4 ms·

I pretty much share all your views, here. My everlasting-optimism is only tempered by a somewhat keen awareness of that Fermi paradox thingy, a Darwinian obser

by K0SM0S 7y ago

I pretty much share all your views, here. My everlasting-optimism is only tempered by a somewhat keen awareness of that Fermi paradox thingy, a Darwinian observation that species just disappear and the world just keeps spinning. I think the greatest invincible filter — one we just couldn't overcome — is the idea of a fatal flaw in our genetic make-up, or relatingly in the evolution of our environment, that we simply couldn't fix in time (it could be hidden, insiduous, e.g. increasingly more 'cancers' until we become born with it in majority). In many instances, species do not entirely die from such evolutionary filters, a few survivors with just the right genes may appear and spread their immunity. But in many instances, species just die at those filters. We still don't really know why Neanderthal disappeared, iirc there are clues pointing at a possible genetic flaw, combined with environmental pressure (sorta contra-variant doom scenario). Which is why I think we should massively spend to solve as much of the "bio" stuff as we can, grab all low-hanging fruits now and buckle up to kick off major projects spanning generations. The value and security to be gained, in terms of ultimate survival and progress, is just too critical to miss or delay. IMHO. And it's likely to take all of tech with it, a poster-child client sector to buy and fund all manners of extravagantly awesome technology. I'd be curious to know how your optimism shapes things in imagination, regarding our past and/or future. :)

deleted 7y ago
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kmlx 7y ago
I think the Fermi paradox is BS. we're stuck on this small planet, never having set foot on another planet, nevermind another solar system. we haven't even encountered a single, no matter how small, alien life. and yet we come up with these naive theories. this tells me we're simply not ready for the possibilities that await us out there. maybe in the future. and since you asked about the future, i want my "self" to be moved to a computer, set to sleep mode and then woken up once it reaches alpha centauri or something similarly far away. no body, no problems. right now that's pretty much the only way to discover anything light years away without our Earth-bound energy converter aka human body that comes with a billion dependencies and dramatically tiny life span. but we're really discussing sci fi stuff. i hope that in the meantime the global warming fight will not drag the whole earth back a few hundred years instead of fixing by innovation.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  Transforming the biological physical body into a biological 'pure information' 'energy-encoded' system (well, just software, but with incredibly specific rules) is one of my favorite ideas in SF. I tried to write a book including that 10 years ago, and while I'm a lazy fiction author, the thinking experiments were great. I called this new species "energeans", functionally termed "Maxwell organisms" in a nod to the 19th century genius. Humans individuals become 'permanent, self-consistent' organized energy 'fields' of sorts (to preserve continuity, the sense of "self", as one's energy goes through machines (as electrons probably), space (as photons), etc. It's totally whack physics as we speak outside some incredibly controlled lab, but it's fun to think about. :) The Fermi paradox, I agree it's probably BS (but that's really just belief as we speak). I like to use it as a reminder of some "unknown known" (that we might not know, but others do), like "civilization is possibly very, very hard"; or "we are so far away from big boys science that we grasp at space with tiny sticks like ants carry food, being silently observed by the equivalent of humans — so, so much above and beyond our very perception"; and my nagging favorite is a hypothesis that maybe, just maybe, what we think we "see" in space is really not what's actually out there — like Bohr's model of the atom with valency etc. was/is totally fine functionally (afaik we still do basic chemistry with it?), but not at all a "picture" of reality. Hence we'd be looking for caterpillars when all there is to see are butterflies — energeians? holo-trickery? nano-robotic swarms? blackhole farming? 5, 11, 23 dimensional space? And most being non-exclusive with others. One thing seems sure to me: the most fundamental thing we might have right now is a quantum interpretation of Shannon's information theory, and going by that, there's a long way ahead of us until we reach "hard limits". It's crazy to think what this universe allows if you give it enough time and energy. Here's to your last sentence being true. I must admit, I have confidence in the eventual resolution in a "decently near" future (~100 years at most), but I'm increasingly worried about the chaos/transition — if history is any indication, which it absolutely is imho, it's gonna cost too many lives and too much despair for too many people, whereas some will undoubtedly manage to turn the outcome to their advantage — even better off on the other side, like the "Great Heist of 1929", and it seems to me most majors periods of intense and prolonged chaos.

by K0SM0S 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kmlx 7y ago

I think the Fermi paradox is BS. we're stuck on this small planet, never having set foot on another planet, nevermind another solar system. we haven't even encountered a single, no matter how small, alien life. and yet we come up with these naive theories. this tells me we're simply not ready for the possibilities that await us out there. maybe in the future. and since you asked about the future, i want my "self" to be moved to a computer, set to sleep mode and then woken up once it reaches alpha centauri or something similarly far away. no body, no problems. right now that's pretty much the only way to discover anything light years away without our Earth-bound energy converter aka human body that comes with a billion dependencies and dramatically tiny life span. but we're really discussing sci fi stuff. i hope that in the meantime the global warming fight will not drag the whole earth back a few hundred years instead of fixing by innovation.

K0SM0S 7y ago
Transforming the biological physical body into a biological 'pure information' 'energy-encoded' system (well, just software, but with incredibly specific rules) is one of my favorite ideas in SF. I tried to write a book including that 10 years ago, and while I'm a lazy fiction author, the thinking experiments were great. I called this new species "energeans", functionally termed "Maxwell organisms" in a nod to the 19th century genius. Humans individuals become 'permanent, self-consistent' organized energy 'fields' of sorts (to preserve continuity, the sense of "self", as one's energy goes through machines (as electrons probably), space (as photons), etc. It's totally whack physics as we speak outside some incredibly controlled lab, but it's fun to think about. :) The Fermi paradox, I agree it's probably BS (but that's really just belief as we speak). I like to use it as a reminder of some "unknown known" (that we might not know, but others do), like "civilization is possibly very, very hard"; or "we are so far away from big boys science that we grasp at space with tiny sticks like ants carry food, being silently observed by the equivalent of humans — so, so much above and beyond our very perception"; and my nagging favorite is a hypothesis that maybe, just maybe, what we think we "see" in space is really not what's actually out there — like Bohr's model of the atom with valency etc. was/is totally fine functionally (afaik we still do basic chemistry with it?), but not at all a "picture" of reality. Hence we'd be looking for caterpillars when all there is to see are butterflies — energeians? holo-trickery? nano-robotic swarms? blackhole farming? 5, 11, 23 dimensional space? And most being non-exclusive with others. One thing seems sure to me: the most fundamental thing we might have right now is a quantum interpretation of Shannon's information theory, and going by that, there's a long way ahead of us until we reach "hard limits". It's crazy to think what this universe allows if you give it enough time and energy. Here's to your last sentence being true. I must admit, I have confidence in the eventual resolution in a "decently near" future (~100 years at most), but I'm increasingly worried about the chaos/transition — if history is any indication, which it absolutely is imho, it's gonna cost too many lives and too much despair for too many people, whereas some will undoubtedly manage to turn the outcome to their advantage — even better off on the other side, like the "Great Heist of 1929", and it seems to me most majors periods of intense and prolonged chaos.