Not to question this guy's remarkable decision or the article itself, just one expression I see quit often and makes me cringe each time, that is : the real world (referred here as a little haven of nature).
Is the 19th century Industrial revolution just an illusion, the factories, the cars, the towns, the wars just a view of the spirit, and the little birds singing in the trees the real world ?
Is the current (electronic?) revolution an illusion, just a bait for digital addicts, a virtual world that drags us away from our real world ?
I think it's quit the opposite. I think the real world is this huge uncontrollable human growth on the branch its standing on.
Don't get me wrong, I was raised in the countryside and my entire soul is deeply bonded to the forest, and the animals and insects living in it. But don't call it the real world. Rather something like the fading world. And we need all the talent and imagination behind computers (or in labs), where we can have true impact on things and save it.
I think, comparatively, given all the human and computer driven computation to create simulations on a screen resulting in something 1/100,000,000th as complex as a sqft of rainforest... Yes its not real.
Computation has been trapped inside boxes and tiny screens, virtualization with behaviors that don't even approach the richness and complexity of reality outside that box. Don't get me wrong, it's a noble and passionate endeavor, but it's misguided if it traps you there forever.
given all the human and computer driven computation to create simulations on a screen resulting in something 1/100,000,000th as complex as a sqft of rainforest
This is an absurd comparison. Besides being apples to oranges, besides being super arbitrary (where did you get 1 square foot?), besides being completely undefined (what kinds of simulations are you talking about?).. it doesn't make any sense.
Let's follow your logic a little bit.
* A butterfly in the rainforest creates a chrysalis. That chrysalis is not real because it's 1/100,000,000th as complex as a square foot of rainforest. It's a noble and passionate endeavor, but it doesn't even approach the richness and complexity of reality outside that chrysalis.
Does that make sense to you? Do you agree with it?
Let's use your logic to try to compare apples to apples. Let's compare a square mile of rainforest to a square mile of New York City. Is one more real than the other? Since you seem to think complexity has something to do with realness (an idea that seems silly and arbitrary, but let's go with it), is one more complex than the other? Hard to say. The rainforest almost certainly has more individual living things. But is that how we define complexity? The city is chock full of human brains, and it's hard to argue with the fact that the human brain is one of the most complex things on the planet. The city also seems low in entropy compared to the jungle. The very fact that a city exists, distinct from the jungle, seems to imply lower entropy. If you let the city go without tending for a long time (and if its location was right), it would become jungle. You might argue that that's because there's no one keeping the complexity high. And since high complexity means more real (I still don't get it, but I'm just going with your "logic"), I have shown the city is more real than the jungle.
Does that make sense? Not really? It's definitely not rigorous. It's not based on sound principles. The logic is faulty in all kinds of ways. It makes leaps of logic and uses poorly defined concepts. Does that stand out more when I do it compared to when you're doing it? I urge you to not be "that guy" or "that girl" that uses that kind of logic.
I believe the distinction suggested is not real vs imaginary, but real vs constructed.
I think it's a reasonable point. One of the useful tests for "realness" is what lasts, what is sustained without human effort. Artificial environments are in some sense a fantasy made real. Sufficiently advanced technologies are indistinguishable from magic because we are always trying to construct our dreams.
Our civilization is in many ways a collective fiction. The clearest example is money, which works only as long as we believe. But there are plenty of other essentially imaginary underpinnings to our constructed world. For example, the US's national ethos, the American Dream: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream
If you had said, "I don't understand this point, could you say more" I would have happily answered. But instead you give a lot of drama in reply, which makes me think there isn't much point in taking the time. But suffice it to say I thought about it for more than one second in writing it, and did so again just now. I still believe it to have meaning.
Absolutely my point, and the notion of collective fiction and how it structures communities through faith, money, democracy and what not, is very dear to me. If you look at how we speak of "the markets" today (the markets are confident, the markets are happy, the markets are scared, the market is always right) it is very close to how ancient greeks would mention their gods... speaking of greeks the gods aren't happy with them... time to kill some goats...
But my main point was the widening divide between our artificial environment and our biological one, the raising concerns that the first is destroying the latter and what we can do about it! I think turning your back to civilization with the notion that it's all an illusion is a dangerous misconception.
I had a similar thought. All my life I thought I wanted this for me. I did, in fact, move to Yosemite for a stretch. While success in anything is generally about how well you execute it paired with how much you desire the end result, I learned that I actually did not want that life, that I really didn't feel at home in a natural environment, and that I missed the feeling of "security" being mashed in among a bunch of humans can sometimes bring.
When I returned, I realized that there is nothing about the world of tech that is any less real, relevant or right than is the world of nature. We may not always do things in ways that produce the least negative impact for our fellow humans, or on nature in general, but show me how this digital reality of ours is invalid?
I actually thrive under the massive hours of work, the stress of delivering and the multitasking mentally I have to endure to stay afloat in the tech industry. It may not be the most conducive to a family life, but I'm figuring it out as I go and I know that I will be happier for having not stayed out in the wilderness.
I applaud anyone who finds what they need, what they want, and once they have it are happy. But I don't believe all humanity is going to find the same thing makes them happy, or is really what they need.
Is the 19th century Industrial revolution just an illusion, the factories, the cars, the towns, the wars just a view of the spirit, and the little birds singing in the trees the real world ?
Is the current (electronic?) revolution an illusion, just a bait for digital addicts, a virtual world that drags us away from our real world ?
I think it's quit the opposite. I think the real world is this huge uncontrollable human growth on the branch its standing on.
Don't get me wrong, I was raised in the countryside and my entire soul is deeply bonded to the forest, and the animals and insects living in it. But don't call it the real world. Rather something like the fading world. And we need all the talent and imagination behind computers (or in labs), where we can have true impact on things and save it.
Going back to it is the true illusion...