If you take away aging, people will still die. Accidents, Disease, War, Murder, Suicide, etc. None of that goes away if you cure aging.
If people can potentially live for thousands of years will they become more scared of dying? All those things that you mentioned, instead of cutting a potential 70 year life short, it's now cutting a 5000 year life short. How will people react to that? Or after the first hundred years have most people already accepted that their life will end sometime due to an unforseen event.
I would guess that at the beginning, it wouldn't be quite as big a deal. Say a person died at 150. "Oh well, they lived a good long life, a helluva lot longer than they would have without the treatment."
But as time goes on and people becomed accustomed to the idea that they will live 5000 years, I think people will be very scared of dying "young". 150 years will now be a life cut "tragically short". I think people will then be a lot more cautious about things we might even consider rediculous. Even to the point where people might lock themselves in a safe environment for hundreds of years at a time. Another question is will it slow down progress... will it take a thousand years to change laws or regulations while people debate and study it?
BTW, IMHO, I believe it is a necessary part of any "learning system" (be it biological or digital or "whatever") that it possesses the capability to forget knowledge. Without this ability, growth of knowledge - true learning - isn't possible. I mean, it's GOOD to forget the wrong way to do things (sometimes) and have reinforced the right way of doing things.
That's a very good point. I think our minds have evolved such that they have become optimized to remembering exactly how much information we need to for a 70 or so year life span. And also become optimized enough to know when to throw out "junk" and when to reinforce things worth keeping. (though it is still debatable whether that information is actually gone or just difficult to access).
I think one of the problems is that our minds are not suited to remembering the amount of information one would *desire* to over such a long lifetime. That would be pretty awful to live through 5000 years of history and not have more than a cursory knowlege of events similar to what one remembers from a world history class. I suppose you'd have a smattering of personal memories in addition to the historical overview, but I think people want much much more than that. They'll want to recall things in as great a detail as they do now over 70 years. Not to have those memories divided up between the 5000 years they are alive.
So you're right, some sort of enhancement to memory is definitely necessary. But whether that would be through genetics or some other means is up for debate. I would hazard a guess that our brains are so honed to remembering 70 years worth of memories that even with genetics it may not be possible to cram more than a few hundred years into it, while retaining the basic structure. Maybe there will be some sort of computer interface, such that we'll be able to use electronic memory to enhance our own. Who really knows? I would guess the more pragmatic future... that people who want to remember will have to learn to write more and take more pictures (videos, holograms, whatever).
About your last point, I can only imagine what living 5000 years would do to someone's mental state. One could presumably be profoundly depressed for a hundred years (over a lifetime today) and no one may think anything of it.
I remember hearing about a theory that most of the pointers (or "cues" as they are referred to in psychology) to our memories don't actually lie within our brains, but all externally. As in, the only reason we can remember anything at all is because we are reminded of it by something we hear or see in our environment. If we can't recall something (assuming it got encoded in the first place)... it's not that the memory doesn't exist, we simply haven't encountered an appropriate "cue" for it yet. And may never; in essense, forgetting something completely. An even stranger aspect to this theory is that some of our memories are stored externally. That is, you remember the "cue" but not the memory itself.(I will come back to this point)
For example think about your childhood. Pick one of these questions, close your eyes and think about it for a minute. -Do you remember playing in the dirt, or a sandbox? -What did you keep in your desk at school? -What did the inside of your parents car look and smell like? -Do you remember the first time you saw MTV?
I just gave you four cues, and I bet at least one of them triggered a memory you hadn't thought about in years (try it again with one if you just read over them quickly)
The reason I bring this up is that is what you were saying about friends remembering things you don't and vice versa. Memories they had about an event triggered something that caused you to recall your own memories. It's like a big jigsaw puzzle for every event... you have some of the pieces and your friends remember some of the pieces. Your brain holds the pointers to some of their memories of that event(like a checksum of sorts- that's how you know if they are true), and vise versa. Along with the pointers in the environement. Not to mention these memories are all being modified slightly each time you recall them, leading to false memories. I guess you could say that's part of the reason the external world holds the pointers to your memories, to keep a check on that.
