KSK

1. I disagree but I'm no theologist and perhaps this isn't the place to debate such things. But anyway, I'd argue that fear of the afterlife is a large part of any organised theocracy, rather than fear of death. Which sounds a bit pedantic, but sinners (however one chooses to define sin) fear the afterlife because they're not going to a better place. The saved (again, however one chooses to define saved), do not fear the afterlife (and thus have no fear of death) because they are. Of course, in a theocracy, those in charge get to define the sinners and to define the behaviour that makes one a sinner. 2. That cuts both ways. A literal link to the past can reinforce a myth too, although I suppose that it stops being a myth if it can be proven to be true. 3. As it always has been. On a related note, I agree with @darthgently especially the wealth part. Historically, most people have valued possessions, and possessions have usually been linked to status, whether that's modern day conspicuous consumption, or the gaudy accumulation of gold and jewels by assorted kings, warlords and despots (but I repeat myself). Holding onto stuff and accumulating more stuff is what humans do, and that's going to be problematic when everyone has a theoretically infinite amount of time to accumulate in. There's a finite amount of stuff in this world, and the immortals who were there from the start will get the lions share of it to the detriment of everyone else, and eventually themselves. I'd also argue that death is required for change because it allows old ideas to literally and figuratively die out. Societies almost invariably have a conservative element and that's going to be amplified by immortality simply because ideas stick around for longer and have more opportunity to fossilise into tradition. TLDR: I don't see any way in which your scenario ends well, and that's avoiding the elephant in the room that is population control and how it's managed. Spoiler - I'm thinking badly, probably to the extent of making China's one-child policy look egalitarian and humane. Edit. And, back to the original question, science and technology flourish best in reasonably stable, organised, and not too repressive societies that value learning for learnings sake. Technological progress relies on a certain amount of blue skies thinking to generate the new concepts that drive that progress. Applied science (and what is technology if not applied science?) without blue skies thinking, ends up going round in circles, making marginally better buggy whips rather than automobiles. I don't think universal immortality from 0BC onwards will lend itself to such societies.

The problem is that competent people may not have anything other than their own interests at heart and that a surviving civilization is not necessarily a good one in anything other than a strictly Darwinian sense, i.e. it is fit because it survived. Try this on for size. The granting of immortality after Jesus' death is seized upon as a sure sign of God's displeasure. For if we cannot die, we are trapped in this earthly sphere and are denied the possibility of salvation and ascension to Heaven. Luckily, as His Apostles, the Eleven (Judas gets an even worse deal in this timeline for obvious reasons), can claim a provable link to the divine, and quickly take advantage of that by claiming that they, and they alone are the repositories of His wisdom. Follow them without question, and your salvation may yet be assured. Of course, the Apostles are only human and sooner or later 'love thy neighbour' takes a back seat to putting the boot into anyone who persecuted the early Christians. Other bodies are subject to selectively exaggerated versions of Jesus' teachings, and it doesn't take long for the moneylenders to be expelled from everywhere and not just the Temple. Long story short, with immortal Apostles in charge, society ossifies into a 1st Century theocracy with 1st Century social values. The notion of a peaceful transfer of power never occurs to immortal rulers (bye bye democracy), the Church takes an even harder line on natural philosophy than it did historically (bye bye science) and of course, the moneylenders have long been reviled (bye bye economics). And when the last tree is cut down for firewood, and the deserts claim the last fields, then the Apostles find that their immortality was all for naught.

How fast are we talking about here? Speed limit on the TGV is 200 mph and they use pantographs. Assuming Wikipedia is a reliable source, there were a bit over 2,700 miles of high speed track as of June 2021, with another four sections planned, so presumably maintenance isn't insurmountable especially as the TGV system seems to be profitable. Admittedly, distance might be more of an obstacle in the US - I don't know whether 200 mph for a high speed train would be fast enough to make it competitive.

That's the thing though, I'm not at all sure that it is a hard line any more, and the author and their proponents are far from the first ones to challenge it. Sure, random mutations over generations, might be the version that's taught in schools (been a long time since I was at school so I don't know!) but the field has definitely moved on in the last five years at least, as shown by the review article I cited. What I don't know is whether the field has moved on enough that 'random mutations over generations' is no longer the standard view. Either way, 'slow accumulation of evidence gradually moves the needle' is a fairly boring narrative compared to 'scrappy underdogs take on hard line orthodoxy' so you end up with articles like the one we're discussing. It's just kind of irritating when stuff that's at least been discussed in the literature for several years is being trumpeted as a radically new paradigm that's sticking it to the establishment.

