They wouldn't be for very long.djolds1 wrote:There have been realistic concepts and studies for mining and even COLONIZING the interior of the Sun. With humans as they are now.
Closed Loop Recycling
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Jeff Peachman
- Posts: 69
- Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2008 2:47 pm
Haha yeah really. I've read sun-diver but thats not "realistic". Someones been reading a little bit too much science fictionscareduck wrote:They wouldn't be for very long.djolds1 wrote:There have been realistic concepts and studies for mining and even COLONIZING the interior of the Sun. With humans as they are now.
- Jeff Peachman
Paul Birch's Dynamic Compression Members are doable. Megascale engineering requiring truly gargantuan investments, but within the realm of the technically feasible. These other concepts are along those lines. Projects of tremendous scale and risk but within the limits of modern materials technologies.Jeff Peachman wrote:Haha yeah really. I've read sun-diver but thats not "realistic". Someones been reading a little bit too much science fictionscareduck wrote:They wouldn't be for very long.djolds1 wrote:There have been realistic concepts and studies for mining and even COLONIZING the interior of the Sun. With humans as they are now.
Therefore projections far within those ranges are entirely realistic. Especially over 1E6+ year timescales.
Duane
Vae Victis
Re: Closed Loop Recycling
The stuff is already in the environment. That is where it came from.2edfe9 wrote:One of the things we really should be trying to achieve is a closed loop economy, where everything is recycled and we don't allow polluting materials to build up in the environment.
Second: the rate of technical change is accelerating. We will be going at least 5,000 times faster in 2100. By 2200 who knows?
Two centuries of guaranteed progress is not bad. Ten centuries (minimum) means we are probably unlimited except for fundamental rules.
Last edited by MSimon on Sat Aug 02, 2008 4:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
93143 says:
Beyond that it is useless to anticipate. Probably beyond 50 year it is useless at current rates of acceleration.
We don't have to be foresighted. Because progress is accelerating. All we have to do is figure out how to keep going from where we are at for another couple of centuries.You sure have a lot of faith in (post-?)humanity. When have we ever done something that foresighted?
Beyond that it is useless to anticipate. Probably beyond 50 year it is useless at current rates of acceleration.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Re: Closed Loop Recycling
Oh PLEASE don't tell me you've bought into the Singularity, Simon.MSimon wrote:Second: the rate of technical change is accelerating. We will be going at least 5,000 times faster in 2100. By 2200 who knows?
A wonderful religious trope, but human and natural systems follow a diminishing returns s-curve of development. The next Western/post-Greek civilization should open up new scientific horizons and a new s-curve, but ours are approaching maturity.
Depends on how effective life extension is. 1000 years is a lot less if the average lifespan is 350 years.MSimon wrote:Two centuries of guaranteed progress is not bad. Ten centuries (minimum) means we are probably unlimited except for fundamental rules.
Duane
Vae Victis
For the sake of my grand kids who don't exist yet I sure hope we don't live that long! I can only imagine the horrific bureaucracy and time scales that would bring on. Might make the Vogons look good....
Once the electronics "revolution" stabilizes, a lot more "revolutions" in other fields will happen. Humans are still trying to figure out how single cells work - all the interactions are just too complicated to follow for now. I would hope we can improve everybodys quality of life, but I sure hope we don't extend it too far. Things could get really boring because everyone is willing to wait 20 years for something to happen.
Once the electronics "revolution" stabilizes, a lot more "revolutions" in other fields will happen. Humans are still trying to figure out how single cells work - all the interactions are just too complicated to follow for now. I would hope we can improve everybodys quality of life, but I sure hope we don't extend it too far. Things could get really boring because everyone is willing to wait 20 years for something to happen.
If Science advances one funeral at a time, a 350 year lifespan would really bring things to a screechin' halt....drmike wrote:For the sake of my grand kids who don't exist yet I sure hope we don't live that long! I can only imagine the horrific bureaucracy and time scales that would bring on. Might make the Vogons look good....
Once the electronics "revolution" stabilizes, a lot more "revolutions" in other fields will happen. Humans are still trying to figure out how single cells work - all the interactions are just too complicated to follow for now. I would hope we can improve everybodys quality of life, but I sure hope we don't extend it too far. Things could get really boring because everyone is willing to wait 20 years for something to happen.
Nanotech will make a plasma torch look like a pretty crude hammer to disassemble garbage.
The local county councilman candidate I talked to 2 weeks ago thought 3-5 years was long long term planning. And he (said he) was a physicist.
Don't count on people acting with long term goals in mind.
We'll probably just muddle through at the last minute.
If we can make this work it will give us generations, at least, of breathing room.
It is refreshing to hear people thinking 100k years ahead.
The local county councilman candidate I talked to 2 weeks ago thought 3-5 years was long long term planning. And he (said he) was a physicist.
Don't count on people acting with long term goals in mind.
We'll probably just muddle through at the last minute.
If we can make this work it will give us generations, at least, of breathing room.
It is refreshing to hear people thinking 100k years ahead.
-Tom Boydston-
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?" ~Albert Einstein
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?" ~Albert Einstein
Nope. I have just looked at the curves.Oh PLEASE don't tell me you've bought into the Singularity, Simon.
The curves are what they are. The singularity is about their meaning/implications.
The deal is that when one S curve tops out a new line has almost always followed.A wonderful religious trope, but human and natural systems follow a diminishing returns s-curve of development. The next Western/post-Greek civilization should open up new scientific horizons and a new s-curve, but ours are approaching maturity.
