All of Rudi Hoffman's Comments + Replies

The Engine of Progress: Why Growth Matters

Marvelous article! Correlates with my readings in Pinker, Rosling, and the authors (sorry, I don't have their names, but they have done their homework) of the book "Superabundance."

Bravo!

I don't think I have a single criticism...paradigm changing writing. And I have indeed have had a paradigm change over the last few decades, from "Club of Rome "Limits to Growth" and Paul Erlich to graduate to the Abundance mentality of Pinker, Diamandes, and Hans Rosling.

This channel is doing important work in my opinion, as even most progressives and intellectuals are leery of growth as a virtue.

Rudi Hoffman

Port Orange, FL, multiverse.

1Philip Skogsberg1yThank you for the comment and words of encouragement. The work the progress studies movement is doing is important and something a lot more people need to hear and internalize

Why Patents? The History and Evidence

Rudi Hoffman1y1

Interesting, well-researched article, IMO. The one component that may make the article more relevant has to do with digital Intellectual Property, which may or may not be the same as patentable ideas. While it seems obvious to me that IP is still property, my nephew, a self-avowed hacker, once said to me of his unabashedly stealing IP "The failure of these business models is not my problem." Which I thought at the time and still think is a moral/ethical lapse of good judgement. Is stealing work product like or exactly like patent infringement? "Informations wants to be free!" is a rallying cry, but lacks nuance. Anyway, great article, thank you!

1ejz1yDigital IP is kind of interesting because IP is a creature of Congress. It isn't like real property where there is a common law basis for it exactly (though many parts of the doctrine come from common law, like fair use). So basically it is up to Congress to determine what the right social mix is. With digital IP clearly there are some things that should remain IP and that doesn't change just because the form changes (like stealing a movie) but there are aspects where the ease of replication may cause us to want to change the balance of some of these rights. It comes up more in copyright than in patents. (Larry Lessig has a great talk on "remix culture" and the ways in which laws might evolve to accommodate new art forms.) Thanks for reading!

Cellular reprogramming, pneumatic launch systems, and terraforming Mars: Some things I learned about at Foresight Vision Weekend

Rudi Hoffman1y2

Brilliant and clever summaries of really exciting projects, mostly in the conceptual phases, but still adjacent to current capabilities given appropriate attention and funding!

Forget About Overpopulation, Soon There Will Be Too Few Humans

Rudi Hoffman1y1

Lovely, fact-based, paradigm shifting article. Bravo! 40 years ago, in college and grad school, my heroes were the "Club of Rome" and others calling for "simple living, high-thinking". I realize now just how short-sighted, blazingly wrong I was. I wish Paul Erlich and most articles in "Free Inquiry" would have a similar epiphany!Rudi Hoffman, Port Orange, FL

1Maarten Boudry1yThanks a lot, and so admirable that you now admit having been "blazingly wrong"! Perhaps I should've described my own double epiphany in the article: initially I was vey much influenced by my mentor Etienne Vermeersch (whom I mention in the essay), who was a disciple of Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome. I thought overpopulation was the root of all environmental problems. The, reading books by Hans Rosling, Charles Mann and others, I became convinced that fears about "population bombs" and overpopulation were outdated and that population growth peaked in the 60s already and has trended inexorably downward ever since. But then I still assumed this should be a source of relief ("Phew, the mass starvation has been averted!") and that it was good news for the planet as well. But then, after reading Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline, a book by two Canadians, as well as economists like Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison about the "Great Stagnation", I became convinced that population shrinkage is notgood news at all, not even for the nature.