Good readable summary post of the future scearios for intelligence improvement (that rise to a singularity type level):
http://memebox.com/futureblogger/show/733
By the way, I get all my news from blogs now. I've pretty much stopped listening to music or playing games. It's a long ways away from when I spent hours playing Doom and Counterstrike, watching comedy central, and listening to bebop jazz, italian opera, and reggae. Reality and technological and scientific development has just gotten too interesting. In my free time I'd rather get smarter (about getting smarter) than anything else. I still hang out with friends, getting dinner, going to house parties, etc. I pick them because I enjoy their company, not because they're interested in these topics, but I wish they were passionate about this stuff too.
I haven't stopped playing games entirely, but I find myself spending more and more time reading these kinds of blogs and enjoying it.
I try to pick friends with interests in those kinds of topics. I'm not terribly successful, but I think it's important to try to surround myself with people who will at least implicitly encourage me to pursue persistence maximizing interests.
Posted by: Ben_Wraith | July 26, 2008 at 01:37 AM
Ironic. I gave up video games ages ago, but now, for professional reasons, I am under significant pressure to dedicate some of my precious blogging time to TV, movies, video games, and of course, given the nature of my company, popular music, as well as activities that never had the slightest appeal to me such as knowing celebrity gossip.
In a sane world I would be working full time on understanding how things work and telling people in some large company, probably a private equity fund or global macro, what I figured out, but in the world as it exists its easier to build such a company myself than to jump through the hoops I would need to in order to find such a job and be listened to.
Posted by: michael vassar | July 26, 2008 at 02:14 AM
Ain't that the truth, Michael. Microsoft responds very well to cold calls, but they'll pay as little for a company or services as they can get away with, in my experience.
Posted by: Hopefully Anonymous | July 26, 2008 at 02:54 AM
I stopped playing video games a while back, and I also decided to stop reading fiction, because I came to find other things more interesting. I used to listen to music a lot while I was on the computer, but after my hard-drive failed I lost the stash I had collected. Also, I'll frequently be listening to bloggingheads, youtube, econtalk or similar things. At the same time, much of what I do spend time on is still a waste.
Posted by: TGGP | July 26, 2008 at 01:11 PM
TGGP, I wonder if you wrote that before you discovered expert blogs? Nowadays I don't need to get a lot of my science or social science news mediated through newspapers or even less expert amatuer wikipedia writers or bloggers: I can get it from blogging professors and exprts in the field. I can watch their talks on youtube. My brain does choose to turn off at times, but I can dose it more precisely now, just dumbed-down-enough content for just the right interval. When Kurzweil and others talk about how exponential growth can surprise you by what feels like suddently massive growth, I don't know if they used media and the internet as an example, but it's one of the best ones I can think of. I'm old enough to have lived when (1) a majority of people didn't have cable tv, and only had about 3-10 tv channels, (2) when a majority had cable, but no internet, less than 100 tv channels, (3) when internet was available, but there was essentially no audio or video content, certainly not real time, and written content was limited and idiosyncratic, (4) BOOM!!! Suddenly pretty much all forms of media are instantly available on the internet, including media never captured before (daily musings of a gazillion experts), particularly if you're willing to download it illegally.
The internet has made it easier for me to actually be smarter, not just feel smarter by relaxing or turning off my brain in more pseudo-intellectual ways. I really do waste less time, in my observation.
Posted by: Hopefully Anonymous | July 26, 2008 at 02:10 PM
Wrote what? Are you referring to the akinokure/Dusk in Autumn link? That's not me, that's agnostic from GNXP. And I just wasted a bunch of time on Wikipedia reading about history less than an hour ago.
Posted by: TGGP | July 27, 2008 at 12:58 AM
Once I went in to lay my mat down, I quickly went back out again and drank a half bottle of water.
Posted by: revenue cycle improvement | August 30, 2011 at 07:03 AM