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Wild Ideas

hanson.gmu.edu

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Re: Wild Ideas

#91

Post by wikiburner »

derleth wrote: post #84
wikiburner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion didn't always exist. In fact, I would guess that it didn't for the majority of human history, although it's ultimately speculation on both of our parts.

Religion (by way of magical thinking) is one of the things that defines humanity. We have evidence of it even in Neanderthal sites, given that we find them in caves, with their feet pointed east more often than not, with flower pollen on them in places in caves where we don't otherwise find flower pollen. Only recently have we been able to overcome it.

Well, I guess it depends on how broadly you want to define religion. A handful of traditional and possibly superstitious behaviors and cave paintings of the big, scary blob of fire in the sky could qualify, but I think we were talking about a much more complex set of beliefs and value systems involving omnipotent, omniscient being(s).

Were the seeds of religion sown in primitive peoples observations of and attempts to reckon with all the scary shit they would witness in the natural world? Absolutely. But any "definitive" statements on pre-historical belief systems are probably anthropological hearsay, possibly weighted by our current knowledge of and feelings towards religion. What was going on back then could have been just slightly more complex than a dog hiding under the bed when there's thunder.

And keep in mind, we're talking about a 200,000 year run up to recorded history. However, I'm sure there was a more complex oral tradition of storytelling and mythmaking that was starting to develop before the Sumerians took off.

Re: Wild Ideas

#92

Post by NhanH »

Houshalter wrote: post #74
goldfeld wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds enticing, but I think you could never rewind the state of the Earth without considering the variables external to it. If you couldn't also simulate anything that could alter the course of events, such as exposure to the Sun, I think you'd end up accumulating enough lossy transitions that the simulation would be rendered (ha) worthless in a deterministic sense. If we consider that only simulating the atoms…

If you just make assumptions or guesses about external variables, could this work to get at least close to what the past looked like? I mean the whole idea is kind of ridiculous but in theory, it might work.

Chaos theory [1] will make sure that any minor change will result in drastically different result, so assumptions and guesses won't be sufficient. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

Re: Wild Ideas

#93

Post by Xcelerate »

Symmetry wrote: post #85
Xcelerate wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different versions that live in different worlds. True. The many-worlds interpretation is nonsense. It's not even science. It makes no testable predictions that differ from any of the other interpretations. I've never understood the weird fascination with "many-worlds". Quantum mechanics provides a very clear set of postulates that allow the prediction of va…

QM provides a clear set of equations that govern how wavefunctions evolve, but some versions also include the notion that wavefunctions collapse when an observation is made, but there are no equations or even firm rules for when this collapse is supposed to happen. Many-worlds is founded on the observation that the equations governing wavefunctions are sufficient in and of themselves to explain the observations that…

> ... but there are no equations or even firm rules for when this collapse is supposed to happen

That's why it isn't science ;)

Maybe when QM was being developed "collapse" was a debated concept; I'm not too familiar with its history. Currently though, modern QM predicts that ensembles of identically prepared systems select an eigenstate of the linear operator corresponding to whatever observable it is you're measuring. Each of these eigenstates has a probability that can be calculated for it, and the mean value of these measurements is given by , where A is the operator. I see no implications of collapse with this -- just probabilities of what values you will obtain in experiment.

Re: Wild Ideas

#94

Post by knz42 »

bumbledraven wrote: post #19

1. Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different versions that live in different worlds. True. 2. If medicine were taxed so much that people only bought half as much, they would be just as healthy. False. The "extra" spending in medicine drives innovations so we have better drugs & procedures etc. than we would otherwise. 3. If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make comput…

What are we supposed to do with this? Did you intend to stimulate discussion? Or are you asserting your views in the hope that others will buy into them just because you happen to be first commenter?

Last time I checked HN was still interested in rational and scientific discourse. Most of your "True/False/Maybe" assertions are nothing of the sort.

I say "most" because for #2, #3, #4, #11, #12, #13 there is room for scientific falsifiability so we could set up experiments to support or invalidate your hypotheses. From there rational discussion is possible.

For the rest... about #1, #6: there's no way you can know this for sure. As another commenter says these theories are untestable. So it's just your beliefs speaking.

About #8 and #9: the Beginning of Infinity you cite is also fiction with little to no scientific support. I can't see how you can support an assertion with this reference.

I can specifically address #5, #7, #8, #9 as I have studied this stuff: all I can say is that your statements amount to a big optimistic wish for the future. There is in our current world and recent history no evidence whatsoever that we can escape the cyclical rise and fall of civilizations. All exponential laws supporting your wishes (Moore's law, economic growth etc) are not really "laws" but simply models of recent history built in hindsight. The real question to be asked is: what are the enabling factors that make this model accurate until now, and will these enabling factors continue to exist for 80 more years?

Of course it boils down to 1) USA supremacy in world politics, a mere historical incident due to WWII and 2) fossil fuels.

