Matt, On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Matt Mahoney <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 12:26 PM, Steve Richfield > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > It seems rather hypocritical to sit there and tout the advantages of not > patenting and of putting software out into open source, while you are now > doing just the opposite. > > The patent was on a proprietary program to compress seismic data. It > was one of many customer-specific compressors that I wrote. All of my > open source programs like PAQ and ZPAQ remain free of patents, and I > plan to keep it that way. You have no choice - as they are firmly in the public domain. If my employer didn't let me publish my work > open source and unencumbered, I could just retire now (since I can > afford to) and nothing would change. > ... until the economy pancakes and your savings become worthless. > > > It would be nice to see SOME way to survive, when technology of all > sorts is free, and none of us, not even you, can make enough to pay for our > groceries. > > Sorry this is so hard to explain. It is like some artists are more > successful than others. Do you think that the Beatles could explain > their success to other musicians? > The world can only absorb so many super-successful musicians. Striving to be a musician (or a programmer) has about the same super-success rate as striving to be a basketball star. > > Anyway, I tried to explain what you must do to prepare. I think we understand the direction things are going, but you did NOT adequately explain how to prepare for it - at least not in terms that I grokked. > The future is > AI. I don't mean programs like OpenCog. I mean that the whole economy > will be automated. Of course. > The process will be very expensive. So the big corporations will own it, now us. > You have seen > my cost estimates. It will take a lot of computing power, complex > software, and vast quantities of personal data. All completely outside of the domain of personal efforts. > That means lots of > poorly paying > jobs for decades to come, followed by starvation when the people are no longer needed. > each specializing on very narrow parts of the problem. and then becoming unemployable when those specialties pass into history. > You need to figure out ways to make the process less > expensive. I don't mean patenting ideas that haven't been tested and > making bold claims. I mean doing research and building things that > actually work and giving them away to prove to others that you have > the skills they want. > Hey, I am on Social Security and Medicare. Your strategy might be OK for someone a third my age. > > Stop focusing on the market that is going away and focus on the market > that is coming. I have been focusing on the future for my entire life. No one is interested. People will only buy the present. > The future is modeling other people's minds, > predicting human behavior. > ... which already has plenty of people working the problem, making it too late for newbies to enter this area. This is the fundamental flaw in venture capital. They all want to invest where the money is being made - but it is already too late to enter those markets - you must invest in future markets, not present markets. Steve ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
