241–250 of 545 posts
I suspect this is already being done to some extent, but I think it would be really useful to
1. Input a list of facts and receive a list of laws pertaining to those facts.
2. Automatically detect language that is too vague to resolve or that conflicts with other parts of the legal code.
3. Suggest optimizations or refactoring opportunities that could guide legislators in simplifying the code.
Actually serious, I believe the transmission of information between the frontiers of science and the public are broken. On one hand the university system is geared towards producing specialists, on the other hand the media is geared towards spectacular as orthogonal of important, due to a mixture of science journalists being the product of the university system and market forces. So one would need a reliable process to produce the one book to read about X.
In first approximation one could try to produce a four volume series "Frontiers in Physics", were the volumes are "Particle physics," "Atoms & Nuclei," "Solid state physics" and "Astronomy and Geophysics" and then distill it into a single volume. (As a illustration of Universities producing specialists, I could not name the four titles for chemistry, let alone linguistics.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it should most certainly not be treated as inevitable. What life never dies? What non-living thing does not change?
Do you think of cancer as inevitable? Or do you think of it as something humans could cure someday? Do you think of degenerative mental disorders as inevitable? Or do you think humans can cure them someday? I don't think of death as inevitable. I think of it as something humans can cure someday. Thinking of it as inevitable means giving up on all possible solutions.
No.
> Do you think of degenerative mental disorders as inevitable?
No.
Change, and thus, death, is inevitable. Also, if you want to prolong you then you are the result of countless deaths.
I know it's not easy and not sexy; but as a species we're in the process of transitioning from a centralized hierarchical model (inherently arising due to costs of communication) to a collective decision making model.
Apart from society collapsing wholesale I don't see any way we won't have global consensus building / decision making in a hundred years; and helping speed that along is the most powerful thing you can do for humanity's benefit right now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think of cancer as inevitable? Or do you think of it as something humans could cure someday? Do you think of degenerative mental disorders as inevitable? Or do you think humans can cure them someday? I don't think of death as inevitable. I think of it as something humans can cure someday. Thinking of it as inevitable means giving up on all possible solutions.
> Do you think of cancer as inevitable? No. > Do you think of degenerative mental disorders as inevitable? No. Change, and thus, death, is inevitable. Also, if you want to prolong you then you are the result of countless deaths.
Lack of change seems closer to death than change does.
But in any case, whatever definition of death you've used doesn't seem to relate in any way to the ones that people in this discussion have advocated eliminating.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can live for a thousand years and you will still procrastinate and you will still not want to die. Of course not! Why should you ever want to die? Why should you ever "get over" that? It's a bug. We haven't fixed it yet. It should not be romanticized, and it should most certainly not be treated as inevitable. It's an abomination we have yet to eliminate.
> it should most certainly not be treated as inevitable. What life never dies? What non-living thing does not change?
For humans (or at least for me), I think the main concern is really more of continuity of experience than maintaining a particular body configuration indefinitely. I.e. I would like to run into an old friend in 10,000 years and reminisce about that time we did something hilarious. It wouldn't be very satisfying to undergo a procedure that resets my body but wipes out my memories in the process.