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Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#231

Post by lukan »

antifa wrote: post #220
lukan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If too many not so old people would use it, the effects might be not great: https://xkcd.com/989/

I have a feeling most people rushing to be first in line to freeze themselves for non-terminal-illness-reasons are probably not high productivity individuals.

Possible. And the interesting question will be, why anyone would want to wake them up one day and care for them? Because they signed a contract today with a company that might go out of buisness in 10 years? Good luck to them, I guess.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#232

Post by huxley »

John23832 wrote: post #167
COGlory wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for it. People get lucky, then try to rationalize the past with a skill narrative. Then they soak up all the grants.

> People get lucky, then try to rationalize the past with a skill narrative. This is literally the opposite of the situation put forth in the article. Accidental discoveries are accidental discoveries. > Then they soak up all the grants. What use does a machine learning model have for a grant? This seems like something that is uniquely useful to humans.

If the emergent behaviour was to desire more and more corpus, then grant money would allow the AGI to purchase IP to consume

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#233

Post by Thiez »

Jach wrote: post #51
onionisafruit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real trick is being somebody that a future generation will go to the trouble of defrosting.

If we found a crypt of a hundred well-preserved mummies from a few thousand years ago who for all we could tell were basically peasants in their lifetimes, not grand or interesting people, and we had the ability to revive them into the modern world, I still think we would. The "interest" factor of future generations reviving cryonics customers when it's possible to do so is like the weakest factor in trying to predic…

Large groups of people in society already hate immigrants. What makes you think they would welcome useless old and sick people from long ago? They're like immigrants, but worse!

Face reality: when you've been on ice long enough that your friends and immediate family are dead, nobody wants you anymore. You will never be defrosted, and if you're lucky at some point your remains will be given a burial. It's more likely you'll be unceremoniously cremated like medical waste.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#234

Post by Filligree »

withinboredom wrote: post #174
mistercheph wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many work hard designing and assembling perpetual motion machines

I can understand why, it's clearly possible. Just look at the galaxies moving away from us faster than the speed of light. Anything is possible, if you work out the magic.

Sure, the universe as a whole does not obey conservation of energy. That does not make it particularly useful for a generator.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#235

Post by seszett »

dredmorbius wrote: post #217
legulere wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The major natural source of vitamin D is synthesis of cholecalciferol in the lower layers of the epidermis of the skin, through a photochemical reaction with Ultraviolet B (UV-B) radiation from sun exposure or UV-B lamps.[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D

Yeah, very poor wording on my part as I was addressing the false claim in GP that only sunlight-based synthesis would provide vit-D. Diet is an alternate source. More in my other follow-up response.

I said that they couldn't have another way to synthesise vitamin D than sunlight, it can only be synthesised by sunlight. So for the Inuit, vitamin D mostly comes from diet.

The claim I was responding to was "they [unlike other humans] don't need sun to produce vitamin D". They do, they just don't rely much on this source because it doesn't work in their environment.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#236

Post by zrn900 »

Jach wrote: post #224
zrn900 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> were basically peasants in their lifetimes, not grand or interesting people What are you saying - the lives of ordinary people are the holy grail in archaeology and history as they are more difficult to investigate and construct. A king's remains and belongings tell you little about the actual society.

We're not talking about remains and belongings, we're talking about people. Bringing back a king, who was likely literate and learned, would be more valuable to me than a random peasant or slave, though I'd still want to bring them back too. I'd also have someone like Archimedes over a king. But anyway, it sounds like you don't disagree that there'd be plenty of motivation to bring even the peasants back. (You're pro…

> Bringing back a king, who was likely literate and learned

A king would know about his society as much as how much do the Ivy League educated, WASP US presidents would know about the actual US society.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#237

Post by atombender »

Karellen wrote: post #115
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #2

> Karla Helena-Bueno discovered a common hibernation factor when she accidentally left an Arctic bacterium on ice for too long. I love how this story follows the magic pattern of so much of innovation and discovery - an accident. It's refreshingly human and not a mode of discovery that machine learning is going to completely take away from us.

> The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..." -- commonly attributed to Isaac Asimov

To date, nobody has found the quote among Asimov's publishing writings [1]. Similar (but not as succinct) wordings have been identified in earlier sources, but nobody has been able to identify the exact origin of the quote.

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/02/eureka-funny/?amp=1

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#238

Post by dredmorbius »

seszett wrote: post #235
dredmorbius wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, very poor wording on my part as I was addressing the false claim in GP that only sunlight-based synthesis would provide vit-D. Diet is an alternate source. More in my other follow-up response.

I said that they couldn't have another way to synthesise vitamin D than sunlight, it can only be synthesised by sunlight. So for the Inuit, vitamin D mostly comes from diet. The claim I was responding to was "they [unlike other humans] don't need sun to produce vitamin D". They do, they just don't rely much on this source because it doesn't work in their environment.

Fair enough.

We both could have communicated more clearly :-/

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#239

Post by cardiffspaceman »

lebean wrote: post #213
neutronicus wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a one-time scientist, I think Asimov may have been tricked by extreme selection bias on "That's funny..." utterances. It almost always precedes a crushing realization that you have fucked something up and probably wasted a lot of time. You're probably days down exploring that explanation before the eventual "holy shit" (that I never really had the benefit of experiencing).

The most exciting phrase that heralds a new discovery is not "eureka!" but "holy shit!"

The legend of “eureka” is that a fellow who had a specific problem in mind noticed something specific to his problem. Discoveries like sticky notes are not the same thing.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#240

Post by astrange »

throwawaycities wrote: post #176
leobg wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Especially the ownership thing. Tangent: I remember my mother, in the 1980s, getting a parking ticket. So she had to go to the local police officer. We were a tiny town, a village almost. But there was a police station. And the officer was in charge of this case. He talked to my mother. She explained. And he ended up saying that in this case, he’d be willing to make an exception. Fast forward to today. I dri…

The opening scene of American Gangster Denzel Washington’s character is the driver/right hand man for Bumpy Johnson. They go into a store and Bumpy has a heart attack, Denzel calls for help, and Bumpy just says “forget it frank, there’s no one in charge.” And so it is when PayPal or coinbase accounts get frozen, or social media accounts get suspended without notice or explanation, Gmail accounts get hacked or deleted…

There is someone in charge of PayPal (and sort of Coinbase), it's their regulator.

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/

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