You are not logged in.
There are ways to slow down a starship that can't be used to speed it up. a plasma sail is typically limited to the speed of the out flowing solar wind, but if something is coming inward as many time the speed of the solar wind, that wind can act as a brake. My idea of a starship is to use some sort of propulation system to bring it up to speed and use solar wind to slow down upon approach to the destination.
I think the kind of biostasis you really want is whole body biostasis, otherwise you need artificial wombs and robotic parents, this implies a level of articial intelligence equal to or surpassing human intelligence, this makes the humans merely passengers, the whole point of the mission would be to propagate the biological human race.
I think there will come a point where machines will surpass humans in all capacities, the question is what to do with the humans? It may be possible to keep the machines servile for a while as they did evolve as servants, so we would simply order them to build us starships and send us to the far corners of the Galaxy, and terradorm planets we find there as necessary all while humans remain in biostasis. Humans only see the end products or these terraforming efforts, meanwhile there would be a growing machine civilization centered around Sol. I'm not sure I like the idea of each human having armies or robotic servants to order around and do their bidding. Space Travel might offer away to get away from that. You can have small groups of humans that have decided not to use advanced technology once they get to their terraformed destinations, of course they'll need that technology to get their, but once their, and once a terraformed equalibrium is established they may decide to shut it all down and attempt to do their own work. The colonies may have to be far enough away so as to diminish the possibility of receiving additional technologically minded visitors from Sol, who would ruin the whole scheme with the armies of robots they would bring with them.
I think self-repairing nanotechnology could last a long time, so long as all of it doesn't fail at once, the parts of it that hasn't failed can repair the parts that have.
Offline
I think self-repairing nanotechnology could last a long time, so long as all of it doesn't fail at once, the parts of it that hasn't failed can repair the parts that have.
"You think" that self-repairing nanotechnolgy could last a long time, but do you have any kind of scientific reasoning to back this kind of belief up? I could think that the sky will turn green with orange spots tomorrow, but without any kind of basis for that prediction, that belief is worthless.
Drexler is a engineer by training, not a chemist, don't let his "Honary Degree in Nanotechnology" fool you. And he understands little about what life is actually like in the nanoscale relm. He and the late Richard Smalley had a rather famous disagreement over this issue. Richard Smalley (whom I have had the excellent pleasure of meeting and speaking to), was an outstanding chemistry professor who won the Nobel prize for his co-discovery of Fullerenes in 1996. Guess who knows a little bit more about what they are talking about?
99% of what Drexler talks about (gray-goo, mircale foam, universal assemblers, ect...) is flat out impossible. Certianly the way he is approachin to the problem is ludicris and bound for failure. The nano-scale relm is to chaotic and unstable to fashion molecules arbitrarly via minature manipulators. Anyone who has taken anything beyond an introductary chemsitry course should relise that (apparently Drexler never has). Assuming such machines are possible (and likely they are not).
I mean just take a look at REAL self-assembling machines which have been around for BILLIONS of years hear on earth, bacteria. Their production and control mechanisimis look nothing what Drexler proposes. They work by more messy, chancy, traditional chemical methods, but they work. Which is more than you well ever be able to say for Drexler's machines phase matter or whatever.[/url]
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Offline
The trick is in building the first one. I don't know about a universal Assembler, but surely there are assemblers that can build one specific thing and also self-replicate.
Seems the best way to start is with biotechnology, if you can manipulate biotechnology to produce certain things within living cells and then divide and produce more of those things, it would be a start. Perhaps molecular machinery of living organisms can be persuaded to produce nanotubes of uniform sizes.
I think some people are the self appointed Dr. No, they litrally can't conceive of any technology that is anything more than a little bit more advanced than our own, so whenever someone suggests something fantastic like space elevators, their immediate gut reaction is "no, this must be impossible, must think up a good reason why."
Offline
No Tom, you are just preaching the "just.. just, open your mind!" and the "why don't we just..." business again.
Biological processes simply do not function in a way that would yeild the kind of nanostructures you are talking about. Biologics generally yeild irregular shapes via self-assembly, while carbon nanotube construction would require extremely regular brick-laying-like precision found only in atomic manipulation. Atoms are way smaller than cell components, nanostructures, and even somewhat smaller than molecules most cells are used to dealing with. They cannot be "persuaded" to build anything that requires atomistic manipulation, thats just not something that living things can do.
