Participation trophies came around in the 1920s and were most popular in the 60s, when the boomers were kids, and didn't become controversial until the 1990s, when Millennials were kids.

And even then in the developing world the birth rate has been declining. Mexico's birth rate today is the same as the US birth rate in the late 2000s.

The IRA has been dominated by investments into clean energy. Joe Biden has majorly delivered on this front. He was effective at getting that passed.

Fracking as what we did in the past, Solar, Wind, and Battery are dominating new investment and will be displacing fossil fuels. We will soon hit a critical adoption in electric transportation where the overall oil used for miles every year is declining consistently every year. Meaning, not only do we have all the oil infrastructure we will ever need in North America, but we actually have too much. All of our oil infrastructure will produce more oil than we need and prices will crash as a glut is built up.

When investors can no longer make money investing into oil the entire industry will go into trauma mode.

The new precision fermentation processes will be able to make animal products, particularly ingredients used by the food industry, which will be able to produce meats and dairy using a tiny fraction of resources as today's animal livestock processes.

In the future, pretty much everyone will be a vegan, but we will eat things that looks like, and taste exactly like meat and milk.

I know people who bitch about people being lazy when they make their money via passive rent from homes they inherited. The only work they do is show up to city council to protest any new housing developments.

I figure the goal of automation/ai is to collapse the price of every necessity, from housing, to food, clothing, energy, and transportation. To where a first world lifestyle can be afforded for some small fraction of today's cost structure.

You will see people working, but you won't see people grinding away their lives to afford the basics. 24 hours a week might sustain a family of four.

The general trend to go from something human made to machine made is a massive reduction in cost. While the companies that do this for a while, eventually competition shows up and drives the cost down. Markets become flooded.

Gutenberg did this with books. His original goal was just to use the printing press to sell printed bibles at hand written prices. But once others figured out how the technology worked the price of books plummets. Once people start mass producing books it becomes very hard to keep them as expensive items.

The big profits don't come from high prices, the big profits come from an enormous volume of sales.

Difference. A landlord owns 3 rental properties. The way they maximize their income is by having the rent as high as it can possibly be. They don't have 4 properties or 5 properties. They want the absolute highest rent per property.

As where some sort of AI Architect/Engineer/Builder company could be going in a city and building not 3-5 units, but building 50,000 units, or in a place like Los Angeles, 2 million units. The goal isn't to become a landlord but get them all sold, even if at a modest profit of $20,000 per unit, that would be billions of dollars in profit.

Then figure they are going to do this in Orange County, and San Diego, and San Jose, and San Francisco, and Sydney, and Portland, and Vancouver, and Chicago, and Miami, and Austin, and Denver. Instead of trying to maximize profit off a few units, the goal will be to maximize profit by building enormous quantities of housing in city centers.

There is far more money in building millions of units, giving the real estate market total shock and awe by collapsing local prices. Sucking up all the renters as buyers and then expanding into other markets. Flood a market like Greater Los Angeles with 4 million units of housing and the price on all housing will crash.

The rush of buyers will have the all time deal of the century on a new condo in LA and then the existing home sellers will find themselves in an impossible to win situation.

Depending on where you live, a lot of markets already have a minority of jobs that are "good jobs". We have a very high cost of living right now. The majority of jobs in my city do not pay well enough for a person to afford their own 1 bedroom apartment at today's prices.

Like AI is not going to touch janitorial work. We need janitorial work as a society, allowing buildings to fall apart is not an option. However, janitorial work is not a well paying job. Its hardly a good career. People look down upon people who do it, even though it has to get done. We want janitors, we just don't want them living in our community.

I think we need to see a future where this technology can do to drastically reduce our cost of living. We need automated food systems, automated transportation, AI/Robo built urban housing. We need to leverage this technology to bring down expenses.

When a new technology comes along, the legacy industries that fail to adapt never hold on for long. The demand for traditional construction will plummet. Even if these folks can hold in a few marketplaces, elsewhere will have his huge advantage.

People also seem to think that this will just allow people to do the same type of work that the legacy industries used to do, and charge the same exact price, just keep more profit. That might happen, at first, but once several firms start doing this the prices will eventually crash.

