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Bill Joy On His Own Future, And The World's
geeber writes "There is an interesting interview with Bill Joy in the current edition of the Magazine in the New York Times. He is still obssesed with what he calls a 'civilization-changing event' brought on by the fast pace of research into dangerous technologies such as genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Another interesting tidbit: he has flirted with the idea of going to work for Google."
No boogedy-boogedy NYT registatrion required
here.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
"Another interesting tidbit : he has flirted with the idea of going to work for Google."
Really now, who these days hasn't thought about that? :D
Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and cannot contact the database server
Oh well never mind instead click here for a google cache of Bill's page on wikipedia
The invention of knife was very dangerous too, a lot of people are killed by knifes and similar weapons. And a lot are saved by them too (scalpels and al). And for sure our life will be entirely different if we must eat without cutting accesories. You can't condemn entire tools or technologies because it could have some bad uses.
In James Watson's recent book "DNA, The Secret of Life" he touches on this problem. He mentions that the likelyhood of a nano-disaster is unlikely. His discussion is too lengthy to mention here (and I don't have the book in my hands right now) but it is a convincing counterpoint against this possibility.
Also, one forgets that cells have been evolving against this possiblity for billions of years. If a "Gray Ooze" were possible it would very likely have appeared on its own. As it is, cells, and multi-cellular organisms have extremely sophisiticated (sp) means of defense. While will be possible to create a disease that kills millions or billions of humans, I worry far more about nuclear war.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
He's afraid that civilzation is headed for the worse because we have expedited the transfer of information?
I hope his stupidity isn't contagious... I'd hate to see google take a hit because of him.
Unfortunately Google did not share my same fantasy.
Perhaps the point was that the "He" in question was not in the title, so what's your point? Rather, the "He" was in the apparent middle of a poorly constructed sentence. While there should have been a comma in front of it and it should not have been capatilized (unless there was a period before it and it was the start of a different sentence), the real problem is that this front page article talks about someone named Joy that many people have never heard of and makes no effort to say who in the world he is. Instead it only links to a registration required website. It was sloppy and lame in multiple ways.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Even if time travel is acheived in 3000 years, it could be seen "in your lifetime."
i had to refresh almost 20 times to get that ad, but it was worth it.
We've managed to survive the splitting of the atom in the last century, but have bred some very, very, very dangerous weapons while at the same itme developing some very, very important technologies. It's a wonder we've managed that so well (so far).
i understand his concern over these new branches of study and it is of *dire* importance that we tread lightly and remember our lessons in the areas of genetic modification and nanotechnology, yet all the while moving forward. i'm no luddite, but i am always wary and respectful of the power of the human mind.
In fact, if time travel is ever to be achieved, it becomes a relevant question to ask why we don't see time travelers now.
One answer is, of course, that time travel isn't possible, which neatly explains why we see no travelers.
Another answer lands you in the middle of a subgroup of UFO enthusiasts. We do see the travelers; we just don't realize what they are.
Other answers allow you to generate your own SF story.
There you go, time travel to the future. Haven't you had your wisdom teeth pulled?
-I am an elective eunuch.
which is argument #1 against time travel being possible
..... but they could only send them back in time to another point when there laser was on.
or at least against time travel ever being easy...
however I did read one article about some physics Guys with really big lasers who could send single particles back in time
--meh--
the civilization changing event will be smarter than human artificial intelligence, otherwise known as the singularity
There is a great story in Vanity Fair recently about a famous arch's two towers in NYC. Joy bought a two floor duplex. This building is plauged with problems. The list of who lives in them is a who's who of current celebritydom. (martha, calvin etc al) and then there's this geek, Bill Joy :) It made me laugh.
Must be nice.
Hedley
After all, it may be that self-destruction is not only our destiny as human beings, but our purpose.
All facetiousness aside, his mention of Bertrand Russell's opposition to nuclear weapons raises a good point. Sure, we risked barbecuing ourselves during the Cold War. But, arguably, the same weapons also prevented World War III, and are continuing to do so. You could say that we traded an unimaginable amount of economic power -- strategic nuclear-weapons programs are, after all, the most expensive investment the human race has ever made -- for the very security that Joy says we're recklessly neglecting.