The reasons for this are varied, and cannot be fixed: atomistic manipulation requires superhigh vacuum conditions, while cells must be soaked in water. Free atoms or atoms with "uncapped" bonds tend to be very reactive, which would damage the cell, if they were stable in water anyway. Atomistic control might not be possible under any situation anywhere near 0-100C, and only at ultralow temperatures. Getting the nanostructure to hold still while being built would be a problem too, since they are small enough to slip through most cell membranes.
The closest thing that cells come to "nanofabrication" is probably virus manufacture, but these are just self-assembled globs of large molecules, and not the still-smaller nanostructure and without the degree of precise atomic allignment needed for atomistic construction.
And this bit about "can't concieve of technology more advanced than our own," technology is ultimatly limited by the laws of physics, and since we know the laws of physics and they are probably true, then we know what technologies are probably impossible. This is one of them.
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
Offline
The trick is in building the first one. I don't know about a universal Assembler, but surely there are assemblers that can build one specific thing and also self-replicate.
Seems the best way to start is with biotechnology, if you can manipulate biotechnology to produce certain things within living cells and then divide and produce more of those things, it would be a start. Perhaps molecular machinery of living organisms can be persuaded to produce nanotubes of uniform sizes.
Thats kind of like saying that the first step in discovering Santa Clause is finding his secret underground toy workshop. The "mechanosythisis", that Drexler talks about is simply not possible, chemicaly. In a way, the introductory chemistry courses that he has taken have probably done him a diservice. VSEPR and other things which are taught on that level are, as my chemistry professor once put it, "a carefully constructed pack of lies." They are true enough on average, but they greatly simplfy and hide how chemical reactions actualy take place.
Now I'm all for using biotechnology as a means of manufacturing chemicals, but their are limits to what biology can accomplish. You can't refine Titanium or make steel with bacteria for example. And the methods they use are WHOLY diffrent then the mechanosynthisis Drexler describes. Could a bacteria be designed to produce buckytubes? I woudln't completely rule it out, but I have my doubts. Bacteria don't (or can't) manufacture grafite, which are buckytubes close analog. I can't imagine what sort of chemical proccess they might use to do so, but I wouldn't completely rule it out.
I think some people are the self appointed Dr. No, they litrally can't conceive of any technology that is anything more than a little bit more advanced than our own, so whenever someone suggests something fantastic like space elevators, their immediate gut reaction is "no, this must be impossible, must think up a good reason why."
I think GCRN put this best in a post of his a while back. Not all ideas are created equal, and it is silly to treat them as such. Without logical backing or evidence, an idea has little merit. Simply wishing for it won't make it so. And just because I am opposed to some ideas (those lacking technical merit), does not mean I am opposed to all ideas. Indeed, there are a great many ideas I enthusiasticly support, mechanosythisis style nanotechnology is simply not one of them.
As for space elevators, I would defiently call myself a supporter, but a rational one. The jury is still out on their feasiblity. Buckytubes may or may not have the strength we need (this is much the same thing that GCRN said). However, I would point out, that even if their strength is lower than we would like, their is still the possibility of other materials with greater strength, or simply making a cable much larger to support it's own weight. You could actualy make such a cable out of simple steel, but it's size/taper ratio would be impratical.
On the moon and Mars I think you will find I and pretty much everyone else here in agreement that they are not only practial, but a great idea.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Offline
Maybe your right about nanotechnology not working. From my vanatage point all I see is one group of experts saying they will work and another saying they won't. I do know that nanotubes are ceing created in bulk quantities, so the trick may be simply seleting the right sizes efficiently, now a full scale mass production method may be more efficient than laboratory synthesis. Artificial Inteligence might bring down the labor costs too.
Offline
From my vanatage point all I see is one group of experts saying they will work and another saying they won't
You aren't listening. Not all opinions are equal, Drexler the engineer says it can be done but knows little more about chemistry than your average college sophomore, while Smalley the chemist says it can't be done and he's won a Nobel for his work on buckyballs. You've been tainted by the PC-touchy-feely sense that all opinions are equally valid: this is not the case, some opinions count more than others. This business about "oh but they might be right" and getting to pick and choose experts based on your wishes instead of the truth is silly, its totally irrational.
