One way to predict the future is to find patterns in the past, and extend them into the future. And across the very long term history of everything, the one most robust pattern I see is: growth. Biology, and then humanity, has consistently grown in ability, capacity, and influence. Yes, there have been rare periods of widespread decline, but overall in the long run there has been far more growth than decline.
Beside their name, to the right, there should be a dash and a down-arrow. Clicking the down-arrow opens a small menu, to either block the user, or flag as inappropriate.
Re: "Blocked for being immature...," Just curious: How exactly do you (Jim Balter) "block" someone else's comments on Robin's blog? I don't see any feature in my browser or on this website for doing that, but perhaps there is one and I missed it. That said, feel free to insult me at length (like you do to almost everyone else; I expect no less). But if you will honor me with a reply, please try to also include an answer to my question about how to block comments. Thanks, have a good day, and best regards.
Granted, for effect only. We have a great deal of detail (reductionist) information but of that only a small fraction is useful e.g. GMO food. If we think in the most fundamental way about organisms, their behaviour as individuals, in social groups, between species I think we can see a pattern which is similar for all. If we consider this pattern with the least amount of pre-judgement/assumptions we can tease out the paramount reasons for human (all living things) behaviour. But as we have large brains which can imagine things real and not real, we try to get ahead of the curve by substituting favorite proxies. To get to the gist you have to do your own thinking as there is an irresistible propensity to reject. Robert Trivers has said some applicable things about this.
The purpose is self-aggrandization and calls for more money and political power over other people. It is, after all, a propaganda effort. Hence the routine censorship of anything resembling systemized factual criticism.
It's worth remembering that some of these parasites have made a living extracting value from other people's lives. Hanson and his colleages live very handsomely on their tax-funded tenure without offering anything of equivalent value back to society. The same goes for the self-proclaimed "leaders of Effective Altruism" who strangely are never able or willing to pay the true cost of their own "altruism".
Deceitful "admin-password-makes-right" style local censorship is all but inevitable in such a context, lest people actually start objecting to the parasitism. What the rountine-censor/social-parasite doesn't understand is that these meta-attacks are not magic mind-control spells. After all, they don't actually control all communication channels and their propaganda doesn't magically hi-jack the causal agency of every other person alive, no matter how much they wish it did. Hateful backlash, of course, is the inevitable outcome.
Even if increased authoritarianism threatens to cut innovation, that would just reduce the rate of growth. The fact of long term net growth would remain.
Wild speculations. What is utility of these thoughts? We have zero understanding of the origin of living organisms or the essential deference between the living an non-living despite all confident assertions that evolution/genes explain everything. What we see in the universe is increasing entropy and dead and dying things. How is this for a wild speculation: living things came before inanimate matter. How could you determine if that is true or false? As I said we are clueless. Invoking gods, simulations or other inventions is not at all helpful.On the other hand as living organisms we (some anyway) do know our purpose.
This is far-less a political comment or an attempt at being controversial. If one assumes for a moment that we are moving towards a more authoritarian socialist model, does that not affect, or bend the curve of innovation trends? An example which comes to mind is the Soviet Union and Japan over the period of 1950 to 1985. Which country was more innovative? I know you didn't write about socialism but since it is in the news it makes me think of how socialism is based largely on immediate needs and less on the potential of future value and perhaps less forgiving of failures. Would you consider the application of political authority that is concerned with equal outcomes to be a factor in human innovation and invention?
Uncertainty compounds over time, which means that the expected personal utility of trying to migrate to the future decays with temporal distance as well. Not only does the success probability of survival decay, but cultural distance to current values increases, which at least on net should be bad for my personal preferences.
This, in combination with the high probability that crucial details of brain microstructure are lost during freezing, makes cryonics a bad deal from my perspective. I don't see high-probability longevity technologies in the near future either. Sure, future civilization may be able to create people with our names, voices and approximations of our biographic details, but I would consider those other people.
If we're in a simulation, trying to migrate to the future becomes all but worthless, since we're already there and will probably be shut down at some point. That reduces the EV of cryonics even further. Then there's the possibility of dystopian futures where you're not allowed to die - we don't have proper human rights standards even today, after all.
