January 14, 2013 - 12:27 am
Instapundit.com’s Glenn Reynolds talks to Professor James D. Miller of Smith College. Miller is the author of Singularity Rising. Will there come a time when technology becomes so smart that it will alter human civilization? Can you survive what Miller calls the singularity? Find out why this is not science fiction, on this InstaVision.
Interesting. So many variables one has to ignore… lol he said end of universe, but was still talking in reference to this rock. Our sun dies sometime (sorry, it has to’ not infinite fuel). Since there are younger stars, I do not envision our Sun let alone this rock makes it to the end of “the universe” in any form that we can picture it at the moment. This is assuming that we never get hit by an asteroid or comet, or just something we cannot understand at the moment. (let alone, what if the Sun decides it doesn’t “like” these masses tugging at it all the time….)(no one has said the Sun is “friendly”)
AI. Interesting. How does one mathematically represent “friendly”. Then how is it programed to avoid logic to be friendly… At many times, pure logic and “friendly” ARE exact opposites. Snot, define friendly in words, let alone mathematically.
Interesting conundrum….
Hag
Just bloggin.
The Case for Railguns in Aerospace
Railguns are at the moment subject to research and are being investigated for use at Ford class aircraft carrier ships. Aircraft carriers have a very short runway, which is a big disadvantage for most modern aircrafts. Making the runway any longer is not a viable option, therefore the installation of railguns is highly desirable.
Of all possible technical realizations, EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System) is the most promising. It is hoped that an EMALS railgun could impart a 10g (or a little bit more) force for the duration of the runway. This coupled with the inclined bow of the aircraft carrier would be sufficient to propel the aircraft to the sky.
Another big advantage of railguns is that it saves a lot of fuel and engine life from the aircraft. The most critical moment for an aircraft from every point of view is the lift off. That puts the most strain on the engines and guzzles the most fuel per mile.
Railguns would be very beneficial for civilian air flight too. The same considerations as above hold. The runway could be made much longer than that of an aircraft carrier, but considerably shorter than nowadays’ civilian runways. It prolongs the life of all aircrafts by a huge factor. It doesn’t require any relevant changes in the structure of existing and future aircraft. It shortens the time of launch. It makes the launch safer. An aircraft could be launched at zero-lift angle of attack, and the end of the runway could be made a few degrees inclined to cause the lift. All the while in the runway the aircraft has accumulated the needed velocity.
It is beneficial to the military. A civilian infrastructure of railguns throughout the country would be very desirable. Sturdy rockets could be launched from such platforms with 200g, attaining velocities far out of today’s reach. Rocket design would be furthermore very much simplified, bringing their cost down by a good factor.
Railguns are being successfully experimented with. There are technical problems with the loading of capacitors, nothing too hard to overcome. Need for mass application would solve all these problems and completely revolutionarize their design.
Of all these benefits, the one most relevant would be Mars settlement. Many ideas have been put forth for Mars settlement and few of them are on designer’s desk. None of them really economical. Railguns can change that. A railgun a few miles long could help launch a spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO). The spacecraft can be made to contain humans and supplies for a few days. Therefore it would be very light. The spacecraft, its boosters and engine are launched with 10g from a railgun platform. Once out the platform the spacecraft ignites boosters and engines, and very easily makes it to LEO. At this point, other material could be launched from a railgun platform with 200g (which humans can’t survive). Fuel and any sort of supplies can be catapulted this way. They all assemble in LEO. That is relatively easy nowadays. This whole process would bring the cost of sending goods to space from today’s $20,000/kg to roughly $500/kg.
The most costly part of a Mars travel is getting from Earth surface to LEO. It is this one part that makes the rest of the mission a huge burden. With this taken out of the way, human Mars missions and Mars settlement would become a reality.
Just blogging.
The Case for Railguns in Aerospace
Railguns are at the moment subject to research and are being investigated for use at Ford class aircraft carrier ships. Aircraft carriers have a very short runway, which is a big disadvantage for most modern aircrafts. Making the runway any longer is not a viable option, therefore the installation of railguns is highly desirable.
