From: jonwill (jonwill@erols.com)
Date: Tue May 18 1999 - 10:58:55 MDT
Anders Sandberg wrote:
> But how much? Antigravity would be very beneficial, but there are
> obviously a lot of very hard work needed to be done to get it
> practical - if it is possible at all, which we do not know. How much
> should we pursue it compared to (say) cryonics or a better search
> engine?
>
> In the end, it is a question of how much we chose to invest in what -
> put everything on a safe bet, distribute it among likely candidate
> technologies, take a chance and invest in far-off stuff? The most
> extropian solution would of course be a self-organized, flexible
> method that encourages rational estimates; idea futures is one such
> idea (just read the online excerpts of EarthWeb, some nice portrayal
> there of how it might work), plain investment another. Some people
> believe strongly in certain technologies and would invest in them,
> others play it safe.
Efficiency of funds spent on R&D could be increased through a global research
consortium that monitors all such activity to help coordinate and guide all R&D
efforts. Such a system could eliminate wasteful duplication of effort, and
provide a mechanism for sharing of available research knowledge with and between
the
different R&D undertakings. The consortium could fund a committee of experts to
track promising technologies and provide guidance in spending allocations.
Cheers,
Jon
http://www.erols.com/jonwill/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:45 MST