At the end of the day, he'll just have to finish his manifesto and submit it for review by civilization at large. Even Ted Kaczynski managed to get that far.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
He didn't praise the Unabomber, he said that as much as he hated to admit, the Unabomber raised some valid concerns. I seem to recall that he also called him criminally insane.
Worth noting that a friend of Bill Joy was maimed by one of the Unabombers bombs.
Just because a person is a nutcase doesn't mean that all their ideas are to be instantly dismissed.
Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to pull the trigger of a sniper rifle.
I'm hoping that event will be Time Travel. It's high time we understood the true nature of space time and figured out how to control the fourth dimension.
The reason we have the forward arrow of time is because everything decays. To go back in time the whole universe would have to reverse this process just for you. I just don't think that's going to happen.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
It looks like we won't be inveting timetravel anytime soon. Or have you met any time travelers lately? Maybe this aera is just particulary boring to them but it still makes one wonder. ;-)
For me, the key difference is this: new technologies are giving individuals increasing destructive powers over more and more people, and it may be the equation we are all used to, about how tech can be used for good and bad, is changing.
The knife enables you to kill a person at a time.
A gun several.
Bombs - hundreds
Nukes are controlled by states, not individuals - but one fear behind the current war on terror is this will change.
Nano weapons...?
Weapons with gigantic destructive power might be very easy to synthesize in only 20 or 30 years - so imagine this: how do you run a world where every individual has the power to wipe out everyone else? There is no way around it - this is not like the right to bear arms - you simply have to ban the technology and pretty much wipe out everyone who seeks to acquire it, like an immune system killing viruses, while finding some way to lace the environment with 'antigens' of some kind that can automatically 'contain' any 'outbreaks'.
There has to be a point at which a hugely destructive technology becomes so cheap and widely available that it cannot be allowed to proliferate, no matter that it might have beneficial uses.
The 'big bang' of revisitable time?
Only big ligs use sigs.
Just because a person is a nutcase doesn't mean that all their ideas are to be instantly dismissed.
No, but focus on the people who make the points sanely, rather than giving legitimacy to horrible behavior simply because the person's ideas are "valid".
Oh how fun it'd be if he worked for google. Type in "Recipe for pasta salad" and you'd get 5 thousand pop ups going "THE WORLD IS GOING TO END! WE'RE ALL DOOMED!"
--- [Insert intresting Sig here]
Hitler really liked the operas of Richard Wagner. Does that mean Richard Wagner is bad?
Magazine of the New York Times? That sounds so much more compelling than New York Times Magazine! Thanks for bringing this to my attention on the Organization of the Slashdot, geeber! ;-)
iRooster, the Mac OS X a
Time is simply one way of viewing entropy. It is thermodynamic and innately unidirectional. Time travel to the future is simple, it just takes a while to accomplish. It is generally claimed reversing time would violate cause and effect. This isn't really true, it would simply exchange causes for effects. What it would violate is the second law of thermodynamics. The result of this would be the setting up of a feedback cycle that increased energy in "the past" infinately. Not only do we not observe this, it would be a Bad Thing.
In terms of controling "dimensions" the fact of the matter is that we are, for all of our technological advances, still restrained to "control" things within the bounds of natural law. We can manipulate those laws in certain ways to achieve certain effects we desire, but we are, and always will be, constrained by them.
Thus pure research is not so much expanding our limits as it is determining what the absolute limits beyond which we cannot go actually are. The more we learn, the more we learn we are constrained. In fact, that was the whole point of the Theory of Relativity which is really the Theory of an Absolute Limit.
It would seem that travel in time is one of those absolute contraints, which, no matter how much you and I might like to go look at some dinosaurs, is probably a Good Thing.
The future, however, is simply awaiting our arrival.
KFG
Bush's program to go to Mars is a good example
Help fight continental drift.
