Uplifting?

[DBowman]

7 hours ago, PB666 said:

the crows and they no longer return to the ship.

intentional genesis / Noah reference?

@wumpus I agree you get the insects to form composite structures if you need something larger, a lot of ants forms simple bridges, rafts, and 'nests' out of living hive/colony members.

@PB666 I agree re us soon having mapped the insect hive/colony unit neurome (?), and also the chemical signalling and thus the 'programming'. But I'm thinking biology could be a shortcut to 'replicator machines' with associated nano-bots - since biology is already there. I imagine we'd throw away most of the existing programming and build our own using the biology as a substrate. I don't know how far from any human style AI we are, but useful massively parallel collaborative 'robotics' on a biological substrate seems closer. It's not an either or choice. Also birds are pretty smart so I'd have them on my 'uplift list'. They have amazing counter-flow based lungs also - high efficiency rigid constant volume lungs.

@justidutch I bet there would be a lot of resistance to uplifting our selves, maybe the Chinese (Confucian self improvement) or Hindus would go for it. If we won't do it to ourselves we'd end up 'exporting' features into other manufactured/uplifted creatures, eventually like that story of the repaired axe we'd get there starting from a different base. It's going to be a legal mine field.

[justidutch]

3 hours ago, DBowman said:

 I bet there would be a lot of resistance to uplifting our selves, maybe the Chinese (Confucian self improvement) or Hindus would go for it. If we won't do it to ourselves we'd end up 'exporting' features into other manufactured/uplifted creatures, eventually like that story of the repaired axe we'd get there starting from a different base. It's going to be a legal mine field.

Yes, I suppose this would be a very contentious topic of legal and moral debate.  I, for one, would be 'pro-choice', but I guess we can't get into that kind of discussion here!

[magnemoe]

11 hours ago, DBowman said:

 

@justidutch I bet there would be a lot of resistance to uplifting our selves, maybe the Chinese (Confucian self improvement) or Hindus would go for it. If we won't do it to ourselves we'd end up 'exporting' features into other manufactured/uplifted creatures, eventually like that story of the repaired axe we'd get there starting from a different base. It's going to be a legal mine field.

China has already shown interest in this, lack of both religious and various modern stories about it being wrong. 
As I see it the main issue with humans is that its require an very low error rates, with humans an chance of 1/1000 of an birth defect is too high to make it useful. 
having it working reliable on mammals first would be an natural progression. 
Uplifting are not used about humans or has not read it outside this tread, most use is about making animals smart, not improving humans. 
 

[kerbiloid]

An insect hivemind is just a simulacrum of a intellect, not a real one. It poorly could be treated as a sentient being.
An ant heap can't reproduce the gathered knowledge (information) in a subsequent or a neighbor ant heap.

Also if treat an insect hivemind like an intellectual being, you can soon realize that an intellect of this "being" is not higher than a single ant's one.
An ant heap as a (virtual) being is an octopus-shaped blind moron, chaotically fumbling with its tentacles (ant columns) to suddenly discover something edible (or pseudoedible) and getting it to the mouth. I.e basically like a single insect.

A complicated ants activity inside the heap (eggs carrying, taking care of queen, etc) is not more complicated that a cell physiological activity inside an ant's body.
Just cells are large and have chelae and antennae.

While a dogs pack acts like a dog if it were in several places simultaneously.

A human collective can be more stupid or more clever than a single member, but in whole, its activities and decisions are at a single human level of intellect.

So, a hivemind appears to be not more intellectual than its single unit.

And a good example of the "insect hivemind" is Ant Mill

Spoiler

 

 

Edited June 22, 2016 by kerbiloid

[SinBad]

Well, if you want a social hive animal with a more complex nervous system than an insect, why not mole rats?

As an alternative, what about coral? A bit (ok, a lot) of genetic tinkering and i bet we could get them to lay down PN junctions in specific patterns instead of calcium in specific patterns. Then load an AI into it. Intelligence not in the organism, thats just a convenient way of getting a huge processing substrate built. Imagine a computer the size of the great barrier reef...

[DBowman]

18 minutes ago, SinBad said:

Imagine a computer the size of the great barrier reef...

shiver...

