5 ms·
This is trivially untrue. Perhaps someday machines will be able to perform comparably with humans across a range of general actions, but it certainly not the c
by waterlesscloud 13y ago
This is trivially untrue.
Perhaps someday machines will be able to perform comparably with humans across a range of general actions, but it certainly not the case today.
- tptacek 13y agoHe left the word "important" out, which makes it easy to score a debate point against him. What's the important thing humans actually end up doing in space that a machine couldn't do?
- waterlesscloud 13y agoI'm not out to score debate points. I'm out to say this oft-repeated sentiment is trivially incorrect. While there are a range of activities which can be performed better by machines than humans, there is still a very wide range of actions that can't be performed better by machines. One would expect technologists to understand this better than anyone. But the crucial thing here is that a given human is capable of a much wider range of actions than a given machine. True, this can be made up for to an extent by using a wide variety of machines. Though at some point the weight of said machines will outweigh the human and their required support systems. And even then, those machines will be limited to a small subset of actions that the human can take. So what do humans have that machines don't? Versatility. PS- If I wanted to score points, I'd say he said "absolutely nothing", which overstates his case and makes your response invalid.
- tptacek 13y agoWhich actions would those be?
- waterlesscloud 13y agoAnything that requires a versatile response or independent judgment.
- Dylan16807 13y agoSure, for missions that aren't performed within a light-second of Earth. So far we have sent a total of zero humans far enough away to take advantage of their superior reasoning capabilities.
- leoc 13y agoThat's a very generous threshold for usefulness. For difficult interactive tasks—like, perhaps, performing fiddly repair work on a $2.5bn+ satellite—there is clearly some advantage to not having a ping of 2000 or even 350.
- Dylan16807 13y agoThe human mind has a pretty awful ping time, and there's no reason not to take things slow in microgravity.
- leoc 13y ago> The human mind has a pretty awful ping time But unless the repair is going to be conducted by an AI—highly unlikely in the foreseeable future—then this is moot, as there will be a human brain in the loop in either case.
- Dylan16807 13y agoIt's not moot. A high fixed latency from involving humans makes it far less useful to reduce the control latency by a quarter of a second.
- tptacek 13y agoCould you provide a couple specific examples of tasks which fit the bill, that can't be accomplished effectively by unmanned missions?
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
- acqq 13y agoRead the other article linked here: useful experiments don't need humans even now: http://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm#experiments http://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm#experim... The reason the astronauts flip the switch to start them: "The experiments could not be made fully automatic because NASA policy requires that experiments on manned missions involve the crew." Politics, again.
- waterlesscloud 13y agoRight up until something goes wrong that requires an adjustment the automation wasn't designed to make.
- acqq 13y agoVoyager 1, launched 1977, never reachable to humans, still sends us the data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1
- waterlesscloud 13y agoAnd dozens of probes lost because they couldn't adapt to small unforeseen problems.
- tptacek 13y agoSo? They're machines. We just make more of them. Lots more, if we can recover the funds we waste on manned stunt trips to orbit.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- waterlesscloud 13y agoWhich doesn't change the fact that a human overseeing an experiment can do a better job than a machine, and could cause the experiment to not be lost in the first place. Due to the versatility and adaptability of humans.