Lifespan makes no difference. If/when we run out of B11 on the earth we will be mining it from the rest of the solar system.
Give me a 1,000 years at just the current rate of progress and I assure you by the end of that time we will have added another 10,000 years (or more) to our future.
If nothing else - big solar collectors in space coupled with manufacturing on the moon.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
The critical curve is fundamental physics. All other hard sciences and fields of technology follow from that. And the "finalization" of Western physics/the prophesied GUT is visible on the horizon.MSimon wrote:Nope. I have just looked at the curves.Oh PLEASE don't tell me you've bought into the Singularity, Simon.
The curves are what they are. The singularity is about their meaning/implications.
After that, derivative discoveries (biology) and innovations (nano) remain, but the event horizon has been established. Hero of Alexandria kept pushing mechanics and techno-toys centuries after Aristotlean Physics became the "final" form of Classical physics. But note that his innovations had very little impact on the "mature" form of Antiquity.
Inevitably, disgust with the endless "intellectual adventures" of the soft sciences will create disgust with and rejection of soft academe. That disgust will bleed over to "hard" academe, and the scaffolding on which further technical and scientific innovation is built collapses. Both the commoner and elite segments of the population will reject the uncertainty and insecurity of endless innovation, and stasis sets in. The s-curve goes flat.
At least until the rotted shell of the current West implodes and a fundamentally new Western perspective matures in the compost.
Duane
Vae Victis
I think the East is going to mix things up a bit. The West may have hit a wall, but the East is starting to stir. Again. It will keep "innovation" moving along in different ways.
There's just too much we still don't know, and have yet to ask "why" about. I can't see that changing for another 1000 years at least.
Too bad I won't be around for 1000 years to watch!
There's just too much we still don't know, and have yet to ask "why" about. I can't see that changing for another 1000 years at least.
Too bad I won't be around for 1000 years to watch!
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ravingdave
- Posts: 650
- Joined: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:41 am
We may have contantly improving technology, but I dare say what motivates us humans has hardly changed as far back as archeology takes us. We are doubtlessly evolving, but compared to our ever improving ability to kill each other faster and more cheaply, human evolution is essentially non moving.
We now have aircraft missions being flown remotely, and i've heard it said that we are probably seeing the last of the piloted fighter aircraft. I doubt this not at all. I say we currently have the technology to create the analogs to pilotless drones on the ground.
We can build devices that could roam the streets of any city, and kill anything living the moment it sticks it's head around the corner of a building. Such a device is not currently practical because we don't want to kill everyone. Just bad guys.
We are not that far away from the time when our machines CAN descern friend from foe, and then what do we need real human soldiers for ? As pilotless drones will save personel and ground crews, remote controled soldier robots could do the same. With the reduction in the need for human soldiers, fewer people could conduct a war. If the trend continues, it may be one day that VERY few people are needed to conduct a war.
One of the safeguards from despotism in this country is the plain and simple fact that so many people (the armed forces) would have to agree to it that it simply can't happen.
With sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence, the dynamic changes. It actually becomes easy to kill anyone who disagrees with you (including other members of the armed forces) and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. At this point, individuals would want to be on the winning team, which is fine for you if the winning team wants you.
Humans being what they are, the people with the ability to kill become the leaders and get anything they want. Hopefully they will be Kind and Benevolent.
In any case it's not "SkyNet." It's human controlled "SkyNet!"
A kinder gentler terminator service.
Don't you just love technology ?
David
We now have aircraft missions being flown remotely, and i've heard it said that we are probably seeing the last of the piloted fighter aircraft. I doubt this not at all. I say we currently have the technology to create the analogs to pilotless drones on the ground.
We can build devices that could roam the streets of any city, and kill anything living the moment it sticks it's head around the corner of a building. Such a device is not currently practical because we don't want to kill everyone. Just bad guys.
We are not that far away from the time when our machines CAN descern friend from foe, and then what do we need real human soldiers for ? As pilotless drones will save personel and ground crews, remote controled soldier robots could do the same. With the reduction in the need for human soldiers, fewer people could conduct a war. If the trend continues, it may be one day that VERY few people are needed to conduct a war.
One of the safeguards from despotism in this country is the plain and simple fact that so many people (the armed forces) would have to agree to it that it simply can't happen.
With sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence, the dynamic changes. It actually becomes easy to kill anyone who disagrees with you (including other members of the armed forces) and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. At this point, individuals would want to be on the winning team, which is fine for you if the winning team wants you.
Humans being what they are, the people with the ability to kill become the leaders and get anything they want. Hopefully they will be Kind and Benevolent.
In any case it's not "SkyNet." It's human controlled "SkyNet!"
A kinder gentler terminator service.
Don't you just love technology ?
David
Yeah, especially when it fails. Like my car battery. It's been working fine for 4 years, but today it failed. You don't think about the inter-relations of all the sub components until one part fails. So a simple 1 hour errand turned into 4 hours. Fortunately, I always have jumper cables, and I was lucky it wasn't something more complicated like an alternator or a belt.Don't you just love technology ?
I don't think there's any such thing as "artificial" intelligence. Watching politics, I'm not so sure there's any such thing as intelligence! If you could build a machine that could think, it would wonder why it has to kill. Just like in "Dark Star" - or "Men, Martians and Machines".
Besides, if all we have are machines killing each other, it becomes a spectator sport and we can do it on the moon. Another sci-fi story - I forgot the title!