Uplifting?

[PB666]

6 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

Careful.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120927091926.htm

Are we now promoting drugs to snails.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenethylamine

 

[Bill Phil]

7 hours ago, LordFerret said:

You do realize that to cats and dogs, we're nothing but furless 2-legged food dispensers ... yes?

Oh yeah I know. They're still smarter than wolves. They will survive so long as we survive, and we're not going to go extinct, even after an apocalypse.

You see, you can't say that we're only that to dogs and cats, since you can't read their minds. 

They also get free protection. Dang smart.

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

They will survive so long as we survive

Cats & dogs are reading this feeling a perplexity. They aren't going to extinct even after that.
Their domestication hasn't changed them too much (especially cats), they feel themselves enough certain when they have to run wild.

9 hours ago, Camacha said:

 

13 hours ago, LordFerret said:

You do realize that to cats and dogs, we're nothing but furless 2-legged food dispensers ... yes?

To cats, yes. Those still are mostly solitary creatures. Dogs are pack animals that intrinsicly understand the value in sticking together and caring for each other. 

Humans, cats, dogs...
"We" are just a habitual part of the surrounding world picture for any of them.
They miss not "us" as "us", but as a missing part of their comfortable world mosaic.
If an animal walks freely outside of the home, you're a lesser part of mosaic. If it lives inside four walls, the greater.
The same with people. Mostly they miss not "somebody", but a piece of their own puzzle which was represented by this "somebody".

Edited June 21, 2016 by kerbiloid

[DBowman]

On 6/20/2016 at 10:07 AM, wumpus said:

I'll see your David Brin and raise you a Douglas Hofstadter*.  Assuming you built an AI around  multi-core processors, understood it thoroughly (to the degree that AI is possible to understand), and could build it across a high-latency (and noisy) network, you could presumably uplift an insect hive (with a ton of direct genetic modification).

I think you are on a great track.

Insects are closer to 'vacuum ready' than mammals who lack a mechanical constraint exoskeleton. There are probably all sorts of other near adaptations one could harvest from various species e.g. Saharan Silver Ant is covered in highly reflective and emissive hairs and can pre load with heat-shock proteins to operate for a while at 53C. All the various silks and other secretions insects do could be super useful also for fabrication, possibly you could gene hack them to produce more exotic materials. These guys (Bombardier Beetle) even have an H2O2 propulsion system. Load em up with commensal bacteria for ISRU (like termites and cellulose).

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, DBowman said:

I think you are on a great track.

Insects are closer to 'vacuum ready' than mammals who lack a mechanical constraint exoskeleton. There are probably all sorts of other near adaptations one could harvest from various species e.g. Saharan Silver Ant is covered in highly reflective and emissive hairs and can pre load with heat-shock proteins to operate for a while at 53C. All the various silks and other secretions insects do could be super useful also for fabrication, possibly you could gene hack them to produce more exotic materials. These guys (Bombardier Beetle) even have an H2O2 propulsion system. Load em up with commensal bacteria for ISRU (like termites and cellulose).

Problem is that insects breaths with an series with holes to air channels in the sides, all cells has direct access to air, oxygen is not carried by the blood. Simple and it work but put an maximum size on insects. it would need an spacesuit of an far more complex design than us as you would need  to circulate air around most of its body. 

[Camacha]

5 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Problem is that insects breaths with an series with holes to air channels in the sides, all cells has direct access to air, oxygen is not carried by the blood. Simple and it work but put an maximum size on insects. it would need an spacesuit of an far more complex design than us as you would need  to circulate air around most of its body. 

I suppose it would not. You take an empty soda can and put an insect in it. On one side, you feed an oxygen-nitrogen mix into the can. On the other side you extract or vent it.

Even if you say that would be a ship and not a suit, you might get away with attaching oxygen feeds to the breathing channels. Bugs have exoskeletons and might be much more resistant to low pressure environments, as their skin is unlikely to boil.

[DBowman]

Just now, magnemoe said:

Problem is that insects breaths with an series with holes to air channels in the sides

I know, their plumbing sucks - they also have just a single tube that pumps 'fluid' from the front (or back?) to the back (or front?) not even a real circulatory system - but as you say O2 transport is diffusion. Even with such poor design they could grow to a few feet with enough O2 in the atmosphere, and there are currently some crustaceans (basically insects) around that size.

Usually they have a row of 'holes' down each side of their body, you'd only need to plug 'air tubes' into those holes. If you are doing serious gene work you might relocate / 'consolidate them' or something more ambitious. The near constant volume exoskeleton seems like a better starting point than mammals squishy leaky skin.

