sml0820

2030 decade predictions: 1) A rise of smart robots both physically, ranging from military to household uses. A robot can actually clean your house. A newspaper article talks about the "Fly State" in which people cannot tell whether a fly is a surveillance fly or a real fly.

2) Advances in quantum computing lead to breakthroughs in medical science. Notably the immune system is modified to monitor key health metrics on an everyday basis. This will enable early detection of Cancer, and combined with advances in immunotherapy Cancer eradication will be in sight. Clinical trials of immune based early detection start toward the end of the decade.

3) The combination of advances in machine learning and 5G becoming ubiquitous, enabling level 5 self driving cars. The cars themselves can't handle all situations, but they are able to identify uncertain situations and let a third party take over via the 5g network.

4) Mass protests against the rich start to form, which leads the rich to create communities defended by mercenaries in the name of self defense.

5) Concrete plans to send people to Mars by 2040. SpaceX wins this contract from the United States Space Force. China is in competition as they view this as a military threat.

6) An increased nuclear war threat globally as income inequality becomes more drastic between countries, which sparks a rise in companies that specialize in safety. People start to move out of major cities and office headquarters become more remote with the advent of self driving cars enabling an easier commute.

7) Sports gambling and wave of real time applications around sports gambling becomes ubiquitous, as people become more bored and need distraction.

8) Google starts to show clear signs that it will beat Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Cries to break up the company grow increasingly louder with daily protests starting around the the Google campus.

9) People start to seriously consider the idea of genetic modification of their babies for higher intelligence as machine learning makes it incredibly difficult to be competitive in the world.

10) Virtual reality is still a niche market, but augmented reality becomes more real with e-readers and even television taking augmented reality form.

Yes, "The Men Who Built America". Great show.

The article did not do a thorough job pointing to the new book: http://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-ebo...

Also, I would recommend Moonwalking with Einstein which has fair bit of information on how to learn.

You are taking the slippery slope argument. The fact that the NSA would like the access to data mine phone records does not mean we have slipped into a totalitarian state. We have given up civil liberties for the sake of avoiding crimes in the future. I would state that innovation has been at an all time high in this condition within the past decade.

Let's state the facts: There are biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons that can kill millions of people today owned by state organizations. Some of these states have questionable long-term motives whether driven by power or resources.

There are stateless organizations that would use those weapons in a moment's notice against the entire population of the United States.

What you are suggesting is that there is no current evidence of weapons of mass destruction being moved or the knowledge and capital required to make such weapons being from a state to a state-less organization. I disagree:

Number of terrorist groups that have demonstrated interest in acquiring a nuclear weapon: 4

Al Qaeda, Chechnya-based separatists, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Aum Shinrikyo

Number of terrorist groups that may be capable of acquiring and using nuclear weapons: 5

Al Qaeda, North Caucasus-based separatists, Lashkar-e-Tayyib, Hezbollah, Taliban

Number of known groups that have attempted to buy nuclear material on the black market: 2

Aum Shinrikyo and Al Qaeda

Even if so, there is evidence of weapons of such scale in questionable states such as Syria. In addition there is evidence of weapons transfer, albeit not chemical, biological, or nuclear, to stateless organizations.

Millions of people do not have to die to have a substantial impact on a nation. For you what is that number? Is it in a nominal amount of deaths that reach above the amount of second hand smoke or car crashes?

Regardless, from a perspective of economic cost giving up the civil liberty of driving as a result of deaths is not parallel to giving up the civil liberty of someone checking your phone records.

For now you will not be willing to give up your civil liberty since the probability of you being hit by a terrorist attack is low ( I would be willing to wager you to do not live in major metropolitan city). Given the current pace it is a function of time before a stateless organization increases its death count. At that point you will be willing to give up some of your civil liberties.

There is a trade off between the collective rights of the innocent citizenry and the rights of the victims of the crimes that can be avoided. At some point the cost of civilian lives will exceed the cost of strain on civil liberties.

Technology progress and, ultimately the potential magnitude of destruction, is expanding at an exponential rate. Therefore looking at the past 50 years is synonymous with driving by looking through the rear view of the car.

Your civil liberties will begin to erode. Even if a bill is passed that revokes the rights of the NSA, at some point in the next few decades a destructive event due to technology innovation and commoditization of knowledge will cause these civil liberties to be eroded.

Several powerful trends have aligned to profoundly change the way that the world works. Technology now allows stateless groups to organize, recruit, and fund themselves in an unprecedented fashion. That, coupled with the extreme difficulty of finding and punishing a stateless group, means that stateless groups are positioned to be lead players on the world stage. They may act on their own, or they may act as proxies for nation-states that wish to duck responsibility. Either way, stateless groups are forces to be reckoned with.

At the same time, a different set of technology trends means that small numbers of people can obtain incredibly lethal power. Now, for the first time in human history, a small group can be as lethal as the largest superpower. Such a group could execute an attack that could kill millions of people. It is technically feasible for such a group to kill billions of people, to end modern civilization—perhaps even to drive the human race to extinction.

I encourage anyone to read a relevant paper linked below by Nathan Myhrvold.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2290382&d...

This comment could not be further from the truth, as I feel you do not have strong basis in understanding what the weighted cost of capital refers to.

Here is an example calculation of an infrastructure project:

http://investment.infrastructure.gov.au/publications/reports...

Also, your ghost city comment is irrelevant, which I already addressed in a prior comment.

And as a final point, even with a 6% WACC in an ideal scenario, which I addressed, the NPV is still -3.33 billion.

China's ghost cities are unrelated to this. When China invests in ghosts cities their GDP goes up based upon infrastructure spending. In other words, one of the reasons why China invests so much in infrastructure, some of which is never used, is because it pushes their GDP numbers higher.

That being said, the Canal Project would affect Nicaragua's GDP and would have no bearing on China's. Nicaragua's GDP is roughly $10 billion, so it would have a very large impact.

There is no financial benefit for the Chinese government to back up such a project, and the political benefits seem dubious.

This project will not happen, and its unfair to the people of Nicaragua to give them false hope of better economic prosperity from the project.

Also, to further clarify from an investor perspective:

Let's say the canal is able to generate twice the income (revenue minus costs) that panama canal currently generates indefinitely, which comes to 2.8 billion every year forever.

Let's assume the cost of capital for this project is 10% (a standard amount depending upon the investors).

With a 50 billion dollar initial investment the Net Present Value of the project is -22 Billion. In other words, in an ideal scenario the investors are better off lighting 21 billion dollars on fire right now than investing in the project...run.

A Chinese man, who makes a living building various forms of infrastructure, is willing to put $300 million of his own money of $50 billion required into building infrastructure in Nicaragua. Meanwhile Nicaragua is willing to accept $50 billion of infrastructure investment. Sounds like wishful thinking from both sides.

As far as Oil, building a canal is not the way to reap rewards from oil. Here is a more relevant quote "U.S. firm, Noble Energy has given up on an exploratory oil well in Nicaragua, dubbed “Paradise 1,” after spending $90 million at the site. The firm concluded that there was not oil in sufficient quantities to justify further investment in the site." November 15th, 2013