14 ms·

Is This Economist Too Far Ahead of His Time?

136 points by Hooke 10y ago

meira 10y ago
No.
mentos 10y ago
Anyone that hasn't yet, check out Black Mirror on Netflix. It has a lot of ideas in it that I am surprised to see in a show in 2016. I love Elon Musk but I think he is solving the wrong problem when it comes to making human beings a space faring species. The fragility of human flesh is the barrier to colonizing space. You can try to solve this problem by wrapping it in a contained atmosphere or wait a thousand years and send humans to Mars in a different kind of space ship. One made of metal and silicon that can recharge its batteries so long as it has a line of sight on a distant star.. maybe as the article says: "a robotic body [standing] roughly two millimeters tall" The greatest challenge we face is keeping this incubator called Earth alive long enough for us to develop the technology to abandon our flesh. But I imagine if that day ever comes what it means to be human will have been destroyed in the end anyways.
- mordymoop 10y ago
  We can do more than one thing at once.
- mburns 10y ago
  >or wait a thousand years and send humans to Mars in a different kind of space ship. Pardon the pun, but why on Earth should we wait 1000 years (or whatever it actually takes) for something when we don't have to? Our fragile human flesh in a contained atmosphere works well enough and we're roughly capable of doing it now, give or take a couple decades. Then we have 900+ years to improve the containers we use to maintain our preferred atmosphere while waiting for whatever form this futuristic species you describe takes.
  - sjg007 10y ago
    Basically we can't survive space radiation... Even going to Mars.
    - CydeWeys 10y ago
      We can though. Using today's technology we can easily go to Mars and live in underground habitats and be subject to only a moderate increase in health risks from radiation absorbed during the trip. Said health risks would be less than what a decent number of current Earth-bound professions face, and those people don't even get to go to Mars.
      - rabidrat 10y ago
        > easily What we are currently doing on Mars remotely is absolutely incredible and at the upper limit of our present capabilities. Don't think for a second that having "today's technology" does not still require a herculean effort, if we even have a 5% chance of pulling it off before funding (which would be in the trillions) is cut.
        CydeWeys 10y ago
        I was specifically refuting the claim that the radiation problem is a blocker, when in fact it is just a minor nuisance. Storms posed more of a danger to the first ships exploring the new world than radiation will to Mars colonists, and that didn't stop anyone.
        sjg007 10y ago
        You are mistaken. https://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY16/IG-16-003.pdf https://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY16/IG-16-003.pdf
        CydeWeys 10y ago
        Do you have a link to a specific page within that report demonstrating your point? I skimmed through it and all I saw is that it says that there are some risks. Obviously I'm not denying that. It doesn't say at all that the risks are so high that we can't do missions with current technology (which provides minimal to no radiation shielding in transit). Mainly it's saying that further study is merited, which I absolutely agree with. I also think we don't need to hold off on going until we achieve perfect mitigation, and I believe most NASA employees would agree with me on that as well.
- elevensies 10y ago
  I think brain-upload is probably the only way to do interstellar travel, even if you synthesize a new body on the other side. For someone alive today, if you want to do interstellar or non-colonization space travel, going after immorality is the best option IMO. I don't think that earth-preservation is a worthwhile quest on a personal level. There are dozens of people who could destroy the whole planet since the invention of nukes. And with climate change for example, any kind of proportionate action would require an agreement between giant (100M to 1B+ people) political organizations to voluntarily makes themselves less wealthy -- although making tech that is greener and cheaper/better is probably the most significantly helpful option.
  - JaggedNZ 10y ago
    > going after immorality is the best option IMO Now there is an ironic typo/autocorrect, I think the word you where looking for is immortality, unless of course you are making a scathing criticism that the pursuit of self preservation for the purpose of interstellar travel is against the laws of morality. Thanks for a chuckle. I do think though that emulation of "specialized" hardware with generic hardware is a complex problem space. While it's now possible to recreate classic gaming systems with fpga's for example, some cases we are able to only offer an approximation. The computing power of the host exceeds the power of the emulated CPU by several orders of magnitude. My thinking is to emulate wetware with hardware will require hardware several orders of magnitude more powerful than wetware and I suspect the wetware is already close the physical limitation of the universe for several key problem spaces.
    - elevensies 10y ago
      *immortality (oops :S) Sure, I don't necessarily disagree with anything you're saying, and given all that, I still think it is the best chance. #1: in the short term, the quantity of hardware doesn't matter. If you needed a full data center costing $10M per year, it would still be worth it for some people. The idea is to get into a host that is replaceable, and then you can work on making it smaller. #2: in the short term, you don't need to run in real time. If you are just trying to survive until better tech comes along, running at 1% means the equivalent of 3.65 days per year: maybe enough to survive until hardware improves. Taking this to an extreme, 100 people could pool resources for protection and tech improvement while staying in deep storage and only running their minds very seldom. Given the above two points, all that really matters to me is that I can find a way to upload my mind into binary data which I know can be simulated faithfully. All I need is upload, storage, and a recovery plan. If the recovery plan looks like it will take 1000 years, fine, I still prefer it to nothing. If I think there is a 1% chance of success over the next 1000 years for immortality, I believe I will do it. #3: we know for a fact that the functionality of the brain/body is achievable in the space/power envelope of the brain/body. I could easily tolerate a 100x space and power increase. The human body is approximate 100 watts and 100 litres. So 100x is 10,000 watts and 10 cubic meters: 13 horsepower and the size of a compact car -- fine by me. I think I could survive immobile and incorporeal for 100 years with a good library, if, for example, I had to be anchored to the seabed somewhere and run off geothermal energy. The more you expand your lifespan, the more options open up. If you can run yourself at very slow speeds an immense amount of options open up.
- the_duke 10y ago
  I recently discovered Black Mirror. It's a great and fascinating series. Finally something other then the mind numbing pabulum that is most TV. I especially loved season 1 / episode 2. --- The way our brain works, all experience, self consciousness and awareness is intricately linked to physical perception. If we were to go the 'brain in a petri dish' route, we would have to fake all those signals a body would send to the brain. If we just start emulating the brain physiology digitally, that is easier of course. But I would not call the result of either method a 'human being', but something inherently different.
  - internaut 10y ago
