I agree, and most of the new technologies revolve around growing food where normally it wouldn't be considered; like atop buildings, or in stacked greenhouses. Then again, I share the sentiment of not mass producing children, but I am not very paternal. Exponential growth of the human population might not happen forever, as I think the fertility rates are dropping very quickly over time (and exposure to plastics). Perhaps the problem will solve itself indirectly through the accidental sterilization of males.

>> ^chilaxe:
Genome sequencing is down from $250k a year ago to $5k now (http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006527.html).
The exponential growth of technology is right before our eyes.


Very true. Just imagine what the rich folk who spent money on it are thinking now.

Genome sequencing is down from $250k a year ago to $5k now (http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006527.html).

The exponential growth of technology is right before our eyes.

By "tough on savers", what you mean is traders at the expense of savers. Traders are still free to trade in a hard currency system, they just can't wildly speculate...which has been a major problem anyway in terms of recessions and panics. How many times have savers caused an economic downturn vs how many massive speculations, panics, contagions sown by freeish money made available through government fiscal policy and lose central banking.

You are right though, there is an incentive to destroy the environment for hard currency when that currency is gold. Look at Zimbabwe, they are destroying their rivers and other live giving infrastructure. You could use something other than metals, but really, metals aren't going anywhere, the are going to be mined milled and used in other areas. Not having them as a basis of currency isn't going to stop people from wanting gold, silver, oil or whatever we wanted to choose. In fact, it is BECAUSE they are valued and hard to obtain that we wanted to select it as a currency denomination.

As I see it, when you favor Fiat currency, the evils you make are inflation (which can be rightfully called a tax), larger business cycles, and the debt monster which will one day eat your currency alive when exponential growth is no longer possible.

SS is no answer to this at all, our current SS policy is a ponzi scheme. It requires more investors to pay out dividends to the old ones. At some point, that will bust, and to the detriment of everyone alive at the time to watch it.

In short, I think central bankers morgage the future for current gains. This is at the direct cost of the savers, they are being exploited the whole while. The recent bank bust is just more case to this. The savers forced to bail out the massive speculators. Not only does their money get debased, but they have to bail them out when massive speculation made possible by freeish money finally comes crashing down.

exponential growth of tech and world population = none of what you think now will be relevant in less then ten years.

the game is changing fast.. it's deadly serious now.

we all know what is meant by republicans and democrats. the definition is engrained in history for all to see.

it's time for science and math to do the dirty work, not idiots like the above poster.

BillO go home.

>> ^quantumushroom:
For better or worse, Bush the-liberal-with-conservative-tendencies will be the last authentic president from either side for awhile.
"Bush the liberal?" you ask.
All liberal entitlements funded and/or expanded all 8 years - CHECK!
Exponential growth of government all 8 years - CHECK!
85 billion promised to Africa for AIDS - CHECK!
Supported disastrous Medicare prescription "D" drug "benefit" boondoggle - CHECK!
Scrambles for bailouts without second thought (due to splendid ignorance, not ideology) - CHECK!
If Obama did all this you'd be giving him a standing O.


Obama hasn't invaded an innocent country on a false pretext to obtain their oil or ordered torture.

When he does either, we'll condemn him. Until that point, Bush sucks dick (and apparently QM is a fellow fluffer).

re: the video (may as well try to keep it on topic), just because the guy is a douchebag doesn't mean the media can make stuff up about him. He has enough real skeletons in the closet that this 2nd class journalism BS is pointless and distracting from the real crimes he has to answer.

edit: Typo ; )

For better or worse, Bush the-liberal-with-conservative-tendencies will be the last authentic president from either side for awhile.

"Bush the liberal?" you ask.

* All liberal entitlements funded and/or expanded all 8 years - CHECK!
* Exponential growth of government all 8 years - CHECK!
* 85 billion promised to Africa for AIDS - CHECK!
* Supported disastrous Medicare prescription "D" drug "benefit" boondoggle - CHECK!
* Scrambles for bailouts without second thought (due to splendid ignorance, not ideology) - CHECK!

If Obama did all this you'd be giving him a standing O.

>> ^shuac:
Will they be able to continue to make movies as file sharing grows? It's not like they have another job they can fall back on. I realize I'm assuming that a shared file equals lost box office/DVD sales revenue, a super-simplistic equation but think about it: as file sharing grows, what will ultimately happen to the existing box office/DVD sales revenue? Surely, it must eventually shrink and given enough time, the dwindling revenue would collapse the industry altogether, wouldn't it?

