DarkRange55
We are now gods but for the wisdom
- Oct 15, 2023
- 2,042
We watched hypersonic missiles slam into a modern city on TV and one of the world's most remarkable civilizations the Persians take direct hits from both Israel and the US. The idea that the Jews and Persians are both still here is pretty dramatic. But most of us are too young to remember that during the Cold War it was constant tension because there were two players.
There was a six-month period between November 1952 and April 1953 where we unlocked the power of the nucleus because we could fuse hydrogen. And then figured out the three dimensional structure of nucleic acid in the form of a double helix. We have access to the two most powerful levers humanity has ever had or perhaps ever will. And we're just not in a position to deal with this.
We did use fission devices but we didn't use fusion devices, and they're completely different scales. We don't know for example at least covid may have had its origins in a bioweapons program. So at some level we're playing with levers and tools that are so powerful. The key ingredient that made covid so unique was a four amino acid sequence inserted into spike protein. So that's 12 nucleotides coding for four amino acids shut down planet earth for a couple of years. Thats how powerful this is. There are very few things that have that much leverage. In 2017 there was a white paper called "Attention is All You Need," which introduced the Transformer model, a new way for AI to process language. Instead of analyzing words one by one, Transformers use "attention" to focus on the most relevant parts of a sentence all at once. This paper that you can read by 8 authors changed everything. Satoshi in 2008/2009 with the solution to the distributed double spend problem where you could effectively port conservation laws from the physical world into the digital world giving us "digital gold." These ideas that have such high-leverage are making us ever more powerful but without any increased attention to our wisdom to wield these things.
We didn't know what drone warfare looked like, this is the beginning. We didn't know what hypersonic missiles looked like when they slam into a population center.
We had relative peace over the last 30 years especially in the western world. There is always a threat but just figure it out.
People who went through the Great Depression, World War II. In China people who went through Mao's Great Leap Forward. Most of us have no idea what a real pandemic like a Spanish Flu or a Black Plague is like. We don't know what Poland went through when they lost 20-25% of their population to war. Look at the statistics on the Battle of Stalingrad.
We're all trapped here under one atmosphere with 9 individuals (leaders of nuclear-armed nations) who could all wakeup on the wrong side of the bed and say, "ah! Today's the day!"
We had an election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Look the turmoil going on in the UK. UK is a very nuclear country. And wjat about France? The mayoral race for NY. Look at the mess in Gaza, Russia is nuclear, Israel is presumably nuclear, Pakistan and India are nuclear, the US is nuclear, Iran is almost nuclear. China is pissed off about Iran because it was trying to make a play through the region. North Korea is watching. Look at how much is happening with AI and robotics. Everything was really stagnant. Go into a room, subtract the screens and forget about style - how do you know you're not in 1973? Things were just really stagnant for a very long time and during the period of stagnation we had this narrative, the dizzying pace of change. Making it almost impossible to keep up when things were stagnant. So it shows you this weird way in which our minds can be programmed to completely ignore what we're experiencing.
For climate-
A wash - more usable land in Canada and Russia, but also more deserts .
But cheap desalination would make deserts much more usable.
Current boreal forest becomes farmable, current tundra becomes new boreal forest. The soil is pretty thin, but it will build up over decades if managed well.
This will roughly balance current scrublands becoming desert and current dry farmland becoming scrubby rangeland.
There was a six-month period between November 1952 and April 1953 where we unlocked the power of the nucleus because we could fuse hydrogen. And then figured out the three dimensional structure of nucleic acid in the form of a double helix. We have access to the two most powerful levers humanity has ever had or perhaps ever will. And we're just not in a position to deal with this.
We did use fission devices but we didn't use fusion devices, and they're completely different scales. We don't know for example at least covid may have had its origins in a bioweapons program. So at some level we're playing with levers and tools that are so powerful. The key ingredient that made covid so unique was a four amino acid sequence inserted into spike protein. So that's 12 nucleotides coding for four amino acids shut down planet earth for a couple of years. Thats how powerful this is. There are very few things that have that much leverage. In 2017 there was a white paper called "Attention is All You Need," which introduced the Transformer model, a new way for AI to process language. Instead of analyzing words one by one, Transformers use "attention" to focus on the most relevant parts of a sentence all at once. This paper that you can read by 8 authors changed everything. Satoshi in 2008/2009 with the solution to the distributed double spend problem where you could effectively port conservation laws from the physical world into the digital world giving us "digital gold." These ideas that have such high-leverage are making us ever more powerful but without any increased attention to our wisdom to wield these things.
We didn't know what drone warfare looked like, this is the beginning. We didn't know what hypersonic missiles looked like when they slam into a population center.
We had relative peace over the last 30 years especially in the western world. There is always a threat but just figure it out.
People who went through the Great Depression, World War II. In China people who went through Mao's Great Leap Forward. Most of us have no idea what a real pandemic like a Spanish Flu or a Black Plague is like. We don't know what Poland went through when they lost 20-25% of their population to war. Look at the statistics on the Battle of Stalingrad.
We're all trapped here under one atmosphere with 9 individuals (leaders of nuclear-armed nations) who could all wakeup on the wrong side of the bed and say, "ah! Today's the day!"
We had an election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Look the turmoil going on in the UK. UK is a very nuclear country. And wjat about France? The mayoral race for NY. Look at the mess in Gaza, Russia is nuclear, Israel is presumably nuclear, Pakistan and India are nuclear, the US is nuclear, Iran is almost nuclear. China is pissed off about Iran because it was trying to make a play through the region. North Korea is watching. Look at how much is happening with AI and robotics. Everything was really stagnant. Go into a room, subtract the screens and forget about style - how do you know you're not in 1973? Things were just really stagnant for a very long time and during the period of stagnation we had this narrative, the dizzying pace of change. Making it almost impossible to keep up when things were stagnant. So it shows you this weird way in which our minds can be programmed to completely ignore what we're experiencing.
For climate-
A wash - more usable land in Canada and Russia, but also more deserts .
But cheap desalination would make deserts much more usable.
Current boreal forest becomes farmable, current tundra becomes new boreal forest. The soil is pretty thin, but it will build up over decades if managed well.
This will roughly balance current scrublands becoming desert and current dry farmland becoming scrubby rangeland.
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