In China, a robot was approved on the medical exam and accepted to work on a hospital as an assistant doctor:


http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2017-11/10/content_34362656.htm
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/robo-doc-will-see-you-now-robot-passes-chinas-national-medical-exam-first-time-1648027

This just means that doctors are mostly out of work, since this robot will be upgraded, mass produced and exported soon to every country.

I already can see medics on strike, protesting all around the world, arguing about "safety" and the risks... good luck.

Are you thinking about going to medical school? Think twice, this is just the first stupid generation of medical robots.

Even if religions/churches were useful (on the last part of the OP, I wrote why I think they are not), supposedly, they should also be based on actual real things, not on an imaginary pal and his close family.

A pal who (believers on him say) loves you so much that he will burn you in hell if you don't love him back, you don't believe in him or also if, on an honest mistake, you love one of his competitors who sells the same product ("divinity services" in exchange for adoration and a big chunk of your assets to his church; or else...).

You can't compare an actual rocket with "vaporware".

Russia is almost bankrupt (thanks to Putin military adventures and western sanctions) and still uses space technology from the sixties.

They still are a major player, but they would need to spend money they just don't have to keep at the pace of technological development. We'll see if those rocket plans get any implementation.

Of course, with oil at 150 usd a barrel things could be different.

After Falcon Heavy launch success, does anyone still doubt that SpaceX will take humans to Mars?

They already have a rocket powerful enough to reach it easily.

(not on 2024, but maybe before 2030)

Another minor update, taking in account the confirmation that the remains at Jebel Irhoud are from modern humans and, so, that god left us without guidance for about 350,000 years and not just 200,000:
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v546/n7657/full/nature22336.html
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v546/n7657/full/nature22335.html

Musk posted 6 February as the date for Falcon Heavy launch: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/957361443023695872

Let's see if it is this time.

Too bad crossing fingers is worthless.

Taking in account what we know, I think these facts might be truth:

1) Basic life, unicellular, is common on the Universe. They are the first and last stand of life. We, humans, are luxurious beings, created thanks to excellent (but rare and temporary) conditions.

2) Complex life is much less common, but basic intelligent life (apes, dolphins, etc.) might exist on some planets of our galaxy.

3) Higher intelligence with advanced technological development is very rare.

Probably, currently, there isn't another high intelligent species on our galaxy or we already would have noticed its traces all over it.

Because higher intelligence might take a few billion years to develop and planets that can offer climatic stability for so long are very rare (https://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon-Universe/dp/0387952896 ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis).

4) All these few rare high intelligent species developed according to Darwin's Law of evolution, which is an universal law.

So, they share some common features (they are omnivorous, moderately belligerent to foreigners, highly adaptable and, rationally, they try to discover more easily ways to do things).

5) So, all the rare higher intelligence species with advanced technological civilizations create AI and, soon, AI overcomes them in intelligence (it's just a question of organizing atoms and molecules, we'll do a better job than dumb Nature).

6) If they change themselves and merge with AI, their story might end well and it's just the Rare Earth hypothesis that explains the silence on the Universe.

7) If they lost control of the AI, there seems to be a non ignorable probability that they ended extinct.

Taking in account the way we are developing AI, basically letting it learn on its own and, thus, become more intelligent on its own, I think this outcome is more probable.

An AI society probably is an anarchic one, with several AI competing for supremacy, constantly developing better systems.

It might be a society in constant internal war, where we are just the collateral targets, ignored by all sides, as the walking monkeys.

8] Contrary to us, AI won't have the restraints developed by evolution (our human inclination to be social and live in communities and our fraternity towards other members of the community).

The most tyrannical dictator never wanted to kill all human beings, but his enemies and discriminated groups.

Well, AIs might think that extermination is the most efficient way to solve a threat and fight themselves to extinction.

Of course, there is a lot of speculation on this post.

I know Isaac Arthur's videos on the subject. He adopts the logical Rare Earth hypothesis and dismisses AI too fast by not taking in account that AI might end up destroying themselves.

Good luck to your battles.


My english is not that good.
Good luck.


I would say that those believes make you a religious person.

"The most powerful rocket this generation has ever seen, SpaceX’s new Falcon Heavy rocket, launches no earlier than January 2018."

With 5 years of delay, but here it is.




I never paid attention to any rocket launch before, but this one will be historical. Not only because of its importance, but also because of the doors it opens and the promises it backs.

Updated also the OP.

If you had kids, you wouldn't write that.

As far as we know, taking in account the silence on the Universe, even with all our defects, we might be the most amazing being the Universe already created.

After taking care of us, AI might take care of themselves, ending up destroying everything.

Actually, this might be the answer for the Fermi Paradox.

It's a video at youtube with just 7m: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw


It's about killer robots. Trust me: it deserves the click and the 7m of your life. It will scare the hell of you.


Don't read the rest of this post before watching the video, it has spoilers.
















