funkervogt wrote: ↑Tue Jun 29, 2021 11:05 pm
Once machines have mastered the ability to mimic human speech, it will revolutionize the audiobook industry. Any amateur could feed the text of a book into a computer program that would spit out an audiobook version, complete with different voices for different characters and the narrator, that matched their age, sex, race, and other characteristics. It would also be easy to add sound effects.
The age of "radio plays" would return, but with higher production standards and for a much greater variety of stories.
One benefit of automating restaurants is nothing will be closed on holidays. I'm on the road to a relative's house for Thanksgiving, and was barely able to find a place to get lunch.
Come to think of it, robotic restaurants would probably stay open 24/7/365. You could eat in the middle of the night if you wanted.
Until we get Star Trek-level medical technology, we will probably never eradicate COVID-19, and it will persist as an endemic disease, and will in many ways be like the yearly flu. It will periodically flare up, perhaps turbocharged by mutations, forcing us to endure more vaccinations and perhaps even more lockdowns.
I can imagine something similar happening with a future AGI. Either by its own hand or thanks to human help, at some point, an AGI will escape from its server at Google HQ or in the basement of the NSA building and go into the internet. Once there, connected to billions of computing devices across the planet, it will have access to so many hiding places that it will be impossible for us to find every copy it makes of itself.
Even if the AGI fails in its initial attempt to take over the world or to exterminate humanity, it will be able to retreat into countless dark corners of the internet to rebuild its strength or hatch new plans given whatever level of resources it had. Who knows, it might even evolve to be friendly.
7.9 billion humans are alive today, but anywhere from 50 to 110 billion humans have been born since the beginning of our species to the present, meaning the dead vastly outnumber the living.
Once medical immortality is here, there's a chance that the balance could flip, and the living population of humans will outnumber all those who had lived and died.
funkervogt wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 10:58 pm
there's a chance that the balance could flip, and the living population of humans will outnumber all those who had lived and died.
How long would that take, though? I'm guessing a verrrrrrrry long time. Hundreds of thousands of years, millions even?
funkervogt wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 10:58 pm
there's a chance that the balance could flip, and the living population of humans will outnumber all those who had lived and died.
How long would that take, though? I'm guessing a verrrrrrrry long time. Hundreds of thousands of years, millions even?
Fertility rates are trending towards zero.
Forever is a very long time, and on a long enough timeline, most people will have at least one child.
funkervogt wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 10:58 pm
there's a chance that the balance could flip, and the living population of humans will outnumber all those who had lived and died.
How long would that take, though? I'm guessing a verrrrrrrry long time. Hundreds of thousands of years, millions even?
Fertility rates are trending towards zero.
Forever is a very long time, and on a long enough timeline, most people will have at least one child.
Perhaps, there might be a far-off future in which the current population of that day was equal to or exceeding the amount of humans who've lived and died up until NOW, but it's mathematically impossible for that population to equal or exceed all those who had lived and died up until that future point.
How long would that take, though? I'm guessing a verrrrrrrry long time. Hundreds of thousands of years, millions even?
Fertility rates are trending towards zero.
Forever is a very long time, and on a long enough timeline, most people will have at least one child.
Perhaps, there might be a far-off future in which the current population of that day was equal to or exceeding the amount of humans who've lived and died up until NOW, but it's mathematically impossible for that population to equal or exceed all those who had lived and died up until that future point.
Let me rephrase my idea: I think it is possible that, in the distant future, the number of living humans will exceed the number of humans who have lived AND died up to that point.
funkervogt wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:10 pm
Forever is a very long time, and on a long enough timeline, most people will have at least one child.
Perhaps, there might be a far-off future in which the current population of that day was equal to or exceeding the amount of humans who've lived and died up until NOW, but it's mathematically impossible for that population to equal or exceed all those who had lived and died up until that future point.
Let me rephrase my idea: I think it is possible that, in the distant future, the number of living humans will exceed the number of humans who have lived AND died up to that point.
Which point? If you're referring to that future point, then what I'm saying is that that's impossible.
Perhaps, there might be a far-off future in which the current population of that day was equal to or exceeding the amount of humans who've lived and died up until NOW, but it's mathematically impossible for that population to equal or exceed all those who had lived and died up until that future point.
Let me rephrase my idea: I think it is possible that, in the distant future, the number of living humans will exceed the number of humans who have lived AND died up to that point.
Which point? If you're referring to that future point, then what I'm saying is that that's impossible.
funkervogt wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 10:35 pm
Let me rephrase my idea: I think it is possible that, in the distant future, the number of living humans will exceed the number of humans who have lived AND died up to that point.
Which point? If you're referring to that future point, then what I'm saying is that that's impossible.
Why is it impossible?
How can a 2 be a 2 without the 1 that came before it and that is inside it? Even if all there is now is a 3, its existence was only guaranteed due to the 2.99 that came before it, the 2.9998 that came before that, etc.
