The Horrifying Utopia of Prime Intellect

This is a very interesting book wherein the limits of intelligence go beyond what most would consider possible.  Even the fundamental laws of physics and the nature of reality end up malleable to superintelligence, and end up changed in a way that creates an utopia that is not to everyone's liking.

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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.

_reddit source thread link

Yet another comment on brain computer interfaces, abundance, and postscarcity society.

The thing is, AI will eventually accelerate the development of brain computer interfaces. Brain computer interfaces will eventually allow all the senses, all the sensations to be replicated digitally and stored accessible instantly. Like netflix and youtube do with video, or spotify with music. All sensations, taste, smell, touch, all realworld experiences will be recordable, shareable and able to be experienced again and again for free.

Control the brain, and you can eat the most nutritious food, and it doesn't matter how unpalatable it is, the signals will be intercepted and changed such that the food tastes as the best tasting possible food.

You can also eat thin air, and drink thin air, while consuming virtual food with all the richness of sensation and none of the calories. Even the most expensive of dishes, can be had unlimited as desired at a moment's notice, instantly, cost free.

It can also generate worlds of untold beauty and extense virtually. Sensations can be recorded, and shared even from other people. You can experience the emotions, the thoughts, the sense of making choices, the tastes, the smells, the sights, everything indistinguishable from living it yourself live in person, indistinguishable from real recordings, and imaginings of real and fictitious locations.

Say you take the world's richest person a 100 years from now, say he records his life from birth till death. A billion people could potentially experience it all, indistinguishable from being that person, and it would take virtually no resources to live and experience everything he did as vividly and realistically as if you actually were that person.
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The thing is eventually computation and ai will allow the development of alternate histories, to adapt to any possible choice. Such that you too could not only live the same life but make different choices, and experience realistic alternate outcomes or even an entirely fictional experience as a non existent wealthiest individual with free agency.

In any case there is no experience that cannot be recreated with computation, ai and a connection to the brain.

EDIT: People will be able to live in virtual worlds, and use augmented reality to mix the virtual with the real. Any fantasy or desire they have can be materialized by ai in digital form and transmitted directly to the brain at low cost.

People will share, and interact with each other while having access to the ability to exchange thought, emotion, and countless sensations and conjure up any food or experience or sight or sound, touch, smell out of thin air. A far more magical and richer social experience.

Today there are streamers. In the future it has been hypothesized there will be experience beamers, people that connect all their senses to the internet, and thousands or millions connect to their feed and feel all they're feeling.

But not everyone will follow experience beamers. There will be movies and interactive stories or games, where you're a bystander or you're a protagonist, in countless stories with wonderful worlds. Some of these experiences may last hours, other days, yet others may last years decades or more. Perhaps even your memories and personality will be temporarily blocked and overrided, if so desired.

Why would such tech become widely available? Because with the advanced manufacturing of the future it is likely to be practically free to mass produce. With full automation there is no need of employment, and basic needs can easily be met, population caps and regulated reproduction can ensure there are always enough resources to provide basic needs to everyone.

The wealthiest can still have an edge with having more physical land, better physical transportation, and the ability to conduct larger scale simulations with entire simulated billions of people to rule over with godlike power using their BCI. The less wealthier the smaller the scale and complexity of what can be produced, unless it is in a shared multi user experience where the costs are distributed.

Comment on antiaging thread at kurzweilai.

I'll say what I always say.

A neuron was transplanted from one species to another with twice the lifespan, it lived as long as the new host.   The researchers said it had potentially unlimited lifespan, and could probably live longer in even longer lived species.   I believe if you had taken an average human's neuron and put it into Calment it too would have lasted 122+ years, over 50% longer than most any human.   While it would be bolder it may be that even if transplanted into a bowhead, a human neuron could last over 200 years.

Some like Michael Fossel, appear to suggest too that a fraction of cells do not show signs of aging, and only fail due to failing supporting tissue, aging supporting cells.

If the body has cells that do not age, as it appears to have, what then?  The genes of these cells are shared with virtually all cells in the body, the same repair and maintenance mechanism that allows for an immortal cell exists in all cells.

As a species evolves to be longer lived, and longer lived, there are two positions one 1.) it gets harder and harder requiring ever stronger natural selection to push the longevity.  2.) as it gets longer lived and longer lived the fewer the remaining steps to gain indefinite lifespan or biological immortality, the fewer the steps.