Urgh. Didn't like this article at all. Sensationalist, muddled, and technically out of date. The opening part about 'the genetic cures will never happen' is flat out wrong. Not only are they happening, they're available now. Admittedly, they've taken longer than expected but that's mostly because there's a hell of a difference between looking at a genome and goint 'yeah if we correct that gene, it should cure such-and-such a disease', and developing a reliable way of altering that gene in-vivo that doesn't screw up other parts of the genome in the process. It's the difference between reading Tsiolkovsky and building Apollo 11. Hell, it's the difference between reading Tsiolkovsky and building Goddard's rocket. Not to mention that genetics, especially regulation of gene expression, turned out to be whole lot more complicated than expected. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that DNA is an elaborate molecular Turing Machine, the outputs of which just happen to be a staggeringly vast array of living organisms. The Human Genome Project was a necessary first step for developing genetic cures - its kind of hard to even know what questions to ask until you have that baseline data available - but it was only the first step. Pedantic aside, the 2003 human genome was a rough draft. The complete version was only finished in 2022 and it turns out the missing parts were quite important, From Wikipedia: "In 2022, the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) consortium reported the complete sequence of a human female genome,[4] filling all the gaps in the X chromosome (2020) and the 22 autosomes (May 2021).[4][66] The previously unsequenced parts contain immune response genes that help to adapt to and survive infections, as well as genes that are important for predicting drug response.[67] The completed human genome sequence will also provide better understanding of human formation as an individual organism and how humans vary both between each other and other species.[67]" Emphasis added. Moving on, what does this even mean? "This development required a sort of intention or cognition within emergent networks of molecules to create and sustain biological functions." The whole point of emergent things is that they're, well, emergent. No intention or cognition required by definition. Also, the notion that the germ is separate from the organism has been out of date since at least 2019. A 30 second search for 'transmissable epigenetic marks' found this review paper: " Articles indexed in PubMed were searched using keywords related to transgenerational inheritance, epigenetic modifications, paternal and maternal inheritable traits and environmental and biological factors influencing transgenerational modifications. We sought to clarify the role of epigenetic reprogramming events during the life cycle of mammals and provide a comprehensive review of how the genomic and epigenomic make-up of progenitors may determine the phenotype of its descendants. OUTCOMES We found strong evidence supporting the role of DNA methylation patterns, histone modifications and even non-protein-coding RNA in altering the epigenetic composition of individuals and producing stable epigenetic effects that were transmitted from parents to offspring, in both humans and rodent species. Multiple genomic domains and several histone modification sites were found to resist demethylation and endure genome-wide reprogramming events." In other words, they found strong evidence that environmental modifications to the genome can be inherited and that those changes endure the processes which erase epigenetic marks across the genome. That's important because erasing epigenetic marks is thought to be important for making totipent cells, e.g. the fundamental stem cells which can develop into any other kind of cells at all. The starting point for embryogenesis if you like. From the fine article: "“Do you, you people working in gene-centric biology, do you realize what has already been published?” asks an incredulous Noble." Et tu, Brutus. It's possible that that Forbes article did have something useful to say, but in my opinion, it was buried under a heaping load of sensationalism, factual errors, and underdog-against-the-Establishment guff.

Well, if the scenario in this article comes to pass, better hope they do a better job with their shiny military AIs. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/07/trump-allies-want-to-make-america-first-in-ai-with-sweeping-executive-order/ Forgive (and please don't get bogged down in) the slight political detour but it did seem like a very appropriate article for a 'what could go wrong with AI thread'.

Agree on both points, and would add sheep grazing in the UK as an equivalent. The amount of fertilizer and other inputs required to convert such marginally productive land into useful arable land is not environmentally friendly. Source, working for a public research institute a couple of jobs back, who were doing a lot of research into land use, food and water security and sustainability. We already do, depending on who you mean by we. Apparently, insects are part of the traditional (aka, not prompted by a need to find alternatives now to mitigate climate change or whatever) diet of about 2 billion people. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55603-7, Hopefully a Nature article is a reliable enough source. From that article: "Over 1900 insect species are considered as forming part of the traditional diets of at least two billion people13,30,31,32, representing approximately 30% of the world’s human population. It is estimated that people in 113 countries consume at least one insect species33, and Africa, Latin America, and Asia have a well-established history of insect consumption." Not quite seeing what's anti-science about eating bugs.

That scientist probably just killed themself. You probably want an actual physicist to answer this rather than someone who's relying on vague memories of a 'thermodynamics for chemistry' lecture course that he endured thirty years ago but here goes. The change in Gibbs Free Energy (delta-G), of a chemical reaction tells you whether it can happen or not. Delta-G = delta-H - T x delta-S, where delta-H is the change in enthalpy (heat absorbed or released by the reaction), T is the temperature (in Kelvin) and delta-S is the change in entropy. For a thermodynamically favourable (read, allowable) reaction, you want a negative delta-G. For exothermic reactions that doesn't tend to be a problem since delta-H is already negative. For endothermic reactions (positive delta-H) - well they just don't happen unless the associated change in entropy is high enough. So your entropy reducing or eliminating field probably scuffs up a lot of rather important biochemistry, which tends to be bad for one's health. No doubt it would scuff up a lot of other chemistry too, but I doubt your dead scientist is going to be in a position to care too much about that. Aside from that, think of any situation where you want disorder to increase. Things dissolving. Gases expanding. Stuff like that. Not going to happen if entropy can't change. To take one benign example, imagine dropping a lump of sugar in your tea (we'll ignore the fact that sugar in tea is an abomination that Cthulu themself won't go near). Imagine that lump of sugar dropping to the bottom of your mug - and not doing anything at all. Because it can't without increasing entropy.

