QUOTE | POWER OF BIOLOGY SURPRISES SCIENTISTS YET AGAIN

[Lloyd said: “The strangest thing for me is that some organisms can exist for millennia. They are metabolically active but in stasis, with less energy than we thought possible of supporting life.”]-guardian

Biology ultimate technology? Comment on reddit thread

That is my take, this is potentially the ultimate technology barring something that manipulates physical law, though I wouldn't say biology but advanced synthetic biology to be more precise.

People tend to underestimate the power of what can actually be created when you transcend evolutionary limitations with cells.

Biology uses cells as main workhorses in many cases, but synthetic biology can allow cells to construct precise nano-structures organic and inorganic of arbitrary function. Structures that can be scaled to macroscopic dimensions if need be. Cells are able to drastically alter metabolic rate in nature, reducing it as needed, basically halting metabolism and allowing them to consume practically no energy for decades or little energy for even longer.

People tend to think in terms of just animals or plants in terms of the limits of synthetic biology in fiction. But potentially anything could be built by synthetic biology, a TV, a car, a computer, a plane.

Not only are cells able to produce electricity, but they are also able to consume electricity, not just light or chemical fuels. There have been closed systems with biological organisms only in-taking external energy able to recycle all components and continue functioning for decades or more. Self contained devices using cells can be made to recycle all wastes and not need exchange of atoms with the environment only the exchange of energy. Though such restriction can be lifted if it is more convenient as needed.

The thing is cells replicate, and could potentially be used to mass produce. Right now the efficiency of conversion from solar to chemical is quite low, and most plants have low resilience to hostile conditions, they are also not designed to be coupled with a computer for the production of arbitrary products. But cells could be coupled with the energy produced from fission or in the future from fusion, allowing unlimited replicative ability, the excess energy could be used to purify or scavenge any resources that were needed.

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Tech comment future potential hypothesizing

Comment done regards technological capabilities that may enable self-sufficiency at high levels  of technological capability, without the global supply chains, and hard to get components.   Which may be useful in things like future off world colonies, and may be necessary for true self sufficiency of such colonies, and easing their rapid expansion in hostile worlds.

Realistically there are only two possibilities, and they may not be that realistic depending on who you ask.

1.) Hard nano or atomically precise manufacturing, molecular machinery unlike that seen in nature able to self repair, separate and recycle component at the level of atoms, similar to life but supposedly with more precision. I don't think this is possible outside specialized lab conditions with vacuums, probably requiring low temperature.

2.) Extremophiles have shown biology surpassing the limits biologists believed for life, some organisms also were able to synthesize unthinkable ultra reactive substances that would react with almost any internal cellular component and cause an explosive reaction, that is one rocket fuel ingredient.

Hypothetically, there may be a way to combine our advances in manufacturing and information processing with biology itself, molecular machines, through extremely advanced synthetic biology using unevolved and unevolvable molecular systems. It depends on the limits of advanced synthetic biology, but I wouldn't bet against it.

Requires intermediate step of mastering de novo protein design, and multicomponent molecular machines, de novo complex multicellular organisms. Once the science develops it may take years for hundreds of specialists to design living machines for specialized purposes.

That is eventually you would have living machines able to gene sequence, dna synthesize, advanced recycling, advanced manufacturing with nanoscale precision(as seen in nature but with novel materials not seen in nature), energy generation and storage, advanced computing and data storage, etc.

The machines would be designed to exhibit negligible senescence or agelessness, able to last indefinitely, the systems would be mostly self-enclosed, utilizing energy to self repair and recycle wastes. In some cases they could be fully self-enclosed exchanging only energy with the exterior environment.

Such systems should be able to take arbitrary raw soil or raw matter, and decompose it down, break it down to atoms and molecules, and utilize the materials to build other copies of themselves, for growth, and for self repair.

Blade Runner

Blade Runner is a a movie from the 80s featuring synthetic humans from the Tyrell corporation whose motto is "More Human than Human".   Such can be viewed as a kind of prophesy, a self-fulfilling prophesy, as is much of science fiction.

Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction cyberpunk/tech-noir film directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is a modified film adaptation of the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in which genetically engineered replicants, which are visually indistinguishable from adult humans, are manufactured by the powerful Tyrell Corporation. The use of replicants on Earth is banned and they are exclusively utilized for dangerous or menial work on off-world colonies. Replicants who defy the ban and return to Earth are hunted down and killed ("retired") by special police operatives known as "Blade Runners". The plot focuses on a group of recently escaped replicants hiding in L.A. and the burnt-out expert Blade Runner, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment to hunt them down.-source wiki

People have talked about metal robots or robots with artificial polymer skins ,these may take place.  But a form of advanced synthetic biology is going to be very hard to surpass,  the only competing less realistic tech is what is called hard nano, whether hard nano can be used to make self-repairing, self-maintaining, ageless humanoids remain in question.   The laws of physics, the true laws, do not forbid the creation of synthetic humans, humans born of intelligent design through computer assisted design software.   

So it may come to pass, that one day, assuming the human world doesn't self destruct, progress will allow for artificial ageless humans of any race, gender or age.   Humans who may be born with synthetic brains filled with knowledge of a thousand lifespans, more than a thousand years of experience from birth.

Comment on post scarcity video

A comment on Isaac Arthur's post scarcity video.

The problem with scarcity given absolute automation is a problem of unregulated reproduction.   A likely tech for postscarcity is high automation.   With high automation, comes high security, freedom from accidents and crime.  With automated high speed research, comes freedom from disease, including aging.

I believe that new citizens, newborn citizens deserve the best society has to offer, the best parenting, the best resources, the best education, the best health care, and a guarantee to a slice of the resources of the planet.   We summon a new being, call them, into this world, the least we can do is offer the best we can to someone who didn't ask to come here, but was brought into this world forcefully.   But unregulated reproduction can lead to uncontrolled population growth especially in a world with little death from accident, disease, crime, or (highly reduced disease of  uncontrolled depression)suicide.

Regards easy availability to say food, travel or experiences.  I agree with the comments regarding the final examples of virtual reality overlaid on reality, entoptics and its expansion into other sensory modalities, that technology is also called augmented reality.  We need not necessarily print or manufacture many, actually most things.  In fact nonphysical say food has advantages, it has no calories, it is instantly available in unlimited quantities at the right temperature and exact perfect  'cooking', this also allows unlimited consumption.    All that is needed is the technology of advanced brain computer interfaces, with this both virtual as well as augmented reality will allow for the controlled multisensory collective hallucination of experiences and sensations, such that virtual objects offer smell, physical resistance, touch, taste, etc.

 As for the automation technology, I believe advanced synthetic biology will be the final miniaturization and advancement of our physical technology. With negligible senescence, our machines can self renew, self repair, self replicate automatically at a molecular level, they can also recycle their own components at such molecular level. Using an external energy source, an entirely self-contained system is possible recycling and maintaining all components. Although an internal energy source is also possible using fission, fusion or mini black holes. Combined with a body enhanced by synthetic biology, the human within a synthetic biology facility could last indefinitely, and if digital computation is merged into such tech, experience all the wonders possible through brain computer interfaces.

Possibility of synthetic biological neural chips

If you look at a human, the amount of non nervous supporting tissue volume is vast, but this is not the case for all animals.  Some animals have vast nervous system volume with seemingly minimal supporting tissue volume.

"We discovered that the central nervous systems of the smallest spiders fill up almost 80 percent of their total body cavity, including about 25 percent of their legs."- sciencedaily news article

In theory such neural tissue could be hypothetically adapted to work in an artificial biochip, as it requires very little  volume of supporting tissue.   It would be an engineering challenge.  But one can imagine an interweaving of the minute support organ systems creating a large sheet of neural tissue. With some spacing and oxygenation and nutrient systems even volumetric systems are possible. 

 One of the problems observed in nature, including the human brain,  is that as neural communication length grows, natural systems change from analog neural transmission to digital action potential transmission which is less energy efficient, also long range transmission even with myelination is relatively slow.  But an artificial synthetic biology neural chip could make use of optimal optical interconnects that transmit at the speed of light between sections of the chip.

Insects depending on species can go for days without water or food, some can even withstand prolonged oxygen deprivation for tens of hours.   If metabolic suspension capabilities are brought into the equation the systems can hypothetically last for decades without food, water or oxygen.   So these are very resilient chips if designed appropriately.  Not fickle(On a side note: I'm not very fond of petri dishes, and growing things with special finicky settings, growth media, etc, I prefer full multicellular support structures that allow for biological cells to basically sit right there out on the open environment at room temperature and with minimal maintenance.)

