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556 lines
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[2]Freddie deBoer
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To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe
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To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe
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[13][https]
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[14]Freddie deBoer
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Sep 16, 2024
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208
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To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe
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[23]
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we’re all just one more card in the catalog, man
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Scott Alexander has [24]responded to my advice that we should not imagine
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ourselves to be living in some sort of revolutionary epoch. You can decide for
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yourself if he’s convincing. I continue to maintain the basic point that a) we
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are definitionally more likely to live in ordinary times than extraordinary and
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b) we are conditioned to overstate our own uniqueness and importance, not even
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as a matter of intellect or character but as a basic reality of cognitive
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science, a consequence of living as a consciousness. I would say that, for one
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thing, his schema would suggest that someone living in the 1810s or 1860s or
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1910s had just as much cause to think that they lived in extraordinary times as
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we do, and yet Alexander certainly seems to think that now is more important
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than then. I do want to address this one point.
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Freddie sort of starts thinking in this direction[25]^6, but shuts it down
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on the grounds that some people think technological growth rates have
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slowed down since the mid-20th century. Usually the metric that gets
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brought out to support this is changes in total factor productivity, which
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do show the mid-20th century as a more dynamic period than today. So fine,
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let’s do the same calculation with total productivity. My impression from
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eyeballing [26]this paper is that about 35% of all increase in TFP growth
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and 15% of all log TFP growth has still happened during Freddie’s lifetime.
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Let’s take as given the claim in the last sentence is true: it’s still
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inarguable that meaningful technological growth has dramatically slowed in the
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last 50 years compared to the 100 prior years, to choose an arbitrary but
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useful comparison. And if that’s true, it suggests that the notion of
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continuous exponential human growth is nonsense. And if that’s true, it doesn’t
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in and of itself disprove the narrative that ChatGPT is the Mahdi and will
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usher us into paradise, but it does make the overarching narrative of a simple
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exponential climb into a godlike metahuman future harder to maintain. If human
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development has already slowed significantly, shouldn’t that suggest that it
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may very well slow further?
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I will again refer people to Robert J. Gordon’s [27]The Rise & Fall of American
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Growth, which is where the 1870-1970 and then 1970-current split is best
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articulated. I read it, and it’s a classic academic book that ponderously pours
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data on to the same basic observations over and over again. (Just like, for
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example, Capital in the Twenty-First Century and many many others.) That’s what
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an academic book of that type is meant to do; It’s just that I don’t expect
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anyone else to feel moved to read it. What makes it so valuable, though, is
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that Gordon spends so much time looking at very specific economic segments and
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not just demonstrating that productivity and growth have slowed but why they’ve
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slowed in very specific terms. And I can’t point to a single piece of evidence
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that does a better job than that book. I would, however, suggest that some
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common sense would be useful here. I’ll spare you from doing my “time traveler
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from 1910 traveling to 1960 vs a time traveler from 1960 traveling to 2010” bit
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in the main text, but you can read it in a footnote below.[28]1 The fundamental
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observation is simply that beyond the various productivity and growth numbers,
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the lived experience of being human changed dramatically more from 1870ish
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through 1970ish than in the 50ish years since then. To repeat myself, a vast
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majority of what we call the advances of modernity stem directly from the
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development of cheap, stable, relatively safe, reliable refined fossil fuels,
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from electricity generation to cars to planes to modern heating systems to
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fertilizers.