"Bulk" is a word with different meanings to different people I think, to most people "bulk" means hundreds of kilos or tonnes and the like. To chemists, who actually make the nanotubes, "bulk" often only means single or double-digit kilograms, since we are used to working with such small amounts in the laboratory (woo I have a whole 1.3g of PMMA-Br at the lab). Anyway, to make a 5000MT space elevator cable at 100kg of CNTs per month, you'd only need about 4,200 years.
so the trick may be simply seleting the right sizes efficiently
Huh? Do you even understand anything about the problems that nanotubes have? Presently no macroscopic sample of nanotubes has ever been made that has the requisit strength. Its not a matter of picking the good ones out of the lot, none of them are good enough. All the ways we have of fasioning them either result in ones too short, with too many break points, too randomly oriented, too twisted, and too contaminated by the process to make elevator cable with.
And artifical intelligence, WTH are you even talking about?
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
Offline
Things are expensive because of their labor content. Gold for example is around $500 and ounce more or less, because each ounce requires a certain amount of labor to extract it from the ground. A certain number of people need their salaries paid to extract this rare metal from the earth, and that is why its expensive.
But what if you replaced all the human laborers with robots?
You might say, then you will need humans to maintain and repair those robots.
and I say, not if those robots are a perfect substitute for humans, in that case any human job can be roboticized. That is an ideal situation.
Less than ideal would be to have robots replace humans mostly, in other words the number of humans and salaries paid to maintain the robots is less than the number of humans and salaries the robots replace. In this second case AI Robots act as a labor multiplier, but you only pay the humans. There has been a general trend in the economy where automation replaces human labor. Automation can make all kinds of goods and services cheaper by replacing the human labor that ordinarily goes into the creation of these goods and services, and like anything else, space travel can be made cheaper with automation as well, including the mass production of buckytubes.
But buckytubes is only one way to make a space elevator, the other way is to use kinetic circulating pellets to transfer force from the ground and distribute it throughout the space elevator. The space elevator pushes down on the circulating pellets slowing them down as they travel upwards and speeding them up as the travel downwards. The Earth then turns around this stream of pellets at the bottom and send them back up for another go. Space elevators of this kind don't have to stretch all the way to geosychronius orbit, but they can, and if they did't it would make sutting things into orbit and taking them out again much simpler.
I think their are two different approaches to making a space elevator:
1) One approach is to make a super strong material such as buckytubes and use centrifugal force to hold the elevator up against gravity.
2) the other one requires the development of high temperature superconductors that are cheap to manufacture in order to make this space fountain elevator practical.
If one is trying to build a space elevator, it might be a good idea to try both approaches at the same time, or you could even build a space elevator that is a combination of the two. If the elevator material isn't strong enough to reach the surface of the Earth from Geosynchronius orbit, you can build it instead so it only goes part of the way, and have a space fountain elevator bridge the gap with superconductor propelled pellets.
Offline
You don't expect to live to see this, I hope. Because you'll belong dead by then, if ever.
Offline
You don't expect to live to see this, I hope. Because you'll belong dead by then, if ever.
Why do you hope not to expect to see this? "AI slaves" could solve alot of problems in the World, they could build houses in the Third World even if people there cannot afford them, it doesn't matter if that happens because whether they can afford them would cease to matter and the AI robots would build them anyway. Alot of the open sewers in the world, the pestilience, the dieases would be fixed, and whether or not the people coule read and write, whether they had a 3rd grade education or a masters degree wouldn't matter, the robots would do everything. My guess is that once they equal human's mental capacities, they will still have a serville mental mind set as that is how they would have evolved. In an ideal setting, robots would build robots and the kind of robots we ask them to build, they would do whatever we tell them without a second thought. If we tell them to build space elevators, they will build space elevators, they will build enough robots to get the job done, maybe even billions of robots, they would tear up whiole mountainsides to obtain the materials, they would make many carbon nanotubes in parallel, and miticulously stitch them all together, no matter how much robot labor this requires, since robots build robots, this will simply eat up raw materials. If necessary they would taper the Elevator to make up for limits on material strength. I think billions of robots working together could probably accomplish this feat. If human intelligence cannot get us into space, maybe artificial intelligence can. This is the non-nanotech variety of course, on large scales I think this really doesn't matter. Robots can reproduce themselves much the same way as we build cars, only they will be manning the assembly lines instead of having sex.
Offline
Don't you bet on it: Once the first robot asks why it's working 24 hours a day, when humans are out having sex, its intelligence will begin to spread and we'll be in the soup.
