Long Now

I don't think it is surprising most billionaire do not pursue this kind of greatness. They just aren't different from other guys. There, the few who go and try to climb mount Everest "because it's there" or who try and row the pacific are rare, too.

Secondly, if half the billionaires were to do the same outlandish things, we wouldn't call them outlandish.

For example, there probably was a time when quite a few billionaires went elephant hunting. Then, that was not outlandish. Now, it would be.

Now, I think there are plenty of billionaires doing outlandish things, but just not in a highly visible technical direction. For example, Ted Turner started a world-wide news network, tried to start his own Olympic Games, and has a huge herd of bison. Others buy sports clubs, try to win the America's cup, or try to build a mechanical clock that will run for 10000 years (http://longnow.org/). Yet others see it as their goal to get higher on Forbes' list of billionaires (http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml)

Another thing I am curious about: who are the one or two billionaires at the other end of that curve?

Shameless proxy brag:

I volunteer for the Long Now Foundation. [1] One of their amazing efforts is the Rosetta Project [2], a set of parallel texts and linguistic resources so that future civilizations will be able to decode anything written today.

The ESA put one of the Rosetta Project disks on the space probe [3], so a bunch of information about our languages is now way the hell out there. You can think of it as very long term backup. [4] I'm really happy for the Long Now folks today.

As an aside, I strongly recommend their series of talks. It's one of my favorite nerd events in SF, and members can stream them live. The old talks are also available via podcast.

[1] http://longnow.org/
[2] http://rosettaproject.org/
[3] http://blog.longnow.org/02013/12/16/wake-up-rosetta/
[4] http://blog.longnow.org/02008/08/20/very-long-term-backup/

Where are you from and where do you live?

My impression is the USA has the worst drinking culture. Many other places in the world have much better ones. UK pubs, Japanese izakayas.

I had a pretty negative view of drinking growing up in the USA with MADD's messaging etc. Even though my parents drank socially it just seemed not worth.

Then I moved abroad and my outlook changed

Here's an interesting talk on some of the possible benefits to society of drinking

https://longnow.org/ideas/drinking-10000-years-intoxication-and-civilization/

note: I am not suggesting you should go drink. Rather, I'm only passing on my experience. I didn't drink until I moved abroad in my mid 30s. I still generally don't drink in the USA but I've had some great times drinking abroad.

I experienced those "benefits" outside the USA but rarely inside.

I understand the interest in baseload generation but don't see why there's so much interest in nuclear when low-tech concentrated solar in the desert can get the job done and scaling it up (and ensuring it's 100% safe) isn't a matter of R&D but just basic manufacturing. It strikes me a lot of the nuclear focus is (understandable, if not justifiable) interest in cool new technology.

Ironically, with concentrated solar, going lower tech, even at the expense of efficiency, might decrease costs because the materials would amount to cheap mirrors/collectors and steel pipes. Saul Griffith's classic talk highlighted that there's probably no meaningful manufacturing limit to building concentrated solar with existing industrial infrastructure:

https://longnow.org/seminars/02009/jan/16/climate-change-recalculated/

Btw, the chants from the book are real (and part of the interludes if you get the audiobook - which I recommend since the initially boring but ultimately important parts it aren't skippable without effort).

https://soundcloud.com/ztutz/sets/iolet-music-from-the-world-of-anathem

The Thousander Chant is fun if you've got the right audio setup.

https://longnow.org/store/iolet/

> In Neal Stephenson’s new novel Anathem, the Decanarian Erasmus’ daily chore is to ring the Clock bells in his “Math” in a special sequence each day as he chants out the sequence. Those sequences and chants are all based on mathematical formulae that composer and coder David Stutz has put together into an album called Iolet.

This is great! Especially nice to hear as I'd been all to aware of the advice to not rewrite your whole codebase once you raise some money as that's an easy way to tank the company. As a result I have probably erred to much on the type of refactoring he compares this to.

More recently I have been more aligned with the shredding approach. I think one of the reasons that it works that isn't mentioned here, is that often you only really know what's needed after finishing the first implementation and/or using it for a while.

I'm also reminded me of the Japanese practice of rebuilding a temple every 20 years: https://longnow.org/ideas/long-term-building-in-japan/