One might note that 3.762 x 10[sup]9[/sup] nanobots seems like a lot, but it’s not, really, because you only need to build one and they “just” replicate themselves. I realize that this description is a form of linear recursion, but that’s the brilliance of SamuelA’s whole schtick. The mind boggles in intellectual spasms of sheer admiration.
You know, sometimes I feel bad for dumping on SamuelA because, in truth, there are a few far worse posters, genuine pieces of shit, who post here. But it’s the way he continues to solve all the problems of the universe in ways that all the rest of us are just too dim to see that continues to annoy.
I do genuinely know what you mean. You, wolfpup, have taken the time in this thread (and others) to address his comments, try to engage him to demonstrate where his logic went south, and have spent time and energy to try to communicate him. I tend to just go at him with both barrels. The difference? My patience with “it”* was exhausted a long time ago; I’m only willing to put as much thought into a response in proportion to as much thought as “it” puts into its’ posts.
I had just realized, that through some of it’s posts, I don’t get a warm fuzzy that “it” actually exists. There are some red flags that make me think the account of SamuelA is either a bot, or a ‘shared’ account by several ghost writers.
Tripler
Gotta go for now. . . I’ll explain more tonight.
Meant to explain my thoughts a little further last night, but ended up rolling into town kinda late—on travel today.
It’s just something about it’s “thought process” that seems kinda disjointed. For starters, it seems that some posts have a coherent, logical train of thought (however incorrect in its application of basic concepts); others tend to spiral off into a random direction (such as its early trends of ‘redirects’ or “whataboutisms”). Some posts accept a different point of view upon presentation with factual evidence, while others cling to an opinion like a hobo on a ham sandwich. Some posts are able to use the Queen’s English, while others are riddled with grammatical errors and misspellings. He drops hints at “life experiences,” but they’re so vague, and lightly tied to anything a simple Google search can provide, that I wouldn’t credibly put any basis in fact to them. Another flag is the timing of its posts; it claims to have a regular steady job, and be in school, but it’s posts are in the “off hours” when most people in the US (where it claims to be) are normallly asleep. I find patterns of contrived arrogance, when most people would have a sense of humor.
From a “whole person” concept, I’m sensing red flags for multiple keyboard operators that aren’t seamlessly keeping a story or appearance consistent. I dunno, maybe not multiple people, but I’ll put dollars to donuts that it’s multiple something…
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m headed to the East Coast today, but I’ll try to put a few points of evidence together.
I realize that my patience with a “him” is nil, but if I reframe it as an “it,” then I think I might be noticing some patterns…
Thought?
Tripler
From my cellphone… Just like Willie Nelson, “On the Road Again…”
I might be overprocessing it, but I don’t think about things like “it.” It’s just something that caught my instincts. Hell, you may be right that it is a solitary individual. I’ll keep an eye out in the future if/when something jumps out at me again…
You may be onto something. I’d think that the thread about downloading one’s consciousness would be catnip to Sam, but a) they have been very restrained, and b) their posts have been uncharacteristic of the norm.
Lately, our hero has a problem that he can’t engineer himself out of. If only thousands of nanobots could mop up some urine. . .
Beyond the disdainful morality of abandoning/dumping a pet because it’s inconvenient to him, this is one of those posts that make me think there’s a less-than-academic type running the keyboard.
Tripler
It’s okay though; he’s going to go with option “b” because it’s “a less bad outcome.”
You think its immoral to remove a pet that pees all over the house? And it’s wrong for someone, who obviously wants to know what to do, to ask people on a message board that supposedly contains smart people as members?
I just can’t see it that way. His thread was all about trying to find a way to avoid euthanasia. He didn’t want to give his cat over to a shelter because they would kill it, but was also worried that letting it become an outside cat would be cruel.
Including euthanasia as an option actually sounds more academic to me, not less. It’s more academic to include all options, even the ones you find distasteful. And wondering if euthanasia could actually be the more ethical option is more common in academics.
Maybe an analogy would help: Spock vs. McCoy. Spock is the more academic minded character, while McCoy, despite being well educated, is more emotional. And, of the two o them, it is McCoy who would be the character who would want to avoid death at all cost. It is Spock who would reluctantly acknowledge euthanasia as an option, despite his commitment to trying to save life if possible.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think he’s an academic. Just a transhumanist, who may have more recently learned that some of his optimism was misplaced. Maybe he even learned it here–just because people don’t back down from an argument doesn’t mean they didn’t learn new information and won’t change their mind.
I’ll give him a pass on the cat thread. I’m a cat owner and would be considering similar things in his position. I value cats, but sometimes the beasts force one to consider hard choices.
Perhaps if he wasn’t all, “well, I think it’d be better to just toss the thing out to sink or swim, rather than have it put down humanely. And hey, if it gets hit by a car or torn apart by a wild animal, it’s not really MY fault, is it?”
Having the poor cat put to sleep would probably be the better choice, if it came to that. Not to mention as he’s stated before, he didn’t really worry to much about this, because he cared more about sticking it to his landlord, and “eh, I don’t really have time to get her fixed, I’ll do it when I get to it.”
DON’T GET A PET IF YOU CAN’T TAKE CARE OF IT. It’s entirely his own fault. This isn’t an isolated incident, it’s just the latest in a long line of him being an asshole.
Ok, I’m going to drop in here and ask what “TroutMan” knows about the matter. Precisely why wouldn’t staging work?
