8 ms·

This project is terrific. People are critical of what it doesn't do, I'm in awe of what it does do. You're going to have little two man shops in Africa and As

by rmason 5y ago

This project is terrific. People are critical of what it doesn't do, I'm in awe of what it does do. You're going to have little two man shops in Africa and Asia cranking these out and changing agriculture in their part of the world. This demonstrates the power of open source. These engineers are to be commended.

ivm 5y ago
"Their part of the world" has had manufacturing since forever, it's not middle ages outside of the Global North: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tractor_manufacturers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tractor_manufacturers
namdnay 5y ago
I doubt that IP of tractor designs is a major factor in third world poverty. I’m sure there are factories in Asia pumping out cheap tractors already
- beckman466 5y ago
  > I doubt that IP of tractor designs is a major factor in third world poverty. what's your logic here? the intellectual property system is the way the global north propertied class dominates the global south; i.e. renting out the commoditized blueprints/designs and charging insane royalties [1] [1] Vijay Prashad, https://mronline.org/2019/09/29/iphone-workers-today-are-25-times-more-exploited-than-textile-workers-in-19th-century-england/ https://mronline.org/2019/09/29/iphone-workers-today-are-25-...
  - namdnay 5y ago
    Do you think cheap tractor makers in china or India give a fig about IP?
    - beckman466 5y ago
      the west is literally trying to provoke a huge war with china because china is no longer dependent on the west's intellectual property. your framing seems ignorant to me. Vijay Prashad: What's the Left to Do in a World on Fire? | China and the Left, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd8w3ONjv6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd8w3ONjv6Y Vijay Prashad: No Cold War with China, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj1ggllXmws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj1ggllXmws
      - Ericson2314 5y ago
        I feel like tractors are like AK-47s, kinda de facto grandfathered in before Neo-liberalism and Globalization made exporting IP law a big part part of of geopolitics.
        lazide 5y ago
        Basic tractors, like the AK-47, are also designable by most decent mechanical engineering students without a lot of work if they spent an afternoon googling first for prior art (and that prior art has long had any patents expire). Which if there is an ecosystem related to this, that’s great as the manufacturing is where you need economies of scale pretty badly and everyone benefits from it. There is no also no need for a basic excavator to cost $30k or more. Let’s do something about that too!
        coding123 5y ago
        https://www.harborfreight.com/9-hp-towable-backhoe-62365.html https://www.harborfreight.com/9-hp-towable-backhoe-62365.htm... You said basic. :shrug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fK6EtRXqS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fK6EtRXqS4
        lazide 5y ago
        I'm not sure if it counts as an 'excavator' (towed digger maybe?), but that is still pretty neat. Thanks for the link.
        5y ago
    - ajuc 5y ago
      They do. Or, to be precise - they are daughter companies of global corporations that keep their marketshare thanks to IP.
      - namdnay 5y ago
        And that’s why there are no cheap Chinese cars or trucks or tractors or guns or engines or any of that stuff ..
        jaggederest 5y ago
        Many times you'll see a "knockoff" or semi-clone before the original product comes out, even. Which is amazing and awesome. If our systems weren't built around intellectual property it would enable some pretty remarkable things.
  - throwaway210222 5y ago
    Can you be specific? E.g. precisely what patent, design patent, trademark, or copyright is stopping the entire of Africa from designing and building an indigenous diesel tractor?
- i_am_proteus 5y ago
  Not just Asia. Mahindra, an Indian concern (with PRC operating units), builds some tractors and trucks in Africa (I know of plants in at least Mali and South Africa) for various African markets.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  It's not. Third world countries have much bigger concerns than policing the first world's imaginary property. Mostly they'll just ignore any violations for as long as economically viable. If it's important enough, HIV medications for example, they'll even make the fact they don't care about patents official. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/01260212521/patent-denied-aids-drug-india.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/01260212521/paten... https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/brazil-ignores-us-giant-merck-opts-for-indian-drugs/story-MxN9ZwFgwCWxYncXbLjIDJ.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/brazil-ignores-us-giant...
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  There certainly seem to be. https://www.alibaba.com/products/tractor.html?IndexArea=product_en&clusterId=6500033092 https://www.alibaba.com/products/tractor.html?IndexArea=prod... Now if only shipping were reasonable!
beckman466 5y ago
> This demonstrates the power of open source. These engineers are to be commended. if you haven't seen the famous Open Source Ecology pitch by Marcin Jakubowski, you're in for a treat! Open-sourced blueprints for civilization | Marcin Jakubowski, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GEMkvT0DEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GEMkvT0DEk
- gnramires 5y ago
  I need to watch that! I'm developing an algorithmically-driven civilization architecture concept. (in the sense of, how to organize society from a blank slate point of view, while maximizing the wealth of experience for all individuals? I think we've gotten a little caught up in ideology and culture wars and stopped looking for ideas to move society forward with more efficient, humane, robust, collaborative (or adversarially cooperative) societal organization systems) If you thought society as consisting of a large number of agents (with varying degrees of self-interest and diverse motivations), how would you design a system that enables maximum productivity, and maximum well-being? (in the sense of conscious experience: a rich and wealthy life; not necessarily tied to having particular stuff) Seriously, in all our 100,000 years more or less of modern human existence we've seriously toyed with about 2 large scale architectures of society. Why can't we try better in a non-destructive way?
