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I find this a very inspiring line of thought for two reasons. 1) Philosophical. What if we could get rid of randomness in our lives? Can we do 'end-to-end' asse

I find this a very inspiring line of thought for two reasons. 1) Philosophical. What if we could get rid of randomness in our lives? Can we do 'end-to-end' assembly with our health, owning all stages of the process, like Elon Musk does with Tesla Cars? And in the end, will this give you more happiness or more stress? 2) Business. Getting rid of randomness is important for the growth of our startup. This interview gets me thinking: what randomness can we cut out of our business?

HiYaBarbie 11y ago
If you take the idea of "getting rid of randomness" to its logical conclusion, it boils down to making the world deterministic. Does it make sense to pursue impossible goals? If not, does it make sense to philosophize about pursuing impossible goals?
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  It's basically just thermodynamics: if you're willing to spend enough energy, you can optimize the state an arbitrarily large system as you please. Of course, the key words there are enough energy. It sounds like Thiel might be forgetting to account for what we want to optimize and how much effort we're willing to spend on it.
  - HiYaBarbie 11y ago
    > if you're willing to spend enough energy, you can optimize the state an arbitrarily large system as you please Define "optimize" and "system"?
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      "System" -- any bloody thing you care about, any collection of mass and energy. "Optimize" -- to constrain the system to within a subset of its state-space. Or in other words, to make only some things happen rather than all other possible things. Generally, as long as something is physically possible, you can spend some amount of energy to make it reasonably probable or unreasonably improbable. This may just be far more energy than you happen to have, or care to spend.
      - HiYaBarbie 11y ago
        So how does the 'optimization' work? :) I have no clue about physics, so I'm just curious.
        eli_gottlieb 11y ago
        It doesn't. It's really a deliberately vague term referring to any physical action designed to put the system in one state rather than another. A thermodynamically non-reversible action, you could say.
        HiYaBarbie 11y ago
        Alright. Well, we're talking about something that might be theoretically possible, but is impossible in practice. I don't think it matters.
angdis 11y ago
If the discussion is about gaining an increasing measure of understanding and an ability to control biological systems for particular purposes, sure, that certainly makes sense. And, yes, manufacturing when you look at it closely is really all about mitigating variation (randomness) with the understanding that everything is a trade-off. However, to stretch that into the idea of "eliminating randomness" in our lives is absolutely asking to be bitch-slapped by philosophers and scientists--- that's something that money-people like Thiel may need from time-to-time (its not a bad thing).

HiYaBarbie 11y ago

If you take the idea of "getting rid of randomness" to its logical conclusion, it boils down to making the world deterministic. Does it make sense to pursue impossible goals? If not, does it make sense to philosophize about pursuing impossible goals?

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
It's basically just thermodynamics: if you're willing to spend enough energy, you can optimize the state an arbitrarily large system as you please. Of course, the key words there are enough energy. It sounds like Thiel might be forgetting to account for what we want to optimize and how much effort we're willing to spend on it.
- HiYaBarbie 11y ago
  > if you're willing to spend enough energy, you can optimize the state an arbitrarily large system as you please Define "optimize" and "system"?
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    "System" -- any bloody thing you care about, any collection of mass and energy. "Optimize" -- to constrain the system to within a subset of its state-space. Or in other words, to make only some things happen rather than all other possible things. Generally, as long as something is physically possible, you can spend some amount of energy to make it reasonably probable or unreasonably improbable. This may just be far more energy than you happen to have, or care to spend.
    - HiYaBarbie 11y ago
      So how does the 'optimization' work? :) I have no clue about physics, so I'm just curious.
      - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
        It doesn't. It's really a deliberately vague term referring to any physical action designed to put the system in one state rather than another. A thermodynamically non-reversible action, you could say.
        HiYaBarbie 11y ago
        Alright. Well, we're talking about something that might be theoretically possible, but is impossible in practice. I don't think it matters.

angdis 11y ago

If the discussion is about gaining an increasing measure of understanding and an ability to control biological systems for particular purposes, sure, that certainly makes sense. And, yes, manufacturing when you look at it closely is really all about mitigating variation (randomness) with the understanding that everything is a trade-off. However, to stretch that into the idea of "eliminating randomness" in our lives is absolutely asking to be bitch-slapped by philosophers and scientists--- that's something that money-people like Thiel may need from time-to-time (its not a bad thing).