TEOTWAWKI

[Red Devil]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSpLUpiMkj0

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch ... lmost-here

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Economically speaking, I'm still comfortable with my analogy of the general public being like those picnicking on a beach and seeing the tide recede many times further than they have ever seen in their lifetime. They discuss the odd phenomenon, but continue to enjoy their lavish lunch, mildly musing what the reason might be.

Many of the "world changing" problems facing us are being addressed either halfheartedly or with full vigor, yet what I see as almost a sure bet is what has been coined the singularity. The problem with it is many see it as a welcome change, how true sentient AI will help us 'fix' our problems. However, as the film shows, Hugo de Garis is warning us now. . .at the beginning of this century, of the incomprehesible possibilities that may arise.

Hugo is a bit eccentric, but if you have any interest in his predictions, I would urge watching the entire 11 part interview. I believe he has been driven to the edge of sanity because he has a clear vision of the approaching technology.

Some do not buy into the ultra fast approach of the technology. However, we see the early stages of this technology now.

[Red Devil]

our current economic, political, and resources situation is like some big ol' festering zit/boil that's about to pop and just needs a little noodge.

[MrTwosheds]

Fortunately there is much more to Intelligence than just a powerful brain, It has taken a very very long time for evolution to develop something as dumb as a human. So we figure out how to make really fast processors...sitting in a box on the lab bench it will probably remain just that. True AI would require a far more interactive, evolution promoting environment in order to develop anything like sentience. If it did, it is certain that it would not be anything like a human intelligence or indeed the other intelligences evolved by Earth.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

Mankind will certainly begin by attempting to build artilects to emulate human intelligence.

But I too believe once sentient AI breaks the intellectual umbilical cord from humans, we may see a variation in intelligence never conceived by futurists or researchers. Remember, all hard science fiction authors and futurists envision with an IQ of between 100 and 200. What will a sentient AI establish if the closest IQ equivalent is in the thousands, let alone the millions. . .or trillions?

Our experience of insightful and genius-level intelligence is of exceptional men, or groups of men, pondering hard questions of nature and philosophy for months, years or lifetimes. What will happen when 'ingenious' incomprehensible solutions to age-old problems are revealed in milliseconds, AND in a never ending stream?

All I see when I hear, "bah-humbug" of superior independent artificial intelligence is the men who laughed at microscopic bugs caused disease, to man flying, to man breaking the sound barrier, to man going to the Moon, to those who poo-pooed organ transplant, to a computer system beating a man at chess, etc, etc, etc.

[Zax]

I love your posts BFT, I never have to go anywhere else for scientific journals since you always point me to the right ones.

[MrTwosheds]

I have no doubt that it is possible, I do doubt that sentience will be achieved by "emulation". A human brain could not be grown in a vat and taught to think like an intelligent human, the body and brain are actually one item. We are very much constructs of our body and its environment. To bring an AI to sentience rather than an emulation of sentience, would be an extremely difficult task, to end up with something like a human, rather than a cockroach for example, would be even harder.

[Nielk1]

Whenever I hear about dwindling resources I look at the mass of the planet, the mass available in our solar-system, and the fact that all matter is made up of atoms of which we have enough knowledge for basic alchemy, and I just sigh. What is killing us is the institutionalization of protecting the stupid, not dwindling resources.

Furthermore, AI is not too far away if you take it by simply the number of milestones. It just happens that what is left is very hard to get past. If we come up with quantum computers (easy to make ones), we basically turn all problems into O(2n) problems. If we start making our processors with carbon nano transistors, we just blow past those issues with speed. All that remains really is to solve the problem of thought. We can make a machine capable of many things, but thus far there is no capability of actual thought, at the level of sentience. We will have to rely on either a discovery that lets us simulate thought and blast past the singularity, or come up with machines that through brute force act as if they have sentience, and sit just before the singularity. In either case, energy is far from a concern at that point.

Enough of the theoretical, how about the one thing that could solve the so called energy crises over night? Come up with an easy source of hydrogen other than hydrocarbons. Splitting water is energy expensive, so come up with a better way to split water or get hydrogen from somewhere else. As a side note, if we start splitting water, we get purified drinking water as exhaust when we run the engines.

(Also, storing fuel as water if we can find a low energy water splitting method would allow for far safer storing of hydrogen fuel, which is already far safer then they claim. Gasoline explodes too you know.

[AcneVulgaris]

I don't think sentient AI is all that close. Intelligence is too random and holographic to be run effectively on the CPUs we use now. Quantum computers seem like they might promising, but it'll be decades before we have a practical one, and decades more before we figure out how to program it effectively.

Controlled fusion could carry us there, though. It would solve a lot of problems, but there would be a race with the new problems we create as we keep doubling the population.

[MrTwosheds]

Splitting water is energy expensive,

Well our planet orbits a vast source of energy, far more than we can use, what is needed is a cheap/simple way of harvesting it, not to difficult, but again the issue of "the institutionalization of protecting the stupid" prevents us from making this obvious step to a better world. Actually I think it would be better said as, the institutionalization of protecting the greedy.

[Red Devil]

lots of people who are 'off the grid' now (especially in 3rd-world countries :-p ) using solar panels, wind turbines, and whatevers.

if you want to see what TEOTWAWKI will look like, just watch some NatGeo episodes that take place in Africa or Haiti.

[Nielk1]

My standing plans are to buy an old nuclear (bomb) silo in Kansas, outfit it with solar-thermal (as it is underground I have the physical space for photon to heat rather than crappy photoelectric), run a server farm from inside marketed as "apocalyptic data storage". I know they make small nuclear reactors but the red tape would at most let me build it but not fuel it let alone run it. Would have to keep it ready in case of end of the world, then I could probably find fuel laying on the side of the road.

Well the last part was a bit odd but I am pretty serious about the rest of it. I am just concerned about zoning if I try to run a business out of it as well as my residence.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

My standing plans are to buy an old nuclear (bomb) silo in Kansas, outfit it with solar-thermal (as it is underground I have the physical space for photon to heat rather than crappy photoelectric), run a server farm from inside marketed as "apocalyptic data storage".

When I worked at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant, I had the opportunity to grab as many heavily reinforced 16'h x 11'i.d. concrete pipe sections as I wanted after the steam tunnel was complete. They have a wall thickness of 10" and are quite a bit more beefy than standard concrete pipe used in drainage. The catch was, of course, I had to pay to have them hoisted and trucked to my property. As you can see they are still there.

I had begun the design of burying them upright and stacked. Two of them would have provided 3 levels with just under 10 foot ceilings and the equivalent area of 3 small bedrooms. I thought about it for several months, but the cost to have them hoisted and transported was right around $2,800. Then the added cost of burying them and fitting them up as a underground shelter. And this was in the late 80's when that was a very serious sum for me, so and I shrugged it off for several years till I was laid off and lost interest and the opportunity..

[Red Devil]

those pipes look like they would be more useful as defensive positions to protect against the waves of zombie hordes.

[Josiah]

... waves of zombie hordes.

ah, yes, the zombie hordes; such a convenient word play...