A strange idea this collective memory of sorts, but one that does make sense. As far as memories of your life becoming like a legend, according to this theory it's because your environment has changed so much that most of those pointers contained within it are lost.
I will see if I can find a reference for all this; my apologies if some of it is my own speculation.
I too am disappointed that more companies don't make devices that let you configure things yourself. I too wish I could tweak menus and defaults. To me personally, it doesn't matter if it's open source or not... but it would be nice to have more control.
I guess I can see a reason why companies don't like to do this... because inevitably people who manage to break their phones will complain and bog down the tech support/return centers. But all this could be solved by simply having a "reset button". Put a copy of the firmware in ROM... as soon as the button is pressed it reverts to that. Very simple. I can't think of a single reason not to do something like that. People would love having that much control of their phone. Look at how popular ringers and backgrounds have become.
The computer brain transfer bit aside, you brought up an interesting topic: What problems with the mind will crop up after the first hundred years or so? What happens to memories after such a long period of time? Will people forget their childhood after a couple hundred years? How much capacity does the brain have?
With diseases like Alzheimers we at least have an idea of what causes it, and we know what changes happen to the brain as it progresses.... I think it's only a matter of time before it can be prevented. However, I daresay that theories about where and how exactly memories are formed and stored in the brain are mostly wild speculation. We know the roles that certain regions of the brain play in memory, and there are some good abstract models (such as the Phonological loop and the Visuospatial sketchpad) but we are a very long way away from knowing how these are done at the hardware level of the brain.
Very good points you made. It is rediculous that we still use so much coal power when there are plenty of alternatives. Burning coal releases a lot of radioactive material into the air that is virtually impossible to recover. Something in the neighborhood of 10,000+ metric tons. Yikes. At least with nuclear fission most of the waste is concentrated in the byproducts. Coal is definitely one of the most impure fuels around. Not to mention all the other damage that comes from mining.
Oh and you gave me an idea for a new sig. Thanks:)
The article is very short on details. I am very curious how they plan to make these three spheres. Are we talking actual metal spheres surrounding the spaceship? Or thin strands of wire? Or doing something with a magnetic field similar to earth's without a physical shield?
My other question is what sort of energies are we talking about here since protons are fairly massive? I would guess in the 100+ GeV range (ie. particle accelerator size). Any thoughts or better links?
Scientists have shown that the moon is moving away at a tiny, although measurable distance from the earth every year. If you do the math, you can calculate that 85 million years ago the moon was orbiting the earth at a distance of about 35 feet from the earth's surface.
This would explain the death of the dinosaurs... well, the tallest ones at any rate.
Course, you never know. Maybe in the star wars universe Skywalker is one of the most common names out there. No need to hide if your name is John Smith.
After all, IIRC Neo's name was something like Thomas Anderson.
You're right, there's really no reason for Lucas to leave in those stupid scenes. People are going to see the Star Wars movies no matter what. He doesn't need to add gags like that to attract viewers.
Unfortunately a lot of newer movies resort to that sort of slapstick humor just to get ratings. I think people would much rather see complex humor, but instead get treated like they're 5 years old! I cringed when I saw that scene added where Han stepped on Jabba's tail. Why do you have resort to that, Lucas? Even kids enjoy movies, even if they don't necessarily get all the humor. I go back now and watch movies from the 80's and realize how 'adult' a lot of the humor is, but I still enjoyed them at the time.
