Before you die, what do you want to see become a reality

[mfb]

Boredom and long life usually don't refer to 1000 years - it is no problem to find something new for 1000 years. It's probably possible for a million, or even a billion years. But if you consider "true" immortality (you cannot die, even if you want to), eventually you are running out of new things you can discover, or you have to forget at the same rate you see things, and get stuck in some sort of endless loop.

 

[dlgoff]

Boredom and long life usually don't refer to 1000 years - it is no problem to find something new for 1000 years. It's probably possible for a million, or even a billion years. But if you consider "true" immortality (you cannot die, even if you want to), eventually you are running out of new things you can discover, or you have to forget at the same rate you see things, and get stuck in some sort of endless loop.

my bold

Truth? That happens way sooner than 1000 years. Or even 100 years.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I don't want to wander off into sci-fi territory here but I'd add memory enhancement to the longevity wish list. At least that's been one of the things I've had in mind when I said healthy life extension.

 

[mfb]

my bold

Truth? That happens way sooner than 1000 years. Or even 100 years.

Certainly with everyday experiences (there is no point in detailed memory for every time you tied your shoes anyway) , but not with exceptional things.

 

[dlgoff]

Certainly with everyday experiences (there is no point in detailed memory for every time you tied your shoes anyway) , but not with exceptional things.

Yea. You're right. I remember the how cool it was that Peter Higgs was at the CERN announcement of the finding of the Higgs Boson but I have to look down to see if I've put my shoes on.

 

[Akaisora]

Nothing beats living in a futuristic utopia.

 

[lisab]

Nothing beats living in a futuristic utopia.

Ask the folks living 1000 years ago -- we're there, buddy, beyond their wildest dreams .

 

[cdux]

Nothing. Human progress will never end so if you have the illusion that you will be happy if you see some innovations you are wrong. If you see alien life you will then wonder if you will meet intelligent life, and if you see a CPU doing 100x the work of those now you will then wonder if one does 1000x the work. You will never be happy following that path. Innovation will not end and it will always be approaching infinity.

Well, that's practically wrong since the Universe has a finite life cycle, at least in this iteration, but in this iteration, it's still a baby.

Besides, you can already imagine some of those things being actually real. e.g. who seriously believes alien life doesn't exist? It's so likely that even intelligent life is extremely likely to the point of being certain.

I think a better path to happiness is knowledge. Deep knowledge. Knowing that what is going on is part of reality in such a fundamental level of understanding that you are no longer a slave of it or one that has the illusion of a God that controls it, but that you are a camera looking at it clearly and saying "yeah, that's what's going on".

After all, do you really need power? All you need is inclusion.

 

[mfb]

Nothing. Human progress will never end so if you have the illusion that you will be happy if you see some innovations you are wrong.

I see innovations on a daily basis, and I think this is really awesome. Bigger innovations are more awesome, and some of them happened within my lifetime. It is not an illusion, it is a fact.
Example

If you see alien life you will then wonder if you will meet intelligent life, and if you see a CPU doing 100x the work of those now you will then wonder if one does 1000x the work. You will never be happy following that path. Innovation will not end and it will always be approaching infinity.

That just means there are more awesome things to discover.

Besides, you can already imagine some of those things being actually real. e.g. who seriously believes alien life doesn't exist? It's so likely that even intelligent life is extremely likely to the point of being certain.

There is a huge difference between the hypothesis of life elsewhere and an actual discovery - or even communication with them.

I think a better path to happiness is knowledge. Deep knowledge. Knowing that what is going on is part of reality in such a fundamental level of understanding that you are no longer a slave of it or one that has the illusion of a God that controls it, but that you are a camera looking at it clearly and saying "yeah, that's what's going on".

That is connected to innovations.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

who seriously believes alien life doesn't exist? It's so likely that even intelligent life is extremely likely to the point of being certain.

Life or intelligent life? Either way we have only one example of a planet housing both and we don't have sufficient understanding of abiogenesis and evolution to place a probability that an identical primordial Earth would give rise to either (the Fl and Fi in the Drake equation). It could be that those two values are so high that it is statistically unlikely that there is life anywhere else in the universe, or it might not be. There isn't enough data to suggest it is likely one way or the other.