I always bring this up. When Gutenberg invented the printing press in Europe, his original plan was to mass produce bibles and sell them at hand written prices (which were roughly 3 years wages for a clerk per copy). However, once the technology was revealed, book prices crashed and the business model went from producing high dollar items to high volume.

If this technology comes around like how I think it will, where the AI Architects can do design work, engineering work, and building the components in a factory. It doesn't matter what the legacy builders think, they will not be the ones getting the projects. It will be outside players.

Technical work gets old really fast. Art really involves tying together many human experiences and how people connect to each other. I think a major issue today is that a lot of contemporary art is over saturated junk. Its much easier for AI to do that. It will be easy to create really good looking things that have little to no meaning.

Museums are full of otherwise mundane objects from past eras. Its not just the best of the best examples of high culture that are worthy of museum display or archeological studies. A lot of very mundane items from our era will end up in a museum someday. These are items which connect us to the human experience. Society has generally become much more individualistic over time. Earlier periods were much more conformist and technology frequently set people free to socially experiment.

I am in the art business. AI Art is going to disrupt the art business. But its not going to somehow end art. If anything its going to free up artists to push further experimentation and allow humans to create things that were just not possible before. A lot of art has gotten stale and boring and has been popularized by wealthy coke heads who see it as an investment and then want to pump it up like a stock portfolio.

No one has a clear definition of art. Everyone has their own version of it. To some, it is the idea of taking established skills, and showing them off by creating pieces of art. To others its creating things which somehow connect to humans on an emotional level. AI art is very quickly doing the first one but the second one is going to be the challenge. AI is far from an expert in humans and the human experience.

For AI to connect to humans, on a human level, is going to create a drastically different world.

But technology causes people to break through and create new art. The commercialization of photography disrupted the art industry, which then pushed the world of art in the 20th century to extremely new places. This AI art will probably do the same. It already allows people to make quick and dirty digital portraits in various styles.

Art is an extremely difficult thing to do. Even for competent artists who are well 'skilled'. Creating intriguing work that humans take interest and connection to is very difficult. People have different tastes. People have difference experiences. There is a big difference between a rendering and a piece of fine art.

Right now, no. In the future, yes. I like the idea of humans working with AI architects and building engineers to build and test buildings in VR space where they have unlimited creative freedom. The systems can also then have individual components for the buildings produced in 3D printing factories so when the build time is ready a lot of it will be assembly vs human made bespoke pieces.

The construction industry is extremely resistant to change though and this would need to come from outside startups.

If you speak English, we are probably there. The world is rapidly adopting English to the point where it is becoming the universal second language.

Some things need to be expected to have a longer service life. I despise the idea of smart washing machines and smart refrigerators because it locks them into a fairly brief period of time. Something like a refrigerator should be designed for at least 25 years, especially a very well built one like a Subzero or Thermadore.

The idea of a super tech lover smart refrigerator that is expensive and needs to be replaced in 5-6 years. A really good refrigerator should be kicking for decades. I would trade smart features over long term robustness. Hell, I would give up cold settings, in unit water filtration, in unit ice maker an a ton of other shit if the refrigerator was built to last 40 years.

HVAC and Water heaters should also be 25+ year appliances.

I think with computers, it is reasonable that due to things like Moore's law they are not relevant forever. No one would expect a computer from 2003 to operate in today's world, and the computers 20 years from now will be the same jump in performance. I know people who feel the need to replace their computer every year or two, which i find to be silly. I use my computer more than they do, mine is over 5 years old and is still a total champion. I feel it will be rolling with the times when it is 8 years old. Computer service life should be like $400 per year. $2000 computer should last 5 years. High end computers that have very high price tags have their own cost structure, some $50,000 workstation I would not expect to last 100+ years.

I am not a phone guy, but my mentality is that a phone should last 1 year for every $100 spent on it. I use an iPhone SE2. I paid $450 or so for my model. I have had it for almost 3 years, I expect it to last until it is 4.5 years old. Granted, while the phone was $100 per year, the stupid phone bull was much, much more than that.