$10 a month for unlimited downloads sounds great... although I don't think people would go for it for one simple reason... the P2P part. If they're paying $10 a month I can't see many people being willing to share their upload bandwidth, especially people on dial up and those with picky broadband providers. Maybe the solution to this though is treat bandwidth like a $$ credit. For every 100mb uploaded we take a dollar off your monthly fee. (of course then you're probably opening yourself up to some sort of scheme where a group of friends just downloads everything from each other)
The solution I see is the magic $5 price point for cds. Then you're getting into the range where it's harder to justify piracy or going to the trouble of burning your own, for the simple fact that you get a shiny new pressed cd with artwork for a low price. Plus $5 is like the magic number in the U.S. since you can get a value meal at most fast food places for that. I think a lot of people would go for that because it's easy to justify $5 since a cd is more permanent than a meal and americans are good at rationalizing away things like that. Oh I skipped breakfast=$5 so I'm breaking even for the day.
I'm sure you know ever really getting hard numbers on piracy is impossible just because the nature of the industry and who would really buy something if they couldn't get it for free.
I have to disagree with you. On the contrary, I think the majority of people would choose buying something over getting it for free. The catch here is that the item has to be priced reasonably. It all comes down to economics. At $5 a cd, piracy would drop to negligible levels. If you go even lower to $2 a cd I daresay no one would even bother to copy them anymore (except for making mix cds). Why? Because it's simply not worth the time and effort when you get a shiny pressed cd with artwork and a case for your pocket change.
I think they should embrace and encourage, maybe give a biz model similar to what Napster was pushing for. A distributed model (sign the music so you know it isn't tampered with) that will is a premium up and above the free realm stuff like kazaa.
Again, I have to disagree. There is simply no way people are going to willingly give up their bandwidth and hard drive space so a company can make money off that. I suppose if you're clever though with the spin, you could get the crowd that clicks on the punch the monkey ads to run it.
My take on this whole thing is that things will have to get worse before they get better. As long as people have this two party mentality nothing will change. And as long as people think there is actually a difference between democrats and republicans nothing will change. It has to get bad enough that people will be willing to embrace a third party candidate like with Perot in '92. But he screwed that one up by dropping out when he had upwards of 60% of the popular vote, and now I think people are less likely to step out of the box and vote for a third candidate or even vote at all.
Not to mention that we don't know whether all of these factors are necessarily independent. Some of them might be very close to 1 given enough time. I'm thinking specifically L and I(life starts, intelligent life starts). Maybe life is inevitable on a suitable planet.
Also while S (the number of stars) and P give good ballpark figures, it ignores the possibility that life may not need a planet to evolve on. What about stars that share planets? Considering that there's a lot of binary star systems out there.
Although I have nothing better, the basic problem I see with this equation is that it is absolutely no use to determining if life is out there. By the time we know the values to any useful degree of accuracy, we'll already know if there are other species in the universe. Say we are able to go out and explore 1000 planets (which is a big stretch). That sounds like a great number to start extrapolating from.... BUT compared to the Billions of stars per galaxy and Billions of galaxies in the universe, you might as well have a sample size of 2.
If that doesn't make sense, think of it this way. It'd be like trying to guess how many people are in the world by sampling a rural county in Kentucky. There's no way it can be accurate. There's just too much information we'd need to know.
I have a hard time believing our government invaded a country to get rid of weapons that never existed..stranger things have happened.
Never existed? Tell that to the 750,000 Iranians who died because of those weapons that *never existed*. Tell that to the U.S. companies like Dow that were granted liscenses (over 170 of them) to sell Salmonella, botulism, and antrax to Iraq. Or the thousands of Kurds who were gassed before the first gulf war.
Maybe you need to read upa littleon what was going on in the 80's, since you obviously weren't around.
Tools, money, jewels, and the animals which could walk on their own.
I've got to stop working these overnight shifts... when I first read that I imagined tools and coins with legs walking down the street. (you know like on those "let's all go to the lobby" concession stand commercials with the walking hot dogs). Maybe that's this advanced technology people keep bringing up
Re:If Atlantis DID exist, how advanced WERE they?
on
On the Trail to Atlantis
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
That would be interesting to see what kind of technology is buried in the Aegean sea considering the civilizations that have risen there in the last 10,000 years. I think it's safe to say no one had energy systems more advanced then our own, otherwise there would be evidence all over the place. No spaceships or cars buried there. *However*, I don't think it's beyond possibility that they could have had some sort of elaborate mechanical or thermal systems for power, or even a rudimentary form of electricity (like for electroplating or some other curious use... ie. that baghdad battery that was found).