The connection between downloaded copies and box office revenue is an interesting point. Let's take a look at a graph provided by the US branch of the pirate party: Link

Considering the almost definatly exponential growth of filesharing, one might argue that the detrimental effect it has on box office revenue appears to be somewhere between small and negligible or miniscule. The mentioned drops, or better lack thereof, in revenue when a new filesharing platform hits the scene further strengthens this impression, i'd say.
Not everybody has a home theatre and let's be honest, we're going to the movies for the experience, not the movie itself. It will remain a constant revenue stream, most likely even large enough for the actors to get a seven or eight figure paycheck.

Now, DVD sale revenue will decline, no doubt about it. But it would not cease completely. They'd have to offer some additional gimmicks, a nicely styled box or maybe some James-Bond-condoms inside, who knows. People will keep buying them, because people are collectors and love to have nice things to show. It might not be enough to keep up the 20+ million dollar wages paid these days, but they'd survive.


Not helping matters is the movie industry itself: they seem to be fighting file sharing in the same way the music industry did, making all the same mistakes, desperately clinging to the old model because it's in their comfort zone. How much longer will it take for them to start suing individual file sharers?

The music industry already did, the videogame industry as well ... not sure about the movie industry though. Some have realized just how pointless it is, but they'll keep clinging to their monopoly as long as the legislation lets them. Seeing how popular, wide-spread and easily accessible filesharing has become, i'd say even the most bullheaded executive will realize sooner than later that it's a lost cause.

Once the governments stop caving in to their demands and stop producing one unconstitutional law after another, the media industry will eventually have to adapt.

I've seen some interesting alternative business models for the media industry over the last few years that might work rather nicely, once private copies (every non-commercial use) are fully legalized - and they will be, eventually. They have to be if we want to keep our right of privacy.

One or two of them might even be worth a discussion over here if anyone's interested. There are always some weakness to be found, some points that were not taken into account (correctly).

>> ^SpeveO:
>> ^shuac:
As to the long-term affect: porn has been with us since cavemen painted on walls and I see it as a part of the (adult) human experience.

That's like saying farming has been with us for thousands of years, so we know what the effect of industrial farming and genetic manipulation are going to be, it's simply not true. Pornography is now a large scale profit driven industry seeing exponential growth (so far) and that is unprecedented.

So you're equating genetic manipulation in farming with the mere expansion of a ten-thousand year old practice? Just checking.

And yes, just because a certain type of porn exists (a type you or I might not find pleasant) does not vilify the entire industry.

>> ^shuac:
As to the long-term affect: porn has been with us since cavemen painted on walls and I see it as a part of the (adult) human experience.


That's like saying farming has been with us for thousands of years, so we know what the effect of industrial farming and genetic manipulation are going to be, it's simply not true. Pornography is now a large scale profit driven industry seeing exponential growth (so far) and that is unprecedented.

With the phenomenal exponential growth of our computing technology, I'm confident we'll find a way to design, and build, such an ambitious project within the next half a century.

Very interesting video, and I think it brings up points that are agreeably logical. There are some things I tend to disagree with, especially the idea of space babies being born once they land. Um...birth control? That knocks that idea out of the water, as the idea of impregnating an astronaut 10,000,000 miles from Earth is only slightly more irresponsible (and preventable when proper relations are had) than doing so whilst on terra firma. The cost projections are also assumed on the 1970's missions, and I wouldn't want to see any human attempting to go to Mars for at least 50-100 years when the technology (and decreased costs) may literally pushes us to do so. There are possible propulsion systems that can cut the travel time to less than a month (unlikely but I discourage pessimism in technology), and the money would be better spent working on the holy grail of rapid transit- and most important of all a Moon base to stage these missions. Taking inflation into account can cut down the costs, and seeing a U.S. population of 700 million in the near future could make it much more feasible. And that's assuming the U.S. is doing this alone just to drop a flag on the surface. 5 trillion isn't too bad for the entire community of Earth to scrounge up if there is a collective will and incentive to do so. The Moon could become a capitalist's dream land and that would open up the possibility of traveling to Mars for pure exploratory purposes. I am optimistic about the future and think that the restraints we are bound to now can be lifted if human ingenuity has anything to say about it. It still takes that first step and the risk-taking Colombus to plant the seeds of exploration (thankfully only rocks can be raped and diseased this time), and the rest falls into place (travel time between the continents went from months to hours, an infeasible feat according to the greatest minds and technology of the 15th century). I foresee exponential growth in humanity (if the past 100 years have taught us anything) and it will just take time to do the rest. So long as we don't all kill each other, we are destined for great things.

Not to sound too fat headed here but he said nothing that I didn't came up by my self years ago except I was wrong as so is he. The key problem is that we miss the complexity of evolution at exponential growth scales.

