I am a co-author of this paper, “Science opportunities with solar sailing smallsats,” announcing “Project Sundiver”… offering a wide suite of potential fast interplanetary missions that could accelerate far faster than today’s rockets can manage, by swooping DOWN to pass very close to the Sun, spreading lightsail wings to catch a boost off the blasting brightness there. The team did proof of concept with a grant at NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC).
But sure, I have another reason to root for “Project Sundiver” ... my first novel, Sundiver!
As for the ongoing UFO silliness… this Forbes journalist back in January did something rare - he asked excellent questions, understood everything I said, and described (condensed) it accurately, in a wide range of topics. “Why Are UFOs Still Blurry? A Conversation With David Brin.”
"Believe" what you like. Just don't claim to be modernist or scientific in this cult that keeps repeating - twice per decade for the last 80 years - the exact same incantations and spells, never producing an iota of actual evidence. Oh, I have studied concepts of the 'alien' all my life! A bazillion concepts that are vastly less tedious and bo-ring.
== Solar System News! ==
The wonderful Japanese probe that brought samples from the asteroid Ryugu has offered glimpses of interstellar dust that likely predates the Solar System. Embedded in the sample rocks are grains of stardust.
Unfortunately, Russia's Luna-25 moon lander suffered an 'emergency situation in lunar orbit, prior to a scheduled touchdown attempt.
A new study featuring data from the NASA Mars Perseverance rover reports on an instrumental detection potentially consistent with organic molecules on the Martian surface.
An observatory made of hundreds of tanks of water observes Cherenkov Radiation when particles pass through them that were created when super-hyper energetic gamma rays hit atoms in the atmosphere. Those super-hypers (up to about 10 Tev each!) are apparently much more common from the Sun than we thought.
NASA and DARPA announced they awarded Lockheed Martin and BWX Technologies to build and develop a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) engine. An NTR achieves high thrust similar to in-space chemical propulsion but is two to three times more efficient. We helped develop some precursor techs at NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program – (NIAC) – but at half a $billion, this looks to be getting ready for prime time. NASA and DARPA are looking at a launch target of late 2025 or early 2026.
Combining art & science: Ron Miller’s two newest oeuvres. Natural Satellites: The Book of Moons. The natural satellites of the planets―the solar system's moons―are some of the most extraordinary places imaginable. Recently, scientists have turned to the moons for answers in their investigations of the origins of the solar system and the evolution of life on our own planet.
== Farther Out ==
Some really weird objects near the Milky Way’s central black hole.
What a privilege to live to see the twin LIGO observatories, co-founded by my friend Kip Thorne, discover and analyze gravitational waves from converging neutron stars and black holes at ‘short wavelengths of a few hundreds or thousands of kilometers. But what of the deeper growl of longer waves? MUCH longer on galactic scale? Researchers looked at data from about 70 pulsars and found is a pattern of deviations from the expected pulsar beam arrival timings that suggests gravitational waves are ‘jiggling space-time as though it's a vast serving of Jell-O’ … ‘possibilities range from cosmic strings to dark matter to primordial black holes that formed soon after the Big Bang.’
A mirror-like planet with an albedo of 0.80 reflects so much light from its very nearby star that astronomers offer a theory that the planet started out as a gas giant but has been losing mass over time. It must have an atmosphere composed of silica material, like glass, along with titanium. Effectively, then, the atmosphere has a mirror-like composition, super-saturated with silicate and metal vapors. This means that, quite literally, it rains titanium on this weird world.
One side of this white dwarf is (apparently) composed (on the surface at least) of hydrogen, while the other seems made up of helium. Weird! Though the mind spins with notions of sloshing tidal waves of hydrogen, since “Janus” is rotating on its axis every 15 minutes. Especially since some white dwarfs transition from being hydrogen- to helium-dominated on their surface. Or else the answer, according to this science team, may lie in magnetic fields.
== Even farther out ==
A team used gravitational lensing to discover an ultra-massive black hole, an object over 30 billion times the mass of our Sun, in the foreground galaxy – a scale rarely seen by astronomers.
Farther out… WAY farther… the Webb is helping several approaches to refining the famed Hubble Constant for how rapidly the universe is expanding. A good summary here.
Interesting article in Universe Today that identifies the distant stars that were in the line-of-sight of high-power, very directional planetary-radar transmissions, estimates when the signal should arrive at each star, and when we might expect a reply if anyone on the other end detects the NASA signal and is able to answer promptly.
Fortunately 99.999% of Earth’s radio emissions – including “I Love Lucy” – fade away long before one light year. The "METI" cult, who are fetishistically and rudely and illegally trying to foist "yoohoo!" so-called messages, aim to send far more lasting, laser-like coherent beams. And my opposition is explained here.
So why don't I mind these deep space radar blips which are also coherent? Because the odds of bad outcomes are hugely lower compared to the beneficial science. And - simply - because unlike arrogant METI, this is not a jerky rude and illegal thing to do.
And as long as we're on rude jerks.... Kooky Dmitry Rogozin strikes again - denying that NASA landed on the moon! This is the same fella who turned down Elon Musk and this unintentionally caused Musk to create SpaceX, the greatest launch success since Sputnik. Of course this is part of the putinist doubling down on riling-up the one force on Earth that might save them... the US lobotomized right.
239 comments:
1 – 200 of 239 Newer› Newest»From the previous comments, re: "battening the hatches" in California...
The tv keeps saying that the last time a tropical storm hit Los Angeles was 1939.
I remember that while most of Grapes of Wrath was about the dry years of the dust bowl, the book's ending took place in a flooding rainfall from which the protagonists had to take shelter in a boxcar. IIRC, that book was published in 1939. Was the novel's flood based upon the real life one?
We might find this interesting too:
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2009/03/10/seriously-fuck-ayn-rand/
At least in Firefox, the underlined links in this article are not, in fact, links, just underlined blue text. Is it just me?
@Carl that's just Blogspot. You have to roll your own embedded hyperlinks here
(See instructions below comment window.)
Skiffy letdowns:
No Martian canals.
No alien craft or even clear images.
Fusion 10 years from now for decades.
Room temperature ambient superconductors.
String theory.
Cosmology.
None of these are performing up to expectations. The last is deep into baroque complexity, with epicycles upon epicycles, and unexplainable divergence from observation. The next to last has no experimental evidence possible with present or near-future technology. Both fields are overdue for paradigm shifts, but to what?
Hey Dr. Brin,
I'm briefly back. I'd seen a discussion/link to the pre-print of the Solar Small Sat paper some months ago on the wonderful "Centauri Dreams" blog, but didn't catch your name on it back then- kudos! I can imagine a scenario where (if we don't go all "Mad Max" in a few decades) self-assembling telescope constellations are sent to the Oort Cloud gravitational lens (as described in the paper) to observe and map in great detail habitable-zone exoplanets (HZEs). Assuming the technology can be perfected and the cost becomes affordable, I can imagine detailed information on dozens of HZEs within 100-200 ly by the beginning of the next century.
Speaking of "Sundiver": you may have already heard it elsewhere, but ST:SNW had an oblique mention of it- the young Lt. Montgomery Scott mentioned he had just come off the "Stardiver," a solar (though I'd guess it should have been "stellar") research vessel.
Cheers
mcsandberg,
Sails of various sorts would likely work across interstellar distances. Stopping at the target star is potentially tricky due to the potential for the sail to degrade along the way and other reasons, but trip times are pretty large if one intends to slow down at all.*
Our host has written some of these ideas into his stories.
* The situation changes a lot if one can count on a coherent 'light' beam coming from the home star. Getting a boost that way would help a great deal in identifying inbound visitors to our world.
LH,
Grapes of Wrath was published five months before the ‘39 storm.
The parts of California where I've lived oscillate between drought and flood. El Niño and La Niña.
It actually had a huge effect in the first few years after statehood. The floods where I live now wiped out and bankrupted the formerly Mexican Ranches. They were not in good enough financial condition to legally fend off others taking their land in the next immigration wave.
If you walk around downtown Sacramento (where I used to live), you'll see the old places have two basement levels. At some point the locals gave up and just built higher raising their part of town a whole floor.
Much of the land south and west of Sacramento is actually river delta and segmented into islands. On the map it looks like the interior of California, but in terms of water it is much more like the coast.
Flood and Drought.
Mudslides and Wildfires.
And don't forget our wonderful earthquakes.
Plus the St. Francis dam burst of 95 yrs ago.
While I have electricity & internet (the Eye of Hilary hits in 4 hours) here's an bit for those who saw and loved (I did, with minor quibbles) OPPENHEIMER. CBS 1965 interview with Oppenheimer. Ten years after Trinity. 20 before Gorbachev.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdtLxlttrHg
KH welcome back. Of course I went deeply into Big Telescope missions to the Solar G-Lens shell, in EXISTENCE.
Paradoctor you list is highly selective I counter with:
- TWELVE ice-roofed ocean worlds in the solar system
- Spectacular views of Titan’s methane seas and NIAC designs to go back!
- Webb and Perseverence and the little copter – jeez you need more testimony to human competence? Well then…
- … how about rolling out effective covid vaccines within SIX MONTHS… with a side effect that a lot fewer liberals died than MGA idiots. And they’re no doubt much faster now. NO ONE I’ve seen has talked about the biggest aspect of Covid… that it was a fairly UN-disruptive and minimally-lethal exercise to prepare for something that might be far worse! In fact preventative, since potential foes likely feel daunted by our rapid response.
- AI may not yet be conscious, but when it comes, it will be able to talk… and dance…
---
Ah MCS: The best way to go interstellar is to send humans who can hibernate. Likely made of silicon. Bit frozen might work.
As for your Rand article… it started out better than I expected, summarizing Adam Smith in ways that were only maybe 1/3 tendentious and off base. Alas, it then dived into an utterly insipid paean to Ayn Rand as a wondrous moralist, providing the grand moral and practical basis for capitalism.
Alack, the essay devolved into masturbatory worship of the insufferably and sanctimoniously…dumb. I’ll respond separately.
Brin:
I agree about the covid vaccine, and the mRNA technology that created it, and soon others. Maybe common cold cures? Anti-cancer? Anti-agathics?
I also agree that solar and wind are rapidly maturing. I'd go for an electric car and a solar house now, but the battery technology needs to climb up the learning curve. I'm confident that it will, so I'll wait a bit.
The space stuff is indeed very nice, but it is not of personal importance.
As for alleged AI: it's still artificial stupidity. If it looks intelligent to us, then I consider that less a simulation of intelligence than a demonstration that our own intelligence is simulated. Is there intelligent life on planet Earth? My answer: we are not qualified to answer that question, due to lack of objectivity.
My general impression of 21st century sci/tech: if it's close to the ground, well-checked, well-understood, inexpensive and goal-oriented, then it's doing fine. But if it's some grand world-saving scheme, costing zillions and requiring multiple intellectual revolutions, then its bark does not equal its bite.
By analogy:
http://thedanward.com/resources/Build+Droids+Not+Death+Stars.pdf
A military acquisitions officer warns us that grand Death-Star-like projects underperform, but simple adaptable R2-like gizmos overperform.
I say that fusion will continue to underperform, and solar will soon overperform, as soon as we have good batteries.
MCS:
large, organic-crewed spacecraft using huge lightsails deployed for braking would indeed be visible - there's an old SF novel that provides the equation for determining ETA of such a beast. (Title and author(s) escape me atm.) Niven pointed out that it would be recognizable as it would reflect Sol's light.
It seems more likely, though, that first visitors would be uncrewed, smaller, slower, and much harder to detect, whatever their means of propulsion. Automated probes are also more likely in my opinion. There might be some hiding out in our solar system now, which is obviously the plot of a Brin novel (among other works). I think a probe would also count as a UFO.
Ha! Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle.
Pappenheimer
P.S. drove home yesterday evening and from the sky, my hometown (Spokane) was on fire. It's not, but some nearby towns have been evacuated.
Something you might not have thought of, Dr. Brin--fill your bathtub with water.
This being Southern California, if the power goes out, so does our water pressure. :(
That's something the news networks haven't been talking about.
