please watch the video. it is a bit complicated. it is built on top of general relativity. the notion that space is a fabric. that particles cannot move through this fabric because it is a solid. that e=mc^2 and particles can readily convert to waves and waves to particles. so a particle is emitted. it must become a wave in order to move through space-fabric. it interferes with itself as a wave. it stops at the final destination. as it stops is converts back into a particle again by e=mc2.

short 5 minute video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/live/dhSe5725bAI

long 30 minutes video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efd6VSDm_jg

This was mentioned in Isaac Arthur's recent episode on Alternative Intelligence, and I've heard it in other places as well. However, it turns out this is a myth.

See this article:

https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/humans-1-chimps-0-correcting-the-record

In 2012, I wrote a post titled Chimps 1, Humans 0 after seeing videos of a chimp named Ayumu. Ayumu could recall the location of numbers, in order, flashed briefly on a screen. Ayumu’s performance far exceeded my feeble attempts.When I wrote that post, I didn’t know that this conclusion was already without basis. Here’s Peter Cook and Margaret Wilson (2010a) in Science:

Ayumu received extensive practice on the task; the humans to whom he was compared received none. At least one subsequent study (2) shows that, with even very moderate practice, humans can match Ayumu’s performance.

In spite of this basic methodological error, the claim of superior spatial working memory in chimpanzees has been widely and uncritically repeated in the popular and scientific media. Propagation of this incorrect idea distracts from more fruitful explorations of chimpanzee memory and undermines ongoing research into human and primate evolution.

Here's a similar memory test. It took me a few tries, but I was able to get to 10 without much trouble, exceeding what most trained chimps can do. https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/chimp

So congratulations everyone, you are in fact, smarter than a chimp. =P

I don’t need specific math or anything just a ball park.

Let's assume either a whole empire or a post-biological super intelligence is keeping tabs on a planet analogous to earth and has been for millions or hundreds of millions of years.

What could they do to prevent a new dominant species from unshackling themselves from the food chain?

The obvious thing would be to bleach the biosphere, but there's no story there. Let's assume this is they're either nature hippies or are keeping it alive out of sentimental value.

How would you even detect a higher intelligence coming to term? Maybe they look for tech signatures like fire, pollution, or radio waves? But then you run the risk of false positives from things like forest fires or electrotrophic life forms.

And by what method are they keeping tabs on the planet? Just satellite surveillance or do they have autonomous drones roving ground side? If they're doing this for millions of years, how do you make sure that ecological niches don't form around your automous drones?

And what's a likely end goal if intelligence does arise? Abandonment? Coexistence? Genocide? Uplifting? Abduction for research?

What do you think?

Most people I talk to in real life think AGI is impossible, and I did too for more than a year. I changed my mind; here is why.

First, there is no theoretical reason AI can't work beyond misinterpreting how mathematical proofs work: the actual theoretical foundations appear solid, even if needing some adjustment. Second, Adobe Photoshop's editing tools have advanced dramatically, and I am convinced generative AI art will itself be succeeded by more advanced art tools that actually do the artistic process itself. Take the "object selection tool," which was very poor a few years ago but has gotten far better, speeding up the photo editing process dramatically. When this happens the (also unproven) argument that generative AI art was "stolen" will cease to be mentioned as AI has moved on. Third, there will continue to be new solutions to problems, including how we are now observing neurosymbolic approaches like RT-2 achieve good performance on physical tasks. Fourth, the real bottleneck that may push AGI beyond the 21st century is how poorly cognitive science is understood - it seems to be based mostly on the psychology of treating mental illnesses in humans rather than synthesizing and comparing information on the entire animal kingdom's neurological systems.

In conclusion, while Moore's law is ending and AGI is not on the horizon, I think it is "possible in principle" and the public's opinion will shift back again once RT-2's successors are widespread and generative AI is succeeded by cognitive-based models.

1: Climate change is driven by too much infrared radiation getting reflected back to Earth.

2: A Dyson swarm radiates in the IR and there isn't any way to stop this.

So if we pave da Sun to feed our Automated Interpolation dreams then won't we cook the Earth?

