or evil kind. But weird might be very scary indeed, because at some level we humans tend to like that things are somewhat predictable.

I believe the whole discussion about AI is a bit artificial (no pun). Various kinds of AI are already deeply embedded in some parts of society and causes real changes - such as airplane planning systems, trading on the stock market etc. Those cause very real world effects and affect very realy people. And they tend to be already pretty weird. We don't really see it all the time, but it acts, and its 'will', so to speak, is a weird product of our own desires.

Also, I wonder whether and how societies would compare to AIs. We have mass psychological phenomena in societies that even the brightest persons only become aware of some time after 'they have fulfilled their purpose'. Are societies self-ware as a higher level of intelligence? And have they always been?

Are we, maybe simply the substrate, for evolution of technology, much as biology is the substrate for the evolution of us? Are societies, algorithms, AI, ideas & memes simply different forms of 'higher beings' on 'top' of us? Does it even make sense that there is a hierarchy and to think hierarchically at all about these things?

I have the impression our technology makes us, apart from other things, a lot more conscious. But that is not a painless process at all, quite the contrary. But so far, we seem to have decided to go this route? Will we, as humans, eventually become mad in some way from this?

There are mad people. Can we build superior AI if we do not understand madness? Will AI understand madness?

Those abstractions are exactly that - abstractions. They are not the thing itself. Do you think we can understand everything through abstractions, even the process of understanding itself?