November 7th post to Amazon book "Our Final Invention" (brief and clear)

comment on Scott Meredith's review:

10% of all humans who have ever been alive are alive today, and humans are the only ones who have been capable of witnessing such a thing, and if it is an end of humanity, then statistically speaking, this was the most likely generation for an individual to be alive and witnessing it. Since organisms reach their peak of energy acquisition from the environment just before they collapse, this situation is not unusual. So your statistical argument does not apply. I can use this strange anthropic principle reasoning instead of resorting to your stranger "we're just an A.I.'s dream". Before resorting to this, l suggest a different myth for fun: "We are in the big bang, which does not change, but perception of it changes. We are just 'souls' who have reached this particular level of perception."

Getting back to the reality of the physics at hand, evolution discovers the replicators that are the most efficient acquirers of energy to move matter to create more replicators, generating the least amount of heat. This does not bode well for Americans and SUVs. The evolutionary process has three elements: acquiring 1) energy to move 2) matter via 3) thought. They are all the same thing thanks to Einstein and Charles Bennett's exposition of Maxwell's demon, but that's another story. In biology these three are approximately photosynthesis, muscles, and brains. Solar cells are 100 times more efficient than photosynthesis on an area of Sunlight basis. Muscles are 6 times less efficient than electrical motors, but more like 30 times less when other factors are considered. Brains have to move ions that weigh 40,000 times more than the electrons CPUs can move around because biology can't directly smelt metals. Biology is outdated. That is the reason we are in Earth's 6th great extinction episode, and this time is different from a geological incident or biological culmination: biology has to operate at ambient temperature and pressure using water-based chemistry. Our machines are capable of much more. Good luck suckers! :) But that does not mean we have to fear in the near term, say 5 years: governments can continue to print free money equal to productivity increases plus expansion of world economy and there would be no inflation. They're printing just a little bit faster than productivity, and it's being concentrated in a few hands, so there's inflation and unemployment.