Note: I'm terrible at making up titles, and I think that the one I gave may give the wrong impression. If anyone has a suggestion on what I should change it to, it would be much appreciated.

As I've been reading articles on less wrong, it seems to me that there are hints of an underlying belief which states that not only is capitalism a good economic paradigm, it shall remain so. Now, I don't mean to say anything like 'Capitalism is Evil!' I think that capitalism can, and has, done a lot of good for humanity. 

However, I don't think that capitalism will be the best economic paradigm going into the future. I used to view capitalism as an inherent part of the society we currently live in, with no real economic competition.

I recently changed my views as a result of a book someone recommended to me 'The zero marginal cost society' by Jeremy Rifkin. In it, the author states that we are in the midst of a third industrial revolution as a result of a new energy/production and communications matrix i.e. renewable energies, 3-D printing and the internet.

The author claims that these three things will eventually bring their respective sectors marginal costs to zero. This is significant because of a 'contradiction at the heart of capitalism' (I'm not sure how to phrase this, so excuse me if I butcher it): competition is at the heart of capitalism, with companies constantly undercutting each other as a result of new technologies. These technological improvement allow a company to produce goods/services at a more attractive price whilst retaining a reasonable profit margin. As a result, we get better and better at producing things, and it lets us produce goods at ever decreasing costs. But what happens when the costs of producing something hit rock bottom? That is, they can go no lower.

3D printing presents a situation like this for a huge amount of industries, as all you really need to do is get some designs, plug in some feedstock and have a power source ready. The internet allows people to share their designs for almost zero cost, and renewable energies are on the rise, presenting the avenue of virtually free power. All that's left is the feedstock, and the cost of this is due to the difficulty of producing it. Once we have better robotics, you won't need anyone to mine/cultivate anything, and the whole thing becomes basically free.

And when you can get your goods, energy and communications for basically free, doesn't that undermine the whole capitalist system? Of course, the arguments presented in the book are much more comprehensive, and it details an alternative economic paradigm called the Commons. I'm just paraphrasing here.

Since my knowledge of economics is woefully inadequate, I was wondering if I've made some ridiculous blunder which everyone knows about on this site. Is there some fundamental reason why Jeremy Rifkin's is a crackpot and I'm a fool for listening to him? Or is it more subtle than that? I ask because I felt the arguments in the book pretty compelling, and I want some opinions from people who are much better suited to critiquing this sort of thing than I.

Here is a link to the download page for the essay titled 'The comedy of the Commons' which provides some of the arguments which convinced me: 

http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1828/

A lecture about the Commons itself:

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2009/ostrom_lecture.pdf

And a paper (?) about governing the commons: 

http://www.kuhlen.name/MATERIALIEN/eDok/governing_the_commons1.pdf

And here is a link to the author's page, along with some links to articles about the book:

http://www.thezeromarginalcostsociety.com/pages/Milestones.cfm

http://www.thezeromarginalcostsociety.com/pages/Press--Articles.cfm

An article displaying some of the sheer potential of 3D printers, and how it has the potential to change society in a major way:

http://singularityhub.com/2012/08/22/3d-printers-may-someday-construct-homes-in-less-than-a-day/

Edit: Drat! I forgot about the stupid questions thread. Should I delete this and repost it there? I mean, I hope to discuss this topic with others, so it seems suitable for the DISCUSSION board, but it may also be very stupid. Advice would be appreciated.

Edit: Some people have misunderstood my intentions here. I do not in any way expect this to be the NEXT GREAT IDEA. I just couldn't see anything wrong with this, which almost certainly meant there were gaps in my knowledge. I thought the fastest way to see where I went wrong would be to post my idea here and see what people say. I apologise for any confusion I caused. I'll try to be more clear next time.

(I really can't think of any major problems in this, so I'd be very grateful if you guys could tell me what I've done wrong). 

So, a while back I was listening to a discussion about the difficulty of making an FAI. One of the ways that was suggested to circumvent this was to go down the route of programming an AGI to solve FAI. Someone else pointed out the problems with this. Amongst other things one would have no idea what the AI will do in pursuit of its primary goal. Furthermore, it would already be a monumental task to program an AI whose primary goal is to solve the FAI problem; doing this is still easier than solving FAI, I should think. 

