# 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:** 7
**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 27, 2017, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/121 "2017-12-27T21:21:25Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > [I would](http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-think-they-have-found-the-maximum-human-lifespan/). I meant hundreds like 100-109, not hundreds like 100-999. Inartfully phrased on my part, apologies. Though I did say later in the post that reaching and passing 150 is going to require more than just medical advance, but retooling of our cellular machinery, specifically because I am aware of those limits on human lifespan. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/122 "2017-12-27T21:22:00Z")
I can think of few punishments more horrific than immortality. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/123 "2017-12-27T21:27:41Z")
I thought we were talking about armed frogs and battlefield commanders? ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/124 "2017-12-27T21:29:20Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > I can think of few punishments more horrific than immortality. If you can’t experience anything at all, you can’t experience horror, but you also can’t experience anything good, either. I don’t think your ‘belief’ is well grounded, I think you are typing this because you were taught this idea by someone else and you haven’t really thought it through. I mean, most religious people also believe in some nonsense they shouldn’t if they actually thought it through, so don’t feel singled out. It’s normal for most humans to be like this, and I am not perfect either. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/125 "2017-12-27T21:29:22Z")
Consider compound interest. Over a long period of time it’s more powerful than gravity. If only those people in 1400AD & 1500AD had invested all their ducats in the future instead of consuming their pitiful ration of moldy meat we’d have easily double the standard of living today. Given all we really do have here in 2017, it seems rather churlish to sentence the ancients to an even more deprived existence than they had for our benefit. IMO the world’s billionaires, at least the techies, ARE looking towards inventing immortality. Given the lack of a full court press on the project, I conclude that they’ve decided, based on good advice from folks more expert than me, that the time is not yet ripe. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/126 "2017-12-27T22:15:51Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > IMO the world’s billionaires, at least the techies, ARE looking towards inventing immortality. Given the lack of a full court press on the project, I conclude that they’ve decided, based on good advice from folks more expert than me, that the time is not yet ripe. This is true, and we may not have the pre-requisites. The prerequisite for rockets that could reach the Moon was large scale manufacturing, large military industrial complex, reliable digital computers, liquid cryogenic fueled engines, and so forth. You might note that a bunch of that was rush-developed during ww2, if ww2 had not happened, the Apollo landings might have been 20 years later if ever. It’s quite possible that no amount of small scale graduate student + professor biomedical research will _ever_ develop the understanding needed for this kind of manipulation of biology. Any more than a village full of blacksmiths can make the components for the Golden Gate Bridge…no matter how many years they have. The reason is that all the findings are being made by separate human hands, each of whom sometimes screws up and thus creates false data. Different equipment and techniques. Then the data is published in basically a cryptographic code of a scientific paper, yet due to journal publication length requirements, critical information is often missing. Then you don’t publish “negative” findings (even though such findings would reduce the uncertainty bands on a large scale machine learning system) My above post proposes replacing all of it with machines and large scale, integrated efforts. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/127 "2017-12-27T22:22:36Z")
After you invent immortality, you need to invent a way to stop the universe from burning out. I’m thinking a reverse osmosis solar filter with brass fittings would create about 12 x 10 to the 24th megaplacks of matter per hour. If we only made hydrogen from that matter and we superheated it with leftover spaceship exhaust we could create our own sun, and make that sun immortal with mirrors. We could also program it to turn off at night to save energy, or have it switch to battery backup if it’s stormy or something. It’s easy really. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/128 "2017-12-27T22:23:16Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > What research? Dropping things into a cold dewar doesn’t need much practice. > > I might suggest that we try liquid helium, at least for initial freezing, as that would make it freeze faster and lead to less crystallization, but that’s pretty much it, research done. Rapid freezes preserves living things. But it has to be rapid - slow freezing allows ice crystals to damage them. So the thing to be researched is how to _rapidly_ freeze a volumetric object like a brain. You cannot just dunk it into liquid nitrogen or helium - only the outer part will freeze rapidly, the inner parts will be crushed by expanding ice crystals and the data you are trying to preserve is damaged\* or lost. One promising method is magnetic refrigeration. You would run oxygenated cold fluid through a brain, with drugs to force the arterioles to stay open. Similar to conditions for bloodless surgery, where patients can be revived. You prevent the ice from forming with very powerful magnetic fields that are oscillating - the oscillating heats the liquid, keeping the water a liquid, even though the supply liquid would be below freezing. Turn off the magnet (send the current to resistors) and you should get immediate, rapid, demolition-man style instant freezing. Revival has to be done a similar tricky way. You would have had to leave metal containing nanoparticles that are non-toxic inside all these blood vessels. Then through magnetic induction, evenly heat the whole volume. If you don’t heat quickly enough, the same problem with ice crystals happens when you rewarm. As you can imagine, actually doing this physically and getting someone to wake up with enough intact tissue to prove they lived through the experience would be a colossal, multi-billion dollar effort. But you only need do it a few times. Then you could start a mass freezing program for all patients, not reviving them (since revival is going to do a lot of damage) until some future date when you can also treat all their diseases and replace their missing body. And if you’re wondering, this basic idea is mine, but the proof that it might work is here : [Cells Alive System - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cells_Alive_System) Here’s a video of it working : [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/fehdWAefXWw/hqdefault.jpg "Cell alive system") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fehdWAefXWw) \*you might be able to recover the original synaptic states computationally if you had an atom by atom scan of the whole thing, but the original person is dead. