Thiel's view of the future is pretty aligned with the Singularity people.
As for the future of nanorobotics, I recommend you watch this interview with Robert Freitas, an expert in nanotechnology and nanomedicine [1]. The implications of nanotechnology will be huge.
He claims that nanorobotics will emerge in the late 2020's and become dominant in the 2030's. They won't just cure cancer. They'll be able to a cure whole host of other diseases that are seen as incurable today, including aging.
Those past predictions tell us that we weren't very good at predicting the coming of strong AI in the past, but it doesn't necessarily mean that current predictions are unreliable.
Like you said, strong AI would change everything. The richest will be the first to utilize them. Things get scary from that point on.
Unless we massively redistribute wealth, then inequality will arrive at unimaginable levels. It's hard to think of a world where the top 1% owns many multiples of what the bottom 99% owns.
I'm guessing at some point that we'll decide as a species that strong AIs cannot be owned by individuals. I'm guessing that it won't be a smooth transition. Instead, we'll become quasi-communists and fairly evenly distribute gains made by the strong AIs.
Also by "uploading", I'm guessing you mean simulate the human brain? Actually uploading a human consciousness would come a while after the advent of strong AI.
One could argue that you're the one that's brainwashed.
>Japan's currency will never inflate because it's always been that way
I think you're going to change your tone very quickly over the next year or so. Japan's government has never set targets for inflation until now. They are sitting on the largest debt stack to gdp in the world right now at ~245%. They spend almost half their revenues on debt service ALONE.
What happens when inflation hits two percent? What do you think all of these people holding JGBs bringing in 60bp are going to do? They're going to run, not walk.
There was a day and a half when not a single person bought a Japanese government bond because the government wasn't purchasing. The government is buying ALL and I mean ALL the bonds right now.
They are printing as much money as the fed in an economy that is a third our size (~70 billion USD per month). They are going to double the monetary base in two years.
This is clearly unsustainable and the yen is in for some serious devaluation in the very near term when people start running from JGBs.
>>>Japan's currency will never inflate because it's always been that way
Why are you quoting me? I NEVER said this.
In fact, I said the OPPOSITE - inflation is already rising in Japan and it is likely to continue to rise.
It's hyperinflation that I ruled out.
>This is clearly unsustainable
No it isn't. It's been said that it was unsustainable 20 years ago as I said above. This is why the ratings agencies IDIOTICALLY predicted Japanese default in 1997. Cue 20 more years of zero percent interest rates. They were a little bit wrong.
It wasn't unsustainable then which is why it continued for 20 more years. And it's not now either.
"How many more decades of zero inflation / deflation are needed"
That's pretty much what you said.
So what if predictions 20 years ago have turned out to be incorrect? That's really not relevant. Japan's government has never said they will do anything to achieve 2% inflation before.
No you weren't. You created a straw man and then set it on fire.
>So what if predictions 20 years ago have turned out to be incorrect?
So you're making the SAME predictions based upon the SAME model that the last 20 years has proven to be utterly wrong.
We've already proved that 20 years of deficit spending and the highest public debt in the world doesn't automatically cause hyperinflation. It doesn't even necessarily cause inflation at all.
If your model cannot sufficiently explain why that happened then your model is wrong. And it can't. If we went back in time, you'd be making the exact same predictions in 1997.
>Japan's government has never said they will do anything to achieve 2% inflation before.
Japan started inflation targeting in March 2001. Is 13 years enough time?
> No you weren't. You created a straw man and then set it on fire.
I just quoted your exact words and you said exactly what I summarized. You're being a bit ridiculous.
It's actually a pretty simple explanation. The market can remain irrational for a long time, and Japan has never had a monetary policy as insane as its current one.
They are going to DOUBLE their money supply in TWO years. I'm not sure that you understand that massively monetizing your debt has consequences.
It's a massive experiment that is going to end badly.
I think it's more like 25% of revenues, not 50%, but otherwise you're spot on. BTW, the bond futures market froze up last week, too.
But what you're forgetting is that our friend crdoconner has no problem with the idea that the government can print money and then lend it to itself at whatever interest rate it chooses. (Either that, or he doesn't understand the difference between benchmark interest rates and government bond prices.)
Hehe. I love Kyle. He's really good at explaining himself.
I think you would have been right a couple years ago. Japan is projected to spend $257 billion on debt service this year. They bring in about $500 billion in revenues.
Does anyone roughly know what Twitch's revenue/profitability is? I know that they're pretty profitable, but I'm not sure to what extent.
1 billion USD seems somewhat low considering Snapchat was valued at 3.5 billion, and I'm pretty sure their revenues are non existent in comparison to Twitch's revenues.
The likelihood of total war between any of the great powers is nil because of nuclear deterrent. So why are we wasting trillions of dollars on conventional weapons against enemies that we will never fight? Oh because they'll be sold to non-nuclear powers where there MIGHT be conflict (i.e. Iran)? What a joke. That's a 9 billion dollar defense budget against 682 billion.
