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Thursday, December 31, 2015

I Predict!


I predict that in 2016 futurists will continue to be predictable.

8 comments:

jimf said...

> I Predict!

Never fear, when Donald Trump is elected in 2016,
he is certain to usher in the Singularity. So let
it be written. So let it be done!

The Average Person Can't Grasp Donald Trump
Red Pill Philosophy
Published on Sep 12, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfcq6cLSSis
------------
A lot of times Donald Trump. . . when asked "How are
you going to build a wall?" or "How are you going to get
Mexico to pay for this?" or "How are you going to create
jobs?". . . [he'll answer] "I just am. I'm just going
to do it." And they ask "How?" "It'll get done. You'll
see." I think a lot of people don't understand that some
of the wealthiest people, the movers and shakers in our
society, they live by a different set of rules that have
allowed them to achieve the success and influence. . .
People who go through the mainstream school system,
which is supposedly designed to prepare you to be
successful, the mainstream school system doesn't teach
the qualities that billionaires live by. The things
that made billionaires billionaries, the things that
made famous musicians and actors. . . they didn't use
what they learned in school, what most of us learned
in school. They live by a completely different set of
principles and standards. In school you're taught, obey.
Do what you're told. Be like everybody else. Conform.
Wear your school uniform. Complete obedience and
subservience to authority. These principles are the
antithesis of what make you rich and influential in
society. So when Donald Trump says "I'm just going to
do it." people don't grasp that because it's just so
contrary to their brainwashing of "Do what you're told
and wait for somebody else to do it." The truth is
that confidence and a sense of self-certainty are probably
[among] the most important principles in all of life
in accomplishing anything, whether it's making a ton of
money or even being incredibly smart and coming up with
a new intellectual paradigm. . . If you read one of
the most famous self-help books, called _Think and Grow
Rich_, the author interviewed some of the most influential
and successful people of the 20th century. And he came
to the conclusion that the qualities in these people
that made them so successful were. . . a lot of time
just confidence and belief in your project. . .
Not the kind of stuff that the average person is fed
through the mainstream school system and mainstream
culture and upbringing. So when Donald Trump says
"I'm just going to do it." he's referring to principles
that aren't taught in mainstream schools.
====

jimf said...

> [W]hen Donald Trump is elected in 2016,
> he is certain to usher in the Singularity.

Cf:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ub/competent_elites/
Eliezer_Yudkowsky
27 September 2008
------------
I remember what a shock it was to first meet Steve Jurvetson,
of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. . .

Steve Jurvetson talked fast and articulately, could follow
long chains of reasoning, was familiar with a wide variety of
technologies, and was happy to drag in analogies from outside
sciences like biology—good ones, too. . .

I was shocked, meeting Steve Jurvetson, because from everything
I'd read about venture capitalists before then, VCs were
supposed to be fools in business suits, who couldn't understand
technology or engineers or the needs of a fragile young startup,
but who'd gotten ahold of large amounts of money by dint of
seeming reliable to other business suits.

One of the major surprises I received when I moved out of childhood
into the real world, was the degree to which the world is
stratified by **genuine** competence. . .

I was invited once to a gathering of the mid-level power elite,
where around half the attendees were "CEO of something" --
mostly technology companies, but occasionally "something" was
a public company or a sizable hedge fund. I was expecting
to be the youngest person there, but it turned out that my
age wasn't unusual—there were several accomplished individuals
who were younger. This was the point at which I realized
that my child prodigy license had officially completely expired. . .

[T]hese people of the Power Elite were **visibly much smarter
than average mortals**. In conversation they spoke quickly,
sensibly, and by and large intelligently. When talk turned to
deep and difficult topics, they understood faster, made fewer
mistakes, were readier to adopt others' suggestions.

No, even worse than that, much worse than that: these CEOs and
CTOs and hedge-fund traders, these folk of the mid-level
power elite, seemed **happier** and **more alive**.

This, I suspect, is one of those truths so horrible that
you can't talk about it in public. This is something that
reporters must not write about, when they visit gatherings
of the power elite. . .

Hedge-fund people sparkle with extra life force. At least
the ones I've talked to. Large amounts of money seem to
attract smart people. No, **really**. . .

