05 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
"Bug" is Not an Insult
Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a flyswatter under it … this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization. But the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs have... 1 
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notes06 NOV 2014 by ideonexus
Human Communication with Matrioshka Brains
Communication between humans and MB is essentially pointless. The computational capacity difference between a MB and a human is on the order of 1016 (ten million billion) times greater than the difference between a human and a nematode (~109)! A single MB can emulate the entire history of human thought in a few microseconds. It is important to consider that intelligence may not be a linear process. There is a rather large difference between the... 1 notes
notes19 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Accelerating Knowledge
The rate at which man has been storing up useful knowledge about himself and the universe
has been spiraling upward for 10,000 years. The rate took a sharp upward leap with the
invention of writing, but even so it remained painfully slow over centuries of time. The next
great leap forward in knowledge—acquisition did not occur until the invention of movable
type in the fifteenth century by Gutenberg and others. Prior to 1500, by the most optimistic
estimates, Europe was producing books at a r...
1 Toffler describes and quantifies the increasing production of information in human civilization and its implications.
05 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Pessimism VS Optimism in Science
By and large, literary intellectuals tend to be a gloomy lot, with little but scorn for science and technology as engines of human happiness. By contrast, science is impossible without hope; it is inherently forward-looking. As Ian McEwan says: "You can't be curious and depressed."
So the two cultures are not based so much on the academic disciplines themselves as on basic temperaments, says Ferry. One is either an optimist or a pessimist about the direction of human civilization; science an...Hope is a virtue, you have to work at it. We are split between optimists and pessimists.
29 OCT 2011 by ideonexus
Government Maps the Terrain for Private Enterprise
There is fundamentally no business case for private enterprise to advance a space frontier. When you advance a frontier, you are making mistakes that the capital markets choose not to value. You have to create patents to enable things that you don't know will work. Anytime you are the first person to do something on that scale, the history of human civilization has demonstrated that the only funding available to do that via governance.
And so what then happens is the patents get issued. The ...
1 Neil deGrasse Tyson explains how government explores and maps out the terrain before private enterprise comes along behind after the costs and risks have been determined.
30 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
A Solid Prediction About Science from the Early 1900s
Man has mounted science, and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of men. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world. Not only shall we be able to cruise in space, but I'll be hanged if I see any reason why some future generation shouldn't walk off like a beetle with the world on ... 1 notes
notesHenry Brooks Adams predicts that human civilization will run away with science and it will consume everything in our society and contain the threat of our destruction.
