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Not anymore. Current cryonics procedures are based on vitrification, which preserves tissue with relatively little damage. As I understand it, much of the inability to revive a vitrified being comes from the fact that the chemicals used to facilitate the vitrification process are toxic, and as of yet we lack a good way to extract them from the system. http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2009/10/this-is-your-brain-on-cryonics/

"... the real point about the Singularity is that one would want to derive the core, productive algorithms of intelligence and consciousness, and merely implement these in computer code. I think the whole idea of trying to replicate in a computer the biological processing of the human brain down to the molecular level or whatever will never amount to anything more than an academic exercise. That would be like trying to use evolutionary algorithms to evolve an intelligence on a computer, or other such insanity that sounds like the idea of Hugo de Garis."
-me
 
"There are lots of people who think that if they can just get enough of something, a mind will magically emerge. Facts, simulated neurons, ..., raw CPU power, whatever. It's an impressively idiotic combination of mental laziness and wishful thinking."
-Michael Wilson
 
There are three schools of Singularity thought. This article is primarily about one of them. Please read these articles
 
  http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools
 
"I find it very annoying, therefore, when these three schools of thought are mashed up into Singularity paste. Clear thinking requires making distinctions.
 
But what is still more annoying is when someone reads a blog post about a newspaper article about the Singularity, comes away with none of the three interesting theses, and spontaneously reinvents the dreaded fourth meaning of the Singularity:
 
Apocalyptism: Hey, man, have you heard? There's this bunch of, like, crazy nerds out there, who think that some kind of unspecified huge nerd thing is going to happen. What a bunch of wackos! It's geek religion, man."
 
  http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2009/02/the-three-singularity-schools-kurzweil-and-superintelligence/
 
"The point of this article is to remind the reader that there are three schools of Singularity thought - this is so fundamental, but so few people are aware of it. It should be the first thing that people learn when introduced to the concept. As I argued in 2007, the word "Singularity" has lost all meaning, but if we're stuck with it, we should at least pull apart three of the major meanings it tends to have."

"... the real point about the Singularity is that one would want to derive the core, productive algorithms of intelligence and consciousness, and merely implement these in computer code. I think the whole idea of trying to replicate in a computer the biological processing of the human brain down to the molecular level or whatever will never amount to anything more than an academic exercise. That would be like trying to use evolutionary algorithms to evolve an intelligence on a computer, or other such insanity that sounds like the idea of Hugo de Garis."
-me
 
"There are lots of people who think that if they can just get enough of something, a mind will magically emerge. Facts, simulated neurons, ..., raw CPU power, whatever. It's an impressively idiotic combination of mental laziness and wishful thinking."
-Michael Wilson
 
There are three schools of Singularity thought. This article is primarily about one of them. Please read these articles
 
  http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/schools
 
"I find it very annoying, therefore, when these three schools of thought are mashed up into Singularity paste. Clear thinking requires making distinctions.
 
But what is still more annoying is when someone reads a blog post about a newspaper article about the Singularity, comes away with none of the three interesting theses, and spontaneously reinvents the dreaded fourth meaning of the Singularity:
 
Apocalyptism: Hey, man, have you heard? There's this bunch of, like, crazy nerds out there, who think that some kind of unspecified huge nerd thing is going to happen. What a bunch of wackos! It's geek religion, man."
 
  http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2009/02/the-three-singularity-schools-kurzweil-and-superintelligence/
 
"The point of this article is to remind the reader that there are three schools of Singularity thought - this is so fundamental, but so few people are aware of it. It should be the first thing that people learn when introduced to the concept. As I argued in 2007, the word "Singularity" has lost all meaning, but if we're stuck with it, we should at least pull apart three of the major meanings it tends to have."

The question is, can I talk about the inspiration for the user interface on the combat robot?

Yes, on the combat robot, we started out with engineers designing it, very expensive, joysticks with force reflecting, we put it out in the field, the kids out in the field, the 19 year old started doing *bang* *bang* *bang* pulse width modulation with their hands, umm, we changed it then to a game controller and now the 19 year olds in Iraq pick it up, zero training, know what to do.

Great.

[question about flat worms, etc]
[different question about humans merging with ai, losing emotions, etc]
[question about research funding]

The question is, I used to talk about insect level intelligence, what's my attitude to that.. well, I've got 3 million robots out in people's homes with insect level intelligence. It's a real commercial success. But it doesn't mean we should stick with just that. Some of the principles from that we've been using in these humanoid robots and I was trying to explore a different set of space, but really, I tend to think that, humans are just bit insects. [laughter] Ha ha, we're not as smart as we like to think we are. I still believe that, at its core.

The question, is about [soldiers] becoming emotionally attached to the robots and has that caused us to rethink at all. No, we haven't done that in the military space, but in the home space we've seen people getting attached.. there's a whole set of third party industry making clothes for roombas, there are skins for roombas that you can get, there's some web sites, so I think those, ya know, we'll have Facebook for robots [laughter] I mean, there really is part of this attachment that's an interesting phenomena going on there. Sherry Turpils looked at it with Furbies a lot. There's a lot of projection onto these devices which they don't really deserve from a rational point of view. But we're not rational beings.

The question is, there have been reports of packbots being equipped with machine guns and what do you do worrying about friendly fire. Actually, that's not true, none of the packbots have had a machinegun, the Talon from Foster Miller has had a weapon on it,
all with safety circuit and a human in the loop. I think it is an interesting question, when (if ever) do we want to allow robots to have independent targeting authority. I think now is the time to act. There's a bunch of ethics conferences coming up in the next year. I think its time to put this into the Geneva Conventions - some governments do go along with the Geneva Conventions - and [laughter] I think its time to think about that. Absolutely.

[Audience member asks a follow-up:] You said "some governments" follow the Geneva Conventions, but apparently not that you've done some work for. Is it a good idea for you to be developing AI and robotics for the US government? and, umm, in my mind, that could lead to some of the worst nightmare scenarios and I'm wondering how, ya know, what your thoughts are on mitigating against...

Yeah, I think that, in a sense is nothing to do with AI, that's been a question which has faced scientists in the past since the time of Da vinci, who was completely funded by military, doing military work for his patrons. So that's an issue that scientists have had to deal with for hundreds of years. Independently, of AI. And I think it is a big responsibility of scientists to worry about controls of how things are used and I think, actually, the Geneva Conventions have been a good way of

There is a good article presenting the contraindications against rockets and a number of currently being investigated alternatives (including the beanstalk) here:

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=178

Another concept mentioned in the article is something called a "Space Pier", which I've always believed will eventually become the standard for shipping freight that can handle very sudden accelerations.

When I was a kid, I conceived it as a coilgun embedded in a mountain range with a line of superconductive electromagnets that would fire things into space like a bullet, but this guy J. Storrs Hall, works on the CRN Global Task Force, he proposes a 100km tall structure built on legs with an electromagnetic linear accelerator on top. Same basic concept, and I think it will eventually be demonstrated to be optimal for the appropriate cargo.

One highly subjective, criminally over-simplified take on the whole liberal/conservative question is: it boils down to one of modeling society. If you want "one big family" then you lean to the left, and want more socialized policies. If you question whether people scale well and want more individual responsibility and less safety net, then you might prefer conservative policies.

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