
Wild Ideas - a3voices
http://hanson.gmu.edu/wildideas.html
======
snitko
The author is obviously some kind of crazy anarchist. Private law system? You
mean that all of a sudden people would become customers of multiple legal
firms instead of subjects of one big system and will be able to choose laws
they like while at the same time not interfering directly with others who
chose different laws? You mean that all of a sudden majority would lose its
power to dictate minorities how to live their lives and gay people all over
the world can start marrying each other simply because they are customers of a
different firm by their voluntary choice? I say impossible! We need
government. Anyone who says we don't is an anarchist and we all know
anarchists are bad for ya.

~~~
pinchyfingers
[Edit: Self-righteous anger caused me to stop reading parent post mid-way
through and start replying furiously. Nothing to see here.]

Crazy anarchist.

Because there have been no extremely intelligent, logical, level-headed and
productive people who are also anarchists.

Start with this guy and get back to me:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard)

If you said "crazy statist" I could maybe agree, since statism is kind of
crazy in my opinion, but I think attacking any ideas by disqualifying with
adjectives like crazy is extremely narrow-minded and leads to poor results,
even if you're talking about statists.

Just because you've never heard of something, don't be so immature to dismiss
it without thinking it through... you expose yourself as ignorant of the hard
work of many intelligent people that have come before you.

~~~
unimpressive
Since we're now on the subject. I notice that there seems to be a very high
turnover of young people from the various forms of anarchism as they get
older.

Would anybody who fits this description like to elaborate on why that
happened? Found a convincing argument? General disillusionment with humanity?

~~~
Houshalter
I was an anarcho-capitalist for awhile. I thought it was the perfect system.
There would be absolutely no incentives to do bad things. Anything a
government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough
people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so.

But I no longer think it's a _perfect_ system. People don't behave like
perfect rational market actors, there are edge cases like natural monopolies
where normal market mechanisms don't lead to the best outcome, and then there
is just enforcing altruism (like looking out for animal rights or children's
rights, who couldn't buy legal services under this system, or redistributing
income so you don't end up with people starving to death or in poverty.)

Of course the current system we have is so far from a perfect system it makes
these problems seem trivial. But at least it seems ok and generally stable,
whereas what would happen in an anarcho-capitalist world is a complete
unknown.

There still might be a near-perfect system. Robin Hanson's ideas on prediction
markets for making policy decisions might be a huge improvement, at least in
some areas, and a semi-private legal system for some things might work. And I
think libertarian policies in general are better.

~~~
derleth
> Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary
> system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to
> them to do so.

And we call that system a government.

Seriously. Every time an anarchist seriously gets down to brass tacks about
how their world would work, there's some agency by 'the people' which does
things which have to be done, and it's indistinguishable from a government.
It's just a Good Government, a Responsible Government, and, really, an Ideal
Government.

Either anarchy has never happened or it's the only thing that happens. I don't
know which is more damaging to the case of doctrinaire capital-A Anarchists.

