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Mark Dolan's avatar

Nels --

A lot of your content is quite dense. That is a compliment, at least from my point of view. While the parallel might not seem so apparent, AI / ML /AGI is a common pattern for us humans. I wrote a post(s) a while back about "Going Big". Whether apocryphal (Tower of Babel), Fusion Power, or myriad other endeavors, our minds are readily trapped by the quantum leap and the shiny object. Almost all of the breakthroughs of mankind are rooted in modeling nature. Our understanding is currently rudimentary about how brains work so the dream of AGI simply lacks a model of any likely form just yet.

I believe the movement toward nanotechnology and piggybacking on nature (specifically DNA replication) will be the springboard to understanding of the nature of "thinking networks". Only by going small first and actually observing the natural pattern, will we have the model for how to do AGI. Just like the Tower of Babel & Fusion Power, it is hard for a two-tiered primitive and cognitive brain to resist the shiny object. AGI is the shiny object.

All of the scientists who have toiled now for 75 years to build a fusion reactor (it's limitless you know) must be sad to see the reality of every human endeavor to the better mousetrap, that is inverted hockey stick growth piled one of top of another to simulate exponential growth be the true path forward. What am I getting at? Solar farms and wind farms everywhere on a learning curve and declining in cost by 70% every ten years. Battery tech doing the same. The inspiration for energy was the free and limitless sun inbound and merely building a catcher's mitt to capture it for free and a mechanism to store the bits we catch.

I'm sure that governments and VC will continue to build contraptions to capture the energy of the sun in a magnetic field in every increasing complexity. The hydrogen bomb and the limitless energy it releases was the shiny object that captured human imagination and we have not let go of it now for 75 years. I am sure the amount of energy released was irresistable to not try.

I love your content and try to make time for the references. Thanks!

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