Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Curious Droid"
channel.
-
56
-
Perhaps I'm leaning on the positive side a bit here, but on all this doom and dread talk about AI replacing humans in jobs, I still imagine that we'll fill up those spaces with other types of jobs.
The switch won't happen without it's bumps and obstacles, but it just feels to me that if we were to look at human societies overall as an organism, it seems that this organism is highly adaptable and can change itself to handle plenty of shifts, even though the individuals who compose it not always notice.
Taking a bit from history, humanity has faced this whole story before. Industrial revolution, the mechanization of agriculture, computers outright killing several types of jobs that were required in the past, the internet replacing other forms of communication... there's a lot to relate from our past history.
Can you imagine what someone from half a century ago would think about people who made a living by playing games and sharing the content over a world wide web? xD
Not that millions of people won't suffer the impact of such changes, but it seems to be an integral part of humanity itself.
If all goes well in the transportation automation front, I imagine that several generations from now, drivers will be seen as technical jobs... much like we see nowadays people who operate heavy machinery. Because they will be needed for some cases, but in a completely different scenario as how nowadays every adult is kinda expected to learn how to drive.
We'll eventually reach some point where people overall will be given their basic needs to live regardless of having a job or not. If we draw from history, less abled people who couldn't fullfill some basic tasks were left to die... even though we still have huge disparities and wage gaps in the modern era, things were way rougher in the past.
I'm taking kind of an utopic approach here, but research, influence, and creativity will become the dominant areas for jobs, as in thinking and working on stuff to fill the void AIs still can't do.
And then, if we ever reach an age where AI and automation can fullfill all possible needs, humanity will be there to take a step back and try to provide something AIs cannot. We can see glimpses of it these days... people will dedicate huge chunks of time to explore old tech just because. Photographers going back to film, musicians going back to old instruments and old formats like vynil records, stuff like that.
3
-
Yeah.... that's gonna be very hard, specially if we're talking about stasis for hundreds or thousands of years. I mean, it's hard enough if it's "only" a few weeks or months of something similar to hibernation, because we don't have the biology for it, but at least we have animal counterparts.
More than that, it just goes against everything we know about biology. Extremophiles might even last longer, but they are usually very simple organisms with not many parallels to us.
Honestly, even though we're talking about completely extreme sci-fi scenarios here, in this case I think it's more likely that we'll first get to a point of sending surrogates (remotely controled humanoid robots), cyborgs (body of a robot, human brain), or robots that have a powerful enough computer in them to upload our entire brains into it somehow.
First one is easier... human surrogates just don't need to be activated until you reach the end of the trip. Cyborg it already becomes a problem... brain is organic, you have to find a way to preserve it physically and mentally. Uploading the brain, if it works exactly like a human brain, then you gotta find a way to preserve it mentally.... or find a way to shut down and turn back on later.
Anyways, the whole problem here is that we're still in kind of an infancy, and a very dangerous one, of biology and anatomy. We understand few things, we have a limited ammount of stuff we can do with it, and we're not quite past extending the natural limits that we have. Stasis seems to be further beyond curing all diseases, surpassing natural limits, among others.
2
-
For current technology, I think this is kinda moot and presents more risks than benefits.
Don't get angry with me, my opinion, let's just analyze things a bit.