Many people mention that we have survived possible nuclear destruction and created hundreds of destructive weapons yet manage to live. You miss the point of those things beeing weapons, people weilding them were aware of extreme consequences their actions would bring. They had responsibility and while driven by their own agenda understood what they had on their hands. Great deal of effort was spent to keep it responsible, and less prone to get out due to single person/company/country mistakes/evil intent. What Bill argues is that there is a great possibility that now such responsiblities may fall on a limited group of people driven by money grabbing/get there fast/cheap mentality, or even a single person. No control as we have with nuclear technology, with consequences just as dire. He argues for responsible science. Just as there is a difference in responsible and secure code ( Linux/xBSD vs Microsoft). Its not a technology issie it is a people menatality issue, and is so much greatly illustrated by the quote given in the article from a book by Bertrand Russel: "I thought that people would not like the prospect of being fried with their families and their neighbors and every living person that they had heard of. I thought it would only be necessary to make the danger known and that, when this had been done, men of all parties would unite to restore previous safety. I found that this was a mistake. There is a motive which is stronger than self-preservation: it is the desire to get the better of the other fellow." This above is so true, and drives the market and human forces to get there fast, loosing a responsible approach in progress.
If it is going to be something like vi I would have no problems at all
Thanks Mr.Joy for the joy called vi
I am no doctor but I would suggest that he seek some therapy on this and other issues in his life. I mean who buys movies based on three books. From what I read in the article, he bought three movie books, and took 600 of the titles that were in all three books and bought them.
I would just suggest that he not point his life in an analytical fashion and realize that fate and good ole advanced decision making can lead to wonderful marvels of life.
I don't want to come across as a troll here, but I really felt sad for the guy as I read that article because I got the feeling that he tries to lead life like he is writing a computer program, instead of going out on a whim every once in awhile. I hope his kids don't pick up on dads habits. Heaven forbid we watch a movie because we like the box art.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
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- Cells have been evolving against this possibility, however, the possibility has been evolving by the same mechanism. Lifeform immune systems are constrained in their ability to adapt by the evolutionary process. But so are viruses, so this isn't much of a problem. HOWEVER, nanotech works outside the evolutionary process. A nanotech virus developed in a lab could rise to a form such that no lifeform immune system has ever seen anything like it in a countable number of years, and from the perspective of "the wild" it would if released appear instantly. It might take lifeform immune systems thousands of years to adapt to the point where they could deal with this totally alien nanotech "thing". That might be in a worst-case scenario enough time for the nanotech to kill many of the lifeforms.
- Life is constrained to working with certain sorts of molecules; it needs carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc, because those are the elements it knows how to use as fundamental building blocks. It doesn't really need a whole lot of anything else. It needs certain amounts of certain metals and nutrients, but there's no lifeform on earth for whom it makes sense to just, for example, suck up as much iron as possible. A lifeform that attempts to go "gray goo" is mostly going to only be operating on the materials of life, and really is pretty much just going to be attacking lifeforms themselves (which, as you note, the world's current "gray goo" nanomachines-- i.e. infectious diseases-- have been doing). Nanotech doesn't have this constraint. It's possible to imagine, for example, some sort of self-replicating nanobots designed to mine iron ore, which isn't contained very well, gets picked up by the wind and carried to somewhere else, and starts ravaging the countryside.
I don't think these are serious enough concerns at the moment to give us any pause in nanotech research whatsoever, but they're nonzero. Interesting to think about, anyway.Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
You guys, mod that up, i'm very, very interested to see what some of our psychologists and futurists in the crowd have to say about that. Living in a world where everyone has the power to destroy everyone...the implications are blowing my mind away right now. Mental illnesses would HAVE to be solved and understood. Anger management would become one of the most important human attributes overnight. Wow. My mind really is reeling thinking about this. Yow.
Let's have some thoughts folks!
Umm. Ok let's assume for a moment that you figure out how to instantly travel 1 second in time (forwards or backwards -- take your pick). Where will you end up?
First let's consider a few well-accepted values:
How fast is the Earth spinning? 0.5 km/sec
How fast is the Earth revolving around the Sun? 30 km/sec
How fast is the Solar System moving around the Milky Way Galaxy? 250 km/sec
How fast is our Milky Way Galaxy moving in the Local Group of galaxies? 300 km/sec
Alrighty then, now lets do some computations! You hop into your little time machine and set the dial to 1 second. *blink* You soon discover:
a) you are inside the Earth. You die instantly.
b) you are free-falling towards the Earth. You die upon impact.
c) you are somewhere in space; your lungs explode. You die instantly.
Choose your own adventure!
