Maybe we should do away with insurance (averaging) altogether, and just have everyone pay for whatever happens to them. After all, if you don't have cancer, why should you pay extra for the people who do?
Indeed, I'm actually quite hopeful that the problem can be solved, I just think it requires one of:
a) a different understanding of the physical laws of this universe ("we were wrong about the universe being doomed"). b) changing the physical laws of the universe ("we were right about the universe being doomed, but then we used our technology to change it"). c) leaving the universe ("we're right about being doomed in this sucky universe, so we're out of here")
I'm talking about how you survive 10^21 years or so, when proton decay has eliminated all the protons in the universe. It gets hard to replace your mass when there aren't any protons available to do so.
And attempting to model everything we know about the chemical processes. That said, there are 2 dimensions of performance issues:
1) Neuron is not as fast as it could be, because a lot of the work being done is at an interpretive level. 2) It's likely we don't know all we need to about the chemistry.
I assume those 2 issues are roughly a draw, and that in order to eventually simulate a human brain, there will be improvements in the simulator software eventually, but those will trade off against the necessity of more detailed simulations.
In any case, 50 years for the computer power to simulate a human brain is a decent bet.
This will be a while. A current generation processor can simulate in the range of 10 neurons with pretty good accuracy in real time. A human brain has ~100 billion neurons.
I think everything you listed only makes my point. We're getting better and better at stuff we already know how to do. And more importantly, look at the things you're listing:
Nanotechnology: a great technology, which allows us to make materials better than ever before. But how much better than atomic assembly do you think we'll get? We'll have atomic assembly nailed in less than a hundred years, and I put my bet on subatomic assembly being mastered in less than a thousand. Do you think we'll ever learn to master sub-quark assembly? Will we need to?
Interstellar vessels: we'll basically need to refine the spaceships we've already built (which are really just airplanes adapted to space, which are really just locomotives adapted to the air...). But how long do you think this will take? We pretty much know how to do it now, but the manufacturing costs are too high for the payoff.
A teleportation device would be pretty great, but it certainly seems likely to be used as the most rapid possible form of travel. If it is possible to do, do you think we will not be able to do it in the next thousand years?
The end of technology development is a lot further off than the end of science. Even with self replicating machines, it will take us a while to build up the technology base necessary to build a dyson sphere. But we'll know a long, long time before we attempt it whether or not it is possible.
Indeed, I should have meant an r^2 rate. It's been a while since my EM class. Thanks for the non flaming correction. It's still an incredibly steep fall-off.
But semi-conductors are just a refinement on vacuum tubes. Nuclear power is just another kind of power source. Antibiotics is just a way to kill people by making stronger biotics that we have no way to kill (or alternatively, just a refinement of disease control methods).
Nothing really new here. We make lots of progress, and we have a long way to go, but it's pretty much all refinement.
For example, you could re-engineer your opponent's DNA to reduce aggression. Or you could brain wash them. Etc.
Why not just blow up their planet with a Death Star and call it day? That would seem likely to violate the 'no killing' proposition that pacifism is based on?
EM signals keep going indefinitely, but they also attenuate at an r^3 rate. To broadcast a signal intense enough to be picked out of the background radiation noise in the universe requires a fair amount of power. The distance over which our radio broadcasts can be picked out over the random noise from Sol is not far (probably only a few stars are in range, assuming they use antennae no larger than the planets they can conveniently build them on.
Life might be unique on earth, but there are other explanations for the lack of contact that are more likely than that one.
Pacifism also works if you define it to allow the use of coercion (changing your foe) but not violence (killing your foe). For example, you could re-engineer your opponent's DNA to reduce aggression. Or you could brain wash them. Etc.
There are literally millions of self replicating probes surrounding our solar system, it's called the kuiper belt. It just so happens that the cool temperatures out there are just the right distance for maintaining the delicate quarkonics that make up the probes, and that's why all the millions of races out there send the same sort of probe to the same solar orbit. It's just the most obvious, easy technology. Plus, it doesn't disturb the natives until they're ready to step out of their solar system and join the galactic government.
And the cool thing is, if you wipe out all the other civilizations, you can make God's word true. And God's word is true by definition, so let's get killing!
It seems plausible that in 10k years we'll run out of scientific advancement. We're pretty much at the ability to manipulate the atomic scale now. Widespread manufacturing on the atomic level isn't likely to be more than 100 years away, if that. Then comes subatomic manufacturing, over say the next 1000 years.
It's not obvious where you go from there. I don't think we even have a glimmer of what's at the sub-quark level, if anything, and the advantages of being able to manipulate the sub-quark level seem pretty hazy. At that point, it seems likely that a war comes down to the total power harvesting capacity you have, which will mostly be a function of your expansion before the war started. I have fond hopes that the easy resources available at that technology level make folks uninterested in war, and that the real competition will be to embarrass the other races into suicide with the superiority of your art.
The terrorists don't want to blow up the power plant because we've stopped kidnapping and holding their wives hostage to force them into laboring for our oil.
Alternatively, you build several power plants so that one blowing up isn't a big deal.
Traditionally a mole has to fit into the organization they're infiltrating, so in this case an overweight unkempt 24 year old male would probably have been ideal.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe we should do away with insurance (averaging) altogether, and just have everyone pay for whatever happens to them.
After all, if you don't have cancer, why should you pay extra for the people who do?
I think that was the point: the end result is the crisis is solved.
