Many people have long imagined eternal lives beyond our bodies. But this is hard to gasp. People have a hard time dealing with pleasure or pain lasting days or years. Imagine billions of years or longer! Even the most subtle heaven could become a hell if long enough.
I heard the 50-50 chance of a fatal accident is 2000 years.
But compared to forever, 300 or 2000 years is short.
Science fiction writers have contemplated this. Some suggest "sissy" societies where everyone is extremely cautious and contained inside tons of protective shelter.
Other authers talk about backup clones with memory copies, ready activate when the previous copy perishes.
Even in our "mortal" society, the percentage of work needed for basic survival- food and shelter- has drastically declined the past couple centuries.
In an immortal society, this trend would continue, with the unproductive & dependent parts of the lifespan like childhood and old age sink into insignificance. People would probably spend much of their lives in leisurely pursuits like education, entertainment, travel and sport, perhaps punctuated by periods of productive service to society. The amount of time to fill basic survival needs wouldn't be a third of a liftetime as it may be now, but on the order of one percent or less.
Society still needs to figure out how to better distribute its immense productive capabilities. The current mode of thought is to monetarize most of human activity and buy-sell-trade it. Authoritarian and commune approaches have been tried and work less well than this. Immortality may suggest different approaches.
Nearly every week there is some "new study" published that contradicts a previous one. Theories of aging 10-20 years ago are pretty different than those of today. So I'd venture at least half of his seven claims would be either wrong or insignificant 20 years from now.
I am optimistic that someday medicine will have a better understanding, but not today.
This week is the 5-year anniversary of the 1990s stock peak. Social Security, which invests their trust fund in a laddered set of US Treasuries, average 6.2% annual reurn, would have returned 35%. Investing in high tech stocks, which is all the rage in Y2K would be still be down 59% (NASDAQ).
That $1500 monthly check is equivalent of buying a $300,000 annuity at age 65. That $300,000 less you dont have to save starts look better and better as you get closer that magic age. And when your bosses are downsizing your job to India.
Japanese R&D groups pour a lot more money into robots than anyone else in the world. Kids see robot cartoons and play with robot toys (transformers). I dont particularly understand this infatuation. Buit at least it encourages some part of the world to experiment more with robot tech.
Mr. Summers criticized some of the Black Studies professors at Harvard as not being rigorous scholarship (with good cause in my opinion). Two of them left, decimating Harvard's formerly top program.
Lawrence Summers graduated from MIT in economics in 1975, but spent grad school and academic career at Harvard. His uncle is the famous economist Paul Samuelson.
Larry has been promoting stronger math and science requirements at Harvard. An "educated person" needs to know these subjects. Harvard recently created a School of Engineering. Not to compete with MIT but to fill in the gaps with Harvard's specialties.
A young adult generates 1/2 watt per pound of body weight sitting, and four times that in exercise. Thats why they have to air condition auditoriums even in the winter with hundreds of those "light bulbs" sitting there.
Everestnews.com has been carrying blogs from Everestr since before the 1996 "Thin Air" disaster. The 2005 season is starting to prepare now. Typically the hoards arrive in early April, to acclimatize for an ascent assualt during a weather window in mid-May. About 300 summitted last year.
In a mere 25 years, Japan rose from the poverty of 1945 to a near superpower in 1970. China looks like it will take about 40 years, starting from its capitalistic freedom given by Deng Xiaoping in 1980.
However, it seems to be on a similar trajectory. India wasnt unleashed until 1990, but it could be up there too in 15 to 30 years.
The Media Lab was an amalgamation of the MIT Architecture studios and the Computer Science Lab. Both places had used the "playpen" environments since the 1960s. The architecture labs inter-penetrated the top floor of Building 7 Borg infiltrating the Enterprise. People built interconnected, multi-level cubby holes and common areas for their art studios and classrooms.
Many dot.coms adopted this style of goofy shared spaces. You still see this at Google, Pixar, etc.
