rkbabang

Yes, people in the car unsupervised will trash them. The seats will be damaged and stained by who knows what. They will be full of graffiti. It will be a regular occurrence to have one of these arrive with puke in it on a Saturday night. people will do all kinds of things they would never do in a taxi or Uber with a driver there. Anything public is gross. I don't know about anyone else (maybe I'm just an elitist asshole) is that I wouldn't use an AV ride service even if it was cheaper, quicker, and more convenient. I get grossed out every time I take a bus, or a subway, or even a plane ride. I don't want to be around these people, even if it means using the car by myself after they do. I don't want to sit on the seats or touch the handles/armrests/handholds/etc. It's the same reason I won't shop at Walmart even if I could save money by doing so. Even if the AV doesn't get to me smelling like B.O., puke, or piss (as many subway cars always do), I'd be imagining that the last people in it were un-showered, greasy haired, drug attics in their un-washed pajama pants heading to Walmart. I'll pay more, even a lot more, to drive myself sitting in my clean private car with heated/ventilated leather seats. I've always said there is only one thing I envy about the ultra-rich. It isn't their mega-mansions, or their yachts. It isn't their supercars or anything else. It's their ability to fly private and avoid, not just the security, but the people at the airport and on the plane. My wife and I will often take the extra time to drive places when it would have been much easier to fly, or most of the time just avoid traveling altogether simply to avoid air-travel. Technology isn't really the problem with AVs, like most things, people are.

The real benefits to come with autonomous vehicles come with autonomous flying drones which pick you up minutes from when you call them and fly you point to point to your destination. No traffic, no roads, no crazy human drivers to worry about. There will never be flying cars with human pilots, but in many ways flying drones are easier than driverless cars that need to be in the ground around humans and other obstacles.

Yes, like I said. Major cities first the rest later as the tech improves. There will always be people who own their own cars, just as there are still people who own their own horses. I doubt I'll ever give up owning my own vehicle. But the next generation that comes after driverless cars have been perfected will never even learn to drive. The only question is how long until this happens? I'm thinking driverless cars being the majority on the road in big cities in 15 years, in rural areas in 30. Those are just wild guesses based on nothing though.

In the short to medium term I'm far more bullish on fission nuclear power. I think the US is going to eventually get off its ass and reduce the regulatory burden and allow advanced reactors to be built and built more quickly. Even if the US doesn't do this other parts of the world will. Nuclear Power Will Grow "Exponentially" In Low-Carbon World – Citigroup White Paper https://www.wealthbriefing.com/html/article.php?id=198695 I'm invested in SRUUF right now and am looking for other ways to take advantage of this trend as well. Fusion is interesting, and will probably eventually be how humanity generates its power, but it's not really actionable yet for an individual investor.

Or the new anthem that dropped a few days ago and is going viral: "... your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end ..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro

Yes, obviously carless living will happen in the mega-cities (starting with the ones with nice weather and no snow to deal with) way before it happens in the smaller cities, not to mention suburban and rural areas. There are already a large number of carless people in major cities, so this is really just AI replacing Uber or taxis service. AI has a long way to go before it can drive in a whiteout snow storm on a twisty mountain road.

Thanks! Much appreciated.

Could you give us a little more info on the above? I'm not familiar with either Lyn Alden or the Horizon Kinetic Papers. It looks like Lyn Alden has a bunch of YouTube videos, are there any in particular I should start with? And I didn't find anything very interesting in the first few links of a google search for "Horizon Kinetic Papers".

Yep. USD value in 2013-USD

They make RVs and campers too. When my kids were young I had a Forest River “Rockwood Roo” camper for a few years. I bought it used, fixed it up, used it for 3 years then sold it for significantly more than I paid for it.

More FFH & JOE. Funded by selling off my TTD (bought during 2020 crash) and SHOP (held since 2018).

I think we can discount ever meeting anyone from another galaxy. So we are only talking about the Milky Way. Not all 200 Billion stars have habitable planets fit for life. Not all habitable planets have a large moon for protection. It is certainly possible that we are the only intelligent lifeforms at the moment in the Milky Way and even we have no reasonable means to travel between the stars. There is nothing arrogant about it. We just don't know. Anyone who claims to know is lying to you or lying to themselves. I put contactable ETs in the same category as god(s). People want to believe, so they do.

My line of thinking is that a lot of the variables in the Drake Equation are completely unknown. You can easily put in numbers which make the chances much less than 1 in 300M. There are so many potentials for great filters. Life starting to begin with, intelligent life evolving, evolved intelligent life that doesn't go extinct after discovering Fission and Fusion, intelligent life that doesn't go extinct after creating strong AI, on and on and on.... Then you have to factor in the chances not only that they exist and that they are capable of interstellar travel, but that they somehow found us and came here. It would be astounding if the chances of all of that were less than 1 in 10 billion.