One of the things I've always been fascinated by was how close civilizations have come to producing an Industrial Revolution. What would the world be like today if that had happened two thousand years ago when the first steam engine had been invented? Or 5000 years ago when the Bronze age started in parts of Asia? What would the world be like today with 2-5 thousand years of industrial progress behind us? Imagine where we will be in the year 4000... probably beyond anything we can possibly dream of considering the pace of technology in the last 200 years. And all that could be here today if it hadn't been for the relative cheapness of slave labor and all the other factors that held us back.
I know for a fact the Minoans had a very advanced civilization well over a thousand years before Plato's time, including running water, A/c, etc.. I think this is what you were referring to when you mentioned the volcano, which happened around 1500BC. If that's true, the advanced civilization really not that suprising considering their proximity to Crete (where the minoans were mainly).
As I was writing this I found a good general overview site for Alantis which is a lot more readable than the wikipedia link. Atlantis Info Apparently the website was listed as one of the 50 best science sites by pop sci magazine, so despite it's conspiracy theory-esque look, it seems to be a credible source.
Slashdot Mirror
If people can potentially live for thousands of years will they become more scared of dying? All those things that you mentioned, instead of cutting a potential 70 year life short, it's now cutting a 5000 year life short. How will people react to that? Or after the first hundred years have most people already accepted that their life will end sometime due to an unforseen event.
I would guess that at the beginning, it wouldn't be quite as big a deal. Say a person died at 150. "Oh well, they lived a good long life, a helluva lot longer than they would have without the treatment."
But as time goes on and people becomed accustomed to the idea that they will live 5000 years, I think people will be very scared of dying "young". 150 years will now be a life cut "tragically short". I think people will then be a lot more cautious about things we might even consider rediculous. Even to the point where people might lock themselves in a safe environment for hundreds of years at a time. Another question is will it slow down progress... will it take a thousand years to change laws or regulations while people debate and study it?
That's a very good point. I think our minds have evolved such that they have become optimized to remembering exactly how much information we need to for a 70 or so year life span. And also become optimized enough to know when to throw out "junk" and when to reinforce things worth keeping. (though it is still debatable whether that information is actually gone or just difficult to access).
I think one of the problems is that our minds are not suited to remembering the amount of information one would *desire* to over such a long lifetime. That would be pretty awful to live through 5000 years of history and not have more than a cursory knowlege of events similar to what one remembers from a world history class. I suppose you'd have a smattering of personal memories in addition to the historical overview, but I think people want much much more than that. They'll want to recall things in as great a detail as they do now over 70 years. Not to have those memories divided up between the 5000 years they are alive.
So you're right, some sort of enhancement to memory is definitely necessary. But whether that would be through genetics or some other means is up for debate. I would hazard a guess that our brains are so honed to remembering 70 years worth of memories that even with genetics it may not be possible to cram more than a few hundred years into it, while retaining the basic structure. Maybe there will be some sort of computer interface, such that we'll be able to use electronic memory to enhance our own. Who really knows? I would guess the more pragmatic future... that people who want to remember will have to learn to write more and take more pictures (videos, holograms, whatever).
About your last point, I can only imagine what living 5000 years would do to someone's mental state. One could presumably be profoundly depressed for a hundred years (over a lifetime today) and no one may think anything of it.
I remember hearing about a theory that most of the pointers (or "cues" as they are referred to in psychology) to our memories don't actually lie within our brains, but all externally. As in, the only reason we can remember anything at all is because we are reminded of it by something we hear or see in our environment. If we can't recall something (assuming it got encoded in the first place)... it's not that the memory doesn't exist, we simply haven't encountered an appropriate "cue" for it yet. And may never; in essense, forgetting something completely. An even stranger aspect to this theory is that some of our memories are stored externally. That is, you remember the "cue" but not the memory itself.(I will come back to this point)
For example think about your childhood. Pick one of these questions, close your eyes and think about it for a minute.