    Watch Utopia. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia I judge it better than Black Mirror. Don't google any information about it because it will sound stupid, just watch it outright.
  - Shorel 10y ago
    What you describe is the central idea in 'I of the vortex: from neurons to self' by neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás. Self consciousness and awareness is linked both to physical perception and to the prediction and anticipation of said perception.
- internaut 10y ago
  There is a TV series better than Black Mirror believe it or not. I'll shill for it because it's an amazing work of art. It's called Utopia, it's a conspiracy thriller from Channel 4, and if it doesn't send chills down your spine and raise your hackles then you aren't alive. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia
- _andromeda_ 10y ago
  Just read on Black Mirror; it seems interesting. Thanks for the recommendation. For those seeking more knowledge on DNI and the validity of cryonics as an elixir of life, I highly recommend getting a copy of Michio Kaku's book, The Future of the Mind.
cynicalBit 10y ago
If people can be convinced that their simulated virtual self is actually them, overpopulation will be solved by mass suicide. Sorry if that's too dark for you guys, it just has to be said. All these "live inside a computer people" are just a modern Jim Jones cult.
- OscarCunningham 10y ago
  Whether or not simulations are actually the people they're copies of, or people at all, is irrelevant to the question Hanson is looking at, which is "What might we expect ems to do?".
- philipkglass 10y ago
  A self-backup from pattern data isn't any good for soothing one's metaphysical fears, unless (like most of the people on Star Trek) you don't think that the disintegration of all the molecules in one's body is the disintegration of oneself. A backup self is perfectly adequate if you want certain things to be taken care of despite one's death. I believe that if I die I'm dead, backup or no, but I'd like to have a backup anyway so it could continue to pursue the research I found interesting while alive and could continue to take care of my family just as I would. The dead-me won't care either way but present-me would like to make contingency plans for the future.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  A copy of you is you. Literally the atoms that make up 'you' are replaced all the time, by biology. And the atoms themselves aren't real. Like some models of physics suggest that physical things are constantly being copied and deleted already, like how objects in a cellular automaton universe are "destroyed" every time they move. But how the universe actually works is irrelevant even. Other people can have a different definition of 'death'. If the information in my brain is preserved then that's all that matters to me. If I had to get my neurons replaced, one at a time, with 'artificial neurons' that would contain all the same information, then i would do it. Surely you would to. And you wouldn't even notice any change I bet. It wouldn't change anything observable at all. So how can it possibly matter?
Animats 10y ago
Living in VR, and the implications thereof, have been written about in SF for decades. The earliest work is "Simulacron 3", from 1964. It's been done to death in anime. "Sword Art Online" is probably the best known stuck-in-VR anime, but "Log Horizon" deals with the philosophical aspects in more depth. Hanson is not breaking new ground; he's recycling SF as economics. Read Hanson's list of "wild ideas".[1] "By 2100, the vast majority of "people" will be immortal computers running brain simulations." (And the rest will be keeping the server farms going?) "If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make computers as smart as people." (After 30 years of Cyc trying that, that's probably a no.) "If we allowed complete freedom of contract, law could be privatized, to our common benefit." (He's at George Mason University, which is a right-wing think tank, and has to say stuff like that to get tenure.) [1] http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/wildideas.html http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/wildideas.html
- nhaliday 10y ago
  > Hanson is not breaking new ground; he's recycling SF as economics. World-building for purposes of entertainment generally has little to do with successful prediction. Hanson has made this point in a few places, eg, http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/11/science-fiction-is-fantasy.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/11/science-fiction-is-fan.... I'm not sure if you've read Age of Em but it didn't feel like reading scifi, so much as reading an encyclopedia. RE: the list of "wild ideas." He estimates that maybe a third of them are true. Quoting a few and acting shocked that that's the case is not a very epistemically hygienic criticism. BTW if anyone wants to read a summary that carries some of the tone and emphasis of the book itself, https://casparoesterheld.com/2016/08/30/the-age-of-em-summary-of-policy-relevant-information/ https://casparoesterheld.com/2016/08/30/the-age-of-em-summar... is pretty good.
  - nitwit005 10y ago
    > World-building for purposes of entertainment generally has little to do with successful prediction Do you have any evidence that that's true? A decent number of ideas portrayed in science fiction have come true, so clearly successful prediction is going on. Ultimately, economist or author are both using imagination and extrapolation. I don't see any particular reason to expect better results from the economist.
wimgz 10y ago
His book is not available on Kindle, so no
- Symmetry 10y ago
  Would you expect an author to have anything to do with that decision?
- ikeboy 10y ago
  It used to be (see https://www.amazon.com/Age-Em-Work-Robots-Earth-ebook/dp/B01FHNFAVS?ref_=mt_kindle https://www.amazon.com/Age-Em-Work-Robots-Earth-ebook/dp/B01... and http://ageofem.com/ http://ageofem.com/). I don't know why it was pulled or who was responsible.
- RobinHanson 10y ago
  Amazon pulled it to pressure Oxford U. Press to give more $.
carsongross 10y ago
He's not an economist, he's a futurist, and not a particularly interesting one. For an actual economist ahead of his time, I recommend Steve Keen.
- duckkg5 10y ago
  Hanson is a professor of economics at GMU http://economics.gmu.edu/people/rhanson http://economics.gmu.edu/people/rhanson
  - vannevar 10y ago
    He may be an economist by training, he may teach in an economics department, but as described, his course would fit right in at any future studies program. The article certainly makes him sound more futurist than economist.
  - vannevar 10y ago
    For folks who may not be familiar with future studies. It's a genuine academic discipline, when we say that Hanson is a futurist, it's not an insult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_studies
- lr4444lr 10y ago
  Upvoted. Keen did get a few falsifiable predictions wrong, but his work on bank endogenous money creation, debt instability, and rate based economic modeling I think merit much more serious research in mainstream economics, along with the MMT school. Good of you to mention.
- barry-cotter 10y ago
  http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/09/on-futurism.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/09/on-futurism.html When the media reports on the future, reporters pretty much only ever quote these sort of futurists, who have hijacked the future to support their side of certain current disputes. Truth be told, folks who analyze the future but don’t frame their predictions or advice in terms of standard ideological categories are largely ignored, because few folks actually care much about the future except as a place to tell morality tales about who today is naughty vs. nice.
buro9 10y ago
