My random thoughts

[funkervogt]

I bought a small house, have been renovating it, and just finished removing all the old galvanized steel water pipes and sink faucets. All of it is over 50 years old, and probably closer to 70 years old, and is badly rusted and leaky. At the scrapyard, I only got $7 for 120 lbs of this steel!

Whatever. I'm happy to do my part to make the world just a little tidier and more modern, and to put some scrap metal back into the economy so it can be used to make a new car or something. Whenever machines come to dominate the planet, they'll collect, reuse, and recycle every bit of useful scrap material that humans have left scattered around. Much more efficient.

[funkervogt]

Even something as simple as municipal trash service will be affected by AI and robots. The way things work now is there is a designated trash collection day each week where garbage trucks stop in front of each house, empty the homeowners' trash cans into their vehicle, and drive it to the landfill. This is actually an inefficient way to remove waste. Along a particular collection route, the amount of trash its inhabitants are throwing out fluctuates from week to week. One week, the garbage truck might be perfectly full, the other it might be half empty, and the next, it might be overflowing and forced to do two trips to the landfill. Moreover, households that consistently generate large amounts of trash pay the same, flat fee as households that consistently generate less.

Once AIs are running things and each household has a robot capable of doing manual labor, trash collection will change. They would monitor the volume and weight of trash that their household had accumulated, and once the households located along a specific garbage collection route had built up enough trash to match the garbage truck's capacity, the garbage truck would be sent out to get it. Routes might also constantly change to account for geographic variations in trash accumulation. As a result, there would be no set "trash day," and households would pay different amounts of money for the removal of different amounts of waste.

This model would also apply to recycling. You might have a bin devoted to used aluminum products that doesn't get collected until it fills up, which might take months.

[Vakanai]

Even something as simple as municipal trash service will be affected by AI and robots. The way things work now is there is a designated trash collection day each week where garbage trucks stop in front of each house, empty the homeowners' trash cans into their vehicle, and drive it to the landfill. This is actually an inefficient way to remove waste. Along a particular collection route, the amount of trash its inhabitants are throwing out fluctuates from week to week. One week, the garbage truck might be perfectly full, the other it might be half empty, and the next, it might be overflowing and forced to do two trips to the landfill. Moreover, households that consistently generate large amounts of trash pay the same, flat fee as households that consistently generate less.

Once AIs are running things and each household has a robot capable of doing manual labor, trash collection will change. They would monitor the volume and weight of trash that their household had accumulated, and once the households located along a specific garbage collection route had built up enough trash to match the garbage truck's capacity, the garbage truck would be sent out to get it. Routes might also constantly change to account for geographic variations in trash accumulation. As a result, there would be no set "trash day," and households would pay different amounts of money for the removal of different amounts of waste.

This model would also apply to recycling. You might have a bin devoted to used aluminum products that doesn't get collected until it fills up, which might take months.

I don't like the idea of changing people's bills like that. Sometimes poor people produce more trash than those who have more money to spend. I mean, there's a lot of plastic and cardboard containers when buying cheap food. Plus it hits larger families harder, and they usually have less money to spend because, well, more mouths to feed. Wanting to punish people for waste is understandable, but it's more complex than people just being wasteful.

[funkervogt]

When did making a person pay for their own expenses become "punishment"?

[Vakanai]

When did making a person pay for their own expenses become "punishment"?

They already do, that's what bills are for. As for punishment, it might have been a bad word choice on my part. I was just kind of grasping at words to lazily express the idea that you're clearly trying to instigate an idea/impetus to incentivize people to produce less waste, and I was just expressing the view that some people might have trouble with that while being unfairly charged more than they used to be.
Still, raising garbage bills on people for something they don't have much say on seems ill advised (sure, some people are blatantly wasteful, but most are really just trying to get by). I'm also concerned that some would then turn to dumping their garbage somewhere out in nature out of sight, which would be unfortunate.
Plus you'd have to add scales to every garbage truck, which seems like an unnecessary expense. Again, it seems like the point isn't to reach an efficiency in payments, but to incentivize behaviors you might find desirable. Which I'm not again, I wish cigarettes were taxed out of existence, but it is a nuanced problem.
At least, I think it probably is. Maybe I'm overthinking it, I don't know.

[funkervogt]

They already do

Your previous post implied the opposite. By suggesting that switching from a flat fee payment system to a measured by weight/volume payment system would result in some poor people paying more, you implied that they are currently paying less for the waste disposal service than they are using.

That's all I'll say about it. I hate talking politics.

[Vakanai]

They already do

Your previous post implied the opposite. By suggesting that switching from a flat fee payment system to a measured by weight/volume payment system would result in some poor people paying more, you implied that they are currently paying less for the waste disposal service than they are using.