-Do you remember playing in the dirt, or a sandbox?
-What did you keep in your desk at school?
-What did the inside of your parents car look and smell like?
-Do you remember the first time you saw MTV?
I just gave you four cues, and I bet at least one of them triggered a memory you hadn't thought about in years (try it again with one if you just read over them quickly)
The reason I bring this up is that is what you were saying about friends remembering things you don't and vice versa. Memories they had about an event triggered something that caused you to recall your own memories. It's like a big jigsaw puzzle for every event... you have some of the pieces and your friends remember some of the pieces. Your brain holds the pointers to some of their memories of that event(like a checksum of sorts- that's how you know if they are true), and vise versa. Along with the pointers in the environement. Not to mention these memories are all being modified slightly each time you recall them, leading to false memories. I guess you could say that's part of the reason the external world holds the pointers to your memories, to keep a check on that.
A strange idea this collective memory of sorts, but one that does make sense. As far as memories of your life becoming like a legend, according to this theory it's because your environment has changed so much that most of those pointers contained within it are lost.
I will see if I can find a reference for all this; my apologies if some of it is my own speculation.
I guess I can see a reason why companies don't like to do this... because inevitably people who manage to break their phones will complain and bog down the tech support/return centers. But all this could be solved by simply having a "reset button". Put a copy of the firmware in ROM... as soon as the button is pressed it reverts to that. Very simple. I can't think of a single reason not to do something like that. People would love having that much control of their phone. Look at how popular ringers and backgrounds have become.
With diseases like Alzheimers we at least have an idea of what causes it, and we know what changes happen to the brain as it progresses.... I think it's only a matter of time before it can be prevented. However, I daresay that theories about where and how exactly memories are formed and stored in the brain are mostly wild speculation. We know the roles that certain regions of the brain play in memory, and there are some good abstract models (such as the Phonological loop and the Visuospatial sketchpad) but we are a very long way away from knowing how these are done at the hardware level of the brain.
Oh and you gave me an idea for a new sig. Thanks :)
A similar book I have read and enjoyed is How to Read a French Fry (and other intriguing Kitchen Science) by Russ Parsons.
After all, since the IT person is being eliminated it is EVERYONES responsibility to keep things up and running.
My other question is what sort of energies are we talking about here since protons are fairly massive? I would guess in the 100+ GeV range (ie. particle accelerator size). Any thoughts or better links?
Alternate theory:
Scientists have shown that the moon is moving away at a tiny, although measurable distance from the earth every year. If you do the math, you can calculate that 85 million years ago the moon was orbiting the earth at a distance of about 35 feet from the earth's surface.
This would explain the death of the dinosaurs... well, the tallest ones at any rate.
After all, IIRC Neo's name was something like Thomas Anderson.
Unfortunately a lot of newer movies resort to that sort of slapstick humor just to get ratings. I think people would much rather see complex humor, but instead get treated like they're 5 years old! I cringed when I saw that scene added where Han stepped on Jabba's tail. Why do you have resort to that, Lucas? Even kids enjoy movies, even if they don't necessarily get all the humor. I go back now and watch movies from the 80's and realize how 'adult' a lot of the humor is, but I still enjoyed them at the time.
The solution I see is the magic $5 price point for cds. Then you're getting into the range where it's harder to justify piracy or going to the trouble of burning your own, for the simple fact that you get a shiny new pressed cd with artwork for a low price. Plus $5 is like the magic number in the U.S. since you can get a value meal at most fast food places for that. I think a lot of people would go for that because it's easy to justify $5 since a cd is more permanent than a meal and americans are good at rationalizing away things like that. Oh I skipped breakfast=$5 so I'm breaking even for the day.