I don't know what all you could do bio chemically - whales can go 90 mins without breathing by storing O2 in muscle (and relaxing I guess) - you might be able to do similar tricks to not need a suit at all for short excursions.

[SinBad]

If i remember, insects 'air holes' are all on the abdomen, that would be the only part needing air or (maybe?) Pressurisation. Circulating the atmosphere in a human eva suit isnt like a tube in the mouth like scuba. Its an organism respirating within a small, closed environment. I dont see the insect being any different.

[magnemoe]

6 minutes ago, DBowman said:

I know, their plumbing sucks - they also have just a single tube that pumps 'fluid' from the front (or back?) to the back (or front?) not even a real circulatory system - but as you say O2 transport is diffusion. Even with such poor design they could grow to a few feet with enough O2 in the atmosphere, and there are currently some crustaceans (basically insects) around that size.

Usually they have a row of 'holes' down each side of their body, you'd only need to plug 'air tubes' into those holes. If you are doing serious gene work you might relocate / 'consolidate them' or something more ambitious. The near constant volume exoskeleton seems like a better starting point than mammals squishy leaky skin.

I don't know what all you could do bio chemically - whales can go 90 mins without breathing by storing O2 in muscle (and relaxing I guess) - you might be able to do similar tricks to not need a suit at all for short excursions.

regarding uplifting, I wonder if you are not the expert here?

http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff2500/fc02467.htm

[SinBad]

Now that i think about it, Peter F Hamilton made a race with an exoskeleton in the nights dawn trilogy. Their solution was was basically a clear rubbery sack suit filled with gel. Inside that they basically wore scuba gear. So make scuba gear for an ant, then pput it intu a tiny six fingered rubber glove and charge it will goo.

[magnemoe]

4 minutes ago, SinBad said:

Now that i think about it, Peter F Hamilton made a race with an exoskeleton in the nights dawn trilogy. Their solution was was basically a clear rubbery sack suit filled with gel. Inside that they basically wore scuba gear. So make scuba gear for an ant, then pput it intu a tiny six fingered rubber glove and charge it will goo.

You could have an exoskeleton and an circulation system who are more suited for larger species. 
Main problem with an exoskeleton is having it grow with you as the outside is dead cells. 
Crabs and lobsters might be an better starting point than insects. Beeing in water makes it easier to survive then you change them. 
Or you can just put on armor then you need to

[DBowman]

8 minutes ago, SinBad said:

Now that i think about it, Peter F Hamilton made a race with an exoskeleton in the nights dawn trilogy. Their solution was was basically a clear rubbery sack suit filled with gel. Inside that they basically wore scuba gear. So make scuba gear for an ant, then pput it intu a tiny six fingered rubber glove and charge it will goo.

Could you do that with people using perflurocarbon or something (like in the film Abyss)? The liquid can be low pressure (less balloon-y mechanical force to move it against vacuum) but still high density (O2 carrying capacity, alveoli/mucus membrane protective ). Also fun to think liquid breathing as a solution to operating in a vacuum.

@magnemoe freefall - looks interesting ...

Edited June 21, 2016 by DBowman

[magnemoe]

Just now, DBowman said:

Could you do that with people using perflurocarbon or something (like in the film Abyss)? The liquid can be low pressure (less balloon-y mechanical force to move it against vacuum) but still high density (O2 carrying capacity, alveoli/mucus membrane protective )

@magnemoe freefall - looks interesting ...

Its my favorite comic, hard sci-fi and funny. 
I was sure your nic was after doctor bowman, 

[DBowman]

1 minute ago, magnemoe said:

I was sure your nic was after doctor bowman,

I guess Dr Bowman and I share a common ancestor, 2001's Dave Bowman.

[Sereneti]

THere was a dog in space, a long time before the first man ....
(laika ...)

[wumpus]

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Problem is that insects breaths with an series with holes to air channels in the sides, all cells has direct access to air, oxygen is not carried by the blood. Simple and it work but put an maximum size on insects. it would need an spacesuit of an far more complex design than us as you would need  to circulate air around most of its body. 

The point with working on the insects at the "hive" level removes the size restrictions (you just make a bigger hive).  The maximum size of a bug is pretty big: I thought there were dragonflies with near-meter wingspans before the dinosaurs (and smaller reptiles that were more efficient than meter long bugs).  Of course, you would avoid expanding your insects (unless you couldn't make a hive iguana, or similar) for the same reason that they died out.

I'm not saying there is a real advantage to uplifting a hive vs. a whale.  Chimps, whales, and even octopii are likely a better source (ars apparently claimed birds are better than we thought.  Any chance the KT layer was asteroid mining gone wrong, act or war/terrorism?).  I am saying that they are a reasonably close match to the hardware available to build an AI and could easily negate the "can't uplift a bug" claim.