I see my instinct to impress people outside of instrumental purposes as a weakness, not a strength. Yes it's hard to overcome, but I don't want to spend resources that could have been used to make me better off in a more actual sense instead.
As for influencing or helping future people, their causal inability to reciprocate eliminates my motivation to do so. Yes, there's Basilisking, but since they can only recreate other people who merely pass as approximative versions of me, I'm not impressed. This remains the case whether we frame it in terms of reward or punishment. Yes, we could be in a simulation right now made by future entities who want to torture or reward selectively based on what choices we make. But this doesn't make much sense because in that case, we're not influencing the real future and our simulators' real future was influenced by different real past people with different identities, so rewarding or punishing us is not actual reciprocity. Yes there could be misguided pseudo-reciprocators, but I'm not willing to gamble much real present cost on the possibility of future irrationality alone.
I am, of course, completely fine if you want to pay for your own cryonics, or if other people want to pay the huge costs of trying to influence the far future - as long as they don't force me to pay. I would also recommend that we agree that brain emulations, longevity and similar technologies should be based on individual consent. In the unlikely case that you actually manage to create these technologies somehow, you should not want to induce a perverse incentive for disruption in those people who see them more as a threat than a promise.
By (at least) linear returns I mean any system that could, from our POV, grow indefinitely. Some natural limits might exist there, too.
By log returns I imply that there may be more definite limits to growth here on Earth and that approaching them would show as indefinitely diminishing growth. One such limit might be the extent to which fossil fuel reserves carry us: a treasure the like of which there has never been before, and will not necessarily ever be again.
If such "hard" limits exist due to whatever reason, doubts about growth rates have also to do with doubts about total growth. I agree that the historical record is a story of growth, but I'm not sure we should extrapolate that trend indefinitely without addressing the potential limits.
Beside their name, to the right, there should be a dash and a down-arrow. Clicking the down-arrow opens a small menu, to either block the user, or flag as inappropriate.
Re: "Blocked for being immature...," Just curious: How exactly do you (Jim Balter) "block" someone else's comments on Robin's blog? I don't see any feature in my browser or on this website for doing that, but perhaps there is one and I missed it. That said, feel free to insult me at length (like you do to almost everyone else; I expect no less). But if you will honor me with a reply, please try to also include an answer to my question about how to block comments. Thanks, have a good day, and best regards.
How exactly do I in this post call "for more money and political power over other people"?
Granted, for effect only. We have a great deal of detail (reductionist) information but of that only a small fraction is useful e.g. GMO food. If we think in the most fundamental way about organisms, their behaviour as individuals, in social groups, between species I think we can see a pattern which is similar for all. If we consider this pattern with the least amount of pre-judgement/assumptions we can tease out the paramount reasons for human (all living things) behaviour. But as we have large brains which can imagine things real and not real, we try to get ahead of the curve by substituting favorite proxies. To get to the gist you have to do your own thinking as there is an irresistible propensity to reject. Robert Trivers has said some applicable things about this.
Never mind, it just magically reappeared. Great, now I look (even more) like an ass for assuming ideological censorship.
"What is utility of these thoughts?"
The purpose is self-aggrandization and calls for more money and political power over other people. It is, after all, a propaganda effort. Hence the routine censorship of anything resembling systemized factual criticism.
It's worth remembering that some of these parasites have made a living extracting value from other people's lives. Hanson and his colleages live very handsomely on their tax-funded tenure without offering anything of equivalent value back to society. The same goes for the self-proclaimed "leaders of Effective Altruism" who strangely are never able or willing to pay the true cost of their own "altruism".
Deceitful "admin-password-makes-right" style local censorship is all but inevitable in such a context, lest people actually start objecting to the parasitism. What the rountine-censor/social-parasite doesn't understand is that these meta-attacks are not magic mind-control spells. After all, they don't actually control all communication channels and their propaganda doesn't magically hi-jack the causal agency of every other person alive, no matter how much they wish it did. Hateful backlash, of course, is the inevitable outcome.
