3blake7

Population growth projections are with immortality. As far as the possibility immortality goes, you can refer to this thread. If you wanted a lot of Methane, you could go with the Sabatier reaction but that would require transporting more Hydrogen from Jupiter, plus you have to deal with all the Methane, which is greenhouse gas. Instead, with the v2 spreadsheet, I went with a CO2 -> O2 + C using a laser or heat + catalyst. A million years with microbes is a long time, lol

I saw coverage on the news channel about immortality being possible in the near future. I wanted to know if there are any experts on the forums that can elaborate on where we are and what still needs to be accomplished. I read an article that scientists have converted skin cells into stem cells then into neurons, which would be required to repair the brain as neurons die. I read that scientists have identified genes and have been able to trigger them to increase cellular respiration, which decreases with age. I read that telomeres degrade with cellular mitosis and will have to be repaired which they haven't been able to do yet. I read that molecular manufacturing could be invented in the next 10-30 years which will allow for the mass production of medical nanomachines which could repair telomeres. I read that the body completely replaces itself, cell by cell, in three years and deduced that immortality treatments would be injections of new neurons and nanomachines, which would allow a person of any age to reverse age to the age of 20ish within 1-3 years. I can link articles if you need.

I updated the spreadsheet to go to the asteroid belt instead of the moon, to get hydrogen from Jupiter to combine with the O2 from CO2 instead of mining water from Ceres and I am dumping the excess Nitrogen on Mars. Here is the v2 spreadsheet. This reduced the number of supertankers I needed and you were right, the asteroid M-Type asteroids are so pure that I can skip the Crusher and Separator in the process and go straight to the Smelter. Terraforming Venus v2 As for moving people into orbit, the StarTram would move the first self-replicating machines, which will self-replicate for 22 years to a big enough industry to produce a Venus Sunshade, Venus Spacescraper and the 60 million supertankers in 100 years. After that it will be free to mass produce space stations. So after 122 years, the StarTram will be decommissioned and replaced with an Antarctica Spacescrapper, which would be 100 km tall and be able to launch hopefully 400 million people into orbit a year, just enough to counter population growth. The industry in the asteroid belt will be able to keep up with that. Other supplies would have to be sent up as well, like computer processors, seeds, etc. Since I am no longer using Ceres for Venus, Ceres can be used as a source of water and oxygen for the space stations.

It didn't happen all at once, to borrow a metaphor there isn't an exact point where you go from young to old, it's too gradual to pinpoint an exact turning point. I would say over the last 200 years. Before cultures were more isolated and so their sociological defense mechanisms were adequate but now there is less isolation so cultures are competing against each other and some have more effective sociological mechanisms for retaining and/or recruiting members. I agree the mechanisms haven't changed, just the diversity of the cultures available to a person with the invention the radio/television/internet and more cultures being represented locally. I guess the question I wanted to discuss is more, are some cultures failing to recognize the new environment, the new competition and maladjusting in a subconscious (from a sociological standpoint) attempt to retain members? A good example is older cultures attempting to prevent their youth from being lured into the black market culture. The black market culture really took on a life of it's own in the 70-80s, it diverged from mainstream culture and developed it's own slang, style and even values. That, in my opinion was caused by the downfall of unions, the minimum wage no longer increasing with increases in productivity and the wars on drugs. So, public policy created an environment where a black market would flourish, followed by it's own unique culture, with it's own belief system, and methodologies for recruitment and retention. The government, schools and parents are all attempting to understand the attraction youths have towards these cultures and compete against them. A positive adjustment could be cultures to form community watches, which accept members of all ages, for rap groups to support them and make it cool to be a "good guy". So, in your opinion, what are some maladjustments and better alternatives in the war of cultures?

I was thinking, as usual and put my finger on something I would like to discuss. The idea of Role Model Capitalism, which is a phrase I just made up until something better comes along. It's the idea that culture at large has changed, from children looking up to their parents, Hereditary Role Model Monarchy, to it becoming socially acceptable at large to rebel from your parents, to believe they are out-of-date and out-of-touch with how things are for the younger generation, and to find social acceptance outside of the home, in whichever social group that happens to fit. This creates a situation of Role Model Capitalism, where different social groups compete against each other through seduction. The older social groups are still holding on to older methodologies, like obedience which are failing to have the effect that they once had. Nowadays, if you socially reject someone, they will be socially accepted by another social group, the original social group would be out-seduced. If you are cruel to someone because they are different, you'll be out-seduced by a social group that playfully makes fun of them and accepts them anyways. If you demand obedience and treat someone as an inferior, they will find a social group that treats them like an equal and shows them respect, you'll be out-seduced. If you want your child for instance to have your values, you have to out-seduce the competition. Do you believe this is an accurate description of a real sociological mechanism? Also, do you know of a more official label for this? Perhaps parents should be required to get a parenting degree, to understand the psychology and sociology behind parenting, so that they may better parent their children to conform to their values.