  - 6510 5y ago
    I wrote a few replies to this that I didn't feel like posting. The issue is that when I think about it the concept seems a lot deeper and broader than I give it credit for. What you should do is design a personality and a society simultaneously, design the personality such that it ponders the society and the society so that it builds such characters. The improvement accomplished reinforces the loop.
    - gnramires 5y ago
      Thanks for the support. Feel free to mail me. The current avenue of approach is indeed in two System Parts: (1) Definition of the problem: If we want things to be 'best' in a sense, 'maximally humane', 'maximum quality of experience', 'maximum quality of life, existence and culture', etc. we should define those things, and create structures that continually refine and employ the best methods to asses and measure progress. (2) Optimization of the problem: Choosing the architecture and structures that maximizes our measures. This again almost certainly is some kind of distributed structure that gives rewards and occasionally demands compensation (for a generalization of negative externality -- generalized externality of existence). I often say that the Universe is a search problem. This is just a big honkin' search problem :) --- Capitalism leaves the job of (1) on the individual, and on the government somewhat. The job of (2) is accomplished by a dual again of capital (supply and demand, allocation of capital for maximum profit) and government (using taxes and incentives). Again the problem of capitalism is that it doesn't account for externalities very well (too often ends up maximizing the wrong function), and the problem of government is inefficiency, centralization (algorithmic inefficiency of resource allocation strategies), lack of agility. Note: Capitalism (without support structures) is very similar to evolutionary dynamics. It's hard to model exactly what evolutionary dynamics maximizes, but one formulation is that it maximizes environmental domination: expanding to cover the most of the environment, whatever it takes. Lose consciousness and become soul-less robots to take over everything? Sure, no problem; and annihilate anything that gets in the way. Accidentally or not evolutionary dynamics gave us life and consciousness, but it's not certain life and consciousness will endure as essential for environmental domination (in a way, consciousness is currently related to intelligence via humans, but we for example already appear able to create super-human intelligence that is not conscious or at least not very conscious). So we need to change the objective function to create a great harmonious future where some for of existence... exists. To see why evolutionary dynamics and environmental stability (i.e. the result of environmental expansion) doesn't prize conscious experience (in general, the Meaning of life), I use two thought experiments: (1) Generalized grey goo/Paperclip maximizer. Again, just picture a very intelligent creature dedicated to maximizing only its environmental domination. It will create other forms of intelligence only as much as needed to maintain its dominion. Any form of existence that's not immediately conductive to the maintenance and expansion of dominion is irrelevant/negative value. I can only see this leading to an empty Universe and a few singular intelligences looking for ways to annihilate all other existences at maximum speed focusing on weapons research and planetary domination exclusively. (2) Doomsday button. The ultimate thought experiment in this line is the following: suppose you assume environmental regularization (domination) originated by your actions is the 'Ideal goal of existence'. Then I present you a doomsday button: If you push the button, you will trigger some kind of physical mechanism that will consume the entire universe into a regular lifeless crystal-like structure. Think of it as a bomb of expanding regular wave that takes over the entire universe. In a way, this represents a maximally stable solution to dominating the environment... maximum effect, perpetual and irreversible. But that doesn't look like a good solution at all, does it? It's in fact lifeless and non-existential. Clearly the ultimate objective is related to existence, not to environmental domination or regularization by some abstract definition of 'Individual' or 'Nation' or whatever. If we can't change objective, I predict we'll be consumed by this savage nature quite soon. --- I don't mean to trivialize System Part 1 (Evaluation). It's literally all that matters to humanity and existence. I guarantee it's not a second degree equation :) For example, individual autonomy can be an important component of human experience, the ability and free will to decide more or less independently is likely an important part of the whole. My approach is that we need to define the Meaning of life clearly. We've also postponed this way too much as a Civilization. By now it shouldn't be that complicated -- we know it's got to do with experience and somehow the internal dynamics of a large neural network, the sustainability and continuity of life. I have a draft[1] but don't expect it to be bulletproof. This should evolve into a Formalization of Ethics program (hopefully a collaborative, worldwide effort) to get the basics done. Think of it as a Super Declaration of Human rights, or a Foundation of Ethics (like we have a Foundation of Mathematics). This could not be ignored by any nation, hopefully in the short term strengthening clarity and convictions on the objective of human (and generalized conscious) existence. This Foundations should be Universal. First, I'm convinced the rough draft (given above) is correct, it