In order for the scenario you envision to come to fruition, there'd have to be a singular moment - and by that, I really do mean an instant of time - where the population suddenly increased by an amount greater than the sum total of all living and dead humans up till that particular instant.
If what you speak of does not occur instantaneously, then it couldn't be possible. That's just the nature of counting and addition.
And this is without getting into the non-mathematical hurdles that make even approaching an amount implausible.
The state of affairs I hypothesized could happen. It is not a mathematical impossibility. Here's how:
1) Assume that the number of humans who have lived and also died up to now is 100 billion, and that the number of humans currently alive is 8 billion.
2) Assume that a cure for aging and death is discovered tomorrow, and everyone in the world takes it within a year. We'll call this cohort of humans "Generation A."
3) The 8 billion humans have one child apiece (the standard of two children per couple), producing "Generation B" which also has 8 billion members. The overall population is thus 16 billion. Every member of the new Generation takes the cure for aging and death.
4) The process repeats itself, with each generation creating a new one that is as big as itself. By the time the 13th Generation, "Generation M," is born, the total human population is 104 billion, which exceeds the number of humans who have ever lived and also died. 8 x 13 = 104
Even if I never get married or have kids, I don't expect to be lonely in old age since there will surely be human-like AI chatbots, and probably AGIs that I could socialize with endlessly.
Considering the likely timetable for the first manned Mars landing, when it happens, the astronauts will have ultra hi-res 3D cameras with them, and the footage sent back to Earth will let us experience the planet's surface with VR goggles.
We could use technology to create android angels and demons. We could build mechanical bodies for them that matched the Biblical descriptions of them, and load them with AI minds that were programmed to always be good or evil, respectively, and that could not change their own programming.
VR and AR glasses will someday let us overlay historically accurate images of past events at the places where they occurred. For example, newsreels from the late 1800s showing people walking around European and American cities could be upscaled and converted into lifelike footage that you could see in 3D if you went to the location where they were and put on your glasses.
And as surveillance cameras and photo-taking become more common, it will become possible to use the data to virtually re-live whole days or weeks of events with high accuracy.
Bob Dole is dead. Whatever your feelings about politics, he was an extraordinary person, and he came from a more honorable era of public service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dole
I wish we would clone extraordinary people like Dole upon their deaths. It would be very interesting to see how the clones developed, in light of their knowledge of who their predecessors were, the realization that they were clones, and under different life conditions than their predecessors faced.
funkervogt wrote: ↑Wed Oct 20, 2021 2:00 pm
I've long believed that modular home construction is an underappreciated technology. Mass-producing house "modules" in prefabrication factories, then trucking them to building sites and having workers connect them together would lower the cost of housing and reduce construction waste.
I'd like it if we used robustly-made modules that could be easily connected and disconnected from each other through some simple method like lining up the holes in the metal frames of two modules and then hammering thick pegs through the holes. Instead of demolishing houses once they were unwanted, they could be easily disassembled, and sold as is to people (maybe someone really likes the kitchen configuration), or sent back to the prefab factory to be gutted, refurbished, and resold.
Robust prefab houses that could be easily broken down and put back together would also make it possible for average people to move their houses to new locations, like these people did.
However, it would be easier and cheaper since a prefab house could be moved piecemeal, and each piece would be stronger and hence less likely to sustain damage during the move.
The manner in which Bailey Bridges are assembled is much like how I envision modular houses should be assembled.
A breakthrough in materials science could make hot air ballooning more practical. The balloons stay aloft because the hot air inside of them is less dense than the colder air outside of them. The problem is, the interior air cools down quickly through conduction with the fabric of the balloon itself. The balloon keeps having to combust its fuel to keep the air heated, and the fuel runs out, forcing the balloon to land.
A super thin, super insulating material could go a long way to solving the problem. A balloon made of fabric with those properties wouldn't lose heat nearly as fast.
Also, if the fabric were impregnated with a material that could convert sunlight into energy, it could help bolster the balloon's fuel reserve.
FIVR will allow the creation of enormous "virtual department stores" with arbitrarily large stocks of merchandise. Such a store could be 10 times larger than a typical Wal-Mart, with 50 times the variety of merchandise (in a brick-and-mortar store, a lot of shelf space is devoted to having multiple units of the same item, whereas in a virtual store, there would only need to be one representative sample of each item).
If a consumer decided to buy something, an algorithm would instantly select the cheapest seller for that item, which would either be the manufacturer or an overstock warehouse.
As a result, people in the future will have access to "department stores" that are cheaper and contain a much larger variety of goods than we do.
To be clear, I don't think virtual stores will make brick-and-mortar malls obsolete, but I do think the latter will need to evolve towards offering luxury goods and more "experiences" to survive.
