Okay, you had me up until > up to and including a technological singularity.
Please...please stop this Ray Kurzweil religious BS. This will most likely not happen within our lifetime and I sure hope it doesn't. The Singularity is based on the notion that we will all have access to immortality, knowledge, etc.. the beautiful concepts we are already losing access to (See SOPA, PIPA, freedoms getting taken away, etc..)
The 'sheeple' will never get to reap the benefits of 'The Singularity'.
This may surprise you, but I think Ray Kurzweil is waay too optimist. Partly because reaching the Singularity will mean messing with forces we barely comprehend, and partly because we may collapse before we even have the time to mess with those forces. If you have some time, I suggest you to take a look at http://facingthesingularity.com/
In the meantime, just ponder this: we are, in a trivial sense, machines. Machines capable of reasoning about themselves. In principle, there is nothing stopping us from making actual machines that beat us in every domain. Yesterday, Chess. Today, Jeopardy. Tomorrow, driving. And maybe someday, machine building itself.
If we ever reach that point, you know enough about recursion to know how this will goes: recursive self-improvements leading to something way more capable than your average Einstein. Now let's hope that our little Skynet is programmed to do good (whatever "good" is), instead of, say, using us as raw material to fill the solar system with paper clips. Because unlike with the fictional Skynet, we won't even stand a fighting chance.
link2009: I suspect your account may have been killed (i.e. everything you post is visible only to you). You should check since your most recent post is dead. (However that can also happen if you post a duplicate, so I can't say for sure.)
It's risky for a new member to post something controversial - you have to build up a karma cushion first. (I personally don't approve of downvoting a controversial comment, but I'm fighting a loosing battle on the subject.)
The core concept is an event we can't predict beyond, so claiming it means any specific benefit (such as immortality) is misunderstanding it, and so is claiming some specific people won't be affected, and so is claiming that the outcome must include 'benefits' for living humans.
There are now 3 core concepts that we may call "Singularity".
1) Event horizon: past the point where there are entities smarter than us, we virtually can't predict anything.
2) Accelerating change: things will get bigger/better/smarter at an exponential rate. The "Singularity" is a point somewhere on that exponential curve. (Or something)
3) Intelligence explosion: if it's smarter than us, it will be made by us (whether it is an AI, or brain computer interface, or whatever). Therefore it can recursively improve itsef to super-intelligence very quickly.
Taken loosely, those 3 visions are mostly compatible. But taken to their extremes, they are contradictory. It is important to distinguish the 3 to avoid confusion.
NINJA EDIT: There is an 'unzoom' button on the left!
I can't figure out how to zoom out either because I don't think they've implemented that functionality. You can also zoom in infinitely...which is strange.
Not to be a jerk, both those three videos you posted don't seem to encompass exactly what happened here.
I'm not saying it's a real video but everyone's reaction is different towards any event. I don't think this can be counted as proof against the 'realness' of the video.
I was curious, so from Wikipedia:
The Internet2 Project was originally established by 34 university researchers in 1996 under the auspices of EDUCOM (later EDUCAUSE), and was formally organized as the not-for-profit University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID) in 1997.
I watched Rands speak at CUSEC in 2011 in Montreal. The way he speaks is similar to the way he writes. His thoughts are though-provoking and insightful, generally teaching you at least one new thing you hadn't known before.
Far more poignant in Buffet's case given his age and the length of time he's been in the game, and the sheer financial impact he has on the country. He's not a paper tiger.
Mr. Zuckerberg is exceptionally wealthy for his age, but he's young, and it's all based on a single assett. So while not judging, let's hold off on comparing the two for a couple of decades at least.
I see your point and I agree with you. Look over the article describing the bankruptcy announcement, it states that "Some 15,600 jobs are expected to be cut."
That is quite damaging for a company of such degree and the family of all those employees.
I think the lesson here is that it's important to be close to your employees, regardless of how rich you _can_ be.
Actually, I think the message is that it's more important to be competent than nice. Most of those laid off would have probably preferred an overpaid, aloof manager who kept the company afloat.
Not saying you have to choose, of course. But being competent at management doesn't require you to be loved by all your employees.
This seems to be a classic example of correlation vs. causation.
Airlines have been having a rough time in recent years. Against a background of people bashing them on environmental grounds and promoting alternative modes of transport, often hypocritically, they have seen major costs such as fuel going way up, their market suffering because a lot of air travel is a luxury that people aren't so willing to pay for in a depressed economy, and in many cases significant staffing problems due partly to the same economic conditions.
We can't say whether Japan Air failed because of its CEO's apparently folksy style of management. For all we know, it would have gone to the wall two years earlier if he'd been claiming millions and not so aware of what was really happening from his customers' and staff's points of view.
I didn't say anything like that. In fact, I'm arguing the same point: we can't say his folksy style had any effect on the bottom line, good or bad. I'm just saying that it's clearly not required for good management.
I'd say that's pretty dependent upon one's definition of "good management". Not running the company in the ground is merely acceptable. Looting the company and distancing yourself from the people that sustain your lofty position while not running the company in the ground still seems pretty crap to me compared to engaging your employees directly and keeping your consumption (read salary) in line with the rest of the company while not running said company in the ground. YMMV
Please...please stop this Ray Kurzweil religious BS. This will most likely not happen within our lifetime and I sure hope it doesn't. The Singularity is based on the notion that we will all have access to immortality, knowledge, etc.. the beautiful concepts we are already losing access to (See SOPA, PIPA, freedoms getting taken away, etc..)
The 'sheeple' will never get to reap the benefits of 'The Singularity'.