> a semi-private legal system for some things might work

This is called contract law.

~~~
1_player
> Seriously. Every time an anarchist seriously gets down to brass tacks about
> how their world would work, there's some agency by 'the people' which does
> things which have to be done, and it's indistinguishable from a government.
> It's just a Good Government, a Responsible Government, and, really, an Ideal
> Government.

Which are these "things which have to be done" that only a government could
take care of?

Crime prevention? Does our government police prevent crime, or just punish
criminals? I can argue that without any state-established law criminals would
be punished, in some way or another.

Medical services? I think that some people really enjoy being doctors and
nurses, and they would associate even without state-mandated organization.

One thing is for sure, we're not ready yet for anything like that, since many
necessary services and resources are "scarse", and scarsity makes people fight
for their survival with brutal results. But we're (slowly) solving scarsity
through science and technology.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Crime prevention? Does our government police prevent crime, or just punish
> criminals?

Both.

> I can argue that without any state-established law criminals would be
> punished, in some way or another.

Without any state-established law there would be no criminals, just the much
broader category of people that other people don't like. Quite arguably, the
whole purpose of state-established law is to _limit_ the scope and severity of
punishment compared to what happens in the absence of central authority, and
to provide clear rules. This aids in deterrence, since, to the extent that
antisocial behavior is rational and deterrable, there needs not merely be an
expectation of punishment if you do 'wrong', but a clear idea of what 'wrong'
is in the context, and a clear expectation that punishment will not be imposed
if you do not do 'wrong'.

Certainly, one can argue that modern states are less than ideal in each aspect
of this, but that's very different than arguing that they are worse than the
absence of a state would be.

> Medical services? I think that some people really enjoy being doctors and
> nurses, and they would associate even without state-mandated organization.

The problem here isn't that there would be no medical practitioners apart from
a mandate to provide them (after all, most states that provide medical
services don't compel people to become doctors and nurses), but that medical
services lack features that make it the kind of service modeled well by econ
101 rational choice assumptions, with (among other things) a very high and
uncorrectable cost of bad (or even merely incompetent) suppliers.

> But we're (slowly) solving scarsity through science and technology.

We may be reducing the resource costs of some goods and services, but that
doesn't solve scarcity (it reduces the opportunity cost of some while
_increasing_ the opportunity cost of others, since it is unequal progress, and
opportunity cost is what else you could have gotten for the resources you put
into getting what you chose.)

Suggesting that we are "solving scarcity" demonstrates a lack of understanding
of what "scarcity" means.

------
sytelus
Yes, wild ideas except for the "2100" part. The scientific and engineering
breakthroughs have been slowing down dramatically in past 50 years or so.
Science fiction from 60s and 70s is embarrassingly filled with predictions
such as we would have colonies in space, computers indistinguishable from
humans, flying cars on street, humankind without poverty and end of cancer by
2020. How close are we? If we go back in time to meet all these writers from
60s & 70s, the major breakthroughs we would have to show for are likes of
Instagram and Angry Birds. Yes, I'm downplaying all these increase in
computing power and better algorithms in search etc but guess what? Moors law
is dead as we know it and search is still keywords in a textbox. To me it
looks like we probably had 10 fold increase in human productivity during past
50 years but major portion of it goes towards "enhancing shareholder value" or
wars rather than advancing science and technology. So unless this changes
somehow, all the magic that can happen is still pretty far in distant,
probably much beyond 2100.

~~~
sthatipamala
You're also downplaying the creation of a global communications infrastructure
that is nearly ubiquitous and unprecedented in its capacity.

Other than that, no progress at all. /s

~~~
Houshalter
But how much did the internet actually improve people's lives or change
things? The major changes of our time are nowhere near as major as the ones of
the last two centuries. Industrialization and mass production and trains and
electricity, and massive population growth, and crazy amounts of scientific
progress.

Almost all of the major improvements happened early on in the century, not so
much in recent times. All the low hanging fruit has been picked. There is
never again going to be a single technology that improves people's lives as
much as mass adoption of electricity did (short of a singularity at least.)
More efficient or even self driving cars compared to today's cars, will be
nothing compared to what cars were for horses and trains. No single medical
technology is going to have as big of an impact as antibiotics did. Cell
phones are not nearly as big of an improvement as the first phones were.

Did the world really change and improve as much between 1970 and now as it did
between 1930 and 1970? Did it change as much then as between 1890 and 1930?

~~~
some_guy_there
Mass use of shipping container in 1970s alone has changed more lives than all
those inventions from 1930 to 1970 combined.

~~~
sytelus
Seriously? The way I see it, containers made transport of goods more
_efficient_. Without containers, it was still possible to have all the goods,
may be at higher prices, but possible.

~~~
gwern
> may be at higher prices, but possible.

Because lower prices don't affect anyone's lives?

------
6ren
Try this: we don't get alien visitors because space travel is prohibitively
expensive. But communication is cheap. So you'd expect the sky to be filled
with messages, maximally compressed and/or encrypted, and so indistinguishable
from noise: background radiation.

~~~
codezero
The only catch here is that such messages would be prohibitively costly (power
wise) to transmit uniformly in all directions. They would be point to point to
reduce the power, required to transmit, and increase privacy.

It's difficult to intercept line of sight communications and it's unlikely
we'd fall on the line of sight of two hot spots of intelligent communication
in all the vastness of space.

Even if they broadcast, I doubt it would be so completely uniform in all
directions through long periods of time so as to appear as background.