love you too, buddy.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t much care if we’re on either - and I don’t recall mentioning Bezos at all, so the point is moot. But what I meant is that, whilst IFT was impressive and a big step forward over IFT2 and IFT1, there’s a way to go yet before it’s a workable disposable rocket, let alone the fully reusable, chopstick landing (or whatever method ends up working), in-orbit refuelling, Artemis landing beast that it’s intended to be. Yes, yes, test flight, iterative improvement etc etc. I’m well aware of all that. And, with their track record, I’m certainly not betting against SpaceX to deliver all of the above eventually. But what I don’t give a damn about is Elon vapourware about the next super-duper-double-the-payload rocket, because it doesn’t make much difference if your rocket carries 200 tons or 400 tons if you can’t get it to point the right way. Frankly it feels like a distraction tactic and judging by the shift in comments on this thread it’s worked beautifully.

And V5 will have a warp drive on the back, and V7 will usher in world peace and first contact with the Vogons. Or something. How about getting this rocket consistently pointing in the right direction first, and doing all the other things too, before flapping your everlasting gums about the next one? More prosaically, I'd prefer bread today than jam at some unspecified Elon Time tomorrow.

Go - whoaah - mit, Comder! Are you out of your —yikes— —wowza— — ow-my-ears— mind?!

One of the nice things about working from home, is being able to pop on some tunes if the afternoon's dragging a bit. So, after a bit of big hair rock, the algorithm decided to throw a certain well-known Journey piece at me... Resisting the urge to bust out the air guitar and <shred> was tough - but I'm a professional. And yeah, that song and this strip will forever be linked in the bowl of mush that passes for my noggin these days.

IIRC, Elite Dangerous’s map was partly based on real life data and partly on a fairly sophisticated procedural generation system based on a proper simulation. The trading part? Unsure but probably not too crazy if you think of foodstuffs and such as luxury goods. In-game you wouldn’t trade foodstuffs between Earth-like worlds anyway since you’d almost certainly be trading between two agricultural economies dealing in much the same sort of goods. You’d be better off shipping them to some mining colony or an industrial station orbiting a mineral rich hall of rock somewhere. In which case I could see 20 tons of fresh fish being a desirable alternative to Space Rations or 3D printed burgers or whatever. As to how realistic the whole Elite economy is, I suspect the answer is ‘not very’ but it makes a nice gameplay loop.

… who are sporting the very latest in high performance running shoes.

Ahh, the High Impulse Propulsion by Particle InvErsion drive? Sounds groovy!

I'm going to have to read that Deepmind paper because I'm genuinely curious to know how they're defining AGI. Whether or not I agree with that definition is another matter, but I think it would be useful to know what it is for discussions like this.

I’m not sure that table is so helpful. Take calculator software for example - I’m willing to bet that it could be used to perform tasks up to at least Level 3 on that scale. Likewise, I reckon that image generators could be used to spit out work at Levels 1-3, possibly 4, depending what you prompt them with. I’m also slightly alarmed that 50% of skilled adults are less competent than Siri within its range of tasks.

Following up from @Shpaget’s post, the combined mass of the Apollo CSM and lunar module was about 43 tons. Peak acceleration of the Saturn V was apparently about 3.9g. If they could do it in the 60s, I’m pretty sure it’s a problem you could handwave away. Also, why does the 1000 ton vessel require a 300 ton drive core rather than a 100 ton one? (Given that the 300 ton vessel requires a 30 ton core). Not that it’s important, I’m just curious. As for crew capacity, that’s difficult to judge purely from vehicle mass, but if you want some numbers, a Boeing 737 can hold about one to two hundred passengers depending on model, and has a dry mass of just over 41 tons. High gross weight max takeoff is just over 79 tons.

Magnets huh? Well they’re close enough to magic that I’m convinced. Shows what the last guy knew though. He swore that his air car ran on pure water and got 150 miles to the gallon.

Maybe it’s just me but I thought that last post had definite overtones of Q (from James Bond rather than Star Trek. ). ”Now pay attention 007 Mr Dilsby…”

Man, that alarm is getting a workout. Ahhh - who cares... For Science! For Kerbfleet!

Forget about Dyson spheres and other such namby-pamby concepts. Real spacefarers deconstruct their star systems to build pusher plates for yottabomb powered Orion drives...

A motto to live by. I am of course referring to the risks of consuming overly hot tea.

Seriously though, yotta is a ridiculous scale to be working in. For comparison, the Sun weighs about 2 million yottagrams.