AI is already performing work that humans used to do. If 10% of jobs today are automated by 2030 that would be an enormous change in society.

The cost of music has also plummeted. We can now enjoy much more music and artists are no longer dependent on being mega stars to make a living. With services like Pateron, YouTube, and Spotify, we are seeing a lot of musicians who are middle class.

If we see a similar thing to things like food that you mentioned, we could see food prices plummet. PF made proteins could be cheaper than the bottle they go in.

There is a new startup called FreeWater that has canned water and the company sustains itself on the ads printed on the bottles. As PF disrupts food, we could see some sort of FreeFood business. Even if something as simple as Milk. Like FreeMilk or FreeProtein where you can go to a vending machine with your phone, and get a free can of nutrients where the real business is that there are ads on the can. But we can make this whole idea of hunger as something that no longer exists for humans. PF systems make the ingredients, which are then made into useful food by automated systems, which are then distributed by primarily Autonomous vehicles, stocked in warehouses by robots. Perhaps the final vending machine distribution will involve some human labor.

Automation should be seen as a force multiplier. It allows a group of 100 humans to do what at one point required a group of 1000 or 5000 humans to do. This insane productivity can then turn around and drastically reduce the cost of living. To where a current lifestyle that might require a $70,000 income can be afforded with a $15,000 income. Someone working 20 hours a week doing something 'easy' could live a pretty good life. No more grind or die. No more working poor. No more 50 hour week just to get by. Someone working a part time job can live fairly comfortably because the systems which provide all their energy, housing, food, clothing, and other goods are all automated.

I have envisioned something like this. AI Architects design mixed use urban block developments. Those AI architects then design all of the pieces for the development. There will still need to be humans working on the job site but the components to build the building will be assembled in an automated factory. All of the design work, engineering work, everything is mostly done by AI. The design might be driven by a team of humans who act as the more creative side. All of the building engineering is then verified and permitted with other autonomous systems. The components all then come to the job site with minimal to zero manipulation. Every steel beam is exactly the right size. Every tube and hose for plumbing is the right size. Humans and Robots then assemble the building.

This building isn't free. But instead of $500 per square foot construction costs, its $50-$100 per square foot construction costs. The 1 bedroom apartments might cost $45,000 to build. The developer could sell them at a 20% markup and the mortgage would be $420 per month. Rent on such a place in my city is currently 4-5 times that much. The developer makes the big money not by selling expensive housing, but by owning the retail/office space on the first and second floors. The housing just recoups their costs. But they maintain ownership of the first two floors and then rent it out to commercial tenants. A retail location with 500+ households sharing the same building and 10,000 households within a 10 minute walk is pretty sought after. Restaurants will pay a premium to be in a place where there are 25,000 customers in the neighborhood.

Napster was one of the first real disruptions the internet had on society. It definitely put pressure on the music industry and created this whole world where music was suddenly digital, on computers, and on the internet. It showed us a new world is possible and the old world was obsolete.

You are right. Its not ChatGPT, its the successor of ChatGPT. Its also the new business models and startups that will start ground up using ChatGPT vs old businesses that make the transition.

Spotify didn't start as a CD company, they were ground up internet.

30% of tech workers admit to working fewer than 4 hours per day. I have friends and family in this industry, many working in Silicon Valley. Some of them are workaholics and some barely do anything. I have heard of project managers, who seem to exclusively be very attractive young women, who barely work 2-3 hours per day but make more than a doctor.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90597677/report-one-third-of-tech-workers-admit-to-working-only-3-4-hours-a-day

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These tech companies are so flush with cash and they don't want to pay dividends to investors so they were hiring huge amounts of people. I knew people who got caught up with this and they would claim that the job is not as difficult as Starbucks but paid 5 times as much.

The work horses in tech will mostly always be employed.

I think the ideals will influence future generations, but so will our short comings. Especially any short comings that have negative effects on future generations. Things past generations did that were wrong also greatly influenced us.

I think we are really not in a place to try to judge the honor of future cultures. There will likely be a lot of things we are doing now that will be socially unacceptable to people of the future. They could see the entire animal livestock industry as wrong and society tolerating such a thing is wicked and cruel.