[kerbiloid]

1. If they all begin thinking, whom would we eat?

2. If cows, sheeps, rabbits, etc become sentient, how would we explain them that we have eaten billions (trillions?) of their relatives? And which aftermath should we face then?.

P.S.
Cats are sentient already.

[kBob]

As to how, well I guess I'll leave that to Einstein the golden retriever to explain (Watchers by Koontz).  But really if you want to uplift something it should be standard poodles, fun loving, highly intelligent, don't shed and are able to better grasp future and past times than most dogs, so they seem to be good candidates.  Now why would you want to uplift them though?  Well I can't really think of a good reason they are pretty happy the way they are, if you uplift any species then it's probably going to have to start worrying about time and money and who needs that (this was expressed better in The God's Must be Crazy than I am doing here). 

There's also the problem of life span, most dogs don't live beyond the 10-15 year range and so unless you can also make them live longer when you uplift them it's going to be a problem (i.e. by the time you finish training them with the knowledge and skills necessary to do complex missions especially space oriented ones, they will probably be long dead before they get to where they are supposed to be).

Edited June 21, 2016 by kBob

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

The point with working on the insects at the "hive" level removes the size restrictions (you just make a bigger hive).  The maximum size of a bug is pretty big: I thought there were dragonflies with near-meter wingspans before the dinosaurs (and smaller reptiles that were more efficient than meter long bugs).  Of course, you would avoid expanding your insects (unless you couldn't make a hive iguana, or similar) for the same reason that they died out.

I'm not saying there is a real advantage to uplifting a hive vs. a whale.  Chimps, whales, and even octopii are likely a better source (ars apparently claimed birds are better than we thought.  Any chance the KT layer was asteroid mining gone wrong, act or war/terrorism?).  I am saying that they are a reasonably close match to the hardware available to build an AI and could easily negate the "can't uplift a bug" claim.

Common misunderstanding, we are more hive mind than insects. We do group decisions all the time. Insects do some of this but without discussion more like an crowd do.

Not sure a classic hive mind Is plausible, you will get serious bandwidth issues, 

 

[PB666]

24 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

 

Why waste the time, the entire nervous system of lower insects will be known in a few years, plus the stimuli that alter their behavior, you can simply copy them into replicators (automatrons that can build a machine that replicates themselves, from the SG1) and simply avoid the biology issues altogether. This is particularly useful in space, since you can use objects in the vacuum of space as fuel for these things. THey could even have their own cluster of nanobots that isolate minerals in roids (separating out useful metals, making stocks and jettisoning the rest into the vacuum of space).

Dolphins .  . .No.
Dogs . . . . No. Such in zero g - they have no hands
Insects .. . . .No, to easy to copy as automatrons and program to suit needs.

Birds, your average crow:

- can fly and manuever in space craft better than humans.
- more intelligent than your average dog.
- canary in the mineshaft, sensitive respiratory systems alerts at environment failure.
- on planets can conduct long range aerial survelance.
- Are hatched from eggs, eggs can (with adequate technology) be frozen and stored for generations, millions of years, removed and incubated autonomously from any other life form, except presumbably phototrophs.

Imagine the following, 200 years from now we finally discover that it is appreciably difficult to send humans to planets, and everything we find needs to be terraformed. After initially bombarding a planet with microbes and basal oceanic phototrophs its not time to seed the planet, but the problem is, the transfer expense for humans is too great, takes to long.

With oxygen levels rising you have a small ship arrive on the planets surface, it is stocked with food and seeds, and various small creatures as cryogenic eggs.
The eggs are then incubated the crow is fed but within a training simulation that focuses reward, the crows fly out and plant tree seeds for seed trees, fertilized both fresh and salt water with packets that autorelease eggs, etc. Each ship has a different crow, some male some female, after successfully seeding their territory they are alerted where the opposite sex is, and they mate. More ships arrive with more packets, the crows distribute more ecosystem stuff until its sufficient to support the crows and they no longer return to the ship. Once the crows are autonomous, the signal is sent back to send humans to the planet. 

 

[magnemoe]

9 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Why waste the time, the entire nervous system of lower insects will be known in a few years, plus the stimuli that alter their behavior, you can simply copy them into replicators (automatrons that can build a machine that replicates themselves, from the SG1) and simply avoid the biology issues altogether. This is particularly useful in space, since you can use objects in the vacuum of space as fuel for these things. THey could even have their own cluster of nanobots that isolate minerals in roids (separating out useful metals, making stocks and jettisoning the rest into the vacuum of space).

Dolphins .  . .No.
Dogs . . . . No. Such in zero g - they have no hands
Insects .. . . .No, to easy to copy as automatrons and program to suit needs.

