"What is the price of friendship?" and other evil questions from a rational monster

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

― Oscar Wilde

We follow the theory of Philip E. Tetlock, who has studied several related topics: forecasting future events (as detailed in a book Superforecasting (2015)), counterfactual history ("What if...?"), and some "taboo thoughts" that despite being rational, often provokes "moral outrage" (precise definition given later).

These topics are related, as we will see later. But first: What's the price of an average human life?

Answer: In America, between 1 million to 10 million.

Now, this is perfectly reasonable, as a Fermi estimate quickly shows: An average American works 50 years, with yearly salary 30000 dollars. So in full that gives 1.5 million dollars. That's a lower bound, considering that it's just cash salary and doesn't include all the other non-salary productive work, like friendship, volunteering, and writing free blog posts (like this one lol). But the order of magnitude is very much right.

Okay, if that's right, then isn't it wrong to say "A life is priceless?"

Yes. But don't say it out loud, else you get the dreaded moral outrage.

6 tech problems that every lawyer should think about

I wrote an email to an acquaintance who is a lawyer, advising them on the most pressing issues that a lawyer should deal with in a world that's changing quickly by AI, cryptocurrency, and some other technologies. Here's the edited version of it.

Have you studied more about AI? Kai-fu Lee wrote a new book AI Superpowers, and it is worth a read. You could read and watch a presentation here, and an interview with Wharton here.

There will be a very strong market for lawyers proficient in legal issues around AI and other emerging technologies, and I think you can benefit from learning more. Here are some problems for you to think about:

1. Income inequality is increasing more and more in the world due to AI. Read a piece by Kai-fu Lee to see why. How should the laws be changed so that those who lose their jobs won't sink into poverty? Universal Basic Income? Free education? Unemployment benefits?
2. If a self-driving car kills someone, who are legally responsible?
3. If a self-driving car senses that the brakes failed and there is a group of people walking in front, should it crash into the crowd, killing 3, or crash into the side of the road, killing 1 in the car?
4. How would the laws treat bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies?
5. What are the legal tasks that AI can perform? What would the lawyers do instead? Watch this TED talk. There are already companies like Kira that do lawyer work with AI, and their capabilities would only grow and grow.
6. Algorithmic discrimination: what to do where the algorithms create discrimination? See this and this.

Energy, the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and of the modern society.

The collapse of Western Roman Empire is a very classic topic among scholars of history, politics, economy, etc. Joseph Tainter had a theory, based on complexity and energy management. 

If you have time, you can watch this lecture by Joseph, it's a fun and somber talk about the collapse of Western Roman Empire from his perspective. I also read the book The Collapse of Complex Societies, which elaborates his theory of social collapse with more examples than just the Western Roman Empire, including the Mayan Empire and Chacoan civilization.

The Collapse of Western Roman Empire

In the early days of Western Roman Empire/Roman Republic, it conquered a lot of new lands. Each conquest was easy, and brought great loots. The Romans used the loot to increase their wealth and power and social complexity. 

Some complexities were voluntary: they wanted to enjoy life. Some complexities were forced on them: they needed it to keep their growing republic/empire in order. These complexities were mostly in the forms of bureaucracies and law codes.

Eventually, the conquests ground to a halt: its borders reached the Germanic, Persian, Briton, and so on, countries that were either too powerful to conquer or too poor and distant to worth conquering. Rome went from conquest mode to farming mode. This placed a great burden on the empire: the economy and culture used to run on conquests, but now it has to run on farming.