No. The timescales are on the side of my argument. The diameter of the Milky Way is about 100,000 light years.

If just one alien civilization figured out how to travel at 1% the speed of light from Star to star, it would take about 10 million years to expand from one side of the galaxy to the other. That is a very small length of time, because if life is common enough for there to be, say, hundreds of civilizations developing in the galaxy, over its billions of years of history, then the spread of their beginnings would most likely vary by far more than just 10 million years.

If civilizations make machine superintelligences, then why do we not see machine superintelligences all over the place? They should have probes and satellites at a minimum, in every star system by now.

The weakness in that argument is that something has to happen to every single other civilization in our galaxy. It takes only one single success, to puncture the bubble.

My understanding is that the majority of the problem has to do with permitting and inspections. Are they planning to do anything to accelerate and ease permitting, inspections, and other such non-manufacturing related processes?

I have noticed that every time the price of housing goes down, there is fear and panic in the news. We are wedded to the idea that the home is an investment and its price shall only go up, and that if the price does not go up, something is very wrong:

I have never had a problem with self-checkout. I have been to plenty of different stores. I have suspicions about the motives of the anti-self-checkout people. They remind me of the people justifying Oregon laws that require that some guy is paid to pump your gas for you. If you want to not self-checkout, or for me, when I have too many things, there is always the checker available.

Plot twist: Human beings are in the clutches of self-winding watches, everywhere.

"Stop trying to make [web 3.0] happen.
It's not going to happen."

I do not get it.

I love that there are so many games. I love games from AAA to A to B to C, there are even some D grade games that I love. The attitude is: yes it is trash, but it is MY trash.

What is the problem that the author has? He cannot play EVERY single game?

Just wait until he discovers how many books people are writing.

Yup. Godzilla was absolutely amazing.

What am I missing here? How does this work?

If I had moderator points, I would +1 you. Everything you said here is correct. The article is trying to stir stuff up where there is nothing to stir.

I routinely now search for something with Google. It says âoeno results found.â Then I manually go and find the thing, verify that it has all the keywords, and then realize âoeGoogle just does not work any more.â

I asked Chat-GPT about hybristophilia, and it was arguing:

âoeHybristophilia, as a general concept, refers to attraction to individuals who have committed serious crimes, irrespective of the gender of the person experiencing the attraction. The popular awareness of this phenomenon frequently focuses on women who are attracted to male criminals, likely because several high-profile cases and media portrayals emphasize this dynamic. However, this does not mean that the reverse cannot occur; it's entirely plausible for men to be attracted to female criminals in a similar way.â

Um, okay, Chat-GPTâ¦

Embarrassing.

I am thinking: If there's lots of housing, and fewer people, then the price of housing should go down.

If the price of housing goes down, then that would mean that living should cost less.

If living costs less, then I would think people would have more children.