To summarize: We have this unprecedented 50x rise in manual work productivity between 1870 and 1970. Then, at the exact time you’d expect things to have another 50x boost because of the computer revolution, things start slowing down.

Republicans. Republicans happened. They threw out carters fridge and exon decided to abandon all green research and double down on PR actions and lobbying and thats all she wrote.

You were sold a lie by capitalism, you bought it and now youre wondering why they havent delivered

Nearly every science fiction author since Mary Shelly.

SciFi is just philosophy studying the human consequences of technology in an entertaining format.

While the push for evs might be a good one, it's timed completely wrong. At this time, we can't even generate enough green electricity to provide our basic needs and our electric backbone is completely full. Any extra electric consumption only leads to more coal to be burnt. We need to consume LESS electricity, not more. Maybe, MAYBE, if we have a superstrong electric backbone and an overproduction of green energy, we can start thinking of adding more by going EVs.

More and more of people’s interactions online with social media will be actually with AI. People will slowly lose the ability to discern the difference between real people’s posts, comments, photos, and videos and AI created ones. And they won’t care anyway since they receive the same stimulation and satisfaction.

AI social bubbles will be generated by actors (corporations, foreign governments, individuals) with political, economic, or malicious motives. “Hurding” will be the new buzzword used to describe the manipulations done to people en masse, an amalgam of hurt and herding.

Over time people will lose a sense of actual belonging to their social, familial, and geographic tribes and will form emotional and psychological alliances with AI-generated ones.

Governments will be a reflection of the will of the most successful actors and not of the people. People will ignorantly strongly defend those governments, believing them to represent their own interests without realizing the level of endemic manipulation that created those beliefs.

The will of the people will fade over time as they realize that their individuality was little more than a false perception supported by their relative isolation and ignorance of the commonality of thought and deed.

Governments will ensure that basic living conditions remain sufficient to meet the basic needs the population, further reducing the need for most to seek behaviours and thoughts outside their hurd.

Those seeking power will focus on creating the broadest and most effective environments to capture the hearts and minds of the greatest numbers. Competing for resources will be centred on headcount. Success at power will be measured by those with the highest number of members.

I don't think the quality ot public transport in Hungary, Latvia or Romania has anything to do with their low car density.

The cautionary part did not get through in the submission statement. But as you can imagine in a tiny country with 17 million people and 12 million pigs we have a few problems. Big problems, both ecological and political. So yes, learn from the Dutch, but learn all, there are huge downsides.

Who cares? Those few cars/yachts etc are not adding anything to the emisions. I know it's not a popular opinion, but it's the masses that count, not those happy few.

Thank you for the resources—definitely a lot to take in and contemplate. I will be adding these links to my study. Much appreciated 🙏

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So 1) geostationary satellites equipped with solar panels from as many points along the great-circle ad possible, 2) spider silk equivalent between the satellites to create the loop, and 3) anchorpoints for payload delivery?

considering that the moon collided with earth billions of years ago. this is no surprise.

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The thing is, you have to develop it before you can determine what the impact might be. It makes no sense to halt development until you determine the impact when you can't test its capabilities until it has been trained.

Spider silk is really strong but not as strong as the nanotube cable would be, and not quite strong enough for a space elevator.

With the orbital ring, you only go, say, 150 miles up. You have a ring in any circular orbit around the planet. This ring does not have to be solid; the key is a bunch of hunks of iron, moving at faster than orbital speed. Those are electromagnetically deflected by passing through rings, which are cabled to the ground. The deflection pulls the rings upwards.

Getting to 150 miles altitude is just like a space elevator. After that, you use the momentum of the orbiting metal to launch you to orbital speed. You have to keep accelerating the metal chunks, so you need a bunch of solar panels.

All this can be done with today's technology for a few billion dollars in launch cost, you'd effectively get lots of space elevators instead of just one, and it could get payloads to orbit for $0.05/kg. But you'd need all the countries along a great-circle path around the planet to work together on it.

Before doing all that though we could do a launch loop, same basic idea but it's just a couple thousand miles long, and instead of the metal orbiting the planet it travels in an arc and back along the ground.

https://medium.com/accelerated-intelligence/were-in-a-productivity-crisis-according-to-52-years-of-data-things-could-get-really-bad-5c7e53242a0. That is what happened - and is continuing to happen. I suggest reading that article, not skimming it. It's a lot of info to take in. Also, see https://wtfhappenedin1971.com for more data.

Most governments in the world will be wholly incompetent with any sort of regulation for AI. It will not matter if there are people out there with good ideas to regulate AI or even decent laws for regulation.

Then figure out how to use AI to do something else that is easier and pays better. The times won't wait for you, as they didn't for sellers of buggy whips.

My own job seems to be on the line, too. Chatgpt can answer complex questions about my workfield with decent enough answers that if clients asked them to chatgpt instead of me, the differences are small enough to not matter. Luckily for me, most do not know what the right questions are to ask.

On the flip side? Imagine that you can now start to create things in a CAD program that you tell what to make in your own voice, not an arcane set of codes or even having to be able to draw. Then, get the AI aided/verified design 3D printed, and you have a prototype. The same goes for a modular printboard/micro computer design and the code for the software that runs on it. Suddenly, "everyone" can create new toys, tools, utilities, car parts, or whatever you can think of.

If you want to be fearful of AI, don't be afraid to lose your job. Be afraid to lose your life, Terminator style. 🙃

Interesting take on deliberation

Its hard to see the entire forest if you are on the ground. The norms folks have are coevolved with the systems they operate in and in most cases getting past them takes a wisdom they dont have.

I think you have something here boil it down.

Oh we have the technology for flying cars but we don’t trust the public to fly them

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Decentralized social media is an oxymoron. Social media by nature seeks to grow with exponential network effects.

Decentralized networks suck at facilitating huge networks.

You need to get off the Web3 bandwagon. It's really not happening.

Technology will save us!

No need to panic, ditching fossil fuels sooner than we need to, wrecking economies and sending the world's poorest into even worse poverty.

It truly is a wealthy person's privilege to worry about climate change more so than the next meal...

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I tried something similar but the answers weren't that good.