Post-Scarcity Economics

[Luzr]

They had positional zero, they just rarely needed it: A history of Zero.

Means they really sucked at numerics..

Check out Archimedes' Sand Reckoner, where he constructs the number ten to the power of eighty quadrillion.

And that is the proof of great Greeks numerics or what?

If you really want to provide a proof that we had surpased Greeks by 1700, you really have to try harder.

[alexjrgreen]

quadratic and cubic equations

Look up Diophantus (third century AD).

Does not look like he was better than Italians around 1500.

Del Ferro and Tartaglia get further with cubic equations, it's true, but the general level of mathematics is still fairly patchy in 1500.

[Luzr]

Look up Diophantus (third century AD).

Does not look like he was better than Italians around 1500.

Del Ferro and Tartaglia get further with cubic equations
, it's true, but the general level of mathematics is still fairly patchy in 1500.

No dispute about that.

But it is much superior to Greeks - if nothing else, all Greeks knew was still known and there were very important additions to the field.

See, I do not dispute that the contribution of Greeks (and to the much lesser extent Romans) to the science was huge. But to see them as superior to what happened in the west starting with renesance is really far fetched. By 1700, western science and technology was way ahead.
That is simple and irrefutable fact.

[alexjrgreen]

See, I do not dispute that the contribution of Greeks (and to the much lesser extent Romans) to the science was huge. But to see them as superior to what happened in the west starting with renesance is really far fetched. By 1700, western science and technology was way ahead.
That is simple and irrefutable fact.

Until about 1700, and despite the writings of Copernicus, the overwhelming majority of astronomers still believed that the earth was at the centre of the universe.

[Luzr]

See, I do not dispute that the contribution of Greeks (and to the much lesser extent Romans) to the science was huge. But to see them as superior to what happened in the west starting with renesance is really far fetched. By 1700, western science and technology was way ahead.
That is simple and irrefutable fact.

Until about 1700, and despite the writings of Copernicus, the overwhelming majority of astronomers still believed that the earth was at the centre of the universe.

And your point being?

[TallDave]

500 years later, we have a man on the Moon, the Internet, jet planes, nuclear power, petaflop computers, MRIs, and the highest living standards ever achieved.

Where were the Greeks 500 years later?

They were certainly the geniuses of their age, and their principles gave rise to Western Civ. No doubt they'd be proud of their intellectual descendants.

[alexjrgreen]

See, I do not dispute that the contribution of Greeks (and to the much lesser extent Romans) to the science was huge. But to see them as superior to what happened in the west starting with renesance is really far fetched. By 1700, western science and technology was way ahead.
That is simple and irrefutable fact.

Until about 1700, and despite the writings of Copernicus, the overwhelming majority of astronomers still believed that the earth was at the centre of the universe.

And your point being?

Aristarchus of Samos (third century BC, quoted by Archimedes) had already proposed a Heliocentric model and attempted to measure the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

The fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 brought a flood of Greek scholars, with their collections of ancient manuscripts, to Italian city states eager to turn new knowledge into profit. But our modern journey to equal and then surpass the Greeks would not be complete until two and a half centuries later.

[alexjrgreen]

500 years later, we have a man on the Moon, the Internet, jet planes, nuclear power, petaflop computers, MRIs, and the highest living standards ever achieved.

Where were the Greeks 500 years later?

The Greeks lacked printing. When books were copied by hand, you had to be rich to own one.

[Luzr]

500 years later, we have a man on the Moon, the Internet, jet planes, nuclear power, petaflop computers, MRIs, and the highest living standards ever achieved.

Where were the Greeks 500 years later?

The Greeks lacked printing. When books were copied by hand, you had to be rich to own one.

While we had printing before 1500...

[alexjrgreen]

500 years later, we have a man on the Moon, the Internet, jet planes, nuclear power, petaflop computers, MRIs, and the highest living standards ever achieved.

Where were the Greeks 500 years later?

The Greeks lacked printing. When books were copied by hand, you had to be rich to own one.

While we had printing before 1500...

The Mycenaeans (archaic Greeks) inherited movable type based on seal stamps from the Minoans (see the Phaistos Disc) but, like the Chinese, didn't develop it.

Equalling and then surpassing the Greeks wasn't accomplished by a single achievement, but by thousands of achievements over several centuries.

[TallDave]

So, how far away do you guys think we are from post-scarcity?

I don't think we need strong AI for that. Cheap fusion and cheap general-purpose robotic labor should do the trick. I say 40 years.

Land and building materials will still have some scarcity, at least in theory, but I expect we can tap the mantle when the crust runs out of useful stuff, and post-scarcity we can make the deserts bloom and build some big new islands.

Time will be the main scarce commodity when labor and energy are essentially unlimited.

[Luzr]

So, how far away do you guys think we are from post-scarcity?

I would say it depends on how you define it. I would say that we already satisfy some 'weaker' definitions of the term.

I don't think we need strong AI for that. Cheap fusion and cheap general-purpose robotic labor should do the trick.

Well, I am afraid that some robotic labor might require a form of strong AI. Maybe not, maybe it is really possible to achieve similar outcome using a combination of known approaches, but think about jobs like repairing machinery...

I say 40 years.

I say we might have general strong AI in 20-60 years. The rest will be history... But I might be wrong too, of course.

Land and building materials will still have some scarcity, at least in theory, but I expect we can tap the mantle when the crust runs out of useful stuff, and post-scarcity we can make the deserts bloom and build some big new islands.

Actually, I was always thinking that before colonizing space, it might pay off to actually colonize oceans... These are 2/3 of surface and are so empty.

I would even say that you might realize some form of Bank's Culture utopia there, with sentient megaships cruising oceans instead of galaxy...

Time will be the main scarce commodity when labor and energy are essentially unlimited.

Depends on status of immortality:)

It would be definitely nice to have a little bit more time to finish all projects I ever wanted to start...

[IntLibber]

Time will be the main scarce commodity when labor and energy are essentially unlimited.

Depends on status of immortality:)

It would be definitely nice to have a little bit more time to finish all projects I ever wanted to start...

Not really in that sense. The idea of time scarcity is that imagine having nearly infinite intelligence and data storage capacity, the Moore generation time to develop the next generation of technology is effectively compressed to near zero, but you still need to take the time to apportion resources, build means of production, particularly for new tech that requires new tooling to be built.

In order to keep compressing the doubling time you are going to need to be developing more future generations of technologies sooner. Right now Intel starts working on chips 3-4 generations ahead of current market releases. There will be a limit to how many generations ahead you can be working on tech, particularly when the user base becomes an integral part of your development cycle in the internet of things.

[BenTC]

Time will be the main scarce commodity when labor and energy are essentially unlimited.

Depends on status of immortality:) It would be definitely nice to have a little bit more time to finish all projects I ever wanted to start...

Time scarcity is partly a matter of "nowness." All those projects you want to do, you can't do them all at once. The list is not static, so while you take the time to do one project, you gain other interests and add other projects to the list. Some projects may never make it to the front of the list. In the meantime, someone else will do a similar project before you, so they get the kudos, not you. This will apply to individuals and corporations.

[TallDave]

Well, I am afraid that some robotic labor might require a form of strong AI.

I don't know, my Roomba manages to do some useful work despite being pretty dumb.

The world needs ditch-diggers too. I think we could get to post-scarcity on the AI equivalent of human unskilled labor.