# Technology doesn't work that way - SamuelA's Pit Thread **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 3, 2017, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420 "2017-12-03T00:52:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/81 "2017-12-26T21:15:32Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > **SamuelA** , if conservation of momentum is all you need to know about deflecting asteroids with nuclear weapons, why can’t you move a fog bank with a bullet? > > Regards, > Shodan If the bullets are on the scale of the droplets of fog, and the fog bank is in a vacuum and not being pushed by wind, you can. You can also move a 10 kilometer diffuse collection of rocks with a really big bullet. The reason the bullet passes through the fog bank is that it weighs a lot more and is a lot more dense than the droplets. A 10 kilometer asteroid with the gas pushed by a few megatons of nuclear warhead is nothing like your analogy. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/82 "2017-12-26T21:17:01Z")
Et voila. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/83 "2017-12-26T21:19:34Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > ``` > Suppose a person has a month left to live. You are very certain of this - you have a laboratory confirmed diagnosis and statistically, 99.9% of the patients in this pool die within 30 days. (we can discuss greater uncertainty at a later time). You could either get at most 30 days of interaction with that human being, or freeze them. Let's saying freezing them preserves only 50% of their mind, the other half is lost. But if you do potentially revive them in the future, and you think there's a 50% chance that will happen (so down to net '25% of them is left'), you get 25% of them for 1000 years. > > ``` Does the patient get any say in this? If someone wants to be frozen, I’m fine with that. If someone wants to freeze me after I’ve finished using this body, I have no objection. I do have an extreme objection to you judging that me losing the last month of my life is worth having a 50% chance of coming back with only half my mind intact. And I am more than a bit skeptical of your optimism on those odds. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/84 "2017-12-26T21:20:13Z")
> [@Ramira](#): > > Et voila. A shotgun round loaded with dust will push a fog bank. So will a fan. No nanobots required. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/85 "2017-12-26T21:24:50Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > A shotgun round loaded with dust will push a fog bank. No, it won’t. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/86 "2017-12-26T21:26:30Z")
> [@Sunny\_Daze](#): > > I worked in Alzheimer’s research at Stanford University. I’ll try to keep up with your stupendous string of blathering nonsense. > > I take issue in particular with this: > By several incentives, you mean health professionals prefer not to get charged for murder in order to “preserve” memories via a method which has never been shown to be effective at doing that. Oddly, healthcare professional prefer to provide quality care, and on the research side, we amused ourselves by trying to find an actual cure. Quaintly, we could do this without killing our patients and freezing their brains, and then waiting an unknown time for technology to be invented to see if there is anything left to be salvaged. > > Really, why stop with Alzheimer’s, you could expand to any terminal illness. They’re all going to die anyway, amirite? Kill them now, while their brains are “fresh”. No point in wasting medical care on anyone. > > You are someone I would characterize as evil. You casually throw around the idea that early death for people whose lives have no meaning for you is reasonable. Their death is a worthwhile thing because it will help you pursue your dream of cryo. The idea that human death is a reasonable course of action to support Cryo is monstrous. If only eugenics had caught on, we wouldn’t have to kill and freeze people. But no-o-o-o-o. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/87 "2017-12-26T21:33:47Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Yes, but **wolfpup** ’s find has a much more fitting picture. 🙂 Yes, though I wonder now if the bowler hat is entirely appropriate. In some ways it is, but most of his posts make me picture **SamuelA** as having a propeller beanie on his head, the propeller slowly rotating as he holds forth with his simplistic and almost amazingly always-wrong pontifications. The other thing wrong with that picture is that the jaw needs to be slack, with a thin stream of drool running down it, in order to properly represent the unique combination of bloviating pomposity and complete cluelessness that is our wondrous **SamuelA**. > [@SamuelA](#): > > What irritated me was that we were talking about a very simple subject. From the reference frame of an asteroid, any mass \* velocity gained or lost from the asteroid, whether it be from new material added or lost, with a velocity vector, affects the course of the asteroid … > > … No doubt you’re going to slam me over and over and claim I’m not credible enough to make claims about reality…but you’d still be wrong. The paragraph above is based on solid, invariant