(Normally I'd feel bad about potentially wasting so much water, but not today!)
BARBIE trounces OPPENHEIMER at the box office. A long, vitriolic post about sifting eye candy is called for, but I'll put it on my own turf, not OGH's. Stay safe in SoCal.
Alan Brooks:
Grapes of Wrath was published five months before the ‘39 storm.
So he made it all up, and it came true anyway?
mcsandberg,
That sail would be enormous and easily spotted.
I disagree. They WOULD be enormous (Moon sized), but there is very little light out there. Unless they were aimed in such a way that reflections arrived here. One side is likely to be very black to dissipate heat that soaks in when photons fail to reflect, but once a sail is out between the stars there is so little light available that they'd cool to ambient temperature.
-------
I don't think we've been visited yet, but I can think of a few ways to arrive that would result in humanity failing to notice. If you KNOW humanity might be watching there are still ways to do it.
1. They arrived some time ago and are snoozing among the rocks or ice.
2. Arrive inside a giant black rock with a perihelion of about 50 AU. Break up into smaller black rocks and lower your perihelion while the Sun blocks our view of them.
3. Arrive in a small black rock and deploy a sail at the last moment. Time it so your pass through perihelion has Earth on the wrong side of the sun.
Most UFO nuts posit the existence of magical space drives. If your aliens have such things, then it's pretty easy to approach us without us noticing until the last minute. Keep the sun almost behind you from our POV. We have instruments pointing AT the sun, but the ones that point to the sides are generally doing particle physics work.
The way to pop their bubble is to point out that aliens on the surface nowadays are MUCH more likely to be noticed. There are SO many cameras deployed these aliens would have to hide in unpopulated areas like the southern ocean or Antarctica... and even that might not work due to our satellites.
I don't mind Barbie making boat loads more money. That physicists were portrayed at all in a major film is pretty amazing. One might happen in an idiot plot movie... usually as a mad or negligent scientist, but Oppenheimer wasn't an idiot plot.
Both movies had messages to deliver... which I think they did just fine.
Yes, OPPENHEIMER is still closing in on $1B, a staggering sum considering its $100M budget and especially for an historical biopic. And the BARBIE phenomenon is largely American, which is both good news and bad.
Yejin Choi does a good job of making Voltaire's point that common sense is not so common, an A.I. theme that I (and many others) have been beating the drum for for decades.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/11/1193176704/the-not-so-intelligent-side-of-artificial-intelligence
sigh. and now earthquakes.
We are watching Hilary sweep by to the east of us, but there is nothing like being close to 5.0's. It's like someone smacked the house.
Hurricane Hilary is upon us! Tho not so bad, so far...
AFR… got.a whole swimming pool to drink, if it comes to that.
But thanks!
BARBIE trounces OPPENHEIMER at the box office.” Meh, nerds were at least in the running.
Obsession with ‘generations” like ‘boomers’ – is all a distraction from class.
DB,
the interview was 20 yrs after Trinity,
not ten.
65% of American voters want to dump Trump while 35% love him rabidly. Republicans gerrymadered themselves into a corner where their party's radicals dominate nominations.
That's the bed they made.
There IS ONE WAY out for repubs... to invite everyone in many districts to re-register as Republicans, so the radicals will lose their grip on the party. Won't happen. Like the gutless Romney types won't act either.
As for Trump... I genuinely(!) fret about what the oligarchs will do, when they realize their tool and asset now threatens to drag them down. YOU may hate him, centrally. I recognize him as a riveting savanarola/rasputin/puppet of far more shadowy figures, a tool whose time has passed - yet he might serve the oligarchs one last time. Watch NETWORK to the very end. God bless the United States Secret Service! And I mean it. I don't need to see him in prison orange and we do NOT need him "Howard Beale" martyred! A decline into irrelevance, discrediting everything about the undead thing that's hijacked American conservatism, will suit me fine. Stay on your toes, USSS guys. We put our trust in skilled professionals.
Hillary has left us, but is now headed your way, Alfred.
Good luck. :)
I DO want to see Trump in prison orange, but I'll settle for a minimum security place. I want pictures in exchange for the crap we've had to tolerate.
------
Hilary's vigor is likely to pass by tonight. Most of it. I think I'm just far enough west to help.
The earthquake and aftershocks did knock a few things off my shelves. No biggie, but I did notice I have to attach a few more bookcases to the walls. Apparently I didn't finish that task when I moved in.
Sending Trump to prison would also make a martyr of him. Best to maneuver him into being what Nixon was in his last year—a clownshow.
“I am not a crook.”
He's already playing the martyr card.
I want that picture... with no hair product please.
I want him to be seen as a mortal human.
Sending Trump to prison will send a very belated message to said shadowy figures:
"There will be consequences to your actions. Weigh 'em."
Nah, by the time appeals were exhausted, it’d be too late, anyway. Would an eighty-something ex-president be imprisoned?
The only way I know of is to debate these deplorables on their own terms—and divide them. I wrote on one of Trump’s FB pages that DeSantis has got to be stopped. Recently DeSantis said quote “throatslitting’ must be done.
Naturally, he’s rallying his troops with that sort of bluster—but Trump doesn’t have much use to begin with for DeSanctimonious and his lemmings.
The GOP is largely a Reagan nostalgia club; thus though they can’t be conquered they can be divided.
scidata said...
And the BARBIE phenomenon is largely American, which is both good news and bad.
Is that true? The figures for Barbie from IMDB's Box Office Mojo:
Domestic (44.3%)
$567,282,865
International (55.7%)
$711,900,000
Worldwide
$1,279,182,865
Alan Brooks:
The GOP is largely a Reagan nostalgia club;
That was true until Trump's election. Now, they're more a Trump revanchist club.
Re: BARBIE phenomenon
Point taken, gregory byshenk, I may have been looking at different (earlier) numbers. Still, Americans are seeing BARBIE at 10X their weight in world population. Hollywood psychology is interesting, someone should write a book about it :)
@Dr. Brin & other So CA folks: hope you and yours all came through safe and dry.
Can one separate a mixture of hydrogen and helium using magnets? Do tell.
@ Dr. Brin: The Impending Privacy Threat of Self-Driving Cars (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/impending-privacy-threat-self-driving-cars)
As (I believe) Charlie Stross said re: internet-connected devices:
1) They can be used to spy on you.
2) They can be hacked to do things you don't want them to do.
Dr. Brin, what're your thoughts re: self-driving cars, or as I refer to them- "auto-mobiles"?
Cheers,
Keith
P.S. I'm reading the 1999 version of "The Transparent Society".
KH ever see the TV series UPLOADED? A self-driving taxi is hacked to lock the passenger in and drive off a pier.
@Dr Brin,
Glad to see you've got power and internet.
@Alfred Differ,
How are you faring?
* * *
To bad a hurricane named "Hillary" didn't wipe out Mar-a-Lago. That would have been sweet.
Off topic, but I just heard Ukraine is developing an anonymous portal where citizens can report corruption and receive 10% of the fines or money recovered (not sure of the precise details)
Reminded me of the whistleblower protection and reward system that Dr Brin advocates!
@Andy,
Zelenskyy might as well be called the leader of the free world.
Looks like we escaped without a scratch. I'm heading into work today, so I'll get to drive around town and see what happened. 8)
There's some fallacy among hack writers including extra gratuitous obstacles in the protagonist's path without which the plot would still have worked and been a bit more plausible.
The earthquake was just that.
If L were an honest person, he’d suggest ALTERNATIVES to ‘acidification’ that he'd accept as neutrally describing the same horrific threat to the world. Thus, allowing him to admit he should care.
Ooooh! I got one! DEBASING the oceans![DB]
Compliment accepted, as it was I who first offered up this alternative on this very site during the Saturday, October 18, 2014, thread.
It's like that bad Leonardo DiCaprio film wherein giant mental adjustments spring from the implantation of tiny subconscious seeds.
And, soon, I expect our fine host to admit that 'an 80 year west coast hurricane', 'the worst drought in 600 years' and 'the hottest day in 125,000 years' in no way proves the anthropogenic climate change theory either going forwards or backwards.
Inception complete.
Best
_______
Saturday, October 18, 2014
So, remember, when the CC cultists chatter on about 'ocean acidification', remind them the ocean is still basic, that an ocean becoming 'less basic' does not mean the same thing as 'ocean acidification' because 'acidification' cannot occur until (if & when) the ocean's pH becomes less than 7...
'DeBASEment' is an excellent description of human-mediated environmental degradation (especially CC), plus it conveys a pithy confidence that mocks, devalues & dismisses the opposing argument in a way that earnest debate (whose very seriousness validates the opposing argument) cannot do, and it's very tangentiality (obliqueness) also defies the dichotomous 'for/against' convention which (by happy coincidence) is exactly what conflict resolution theory tells us to do.
Let us promote this term, by all means, and make 'debasement' the new euphemistic catch-phrase of the 21st Century so, from now on, we can talk about Oceanic Debasement instead of mere 'acidification', Political Debasement instead of the newspeak of 'political correctness' and Fishery Debasement instead the equally boring 'overfishing' (etc).
We have work to do re fallen big branches... the foliage cans will be full for a month+! Still, no landslides or blackouts. All services running well.
"elenskyy might as well be called the leader of the free world."
Oh, here's one fellow who'll have stuff named after him. But not a huge man. Walking among DUTCH leaders yesterday (tallest people on Earth, except the Watusis) he seemed like a hobbit.
Actually a giant.
Criminy... maybe that's why I keep him around. While locum was a nut job before, I dimly recall that he did occasionally show glimmers of sapience. DEBASEment certainly was an actual actual suggestion... 9 years ago.
Alas, it is still squirming avoidance of the issue, which is that his mad cult COMPLETELY UNNECESSARILY, clings to insane drivel denialism, making it a core tenet of their identity and the warped thing that US conservatism has become. If they sincerely wanted to save that movement, they'd join in negotiating WAYS to save the planet. Along with WAYS to use grand juries and general transparentcy to scour the political castes of corrupt and obviously-blackmailed monsters.
There is of course a reason. The same one that has them kowtowing before Putin's 1000 "ex" commissars whose renamed KGB has all the same goals and methods as before they won the US right, by changing a few symbols and lapel pins.
ALl out war vs Grand Juries and science and every fact profession is the actual reason for climate denialism and Moscow worship and all the rest. It is a cult hate far deeper than mere racism.
Dr Brin:
Alas, it is still squirming avoidance of the issue, which is that his mad cult COMPLETELY UNNECESSARILY, clings to insane drivel denialism, making it a core tenet of their identity and the warped thing that US conservatism has become.
Again with the "gotcha" that "acidification" is an improper term unless the sea actually becomes acid, as if the sea turning acid is the problem being discussed. The decrease in ocean pH is a symptom which acts as a metaphorical barometer revealing the increase in atmospheric CO2. The fact that ocean pH is dropping makes the CO2 increase obvious. What you call the decrease in ocean pH is irrelevant.
The fact that loc thinks that "It's not really acidification," is a gotcha that invalidates the above shows he's nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is.
* * *
On Zelenskyy, back when Trump was in the White House, I often asserted the obvious fact that no one could seriously call him the "leader of the free world", despite the office he held. When Zelenskyy began conducting the opposition to the Russian invasion (beginning with "I need ammunition, not a ride!"), I felt that the title belonged to him as much as to anyone.
Now that we have a president who defends democracy again, I've got no beef with President Biden taking the title back. But he's the challenger, and it's Zelenskyy's to lose.
Dr Brin:
It is a cult hate far deeper than mere racism.
I won't argue against that. But your tendency to insist that it is all about hatred of nerds overlooks the strong element of racism that is a part of the type of conservatism that has morphed into Trumpism. Not simply hatred of "inferior" races, but a sense of entitlement for their own master race. Part of the rage that comes from that side of the aisle seems to be a sort of outrage that white Christian men aren't getting the deference which is their birthright.
When Pat Buchannan illustrated his white supremacist values by saying that it takes more intelligence to put a man on the moon than to put a bone in your nose, he wasn't disparaging nerds or science. He was disparaging black people.