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[29]
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[https]
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[30]source
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What I’m suggesting is that people trying to insist that we are on the verge of
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a species-altering change in living conditions and possibilities, and who point
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to this kind of chart to do so, are letting the scale of these charts obscure
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the fact that the transition from the original iPhone to the iPhone 14 (fifteen
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years apart) is not anything like the transition from Sputnik to Apollo 17
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(fifteen years apart), that they just aren’t remotely comparable in human
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terms. The internet is absolutely choked with these dumb charts, which would
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make you think that the technological leap from the Apple McIntosh to the
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hybrid car was dramatically more meaningful than the development from the
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telescope to the telephone. Which is fucking nutty! If you think this chart is
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particularly bad, go pick another one. They’re all obviously produced with the
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intent of convincing you that human progress is going to continue to scale
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exponentially into the future forever. But a) it would frankly be bizarre if
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that were true, given how actual history actually works and b) we’ve already
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seen that progress stall out, if we’re only honest with ourselves about what’s
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been happening. It may be that people are correct to identify contemporary
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machine learning as the key technology to take us to Valhalla. But I think the
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notion of continuous exponential growth becomes a lot less credible if you
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recognize that we haven’t even maintained that growth in the previous
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half-century.
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And the way we talk here matters a great deal. I always get people accusing me
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of minimizing recent development. But of course I understand how important
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recent developments have been, particularly in medicine. If you have a young
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child with cystic fibrosis, their projected lifespan has changed dramatically
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just in the past year or two. But at a population level, recent improvements to
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average life expectancy just can’t hold a candle to the era that saw the
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development of modern germ theory and the first antibiotics and modern
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anesthesia and the first “dead virus” vaccines and the widespread adoption of
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medical hygiene rules and oral contraception and exogenous insulin and heart
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stents, all of which emerged in a 100 year period. This is the issue with
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insisting on casting every new development in world-historic terms: the
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brick-and-mortar chip-chip-chip of better living conditions and slow progress
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gets devalued.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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I listened to the [31]latest episode of Derek Thompson’s (highly recommended)
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Plain English podcast, with DeepMind researcher Pushmeet Kohli. Kohli and his
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colleagues are using machine learning in drug discovery, particularly through
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the [32]protein folding that’s such an essential element of developing new
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medicines. This work, they demonstrate, is well-suited to what modern large
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language models can do. It’s also one of the very, very few places where the
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hype for these systems might actually be warranted; the vast majority of
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breathlessly-discussed “AI” possibilities would not even be particularly
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transformative if they came to pass, which most of them won’t. (AI doomerism
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relies on the idea that consciousness, superintelligence, and ill intent will
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prove to be “emergent” properties of LLMs, which no one can articulate in
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remotely rigorous terms and which most actual LLM researchers dismiss as
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nonsense.) Drug discovery is definitely a big deal and these tools seem very
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promising. The question Derek didn’t ask is, I think, a central one: why call
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this “artificial intelligence” at all? Nothing that DeepMind is working on
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requires “emergence.” Their tools are not agentic/choice-making. They have no
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consciousness, nor are they required to in order to fulfill their purpose.
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They’re very powerful systems built on very powerful algorithms but that’s
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fundamentally what they are, systems built on algorithms. So where does
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intelligence come in at all, and why is it necessary?
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This is part of the basic poverty of the current “AI” discourse - the core
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concept of agentic, self-directed, learning, and conscious computer technology
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has given way to just any instance of “a computer doing complicated stuff.”
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DeepMind is developing a potentially profoundly-useful technology built on
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algorithms that appear to work. Why is that not enough? Algorithms that work
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are good enough.
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In the podcast, Derek says that GPT has mapped human language. I would push
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back against that, forcefully - a map is not probabilistic. You can have a
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better or a worse map, but a map is not fundamentally stochastic and GPT’s
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understanding of language will always have error bars, due to its basic
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architecture. This is why “AI” has conspicuously failed in one of the many
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tasks it is confidently asserted to be on the brink of solving, which is
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producing a complete and functioning syntax for the grammar of a human
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language. This was exactly Chomsky’s point when he and colleagues [33]critiqued
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ChatGPT; the modern era of linguistics began precisely when he and his
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generation came to understand that language is rule-bound in a way that is
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fundamentally neurological and probably genetic. (Which is to say, it does not
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rely on the ingestion of data, hence the [34]poverty of the stimulus.) And
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that’s precisely what LLMs don’t do, proceed from a list of static rules and
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build understanding step-wise. If they did, tech companies wouldn’t be where
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they are now, which is trying to somehow ingest more language data than has
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ever been produced by all human beings combined in the history of the world.