 

[NextElement]

I'd LOVE to see a new, SAFE, renewable energy source so society can stray away from fossil fuels. I'm no environmentalist, but I think everyone can understand the benefits of renewable energy.

My high school biology teacher was just telling us today how he went to a nanotechnology conference, and they had teams build small cars that ran on hydrogen. When I asked why they couldn't do this with full size vehicles, he said because hydrogen is explosive... Isn't gasoline explosive too?

 

[mfb]

Hydrogen at room temperature is a gas, tanks in cars would have hydrogen with a high pressure. A mixture of hydrogen and oxygen is extremely dangerous.
Gasoline evaporates if it can, but the tank itself is not under pressure and it is not as bad as hydrogen.

 

[Pythagorean]

A place to stay
"Oi! A real one ..."
Enough to eat
Somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street
Where you can speak out loud
About your doubts and fears
And what's more no-one ever disappears
You never hear their standard issue kicking in your door.
You can relax on both sides of the tracks
And maniacs don't blow holes in bandsmen by remote control
And everyone has recourse to the law
And no-one kills the children anymore.
And no one kills the children anymore.

 

[OmCheeto]

A place to stay
"Oi! A real one ..."
Enough to eat
Somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street
Where you can speak out loud
About your doubts and fears
And what's more no-one ever disappears
You never hear their standard issue kicking in your door.
You can relax on both sides of the tracks
And maniacs don't blow holes in bandsmen by remote control
And everyone has recourse to the law
And no-one kills the children anymore.
And no one kills the children anymore.

hmmm...

And there I thought I was the only person who read too much into music.

I don't remember this song. I shall listen to it tonight.

Unless of course, I die, before I get to my place to stay.

But I doubt I'll die tonight.

...

We shall talk in the morning.

 

[Evo]

Before I die, I'd like to see people finally understand what the internet is and isn't. Not one person I've run across online actually knows. Of course, since I worked for the company that invented the concept with the US government and worked in it for the past 3+ decades, I know.

It's not a "thing", it thousands of companies and governments all contributing pieces of data connections.

It's not a "right".

Politicians have no clue what the internet is, they go by what people tell them, usually special interest lobbyists.

Then there are individuals and companies that create websites that can be accessed through the myriad data connections that form parts of what we call "the internet". They are not the "internet".

 

[OmCheeto]

...
We shall talk in the morning.

Watched a video of the song.
Yes, these last 100 years, have been brutal.
...
Reloading...
Things I want to see... hrmmm...

All lawyers must die!

hmmmm...

Wait! That was Shakespeare... Never mind...
------------------------
I can hear the drones, already...

 

[cdux]

I see innovations on a daily basis, and I think this is really awesome

Yeah the thing is all this optimism is something I took into account. What you didn't take into account is that the coin has a second side, pessimism, if you don't get your fix soon. A habit that gives a high doesn't only give highs, it also gives lows.

You probably misunderstood my way of thinking though. I mainly criticized spectators. I think being the actual innovator is the real joyful thing, even if sometimes you fail, people are hardwired to want to struggle (it explains how all Billionaires still work at the age of 80+). But if they just stand in front of a screen waiting for innovations to come merely as spectators they will have highs and they will have lows. And frankly they will have more lows if they are too fixated. e.g. I'm waiting now for new GPUs to come out and it's such a long process (move it TSMC!).

They are not the "internet".

The thing is besides the historical origin or even some of the current infrastructure, in practice a country can now just disconnect from the rest of the world and have its own internal network. So in my view, the internet is nothing but a 'network'. I don't really have to qualify it further since that's the main quality of it, that it networks computers in an area. If the internet - as you define it - disappeared, then we'd miss mainly the lack of networking, rather than the underlying technological details or its historical origin, even if some of those details are in some cases defining (e.g. the quality of having an IP address whenever you connect anywhere.)

 

[Lsos]

Why do I have have to carry 5 freaking keys around in my pocket at all times? Is it too much to ask, this day and age, to not require keys anymore?? Cars have been able to be opened remotely for a long time, but for some reason this hasn't transferred yet to anything else. When will my "smart" phone be able to open all of my doors??

Am I asking too much? I'm not requesting a servant robot or a flying car over here

 

[Digitalism]

human animal hybrids

technological telepathy/telekinesis etc

 

[berkeman]

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