My random thoughts

Anything that doesn't quite fit in elsewhere...
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funkervogt
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My random thoughts

Post by funkervogt »

This thread is dedicated to the random thoughts of mine that share this forum's foci. It is a continuation of my long-running thread on the defunct Futuretimeline.net forum, which I had titled "My half-finished thoughts."
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

Post by funkervogt »

Here's an idea for a cheap, fully automated land reclamation project that will be possible in the not-too-distant future:

Get some old cargo ships that are no longer useful for regular purposes, replace their crews with machines, replace their drive systems with batteries and electric engines, and cover their upper decks with solar panels. Have them ply routes between ports where a lot of fill dirt, rocks, and construction debris was available, and shallow points in the ocean, like shoals and coral atolls. The debris would be loaded into the ships at the ports, and then dumped into the ocean at the shallow points. Over a long period, islands would be created or enlarged.

This project would be very cheap since the ships wouldn't need money for fuel or for human crew salaries. The fill material would also be cheap or free.

The islands would have many productive uses.

The automated land reclamation project could be paired with projects to build some of these proposed canals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposed_canals

By practically eliminating the costs of getting rid of the excavated rubble, the canals would be more economically feasible to construct.
TrueAnimationFan
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Re: My random thoughts

Post by TrueAnimationFan »

You know, I've been thinking recently about humanity in the extremely far future as predicted by the timeline, and there's something oddly poetic about it.

The year is 10 million BC.

You can do what ever you want, as there are no laws to stop you.

You roam about your environment freely, as you are not intelligent enough to invent a home.

You can get food when ever you'd like it, as it is readily available in the safety of the treetops.

You do not communicate using speech, as your vocal cords are not the right shape to allow for it.

The year is 10 million AD.

You can do what ever you want, as work has been a thing of the past for a literal eternity.

You roam about your environment freely, as nothing can kill you - you're a transhuman with insane amounts of strength and speed.

You can get food when ever you'd like it, as you can simply create objects at will using your ability to manipulate matter.

You seldom communicate using speech, as telepathy is orders of magnitude faster.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

Post by funkervogt »

Interesting. Your dates are a little off, though. In 10 million B.C., humans didn't exist, and our ape-like ancestors hadn't even come into existence. The conditions you describe as existing in 10 million A.D. should exist by 2200 A.D.
TrueAnimationFan
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Re: My random thoughts

Post by TrueAnimationFan »

funkervogt wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 3:36 pm Interesting. Your dates are a little off, though. In 10 million B.C., humans didn't exist, and our ape-like ancestors hadn't even come into existence. The conditions you describe as existing in 10 million A.D. should exist by 2200 A.D.
Maybe my BC date was wrong, but I honestly think the human-related stuff the timeline says should exist in 2300 sound more like something you'd expect from the year 3000. And besides, I was saying that those conditions still exist by 10 million, not that they took until then to appear.
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

Post by funkervogt »

A reason often given for colonizing Mars is that we need a "backup" for human civilization. In short, if Earth is destroyed, the human race could rebuild elsewhere.

There's logic to this, and I believe AGIs will also heed it once they've taken control of this planet. They will also realize that their civilization could be made more survivable without leaving Earth, by spreading out more across and within the planet. AGIs will probably live at sea and underwater, and even deep underground.

Imagine some kind of engineered, robotic/organic life form that could dig deep into the Earth's crust and harness geothermal energy. This could easily be infeasible, but I envision a kilometers-long snake that burrows underground, slowly digging a giant loop-shaped tunnel whose bottom end is near the mantle and whose top end is near the surface. Once the circle is complete, the giant snake curls so its head meets the tip of its tail, which it swallows. The tail opens up (you could think of it as an anus if that helps, even if the orifice would not be used for waste), and the machine snake becomes a gigantic, closed loop full of fluid. The fluid would be heated at its bottom extremity and would flow to the top, where it would cool, and then go back down to be reheated again. The cooler soil and rocks around the upper part of the loop would be its heat sink. The fluid's flow would be used to generate electricity and energy.

A giant snake robot like that would have onboard computers and superintelligent AGI. It would be able to grow new limbs, to spawn copies of itself, and to make smaller robots from its own body that would repair damage to itself, like white blood cells in our own bodies. It would exist entirely below ground, slowly tunneling from one hot spot to another, never interacting with the surface aside from maybe to trade valuable minerals it found in its travels. Whatever happened topside would not affect it, its energy source (geothermal) would be impossible to interrupt, and if the surface inhabitants were eradicated by some calamity, the snake AGIs could emerge later to seed the surface with new machines to rebuild.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/radioact ... -20210524/
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

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I've long thought the English language should be changed so as to be more logical and easier to learn. Grammatical rules should be simplified and made more consistent, irregular verbs should be made regular, and words should be spelled phonetically. In addition, I think the alphabet should be changed so there is one letter corresponding to each phoneme in English. This would mean creating a 44-letter alphabet. Some of the new letters might be existing letters with similar sounds, but with accent marks over them.

If we adopted my reforms, words would be shorter on average, and there would never be confusion over how to pronounce a word based on how it was spelled. "Knife" would become "nyf."

The regularization of verbs would mean, for instance, that "Went" "Go" and "Will go" would become "Goed" "Go" and "Gowil."

I don't expect these reforms to be adopted until possibly the far future Posthuman era, when we would all be so smart and capable that we could instantly switch languages without a problem. I imagine the language changing even more after that, as posthumans and AGIs became capable of pronouncing more phonemes and formulated new concepts, necessitating the introductions of more letters and words.


https://englishlive.ef.com/blog/study-t ... p-english/
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funkervogt
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Re: My random thoughts

Post by funkervogt »

Chernobyl will be repopulated by AGIs since they can be easily protected from radiation.
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falling-cosmos
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Re: My random thoughts

Post by falling-cosmos »

funkervogt wrote: Sun May 30, 2021 9:21 pm Chernobyl will be repopulated by AGIs since they can be easily protected from radiation.
Or maybe radioactive mold
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TrueAnimationFan
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Re: My random thoughts

Post by TrueAnimationFan »

falling-cosmos wrote: Sun May 30, 2021 11:11 pm
funkervogt wrote: Sun May 30, 2021 9:21 pm Chernobyl will be repopulated by AGIs since they can be easily protected from radiation.
Or maybe radioactive mold
It's highly likely that transhumans would be immune to radiation, so there's those guys, too.
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