In their recent book Warnings, former US national security advisors Richard Clarke and R.P. Reddy take an evidence-based approach to identifying persons they call Cassandras. Cassandras are credible forecasters, with solid track records in their fields, who warn of coming existential threats, based on irrefutable data. The book combines case histories of previous Cassandras who […]
Shock therapy is a concept proposed by some economists before the Soviet union collapsed. Essentially, it’s the idea that a command and control economy should be immediately dismantled, to be replaced by market mechanisms. Adam Smith cautioned against this, and it was a disaster in Russia. People who lack a culture of individual responsibility will […]
I am an admirer of Peter Diamandis. He and Steven Kotler have been largely responsible for shifting the planetary conversation from endless doom and gloom within a context of scarcity to the possibility of sustainable abundance. For the book Abundance and his related work, I believe we all owe him a large debt. Peter is […]
Meat consumption is a problem is many ways. A substitute for industrial “farming” of animals is needed. This could take the form of vegetable “meats” (more on this below) or a 21st century alternative to industrialized animal “husbandry”. We will, in future, grow meat in vats in a factory-type environment without the involvement of any […]
When one paid worker appears or disappears in a community, it causes what economists call a “multiplier effect”. This has historically been estimated at 5 times the salary of the worker. Here’s how it works: if a person earning an income enters a community, that worker will then demand various goods and services. The providers […]
In movies such as The Terminator, The Matrix and so forth, self-aware AIs come into existence and soon threaten humanity. This thinking is reflected in the arguments by Musk, Hawking and others against creating strong AIs. Due to a recent insight, I believe that self-aware AIs are not much of a threat to humanity, and […]
In this world, however much we might wish it otherwise, there is no perfection to be found. Every beautiful thing has its limitations or deficiencies. Even mathematics has Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems. So, too, must a Celebration Society be imperfect. This is not to say that I regard it as falling short of being utopian, for […]
Psychologists have noted that many people, when presented with evidence that contradicts a belief of theirs, simply ignore or rationalize away that evidence, holding even more tightly to their existing beliefs. If we are to fundamentally change the world in the direction of an Abundance Game, we must accept that many of our fellow people […]
I expect that the US government has already figured out how to end much of the world’s terrorism in the next several decades. This opinion is based on the following facts: 1. Drone strikes are already being used against terrorists. 2. A set of technologies will soon converge to make such strikes far more effective, […]
The AI researcher Jurgen Schmidhuber has argued in a talk that there is a precise way to optimize a self-improving superintelligence based upon Godel’s mathematics. He further explained this in a paper audaciously named “Formal Theory of Creativity, Fun, and Intrinsic Motivation”. He says “The simple but general formal theory of fun & intrinsic motivation […]