Yet another person who has read too many of the Culture Series books by Iain M. Banks and thinks we are close to achieving a lot described within those books. I do think it is achievable, but even the books acknowledge it takes thousands of years to get there.
- OscarCunningham 10y ago
  I don't think the books do "acknowledge" that? I mean in particular there's that nice short story where the Culture visits Earth. So the books are set in our present and not the future.
  - wavefunction 10y ago
    "Consider Phlebas" takes place in 1331CE whereas "Surface Detail" takes place between 2700 and 3000CE, with the other books in the "series" taking place at different points within that range.
- nhaliday 10y ago
  Hanson has actually disparaged science fiction in general for purposes of futurism. I don't think he's been influenced by it much.
ikeboy 10y ago
Hanson's thoughts on the profile: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/10/profile.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/10/profile.html
philipkglass 10y ago
The book’s premise is that in about a century, it will be possible to scan human brains at "fine enough spatial and chemical resolution," and to combine that with good-enough models of signal-processing functions of brain cells, "to create a cell-by-cell dynamically executable model of the full brain in artificial hardware, a model whose signal input-output behavior is usefully close to that of the original brain." Like Bostrom and Kurzweil I think this guy is seriously underestimating the difficulty of biology. I don't believe in souls or non-computable woo going on in our brains. I do believe that biology is insanely complicated compared to computing or physics; physicists, engineers, and people from a computing background who've never worked in biology tend to handwave incredibly difficult problems. See also: the long and mostly-unsuccessful history of people who thought that they could replace animal/cell culture drug testing with models in silico. On top of the sheer audacious difficulty of creating whole brain emulations, there's the problem of competing with boring old "narrow" AI. Surely an economist of all people should recognize the feedback loop that makes narrow AI profitable first, which attracts more investment, which unlocks more capabilities without biological emulation... how many of today's jobs are going to be left un-done by narrow AI a century from now, even if whole brain emulations are finally practical then?
- jessriedel 10y ago
  You don't have to think that this is the most likely scenario to think this is a very important book. Even if the chance that em AI beats ab initio AI is only 5%, it's a dramatically different and important scenario to consider.
- arthurjj 10y ago
  He's stated elsewhere he thinks the chances of this scenario are only ~30% IIRC
  - davidgerard 10y ago
    Based on what, though? The hazard of dealing with Bayesian epistemologists is that they will confidently state percentages that they literally made up.
Paul_S 10y ago
The Age of Em can be read in two ways. One is to treat it like an RPG setting book. An imaginative world with highly detailed descriptions, complete with cool potential plots for your campaign. The second way to read it is as a book trying to predict the future in much the same way as The Flintstones is recording history. Everything is strange yet it's all mimicking the current world with superficial differences. The chapter about computational reversibility was really annoying - good luck with it if you're not a CS academic. I'm a software engineer and I only have a vague idea what it is and unless you know already you're out of luck as the author will not explain anything. The rest is ridiculously specific descriptions of a future world - a bit like trying to forecast weather 20 years in advance by trying to get the exact temperature, rainfall, etc. on a particular Thursday in March, in your back garden. This is why I'm going with the former way of reading this book. Maybe someone will write a fiction book based on this setting - could be interesting. One last thing: the author mentions that economists often predict the future correctly but the irrational^H^H^H^H^H^H^H uncoordinated populace fails to realise the correct prediction (a comment I've read before made by other economists), implying that the only way he can be wrong about his predictions in this book is if we all somehow conspire against him, at which point it's all our fault. AI research must be a traumatising field.
- andrewflnr 10y ago
  Speaking of fiction, it sounds a lot like The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi, more in the "forking your mind repeatedly" respect than the 2mm robots, though the tiny people are there, too. Reading this article shortly after The Quantum Thief was actually a bit uncanny.
- freshhawk 10y ago
  "...economists often predict the future correctly but the irrational..." This is the Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong community worldview basically, and I find your RPG setting reading works well for understanding them as well. From now on I'll think of them as writers who are predicting the future of an alternate universe where humans think fundamentally differently than in our reality. It's a hell of a lot of fun, if you model homo economicus instead of homo sapiens it actually is possible to reason about large societies and at least attempt to predict far future outcomes to some degree. Plenty of ways to hand wave away the reasons that you can't "predict" historical events or the present with these models, that's boring anyway, the future has cooler toys. If you accept that a chaotic soup of memes can, at any time, combine to form an idea that becomes a popular ideology that prompts a bunch of clever apes to act anywhere from irrational to completely insane for arbitrary amounts of time ... well that's impossible to model in any meaningful way. The aversion to history makes a lot of sense, my own interest in history and sociology is what showed me the holes in this worldview and now I can't play this fun game with the same immersion they do.
lr4444lr 10y ago
Is anyone else having a hard time disambiguation which of his models and predictions he holds genuinely, and which are merely exercises in reductio ad absurdum attacks on the dysfunction he sees in the establishment? I'm all for free thinking, but this seems all too convenient to hedge his bets.
reflexive 10y ago
> You are beautiful, intelligent, and charismatic, as are your friends, co-workers, lovers. Aren't all of these qualities measured relative to our neighbors? I.e., each of us is a genius compared to our ape forebearers, but if everyone around you is beautiful, intelligent, and charming, then no one is. > You feel no hunger, no cold, no heat, no pain. Again, isn't discomfort relative to what one is prepared for? Under such circumstances, wouldn't the slightest dip or peak in subjective well-being feel like a life-altering crisis? "Connoisseur" is relevant https://xkcd.com/915/ https://xkcd.com/915/ Am I missing something, or is this just another economist who understands nothing about human desire?
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  You can make a case that charisma only matters in contrast to its lack, and perhaps beauty is the same although I'm not as certain, but intelligence has an intrinsic value that ought to be evident by the fact that we built a technological civilization with it.
  - reflexive 10y ago
    That's a good point, I'll just say that no one will perceive themselves or their friends as intelligent, except relative to their competitors.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  Those qualities are measured relative to us, present humans. He's saying the Ems will be much smarter, beautiful, and charismatic, compared to humans in 2016. >wouldn't the slightest dip or peak in subjective well-being feel like a life-altering crisis? Well that's much more debatable. I think to some degree suffering and pleasure are on an objective scale. Maybe it has to do with how much dopamine or pain nerves are triggered, probably it's much more complicated than that. Certainly I would give a lot to live in a world where there was no risk of getting some illness or accident that could cause intense pain or suffering, yet otherwise everything else was exactly the same. Wouldn't you?