You have one end of a process - the top of Mount Everest, or at least the last strong portion of the mountain. You know that humans in spacesuits with safety lines would be safe from all of the dangers. (low pressure, the extreme cold, the risk of falls, even the risk of hand abrasions)
You also have the problem that space suits need a constant stream of supplies to keep them functioning (obviously fresh batteries and oxygen, as well as replacement life support packs and so forth as they fail)
And you have another end of a process - a mountainous landing strip where cargo can be unloaded, albeit in small quantities, and the pressure is high enough for a normal work environment.
This is just a linear recursion problem, I don’t need to spend any more time thinking of it. It’s clearly solvable. For an affordable price? Beats me. I acknowledge that freely. I suggested a cableway to haul the constant stream of supplies needed for the advancing end of the effort, as it makes intuitive sense that it would work, but I’m not fixated on that solution.
Also I know that pressure chambers are problematic, so “oxygen tents” might be a better solution.
Because I made my point and I realized that I don’t need to do any further than demonstrate what’s called a recurrence, in an algorithm’s course I’m taking. The lower level functions of a human brain appear to be solvable with known techniques, therefore consciousness emulation is also solvable, with sufficient scale. You know, assuming the laws of physics are the same inside a human brain as seen outside, base assumptions that other posters in that thread also get to eventually.
As for understanding consciousness - or all the “symbols aware of their own values” nonsense that wolfpup seems to be fixated on, to figure it out systematically will take a lot of stuff, like I said. There is not sufficient data at this time to answer why these problems that wolfpup seems to be fixated on exist. However, the existence of this problem is irrelevant for the medical solution to human death I have been “peddling” in these parts, since if it’s possible to preserve the low level elements of human neurons, the high level elements of a larger running brain must follow. (and if cryonic preservation isn’t good enough to preserve the low level structures that matter, well, I acknowledge it won’t work if that turns out to be the case)
As for my thread about science, where Colibri claims I have “breathtaking” ignorance, not sure what I can say there. I cannot disprove his hypothesis that my ignorance is “breathtaking”, and he’s not going to engage further on the subject with such a base argument.
I could discuss it further but while I know my algorithm is valid, as I didn’t think of it - it’s just particle filters, applied to track scientific hypotheses. It would allow scientists to easily maintain dozens of hypotheses in parallel, and instead of making a written statement in a paper of what they are testing, they just include the data file of the present state of the filter’s plot (and a link to the source code for how it was generated).
Famous arguments like particle-wave duality would have been easy to track with such a tool - there wouldn’t be “camps”. You’d have regions on the plot for each hypothesis and every rational scientist would be forced to acknowledge the probability weight for the other side.
It’s not very complex of an idea and I’m sure someone has already tried this before.
Also, it would be possible to model what different outcomes of a scientific experiment would do to the plot, without doing the experiment, and then decide which, of a list of possible experiments, offers the greatest knowledge gain per dollar spent. This is neatly recursive in that this model depends on the present state of the plot.
I’m not going to bother with the myriad reasons it wouldn’t work, but I’ll make one request: before solving all those other problems, describe in detail one thing. Where and how will you attach the supports for the cable, shelters, or whatever else you envision? Be sure you include the means by which you attach it (ice anchor? drill rig to bore down to bedrock?) and the materials used at each point along the way, from base camp to the summit.
I also like the way you use scare quotes around my user name, as if it to suggest it isn’t my real name. Mea culpa, you got me there.
But…if you don’t actually do the physical exertion of the climb, what’s the point?
It would be much cheaper to build a hangar the size they use for putting together space rockets, and line all the walls/floors/ceilings with giant screens on which you display high resolution images of 360 degree views from Mt. Everest. (Live, if you like, just cover that little space on top of Everest with a bunch of cameras and some sort of broadcasting setup.)
And then for $X you get Y minutes all alone in the center of hangar and you can take a zillion selfies.
Heck, if you want even more “reality” we can chill the hangar to any temperature you like, add fans for ‘wind’. Seal it up air tight, and you can even enjoy hypoxia, why not?
Ok, first, I thought of this problem a minute or 2 more, and I realize I missed another important detail. Lukla does have a finite capacity. It can be paved, a parallel runway will fit from thevideos online, you could use civilian badged C-130s - but if you need more tons/day for developing infrastructure to Everest than even an expanded airport can supply, then it wouldn’t be possible.
But if it is possible to get enough tons/day, and each subsidiary problem is solvable (if you can put a cableway 500 meters from Lukla, you can extend it another 500m, up until the point that the mountain won’t support the weight), then the whole problem is solvable.
I would assume you have to drill into bedrock. I don’t know how you get the supplies and machinery to drill each hole to each spot, or the cableway poles, or the tons of cable itself. It would heavily depend on the terrain at each stage as to which methods would work. You could do it with teams of climbers installing a lightweight cable to a small explosively driven rock anchor. Then, using a powered winch (connected to a power cord connected ultimately to generators back at Lukla), you winch increasingly heavy cables and winches to the next leg, then once the lift is installed, winch the multi-ton of electric rock drilling machine you would need for a deep hole.
Or just 4-wheelers for the easier, flatter and wider segments. Or build a road. Or choose a lighter drilling machine or use shaped charges. Concrete won’t set? Heat it. (by embedding electric heat cables into it before pouring)
Humans have built thousands of miles of mountainous roads, railroads, railroad tunnels through mountains, railroad tunnels against the side of the mountain - the only difference with Everest is that it’s cold and the pressure is lower. Which is possible to protect against with protective suits, whether they be compression garments and oxygen masks or full spacesuits.
However, given enough time and money it’s clearly doable so I reverse this task.
What are you mentally thinking when you concluded “it’s impossible”. What do you think you know and how do you know it?