Humans are already very long lived, and as I said it may be some cells within humans are already exhibiting agelessness(their parameters only declining due to aging of supporting cells).   It may be that a drug or drug combo could tweak gene expression enough to allow for decades or centuries of added lifespan.-DS, source link

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.

Future civilization speculation post over at Kurzweilai

That is not how it works. There are costs involved in exploration, extraction. mining, refining, manufacture and transport. If you think that you can just live in a virtual world, then you are perfect for mind uploading. Sell up and transfer your wealth to my Singudollahs...I promise not to....(You know the rest...)

Ok, suppose I take vast amounts of land, and put fully self sufficient facilities in there, large solar panels, fusion reactors, etc. Just need to send an automated bot to the ocean every few centuries to pick up a bit of water if I want to be all gungho high energy consumption, or every few millenia or more depending on energy use and how much I want to store.

With full self sufficiency with the use of molecular machines able to self repair and recycle all wastes, we could even cut off virtually all matter exchange with the outside and have an enclosed atmosphere, surviving out of sunlight, and keep fusion fuel just in case of emergencies.

Molecular machines can create anything from arbitrary products of the highest quality, displays, computers, machinery, cars, etc to biological humanoids of any shape or size. All ageless, self repairing, that is essentially immortal.

Brain Computer interfaces potentially allow any possible sensation to be experienced at a whim, at a moment's notice, and replayed again and again for free.

It is said that a single grain of sand might be convertible to over a million trillion human brain equivalent, even if the numbers on the brain estimate(think it was 10Petaflop) were off by a million, that's a trillion brains equivalent, hypothetically speaking Even if we reduced this number by a thousand to allow for cooling and interconnect reductions in usable area, that still leaves a billion humans per grain of sand equivalent, hypothetically speaking.

Already memory state changes at petahertz range are being considered as conceivable. So take it I create entire agi civilizations to create vast quantities of art and science. All that content would be mine to use as I desire, I can exchange it, if need be, but realize that for entertainment and increasing my knowledge I no longer would have any need of the external society.

The only thing society would offer in such a scenario is dangers, restrictions and attempts at extracting resources from me and others, if I and others reached that state. I'd have to bother with society, because as a group they may attempt to overpower me and take what's rightfully mine. IF a dictator or what have you took power, I'd basically have to resist. The question is what right does society have to impose its will upon my domain, and demand resources from me, and threaten me with potential torture, deprivation of liberty, etc even were I innocent of any crime?

Yes, initial costs. Then, maintenance costs. Energy can be harvested "for free", once the initial costs have been covered. Then, energy can be harvested "for free", whilst maintenance costs are factored in, over a given theoretical period of time.

There are trees in the middle of the forest that have existed for hundreds of years without paying anyone. These trees depend on an open atmosphere, have low energy assimilation, and do not compare to what is possible with fusion reactors, high efficiency solar energy extraction, and fully enclosed atmospheres.

The plants I kill with herbicide and rip root out from the concrete cracks, they pay no one for materials, they extract them from the ground and the atmosphere. Their maintenance is free, and they self replace, had they been made immortal they'd be there for hundreds of years should no one rip them out.

Fully automated molecular machines cost nothing to maintain, and cost nothing to make, they can emerge from raw garbage, from the ground, from the ocean, from anywhere. We only need the knowledge to create the first set of advanced molecular manufacturing systems, and this system alone can create unlimited versions for free. At most the cost of all the molecular machine systems of the entire universe, all future colonies and all future machines throughout the cosmos, the only cost is the initial R&D cost. And again if you have agi, that's only energy and computational costs, quite small by comparison of all it allows.

Again, you do not own the resources that are required for the very many different things, that you may require. You may own a house and a garden and a car and a dog and a cat and plants and soil. That does not "a free stuff robot" make...

We have no reason to suppose that biological machinery cannot be used to create neural interfaces and advanced computational hardware. Biological machinery self replicates and can basically grow and self maintain all its own, as said even from a few cracks of concrete under partial shadow, vast volumes of biological tissue are constructed automatically and free within weeks. Again this is at low efficiency of solar energy extraction, a high efficiency solar extractor + fusion reactor system, will vastly surpass the rate of biological tissue construction from atmospheric and ground resources.

You need the refined, manufactured and transported at a cost, ready to print, or create, product, that cost someone, somewhere, money, to get to the point that makes it safe and ready to use.

Well One of Drexler's point is that molecular control allows the substitution of cheap common elements for rare elements, all while construction products nearly as good in some cases, but actually vastly superior to current products that use rare building materials in many cases.

