Category Archives: Philosophy

Business, Economics, Philosophy, Space, Technology and Society

Bezos Versus Musk

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They are both trying to open up space to humanity, but they have fundamentally different philosophies:

“Let me assure you, this is the best planet. We need to protect it, and the way we will is by going out into space,” [Bezos] told Recode Editor at large Walt Mossberg. “You don’t want to live in a retrograde world where we have to freeze population growth.”

Bezos says tasks that require lots of energy shouldn’t be handled on Earth. Instead, we should perform them in space, and that will happen within the next few hundred years.

“Energy is limited here. In at least a few hundred years … all of our heavy industry will be moved off-planet,” Bezos added. “Earth will be zoned residential and light industrial. You shouldn’t be doing heavy energy on earth. We can build gigantic chip factories in space.”

Solar energy, for instance, is more practical for factories in space, he said.

“We don’t have to actually build them here,” he said. “The Earth shades itself, [whereas] in space you can get solar power 24/7. … The problem with other planets … people will visit Mars, and we will settle Mars, and people should because it’s cool, but for heavy industry, I would actually put it in space.”

This is the O’Neillian vision (which drove the founders of XCOR, and I continue to share, after all these decades. Mars isn’t the goal; allowing people to go wherever they want, including Mars, should be the goal. Elon’s vision (and that of the Apollo to Mars contingent) is actually quite blinkered. He is a romantic, and a planetary chauvinist (who, by the way, opposes space solar power, or at least thinks it won’t work).

But I’m happy to see them both pursue their visions. Competition is good.

Business, Economics, Law, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Disappointing Libertarian Ticket

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I agree with Tim Carney; they seem to be running against conservatives more than in favor of liberty:

Weld and Johnson held their first post-nomination joint interview on Tuesday, on liberal network MSNBC. “We’ve never bought into this anti-choice, anti-gay…sense of the Republican Party,” Weld said, as his first comment to the national television audience.

The message was clear: We don’t need those backward Christian Right bozos as much we need as you MSNBCers.

Johnson has sent similar signals, suggesting that his love of liberty is second to his revulsion to religion. In January, for instance, Johnson said he would make it a federal crime for women to wear the Burqa, the full-body covering worn by women in certain strains of Islam. Johnson recanted a day later, while continuing his warnings about the threat of Sharia — Islamic law — in the U.S.

This spring, Johnson pushed aside freedom of conscience. When asked in an Oregon about laws and lawsuits requiring caterers to participate in gay weddings, Johnson took the big-government side — for coerced baking in the name of gay rights. When later asked about this anti-liberty view, Johnson made the standard liberal conflation between selling off-the-shelf cupcakes to a gay customer (which is straight-up discrimination against a person) and refusal to participate in a ceremony (which is a freedom of conscience issue, a freedom of association issue, and often a free speech issue).

The dress-code libertarianism and bake-me-a-cake libertarianism Johnson has embraced isn’t libertarianism at all — it’s left-wing social engineering enforced at gunpoint. Coming from Johnson and Weld, it reeks of raw identity politics. The only consistent theme is that religious people are bad.

Yes. It’s disgusting. This sort of thing is why I’ve never been a Libertarian, despite the fact that I’m generally libertarian.

Law, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

In A World Of Self-Driving Cars

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…we’ll still need the Miata.

Yes. Two counterpoints, though.

First, I don’t think I’d be able to read or write while being driven; in my experience that can make me car sick. I have to be in control.

Second, I very much fear that in a world of self-driving cars, it will be considered socially irresponsible and dangerous to drive yourself, and probably made illegal.

Business, Mathematics, Philosophy, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The Brain

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Is it computable?

Nicolelis is in a camp that thinks that human consciousness (and if you believe in it, the soul) simply can’t be replicated in silicon. That’s because its most important features are the result of unpredictable, nonlinear interactions among billions of cells, Nicolelis says.

“You can’t predict whether the stock market will go up or down because you can’t compute it,” he says. “You could have all the computer chips ever in the world and you won’t create a consciousness.”

I’m personally an agnostic on the issue.

Mathematics, Philosophy, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Aging

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I’ve always believed that there is no law of physics that makes it inevitable, that it’s a matter of learning how to continue doing the cellular-level repair that occurs when we’re young. But here is an article that says it is caused by thermal chaos.

Not sure I buy it (it still doesn’t take into account artificial techniques for doing error checking in transcription), but it’s an interesting read.