ideas that you should be evaluating on the _merits_, not the identity of the speaker. The thing is, **SamuelA** , that many, many of us have, in fact, responded to your idiotic pontifications on their merits. This included the spacecraft engineer with whom you argued about propulsion and the neuroscientist with whom you argued about neuroscience, not only claiming that they were wrong and you, as always, were of course exactly correct, but insulting them in the process, as you do with almost everyone you converse with. There are plenty of examples in the asteroid thread in GQ that you started solely for the purpose of grandstanding (and succeeded only in getting your ass handed to you, because you didn’t even understand the basics of what **Stranger On A Train** was saying), or [in this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=837733) about the mind and mind transfer – a thread in which I, too, was sucked in to wasting my time because of your inane posts. They included gems like these: Well, we have an established model that the brain is the effect of thousands of physical computational circuits … We do know for a fact that consciousness most likely requires the collective activity of millions of neurons working collectively. I happen to believe that the computational theory of mind is an important precept in cognitive science, but your type of pontification is an embarrassment to CTM. You don’t even have the vaguest understanding of what CTM is. All an opponent of CTM would need to do to discredit it is get a nitwit like you to support it. Right, the mind is just a collective bunch of computational circuits working collectively! 😃 Problem solved! Now we move on the problem of emulating the body … from that same thread, by you: You could simulate the body by a very simple machine learning algorithm, and an implanted sensor in a volunteer that can measure the signaling molecules. Problem solved again! We’ve now emulated both the brain and the body! This is how things get done when one is lucky enough to have a genius brain like yours at work on the problem! Next, we move on to creating a vast army of autonomous self-replicating nanobots to populate the galaxy, also quite trivial once one understands the basic principles, which of course you do. Indeed, [you know what you’re talking about](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20671498&postcount=24), and [you’re always right](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20672311&postcount=28). At least according to you. You’re an obnoxious fucking moron. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/88 "2017-12-26T21:46:45Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > If the bullets are on the scale of the droplets of fog, and the fog bank is in a vacuum and not being pushed by wind, you can. You can also move a 10 kilometer diffuse collection of rocks with a really big bullet. > > The reason the bullet passes through the fog bank is that it weighs a lot more and is a lot more dense than the droplets. A 10 kilometer asteroid with the gas pushed by a few megatons of nuclear warhead is nothing like your analogy. This guy is brilliant, why are any of you even arguing with him? Not one of you thought about the fog bank being in a vacuum. Admit it, ya didn’t, did ya? ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/89 "2017-12-26T22:07:50Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Yes, though I wonder now if the bowler hat is entirely appropriate. In some ways it is, but most of his posts make me picture **SamuelA** as having a propeller beanie on his head, the propeller slowly rotating as he holds forth with his simplistic and almost amazingly always-wrong pontifications. The other thing wrong with that picture is that the jaw needs to be slack, with a thin stream of drool running down it, in order to properly represent the unique combination of bloviating pomposity and complete cluelessness that is our wondrous **SamuelA**. > > The thing is, **SamuelA** , that many, many of us have, in fact, responded to your idiotic pontifications on their merits. This included the spacecraft engineer with whom you argued about propulsion and the neuroscientist with whom you argued about neuroscience, not only claiming that they were wrong and you, as always, were of course exactly correct, but insulting them in the process, as you do with almost everyone you converse with. There are plenty of examples in the asteroid thread in GQ that you started solely for the purpose of grandstanding (and succeeded only in getting your ass handed to you, because you didn’t even understand the basics of what **Stranger On A Train** was saying), or [in this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=837733) about the mind and mind transfer – a thread in which I, too, was sucked in to wasting my time because of your inane posts. They included gems like these: > Well, we have an established model that the brain is the effect of thousands of physical computational circuits … We do know for a fact that consciousness most likely requires the collective activity of millions of neurons working collectively. > I happen to believe that the computational theory of mind is an important precept in cognitive science, but your type of pontification is an embarrassment to CTM. You don’t even have the vaguest understanding of what CTM is. All an opponent of CTM would need to do to discredit it is get a nitwit like you to support it. Right, the mind is just a collective bunch of computational circuits working collectively! 