Spoilers:

Of course, it's just a movie, not a real presentation. But in the beginning, the issue isn't clear.

Yes, as far as we know, this doesn't exist, yet.

But it's a shore deal. And no public appeal of the Future of Life Institute will avoid it.

In a few years, any coder will be able to build bots like these. Imagine the damages on the hands of a terrorist group or of a dictatorial government.


See further, about the dangers of a super AI:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1538764.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2423065.0

A Molten salt thorium reactor could easily power our spaceships, with more speed, safety and efficiency.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2450168.0

Suddenly, Mars and the other planets and moons of the Solar system seem closer.

Human ingenuity never ceases to amaze me. Are we something or what?

Beside time, energy is our most precious commodity. All societies run on it.

If we couldn’t sustain the current energy output, we wouldn’t be able to support the present world population of about 7,4 billions (to reach about 9 billions on about 25 years).

With global warming and the possibility that oil production won’t be able to keep up with demand (Peek Oil is still a serious possibility taking in account the development of India and Africa; fracking didn’t solve this problem, could only postpone it), we are risking a serious climate and energy crisis.

Because of it intermittence and low density (no use to try to run North Europe or Canada on solar power), with current technology, renewable sources can’t really offer a complete solution to overcoming fossil sources dependency, even taking in account the major drop in prices of Solar.

After Chernobyl and Fukoshima, traditional nuclear reactors are clearly on a serious crisis (Germany decided to close all its nuclear plants by 2022).

Current nuclear plants rely on a high pressure water system in order to power an electrical generator.

Since water boils at about 100 degrees centigrade, only by submit it to a pressure as high as 70 times the normal atmospheric pressure can water temperature be increased to about 300 degrees without boiling it in order to produce energy at about 30-35% efficiency.

Well, pressuring radioactive water to 70 times the normal pressure is a dangerous business.

If the plant loses pressure, water will start boiling and vapor occupies much more space than liquid water. If the massive concrete and steel container that covers these reactors, in order to avoid any radioactive emission, is breached, one ends up with another Fukoshima.

Since the fifties there were experiments with nuclear reactors that use Molten salt as the heating/cooling instrument and not pressured water.

Molten salt reactors have a few advantages: they can reach much higher temperatures (so, they are much more efficient producing energy) and at normal pressure!

Therefore, it doesn’t need the expensive containers, so the plant is much smaller and cheaper to build.

They can be indeed very small and even be transportable! They can be manufactured on assembly lines.

Also, these reactors are much safer. They cool off on their own when temperature rises too much and the nuclear reaction can be easily stopped.

Moreover, a Molten salt reactor can be powered with thorium (that can be easily converted to uranium 233), which has some advantages over uranium:

1) Is much more common than uranium and have been mined extensively as a by-product no one currently uses. So, it's available with little mining costs.

2) Can be used almost completely (contrary to uranium, which only about 0.07% is actually consumed, leaving the rest as waste that is radioactive for thousands of years), being able to create about 200 times more energy than the same quantity of uranium.

3) Leaves relatively little waste and this waste is radioactive “only” for about 300 years.

4) This waste, contrary to the one from conventional reactors, is hard to use for weapons purposes. So, it’s much less risky to share this technology.

Finally, this new reactor can be also powered by a mix of thorium and uranium wastes created by conventional reactors.

So we can find use for this terrible legacy we are leaving to future generations.

There are a few technologic obstacles, like the corrosive nature of salt. But some projects intend to use graphite on the core to overcome it.

Nobody will stop this now: the Chinese, the Indians, the USA, Canada and also a few European countries are racing to build a fully working reactor of this kind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv_XjHPJjEg


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Twenty-first_century

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/254692-new-molten-salt-thorium-reactor-first-time-decades

http://www.businessinsider.com/thorium-molten-salt-reactors-sorensen-lftr-2017-2

It seems our future is nuclear: first, Molten salt thorium fission; then, fusion.

I wrote about meaning, but a lack of meaning isn't necessarily bad.

A life without meaning is a life without any goal constraints, where one can do anything one pleases with no wasting of time perception.

Time you loved to waste wasn't wasted.

A life without meaning is a life where we aren't slaves of any goal that we have to reach at any cost: is a life of freedom.

The above post deserved at least some flame or bashing from some believer.

I laughed out so much reading this story and while I was writing my post, that I couldn't resist posting it.

"In 2014, he launched himself in a rocket from a private property in Arizona, traveling 1,374 feet before a crash-landing that wasn’t very well aided by a hole-ridden parachute. The landing left Hughes out of action for three days."
http://www.newsweek.com/earth-flat-rocket-launch-mad-mike-hughes-719367

Hehehe.

He is indeed determined to be a flat-earther martyr.

