My random thoughts

[funkervogt]

I saw part of a film yesterday, where a car runs off the road, and sinks into a river with a female passenger trapped inside because the impact somehow jammed her arm or leg between her seat and her door. Though rare, scenarios like this unfold in real life, though in the future, I doubt they will at all. A posthuman or cyborg would be strong enough to bend dented-in door enough to free their limb. Failing that, they could detach their trapped limb (come to think of it, this would be a very useful general ability, like how some lizards can detach their tails). Being trapped underwater would be a less urgent problem as well, given that they might not need to breathe oxygen.

[funkervogt]

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_drama

It's occurred to me that the technology needed for this will inevitably improve so as to make it possible to generate high-quality cartoons and films, based only on the text of a book. The neural network "DALL-E," which is based on GPT-3 technology, can already reliably generate images of things based on text descriptions of what they are. Within the next five years, I predict it will be able to make short video clips that accurately depict people, events, and environments described in a written paragraph.

Machines could find and recognize physical descriptions of characters in a book, make accurate CGI representations of them, and use those representations as actors in the resulting auto-generated films. Inferences about what their mannerisms and voices should be like could be made based on in-book descriptions and data on their age, sex, race, and other demographics.

Conservatively, I predict that within 20 years, machines will be able to produce full-length films of "acceptable" quality--complete with lifelike CGI, accurate sound effects, and natural-sounding voices--merely by scanning text. I suspect many aspects of those films will still be inaccurate in some way, and that humans will be needed to find and fix them. Nevertheless, this will be an enormous boon to the movie industry, as it will dramatically lower the costs of making films, and to consumers, who will have access to much more new content. In literally one afternoon, a PDF of a book could be uploaded to a neural network, and it could generate a two-hour long film that would serve as a solid "framework" that a team of humans could tweak into a final cut over the course of a few weeks.

This technology will empower amateur and independent filmmakers, hobbyists, and enthusiast groups who are interested in obscure works of fiction just as much as it will empower Hollywood. Imagine a team of 20 people, based in different locations across the world, collaborating for free over the internet to make a movie version of a long-forgotten play or novella whose copyright had expired. Through a labor of love, they could transform it into a film with high production standards, and share it with the world at low or no cost.

I also predict that this level of technology will let different groups of people release different versions of the same movie, in the same way that hobbyists with moderate computer skills can make "mods" for their favorite video games, and then share the mods over the internet. Returning to the example in the previous paragraph, let's say the group releases their movie version of the old novella. It's such a niche subject that only a few thousand people ever watch it, but one enthusiast of the novella thinks they got something wrong. Maybe he interpreted some part of the text differently, and as a result, he believes one of the characters should look slightly different, or that one scene in the film should have been lit differently to evoke a different emotion from the viewer. This dissenting person could edit their film using powerful, AI-augmented technology, and re-release his own cut.

Just as there are online forums where video game enthusiasts talk about their favorite games, share mods with each other, and debate the mods' merits and weaknesses, there will be forums where amateurs share and discuss their different movie versions.

And thanks to accurate DeepFake mimicry of voices and faces, it will be possible insert actors of choice into these CGI films. The recent deepfake of Tom Cruise shows what is possible.



In 20 years, I foresee amateur filmmakers sharing different versions of the same movie, replete with different casts of actors (alive and dead) playing the same characters. Just as today, some people will say they prefer the "Director's Cut" of a film while others prefer the "Theater Cut," in 20 years some will prefer the "Tom Cruise Cut" while others prefer the "Christian Bale Cut."

[funkervogt]

I'd like to see humans who have been genetically engineered to somehow benefit from mild electric currents. The humans I'm envisioning would be 100% biological, but would have some faculty for using electrical currents to help their cells. It seems like a waste to not be able to make use of such a common force.

[funkervogt]

Here's a plot for a sci-fi book: Fifty years from now, astronomers discover an asteroid in the Kuiper Belt that is made of antimatter. It's not on a collision course with anything, so it poses no direct threat, but tensions among different humans reach the boiling point as governments and companies race to lay claim to it. Whoever gains control of it will effectively have a nuclear weapons arsenal and 1,000 years worth of clean energy for the whole planet.

[funkervogt]

I wonder if it would be possible to create a human that bore no genetic relationship to any other. In a test tube, geneticists would assemble a complete human DNA strand from inorganic components, meaning all the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and other elements in the DNA would come directly from inorganic molecules, and not from complex organic molecules.

Additionally, the DNA sequence itself would have such an arrangement that the person's parents could not have been any other human. This is the hard thing to describe and possibly the part where I am fundamentally wrong, but the synthetic person's alleles would, in aggregate, be in such combinations that they could not have been the result of natural evolution.