Acidification works just fine for the same reason that 'travelling north' works fine for any trip started at the south pole.
It doesn't take much of a pH drop to change the chemistry needed by mollusks and every other critter that makes shells from calcium. We are seriously f#$%ing with the food chain in the oceans by lowering the pH and have no real clue what that would do to us long term... except cause changes. LOTS of people depend on seafood for their protein, fats, and a decent fraction of their calorie intake.
------
The analogy I like to use is getting people to imagine acidification of the air. It can be done and your lungs notice rather quickly. Just hang around a chemistry lab with beginner students learning to identify ions in solution. They often don't know how important the fume hood is.
Natural 'moons' seem to be comfy niches. Endosymbiosis, gut flora, parasites, pilot fish, scavengers, great oceanic food migrations, tectonic plates, planetary systems (eg ice-roofed ocean worlds), binary/trinary stars, clusters, etc. Seems odd because you'd think that the long-term stability offered by 'mother' entities would be preferable. It hints at the advantages of diversity, but I tend to see that almost as much as I do Hari Seldon reminders :)
Actually a giant.
You may recall the amusing little skit HM was involved with for her jubilee last year.
Was someone with 70 years of statesmanship behind her aware of who voiced Paddington for the Ukrainian release?
What do you think?
But, they’ve been casting about for a replacement Gipper for 35 yrs. Reaganism is the foundation of Trumpism.
KH ever see the TV series UPLOADED? A self-driving taxi is hacked to lock the passenger in and drive off a pier.
Really? Because I wrote a flash-fiction story* back in 1992 which had exactly that plot--except that it was a private car, the self-driving feature was activated because the guy was too drunk to drive, and his wife did it because he was a mean drunk. And he went over Sunset Cliffs. But other than that, exactly the same. :)
You may be the only one here, Dr. Brin, who might have seen it, too. It was published in "ComputerEdge" magazine (although it still may have been "The Byte Buyer" back then), that free local computer rag they distributed about San Diego, right next to "The Reader." I'm sure if you saw it, you've (thankfully) forgotten about it by now.
It's cool to see it finally was dramatized, even if it wasn't my story.
*YMMV on whether anyone would consider it an actual "story." What it lacked in characterization, plot, description and suspense, it made up for in the fact that someone actually bought it! :)
Dr. Brin:
The white right isn't only anti-semITic; they are also anti-semANtic. They're against words having meanings.
Part of their anti-semanticism is that they call themselves 'conservative', though they conserve neither life, liberty, property, custom, norms, morals, nor rule of law. Their name for themselves is a Big Lie.
"But your tendency to insist that it is all about hatred of nerds..."
Never, ever said that. I point to the things no one is talking about. TONS are talking about racism/sexism etc. And I OFTEN avow that's an ongoing American crime going back to 1619.
But the MAGAS deeply WANT Racism to be the core topic. Then a majority of them ("I don't FEEL racist!") who admire Clarence Thomas and have all sortsa racial heroes, can then shrug off all accusations as being from yammering PC bullies (and anecdotally those exist.
The war vs nerds is huge. It is pure. It is overwhelmingly blatant. Or it would be, if anyone dared to point it out.
I think like Locum, and shouldn’t put him down (except for fun. He’s having a tad fun at CB, isn’t he?)
Yet it’s from weakness. I think climate change will eventually Destroy The World as We Know It. Nuclear war can happen at any time. Every problem we solve merely causes further problems...
Internal whining.
But why whine at a blog? There’re only so many minutes in a day; rather than blog-whine, why not have those minutes utilized in helping widows and orphans, leading old ladies across the street?
Climbing trees to rescue stranded cats?... If things are as negative as loc presumes, why even own a computer?
overlooks the strong element of racism that is a part of the type of conservatism that has morphed into Trumpism
Google searches for racist jokes (out of all searches) turned out to have the strongest correlation with votes for Trump in your 2016 election.
It's safe to say that racism is alive and well in the American further-right wing.
...whining derives from self-pity:
‘I’m going to die someday, and the world should die with me’.
Which is why eschatology is comforting to countless of the religious: they are in decline—but so is the world.
No only do cynics believe that nothing changes, they come to believe that nothing *should* change.
As Alex Steffen puts it: "Cynicism is obedience"
My corollary being: "Master has given me a new hand!"
Self Driving Cars
At first though the problem with "accidents" seems a biggy
But today who "pays" for an accident? - its the insurance companies
Where its legal in the USA Tesla will provide insurance - it becomes the insurance company AND because the self driving cars are SAFER than human driven cars the other insurance companies will want part of the action
The human sabotage of a self drive car is just like somebody cutting the brake lines - only more difficult
...Death is the great equalizer,
and so is apocalypse.
scidata said...
Re: BARBIE phenomenon
Point taken, gregory byshenk, I may have been looking at different (earlier) numbers. Still, Americans are seeing BARBIE at 10X their weight in world population. Hollywood psychology is interesting, someone should write a book about it :)
But that "10X their weight" is more or less the norm for Hollywood films.
If you look at the 2023 Worldwide Box Office you will see that the domestic/international split is essentially the same for the three top-grossing films of the year. In fact, there is only one film in the top 10 (Fast X) with a US share of less that 25%, and two with a US share of over 50%.
The Barbie "phenomenon" may be centered on the USA (depending on how one defines the 'phenomenon'), but the film's box office is basically in line with the rest of big Hollywood films.
The AI sabotage of a self-driving car is when control is returned to the human operator when a collision is flagged as unavoidable.
I wonder what the logged events say in such circumstances.
Hi Tony
The "log" would show AI control - then handing off to the human
If you want it to show something else then you need to "hack" two different systems
@duncan, if the two different systems are made by the same manufacturer, who perhaps doesn't want to be sued?
... but that is, admittedly, an extreme case of paranoia.
Tony
"Doesn't want to be sued"
If that manufacturer is also the insurer - then he/it will be paying for the incident anyway!
Here (NZ) we have a superb system where we have a Government Corporation that is responsible for "making accident victims whole" - this means that if you are injured (even if its your own stupid fault) ACC will help you out
The flip side is "No Suing" - overall we think that keeping the lawyers out of it massively cuts the cost
Using OSH to go after companies that cause injury is much cheaper and much more effective than suing them
@Duncan Nice, although the reference I gave was referring to an 'interesting' quirk in Teslas (ie US). They did point out that the black box logs would make trying to place the blame on the driver by this method look ridiculous. Unless...
Actually, on sueing, I once saw a documentary outlining how a (US!) Veteran hospital realised that accepting blame for mishaps not only reduced costs (because relatives were more after closure than litigational revenge) it encouraged them to improve the faults in their processes, thereby reducing the number of incidents. Transparency 101. Sorry, the link is long gone. I suspect the initiative went the same way.
Tony Fisk:
The AI sabotage of a self-driving car is when control is returned to the human operator when a collision is flagged as unavoidable.
That seems like the worst case for the human occupant. The car gets you into a situation with no way out and then goes, "Ok, your turn to drive."
Have they abandoned the idea of completely self-driving cars with no human controls at all?
This is tangential, but I've often wondered what those cars that can parallel park by themselves do when presented with a situation where getting the car into the space is physically impossible. Do they stop trying, or is it like "Compute to the last digit, the value of pi?"
Re: BARBIE
Its US box office is at least 3X OPPENHEIMER last I saw.
It stars an Australian as Barbie (Margot Robbie) and a Canadian as Ken (Ryan Gosling), which should have balanced box office a bit.
The word 'phenomenon' isn't mine, it's widely used to describe BARBIE ($2.3T).
Re: A.I.
That Yejin Choi talk I referenced above has some staggering examples of A.I.'s utter lack of common sense.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/11/1193176704/the-not-so-intelligent-side-of-artificial-intelligence
$2.3B not trillion (yet)
Huh, now I can only find $1.3B for BARBIE.
scidata:
Re: BARBIE
Its US box office is at least 3X OPPENHEIMER last I saw.
I haven't seen either one yet--waiting for the crowds to abate--but I suspect that Oppenheimer isn't the kind of film that people go back to see for repeated viewings, and that Barbie is.
Larry Hart said...
"Have they abandoned the idea of completely self-driving cars with no human controls at all?"
I don't know about the "no human controls at all" part, but no, they haven't given up on completely self-driving cars. At present there is only one company that seems to be getting close to that goal, Tesla. Their system is not yet capable of operating in all conditions, but in the conditions it is capable of operating in it is already much better than human drivers, by the metric of mishaps per mile.
No doubt there will be a period of adjustment, but IMO who to blame for an accident when a self driving vehicle is involved is not a big problem. Once self driving systems become significantly better than human drivers there is 0 good arguments left for not allowing them. And that will happen, within 10 years, perhaps less. Could be within a year.
Darrell E:
"Have they abandoned the idea of completely self-driving cars with no human controls at all?"
I don't know about the "no human controls at all" part, but no, they haven't given up on completely self-driving cars.
Two different things. I was specifically asking about the notion of self-driving cars that are incapable of being operated from inside the vehicle at all. It seemed to be the direction the industry was touting a while back, but then I keep hearing about the conditions under which the human driver needs to be alert when control is returned to him.
@Dr. Brin: re: "Upload"
Yes, indeed. My wife and I both enjoy the program- Season 3 is coming out on 10/20.
She and I were discussing "auto-mobiles" and I suggested it might be time for a re-boot of CHRISTINE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_(1983_film)).
"Christine" could be a "Cruismo" self-driving car with a mind of her own- a DEADLY mind....
Do you have a suggestion how regular citizens might be able to access the data collected from these vehicles as part of reciprocal transparency?
Re: Fully self-driving cars. I contracted recently for an ADAS (advanced driver-assistance system) company. From my understanding, it was felt that *Level 5 (fully autonomous driving) was a fair ways away. At the same time, my experience here in San Francisco encountering an "auto-mobile" as a close-by pedestrian (I tried to see how it would react to me moving about.) seemed to show potential...
I also wonder how soon this will start to cause significantly increased unemployment in the transportation sector (for drivers), how that will be handled, and who will pay for it.
*synopsys.com/automotive/autonomous-driving-levels.html#:~:text=Level%205%20cars%20won't,available%20to%20the%20general%20public.
The reason you keep hearing about conditions under which the human driver needs to be alert when control is returned to them is because currently there are no self driving systems* that are allowed to be operated as fully autonomous. All systems currently require, both legally and per the manufacturer, to have a human at the controls all the time, ready to take over. The technology is not ready yet for fully autonomous driving.
* An exception, sort of, there is a couple of companies that have fully autonomous taxi vehicles, but they are limited to very small downtown sections of a few cities and a small number of specific routes. More like a train than a self driving car. These systems rely on special super accurate mapping of the route, which the car follows like a virtual rail. By reports these companies aren't doing very well, performance-wise or business-wise. The basic design of these systems is limited compared to systems that "learn" how to drive similar to a human, which once they learn how to drive can drive anywhere.
Darrell E:
systems that "learn" how to drive similar to a human, which once they learn how to drive can drive anywhere.
This isn't a criticism or a "gotcha" question--I'd really like to know.
What is the industry-standard procedure for directing a self-driving car or taxi? Is it just a matter of giving the car the destination, and it takes over from there? Or can you tell it to take the scenic route, or to avoid the construction zones on I-90 and I-294 even though taking I-80 over to I-57 is a bit out of the way?
Larry Hart,
From what I've seen and understand if it can be said that there is an industry standard it is that you create a virtual path for the vehicle to follow either by hyper accurate mapping or sensors along the route, and then add obstacle avoidance capability. Most outfits pursuing self-driving capability are doing something similar to that. This method involves preparing the area the vehicle operates in, doing the specialized mapping and or installing the sensors along the roadways. The obstacle avoidance systems need to be programmed, and any outfit that wants to meet with any success uses self learning software to do this. That requires lots of data for training the software.
