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Since Buzz Aldrin's Mission to Mars does not actually involve humans landing on Mars but staying in orbit around Mars and operating teleoperated robots, I was thinking, wouldn't this be easier to do with Venus? You could have a manned mission to Venus orbit, Venus is closer after all, the teleoperated robots would have to be able to survive on Venus while the astronauts are in orbit around the planet, they could stay for 2 weeks and return to Earth, I believe there was an Apollo applications program that outlined such a mission. Not sure how long you could have robots last on Venus, so it might not make sense for the astronauts to stay in orbit for the planets to realign for the outbound return to Earth.
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Here is a study of a manned Venus Mission, where astronauts orbit Venus and then return:
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First of all, welcome back. Long time no see!
What is your reason to say that it would be easier to do for Venus? While the shorter orbital period and shorter orbital radius means that a mission could be done more quickly than a Mars mission, it couldn't be done with less delta-V. This is especially true on the return trip, where Venus' significantly higher gravity well means that it's necessary to carry a higher delta-V capacity. This depends strongly on where you actually station your missions: it's not realistic to place your mission in a Venus stationary orbit, because Venus' extremely long siderial period means that this is actually outside the sphere of influence of the planet. There will be less radiation in a Low Venus Orbit, and there will be less lag for your teleoperations, although your window for actually interacting with the surface robots will be much shorter.
It's also worth noting that surface operations on Venus are somewhat less practical than they are on Earth. It's really tough to develop equipment that could operate on the surface of Venus for a significant period of time. The cloudtops are an interesting place to operate but aren't particularly variable from one area of the planet to another and don't really necessitate a manned mission to gather a good amount of information.
Further, Mars is a much better target for colonization in the near and medium term than Venus is. This means that even if the two missions were to return an equal amount of information about their respective target planets, the information gleaned from a Mars mission would be much more useful and be of much more value.
It's an interesting mission plan, and other than maybe a mission that made use of a floating on-planet observatory (more radiation protection, maybe even the possibility of quick surface jaunts, but less comprehensive planetary coverage) I think it's a pretty logical first step towards the eventual human colonization or utilization of the planet Venus.
-Josh
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You can always scatter a constellation throughout Low Venus Orbit. Small satellites are coming on in development, so by the time such a mission would be launched, it could probably carry several tonnes worth of satellites that would allow complete coverage.
But I'd prefer to put the habitat inside the atmosphere. It's more protected there, and they could do useful studies whilst they're there.
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There is something called a Venusian 24-hour orbit, which I've calculated is at a radius of 39,000 km, place two other comsats 120 degrees and behind the manned orbiter, and you can have continuous contact with all drones on the surface of Venus and flying in its atmosphere (balloons, planets, gliders, rovers etc). The orbit is about as high as a geosynchronous orbit around Earth, an aerobraking maneuver can be used to settle into an elliptical orbit, which can be circularized or not. It is fortunate that Venus has no Van Allen belts, because an orbit around Earth at this altitude would be right in the middle of one! I think the value of this mission is that it would require less duration than a similar Mars mission to teleoperate robots on Mars surface. I flipped through Buzz Aldrin's book, and he seems to be pushing for this sort of mission with no humans on Mars landings, I figure if we are going to do only that for the first few missions why restrict it only to Mars? We could send humans to Venus too, and make better use of the limited lifespan of robots operating under harsh Venusian conditions, this would in part serve the function of the Apollo 8 mission for the Moon, to validate an human crewed interplanetary mission, Venus is closer, though other than orbital missions around Venus there is little else that could be done regarding Venus. Putting a human in Venus' atmosphere or on its surface wouldn't be worth it, until we can get him off of it again. A human Venus Suit would pretty much be a robot in itself, it would be a nuclear powered walking submarine with robotic arms and legs, the bigger the better because it is easier to cool a large suit in the Venusian environment than a small one, has to do with surface area to internal volume ratios. Getting off of Venus would probably require an areostat launch, that is a floating launch pad high in the Venusian atmosphere where its cooler. A rocket orbiter would then be drop launched from the aerostat, and two or three stages would be spent to reach Venusian orbit. Probably by the time we have this capacity, we'd also have cheaper access to Earth orbit as well.