Eventually a self contained gas exchange, and nutrient recycling with electric energy conversion(electrical to chemical to carry out recycling and power the molecular machinery) could make the entire computing system fully enclosed needing neither external water nor external food nor external oxygen.

Once the genetic regulation that regulates connectivity and learning is optimized such a system could be used for arbitrary applications.   In the unlikely event that it is true as some neuroscientists, seem to imply, that even a single biological neuron is basically supercomputer level maybe even as some hypothesize able to do quantum computations(very unlikely), well a biochip with billions of said neurons would vastly out compete any digital computer, if any of the implied performance hypotheses are true.   Even if the performance hypotheses aren't true, the energy efficiency durability and performance of such systems would be excellent.

Comment on living buildings and possible future synthetic biology tech

Yes lots of problems with the current approach. But someday in the future we might see true living buildings, where there are isolated locations that recycle wastes, and also separate energy collection and storage, self repairing and self modifying living walls.

Ideally you'd use synthetic biology to create a new type of multicellular organism, one that could take energy from the sun, from nuclear materials, from electricity, from the wind, and store it. Might be plant like, but with living 8k display covering all walls, perhaps even holographic. Could biosynthesize carbon nanotubes to strengthen the structure, and since it would exhibit negligible senescence the building could last for thousands or even millions of years. If it had advanced living computing, recycling and manufacturing facilities, technology and knowledge at the state of the art would be preserved even if most of the world was destroyed in some disaster.

With extremophile genes and the ability to build the right insulating and protective compounds, it could survive extreme temperature and even atmospheric variations, while keeping the internal areas human hospitable.

Able to repair, build up more of itself, and recycle, a small seedlike form of this could be sent to a planet like mars, and it would automatically and at virtually zero cost build by itself vast subterranean facilities all across mars, facilities that were human hospitable.- source next big future

Comment on future tech regards synthetic biology

The idea of a body made of static non self renewing(self repair and maintenance) non self cleaning materials and hardware, is not very enticing for me.  I prefer things of indefinite longevity.

Can atomically precise manufacturing, that is hard nano work?  Many doubt it's viable, and without it the only bodies that can potentially self clean self regenerate indefinitely are synthetic biology bodies.

But a synthetic biology humanoid body would have real flesh, and it would be indistinguishable from the real thing.   Albeit, with synthetic genetic modification of the cells, they could feature negligible senescence, that is biological immortality, and in addition the ability to regenerate lost limbs, organs, and scar less skin regeneration.

I would say that long term, things will get interesting.   Reality allows for the generation of computer controlled flesh bodies that do not age or die.   How soon can we expect such?  Probably  later half of the century, maybe first half of the next, unless something radically accelerates the rate of progress.-EDIT: comment from nextbigfuture, but no link to original article as it is probably nsfw

reply to thread regarding future advances in computing tech at kurzweil ai forums

2 cents

I like this quote regards analog devices

[quote]Archimedes made a great discovery that digital representation of numbers is exponentially more efficient than analog ones (sand pile sizes). Many subsequent analog devices yielded unimpressive results. -Leonid Levin[/quote]

As I've said previously lower energy consumption, and cheaper manufacturing tech is required.   I believe that eventually we will transition to synthetic biology.   Which is why medical investments in tissue engineering are very good.   The brain has about 100 Billion cells, but almost all of those cells are in the cerebellum.

Judging by this picture http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/science-society/watching-brain-working, that's about 10% of the size of the brain.   But each neuron tends to have 1000s of synapses, so there are countless trillions of components. 

But it is likely digital logic can be carried out by molecules, even if we had to resort to nanomechanical systems, but perhaps molecular electronics is possible still...

Perhaps some form of protein-like logic element could be imbued into circuit like multimolecule machines in membraneous like areas within microscopic cells with some simple genetically guided circuit construction,  Some manner of intercellular communication, and you'd have self repairing self replicating circuitry, which in some multicellular machine would amount to quite alot.  Let's assume 100M such components per cell, then for an organ similar to the liver with about 240Billion cells, that would give 24 Quintillion logic elements.   Operating even at a few Mhz speeds, such a system would probably beat even hypothetical Yottaflop supercomputers in processing power, but would likely consume only a few tens of watts.

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EDITED