Kevin's Watch

Vraith wrote:

peter wrote:All of which implies, I'm thinking, that we understand less about comets than we perhaps thought we did.

I agree in a way... we understand most of them in a general way....but I'm also certain we'll find unique/weird things in comets and similar objects. [[just like we understand most supernovae/stellar collapses/other star-cycles pretty well---but there are plenty of rarer/odder ones we know less about and maybe some kinds we haven't seen/thought of yet]].
But THIS isn't a comet at all really...the best guestimates I've seen say it's highly probably the thing has passed by/through several star systems...and has spent at least tens of millions of years---and perhaps a billion or more...in deep space...where it was totally naked and exposed to massive amounts of cosmic rays and other things we don't know much about.

Fun, though, people are interested in these things now---and somewhere I think I saw that one of these [things big enough to spot] comes that close or closer to us every year or two.
People are watching and at least a couple groups are preparing to visit/sample one.
THAT would be AWESOME.
Not as awesome as meeting an alien...but way more awesome than the fact that people pay hundreds of millions of extra dollars a year for amethyst because it comes from Brazil instead of Minnesota, or Russian instead of Canada or Austria.

Ive got a certificate and a gold seal thats was taken into orbit on one of the space shuttles .. my hubby worked in the Space Industry here and his big project was Satellite launching from Xmas island. He drafted Australias position on legal responsibilities on launch states and presented to The Hague.

... first contact would be awesome...

And Savor Dam worked in NASA didnt he?

Skyweir wrote:
Ive got a certificate and a gold seal thats was taken into orbit on one of the space shuttles .. my hubby worked in the Space Industry here and his big project was Satellite launching from Xmas island. He drafted Australias position on legal responsibilities on launch states and presented to The Hague.

... first contact would be awesome...

And Savor Dam worked in NASA didnt he?

that's pretty damn cool.
I had a great uncle that worked on Project Blue Book [gov't/air force U.F.O investigations---the official gov't position on it was that there was nothing seen that couldn't be understood by terrestrial tech/science and natural occurrences...he says that's bullshit. There was nothing they knew was alien for sure---but there were a LOT of things that were inexplicable by known science/nature
]
and one of my FB friends that I've never met IRL works in aerospace...she fairly regularly posts about things she's worked on getting launched.
She's definitely not SD, though---did SD really work for NASA?
That's cool. I didn't know.
But hell, I also don't know who 30 or 40% of my FB friends are...that's probably not the most secure state of affairs....But I'm on the lookout to spot if they post pics of self or others wearing gabardine...then I'll know they're spies.

peter!!!!!! you really don't want to be around if aliens come-a-calling???????
ARE YOU CRAZY???
1/2 the reason I want to be a super-smart near-immortal cyborg is to maximize my chances of meeting aliens!
[[the other half is it's met-a-meg-a-mazing as all hell being a super-smart near-immortal cyborg.]]]

OMG too funny .. and yet I suspect you are deadly serious ... about your cyborg ambitions

Is that Mel? Waddley here at the Watch?

Skyweir wrote:

OMG too funny .. and yet I suspect you are deadly serious ... about your cyborg ambitions

Is that Mel? Waddley here at the Watch?

I AM serious about my cyborg ambitions. Everyone should be. If you don't want to be a cyborg, you just want to be next-gen Amish...or maybe a nice plant-eating dino that "naturally" went extinct]
That's fine...but not my path/desire.
The ONLY thing I worry about is making sure my systems are hardened, encrypted, and operate self-contained most of the time...only voluntary and totally clean upgrades.
I only 1/10th understand anyone who DOESn't want that. [and I think they're confused about the stuff they think is negative]

I don't THINK my space-friend is a watcher...but I don't know. She seems younger than what I perceive most watch/FB friends to be. [[though I know some have kids and some of them are here...at least sometimes had been in the past]]

Ahhh lol .. Melanie IS younger .. she was a wee padawan when she started posting. Id put money on it being a possibility

And to everything else you said

Do you think youll be alive for cyborging V?

... wonders if there would be age restrictions on implants

I LOLd at your naturally extinct plant eaters ... cis the irony .... haha

Vraith wrote:
I AM serious about my cyborg ambitions. Everyone should be. If you don't want to be a cyborg, you just want to be next-gen Amish...or maybe a nice plant-eating dino that "naturally" went extinct]

Vraith is not the only one who is serious about going cyborg. At this point, I just hope we attain the technology to digitize a consciousness when the Singularity happens before my time runs out.

Well they can give an artificial pancreas, pace makers, and all manner of organic implants .. all manner of prosthetics .. cant be that far off

Skyweir wrote:Well they can give an artificial pancreas, pace makers, and all manner of organic implants .. all manner of prosthetics .. cant be that far off

Those and other things, I think my odds are about 50/50 for living long enough to get serious long-life upgrades.

Oh, they've already begun to be able to run electronics/computers by thought alone. That's cool.
Haven't yet managed to integrate chips and neurons, which is what I really want...where it doesn't just do what you tell it, both work together to actually make you SMARTER, not just more informed...

Wow that is fascinating.. is the goal long life, no death, or increased strength, capability and intelligence?


Well regardless ... fingers crossed for you.

High Lord Tolkien wrote:

wayfriend wrote:
+2 trek points for the obscure reference.