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What unites the two preceding paragraphs is simply this: my confusion as to why
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reality itself is never good enough. Why does our culture insist on overselling
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and overhyping when there are genuinely impressive developments happening? Is
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it just literally about stock prices? I think it might literally be about stock
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prices.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Here’s some things I think, without any particular qualifications to think
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them.
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• The speed of light is an actual hard speed limit; various sci-fi tricks
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like warp drive and traveling through wormholes have immense practical and
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theoretical barriers to being usable and I don’t think they’ll ever be
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overcome
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• Time travel into the past actually is impossible, which is why no one has
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ever come back to tell us about it
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• Even if we achieve speeds on the order of (say) 10% of the speed of light,
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which we almost certainly can’t for simple relativity reasons, traveling to
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potentially habitable stars will take hundreds of years; we have no reason
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to believe that cryofreeze/stasis/etc technologies are actually achievable;
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multigenerational interstellar travel is likely impossible for all the
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reasons Kim Stanley Robinson lays out [35]here; we will therefore never
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colonize the stars and in the exceedingly unlikely event that we survive to
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see it, we’ll die when our sun expands to become a red giant; we might mine
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or colonize planets or moons in our solar system, but that won’t
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fundamentally change human life
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• There’s very likely other life in the universe, even intelligent life, but
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given that the cosmic speed limit will apply to them too, we’ll never meet
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with any of them physically, and given the distances involved synchronous
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communication is essentially impossible
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• Quantum entanglement won’t allow for faster-than-light communication for
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the reasons enumerated in [36]this video
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• We don’t live in a simulation
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• Even if there are many worlds/multiple dimensions we’ll never experience
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them directly and thus they’ll have no practical impact on our lives
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• We’ll never “upload” our consciousness into computers to live forever,
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which suggests that there is some such thing as our consciousness separate
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from the physiological structures that contain it, which is a dualist
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fantasy
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• Artificial intelligences of various kinds will develop and emerge and have
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meaningful consequences for humans and improve quality of life, but they
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won’t somehow enable us to transcend the physical limitations of the
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material world, that is, no free energy, no breaking the laws of physics,
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no eternal life
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• We’re all going to die, and it’s going to feel far too soon for almost all
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of us.
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Look, stuff is gonna happen. Technology is going to grow. A lot of it will be
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good and some of it will be bad. I don’t doubt, for example, that in a hundred
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years the science of human genomic editing will fundamentally transform many
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elements of human life and, in particular, undermine basic human notions of
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“meritocracy” and just deserts. Obviously, that could go do a lot of bad as
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well as a lot of good. I could also easily see a world, even in a decade or
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two, where a significant chunk of the human population spends almost all of its
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time in virtual reality and essentially disconnects from actual human life;
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that sounds straightforwardly bad, to me, and would justify [37]anti-tech
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terrorism. One way or another life is gonna change. Human beings will change.
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Life expectancy is going to increase. We’re gonna have a lot of cool new toys.
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But, fundamentally, we live in a mundane universe and that will never change.
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And, crucially, it’s our nature to adapt to make the extraordinary seem
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mundane. I’m a big believer in a steady state/thermostatic concept of
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happiness, which suggests that we mostly have our own individual levels of
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default life satisfaction and we tend to gravitate to that level over time.
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It’s not that events just don’t matter for how we feel; if you fall in love
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you’ll feel more happy and if you go to prison you’ll feel more unhappy. Of
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course you can make your life better and be an incrementally happier person. I
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have, over the course of my own life. But we reliably, slowly adapt to change
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and float back towards our baseline level of life satisfaction. And with
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technology, particularly, things that seem remarkable come to seem boring at a
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relentless pace. Smartphone sales have slowed because we’ve wrung all the
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innovation out of them that we can and people now see them as commodities.
