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ArisKatsaris comments on May 2016 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: ArisKatsaris 01 May 2016 09:27PM

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Comment author: ArisKatsaris 01 May 2016 09:28:04PM 0 points [-]

TV and Movies (Live Action) Thread

Comment author: gwern 02 May 2016 12:13:31AM 3 points [-]
  • Pirates of Silicon Valley (Bit of a '90s nostalgia trip. Awkward frame narration aside, this is one of the paradigmatic interpretation of Bill Gates & Steve Jobs from before they entered their second or third acts - Jobs when Jobs had ruined Apple but not yet saved it, Gates when Gates was widely vilified as a monotone psychopath nerd and was not yet canonized Saint Gates for devoting his fortune to Third-Worlders. Watching it, I find myself astonished yet again how Microsoft became so dominant and Bill Gates the richest man in history. How did it happen? It just doesn't seem possible, even after you read event by event descriptions. How could it be that Gates could go to IBM offering them a simple operating system, a thing that was always before then, and we can see is even now with Android and Linux and Apple, something that was relatively unimportant compared to the hardware and easily copied or surpassed, and build its empire on this? It makes no sense. But it happened anyway.)
Comment author: Document 17 May 2016 03:39:00AM *  0 points [-]

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., S03E18: "The Singularity". Aired April 26. The team wants to find a biologist whose work they need.

Simmons: He was asked to step down a month before for conducting irregular experiments.
Lincoln: "Irregular" meaning...?
Fitz: (grimly) He's a rumored transhumanist.
Coulson (who previously collected a set of trading cards commemorating, and later worked with, a man who was biologically augmented in the 1940s; worked with and against various members of an alien civilization whose advanced magic/technology allows them to live for thousands of years; ran, tried to have shut down, and later had his life saved by an advanced research project dedicated to reviving the clinically dead; fought a Hydra faction led by a man who'd uploaded his mind to a bank of computers in the 1970s; worked closely with a biologically and technologically upgraded cyborg; and has a prosthetic arm with super strength among its features): A what?
Simmons: People who believe in using science and technology to transcend our biological limitations. Their goal is...
Lincoln: Become more than human. Timely.
Fitz: Digital immortality, superintelligence...
Coulson: Okay. I'm glad everyone knows what it is.

(The episode goes on to portray "transhumanists" as sexy, stylish young people who meet in secret clubs to exchange illegal(?) enhancements. The biologist appears to enthusiastically join a villain who wants to end conflict by converting the world into his mind slaves.)