Of all possible technical realizations, EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System) is the most promising. It is hoped that an EMALS railgun could impart a 10g (or a little bit more) force for the duration of the runway. This coupled with the inclined bow of the aircraft carrier would be sufficient to propel the aircraft to the sky.
Another big advantage of railguns is that it saves a lot of fuel and engine life from the aircraft. The most critical moment for an aircraft from every point of view is the lift off. That puts the most strain on the engines and guzzles the most fuel per mile.
Railguns would be very beneficial for civilian air flight too. The same considerations as above hold. The runway could be made much longer than that of an aircraft carrier, but considerably shorter than nowadays’ civilian runways. It prolongs the life of all aircrafts by a huge factor. It doesn’t require any relevant changes in the structure of existing and future aircraft. It shortens the time of launch. It makes the launch safer. An aircraft could be launched at zero-lift angle of attack, and the end of the runway could be made a few degrees inclined to cause the lift. All the while in the runway the aircraft has accumulated the needed velocity.
It is beneficial to the military. A civilian infrastructure of railguns throughout the country would be very desirable. Sturdy rockets could be launched from such platforms with 200g, attaining velocities far out of today’s reach. Rocket design would be furthermore very much simplified, bringing their cost down by a good factor.
Railguns are being successfully experimented with. There are technical problems with the loading of capacitors, nothing too hard to overcome. Need for mass application would solve all these problems and completely revolutionarize their design.
Of all these benefits, the one most relevant would be Mars settlement. Many ideas have been put forth for Mars settlement and few of them are on designer’s desk. None of them really economical. Railguns can change that. A railgun a few miles long could help launch a spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO). The spacecraft can be made to contain humans and supplies for a few days. Therefore it would be very light. The spacecraft, its boosters and engine are launched with 10g from a railgun platform. Once out the platform the spacecraft ignites boosters and engines, and very easily makes it to LEO. At this point, other material could be launched from a railgun platform with 200g (which humans can’t survive). Fuel and any sort of supplies can be catapulted this way. They all assemble in LEO. That is relatively easy nowadays. This whole process would bring the cost of sending goods to space from today’s $20,000/kg to roughly $500/kg.
The most costly part of a Mars travel is getting from Earth surface to LEO. It is this one part that makes the rest of the mission a huge burden. With this taken out of the way, human Mars missions and Mars settlement would become a reality.
Early on in the clip, Miller talks about how we have to protect ourselves from being attacked by our super-intelligent creations, by developing “the mathematics of friendliness” and making sure that these creations are programmed in a fail-safe way with “friendliness” towards humans. A little later, he says that attempting to protect ourselves by banning research in increasing machine intelligence probably wouldn’t work because (paraphrasing) “maybe 25 guys working in their basements is all that would be needed to create a super-intelligence”. OK, I ask, if 25 rogues could create a dangerously super-intelligent machine, does that not make it impossible to ensure that such a machine would be “friendly” (never mind whether or not there is such a thing as a “mathematics of friendliness”)? Considering that including this “friendliness” functionality would probably be more trouble to the rogues than leaving it out, why couldn’t we expect them to develop dangerous, super-intelligent, machines without friendliness the way a bunch of kids (kids and rogues both tend to be judgement impaired) might try to build a fast go-cart before they bother to worry about good brakes? Would not “banning research in super-intelligent machines” and “ensuring that super-intelligent machines are endowed with friendliness” have nearly identical enforcement difficulties that would similarly be nearly impossible to solve?
We will be mostly unemployed and being kept as zoo animals being fed with food stamps before A.I. is capable of taking over. It will be like a reverse zoo where the keepers and staff are enclosed on estates and we roam the land waiting to be fed and clothed and housed. Everything will be cheaper from the zookeepers’ industries so there won’t be any point in trying to feed or clothe ourselves. Eventually we will stop reproducing like Russia and drink ourselves to death.
There is intelligent life all over the universe. Almost all of it will never communicate. They are too busy on their prayer rugs with their fetishes, images, and rituals. It comes with self-awareness.
There is a problem with programming super-intelligent computers to be friendly toward humans:
— Ruk (Star Trek episode, What Are Little Girls Made of?)
As soon as humans and machines are competing for the same resources, survival enters in to the equation.