One of my professors this semester assigned a project comparing and contrasting the views of Joy, Dertouzos, and Kurzweil. The following articles shed some light about each one's perspective, respectively.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
http://www.lcs.mit.edu/about/reason.html
http://www.lcs.mit.edu/about/kurzweil.html
Gotta get me one of these!
This is Insightful? Does anyone other than one bitter crank who's pissed off about how his site gets indexed believe any of this is remotely true? Google searches "pure garbage," full of nothing but porn sites? Their support told him to "fuck off"? Oh, wait, that's what they "basically" told him. So, in other words, this guy just has an axe to grind and he's willing to make up whatever he wants so long as it fits his rant, and then other people will mod him up, "basically" because they're jealous of Google or something. Tell you what, pal -- why don't you start your own search engine? Then, when your engine gets really popular, you can throw huge parties and not invite anybody from Google, just to show 'em!
Breakfast served all day!
Bill Joy is perhaps the greatest programmer of our time. You are perhaps the most ignorant /. poster of our time.
He made large parts of BSD, created VI, and single-handedly implemented the TCP stack that started the internet revolution.
Bill is the lesser known sibling of Kill Joy. You never hear people say, "you're such a bill joy."
I think that there are real risks of technology. But I'm not convinced that a "go slow" prescription is a solution. This presupposes that we actually can forecast the risks and benefits of technology if we just slow down the pace a bit. But so often, modern technologies synergize in ways that are nearly impossible to predict. And hypothetical risks often loom much larger than benefits. It was easy to foresee, for example, the risks to privacy of widespread computer connectivity. But who foresaw the many benefits of computer networks for commerce, communication, grass-roots political organization, etc., etc? Over the years, I've seen many nightmare scenarios. In early '70's, many young people were convinced that nuclear or ecological catastrophe would overtake us in just a few years. Yet somehow, the forecasted disasters always managed to stay just a few years ahead. It is worth thinking about risks--occasionally, the dangers are sufficiently obvious that they actually can be avoided. But that is the exception rather than the rule. I think the greater danger is that we will be paralyzed by fear and uncertainty.
That's one of the arguments put forth against any ETs visiting us, any race of creatures technologically advanced enough to produce faster than light travel would have already blown themselves to peices with weapons (assuming a human-like nature).
This is...
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Could, theoretically, the increase of energy in the past actually be a neccesity, creating the 'big bang' and thus powering the cosmic fireball engine? I know I'm out on a limb here, but it is an interesting idea that maybe sentient beings can do this to their overall environment. Just a thought.
Hey man, warn a guy to bring his shovel and boots before you post like that, will ya?
I assume people have them when they come in here. If they don't I assume they get what they deserve and will know better next time. If they don't know better next time, well, it's not my responsibility to look out for every idiot in the world.
KFG
Um... no. Go pick up a book and read on time travel. Its very possible and could be done today, we have the knowledge, not the means. What you said is like saying your car keeps moving foward in the X direction so you can never put it in reverse. I'd recommend reading "Time Travel in Einsteins Universe" to start with. It was written by a brilliant professor at Princeton. I'm not sure how much you know about such things, but here are two quick notes for you: a) The closer you re traveling at the speed of light, the slower time moves, this has been proven and b) iirc if you could take Jupiter's mass and crush it into a hollow sphere 8 feet in diameter( might be radius) and you sat in the sphere, the rest of the world would age significantly faster then you ( time would actually be moving much slower for you).
Regards,
Steve
C'mon man. At BEST flight has boosted our economy by making travel from point A to point B faster. But has it really had a profound effect on the fabric of humanity in the same way Nano-tech and genetics research most likely will? If you're going to site a technology that is in the same duality in it's good and evil power, use something like microbiological culturing (advanced biowarfare/antibiotics), even chemical engineering (chemical weapons/chemical fertilizers that allow for precise application to maximize crop yeild and minimize groundwater pollution)! Compared to these, flight is just a vehicle for transmission. An alternative to bipedal motion. A fairly innocuous invention. Had it not been invented, other means of transportation would have come about - like sub-survace intra-space-time balooning.
Seriously, why do people get so up in arms when others present a word of caution? We've invented some pretty volitile shit in the past without thinking, and it's costed lives. Fortunately for those of us in the US, we've generally not been on the recieving end. One day we might be. So, why not step into these waters of nano tech and genetics with caution?