That's all I'll say about it. I hate talking politics.

Not really - I believe a flat fee payment system is paying for it. But to each their own.

[funkervogt]

David Cronenberg has released a new body horror movie called Crimes of the Future. Here's an interesting passage from a review of it:

Autonomy and ownership, consumption and modification, sex and pain, what it means to make passionate love in an autopsy machine or have a zipper installed in your guts for easy access

I'm not sure if Posthumans will ever have such a thing, but robots certainly will. They will be able to remove their own parts to fix them or replace them with new ones, and to open up their bodily cavities to access everything.

Having a flexible torso, four hands, and four, highly flexible limbs that could bend in more ways than we can would also let the general-purpose robots comfortably touch any part of their own bodies, enabling them to self-repair, which would be an invaluable feature. The swiveling sensor stalk plus tiny cameras built into other parts of its body like the hands and torso would also let it see every part of its own body (cameras built into the hands or fingers would also let it reach inside small, tight spaces and clearly see what is inside, letting it guide the appendage, unlike humans who must blindly feel around in such situations). Contrast this with us humans, who have a hard time touching and manipulating some parts of our bodies (like the spot between our shoulderblades) and who can’t see every part of our own bodies because we have only one set of eyes that are in a head with limited rotation.

On that note, having small cameras embedded throughout its body would also eliminate blind spots, which would improve safety since the robots wouldn’t be at risk of running into humans or objects because they were unseen. Whereas human vision is confined to a forward-facing cone, the general purpose robots would see in a 360-degree bubble. The tip of the head stalk might have the biggest and best camera, but losing it wouldn’t blind the robot.

https://www.militantfuturist.com/what-w ... look-like/

[funkervogt]

After several decades, the U.S. military might be adopting a new assault rifle. As this video analysis shows, the "M5" is a high-quality weapon incorporating more advanced engineering than the current M4 rifle.



This makes me wonder what a rifle designed for robot troops to use would be like. I think it would be simpler than the M5. Since they wouldn't have eardrums to get damaged by the sound of gunblasts, there wouldn't be a suppressor. There would not be ambidextrous controls and buttons since robots will already be ambidextrous (think about it). And since robots would be able to very strongly grasp their weapons, they might not need buttstocks at all. If they did need one, a simple, non-adjustable wire framed butt would be fine. Since robot soldiers would have naturally good vision, the need for accessories meant to assist aiming, like scopes and flashlights, would be reduced, and the guns would be less cluttered with added gadgets.

[Lorem Ipsum]

One answer to the fermi paradox is that FTL travel is not possible + the rarity of spacefaring life (we could be one of the first in at least nearby galaxies).

[funkervogt]

Posthumans with superior senses of smell will not just be able to smell things in smaller concentrations; they will have improved knowledge of what the smells are of. For example, a posthuman would know what every plant's distinctive smell was, so it could walk through a forest while blindfolded and know which species of trees and plants were nearby, with high accuracy. Only a tiny number of highly trained humans can do this now.

[Vakanai]

Posthumans with superior senses of smell will not just be able to smell things in smaller concentrations; they will have improved knowledge of what the smells are of. For example, a posthuman would know what every plant's distinctive smell was, so it could walk through a forest while blindfolded and know which species of trees and plants were nearby, with high accuracy. Only a tiny number of highly trained humans can do this now.

Would blindfolding a posthuman really matter? Posthumans would have senses like a bird's magnetoreception, a bat's echolocation, a ray's electrolocation, and more, whether through genetic engineering/organ engineering or purely mechanical/technological means. Never mind the eyes in their head would only be one of the sets of "eyes" they would use to see the world, since they'd have their own swarm of small drones they could look through to navigate as well. They would also innately have their GPS coordinates beamed to them, as well as download various maps of the area they find themselves in. Add these senses to the enhanced smelling you bring up and a posthuman should be able to navigate the forest blindfolded better than you or I could do with our vision unrestrained. The senses of a posthuman are an experience we can't truly imagine without experiencing them for ourselves.

[funkervogt]

Posthumans with superior senses of smell will not just be able to smell things in smaller concentrations; they will have improved knowledge of what the smells are of. For example, a posthuman would know what every plant's distinctive smell was, so it could walk through a forest while blindfolded and know which species of trees and plants were nearby, with high accuracy. Only a tiny number of highly trained humans can do this now.

Would blindfolding a posthuman really matter? Posthumans would have senses like a bird's magnetoreception, a bat's echolocation, a ray's electrolocation, and more, whether through genetic engineering/organ engineering or purely mechanical/technological means. Never mind the eyes in their head would only be one of the sets of "eyes" they would use to see the world, since they'd have their own swarm of small drones they could look through to navigate as well. They would also innately have their GPS coordinates beamed to them, as well as download various maps of the area they find themselves in. Add these senses to the enhanced smelling you bring up and a posthuman should be able to navigate the forest blindfolded better than you or I could do with our vision unrestrained. The senses of a posthuman are an experience we can't truly imagine without experiencing them for ourselves.