  - 10y ago
crimsonalucard 10y ago
Far ahead of his time? No. This overwhelming optimism for technology is a very mainstream attitude you see among millennials and a lot of HN commenters.
JamesBarney 10y ago
My favorite writer wrote a great book review of Robin Hanson's seminal work 'Age of Em" here http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of-em/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of-em/
davidgerard 10y ago
JETSON, Bay Area, the future (H Minus) — Scientists, or self-taught philosophers who’ve heard of science anyway, predict a dazzling future for humanity — in which our computer-augmented future selves, in a world of endless plenty, keep being shits to each other. An advanced computer-managed economy will do all the jobs, building our homes, 3D-printing our iPhones and nano-assembling our food. Wanting for nothing, people will at last be free to assert their essential humanity and complain bitterly about everything. Genetic engineering will give us new bodies and an indefinite lifespan. Whole-brain emulation will let those who would have died go on as personalities living in computers. In the future, fuckwits will be with you forever. We will live in fabulously diverse harmony and break the cycle of every new technology first being used to murder each other. This will include those thoroughly deserving of murder, particularly the endless identical instances of irritating hippie emulations blathering about cosmic oneness. Cryogenically-preserved humans from the twenty-first century will have their frozen brains read by nanobots so their personalities can be run as programs. To avoid future shock, they will be put to work in a computer-simulated office job, and be reset each morning. For comfort and familiarity, each person-emulation will be given a helpful companion program, called “Clippy.” A benevolent artificial superintelligence will run the world, for the good of all humanity. To maximise utilitarian value across the quantum wave function of the universe, “Roko’s femilisk” will regrettably have to punish emulations of those who complained that they found Tumblr social justice warriors’ intolerance of intolerance “triggering.” Please donate to help achieve this. Given the opportunity for a world of unlimited creative freedom and enjoyment, we can be certain that humanity will not rest until it has turned this infinitely bountiful paradise into something even pissier than modern-day capitalism. The Singularity will elevate the human condition to nasty, brutish and long. An emulation of Thomas Hobbes will, however, buy that for a bitcoin.
cmrdporcupine 10y ago
Let all of these people 'transcend' their minds into computers, I will go the other way, and go immanently into my body. "Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage—it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body." -- Nietzsche http://www.philosophy-index.com/nietzsche/thus-spake-zarathurstra/iv.php http://www.philosophy-index.com/nietzsche/thus-spake-zarathu... Or Deleuze summarizing him: As Nietzsche would say, we stand amazed before consciousness but the truly suprising thing is the body. To feel a raindrop on the skin, to look out on a surprising sunrise, to lie on one's back in the grass at dusk while bats fly overhead. I would not want to live 1000 years without this. I'd rather the lights go out and have it all end and gone forever than live only in a simulation, to no longer feel the randomness, the intricacy, the depth, the richness of what is happening now. You're welcome to all the virtual you want. But no thanks.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  Your preference is irrelevant. Many people will choose to be uploaded, and those people will inherit the Earth. As the uploads will be able to think, work, and multiply much faster than normal humans (among other possible advantages.) Hanson imagines that fleshy humans will be left behind by the future, perhaps continuing to exist by investing in the em economy and living off the interest, but otherwise not participating in the system at all. I don't know why you think an upload's experience would be worse than a fleshy human's experience. With such advanced technology in the far future, virtual reality and simulations will probably be indistinguishable from the real world. They will feel rain drops and see sunrises. But also they will probably be able to experience so much more. As virtual worlds do not have all the limitations the physical one does. They won't have to age or experience pain or discomfort, sickness, etc. They can walk on distant planets or swim in deep oceans, or fly through the air effortlessly, and without mechanical aid.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
rafaelvasco 10y ago
You can't hope to "scan" a human brain and make a virtual clone of a human being or any being, because life and conscience is much more than a brain. So that future he describes , at last functioning the way he thinks is impossible. Until we understand 100% of what we're made of, no one can even think of anything like this.
emblem21 10y ago
I once wrote a book in 2005 about the inevitable fusion of central banking theory, economic psychology, and "good-enough" artificial intelligence. Whole brain emulations weren't required. Instead, mass expansion of mobile devices and the consolidation of civil behavior into those devices (purchasing, voting, socialization, documentation, research, institution interactions, welfare benefits, etc) allows a sufficiently powerful enough AI to read an NSA trunk and be able to create a model of the "animal spirits" of the individual constituents of markets. It couldn't model human behavior accurately, but that wasn't required. Instead, it could create a chaotic chain of events between all actor demands and capabilities via small actions that would result in massive economic policy enforcement. Instead of invading Iraq, the machine predicts a convoluted path of investment schemes that ultimately bankrupt the dinar, the ruling party, and the entire nation. No bullets fired. No soldiers deployed. To economists, it would look like normal macroeconomic activity. I never released the book because I realized I was writing a business proposal.
- sideshowb 10y ago
  I once had ideas like that. Let me know how it works out. I suspect you'll find it hard to predict much at all let alone influence.
- M0T0K0 10y ago
  I would be highly interested in reading such a book. Any drafts and/or links available?
- dxg732f 10y ago
  That sounds really interesting. I have also thought about how "good-enough" AI could get a lot more done than many predict. I also like the idea of a Rube Goldberg equivalent of investment schemes and options to achieve certain objectives. Write a fun versions of it first, then do the business proposal. Good luck :)
dschiptsov 10y ago
Cosplay (role-playing) of intelligence (acute hipsterism) at its best.
dxg732f 10y ago
I like the main point he is trying to make (which I see summed up by the cliche "think outside the box") but most of the ideas in this article are such stereotypical notions of turning everything on it's head: Aliens? AI taking over? Robots taking over? Us living in a simulation? Challenging the concept of rape? Can we stop pretending these are cutting edge and out there? Can we stop pretending these ideas don't have very old precedents? He has come up with unique ideas on these themes, but no he is not "ahead of his time" I would argue in many ways he is stuck in the past.

