> a billion dollars does not convince me more.

Buying up gasoline vehicles and buying fossil fuel for them will cost money. But I don't think that'll be a billion dollars.

This is the oldest dental scam in Indian subcontinent. It's so much culturally persistent that my family resisted going to the dentist.

> would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?

We can definitely try to increase wheat production by trying to make a GMO. This could be ground breaking for food production.

Almost all living beings process signals(especially chemical signals), bacteria for example starts making beta lactamase in presence of antibiotics.

I think that all living beings and even cells within a living being possess a form of intelligence. Though I don't know enough about biology to defend that intuitive understanding with the rigor that many HN readers would require and many here would possess.

Cells are mobile, hunt, some even see using photoreceptive organelles on the inside of a section of cell wall using the cytoplasm as a lens. The function of many organelles clearly visible in cells under microscopy is still unknown. But it's clear they're doing a fair amount of computation and behaving intelligently. I'm struck by how similar gene regulatory network maps can look to function call graphs[1] and ion channel receptors in cell walls behave very similarly to transistors with on/off but also signal amplification applications. The more I watch them under microscopy, the harder it is not to think of cells as little animals unto their own. A great channel for beautiful footage is https://www.youtube.com/@journeytomicro

1: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emanuel-Goncalves-3/pub...

The problem is we taught people to trust science, instead of teaching them science. People should learn to be able to critically analyze data and statistics.

Still better than a preterm baby dying.

Unless the US passes extensive legislation to prevent US companies from unlawfully accessing their clients devices all over the world, Google will comply. But the US isnt likely to do that.

It's extremely costly to deeply inspect terabytes of traffic.

> Most ISP's have a central point of contact / administration, and can be compelled to only forward encrypted traffic if it's explicitly permitted.

We standardized https. So it should be a lot harder than usual techniques.