We are really not in a position to prevent people who haven't been born yet with what they might do with the technology they invent.

People of the future might have an extreme aversion to Furries just because they associate it with their Millennial and Zoomer Great grant parents.

I own a copy of the book "Arcology: City in the Image of Man" that I bought when I visited Arcosanti back in 2005. I highly recommend it as its where the whole concept came from. In the book, Soleri really details why arcologies should exist and what real world ones would look like and how they would function. The second half is arcologies for various ecosystems, some for space.

Other than the space ones, the goal was never to be isolated or a biodome. They are proposed as a new type of city that is super dense and have a much smaller footprint than modern cities, that would then be surrounded by nature. So you could be living in this super megacity but then are a few minute walk away from a nature hike.

His project city in Arizona, Arcosanti. It probably could have been constructed in the 1970s-1980s if they had like, a few billion dollars worth of resources. At least to the point where it would have been economically productive enough to where it would have sustained future expansions for the next 40 years.

The vibe I also got was that figuring out how to make these things on Earth as working places will teach us how to eventually make them for space use.

We have enough natural gas to run the entire grid during a windless and cloudy day. Our demand on those days is usually fairly low. The extra deman for brownouts was due to us having brief periods of 50GW of demand during an extreme heatwave.

The periods of extreme demand do not occur during cloudless days, the demand is brought on by AC. I have never seen on the CAISO where the daytime solar demand is under 20%, statewide storms like that are extremely rare.

My point is that if we are 90% renewables and 10% natural gas, that is a huge improvement. Then perhaps it can be 91% and 9% natural gas.

Because 6 months out of the year is extremely predictable weather regarding sunshine, we can probably get by with 300GWH of battery, 70GW of solar, and 25GW of wind. May 1st, October 31st could likely be 95% renewable.

Tony Seba of Rethink X made a presentation where they actually went and tracked historical weather data, then designed a system that would have 100% uptime. They then took the cost projected prices for renewables and gave capacity numbers for solar, wind and battery storage for California, Texas, and New England.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zgwiQ6BoLA

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The main idea is that solar will be so cheap that it will be viable to just overbuild by some huge factor so that on cloudy days where output is diminished by 80%, the remaining 20% is still collecting and that 20% is enough to satisfy demand, taking the edge off the batteries.

In one example he proposed 330GW of solar for California. Our normal demand is 20-35GW (with peak summer at 50GW). But it would be 30GW powering the grid and 300GW charging batteries. So every 1 hour of sunshine covers 8-10 hours of battery storage.

We had all the natural gas first. The renewables have only really been added over the last 10 years, and the majority of them since like 2016. That 70% is not any sort of hard limit. It was literally the maximum renewable today on the CAISO. Despite still being winter, our solar still puts out and hits its capacity all the time. We get sunshine in the winter months.

We do not have more solar than we have demand. Solar is around 13GW on the CAISO. The demand has never been under 18GW, most days its in the mid 20s, and in the summer days its in the 30-50GW range. So this idea that solar over producing is somehow a big problem is not founded on reality.

We do not need batteries for 6 months. We only need batteries for about 2 days, and even 8 hours would reduce our natural gas consumption considerably.

The plan is to keep installing solar, wind, and batteries and gradually ween off natural gas, to eventually between those three main systems we are not running natural gas. We might keep the plants around and they might get fired up 2 weeks a year, but it would be an enormous reduction.

We have about 10GWH of battery on the CAISO. I figure we are about 1% where it needs to be.

No. The hippies did zero damage to the nuclear industry. It was all WallStreet as the nuclear industry had constantly rising costs and weaker than expected long term earnings.

Any new nuke plant today will not be commercially viable in 10-15 years.

Here in California there are periods where during the day, renewables cover 70% of the demand on the CAISO. 15 years ago critics were claiming it was never going to surpass 10%. If we double the current solar, on most days, when the sun is shining, the solar output would be comparable to the total demand.

Renewables are dropping so much in price that it will be soon cheaper for households in the US to full rooftop solar and battery storage and then only buy the absolute minimum energy from the grid.