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In the long term however, Venus is a "diamond in the rough" Underneath its atmosphere, Venus is more similar to Earth than is Mars, it has an active geology like Earth does, Mars has billion year old volcanoes that rarely erupt. It is possible to live in Venus' upper atmosphere at an altitude of 50 km above the surface, it has been noted that a balloon filled with breathable gases would have lifting power of about 0.5 kg per cubic meter, Humans could live inside such a balloon, just so long as the lift provided by the gases they breath is greater than the weight of the fabric of the balloon plus the other stuff inside besides air. A cubic meter of water weighs 0.9 tons on Venus, about 900 kg which would require 1800 cubic meters of air to lift, probably more like 2000 cubic meters of air as the balloon material will weigh something as well. Later on we could crowd the skies of Venus with balloons, stitch them together such that it becomes a shell, at the 39,000 km 24-hour orbit we can place a solletta which will reflect sunlight around the planet for a 24-hour day/night period without having to alter the spin of this planet, as well as screen it from excess sunlight. I'd like to direct your attention to some diagrams as to how this solletta would work:
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/theh … tos/albums
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/theh … 1248775018
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/theh … /410928091
Eventually after importing enough hydrogen, the shell can be dispensed with, and ocean created out of the carbon-dioxide the the carbon sequestered, the Solletta will remain to shield Venus for excess sunshine, and provide the 24-hour day, and people can settle on the actual surface of Venus amongst its two main continents, numerous islands and shallow oceans. Venus has an active geology and with oceans, it will probably start to have plate tectonics, over time its oceans will get deeper and more water will have to be added, as Venus comes to resemble Earth more and more.
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You can always scatter a constellation throughout Low Venus Orbit. Small satellites are coming on in development, so by the time such a mission would be launched, it could probably carry several tonnes worth of satellites that would allow complete coverage.
But I'd prefer to put the habitat inside the atmosphere. It's more protected there, and they could do useful studies whilst they're there.
Trouble is, once your in the atmosphere, its hard to get out again, the escape velocity is 10 km/sec.
Venus is the only other terrestrial planet besides Earth with a significant atmosphere, water can exist in its atmosphere at certain altitudes. Venus is a diamond in the rough. Everyone's looking toward Mars, what if someone wants Venus. Suppose a space faring nation wanted to pay off the other spacefaring Nations to have Venus while the others were looking toward Mars?, what would that price be? How much is Venus worth? In astronomical terms it is an Earthlike planet, the only differences between it and Earth are its atmosphere its orbit, spin and axis or rotation, most of its problems can be altered by altering the light it receives. You know how mirrors are used to reflect light into an O'Neill habitat? With Venus its the same problem only that Venus is a much bigger orbital habitat.
I think there are stages of development for instance one can build orbital habitats around Venus, at the 39,000 km orbital radius the orbital period would be about 24 hours. Venus can be used as a gathering point for materials mined in the asteroid belt, its atmosphere can act as a decelerator as material falls sunward, and the extra abundant solar energy is a plus for space based manufacturing and construction. The Earth's atmosphere can also be used to slow down asteroids, but since the Earth's surface is inhabited, there is less risk in using Venus' atmosphere for this job.
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Well, since you'd be talking about paying off anyone who has the ability to reach Venus, and that space colonisation will entail a lot of people having that ability... you'd be bribing people to settle somewhere else, so you'd have to pay them whatever they consider to be the economic disadvantage of settling somewhere other than Venus.
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I'd add that Venus' atmosphere is more of a disadvantage than an advantage; there's really no value in its supercritical ocean of high pressure, high-temperature Carbon Dioxide. Mars has plenty of volatiles, and the difficulty of designing a pressurized hab is nothing in comparison to the difficulty of making your hab float. Beyond that, the metals on the surface of Venus are basically inaccessible from the cloudtops, and you still have to deal with corrosion issues from the sulfuric acid. Plus the fact that the amount of available water is negligible.
