Purpose, Pleasure, and Meaning in a World Without Work (with Nicholas Bostrom) 5/20/24

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 พ.ค. 2024
  • If you didn’t have to work to enjoy material abundance, would you do it anyway? If an algorithm or a pill could achieve better results, would you bother shopping or going to the gym? These are the kinds of questions we’ll need to ask ourselves if AI makes all human labor and other traditional ways of spending time, obsolete. Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom, author of Deep Utopia, is downright bullish about our ability, not only to adjust to a life stripped of labor, but to thrive. Listen as Bostrom explains to EconTalk’s Russ Roberts what pleasure and leisure might look like in a world without struggle or pain, and why art and religion may come out still standing, or even become more necessary. Finally, they speak about how AI might free us up to be the best people we can be.
    Links, transcript, and more information: www.econtalk.org/purpose-plea...
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    and wherever you listen to podcasts.
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ความคิดเห็น • 15

  • @VeniVidiVid
    @VeniVidiVid 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +5

    Accomplishments tend to be worth what you pay for them. The pleasure of having earned a thing is far deeper than having been given it.
    Perhaps that’s the current day neo-Puritan in me, but having watched quite a few people try to pharmaceutically shortcut themselves into some sort of lasting joy, I recognize how hollow it ends up for them.

    • @VeniVidiVid
      @VeniVidiVid 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      And now, having listened to the entire conversation with Dr. Bostrom, I find myself having a Doctor Pangloss moment.
      If we imagine technology so subtle and powerful as to produce everything we can imagine, including a chance for failure to keep achievements valuable (see the old Twilight Zone TV episode “A Nice Place to Visit”), wouldn’t that simply be the same reality we have, but with different bounds? Isn’t every reality the best possible world within its bounds?

  • @AccountingInstruction
    @AccountingInstruction หลายเดือนก่อน

    Very interesting. I would really like to buy the book on Audible at some point if you plan on putting it up. Maybe I'll check out your last book I see here. Thank you.

  • @farinshore8900
    @farinshore8900 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Are we assuming that AI has solved the problem of wealth distribution ?

  • @farinshore8900
    @farinshore8900 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Are we assuming that human evolution moves at the speed of technological evolution ?

  • @andrewmcpherson8441
    @andrewmcpherson8441 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    I can't help but feel uneasy about the prospect of such a world, this termination of the instrumental. It seems to me that there's something inherently meaningful in overcoming the learning curve, feeling your abilities expand with effort; the sweat and exhilaration of a workout etc. Even if you could take a pill to produce not just the desired body, but accompanying buzz of a workout, would that really sit well with you psychologically? Think of some of the most popular stories, be they films, books, series, narrative video games. So often what we're witnessing is the characters overcome adversity, often seemingly insurmountable. Who doesn't love an underdog?

    • @Kenny-tl7ir
      @Kenny-tl7ir 2 วันที่ผ่านมา

      When you can take a pill to produce your desired body, we will have the technology to change the simulation. I.e. reincarnate your consciousness into a life where this adversity is overcome.

  • @tysonn4736
    @tysonn4736 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    If we re-wire our brains to be different than your evolutionary programming, are we even human beings at that point? Won't that make us something else?

    • @NE0Nwhip
      @NE0Nwhip 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      We're not just evolutionary. Aliens genetically tampered with DNA and created us...

