In string theory in the mid-1980s, there was a moment when they thought, not just that they had found the theory of everything, but that they might be able to prove it. Only one “realistic” string vacuum was known, so all they had to do was calculate the particle masses, and they’d be done… Forty years and a googolplex possible worlds later, attitudes are rather more cautious now.
I would be interested to know what the high point of optimism associated with FTX was. Bankman-Fried was discussed as a future trillionaire, he was hanging out with regulators and bailing out other crypto enterprises… Were there, say, people who combined crypto maximalism and Democrat progressivism to dream that FTX might catalyze the transformation of the USA into the heart of an EA-centered global civilization, which in turn could become the nucleus of a hedon-maximizing galactic civilization?
In string theory in the mid-1980s, there was a moment when they thought, not just that they had found the theory of everything, but that they might be able to prove it. Only one “realistic” string vacuum was known, so all they had to do was calculate the particle masses, and they’d be done… Forty years and a googolplex possible worlds later, attitudes are rather more cautious now.
I would be interested to know what the high point of optimism associated with FTX was. Bankman-Fried was discussed as a future trillionaire, he was hanging out with regulators and bailing out other crypto enterprises… Were there, say, people who combined crypto maximalism and Democrat progressivism to dream that FTX might catalyze the transformation of the USA into the heart of an EA-centered global civilization, which in turn could become the nucleus of a hedon-maximizing galactic civilization?