The link doesn't mean anything. I was not saying that there is absolutely no basis for Tibet's independence, just that it's contrived and absolutely irrelevant today. A few centuries ago Italy was a bunch of intependent states. So was Germany. That doesn't mean that today there would be any basis for Florence or Bavaria claim to independence.
First of all, my country haven't sought its independence from the Dutch and Spanish. Dutch were our friends (our czar loved Holland) and Spaniards are just too far from us.:) Everybody else got their asses kicked, but then again, we weren't a bunch of monks up there on some stupid mountain.
Second, I seriously doubt that China is interested in continued oppression of Tibet just for the sake of violence. If Tibetians oppose China, it's reasonable to expect it to strike back with a vengeance. But if they would just realise that their fight is futile (unlikely to happen - as experience everywhere suggests, separatists are too irrational and wouldn't have anything to do if they stopped fighting), they would be able to live happily again.
Separatism is not accepted anywhere. Britain, Spain, Finland, Greece and probably many other countries in Europe alone suffer from it and nobody supports it. Tibet is just another bad case of separatism. They don't have any historical or economical reasons to be independent, it's just a craze. Good luck to China in quelling the dissent there. May be then Tibet will be able to move on from subsistence agrigulture and become a part of Chinese economic growth.
Am I the only one bothered by the fact India is keeping the pro-Tibetan protestors out of the picture?
Yes. You and a small bunch of other hippies.
Seriously, who cares about some monks up high in the mountains. Tibet is not a country. They are not self-sufficient, they have no economy to speak of, they are nothing if they weren't part of China (or India). The sooner they understand that and stop that silly struggle for "independence", the better off they will be. It's not like China is exploiting the riches of Tibet, doesn't look like they have much oil or arable land or anything. Mostly llamas and snow.
Re:Now, this is an example...
on
Camel-Riding Robots
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That's why mandatory population control (using sterelisation, if necessary) would be a more humane policy than demanding child jokeys to be replaced with robots.
Of course, the Western society (and human rights activists) doesn't really care about people, they care about their perception of what is proper.
Re:Complex task vs. low wages
on
Camel-Riding Robots
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Marshal Brain agrees. He argues that fast-food workers (and service workers in general) will be one of the first major professions to be automated next (in the next few decades).
This is a different kind of change, it's social change you are talking about. Further improvements today are prevented for ideological reasons. It is already feasible to have a communist (in a good sense) society, where crime is low, where most people are well-educated and well-cultured, where people are healthy and noone is poor, where boring and dangerous work is done by machines. Of course, then you wouldn't be able to buy a 300000$ house, get a 70000$ car and other stuff like that, so the "elite" is quite happy with the status quo.
But if you consider technological change, then to have comparable results we need to consider some upscale guy born in 1860, not a worker. In that case the progress will still be significant, but not as much as throughout 1920-2000.
Of course, comparing the lifes of individual lives (even if we strive to select representative examples) is a very bad way to measure technological change. We need more objective approaches.
Sorry, I am not qualified enough to precisely calculate the amount of damage the cosmic rays will cause the computers, but common sense and some rough estimates say it won't be significant. "The active, quasar-like core of spiral galaxy PG 0052+251, for example, is seen to radiate 7 times as much energy as comes from all of the galaxy's stars." [1].
So a galactic core explosion in our galaxy will have roughly the same effect as all stars increasing 10 times in brightness. Hardly a significant effect. From that same page you can find out that the biggest effects were not caused by the radiation, but by accumulation of dust and problems that these relatively minor effects caused to the finely tuned solar mechanism. Someone sitting 3 thousand km under the Moon's surface would hardly notice anything.
Furthermore, it's extremely easy to make reliable computers if you can have enough redundancy. BTW, I don't see how a space colony 100 light years from here is better (for us) than a computer in the centre of the Moon. You can back up human minds to such a computer, along with virtual copies of all valuable artefacts. After any catastrophic events, everything could be restored from that backup copy using nanotechnology.
