Miscellaneous

[Derek McGowan]

A few questions and topics under one roof:

1. The world is running out of gold

http://gizmodo.com/the-world-is-running-out-of-gold-1579512815

2. A poll-

Which group do you think has produce more advances (this includes scientific, technological, social, and all other human endeavors that require research and commitment) - a group which we will call the "merely curious" which include those who have followed their dreams on weekends, the idle rich, those who create tools primarily for their own use, which are then "discovered" by others and brought to the masses, academics using grants to study stuff just for the sake of publishing or curiosity, etc

or

a group a group we will call "desperation is the mother of all invention" which includes those who invent or create because it is mandated (such as they get the order from a boss), those trying to become rich, academics who need to publish to retain their jobs, those individuals or businesses that are in competition with others, Someone whose usual tool just broke and they are running out of time to complete x job, generally those facing various pressures to perform.

3. I was talking to a friend who founded and built up a printing company, becoming the largest in the state until last year when they closed their doors for good- the shrinking of the industry- and it made me think of so many people we hear about and know that worked 30 years in a industry only to have said industry collapse 10 years before their retirement. It then made me think of the future. Will anything be stable? industries will/are rise and fall at an accelerated rate. It may get to the point where someone goes to school for a certain career and by the time they get out, that career is already gone. Will businesses invest in building assembly lines when that assembly line may lie idle in a few years time. Will the goal no longer be to get a good long lasting job, but to pull as much money out of an industry as fast as possible before it goes away?

4. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

[Selene]

Derrick:

About two (2) or three (3) decades ago, I saw a fabulous C-span presentation about the "futrure of work."

I have not been able to find it, however, it was powerful.

Came close to your questions and this was quite a while ago.

A...

[Mikee]

A lot of sci fi of the last several decades have addressed these questions. The only certainty is things will always change. The science and technology developed in our time is a gift to future generations. Eventually the basic needs of people for food, shelter, energy, transportation, information, will be met with a trivial amount of effort through automation and artificial intelligence. Probably the population will fall dramatically. People may be very long lived, there will be few children, the arts and philosophy and study of nature will be the major interests. The mysteries of physics will be pretty much solved through the use of artificial intelligence. The political situation could be anything from no government to a technocratic elite with absolute power, virtually invulnerable due to control of the technology.

[moralist]

#3:

One alternative approach to going into debt to pay for years of sitting in class in order to enter one specialized field which may be obsolete by the time you get there, is to acquire a skill set which can be applied to a multitude of fields. This outside the box approach leaves a person free to innovate, because innovation is what allows people the freedom to adapt themselves so as to flourish and to prosper in a changing, even catastrophic, economic environment around them.

Nassim Taleb calls this quality antifragility:

1. Stress destroys that which is fragile.

2. Stress does not destroy that which is robust.

3. Stress makes stronger that which is antifragile.

Humans have the potential to become antifragile if they choose to cultivate that ability in themselves...

...but that can only come about by giving up seeking security outside of themselves.

The futility of seeking security in a nonsecure world is the hallmark of the failure to become a man. By default the security seeker becomes a useless unproductive puer aeternus looking for his mommy to take care of him. That "mommy" frequently ends up being a government public union.

The cancerous growth of government is directly related to security seeking failures.

Greg

[Derek McGowan]

thanks for answers so far

I left one out...

5. what is your definition of monopoly. Yaron has convinced me that monopolies cannot exist long term because someone will invent a competing technology so for instance Comcast cant have a monopoly on internet (even after the merger with TimeWarner) because cable is also disseminated through phone lines, satellite and over the air waves. BUT could Comcast have a monopoly over "internet through cable" ? I don't know if that counts as a monopoly but maybe it does....