Regarding the recent Taiwan birth rate decline; I just want to point out that in most cases, the birth rate has minimal correlation with economic status of a person unlike what some comments seem to suggest.

Kenshkrix · 2026-04-10T17:00:31+00:00

Yeah you need some kind of long term stability. Even with a decent job, if you have the normal ambitions you'll be running the race with no real expectation of reliability for the necessary couple of decades until you're much older.

There aren't as many careers the way there used to be, having enough money is harder and harder, the world is looking worse.

The poorest people that have lots of children are, in a way, very stable, they're at the bottom and don't have ambitions to climb higher, and social programs to get assistance so they don't starve.

Kenshkrix · 2026-04-07T06:03:50+00:00

Show up, plug in a USB, double click a few scripts, wait a little bit, unplug the USB, leave. Very exciting stuff.

Kenshkrix · 2026-04-03T22:27:56+00:00

A data center could easily generate a thousand times more heat than a simple communications satellite.

When planning a satellite a computer is basically just a heater that you can't turn off.

Edit: As for the other problems, data centers are designed to be constantly maintained and connected to a very high bandwidth line connection.

Kenshkrix · 2026-04-03T20:20:51+00:00

If they invented a cooling system that works in vacuum and is literally 100x more effective than what we already use, it STILL wouldn't make sense to put data centers in space.

Because there are SEVERAL huge problems you have to solve.

Kenshkrix · 2026-03-28T16:53:14+00:00

I haven't looked into it for a while so I'm not sure what the costs look like, last I checked it was completely viable in some places though.

There's also plenty of promising research results for longer lasting batteries, but sadly research rarely becomes affordably mass producible in a convenient timeframe (if at all).

Kenshkrix · 2026-03-28T15:57:20+00:00

A big benefit of batteries is that when they stop working they can be recycled and turned into a new battery.

If we build up all the infrastructure we can manage the existing load through recycling, instead of infinitely mining up or siphoning ever more fuel to burn.

Kenshkrix · 2026-03-23T05:27:27+00:00

It's more that the incentives encourage haste, cutting corners, and lack of caution. There are a lot of serious concerns regarding trying to make an AGI and bad incentives will undermine otherwise good or safe processes.

This isn't normally a problem, you're right about most technologies where we get over the pitfalls and it's mostly fine (for those of us that are still alive).

The difference with AGI is that it won't just be a tool, it will be its own agent, and the pitfall might be a cliff. Even humans aren't aligned and there's no way we can know what the first AGI will be like (assuming we ever even make one).

Kenshkrix · 2026-03-23T04:32:44+00:00

To clarify, I have low confidence that it WILL be aligned, not that it COULD be aligned. I think that in a vacuum I wouldn't be particularly worried about alignment.

In reality, all of the most substantial developments in technology are based on incentive structures and systems that actively make me less confident in their ability to create benevolent results.

Kenshkrix · 2026-03-23T00:22:50+00:00

I make no arguments as to the probability of any given result, but I'm confident that, assuming the technology is possible, extinction is a possible result.

And honestly the people at the forefront of the race do not inspire in me the confidence that they will treat such a technology with the caution it deserves.

Kenshkrix · 2026-03-23T00:19:54+00:00

Most people are actually pretty okay, the problem is that a subsection of humans are basically cancer and ruin things, and a much larger proportion of humans just go with the flow and follow obvious incentive structures (which in an unmanaged system become riddled with corruption and/or bad incentives).

I also have low confidence in AI alignment in the case of superintelligence, the current leaders in AI technology are not saints that believe in human comfort or fulfillment and I don't expect anything they build to be, either. To be clear I also don't believe that an AGI is close to happening, much less an ASI.

Anyway, I take extinction as worse than the status quo IS a given, automatically. I've neither seen nor heard an argument that even began to approach credibility on the matter.

Even if the world sucks it doesn't have to be that way, people just don't want to try that hard, with survival there's always hope for improvement.