Obscure????? That's the best episode out of the whole franchise!

How odd...

I'd have thought just about ANYONE on KW with ANY Trekkie leanings would have thought that The Enemy Within was the best damn episode oout of the whole damn franchise...



Not that a much celebrated fantasy author ripped this episode off pretty much verbatim in the eventual denouement to his 10 volume magnum opus... oh no no, not at all...

#StevieWouldNeverDoThat!




...




#WouldHe?

Hashi Lebwohl wrote:

Vraith wrote:
I AM serious about my cyborg ambitions. Everyone should be. If you don't want to be a cyborg, you just want to be next-gen Amish...or maybe a nice plant-eating dino that "naturally" went extinct]

Vraith is not the only one who is serious about going cyborg. At this point, I just hope we attain the technology to digitize a consciousness when the Singularity happens before my time runs out.

So you want to be a part of the Borg....

That is until some hacker steals your PIN and makes you walk around like some
1970 Atari game controlling the horizontal and the vertical. Then you enter
the twilight zone.

The Singularity is not about becoming a cybernetic collective. Instead, it is the point at which computers, probably with AI, start improving their own designs and we, via wetware, advance along with them. If you thought our rate of technological progress was impressive--the last 200 years have had more advances than the previous 2,000 years had--then just wait. The next 100 years will make the previous 100 years look primitive.

Skyweir wrote:Wow that is fascinating.. is the goal long life, no death, or increased strength, capability and intelligence?

Yes, even though the strength is not important, only the increased capability and intelligence. The "no death" part comes from being able to transfer digitized consciousness from shell to shell.

You won't catch me putting my consciousness in the hands of the people who obsessively collect my personal data so that they can persuade me to do stuff. Then they won't have to persuade me, because they can just alter me.

Also, "Obscure?????" is one of the funniest posts of the season.

Yeah, not a big fan of the idea myself.

--A

Yeah not queuing up for a consciousness transplant .. either .. but apart from the arguable surrender of ones volution, I might put my hand up for a pace maker, if I needed one or artificial pancreas etc.

Lets see.. There might be an indicator that gauges the obsession and how
technology controls the human mind.

One is the VR machines.
Two is the phones with tweeting.

How much influence do those two have on the human mind?
Or if other terms.. if they suddenly disappear what would happen?

There are dangers of our own making. We havn't recognized them as such.
Even this board has influence.

It's probably a question for another thread ... but if you placed your digitized consciousness into a computer (which I do not think means what people think it means), how would you know if your thoughts are actually yours?

wayfriend wrote:It's probably a question for another thread ... but if you placed your digitized consciousness into a computer (which I do not think means what people think it means), how would you know if your thoughts are actually yours?

Ask the keyboard operator...

wayfriend wrote:It's probably a question for another thread ... but if you placed your digitized consciousness into a computer (which I do not think means what people think it means), how would you know if your thoughts are actually yours?

It is a bit off topic....or is it? The first true AI or Cyber-I will absolutely be "First Contact" with an alien being. [[heh...unless the spacies get here pretty damn soon to be first.]]
Anyway, on above:
You wouldn't know....No...actually...you would know something...would definitely know the opposite...that it WASN't having your thoughts.

If everything was perfect..and it WAS an exact copy, and it DID precisely process as your brain processes, one tiny fraction of a second after it was loaded and opened, it would be a different "person" from you...different life, different experiences, different root, different capabilities...different everything.
I mean...ok, they upload a copy...original you wakes up---you're still old, your arthritis is killing you, you're tired, everything looks blurry cuz they' took out your lenses while you were copying. [[Yea---you wake up in your body...OR, did they MURDER your brain and harvest your organs after the copy was finished???]]

You in the machine wakes up and...you have no body at all, [at least no NECESSARY body that is an inherent part of your being] and every damn thing you ever didn't understand, and the things you thought you did, and things you didn't know even mattered or existed is RIGHT THERE IN "YOUR" "HEAD." You are a brain surgeon AND a rocket scientist AND a rock star AND ANYTHING/EVERYthing.

At this point, if the original you in the body/brain wasn't automatically murdered, while the copying was done, you will probably instantly conceive a sure-fire way to get away with murder of the man/woman and any gooey meat or machine relative that has legal claims that stand in your way, and take over all the originals wealth/assets/everything.
[[that's if it was a person at all---if it was actually conscious/thinking and not merely simulating/modeling those...and built all the way down with no-erase/no-edit/no-disable "Serve/Obey the original" code.]]

I'm not with Hashi on this part...I don't believe digital upload is a person/consciousness. I don't believe we should do it, even if we can...the digital should be an extension/enhancement...but the center and control should be a biological brain. [[aside from any dangers, there is for the foreseeable future---and maybe forever---a complete difference in KIND between what digits and algorithms can do and what a human brain does...and we already know that things work BEST when human PLUS machine. Far better than either alone, no need to replace one with other---instead synthesis, synergy.]]

Vraith wrote:You in the machine wakes up

No, you don't. Another being (granting that it is one) which thinks it is you wakes up. It remembers being you .... but you will never, ever, ever experience being it.

Vraith wrote:but the center and control should be a biological brain

We were given a gift that we haven't really appreciated. The gift of our consciousness being isolate and inviolate. We never have to worry about from whence our thoughts arise.