Venus will be useful as a source of mass once we start thinking on that scale. Until then, Venus isn't a "diamond in the rough" so much as it's just "the rough"
-Josh
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Venus pretty much has all the elements Earth has except hydrogen, that is Venus has a hydrogen deficit in its atmosphere. The trick to terraforming Venus is two-fold, reduce the amount of sunshine reaching Venus, and add back the hydrogen Venus lost over 5 billion years, combine the hydrogen with the oxygen in the carbon dioxide atmosphere, and carbon without the "dioxide" is simply a solid that will settle into the crust. Who ever gets Venus will have in his possession a potential "Second Earth" Of all the planets in the Solar System Venus comes closest to Earth in terms of mass and gravity, the other stuff can be adjusted relatively easily with mirrors and adding back the hydrogen that Venus lost over its existence. One way to view Venus is as a rather large O'Neill colony that would depend on gravity to hold into its future habitable atmosphere. Once you get Venus into an Earthlike state and properly shaded with light reflected onto it for a 24-hour day/night cycle, generate the artificial magnetic field around it and add life, then Venus will take care of the rest by recycling its crust. Venus, like Earth has an active geology, it has volcanoes, and if its surface is made more Earthlike, it will probably develop tectonic plates and fault lines, water will combine with rock to form granite which is less dense and will form true continents as opposed to the pseudo continents of Ishtar and Aphrodite that now currently exist. Venus' oceans will start out shallow, and as they deepen, extra water will need to be added. This is a process that will take millions of years I think. Earth life with little modification can adapt to a terraformed Venus, everything will be 10% lighter under Venus' lesser gravity, rather than 62% lighter under Martian gravity. A visit to a future terraformed Venus will present us with a lot of familiar sights, I think the terraformers will prefer a Venus that is slightly warmer than the Earth, as one of its major pseudo-continents Ishtar is near the North Pole, that is a lot of land, and I don't think the terraformers will want that land to be under glaciers, so I think it will have a temperate climate instead, the light levels will be brighter on this terraformed Venus, though not as bright as it is today above the cloud tops. The Aphrodite pseudo-continent will be steamy tropical jungles. Another feature of Venus would be that its oceans will have many more large islands that the Earth does, and they'll be shallower too, probably have lots of blue green algae in it and the oxygen percentage in the atmosphere will have a higher percentage than the Earth, much like the Earth in the Carboniferous Period, expect large insects, as the higher oxygen percentage will support them, and lower gravity will enable larger flying creatures such as birds, bats, and insects.
Mars will look weirder to our eyes, low gravity means the trees will stand 3 times as high, the atmosphere will stack three times as high as well, I don't know if a solletta will be required, if there is one, I like the circular variety in orbit around the planet rather than a parasol situated at the Mars-Sun L1 point, in Mars case though, is rotation will be about right, all the solletta will have to do is concentrate the sun's rays on Mars somewhat. An atmosphere that stacks three times as high as on Earth will mean a greater greenhouse effect, if you assume a 1 bar atmosphere at sea level, in any case Mars will not require as much sunshine as Earth to stay just as warm. I think we'll want a temperate Mars, it will have seasons and ice caps just like Earth. There is no reason to make Mars mostly desert, the point of terraforming is not to create the dying Mars that Percival Lowell and E.R. Burrows imagined, but a place where humans can live. Humans will have to adjust to the lower gravity as will all the animals and plants that we would wish to import. I think Mars would make a nice forest world with tall trees and a gloomy forest floor, probably they typical Martian forest will resemble the giant sequoias and redwoods of California, Oregon, and Washington except with thinner trunks. A typical hiker would leap and jump over roots as he walks through the towering forests of Mars, giant birds, bats and insects will flit among the branches of these trees., the leaves of the trees and plants will probably have a darker shade of green to absorb more sunlight, fortunately the growing season is twice as long over a Martian year.
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The thing is, mass and gravity really aren't that important. And it's not just about the elements, it's also about what form they're in and where they're located. If you look at Venus, they're basically inaccessible.
Terraforming Venus would be a massive project that would probably take a thousand years. Will we even need planets by that time? Is terraforming really worth the effort? I say no. We're better off simply building progressively larger domes to make the space we need, but it will be a very long time with that approach before we need an entire planet.
