Futurology - General - Facepunch Forum

This thread and that video especially cheered me up big time.

Artificial Intelligence? We are fucked

this thread had far too much effort put into it for it to die now I just wanna say that your vertical farming video looks more like just good old hydroponics to me

I love futurology, I don't by any means consider it a real science, but it's especially interesting in this day and age to try and predict what the future will be like. Technology grows exponentially which is something a lot of people don't take into account when thinking of things that can happen during their lifetime, thus leading people to think futurists are too optimistic about future events. That may be true historically, but I think anyone alive now was born at just the right time to experience a radical change in humanity's rate of progress. I like to imagine we're at the "curve" on exponential graphs that bridges the mostly "horizontal" part of a graph and the mostly "vertical" part of a graph. People just need to be aware of this and plan for the future exponentially or else a lot of people will fall behind and fuck up their lives with bad economic decisions, which is almost a paradox and a dark contrast to all the problem solving that will be done in the 21st century Okay I think that paragraph makes me look like an insane washed up scientist or some shit, but I promise after reading it a few more times it will make sense

I cannot wait for power armor

[QUOTE=Zerohe;37444331]I love futurology, I don't by any means consider it a real science, but it's especially interesting in this day and age to try and predict what the future will be like. Technology grows exponentially which is something a lot of people don't take into account when thinking of things that can happen during their lifetime, thus leading people to think futurists are too optimistic about future events. That may be true historically, but I think anyone alive now was born at just the right time to experience a radical change in humanity's rate of progress. I like to imagine we're at the "curve" on exponential graphs that bridges the mostly "horizontal" part of a graph and the mostly "vertical" part of a graph. People just need to be aware of this and plan for the future exponentially or else a lot of people will fall behind and fuck up their lives with bad economic decisions, which is almost a paradox and a dark contrast to all the problem solving that will be done in the 21st century Okay I think that paragraph makes me look like an insane washed up scientist or some shit, but I promise after reading it a few more times it will make sense[/QUOTE] you can make the transition point appear anywhere on an exponential graph by just fiddling with the scales there's also been evidence that Moore's law and its associated analogies are beginning to slow down.

[QUOTE=ewitwins;37382206]As someone who is attempting to start a hydroponics business, I think this thread is fucking awesome.[/QUOTE] I also agree that this thread is fucking awesome, and hydroponics is also amazing, the future of food.

[QUOTE]- Artificial Brain[/QUOTE] Henry Markram is, well, overly optimistic. Even Ray Kurzweil thinks "A human brain emu in 10 years" is insane, and Kurzweil IS insane. I mean, [URL=http://www.izhikevich.org/human_brain_simulation/Blue_Brain.htm#Simulation of Large-Scale Brain Models]we have already emulated a human brain equivalent[/URL] (Not that anyone noticed), but at the level of detail he's proposing, Christ, you could hijack all of Amazon's cloud computing platform and run PSICS on every node and it would still be fucking nuts.

[QUOTE=Eudoxia;37447103]Henry Markram is, well, overly optimistic. Even Ray Kurzweil thinks "A human brain emu in 10 years" is insane, and Kurzweil IS insane. I mean, [URL=http://www.izhikevich.org/human_brain_simulation/Blue_Brain.htm#Simulation of Large-Scale Brain Models]we have already emulated a human brain equivalent[/URL] (Not that anyone noticed), but at the level he's proposing, Christ, you could hijack all of Amazon's cloud computing platform and run PSICS on every node and it would still be fucking nuts.[/QUOTE] speaking of ems, what do you think of robin hanson's ideas about the em economy?

[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;37447228]speaking of ems, what do you think of robin hanson's ideas about the em economy?[/QUOTE] Haven't read about them yet (Too busy building [URL=http://wiki.transhumani.com/index.php?title=Whole_Brain_Emulation]this[/URL]), but from what I've heard it's basically Accelerando: The capitalist Singularity :v: . What papers/videos do you recommend I read/watch? (Because frankly I can't make the time to read all of Overcoming Bias)

[QUOTE=Eudoxia;37447263]Haven't read about them yet (Too busy building [URL=http://wiki.transhumani.com/index.php?title=Whole_Brain_Emulation]this[/URL]), but from what I've heard it's basically Accelerando: The capitalist Singularity :v:[/QUOTE] yeah that's basically it his condensed argument is that it'll be cheaper to just run billions of copies of a limited set of human minds all specialized for certain tasks, at accelerated rates. they'd be paid subsistence wages and terminated as soon as their job is finished. humans would basically become function calls [editline]28th August 2012[/editline] also shitting christ did you write that whole thing? hats off to you, great scholarship work.

[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;37447285]yeah that's basically it his condensed argument is that it'll be cheaper to just run billions of copies of a limited set of human minds all specialized for certain tasks, at accelerated rates. they'd be paid subsistence wages and terminated as soon as their job is finished. humans would basically become function calls[/QUOTE] You know, my main problem with these proposals is that they just seem to conjure computing power from the luminiferous aether. I suspect computers will get better, and faster, even after Moore's Law goes poof; but a list of emerging computing platforms with their FLOPS-per-watt-per-gram would help outline the bounds of these scenarios, and convince me they are possible at all. EDIT: Most if it is just rephrased stuff from the WBE roadmap.

[QUOTE=Eudoxia;37447328]You know, my main problem with these proposals is that they just seem to conjure computing power from the luminiferous aether. I suspect computers will get better, and faster, even after Moore's Law goes poof; but a list of emerging computing platforms with their FLOPS-per-watt-per-gram would help outline the bounds of these scenarios, and convince me they are possible at all.[/QUOTE] I'm not sure, it's been a while since I read the full version of his ideas. His blog is [url=http://www.overcomingbias.com/]here[/url], the main thesis can't be more than 2 or 3 clicks away.