Doing stuff has consequences. But that doesn’t make it impossible to do the stuff, though it might make it very inconvenient?
Bastiaan
Karma: 54
But what kind of stuff can you just do?
Some thoughts pointing to slower AI take-off
I believe that spaceships use cooling fans to radiate off excess heat. Earth is nothing but a spaceship so I don’t see why we couldn’t shed heat this way if it were to become necessary.
Humans (v1.0, us) have a limited bandwidth for information intake and processing; what is left to “want” once you saturate that? This to me implies that there is also a limit to desires.
One of the things that I find helpful is to see how similar people who like X are to myself. I’m currently considering a career change and I can identify three important parts of this career. In one I’m very similar to people I know in this career, in another I find it hard to say how similar I am and in a third I’m quite dissimilar. And because of this I see a fairly big risk (I have high uncertainty about) me enjoying this career.
It has been my experience that it’s impossible to convince someone of something. However, it is sometimes possible to help them convince themselves. What is needed for that is a genuine interest in their position. Why do they believe what they believe? And through asking questions (not by giving arguments!) It sometimes happens that they think about something that they never considered before, which loosens their firmly held belief by a bit.
The “risk” of this is that you might get answers that you weren’t expecting, ones that actually make sense and you’ll find yourself taking a step in their direction.
When that happens however the conversation tends to open up even more, the other person will feel that you really are interested in learning and not convincing. When you try to convince people become defensive. When you try to learn they own up.
Interesting idea, but sparse on how you’d actually achieve this. What is your vision for what an MVP would actually do?
And, If you succeed, what stops this from becoming evil after all? Writing “Don’t be evil” helps, but it’s not enough.
How are you going to make money off of this? Without money there is a real risk of something slowly dying out.
Good luck!
I don’t think currency is a -unit- of value, in fact I don’t think such a thing can exist. Value for me means, “what would you be willing to give up to obtain something?” Value is subjective; a glass of water generally has close to zero value but if you’re stranded in the desert it will have an extremely high value.
And this way value can be created: I have lots of glasses of water in this desert, you have none. You give me your kingdom and I give you a glass and we both give up less value than we get.
I agree that it’s good to get rejected often. But if you’re trying to get rejected often you might fail and not get rejected. And end up with 5 new friends, 3 internships, a new job, 4 dates and a dog. All of which take up time, next to the things you’re already occupied with. So it’s good to apply for things, but only if you have the capacity to actually follow up on them.
There doesn’t seem to be any technical issue with making this both democratic and independent: have a direct election for central bank boards? This creates a divide with “normal” politics and creates more democracy.
How do you see this resulting in markets going up?
Technically any option is a volatility bet (from the view of the seller at least). But if you believe that volatility is going to increase then VIX is much easier.
Winter is coming (hah!) which will mean more heating. That could well have been priced in already, but probably not all of it. Two potentially counteracting forces make it hard to predict what might happen. Also, -if- you’re going to travel you want to do it with your own car and not with public transport so there is a story where gasoline use actually increases. Finally, aren’t oil prices mostly supply driven?
Leisure / travel I get, but why would energy be especially impacted?
People getting COVID on its own won’t affect large companies much. But the economy tanking because of lockdowns / people being afraid to go out most certainly will affect big companies. And the likelihood of this affecting the real economy is quite large in my opinion: (smaller) companies have been burning through their reserves, banks getting all their loans back is becoming less likely. Add another shock to the system and I wouldn’t be surprised if panic hits. And given that the economy is already shell-shocked I also wouldn’t be surprised if we see a larger crash than the last time around.
Add to this that stock prices don’t reflect NPV perfectly, especially in the short term: “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”.
I’m still considering my possibilities but I’m thinking about liquidating a large part of my investment portfolio and taking -some- of that money to buy puts.
Of course this means having to have some idea of -when- a downturn might set in. OP mentions June, but my feeling is that this will happen much earlier and so earlier options might be in order. My thoughts are going towards buying February and / or March puts.
I have a pretty clear story line how this leads to a crash. What would need to happen for this -not- to lead to a crash?
Or you can crank up inflation, which is very easy to do as history attests.
But that only impacts this artificial thing called GDP, not the thing OP is interested in? Though I’m not entirely sure what that thing is exactly
Probably true. And even then I don’t see any reason why there would be an interest in increasing the world population by that much. But it’s a technological possibility...
Having more children the natural way would do the trick, but that’s not a technological solution, which was what was being asked for?
But again, this “only” increases GDP, not GDP per capita. It wouldn’t actually change anybody’s living standards.
Cloning. Increase world population by 9% per year and you’ll add 9% in GDP fairly easily.
Which also points to GDP per capita being a more interesting measure?
Two things:
There is an unspoken (though for me personally clearly felt) corollary to “You can just do things”: “and you will have to accept the consequences”. Mostly those consequences are way less severe than we imagine / fear (which is why we have the saying in the first place). But they are never zero.
Following from this and related to your examples: These to me are great mistakes to make! Yes, they absolutely suck. And also, they give the possibility to learn how the world works, to learn to say sorry, to learn where -real- boundaries are.