When I described the thought exercise, I wasn't implying that posthumans could use their sense of smell for navigation. I meant they could use it to identify nearby objects with high accuracy.

[Vakanai]

Posthumans with superior senses of smell will not just be able to smell things in smaller concentrations; they will have improved knowledge of what the smells are of. For example, a posthuman would know what every plant's distinctive smell was, so it could walk through a forest while blindfolded and know which species of trees and plants were nearby, with high accuracy. Only a tiny number of highly trained humans can do this now.

Would blindfolding a posthuman really matter? Posthumans would have senses like a bird's magnetoreception, a bat's echolocation, a ray's electrolocation, and more, whether through genetic engineering/organ engineering or purely mechanical/technological means. Never mind the eyes in their head would only be one of the sets of "eyes" they would use to see the world, since they'd have their own swarm of small drones they could look through to navigate as well. They would also innately have their GPS coordinates beamed to them, as well as download various maps of the area they find themselves in. Add these senses to the enhanced smelling you bring up and a posthuman should be able to navigate the forest blindfolded better than you or I could do with our vision unrestrained. The senses of a posthuman are an experience we can't truly imagine without experiencing them for ourselves.

When I described the thought exercise, I wasn't implying that posthumans could use their sense of smell for navigation. I meant they could use it to identify nearby objects with high accuracy.

I know, I was mostly just kind of running with a thought I had when reading the bit about blindfolding a posthuman in a forest.
Although I remember reading recently about a nose prosthesis (not a prosthetic nose, but a prosthesis put in the nostrils) that would allow for directional smelling, telling which direction a scent came from, so using it for navigation is something a posthuman could probably do...

Edit: Found a link: https://spectrum.ieee.org/digital-nose- ... -in-stereo

[funkervogt]

A few decades after machines take over Earth, all parts of it will equalize in terms of infrastructure, productivity and quality. Regional and nation-specific differences will disappear. For example, Africa will no longer be a poor continent, Italy will not be known for better food than anywhere else, and Germany won't be better at engineering than average (national borders might disappear, in fact).

[funkervogt]

I'm having a small, outdoor staircase replaced at a house I bought. It seemed like a simple job, but once the handyman arrived and started work, he pointed out things I hadn't thought of when I did my initial planning for the project, and so I had to rush to Home Depot to buy more wood, screws and washers.

This makes me realize how much more efficiently projects like this will be under AGIs. An AGI could have looked at my backyard steps and the area around it, made a 1:1 3D model of it, and visualized exactly what materials would be needed to make a replacement set of steps, and in accordance with all building codes (part of my problem is I didn't know the codes). Not only that, the AGI would know the step-by-step construction and carpentry process for completing all the work.

A hyper-informed consumer like this AGI would be able to perfectly evaluate bids submitted by different handymen to do the work. Contractors who were overcharging would be made clear, as were those who were undercharging (which can also lead to problems, believe it or not). The competitive range would get narrower, and it would be much harder to trick consumers.

This efficiency improvement would of course extend beyond minor home renovation projects to every type of market transaction. Capitalism will only get more cutthroat.

[funkervogt]

I remember when the peak of automatic writing assistance technology was "Clippy," and its advice was usually counterproductive, and it was the butt of many jokes. Today, the assistance program embedded in Gmail and Google Docs renders useful advice almost 100% of the time, and is instantaneous. Interesting how the sea change crept up on us.

[funkervogt]

As another summer begins, cases have resumed of people dying in desert environments like Death Valley because their cars ran out of gas, they were forced to try hiking to safety, and they were overcome by the heat. Electric cars with solar panels integrated into their roofs would probably end this problem.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... n-gas.html

[Nanotechandmorefuture]

As another summer begins, cases have resumed of people dying in desert environments like Death Valley because their cars ran out of gas, they were forced to try hiking to safety, and they were overcome by the heat. Electric cars with solar panels integrated into their roofs would probably end this problem.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... n-gas.html

Even with most of the tech possible to stay safe some will deliberately avoid helping themselves out. If the climate change focus for this era is any indication if the USA gets more barren the deaths may spike up in remote locations. I wonder what it was like before the internet trying to cruise the dangerous parts of America like Death Valley. Surely the death rate must have been worse.

[funkervogt]

Androids will be better than humans at ballet, plays, and all types of live dance shows since they'll be able to learn all the steps, notes and spoken lines instantly. Humans have to spend weeks rehearsing to get it right.