The simple truth is that the military-industrial complex is just a giant leech on our economy that has somehow convinced Americans (and other nations) that it's necessary to buy these multi-billion dollar systems because of all the fear-mongering bullshit that's spewed. Roosevelt's line about the only thing we have to fear is fear itself is apt here.
The amount of waste in our system is disgusting. If we had a smart electorate, our defense budget would be much, much smaller.
A lot of hedge funds (e.g. Kyle Bass and George Soros) think that we've reached a tipping point in Japan. Their government already spends 1/4 of all revenue on debt service because their debt is monstrously huge. If inflation happens, their debt bomb is going to go off because no one will want their money in low yield bonds in an inflationary environment. If JGBs (I've never heard them referred to by the JTB abbreviation before) move 200 basis points (which is what the government is targeting for inflation), the government's debt service will exceed revenues. Yields spiked 25 points in 3 days last week.
A debt crisis looks imminent. Kyle Bass is asserting that they're going to have to default and the value of the yen is going to plummet to something like 200 to the dollar. This is just the beginning of the end. Get your money out of yen.
Bass' thesis is basically sound. Japan is well beyond the tipping point and as he notes, JGB yields will eventually become untenable for the government. Unlike the European nations facing similar issues though, Japan prints it's own currency. As such, it will never default. Given a choice between default and monetization, monetization is always the lesser evil.
So the central bank ends up just buying all the debt that can't be sold at sustainable yields. Net result is extremely high inflation and massive Yen devaluation (i.e. >200).
Impact on the population:
- poor stay poor
- rich stay rich as their wealth is in real assets
- middle-class get wiped out.
This is the end game and is likely a few years away yet, but there seems little chance of any other outcome.
I think there are real structural problems that need to be overcome for the economy to grow. Debt monetization is OK - but what about a shrinking population, stagnant productivity and very low immigration levels?
Japan's economy has got a nice jump-start due to the unprecedent monetary stimulus. But, as others have commented, there are also issues are energy prices and the negative effects of inflation. Japan still remains an expensive place to do business. I wonder where the economic growth will come from without further reforms.
It doesn't help that (politically at least), Japan treats immigrants/foreign workers with distrust (even though the terrorist attacks that have happened in Japan were by Japanese nationals).
Abe's strategy does not end with quantitative easing. The whole idea is to use it to gain legitimacy in the short term that he can then leverage to force through structural reforms.
Yes, it is possible. Which is why I wrote little chance rather than no chance. Given the magnitude of the debt however, it is a very unlikely outcome.
Consider that just to achieve close to zero GDP growth over the last nearly 20 years, the government has been borrowing and spending ~10% of GDP every year. It will require an enormous amount of growth to offset even that spending, and you're still at 0%.
I have heard and read similar analysis. I reckon the Government could force the mega-banks and pension funds to just take the pain and keep hoarding JGBs. Not having to deal with external yield hungry investors has it's advantages.
I can imagine the government making an appeal to patriotism, which may be more successful in Japan than in other places.
I shouldn't even say if because it's happening now. The yen's fallen more than 20% in the past 6 months. Their government is printing 7 TRILLION yen every month for two years to force inflation. That's almost as much as the Fed is doing in an economy that's a third our size. I'd put my money in US stocks. I tend to think Buffet's right about gold being a lousy investment and really don't have any idea how bitcoins will do.
It's not if you're Japanese and it causes a bond crisis. Their debt equals over 20 times their government's revenues. Even 2% inflation will cause yields to move and debt service to exceed government revenues. They will be forced to default or inflate. Either will cause the value of the yen to nosedive.
>Haters gonna hate. Larry Page obviously didn't hire him and let him take up Google's resources for his "rigorous hand-waving".
No, he did it to get some PR of Google as a mad-genius storage. He also did it with tons of other semi-retired Comp Sci legends. He might also like the guy, or believe the Singularity mambo-jambo himself.
There's a line going around about Google being where "old computer scientists go to retire".
>How does this one-liner contribute to the conversation at all?
By giving a summary of the whole thing? A very succinct one at that? If it's also accurate (which you can argue about), then it's a perfect contribution to the conversation.
He's not building a human though. He's building food. Modern rocketry has been around for about a century, and food has been with us since the beginning. I don't see why it would be that complex. Like pg said, the top comment for every new product posted on HN is always something dismissive that doesn't really add to the discussion, and this thread is no exception.
Human females contain an environment in which an organism, after being bootstrapped, can assemble itself into a human using mostly food as input. I would argue that building the correct input for that environment and process is exactly as complex as building a human.
As for the future of nanorobotics, I recommend you watch this interview with Robert Freitas, an expert in nanotechnology and nanomedicine [1]. The implications of nanotechnology will be huge.
He claims that nanorobotics will emerge in the late 2020's and become dominant in the 2030's. They won't just cure cancer. They'll be able to a cure whole host of other diseases that are seen as incurable today, including aging.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UVet-OCFdI