136 points by Hooke 10y ago

meira 10y ago

No.

Anyone that hasn't yet, check out Black Mirror on Netflix. It has a lot of ideas in it that I am surprised to see in a show in 2016. I love Elon Musk but I think he is solving the wrong problem when it comes to making human beings a space faring species. The fragility of human flesh is the barrier to colonizing space. You can try to solve this problem by wrapping it in a contained atmosphere or wait a thousand years and send humans to Mars in a different kind of space ship. One made of metal and silicon that can recharge its batteries so long as it has a line of sight on a distant star.. maybe as the article says: "a robotic body [standing] roughly two millimeters tall" The greatest challenge we face is keeping this incubator called Earth alive long enough for us to develop the technology to abandon our flesh. But I imagine if that day ever comes what it means to be human will have been destroyed in the end anyways.

mordymoop 10y ago
We can do more than one thing at once.
mburns 10y ago
>or wait a thousand years and send humans to Mars in a different kind of space ship. Pardon the pun, but why on Earth should we wait 1000 years (or whatever it actually takes) for something when we don't have to? Our fragile human flesh in a contained atmosphere works well enough and we're roughly capable of doing it now, give or take a couple decades. Then we have 900+ years to improve the containers we use to maintain our preferred atmosphere while waiting for whatever form this futuristic species you describe takes.
- sjg007 10y ago
  Basically we can't survive space radiation... Even going to Mars.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    We can though. Using today's technology we can easily go to Mars and live in underground habitats and be subject to only a moderate increase in health risks from radiation absorbed during the trip. Said health risks would be less than what a decent number of current Earth-bound professions face, and those people don't even get to go to Mars.
    - rabidrat 10y ago
      > easily What we are currently doing on Mars remotely is absolutely incredible and at the upper limit of our present capabilities. Don't think for a second that having "today's technology" does not still require a herculean effort, if we even have a 5% chance of pulling it off before funding (which would be in the trillions) is cut.
      - CydeWeys 10y ago
        I was specifically refuting the claim that the radiation problem is a blocker, when in fact it is just a minor nuisance. Storms posed more of a danger to the first ships exploring the new world than radiation will to Mars colonists, and that didn't stop anyone.
        sjg007 10y ago
        You are mistaken. https://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY16/IG-16-003.pdf https://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY16/IG-16-003.pdf
        CydeWeys 10y ago
        Do you have a link to a specific page within that report demonstrating your point? I skimmed through it and all I saw is that it says that there are some risks. Obviously I'm not denying that. It doesn't say at all that the risks are so high that we can't do missions with current technology (which provides minimal to no radiation shielding in transit). Mainly it's saying that further study is merited, which I absolutely agree with. I also think we don't need to hold off on going until we achieve perfect mitigation, and I believe most NASA employees would agree with me on that as well.
elevensies 10y ago
I think brain-upload is probably the only way to do interstellar travel, even if you synthesize a new body on the other side. For someone alive today, if you want to do interstellar or non-colonization space travel, going after immorality is the best option IMO. I don't think that earth-preservation is a worthwhile quest on a personal level. There are dozens of people who could destroy the whole planet since the invention of nukes. And with climate change for example, any kind of proportionate action would require an agreement between giant (100M to 1B+ people) political organizations to voluntarily makes themselves less wealthy -- although making tech that is greener and cheaper/better is probably the most significantly helpful option.
- JaggedNZ 10y ago
  > going after immorality is the best option IMO Now there is an ironic typo/autocorrect, I think the word you where looking for is immortality, unless of course you are making a scathing criticism that the pursuit of self preservation for the purpose of interstellar travel is against the laws of morality. Thanks for a chuckle. I do think though that emulation of "specialized" hardware with generic hardware is a complex problem space. While it's now possible to recreate classic gaming systems with fpga's for example, some cases we are able to only offer an approximation. The computing power of the host exceeds the power of the emulated CPU by several orders of magnitude. My thinking is to emulate wetware with hardware will require hardware several orders of magnitude more powerful than wetware and I suspect the wetware is already close the physical limitation of the universe for several key problem spaces.
  - elevensies 10y ago
    *immortality (oops :S) Sure, I don't necessarily disagree with anything you're saying, and given all that, I still think it is the best chance. #1: in the short term, the quantity of hardware doesn't matter. If you needed a full data center costing $10M per year, it would still be worth it for some people. The idea is to get into a host that is replaceable, and then you can work on making it smaller. #2: in the short term, you don't need to run in real time. If you are just trying to survive until better tech comes along, running at 1% means the equivalent of 3.65 days per year: maybe enough to survive until hardware improves. Taking this to an extreme, 100 people could pool resources for protection and tech improvement while staying in deep storage and only running their minds very seldom. Given the above two points, all that really matters to me is that I can find a way to upload my mind into binary data which I know can be simulated faithfully. All I need is upload, storage, and a recovery plan. If the recovery plan looks like it will take 1000 years, fine, I still prefer it to nothing. If I think there is a 1% chance of success over the next 1000 years for immortality, I believe I will do it. #3: we know for a fact that the functionality of the brain/body is achievable in the space/power envelope of the brain/body. I could easily tolerate a 100x space and power increase. The human body is approximate 100 watts and 100 litres. So 100x is 10,000 watts and 10 cubic meters: 13 horsepower and the size of a compact car -- fine by me. I think I could survive immobile and incorporeal for 100 years with a good library, if, for example, I had to be anchored to the seabed somewhere and run off geothermal energy. The more you expand your lifespan, the more options open up. If you can run yourself at very slow speeds an immense amount of options open up.
the_duke 10y ago
I recently discovered Black Mirror. It's a great and fascinating series. Finally something other then the mind numbing pabulum that is most TV. I especially loved season 1 / episode 2. --- The way our brain works, all experience, self consciousness and awareness is intricately linked to physical perception. If we were to go the 'brain in a petri dish' route, we would have to fake all those signals a body would send to the brain. If we just start emulating the brain physiology digitally, that is easier of course. But I would not call the result of either method a 'human being', but something inherently different.
- internaut 10y ago
  Watch Utopia. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia I judge it better than Black Mirror. Don't google any information about it because it will sound stupid, just watch it outright.
- Shorel 10y ago
  What you describe is the central idea in 'I of the vortex: from neurons to self' by neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás. Self consciousness and awareness is linked both to physical perception and to the prediction and anticipation of said perception.
internaut 10y ago
There is a TV series better than Black Mirror believe it or not. I'll shill for it because it's an amazing work of art. It's called Utopia, it's a conspiracy thriller from Channel 4, and if it doesn't send chills down your spine and raise your hackles then you aren't alive. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia
_andromeda_ 10y ago
Just read on Black Mirror; it seems interesting. Thanks for the recommendation. For those seeking more knowledge on DNI and the validity of cryonics as an elixir of life, I highly recommend getting a copy of Michio Kaku's book, The Future of the Mind.