-Josh
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One thousand years is very short on the time scale of planets, for humans it is a long time. I think that by 3000 AD there will be two kinds of humans, "flesh and blood" humans and the electronic kinds or "e-people". I think e-people will vastly outnumber flesh and bloods and it is the flesh and bloods that will require Earthlike environments, and where will the e-people live? As I said before my idea is to build a Soletta around Venus to block some sunlight and redirect other sunlight to produce a 24-hour day night cycle. You know that only a small fraction of the Solletta's surface will let in and reflect sunlight, the rest will simply absorb or reflect sunlight that hits it, the outer surface can be covered with solar cells that convert sunlight to electricity, and within the structural body of the Soletta will be a computer network that can run simulations that the e-people can interact with and live in, that would be their home, so by building the Soletta around Venus they are also building their home, and we'll need a population in excess of the flesh and blood humans in order to terraform Venus, there could be trillions of e-people living in electronic form in the Soletta. in the meantime the flesh and bloods can live in space habitats or in the upper atmosphere of Venus until the planet's surface is ready for human habitation by flesh and bloods.
Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2013-11-03 09:37:43)
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Given that 21st century technology is much better than 17th century technology, do you seriously think there are people insisting on using the latter, right now, in America?
Religious and philosophical objections to uploading aside (which, given that in most proposals it involves committing suicide and forcing someone to have your memories, will be many), you're also assuming that Moore's law will continue unabated. Which isn't obvious - for nearly all of human history, Moore's law hasn't actually been in effect. As well as that, we don't actually understand the human brain enough to say whether simulating it on a computer will be possible. If we have the processing power, my inclination is to say that it should be possible, but I'm not going to try to argue that without any actual evidence.
As far as AGI goes, you're not just talking about hardware, but software. Again, I think there's a good chance we'll be able to come up with fairly decent, flexible AI for trawling through knowledge databases and communicating in natural languages, but I'm not so sure about AGI. Certainly not self-aware AGI, especially if certain theories about consciousness (and I'm not talking metaphysics here, just ones about how the brain gives rise to consciousness) are correct. It's a hard problem indeed.
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(AGI: Artificial General Intelligence, as opposed to Artificial Intelligence in the sense that companies like Google or the NSA are starting to use learning algorithms to predict everything about you)
My thinking is that in a finite, physical universe, everything is fundamentally knowable. Therefore, simulating a brain would be possible, even if it required the immense computing power of simulating it molecule by molecule or even fundamental particle by fundamental particle.
IMO simply providing for a direct two-way connection between brain and computer may be enough to make AI real.
-Josh
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Given that physical people will be at such a great disadvantage compared to AI and uploads, why do you expect that they'll still be around at all?
There is the fear that if you are a simulated being running on a computer, the hardware might crash, also there is the possibility of Solar flares that might wreck electronic havoc, there are people who will prefer to live as flesh and bloods e-people will be created initially to do work, not all of them will be uploaded flesh and bloods. One way to make an e-person, is to simulate a baby, take care of it in a virtual nursery, and teach it as one would teach a child, then make multiple copies of it to do the work of terraforming, after their work is done, these people being the equivalent of human beings will need someplace to live, a Solletta around Venus could be one place to live, but still flesh and bloods will have children and some will elect simply to repair their biological bodies and live as long as they can in them, and are daunted by the process of uploading their minds into a computer, they don't really know whether their souls will up load with them or whether they'll just make a copy of themselves in a computer file that thinks they are them cause they have the same memories and personality. Whether the physical experience of being transfered from a first person point of view is there will be an open question.
I think chances are good that those born biological will elect to remain biological so long as they can indefinitely repair their bodies and keep living.
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Extensive backups can make death by hardware destruction much less likely than for a biological human. Meanwhile, these simulated beings will also be the ones who have the capacity to go to the stars.
Let's ask ourselves something else: What is likely to come first: Biological immortality or computational immortality? My guess would be the latter. Once that happens, the more advanced computational beings are not really going to care about the obsolete jellybags that preceded them.
These computer-based beings will be much more efficient, much smarter, and probably much more wealthy and/or powerful than the physical humans will be. It'll get to the point where it is simply not possible to afford the massive costs of living as a biological human, given the low productivity and high costs associated with being a biological human.
