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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

(www.ycombinator.com)
1106 points sama | 2 comments | 15 Sep 16 18:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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astazangasta[dead post] ◴[15 Sep 16 18:40 UTC] No.12508638[source]▶
Of course Elon Musk thinks that AI and brain interfaces are the most important things to work on, that's all that is holding back his raging space boner. Meanwhile, a large part of the world is still using Iron Age technology to get by with the bulk of their lives.

The most important work of "How to Build the Future" is political work - reforming our property relations, for example, so that we aren't organizing our economic lives around feudal holdovers like land titles. Who gives a shit if Elon Musk can connect his brain to the Internet and live forever as a sentient AI, while the rest of humanity drinks ditch water and lives small, dull lives?

JoshTriplett ◴[15 Sep 16 18:51 UTC] No.12508735[source]▶
The delta from "people die" to "people no longer die" is a massive technological problem. By comparison, once we have that technology, making it available to everyone is many orders of magnitude easier, and much easier to get funding for. Do you really believe, given a cure for mortality, that we couldn't get it to the rest of the world in much less time than it took to develop in the first place?

And with that in place, thousands of other smaller problems evaporate along with it.

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idlewords ◴[15 Sep 16 18:55 UTC] No.12508765[source]▶
Much more likely than a hotfix for death is a world where there are very, very expensive treatments that allow wealthy people to extend their lives by some significant amount.

That's not going to be a fun world to live in, especially if the treatments requires biological raw materials that the destitute can sell.

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emmett ◴[15 Sep 16 19:05 UTC] No.12508857[source]▶
Historically, expensive treatments for the rich have become universal treatments for everyone over time.

What makes you believe that life extension will be any different? Or, if you disagree that expensive treatments generally stay expensive, what are your examples?

I agree we could have a temporary awkward period in the middle, say 20 years, where it's not cheap yet. But on the scale of history that's a short period of time...I'll admit that's cold comfort to those who die in the meantime.

(See: antibiotics, insulin, appendectomies, lasik, ...)

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idlewords ◴[15 Sep 16 19:19 UTC] No.12508989[source]▶
My counterexample is a facelift.
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taeric ◴[15 Sep 16 20:09 UTC] No.12509415[source]▶
How do facelifts extend life? I thought they were purely cosmetic.
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1. dredmorbius ◴[16 Sep 16 01:16 UTC] No.12511254[source]▶
If I'm interpreting properly: that's the point.
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2. taeric ◴[16 Sep 16 03:54 UTC] No.12511715[source]▶
I interpreted the main claim to be "expensive life extending procedures..." I think if you drop the "life extending," then bringing up facelifts makes sense. Otherwise... it doesn't really seem to fit into the debate in a meaningful way.