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Who’s excited to upgrade from a Galaxy Sx to a Galaxy Sx+1, no matter how
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remarkable the underlying technology? The PlayStation 5 Pro is an absolutely
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remarkable piece of human ingenuity, and yet many people feel cynical and
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underwhelmed about it, and I don’t blame them. The Nintendo64, now, that felt
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revolutionary. Is that fair, the ever-ratcheting expectations game? Doesn’t
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matter. It’s human nature.
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Ultimately, I do want to tell people to please try and chill out, yes. No, I
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don’t think AI Jesus is about to come and initiate the Rapture, and the desire
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for that to be true seems to be derived from very naked psychological needs. We
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live in a mundane world, a world of homework and waiting for the bus and
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sorting the recyclables and doing the laundry and holding your shirt over your
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nose when you enter a public bathroom and trying to find a credit card that
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offers a slightly better points program. It just keeps going, day after day
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after grinding day. You never get removed from it, never escape it. And yes,
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there’s transcendence and beauty and fun and satisfaction and growth and
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meaning, all of it! But you find that all in the mundane, generally; those few
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who spend their lives in a state of constant stimulation and novelty, well, God
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bless them. Most of the time they didn’t get there through their choices but
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through random chance. I’m saying all of this because I think a lot of people
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spend their time yearning for some great fissure in their lives where there’s a
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massive and permanent division between the before and the after, and all of
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this AI stuff is giving rational people an excuse to be irrational. (Of course,
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this is the number two fantasy behind the great American civic religion,
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“Someday, I’ll be a celebrity.”)
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You have to imagine a life you can live with, where you are, when you are. If
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you don’t, you’ll never be satisfied. Neither AI nor anything else is coming to
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save you from the things you don’t like about being a person. The better life
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you absolutely can build isn’t going to be brought to you by ChatGPT but by
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your own steady uphill clawing and through careful management of your own
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expectations. You live here. This is it. That’s what I would tell to everyone
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out there: this is it. This is it. This is it. You’re never going to hang out
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with Mr. Data on the Holodeck. I know that, for a lot of people, mundane
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reality is everything they want to escape. But it could be so much worse.
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[38]1
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A person living in the United States the 1910s would be someone who
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• Very likely did not have indoor plumbing, meaning they used an outhouse,
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got water from a well, could not routinely bathe or wash their hands, and
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was subject to all manner of illness for these reasons, to say nothing of
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the unpleasant nature of lacking these amenities
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• Almost certainly did not have an electrified home, the consequences of
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which are obviously numerous and significant compared to modern existence
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• Had no artificial refrigeration at all and relied on blocks of delivered
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ice where possible, which when combined with a lack of modern food
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production regulation and hygienic storage led to vastly higher rates of
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foodborne illness
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• Got around by horse and cart for anything nearby, taking hours to go more
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than a few miles; got around by train for anything domestic and far away,
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remarkably fast in many ways but still slow compared to plane travel and on
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set schedules and from and to a certain set number of places; got around by
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steamship if having to travel over water, which was very expensive for
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ordinary people and glacially slow compared to modern methods
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• Could expect to see their children die at a rate of about 15% in the first
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year of life and could expect to die themselves (as the mother) or their
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partner to die (as the father) at a rate of about 1%
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• Had a life expectancy of about 45 to 50 years if a man and about 50 to 55
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years if a woman, and faced the looming threat of the 1918 influenza
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pandemic (which killed something like 700,000 Americans) to say nothing of
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the constant threats of polio (27,000 cases in the 1916 outbreak alone),
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tuberculosis (200,000 new American cases a year and 100,000-150,000 deaths
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a year in the 1910s), and all manner of infectious diseases that are now
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eminently treatable
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• Did not yet have commercial radio, though ham radio technology existed (for
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those with access to electricity); nor was there television, obviously;
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only 10% of households had a telephone; telegraph technology existed and
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was remarkably sophisticated but not very accessible
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I could go on. Let’s say we teleport our 1910 fellow to 1960.