As for your last comment, it betrays an almost complete lack of understanding of the future that you have. May be you also believe that humans will continue to have two hands, an appendix and a coccyx, will continue to procreate by having sex, will fight for power and privileges and in general act according to the "human nature"? That would be totally idiotic.
Perhaps you should think a little bit using the brain instead of relying on cliches from 50-year old science fiction. There won't be galactic empires, galactic republics or space exploration as we currently understand it..
1) You don't wear the exoskeleton, rather you rid one. Thus your objection about load bearing is totally misguided. 2) Guess what, this heavy exoskeleton is a stop on the way to build "lightweight synchronized brace system". You managed to completely misunderstand the technical issues.
This is actually a load of claptrap. Japanese robotic programs are the result of technology foresight exercise in 1970, when this project run by the Japanese Ministry of Science showed the prospects of scientific and technological progress in 1970-2000. As a result Japan started several ambitious R&D programs, to develop AI, advance robotics and create fifth generation computers.
Because of that Japan is one of the leaders in robotics, not because Japanese people liked Gundam and other mecha anime.
Yes, the radiation will be diminished, but it will still fry you. Cosmic rays, for example, go right through the Earth and out the other side - very few get blocked, but enough of them (such as from a major stellar explosion) will kill you.
That doesn't make sense. If a cosmic ray goes through the Earth, by logic it doesn't react with Earth. That means it will probably not react with our backup computer in the centre of the Moon, it will just go right through it. And I am not talking about a human sitting there, but about a computer designed especially for redundancy and safety with extremely strong error-correction.
BTW: once you get _any_ expansion, you end up getting exponential. Sooner or later, the colonies start making colonies of their own, and you get an exponential growth curve.
Nope. You imply that the colonies will be motivated by the same principles as the Earth. That's not necessarily true. The colonies will not be "owned" by Earth, so the colonies will not need their "own" colonies. All needs (back-ups, exploration, variety) will be met just as well by existing ones.
I am not an astrophysicist, but I believe that a few thousand kilometers of rock is going to protect you against pretty much everything (even the galactic core explosion), except may be our Sun going supernova (which it can't). So if we backup everything on a supercomputer in the centre of the Moon, we will be just fine.
Yes, galactic events can kill natural life on Earth, but, as I said, once we pass a certain technological threshold, we will be invincible. If you want to be sure, fine, there will be a few space colonies around other stars (at the other side of the Galaxy, even at other galaxies), but we don't need (as I see it now) exponential expansion settling each and every piece of rock we find.
Staying alive is a worthy goal. Preserving the culture is another. Maintaining the civilization is one too. But "survival of the species" is not.
The choice of words reflects the thoughts. I am not saying we should in some way limit our exploration, I am only saying that thinking about our inevitable galactic expansion in terms of "survival of the species" is silly, almost as bad as thinking about Mars as "Lebensraum".
Superhumans have no need for offspring, no need for planets and no need for external manufacturing capacity.
We won't need to "survive as a species". First, it is absolutely not even a valid goal - nobody cares about survival of the species, but it sounds nice and we are led to believe it can be a worthy goal. Natural selection didn't select for individuals who care about survival of the species, it is not a "goal". It makes slighly more sense to talk about survival of the human civilization, but it is still wrong to think our policy will be based on this principle.
The fact is that such thinking is an evolutionary atavism. Once we pass a certain technological threshold, our survival will be pretty much guaranteed. Pollution will be stopped as soon as we transition to nanomanufacturing. From then on the Earth will be as friendly and hospitable as we will want. And astronomical phenomena are actually rather predictable. We have a few billion years before Sun changes. Much eariler we will probably be able to shut it down and use its hidrogen sparingly to last billions of billions of years.
The chances that there is someone who wants to exterminate humans are rather low. We'd be happy to find any sentient life at all. Furthermore,
There is no need to colonize new star systems beyond what we will need to satisfy our curiosity and desire for fun. The exploration will certainly happen, but you think it will involve terraforming all available planets and populating them on a large scale, you are wrong.
Transhumanism and immortalism are the answers (look it up on the Net). It is almost certain that in a few decades we will defeat ageing and most deseases. In 50 years human beings may already be immortal. If you are 21 year old, you have all the chances to live forever (or as long as you want).
