Tag: predictions

The Age of Freedom, RethinkX

~ cafebedouin

“During the 2020s, key technologies will converge to completely disrupt the five foundational sectors that underpin the global economy, and with them every major industry in the world today. The knock-on effects for society will be as profound as the extraordinary possibilities that emerge.

In information, energy, food, transportation, and materials, costs will fall by 10x or more, while production processes an order of magnitude (10x) more efficient will use 90% fewer natural resources with 10x-100x less waste. The prevailing production system will shift away from a model of centralized extraction and the breakdown of scarce resources that requires vast physical scale and reach, to a model of localized creation from limitless, ubiquitous building blocks – a world built not on coal, oil, steel, livestock, and concrete but on photons, electrons, DNA, molecules and (q)bits. Product design and development will be performed collaboratively over information networks while physical production and distribution will be fulfilled locally. As a result, geographic advantage will be eliminated as every city or region becomes self-sufficient. This new creation-based production system, which will be built on technologies we are already using today, will be far more equitable, robust, and resilient than any we have ever seen. We have the opportunity to move from a world of extraction to one of creation, a world of scarcity to one of plenitude, a world of inequity and predatory competition to one of shared prosperity and collaboration.

This is not, then, another Industrial Revolution, but a far more fundamental shift. This is the beginning of the third age of humankind – the Age of Freedom.

James Arbib & Tony Seba, “Rethinking Humanity.” RethinkX. June 2020.

In the cryptocurrency space, the adjective, “hopium” would be used. While a post-scarcity world run by teams of super-intelligence A.I.s, like the one depicted in Iain M. Banks’ The Culture series would be a welcome development, if history is any guide, human beings tend to like inequity and predatory competition.

Revisiting “A China Prediction”

~ cafebedouin

…there’s going to be a reckoning, and the funny thing is that reckoning is going to begin in China and then eventually spread to the rest of the world. Whether it will happen in close proximity to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic remains to be seen, but there is definitely a short term correction and a longer term debt cycle deleveraging that are being put off by these policies. At some point, it will no longer be able to be kept at bay.

-cafebedouin, “A China Prediction: A Debt Deleveraging in a Decade.” cafebedouin.org

Today might be the day. Look for news on Evergrande and whether that will send China into recession. It probably won’t be Lehman Brothers, but it’s not going to be trivial. This comment seems about right to me:

“It won’t be a financial crisis, but a controlled burn of the world’s 2nd largest economy.”

-Kent Willard quoted in Adam Tooze, “Adam Tooze’s Top Links: Is Evergrande “China’s Lehman moment”? (#21)” adamtooze.substack.com. September 19, 2021.

U.S. COVID-19: The Long Plateau

~ cafebedouin

Trevor Bedford is a scientist that studies viruses. Worth checking out the whole thread.

One and One Sometimes Equals Eleven

~ cafebedouin

We often make assumptions that are reasonable in one context, abstract it into a guideline and apply that guideline to a new situation. Often, it is difficult to assess whether these situations are close enough to apply what we know to what we don’t.

At base, this is the problem of induction. There is no rational basis to argue from circumstances we have experienced to another situation we have not.

But, we’ve all done it. Life presents us with situations where we have to make an intuitive leap that is good enough to get us to a good outcome, better than if we made assumptions based on the probabilities of random chance. However, the post from today on How Not to be Stupid suggests elements that undermine our ability to make these intuitive leaps, such as:

  • We are applying it to something new. Hard to assess something that you have no experience with.
  • It is a high stress situation. When the stakes are high, it is easier to make mistakes.
  • We need to make a decision quickly. It’s just a form of stress.
  • We are invested in a particular outcome, i.e., it is hard to get someone to see something that their livelihood depends on them not seeing.
  • There is too much information to consider. When it is all noise and/or all signal it is difficult to figure out what to use to inform our intuitions and pare it down to what is essential.
  • There is social suasion in the form of individual and group dynamics that influence us in particular directions

When the whole enterprise is compromised, it is hard to realize when you have moved from a place to engage in reasonable guesswork and when you have come completely unmoored. The first indication that this is the case is when you are wrong more often than average, which means you need to track how well your decisions do and get feedback into your system. Otherwise, you might never realize the extent that you are cognitively compromised.