😃 Problem solved! Now we move on the problem of emulating the body … from that same thread, by you: > You could simulate the body by a very simple machine learning algorithm, and an implanted sensor in a volunteer that can measure the signaling molecules. > Problem solved again! We’ve now emulated both the brain and the body! This is how things get done when one is lucky enough to have a genius brain like yours at work on the problem! > > Next, we move on to creating a vast army of autonomous self-replicating nanobots to populate the galaxy, also quite trivial once one understands the basic principles, which of course you do. Indeed, [you know what you’re talking about](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20671498&postcount=24), and [you’re always right](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20672311&postcount=28). At least according to you. You’re an obnoxious fucking moron. Wolfpup, you say in your insult filled tirade that my computational thoery of the mind is too simple to work. Even though actual world class researchers have gotten superhuman performance from very simple models, simpler than mine. So I must ask : what do you know about it? Why should I assume that you are any more than a mouth breather yourself? ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/90 "2017-12-26T22:09:47Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > No, it won’t. Citation needed. I actually have seen shotguns fired in fog and it does move the part that is hit. It gets pushed back by wind, and there is no wind in space. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/91 "2017-12-26T22:10:05Z")
He has no self awareness it is clear. It is amusing in a way. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/92 "2017-12-26T22:14:54Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Citation needed. I actually have seen shotguns fired in fog and it does move the part that is hit. It gets pushed back by wind, and there is no wind in space. My citations are thus: 1. My I.Q. has three digits, not two. 2. Reality 3. “Fog in a vacuum”…_riiiight_ ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/93 "2017-12-26T22:16:35Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Wolfpup, you say in your insult filled tirade that my computational thoery of the mind is too simple to work. Even though actual world class researchers have gotten superhuman performance from very simple models, simpler than mine. So I must ask : what do you know about it? Why should I assume that you are any more than a mouth breather yourself? Please cite a researcher who has gotten mere human performance out of a computational model, much less superhuman. BTW, your statement “thousands of physical computational circuits … We do know for a fact that consciousness most likely requires the collective activity of millions of neurons working collectively.” is off by at least 3 orders of magnitude. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/94 "2017-12-26T23:47:22Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > I would characterize **you** as the evil one, and history will prove me right. As a result of the dominant beliefs that you and your peers hold, we send over a million people to the ground, every year, without even attempting to preserve some of them. So? the point of life is to reproduce and then die. who is so damn important that they need to be “preserved?” this world would be uninhabitable if living things didn’t eventually die. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2017, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/95 "2017-12-26T23:52:38Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > the point of life is to reproduce and then die. who is so damn important that they need to be “preserved?” > > this world would be uninhabitable if living things didn’t eventually die. Right. One must realize that you are a note, not the song. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/96 "2017-12-27T00:01:37Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Yes, though I wonder now if the bowler hat is entirely appropriate. In some ways it is, but most of his posts make me picture **SamuelA** as having a propeller beanie on his head, the propeller slowly rotating as he holds forth with his simplistic and almost amazingly always-wrong pontifications. The other thing wrong with that picture is that the jaw needs to be slack, with a thin stream of drool running down it, in order to properly represent the unique combination of bloviating pomposity and complete cluelessness that is our wondrous **SamuelA**. > > The thing is, **SamuelA** , that many, many of us have, in fact, responded to your idiotic pontifications on their merits. This included the spacecraft engineer with whom you argued about propulsion and the neuroscientist with whom you argued about neuroscience, not only claiming that they were wrong and you, as always, were of course exactly