For all we know at this time, infighting and China will probably make #1 disappear within (This is where HN turns into Reddit or 4chan. A series of sci-fi statements cited from a blog, with the commenters assertions next to them with no justification whatsoever. Not cool.)

Re: Wild Ideas

#95

Post by some_guy_there »

Houshalter wrote: post #72
sthatipamala wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're also downplaying the creation of a global communications infrastructure that is nearly ubiquitous and unprecedented in its capacity. Other than that, no progress at all. /s

But how much did the internet actually improve people's lives or change things? The major changes of our time are nowhere near as major as the ones of the last two centuries. Industrialization and mass production and trains and electricity, and massive population growth, and crazy amounts of scientific progress. Almost all of the major improvements happened early on in the century, not so much in recent times. All th…

Mass use of shipping container in 1970s alone has changed more lives than all those inventions from 1930 to 1970 combined.

Re: Wild Ideas

#96

Post by pawelwentpawel »

By 2100 we should be able to scan this info from a frozen brain. If we scan your brain and then build and run a computer simulation of it, someone who remembers being you would wake up and feel alive.

Let's say we are actually able to do that by 2100. Somebody is scanning in patterns and current state of my neural activity. He copies that into a simulation - more than once. Which of the simulations will be me? All of them?

Also, it reminds me a bit of Swampman problem : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swampman

If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make computers as smart as people.

Would it make them smart or just filled with hard coded knowledge? I would expect that in this case the goal would be to create a system that is able to acquire common sense knowledge on its own from a given environment and reason from it. What we might consider as common sense in our daily lives might not be fully applicable in different situations.

Re: Wild Ideas

#97

Post by _glass »

Xcelerate wrote: post #61
bumbledraven wrote: post #19

1. Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different versions that live in different worlds. True. 2. If medicine were taxed so much that people only bought half as much, they would be just as healthy. False. The "extra" spending in medicine drives innovations so we have better drugs & procedures etc. than we would otherwise. 3. If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make comput…

> 1. Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different versions that live in different worlds. True. The many-worlds interpretation is nonsense. It's not even science. It makes no testable predictions that differ from any of the other interpretations. I've never understood the weird fascination with "many-worlds". Quantum mechanics provides a very clear set of postulates that allow the prediction of va…

From the standpoint of Metaphysics it makes sense and provides a solution for the problem: What is a cause? If B follows A, and in another world B follows not A, then we can say that A is the cause of B.

This theory does not claim to be Science as it uses a different model to find answers.

Re: Wild Ideas

#98

Post by ckuehne »

derleth wrote: post #81
ckuehne wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overall result, namely, that at the margin medicine has net-negative effects (i.e., after a certain point more medicine equals worse health) has been replicated many times. See for example this meta-study from 2008 about what happens when health workers go on strike [1]: "[..] mortality either stayed the same or decreased during, and in some cases, after the strike. [No study] found that mortality increased durin…

> emergency care was available during all of the strikes. Interesting. Have there been strikes which made emergency care unavailable?

Not that I am aware of. But it is safe to assume that no one doubts the effectiveness of emergency care or most basic procedures in general. However, everything beyond that is likely on average not helpful and might be even harmful.

Re: Wild Ideas

#99

Post by Nux »

pawelwentpawel wrote: post #96

By 2100 we should be able to scan this info from a frozen brain. If we scan your brain and then build and run a computer simulation of it, someone who remembers being you would wake up and feel alive. Let's say we are actually able to do that by 2100. Somebody is scanning in patterns and current state of my neural activity. He copies that into a simulation - more than once. Which of the simulations will be me ? All o…

Ahh, the swampman! I always thought of this problem when watching characters in StarTrek using teleportation, didn't know it was an existing, famous problem.

IMHO the teleported person ceases to exist at some point and a _new_ , identical person is being "created" by the transporter device. It's more of a gut feeling, hard to explain in words why I feel this way.

Re: Wild Ideas

#100

Post by babesh »

Houshalter wrote: post #77
babesh wrote: post #54

1. Human cloning 2. Giant solar collectors the size of states 3. Pandemics 4. Self aware computers 5. Tailored assassination drugs to induce swift cancer 6. Colonies on the moon 7. Genetic alteration and enhancement 8. Thought control 9. Man and machine war like the Matrix 1. and 5. are mostly to occur first.

Is there any practical purpose in human cloning short of cloning specific organs for replacement? As for tailored drugs to induce cancer, that is rather specific. There are a lot of ways to kill people, not sure if that would be the most efficient. And if you have that level of technology, there might also be dangers like custom made viruses that are super-contagious and 100% lethal. Which makes #9 more interesting.…

The sequel is that the machines then fight against each other which makes a lot of sense. Mr Smith and all. There will probably always be a struggle to replicate and for resources. It's not specific to humans.
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