Here's the thing to experience any sensation, you need only a neural interface with advanced computer, no reason to suppose it is impossible with biological machinery to do so, and if it is it can be done cheaply with easily available materials. One of the most versatile elements carbon is cheaply available, and molecular machines can build arbitrary products with extraordinary resilience from it. Structurally it may allow for superior airplanes, cars, boats, and all manner of vehicles.

Display wise, we already know organic materials can be used, no reason to suppose biology cannot create high quality ageless displays.
Here's the other thing, molecular machines allow for advanced and perfect recycling, as well as self repairing immortal appliances. Even if the appliance breaks down it can be perfectly reconstructed into a brand new one. Not seeing what exactly it is you need, all this can run automatically with no human intervention, potentially.

There won't be such a time, where "robots have freed us from any concerns over money", where people who have not paid in some way, just lay around and do nothing, whilst robots/AI take care of everything. That is a "heaven of free stuff' belief.

I'm not seeing what exactly stops that once we can design minds. If we have a willing high intelligence being doing work for peanuts, tada. A fraction of the human population has investments managed by others generating in a month more money than a normal human could normally use in a lifetime. This fraction in essence uses the rest of the population as machinery, to travel from place to place and some live a life of pure leisure and decadence. WHAT EXACTLY stops these people to continue their ways, but simply replace the rest of the human population with advanced self sufficient machinery should they want and be able to do so? If the machines are as capable or even more capable, more intelligent, stronger, self sufficient, there's nothing man can do that such can't do better.

what will you do when machines are smarter and more dextrous than you

This is silly. Mind design is quite ample, not all need be non-subservient. Look at a company the engineers, the managers, etc the collective it is smarter than the ceo, and sometimes the ceo's activities are actually to the detriment of the company, which would be better without him, yet they're paid regardless.

If you've a civilization of agi under your roof, it generates more art and science in a year than that generated throughout the collective history of mankind. All those assets are yours, and you can exchange them with others. Whether they'd have worth when anyone can reproduce Einstein, Shakespeare, Archimedes level of quality works. Who knows.

_SOIURCE LINK

Comment on thread on running simulations

I don't believe you actually can create such feelings, you can only access the memories of events. Simulation is only the creation of memory states and transitions between them, even with more elaborate branching of subsections, it is not different in kind than the playing of an interactive dvd. What happened happened and there's no changing it.

Those rapes and tortures they exist atemporally forever as possibilities, they happened, happen and will always happen. There's no changing it, you can view what is, and view alternate histories. But there's no changing the death of Yoda or Harry Potter's parents, those are things that are part of one potential sequence of events. The sequences exist independent of time.

Even with godhood, you can't stop logical possibilities from existing and always being, you can only view such, experience such.

Even simple substraction or addition with branching offers universal computation, a very simple process. There is nothing wrong morally with substracting, or adding, nor with making a decision as to where to add or substract. When you draw a painting of an elephant, that elephant exists independent of the painting, the painting is not unethical. Similar reality as is appears to be an instance of the possibilities, and the elephant exists independent of its presence in any one planet.
So yes I would run simulations, but the consciousness while referent to the structures generated, exists, existed, and will exist independent of any particular instantiation.

You can't stop sequences of events from happening, you can access such, and even access alternate ones where divine intervention occurs, but all possibilities have already taken root, they simply are, forever so. -source link for thread on kurzweilai

hypothetical future | hypothetical technology | internal arbitrary compound synthesis and storage | future of medicine

Potential technologies of medicine from the future.

As I've spoken elsewhere, vast increases in the capabilities of the body are likely, agelessness, cancer immunity, regeneration, ability to suspend metabolism, super immunity, extreme intelligence, increased strength and speed.

But even with a far better body, one may imagine that there may still be use for small molecules to be used from time to time, drug and drug like systems may still complement the age of advanced molecular machines implemented in medicine.

One hypothetical idea would be a device or organ that wirelessly took in data, and synthesized any compound measuring the blood levels of the compound and being updated and monitored in real time by doctors whether ai or biologically human.

In the future to come it is likely you will virtually have information from your body sent to your doctor and the advanced monitoring system will be enough for a diagnosis, at least in most cases, if need be for any drug or drug like compound the instructions to synthesize virtually any compound will be sent to a device within the body which will generate the compound in a regulated fashion.   Stores of compounds may be in place in case of medical emergency to administer vital compounds at vital times.

