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Wild Ideas

hanson.gmu.edu

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Re: Wild Ideas

#121

Post by utopkara »

utopkara wrote: post #119

Some of these comments cannot be falsified: - You could be a computer. - There could be a colony on earth millions of years ago. Oh, and he is an economist too! How appropriate. Yep, Dr Hanson, keep up the good work.

Here's another one, I just made up:

- Aliens from billions of years into the future with an infinite source of energy and computational power have managed to slice the universe and put us into the solar system as a simulation. Everything coming back beyond the solar system is simulated, matter and energy alike.

Re: Wild Ideas

#122

Post by utopkara »

utopkara wrote: post #119

Some of these comments cannot be falsified: - You could be a computer. - There could be a colony on earth millions of years ago. Oh, and he is an economist too! How appropriate. Yep, Dr Hanson, keep up the good work.

Here's another "thought":

- If academics kept compiling the knowledge of the world starting at 2000BC, and everybody were taught the knowledge, we'd have reached our current level of science by 1000BC.

Re: Wild Ideas

#123

Post by exratione »

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #115
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…

I will be your resident biologist tonight (not working in cognition/memory but I will try to make a more general point). Putting aside the philosophical problems for a moment, the notion that the only relation between a brain and a mind is the pattern of neuronal connections is pretty naive. The formation and maintenance of memory is controlled at multiple levels: single atoms (ionic gradients determining the polariz…

http://alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm

http://alcor.org/Library/html/MolecularRepairOfTheBrain.htm

http://alcor.org/Library/html/nanotechrepair.html

Re: Wild Ideas

#124

Post by puzzlingcaptcha »

exratione wrote: post #123
puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will be your resident biologist tonight (not working in cognition/memory but I will try to make a more general point). Putting aside the philosophical problems for a moment, the notion that the only relation between a brain and a mind is the pattern of neuronal connections is pretty naive. The formation and maintenance of memory is controlled at multiple levels: single atoms (ionic gradients determining the polariz…

http://alcor.org/sciencefaq.htm http://alcor.org/Library/html/MolecularRepairOfTheBrain.htm http://alcor.org/Library/html/nanotechrepair.html

The links that you provide make o lot of bold, unsubstantiated claims (outright dismissing protein shedding as 'trivial' borders on funny) so I am not sure whether you are agreeing with me or disagreeing. They are also from the 90's and the understanding of the physiological complexity of the brain has changed a bit since then.

Re: Wild Ideas

#125

Post by jmmcd »

6ren wrote: post #4

Try this: we don't get alien visitors because space travel is prohibitively expensive. But communication is cheap. So you'd expect the sky to be filled with messages, maximally compressed and/or encrypted, and so indistinguishable from noise: background radiation.

I like it, but: I guess you're talking about civilizations deliberately communicating with each other. If they don't already know each other, then maximal compression or encryption would prevent them recognising each other's signals, by your argument. If they do, then how did that happen?

Re: Wild Ideas

#126

Post by randallsquared »

wikiburner wrote: post #17

Soul Extraction - Assuming that there is a technological singularity at some point in the future, and assuming that time travel is possible[1], but that we've seen no evidence of it because it must be mostly observational in nature in order to prevent disruptions that would create time paradoxes, humanity adopts the practice of extracting the brain/nervous systems (and then replacing w/ equivalent matter) of every hu…

All the time machines that seem possible in current physics require massive objects and must exist before the earliest point in time to which you can travel. So, the simplest explanation for why there are no time travelers is that we haven't constructed a time machine for them to use to visit us, yet.

Also, see "massive object".

Re: Wild Ideas

#127

Post by opminion »

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…

2. [...] The "extra" spending in medicine drives innovations so we have better drugs & procedures etc.

That's what many doctors (also in Europe) argue. An argument against that could be based in Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma depressing review of the flow of money in relation to how medical trials are used to decide what's better.

Re: Wild Ideas

#128

Post by opminion »

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…

Maybe there's an infinity of worlds, forked from ours, where the many worlds hypothesis is testable... :-)

Re: Wild Ideas

#129

Post by opminion »

I was thinking the other day that I have seldom seen the purpose of mankind discussed in public (beyond religious belief).

This list of ideas could be an interesting trigger of such discussion.

Re: Wild Ideas

#130

Post by mhitza »

asgard1024 wrote: post #89
samweinberg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting to ponder on and all, but we know the Sims characters are not aware.

Are you sure? Since version 1, they can recognize themselves in a mirror.

We are programmers here, let's not attribute simple tricks to sentience.
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