The resulting person might not look different from other humans and would be able to breed with the rest of us, but he or she would be genetically "disconnected" from the rest of our species.

[funkervogt]

Once lab-grown foods become cheap and the technology gets very advanced, we will develop a truly scientific understanding of the sense of taste. This will lead to experimentation in which wholly new types of chemical compounds are synthesized, which taste different from anything humans have ever eaten before.

Imagine a gigantic "possibilities space" of all taste signatures a human can detect, and food labs synthesizing fruits, vegetables, herbs, and meats containing every combination of them and letting people try them. Who knows what kinds of new, delicious tastes we will discover?

If we found new chemicals that were particularly tasty, we could genetically engineer existing plants to produce them, and grow strains of those plants in gardens and greenhouses. The revolution in gastronomy will be comparable to tomatoes and potatoes being introduced to Europe thanks to the Columbian Exchange.

What happens when posthumans with better senses--including taste and smell--are created? Being able to detect chemical flavors that we cannot, their possibilities space of taste signatures would be larger than ours, and the whole project would start anew. I can't imagine what simply biting into an apple would taste like to them.

[TrueAnimationFan]

Once lab-grown foods become cheap and the technology gets very advanced, we will develop a truly scientific understanding of the sense of taste. This will lead to experimentation in which wholly new types of chemical compounds are synthesized, which taste different from anything humans have ever eaten before.

Imagine a gigantic "possibilities space" of all taste signatures a human can detect, and food labs synthesizing fruits, vegetables, herbs, and meats containing every combination of them and letting people try them. Who knows what kinds of new, delicious tastes we will discover?

If we found new chemicals that were particularly tasty, we could genetically engineer existing plants to produce them, and grow strains of those plants in gardens and greenhouses. The revolution in gastronomy will be comparable to tomatoes and potatoes being introduced to Europe thanks to the Columbian Exchange.

What happens when posthumans with better senses--including taste and smell--are created? Being able to detect chemical flavors that we cannot, their possibilities space of taste signatures would be larger than ours, and the whole project would start anew. I can't imagine what simply biting into an apple would taste like to them.

If imagining the taste of an apple to a posthuman is an insane thought, then I assume a posthuman eating an oreo would be completely and utterly impossible for someone with a biological brain to understand.

[funkervogt]

Some androids' heads will be made of segments and metamaterials, allow them to change their appearances at will. Imagine one of their facial proportions slowly changing, and once everything was in the right place, the synthetic skin would tighten up.

Eye color could also change quickly, and probably skin tone as well.

Androids might even have telescoping limbs and backs, allowing them to change heights and bodily proportions.

[funkervogt]

With radical genetic engineering, we might be able to shrink humans to half our current sizes, without any loss of intelligence in spite of our brains being correspondingly smaller. Consider that bird neurons are smaller than mammalian ones, allowing birds to pack twice as many nerve cells into the same unit of mass as mammals can. That means a human brain made of bird neurons could, in theory, be half the size of one of our brains, but just as smart.

Additional genetic tweaks on top of that could shrink the brains and also bodies even farther. Consider that Einstein's brain was not larger than average, yet he was vastly smarter than the typical person, showing that human intelligence is affected by factors other than the size of the organ. If we created an abnormally small brain that only had 75% the mass of an average human brain, but we also engineered the small brain to possess all the other attributes necessary for genius level intelligence, then the two modifications (lower quantity but higher quality) would cancel each other out, resulting in a brain that worked just as well as a normal human brain while being 25% smaller.

Let's say the result of all this modification is a human brain that is 50% smaller than one of our brains, but capable of the same level of thought. A smaller brain means a smaller skull is needed, and in turn, that all other body parts can be smaller. We end up with a new species of child-sized humans.

[BaobabScion]

With radical genetic engineering, we might be able to shrink humans to half our current sizes, without any loss of intelligence in spite of our brains being correspondingly smaller. Consider that bird neurons are smaller than mammalian ones, allowing birds to pack twice as many nerve cells into the same unit of mass as mammals can. That means a human brain made of bird neurons could, in theory, be half the size of one of our brains, but just as smart.

Additional genetic tweaks on top of that could shrink the brains and also bodies even farther. Consider that Einstein's brain was not larger than average, yet he was vastly smarter than the typical person, showing that human intelligence is affected by factors other than the size of the organ. If we created an abnormally small brain that only had 75% the mass of an average human brain, but we also engineered the small brain to possess all the other attributes necessary for genius level intelligence, then the two modifications (lower quantity but higher quality) would cancel each other out, resulting in a brain that worked just as well as a normal human brain while being 25% smaller.