  • @CharlesBrown-xq5ug
    @CharlesBrown-xq5ug 12 วันที่ผ่านมา

    I'm trying to release free-to-the-world plausible hope that civilization can quit the second law of thermodynamics. The second law is behind modern refgeration needing electrical energy to compress the refrigerent to force it to release as waste the heat that it has removed from the refrigerator's service interior in the cooling part of the refrigerent's circulation. There is also discarded heat from mechanical friction.
    Refrigeration by the principle that energy is conserved should produce electricity instead of consuming it.
    It makes more sense that refrigerators should yield electricity because energy is widely known to change form with no ultimate path of energy gain or loss being found. Therefore any form of fully recyclable energy can be cycled endlessly in any quantity.
    In an extreme case senario full heat recycling all electric very isolated underground communities would be highly survivable with self sufficient EMP resistant LED light banks, automated vertical farms, thaw resistant frozen food storehouses, factories, dwellings, and self contained elevators and horizontal transports.
    In a flourishing civillization senario small self sufficient electric or cooling devices of many kinds and styles like lamps smartphones, hotplates, water heaters, cooler chests, fans, radios, TVs, cameras, power hand tools, and personal transports, would be available for immediate use anywhere as people see fit.
    Larger equipment would be built for enterprise use.
    If a high majority thinks our civilization should geoengineer gigatons or
    teratons of carbon dioxide out of our etnvironment, instalations using devices that convert ambient heat into electricity can hypothetically be scaled up do it with a choice of comsequences including many beneficial ones.
    Computers that consume electricity and yield heat would complement energy sensible refrigerators that absorb heat and yield electricity. Computing would be free.
    A simple rectifier crystal can, iust short of a replicatable long term demonstration of a powerful prototype, almost certainly filter the random thermal motion of electrons or discrete positiive charged voids called holes so the electric current flowing in one direction predominates. At low system voltage a filtrate of one polarity predominates only a little but there is always usable electrical power derived from the source, which is Johnson Nyquest thermal electrical noise. This net electrical filtrate can be aggregated in a group of separate diodes in consistent alignment parallel creating widely scalable electrical power. The maximum energy is converted from ambient heat to productive electricity when the electrical load is matched to the array impeadence.
    Matched impeadence output (watts) is k (Boltzman's constant ~1.38^-23), times T (tempeature Kelvin) times bandwidth (0 Hz to a natural limit ~2 THz @ 290 K) times rectification halving and nanowatt power level rectification efficiency times the number of diodes in the array.
    For reference, there are a billion cells of 1000 square nanometer area each per square millimeter, 100 billion per square centimeter.
    Order is imposed on the random thermal motion of electrons by the structual orderlyness of a diode array made of diodes made within a slab:
    v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v
    All the P type semiconductor anodes abut a metal conductive plane deposited on the top face of the slab with nonrectifying joins; all the N type semiconductor cathodes abut the bottom face. As the polarity filtered electrical energy is exported, the amount of thermal energy in the group of diodes decreases. This group cooling will draw heat in from the surrounding ambient heat at a rate depending on the filtering rate and thermal resistance between the group and ambient gas, liquid, or solid warmer than absolute zero. There is a lot of ambient heat on our planet, more in equatorial dry desert summer days and less in polar desert winter nights.
    Focusing on explaining the electronic behavior of one composition of simple diode, a near flawless crystal of silicon is modified by implanting a small amount of phosphorus (N type)on one side from a ohmic contact end to a junction where the additive is suddenly and completely changed to boron (P type) with minimal disturbance of the crystal pattern. The crystal then continues to another ohmic contact.
    A region of high electrical resistance forms at the junction in this type of diode when the phosphorous near the ĵunction donates electrons that are free to move elsewhere while leaving phosphorus ions held in the crystal while the boron ions donate a hole which is similalarly free to move. The two types of mobile charges mutually clear each other away near the junction leaving little electrical conductivity. An equlibrium width of this region is settled between the phosphorus, boron, electrons, and holes. Thermal noise is beyond steady state equlibrium. Thermal noise transients, where mobile electrons move from the phosphorus added side to the boron added side ride transient extra conductivity so the forward moving electrons are preferentally filtered into the external circuit. Electrons are units of electric current. They lose their thermal energy of motion and gain electromotive force, another name for voltage, as they transition between the junction and the array electrical tap. Inside the diode, heat is absorbed: outside the diode, an attached electrical circuit is energized.
    Understanding diodes is one way to become convinced that Johnson Nyquest thermal electrical noise can be rectified and aggregated. Development teams will find other ways to accomplish this wide mission. Taxonomically there should be many ways ways to convert heat directly into electricity.
    A practical device may use an array of Au needles in a SiO2 matrix abutting N type GaAs. These were made in the 1970s when registration technology was poor so it was easier to fabricate arrays and select one diode than just make one diode.
    There are other plausible breeches of the second law of thermodynamics. I hope a lot of people will join in expanding the breech. Please share the results of progress or setbacks.
    These devices would probably become segmented commodities sold with minimal margin over supply cost. They would be manufactured by advanced automation that does not need financial incentive. Applicable best practices would be adopted. Business details would be open public knowledge. Associated people should move as negotiated and freely and honestly talk. Commerce would be a unified conglomerate of planetary scale of diverse local cooperatives. There is no need of wealth extracting top commanders. We do not need often token philanthropy from the top if the wide majority of people can afford to be generous.
    Aloha
    Charles M Brown
    Kilauea Kauai Hawaii 96754

  • @casualobserver2997
    @casualobserver2997 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Intrigued to hear the rest (only had time to get the first 15 minutes), but I am first off skeptical that what we now see as AI will be able to produce this completely 'solved' world. Just like when no one needed to work on the farm any longer, lots of new work in different areas materialized. Second, I have always felt that a good day is measured by achievement, not by leisure. While the latter is great (and necessary for mental health), I don't see how one enjoys leisure without having accomplished something ahead of that. We'll see how my thoughts evolve as I listen to the remainder!

  • @ChesterCopperpot1985
    @ChesterCopperpot1985 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

    This sounds awful and it’s terribly reductionistic as if pleasure or meaning or fitness are a pill with the right chemicals. There is meaning in effort. Sure a pill can make you feel like you made the effort but truth has its own valence. And a pill can make you feel the truth, but you’d still know it was a lie because you took the pill. This all sound utterly awful. The etymology of Utopia is that it’s nowhere. Can we stop with these utopian visions?

    • @BadWithNames123
      @BadWithNames123 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      Bro.. have you ever done L SD?

    • @ChesterCopperpot1985
      @ChesterCopperpot1985 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@BadWithNames123 several times, bro. And if it's done anything, it's been to reveal the salience of the Real and how getting at it is the essence of authentic experience. If your contention is that L SD is somehow equivalent or evidence of what this philosopher is talking about being possible to put in a pill, then you and I have learned very very different lessons from that molecule.