Just try to live healthy life, minimize your risks (fasten the seatbelt, try to use other means of transportation, chose a safe neighbourhood and sign up for cryonics). You don't have to die unless you want to.
Completely misguided. Why would we need exponential growth? It's a remnant of our animal (human) past, when we have advanced technologies, we will be already changing ourselves to get rid of such base instincts. It doesn't make sense to exponentially expand, because... why?
We will certainly use Von Neumann probes, but not to create millions of new Earth, ready to be populated with trillions of human colonists. That would be just pointless.
There oughta be a law against stupidity. I mean, seriously, what forces people like yourself to post when they clearly don't know anything about the subject? May be you are so stupid as to not realise it?
40 mm single-wall nanotubes were made in 2004 (photo of 40mm SWNT here). The tensile strength of nanotube composites has been measured and was (Ray Baughman's group at University of Texas) as high as 600J/g (compared with Kevlar fibres at 27-33J/g).
I hate incompetent morons, who speak as if they are on the same level with people who know something. Please, don't ever break into a discussion unless you have something truly valuable to contribute and you double- and triple-checked it. Thanks.
It is obvious that you are a moron, but for the benefit of other readers I will reply.
Call back when we have the technology to bridge from Singapore to Mexico City in a single span - we'll be a small fraction of the way there.
Tension strength is not the same as rigidity. Take an A4 list and roll a 2 cm tube. Try to break it with your hands - I am sure you can't, even with all your force. That doesn't mean, however, that the same tube, when used in a bridge, will not flex or stretch.
As I said, you don't know what you are talking about. Building a space elevator is physically feasible. Building a one span bridge from Singapor to Mexico city most likely isn't.
if you're jumping twice as high today as last year, I wouldn't start drawing any exponential curves.
Totally misleading analogy. What if I am jumping twice as high today as last year and these improvements have gone on and on for half a decade already, and according to the laws of physics it is possible to jump 100,000 km high?
Nanotubes are real, there are no stumbling blocks, the quantity and the length are increasing rapidly, the price drops, the quality of nanotube composites improves, everything is going just fine. We also know that a space elevator is physically possible.
I see absolutely no reason not to think about building the space elevator in practical terms, no reason whatsoever.
Instead of thinking about percentages of projects that fail, I suggest you think about percentages of people, whose opinions on a future technology are not worth jack shit. Think 1895 and think aviation. Do you think that an opinion of a random Joe Schmoe about the aviation was worth considering? Heck, even Wilbur himself didn't believe he will ever see planes flying just two years before being on a one. 99.9% of people today have an absolutely wrong opinion about the feasibility of a space elevator. It seems you are one of them, BTW. And it should not be called "a dissenting view" or "an alternative opinion", it's wrong, plain and simple.
I just checked the article on my home city. I've found 10 factual errors on two pages after reading it through once. This was the only Encarta article that I read in the past year (?) and this was the subject about which I know something. Now would you claim that this article was not a representative one? Or is it simply that Encarta is riddled with errors?
Those movies had endings. May be not final resolutions, but endings nevertheless, even if those were cliffhangers. Half-Life 2, on the other hand, had no ending to speak of. I remember just getting up to that ??? "place", not having the slightest idea of what the fuck is going on, randomly shooting the ??? "thing", then basically having "YOU WIN" flash on screen, watching some crappy cutscene (which should have literally be a "cut scene") and listening to some pretentious crap from the G-Man. That was not an ending. Heck, even Tetris has a better ending, at least you sometimes enter the hall of fame.
My sister regularly plays Colonization (she also plays Sims 2 and Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer). I expect she will continue to play Colonization until Sid Meier releases Colonization 2.
Check out Spore, a game by none other than Will Wright based around the idea of user created content.
The exceedingly large fraction of the costs going to create art is an anomaly. In the future the content will a) be taken from huge libraries of real-world objects b) generated procedurally and c) created by users.
There are also whole genres of games that do not require extensive graphics assets.