[justidutch]

Wouldn't it be easier, instead of uplifting other species or creating post-humas (as I previously mentioned), to instead just build smart robots in whatever size and configuration and for whatever specific purpose we desire?  I think it would certainly be less of a moral issue.

Though, I guess that would beg the question of wether you prefer the Terminator scenario versus Planet of the Apes...

[PB666]

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/i-asked-leading-entomologists-whats-the-smartest-bug-in-the-world

[SinBad]

@PB666 thats a good article! Thanks for the link.

[kerbiloid]

Quote

“Ants, bees, and termites all have very high intelligence,” says Srour. “They have to recognize nest mates, communicate with them often.”

If you have a fish, several years later you'll be sure that it she understands everything you're talking about, including Shakespeare.

Why at all, the "social" animals are presumed to be more intellectual? While a standalone animal observes, analyses, decides, works on its own.

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

If you have a fish, several years later you'll be sure that it she understands everything you're talking about, including Shakespeare.

Why at all, the "social" animals are presumed to be more intellectual? While a standalone animal observes, analyses, decides, works on its own.

Having to deal with other animals in an group require lots of strategy and thinking, at least if their behavior is complex.
An fish shoal don't interact much compare to an wolf pack, primates have even more complex.
Effect might even be reinforcing like with humans. Early humans was far smarter than they needed to be, this paid back later. 

[kerbiloid]

48 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Having to deal with other animals in an group require lots of strategy and thinking, at least if their behavior is complex.

Dogs' social rituals are quite primitive, for my view, not a rocket science.

Say, cats, who are individual hunters, have almost the same social abilities, just don't need to demonstrate them for every other animal.
They also create packs, demonstrate a social hierarchy, artistically possess human's intensions.
Even show all tricks which the dogs can (understand voice commands, bring named things, finds named people, bring a paperball back to make it be thrown again). They just do this when they find this funny, while dogs — always.

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

An fish shoal don't interact much compare to an wolf pack

Standalone fish is also much more stupid than a standalone mammal. But if compare animals of the same evolutionary level, we can see that sheeps, cows and other herd animals unlikely are more clever than a tiger or rhino.

Humans are another kind of things. They can speak. This means that died or absent people can talk to the present ones, this means a positive loopback of information gathering.

[DBowman]

On 6/24/2016 at 2:51 AM, justidutch said:

Wouldn't it be easier, instead of uplifting other species or creating post-humas (as I previously mentioned), to instead just build smart robots in whatever size and configuration and for whatever specific purpose we desire?  I think it would certainly be less of a moral issue.

I imagine we'll do both and meet in the middle, putting aside the hard AI / dualism thing for now. Our bodies are just a collection of smart enough robots configured to be us.

On the downside they have a narrow range of operating conditions that are not so useful 'in space' and are hard to 'program' (like that old idea of the homing pigeon guided missiles).

On the upside. They have built in replication and repair given some not quite raw materials, and from raw materials if you include enough of an ecosystem. There are a wide range of capabilities and ready made solutions one could copy and plug and play to some extent. Also there are probably a range of simple tweak/hacks one can do to expand their operating range.

It's not clear to me which approach will deliver value quicker, by the time either is amazing it will probably look like the other (assemblages (bodies) of self repairing nanobots (cells) ). I guess the robot route seems more predictable, the bio route is kinda wacky.

[SinBad]

Wacky. Good description I dont think we will get to the unpredictable part of biotech any time soon. We live in the capitalist wonderland after all. GM crops cant be grown from the seeds of GM crops. Thats not a technical limitation, but a financial one : it means the company who produces it continues to make money season after season. I dont see other GM 'bio-tools' being any different. Bacteria that pull minerals out of low yield rock, or algea with enhance nutritional value or O2 production will have suicide genes that make sure that after x number of cell divisions only short lived, non-producing cells are made.

If a company (and it will be a company funded effort) ever did decide to uplift an animal, they would make sure that animal would not only be sterile and un-cloneable, but also that it would have a sharply limited lifespan. Sure, the superchimp might need 2 years of training by the company, so make it live to seven years. Then the customer has to buy a new one every five years. They would spin some story about increasing intelligence had the side effect of a short life and sterility and how sad that there isnt any way around it. but you can send your superchimp slave back to us when its six years old and pay for it to enter our super relaxing fun time retirement home to live out its final year in liesure. you will be taking home a replacement slave on your way out, wont you?