Indeed, I'm actually quite hopeful that the problem can be solved, I just think it requires one of:
a) a different understanding of the physical laws of this universe ("we were wrong about the universe being doomed").
b) changing the physical laws of the universe ("we were right about the universe being doomed, but then we used our technology to change it").
c) leaving the universe ("we're right about being doomed in this sucky universe, so we're out of here")
I'm talking about how you survive 10^21 years or so, when proton decay has eliminated all the protons in the universe. It gets hard to replace your mass when there aren't any protons available to do so.
It's going to be really hard to resist proton decay at some point. Not dying in this entropic universe is a really, really hard problem.
That said, reaching a lifespan of a billion years would not be excessively difficult.
I'm sure there are numerous fairly easy ways to defeat this, if you're prepared. I'm just confident that closing your eyes isn't one of them.
Assuming we cannot exit the universe, or alter its physical laws.
Yeesh, who moderated this overrated?
Shine a bright flashlight at your eyelids and see if you can guess what will happen when you try this strategy.
Your wish is google's command:
http://dribibu.xs4all.nl/dilbert19950813.html
http://dribibu.xs4all.nl/dilbert19951230.html
My estimate is based on direct experience using Neuron:
http://neuron.duke.edu/
And attempting to model everything we know about the chemical processes. That said, there are 2 dimensions of performance issues:
1) Neuron is not as fast as it could be, because a lot of the work being done is at an interpretive level.
2) It's likely we don't know all we need to about the chemistry.
I assume those 2 issues are roughly a draw, and that in order to eventually simulate a human brain, there will be improvements in the simulator software eventually, but those will trade off against the necessity of more detailed simulations.
In any case, 50 years for the computer power to simulate a human brain is a decent bet.
This will be a while. A current generation processor can simulate in the range of 10 neurons with pretty good accuracy in real time.
A human brain has ~100 billion neurons.
I think everything you listed only makes my point. We're getting better and better at stuff we already know how to do. And more importantly, look at the things you're listing:
...). But how long do you think this will take? We pretty much know how to do it now, but the manufacturing costs are too high for the payoff.
Nanotechnology: a great technology, which allows us to make materials better than ever before. But how much better than atomic assembly do you think we'll get? We'll have atomic assembly nailed in less than a hundred years, and I put my bet on subatomic assembly being mastered in less than a thousand. Do you think we'll ever learn to master sub-quark assembly? Will we need to?
Interstellar vessels: we'll basically need to refine the spaceships we've already built (which are really just airplanes adapted to space, which are really just locomotives adapted to the air
A teleportation device would be pretty great, but it certainly seems likely to be used as the most rapid possible form of travel. If it is possible to do, do you think we will not be able to do it in the next thousand years?
The end of technology development is a lot further off than the end of science. Even with self replicating machines, it will take us a while to build up the technology base necessary to build a dyson sphere. But we'll know a long, long time before we attempt it whether or not it is possible.
Indeed, I should have meant an r^2 rate. It's been a while since my EM class. Thanks for the non flaming correction. It's still an incredibly steep fall-off.
But semi-conductors are just a refinement on vacuum tubes.
Nuclear power is just another kind of power source.
Antibiotics is just a way to kill people by making stronger biotics that we have no way to kill (or alternatively, just a refinement of disease control methods).
Nothing really new here. We make lots of progress, and we have a long way to go, but it's pretty much all refinement.
And just how many inventions can you come up with which are not merely refinements of 19th century technology?
Seriously, there aren't many.
Feel free. :-)
Why not just blow up their planet with a Death Star and call it day? That would seem likely to violate the 'no killing' proposition that pacifism is based on?
EM signals keep going indefinitely, but they also attenuate at an r^3 rate. To broadcast a signal intense enough to be picked out of the background radiation noise in the universe requires a fair amount of power. The distance over which our radio broadcasts can be picked out over the random noise from Sol is not far (probably only a few stars are in range, assuming they use antennae no larger than the planets they can conveniently build them on.
Life might be unique on earth, but there are other explanations for the lack of contact that are more likely than that one.
Pacifism also works if you define it to allow the use of coercion (changing your foe) but not violence (killing your foe).
For example, you could re-engineer your opponent's DNA to reduce aggression. Or you could brain wash them. Etc.
There are literally millions of self replicating probes surrounding our solar system, it's called the kuiper belt. It just so happens that the cool temperatures out there are just the right distance for maintaining the delicate quarkonics that make up the probes, and that's why all the millions of races out there send the same sort of probe to the same solar orbit. It's just the most obvious, easy technology. Plus, it doesn't disturb the natives until they're ready to step out of their solar system and join the galactic government.
And the cool thing is, if you wipe out all the other civilizations, you can make God's word true.
And God's word is true by definition, so let's get killing!
It seems plausible that in 10k years we'll run out of scientific advancement. We're pretty much at the ability to manipulate the atomic scale now. Widespread manufacturing on the atomic level isn't likely to be more than 100 years away, if that. Then comes subatomic manufacturing, over say the next 1000 years.
It's not obvious where you go from there. I don't think we even have a glimmer of what's at the sub-quark level, if anything, and the advantages of being able to manipulate the sub-quark level seem pretty hazy. At that point, it seems likely that a war comes down to the total power harvesting capacity you have, which will mostly be a function of your expansion before the war started. I have fond hopes that the easy resources available at that technology level make folks uninterested in war, and that the real competition will be to embarrass the other races into suicide with the superiority of your art.
The terrorists don't want to blow up the power plant because we've stopped kidnapping and holding their wives hostage to force them into laboring for our oil.
Alternatively, you build several power plants so that one blowing up isn't a big deal.
Traditionally a mole has to fit into the organization they're infiltrating, so in this case an overweight unkempt 24 year old male would probably have been ideal.