I've always wanted to have a black-hole file-shredder on display on my desk. Not a big one, just a tiny speck that would generate crazy space-time distortion effects. I figured that it would be hard to contain on earth because it would fall to the center of the earth. So the trick is to build it in orbit. It seem far fetch but once you decide to work in space it opens plenty of engineering shortcuts to scale-up the L…
The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity
41–50 of 78 posts
Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity
#42Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity
#43Rather than having one planet we should have a portfolio.
(I'm interpreting your comment as "portfolio of planets") But the corporations would want to spread to all of them. Just like big cities all over the globe look the same, you can buy the same stuff. Trade is good, and I love corporations (never understood why anyone on the left would be against the concept - it's ideally suited to create a "container" for cooperating individuals), but even on our own main planet we c…
Space is very good at that. Easy to end up in places that are not practical to reach. Over time things change.
Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity
#44Does SETI not count? Easy to imagine the first received ETI signal being some world-ending infohazard. [edit]: Targeting humans: a viral ideological, philosophical, or religious meme that causes us to self-destruct. A technological gift with insidious Trojan Horse functionality (a biotechnological machine with subtle side effects; a physics device that touches physics we haven't discovered). Irresistible instructions…
I myself think if any theory beyond that of the Fermi Paradox holds water it’s likely the Aurora Hypothesis which simply states that colonizing space is incredibly dangerous and therefore hard to do at scale beyond your immediate solar system, hence why we haven’t seen anything in ours I don’t quite buy it but it feels the most plausible of all the alternative explanation for Fermi Because of phenomenons like Simulta…
Well maybe could say "one of":
We recall that the big bang was ~14 billion years ago.
Our solar system was made ~5 billion years ago (very rough arithmetic) out of the results of an exploded star. The star may have exploded ~7 billion years ago. In that case it may have been a first generation, hydrogen star and took ~6 billion years to form, make heavy elements, and explode (and make more heavy elements).
So, that makes our star a second generation star and our solar system, from an exploded first generation star, one of the first.
If all that is true, then, okay, "we are just among the first of civilizations ever".
Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity
#45"An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilizations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop."
Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I feel like I’m not using any of my technical acumen to advance human civilization What would you rather be working on?
I’m not saying I’m going to crack some crazy software problem like general AI or something, but theoretically I’d love to be working on something that pushes renewable energy forward. In what capacity I don’t know. I’m pretty convinced we are overlooking geothermal energy in the USA at least. I often wonder if we could both relieve potentially dangerous pressure bellowing Yellowstone while simultaneously harnessing i…
Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity
#47I've always wanted to have a black-hole file-shredder on display on my desk. Not a big one, just a tiny speck that would generate crazy space-time distortion effects. I figured that it would be hard to contain on earth because it would fall to the center of the earth. So the trick is to build it in orbit. It seem far fetch but once you decide to work in space it opens plenty of engineering shortcuts to scale-up the L…
I'm afraid the Consumer Product Safety Commission is a serious wet blanket on the market potential of generally-relativistic desk ornaments.
Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity
#48It’s moments that I read articles like this that make me wonder why I’m putting so much energy into making a better SPA or trying to engineer solutions to faster more performant web animations. I feel like I’m not using any of my technical acumen to advance human civilization but instead to line my own coffers and those of the corporation I work for. With that said, it is always good to keep in mind just how fragile…
I mean .. do you enjoy the work? I write Haskell, I make computer games, I make web apps. Mostly because it's fun and satisfying. I'm also quite good at it and it comes easily to me. I remember when I decided to go into engineering, a peer of mine from high school said "whateveracct, you're top of your class. Why aren't you going into medicine in order to do something more Worthwhile with your life?" Stuck with me ev…
You're looking for balance of "saving the world" (i.e. our responsibility with civilization and all lifeforms) and "enjoy your life". Clearly if everyone is concerned exclusively with enjoying their lives (i.e. hyper-hedonism), society collapses; that's deeply irresponsible. If everyone is also hyper-focused on self-propagation of our species with zero regard to our actual experience as conscious beings with rich inner lives, then clearly there's the risk of indeed making our inner lives much worse than they could be.
A system I've seen recommended here to think about it is (I've seen it related to Ikigai, a Japanese concept): you need to find a balance between your needs and experience, your skills and potential, and what's good for society at large (in a soft max-min).
I think overall, however, if we give it a little thought it's easy to find something aligned with our interests and potential that can really make a good impact. If you're interested I recommend the Effective Altruism community for a take on this (they're largely focused on more tangible things like Earning to Give) and 80000 hours. In all likelihood, just by being a functional member of our society (and giving what you can), if you don't work for some obviously evil enterprise (idk, making hyper-addictive things, oil field discovery, or something like that), you're probably helping society.
I encourage a different path as well: if you can program (or develop technology) and you're entrepreneurial (many people around here?) you can most likely make something that will make a good impact on society and even civilization at large. Furthering education with online tools, making educational games (or otherwise that promote growth and reflection), making tools more accessible, ... , improving the robustness and reliability of our systems, ..., the list goes on -- why not fulfill your potential to the best you can? Invent the future, Hack the planet.
Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity
#49Thinking about this, I am curious what the original procedure would've been. How did they plan on retrieving the astronauts, in a capsule on the ocean, without allowing the air inside to escape?
Re: The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm afraid the Consumer Product Safety Commission is a serious wet blanket on the market potential of generally-relativistic desk ornaments.
I imagine the first thing we would use programmable time dilation for would be to skip build times. Sure, it doesn't make you any more productive in non-dilated time, but just think how much you could extend your life by :-)