All space habitats have serious problems that planets don't, but generation ships in particular have severe issues. The radiation shielding against cosmic rays would have to be huge, but beyond this there are two fundamental problems I see here: the first is absolutely fixed which is thermodynamics. The other conceivably could be corrected by AI or genetic engineering, and that is conflict between humans and social breakdown.

With thermodynamics, energy could be produced efficiently through nuclear fusion, but more concerning is material loss. Generation ships seem to be trying to be a closed system, but inherently will actually be exothermic. Anytime material is lost (e.g. leaking air) it's gone forever. This also means meaningful economic growth is impossible. If you want GDP per capita to go up you need to start at a high population and then experience population decline, which has been linked to social problems independent of wealth, over the centuries-long journey.

With human conflict and population dynamics, social breakdown is inevitable. Obviously, Biosphere 2 failed, but beyond this is the human crew itself. It's clear to me that the crew's values will evolve beyond the original goals of the sponsors, but that's assuming they even make it to the destination. The middle generations will lack motivation. Anthropologist Cameron M. Smith has calculated a minimum crew in the tens of thousands, because he assumes at least one population catastrophe in a 150-year voyage; learning of this paper really raised the issue to me that technological accidents happen and civil wars break out.

Potentially though, it could still work, but how hard do you guys think it would be?

Although I understand that the kind of inequalities described in scifi worlds like "The Expanse" are hardly realistic (an economy that has easy fusion power is unlikely to have problems with overpopulation, catastrophic climate changes leading to resource shortages, or water shortages in space colonies), even in the kind of futures SFIA describes there may be those who slip through the cracks on the way to a post-scarcity civilization. Wars can still be fought over competing ethnic/nationalist claims; widespread automation can lead to economic displacement; people with genetic or cybernetic enhancements are either discriminated against or exalted over baselines, and the like.

What's the likelihood that we will still se such things in, say, the 24th century? (Incidentally, I'm setting the background for a series of stories set in this time.)

Generally, each operational environment has its own survival kit. For example, survival kits/gear for maritime operations (either sailors or naval pilots) include a flotation collar, immersion suit, GPS locators, foods of various types, signal mirrors, flares, med kit, etc.

In the case of space exploration/astronauts, what will survival kits loo like? The first things that come to my mind are:

1. "Space" duct tape. It worked fine for Apollo and Shuttle missions, but I think we might need an on steroids version of it. In an emergency case, it'll be useful to patch punctured suits or helmet/visors and prevent decompression. Unlike the classic "earthy" rolls, it's gonna be in ready to grab strips (usually it comes into 2" wide rolls- a wider version might be needed in space) with a pull "handle".

2. Extra oxygen bottles. Basically like current steel bottles we use, but pressurized and containing 100% oxygen (or a 79% N2 + 21% O2 mix if the suits use normal air at 1 atmosphere). These will need to be easily recognizable and thus be painted in a high visibility color, such as bright red or a fluorescent color. It'll be easy to replenish your oxygen tanks by using these bottles, feeding it from a port on the suit.

3. If we're talking food and water, we're applying the same concept as the extra oxygen. Tube foods (like U-2 pilots) and hydrating fruit juice/water. Snacks are probably gonna be already inside the suit (or possibly MREs), but some extra food might be useful if you're lost or stranded somewhere and your buddies are searching for you.

4. A knife and a weapon of sorts. You never know: maybe you gotta use the knife the same as a camping tool here on Earth (set up a tent, cut ropes, etc) or maybe you need to fend off Lunar pirates from stealing your stuff.

And then location beacons, flares, etc. What do you think it will look like?

One of the issues that prevent skyhooks from being implemented is the fact that they require very long structures, producing a similar issue to that of the issues encountered by a space elevator. Proposals have been made for rotating skyhooks, however this also has some problems, such as the fact that your window for docking is quite short as well as the structural challenges.

However, if you had the option of varying the length of the tether, that would significantly change the situation. You could have the tether rolled out in front of the tether ship, and then you could retract it backwards into the ship slowing it down until it reaches the desired velocity. Then the rendezvousing ship could catch the tether, before the tether once again starts to unroll, accelerating back to orbital velocity. There are a few options for how this could be done, however I prefer to think of is like a rope with several pulley systems, each allowing the tether to be spooled in or out at a decent speed, progressively adding up to provide the velocity. However, you could probably also do it by replacing the tether with a segment of an orbital ring. You have a "train" using the tether as a "track" which it then moves along at orbital velocity, to cancel out the speed of the ship. Then you can have an object dock to the train before being rapidly accelerated.