should be a matter of truth and reason[2], and not require any advanced metaphysics or elicit genuine controversy after rational examination. This is also part of a new propostion for making philosophy that I call 'Explosive Philosophy': the negation of the Principle of Experience (i.e. consciousness is not the prime motive of existence) leads to absurdity as demonstrated by several thought experiments. Explosive Philosophy is the use of rejection by absurd by taking particularly obviously unacceptable consequences of a principle. Second, if some Nation is a Competitive Supremacist (i.e. Evolutionarist), that will clearly put it in conflict with the Conscious Foundations. It will try to achieve domination at all costs, and eventually it will need to settle with the Foundations[2] or live under constant watch to make sure it doesn't take over everything or even consume itself. --- Afterwards, the plan is as I insuated, to change the Political-Economic-Cultural system to reflect the universal values (including diversity from derived heuristics). The main idea I've had is to create concrete measures related to Quality of Experience, and a distributed network of evaluations, each specialized in a segment of society (Science, Industry, Culture, Philosophy, etc.) measures impact of Corporations/Entities/Individuals, and compensates for the error the capitalist system has. So if I create predatory advertisement, this has a social cost. An evaluator can perceive this, measure it (estimate it), and demand compensation (to be given back to society). The evaluator itself takes a share of this compensation to reward its effort. The evaluator can even colaborate with the company to more acurately measure the externality, and reduce the compensation (under uncertainty the evaluator would have an adjustment to overestimate/take an upper bound of the evaluation). Those evaluator are adversarially cooperative, and predictive, in the sense that they oversee themselves as well, and are predictive. The success of an evaluator is asessed later: a market is established for the correctness of the decision. The idea is to replace Supply-and-Demand with Science: in particular, a kind of Eventual Consensus -- in simple terms, the Consensus of evaluation by relevant audience/specialists upon reflection after a long time. The Consensus is made through cross-evaluation of evaluators (they get funds based on the later re-evaluation by the wider evaluation network), as well as certain input from individuals, corporations and government. Transparent (and relatively simple) algorithms resolve the credit assignment problem of how each evaluator should be credited. This is similar to the slow eventual consensus of Science, although the goals are different and the system would be both simpler and more transparent. That's close to a definition of truth itself: the eventual consensus model revealed by experiments and sufficient formal reasoning (following axioms of logic, and axiom of reality). I call this idea 'Elementalism' for now. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/p2w4ql/extinction_sounds_bad_but_given_the_sheer_amount/h8p3ou6/ https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/p2w4ql/e... [2] Any similarity with Asimov's Foundations is a mere coincidence? :) [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/p6ng5d/what_are_some_high_quality_blogsforumspeople_that/h9f0t2i/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/p6ng5d/what... Note: What I mean by experience is not any kind of pure hedonism. It's a deep, rich internal collection of qualities and perception of the mind -- consciousness. Again we need principles and consensus to conclude what is the wisest experience, but we can derive general principles, largely centered around our cognition having structure, meaning and depth (this is getting really long so I'll stop now :) to discuss exactly what this means is involved).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
5faulker 5y ago
At the holistic level, their impact on the ecology is still to be known though.
- brezelgoring 5y ago
  Living in South America all my life, and I know this is anecdotal, ecology is always second to economic progress. You can't go to a [settlement] (https://sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/elpaiscr/2019/09/Asentamientos-precarios-en-Chile.-Redes-599x330.png https://sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/elpaiscr/2019/09/Asentam...) and tell them not to use certain tools because they might not be ecological. I'm not discarding your concern though, I understand its impact is not known, I just wanted to say it likely won't be a factor in the decision-making of those that use this tech.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    There's a well known correlation between economic progress and ecological protection. The wealthier a community, the better it can make good long term decisions about maintaining the ecosystems around it. When people are struggling, they use whatever they can to survive. They'll burn wood indoors, and strip the wooded areas of all trees, use up as much groundwater through wells as possible, and so on... Get rid of the do-or-die hard scrabble for survival and people can start being better stewards. It's the largely invisible, widespread, and long term effects, like leaded gas and co2 impacts on climate that require nation state intervention through science based policy. For highly empowering things like this, the upshot is likely that even though the tech is not likely to be as clean and efficient as we'd want, it will enable individuals and communities to thrive and better their lives to the point that they can start affording long term ecological preservation.
    - Shorel 5y ago
      That seems extremely recent, like last century only. The correlation I see is the longer civilization has been in some place, the more arid that place becomes. Applies to Africa, Middle East, Brazil, and so on.
silexia 5y ago
I agree! I would love to see this extended to excavators and bulldozers, these are way overpriced.
theodric 5y ago
I'm not sure we should be happy about adding many more potential petrochemical-consuming vehicles to the world