The more I think about it, the more I like the proposed idea of having insurance policies for disasters involving dangerous technologies. The insurance companies will of course be subject to market forces and will thus be far more effective 'regulators' than bureaucrats in Washington who may have read a book on the technology they are regulating.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
>In a nutshell, the problem with exponentially
>advancing technology [kurzweilai.net] is that it
>is increasingly outpacing our primitive human
>brain's ability to intelligently deal with it.
What level of advance are you willing to put me in
jail to protect? How do you decide on this level?
How do you decide at any one time what fits under
your arbitrary bar? Given the human nature
you are so afraid of, i think we all know what
direction this will go.
What makes you think progress will continue at
all if you remove its historical growth pattern?
A small linear growth goal is just as likely
to kill progress and send us back into the
dark ages. You have no evidence at all that
what he wants to do can or will work. None.
Perhaps we can engage in risk mitigation. If
we are worried about ending the world then how
about we make it a priority to settle new worlds
as a way of balancing our human portfolio?
If our primitive brain is the problem then
perhaps, like boosting our immune system,
improving our brains is a better choice.
Or we can just stick our vestigal tail
between our legs.
I'm not sure how much you know about such things, but here are two quick notes for you: a) The closer you re traveling at the speed of light, the slower time moves, this has been proven and b) iirc if you could take Jupiter's mass and crush it into a hollow sphere 8 feet in diameter( might be radius) and you sat in the sphere, the rest of the world would age significantly faster then you ( time would actually be moving much slower for you).
Well, I'm not sure how much I know about these things but in response to your examples:
a) Sure time is slowing down, but you are still traveling forward in time. Just as you are now, but slower.
b) Correct me if I'm wrong but if you sat on the mass of Jupiter compressed to 8 feet in diameter, your atoms would simply become a part of that little sphere. And if you could survive, once again you are still moving forward in time, just slower.
I have read many books on time travel, both pro and con. The pro side hasn't convinced me yet. Until actual proof is presented to me I'll keep it in the same category as UFO's and the Loch Ness Monster.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
Has /. become stale? I hate to sound like one of those people who says "thiss place used to be cool, until it hit 1e6 members", because one could draw that line at 1e5, 1e4, 1e3 just as easily. I'm a great believer in the notion that quality, not quantity, is what matters. The moderation system and the meta-mod system are supposed to deal with that, and perhaps those methods achieve a good result up to a point (1e6?).
/. can also become weaknesses. Sometimes, posters say things that are clearly not based on any understanding of the facts. If they seem uninformed on a topic that I know something about, I try to supply them with correct information. But it can be frustrating. I have to admit that my enthusiasm for /. has waned somewhat because of the mediocrity.
But I have to agree, I often find that the tangents that get discussed are often irrelevant, and the quality of discussion has in some threads been lost. Stupid little retorts and one-liners seem to replace discourse.
I guess I could meta-mod more often instead of complaining. But ultimately, I wonder if even that would help.
I've sometimes felt that some of the strengths of
Like alot of intelligent people, bill has some serious concerns with humanity as it progresses towards the future. Do the math. As technology becomes more advanced, the amount of real damage an individual does to this reality goes up exponentially. First it starts with a few rocks. Then mixing some simple chemicals together to get a rapidly exploding gas. Then compressing some rare uranium to get a nuclear chain reaction. At first, it started out as individuals, then progressed so that large groups would be the only ones capable of doing something like a nuke. But in the future it will start to swing back, so that individuals will be able to achieve the impossible (or what we thought was impossible). In the future we will all be Q's. And all it takes is one bad apple. And look what 21 did just recently. I give humanity 200 years. Tops. Cheers, have a great sunday! ;-)
There is always a natural balance to things. We don't allow anyone to go out start producing fissible material.
The problem I have this argument is yet again people are ignoring history. People like Bill Joy should read history a bit more before attempting to sound profound.
m herstsmallpox.htm
The problem I find all too often is that people do
not acquaint themselves with history to know what the problems actually are. For germ warfare is not new. In fact it is over two hundred years old. Let me give an example http://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/~chssocst/ssgavittus1a
To beat the Indians instead of fighting them a general handed out Small Pox infested blankets. The effects to the Native American's were devestating and wiped out many people.