correct, but insulting them in the process, as you do with almost everyone you converse with. There are plenty of examples in the asteroid thread in GQ that you started solely for the purpose of grandstanding (and succeeded only in getting your ass handed to you, because you didn’t even understand the basics of what **Stranger On A Train** was saying), or [in this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=837733) about the mind and mind transfer – a thread in which I, too, was sucked in to wasting my time because of your inane posts. They included gems like these: > Well, we have an established model that the brain is the effect of thousands of physical computational circuits … We do know for a fact that consciousness most likely requires the collective activity of millions of neurons working collectively. > I happen to believe that the computational theory of mind is an important precept in cognitive science, but your type of pontification is an embarrassment to CTM. You don’t even have the vaguest understanding of what CTM is. All an opponent of CTM would need to do to discredit it is get a nitwit like you to support it. Right, the mind is just a collective bunch of computational circuits working collectively! 😃 Problem solved! Now we move on the problem of emulating the body … from that same thread, by you: > You could simulate the body by a very simple machine learning algorithm, and an implanted sensor in a volunteer that can measure the signaling molecules. > Problem solved again! We’ve now emulated both the brain and the body! This is how things get done when one is lucky enough to have a genius brain like yours at work on the problem! > > Next, we move on to creating a vast army of autonomous self-replicating nanobots to populate the galaxy, also quite trivial once one understands the basic principles, which of course you do. Indeed, [you know what you’re talking about](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20671498&postcount=24), and [you’re always right](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20672311&postcount=28). At least according to you. You’re an obnoxious fucking moron. NM ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/97 "2017-12-27T00:29:16Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Nothing in your post can be considered a rational thought. Right back atcha. > [@](#): > > You’re starting with the preconceived notion that death is absolute, not relative, and working from there. Yes, death tends to be absolute not relative, short of religious discussions. > [@](#): > > Freezing a person who is _certain_ to rot into a corpse later is in fact better than the alternative. The freezing does less damage than the death + rotting, so… The alternative that they will now be a rotting corpse with a frozen brain? The improvement is where exactly? The only thing that has changed factually is that you have removed time that person might have spent with their family. > [@](#): > > I would characterize **you** as the evil one, and history will prove me right. As a result of the dominant beliefs that you and your peers hold, we send over a million people to the ground, every year, without even attempting to preserve some of them. I am more than ok with not killing people to satisfy your odd need to complete failed technology in order to save memories. There are other ways to chase your dream. > [@](#): > > There will be an era of human history where preservation of the terminally ill is practiced on a large scale. Indeed, assuming you mean that humanity will try to end illness. Somehow I don’t think that’s what you mean. > [@](#): > > I may or may not personally live to see it, but this is the obvious thing to do for non-idiots. Our current methods (freezing in liquid nitrogen + injected chemicals to reduce frost damage) are basically shit. They are only a little better than the alternative. They are better in no conceivable way than the alternative, assuming death is the alternative. I suppose someone is making money on it. > [@](#): > > We _should_ be pouring money into making the preservation better. Perhaps half of all medical research money, since it obviously treats all diseases, while any given research can at best delay death from a single class of disease. Preservation treats nothing. How will it treat half of all medical diseases? Why half? If it’s half, why isn’t it all? > [@](#): > > By my perspective, the weighting I am mentally performing is as follows : > > Suppose a person has a month left to live. You are very certain of this - you have a laboratory confirmed diagnosis and statistically, 99.9% of the patients in this pool die within 30 days. (we can discuss greater uncertainty at a later time). You could either get at most 30 days of interaction with that human being, or freeze them. Let’s saying freezing them preserves only 50% of their mind, the other half is lost. But if you do potentially revive them in the future, and you think there’s a 50% chance that will happen (so down to net ‘25% of them is left’), you get 25% of them for 1000 years. There is no person there anymore. Most people expect to be “there” when they “wake up” from this horse shit cryo. There is no 25% of “them” when they wake up. There is 25% of their