I have to disagree with you. On the contrary, I think the majority of people would choose buying something over getting it for free. The catch here is that the item has to be priced reasonably. It all comes down to economics. At $5 a cd, piracy would drop to negligible levels. If you go even lower to $2 a cd I daresay no one would even bother to copy them anymore (except for making mix cds). Why? Because it's simply not worth the time and effort when you get a shiny pressed cd with artwork and a case for your pocket change.
I think they should embrace and encourage, maybe give a biz model similar to what Napster was pushing for. A distributed model (sign the music so you know it isn't tampered with) that will is a premium up and above the free realm stuff like kazaa.
Again, I have to disagree. There is simply no way people are going to willingly give up their bandwidth and hard drive space so a company can make money off that. I suppose if you're clever though with the spin, you could get the crowd that clicks on the punch the monkey ads to run it.
My take on this whole thing is that things will have to get worse before they get better. As long as people have this two party mentality nothing will change. And as long as people think there is actually a difference between democrats and republicans nothing will change. It has to get bad enough that people will be willing to embrace a third party candidate like with Perot in '92. But he screwed that one up by dropping out when he had upwards of 60% of the popular vote, and now I think people are less likely to step out of the box and vote for a third candidate or even vote at all.
Also while S (the number of stars) and P give good ballpark figures, it ignores the possibility that life may not need a planet to evolve on. What about stars that share planets? Considering that there's a lot of binary star systems out there.
Although I have nothing better, the basic problem I see with this equation is that it is absolutely no use to determining if life is out there. By the time we know the values to any useful degree of accuracy, we'll already know if there are other species in the universe. Say we are able to go out and explore 1000 planets (which is a big stretch). That sounds like a great number to start extrapolating from.... BUT compared to the Billions of stars per galaxy and Billions of galaxies in the universe, you might as well have a sample size of 2.
If that doesn't make sense, think of it this way. It'd be like trying to guess how many people are in the world by sampling a rural county in Kentucky. There's no way it can be accurate. There's just too much information we'd need to know.
In the interests of being accurate, Dow only sold chemicals to Iraq. The bacterial strains were given by the Defense Dept.
I have a hard time believing our government invaded a country to get rid of weapons that never existed..stranger things have happened.
Never existed? Tell that to the 750,000 Iranians who died because of those weapons that *never existed*. Tell that to the U.S. companies like Dow that were granted liscenses (over 170 of them) to sell Salmonella, botulism, and antrax to Iraq. Or the thousands of Kurds who were gassed before the first gulf war.
Maybe you need to read up a littleon what was going on in the 80's, since you obviously weren't around.
Dumbasses like you need to stay on IRC.
Speaking of which, know of any low cost electronic scales?
On Page 2 he talks about the sex aspect of games.
Enjoy!
really? Do you have any links to information about this Egyptian-American trade? I've never heard of anything like that before
I actually meant air condioning; as in they had heated water piped (under the floor I think?) through rooms to control the temperature
I've got to stop working these overnight shifts... when I first read that I imagined tools and coins with legs walking down the street. (you know like on those "let's all go to the lobby" concession stand commercials with the walking hot dogs). Maybe that's this advanced technology people keep bringing up
One of the things I've always been fascinated by was how close civilizations have come to producing an Industrial Revolution. What would the world be like today if that had happened two thousand years ago when the first steam engine had been invented? Or 5000 years ago when the Bronze age started in parts of Asia? What would the world be like today with 2-5 thousand years of industrial progress behind us? Imagine where we will be in the year 4000... probably beyond anything we can possibly dream of considering the pace of technology in the last 200 years. And all that could be here today if it hadn't been for the relative cheapness of slave labor and all the other factors that held us back.
As I was writing this I found a good general overview site for Alantis which is a lot more readable than the wikipedia link. Atlantis Info Apparently the website was listed as one of the 50 best science sites by pop sci magazine, so despite it's conspiracy theory-esque look, it seems to be a credible source.