And yes, slave. Thats exactly how they would be treated. Because humans are kinda horrible like that. After all, thats why we are building robots (not general AI, just vaccume cleaners and factory staff for now), right? A company makes it, we buy it, so... we own it now?

[kerbiloid]

19 minutes ago, SinBad said:

And yes, slave. Thats exactly how they would be treated. Because humans are kinda horrible like that. After all, thats why we are building robots

No, because robots work better than wage workers, while wage workers better than slaves.

Slaves are useful only for simplest works, because they damage the tools, ignore the result and depict themselves as idiots treating as an idiot their owner.
Wage worker may do this clownery too, but then he gets no money.

Edited June 26, 2016 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

5 hours ago, SinBad said:

Wacky. Good description I dont think we will get to the unpredictable part of biotech any time soon. We live in the capitalist wonderland after all. GM crops cant be grown from the seeds of GM crops. Thats not a technical limitation, but a financial one : it means the company who produces it continues to make money season after season. I dont see other GM 'bio-tools' being any different. Bacteria that pull minerals out of low yield rock, or algea with enhance nutritional value or O2 production will have suicide genes that make sure that after x number of cell divisions only short lived, non-producing cells are made.

If a company (and it will be a company funded effort) ever did decide to uplift an animal, they would make sure that animal would not only be sterile and un-cloneable, but also that it would have a sharply limited lifespan. Sure, the superchimp might need 2 years of training by the company, so make it live to seven years. Then the customer has to buy a new one every five years. They would spin some story about increasing intelligence had the side effect of a short life and sterility and how sad that there isnt any way around it. but you can send your superchimp slave back to us when its six years old and pay for it to enter our super relaxing fun time retirement home to live out its final year in liesure. you will be taking home a replacement slave on your way out, wont you?

And yes, slave. Thats exactly how they would be treated. Because humans are kinda horrible like that. After all, thats why we are building robots (not general AI, just vaccume cleaners and factory staff for now), right? A company makes it, we buy it, so... we own it now?

First making something uncloneable would be hard also pointless as anybody able to clone in scale would be cooperation you could sue. 
You would want crops and other products use by many sterile to make it harder for everyone to make copies. 
Limiting numbers of splittings on an microorganism would be pretty complex and you have to make sure they split as many time as specified too. 

If you made an uplifted animal, limiting life length would be idiotic. Primarily as its an considerable cost raising and training the animal, something smart is likely to have an an long childhood, think primates if close to human intelligence.

Limited life length on products are an popular myth, its however rare that this is done on purpose and its very rare for expensive products. 
More common is crappy products with limited life because of crappy parts and assembly, this can easy kick back as part fail before warranty is out. 
Classical example is cheap pc power supplies, pc producer select an crap PSU and also one who is barley powerful enough, they often fails before warranty time on pc is out and the producer has to take the repair cost and the reputation loss. 
New improved and more trendy products is the common ways to get customers to upgrade, 

Finally for animals you face an far larger problem, people get very attached to animals, limiting lifespan on purpose would get lots of people angry at you, 
In this setting you would be questionable ethic anyway and have plenty of enemies, you don't want former owners as one of them. 
And no claiming that for some reason life length is far shorter than for normal chimps would not work well as you would not be the only one working on this. 

The slavery angle is an perfect story plot, it has an decent chance of working as this would be an gradual progress over time from dogs who is a bit smarter than normal up to chimps who is almost as smart as humans. Now add two factors who makes things more complex, first you company demand better treatment of them than normal animals, secondary they don't want freedom, you made sure of this, its important for your bottom line. 
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff800/fv00714.htm freefall go pretty deep on this with an surprising twist. 

 

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

No, because robots work better than wage workers, while wage workers better than slaves.

Slaves are useful only for simplest works, because they damage the tools, ignore the result and depict themselves as idiots treating as an idiot their owner.
Wage worker may do this clownery too, but then he gets no money.