My point is that we ALREADY have the power to eradicate many people in very cost-efficient and effective manner. It is not new...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
As long as the controlling body isn't the USA, the only ones who have attacked with nuclear weapons, ever, and the ones who are testing the waters of the media for tolerance of "tactical nukes", they're smaller don't worry. It would have to be a powerful group whose sole concern is the human race as a whole, not one country, ethnicity, economic circle etc, but the species itself.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Back when cavemen still said "ooga booga", maybe somebody figured out how to sharpen obsidian into a knife, and the other neanderthals spread the love.
Thousands of years later we had guys like L. Da Vinci and then B. Franklin, renaissance men with who dabbled in science for the joy of their own genius.
Now science is industrial (and so is science education, IMO). Much of it is driven by the search for profit (biotech) or power (Manhattan Project). (And you can easily find examples of valid science with medical benefits which is not done because it can't be protected by patents.)
Every advance comes with unforseen consequences, and so the increasing pace of science comes with increasing danger.
By nature, the profit/power motive won't intentionally slow itself down. Joy seems to say that maybe we should put some checks in place. In his words:
Time is an illusion employed by the consciousness in order to prevent having to deal with everything at once. Every instant in time is simply part of an already extant continuum. It's like a story in a book: the story is already there, but you haven't read the pages ahead yet. Some think this brings up the whole fate vs. free will debate, but actually it renders both points of view irrelevant as neither view "the future" as a static thing.
This is, of course, all just philosophy, suitable for discussion or spreading over the garden to promote growth.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I'm not. You think the tourists are annoying now? Just wait...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Wikipedia is working again. BTW, does anyone know how to donate some equipment there, they are doing better job than almost all of the open source projects, they deserve it and they definitely need it.
That's a good connection, but the two things would look very different. The Big Bang looks vaguely like a big bomb done went off. It scattered debris and radiation, but the debris is expanding and the distances between the matter in increasing, all the while the initial energy of explosion is dissipating and space gets colder and colder.
An energy feedback would look like a point version of Olber's Paradox. If the universe were inifinately large and looked the same from any point it would contain an infinate number of stars and over time space would fill up with energy making it brigher and brighter. Even the night sky should blinding (and since it isn't we can conclude that there aren't an infinate number of stars). If there were an energy feedback at some point a "ball" of light would emanate from it that ever increased in diameter and intensity and space would get hotter and hotter.
So, if we ever see a "supernova" event that refuses to burn out, engulfs its galaxy and then just keeps going, we can deduce that some"one", somewhere, has invented time travel to the past and we'll have to make our time (which could be billions of years. You won't get out of your AmEx bill that easy).
Since we don't see this we can deduce that a)no "one" anywhere has ever been able to do it, or b)they did it but never tried coming back this far, or c)it certainly wasn't us in any case because the first thing we would have done was go check out some dinosaurs, unless we were a dork like Bruce Willis under the command of insurance underwriters or something. (Of course there's also d)there's a flaw in the reasoning somewhere. Which would still leave us with Hawking's argument--where are all the time tourists pointing at us, giggling and saying things like "My. How quaint."?)
KFG
People in some churches used to see time travelers with some frequency. They'd go away for ten years, and be out of touch with everything but their missions for years.
.bomb hadn't occured.
Come back after ten years, and see how much has changed. Ten years ago, the Internet wasn't a household name. Clinton hadn't become the second President impeached. The
Computers are everywhere...imagine coming back after all that.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Just realized the downside of useing adblock :( , this ad isn't that great, but...
I find it interesting that he finds the possibility of seeing a bad movie so abhorrent that he only bought movies that there was positive critical consensus on. That's just plain weird. Who trusts film critics anyway? Is he so sure of those film geeks opinions that he'd base his entertainment solely on their discretion?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Just like people smart enough to make an atomic bomb would be smart enough not to use it. In extremis and mixed in with a bit of ignorance people will do amazing things in retrospect, espcially as a group. There's nothing stupider than a nation with an enemy. We learn by trial and error. For the most part smart people aren't people who don't make mistakes, they're people who recognize them as mistakes and then don't do it again.
