posted
The post on singularity was fascinating. I'm a smart guy, yet you make me feel like Penny from The Big Bang Theory. I'd think that energy would be the biggest limiting factor in the whole discussion. Aren't Earth's resources already being stretched thin among the total population? The talk of us all being rich seems absurd--but I'm guessing I'm not understanding the discussion on the level you are.
As for sexual selection, I wouldn't equate "James Bond" traits with "jerk" traits. The way the article phrases it is deceiving. You could easily label the "jerk" traits (self-obsessed, impulsive, deceitful) as "confident, exciting, and mysterious"--those are the James Bond traits. Women love his confidence, his passion for "adventure" and "fun", and his mysterious nature that makes him difficult to figure out. Women are bored with men who are too easy to read (a generalization, but I don't think it's inaccurate).
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Hmm, maybe I should try to ask more women out.
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quote:Originally posted by Launchywiggin: The post on singularity was fascinating. I'm a smart guy, yet you make me feel like Penny from The Big Bang Theory. I'd think that energy would be the biggest limiting factor in the whole discussion. Aren't Earth's resources already being stretched thin among the total population? The talk of us all being rich seems absurd--but I'm guessing I'm not understanding the discussion on the level you are.
Overcoming Bias (the blog that KoM links to from the post you are referring to) is pretty interesting and I read it regularly. You'll need to read a lot of the earlier posts to understand the current posts.
If you're interested, here's a good overview. That site has some good links as well.
Reading about this stuff is a hobby of mine. I want to study AI in college and [hopefully] grad school.
Posts: 1327 | Registered: Aug 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Launchywiggin: I'd think that energy would be the biggest limiting factor in the whole discussion. Aren't Earth's resources already being stretched thin among the total population? The talk of us all being rich seems absurd--but I'm guessing I'm not understanding the discussion on the level you are.
Well, you should understand, I don't necessarily believe there will shortly be a singularity with economic growth rates of several hundred percent, as Dr Hanson does. But if there were, then we would all become absurdly rich, just as we are indeed ridiculously wealthy compared to our ancestors of even two or three generations ago. Even homeless people can generally manage to go to sleep with something in their stomachs; go back two hundred years and people who owned actual farmland wouldn't be able to guarantee that for their children.
Then, when you talk about limits set by physics, you tend to get results that are absurd. I think it extremely unlikely that the amount of Shannon information containable by the Earth's mass is the ceiling to our economic growth; the real limit will be something completely different and much more stringent. The energy output of the Sun is a pretty good bet. I was just playing with the idea of the singularity to see where it would take me if I pushed it to the limit.
The Earth's resources are stretched thin among the current population, sure; but economic growth consists of learning to apply those resources more efficiently. If GDP growth outstrips population growth, then resources will becomes less thinly stretched. It's only if our growth goes below population growth rates that we need to worry; that's what Malthus is talking about.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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