by rmason 5y ago

ivm 5y ago

"Their part of the world" has had manufacturing since forever, it's not middle ages outside of the Global North: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tractor_manufacturers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tractor_manufacturers

namdnay 5y ago

I doubt that IP of tractor designs is a major factor in third world poverty. I’m sure there are factories in Asia pumping out cheap tractors already

beckman466 5y ago
> I doubt that IP of tractor designs is a major factor in third world poverty. what's your logic here? the intellectual property system is the way the global north propertied class dominates the global south; i.e. renting out the commoditized blueprints/designs and charging insane royalties [1] [1] Vijay Prashad, https://mronline.org/2019/09/29/iphone-workers-today-are-25-times-more-exploited-than-textile-workers-in-19th-century-england/ https://mronline.org/2019/09/29/iphone-workers-today-are-25-...
- namdnay 5y ago
  Do you think cheap tractor makers in china or India give a fig about IP?
  - beckman466 5y ago
    the west is literally trying to provoke a huge war with china because china is no longer dependent on the west's intellectual property. your framing seems ignorant to me. Vijay Prashad: What's the Left to Do in a World on Fire? | China and the Left, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd8w3ONjv6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd8w3ONjv6Y Vijay Prashad: No Cold War with China, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj1ggllXmws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj1ggllXmws
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      I feel like tractors are like AK-47s, kinda de facto grandfathered in before Neo-liberalism and Globalization made exporting IP law a big part part of of geopolitics.
      - lazide 5y ago
        Basic tractors, like the AK-47, are also designable by most decent mechanical engineering students without a lot of work if they spent an afternoon googling first for prior art (and that prior art has long had any patents expire). Which if there is an ecosystem related to this, that’s great as the manufacturing is where you need economies of scale pretty badly and everyone benefits from it. There is no also no need for a basic excavator to cost $30k or more. Let’s do something about that too!
        coding123 5y ago
        https://www.harborfreight.com/9-hp-towable-backhoe-62365.html https://www.harborfreight.com/9-hp-towable-backhoe-62365.htm... You said basic. :shrug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fK6EtRXqS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fK6EtRXqS4
        lazide 5y ago
        I'm not sure if it counts as an 'excavator' (towed digger maybe?), but that is still pretty neat. Thanks for the link.
        5y ago
  - ajuc 5y ago
    They do. Or, to be precise - they are daughter companies of global corporations that keep their marketshare thanks to IP.
    - namdnay 5y ago
      And that’s why there are no cheap Chinese cars or trucks or tractors or guns or engines or any of that stuff ..
      - jaggederest 5y ago
        Many times you'll see a "knockoff" or semi-clone before the original product comes out, even. Which is amazing and awesome. If our systems weren't built around intellectual property it would enable some pretty remarkable things.
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  Can you be specific? E.g. precisely what patent, design patent, trademark, or copyright is stopping the entire of Africa from designing and building an indigenous diesel tractor?
i_am_proteus 5y ago
Not just Asia. Mahindra, an Indian concern (with PRC operating units), builds some tractors and trucks in Africa (I know of plants in at least Mali and South Africa) for various African markets.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
It's not. Third world countries have much bigger concerns than policing the first world's imaginary property. Mostly they'll just ignore any violations for as long as economically viable. If it's important enough, HIV medications for example, they'll even make the fact they don't care about patents official. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/01260212521/patent-denied-aids-drug-india.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110105/01260212521/paten... https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/brazil-ignores-us-giant-merck-opts-for-indian-drugs/story-MxN9ZwFgwCWxYncXbLjIDJ.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/brazil-ignores-us-giant...
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
There certainly seem to be. https://www.alibaba.com/products/tractor.html?IndexArea=product_en&clusterId=6500033092 https://www.alibaba.com/products/tractor.html?IndexArea=prod... Now if only shipping were reasonable!

beckman466 5y ago

> This demonstrates the power of open source. These engineers are to be commended. if you haven't seen the famous Open Source Ecology pitch by Marcin Jakubowski, you're in for a treat! Open-sourced blueprints for civilization | Marcin Jakubowski, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GEMkvT0DEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GEMkvT0DEk