So, I started to think about this for a little while, and I thought 'how could you make this safer?' Well, first of, you don't want an AI who completely outclasses humanity in terms of intellect. If things went Wrong, you'd have little chance of stopping it. So, you want to limit the AI's intellect to genius level, so if something did go Wrong, then the AI would not be unstoppable. It may do quite a bit of damage, but a large group of intelligent people with a lot of resources on their hands could stop it. 

 Therefore, what must be done is that the AI cannot modify parts of its source code. You must try and stop an intelligence explosion from taking off. So, limited access to its source code, and a limit on how much computing power it can have on hand. This is problematic though, because the AI would not be able to solve FAI very quickly. After all, we have a few genius level people trying to solve FAI, and they're struggling with it, so why should a genius level computer do any better. Well, an AI would have fewer biases, and could accumulate much more expertise relevant to the task at hand. It would be about as capable as solving FAI as the most capable human could possibly be; perhaps even more so. Essentially, you'd get someone like Turing, Von Neumann, Newton and others all rolled into one working on FAI. 

 But, there's still another problem. The AI, if left for 20 years working on FAI for 20 years let's say, would have accumulated enough skills that it would be able to cause major problems if something went wrong. Sure, it would be as intelligent as Newton, but it would be far more skilled. Humanity fighting against it would be like sending a young Miyamoto Musashi against his future self at his zenith i.e. completely one sided. 

 What must be done then, is the AI must have a time limit of a few years (or less) and after that time is past, it is put to sleep. We look at what it accomplished, see what worked and what didn't, and boot up a fresh version of the AI with any required modifications, and tell it what the old AI did. Repeat the process for a few years, and we should end up with FAI solved. 

After that, we just make an FAI, and wake up the originals, since there's no point in killing them off at this point. 

 But there are still some problems. One, time. Why try this when we could solve FAI ourselves? Well, I would only try and implement something like this if it is clear that AGI will be solved before FAI is. A backup plan if you will. Second, what If FAI is just too much for people at our current level? Sure, we have guys who are one in ten thousand and better working on this, but what if we need someone who's one in a hundred billion? Someone who represents the peak of human ability? We shouldn't just wait around for them, since some idiot would probably just make an AGI thinking it would love us all anyway. 

 So, what do you guys think? As a plan, is this reasonable? Or have I just overlooked something completely obvious? I'm not saying that this would by easy in anyway, but it would be easier than solving FAI.

So, I read a post a little while ago saying that asking the community for advice on personal problems was okay, and no one seemed to disagree strongly with this. Therefore, I'll just ask for some advice, and hope that I'm not accidentally going past some line. If I do, I apologise

 I have had migraines for quite a while now. They started when I was a child, but were infrequent in those days. They got progressively worse as time went on, and things started to get quite bad when I was about 12. A few years down the line, I would have headaches for months at a time, with migraines popping up for a few days a month. It got worse from there. Now, I have had migraine-like symptoms for 10 months now. I say migraine-like because part of the definition of a migraine is that it lasts from about 3 hours to a few days. According to a neurologist I recently went to, I have transformative migraines, or wording similar to that. So I have all the symptoms of migraines, except they last for inordinate amounts of time. I've had an MRI, and it showed nothing wrong with my brain. According to the World Health Organisation, this is more disabling than blindness, and as bad as acute psychosis: http://www.migrainetrust.org/chronic-migraine You can see why its rather important to me that I get rid of/deal with this.

Now, I've tried quite a lot of things over the years, especially in the last two or so. NSAIDs do very little, and thing like migraleve (paracetamol with codeine) are a little better. Sumatriptan provides some relief, but it doesn't get rid of the migraine. At best it will knock me down to a weak migraine. I've tried taking propanalol (160mg) for half a year, and it does little to help. I was prescribd Amitiptyline (10mg) a week ago, but it hasn't had much effect. I was told to increase by 10mg it every two weeks until I hit 30mg. I've also tried cutting things out like chocolates, and dairy for a month. It didn't have any effect. I also don't have any caffeine. So this eliminates some common causes of migraines. My migraines sometimes respond to heat/cold applied to my head, but this is only some of the time, due to my migraines shifting in nature. Further, it only takes the edge of them. I've also tried taking magnesium supplements, but they had a negative effect on me i.e. strange dreams and insomnia. That just made my problems worse. Also, I've ruled out medication overuse.