Slashdot Mirror
The link doesn't mean anything. I was not saying that there is absolutely no basis for Tibet's independence, just that it's contrived and absolutely irrelevant today. A few centuries ago Italy was a bunch of intependent states. So was Germany. That doesn't mean that today there would be any basis for Florence or Bavaria claim to independence.
First of all, my country haven't sought its independence from the Dutch and Spanish. Dutch were our friends (our czar loved Holland) and Spaniards are just too far from us. :) Everybody else got their asses kicked, but then again, we weren't a bunch of monks up there on some stupid mountain.
Second, I seriously doubt that China is interested in continued oppression of Tibet just for the sake of violence. If Tibetians oppose China, it's reasonable to expect it to strike back with a vengeance. But if they would just realise that their fight is futile (unlikely to happen - as experience everywhere suggests, separatists are too irrational and wouldn't have anything to do if they stopped fighting), they would be able to live happily again.
Separatism is not accepted anywhere. Britain, Spain, Finland, Greece and probably many other countries in Europe alone suffer from it and nobody supports it. Tibet is just another bad case of separatism. They don't have any historical or economical reasons to be independent, it's just a craze. Good luck to China in quelling the dissent there. May be then Tibet will be able to move on from subsistence agrigulture and become a part of Chinese economic growth.
Am I the only one bothered by the fact India is keeping the pro-Tibetan protestors out of the picture?
Yes. You and a small bunch of other hippies.
Seriously, who cares about some monks up high in the mountains. Tibet is not a country. They are not self-sufficient, they have no economy to speak of, they are nothing if they weren't part of China (or India). The sooner they understand that and stop that silly struggle for "independence", the better off they will be. It's not like China is exploiting the riches of Tibet, doesn't look like they have much oil or arable land or anything. Mostly llamas and snow.
That's why mandatory population control (using sterelisation, if necessary) would be a more humane policy than demanding child jokeys to be replaced with robots.
Of course, the Western society (and human rights activists) doesn't really care about people, they care about their perception of what is proper.
Marshal Brain agrees. He argues that fast-food workers (and service workers in general) will be one of the first major professions to be automated next (in the next few decades).
This is a different kind of change, it's social change you are talking about. Further improvements today are prevented for ideological reasons. It is already feasible to have a communist (in a good sense) society, where crime is low, where most people are well-educated and well-cultured, where people are healthy and noone is poor, where boring and dangerous work is done by machines. Of course, then you wouldn't be able to buy a 300000$ house, get a 70000$ car and other stuff like that, so the "elite" is quite happy with the status quo.
But if you consider technological change, then to have comparable results we need to consider some upscale guy born in 1860, not a worker. In that case the progress will still be significant, but not as much as throughout 1920-2000.
Of course, comparing the lifes of individual lives (even if we strive to select representative examples) is a very bad way to measure technological change. We need more objective approaches.
Sorry, I am not qualified enough to precisely calculate the amount of damage the cosmic rays will cause the computers, but common sense and some rough estimates say it won't be significant. "The active, quasar-like core of spiral galaxy PG 0052+251, for example, is seen to radiate 7 times as much energy as comes from all of the galaxy's stars." [1].
So a galactic core explosion in our galaxy will have roughly the same effect as all stars increasing 10 times in brightness. Hardly a significant effect. From that same page you can find out that the biggest effects were not caused by the radiation, but by accumulation of dust and problems that these relatively minor effects caused to the finely tuned solar mechanism. Someone sitting 3 thousand km under the Moon's surface would hardly notice anything.
Furthermore, it's extremely easy to make reliable computers if you can have enough redundancy. BTW, I don't see how a space colony 100 light years from here is better (for us) than a computer in the centre of the Moon. You can back up human minds to such a computer, along with virtual copies of all valuable artefacts. After any catastrophic events, everything could be restored from that backup copy using nanotechnology.
As for your last comment, it betrays an almost complete lack of understanding of the future that you have. May be you also believe that humans will continue to have two hands, an appendix and a coccyx, will continue to procreate by having sex, will fight for power and privileges and in general act according to the "human nature"? That would be totally idiotic.