A flat-earther built a rocket and is going to try to launch himself in order to take pictures from "space" and prove that he is right:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/flat-earther-launch-himself-homemade-212500611.html

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/259409-flat-earther-plans-homemade-manned-rocked-launch-coming-saturday

www.newsweek.com/earth-flat-rocket-launch-mad-mike-hughes-719367

https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/11/22/flat-earther-launch-rocket-prove-earth-flat/

I couldn't believe on this story, so I had to find more news sources to take it seriously.

There are pretty good chances that this remarkable movement who believes the Earth is flat is going to lose one of its members: not really because he is going to change his opinion after being able to reach space and see Earth, but because of his premature death.

I guess they don't know that they could just rent a ship and sail until they "drop out of Earth".

But, for the record, he isn't completely stupid, since he said “If you’re not scared to death [for trying this], you’re an idiot”.

But he is wrong: he is the living (unfortunately, probably, only until Saturday) proof that one can be scared to death for trying this and still be an idiot.

I guess the movement is going to have his first martyr.

Of course, they will be saying that he was blown out of the air by the evil conspirators who have been fooling us all.

Because we all [but not them] are the stupid ones.

The things people can believe or do just to try to show how [not] intelligent they are…

Many claim that the threat that technology would take away all jobs has been made many times in the past and that the outcome was always the same: some jobs were eliminated, but many others, better ones, were created.

So, again, we are just making the "old wasted" claim: this time is different.

However, this time isn't just repetitive manual jobs that are under threat, but white collar intellectual jobs: it's not just driving jobs that are under threat, but also medics, teachers, traders, lawyers, financial or insurance analyst or journalists.

And this is just the beginning.

The major problem will arrive with a general AI comparable to humans, but much faster and cheaper.

Don't say this won't ever happen. It's just a question of organizing molecules and atoms (Sam Harris). If the dumb Nature was able to do it by trial and error, we will be able to do the same and, then, better than it.

Some are writing about the creation of a useless class. "People who are not just unemployed, but unemployable" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari) and claiming that this can have major political consequences, with this class losing political rights.

Of course, we already have a temporary and a more or less definitive "useless class": kids and retired people. The first doesn't have political rights, but because of a natural incapacity. The second have major political power and, currently, even better social security conditions than all of us will get in the future.

As long as Democracy subsists, these dangers won't materialize.

However, of course, if the big majority of the people losses all economic power this will be a serious threat to Democracy. Current inequality is already a threat to it (see  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1301649.0).

Anyway, the creation of a general AI better than humans (have little doubt: it will happen and you'll see it in your lifetime) will make us an "useless species", unless we upgrade the homo sapiens, by merging us with AI.

CRISPR (google it) as a way of genetic manipulation won't be enough. Our sons or grandsons (with some luck, even ourselves) will have to change a lot.

Since it seems that the creation of an AI better than ourselves is inevitable, we we'll have to adapt and change completely or we'll become irrelevant. In this case, extinction would be our destiny.

General job destruction by AI and the new homo artificialis


Many claim that the threat that technology would take away all jobs has been made many times in the past and that the outcome was always the same: some jobs were eliminated, but many others, better ones, were created.

So, again, that we are making the "old wasted" claim: this time is different.

However, this time isn't repetitive manual jobs that are under threat, but white collar intellectual jobs: it's not just driving jobs that are under threat, but also medics, teachers, traders, lawyers, financial or insurance analyst or journalists.

Forget about robots: for this kind of jobs, it's just software and a fast computer. Intellectual jobs will go faster than the manual picky ones.

And this is just the beginning.

The major problem will arrive with a general AI comparable to humans, but much faster and cheaper.

Don't say this won't ever happen. It's just a question of organizing molecules and atoms (Sam Harris). If the dumb Nature was able to do it by trial and error during our evolution, we will be able to do the same and, then, better than it.

Some are writing about the creation of a useless class. "People who are not just unemployed, but unemployable" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Noah_Harari) and arguing that this can have major political consequences, with this class losing political rights.

Of course, we already have a temporary and a more or less definitive "useless class": kids and retired people. The first doesn't have political rights, but because of a natural incapacity. The second have major political power and, currently, even better social security conditions than all of us will get in the future.

As long as Democracy subsists, these dangers won't materialize.

However, of course, if the big majority of the people losses all economic power this will be a serious threat to Democracy. Current inequality is already a threat to it (see  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1301649.0).

Anyway, the creation of a general AI better than humans (have little doubt: it will happen) will make us an "useless species", unless we upgrade the homo sapiens, by merging us with AI.

CRISPR (google it) as a way of genetic manipulation won't be enough. Our sons or grandsons (with some luck, even ourselves) will have to change a lot.

Since it seems that the creation of an AI better than ourselves is inevitable (it's slowly happening right now), we we'll have to adapt and change completely or we'll become irrelevant. In this case, extinction would be our inevitable destiny.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/worlds-first-human-head-transplant-successfully-carried-132553590.html

Take this news with some caution, this hasn't yet been confirmed by any scientific article.