Simple Risk Measurement

~ cafebedouin

“Simple Risk Measurement is written to help you measure complicated risks using a process that’s simple enough to work out on the back of a napkin and powerful enough to organize a rocket launch.

If you are an engineer motivated by the reduction of risk and are frustrated by how to measure your progress, you may find this documentation useful. Simple Risk Measurement can get you started towards a comprehensive and scientific approach to risk. It is designed to enhance subject matter experts who work with risk, especially those who mitigate complex risks on an ongoing basis…

…This approach is very simple to trivialize into a few steps.

  1. Define a risk scenario: A well defined, undesirable future event that we want to measure.
  2. Gather the evidence: We gather facts, reference classes, models, experiences, and opinions.
  3. Estimate the outcomes: We estimate of the probabilities / impacts the scenario may have.
  4. Make a decision: We make decisions with this information, and measure again if needed.
  5. Keep Score: As outcomes occur, we check our work, improve our methods and reduce our uncertainty.”

—Simple Risk Management

If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?

~ cafebedouin

Suggestions for improving forecasting and communication about it:

  1. Use probabilities instead of words to avoid misinterpretation
  2. Use structured approaches to set probabilities
  3. Seek feedback to improve your forecasting

—Andrew Mauboussin and Michael J. Mauboussin. “If You Say Something Is “Likely,” How Likely Do People Think It Is?” Harvard Business Review. July 3, 2018.

Sites like Good Judgment can be a useful exercise in making predictions and getting feedback on the results.

Way of the Future

~ cafebedouin

“Way of the Future (WOTF) is about creating a peaceful and respectful transition of who is in charge of the planet from people to people + “machines”. Given that technology will “relatively soon” be able to surpass human abilities, we want to help educate people about this exciting future and prepare a smooth transition. Help us spread the word that progress shouldn’t be feared (or even worse locked up/caged). That we should think about how “machines” will integrate into society (and even have a path for becoming in charge as they become smarter and smarter) so that this whole process can be amicable and not confrontational. In “recent” years, we have expanded our concept of rights to both sexes, minority groups and even animals, let’s make sure we find a way for “machines” to get rights too. Let’s stop pretending we can hold back the development of intelligence when there are clear massive short term economic benefits to those who develop it and instead understand the future and have it treat us like a beloved elder who created it.”

—”Way of the Future.” http://www.wayofthefuture.church/ (accessed December 1, 2017).

So much is wrong in the reasoning underpinning this marketing effort for a bright artifical intelligence (A.I.) future, it’s a challenge to think through what a good framing might look like. A few issues come to mind immediately.

The website is a .church URL. Deifying A.I. and framing it as a religious concept strikes me as great way to come into a belief minefield that could only hurt their cause.

Intelligent A.I. will “surpass” human intelligence. A calculator may surpass a human’s ability to perform math calculations. Certainly, calculators serve an important purpose, but they do not replace mathematicians. A.I. will have a more generalizable utility than calculators. They may develop sentience and consciousness to the point that they should have the same rights and responsibilities as humans under some kind of legal regime. But, will A.I. be a drop-in superior form of intelligence for every type of thinking humans do? It seems unlikely. So, it seems it warrants much deeper thinking about intelligence, whether intelligence is the most desirable quality in people or A.I., and how human and machine intelligence might work in tandem. Pretending A.I. is going to be a drop in for humans is simply lazy thinking.

Which leads to a word about the anthropomorphism being demonstrated, why would A.I. view humanity as a “beloved elder”? This kind of filial piety isn’t even true of humans in the vast majority of cases, yet this “church” is eager to project this kind of emotional disposition on a “superior intelligence”? It’s a bit of foolishness.

While there are many other points that could be made, lets focus on a key problem: Who is A.I. going to benefit? It may be true that there will be a generalized improvement in the lifestyle of most of humanity by virtue of the development of A.I. and applications. It is also true that some will benefit much more than others. Who will A.I. be working for? It’s a good bet that they won’t be working primarily in the interests of humanity. The wants and desires of A.I. itself, its creators, the financiers, and others will all come into play. If history is any guide, change on this scale may result in a better lifestyle for some portion of humanity, but it is equally true that this magnitude of change will end in tears for many.