Robots sometimes work better in some sort of works, they usually don't, this is why you don't use robots for all work. 
Its pretty easy to motivate slaves or cheap labor to work well, however this require more management who is expensive so its mostly not done as the labor is cheap you rater take the inefficiency.  Classical tricks to speed up conscripts in the army is to tell them that after they are done with task they can take the day off. 

For the society slavery reduces productivity as lots of the slaves would do better work doing something they selected rater than that they was sold for.
Slavery is also pointless if labor cheap, it died out in Europe during medieval times as labor was dirt cheap. It was successful in America as it was a lack of cheap labor, you could just as well start your own farm rather than work cheap for somebody else. You would also be more productive so society lost 
The slave owners got rich, they would also get rich if they owned all the land back in Europe. 

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Robots sometimes work better in some sort of works, they usually don't, this is why you don't use robots for all work. 

Robots work better in predictable and formalizable jobs, So, scientists and caretakers do their work better than robots.

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Its pretty easy to motivate slaves or cheap labor to work well,

Hmm...

Late Ancient Rome.
Slavery was being widely replaced with institute of colonus,
I.e. a former (or still formally) slave is granted with a land allotment and works paying fixed tax for his former (or still formally) owner. All what he gains above this tax, is his unalienable profit.
Widest usage of libertines, i.e. a former slave, juridically made a free man, but again juridically staying a junior member of his/her former owner's family. Having their own business but with duties to his patronus.

Confederate States of America,
The same with colonuses,

Early XIX century Russia.
Statute labor on the landlord's field (up to 6 days per week) - "barshchina"  is being widely replaced with a fixed payment  - "obrok".

Not so easy, though... Only in jobs where a worker must only flitter wit a pickaxe or axe, without any care for result,
For example, this is why Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were the pioneers in slavery: their farming was based on a channels digging. So, take a prisoner, give him a pickaxe and let him rock. Hard to simulate an idiot in such primitive work.
In other places (Europe in wide sense, etc), channels weren't required — the care was. And slavery was much less efficient, so slaves were more like personally constrained tribesmen with the lowest status, or were used in mining,

Edited June 27, 2016 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

11 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Robots work better in predictable and formalizable jobs, So, scientists and caretakers do their work better than robots.

Hmm...

Late Ancient Rome.
Slavery was being widely replaced with institute of colonus,
I.e. a former (or still formally) slave is granted with a land allotment and works paying fixed tax for his former (or still formally) owner. All what he gains above this tax, is his unalienable profit.
Widest usage of libertines, i.e. a former slave, juridically made a free man, but again juridically staying a junior member of his/her former owner's family. Having their own business but with duties to his patronus.

Confederate States of America,
The same with colonuses,

Early XIX century Russia.
Statute labor on the landlord's field (up to 6 days per week) - "barshchina"  is being widely replaced with a fixed payment  - "obrok".

Not so easy, though... Only in jobs where a worker must only flitter wit a pickaxe or axe, without any care for result,
For example, this is why Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were the pioneers in slavery: their farming was based on a channels digging. So, take a prisoner, give him an axe and let him rock. Hard to simulate an idiot in such primitive work.
In other places (Europe in wide sense, etc), channels weren't required — the care was. And slavery was much less efficient, so slaves were more like personally constrained tribesmen with the lowest status, or were used in mining,

The ancient world lacked the idea of wage labor, the idea that you show up at work at an fixed time is recent and dates from the industrial revolution. 
It was though to sell, very tough, back around 1850 it was common for south state plantation owners too counter discussion about the evil of slavery with the conditions of the workers in English factories at that time.
Rome used up slaves then they could not capture more they ran out, crowding an very low standard of living an no hygiene
Sharecropping took over after the civil war then slavery was illegal, yes it might well be more economical. Also that most of the previous slaves neither had the resources or was allowed to set up their own farm.

