Phil and Stephen celebrate Star Wars Day — May the Fourth be With You! — with a discussion of Star Wars technology and other signs of a future that we can grab and make our own.
Plus an update on the World Transformed 2.
Interesting argument. Peter Diamandis says that that there are “twenty trillion-dollar checks up there, waiting to be cashed,” referring to the near-earth asteroids.
Diamandis, of course, is founder of the X Prize Foundation. He thinks the privatization of space travel is about to open up something of a gold rush.
Diamandis sees a promising price improvement curve as what used to take one billion dollars and twenty thousand people to get a space shuttle into orbit can now happen with “a team of twenty people funded by a single individual.” In the evolution of space travel, he says “the military industrial complex of Boeing, Lockheed and NASA are the dinosaurs” and today’s entrepreneurs are “the furry mammals.”
Sounds good to me. Let’s evolve!
Interesting argument. Peter Diamandis says that that there are “twenty trillion-dollar checks up there, waiting to be cashed,” referring to the near-earth asteroids.
Diamandis, of course, is founder of the X Prize Foundation. He thinks the privatization of space travel is about to open up something of a gold rush.
Diamandis sees a promising price improvement curve as what used to take one billion dollars and twenty thousand people to get a space shuttle into orbit can now happen with “a team of twenty people funded by a single individual.” In the evolution of space travel, he says “the military industrial complex of Boeing, Lockheed and NASA are the dinosaurs” and today’s entrepreneurs are “the furry mammals.”
Sounds good to me. Let’s evolve!
Phil and Stephen discuss thorium nuclear reactors, the solar
singularity, and the possibility that the planet might be taken over by…human
beings. PLUS: An update on the World Transformed 2!
[ UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Glenn!
Reviewing this piece, maybe I come off as kind of single-issue where energy is concerned. In addition to one with a serious energy policy, I could also get behind a candidate who recognizes that the solutions to our health care and higher education bubbles lie in automation (although the latter seems to be taking care of itself) and that 3-D printers are about to redefine the economy.
The solutions are there; we need leadership capable of recognizing them. Ideally, we want someone who sees that it's time for the humans to take over. ]
A rare political endorsement here at the Speculist.
I don’t care what party they’re affiliated with and where they stand on virtually any other issue (within reason), in 2012 I pledge my full support to the presidential candidate who outlines the most aggressive plan for implementing thorium-based nuclear power plants. And I’ll go door-to-door for any candidate who hedges such a plan against the solar singularity.
[ UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Glenn!
Reviewing this piece, maybe I come off as kind of single-issue where energy is concerned. In addition to one with a serious energy policy, I could also get behind a candidate who recognizes that the solutions to our health care and higher education bubbles lie in automation (although the latter seems to be taking care of itself) and that 3-D printers are about to redefine the economy.
The solutions are there; we need leadership capable of recognizing them. Ideally, we want someone who sees that it's time for the humans to take over. ]
A rare political endorsement here at the Speculist.
I don’t care what party they’re affiliated with and where they stand on virtually any other issue (within reason), in 2012 I pledge my full support to the presidential candidate who outlines the most aggressive plan for implementing thorium-based nuclear power plants. And I’ll go door-to-door for any candidate who hedges such a plan against the solar singularity.
The next edition of the World Transformed 1.5 is postponed to one week from tonight.
Tuesday was an important day in the future history of our planet, at least for those who buy into the future as presented in the Terminator films. Basically, for those not aware, Tuesday represented the beginning of the end of the world. Entertainment Weekly “reported” as follows:
Last night — while you were eating dinner with your family or sharing laughs with your friends or watching your favorite reality TV shows or doing whatever fine, decent, human thing you do to pass the time on a Tuesday evening — the artificial intelligence system known as Skynet became self-aware. Scientists at Cyberdyne Systems, realizing that their unholy creation had achieved sentience, immediately attempted to delete the program. Skynet interpreted their actions as an indication that the entire human race was a threat, and implemented an extinction agenda, thereby initiating the Dawn of the Age of Robots. EW has received reports from our correspondents around the world that T-800 assault machines are currently marching on all the city’s major cities: Beijing, Mumbai, London, Paris, that city in Canada where the Olympics were that one time, and even that city in Australia with that cool Opera House.
The good news here is that the end of the world hasn’t started — or at least if it has, it has done so in a much more subtle way than described above. The bad news is that we can’t completely rule out an eventual hostile machine takeover / destruction of the planet. Although that sounds crazy to a lot of people, it’s a serious scenario. I have written about it fairly extensively on my other blog, and I highly recommend this site for anyone interested in learning more about the technological singularity and the potential risks associated with unfriendly artificial intelligence.
As outrageous a scenario as a computer takeover of the world may seem , I can think of an even more fantastic possibility, a possibility that I believe evidence suggests is occurring right now.
What if…the humans took over?
Don’t just dismiss the idea out of hand. Consider the evidence. Individual human beings are more thoroughly empowered to learn, to create, to interact, and to modify the world around them than in any prior era. We do things for ourselves that we used to rely on others to do — pump our own gas, file our own taxes, check out our own groceries, plan our own travel — and we as individuals can now do many things that once only large corporations or government agencies could do. Today, anyone who wants to can produce a movie, cut a single, or start a media empire. Not too long ago, it was considered revolutionary when individuals had at their disposal publishing capability that once belonged only to large organizations. Today we take it for granted that empowered individuals play at least as large a role as big organizations in managing natural disasters or reshaping the political landscape.
Think about it: are the humans are taking over?
What’s interesting about this scenario is that it involves machines, too. In fact, technology is one of the prime enablers of an eventual human takeover of the planet. With better information at their disposal, people are able to manage their own health, their finances, and their careers like never before. Equipped with better information, people are doing astounding things with their own bodies and are gaining an ability to manipulate the world around them like nothing that’s ever been seen before.
What happens next? That’s hard to say. But one good guess is that we’ll have more say in what happens than we would have before.
It sounds outrageous, but it just might be happening:
The humans are taking over.
Cross-posted from Transparency Revolution. Please leave comments there.
David Asprey joins us to discuss the talk he gave ast the recent BIL
conference: The Upgraded Self: Top 6 Biohacks to Upgrade Your Body and
Mind. (Video here.)
| Dave Asprey is a NY Times-published Silicon Valley biohacker, entrepreneur, senior executive, and angel investor who spent 15 years and $250,000 hacking his own biology to gain an unfair advantage in business and life. He upgraded his brain by more than 12 IQ points, lost 100lbs, got ripped without exercise, learned to sleep less than 5 hours per night, and became an expert in mental performance, setting his career on fire. He’s the author of an upcoming book (2011, Wiley) titled “The Better |
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Did I have any choice in posting this video?
Did I have any choice in naming this blog The Speculist?
There’s the liberating way of looking at it: every bad career, financial, relationship, or other move I ever made was hardwired in. The problem is, I don’t believe that.
Even if they can somehow prove that free will doesn’t exist, won’t we all continue to have an overwhelming subjective experience that tells us that it’s real?
The delusion that my choices shape my life — if it is, in fact, a delusion — is one I intend to hang on to.