Let's say the result of all this modification is a human brain that is 50% smaller than one of our brains, but capable of the same level of thought. A smaller brain means a smaller skull is needed, and in turn, that all other body parts can be smaller. We end up with a new species of child-sized humans.

We'd have gnomes and halflings, or maybe even fully conscious and sentient homunculi, with oversized hands, ridiculously proportioned features and all. Wonderful!

[funkervogt]

Once lab-grown foods become cheap and the technology gets very advanced, we will develop a truly scientific understanding of the sense of taste. This will lead to experimentation in which wholly new types of chemical compounds are synthesized, which taste different from anything humans have ever eaten before.

Imagine a gigantic "possibilities space" of all taste signatures a human can detect, and food labs synthesizing fruits, vegetables, herbs, and meats containing every combination of them and letting people try them. Who knows what kinds of new, delicious tastes we will discover?

If we found new chemicals that were particularly tasty, we could genetically engineer existing plants to produce them, and grow strains of those plants in gardens and greenhouses. The revolution in gastronomy will be comparable to tomatoes and potatoes being introduced to Europe thanks to the Columbian Exchange.

What happens when posthumans with better senses--including taste and smell--are created? Being able to detect chemical flavors that we cannot, their possibilities space of taste signatures would be larger than ours, and the whole project would start anew. I can't imagine what simply biting into an apple would taste like to them.

Here's a related prediction that I found:

I have an irrational love of vertical farming. The combination of LED lights, cheap electricity (for water pumps), direct-use geothermal heating, and smart machine learning algorithms that determine optimal nutrient distribution could yield better produce than conventionally farmed vegetables at competitive prices. By removing pesticides, optimizing varieties for nutrition and flavor instead of hardiness on the supply chain, and ensuring quick delivery to market, vertical farms could supply a healthier and more delicious future of food.

https://elidourado.com/blog/notes-on-technology-2020s/

I agree that, for this and other reasons, food will be healthier and tastier in the future.

[funkervogt]

Since robotic attack submarines won't have human crewmen, they wouldn't need to be full of air. If their interior spaces were full of water, then there would be no pressure difference with the outside, meaning their hulls could be made thinner, weaker and cheaper. Holes in the hull would also be much less problematic, and the subs could shake off damage that would cause a human sub to implode.

The one thing I'm unsure about is how a fluid-filled robotic sub's performance might suffer thanks to the extra internal weight of the fluid. Just one cubic meter of water weighs 1,000 kg, which is the same as 12 grown men.

[funkervogt]

If you believe different races of humans have different innate intelligence levels, then what will upend your worldview is the fact that human genetic engineering will erase those disparities in the far future. Everyone will genetically engineer their children to be as smart as possible (presumably, the genome imposes some upper limit on how well a human brain can function, and all races of humans can be modified to meet that level), so everyone will be the same.

I just remembered that in the book The Female Man, the futuristic, all-female society was genetically augmented. One result was that, since everyone's intelligence was "maxed out," the population IQ bell curve was much narrower than today's. The women were smart in different ways, but their overall intelligence levels didn't vary much from one person to the next.

[funkervogt]

Ray Kurzweil has said that his studies in futurology and tech trends reveal that most failed inventions fail because they are released onto the market too early or too late. Google Glass is an example of one that came too early. D-VHS tapes, which were introduced in 1998 when the switch to CDs and DVDs was underway and never sold well, are an example of one that came too late.

This makes me wonder about what the optimal technologies are for any given moment in time, considering the broader context of consumer needs and what other technologies are already in use.

It also makes me wonder about technologies that were never developed because they came too late, but which could have had major impacts had they been invented earlier. The bicycle and electric slow cooker pots are two examples I know of, of machines that could have been invented decades earlier than they were. Maybe there were remarkable things that were never invented because the technology paradigm they would have been part of ended too early for them, and all the inventors' energies shifted to making new things that were part of the new paradigm. For example, maybe Super-D-VHS tapes could have been invented in 1995 had the humans working in that field of technology collaborated better, or been aware of a few key technologies in other fields.

I hope we use the massive computing resources we'll have in the distant future to answer these questions. If one of our intelligent machines crash-landed on an alien planet, it could assess the aliens' level of technology, and then turn to its own database of all possible inventions to look up the most optimal types of machines it could make using what the aliens had available.

[funkervogt]

Timber from "old-growth" trees is superior to that from "new-growth" trees because its growth rings are packed tighter. Old-growth timber is prized, expensive, and harder to find since so many old trees were cut down, and it takes at least 120 years for them to grow back.

