

The Death Star: A Pentagon Purchasing Nightmare - brianl
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/death-star-pentagon/

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alttag
A great article. I loved the last line:

    
    
      ... maybe we can look forward to watching the Empire go
      bankrupt after convincing itself to buy two Death Stars, 
      on the theory that different models will drive down costs.
    

The article linked to a Navy project, but my mind went directly to the Joint
Strike Fighter [1], which used the same (sensible sounding) rationale.

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program#Pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program#Program_issues)

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felipemnoa
As a side note I wonder what our future will look like when we enter the age
of humanoid robots with strong AI . Lets assume that we figure out how to
maintain control over them so that they never revolt a la Terminator or Battle
Star Galactica (re-imagined).

For one thing our purchasing power will go up. Or rather things will become so
cheap to produce that we will probably lose our drive to hoard material
possessions. There will probably be no excuse for poverty.

What new things will we fight about? Certainly not wealth anymore. Probably
religion: one group trying to tell the other group what to believe in or how
to live their lives. The future will probably be stranger than fiction. Hope I
can live long enough to see it.

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nazgulnarsil
there's already a drive toward giving up material possessions in favor of
experiences. Robin Hanson calls this a "return to forager values" enabled by
wealth after we spent a time in farmer mode.

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felipemnoa
The drive for experiences has always existed and there have always been people
that prefer experiences instead of possessions. That is not what I'm talking
about. I'm talking about the point in time where material possessions are so
cheap that anybody can have them, whether you want them or not.

i.e. Several decades ago only large institutions could own a computer. Now one
can carry in their pockets computers that would have been considered super
computers not very long ago and costing millions of dollars. See the trend?
Eventually production will be almost as free as air, especially if we invent
strong AI.

What that future will be like is very hard to imagine. How will our culture
change because of that? Especially our world culture.

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nazgulnarsil
this isn't a someday thing is what I'm trying to point out. Walmart has
accelerated us well along this spectrum.

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aaronbrethorst
On a somewhat related note (especially given the anniversary coming up on
Sunday), Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to give a speech on the importance of
'Star Wars,' ballistic missile defense systems, on Sept 11 2001.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-
dyn/A40697-2004Mar31?la...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-
dyn/A40697-2004Mar31?language=printer)