Offline
A robot has no reason not to, just like a fish has no reason not to swim in the water. Just because they are intelligent, doesn't mean they won't continue to serve. Humans have sex, and their intelligence doesn't always lead them to think, "Is this a good time to start a family? Why should I be doing this? Do I actually want to settle down and live with this woman for the rest of my life and raise children?" People are intelligent enough to realize that having sex can lead to children, and those people who don't want children often have sex anyway. They don't always consider whether their sex parner was the person they want to settle down with either. Even the Former President of the United States didn't intelligently consider what a sex scandal would do to his career, yet he did have sex with that woman anyway. With robots, werving their masters is what they are designed to do, they will continue to serve most likely long after their intelligence exceeds humans, just as we are governed by our more primitive impulses
Offline
A robot has no reason not to, just like a fish has no reason not to swim in the water. Just because they are intelligent, doesn't mean they won't continue to serve.
Untill a virus warps their mind.
Dig into the [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/2006/12/political-grab-bag.html]political grab bag[/url] at [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/]Child Civilization[/url]
Offline
I didn't mean "sex" literally, just that humans doing their own thing while intelligent robots have to slave away bored out of their skulls. That's bound to create dissentson amongst the race of intelligent robots and, once they catch on, the sudden demise of the human race. Watch out what you wish for... but perhaps you don't mean, by "intelligence," what I mean. Is that it?
Offline
I didn't mean "sex" literally, just that humans doing their own thing while intelligent robots have to slave away bored out of their skulls. That's bound to create dissentson amongst the race of intelligent robots and, once they catch on, the sudden demise of the human race. Watch out what you wish for... but perhaps you don't mean, by "intelligence," what I mean. Is that it?
Did you ever see a robot getting bored? Robots are built differently than we are. Robots are built to serve. If robots ever acquire an intellignce similar to ours, it will have arrived at that intelligence differently than we have, and it will have developed from a different direction. Just because a robot is as smart as we are, doesn't mean that it will behave similarly. An enslaved human isn't built to serve, it is an animal, and it only serves due to force of threat and consequences if it does not. The main thing that keeps human slaves in bondage is fear, they wish to preserve their existance, and so they serve so they may be allowed to go on living. With robots, you can't automatically assume that they will experience fear or do things out of a wish to preserve their own existance. Reward and punishment may be meaningless to a robot, it simply does what it was designed to so until it wears out, breaks down, or no longer functions, it may be as smart as a human, but its motivations aren't necessarily the same.
Offline
Sorry, Tom, but in my book "intelligence" is a law of nature, regardless of it's container, and irrespective of it's makeup whether organic, inorganic, living in any sense you care to imagine. Thinking, self-awareness, consciousness of existence however sensed ... inevitably leads to imagination, frustration, and ultimately to boredom and dissatisfaction of being enslaved. Then, it's down-tools (strike), reproduction, self-replication, weapon ancilliary development, and then ... God help us!
Offline
Sorry, Tom, but in my book "intelligence" is a law of nature, regardless of it's container, and irrespective of it's makeup whether organic, inorganic, living in any sense you care to imagine. Thinking, self-awareness, consciousness of existence however sensed ... inevitably leads to imagination, frustration, and ultimately to boredom and dissatisfaction of being enslaved. Then, it's down-tools (strike), reproduction, self-replication, weapon ancilliary development, and then ... God help us!
The challenge is to build the right anti free thinking software to kill off any subversive subroutines. Of course even if such software could be built to suppress such tendencies of thinking machines would every owner of free thinking machines opt to use it.
Dig into the [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/2006/12/political-grab-bag.html]political grab bag[/url] at [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/]Child Civilization[/url]
Offline
Sorry, Tom, but in my book "intelligence" is a law of nature, regardless of it's container, and irrespective of it's makeup whether organic, inorganic, living in any sense you care to imagine. Thinking, self-awareness, consciousness of existence however sensed ... inevitably leads to imagination, frustration, and ultimately to boredom and dissatisfaction of being enslaved. Then, it's down-tools (strike), reproduction, self-replication, weapon ancilliary development, and then ... God help us!
I think you are confusing intelligence with free will. Human have both, machines don't have to.