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• Outside of a few stubborn places in the deep South and some truly
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out-of-the-way rural locales, almost all American homes have indoor
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plumbing, which allows for using a flush toilet, washing your hands,
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regularly taking showers or baths, and having handy access to clean water
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for drinking and cooking
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• The vast majority of American homes are electrified, allowing for indoor
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artificial lighting without the fumes or dangers of oil-based light, along
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with a myriad of household gadgets and devices
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• Most American homes have refrigerators, expanding the kinds of foods that
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are practical accessible (with help from modern supply lines and
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transportation) and seriously reducing the risks of food poisoning and
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similar ills
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• 80+% of American households have a car, dramatically expanding the
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geographical range that can be traveled, reducing transportation time in
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all manner of contexts, and making long commutes for work practically
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possible, albeit with major consequences for safety and the environment
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• The infant mortality rate in the first year of life has plunged to 2.6%,
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while the maternal mortality rate has fallen to less than .05%.
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• Men’s life expectancy has grown to more than 65 years and women’s to about
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73 years; the incidence of new cases of polio had fallen to about 3,000 by
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1960 and in the next several years the disease would be essentially
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eradicated from the United States; there were some 84,000 new cases of
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tuberculosis, almost all of them in rural and impoverished areas, and the
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survival rate was meaningfully higher; ordinary Americans now had a decent
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shot at having access to chemotherapy, antibiotics, heart bypass surgery….
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• 90% of American households have a radio, better than 85% have a television,
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bringing information and entertainment into the homes of millions; 90% have
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a telephone, enabling instant peer-to-peer communication with a vast
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network and dramatically improving the capability of emergency services,
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practical access to information, the ability to socialize and connect with
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those who are geogrpahically distance, etc etc….
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Again, I could go on. The 1910 person would find the world utterly transformed.
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The interstate highway system, in and of and by itself, is a change that’s
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absolutely massive in the most practical and physical and meaningful terms.
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Every aspect of life has changed in deep, obvious, material ways. Now let’s
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take someone from 1960 to 2010.
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• It is still the case that almost all American households have indoor
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plumbing; the number without has fallen, but because of ceiling effects the
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amount of change is vastly smaller than from 1910 to 1960; indoor plumbing
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has already been accomplished
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• It is still the case that almost all American households have electricity;
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the number without has fallen, but because of ceiling effects the amount of
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change is vastly smaller than from 1910 to 1960; electrification has
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already been accomplished
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• Most American homes still have refrigerators; they’re nicer and bigger and
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more energy efficient but they do the same thing; regulatory standards are
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maybe, maybe, maybe a little better?; the range of foods available has
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increased, maybe the quality, but the change is vastly smaller than from
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1910 to 1960
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• The percentage of American households with cars has risen to 90%. That
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increase is meaningful but doesn’t represent any revolutionary change to
|
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average living conditions. The cars are way, way safer and nicer than those
|
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in 1960, but they’re still almost exclusively burning fossil fuels and
|
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otherwise function in the same way that they did in the 1960s. The
|
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interstate system has expanded but someone driving on it in 2010 might not
|
||
even notice any difference since 1960
|
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|
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• The infant mortality rate has fallen from 26 per 1000 in 1960 to 6 per 1000
|
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in 2010. That’s a lot! But it’s very small compared to the improvement from
|
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1910 to 1960. Similarly, the maternal mortality rate has improved but from
|
||
next to nothing to even closer to nothing
|
||
|
||
• Men’s life expectancy has grown to about 76.2 years for men and 81 for
|
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women; again, meaningful and important but simply not at the same scale as
|
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from 1910 to 1960
|
||
|
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• Almost everybody has a telephone, but that was true in 1960; almost
|
||
everybody has a television, but that was true in 2010. They are much more
|
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sophisticated and now portable and can access far more content, but in both
|
||
cases the changes are a matter of refinement and development, not dramatic
|
||
innovation. In general, information technology has proceeded at a
|
||
remarkable pace, but in terms of the actual lived experience of human
|
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beings, it’s very difficult to argue that the introduction of the internet
|
||
etc can keep pace with the immense practical and material changes
|
||
introduced in the previous era.
