4 ms·

In 1982(-ish)i have first heard of the AIDS virus. My father (a biologist) said "I feel sorry for the young people of your generation, this will make life so mu

by D_Alex 15y ago

In 1982(-ish)i have first heard of the AIDS virus. My father (a biologist) said "I feel sorry for the young people of your generation, this will make life so much less fun" or something like that (I was 16). And I said something like "You old fellas just do not appreciate how potent science is today, we'll have a cure in 5 years max"... The fact that 30 years later we cured ONE person has really deflated my hubris. Also, no mission to Mars, no general purpose AI, no flying cars, etc, so many disappointments! I have a theory why it is so, I'll not bother you all with it, I'll just say that the other symptom of the underlying cause is the GFC.

michael_dorfman 15y ago
GFC? I've looked over this list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFC, and still don't have a clue which you might mean.
- bad_user 15y ago
  He probably refers to the financial crisis -- there have been theories flying around that our society is rotten to the core because of money. Taking money out of the equation would be an interesting experiment - what if you'd had access to wealth based on your achievements that benefit human kind and not based on whether you're playing stock market games? So in other words, we are doomed :) On the other hand, as a cynical contrarian that I am, I'm thinking that medicine may have gone too far. Natural selection doesn't work anymore.
  - D_Alex 15y ago
    Yes, I meant the financial crisis. I did not mean that our society is rotten to the core, but it seems to me that an inexcusable proportion of our best brains are drawn in to play zero-sum games (much of finance, also law).
    - NickPollard 15y ago
      Finance isn't a Zero-Sum game (well, not all of it anyway). Investing money in the right place can create more wealth for all of humanity.
henrikschroder 15y ago
Strong AI is impossible, flying cars are impractical, and what would we do on Mars? But look at all the cool stuff we got instead! Augmented reality! Internet everywhere! 3D printing! Controllable prostetic limbs! Gigaherz multicore computers! Terabyte storage! Sliced bread! Also, almost noone dies of AIDS of anymore, or has died in the last 10 years in our western countries. The HIV suppressants are so good that even if you are infected with HIV, you'll have the same life expectancy as everyone else. It's not cured, but the quality of life is very similar.
- D_Alex 15y ago
  Yeah, internet, sliced bread and all that are great. But flying cars and a cure for AIDS would have been nice too. My point is that in the '80s there was a lot of optimism about humankind's capabilities, people were saying "it's not a question of what CAN we do anymore, it is what SHOULD we do", implying we COULD do anything. I believed that at the time, but have grown increasingly skeptical (and I blame the brain drain away from science and into zero-sum games like finance for not fulfilling our potential). Also, you are wrong about AIDS - apparently in USA alone there are around 18,000 AIDS caused fatalities each year (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/us.htm http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/us.htm). You are wrong about AI too, it has already been implemented - in meat, of all things!
  - henrikschroder 15y ago
    Well, the more you know, the more you know that you don't know. Predicting what we'll have in the future is always going to be hard, because it's very hard to know the pitfalls, the actual hard problems of a technology. Sending stuff to Mars isn't hard, but having a human survive the trip is really hard because of radiation and psychology, and it took a while to figure that out. Meanwhile, noone in the 80's thought we'd have the internet, tablets, or mobile phones.
    - Anon84 15y ago
      "The lack of data from the future makes predictions hard"
kahawe 15y ago
This becomes an especially cringing realization when considering that a LOT of people are celebrating twitter, facebook and "apps" as the glorious, big and important inventions (almost paradigm shifts) of our time...

by D_Alex 15y ago

michael_dorfman 15y ago

GFC? I've looked over this list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFC, and still don't have a clue which you might mean.

bad_user 15y ago
He probably refers to the financial crisis -- there have been theories flying around that our society is rotten to the core because of money. Taking money out of the equation would be an interesting experiment - what if you'd had access to wealth based on your achievements that benefit human kind and not based on whether you're playing stock market games? So in other words, we are doomed :) On the other hand, as a cynical contrarian that I am, I'm thinking that medicine may have gone too far. Natural selection doesn't work anymore.
- D_Alex 15y ago
  Yes, I meant the financial crisis. I did not mean that our society is rotten to the core, but it seems to me that an inexcusable proportion of our best brains are drawn in to play zero-sum games (much of finance, also law).
  - NickPollard 15y ago
    Finance isn't a Zero-Sum game (well, not all of it anyway). Investing money in the right place can create more wealth for all of humanity.

henrikschroder 15y ago

Strong AI is impossible, flying cars are impractical, and what would we do on Mars? But look at all the cool stuff we got instead! Augmented reality! Internet everywhere! 3D printing! Controllable prostetic limbs! Gigaherz multicore computers! Terabyte storage! Sliced bread! Also, almost noone dies of AIDS of anymore, or has died in the last 10 years in our western countries. The HIV suppressants are so good that even if you are infected with HIV, you'll have the same life expectancy as everyone else. It's not cured, but the quality of life is very similar.

D_Alex 15y ago
Yeah, internet, sliced bread and all that are great. But flying cars and a cure for AIDS would have been nice too. My point is that in the '80s there was a lot of optimism about humankind's capabilities, people were saying "it's not a question of what CAN we do anymore, it is what SHOULD we do", implying we COULD do anything. I believed that at the time, but have grown increasingly skeptical (and I blame the brain drain away from science and into zero-sum games like finance for not fulfilling our potential). Also, you are wrong about AIDS - apparently in USA alone there are around 18,000 AIDS caused fatalities each year (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/us.htm http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/us.htm). You are wrong about AI too, it has already been implemented - in meat, of all things!
- henrikschroder 15y ago
  Well, the more you know, the more you know that you don't know. Predicting what we'll have in the future is always going to be hard, because it's very hard to know the pitfalls, the actual hard problems of a technology. Sending stuff to Mars isn't hard, but having a human survive the trip is really hard because of radiation and psychology, and it took a while to figure that out. Meanwhile, noone in the 80's thought we'd have the internet, tablets, or mobile phones.
  - Anon84 15y ago
    "The lack of data from the future makes predictions hard"

kahawe 15y ago

This becomes an especially cringing realization when considering that a LOT of people are celebrating twitter, facebook and "apps" as the glorious, big and important inventions (almost paradigm shifts) of our time...