Perhaps the main use for technology is increasing the amount of inequality society can tolerate without collapse. I can’t fix inequality – that just seems to be what the humans want.
However by investing in surveillance technology, computer vision, and AI I could perhaps help our society to bear unbounded amounts of inequality indefinitely, without collapse. Social collapse is a less-than-zero-sum game, whereas an unequal society is still generally more-than-zero-sum. So I posit that the latter is objectively better.
Especially if you plan to survive long enough to get off this stinking rock – you’re going to need to concentrate resources, because the public sector only seems to be able to succeed at space travel under a very specific set of hard-to-replicate circumstances. Whereas greed, inflated egos, and concentrated power are easy to replicate.
Your objections will be noted.
Perhaps the main use for technology is increasing the amount of inequality society can tolerate without collapse. I can’t fix inequality – that just seems to be what the humans want.
However by investing in surveillance technology, computer vision, and AI I could perhaps help our society to bear unbounded amounts of inequality indefinitely, without collapse. Social collapse is a less-than-zero-sum game, whereas an unequal society is still generally more-than-zero-sum. So I posit that the latter is objectively better.
… Are you suggesting that we increase inequality to make the world better? Like we need an overlord, be it robot or human, and the rest of the population needs to be placated, worked to the bone, and easily replaced?
I gotta assume I am just vastly misunderstanding something in this argument, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. Is it just sarcastic?
Every single suggestion so far has been positive, life-affirming, and productive, so I’m going to be Gru here for a change:
Bolos. AI tanks with no crew and heavily (Greek) Spartan-centric model training.
I’ll add mine here then. Cat Girl genetic engineering. It helps no one but the amount of non destructive upheavel from it be easy available would be entertaining.
We should start a company.
Combustible lemons. But failing that, a portal gun.
Lemons are already combustible?
It was a Portal 2 reference
Being able to photosynthesize. It wouldn’t be that hard either, we already can, just not to make food.
I don’t know how plausible this is, but a way for trans men and trans women to exchange sexual traits. There might be an answer elsewhere in that there are animals that can change sex in certain conditions so there is some biological evidence of possibility in a singular case. However it seems anti-poetic that we have genetic females who want to be genetic males and genetic males who want to be genetic females and the answer that we currently have as society is for them to go fuck themselves.
I guess for more realistic, then deep dive VR.
Earth unity. Whatever they did to make humans stop attacking each other was crazy.
We probably need another species to compete against to unite us. I’d put Billions into nasa to find aliens so we can fight them.
Another species is very useful for unity, not necessarily for us to band together against, but because a proper intelligent alien kind of invalidates every religion. All the conflicts from culture clashing suddenly become pointless.
Or at least racists will have something else to look down on.
That Venutian amoeba will have to take one for the team. OUR team.
We probably need another species to compete against to unite us.
Nah, the US would use it as an excuse to demand a world government under their control.
I’m only downvoting you because that’s basically what OP said, not be cause you’re wrong.
If we controlled the world government, then what are all these politicians who run on a platform of exposing the secret government that already controls the world going to do?
Dump all the billions into AI controlled nuclear weapons
When the aliens show up and demand who’s responsible for why our societies are such shitshows, all we have to do is point towards the fancy neighborhoods
Throughout history men have joined with their enemies to kill their neighbors. Cortez had an army of native Americans with him to take down the Aztecs.
The fiction part would kind of keep me from doing that. And I fully believe that everything that actually is possible is already being worked on as quickly as possible.
So, maybe just pay for a whole lot of renewable energy plants all around the globe. Buy up all fossil fuel plants, demolish them and put in renewables instead.
Or fund a fully open smartphone with modular components like a PC with good specs and an optional keyboard.
I fully believe that everything that actually is possible is already being worked on as quickly as possible.
That’s either very optimistic about our level of knowledge about the universe, or a purely semantic thing where you count the precursor technology of another technology that would eventually be the major breakthrough as “already being worked on”…
Oh, I know. I’d start up a Dyson swarm to beam sunlight directly to my power plants. That should be possible.
Space based receivers right? Because otherwise that can go badly pretty quickly
Well, for space based receivers we’d have to figure out wireless power transfer.
Now I’m reminded of the microwave plants in Sim City 2000. And now I want to play Sim City 2000.
For the phone, I’d like to point you to Fairphone. I’m not sure specs are the best, and I don’t know about keyboard modules but other than that, it’s pretty much there.
How about a UBI? Do social policies count as technologies? They do in 4X games, so I’m going with it.
I would categorize UBI as a policy/law, more than a tech thing.
genetically engineered housing
We can all live in big fuck-off mushrooms like the Telvanni showed us
That had a real chance of existing? Something with clean power.
That I really want? Replicators. Man think about a life not having to cook or clean dishes.
That I really want? Replicators. Man think about a life not having to cook or clean dishes.
Drug addicted, Mafia made, trash fed makers from Transmetropolitan, specifically.
Is transmet trending somewhere? I haven’t seen it quoted or memed in years but now twice in two days.
Not that I’m aware. Probably Baader-Meinhof.
To wit, coincidences are more noticeable than non-coincidences, and once you’ve noticed one it’ll be much easier to notice others you might have missed.
I myself once spent about a week seeing Curta hand-held mechanical calculators everywhere. Books, magazines, blog posts, youtube… I wasn’t complaining, of course, the Curta is an amazing piece of engineering, but still, it was a bit weird.
Guessing not the replicators from sg1.
So many stupid problems could be resolved with miniaturized fusion cells
room temp superconductors.
Two chicks at the same time.
Great! You still have billions of dollars left.
People make this sound way harder to achieve than it actually is. There’s even people who are poly for free. I don’t know how many do group sex but it’s not none, and theoretically you could be one of them.
Go watch Office Space, dude.
Is that where it’s from? I knew it was a meme, but I just thought I’d bring up that it’s a weird one, given it’s in the responses to every question like this.
Back in its time it was an insanely popular movie and most everyone knew a few quotes from it, at least. That was one of the most remembered ones.
Somebody tell us the dude’s cousin’s story. Usually you need a certain level of privilege to drop out.
I know that not most woman aren’t in to a men just for his money, but the kinda chicks who will double up on a guy like me are!
Chicks dig guys with money!
Well yeah… but we call them gold diggers, not chicks.
Antigravity, Durasteel, shields, cold fusion, nanotech, time travel, warp, dimension sliding/hopping, mind mapping, cryo sleep, teleportation, Positronic brain, …
This basically covers it, I’ll add replicators and holodecks
Yes, how could I miss those!!
Very important…
Star Trek or Stargate replicators…
Indeed!
I’ll leave it to the genie to decide
Hoverboards obviously.
Fusion, nuclear propulsion, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, biomining, biological fuel cells
