So this makes me wonder if I were running society what questions should I ask...
- what Automation initiatives never hit "take off"? I mean, like for Nuclear Fusion, human interplanetary exploration, and Quantum Computing there's some chance that the technology simply remains beyond us "forever", I guess that "forever" means more than the lifetime of the people who start the journey... or maybe actually just beyond humans full stop. We should admit there is a non-zero chance that FSD is one of these failing quests, even if a rational observer would have to say that that chance does seem to be shrinking and close enough to 0 to instill some confidence. Perhaps domestic robotics, auto-doctors, robot-manufacturing, programming, drug development will playout to automation - but maybe not.
- how do we consider the utilisation of the resources to do this? FSD has been very expensive so far, it's consumed lots of investment capital and lots of human creativity. Was that investment rational given where we stand? If society had held off and invested minimally from 2000->2024 how much would that have delayed the technology in reality? Or is it the other way round? Has the FSD investment facilitated the development of other technologies and created a 1->1 acceleration (for every year of 2000->2024 it's brought FSD a year closer than it would have been, so a cold start this year would mean FSD by 2050 or similar, whereas if we keep going then we can expect FSD by e.g. 2026)
- how do we value these outcomes? Are these unalloyed goods, or are some worse than the status-quo? It could be argued that the development of some technologies left the world worse off than before - smoking, social media, personal automobiles (I know this is politically charged but I am just using examples others have raised before). Can we choose rationally, especially if a large scale intervention and development process is required to realise these outcomes?
- what Automation initiatives never hit "take off"? I mean, like for Nuclear Fusion, human interplanetary exploration, and Quantum Computing there's some chance that the technology simply remains beyond us "forever", I guess that "forever" means more than the lifetime of the people who start the journey... or maybe actually just beyond humans full stop. We should admit there is a non-zero chance that FSD is one of these failing quests, even if a rational observer would have to say that that chance does seem to be shrinking and close enough to 0 to instill some confidence. Perhaps domestic robotics, auto-doctors, robot-manufacturing, programming, drug development will playout to automation - but maybe not.
- how do we consider the utilisation of the resources to do this? FSD has been very expensive so far, it's consumed lots of investment capital and lots of human creativity. Was that investment rational given where we stand? If society had held off and invested minimally from 2000->2024 how much would that have delayed the technology in reality? Or is it the other way round? Has the FSD investment facilitated the development of other technologies and created a 1->1 acceleration (for every year of 2000->2024 it's brought FSD a year closer than it would have been, so a cold start this year would mean FSD by 2050 or similar, whereas if we keep going then we can expect FSD by e.g. 2026)
- how do we value these outcomes? Are these unalloyed goods, or are some worse than the status-quo? It could be argued that the development of some technologies left the world worse off than before - smoking, social media, personal automobiles (I know this is politically charged but I am just using examples others have raised before). Can we choose rationally, especially if a large scale intervention and development process is required to realise these outcomes?