gnramires 5y ago
I need to watch that! I'm developing an algorithmically-driven civilization architecture concept. (in the sense of, how to organize society from a blank slate point of view, while maximizing the wealth of experience for all individuals? I think we've gotten a little caught up in ideology and culture wars and stopped looking for ideas to move society forward with more efficient, humane, robust, collaborative (or adversarially cooperative) societal organization systems) If you thought society as consisting of a large number of agents (with varying degrees of self-interest and diverse motivations), how would you design a system that enables maximum productivity, and maximum well-being? (in the sense of conscious experience: a rich and wealthy life; not necessarily tied to having particular stuff) Seriously, in all our 100,000 years more or less of modern human existence we've seriously toyed with about 2 large scale architectures of society. Why can't we try better in a non-destructive way?
- 6510 5y ago
  I wrote a few replies to this that I didn't feel like posting. The issue is that when I think about it the concept seems a lot deeper and broader than I give it credit for. What you should do is design a personality and a society simultaneously, design the personality such that it ponders the society and the society so that it builds such characters. The improvement accomplished reinforces the loop.
  - gnramires 5y ago
    Thanks for the support. Feel free to mail me. The current avenue of approach is indeed in two System Parts: (1) Definition of the problem: If we want things to be 'best' in a sense, 'maximally humane', 'maximum quality of experience', 'maximum quality of life, existence and culture', etc. we should define those things, and create structures that continually refine and employ the best methods to asses and measure progress. (2) Optimization of the problem: Choosing the architecture and structures that maximizes our measures. This again almost certainly is some kind of distributed structure that gives rewards and occasionally demands compensation (for a generalization of negative externality -- generalized externality of existence). I often say that the Universe is a search problem. This is just a big honkin' search problem :) --- Capitalism leaves the job of (1) on the individual, and on the government somewhat. The job of (2) is accomplished by a dual again of capital (supply and demand, allocation of capital for maximum profit) and government (using taxes and incentives). Again the problem of capitalism is that it doesn't account for externalities very well (too often ends up maximizing the wrong function), and the problem of government is inefficiency, centralization (algorithmic inefficiency of resource allocation strategies), lack of agility. Note: Capitalism (without support structures) is very similar to evolutionary dynamics. It's hard to model exactly what evolutionary dynamics maximizes, but one formulation is that it maximizes environmental domination: expanding to cover the most of the environment, whatever it takes. Lose consciousness and become soul-less robots to take over everything? Sure, no problem; and annihilate anything that gets in the way. Accidentally or not evolutionary dynamics gave us life and consciousness, but it's not certain life and consciousness will endure as essential for environmental domination (in a way, consciousness is currently related to intelligence via humans, but we for example already appear able to create super-human intelligence that is not conscious or at least not very conscious). So we need to change the objective function to create a great harmonious future where some for of existence... exists. To see why evolutionary dynamics and environmental stability (i.e. the result of environmental expansion) doesn't prize conscious experience (in general, the Meaning of life), I use two thought experiments: (1) Generalized grey goo/Paperclip maximizer. Again, just picture a very intelligent creature dedicated to maximizing only its environmental domination. It will create other forms of intelligence only as much as needed to maintain its dominion. Any form of existence that's not immediately conductive to the maintenance and expansion of dominion is irrelevant/negative value. I can only see this leading to an empty Universe and a few singular intelligences looking for ways to annihilate all other existences at maximum speed focusing on weapons research and planetary domination exclusively. (2) Doomsday button. The ultimate thought experiment in this line is the following: suppose you assume environmental regularization (domination) originated by your actions is the 'Ideal goal of existence'. Then I present you a doomsday button: If you push the button, you will trigger some kind of physical mechanism that will consume the entire universe into a regular lifeless crystal-like structure. Think of it as a bomb of expanding regular wave that takes over the entire universe. In a way, this represents a maximally stable solution to dominating the environment... maximum effect, perpetual and irreversible. But that doesn't look like a good solution at all, does it? It's in fact lifeless and non-existential. Clearly the ultimate objective is related to existence, not to environmental domination or regularization by some abstract