~~~
6ren
They are point to point. There's just so many, billions more than the number
of stars (imagine cell phones radiating point to point), and even alien
technology can't prevent beam-spread over billions of light years (another
assumption).

------
pawelwentpawel
_By 2100 we should be able to scan this info from a frozen brain. If we scan
your brain and then build and run a computer simulation of it, someone who
remembers being you would wake up and feel alive._

Let's say we are actually able to do that by 2100. Somebody is scanning in
patterns and current state of my neural activity. He copies that into a
simulation - more than once. Which of the simulations will be _me_? All of
them?

Also, it reminds me a bit of Swampman problem :
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swampman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swampman)

 _If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make
computers as smart as people._

Would it make them smart or just filled with hard coded knowledge? I would
expect that in this case the goal would be to create a system that is able to
acquire common sense knowledge on its own from a given environment and reason
from it. What we might consider as _common sense_ in our daily lives might not
be fully applicable in different situations.

~~~
puzzlingcaptcha
I will be your resident biologist tonight (not working in cognition/memory but
I will try to make a more general point).

Putting aside the philosophical problems for a moment, the notion that the
only relation between a brain and a mind is the pattern of neuronal
connections is pretty naive.

The formation and maintenance of memory is controlled at multiple levels:
single atoms (ionic gradients determining the polarization of neurons), small
chemicals and hormones (e.g. neurotransmitters in the synapses and signalling
peptides), DNA (epigenetic control, mainly methylation), proteins (constant
synthesis and degradation in the process of memory consolidation and long-term
potentiation) and finally cells (pattern of connections between neurons).

I highlight these different levels because they are formed by compounds that
are very different from a biological and chemical point of view. You can't
just snap-freeze them all in their place. And freezing is the easy part -- how
do you thaw a brain and preserve the state of all these components (all of
which have different thermodynamic properties)?

Assuming you don't want to thaw it but, as the article suggests, 'scan it' you
would have to be able to determine the conformation and activation state of
each involved protein and compound, along with all their density gradients in
intracellular spaces... Not by 2100, sorry.

Biology is hard because it's all relations, thresholds, gradients and fuzzy
logic. To escape this probabilistic haze into a clean world of ones and zeroes
-- I read HN.

~~~
exratione
[http://alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm](http://alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm)

[http://alcor.org/Library/html/MolecularRepairOfTheBrain.htm](http://alcor.org/Library/html/MolecularRepairOfTheBrain.htm)

[http://alcor.org/Library/html/nanotechrepair.html](http://alcor.org/Library/html/nanotechrepair.html)

~~~
puzzlingcaptcha
The links that you provide make o lot of bold, unsubstantiated claims
(outright dismissing protein shedding as 'trivial' borders on funny) so I am
not sure whether you are agreeing with me or disagreeing. They are also from
the 90's and the understanding of the physiological complexity of the brain
has changed a bit since then.

------
aasarava
#2, about health insurance, overlooks a big part of the RAND HIE's findings:
people who were sick and poor in the study _did_ have worse health outcomes.

~~~
ckuehne
The overall result, namely, that at the margin medicine has net-negative
effects (i.e., after a certain point more medicine equals worse health) has
been replicated many times. See for example this meta-study from 2008 about
what happens when health workers go on strike [1]:

"[..] mortality either stayed the same or decreased during, and in some cases,
after the strike. [No study] found that mortality increased during the weeks
of the strikes compared to other time periods."

The authors speculate about the reasons: "The paradoxical finding that
physician strikes are associated with reduced mortality may be explained by
several factors. Most importantly, elective surgeries are curtailed during
strikes. Further, hospitals often re-assign scarce staff and emergency care
was available during all of the strikes."

[1]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18849101](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18849101)

EDIT: clarity

~~~
derleth
> emergency care was available during all of the strikes.

Interesting. Have there been strikes which made emergency care unavailable?

~~~
ckuehne
Not that I am aware of. But it is safe to assume that no one doubts the
effectiveness of emergency care or most basic procedures in general. However,
everything beyond that is likely on average not helpful and might be even
harmful.

------
clamprecht
I have a "science-fictiony" idea that I haven't seen anywhere else yet. The
idea is this: If we can see light from planets thousands of light years away,
then we can see the past. Once our telescopes are good enough to basically do
a "google maps" zoom-in on other planets, we will be able to watche the past
on other planets. But then, if we can ever watch our own Earth from a thousand
light years away, then we can see what happened in the past. The missing link
is for us to be able to travel faster than the speed of light so we can go far
enough to view Earth's past.