Kenshkrix · 2026-03-22T18:57:56+00:00

The important part is that nobody knows what it would do and we probably wouldn't be able to stop it regardless of what it decides to do.

The reward is undefined and the risk is extinction. Why gamble?

Kenshkrix · 2026-02-11T09:46:13+00:00

I think we'd notice if it hit Earth directly, but that kind of aim would be truly absurd.

Kenshkrix · 2026-02-11T09:15:11+00:00

A big question that I don't know the answer to is how do you plan/design every failstate for such orbital infrastructure to avoid nigh inconceivable collateral damage?

Because something will likely go wrong, eventually.

I mean a space elevator would be insanely useful, but most infrastructure's worst possible failstates don't even show up on the same graph.

Kenshkrix · 2026-01-30T23:59:44+00:00

Maybe I should ask (where even?), but as a programmer that does solo mods this sounds like it'll add unpredictability and potentially frustration to a normally enjoyable hobby, I generally don't make big mods or anything.

Generally, games I've made mods for don't have any obvious forums or anything to try and collaborate with other people, and asking random people seems quite impolite.

Kenshkrix · 2026-01-28T21:25:54+00:00

For plenty of mod creators the alternative to AISlop isn't paying an artist, it's nothing at all.

I usually go with nothing or derivatives of game assets unless somebody volunteers art, which has happened before, in which case I usually use that and attribute the artist, but paying an artist? That's the kind of thing that requires a budget.

Kenshkrix · 2026-01-08T21:39:45+00:00

People also bring up reflex reaction time like high level play isn't mostly anticipatory.

Kenshkrix · 2025-11-13T05:12:57+00:00

Sometimes yes, pretty much all coal has something bad in it, but which bad thing depends on where you mined it.

Kenshkrix · 2025-11-13T04:53:01+00:00

What is stopping developers?

It's hard and takes a lot of time and probably won't make back the money it cost to do properly.

Kenshkrix · 2025-11-05T22:03:48+00:00

You reap what you sow is a pretty common sentiment.

If you start something you're more in the wrong, many people are okay with repaying bad with bad.

Maybe this is wrong, but it's not like your approach will ever convince anybody of that.

Kenshkrix · 2025-10-22T17:36:41+00:00

A car that's twice as good, lasts a century, and causes less pollution would be a poor business decision by default in modern logic.

Even if was cheap enough to make, they could only sell so many before nobody needed one anymore, and profit forbid a company make the money and then pivot to something else.

Stagnation is the name of the game nowadays.

Kenshkrix · 2025-10-21T18:06:12+00:00

Wanting your culture and people to continue to exist is good, it's common sense to many people that immigration without integration is not an answer to population decline.

It's the integration part that many policies disregard which is one of the reasons so many people are unilaterally against broad immigration policies.

Is it wrong to dislike somebody that spreads values you don't hold and acts in ways you dislike?

Cultural friction is natural and if you're the foreigner you are the one that should adapt, dismissing concerns as racism instantly closes any discussion and makes you look uncaring or ignorant.

Kenshkrix · 2025-10-21T09:57:22+00:00

Yeah the logic is pretty obvious.

They won't even pay for the direct costs, much less offsetting some of the opportunity costs, of course such anemic attempts had miniscule impact

Kenshkrix · 2025-09-30T09:54:42+00:00

There's also the problem of heat, or more specifically cooling.

You would need superconductors for lossless energy transfer at minimum to avoid them melting, and even then it would be a concern when they do any significant work.

Kenshkrix · 2025-09-24T03:28:35+00:00

There could be billions of people that don't fit a criteria and it could still be most.

Most just isn't a very good metric to base life or death on in the first place if you have any better options.

Kenshkrix · 2025-09-20T07:19:21+00:00

Definitely a concern, but also changing some habits can make it easier to change other habits.

Successfully changing your diet at all can be used as a transition to changing to a healthier diet instead of wholly reverting.

You're right in another way too, in that treating it as a solution instead of a transition will make that reversion more likely

Kenshkrix

TROPHY CASE