It is pretty unlikely we are the only intelligent beings in the universe, but I think it is far more likely that 1) we are the only intelligent beings in the Milky Way Galaxy; and 2) No beings exist anywhere with the technology for intergalactic travel. In which case we are for all intents and purposes very alone.

Back in the mid-90s I worked for NYNEX, now Verizon, as a splice technician in Massachusetts for a summer when I was in college. It was basically climbing poles and splicing large cables together, then installing new drop wires to the houses. They were replacing a lot of the old cables in the city, so the linemen would hang the new ones and we'd go and splice them together then connect the houses, then the linemen would come back and remove the old cables. They were doing the same thing downtown where everything was underground, but as a college student summer hire I wasn't allowed to work on the underground stuff as all the old cables underground were lead jacketed. The guys working down in the manholes would get tested once per month and if their lead levels where high, they'd have to get treated by a doctor and stay out of the manholes until their lead levels were back to normal. There were guys who had high lead levels multiple times per year.

I've been buying and stocking up on lead and copper for years, but not for superconductors.

Exactly. Unexplained things would have been angels or demons 500 years ago, it would of been the Gods 2000 years ago or maybe fairies or gnomes before that, its space aliens now. It is possible likely that our understanding of existence is still extremely primitive and that over the next 500 years we will grow our scientific understanding more than we have in the last 500 years. Maybe Alex Jones's "interdimensional beings" will be closer to the truth of what has visited us than lifeforms from another star system or maybe something else entirely. I have a feeling (based on nothing but my opinion) that intelligent life is rarer than most assume. I base this on the fact that in >2B years we are the most advanced species to evolve on earth and if an comet hadn't punched the dinosaurs ticket it might not have happened at all ever. Also it would be so easy for humanity to wipe itself out even now long before we are capable of interstellar travel and making ourselves extinct will become easier and easier as time goes on. Other intelligent species must hit the point where they can kill themselves off long before they hit the point where they can travel between the stars. I think it is possible we are the most intelligent species which exists in the Milkyway Galaxy at this current time or if there are others they too may kill themselves off before mastering interstellar travel.

The thing I like about Rogan's show is that he interviews a wide range of people from all walks of life and lets them talk. Yeah, he makes a lot of stupid comments and asks some dumb questions, but over the course of a 3 hour show the guests gets a chance to say everything they wanted to say. Rogan admits he's no expert on anything and he doesn't come off as having any type of addenda. Listening to more "polished" mainstream interviewers you mostly get leading questions with no time for the guest to properly respond, the hosts often arrogantly think they know as much or more about the topic as the experts, they often edit the show before airing it so you hear only what they want you to, and of course there are some people that the mainstream shows just won't interview at all because they don't want you to hear the other side of some topics. You can get a lot of value from Rogan's show around a bit of nonsense.

Yes, I would recommend “The Bitcoin Standard” as the place to start. “The Fiat Standard” is also excellent as it contrasts Bitcoin with what we have now. After that if you want a more technical book about the mechanics of it “Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain” by Andreas Antonopoulos is excellent, but maybe more technical than you need.

Exactly what I just said. Look at raven coin. No promises, no issuance, no premine, it is a mined coin just like Bitcoin. There are a lot of coins like this. To say only Bitcoin is not a security is just asinine.

Coinbase CEO Reveals SEC Told the Company To Delist Everything but Bitcoin https://www.btctimes.com/news/coinbase-ceo-reveals-sec-told-the-company-to-delist-everything-but-bitcoin "Armstrong stated that the SEC reportedly expressed its belief that "every asset other than Bitcoin is a security." He added that “we said, well how are you coming to that conclusion? Because that’s not our interpretation of the law.” He recalled the regulator's stance, saying, "we’re not going to explain it to you; you need to delist every asset other than Bitcoin." That is a crazy opinion by any definition. If Bitcoin is not a security, then neither are the Bitcoin clones or bitcoin-like coins such as Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dodgecoin, Ravencoin, etc....

Of course you can't completely discount the theory that this is some type of phycological operation the intelligence industrial complex is perpetrating on the American people for some reason. Such as to distract us from something else which they are doing or something else which is happening. Occam's razor. What's more likely? That UFOs exist and aliens have been captured by the government, or that someone for some reason wants you to think that? I'm keeping an open mind about all possibilities.

Charles Munger is 99 so you could be a billionaire with many decades yet to live.