'It's going to be really bad': Fears over AI bubble bursting grow in Silicon Valley

[hunter]

63. The notion that humans are infinitely repairable machines is absurd.

We're not like the automobiles in Jay Leno's garage where even the exotic stuff like Chrysler turbine cars can be repaired.

From an evolutionary perspective humans who had fully functional grandparents around, biological or adopted, were more likely to survive. Longevity beyond getting our grandchildren to reproductive age was mostly irrelevant. After that we humans become less functional, eventually suffer some fatal system failure, and get recycled into the biosphere.

I don't think there is any magical way to sidestep that reality. I'm not saying it's not worth trying, but not to the extent that people already living are deprived of necessities and comforts.

The end point of medical progress is that is we all die of our own unique diseases or highly improbable accidents. As we approach that limit medicine becomes increasingly difficult. If we haven't hit the point of rapidly diminishing returns yet, at least for the more affluent members of society, we may be getting close.

I tend to associate this line of thought with the Fermi Paradox. In this universe certain things may not be possible. Faster-than-light travel might be one, time travel another. It's also possible that the longevity of naturally evolved intelligent beings such as ourselves is constrained in ways we do not understand and could not change even if we did. It may be impossible to maintain complex systems such as ourselves and the systems required to sustain us across light year distances at sub-light speeds.

In any case there's no point in building environmentally destructive and expensive supercomputers to find new drugs if that environmental destruction and economic displacement these supercomputers cause kill more people than any potential medical discovery would help.