This atmosphere has recently extended to the newly opened "Dr. Suess" Computer Science Department (Strata) building at MIT. This building looks like a bunch of twisty towers. Theres a lot weird looking offices, common spaces and passage ways. Plus its own gym and cafeteria, so students rarely need to return home.
Scientists are holding tight whether they good telemetry from the probe. The ESA designers forgot to correct for the doppler shift of the changing velocity between the Huygens probe and the Cassini mother ship. There is a chance that some of the signal could shift outside of the attenna frequency range and be lost. The landing was changed to slower trajectory orbit to hopefully compensate.
I wonder if you could do it a lot cheaper my just indexing the whole mess with a Google search engine. The FBI "system" was dozens of custom databases, many written in COBOL or PL/I decades ago. Google works well with flat files than structured databases.
A nightline reporter asked board members last night was what Intelligent Design meant. Most bullshitted incoherent answers, showing they didnt have the faintest idea of what it was. I.D. is just a stand-in for anti-evolutionism, with relatively few understanding what it means.
At the time I write this they've only "heard" the bleep transmitter. This is a minimal device to show the probe is working and where it might be on its journey.
The original system incorrectly compensated of the Doppler shifting of frequencies (I recall there was no compensation designed in). This means as the two probes and Titan move through space, the signals shift a bit to different frequencies. The fix was to select an impact orbit with lesser relative velocities than they had originally planned. If the attenna doesnt get all the signals, then they could be lost.
Global dimming is just one factor. You have the greenhouse gas- CO2, methane-; The sun changes its brightness output a tenth or two a percent in cycles; the earth's orbit varies a bit; weather and ocean currents change, and so on. The Cassandras see runaway warming or ice ages at every turn. Real scientists say to continue studying to better understand it.
Slashdot Mirror
Many people have long imagined eternal lives beyond our bodies. But this is hard to gasp. People have a hard time dealing with pleasure or pain lasting days or years. Imagine billions of years or longer! Even the most subtle heaven could become a hell if long enough.
I heard the 50-50 chance of a fatal accident is 2000 years. But compared to forever, 300 or 2000 years is short.
Science fiction writers have contemplated this. Some suggest "sissy" societies where everyone is extremely cautious and contained inside tons of protective shelter. Other authers talk about backup clones with memory copies, ready activate when the previous copy perishes.
Even in our "mortal" society, the percentage of work needed for basic survival- food and shelter- has drastically declined the past couple centuries. In an immortal society, this trend would continue, with the unproductive & dependent parts of the lifespan like childhood and old age sink into insignificance. People would probably spend much of their lives in leisurely pursuits like education, entertainment, travel and sport, perhaps punctuated by periods of productive service to society. The amount of time to fill basic survival needs wouldn't be a third of a liftetime as it may be now, but on the order of one percent or less.
Society still needs to figure out how to better distribute its immense productive capabilities. The current mode of thought is to monetarize most of human activity and buy-sell-trade it. Authoritarian and commune approaches have been tried and work less well than this. Immortality may suggest different approaches.
Nearly every week there is some "new study" published that contradicts a previous one. Theories of aging 10-20 years ago are pretty different than those of today. So I'd venture at least half of his seven claims would be either wrong or insignificant 20 years from now.
I am optimistic that someday medicine will have a better understanding, but not today.
This week is the 5-year anniversary of the 1990s stock peak. Social Security, which invests their trust fund in a laddered set of US Treasuries, average 6.2% annual reurn, would have returned 35%. Investing in high tech stocks, which is all the rage in Y2K would be still be down 59% (NASDAQ).
With the first pilot filmed in 1964, they are starting to run out of good stories.
That $1500 monthly check is equivalent of buying a $300,000 annuity at age 65. That $300,000 less you dont have to save starts look better and better as you get closer that magic age. And when your bosses are downsizing your job to India.
Does that count?
Japanese R&D groups pour a lot more money into robots than anyone else in the world. Kids see robot cartoons and play with robot toys (transformers). I dont particularly understand this infatuation. Buit at least it encourages some part of the world to experiment more with robot tech.