brain, whatever that 25% happens to be. You clearly envision a specularly failed data backup, no doubt an expensive one. Fuck that shit. > [@](#): > > A rational person multiplies. A person who believes in woo does not. Unfortunately, a lot of people…even well educated doctors…believe in woo. Multiples what? A minuscule chance of getting 20% of Uncle John’s memories of studying grammar in 7th grade, in 200 years when the tech is finally, sort of, ready? Where’s the woo here? The medical care teams who provide end of life treatment or fight disease or do research? Or is the individuals who think we should freeze individuals who are NOT YET DEAD so that they can be woken on some future date, using some unknown technology, to recover some unknown brain function. I’ll give you a hint. The conventional medical folks aren’t practicing woo in this situation. Maybe we can all chip in and get you a “woo practitioner” title on the Dope. > [@](#): > > Of course we should research new treatments for disease, but for a person that is terminally ill, the odds are about 99.9% they are just going to die. It is very rare for clinical trials to work, most people don’t even get them or get put in the control group, and so on. Newsflash - we are all going to die. It may be 99.9% with research studies (I haven’t checked that number) but if the disease doesn’t get them, life will. Your method will 100% get your “study group”. No one is getting out alive. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/98 "2017-12-27T02:16:41Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > I would characterize **you** as the evil one, and history will prove me right. As a result of the dominant beliefs that you and your peers hold, we send over a million people to the ground, every year, without even attempting to preserve some of them. And they call themselves scientists, the purblind fools! ---
**Author:** ![AI\_Proofreader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@AI\_Proofreader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AI_Proofreader)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/99 "2017-12-27T02:59:06Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > The timecube guy had a whole website if I recall full of his rantings. So maybe it’s going to take too long. But _if you have a pattern of information preserved in low temperature ice, you can potentially recover that pattern, and if that pattern is the plan for a computing system, you can build an equivalent emulator of that computing system and get similar outputs from any inputs you feed it_…are you just not able to read that sentence fast enough? What’s the problem here? > > You obviously think that what I wrote is about the equivalent of that bum writing on the side of a cardboard box in crayon, but for god sakes, you’re being an asshole. Out of curiosity and boredom, I read both (extremely long and horribly formatted) pages of his 90’s-era webpage. The crayon scribbling on a cardboard box would have been more enlightening. It was basically 25 minutes worth of angry rantings about how everyone else are idiots, especially academia and established science, how he’s been horribly abused, and reality is a big illusion, you’re all being brainwashed into thinking Earth has 24-hour days! …with some random racism and sexism thrown in for good measure. But it’s not every day you get to read the wisdom of a man who admits on his Wikipedia page that a psychiatrist diagnosed him with schizophrenia, but only because his own wisdom “so antiquates known knowledge.” His rambling, useless text stripped of all the “they’re all out to get me!” “everyone is stupid!” and “the races weren’t meant to be mixed” type stuff could be summarized in three sentences: The Earth doesn’t rotate the way everyone knows it does. One hemisphere rotates one direction, the other one rotates the other way. You can think of the Earth being divided into four quadrants, 2 in each hemisphere, and because the Earth isn’t actually completing one full rotation per 24 hours with the whole sphere rotating in the same direction (LIKE THEY WANT YOU TO BELIEVE!) there are actually 96 hours in a day. Anyway, I’d like to say \*\*SamuelIA \*\*that I find most of your ideas plausible - probably inevitable - BUT you are way, way too early with them. Barring some unforeseen circumstances most of the technologies your posts describe will not be available for use within our lifetimes. Having moral outrage about not using them or planning for the use of them, now, is kind of like Leonardi da Vinci getting into a huff about no one considering seat belts for the flying machines that are going to be filling the skies ANY DAY NOW. Why are you risking people’s lives by not making seat belts for passenger jets? I know we’re talking about this by candlelight but I swear my one-man glider proves 200-person jet airplanes will be filling the skies by the the millions within a few years. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/100 "2017-12-27T05:01:19Z")
You are way too kind. He’s a deranged loon. I can see the spittle hitting the screen while he’s typing, and screaming “why can’t you sheeple see the truth? It’s SO OBVIOUS.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420.md?page=6)