To be honest, I am sceptical that this would be practical for a crewed ship due to the accelerations that could be encountered, however it would be amazing for launching cargo.

Like seriously, something about it just never sat right with me, even human nature is utterly disgusting to me. Like, just basic things like the reproductive and digestive systems feel borderline insulting. Like, people celebrate bloating up as a parasite leeches nutrients off of them and binds itself to them, waiting to slowly ooze out as a disgusting flesh droplet instead of just staying safe in an egg somewhere like the majority of the animal kingdom. We celebrate stuffing our oral cavities with bits of flesh from animals we murdered, turning it into fat and shit in a process people say we should enjoy. Most of the earth is deep in the mantle and core, most of the crust is inaccessible right now, most of the surface is ocean, most of the land is wilderness, most of the usable land is farmland, we have rural and suburban areas, and urban areas that are still quite wasteful all for a single person to be outweighed by the amount of random shit they need to live, and most of their actual self is mere unthinking body, most of their brains are designed to cater to that body, and only a tiny sliver is genuine consciousness, you, and that consciousness is flawed in numerous ways anway. Like, for example the moment we run out of food, all pretense of cvility and morality give way to selfish primal instincts to cram more biomass into ourselves. And I've never found beauty in nature either, I don't get why so many people are emotionally dependent on the amount of green shit in their immediate vicinity. And the weird sentimentality towards the environment always irritated me. Like, I'm an environmentalist, but purely for pragmatic reasons, it's merely transactional coexistence with the thing that we temporarily depend on for our immediate survival in the near future. Environmentalism isn't about "toughing grass" or "reconnecting with mother nature" it's about living long enough to break out of the shackles of darwinism. I get genuinely nervous when environmentalists tall about "degrowth" and "living in harmony with nature" because fundamentally that translates to tearing down significant portions of our civilization because of our temporary carrying capacity at this technological level, then further making ourselves vulnerable by becoming completely dependent on nature. The future of Earth (if it isn't outright disassembled) will likely be as an ecumenopolis, shellworld, or planet wide supercomputer, none of which leave room for the sentimentality towards the ecosystem. For whatever reason I've always hated the past, don't get me wrong it's fascinating, but in a haunting, disgusting sort of way. I don't even like the present, for all that it's better than the past. Singularity or not, we are like a light switch balancing between off and on, and with just a slight nudge, in the blink of the cosmic eye, we'll be on, and once that happens everything will fundamentally change, it's the shift from a world dominated by biology and darwinism to a world of technological design and meticulously crafted beauty. I often feel as though I were born too early, before the light switch fully flipped on.

So yeah, that was my little ramble, it's not entirely rational (but since when are humans anyway) and a bit dramatic, but still this has always been my frustration, my inherent dislike of the natural. Not really sure where the attitude came from, I've just always had a (more tech= better) attitude, and while I try to curb that reflex, I still have this innate pull towards the advanced, hence my disillusionment with the natural world at times. Does anyone else feel this way? If you like nature, why? I'm genuinely curious because I've never really understood the sentiment.

I believe humans will modify themselves to be more moral, but for those who don't there should still be an alternative to violence. Putting a superintelligence in charge is a great solution as they can hold those morality augmentations and apply that benevolent guidance to massive populations. They could have nanites in people's bodies that prevent them from harming others. They can teach people individually to overcome their worst traits.

It's inevitable, everyone's privacy is going to go away, including one's thoughts, and that doesn't have to be a bad thing. If everyone is being watched by everyone then there is no Big Brother, it's a universal panopticon that excuses nobody. Not a surveillance state but rather the death of privacy as a concept. Nobody needs to hide things from others, if they have something to hide then it's some they shouldn't be hiding. This is especially true in the future with encrypted virches and beings that can contain minds within their own mind. This could prevent literal simulations of hell from being made, this is a moral imperative. And it's achievable too, if something is encrypted, the majority who watch each other can send in nanites to unlock the Sim, and if other nanites resist they can just overwhelm them with numbers and win the nano-war.