[Y]ou really do find a lot more cream as you move closer
to the top. . .
====

Dale Carrico said...

So when Donald Trump says "I'm just going to do it." he's referring to principles that aren't taught in mainstream schools.

It's called bullshitting.

Dale Carrico said...

Eliezer Yudkowsky, supergenius, ethical exemplar, robocultic guru, ladies and gentlemen is unafraid of the hard truths of plutocratic elitism. Let's have that last bit again, shall we?

"CEOs and CTOs and hedge-fund traders, these folk of the mid-level
power elite, seemed happier and more alive. This, I suspect, is one of those truths so horrible that you can't talk about it in public. This is something that reporters must not write about, when they visit gatherings of the power elite... Hedge-fund people sparkle with extra life force. At least the ones I've talked to. Large amounts of money seem to attract smart people. No, really... [Y]ou really do find a lot more cream as you move closer to the top..."

Has he recanted or qualified ANY of this truly ugly, evil, crazy crapola in the years since he said this?

jimf said...

> Has he recanted or qualified ANY of this truly ugly, evil,
> crazy crapola in the years since he said this?

Nope. And, as an earthy Brit might say, "not bloody likely". ;->

That post is still widely mentioned. Speaking of which, a Tumblr
post referencing it:
http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/135482591189/youzicha-nostalgebraist-reddragdiva
led me to this vignette:

http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/
------------
George W. Bush is smarter than you
Keith Hennessey

. . .

This seems like a good time to bust a longstanding myth about
our former President, my former boss.

I teach a class at Stanford Business School titled “Financial Crises
in the U.S. and Europe.” During one class session while explaining
the events of September 2008. . . [o]ne of my students asked
“How involved was President Bush with what was going on?” I
smiled and responded, “What you really mean is, ‘Was President Bush
smart enough to understand what was going on,’ right?” . . .

I looked hard at the 60 MBA students and said “President Bush
is smarter than almost every one of you.” . . . [T]hen I
launched into a longer answer. . . :

I am not kidding. You are quite an intelligent group. Don’t take
it personally, but President Bush is smarter than almost every
one of you. . .

President Bush is extremely smart by any traditional standard.
He’s highly analytical and was incredibly quick to be able to
discern the core question he needed to answer. It was occasionally
a little embarrassing when he would jump ahead of one of his
Cabinet secretaries in a policy discussion and the advisor would
struggle to catch up. He would sometimes force us to accelerate
through policy presentations because he so quickly grasped what
we were presenting. . .

Every meeting was a dialogue, and you had to be ready at all
times to be grilled by him and to defend both your analysis and
your recommendation. That was scary. . .

You think that me cold-calling you is nerve-wracking? Try defending
a sentence you inserted into a draft speech, with President Bush
pouncing on the slightest weakness in your argument or your word choice.

In addition to his analytical speed, what most impressed me were
his memory and his substantive breadth. We would sometimes have to
brief him on an issue that we had last discussed with him weeks
or even months before. He would remember small facts and arguments
from the prior briefing and get impatient with us when we were
rehashing things we had told him long ago. . .

I only had to worry about economic issues. In addition to all of
those, at any given point in time he was making enormous decisions
on Iraq and Afghanistan, on hunting al Qaeda and keeping America
safe. He was making choices not just on taxes and spending and
trade and energy and climate and health care and agriculture and
Social Security and Medicare, but also on education and immigration,
on crime and justice issues, on environmental policy and
social policy and politics. Being able to handle such substantive
breadth and depth, on such huge decisions, in parallel, requires
not just enormous strength of character but tremendous
intellectual power. President Bush has both. . .
====

Now doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy?

Esebian said...

Predictably, just like that "Facts" From A Hundred Years Back list gets updated by subtracting 100 from the current year (http://factually.gizmodo.com/this-viral-list-about-1915-is-full-of-lies-1750330886), "futurists" will update their same old ad copy by adding 20, 30 or 40 to the current year.

Unknown said...

I predict that this year we will get another shitty phone that are not that different from the other phones for the past 4 years. I will be more accurate than Ray Kurzweil in my prediction.

Dale Carrico said...

I wonder if Kurzweil will ever publish the only prediction his conduct reveals he truly believes: There's a sucker born every minute.