Perhaps you should think a little bit using the brain instead of relying on cliches from 50-year old science fiction. There won't be galactic empires, galactic republics or space exploration as we currently understand it..
RTFA!!!!!!!
1) You don't wear the exoskeleton, rather you rid one. Thus your objection about load bearing is totally misguided.
2) Guess what, this heavy exoskeleton is a stop on the way to build "lightweight synchronized brace system". You managed to completely misunderstand the technical issues.
This is actually a load of claptrap. Japanese robotic programs are the result of technology foresight exercise in 1970, when this project run by the Japanese Ministry of Science showed the prospects of scientific and technological progress in 1970-2000. As a result Japan started several ambitious R&D programs, to develop AI, advance robotics and create fifth generation computers.
Because of that Japan is one of the leaders in robotics, not because Japanese people liked Gundam and other mecha anime.
Yes, the radiation will be diminished, but it will still fry you. Cosmic rays, for example, go right through the Earth and out the other side - very few get blocked, but enough of them (such as from a major stellar explosion) will kill you.
That doesn't make sense. If a cosmic ray goes through the Earth, by logic it doesn't react with Earth. That means it will probably not react with our backup computer in the centre of the Moon, it will just go right through it. And I am not talking about a human sitting there, but about a computer designed especially for redundancy and safety with extremely strong error-correction.
BTW: once you get _any_ expansion, you end up getting exponential. Sooner or later, the colonies start making colonies of their own, and you get an exponential growth curve.
Nope. You imply that the colonies will be motivated by the same principles as the Earth. That's not necessarily true. The colonies will not be "owned" by Earth, so the colonies will not need their "own" colonies. All needs (back-ups, exploration, variety) will be met just as well by existing ones.
I am not an astrophysicist, but I believe that a few thousand kilometers of rock is going to protect you against pretty much everything (even the galactic core explosion), except may be our Sun going supernova (which it can't). So if we backup everything on a supercomputer in the centre of the Moon, we will be just fine.
Yes, galactic events can kill natural life on Earth, but, as I said, once we pass a certain technological threshold, we will be invincible. If you want to be sure, fine, there will be a few space colonies around other stars (at the other side of the Galaxy, even at other galaxies), but we don't need (as I see it now) exponential expansion settling each and every piece of rock we find.
Staying alive is a worthy goal. Preserving the culture is another. Maintaining the civilization is one too. But "survival of the species" is not.
The choice of words reflects the thoughts. I am not saying we should in some way limit our exploration, I am only saying that thinking about our inevitable galactic expansion in terms of "survival of the species" is silly, almost as bad as thinking about Mars as "Lebensraum".
Superhumans have no need for offspring, no need for planets and no need for external manufacturing capacity.
We won't need to "survive as a species". First, it is absolutely not even a valid goal - nobody cares about survival of the species, but it sounds nice and we are led to believe it can be a worthy goal. Natural selection didn't select for individuals who care about survival of the species, it is not a "goal". It makes slighly more sense to talk about survival of the human civilization, but it is still wrong to think our policy will be based on this principle.
The fact is that such thinking is an evolutionary atavism. Once we pass a certain technological threshold, our survival will be pretty much guaranteed. Pollution will be stopped as soon as we transition to nanomanufacturing. From then on the Earth will be as friendly and hospitable as we will want. And astronomical phenomena are actually rather predictable. We have a few billion years before Sun changes. Much eariler we will probably be able to shut it down and use its hidrogen sparingly to last billions of billions of years.
The chances that there is someone who wants to exterminate humans are rather low. We'd be happy to find any sentient life at all. Furthermore,
There is no need to colonize new star systems beyond what we will need to satisfy our curiosity and desire for fun. The exploration will certainly happen, but you think it will involve terraforming all available planets and populating them on a large scale, you are wrong.
Transhumanism and immortalism are the answers (look it up on the Net). It is almost certain that in a few decades we will defeat ageing and most deseases. In 50 years human beings may already be immortal. If you are 21 year old, you have all the chances to live forever (or as long as you want).