While not "obvious", I still feel like others have probably thought of this
idea. It could make a cool science fiction story.

~~~
wikiburner
Here's an even crazier version: we develop a quantum computer the size of
Jupiter with seemingly infinite computational capacity, and "scan" and
simulate the earth. Similar to how a sufficiently advanced AI application
today could probably take an overview picture of a pool table at any point in
a game, and deduce the past shots that had to be taken in order for it to
result in it's current state, you might be able to develop a virtual time
machine.

~~~
goldfeld
That sounds enticing, but I think you could never rewind the state of the
Earth without considering the variables external to it. If you couldn't also
simulate anything that could alter the course of events, such as exposure to
the Sun, I think you'd end up accumulating enough lossy transitions that the
simulation would be rendered (ha) worthless in a deterministic sense.

If we consider that only simulating the atoms contained within the Earth is
enough to have a perfect understanding of it's state across time, by logical
conclusion simulating a house would be enough to rewind the history of it's
structure.

~~~
Houshalter
If you just make assumptions or guesses about external variables, could this
work to get at least close to what the past looked like?

I mean the whole idea is kind of ridiculous but in theory, it might work.

~~~
NhanH
Chaos theory [1] will make sure that any minor change will result in
drastically different result, so assumptions and guesses won't be sufficient.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory)

------
goldfeld
On the Great Filter, there was a discussion here about an excellent essay on
the matter by Nick Bostrom, which I summarized in a comment[1] and extended
the thinking. Still haven't read the one linked this time.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4842416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4842416)

------
wikiburner
_Soul Extraction_ \- Assuming that there is a technological singularity at
some point in the future, and assuming that time travel is possible[1], but
that we've seen no evidence of it because it must be mostly observational in
nature in order to prevent disruptions that would create time paradoxes,
humanity adopts the practice of _extracting_ the brain/nervous systems (and
then replacing w/ equivalent matter) of every human in history at the moment
of their death, to live in a post-singularity utopia.

[1]: Einstein, Hawking, and many others have speculated that time travel
should be possible, but were ultimately skeptical of it because of the "Where
are all of the time travelers?" argument. Fear of the creation of time
paradoxes could be the reason why there's no evidence of time travel.

~~~
snitko
Extracting all info out of the brains would be impractical. A lot of the
things humans do we do because we are humans. Our emotions only make sense
because they are mechanisms of survival and passing our genes. They would be
quite impractical in a singularity (although, some other emotions, specific to
the digital world, may be employed). So in a sense, I can only see one force
in a post-singularity utopia, driving post-humans: knowledge and understanding
the beauty of it.

~~~
jjoe
What if the "info" is in the heart... And for those who downvoted, you need to
read more about the functions of the heart besides blood pumping. The heart
has neurons too and an electromagnetic field far stronger than the brain's.

Update: some links

The little brain on the heart:
[http://www.ccjm.org/content/74/Suppl_1/S48.full.pdf](http://www.ccjm.org/content/74/Suppl_1/S48.full.pdf)

Does changing the heart mean changing personality? A retrospective inquiry on
47 heart transplant patients:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1299456](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1299456)

~~~
unimpressive
Then exactly what would the brain be doing? Then how come when you poke around
the brain it changes peoples behaviors?

How come people who get a heart transplant don't become different people?

~~~
hakan
[https://www.google.com/search?q=heart+transplant+food+cravin...](https://www.google.com/search?q=heart+transplant+food+craving)

------
gbog
Mine:

In fifty years ecology will seem as ridicule as we see the middle age crusades
now.

The only allowed porn will be animal documentaries.

Economy will be replaced by something that actually works, the same way
alchemy has been replaced with chemistry.

High buildings will be considered as dangerous paper castles and cities will
be flat.

Having to sit on a desk at work will be considered as belonging to the lowest
end of the social scale.