By the end of this century, we'll be able to synthesize wood in labs that has better properties than even old-growth timber.

[funkervogt]

I think Venus will inevitably undergo planetary engineering and colonization, even if intelligent machines are calling the shots. Right now, Venus' atmosphere is so thick and so hot that even heavy-duty machines can't survive on its surface for long before they melt. "Nature abhors a vacuum," and intelligent machines will abhor a useless, unproductive point in the middle of their solar system.

Thinning the atmosphere is by far the most important thing that will need to be done. Maybe two birds could be killed with one stone by installing a space elevator in Venus' orbit and having it slowly suck the atmosphere up into space, like a giant straw (even if it might move the gases through a different principle). The gases could be processed somehow for space manufacturing.

Even once the atmosphere was thinned and the surface cooled enough for machines to survive there, Venus might be unsuitable for humans like us. Totally new organisms, created in cloning labs to be suited for conditions on Venus, would be implanted there.

[funkervogt]

No adult human today bothers playing Tic-Tac-Toe with another human to prove who is smarter because the game is so simple that it is a "solved game," and any two players can tie each other using a basic move strategy.

With that precedent in mind, let me go a step farther to predict that, to androids with superhuman strength, reflexes, and intelligence, human games of skill (e.g. - billiards, darts, chess) will be trivially easy, and it will be a waste of time for them to play against each other to prove who is better. They'll have to invent new types of games that we humans will be badly unsuited for.

[funkervogt]

Once lab-grown foods become cheap and the technology gets very advanced, we will develop a truly scientific understanding of the sense of taste. This will lead to experimentation in which wholly new types of chemical compounds are synthesized, which taste different from anything humans have ever eaten before.

Imagine a gigantic "possibilities space" of all taste signatures a human can detect, and food labs synthesizing fruits, vegetables, herbs, and meats containing every combination of them and letting people try them. Who knows what kinds of new, delicious tastes we will discover?

If we found new chemicals that were particularly tasty, we could genetically engineer existing plants to produce them, and grow strains of those plants in gardens and greenhouses. The revolution in gastronomy will be comparable to tomatoes and potatoes being introduced to Europe thanks to the Columbian Exchange.

What happens when posthumans with better senses--including taste and smell--are created? Being able to detect chemical flavors that we cannot, their possibilities space of taste signatures would be larger than ours, and the whole project would start anew. I can't imagine what simply biting into an apple would taste like to them.

Here's a related prediction that I found:

I have an irrational love of vertical farming. The combination of LED lights, cheap electricity (for water pumps), direct-use geothermal heating, and smart machine learning algorithms that determine optimal nutrient distribution could yield better produce than conventionally farmed vegetables at competitive prices. By removing pesticides, optimizing varieties for nutrition and flavor instead of hardiness on the supply chain, and ensuring quick delivery to market, vertical farms could supply a healthier and more delicious future of food.

https://elidourado.com/blog/notes-on-technology-2020s/

I agree that, for this and other reasons, food will be healthier and tastier in the future.

And here's yet another related article, about the ongoing effort to domesticate new plants. The article focuses on "Kernza," but there are many other candidates. In the future, there will be new varieties of crops and animals with novel tastes to them. The ultimate experience would come from brain implants, which would let you stimulate the taste and olfactory regions of your brain in all kinds of unknown ways. Things we can't imagine will become possible.
https://www.wired.com/2014/06/potato-bean/amp

[funkervogt]

Someday, when intelligent robots exist (think "Sonny" from "I, Robot"), we'll find that normal physical barriers like walls and barbed wire meant to keep humans out of places won't work on the machines. They'll just be able to jump or climb over them really quickly. They'll also be skilled at picking locks.

Humans skilled at "parkour," like Oliver Thorpe, show what is possible.

[funkervogt]

It also makes me wonder about technologies that were never developed because they came too late, but which could have had major impacts had they been invented earlier. The bicycle and electric slow cooker pots are two examples I know of, of machines that could have been invented decades earlier than they were. Maybe there were remarkable things that were never invented because the technology paradigm they would have been part of ended too early for them, and all the inventors' energies shifted to making new things that were part of the new paradigm.

Here are some links delving into the odd delay inventing bicycles and slow cooker pots:

https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we- ... he-bicycle

https://kk.org/thetechnium/progression-of/ [look in the Comments section]

The first link also reveals that the cotton gin and the "flying shuttle" device used for weaving clothes were very useful and could have been invented decades or even centuries earlier than they were.