But the mistake comes first.
As for that explosion of Mars thingy, I'd kinda like to see that myself and I know of no theoretical restriction on time travel to the future, but I'd like a chance to walk around the place a bit first.
KFG
Stopping the progress of science and civilization for an extended navel-gazing session doesn't sound very interesting, though. It would shift the custodianship of scientific power away from the scientists and towards the politicians, the philosophers, or, heaven forbid, the priests. Bad move for civilization, IMHO
...but I posit -- and am fully prepared to get flamed like there is no tomorrow as a result -- that at least the priests and the philosophers think about the problems of the day and aren't addicted to this real-time realpolitik which plagues us. I think you made a lot of really great points in your post but this is one popular position with which I take issue. Other than the nature of power to consolidate itself...which is a function of being human...which means it may never go away ... what is your issue with the priests and the philosophers taking on the custodianship of things for a while? Seriously...?
Why is this YHO (your humble opinion), anyway? Sure, the priests, when they have power, tend to see things in very black and white terms and use their power to perpetuate that power. Just like the kings and the nobility did. Just like the political parties do today. That's just a function of power...
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Civilization-changing event? I'm thinking sexbots.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Until you can explain how Enron is inapplicable to this discussion, I'm not buying any of the market-based approaches as a viable solution. The market only punished Enron and Athur Andersen after the train wreck had already occurred. Joy's whole point is that with some types of technology, you only get one chance. One mistake is one too many. Robert McNamara made a similar point about global nuclear war in Erroll Morris' documentary "Fog of War".
Joy stopped working on his book because he was unable to come up with a workable solution. That does not mean a solution is impossible, and any solution will need to include market considerations to be effective. But history does not give me any confidence that the market will solve this problem even if some regulations try to force it to do so (mandatory insurance for example).
It could still be possible that time travel is inventable. The trick is that maybe you need a time machine to be the "receiver" of the time traveler. In other words, you can only travel back to a time when there is a time machine already built.
Often is a bit too strong. IIRC, it's happened about four times in the course of our nation's history.
Some people are seriously thinking of making 'backups' of civilization: "secure sanctuaries (think of the monasteries of the Middle Ages) that preserve and update copies of the vital records and articles needed for the conduct of our society". They would be placed all over Earth and eventually at locations in space. "In the event of a global catastrophe, the ARC facilities will be prepared to reintroduce lost technology, art, history, crops, livestock and, if necessary, even human beings to the Earth."
See Robert Shapiro and William E. Burrows
It's just a small semantic thing, but the two questions aren't the same thing. The latter could be taken to assume that the answer is to devise some way of "running the world". I indeed understood that the gist of your question was more along the lines of the former; I simply found it interesting that when I considered the root of the problem, I found the direction of the solution to be the exact opposite of the wording of your original question. To wit. Q: "How do we run such a world full of WMDs?" , A: "By somehow convincing anyone with WMDs that it's not their world to run." It's really the only way such a situation can end without mass death.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I am really afraid of a combination of phobias of cloning and genetic engineering pushing all research work on these subjects out of the U.S. We have already seen China's plan to become the world leader in theraputic cloning research.
Take a hint, Bill. Pour yourself a tall one, kick back and relax. You've earned it. Nothing's gonna happen. It's gonna be all right.
ps: ask the doc for some Xanax.
Some basic precepts:
Our species and it's spirit are not the end point of evolution nor eternal.
Our intellligence and science are a part of the evolutionary process
and are not yet totally in control this process.
Mother nature is cruel and without mercy, and humanity is not far behind her.
Homosapiens are not the endpoint of evolution nor the highest point of intelligence.
If our species wishes to survive, we must find a way to evolve our life form to withstand new environments
that are waiting for us in the future produced by our own endeavors or just plain old natural causes.
This is a test!
Surely, by definition, time travel should be witnessed in everyone's lifetime?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Joy's solution, as some posts here already indicated, is invalid due to the underlying logic of the problem he poses:
- We may have VERY destructive technologies
- Those technologies might be developed/obtained by small entities (up to an individual) who may not always be responsible in their use/effect.
His solution is: Limit the spread of development.
Problems with his solution:
1) It's virtually impossible to limit scientific/technological development. There will always be some rogue or naive/dumb/uncaring guy who will do the R&D anyway.