Let me make a comparison: What would happen if there were a group of people who insisted on using tube-based computers, for whatever reason? Let's say these computers cost 20 times as much as a silicon-based computers and aren't even capable of running MS-DOS. Can these people be hired for any job? Not if it uses a computer, which these days just about everything does. They will likely become indigent and depend on whatever scraps that productive society leaves behind for them. This will be even more extreme for any luddites who choose not to follow their contemporaries onto silicon.
Beyond that, I know that I would choose to upload given half a chance. The possibilities that it promises for becoming a higher form of life are simply too good to resist.
We're heading in that direction anyway. We're already dependent on technology for more and more functions that were once done by the human mind (for example, how many phone numbers do you remember, and how does this compare to the number that you had memorized in the 90s, assuming you were an adult in the 90s? Cell phones have substituted for our minds in this function.
What we're seeing now is that we are innovating faster and faster ways for us to interface with technology; While cell phones used t9 inputs into the mid 2000s, our smartphones now have full keyboards and touch screens, which gives us much more granularity in communicating with out devices. With voice control and things like google glass, which promise to be able to interpret gestures and even more nuanced and high-bitrate ways that we communicate with the world, while its little viewscreen will cover a pretty significant portion of our field of view, which will allow an even higher rate of communication from the machine to our brain.
In the lab we've experimented with giving rats a sixth sense using digital inputs and found that it is doable, although the invasive surgical procedures would probably not be popular in people there will be continual advances here. Meanwhile prosthetics these days can actually be controlled directly from the brain.
I would say that within 10 or 15 years, and maybe as little as 5, we'll be seeing this kind of direct interface built into consumer electronics. From there, the boundary between carbon based and silicon based processing gets very hazy as silicon starts to augment and replace certain functions traditionally done within a person's skull. Eventually, the human body will simply be one component within a much larger and more capable network of electronics; At a certain point the human will become unnecessary, replicable, or replaceable. At this point, we will have become uploads, and it will be simply a natural extension of the way the electronics industry has been progressing for the last 30 years.
-Josh
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Here's a simple question to provoke thought: Are cockroaches obsolete? We're a lot smarter than a cockroach, so how come cockroaches are still around? I think what you just described is what I call a "brain race" basically beings upload their brains into successively more powerful and faster computers, increasing the rate of change and where does it lead? One thing to remember, biology is a lot older than computers, in some ways biology is tougher, more proven and better lasting, for example in the 1860s there was a massive solar flare that created power surges along telegraph lines, had it occurred in the late 20th or early 21st century it would have been a disaster, would have fried electronics and blown transformers world wide and set everybody back into the pre-electronic era until things could be fixed and replaced, but biological creatures kept on functioning despite the magnetic storm. How many similar solar flares hit the Earth in its 5 billion year history with most animals not noticing anything but a peculiar glow in the sky? I think we have to be wary about uploading into a new form without keeping the old form around for backup. Electronic people don't need planets, but the backup biological humans do need them or something very much like them, and there is the Fermi Paradox to consider, have other species followed that same path were following now. I think its always best to keep one's options open for as long as possible, that is why we should terraform planets, while at the same time creating electronic homes of new electronic beings. I think while some humans are going in one direction, we should make allowances for the old fashioned biological humans, even though they don't travel as well and have very demanding requirements, it not like the Solar System has few resources that need to be carefully husbanded or that there aren't over 100 million stars in the Galaxy. I think something has caused the Great Silence in the Universe, so the logical thing to do would be to preserve the biologicals in some type of biostasis, send them away in a starship far away from the rest of humanity, the starship with its frozen cargo of humans (whether fully grown, or as embryos) enters a period of dormancy for thousands of years, and later on returns to the Solar System to see what has become of humanity, if we all have uploaded into electronic consciousnesses, then all the terraformed planets would be for these returning visitors, the Science Fiction writer Pamela Sargent wrote a series of books (Venus of Dreams, Venus of Shadows, Child of Venus) that ended with humans returning to a terraformed Venus. Whatever caused the great silence of the Universe, I think we as a species ought to look for ways to defeat it. So if humans travel a great distance through time and space in a starship and return to the Solar System thousands or tens of thousands of years later, we humans still be here, and if not this gives us a chance to repopulate these worlds and try again, hopefully among the lasting artifacts will be a series of terraformed worlds, not only in our Solar System, but in other star systems as well.