definition of 'Individual' or 'Nation' or whatever. If we can't change objective, I predict we'll be consumed by this savage nature quite soon. --- I don't mean to trivialize System Part 1 (Evaluation). It's literally all that matters to humanity and existence. I guarantee it's not a second degree equation :) For example, individual autonomy can be an important component of human experience, the ability and free will to decide more or less independently is likely an important part of the whole. My approach is that we need to define the Meaning of life clearly. We've also postponed this way too much as a Civilization. By now it shouldn't be that complicated -- we know it's got to do with experience and somehow the internal dynamics of a large neural network, the sustainability and continuity of life. I have a draft[1] but don't expect it to be bulletproof. This should evolve into a Formalization of Ethics program (hopefully a collaborative, worldwide effort) to get the basics done. Think of it as a Super Declaration of Human rights, or a Foundation of Ethics (like we have a Foundation of Mathematics). This could not be ignored by any nation, hopefully in the short term strengthening clarity and convictions on the objective of human (and generalized conscious) existence. This Foundations should be Universal. First, I'm convinced the rough draft (given above) is correct, it should be a matter of truth and reason[2], and not require any advanced metaphysics or elicit genuine controversy after rational examination. This is also part of a new propostion for making philosophy that I call 'Explosive Philosophy': the negation of the Principle of Experience (i.e. consciousness is not the prime motive of existence) leads to absurdity as demonstrated by several thought experiments. Explosive Philosophy is the use of rejection by absurd by taking particularly obviously unacceptable consequences of a principle. Second, if some Nation is a Competitive Supremacist (i.e. Evolutionarist), that will clearly put it in conflict with the Conscious Foundations. It will try to achieve domination at all costs, and eventually it will need to settle with the Foundations[2] or live under constant watch to make sure it doesn't take over everything or even consume itself. --- Afterwards, the plan is as I insuated, to change the Political-Economic-Cultural system to reflect the universal values (including diversity from derived heuristics). The main idea I've had is to create concrete measures related to Quality of Experience, and a distributed network of evaluations, each specialized in a segment of society (Science, Industry, Culture, Philosophy, etc.) measures impact of Corporations/Entities/Individuals, and compensates for the error the capitalist system has. So if I create predatory advertisement, this has a social cost. An evaluator can perceive this, measure it (estimate it), and demand compensation (to be given back to society). The evaluator itself takes a share of this compensation to reward its effort. The evaluator can even colaborate with the company to more acurately measure the externality, and reduce the compensation (under uncertainty the evaluator would have an adjustment to overestimate/take an upper bound of the evaluation). Those evaluator are adversarially cooperative, and predictive, in the sense that they oversee themselves as well, and are predictive. The success of an evaluator is asessed later: a market is established for the correctness of the decision. The idea is to replace Supply-and-Demand with Science: in particular, a kind of Eventual Consensus -- in simple terms, the Consensus of evaluation by relevant audience/specialists upon reflection after a long time. The Consensus is made through cross-evaluation of evaluators (they get funds based on the later re-evaluation by the wider evaluation network), as well as certain input from individuals, corporations and government. Transparent (and relatively simple) algorithms resolve the credit assignment problem of how each evaluator should be credited. This is similar to the slow eventual consensus of Science, although the goals are different and the system would be both simpler and more transparent. That's close to a definition of truth itself: the eventual consensus model revealed by experiments and sufficient formal reasoning (following axioms of logic, and axiom of reality). I call this idea 'Elementalism' for now. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/p2w4ql/extinction_sounds_bad_but_given_the_sheer_amount/h8p3ou6/ https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/p2w4ql/e... [2] Any similarity with Asimov's Foundations is a mere coincidence? :) [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/p6ng5d/what_are_some_high_quality_blogsforumspeople_that/h9f0t2i/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/p6ng5d/what... Note: What I mean by experience is not any kind of pure hedonism. It's a deep, rich internal collection of qualities and perception of the mind -- consciousness. Again we need principles and consensus to conclude what is the wisest experience, but we can derive general principles, largely centered around our cognition having structure, meaning and depth (this is getting really long so I'll stop now :) to discuss exactly what this means is involved).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