Birds, your average crow:

- can fly and manuever in space craft better than humans.
- more intelligent than your average dog.
- canary in the mineshaft, sensitive respiratory systems alerts at environment failure.
- on planets can conduct long range aerial survelance.
- Are hatched from eggs, eggs can (with adequate technology) be frozen and stored for generations, millions of years, removed and incubated autonomously from any other life form, except presumbably phototrophs.

Imagine the following, 200 years from now we finally discover that it is appreciably difficult to send humans to planets, and everything we find needs to be terraformed. After initially bombarding a planet with microbes and basal oceanic phototrophs its not time to seed the planet, but the problem is, the transfer expense for humans is too great, takes to long.

With oxygen levels rising you have a small ship arrive on the planets surface, it is stocked with food and seeds, and various small creatures as cryogenic eggs.
The eggs are then incubated the crow is fed but within a training simulation that focuses reward, the crows fly out and plant tree seeds for seed trees, fertilized both fresh and salt water with packets that autorelease eggs, etc. Each ship has a different crow, some male some female, after successfully seeding their territory they are alerted where the opposite sex is, and they mate. More ships arrive with more packets, the crows distribute more ecosystem stuff until its sufficient to support the crows and they no longer return to the ship. Once the crows are autonomous, the signal is sent back to send humans to the planet. 

 

Agree here an smarter bird would be practical, main issue is getting them up to human level without making the brain to heavy. If you are happy with just an smart bird it should work well.
Giving animals hands would not be so much harder than giving them human level intelligence, you would need to do lots of changes anyway, 

[kerbiloid]

28 minutes ago, PB666 said:

- can fly and manuever in space craft better than humans.

How many crows were already tested in zero-G to presume they at all can fly?

28 minutes ago, PB666 said:

more intelligent than your average dog.

How many crows were already trained instead of dogs?

29 minutes ago, PB666 said:

canary in the mineshaft, sensitive respiratory systems alerts at environment failure.

Useful when both toilets and oxygen regenerators are broken.

31 minutes ago, PB666 said:

on planets can conduct long range aerial survelance

For their own. What's our profit?

32 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Are hatched from eggs, eggs can (with adequate technology) be frozen and stored for generations, millions of years, removed and incubated autonomously from any other life form, except presumbably phototrophs.

Humans are also being hatched from eggs. Just without a shell. They also can be frozen and stored for generations.

[wumpus]

31 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Agree here an smarter bird would be practical, main issue is getting them up to human level without making the brain to heavy. If you are happy with just an smart bird it should work well.
Giving animals hands would not be so much harder than giving them human level intelligence, you would need to do lots of changes anyway, 

While you might get away with less mass than a human (there have been a significant number of people with low-mass brains and normal intelligence*).  What you won't get away with is a lower metabolic rate.  I doubt you can get a human brain's metabolic load into a crow or similar sized animal.  How long would a crow live that ate like a humming bird?

* the old saw about using 10% of our brain isn't that far off the mark.  There *have* been people with 10% of a brain (lost under 2 years of age) that have lived normally.  Just nobody with "10 times the intelligence".

Edited June 21, 2016 by wumpus
forgot footnote

[justidutch]

I can't see there being a use or reason for uplifting other species; except in the case where doing so would guarantee our inclusion into a League of Peoples.

I think that before we are able to do that, we'll have figured out how to uplift ourselves - how to modify a human to be more micro-gravity and radiation tolerant, how to fix or replace our broken cells, how to improve/change muscles, bone structures, etc.  Also how to implant tech into ourselves.  Basically I am saying that I think we'll be able to modify ourselves to a point where we could become an engineered post-human with whatever qualities are needed for whatever environment we are desiring to inhabit (within reason I suppose).  Why do that with other species when we can do it to ourselves and not have to worry about the ethics of creating smart dungbeetles? 

Edited June 21, 2016 by justidutch

[PB666]

6 minutes ago, justidutch said:

I can't see there being a use or reason for uplifting other species; except in the case where doing so would guarantee our inclusion into a League of Peoples.

I think that before we are able to do that, we'll have figured out how to uplift ourselves - how to modify a human to be more micro-gravity and radiation tolerant, how to fix or replace our broken cells, how to improve/change muscles, bone structures, etc.  Also how to implant tech into ourselves.  Basically I am saying that I think we'll be able to modify ourselves to a point where we could become an engineered post-human with whatever qualities are needed for whatever environment we are desiring to inhabit (within reason I suppose).  Why do that with other species when we can do it to ourselves and not have to worry about the ethics of creating smart dungbeetles? 

Ooh,  smart dung beetles, just what you need on a space station, they give you the separation you need.