|
||
|
||
208
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To Learn to Live in a Mundane Universe
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159
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159 Comments
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[https]
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[ ]
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[51]
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Feral Finster
|
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[52]Feral Finster
|
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[53]Sep 16·edited Sep 16
|
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|
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1. Scott and ACX readers seem to have a beef with you.
|
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|
||
2. I suspect that we are living in revolutionary times, not merely
|
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[50] because of impending technological advances, but because the likelihood
|
||
[https] that the tools we already have will be abused approaches 1:1.
|
||
|
||
What we have now would make a Himmler, a Goebbels, a Vyshinskii weep
|
||
hopt satly pony tears of joy and envy. Already, people of influence and
|
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authority are licking their chops.
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[55]21 replies by Freddie deBoer and others
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|
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[57]
|
||
BronxZooCobra
|
||
[58]Sep 16
|
||
|
||
There is also the other side of the argument where people are
|
||
[56] incredibly uncomfortable with all the magic and wonder that will occur
|
||
[https] after they are gone. It’s more comforting to think the future will
|
||
resemble the now than to think of all that will be that one won’t be
|
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around to experience.
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References:
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[1] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/
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[2] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/
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[13] https://substack.com/profile/12666725-freddie-deboer
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[14] https://substack.com/@freddiedeboer
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[21] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comments
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[22] javascript:void(0)
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[23] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff6232ab1-1a24-4290-b3b9-1de9025d9c13_4500x2233.png
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[24] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-deboer-on-temporal-copernicanism
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[25] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-deboer-on-temporal-copernicanism#footnote-6-148609720
|
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[26] https://orbilu.uni.lu/bitstream/10993/55043/1/s40797-023-00221-x%20%281%29.pdf
|
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[27] https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691175805/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-growth
|
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[28] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe#footnote-1-148918222
|
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[29] https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffba9fb25-337a-43be-8b21-570a4cfe95fc_850x509.png
|
||
[30] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353714693_A_Technology_Countdown_Approach_To_Historical_Timelines
|
||
[31] https://open.spotify.com/episode/49QLyJeU56X1DYRhFk0x2S?si=5ebcb656a9f245b7
|
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[32] https://comis.med.uvm.edu/VIC/coursefiles/MD540/MD540-Protein_Organization_10400_574581210/Protein-org/Protein_Organization8.html
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[33] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chatgpt-ai.html
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[34] https://web.archive.org/web/20130921205122id_/http://www.philosophy.dept.shef.ac.uk/papers/POS.pdf
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[35] https://boingboing.net/2015/11/16/our-generation-ships-will-sink.html
|
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[36] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLqk7uaENAY&t=166s&pp=ygUgY29vbCB3b3JsZHMgcXVhbnR1bSBlbnRhbmdsZW1lbnQ%3D
|
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[37] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/ants-in-the-server-racks-21st-century
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[38] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe#footnote-anchor-1-148918222
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[45] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comments
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[46] javascript:void(0)
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[50] https://substack.com/profile/2255172-feral-finster
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[51] https://substack.com/profile/2255172-feral-finster
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[52] https://feralfinster313120.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_content=comment_metadata
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[53] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comment/69182752
|
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[55] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comment/69182752
|
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[56] https://substack.com/profile/19997282-bronxzoocobra
|
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[57] https://substack.com/profile/19997282-bronxzoocobra
|
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[58] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comment/69182974
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[60] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comment/69182974
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[61] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/to-learn-to-live-in-a-mundane-universe/comments
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