Why can’t cities/countries be run more like exceptional companies? Efficient, innovative, etc.
How far away are we from people like Elon Musk being able to buy some land and build a new city with groundbreaking quality of life?
Would that even ever happen, and why yes or why not?
Locally maybe there is no purpose. But maybe it’s necessary for life to emerge elsewhere, so it could have a larger purpose.
If you isolate a napkin, it has no purpose but as soon as you need to wipe you mouth it acquires one. So maybe purpose is relative.
But yeah, looking at my original post, I’m trying to compare the purpose of the universe with the purpose of humans, which doesn’t necessarily overlap
I think it might also depend on your goals. Like how fast you want to learn something. If you have less than ideal time, then maybe more structured learning is necessary. If you have more time then periods of structureless/passive learning could be beneficial.
Is the purpose of the universe evolution?
I often think about why we’re here -and of course the roman empire. And while it might be tempting to think that the purpose of life is to be happy or content, I think the over arching theme of the world is evolution. Repeating cycles of creation and destruction: biological life, planets, solar systems, black holes, etc.
It’s almost a little grim. That maybe, the reason we’re here is for the end product. Just like a farmer plants a tree for the fruit. But I guess the in-between steps are no less beautiful than then finished result. Same as the journey being as meaningful as the destination.
Wouldn’t you agree though, that one should probably not always do the number1effective thing? Can we even really say confidently which thing is most effective?
How does the brain data not get corrupt when waking up randomly at night? I’m assuming during sleep the brain is changing and reorganising data.
I think we might be valuing the importance of each step based on personal experience. But maybe they’re both equally important. ex. What’s more important for a cake, buying the ingredients or cooking it?
How can one improve the “mating dance” ?
What is your point?
Of course you will have to go through the rest of process, but you just solved the most critical step.
I believe, the fact that they might not want to know the outcomes, due to potentially complex legal procedures the effort they would have to exert to protect users better doesn’t make it hard, it makes the companies selfish.
Looking the other way and claiming ignorance because you don’t want to deal with the legal implications of your product potentially causing harm is really horrible.
EDIT: Happy to hear the disagreements here.
Yeah we would definitely need to reach a level of Artificial Intelligence at least equal to human for this to work well.
And you’re right that debugging would be out the window, but assuming a smart AGI, that should not be a problem.
As for the advertising, I’m sure it could still be part of the interface somehow. I also don’t see advertising going away anytime soon, but I haven’t put much thought into it.
Imagine a dynamic user interface generated in real-time by AI. Isn’t that the future of UI?
Imagine WhatsApp being different for everyone. Or Facebook being different for everyone. Apps themselves would kinda lose their meaning and maybe just the backend would remain.
This would probably unify apps into one single UI where a message is a message, no matter where it’s coming from.
What do you think?
I like this perspective. I guess I was seeing “becoming a celebrity” as a choice of some sort or a separate thing. But it does seem that the problem is entertainment, and there is a big spectrum of people trying to solve it with different means.
Looking at it like that, trying to solve entertainment is definitely not a bad thing. Just maybe less effective at saving/improving lives than some other career paths.
Would be interesting to somehow compare the impact of a doctor/philanthropist to an entertainer.
Either way, thanks for sharing!
No yeah, you would probably need to collect the data yourself. But that should not be that hard. Do you think AI would currently be capable of actually matching people correctly, given the right data?
These are tiny issues you are mentioning. The hardest thing to make is the AI.
If you have the algorithm for “perfect” matchmaking. You can just advertise the hell out of it, put a limit for the minimum number of users for the platform to work (100K?) and once that’s reached activate it, match people, everyone is ecstatic to meet the love of their life there → more publicity → more people sign up → success.
I think people would be willing to pay a LOT of money, for “perfect” matches.
@Dagon Indulge me in a hypothetical. Let’s say the average person gets to know one new person a day (which is probably an exaggeration). 365 new people a year. half of them probably the wrong sex (182) 1⁄3 is the wrong age (120). 8⁄10 they don’t find attractive (24). 2⁄3 don’t like them back (6).
That’s 1 person every 2 months that you like and likes you back. And that’s even before you go an a date, and all the things that could mess that up.
Now imagine if you had 10 of those people every month. 10 people that you like, and like you back and want the same things as you, at least in theory.
I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to go on dates with compatible people they find attractive.
Now sure, that wouldn’t solve the psychological issues and traumas, or knowing to be a good partner, but at least people would be able to experiment and learn. I feel like now, people have kind of given up because it’s so hard to find good matches.
How can you learn to play the guitar if you only have access to it once a month?
What would it take to bring Apple down?
Not in a malicious way. Just like empires fall, or businesses fail. What would it take, or what would need to happen? Apple seems to be growing, and doing many things right.
What is the (counterfactual) impact of a celebrity? Like, how much good does it bring to the world when someone becomes a star singer, actor, athlete?
Sure they can entertain, they can inspire, they can donate money, they can raise awareness for different issues.
But there can also be a lot of narcissism and selfishness and entitlement.
I’m trying to imagine someone dedicating their life to acting, singing or sports… and it just feels like such a waste of time, when there’s so many problems in the world that need solving. How does one make that choice? Is there a logical argument for it?
In a future where we have conscious control over our dopamine system, why would we do anything?
Even caring for others taps into our pleasure center and is something that makes us feel good. But without the pleasure bias, why would we do anything?
What would be the goal and why?
Literally everything is colored by our emotions. So without them, what decides our actions? I guess logic would be the logical answer, but logic is just a tool emotions are the driving force.
Maybe survival could be one high-level goal, and also evolution. Both are not necessarily dependent on emotions.
Meaning you can logically make a case for why it’s important for life to survive in the universe: if it doesn’t survive, then there’s no point in the whole thing. Same goes for evolution: there’s no point in a static universe.
Maybe I could go deeper here;
Could there be a point to life going extinct? I don’t see one inside our universe. Maybe outside the universe, there are different things at play that would change the answer but without that information it seems to me unlikely.
Could there be a point to a static universe? It seems evolution and change is sort of built-in. There would be no benefit to life just existing. But there could be a benefit to life evolving; figuring things out, understanding how everything works, but still this doesn’t get to the bottom of it: why is it a good goal to evolve?
And also, why is it important for there to even be a point? Pff i’m even more confused now.