His biggest mistake and mine was to think we can guess what is going to happen in 200 or more years. People need to realize that StartTrek is an old guess on how the future will be.

The key difference this time is that for the first time in human history our brains will be surpass by a vastly superior evolutionary process which is due to catch up with us by (2040). This event is call the singularity and it is THE KEY event of human evolution for the next few thousand years and why we can't predict much more farther going forward from this event.

With exponential growth we are like ants trying to make sense of differential equations. There is so so much we can say before we are just too dumb to think farther. Level 3, 2, or even 1 are well beyond our current understanding.

I found this as I was trying to visually explain the problem of exponential growth in a system to a friend. Its a great representation of how crazy multipliers get.

Pretty damn silly to compare the computational power of computers to humans as they process information in completely different ways.

It isn't silly at all, but there are a number of reasons why one might think so.

One reason is that computers are too simple in comparison to human brains- so far. It is possible, in principle, to simulate the massive parallelism of the human brain using digital technology. The problem is that it takes an absolutely enormously powerful computer for this kind of simulation to be even remotly useful.

A simple pocket calculator can find square roots WAY easier than you, and that is incredibly useful. Is there any wonder computers that function essentially like calculators have become ubiquitous?

My point is that just because all the computers that you've ever seen function like that, doesn't mean that all computers will always nessesarily be like that.

Computers are very VERY good at number crunching. Straight forward, step-by-step rule following. Human brains, on the other hand, have computers beat six ways to sunday at pattern recognition. This is because our brains are HUGELY parallel. Lots and lots and lots of neurons, each connected to dozens or even hundreds of others.

It IS possible to calculate (within a few orders of magnitude) just what sort of computing power might theoretically be nessesary to simulate the human brain. Because of the exponential growth of computing power, even if we are off by 5 orders of magnitude, the timetable for a human equivalent computer would only be off by a few years.

Personally I think that this video is very pessimistic, for a number of reasons. Some of which are relavent to this comment:

yeah. the human brain is an amazing creation. given the fact that humans only use 10% of there brain power a comuter will never come close to the same amount of computing power. and anyways, humans can't create something smarter than the human race. that's just sounds like ludicrous lol.

The 10% figure that is often quoted represents a severe misunderstanding of neural biology. While there are documented cases of people losing HUGE portions of their brains and yet being able to rehabilite most of their functionality, the truth is that we use all of our brains- just not all at the same time.

As for humanity creating our successors, this is almost certainly what is going to happen. There have already been quite a few instances of processes yielding progressively more "intelligent" processes.

Lets start with Physics. In the beginning, (13 billion years) there was the big bang- in a few microfractions of a second, the laws of physics were born, and then it tooks billions upon billions of years for stars to birth and die and elements to be made, etc etc etc- until finally at some point chemestry became possible.

Life on earth formed about 4 billion years ago, but it took 3.5 billion years to get to animals like fish and lizards.

From that point on, it becomes millions of years. 70 million years ago mammals turned up. 65 million- dinosaurs died out. 5 million years ago, humans showed up, but we were just another animal for the vast majority of our heritage. Mere thousands of years ago, we learned to talk, and then it was like a flash and all of civilisation happened. Only hundreds of years ago did we harness electricity, and computers were only dozens of years.

What does this all mean? Well, the point I was trying to make is that Chemistry is dumber than evolution, but it created it. Evolution is dumber than Humans but it created us. I say that we are smarter than evolution because while it does create progressivly better species, and come up with solutions to problems, it is VERY VERY SLOW and inefficient at it. I bet you can name a dozen things that you would improve about the human body just off the top of your head.

So not only do dumb processes beget smarter processes, but the speed at which this is happening has increased exponentially. We are right on the cusp of the transition to a machine based existence.

As I mentioned, I think that their estimates for machine human equivalence is pessimistic. They say human equivalence in 2013, that may be correct, but no way will it take 10 years from that until a $1000 human equivalent. Why? Because the rate of change is changing. The curve is hyperbolic, not just exponential.

What's more, I don't think that a human equivalent computer is even nessesary! I think that it is possible that computers already posses enough computing power to begin a process of self-improvment that will ultimately end in their surpassing us in leaps and bounds. The problem, I believe, is currently software. We just don't know how to do it yet. If somebody figures it out, it may only be a matter of months or even weeks for "skynet" to wake up, if you will. We can only hope that the somebody who programmed the computer to bootstrap itself also figured out how to make our new computer overlord sysopmind friendly.

</endrant>

(my god, i think that is the longest comment i've made in YEARS)