Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmcgough | Hacker News Reader

> No matter what we do, the coming wars will be horrific. Billions will die. But that’s what is beautiful; diversity is messy. On a cosmic scale, this period is just a blip, it isn’t what matters.

Does anyone know what geohot is talking about, or did he join a doomsday cult after he got tired of self-driving cars?

Either way, a largely unregulated tech industry is arguably what got us into this mess, with social media apps that encourage conspiracies and partisanship. Maybe billions won't die if we stop taking such a business-friendly laissez-faire approach.

View on HN

why on earth would geniuses be the future of humankind? lost me on that line of reasoning. secondly whats wrong with ubi? there are a plenty of people that aren't able to function in the world we've created and they'd benefit greatly from being left to do their own thing. i get that you're trying to be one of those geniuses (lol), but you could stop trying to tell other people whats good for them, thanks. and the world will be saved by open source software? thats it? cool.

edit: jmc - not replying to you so much as just commenting on the blog in general. i agree with your comment.

I interpret the geniuses in the post as analogy for future LLMs that substantially outperform those we have now, and the post as an argument for open weight models.

His apparent belief that we're heading for some kind of war I see as something separate. Why he connects this with UBI I don't understand though.

I interpret the UBI paragraph as it's one of those "create the problem, sell the solution" cases. First make a system where you need a yo–yo to live and if you don't have a yo–yo you die. Then give everyone a free yo–yo. Geohot says: Well how about just stopping this if you don't have a yo–yo you die thing instead, it seems a bit silly?

What's wrong with Universal Basic Income?

Where's the money/resources coming from? (Even Musk's putative net worth would be drained in less than 3 months at $1000/mn just for the USA--not even considering how badly stock values would crash if he were forced to cash out)

Where's the money going to? (You want inflation outside of collectibles and crypto? Give people in need money to spend without commensurate requirements to improve supply)

Whose included in Universal?

The experiments so far that have called themselves Ubi apparently use "universal" in an inconceivable way, and if there is one thing we have found out about humanity, it's that results for a few don't often play out the same at a large scale.

Positive sum game started to collapse more than 3 decades ago. So it’s not that simple as just “unregulated tech industry”. They made it worse for sure, but they’re not the only reason.

There's never been a peaceful time in history. There's no reason to assume there will suddenly be one.

He's probably high

Reply on news.ycombinator.com