There is one outfit that does things a bit differently. There approach is to train their system to drive similar to how a human learns to drive so that it's driving capabilities are generally applicable, like a humans are. Meaning that it doesn't need a virtual rail to follow, doesn't require specialized super accurate mapping or sensors along the roadway. It can operate anywhere humans can. The system uses Google maps for directions just like a human does, but it doesn't use the maps to drive.
Among critics, expert and non-expert alike, many think this sort of system is great while many others think it's horrible. But I've yet to see any other system make the steady progress this one has and I don't know of any other system that can do what this one currently can. It's Tesla, of course. They have a bad rap, perhaps deservedly, because they named their system "Full Self Driving" long before it was actually capable of that. Still isn't capable of full autonomy actually. But despite the rightness or wrongness of that, their FSD is way, way ahead of anyone else that I'm aware of. And despite what someone said up above they are still making progress and have just recently brought on line a new supercomputer to further improve the training for their FSD software. Data is the key and they have an order of magnitude, or greater, more data than anyone else.
They have a bad rap, perhaps deservedly, because they named their system "Full Self Driving" long before it was actually capable of that.
Look at the problems we have with "flushable" wipes clogging our sewer systems. For that matter, tampons were still being labelled "flushable" (with fine print qualifications) long after they were a serious problem clogging pipes. (I used to work in building maintenance. And got flooded out of my office when a colleague put a tampon down the toilet on the floor above.Spoiler warning: the flood wasn't pure water.)
We already know people don't read fine print or instructions. Labelling a system controlling thousands of kg of high-velocity mass "Full Self Driving" when it isn't is verging on reckless endangerment. (I know people with Teslas who believe that "Full Self Driving" means they can work on their laptop while the car drives, because they think Tesla wouldn't be allowed to call it that unless it really was capable of full self-driving. In one case, it's the whole reason he bought a Tesla.)
What do Climate Change & Trumpism have in common?
They are near identical Chicken_Little-isms, Fin de Siècle syndromes and the End_of_Times prophecies, redressed & rehashed in 21st Century costume, like Nineveh's Fate, Y2K, Red Scares 1&2, COVID-19 & the Ukraine Conflict.
They are Religious Manias which insist that WE'RE ALL DOOMED by some EXISTENTIAL THREAT du jour wherein OUR ONLY PATH TO SALVATION is to grovel before the almighty nerd, self-abase before authority, cover ourselves in sack cloth & ashes, abstain from sexism, racism & disobedience, give up fossil fuels and REPENT of all our so-called sins & foibles.
This a type of pseudo-religious claptrap that we're no longer buying, probably due to the well-documented decline in Western Religiosity, made even more deliciously ironic by the subsequent collapse of a faithlessly manipulative secularism, leaving us with little reason to ever obey (let alone 'trust') our ruling classes again.
Best
_____
It's incredibly amusing how those who assume that self-driving cars & other AI automatons have some sort of (natural; inalienable; god-given) right-to-exist most often attempt to deny the same rights to other human beings.
I therefore suggest a technique I've seen used to great effect in San Francisco. It's called 'Coning' and it's coming to a city near you:
https://sfstandard.com/2023/07/07/we-spoke-to-one-of-the-activists-coning-cruise-and-waymo-robotaxis-in-san-francisco/
@Darrell E,
At the risk of appearing to be sealioning, I read your post above, but still don't know what I was looking for. When I get in my self-driving car (let's say it's a Tesla with years of learning experience), do I just get to say "Take me to my daughter's apartment in Champaign" and the car decides the rest? Or do I get to specify a particular--possibly alternate--route of my own?
Also, I wasn't thinking of this before, but what if I spot a pizza joint along the way and decide I'd like to stop for food? I assume there is a way to abort the mission prematurely, as it were?
Alan,
If things are as negative as loc presumes, why even own a computer?
Because there is comfort in Knowing A Truth.
Because there is schadenfreude in sharing it with those who don't.
I like Tony's explanation too. Master has indeed given LR a new hand.
duncan,
overall we think that keeping the lawyers out of it massively cuts the cost
I have to agree.
I like the solution y'all have, but I don't trust my political opponents to do it right here. Making them whole IS the right idea, but we will mix it with "freeloaders don't deserve our help".
I've had two distinct opportunities to sue others over business issues… and chose not to enrich the lawyers. It was smarter to take the financial loss and reputation hit. Turns out I was able to mitigate the latter without a huge expense.
Larry Hart,
Apologies if I seem to be giving you non-answers, it's not intentional. I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for.
As far as I know the intent for mature fully autonomous driving systems is that they would be capable of all of the things you mention and more. Get in and say, "take me to my daughter's house," and it would decide the best route, much like Google maps does with directions, and start driving. Tell it you want to take a specific route or make your own route up, similar to how you can with Google maps, and it does that. While in route ask it for nearby restaurants, pick one and tell it to take you there, and it will. Yes, that's the sort of ease of use that everyone working on self-driving hopes to eventually achieve.
Really, I think that is the easy part. Most if not all of what is necessary for that sort of flexibility already exists, for example things like Google Maps, Google Assistant, Alexa, etc.. The hard part that hasn't been licked yet is the actual driving.
Larry,
…Oppenheimer isn't the kind of film that people go back to see for repeated viewings, and that Margot Robbie is.
There. I fixed that for you. 8)
In all seriousness, I want to go see Oppenheimer again. I don't think my wife will go for a second time, but the dialog was fast and I know I missed parts of it.
mcsandberg,
…I think they've hit the end of what neural nets can do.
Heh. I don't. I suspect it is a truly difficult problem and they've decided to shut up about it to avoid bad press. With their former mouthpiece busy making life interesting in the social media industry, they can get away with that while they work.
They won't be shelving this project. It's worth VAST sums of money if they pull it off.
Larry,
If you are inclined to bet any money on a future industry model for self-driving cars, think "chauffeur".
Of course they'll let you change your plan along the way. They'll even recommend places to stop and shop because there is advertising revenue to be made by those from whom you are buying AI services.
The chauffeur will only partially be in the car. Just enough for it to function while you are offline, but otherwise it will be best for it to connect to the parent AI.
Poor jibbering L can only see in a 2D sepia mirror. Everything he just said is true... about his cult.
"I know you are, but what am I?"
-- PeeWee RIP
Snork
If Loc is worried about the future,
we can’t do anything about it—we don’t know him; we don’t know what his name is.
He is too humble!
“Bigotry is the disease of ignorance,
of morbid minds”
Darrel E:
Apologies if I seem to be giving you non-answers, it's not intentional. I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for.
No, your latest post pretty much answered what I was looking for, which in a nutshell is "How much flexibility does the human occupant have?" That and another question you already answered about the financial responsibility for accidents.
I'm not opposed to the concept, but am prone to err very much on the side of caution.
I also hope that the kind that learns to drive the way humans do aren't completely dependent on Google Maps and GPS as single points of failure. After all, (some) humans are able to drive to their destinations without those things.
Alfred Differ:
There. I fixed that for you. 8)
Heh.
Again, I haven't yet seen either picture, I was thinking more that Oppenheimer would have its moments that are worth seeing once, but difficult to sit through again, especially just a short time later. Whereas Barbie would be more of a lighthearted romp that would be fun to keep going back to catch all of the hidden Easter Eggs.
And the hot chicks, of course.
How lucky (for viewers, anyway) that those two made it just under the wire of the writers' and actors' strike.
Dr Brin:
"I know you are, but what am I?"
I've been retorting that way to Republicans accusing liberals/Democrats of doing what we're not doing but they are for at least a decade now.
duncan cairncross:
Here (NZ) we have a superb system where we have a Government Corporation that is responsible for "making accident victims whole" - this means that if you are injured (even if its your own stupid fault) ACC will help you out
The flip side is "No Suing" - overall we think that keeping the lawyers out of it massively cuts the cost
That sounds right to me. It's society's job to promote justice in the form of making victims whole. Perhaps society is allowed to go after the responsible parties for restitution, but that's a separate transaction. It shouldn't be up to individual victims to find someone with deep enough pockets to blame and go after them.
Larry,
BARBIE was lighthearted only relative to OPPENHEIMER. Both movies had complex messages and serious undertones. The first had way more Easter Eggs, though. 8)
...and yes. I know one of the strikes hampered the publicity machine for BARBIE, but a lot of the advertising and events occurred early and proved to be enough.
If you are going to see BARBIE in theaters, I recommend not waiting for the crowd to die down. Part of the experience IS the crowd response to some of the lines. I went on the second weekend and many in the audience were dressed in pink.
Alfred Differ:
BARBIE was lighthearted only relative to OPPENHEIMER.
I didn't mean it was message-free. I just expected that it is more fun and less heavy than Oppenheimer, therefore more conducive to seeing multiple times.
I went on the second weekend and many in the audience were dressed in pink.
Heh. When my daughter was 10, I had to attend the Hannah Montana movie with her because my wife passed that one off to me*. The amount of audience cosplay was...educational.
* In general, I don't have a problem with attending kids' movies. I once took my daughter and her two cousins to see Gnomeo and Juliet because none of the other adults were willing.
@ Everybody: thank you for all the discussion re: "auto-mobiles".
I would appreciate further discussion on what these will mean for unemployed drivers:
The US Census states that there are more than 3.5 million truck drivers in the U.S., making driving one of the most popular occupations in the United States.
Today, there are approximately one million Uber drivers in the US providing rides and mobility to customers.
How many Lyft drivers in the USA? It has been claimed that there are 700,000 Lyft drivers in the United States and 1.5 million around the world. CNet cites a report of 1.4 million Lyft drivers in the US.
The Taxi drivers workforce in 2020 was 282,910 people (16.1% women and 83.9% men). This implies an average annual growth of 19% between 2018 (237,716) and 2020 (282,910).
There are over 175,855 bus drivers currently employed in the United States. 48.9% of all bus drivers are women, while 51.1% are men. The average bus driver age is 57 years old.
I'll be simplistic here:
Let's assume tech unemployment starts in 7 years, the number of drivers remain constant, and that unemployment is constant at 10% of the total annually. (Faulty assumptions, but the best I can do at this point.) Starting in 2030, an additional 600,000 people/yr will become unemployed. What will they do for money, will they be trained, who will retrain them, who will pay for the retaining, who will hire them, and will they make anything like what they were making before?
What will they do for money, will they be trained, who will retrain them, who will pay for the retaining, who will hire them, and will they make anything like what they were making before?
What has happened to people whose jobs were taken by technology in previous cases? Do they typically retrain and continue at the same standard of living with a different occupation? Or are the new jobs created by new technology filled by other people, with the original workers never recovering?
Keith, I've long wondered why future folk would go to the trouble of defrosting and fixing some past bazillionaire who had himself frozen. Because of their bank accounts? Please. In this case the buyer will have all the power and you had better have something to sell that they want.
One scenario... drivers. No organic humans will EVER again be as skilled as we adults are, today. So what if robo cars become untrustworthy? Okay that's TWO majore whatifs in parallel. But combine them and maybe you might get woken out of corpsicle state, after all/
Keith,
If you know anyone who can make decent predictions about which forms of labor will be highly prized in 2030, I'd like to know them. I'd like to move my investments.
We can sometimes tell which jobs are likely to decline in terms of demand, but it is much more difficult to predict the flip side even though we KNOW something will pop up.
It's not so much that lots of people will suddenly become unemployed. What appears first is less demand for them. This hampers their ability to demand a decent price for what they do. THAT will drive out people who are barely making it in the first place. THAT will appear as buy-outs and mergers.
I don't know where they'll go, but what I suspect is they'll cling to what they have for awhile... and then go where the money is.
As long as they are willing to relocate (truckers are more mobile than most of us) they should have a few options. What they'll probably do is what humans usually do. Imagine pouring a bucket of water on the ground. The water goes everywhere.
Hi Alfred
My "hope" is that paid drivers are a large enough section of the population that it will make the case for a sensible Universal Basic Income (UBI)
“Which forms of labor will be highly prized in 2030”
For starters, sanitation workers. If garbagemen were to strike en masse, we’d have new mountain ranges—
of trash.