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/129 "2017-12-27T22:28:39Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > After you invent immortality, you need to invent a way to stop the universe from burning out. I’m thinking a reverse osmosis solar filter with brass fittings would create about 12 x 10 to the 24th megaplacks of matter per hour. If we only made hydrogen from that matter and we superheated it with leftover spaceship exhaust we could create our own sun, and make that sun immortal with mirrors. We could also program it to turn off at night to save energy, or have it switch to battery backup if it’s stormy or something. It’s easy really. I know you’re trolling, but _something_ created the universe. If it wasn’t a “god” and it isn’t a simulation, that _something_ might be replicable using resources we have in this universe. Even I think this is far fetched, I’m just saying, if you have trillions of years to work on the problem, it might not be as intractable as we humans think it is. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/130 "2017-12-27T22:37:08Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > I know you’re trolling, but _something_ created the universe. If it wasn’t a “god” and it isn’t a simulation, that _something_ might be replicable using resources we have in this universe. Even I think this is far fetched, I’m just saying, if you have trillions of years to work on the problem, it might not be as intractable as we humans think it is. Me trolling? No way. This shit is way to serious to mess with. I could accidentally open some kind of portal and be swept away to some fucking red state, or even worse, Florida. I’d never mess with a portal. Anyway, this trillions of year things. I think our sun goes to sleep in about 5 billion, so I’ll have to have it done by then. ---
**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 27, 2017, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/131 "2017-12-27T22:39:43Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > I know you’re trolling, but _something_ created the universe. If it wasn’t a “god” and it isn’t a simulation, that _something_ might be replicable using resources we have in this universe. Even I think this is far fetched, I’m just saying, if you have trillions of years to work on the problem, it might not be as intractable as we humans think it is. Please don’t try to create a new universe until we are done with this one. ETA: I’m pretty sure I know how to do it, it’s just that it would replace this one, and we are all having such a wonderful time. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/132 "2017-12-27T23:12:18Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > Me trolling? No way. This shit is way to serious to mess with. I could accidentally open some kind of portal and be swept away to some fucking red state, or even worse, Florida. I’d never mess with a portal. > > Anyway, this trillions of year things. I think our sun goes to sleep in about 5 billion, so I’ll have to have it done by then. No worries. Just combine enough laser beams and you’ll create a synthetic black hole. [Easy peasy](https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803). I mean, once you have self replicating robots, just send some to the Moon, wait a decade or 2, then order the super-swarm to make your laser apparatus. Don’t know how to make the lasers yet? Have some of the super-swarm make prototypes using an evolutionary algorithm to find the best laser design. Should just be a few mouse clicks, really, anyone armed with post singularity tech could do it. \*Now I am somewhat trolling myself here but if you did have self replicating robots and very powerful AI, this _would_ be technically possible. Maybe not the harnessing a black hole part, but the apparatus to build a small one to see if you can harness it would be. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/133 "2017-12-27T23:20:39Z")
No, I don’t know how to make a laser. But I helped invent the electric sextant for a submerged nuclear submarine. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/134 "2017-12-27T23:28:13Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > No, I don’t know how to make a laser. But I helped invent the electric sextant for a submerged nuclear submarine. Really? I mean you had to ascend to periscope depth, right? ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2017, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/135 "2017-12-27T23:51:16Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Really? I mean you had to ascend to periscope depth, right? That was the problem, the subs had to take their noontime sightings 2 hours after sunset to avoid detection on the surface. But for those times the exec is playing Call of Duty on the GPS computer, you have no other choice. It’s a back up. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/136 "2017-12-28T00:51:09Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > That was the problem, the subs had to take their noontime sightings 2 hours after sunset to avoid detection on the surface. But for those times the exec is playing Call of Duty on the GPS computer, you have no other choice. It’s a back up. Ok. So you didn’t find a way to solve _that_ problem. By like a mixture of very sensitive magnetic field detectors and gravitational field detectors or something. (since both the earth’s magnetic field and the strength of gravity vary very very very slightly depending on where you are on Earth, if you had sensitive enough detectors and a big table of values for every location, you could determine your position that way…) Or releasing a drone sub to go check the starfield while the mothership hides safe in the depth. You know, something else. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/137 "2017-12-28T00:56:45Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Ok. So you didn’t find a way to solve _that_ problem. By like a mixture of very sensitive magnetic field detectors and gravitational field detectors or something. (since both the earth’s magnetic field and the strength of gravity vary very very very slightly depending on where you are on Earth, if you had sensitive enough detectors and a big table of values for every location, you could determine your position that way…) > > Or releasing a drone sub to go check the starfield while the mothership hides safe in the depth. > > **You know, something else.** Like something that exists? ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/138 "2017-12-28T00:59:07Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > Like something that exists? Yeah I thought there was a way to determine your position that way, not sure if it’s very accurate. And the drone sub obviously works perfectly as a concept, it’s just tough to execute since it’s a separate vehicle that has to work reliably in the sea, which is extremely cruel to all machinery. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/139 "2017-12-28T01:02:08Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Yeah I thought there was a way to determine your position that way, not sure if it’s very accurate. And the drone sub obviously works perfectly as a concept, it’s just tough to execute since it’s a separate vehicle that has to work reliably in the sea, which is extremely cruel to all machinery. Isn’t accuracy the important part? Everything works perfectly _as a concept._ But there’s this pesky thing called reality that keeps rearing it’s ugly head. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2017, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/140 "2017-12-28T01:08:30Z")
Detection? This isn’t classified anymore, but they use compressed steam balls for that. So totally simple. That came with the 688 subs. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420.md?page=8)