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It's weird that a few people are challenging short-term thinking, and they're all friends with each other (Thiel, Musk). Also, it's weird how short-term thinki

It's weird that a few people are challenging short-term thinking, and they're all friends with each other (Thiel, Musk). Also, it's weird how short-term thinking has infected the government. Nobody's forcing them to meet a quarterly P&L, you'd figure that would give them more freedom.

cryptoz 13y ago
> Nobody's forcing them to meet a quarterly P&L Yes they are, that's the problem. Running for re-election is equivalent to quarterly reports and it results in most politicians thinking in just as short of time scales as corporations.
narrator 13y ago
I don't think there's a whole lot of long-term vision out there. It seems the political conception of the future is mostly filled with tackling the challenges of global warming, unreset and other sorts of eco-doom that the zeitgeist is enthralled with. Musk, Kurzweil and a few others are the only people who look far into the future outside of the eco-doom/security paradigm any more.
- zanny 13y ago
  Here are the things I'd like to see (and if possible, be involved in) during the 21st century: 1. Molecular printing, mainly of food, as the end-state of consumer 3d printing. Print the protein folds and amino acids and make whatever food product you want, and cure world hunger with it. 2. Generational spacecraft running on a mix of fission, fusion, and solar power. Requires a construction facility in at least low Earth orbit. 3. A floating city on Venus in one of the temperate belts near the poles rife with CO2 to enable an oxygen cycle. 4. Embedded cybernetics, including the ability to interface with the brain, by properly decoding the human electrical signaling system the nervous system uses. 5. 3d printed stem cells to regrow any damaged tissue anywhere. 6. The end-state of current computer tech is embedded cybernetics that interpret brain waves. Bionic eyes that provide huds and vision in multiple spectrums, a wireless access point in your head, etc. 7. Elimination of bacterial infection by fabricating antibodies with 3d molecular printing (there is a trend here!) 8. Not really long-term game changing, but the natural evolution of learning systems moves towards self-maintaining infrastructure and transit, so that entire cities and the transportation of people and goods is done entirely by an automated interconnected grid. 9. A space-based solar array to power the planet that has a diminished orbit to stay in direct line of sight of the sun. I'd suggest a solar ring around the Equator, but it is more efficient to keep the entire thing pointing at the sun all the time. 10. Either the commercial fusion of rare earth metals, or asteroid mining, whichever is cheaper (more likely the latter) for scarce elements.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Also, it's weird how short-term thinking has infected the government. That's what we get for 40 years of culture war. One thing Peter thiel mentioned when I saw him a year or so ago which made a deep impression on me was that while he's a libertarian he has no desire to 'drown government in the bathtub' like ideologues such as Grover Norquist. Rather, he'd like an approach to governance that was a bit less procedural and a bit more accountable while still being capable of taking on big projects, citing the Eisenhower administration and Vannevar Bush (no relation) as his models. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush
- jacoblyles 13y ago
  Culture war is inevitable when a country moves from having a single dominant culture to no longer having one. Call it diversification, Balkanization, or personalization depending on your ideological lean.
- jhartmann 13y ago
  I feel very similar that the Government has stopped working right but have no desire for downsizing it. We should in fact increase spending on big projects and push for the hard things that traditional short term capital doesn't want to touch. Things like AGI, Space Colonization, things like Sonny White's Eagleworks, things that could transform our society in short order. I would love it if the real dreamers like Paul March and James Woodward got sizable funding for their work on Mass Fluctuations and their work on the origin of Inertia, Eric Lerner got some money to work on Focus Fusion, Kirk Sorensen could really build and engineer his Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactors on a large scale and countless more less known scientists and visionaries got to pursue their ideas full time and with significant funding. A well functioning Government and visionary investors if they focused on people like that could really move the ball forward for our society and the world. I think we have great potential for greatness, if I ever get to be 'king' I'm definitely going to give money to those who want to really reach for the stars. I wish our Government thought the same way, hopefully with the right direction and moving away from the quarter as our yardstick we can get there.

cryptoz 13y ago

> Nobody's forcing them to meet a quarterly P&L Yes they are, that's the problem. Running for re-election is equivalent to quarterly reports and it results in most politicians thinking in just as short of time scales as corporations.

narrator 13y ago

I don't think there's a whole lot of long-term vision out there. It seems the political conception of the future is mostly filled with tackling the challenges of global warming, unreset and other sorts of eco-doom that the zeitgeist is enthralled with. Musk, Kurzweil and a few others are the only people who look far into the future outside of the eco-doom/security paradigm any more.

zanny 13y ago
Here are the things I'd like to see (and if possible, be involved in) during the 21st century: 1. Molecular printing, mainly of food, as the end-state of consumer 3d printing. Print the protein folds and amino acids and make whatever food product you want, and cure world hunger with it. 2. Generational spacecraft running on a mix of fission, fusion, and solar power. Requires a construction facility in at least low Earth orbit. 3. A floating city on Venus in one of the temperate belts near the poles rife with CO2 to enable an oxygen cycle. 4. Embedded cybernetics, including the ability to interface with the brain, by properly decoding the human electrical signaling system the nervous system uses. 5. 3d printed stem cells to regrow any damaged tissue anywhere. 6. The end-state of current computer tech is embedded cybernetics that interpret brain waves. Bionic eyes that provide huds and vision in multiple spectrums, a wireless access point in your head, etc. 7. Elimination of bacterial infection by fabricating antibodies with 3d molecular printing (there is a trend here!) 8. Not really long-term game changing, but the natural evolution of learning systems moves towards self-maintaining infrastructure and transit, so that entire cities and the transportation of people and goods is done entirely by an automated interconnected grid. 9. A space-based solar array to power the planet that has a diminished orbit to stay in direct line of sight of the sun. I'd suggest a solar ring around the Equator, but it is more efficient to keep the entire thing pointing at the sun all the time. 10. Either the commercial fusion of rare earth metals, or asteroid mining, whichever is cheaper (more likely the latter) for scarce elements.

anigbrowl 13y ago

Also, it's weird how short-term thinking has infected the government. That's what we get for 40 years of culture war. One thing Peter thiel mentioned when I saw him a year or so ago which made a deep impression on me was that while he's a libertarian he has no desire to 'drown government in the bathtub' like ideologues such as Grover Norquist. Rather, he'd like an approach to governance that was a bit less procedural and a bit more accountable while still being capable of taking on big projects, citing the Eisenhower administration and Vannevar Bush (no relation) as his models. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush

jacoblyles 13y ago
Culture war is inevitable when a country moves from having a single dominant culture to no longer having one. Call it diversification, Balkanization, or personalization depending on your ideological lean.
jhartmann 13y ago
I feel very similar that the Government has stopped working right but have no desire for downsizing it. We should in fact increase spending on big projects and push for the hard things that traditional short term capital doesn't want to touch. Things like AGI, Space Colonization, things like Sonny White's Eagleworks, things that could transform our society in short order. I would love it if the real dreamers like Paul March and James Woodward got sizable funding for their work on Mass Fluctuations and their work on the origin of Inertia, Eric Lerner got some money to work on Focus Fusion, Kirk Sorensen could really build and engineer his Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactors on a large scale and countless more less known scientists and visionaries got to pursue their ideas full time and with significant funding. A well functioning Government and visionary investors if they focused on people like that could really move the ball forward for our society and the world. I think we have great potential for greatness, if I ever get to be 'king' I'm definitely going to give money to those who want to really reach for the stars. I wish our Government thought the same way, hopefully with the right direction and moving away from the quarter as our yardstick we can get there.