This is something I don't hear much about, all the activities that occur inside an O'Neil cylinder, particularly lighting, generate enormous amounts of heat that need to be purged elsewhere.

Of course, you place some radiators on the cylinder wall to radiate the heat, but first you need to remove that heat from the inside of the cylinder and get it to the radiators.

It is also widely discussed that O'Neil cylinders and other rotating habitats would have non-rotating layers surrounding them, which adds a lot of complexity to this process. You can have a large enough vacuum layer between the rotating and non-rotating part that there are radiators inside it so that the non-rotating part can absorb the radiated heat and in turn radiate it into space, but that doesn't seem to be a very efficient thing.

Perhaps you could transfer pieces of very heated or cooled matter regularly between the parts to transfer heat as well, fluids would be more ideal, but I don't know of a way they could be transferred without major leaks.

Yesterday I saw the discussions about a news regarding hoarders which left me wondering whether people are aware of the blurred line between "archiving" and "hoarding" since apparently so many arguments against pathological hoarding can easily be applied against legitimate archiving and so on. The line is even more blurred in the case of "digital hoarding" which had been discussed in the Data Hoarder subreddit.

It's as if archiving in general is synonymous with pathological hoarding for common people as minimalist lifestyles are still popular these days. Here's an article about how edge cases between archiving and hoarding do happen.

What is "important" or not is bound to be subjective in the end. They can easily retort that randomly collecting things which have no true value at a glance can be a form of anarchiving or counter-archiving. This video really puts many things into perspective.

In some edge cases hoarders will say that they're archives, but many archivists might disagree by saying that archives are organized whereas hoards aren't. Within the long term context while some will dismiss those as junk hoards, others might classify them as archeological hoard, trove or rather time capsules or doomsday vault instead. Martin Kunze's Memory of Mankind project stores anything and everything they received which they engraved on ceramic tablets for storage in Hallstatt salt mine, Austria.

To put it in simpler words, nuances are missing in general conversations about hoarding disorder. Actually I just had discussions about that elsewhere with many people which results in many ideas to delineate the lines between archiving and hoarding. There, one proposed that in order to qualify as archive or so, the hoarder must have the mens rea of long term storage and preservation. Another person suggested an intermediate term to define something between pathological hoarding and archiving which would be called "storing" since after all while we shouldn't live in dilapidated houses caused by extreme pathological hoardings, we don't all have to live in Marie Kondo houses either.

It's a fact that the Hoarders TV series have popularized the trend to treat people with hoarding disorder, but it does a piss poor job in delineating the differences between archiving and pathological hoarding. More works are needed in public messaging to clarify the distinction between those two if not already. Just a FYI, in the Japanese city of Kitakata, many people have their personal storehouses named Kura (倉 or 蔵) to put their things inside, presumably so as to not disrupting their active living areas while for express preservation purposes.

Perhaps there should be an Isaac Arthur episode about the whole debacle and how the situation might evolve in the future.

From the near future of life extension, post scarcity societies, and everyone having ready access to full dive VR or digital uploading; to the middle future of setting up a major space presence, becoming an integer in the Kardashev Scale, etc; to the far future of living off black holes and maybe iron stars, or even some of the theories for a truly infinite existence.

If I wanted to share those ideas with someone (with special emphasis on the near future and what we'll likely live to see), what is the best way to do it in about an hour or so? A single video or multiple shorter videos, even ones from other youtubers, anything is welcome.

Interested in more nuanced opinions as well.

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Will discoveries be made exponentially quickly, and will we achieve advanced technologies quickly?

I think it's doable in a certain sense, but "utopia" is fundamentally subjective. However, I do believe the utopia of a given ideology or philosophy can be achieved within a society. Like, a society with no internal division, no death, or no suffering, all that might be feasible, but not everyone will like it, which is why it can't be universal but rather something voluntary. However, I do think a sort of societal darwinism will emerge where certain societies will just do better, and one of perfect unity would definitely dominate. What do you think? Remember not to fall into the trap of the "conventional wisdom" around this subject too easily, just because the concept of utopia makes people antsy doesn't mean it is actually flawed, though it very well may be flawed for legit reasons.

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