[ExI] DARPA seeking Genesis-style godware capability

[spike]

> 
> >US military wacky-professor bureau DARPA has outdone itself this
> time, issuing a request for "intelligent"
> > electronic components and chemicals which can "self-organise" 
> > themselves (...)
> 
> This looks a lot like a bad sci-fi movie plot...Henrique Moraes Machado


As for clearly foreseeing the future, DARPA is in first place.  Consider a
DARPA project from the 1960s, the notion that a missile could have a control
system so accurate as to hit another missile.  Absurd as this sounds, DARPA
sponsored a young Standford PhD student, who wrote his thesis on this topic.
Throughout the 1990s, prototypes were tested, failed, tested, failed, all to
the consistent droning drumbeat of ridicule and opposition from the
lamestream media.  Ten years ago this month, they finally managed to hit a
target.  The next several tests in a row were successful.  They found and
fixed every bug.  

Now this system, known as THAAD, is being quietly deployed to Hawaii in
anticipation of a 4 July rocket launch from North Korea.  This rogue nation
was the justification for the program in the first place, to the sounds of
dirisive laughter.  Efforts at missile defense were met with ridicule and
opposition, as the system would not be useful against Russia.  We even
indulged in that debate on this forum a number of years ago, but we were not
so insightful as DARPA on that topic.  A casual glance at the ExI archives
reveals that the US military saw the future far more clearly than we did,
and put money on it, and succeeded.

We may soon see the day where the THAAD missile system saves more lives in
one day than all of modern medical technology in its entire history.  That
system could save more lives than the US military has taken in its entire
history.

When DARPA proposes something wacky, I listen and think.

spike