TED
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2016–2025
19:46 · 173K views · Jan 16, 2007
David Deutsch's TED talk arguing that humanity's survival depends on solving problems through knowledge growth. He frames people as improbable "chemical scum" capable of understanding distant quasars.
Cited for its optimistic argument that there are few limits to knowledge and human progress.
3 comments from Hacker News
1. It won't effect it. Considering that the entire current human population could fit into France or Germany at about the same density as some parts in SE Asia. Not saying this is desirable. But consider how many people could live in the entire solar system? Ultimately in intergalactic space: this video [LINK] 2. Any neuroplasticity loss due to biological aging is itself accumulated damage which will have to be repaired as part of life extension. 3. Human evolution is now overwhelmingly the evolution not of genes but of ideas/culture/memes. 4. That's for an individual to decide. At the moment there are plenty of old people who can apparently think of no reason to live but they hide the fact. They are in effect waiting around to die. They eventually go to hospital and care home for a few years before death which entails a fair bit of suffering and costs a lot of money. This is a sad and somewhat cruel situation in my opinion. 5. I bet that the cheapest way to treat things like heart disease and cancer will turn out to be life extension technology (i.e. damage repair). So you may have to decide not to get treatment for things which are currently routinely treated by conventional means. Of course you might still fall down the stairs...
Since we all seem to be in a sharing mood... Also a guy -- no beard -- but (and I'm not joking here)... I watched that exact trailer just now and teared up a little. As for movies, I have two examples: Up (pure emotion) and The Fountain -- the scene towards the end where he talks to the high priest and Clint Mansell's music takes over. For me, I think it's generally sort of really EPIC things that do it. Really huge scales also tend to do it, for example some of the star size comparisons, or David Deutsch's talk about relativistic jets[1], or just contemplating the fact that some black holes swallow a solar mass per day . Sometimes it's just "beauty", e.g. I couldn't help tearing up when Carolyn Porco showed the "Saturn Eclipse"[2] picture in her Ted Talk[3]. Some of that, I think, was because of the realization that we humans had actually sent a thing out there to take that picture. (Btw, I think I'm generally considered a bit of a cold fish among my friends/acquaintances, FWIW. Humans are weird.) [1] this video [2] [LINK] (WARNING: Image is HUGE!) [3] [LINK] (I won't link you to the exact time because the video deserves to be seen its entirety. If you really want to skip, skip to 15m15s.)
There are virtually no limits (for Mandelbrot and computing in general) because there are few limits on the growth of knowledge [5]. In a few decades we will have learned to take CO2 (carbon dioxide) molecules out of the air [4] and rearrange the carbon atoms in 3D structures atom by atom [6]. We will be able to grow the transistors and the solar cells virtually for free. Energy will be virtually free, a squandrable abundance of free and clean energy [2]. At that point we will start automatically self-assembling Dyson Swarms constructions of solar cells with transistors on the back [1] on the Quebibyte scale to capture all the solar output of the sun [3] and get near-infinite compute for free. We would finally be able to explore the Mandelbrot space at full depth within our lifetime. [1] [LINK] and [LINK] [2] Bob Metcalfe Ethernet [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] Richard Feynman Plenty of Room at the Bottom [LINK] [5] David Deutsch: Chemical scum that dream of distant quasars this video [6] [LINK] and [LINK]