cynicalBit 10y ago

If people can be convinced that their simulated virtual self is actually them, overpopulation will be solved by mass suicide. Sorry if that's too dark for you guys, it just has to be said. All these "live inside a computer people" are just a modern Jim Jones cult.

OscarCunningham 10y ago
Whether or not simulations are actually the people they're copies of, or people at all, is irrelevant to the question Hanson is looking at, which is "What might we expect ems to do?".
philipkglass 10y ago
A self-backup from pattern data isn't any good for soothing one's metaphysical fears, unless (like most of the people on Star Trek) you don't think that the disintegration of all the molecules in one's body is the disintegration of oneself. A backup self is perfectly adequate if you want certain things to be taken care of despite one's death. I believe that if I die I'm dead, backup or no, but I'd like to have a backup anyway so it could continue to pursue the research I found interesting while alive and could continue to take care of my family just as I would. The dead-me won't care either way but present-me would like to make contingency plans for the future.
Houshalter 10y ago
A copy of you is you. Literally the atoms that make up 'you' are replaced all the time, by biology. And the atoms themselves aren't real. Like some models of physics suggest that physical things are constantly being copied and deleted already, like how objects in a cellular automaton universe are "destroyed" every time they move. But how the universe actually works is irrelevant even. Other people can have a different definition of 'death'. If the information in my brain is preserved then that's all that matters to me. If I had to get my neurons replaced, one at a time, with 'artificial neurons' that would contain all the same information, then i would do it. Surely you would to. And you wouldn't even notice any change I bet. It wouldn't change anything observable at all. So how can it possibly matter?

Animats 10y ago

Living in VR, and the implications thereof, have been written about in SF for decades. The earliest work is "Simulacron 3", from 1964. It's been done to death in anime. "Sword Art Online" is probably the best known stuck-in-VR anime, but "Log Horizon" deals with the philosophical aspects in more depth. Hanson is not breaking new ground; he's recycling SF as economics. Read Hanson's list of "wild ideas".[1] "By 2100, the vast majority of "people" will be immortal computers running brain simulations." (And the rest will be keeping the server farms going?) "If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make computers as smart as people." (After 30 years of Cyc trying that, that's probably a no.) "If we allowed complete freedom of contract, law could be privatized, to our common benefit." (He's at George Mason University, which is a right-wing think tank, and has to say stuff like that to get tenure.) [1] http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/wildideas.html http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/wildideas.html

nhaliday 10y ago
> Hanson is not breaking new ground; he's recycling SF as economics. World-building for purposes of entertainment generally has little to do with successful prediction. Hanson has made this point in a few places, eg, http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/11/science-fiction-is-fantasy.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/11/science-fiction-is-fan.... I'm not sure if you've read Age of Em but it didn't feel like reading scifi, so much as reading an encyclopedia. RE: the list of "wild ideas." He estimates that maybe a third of them are true. Quoting a few and acting shocked that that's the case is not a very epistemically hygienic criticism. BTW if anyone wants to read a summary that carries some of the tone and emphasis of the book itself, https://casparoesterheld.com/2016/08/30/the-age-of-em-summary-of-policy-relevant-information/ https://casparoesterheld.com/2016/08/30/the-age-of-em-summar... is pretty good.
- nitwit005 10y ago
  > World-building for purposes of entertainment generally has little to do with successful prediction Do you have any evidence that that's true? A decent number of ideas portrayed in science fiction have come true, so clearly successful prediction is going on. Ultimately, economist or author are both using imagination and extrapolation. I don't see any particular reason to expect better results from the economist.

wimgz 10y ago

His book is not available on Kindle, so no

Symmetry 10y ago
Would you expect an author to have anything to do with that decision?
ikeboy 10y ago
It used to be (see https://www.amazon.com/Age-Em-Work-Robots-Earth-ebook/dp/B01FHNFAVS?ref_=mt_kindle https://www.amazon.com/Age-Em-Work-Robots-Earth-ebook/dp/B01... and http://ageofem.com/ http://ageofem.com/). I don't know why it was pulled or who was responsible.
RobinHanson 10y ago
Amazon pulled it to pressure Oxford U. Press to give more $.

carsongross 10y ago

He's not an economist, he's a futurist, and not a particularly interesting one. For an actual economist ahead of his time, I recommend Steve Keen.

duckkg5 10y ago
Hanson is a professor of economics at GMU http://economics.gmu.edu/people/rhanson http://economics.gmu.edu/people/rhanson
- vannevar 10y ago
  He may be an economist by training, he may teach in an economics department, but as described, his course would fit right in at any future studies program. The article certainly makes him sound more futurist than economist.
- vannevar 10y ago
  For folks who may not be familiar with future studies. It's a genuine academic discipline, when we say that Hanson is a futurist, it's not an insult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_studies
lr4444lr 10y ago
Upvoted. Keen did get a few falsifiable predictions wrong, but his work on bank endogenous money creation, debt instability, and rate based economic modeling I think merit much more serious research in mainstream economics, along with the MMT school. Good of you to mention.
barry-cotter 10y ago
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/09/on-futurism.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/09/on-futurism.html When the media reports on the future, reporters pretty much only ever quote these sort of futurists, who have hijacked the future to support their side of certain current disputes. Truth be told, folks who analyze the future but don’t frame their predictions or advice in terms of standard ideological categories are largely ignored, because few folks actually care much about the future except as a place to tell morality tales about who today is naughty vs. nice.

buro9 10y ago

Yet another person who has read too many of the Culture Series books by Iain M. Banks and thinks we are close to achieving a lot described within those books. I do think it is achievable, but even the books acknowledge it takes thousands of years to get there.