Comment on thread on bioprinters and agelessness

Neurons in mice, iirc, last over twice as long as mice limited only by new host lifespan, think it was [in] rats [when transplanted].  In humans neurons last at least 50% longer than average as evidenced by the longest lived human.   Some have hypothesized that neurons may not exhibit signs of aging in and of themselves, but that their decay may be the result of aging supporting cells.    Therapies are underway to try and rejuvenate supporting cells, and if these ideas are right, they may reverse signs of brain decay if caught on time before neural loss occurs.

Right now bowhead neurons, unless we find there's regeneration throughout their brains, these neurons likely exhibit high metabolic activity, have over 200 year lifespan, and do not likely differ too much from our neurons in terms of maintenance and repair.   That additional virtual century likely came without nature having to implement ever more elaborate solutions as hypothesized by those who believe extensive engineering is necessary to achieve agelessness.

The longer lived a species the closer it is to agelessness, the more minute the necessary changes should be, and perhaps they may be inducible even by drug cocktails.

Now as for bioprinters, the issue of need for vasculature, for nutrient exchange and waste removal, the problems with deep 3d printing, could be solved in part if we used genetic modification to imbue the ability to vastly reduce metabolic rate perhaps even suspend it whie conditions improve and become adequate.   

source link

On the end of all modern human societies and the birth of a new world order.

On the end of all modern human societies and the birth of a new world order.

The fabrication of indistinguishable from real evidence of all forms, the chaos of future technological progress.     Video, audio, even dna evidence.   It is likely that eventually all manner of evidence will be manufacturable at will,  evidence indistinguishable from the real deal.   

 Eventually it may even likely come a time, as foreseen in science fiction, where memories can be altered and implanted.   Such that many may emerge as witnesses, and believe something that has been implanted in them thus making them truly false witnesses unknowingly.  Even the person may be innocent, but may remember and regret having done something they did not do, the memory merely implanted on them, perhaps to incriminate and to serve as a scape goat.

What happens in regards to crime, and the justice systems, when no evidence no matter its origin is no longer truly trustable?  When no number of witnesses, no confession, not even an advanced brain scan might detect these fabrications, these forgeries?

 

It seems to me that a system of rehabilitation, no longer punishment will be necessary for the future.   Forgiveness and rehabilitation in case of criminal actions, or suggestions of criminal actions.

Human society as is cannot survive the power of technology, technological progress, it will shatter before the light of truth, the entire world, a world built on lies, it will crumble before the purity of the divine light.

Freedom, Security, and Time, unlimited.

The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, or is it? article link | comments

Five years ago, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astronomers for their discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace. This led to the widespread acceptance of the idea that the universe is dominated by a mysterious substance named 'dark energy' that drives this accelerating expansion. Now, a team of scientists has cast doubt on this standard cosmological concept. The evidence for acceleration may be flimsier than previously thought, they say, with the data being consistent with a constant rate of expansion.-source sciencedaily news

Some physicists have speculated that perhaps if the universe can be made to contract infinite computational power could be obtained as well as infinite computational time.   This hypothesized state has been called the omega point, it is a highly controversial idea.   I would say that even if evidence for an omega point possibility mounted somehow, the conclusions derived by some regards the implications do not necessarily follow.

Ideas regarding extremely unusual, miracle like events being the product of such, are not necessarily needed as far as I see.  Though the reasoning behind such attributions need to be checked, to see if there's any valid reason to do so, especially if evidence mounted to suggest such a potential future.   In all likelihood to propagate a religious belief at most only the founder and perhaps a few of the followers need to have certain thoughts or ideas, this can occur via simple natural events without invoking exotic highly unlikely events that would border on physical law violation.

Claims that border on nonsensical have to be regarded as nonsensical, whatever their origin.    The likeliest explanation for nonsensical claims is mere natural events of common nature, not uncommon nature.  At most one might regard as extremely unlikely the inception of  ideas if some form of information could be sent, no extreme uncommon miracle like event need to ever occur.  

Cool fictional superpower

Reality Warping-link to related article

By manipulation of the mind's eye all sensation becomes possible at one's finger tips.   Some works of man suggest that man's extent with this will rest atop the layer of the real world.   Whether the underlying layer of the material world can be breached allowing for, perhaps with a machine, to manipulate causality and reality itself, is a good question.   It is the hypothetical final class of weaponry or technology.   If it can be accomplished, the master algorithm should be able to find it, perhaps in short order.

Are we bound by an underlying set of rules or laws that are unchanging?  Or can the underlying rules themselves be subjected to change?

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.