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Superintelligence is an interesting concept because reading about it actually changed CGP Grey from being an optimist about technological determinism to being deathly afraid of it; kinda similar conceptually to Roko's Basilisk in real time in the vein of "learning about the thing dooms you to the thing".
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Oct 15, 2020 23:16
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 12:44 |
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Other interesting topics would be the eventual and inevitable genetically engineered humans via the technological successors to techniques like CRISPR being commercialized and widely available. I mean sign me up for children with a dragon tail or superior eagle vision and the ability to see in the dark and poo poo but I imagine there's some sort of dystopian future somewhere down the lines too. Some people I think have raised ethical concerns about gene filtering treatments that might filter for congenital defects in the embyronic stages, though I also don't see it as something that can be prevented (because of technological determinism). Like, at some point it's just going to be a part of someone's health insurance plan for when you or your spouse is pregnant or similar and that's just going to overwhelm any concerns. AI and genetic engineering are going to be two of candidates for the horsemen of the apocalypse probably.
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Oct 15, 2020 23:31
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I was tempted to make a thread but it probably falls under this thread, is the working class approaching obsolescence? CGP makes a pretty compelling argument that when insurance rates make robot/automation more competitive than human labour than workers, primarily blue collar labour the world labour is going to be rapidly phased out for machines that don't complain and don't unionize. The development of automation has slowed down a bit since that video but given enough time I find it difficult to imagine that the "working class" will continue to exist as we know it and become comprised by grunt coders and what is commonly referred to as the "precariate", people in precarious sociofinancial positions but not necessarily labour or blue collar positions. I think the downwards pressure imposed by technological progress and innovation is going to push hundreds of millions of people out of the middle class over the next few decades.
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Oct 17, 2020 16:37
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Aramis posted:People like to point out the falling cost of automation, and how it's poised to replace workers, but I think the painted picture is a little bit misleading. The cost of customised automation has, and will retain for a long time, a very large upfront cost that is amortised over time, making it suitable only for heavily repeated work. On the flip side, general-purpose automation, usable for small-batch tasks is way harder to develop and doesn't actually bring anything to the table for large-scale manufacturing that bespoke automation does. Yeah that's the current hold up is that it's currently not there yet and further breakthrough has slowed down; my concern though is that such a breakthrough is not being seriously considered enough and is inevitable enough that I think that its going to happen eventually and when it does things will go super downhill super fast in terms of living conditions.
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Oct 17, 2020 17:08
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Posted in the Cold War Airpower thread is this Interesting paper on Nuclear Fusion and its economic implications
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Oct 17, 2020 18:27
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Kurzgesegt talks about Geoengineering not sure which thread was best tbh.
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Oct 27, 2020 17:27
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 12:44 |
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I'm not a climate scientist but, I'm skeptical of *extinction* for complex life happening on that time scale. Things will continue to get uncomfortable for an increasing number of people without the means to adapt to it, and there will be a large amount of loss of life from things that are not directly climate change but result from it, resource conflicts and so on. But I don't think I've seen any estimates that that it's very likely. It also puts aside some small percentage of humanity building underground or underwater cities in the worst case scenarios if there's enough of a lead up time.
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Nov 12, 2020 08:48
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