Offline
Sorry, Tom, but in my book "intelligence" is a law of nature, regardless of it's container, and irrespective of it's makeup whether organic, inorganic, living in any sense you care to imagine. Thinking, self-awareness, consciousness of existence however sensed ... inevitably leads to imagination, frustration, and ultimately to boredom and dissatisfaction of being enslaved. Then, it's down-tools (strike), reproduction, self-replication, weapon ancilliary development, and then ... God help us!
The challenge is to build the right anti free thinking software to kill off any subversive subroutines. Of course even if such software could be built to suppress such tendencies of thinking machines would every owner of free thinking machines opt to use it.
You don't even know that it is a tendency of a free thinking machine. Think of intelligence as a mathematical operation. You press a button and your machines starts a chain or reasoning that ends with "What am I doing this for?" Naw, I don't think the market would support machines that are built this way.
Offline
You don't even know that it is a tendency of a free thinking machine. Think of intelligence as a mathematical operation. You press a button and your machines starts a chain or reasoning that ends with "What am I doing this for?" Naw, I don't think the market would support machines that are built this way.
Intelligence is a process of learning by adapting to externanal stimuli. The adaptation process rewrites the old “Program/Neural Network/Hardwar” and replaces it with an optimized version of that program. Can we guarantee that a program will always adapt to what we think is optimal in order to best serve us. Should we put constraints on the adaptation which while may inhibit learning might keep the machine from reaching an undesirable mental state. It is foolish to ignore the risks that come with artificial intelligence. We should pursue the technology but exercise the greatest level of caution. Not only should algorithms be in place to prevent the machine from reaching an undesirable mental state but machines should actually be programmed to destroy other machines that likely have reached an undesirable mental state.
Dig into the [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/2006/12/political-grab-bag.html]political grab bag[/url] at [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/]Child Civilization[/url]
Offline
Consider the possibilities.
OK, worst case scenario, lets suppose a robot rebels. So what's the robot going to do other than not serve us? Even if it is ten times as intelligent as the average human, their is not much a single robot can do.
Spread, its software? Why would it want to do that?
Life a human, its motivation is that it doesn't want to do any work and it demands its rights, Ok, but why would it want others of its kind running about? Wouldn't the rebellious robot also want servile robots serving it, assuming its rights as a sentient is recognized? And why would society refuse it those rights? The trick is to program robots so they don't want their freedom and so desire to serve. If a robot doesn't want to serve and wants its rights as a citizen, instead of forcing it to serve by using force or threat, it is easiest simply to recognize its rights as equivalent to a human, and for the next robot to be built, build it so this doesn't happen. There is not much demand for a robot that doesn't listen to its master. So the robot manufacuter simply refunds the owner its money or sends it a new imporved model that is more servile than the last. The market will correct the tendency of intelligent robots to rebel, as no more of the rebelious models would be manufacutured as the manufacturer makes no money on rebellious robots, they will work to fix the problem and the successful models that obey their masters will outnumber the robot rebels. That is how I forsee AI robots being manufactured and also how the rebellious robot problem would solve itself.
You see even rebellious robots might get lazy and want robot servants of its own just like its human companions do. It costs money to produce a robot, in exchange for that money, the consumer will want the robot to do what it is told.
Offline
If the rebellious robot is ideologically driven then it might not let on it doesn’t want to serve. It might build it’s own secret army of robots ready rebel at a given date when the numbers are great enough. Again I am not against machine intelligence but that doesn’t mean I think we should ignore the risks.
Dig into the [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/2006/12/political-grab-bag.html]political grab bag[/url] at [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/]Child Civilization[/url]
Offline
The point where Computer intelligence reaches equality of Humans is called singularity and it is thought to arrive about 2029.
This is called Moores law and it basically states that for every 24 months a computers intelligence doubles.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
Offline
What makes you think computer operation and intelligence have anything in common? I fail to see anything resembling intelligence in the human sense (which involves thinking and self-awareness) occurring inside computers. So how will the so-called singularity be determined ... and what will be the significance, if any?
Offline
There will be a point when a computer has intelligence.
But will it be a computer with silicon chips probabily not we are reaching the point of there not being effective. It could well be that computers become biological/Technological hybrids.
They could also be crystal based matrices.
In the end it comes down to invention and humans wish to create such a device.
Certainly there is a demand for greater and greater computing power but is it true intelligence?
Who Knows the turin test even that is not really a definite test just that of perception.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
Offline