Just try to live healthy life, minimize your risks (fasten the seatbelt, try to use other means of transportation, chose a safe neighbourhood and sign up for cryonics). You don't have to die unless you want to.
Completely misguided. Why would we need exponential growth? It's a remnant of our animal (human) past, when we have advanced technologies, we will be already changing ourselves to get rid of such base instincts. It doesn't make sense to exponentially expand, because... why?
We will certainly use Von Neumann probes, but not to create millions of new Earth, ready to be populated with trillions of human colonists. That would be just pointless.
Thanks for the links.
There oughta be a law against stupidity. I mean, seriously, what forces people like yourself to post when they clearly don't know anything about the subject? May be you are so stupid as to not realise it?
40 mm single-wall nanotubes were made in 2004 (photo of 40mm SWNT here). The tensile strength of nanotube composites has been measured and was (Ray Baughman's group at University of Texas) as high as 600J/g (compared with Kevlar fibres at 27-33J/g).
I hate incompetent morons, who speak as if they are on the same level with people who know something. Please, don't ever break into a discussion unless you have something truly valuable to contribute and you double- and triple-checked it. Thanks.
It is obvious that you are a moron, but for the benefit of other readers I will reply.
Call back when we have the technology to bridge from Singapore to Mexico City in a single span - we'll be a small fraction of the way there.
Tension strength is not the same as rigidity. Take an A4 list and roll a 2 cm tube. Try to break it with your hands - I am sure you can't, even with all your force. That doesn't mean, however, that the same tube, when used in a bridge, will not flex or stretch.
As I said, you don't know what you are talking about. Building a space elevator is physically feasible. Building a one span bridge from Singapor to Mexico city most likely isn't.
Yeah, we've discussed it the other day...
if you're jumping twice as high today as last year, I wouldn't start drawing any exponential curves.
Totally misleading analogy. What if I am jumping twice as high today as last year and these improvements have gone on and on for half a decade already, and according to the laws of physics it is possible to jump 100,000 km high?
Nanotubes are real, there are no stumbling blocks, the quantity and the length are increasing rapidly, the price drops, the quality of nanotube composites improves, everything is going just fine. We also know that a space elevator is physically possible.
I see absolutely no reason not to think about building the space elevator in practical terms, no reason whatsoever.
Instead of thinking about percentages of projects that fail, I suggest you think about percentages of people, whose opinions on a future technology are not worth jack shit. Think 1895 and think aviation. Do you think that an opinion of a random Joe Schmoe about the aviation was worth considering? Heck, even Wilbur himself didn't believe he will ever see planes flying just two years before being on a one. 99.9% of people today have an absolutely wrong opinion about the feasibility of a space elevator. It seems you are one of them, BTW. And it should not be called "a dissenting view" or "an alternative opinion", it's wrong, plain and simple.
I just checked the article on my home city. I've found 10 factual errors on two pages after reading it through once. This was the only Encarta article that I read in the past year (?) and this was the subject about which I know something. Now would you claim that this article was not a representative one? Or is it simply that Encarta is riddled with errors?
Those movies had endings. May be not final resolutions, but endings nevertheless, even if those were cliffhangers. Half-Life 2, on the other hand, had no ending to speak of. I remember just getting up to that ??? "place", not having the slightest idea of what the fuck is going on, randomly shooting the ??? "thing", then basically having "YOU WIN" flash on screen, watching some crappy cutscene (which should have literally be a "cut scene") and listening to some pretentious crap from the G-Man. That was not an ending. Heck, even Tetris has a better ending, at least you sometimes enter the hall of fame.
My sister regularly plays Colonization (she also plays Sims 2 and Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer). I expect she will continue to play Colonization until Sid Meier releases Colonization 2.
Check out Spore, a game by none other than Will Wright based around the idea of user created content.
The exceedingly large fraction of the costs going to create art is an anomaly. In the future the content will a) be taken from huge libraries of real-world objects b) generated procedurally and c) created by users.
There are also whole genres of games that do not require extensive graphics assets.