OscarCunningham 10y ago
I don't think the books do "acknowledge" that? I mean in particular there's that nice short story where the Culture visits Earth. So the books are set in our present and not the future.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  "Consider Phlebas" takes place in 1331CE whereas "Surface Detail" takes place between 2700 and 3000CE, with the other books in the "series" taking place at different points within that range.
nhaliday 10y ago
Hanson has actually disparaged science fiction in general for purposes of futurism. I don't think he's been influenced by it much.

ikeboy 10y ago

Hanson's thoughts on the profile: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/10/profile.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/10/profile.html

philipkglass 10y ago

The book’s premise is that in about a century, it will be possible to scan human brains at "fine enough spatial and chemical resolution," and to combine that with good-enough models of signal-processing functions of brain cells, "to create a cell-by-cell dynamically executable model of the full brain in artificial hardware, a model whose signal input-output behavior is usefully close to that of the original brain." Like Bostrom and Kurzweil I think this guy is seriously underestimating the difficulty of biology. I don't believe in souls or non-computable woo going on in our brains. I do believe that biology is insanely complicated compared to computing or physics; physicists, engineers, and people from a computing background who've never worked in biology tend to handwave incredibly difficult problems. See also: the long and mostly-unsuccessful history of people who thought that they could replace animal/cell culture drug testing with models in silico. On top of the sheer audacious difficulty of creating whole brain emulations, there's the problem of competing with boring old "narrow" AI. Surely an economist of all people should recognize the feedback loop that makes narrow AI profitable first, which attracts more investment, which unlocks more capabilities without biological emulation... how many of today's jobs are going to be left un-done by narrow AI a century from now, even if whole brain emulations are finally practical then?

jessriedel 10y ago
You don't have to think that this is the most likely scenario to think this is a very important book. Even if the chance that em AI beats ab initio AI is only 5%, it's a dramatically different and important scenario to consider.
arthurjj 10y ago
He's stated elsewhere he thinks the chances of this scenario are only ~30% IIRC
- davidgerard 10y ago
  Based on what, though? The hazard of dealing with Bayesian epistemologists is that they will confidently state percentages that they literally made up.

Paul_S 10y ago

The Age of Em can be read in two ways. One is to treat it like an RPG setting book. An imaginative world with highly detailed descriptions, complete with cool potential plots for your campaign. The second way to read it is as a book trying to predict the future in much the same way as The Flintstones is recording history. Everything is strange yet it's all mimicking the current world with superficial differences. The chapter about computational reversibility was really annoying - good luck with it if you're not a CS academic. I'm a software engineer and I only have a vague idea what it is and unless you know already you're out of luck as the author will not explain anything. The rest is ridiculously specific descriptions of a future world - a bit like trying to forecast weather 20 years in advance by trying to get the exact temperature, rainfall, etc. on a particular Thursday in March, in your back garden. This is why I'm going with the former way of reading this book. Maybe someone will write a fiction book based on this setting - could be interesting. One last thing: the author mentions that economists often predict the future correctly but the irrational^H^H^H^H^H^H^H uncoordinated populace fails to realise the correct prediction (a comment I've read before made by other economists), implying that the only way he can be wrong about his predictions in this book is if we all somehow conspire against him, at which point it's all our fault. AI research must be a traumatising field.

andrewflnr 10y ago
Speaking of fiction, it sounds a lot like The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi, more in the "forking your mind repeatedly" respect than the 2mm robots, though the tiny people are there, too. Reading this article shortly after The Quantum Thief was actually a bit uncanny.
freshhawk 10y ago
"...economists often predict the future correctly but the irrational..." This is the Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong community worldview basically, and I find your RPG setting reading works well for understanding them as well. From now on I'll think of them as writers who are predicting the future of an alternate universe where humans think fundamentally differently than in our reality. It's a hell of a lot of fun, if you model homo economicus instead of homo sapiens it actually is possible to reason about large societies and at least attempt to predict far future outcomes to some degree. Plenty of ways to hand wave away the reasons that you can't "predict" historical events or the present with these models, that's boring anyway, the future has cooler toys. If you accept that a chaotic soup of memes can, at any time, combine to form an idea that becomes a popular ideology that prompts a bunch of clever apes to act anywhere from irrational to completely insane for arbitrary amounts of time ... well that's impossible to model in any meaningful way. The aversion to history makes a lot of sense, my own interest in history and sociology is what showed me the holes in this worldview and now I can't play this fun game with the same immersion they do.

lr4444lr 10y ago

Is anyone else having a hard time disambiguation which of his models and predictions he holds genuinely, and which are merely exercises in reductio ad absurdum attacks on the dysfunction he sees in the establishment? I'm all for free thinking, but this seems all too convenient to hedge his bets.

reflexive 10y ago

> You are beautiful, intelligent, and charismatic, as are your friends, co-workers, lovers. Aren't all of these qualities measured relative to our neighbors? I.e., each of us is a genius compared to our ape forebearers, but if everyone around you is beautiful, intelligent, and charming, then no one is. > You feel no hunger, no cold, no heat, no pain. Again, isn't discomfort relative to what one is prepared for? Under such circumstances, wouldn't the slightest dip or peak in subjective well-being feel like a life-altering crisis? "Connoisseur" is relevant https://xkcd.com/915/ https://xkcd.com/915/ Am I missing something, or is this just another economist who understands nothing about human desire?

oldmanjay 10y ago
You can make a case that charisma only matters in contrast to its lack, and perhaps beauty is the same although I'm not as certain, but intelligence has an intrinsic value that ought to be evident by the fact that we built a technological civilization with it.
- reflexive 10y ago
  That's a good point, I'll just say that no one will perceive themselves or their friends as intelligent, except relative to their competitors.
Houshalter 10y ago
Those qualities are measured relative to us, present humans. He's saying the Ems will be much smarter, beautiful, and charismatic, compared to humans in 2016. >wouldn't the slightest dip or peak in subjective well-being feel like a life-altering crisis? Well that's much more debatable. I think to some degree suffering and pleasure are on an objective scale. Maybe it has to do with how much dopamine or pain nerves are triggered, probably it's much more complicated than that. Certainly I would give a lot to live in a world where there was no risk of getting some illness or accident that could cause intense pain or suffering, yet otherwise everything else was exactly the same. Wouldn't you?
- 10y ago

crimsonalucard 10y ago

Far ahead of his time? No. This overwhelming optimism for technology is a very mainstream attitude you see among millennials and a lot of HN commenters.