“Which forms of labor will be highly prized in 2030”
Making the "assumption" that expert systems will continue to get better - THEN the vast majority of "White Collar" workers will be easily replaceable
"Blue Collar" - physical work in the real world - will NOT be replaceable in that time frame - possibly by 2050 -
Garbagemen have already been 90% replaced - and automating the trucks that pick up our bins will NOT be difficult
Duncan
"Garbagemen have already been 90% replaced" - what makes you think that?
"Garbagemen have already been 90% replaced" - what makes you think that?
Because around here the garbage trucks pick up the bins and empty them into the trucks - we still have a (one) driver to drive the trucks but everything else is done by the machines
There used to be guys who emptied the bins into the trucks
90% is encouraging; it is quite acceptable.
While not wishing to bind the mouthes of automation sales folk, for the economy as a whole, finding productive ways of getting more income into the hands of more people would do more long term good. Concentrating on mostly automating and cash extraction sounds to me like a farmer who won't bother to manure the fields.
@TimH one of the plusses of renewables over extraction is a greater number of jobs. Skilled jobs.
@Tony Fisk Agreed, a positive step.
Well done India!
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-asia-india-66576580
Successfully avoids "Lithobraking".
Keith,
Another factor to add to the calculus is how many vehicular accident deaths would be avoided by changing to autonomous vehicles? Of course that can only be modeled and can't be answered definitively yet, but there is some data that indicates it could be a lot. The suggestive data comes from "enhanced cruise control" systems from several companies and Tesla's beta FSD releases. Traffic fatalities in the US are over 40,000 annually. If that number could be significantly reduced, would that be worth losing all those jobs? How to weigh these things?
In a sense I don't think it really matters. This technology is coming no matter what we may argue. It could be that the technology never really meets its hoped for capabilities, and or that society never really accepts it and it fades away. But at this point I seriously doubt that. The technology will pan out, and it will become ubiquitous.
Those Uber and Lyft drivers? Maybe even truck drivers? They'll simply buy automated vehicles and spend their day doing other things while the vehicle makes them money.
Re: Chandrayaan-3
Went to WaPo first because "Democracy dies in Darkness".
The forced ads and paywalls drove me away.
@ Dr.Brin:
Thanks. "Cryospension" seems SO Twen-Cen, though the companies still seem to be around.... On a related "We were promised jetpacks" front: still no human hibernation/suspended animation, though I have read of research into torpor- presumably induced with long meetings/hearings (https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Bradford_2013_PhI_Torpor.pdf).
@Alfred:
Thanks to you, too. As a recruiter, I often consider and discus the issue of tech (and other)-induced un(der)employment. Yesterday on LinkedIn I was commenting that if your wok CAN be "tran-sourced"- no-sourced (eliminated as unnecessary to do), through-sourced (automated) or out-sourced (sent away for someone else to do at lower cost)- sooner or later it WILL be. However, there is some stickiness to this because managers and above typically have their statuses and roles linked to how many onsite people they have reporting to them and anything which threatens/appears to threaten this will be resisted; e.g. the increasing number of "return to onsite work or else" mandates for previously successful and productive remote workers. Based on this (and seeing current trends), skilled trades should be much in demand because they can't be tran-sourced. What will other in-demand jobs be then? I have little idea. Finally, IMSM: OGH had a list of 2038 jobs (and their pay) in "Earth".
@Darrell. Thanks, too. I am in favor of "auto-mobiles" and believe they will eventually reduce traffic deaths and injuries.
At the same time, I am concerned about unintended/unplanned consequences:
1) Unemployment (mentioned above)
2) Loss of tax revenue (as a side effect of 1)
3) Further gutting of mass transit
4) Security risks/terrorism potential (through hacking)
5) Surveillance/privacy concerns (Who will own/have access to the data collected and how will it be integrated/aggregated/used?)
6) The unknown: will manual driving eventually be largely prohibited, and if so, how will people react to that?
Keith Halperin 7:52:
During my grad school days, I discovered an effect that I call the "Boredome", namely the spooky ability of a single lecturer to put a whole room to sleep just by talking to them. During one such lecture, amidst my struggle to retain consciousness, I looked to my right, and I saw a whole line of fellow sufferers all nodding off in synchrony!
Amazing! Since then I have detected the Boredome in written form, in bureaucratic forms, educational essays, sermons, philosophy, and military-speak. Two questions arise: why does this happen? And how does this happen? The 'why' is fairly obvious: it's to defend the speaker from critique. The 'how' remains a mystery to me.
Can this power be used for good? As a sleep aid, or an anesthetic? To induce hybernation for space travelers? Will it find military applications?
And can we reverse the effect, to talk to people in ways that wake them up?
Thanks, Paradoctor.
I'll call it the "Colin Robinson Effect"(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-Eldr7aV74&ab_channel=FXNetworks)...
"And can we reverse the effect, to talk to people in ways that wake them up?"
Don't know about rhetoric, but in classical music at least one composer used to end his symphonies loudly in order to wake up his debauched upper-class audience.
Pappenheimer
UBI funded by a "robot tax" appears to be a sensible way to alleviate tech unemployment, so it will not be introduced in the US for at least a generation after it becomes advisable. And it's becoming advisable now. My father's generation will have to become ex-parrots first, and they have excellent health care.
Pappenheimer
There used to be guys who emptied the bins into the trucks
One guy per truck, everywhere that I've lived, going back to the 60s. One driver, one chucker. So that's only 50% automated, not 90%.
Around here, you don't have to use a garbage can, and can leave out large items like sofa cushions, a toilet tank/bowl (separated), and so forth, and the chucker (we still have them) manages just fine. If your item is too heavy they tag it, or get the driver to help load (I've seen both — they typically go the extra kilometre for the old widow). Yard waste in large brown paper bags or tied in bundles, or in a garbage can suitably labelled (or obvious).
My friends in Toronto, where they do have the automated lifters, say it is a lot worse. Large items only infrequently, often trash dumped in the street when the arm loses its grip, and so forth.
While not wishing to bind the mouthes of automation sales folk, for the economy as a whole, finding productive ways of getting more income into the hands of more people would do more long term good. Concentrating on mostly automating and cash extraction sounds to me like a farmer who won't bother to manure the fields.
Tragedy of the commons kinda thing. I I automate and extract cash and you don't, I get ahead. If everyone does it, we have no customers who can afford our products/services.
Seeing the customer as part of the system rather than an essentially limitless resource is uncommon, at least in the business classes/books I've taken/read. We need more systems/ecological thinking in business.
Traffic fatalities in the US are over 40,000 annually. If that number could be significantly reduced, would that be worth losing all those jobs? How to weigh these things?
Considering that a good chunk of the American population couldn't be bothered to wear is simple mask for a few minutes to prevent over a million Covid deaths in three years, or won't consider common-sense measures to reduce 38,000 firearm deaths per year, do anything to reduce the several-time-higher-than-poorer-countries rate of infant and maternal mortality, I know which way I'd bet on a large chunk of the population going.
Those Uber and Lyft drivers? Maybe even truck drivers? They'll simply buy automated vehicles and spend their day doing other things while the vehicle makes them money.
That sounds awfully like what I heard about CNC machines back when they were coming in. That workers would buy a machine and have it work for them in the factory, rather than doing the work themselves, and live off the wages the machine got…
Uber/Lyft and their ilk succeed by externalizing many costs (and in the case of Uber, actively breaking laws). Ditto for AirBnB, which was supposedly about renting out a room or your house while you were away, and because a platform to facilitate ghost hotel suites that externalize wear-and-tear costs (not to mention enforcement of bylaws) on neighbours.
Remember when selling through Amazon was great for small businesses, because they got the benefits of a large platform without the overhead? Then when they got successful enough, Amazon (which of course has all the data) would release an identical product for cheaper as Amazon Basics (because they had the financial clout to negotiate better deals with manufacturers, and the market data to fine-tune the prices for best profits).
Which is a long-winded way of saying I don't believe it.
if your wok CAN be "tran-sourced"- no-sourced (eliminated as unnecessary to do), through-sourced (automated) or out-sourced (sent away for someone else to do at lower cost)- sooner or later it WILL be
My wok is safe, then. My stir-fry could be done by someone else for less, but only if I ignore transportation costs. :-)
Paradoctor:
Can this power be used for good? As a sleep aid, or an anesthetic?
It does already. And the speech doesn't even have to be boring. When I'm having trouble napping, it helps to have a radio program going, even (or especially) one I am actually interested in listening to. Just the fact that it keeps going seems to have a lulling effect.
To induce hybernation for space travelers?
Probably a bridge too far there.
Will it find military applications?
At least as much as the joke that made all those Nazi snipers fall out of trees laughing to death.
Pappenheimer:
Don't know about rhetoric, but in classical music at least one composer used to end his symphonies loudly in order to wake up his debauched upper-class audience.
Is that possible to do politically? Wake up our debauched upper-class audience?
Robert:
Seeing the customer as part of the system rather than an essentially limitless resource is uncommon, at least in the business classes/books I've taken/read. We need more systems/ecological thinking in business.
Wasn't that Henry Ford's justification for paying his line workers enough so that they could afford to buy his cars?
Or is that just apocryphal ?
Paradoc: nice re “boredome’… keep us posted!
Zzzzzz
KDH: We had a study evaluationg the current state of human ‘torpor’ at NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program – (NIAC) – concluding the current state is almost nil/. Alas.
We have lifter garbage trucks and the system works almost perfectly for trash, recycling and yard/foliage waste bins (FIVE of the latter), with only an occasional glitch. We all know that large items are our personal responsibility, to take them to the dump ourselves or hire a service. And this motivates some thought to whether the item can be re-used or recycled.
UBI has its attractions and I expect some form of it, as in Heinlein’s BEYOND THIS HORIZON. But there are alternatives. In Vonnegut’s PLAYER PIANO, men are hired by the “Recks and Reeks” – bureau of Reclamation of Reconstruction, a direct extrapolation of FDR’s CCC, where they work hard on infrastructure/environment, but Kut V portrays it as make-work while automation (run on tape drives in this ~1960 novel) takes all the jobs of commercial value.
In this world we’ve done a lot with option #3… new kinds of service jobs in which millions of folks feel they are commercially employed doing things that other folks value… that contribute no net effects. When I was a kid there were NO nail salons that I know of, or Wax Centers or aroma therapy or…. Now they employ millions who have some self-respect.
Possibility #4 is to take 50% of the wealth from the uber lords and turn it into stock shares given to everyone. A mild ‘revolution’ that simply reverses the Great Post-Reagan Supply Side and Cayman Concealment ripoff.
You have to hand it to the Russians, always thinking up newer and more complicated ways of "committing suicide".
https://www.businessinsider.com/wagner-group-yevgeny-prigozhin-russian-plane-crash-state-media-2023-8
Wagner boss and failed coup leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a plane that crashed in Russia, killing everyone on board, state media reports.
Far more dramatic then merely falling out of a 10 story window.
Looks like the Wagner Group will have to hire anew CEO.
For those who imagine a future of fairy dust & unicorn farts, I'll offer up a real life example of what that the self-driving vehicle will bring:
After its completion in 1995, the Las Vegas Monorail was perhaps the most modern & efficient public transportation system ever conceived, as it was designed to connect its international airport to its major hotels, streamline tourist traffic & eliminate automobile use throughout the greater Las Vegas area.
With stars in its eyes, the city planning commission ignored the objections of the local taxi unions & many independent businesses, until the sabotage, death threats & fatalities began in earnest, rendering the monorail's completed sections as mostly useless curiosities.
The monorail track between the Tourist Area & the Las Vegas Airport was never & will never be operational, by unanimous unofficial agreement, forcing every tourist to take a very expensive taxi ride to & from the Strip, increasing automobile dependency towards near total gridlock.
That, my friends, is the future of self-driving vehicles, and its already started in San Francisco, made even more likely by California's extremely enlightened decision to decriminalise most property crimes from vandalism to shoplifting.
Dr. Brin & his fellow utopians can pass all the laws they wish, only to find that the bulk of unwashed humanity will neither comply nor cooperate.
And, most emphatically, they will never welcome the utopian as a liberator.