2) As mentioned in one post in the thread below, human nature is such taht there are ALWAYS loonies of varying degrees. With sufficiently dangerous technology (as per problem #1, that technology is inevitable), it's only a matter of time before sufficiently looney person/group gets his/her hands on sufficiently destructive tool.
Therefore, there are only 3 possible solutions, all of them technological:
A) Extreme push towards any technology which will enable humans to spread off-earth. "Baskets/eggs" logic. If we are almost guaranteed to wipe ourselves out planetwide, we need to have off-site backups.
B) Concentration on developing solution to looniness. Unfortunately, taht may be innate property of human brain, and as such, the only possible solution I can see is uber-mass-mind-control technologies (bombarding everyoe with "thou shall not murder" and "thou shall ask others for bad consequence of your ideas 100% of the time" might work on eliminating both problems #1 and #2 mentioned above)
C) Concentration to developing solutions to dangerous technology. Artificial uber-antivirii for artivicial uber-virii, anti-gray-goo for gray goo, etc...
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
Don't ever get your wisdom teeth pulled!
Where will you keep your wisdom?
I found that I lost much of my wisdom when I got my wisdom teeth pulled (all four at once, local anesthetic only, then my mother slid off the icy road into a ditch when she was driving me back home, so I had to walk in a freezeing wind down the road half a mile to the nearest house with a phone, calling a tow truck in an Elmer Fudd voice because the anesthetic hadn't yet worn off, but it did while we were waiting for the truck, and no one had any aspirin or other pain reliever, what a fun time that was (true story)).
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Fair go. Just a hypothesis. So basically, the idea is to make sure we DONT create time travel, ja? At least, to the past. Of course, it might not be only energy feedback but just simple looping of time in general which could be a significant problem, as the past would get all screwed up (The Cathedral of Chalesm problem in Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy).
Joy has enough money that he can do any dang thing he wants-enough money that he could go to Russia and hire a pretty decent research team all with his own money--all without risking his capital(i.e. he could just run off the interest of his investments). I don't see Joy as putting his money where his mouth is. If the world may be coming to an end, and if someone really believes it, it would be prudent to invest considerably in averting that possibility.
When I look at Joy's actions, it seems to me like he can't imagine a world in which money doesn't mean more than it does today. That shows a striking lack of imagination in considering what a civilization changing event might mean.
I'd like to be wrong here. I really looked up to Joy when I worked at Sun-the lack of real leadership here is kind of sad though.
Almost as much as hearing Physicists warn us about how AIDS is going to mutate, become airborne and kill us all.
Or hearing a Medical Doctor tell me about the threat that Comet's have towards the entire planet.
The man is TOTALLY unquallifed to discuss these issues. He has enough money. If he REALLY thinks these are important issues, he can afford to get a PhD related to them, or at least fund an institute so someone with a PhD can spout his warnings. Hearing him talk about them is just stupid.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
>>Of course that sort of long term solution requires much more persistence, humility, dedication and sacrifice
>all it takes is 0.00000001% deviants
Introduction of a religious algorithm into our species seems to have been of some benefit in that initial objective.
Unfortunately, religions seem to be afflicted by small but persistent fringe elements that will justify anti-social actions, even actions contrary to the core teachings of their religion, but in the name of the religion.
A good start would be if we were all truly connected mentally, so that the pleasure and pain of each individual was communicated to the collective. A lot of the problems today can pretty well be explained by the simple observation that
We'd still need measures to guard against deliberate self-destruction that causes collective pain.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Yes indeed, it pretty bad regardless of what Hitler thought. The people that maintain the Wagner is "better than it sounds are wrong
Help fight continental drift.
Quoted words straight out of Bill Joy's mouth:
"I was going through the books and found out there are only about 2,000 movies in history in which there's critical consensus that they're really good," he told me. "So I bought 600 of them."
This, told to a reporter interviewing him on the subject of nanotech risk mitigation, suggests a parallel line of reasoning. I seriously doubt Mr Joy just flew off on a tangent about how he happened to have chosen the 600 movies in his basement. No, they were talking about reducing the possibility of bad outcomes. YOUR interpretation, which totally ignores context, is far less plausible.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.