[ExI] A humble suggestion

Keith Henson hkeithhenson at gmail.com
Fri Nov 12 13:58:59 UTC 2010


On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 5:00 AM,   Will Steinberg
<steinberg.will at gmail.com> wrote:

> The thing is, collected here in the ExI chat list are a pretty handy set of
> thinkers/engineers, spread around the world (sort of.)  In fact, I can
> generalize this fact to say that almost all of the people interested in this
> movement fall into that category as well.  Now look.  This is a present
> dropped into your lap.  Instead of only discussing lofty ideals and
> philosophy, we (H+) should focus on the engineering of tools which will
> eventually be very important in the long run for humanity, and for our goals
> in particular.

I hope you have better luck than I had over the past several years.

> List of tools we need to invent/things we need to do:
>
> -A very good bidirectional speech-to-speech translator.  For spreading the
> gospel, once H+ wisens up enough to start including the proletariat.

There is considerable work being done in this area.  I think Google is
one of the companies working on this.  They are doing it (as I recall)
for phone service translation, but it should work on a single phone.
The computation is currently intense enough to need cloud computing.

> -Neoagriculture. This would mean better irrigation systems, GMO crops that
> can easily harness lots of sun energy and produce more food, maybe
> machines/instructions for diy fertilizer.

This is a hard problem.  You know how the efficiency of solar PV
systems suck?  Well photosynthesis is a lot worse and there are good
reasons to think it can't be made much better.  As for diy fertilizer,
that's a snap.  Pee on your lawn.

> -Better Grid--test experimental grid where people opt to operate, on
> property, efficient windmills/solar panels/any electricity they can make for
> $$$

Putting power into power lines has been solved.  The problem with
solar and wind is they are dilute and intermittent.  So it takes large
and expensive structures to collect energy and then there is the
storage problem, which can be ignored if the source is small compared
to other sources.  A kW full time supplies $800 of electricity in ten
years for each penny you charge for it.  So if you want to sell power
low enough to undercut coal at around 4 cents, you have to sell the
power for 2 cents and the cost per kW would need to be $1600.  The
cost for renewable sources is 10-20 times that high.

I have for some years reported here on conceptual progress with power
satellites transportation and more recently about StratoSolar.  If you
want to work on such projects, I often have spreadsheets or
mathematical models that need review.  Or I will check what you can
model.

> -Housing projects that work, or some sort of thing where you pay people to
> build their own house/project building.

Have you ever built a house?  It takes a considerable collection of skills.

> -Fulfilling jobs for proles that also help society/space travel/humanism/H+.
>
> -So many more, I know you can think of some!  I bet you have pet projects
> like these.  Ideas, at least.
>
>
> By Le Ch?telier's principle, improving these fucked up problems that exist
> for much of society will give us much more leeway and ability to do
> transhumanisty things, AND we can do them in the meantime.  It has to happen
> eventually, unless you have some fancy vision of the H+ elect ascending to
> cyberheaven and leaving everyone else behind.
>
> Thereby I suggest: a bunch of dedicated transhumanists mobilize and go to
> problematic regions, experimenting with those tools up there.  Everyone will
> love H+.   The movement will have lots of social power and then we can get
> shit done.  Right?

I started off thinking you were serious, but by the time I reached
this point . . . you must be putting us on.

Keith




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