From: Michael Lorrey (retroman@tpk.net)
Date: Wed Jun 25 1997 - 19:42:00 MDT
Rick Knight wrote:
>
> Max More posted:
>
> I've always thought a pretty good test of intelligence was to ask
> someone what they would do with $X, and keeping increasing the value of
> X until they can't think of anything else to do with it, except buy 50
> Rolls Royce's (as a certain guru did not long ago). I suspect most
> people on this list wouldn't have any trouble finding sensible ways to
> spend their first trillion dollars.
>
> My addition/clarification to that:
>
> First off, thanks Max for instilling a measure of vision and nobility
> into a topic and about which I started getting my ire up.
>
> I would like to add that although the notion of "plenty" may be a
> non-issue for some extropians, it is not necessarily a measure of a
> person's worthiness or intellect that s/he settles for substantially
> less. Rather, it is a limitation of his/her imagination and to that
> extent, those with loftier aspirations should graciously allow them to
> be or inspire them further.
>
> Although I don't scrutinously follow Bill Gates' entrepreneurial or
> philanthropic efforts, it is hard not to regard him ultimately as
> short-sighted and somewhat facist, given the incredibly and
> precedent-setting resources he has amassed.
>
Ah, another person angry that he's ahead in the game of dying with the
most toys. I see it differently. It has taken his strict control of that
much capital to make the impact Microsoft has had in our world, so
anyone wanting to make a bigger dent in history, better get cracking.
$35 billion still isn't much when you measure how much the government
wastes every year. They've got a $2.5 trillion ANNUAL budget, while that
$35 billion is his entire net worth, not his annual income. TO date,
Bill Gates has had a greater positive impact on my life in the past 5
years than the US gov't has had in the past 20. Who says capitalism
doesn't do it better, cheaper?
>
> In Star Trek: First Contact, Picard and the 21st century character,
> Lily have a discussion about the enormous cost of titanium to build a
> ship the size of the Enterprise. It was so encouraging to hear Picard
> speak of a world to come that was not motivated by acquisition and
> self-centered pursuit, as if Gene Rodenberry (whom I regard as a late
> 20th century H.G. Wells) continued to promote his philosophy beyond
> the grave.
I always hated him for making the capitalist Ferrenghi such ugly
dispicable characters, as if to purposely portray anyone with a profit
motive as twisted and beneath contempt (at the time I was starting up my
first business).
> If the definition of extropian includes continually pushing the limits
> of what it is to be human, where would considerations such as this
> factor in?
>
> I wonder if it would take a trillion dollars to make the Enterprise?
Depends on whether Lockheed has made any progress on an Alcubierre type
warp drive with the help of Haisch, Rueda, and Puthoff. Anyone heard
anything?
With the replicator technology, which transforms energy into matter and
back in whatever complexity desired, cost of fabrication then would be
much less than now. We couldn't do it today for $100 trillion. Being
over 1000 feet long, we are talking about a spaceship at least twice the
tonnage of our Enterprise class aircraft carriers, being built in space.
We have yet to put even that much raw mass in orbit, never mind build a
starship.
>
--
TANSTAAFL!!!
Michael Lorrey
------------------------------------------------------------
mailto:retroman@tpk.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive
Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com
Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/
Mikey's Animatronic Factory
My Own Nuclear Espionage Agency (MONEA)
MIKEYMAS(tm): The New Internet Holiday
Transhumans of New Hampshire (>HNH)
------------------------------------------------------------
#!/usr/local/bin/perl-0777---export-a-crypto-system-sig-RC4-3-lines-PERL
@k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_
]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256;
&S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]}
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