Best
DP:
Looks like the Wagner Group will have to hire anew CEO.
I don't know who to root for.
But if I were one of the other nine people on that plane with Prigozhin, I think I would have found alternate transportation.
Isn't Prigozhin's fate an example of the sort of psychohistoric inevitability which was illustrated in Foundation and Empire by Emperor Cleon II and General Bel Riose?
@Larry Hart, now if the Russian Federation would put as much ingenuity into constructive and profitable things as they're willing to put into making smoking holes in the ground and other havoc, they might get somewhere.
Dr. Brin:
Since you asked...
Once I wrote a skiffy fairy tale for my young daughter, titled "Where the Nerdlings took Sogwa", starring Sogwa the Supercat. Chapter 4 went as follows:
***
Chapter Four. The Lecture Effect.
The Crystal Cuddle Ship boosted into space, and Sogwa watched as Earth dwindled to a bright blue dot in the black of the sky.
Then the Nerdlings said, “We promised to get you home before you left. To do this we must take a little detour. We must fly thirty thousand lightyears to the giant spinning black hole at the center of the galaxy, which we know how to use as a Time Machine.”
Sogwa said, “How long will this detour take?”
“Shipboard, only two hundred years. Don’t worry, we can help you nap that long.”
“What could possibly make somebody nap for two hundred years?”
The Nerdlings said, “Three things. We could give you a Yucky Potion. Or there’s Cold-sleep. Or the Lecture Effect.”
“How yucky is the potion?”
“Don’t worry, we cover up the worst of it with yummy mint flavoring.”
But Sogwa said, “I hate mint. What’s cold-sleep?”
“We pop you into the freezer, we freeze you solid, and we thaw you out later.”
“And how do people feel after being frozen solid and thawed out?”
“Oh, about as well as you’d expect.”
“Then no thank you,” said Sogwa.
The Nerdlings said, “Then we must use the Lecture Effect. Let us explain.”
They took Sogwa to a lecture hall, with blackboards and chalk and dust and stale air and square chairs and flickery lighting. Sogwa sat politely in her square chair as the Nerdlings gave her a lecture about the Application of the Lecture Effect to Galactic Space-Time Navigation. The lecture was very, very scientific. They spoke of Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. The Nerdlings explained Lorentz Contraction, Wave-Particle Duality and Curved Space-Time. Sogwa paid close attention; and although she didn’t quite get every single detail, she was sure it would all clear up, later.
But after awhile her eyelids grew heavy. Sogwa tried hard to keep them open, but finally she had to close them, just for a moment, just to rest them awhile. After resting her eyelids awhile, she opened them up with a jolt. Time had passed, and now the lecture was about String Theory and Supersymmetry and Gauge Invariance. The Nerdlings explained Gravito-Magnetism, Electro-Weak Unification and Chromodynamics. Again Sogwa’s eyelids grew heavy, and again she rested them, just for awhile.
And again she opened her eyes with a jolt, and again the lecture had moved on. Now it was about Non-Locality and Retroactivity and Quantum Computation. The Nerdlings explained Self-Determinism, Adeledicnander and Arglebargle Blah Blah Blah.
Sogwa closed her eyes once more, and she fell into a deep, deep sleep. She tumbled out of her square chair and she would have hit the floor, but the Nerdlings caught her, for they are faster than a speeding bullet.
The Nerdlings laid Sogwa on a mat, and plunked her and the mat into a bin, and trundled her bin down to the luggage compartment. And there Sogwa slept for two hundred years.
@Robert:
"...if your wok CAN be "tran-sourced"- no-sourced (eliminated as unnecessary to do), through-sourced (automated) or out-sourced (sent away for someone else to do at lower cost)- sooner or later it WILL be.."
Well-played, sir.
Death by typo!
@Dr. Brin: "In Vonnegut’s PLAYER PIANO, men are hired by the “Recks and Reeks” – bureau of Reclamation of Reconstruction, a direct extrapolation of FDR’s CCC, where they work hard on infrastructure/environment, but Kut V portrays it as make-work while automation (run on tape drives in this ~1960 novel) takes all the jobs of commercial value."
I'd thought of something similar much more recently: a suped-up Green New Deal/CCC where there's a national commitment toward best in-breed infrastructure, energy conservation/ maximum energy sustainability, climate change preparedness, environmental restoration, and things like putting a paid teacher's aide in every US classroom. This would be paid for by(?) and would offer work to anyone, with union-scale wages and full family health coverage. It would buy us some time (10-20 years?) to figure out what to do going forward. Otherwise, we'll likely have several million, un/underemployed young (and older) people who feel they have few prospects in life and aren't happy about it just about the time the *climate starts getting rather nasty. (This doesn't even consider the greatly expanded gray and black markets that will arise as more and more people join the precariat.)
Fascist-leaning Neo-Cyberpunk World: here we come! (But NOT necessarily...)
*unless that's already happening.
Possibility #4 is to take 50% of the wealth from the uber lords and turn it into stock shares given to everyone.
Mack Reynolds did that kind of thing with his idea of Inalienable Basic stock. Everyone had some, and you couldn't sell or give it away, so you always got the dividends. Wasn't much, but you could live on it.
People's Capitalism, totally not to be confused with the state-directed enterprises of the SovBloc.
Brain's Manna has replaced Vonnegut's Player Piano as my go-to example of dystopia via automation. Much more emphasis on de-skilling and "missing middle."
For a long time, human fragility has been touted as one of the great advantages of A.I. However, A.I.-specific pathologies are now beginning to appear. One is analogous to lack of diversity in biology, and is a real danger that lurks in the data lakes that A.I. swims and feeds in during its 'evolution'. This machine disease is called 'model collapse'. Where's Susan Calvin when you need her?
https://www.utoronto.ca/news/training-ai-machine-generated-text-could-lead-model-collapse-researchers-warn
Tried watching the Republican debate for awhile.
Too much lying about Biden, and not enough zingers from Chris Christie, which was all I wanted to see.
P.S.
Vivek Ramaswamy agrees with DP that the problem with America is that younger Americans lack purpose and meaning. He used those specific words.
But his prognosis is to remind us what it means to be an American: We believe in hard work, closing the southern border (where criminals enter every day), and supporting the police. Nothing about a universe created by God. In fact, given the drift he was taking, I was surprised that he didn't mention God or church at all. Or guns.
Still not enough Christie. The local news is coming on soon. Can't take more of the "debate" anyway.
scidata:
The weakening of reality-relevance of LLMs feeding off each other's output reminds me of Marx's Labor Theory of Value. It seems that it takes actual human brains doing actual mind-labor to produce valuable thought. So what is our secret? The programmers don't know, though they themselves are human.
To continue the Marxian metaphor: cybernetic capitalism exploits brains, and alienates them from the products of their labor. But since the robots have no minds of their own, they produce mindlessness, and consequent disorder. Therefore thinkers of the world, unite! Overthrow the tyranny of the mechanical! You have nothing to lose but your illusions.
Our gracious host has identified a Seldonian paradox within Marxism: namely, that when the owning class takes seriously Marx's predictions of mass immiseration and political unrest, then they institute semi-socialist reforms to negate those predictions; but when those measures work, then the owners forget the need for such insurance, they undermine those reforms, and Marx's predictions tend to become true.
Therefore to the owners, Marx is as true a prophet as he is false. That's a paradox worthy of frying any robot's circuits.
@LarryHart your description of the GOP nominee debate reminds me of this courtship dance by the young lads of the Wodaabe Fula people of Niger. (Twitter access required)
Paradoctor: That's a paradox worthy of frying any robot's circuits.
I was going to add a few thoughts about Asimov's "Runaround", but it seemed a bit of a stretch. Recursion, self-reference, feedback loops, and paradox (irony) are at the heart of computational psychohistory. They come naturally to us, but they are tough to implement in silicon, at least for me. And Marx sort of reminds me of...
The latest... credible since it is from ISW... is that the plane with Prigozhin and his top commanders was shot down by two S-300 missiles, controlled by the Muscovite Ministry of Defense. The parallel may be the Night of the Long Knives. (Look it up.)
https://www.iswresearch.org/search/label/Ukraine
Paradoctor is on a roll.
I'll be posting a blog showing what Adam Smith, Marx and Rand all had in common! And how they diverged...
Shows how careless many Russian bigwigs are. To trust the word of his superiors that he wouldn’t be killed, demonstrates blind gullibility on the part of a Prigozhin.
We don’t know what promises Putin and Belarus’ president gave him, yet we do know he was a chump—to think there was an alternative to hiding, that is to say, attempting to hide, somewhere.
Perhaps he could have lived a few months/years longer than he did.
Possibly he had a cavalier attitude towards his life; after all, he was a devil-may-care mercenary and ‘entrepreneur’.
**
At any rate, a Russian expert said that many members of the Russian oligarchy aren’t bright enough for the positions they occupy... he said they think like criminals, not geniuses. Which may be obvious, but maybe not. Could be many assume that Russians are much craftier than they are. Russia received a rep for being extremely clever during the Stalin era, constructing a Communist empire in Eurasia and elsewhere in merely a few yrs. You’ve known it for a long time, but most including me absorb reality slowly in trying to grasp it. I sed to think it was about giving Russia the benefit of the doubt—but it was from ignoring the signs.
People tend to want to think ‘all’ is basically well, even when the opposite is the case.
Keith,
However, there is some stickiness to this because…
Yes. Indeed. This is a big part of why Wall Street smiles upon companies that engage in periodic layoffs/downsizing, rightsizing, or whatever you want to call it. From the investor's perspective, an occasional 10% layoff competes with the urge to build internal empires that you describe. This could be good or bad depending on what internal initiatives get killed with each culling. There are also counter-forces like unionization (some formalize little fiefdoms and call it defending labor rights) and politically savvy little tyrants within companies (some are effective at ensuring someone else gets culled before their team does), so it all gets complicated.
I have little idea.
Heh. There are many ways in which I agree with OGH on political matters, but I haven't been inspired by his economic and financial predictions. I don't have enough money to play with the sharks in the 'shorting' game, and can just barely get into the version of it where option contracts get used. It's REALLY hard to play! With regular stocks, you only have to guess at the future value of your shares and then decide when to buy and sell. With options your guesses must also be calendar accurate or the contracts expire in a worthless state. Ugh.
OGH is pretty good at predicting things about what we SHOULD NOT DO, but I don't know how to bet them in terms of options. For example, he argued in the transparency book that cameras would be pretty much everywhere (and microphones by extension). Back then I thought that might mean little cameras. Even though I was aware of the digital concept of 'convergence', I expect things to converge on computers that looked a bit like laptops… not on cell phones. Betting his prediction well would have required I adopt a diverse portfolio of options, but there is little difference between that and sticking with broad index funds.
What I actually did is stick most of my money in broad index funds and kept a moderate fraction on semiconductor focused index funds. It doesn't really matter where the camera is IF one realizes they require chips, right? This technique works for me moderately well, but not with any wild options play.
Exactly what I've done with my money isn't the point of this, though. What I'm trying to say is that people who REALLY believe in the truth they know will put their money up… because why the hell not? It's a form of wagering that demonstrates what one TRULY believes.
return to onsite work or else
Heh^2. I'm actually betting some of my money AGAINST these fools. I can see it being necessary for some kinds of work, but all too often it indicates a management team that doesn't know how to be anything other that petty tyrants.
Paradoctor,
The 'why' is fairly obvious: it's to defend the speaker from critique.
Ha!
Yep. Couple that with dense verbal obfuscation and it explains most seminars I ever attended.
And can we reverse the effect, to talk to people in ways that wake them up?
Yes. I received a great gift from one professor before my oral examination. He what trying to help me not get all flustered when I was given just a few minutes to speak about my intended research topic and then got diverted onto things that had nothing to do with it and I knew nothing about. He wanted me to understand that they weren't interested in my topic, but WERE interested in how I tackled things I didn't know yet. They'd feed me hints and see how I could move up from ignorance.
