Yeah, with his talents he could have become the richest man in the world. Oh wait…
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Elon Musk
- Thread starter graham
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Yeah, with his talents he could have become the richest man in the world. Oh wait…
Phrugal Phan
MYLR 2022 Blue/Black w/FSD
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
Stuart Watson
Member
Perhaps because he feels:
(i) free speech is essential for progress
(ii) Twitter is such a badly run business it will only take a few steps to greatly improve it.
He’s right, on both counts of course.
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Looks like Elon and this guy think alike
What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill review – a thrilling prescription for humanity
This is the ultimate moral force of longtermism: we should save the climate, control AI and stop pandemics not only to prevent the suffering of current or imminent generations, but because the end of humanity would mean trillions of potential happy lives going unlived. (And those lives could be really happy. The best quality of life today would have been unthinkable even for kings or queens in centuries past – so what if we’re in a similar position with respect to future flourishing?)
It follows too that, all else being equal, we should want the world’s population to grow; we should want to colonise space, so that more and more lives can flourish; and (though MacAskill is no opponent of reproductive rights) we should see having children as a way of making a positive contribution to the future. The increasingly popular environmental argument against parenthood rests, obviously, on a pessimistic assumption about the role your potential children might play in helping to create a better world. But it also fails to reckon with the potential human happiness you’re removing from the future – your children’s happiness, and those of their children, and their children’s children.
The overall promise of this thrilling book is of a life both less burdened by ethical guilt – by beating yourself up over every choice of groceries or transportation – and much more effective at actually helping humanity. A life you truly enjoy, and in which you take that enjoyment seriously enough to want the same – or better – for billions more humans to come
What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill review – a thrilling prescription for humanity
This is the ultimate moral force of longtermism: we should save the climate, control AI and stop pandemics not only to prevent the suffering of current or imminent generations, but because the end of humanity would mean trillions of potential happy lives going unlived. (And those lives could be really happy. The best quality of life today would have been unthinkable even for kings or queens in centuries past – so what if we’re in a similar position with respect to future flourishing?)
It follows too that, all else being equal, we should want the world’s population to grow; we should want to colonise space, so that more and more lives can flourish; and (though MacAskill is no opponent of reproductive rights) we should see having children as a way of making a positive contribution to the future. The increasingly popular environmental argument against parenthood rests, obviously, on a pessimistic assumption about the role your potential children might play in helping to create a better world. But it also fails to reckon with the potential human happiness you’re removing from the future – your children’s happiness, and those of their children, and their children’s children.
The overall promise of this thrilling book is of a life both less burdened by ethical guilt – by beating yourself up over every choice of groceries or transportation – and much more effective at actually helping humanity. A life you truly enjoy, and in which you take that enjoyment seriously enough to want the same – or better – for billions more humans to come
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
(3) He's seen WeChat and sees the possibilities for Twitter.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
So, you think Elon is in favor of pandemics?
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
Not in favor of stopping pandemics =/= in favor of pandemics.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
As Elon said pandemics stop naturally because exponential growth cannot continue forever.
Maybe you can point to an action that Elon was in favor of to mitigate the pandemic?
Now maybe he would be in favor of mitigating or stopping a different pandemic but I'm going to wait and see before I bet on that!
mspohr
Well-Known Member
This argument only works if the environment can handle all the extra people. I hear a lot of concern about climate change but from what I see the bigger problem is environmental damage from too many people chasing too few resources.
Pathogens mutate and come around again. The same person can be infected with COVID multiple times.
Viruses can mutate into more lethal forms. That's what happened in 1917 when a more deadly flu strain evolved.
The Black Death was due to a bacteria rather than a virus, but it mutated from a blood born bubonic plague into an airborne pneubonic plague and then killed 1/3 - 1/2 of Europe.
The trendline for most respiratory viruses is to become more benign, but SARS-Cov-2 is a weird virus that has done some weird things. What if we get a COVID variant that says is more aggressive on the central nervous system with the R0 of Omicron? That could be like the Black Death all over the world. It will burn itself out but leave the world reeling.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
Yep, there's definitely a chance we'll get another data point with regards Elon's view on pandemics.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
This has been discussed at length. Basically, the world is on track for fewer people in the future.
Also, the world can support many more people if we stop our unsustainable consumption of fossil fuel and meat.
I've seen Rosling's talks a few times, both the short and long form. He makes a good point that it will stabilize around 10 billion which is about 4-6 billion too many in my estimation. Most of the destruction is happening in the developing world where most people are too poor to eat much meat or burn much fossil fuels.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Still no solution for plastics in the environment, garbage, toxins, and various other forms of human waste which more people will only exacerbate. Fewer people living better lives seems like a more reasonable goal.
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