"zero understanding" seems a vast understatement. I point you to the vast academic field that is biology.
Even if increased authoritarianism threatens to cut innovation, that would just reduce the rate of growth. The fact of long term net growth would remain.
Wild speculations. What is utility of these thoughts? We have zero understanding of the origin of living organisms or the essential deference between the living an non-living despite all confident assertions that evolution/genes explain everything. What we see in the universe is increasing entropy and dead and dying things. How is this for a wild speculation: living things came before inanimate matter. How could you determine if that is true or false? As I said we are clueless. Invoking gods, simulations or other inventions is not at all helpful.On the other hand as living organisms we (some anyway) do know our purpose.
Why was my comment deleted?
This is far-less a political comment or an attempt at being controversial. If one assumes for a moment that we are moving towards a more authoritarian socialist model, does that not affect, or bend the curve of innovation trends? An example which comes to mind is the Soviet Union and Japan over the period of 1950 to 1985. Which country was more innovative? I know you didn't write about socialism but since it is in the news it makes me think of how socialism is based largely on immediate needs and less on the potential of future value and perhaps less forgiving of failures. Would you consider the application of political authority that is concerned with equal outcomes to be a factor in human innovation and invention?
Your silly cheap shot is completely illogical. Blocked for being immature and a complete waste of time.
Uncertainty compounds over time, which means that the expected personal utility of trying to migrate to the future decays with temporal distance as well. Not only does the success probability of survival decay, but cultural distance to current values increases, which at least on net should be bad for my personal preferences.
This, in combination with the high probability that crucial details of brain microstructure are lost during freezing, makes cryonics a bad deal from my perspective. I don't see high-probability longevity technologies in the near future either. Sure, future civilization may be able to create people with our names, voices and approximations of our biographic details, but I would consider those other people.
If we're in a simulation, trying to migrate to the future becomes all but worthless, since we're already there and will probably be shut down at some point. That reduces the EV of cryonics even further. Then there's the possibility of dystopian futures where you're not allowed to die - we don't have proper human rights standards even today, after all.
I see my instinct to impress people outside of instrumental purposes as a weakness, not a strength. Yes it's hard to overcome, but I don't want to spend resources that could have been used to make me better off in a more actual sense instead.
As for influencing or helping future people, their causal inability to reciprocate eliminates my motivation to do so. Yes, there's Basilisking, but since they can only recreate other people who merely pass as approximative versions of me, I'm not impressed. This remains the case whether we frame it in terms of reward or punishment. Yes, we could be in a simulation right now made by future entities who want to torture or reward selectively based on what choices we make. But this doesn't make much sense because in that case, we're not influencing the real future and our simulators' real future was influenced by different real past people with different identities, so rewarding or punishing us is not actual reciprocity. Yes there could be misguided pseudo-reciprocators, but I'm not willing to gamble much real present cost on the possibility of future irrationality alone.
I am, of course, completely fine if you want to pay for your own cryonics, or if other people want to pay the huge costs of trying to influence the far future - as long as they don't force me to pay. I would also recommend that we agree that brain emulations, longevity and similar technologies should be based on individual consent. In the unlikely case that you actually manage to create these technologies somehow, you should not want to induce a perverse incentive for disruption in those people who see them more as a threat than a promise.
We aren't anywhere remotely near any fundamental limits to total growth.
Since you write so eloquently, I'm surprised Hanson didn't understand you.
Yes, I understand.
By (at least) linear returns I mean any system that could, from our POV, grow indefinitely. Some natural limits might exist there, too.
By log returns I imply that there may be more definite limits to growth here on Earth and that approaching them would show as indefinitely diminishing growth. One such limit might be the extent to which fossil fuel reserves carry us: a treasure the like of which there has never been before, and will not necessarily ever be again.
If such "hard" limits exist due to whatever reason, doubts about growth rates have also to do with doubts about total growth. I agree that the historical record is a story of growth, but I'm not sure we should extrapolate that trend indefinitely without addressing the potential limits.