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Where do people get this strange idea that having a copy of yourself means you don't die? It's somewhat scary to see how many transhumanists plan on committing suicide in an attempt to live forever... anyway, the point here is that you're still going to be limited to only one set of hardware, be it biological or otherwise. Personally, I opt for a blend - a biological body with extensive cybernetics running throughout it. Heart fail? Machine takes over. Machines fail? Biology continues as before.
But then, I don't have to worry, because I'm not one of those believers. I think we're a long way from such a scenario, maybe another 100 years.
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Making a copy of your mind and just having human equivalent intelligent machines are two different things, I believe the latter is much closer. Once you have human equivalent machines, you can have those machines make more of themselves and copy their software onto those machines, the factories that build them are their reproductive equipment, so they can spread like bacteria complete with a set of skills. I believe AI is the great enabling technology for terraforming planets and traveling to the stars, because however much it costs, you just keep on expanding you labor force until you have enough to accomplish the task, the GDP of an economy will expand with population, so if one says a civilization does not have enough resources to terraform Venus, then you just expand the civilization with enough e-people so that it does, e-people make the best laborers, because you only have to train one of them to do a certain task and then copy that one enough times so you can get that task done. Lets take Mars for example, What if you wanted to transport 1 bars worth of Nitrogen from Titan to Mars? You need to liquefy that nitrogen, put them in tanks, transport them in space ships and then release it into Mars' atmosphere. So how many e-people plus robots building spaceships, liquefying nitrogen and transporting them to Mars would it take to do this in a reasonable amount of time? Suppose you have a population of trillions of such e-people, they are created for the purpose of terraforming Mars, so they build their equipment and spaceships in the asteroid belt and multiply like a virus until they have sufficient numbers, then when the planets are properly aligned, a "cloud" of spaceships descend on Titan sucking up nitrogen, then the "cloud" travels to Mars, releasing its stored nitrogen into Mars' atmosphere bringing the atmospheric pressure at its surface up to 1 bar including the 20% oxygen that it cracked from Titan's water ices. Then swarms of robots cover the planet's surface producing top soil in factories and spreading it all over the surface, water is dumped in ocean basins by a similar swarm of robots, trees, and grass are planted in the new soil, animals are introduced, though they take a bit longer to spread across the surface.
Other swarms of robots deliver hydrogen to Venus, combine it with the oxygen in carbon dioxide to make water, a solletta is constructed by a swarm of robotic spaceships around Venus at 39,000 km by their linking together, solar panels and mirrors are manufactured to form a complete continuous ring around Venus blocking the sunlight. Balloons are manufactured and released in Venus' atmosphere, they link together forming an artificial surface, pumping carbon dioxide below and nitrogen above and the carbon dioxide below is reduced to water and carbon and as the planet cools, the shell shrinks as it settles down towards the actual surface of Venus.
Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2013-11-04 06:54:37)
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If we can't produce e-people, we could always rely on human cloning. Modify people so that they grow to maturity in a decade, and train them in whatever needs to be done. Not as quick as AGI, but if we have artificial wombs, we could clone millions of people each year, giving us a sufficiently large workforce to accomplish out tasks.
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The idea, to me at least, is that if you upload you will certainly take care to backup properly, extensively, and frequently. While this doesn't guarantee immortality, per se (no matter how many times you backup, if the Galaxy explodes or something you're still dead), it greatly decreases your chances of being subject to die as a result of any particular physical event.
-Josh
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Erm, no, because you can't actually create backups. Mindclones, yes, but unless you have a nanogauge wormhole in your head to enable you to control your body and keep your mind somewhere safe, you're still going to die. Even if you vehemently hold to pattern identity theory. What would you rather happen, becoming amnesiac, or a philosophical zombie?
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If you're running on a computer, you are fundamently backup-able. Anyway, we're all philosophical zombies, just very complex and therefore unpredictable ones. Consciousness is an illusion.
-Josh
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Well, if you're going to deny the only thing you can actually know to be true, then what hope is there for you? I give in. You lose.
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