What I heard, though, was a very different message. If they didn't really care about my topic, then I might as well start at the beginning. I might as well assume they knew nothing of it and lecture as if they were students. They'd stop me anyway, right?
Well… they didn't. Instead of a few minutes, I got a full hour and their questions started ON MY TOPIC. Needless to say I was feeling pretty confident half way through the exam and it showed. They were awake, interested, and thinking I was much more capable than I believed I was. Was I? No. I still had some growing up to do, but I grokked an important element of the game.
So yes. It can be reversed and knowing how to do it is REALLY useful.
Vivek is the worst candidate, Locum would make a better potus than he;
an animal on his ranch would, also.
Alan Brooks:
Vivek is the worst candidate,
The point of debates between Republicans seems to be a contest for who can be the worst candidate.
Locum would make a better potus than he;
Heh.
an animal on his ranch would, also.
This is the year for my cat to win the presidency. He even has an appropriate name: Hamilton.
Certainly the war on the administrative state is a war against civil servants.
Alfred Differ:
"return to onsite work or else"
Heh^2. I'm actually betting some of my money AGAINST these fools.
The articles I've seen about a push to return to the office reminds me of articles I saw in the 90s insisting that workers were tiring of casual dress and hungry to return to suits and ties. Much futile wishing on someone's part.
Those Uber and Lyft drivers? Maybe even truck drivers? They'll simply buy automated vehicles and spend their day doing other things while the vehicle makes them money.
The Uber/Lyft business model already features exploitative lending terms for purchase of vehicles, so no, I don't expect it to be simple.
Vivek already won
as worst candidate,
in any party.
Larry - "He even has an appropriate name: Hamilton."
Martha Washington gave the same name to her tomcat, apparently Hamilton was rather popular with the ladies.
Blogger Lorraine said...
"The Uber/Lyft business model already features exploitative lending terms for purchase of vehicles, so no, I don't expect it to be simple."
Nothing in real life is simple. The point is that when changes occur people adjust. It's happening all the time, continuously. Predicting what new patterns may emerge, at least with any specificity, has a long history of lousy success. That true for both positive and negative predictions.
I do think that the changes technological advancements will bring in the near future will present a unique challenge that human societies haven't faced before. Perhaps similar, but not nearly the same degree. It's already happening and the pace will accelerate. Before long, if we don't crash and burn, people will not be necessary to produce the things we need to survive or the luxuries to keep us comfortable. Or at least it will take very few people. What to do with all of those people that used to be doing all that work? Will we end up as some dystopian society like Niven & Pournelle's CoDominium, or Earth in the Expanse story-verse? Where the large percentage of humanity are worthless mouths living miserable lives on the dole and sucking up the majority of resources to maintain their miserable existence? Could be. Maybe this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.
But like I said. Negative predictions have just as bad a record of accuracy as positive ones. It's as likely as not that we go through a period of change and end up as something closer to a Star Trek society than a Mad Max society. No doubt there will be turmoil, injustices, hardships and all the rest, but those things are always present. Lately in our history we've strived to reduce those and made very real, very substantial progress. It's possible to continue doing that.
There are many possible positives as well. For example, people freed from most of the social and economic constraints humanity has endured for all of history to date, that result from the realities of what it takes to provide the basic necessities to stay alive. People much more free to do what they want to do. How many people these days make a living doing something that they love to do? Not many. The majority of people work to live, not live to work. Technological advancement may allow that to be switched around for the first time in human history. If we don't extinct ourselves first.
The Electoral-Vote.com site agrees with me that Chris Christie's performance was disappointing.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Aug24-1.html
...
That said, Christie can be a little grating. Meanwhile, his other selling point, namely his assertive self-confidence, was largely not on display last night. He was NOT on his game, and stumbled through several answers. In particular, he appeared to be positively shaken by a question about how New Jersey's credit rating was downgraded 11 times while he was in office. On the whole, he did not come off as presidential.
Alfred: "I haven't been inspired by his economic and financial predictions." Heh WHAT financial predictions? I stand ready to learn from my mistakes. In fact, investing is an area where I spend little time or energy, alas, say compared to futile attempts to get folks interested in my patents/inventions...
I paid no heed to the debate! distilled impressions, you guys? My one impression is that the whipping boy was the (surprised?) nerd castes.
Dr. Brin:
Tucker Carlson agrees with you that Trump's life may be in danger. Unlike you, he pre-emptively blames Trump's open political opponents rather than his shadowy financial backers. Also, you pray for Trump's Secret Service protection, but Carlson prepares to take advantage.
I would advise Trump not to flee to Russia, where he would indeed never be seen or heard from again. Prigogyn's demise proves that Polonium Putin isn't even trying to fool anyone.
One of them handed me
a leaflet: the last item read,
“the death penalty is mandatory.”
Darrell E:
We already know what the system will do about all those useless mouths. It'll continue to price reproduction out of the market. There's a baby bust worldwide; this will likely continue until world population falls to below the Georgia Guidestones' recommended 500,000,000. That's 1/16th peak population; worse than decimation.
China will have huge trouble trying to convince their underemployed young-ones to breed above replacement. Japan will lean heavily upon robots. America has a cheat code: immigration. Ethiopia and India are behind on the baby-bust curve, so they'll make a fortune on their most valuable export: people.
America's white right will object to such an import, but the color that rules the world isn't white, or black, or tan, or red, or blue. The color that rules the world is the Long Green.
Well, I guess we have it all figured out already, there's your answer.
Want to bet on it?
Vivek already won
as worst candidate,
in any party.
Worse than Trump? That's mindblowing. In a bad way.
David: Ha! I was covering my bases since some of your predictions DO work out. It's the ones that involve possible money choices where I'm skeptical (no one is going to nuke Switzerland for what they've done), but many of your broader social predictions do seem to work themselves out.
IF you could get the dates right, though, I'd be a rich man. 8)
———
I actually did ponder one of your patents* and study whether I could think of a way to make money assuming you'd license it. I thought about it for a few months and then let it go because I couldn't figure out how I'd get investors interested in the market segment I had in mind. You said much the same thing back when I shifted from lurker to active participant around here.
I was looking at your gisting idea as a discovery tool for a parameter set that could be used to tweak experiences that overwhelm autistic kids. Social settings are where we neurotypicals burn a LOT of calories inside our skulls. Easing that load can be done in many ways ranging from noise cancellation (my son's fav) to something requiring the kind of stuff in that patent. Instead of narrowing in on a parameter set that enabled us to drink from the firehose like we do at parties, I was looking at a variety sets and how they might be 'trained' by learning from their owners.
The underlying problem is that most autistic kids** don't have parents who can afford new gadgets and apps for their kids. There are a LOT of possible kids needing help, but little money gets spent on it that doesn't pass through schools and other state agencies. Selling stuff to government is very, very different to selling things to people. Look at the prices of many of the existing help tools and it's obvious no manufacturer expects parents are buying them directly.
I suspect your ideas ARE going to appear as our tech and apps advance, but I don't know WHEN so I don't know how to make the investment bet.
———
* Gosh. It's been almost 20 years.
** Neurodivergent customers were my primary thought, but there are a lot of other people who just need relief from the brain sweating they must perform in complex settings. My sister and I retreat to a dark, silent room now and then at family events. We need a break!
Robert,
There are WAY worse people in the world than Trump. He's terrible, but he's not smart about it... and we know what we are supposed to do about would-be petty tyrants.
Larry,
Chris Christie's performance was disappointing.
Chris Christie IS disappointing. He's not savvy enough to be on the front stage.
Much futile wishing on someone's part.
Yep. Pensions in America's older industries were supported by similar wishes. Global markets changed everything.
David,
Regarding nail salons and their like "that contribute no net effects" I have to point out that they don't sell "things". They sell experiences and those have net effects.
There is a ladder to these things.
Raw commodity... Goods... Services... Experiences.
Many people think of the US as a mostly service economy, but we are closer to being an experience economy. No one buys expensive gourmet burgers because the quality justifies the price multiplier... let alone because they are hungry. They buy them for the experience of eating them. Same goes for science fiction novels and live music. Quality experiences fetch high prices.
Alan Brooks:
One of them handed me a leaflet: the last item read,
“the death penalty is mandatory.”
Did I miss the context for this? "One of" who, and "mandatory" for what?
Alfred: We’ll see if someday world folk get fed up with bank secrecy havens.
My main patents expire next year. In theory, I own Augmented Reality! Hundreds of companies would be affected, if I could interest anyone in an enforcement project. Gisting was one small part of the thing, which I never managed to get anyone interested-in… all stuff that NOW is being ‘discovered’ by scores of ‘innovators’.
Another of my projects appears to be getting slightly more traction… I am working with a small startup on developing methods to do MICROPAYMENTS. All previous efforts failed because all of them were missing at least three ‘secret sauce’ methods. See Micropayments may be the future as advertising fades: https://evonomics.com/advertising-cannot-maintain-internet-heres-solution/ and… http://evonomics.com/beyond-advertising-micropayments-sustain-new-internet/
In EXISTENCE I talk a lot about how tech may help folks along the Spectrum. Got a blurb from Temple Grandin. But yeah, it’s taking too much time.
Good point about the ‘experience economy.’
Could Prigozhin's death have been faked?
I mean, there are what...ten bodies burned to a crisp and presumably unidentifiable?
If this was a tv show, I'd be looking for the character's "surprise" return in the season finale.
'The BRICS Group, a club of nations that formed to tilt the international order away from the West, invited six countries to join: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia."
That's a whole lotta vowels.
Dr Brin:
Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia.
That reminds me of a George Carlin routine about the nuclear test ban treaty. "Today's signers were Chad, Sierra Leone, Upper Volta, Monaco, and Iceland."
I can't imagine Saudi Arabia and Iran in a bloc together, but politics makes for strange bedfellows.
Darrell E 10:39 AM:
You got me good. I should have been a bit more equivocal. "I speculate that..."
The trouble with making a bet is that I'm predicting something that'll take at least a century to unfold. I am fairly confident that the population will fall, what with breeding going out of fashion worldwide, except for Nigeria (though children per woman is falling there too, it just hasn't gone below 2.1 so far, like it has in China, Japan, and Italy(!) ).
But who knows? Maybe some heroic nerds will invent such wondrous tech (fusion, ambient superconductors, cheap space-based solar, LFTR, mRNA anti-agathics, super-plants, a second Green Revolution, and other miracles that locum would scoff at) combined with a new era of peace, freedom, and justice (ya think, locum?) that our great-grandkids will call reproduction groovy again. It took only the length of my lifetime to turn a baby boom into a baby bust; maybe in another 65 years the wheel will turn again.
I stand by my speculation, but somewhat shakily. My stakes are 7.5 billion humans. My even-shakier speculation is that the decimation needn't require any nuclear wars. Why hurry? But that would require the existence of intelligent life on planet Earth, which I cannot prove.
Larry H 12:21 PM:
Prigozhin back? And how about Epstein? Well, maybe, but that's not the way to bet. If the merc or the pedo made some kind of deal, then it included new identities, facial reconstructive surgery, and a promise to never, ever appear on the radar again, lest they die for real.
If they do show up again, then I'll yell "Get me rewrite!" I feel the same way about the quake during the hurricane. Who writes this stuff? Jonathan Hoag would not approve.
Extrapolations of today's population decline become irrelevant. Maybe 10% of human females LOVE having babies above all other considerations and another maybe quarter would happily have more, if all conditions are good. If population decline plus 'abundance' advancements make for prosperity for all, then those will rapidly have the most descendants and their traits will dominate.
"Withering away to nothing' is a rant by fools.
Re: Withering away to nothing
It seems equally likely that we stand on the threshold of exponential growth. Consider Chandrayaan.
Are you kidding me?
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/08/24/us/trump-georgia-surrender-indictment
Donald J. Trump is now in the Fulton County booking system, which records him as having “blonde or strawberry” hair, a height of 6′ 3″ and weight of 215 pounds.
Did they put him on a scale, or did they just ask him what his height and weight were? I hope they at least put him under oath first.
Paradoctor:
Prigozhin back? And how about Epstein?