Mr. Summers criticized some of the Black Studies professors at Harvard as not being rigorous scholarship (with good cause in my opinion). Two of them left, decimating Harvard's formerly top program.
Lawrence Summers graduated from MIT in economics in 1975, but spent grad school and academic career at Harvard. His uncle is the famous economist Paul Samuelson. Larry has been promoting stronger math and science requirements at Harvard. An "educated person" needs to know these subjects. Harvard recently created a School of Engineering. Not to compete with MIT but to fill in the gaps with Harvard's specialties.
A young adult generates 1/2 watt per pound of body weight sitting, and four times that in exercise. Thats why they have to air condition auditoriums even in the winter with hundreds of those "light bulbs" sitting there.
All the ivy greaduates I know are doing quite well. Glad to see overall business is so good that others do well too.
Everestnews.com has been carrying blogs from Everestr since before the 1996 "Thin Air" disaster. The 2005 season is starting to prepare now. Typically the hoards arrive in early April, to acclimatize for an ascent assualt during a weather window in mid-May. About 300 summitted last year.
If is not bad enough with TSA lines and congesting parking lots, it could take an hour to board and unboard this fully loaded monster.
In a mere 25 years, Japan rose from the poverty of 1945 to a near superpower in 1970. China looks like it will take about 40 years, starting from its capitalistic freedom given by Deng Xiaoping in 1980. However, it seems to be on a similar trajectory. India wasnt unleashed until 1990, but it could be up there too in 15 to 30 years.
Two photos made it back at the time of this posting. Only rocks, but fluid eroded.
The Media Lab was an amalgamation of the MIT Architecture studios and the Computer Science Lab. Both places had used the "playpen" environments since the 1960s. The architecture labs inter-penetrated the top floor of Building 7 Borg infiltrating the Enterprise. People built interconnected, multi-level cubby holes and common areas for their art studios and classrooms.
Many dot.coms adopted this style of goofy shared spaces. You still see this at Google, Pixar, etc.
This atmosphere has recently extended to the newly opened "Dr. Suess" Computer Science Department (Strata) building at MIT. This building looks like a bunch of twisty towers. Theres a lot weird looking offices, common spaces and passage ways. Plus its own gym and cafeteria, so students rarely need to return home.
Scientists are holding tight whether they good telemetry from the probe. The ESA designers forgot to correct for the doppler shift of the changing velocity between the Huygens probe and the Cassini mother ship. There is a chance that some of the signal could shift outside of the attenna frequency range and be lost. The landing was changed to slower trajectory orbit to hopefully compensate.
I wonder if you could do it a lot cheaper my just indexing the whole mess with a Google search engine. The FBI "system" was dozens of custom databases, many written in COBOL or PL/I decades ago. Google works well with flat files than structured databases.
The average physicist salary was $87,000 in 2003. No high tech dip here.
A nightline reporter asked board members last night was what Intelligent Design meant. Most bullshitted incoherent answers, showing they didnt have the faintest idea of what it was. I.D. is just a stand-in for anti-evolutionism, with relatively few understanding what it means.
At the time I write this they've only "heard" the bleep transmitter. This is a minimal device to show the probe is working and where it might be on its journey.
The original system incorrectly compensated of the Doppler shifting of frequencies (I recall there was no compensation designed in). This means as the two probes and Titan move through space, the signals shift a bit to different frequencies. The fix was to select an impact orbit with lesser relative velocities than they had originally planned. If the attenna doesnt get all the signals, then they could be lost.
Ray Bradbury imagined a mostly privated space effort. It was modeled after the Oklahoma land rush aimed at Mars.
Global dimming is just one factor. You have the greenhouse gas- CO2, methane-; The sun changes its brightness output a tenth or two a percent in cycles; the earth's orbit varies a bit; weather and ocean currents change, and so on. The Cassandras see runaway warming or ice ages at every turn. Real scientists say to continue studying to better understand it.