5faulker 5y ago

At the holistic level, their impact on the ecology is still to be known though.

brezelgoring 5y ago
Living in South America all my life, and I know this is anecdotal, ecology is always second to economic progress. You can't go to a [settlement] (https://sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/elpaiscr/2019/09/Asentamientos-precarios-en-Chile.-Redes-599x330.png https://sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/elpaiscr/2019/09/Asentam...) and tell them not to use certain tools because they might not be ecological. I'm not discarding your concern though, I understand its impact is not known, I just wanted to say it likely won't be a factor in the decision-making of those that use this tech.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  There's a well known correlation between economic progress and ecological protection. The wealthier a community, the better it can make good long term decisions about maintaining the ecosystems around it. When people are struggling, they use whatever they can to survive. They'll burn wood indoors, and strip the wooded areas of all trees, use up as much groundwater through wells as possible, and so on... Get rid of the do-or-die hard scrabble for survival and people can start being better stewards. It's the largely invisible, widespread, and long term effects, like leaded gas and co2 impacts on climate that require nation state intervention through science based policy. For highly empowering things like this, the upshot is likely that even though the tech is not likely to be as clean and efficient as we'd want, it will enable individuals and communities to thrive and better their lives to the point that they can start affording long term ecological preservation.
  - Shorel 5y ago
    That seems extremely recent, like last century only. The correlation I see is the longer civilization has been in some place, the more arid that place becomes. Applies to Africa, Middle East, Brazil, and so on.

silexia 5y ago

I agree! I would love to see this extended to excavators and bulldozers, these are way overpriced.

theodric 5y ago

I'm not sure we should be happy about adding many more potential petrochemical-consuming vehicles to the world