In Russia the conditions of the serfs got worse over the years unlike in West Europe, If they cut your hair once each year and sell it, I take it as an good indication you are livestock not hired workers. Tsar's reformed it around 1850 and later, interesting is that the upper nobility with money wanted to get get rid of the serfdom while the middle class wanted to keep it 

Back in Babylon or Egypt most slaves was servants, most people for major projects like irrigation up to pyramids was conscripts. Again the idea of paying someone to clean you house was not invented. Rome on the other hand was an true slave state, and Rome was serious bad, ancient Greece or Egypt was far better for most people 

[kerbiloid]

43 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

The ancient world lacked the idea of wage labor

The ancient world was pretty fond of this idea. Roman denarius and Greek obol were the standard lowest daily tax of a agricultural wage day-labourer.
A wage working appeared just when no more free land rest, and a peasant's children couldn't get their own land from their family or cutting a piece of forest, They had to work for wage as day-labourers,

43 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

it was common for south state plantation owners too counter discussion about the evil of slavery with the conditions of the workers in English factories at that time.

Ethical discussion was taking place (and would continue endlessly), but was stopped by the North just because industrial North found former slaves more motivated if being wage workers.

43 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

If they cut your hair once each year and sell it,

A creepy tale, though, A country-style was: hairs cut round a pot and untouched beard for men; a plait for maidens, a bride after the wedding often cut off her plait (maybe then sold it, of course).
Also you can compare to "Les Miserables" by Hugo, things were even worse in Paris 50 years earlier, a woman had to sell her hair and teeth.

43 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Tsar's reformed it around 1850 and later, interesting is that the upper nobility with money wanted to get get rid of the serfdom while the middle class wanted to keep it 

(In 1861, as in USA.)  Not the middle class, but many of peasants, just because they were liberated themselves but with no land, do they had to become day-laborers for the same landlords.
Also, less than half of peasantry was liberated. another half already was "government's people" or so.
And this is an example that landlords thought that a wage worker is more motivated than a slave.

P.S.
The forum amazingly added a tooltip for "Les"!

Edited June 27, 2016 by kerbiloid

[SinBad]

Slavery = work or die (or be beaten)

Minimum wage for many in developed countries = work or die (slowly of starvation, exposure or disease)

Working poor

The modern world still has slaves, except an owner is now an employer and they dont buy their slaves as valuable assets, they rent them by the hour from a massive pool of expendable labor, each indevidual of which firmly believes they are free. In reality, many of them only have the freedom to choose to be unemployed, just as the slave was free to choose punishment over work.

[kerbiloid]

Slavery markers =
1. Impossibility to change job.
2. Danger of physical punishment.
3. Wage is significantly below the market price.

Edited June 27, 2016 by kerbiloid

[DBowman]

Octopus skin has some great properties for space. Ignore the vacuum/vapor tightness for a sec. They can alter the color, reflectivity, and opacity of their skin via chromatophores. They can also use little muscles in the skin to radically alter the surface area. In nature they use these for camouflage (look like seaweed) and communication (look squid sexy on the side facing the ladies and threatening on the other side ).

Being able to change the absorbtivity, emissivity, and surface area of your skin sounds like a great trait for a space fairing creature. There are all sorts of highly reflective materials in creatures, near mirror like even, so you could imagine modifying the natural pigments etc to increase their space utility. Mirror up the sun-ward side and wrinkle and up the emissivity of the shadowed side. They can control these transitions very precisely and rapidly.

[kerbiloid]

On 02.07.2016 at 6:38 AM, DBowman said:

Octopus skin has some great properties for space. Ignore the vacuum/vapor tightness for a sec. They can alter the color, reflectivity, and opacity of their skin via chromatophores. They can also use little muscles in the skin to radically alter the surface area. In nature they use these for camouflage (look like seaweed) and communication (look squid sexy on the side facing the ladies and threatening on the other side ).

Chameleons can into space too.
They can all the same, and additionally they can throw their tongue, jumping from one part of the ship to another; catch things and MarkWatneys passing by in the space; manually tongually assist docking operations.

Also, they are evolutionary more familiar for us and maybe are the space mounts _{(in terms of cavalry)} of future.

Edited July 4, 2016 by kerbiloid

[SinBad]

Well, if we are going to uplift something, i vote for koalas. Imagine what two thumbs would do for a tool user.

Either that or polar bears, bred for large size, intelligence and a deep seated supiriority complex coupled with a complete lack of compassion or moral compass. Eventually that could get...   interesting.

 

Edited July 5, 2016 by SinBad