Potential risks:
- Power output. Because of the need to convert solar power to something else for transmission, even if you have the gains with 24/7 reception plus no atmospheric loss, the ammount of raw power you end up losing during conversion to microwave or laser for transmission, in the end the total energy gains are almost the same. Which means, a fraction of what you'd get from several other types of power plants. There's not a whole lot to be gained versus ground based solar power, I mean - at least for now;
- Kessler syndrome. Those space solar panels will have to be in low Earth orbit so while it wouldn't be that much of a problem to decomission and let it burn during re-entrance, there is always the risk of something going wrong, those solar panels getting smashed into bits, and becoming part of the already worrying ammounts of space junk we already have out there. We're of course still far from blocking our routes outside the planet, but each and every extra piece of junk we put out there risks a chain reaction of space debris that makes it impossible to track everything that's out there, upping the risks of manned rockets leaving orbit. We're putting too many things in space that could and should be solved on ground - and yes, I also mean the Internet sattelites;
- Impossible costs for anything of real significance. Yes, reusable rocket technology has certainly reduced costs of taking solar panels to space, and technologies that are being developed could shove huge solar panels to very small sizes during transport. But it's still very expensive nonetheless, specially at the scale it'd be needed to make a dent in current needs for power. Remember, we're not only talking about putting the solar panels on orbit - we're talking about maintenance, replacement of panels that get damaged for several reasons (bad deployment, damage because of space debree collisions, decaying electronics), construction of the entire infrastructure that is needed to receive, convert and distribute the power on Earth, maintenance of that part too, staff to manage everything, dedicated R&D, etc etc. We are still not left without any alternatives on the ground;
- Climate change, light pollution, sky pollution, astronomy interference. Not the ones we're currently facing, but a potential side effect that might emerge when a program like this gets to scale. One of those space solar panels, no matter how big we manage to make it to harvest solar power, is insignificantly tiny versus the size of the planet. But if we scale the entire thing up and up, because we need to collect more and more power from those systems, at some point they will start having some effect on the planet's climate, and perhaps even on what we see in the sky. I know this would be something very far in the future when we have managed to put perhaps several hundreds of thousands of those panels out there, but it is something to worry about if the idea is to be taken seriously. Studies and small tests don't count. Shooting lasers or microwaves through the atmosphere will have an effect on it, and if it's something to be employed 24/7, it might have several other problems associated with it. And the problem is, the more raw energy collected and transmitted from orbit to ground, the more chances of having worse side effects;
What I'm NOT saying - that we shouldn't do research in this area. Because solar panels in space might still be a great idea to power, for instance, space stations, remote Earth locations, or as a backup system for power generation during emergency situations. Plus, the tech that could come from a research like that could always be very valuable.
Alternative - With the tech we currently have, and a whole ton of work in infrastructure, we could just have several solar farms spread through the world and close at least a bit the night gap. Not 100% because one face of the planet is just ocean, but still. Combined with other technologies like wind farms, underwater turbines, wave energy harvesting, thermal and whatnot, seems more plausible than space based ideas. Specially because we already kinda did this with the Internet. Ground based energy transmission is far more complicated than data, as inherent losses are greater, but isn't it a bit ridiculous that we're thinking more about a global Internet while not thinking about global energy grid? The barriers, both political and technological, are certainly far bigger, but I don't think they are insurmountable. And in a way, I think it's less costlier, safer, and more reachable with current tech than space solar panels. But that's just my uninformed opinion.
o/
1
-
1
-
I've watched many interpretations on this, falling into a black hole, and I understand it's all theoretical in the name of some fun (and sometimes a bit of horror) xD, but let me ask something that kinda ruins the fun - aren't the conditions around a black hole so extreme that it's basically impossible for a human in a spacesuit to survive anyways? xD Or even for a probe for that matter. Relativistic effects around the black hole already being too nuts to even think about getting close.
There is always a need to imagine someone in a spacesuit or ship or whatever to somehow be able to get close to the event horizon, right? In order for the weird things to start happening and we get the perspective of whoever is in the situation. Spaghettification, space-time relativity effects, red shifting, time slowing down to a crawl, etc.
But isn't it true that if someday this ever happens, chances are no one will ever get to experience this, because you simply cannot reach a black hole event horizon alive anyways?
Like, I dunno if I get this right, but thinking about gravity pull, pressure, radiation, speeds, heat by friction, stuff like that... is it even possible to withstand conditions before touching the event horizon limit?
The event horizon itself, is a boundary where gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape it, not even light, right? So... wouldn't you likely be long dead before getting anywhere near it?
Anyways, it's always an interesting subject to hear about, explore and imagine...
1