Epstein would be more difficult to pull off, since there was a body. Sure, it might be a homeless man who just looks like Epstein, but that seems more of a stretch. The part of the Epstein story that I doubt is that he voluntarily took his own life, but I do expect he's dead.
Prigozhin, though, is a blackened corpse. I've seen too many movies and tv dramas not to suspect a switch.
The other case which just might resemble that scenario is not Epstein, but Osama Bin Laden.
If they do show up again, then I'll yell "Get me rewrite!" I feel the same way about the quake during the hurricane. Who writes this stuff?
I did mention that a few days ago. I've often considered the possibility that God is a writer, but I never thought He was a hack.
We could play a game with Russian heads, release a statement reading:
“the crash that took the life of Mr. Prigozhin and the other passengers might conceivably have been an accident. Though the type of plane had a flawless record, there can be a first time in a tragic mishap involving any airplane.
We stand ready to offer any and all help in investigating the cause of the crash.”
John Sweeney's contacts are pretty sure Prigozhin has been nailed, although he's careful to point out that Prigozhin's come back from the dead (another plane crash) before.
"He's sort of like a vampire: you're never quite sure..."
Why, one of the Other, one of our opponents. The Right is fond of executing villains.
Mandatory in their believing that the value of execution is self-evident.
In bringing closure to the families of the victims; in not having to pay the costs of incarcerating perps for life...
Larry - "He even has an appropriate name: Hamilton."
Martha Washington gave the same name to her tomcat, apparently Hamilton was rather popular with the ladies.
A line from towards the end of the show, after Hamilton is forced to show he wasn't being *financially* dishonest:
"He ain't never going to be President now..."
Dr. Brin:
"Maybe".
"If".
But right now, China's youth are 'lying flat' and 'letting it rot'. Some of them are calling themselves 'the last generation'. And who ever expected the Italians to have small families? I say that the odds favor a peak then a fall by this century's end.
I admit that the time scale makes betting on this impractical.
I'm not necessarily worried. If a nation's population peaks, then falls, but its GDP falls slower, then GDP per person rises. "If". This requires a different economic model than the one we're familiar with.
I'm mildly confident that Japan's robots will save them. I'm rather concerned that China will grow old before it grows rich. America has a cheat code: "Send me your tired, your poor..." But from where? Nigeria? The white wing won't approve, but they're aging out. As for India, soft-landing a craft on the Moon's south pole is impressive, but it won't pay for diapers.
Of course withering away to nothing is unlikely; but don't rule out some nations centimating.
Some authoritarian nations will try to force high birth rates. I call that the "Ceausescu solution". It didn't work out well for Ceausescu.
My poorly-informed (and unbettable!) speculation is that planetary population decimation by aging and nonreproduction will proceed until we've re-tooled the world's technologies to being clean, sustainable... and affordable. The last part's tricky. We're working on it.
If by mid-2100s Earth is supporting a reduced human population on clean green cheap tech, then another population explosion is possible. But this suggests population chaos; explosions and implosions in succession with sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Again, that speculation is unbettable, because the process would take lifetimes.
Population chaos implies that the next few centuries/millennia will be an evolutionary punctuation event: for the explosions will increase human genetic diversity, and the implosions will impose stronger natural selection. The same will occur in the natural world, for other critter's populations will explode when ours implodes, and implode when ours explode. You think raccoons have clever hands now? And kudzu's prolific now? Just you wait!
"If" this is all true, then I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that far-future humanity will be superior to us in intelligence, resilience, literacy, numeracy, empathy, toughness, immunity, radiation resistance, sales resistance, and many other virtues. The bad news is that they will need all those superpowers, and more, to survive long enough to reproduce.
Human population
The data appears to show that people are "Rational Consumers" - countries where the men help with the kids have higher birth rates than those where they don't
So making it less expensive to have children will probably have an immediate large effect
The 10% who want to have lots of kids
Possibly - but the way our genetics work that is incredibly unlikely to be strongly heritable - it will almost certainly be a result of a large number of different genetic variables which means that it will not be strongly heritable - although in the long term (dozens of generations) it may be
Paradoctor
Evolution used to be the way things changed
Then we invented "Cultural Evolution" - which is millions of times faster
The next stage (where we are on the cusp) is "Intelligent Design" - where we control or children's (the our own) genetics
Lest hope that we justify the "intelligent" bit
Trump is unbalanced.
Vivek is a NUT—a political psychotic.
Tony Fisk:
A line from towards the end of the show [ Hamilton ], after Hamilton is forced to show he wasn't being *financially* dishonest:
"He ain't never going to be President now..."
Very shortly after the "Grab them by the p***y" tape was publicized, Lin Manuel Miranda hosted SNL, and they went through a hallway with pictures of past hosts of the show, including Donald Trump. Lin pointed to that portrait and snarked the lyric, "He's never gonna be president now."
At the time it was funny, although now it's ruefully ironic.
Other politically appropriate lines from Hamilton...
When John McCain cast that final vote which didn't repeal Obamacare:
You don't have the votes.
You don't have the votes.
Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
You're gonna need congressional approval, and
You don't have the votes.
What Hillary should have said at a 2016 debate:
I know that [Donald Trump] is here and he
Would rather not have this debate.
I’ll remind you that he [was] not Secretary of State.
He knows nothing of loyalty,
Smells like new money, dresses like fake royalty.
Desperate to rise above his station.
Everything he does betrays the ideals of our nation.
A post-mortem for President Obama:
[Speaker Boehner: ]
I’ll give him this: His [health care] system is a work of genius.
I couldn’t undo it if I tried.
And I tried.
[Mitch McConnell : ]
He took our country from bankruptcy to prosperity
I hate to admit it, but he doesn’t get enough credit
For all the credit he gave us.
Wow, did you catch that mugshot? But where's the side view?
Trump looks like someone that you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. On the other hand, Jack Smith looks like someone that Trump wouldn't want to meet in a well-lit courtroom. Which he will.
My first thoughts were:
- Ken, in later years, followed by:
- #BarbyToo
(with apols to Mr. Gosling)
David,
You said you spend little time or energy doing investing, yet you've done enough to push patents through to completion. They count as investments even if they don't wind up paying off. In fact… they are the worst kind from a risk perspective because they aren't diversified. You win or you don't with few options between them. They are great for humanity, though. 8)
When I first met you it was at a space conference where you were the invited lunch speaker. You dropped by the vendor room and I had a small solar sail display. The next time was in a Second Life event where we all proceeded to prove your point about the need for gisting by blowing up the chat log with questions and comments. You couldn't respond to more than one in a couple dozen posts… which had rolled off the top before your response arrived. It was like you were trying to talk to a fully open firehose pointing right at your face. VERY convincing… and that got me to read about your project and note how you rolled some of those elements into your stories.
I'm quite certain augmented reality will arrive eventually. I initially imagined it a bit like V.Vinge's version with those contact lenses in Rainbow's End, but with what they all are doing to hearing aides lately I think gisting will appear there first. The newer hearing devices are partially on-line which means they can consume AI services. They aren't capable enough by themselves yet, but I suspect they will be before 2030. All I have to do now is figure out how to bet on it.
———
For everyone else,
Some kind of (partial?) deregulation event hit the hearing aide industry. You might not be aware of it, but I suspect it will be a BIG deal. My watch links to my phone which links to the Great Machine. Soon my ears will… and they are much better connected to my brain than is my (soon to be determined as clunky) watch.
If you haven't read Rainbow's End, take the time to do it. Pay attention to how the kids react to old user interfaces and the older adults who don't let go of them.
Don't fret so much about AI. It will be IA that changes your life. (Hint: It already is.) It will also be IA that proves my point about the power of flat, fair markets to make the world a better place in ways governments can't POSSIBLY match.
cairncross:
Population chaos will supercharge both genetic and cultural evolution, and for the same reasons, namely: population explosions increase variation; population implosions increase natural selection; these effects are inherited; and variation + natural selection + inheritance yields adaptation. Population chaos accelerates Darwinian evolution.
Intelligent design is to Darwinian evolution as learning from a teacher is to learning by trial and error. In theory a teacher will hasten your learning; but who taught the teacher? The teacher is human; and when all humans are fools, then we all must learn in the Fool's School: Experience.
Genetic engineering will solve the easy problems. For the tougher problems, it will just increase the genetic variation that natural selection works on. So genetic engineering is fancy mutation. Which isn't bad, but it's only a detail, not a revolution.
By the way, if genetic engineering were easy, then viruses would do it to us, to their advantage, not ours. So I speculate that we have long ago evolved genomes hard to engineer.
I speculate that when some Dear Leader gengineers super-soldiers, they'll underperform due to unexpected consequences; but their mutt hybrid grandkids will have the best of both worlds.
For the discussion about the unbettable predictions around population numbers in the 22nd century…
I expect our population will peak this century and then drift slightly lower, but by no more than 5%.
If humans were so easily dissuaded from reproducing in large numbers, I'm pretty sure we would be extinct already.
———
What we see today is just the pendulum swinging. When I was born ('62) it was common practice for mother's in The West to produce twice as many kids as needed for sustainment. TWICE AS MANY! IN THE WEST!
I asked my mother in later years what was going on in her head back then. She said it was just the way it was. She was happy she got four, but understood why some newer mother's were not choosing that way. I didn't have kids of my own and didn't quite understand her, but I did get her macro point. She got what SHE wanted.
Because of the drop in maternal and infant mortality, future mothers can have pretty much what they want except low defect risks once they get near 30 years of age. We are getting pretty good at spotting some of the defects early, but preventing them has limits due to human biology. Not much to be done about that until the day arrives when we figure out how to trick a woman's body into spawning a new set of eggs in her later years. Anyone want to bet that we WON'T figure that out?
Paradoctor,
So I speculate that we have long ago evolved genomes hard to engineer.
I think we already have some evidence supporting this position. Early mRNA research tended to kill the test subjects. They suffered catastrophic allergic responses even to low doses of injected instructions.
Our genomes might be hackable, but our immune systems respond vigorously unless we get things exactly right. It's a wonder to me that we found specific ways around that issue at all, but I don't expect there are any universal ways around the defense. If it were that easy, we'd probably have been extinguished long ago.
Differ:
Intelligence Augmentation is an old story. Two ancient examples of intelligence augmentation are writing and positional numeration.
Alfred
Hearing Aides - I am starting to NEED one - but my Scottish soul will not permit me to pay several thousand dollars for something that is just a cheap amplifier
My watch (less than $100US) has hugely massively more capability and links to my phone
How long before I can get "smart" hearing aides - for a reasonable price??
On that (sort of) subject - I had a superb vacation in the UK (missing a month of our winter) - including a lot of E-Biking
On the bike and walking what we really need is rear view mirrors
On the bikes for cars - and when walking for bikes
Something like the Augmented Reality glasses with rear cameras
Differ:
<<
If humans were so easily dissuaded from reproducing in large numbers, I'm pretty sure we would be extinct already.
>>
Easy or not, this dissuasion is happening, across most of the world. Why and how this is so is not well understood. Perhaps it is a self-regulatory mechanism in the human genome, where crowding suppresses fertility, and its lack increases fertility. This would prevent both overpopulation and underpopulation, and so guard against extinction.
Perhaps other species have such mechanisms. Have any studies indicated this? I do know that certain flying insects gather and take 'censuses' of themselves.
Differ:
Attempts at Artificial Intelligence are also an old story. Two ancient attempts at engineering intelligent beings are Idol-Worship and Bureaucracy. With notoriously lackluster results.
My own parents told me why they had five children (and I'm the 5th): To get back at Hitler. To thwart his plan for genocide. It was a choice.
David,
micro-payments are something where I hope you succeed. But couldn't this be done publicly? It seems to me like this is the sort of thing that is best treated as a natural monopoly. At least I tend to think, if you don't want to give up on the potential added value of competition, at least have a public option, so that the service can be guaranteed to be universally available. There is nothing worse than entry barriers shutting segments of the population out of access.
Putin is Man of the Century,
he makes Hitler seem like an amateur!
I thought the main reason cited for the reduction in human birth rates was female education.
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