We will run on highways with special shoes and cars will make us laugh at
their utter discomfort.

~~~
wikiburner
Wow, it's like Ed Wood has been reincarnated as an HNer. :)

------
bumbledraven
1\. _Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different versions
that live in different worlds._ True.

2\. _If medicine were taxed so much that people only bought half as much, they
would be just as healthy._ False. The "extra" spending in medicine drives
innovations so we have better drugs & procedures etc. than we would otherwise.

3\. _If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make
computers as smart as people._ False.

4\. _If your head is cryogenically frozen today, you will be alive in 2100._
Maybe.

5\. _By 2100, the vast majority of "people" will be immortal computers running
brain simulations._ True.

6\. _There 's a five percent chance I live in a "future" computer simulation
as I write this._ False - to run simulate sentient beings with so much
suffering would be cruel.

7\. _By 2100, world economic growth rates will have increased by over a factor
of a hundred._ Maybe - progress & growth keep happening faster and faster.

8\. _The growth of humanity and its descendants will stop forever within a
thousand years or so._ False - see _The Beginning of Infinity_ by David
Deutsch.

9\. _Our descendants will colonize millions of star systems within ten
thousand years or so._ True, if we don't fuck up - again, see _The Beginning
of Infinity_.

10\. _The nearest intelligent aliens are many millions of light-years away._
True.

11\. _Billions of years ago, intelligent aliens had a colony near here, but
left in a big hurry._ False. It's a bad explanation.

12\. _If we allowed complete freedom of contract, law could be privatized, to
our common benefit._ Maybe - I don't know about "complete freedom of contract"
(can you sell yourself into slavery?) but privatizing law might be a good
idea, eventually.

13\. _If we switched to "futarchy" as a form of government, we would be richer
and just as happy._ Maybe - if we're going to deviate from tradition, better
to do it in the direction of more freedom and less government control - which
is known to make people richer.

14\. _If even a few of us honestly sought truth, we would not disagree with
each other._ True. For any issue, there is an objective truth of the matter,
and if people care enough to find out the truth, they should eventually find a
theory/explanation of the issue that no has an issue with, at least for a
while. People will keep finding new problems with the latest theory, and
they'll have to sort that out, but eventually truth-seeking should lead to
plateaus of agreement.

~~~
Xcelerate
> 1\. Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different
> versions that live in different worlds. True.

The many-worlds interpretation is nonsense. It's not even science. It makes no
testable predictions that differ from any of the other interpretations. I've
never understood the weird fascination with "many-worlds". Quantum mechanics
provides a very clear set of postulates that allow the prediction of various
phenomena through mathematical equations -- that's as far as I read into it.

~~~
Symmetry
QM provides a clear set of equations that govern how wavefunctions evolve, but
some versions also include the notion that wavefunctions collapse when an
observation is made, but there are no equations or even firm rules for when
this collapse is supposed to happen. Many-worlds is founded on the observation
that the equations governing wavefunctions are sufficient in and of themselves
to explain the observations that originally led people to believe that
waveforms collapse, and that therefore the collapse postulate ought to be
discarded as redundant. And because it's spooky action at a distance.

~~~
Xcelerate
> ... but there are no equations or even firm rules for when this collapse is
> supposed to happen

That's why it isn't science ;)

Maybe when QM was being developed "collapse" was a debated concept; I'm not
too familiar with its history. Currently though, modern QM predicts that
ensembles of identically prepared systems select an eigenstate of the linear
operator corresponding to whatever observable it is you're measuring. Each of
these eigenstates has a probability that can be calculated for it, and the
mean value of these measurements is given by <Ψ|A|Ψ>, where A is the operator.
I see no implications of collapse with this -- just probabilities of what
values you will obtain in experiment.

~~~
eoinmurray92
> I see no implications of collapse with this -- just probabilities of what
> values you will obtain in experiment.

Not exactly, your statement is correct for single states, however it breaks
down for entangled states. When one wavefunction describes two or more
particle a measurement on one particle can be thought of collapsing the two
particle wavefunction, which then forces the other particle into a well
defined state.

Edit, I am not arguing in favour many worlds theory, only that the 'collapse'
of the wavefunction is a well developed and useful idea in quantum physics.