 So, does anyone have any recommendations? There should be a few people who have had experience with this level of migraines, and I expect they might be able to provide some advice. I'm not too optimistic, but I really need something that works.

Edit: Hello again. After a fair bit of discussion with some of you, I can say with great relief my belief in an infinite universe with infinite minds in it has gone down. Now, that is not to say that I think that it won't rear its ugly head once more, but it seems to have been beaten back for a while. If you're wondering why I sound relieved, well, that because an infinite, mind hospitable universe is a terrible place. Though some have presented me with some arguments against the whole immortality thing to do with consciousness, well that's a little harder to discuss.I don't think the path I'm taking on the philosophy of mind thing is wrong, but there's a ways to go yet. But I've seen the groundwork, and it looks good to me. Anywho, I've got about 40 -50% belief that its right in the argument I presented below, whereas before it was a little under 70%. Now, I think I'll make another one of these in a few years, because this is an important topic. This whole thing, or something like it may well be right, and utilitarian ethics is going down in that case. And that's bad news for a lot of people, including me. So I'll see you a few years down the line, when I've learnt some more physics, and have brushed up on my arguments.  

Hello there, 

This is my first time writing a LessWrong post (welcome thread aside), and I thought I'd start with something that has occupied most people's minds at one point or another: death. Essentially, I am reasonably sure that immortality already exists from a reductionist point of view, albeit with one assumption that some may not agree with. And depending on whether or not the universe will last forever, then immortality is guaranteed for everyone, throughout all time. it is I think I'd be correct in saying that many people on this site are familiar with the whole Boltzmann brain idea, but I'll go through it anyway, to set the stage.

So, let's get started with the basic idea. In this universe, things seem to run on probabilistic laws known as quantum mechanics. These allow for very strange consequences, which were previously thought eradicated. The idea was originally conceived Boltzmann for a deterministic, infinite world, but it works just as well for a probabilistic one. According to the laws of probability, it is possible that any structure could spontaneously form at random points in the universe. The expected time it would take for that to happen would be far vaster than the length of the universe. A brain could also appear in the midst of space at any time whatsoever, existing for a brief moment in the starry void before fading away. And, in a universe that lasts for an infinite amount of time, it will happen. An infinite amount of times. And so will every other possible combination of atoms. So, doesn't that mean that we would reappear? Well, yes. A structure the same as the universe is right now, with you perfectly recreated would form an infinite amount of times. So, I say to you, is this not immortality? Is this person appearing an infinite amount of times, the very same you that now exists?

 Well, I think so. This is just a simplification, but its a decent example. Suppose two books could be made, which are identical in structure, and we would call them the same book, despite there being two of them. There is no special stuff that makes any of these objects unique, only their structure, which represents how they(people) have changed due to their interactions with the world from a given starting point. So, if we exist for an infinite period, are we not immortal?

But there are still some problems. Just because the same life is repeating over and over again, it doesn't mean that you'll be living forever. To live you need some change, different thoughts, ideas and so on. If you have the same ones over and over again, and cannot even remember the full past, then you're no truly immortal. Well, not so fast. That idea is dependant upon the world being deterministic in nature. Your future actions could go down any number of paths, though they're not 'up to you' in the traditional sense. So the future you is not determined, you're structure from this point in time could take any number of paths, and in an infinite universe, it will take all possible paths.  But the problem is still there. 50 years from now, when I'm dead and gone, my particular branch of life will be over. I will have died and that will be the end of this incarnation of me.

After you die, and have whatever thoughts come to the dying, that will be the end, no? Well, what if your body, just after your last thought, was reassembled straight after? This too is possible, so would you not be carrying on with your life? And you happen to live a few more years, and in this world, someone invents the an immortality pill, and you go on to life forever?

 So, death is trounced, is it not? Our woes are for nought, and we need not truly worry about death.  But hang on, this whole thing was based on an infinite universe. So death is still in play! Well, here's where things start to get a little more iffy. Now, I wholly believe in this, and I think it perfectly reasonable, but others may baulk at this. So, why does our universe exist? Better yet, why does anything exist at all? Wait a minute, don't leave just yet, this probably isn't going where you think it is. Now, some have proposed multi verse theories, which may circumvent this whole problem, and provide an infinite number of universes. But I don't think that's necessary. Its reasonable to keep your assumptions to a minimum, so I think assuming that our reality is the only one should also go. 

 So there you have it. What do you think?.