JamesBarney 10y ago

My favorite writer wrote a great book review of Robin Hanson's seminal work 'Age of Em" here http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of-em/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of-em/

davidgerard 10y ago

JETSON, Bay Area, the future (H Minus) — Scientists, or self-taught philosophers who’ve heard of science anyway, predict a dazzling future for humanity — in which our computer-augmented future selves, in a world of endless plenty, keep being shits to each other. An advanced computer-managed economy will do all the jobs, building our homes, 3D-printing our iPhones and nano-assembling our food. Wanting for nothing, people will at last be free to assert their essential humanity and complain bitterly about everything. Genetic engineering will give us new bodies and an indefinite lifespan. Whole-brain emulation will let those who would have died go on as personalities living in computers. In the future, fuckwits will be with you forever. We will live in fabulously diverse harmony and break the cycle of every new technology first being used to murder each other. This will include those thoroughly deserving of murder, particularly the endless identical instances of irritating hippie emulations blathering about cosmic oneness. Cryogenically-preserved humans from the twenty-first century will have their frozen brains read by nanobots so their personalities can be run as programs. To avoid future shock, they will be put to work in a computer-simulated office job, and be reset each morning. For comfort and familiarity, each person-emulation will be given a helpful companion program, called “Clippy.” A benevolent artificial superintelligence will run the world, for the good of all humanity. To maximise utilitarian value across the quantum wave function of the universe, “Roko’s femilisk” will regrettably have to punish emulations of those who complained that they found Tumblr social justice warriors’ intolerance of intolerance “triggering.” Please donate to help achieve this. Given the opportunity for a world of unlimited creative freedom and enjoyment, we can be certain that humanity will not rest until it has turned this infinitely bountiful paradise into something even pissier than modern-day capitalism. The Singularity will elevate the human condition to nasty, brutish and long. An emulation of Thomas Hobbes will, however, buy that for a bitcoin.

cmrdporcupine 10y ago

Let all of these people 'transcend' their minds into computers, I will go the other way, and go immanently into my body. "Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage—it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body." -- Nietzsche http://www.philosophy-index.com/nietzsche/thus-spake-zarathurstra/iv.php http://www.philosophy-index.com/nietzsche/thus-spake-zarathu... Or Deleuze summarizing him: As Nietzsche would say, we stand amazed before consciousness but the truly suprising thing is the body. To feel a raindrop on the skin, to look out on a surprising sunrise, to lie on one's back in the grass at dusk while bats fly overhead. I would not want to live 1000 years without this. I'd rather the lights go out and have it all end and gone forever than live only in a simulation, to no longer feel the randomness, the intricacy, the depth, the richness of what is happening now. You're welcome to all the virtual you want. But no thanks.

Houshalter 10y ago
Your preference is irrelevant. Many people will choose to be uploaded, and those people will inherit the Earth. As the uploads will be able to think, work, and multiply much faster than normal humans (among other possible advantages.) Hanson imagines that fleshy humans will be left behind by the future, perhaps continuing to exist by investing in the em economy and living off the interest, but otherwise not participating in the system at all. I don't know why you think an upload's experience would be worse than a fleshy human's experience. With such advanced technology in the far future, virtual reality and simulations will probably be indistinguishable from the real world. They will feel rain drops and see sunrises. But also they will probably be able to experience so much more. As virtual worlds do not have all the limitations the physical one does. They won't have to age or experience pain or discomfort, sickness, etc. They can walk on distant planets or swim in deep oceans, or fly through the air effortlessly, and without mechanical aid.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

rafaelvasco 10y ago

You can't hope to "scan" a human brain and make a virtual clone of a human being or any being, because life and conscience is much more than a brain. So that future he describes , at last functioning the way he thinks is impossible. Until we understand 100% of what we're made of, no one can even think of anything like this.

emblem21 10y ago

I once wrote a book in 2005 about the inevitable fusion of central banking theory, economic psychology, and "good-enough" artificial intelligence. Whole brain emulations weren't required. Instead, mass expansion of mobile devices and the consolidation of civil behavior into those devices (purchasing, voting, socialization, documentation, research, institution interactions, welfare benefits, etc) allows a sufficiently powerful enough AI to read an NSA trunk and be able to create a model of the "animal spirits" of the individual constituents of markets. It couldn't model human behavior accurately, but that wasn't required. Instead, it could create a chaotic chain of events between all actor demands and capabilities via small actions that would result in massive economic policy enforcement. Instead of invading Iraq, the machine predicts a convoluted path of investment schemes that ultimately bankrupt the dinar, the ruling party, and the entire nation. No bullets fired. No soldiers deployed. To economists, it would look like normal macroeconomic activity. I never released the book because I realized I was writing a business proposal.

sideshowb 10y ago
I once had ideas like that. Let me know how it works out. I suspect you'll find it hard to predict much at all let alone influence.
M0T0K0 10y ago
I would be highly interested in reading such a book. Any drafts and/or links available?
dxg732f 10y ago
That sounds really interesting. I have also thought about how "good-enough" AI could get a lot more done than many predict. I also like the idea of a Rube Goldberg equivalent of investment schemes and options to achieve certain objectives. Write a fun versions of it first, then do the business proposal. Good luck :)

dschiptsov 10y ago

Cosplay (role-playing) of intelligence (acute hipsterism) at its best.

dxg732f 10y ago

I like the main point he is trying to make (which I see summed up by the cliche "think outside the box") but most of the ideas in this article are such stereotypical notions of turning everything on it's head: Aliens? AI taking over? Robots taking over? Us living in a simulation? Challenging the concept of rape? Can we stop pretending these are cutting edge and out there? Can we stop pretending these ideas don't have very old precedents? He has come up with unique ideas on these themes, but no he is not "ahead of his time" I would argue in many ways he is stuck in the past.