~~~
Xcelerate
I guess I just view the wavefunction as an inherently multiparticle function
on a configuration space. The concept of approximating single-particle states
seems peculiar to me; it seems simpler just to have one state for an entire
system (and the corresponding probabilities of what measurements you'll get on
that system, regardless of how the system is distributing spatially). Then
again, we're coming from different research backgrounds so we probably have a
different way of looking at it ;)

Quantum entanglement doesn't seem to be particularly unusual any more so than
the fact that electron-electron correlation must be taken into effect when
computing energy levels with some kind of QMC. All particles within a quantum
system are correlated, so entanglement just kind of falls naturally out of
that; I'm not assuming any kind of locality. I suppose what you're saying is
that collapse is defined as the process of "fixing" these correlations?

------
LAMike
The Occulus Rift is basically the beginning of the Simulation

------
chetan51
_If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make computers
as smart as people._

 _We learn more about brains and making smart computers, but we seem to have
run out of major architectural innovations -- better ones won 't make a huge
difference. The big stumbling block seems to be how much "common sense" a
system knows, like that things tend to fall down when you bump them. One group
has been writing these down for fifteen years with moderate success; a century
more effort may be plenty._

This seems like a really inefficient way to go about it.

------
zarify
The idea of living within a simulation is an odd one, assuming awareness and
control over resources. Being somewhat defined by our limitations and then
taking away limitations like memory, ability to learn new concepts ("Whoa, I
know kung fu") doesn't actually sound like a lot of fun. And that's from
someone who views life as a largely intellectual pursuit; it'd be super
depressing for those who are defined by physical ability like athletes.

------
babesh
1\. Human cloning 2\. Giant solar collectors the size of states 3\. Pandemics
4\. Self aware computers 5\. Tailored assassination drugs to induce swift
cancer 6\. Colonies on the moon 7\. Genetic alteration and enhancement 8\.
Thought control 9\. Man and machine war like the Matrix

1\. and 5. are mostly to occur first.

~~~
Houshalter
Is there any practical purpose in human cloning short of cloning specific
organs for replacement? As for tailored drugs to induce cancer, that is rather
specific. There are a lot of ways to kill people, not sure if that would be
the most efficient. And if you have that level of technology, there might also
be dangers like custom made viruses that are super-contagious and 100% lethal.

Which makes #9 more interesting. A war between man and machines would end very
quickly if the AI just designs a super-virus and kills 99% of the population
overnight.

~~~
babesh
The sequel is that the machines then fight against each other which makes a
lot of sense. Mr Smith and all. There will probably always be a struggle to
replicate and for resources. It's not specific to humans.

------
cell303
why don't we take this discussion over to
[http://longbets.org/](http://longbets.org/) (and put some money behind it, so
eventually people mean what the say)

------
utopkara
Some of these comments cannot be falsified: \- You could be a computer. \-
There could be a colony on earth millions of years ago.

Oh, and he is an economist too! How appropriate. Yep, Dr Hanson, keep up the
good work.

~~~
utopkara
Here's another one, I just made up:

\- Aliens from billions of years into the future with an infinite source of
energy and computational power have managed to slice the universe and put us
into the solar system as a simulation. Everything coming back beyond the solar
system is simulated, matter and energy alike.

------
opminion
I was thinking the other day that I have seldom seen the purpose of mankind
discussed in public (beyond religious belief).

This list of ideas could be an interesting trigger of such discussion.

------
bnegreve
_If we switched to "futarchy" as a form of government, we would be richer and
just as happy._

So, what's the point?

------
foxylad
Migration to millions of star systems in 10,000 years? Speed of light says NO.

~~~
quink
You don't seem to get what the speed of light is. The speed of light isn't the
problem.

Acceleration, time dilation and deceleration are.

But barring the g-forces and enough of an engine we could travel to Alpha
Centauri in less than 4 years, which may surprise you. Although that would be
less than 4 spaceship years, not less than 4 Earth years.

~~~
tlb
At 1G acceleration, you can accelerate to a large fraction of the speed of
light in about a year. A suitable rocket engine does not yet exist, but
g-forces and human lifespans don't prevent travel to nearby stars.

------
ivanbrussik
the scariest part of us living in a simulated environment is what happens when
the players get bored and decide to turn us off (that thought might have been
controlled by one of the players)

~~~
icebraining
Who cares? It's not like we'll notice. The scary part is if their equivalent
of 4chan gets a hold of the controls.

~~~
andrewkreid
There is another theory that states that this has already happened...

