I think understanding the histological development of the brain in the embryo is a key piece to the puzzle of strong AI. We need to know how our own brains assemble themselves so we can duplicate certain essential steps within that growth and development process.
Unique is not the same as special. Sure, we're unique but I think there are plenty of tool using organisms out there, we're aren't special.
But obviously this is all speculation. We won't really know until we get enough data to form a reasonable sample size to guess how common intelligent tool using cultures are out there. Until then your guess is as good as mine.
Well, I'm for it. New technology makes for new ways to do science.
It's all speculation but I believe humans aren't special. I think as the data comes in I don't think tool using life is all that rare either.
I think it's all just testing of circuits and systems, just to see if the arms and hands work and the if the pleasure circuits work. Nothing beyond that.
It's probably due to the modern idea of sex mostly for pleasure not procreation.
It's a mystery but one I think we'll find the answer to at some point. I myself definitely fall into the "ordinary circumstances, Earth is not special" camp.
Or just an unthinking assumption that a man's sexual response is simple.
Which isn't entirely their fault for thinking so. This assumption is mostly driven by bragging men who pretend it is simple, lying to themselves and to other men. The gals just get the leakage from this huge pile of self-delusion men bury themselves in.
No man's sexual response is simple in the slightest, any man who claims that is lying to themselves or is just completely ignorant of his own body.
Well, it's not so much that as some gals get worried that they aren't stimulating enough. But it's not really their fault at all.
Basically if a guy is used to the firmness and touch of his own hands during masturbation, *any* women might seem too soft and slippery in comparison and this leads to delayed orgasm or no orgasm. At first delayed orgasm might seem like a boon because the guy can last a long time and stay hard while the women gets off as many times as she wants but it can lead other problems where women might feel a little inadequate and the man feels frustrated that he can't seem to carry himself to the end due to such subtle sensations--it's hard to establish the needed feedback loops.
In other words some men a lot of foreplay too.
Sex can be a very finicky, finely tuned thing. For some of us, it's not as simple as a ride on a bicycle.
I wouldn't know myself but I can see that lasting a very long time can be problematic too.
Well, I know men with delayed ejaculation certainly don't fall in that average.
Of course Wong's Milk Man is built of solid, weapons-grade awesome but I am reminded of an older and equally awesome milk man, Reid Fleming.
This might all be academic to me because I hope to be fully synthetic by then.
"The future always arrives unevenly," Mina thought sitting on the torn divan looking out to the nearly finished city on the horizon. She was echoing words she'd read on the Network years ago. They were very old words, almost predating space travel.
Ojo was sitting next to her, sipping desert shine. They had come to the end of their chores, finished dinner and there was a wordless assumption that they'd wind up here on the roof of their adobe hut, in the divan, and maybe a little sex afterwards but, the city held them.
It was unnaturally bright, especially considering it was empty of people, but this was probably due to any number of things, weird optical effects in the assembly fog, photo-cured memory plastic, sterilization, who knew? It looked like the city was under a vast transparent dome but Mina knew this was an illusion. The dome-like cloud was actually filled with countless microscopic and dust grain sized construction robots. Only a week ago there was nothing on the horizon and then, three local days later, a plume of smoke appeared and rapidly grew into an opaque dome-like cloud squatting on the horizon, blotting out the rising sun. The cloud grew steadily more transparent revealing a city that could house millions.
Mina was entirely unsurprised when the Network informed them of the Act of Re-purpose only after the city builders all over the planet were nearly finished with their work. Her telescope showed that they'd already docked two elevators at the equator. There were probably more over the horizon and, considering all the orbital activity she saw, more were probably coming. It was clear the development companies wanted to deal with squatters only after they held all the cards.
When Ojo and Okemina set foot on this barely habitable rock 15 standard years ago, they found a town of rebels, former felons, religious cultists and misanthropes--poor people mostly. For poor people colonization was a dicey affair of vitrifiers, unknown dlestinations, lack of automation, possible starvation, environmental failure and subtle toxins in the atmosphere, if there was atmosphere.
Not so for the people that would live in that city. They would have it easy. They'd have the scenery without the work.
Mina looked up but the light of the city completely washed out her stars.
Still, doesn't look like much progress on the rejuvenation medicine front. Rather a disappointing future if you ask me.
In the old days spent fuel rods in nuclear piles (Not all necessarily power plants as such.) were reprocessed solely to recover plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. Since those days, the plutonium is now recycled back into a fuel process that uses it and prevents it from accumulating as weapons grade material.
A significant number of reactors in the States still use fuel cycles that generate weapons grade plutonium in the spent fuel rods. This material must be reprocessed or it poses problems of theft or waste storage.
There are fuel cycles that don't generate weapons grade materials, thorium for example or reactors that use traveling wave technology.
"A lot of them will no longer be able to meet energy demands in a couple of years."
It's not really that they won't mean energy demand, it's that they are built on older and less safe technology. And some of them reaching the upper limit of their operational life before the components have to decommissioned or replaced.
I wanna see glow in the dark rice!
Well, I'd hardly say that China is unconcerned. They are spending a staggering amount on green energy infrastructure all over their country, over a 1.5 trillion dollars US. That amount is not what I'd call "ignoring the problem."
It's just that their energy demands are exponentiating and they are diversifying their generation just to see that the needs are met.
I also wonder what all the kids think of the term "app" being bandied about by these eccentrics? Wouldn't it be a bit like "lindyhopping" is to us now?
This. So much this.