Has anyone considered mind-control in this debate? A person could be mind-controlled to commit a murder, as they showed on Discovery's Brainwashed. Considering all the other arguments, the outdated belief that people "deserve to be punished" and now the fact that even murder, with overwhelming evidence that a person did commit the murder, is ultimately circumstantial because the methods and technology exist to mind-control people. Isn't mind-control reason enough to abolish the death penalty?

Just playing Devil's Advocate, har har. The story goes, well, at least my interpretation, that God created angels then he created humans. He asked his two top angels, Jesus and Lucifer to come up with plans to help humanity become like God, to teach them the wisdom of God. Lucifer's plan was to go to Earth and tell the humans what to do and if they did the wrong thing, to punish them. Jesus' plan was to let the humans learn from trial and error, to discover the wisdom for themselves, so that they would have history as an example of why the right path is the right path. Jesus also said he would go down to Earth and lead by example. God chose Jesus' plan. Lucifer got angry and thought he knew better than God and attempted to overthrow God. God cast Lucifer and the treasonous angels out of heaven. Lucifer and his "demons" decided they would undermine Jesus' plan, to prove that it wouldn't work, by tempting humans off the path. Ultimately Lucifer just helped Jesus, because it gave humans more bad experiences to learn from, ultimately making them wiser. Eventually humans will develop a good theory of Psychology and Sociology, embrace Moral Universalism and have an enlightened government. On another note, I may be going off topic with this one, Exorcism. I really believe it worked. Back in the day, when people believed in demons, some guy came over, read a bunch of incantations, shook the bed with his foot maybe, got the patient believing it, then said "you're cured" and they were cured. Psychology-wise, if the patient believed it would cure them of their mental disorder, it probably did. Posession was really just like Rape Trauma Syndrome, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. How demonic are those people! Scratching themselves, freaking out for no reason at all, biting their fingernails, with their awkward body language, and their unexplainable facial expressions as they experience one delusion after another. lol

I personally consider it redefining the word God, to the closest real thing. God is science, God has no consciousness, God is not aware, God does not judge, God is neither good nor evil, God is everything. The most accurate and precise language to describe God is mathematics. I'm okay with this, but most people will consider you and me Atheists, just be okay with that, lol

Truth is relative, from most subjective to most objective, even the Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity could be subjective to our universe, while a higher level that explains the Multiverse, like String Theory is even more objective. There could exists other universes with difference laws of physics, which makes truth relative, even most of our scientific truths, which are universal from our smaller perspective. As for alternate realities, that depends on your definition of the phrase. Do you mean alternate Earths, alternate timelines? Whether they exist or not, I don't know. My assumption would be that most of our truths would apply in alternate realities but for example, a person could have different life experiences and have different subjective truths. I am not sure what you mean, a question with no answer. Do you mean a question that has no answer or a question where the answer is unknown? I guess there could be one question without an answer, an answer that science itself may never know, and that is, how did the multiverse begin? How do you have a beginning without an explanation? What about the beginning of that? Then that? It seems no matter how far you go, there has to be some place where there is no beginning, maybe that is it in itself, perhaps it is like a circle, no beginning and no end, it is and has always existed. We'll have to wait and see. You might have better luck if you are less cryptic, lol

I think of sociology like this, every population exists on a bell curve, from emotional reasoners, dominated by social acceptance/rejection and cultural belief systems, to logical reasoners, dominated by logical consistency and universal concepts. There is also the shades of grey, the conditional reasoners, which may be logical in some contexts and emotional in others. They will have contradictory philosophies depending on the context. So what you are saying, I think, is that the presence of logical reasoners, to counter-balance emotional reasoners, can prevent a herd effect, such as Hitler rabble rousing the general population with a lowest common denominator bigotry, which may or may not have existed before, but the lack of first-hand experience with the target population allowed the general population to be easily biased. I would also like to say that I think this happening again is less likely just because we are less isolated with the existence of the internet and cross-pollination between cultures. During the rise of the Nazi Party and Hitler, there was a counter-balance movement, the Antifaschistische Aktion. So, while I don't disagree with you, I think there is another element at play here that has a stronger effect on the general population, and that's culture, the emergent psychology having more first-hand experience with diversity. Logical reasoners are most effective by exposing their relative culture to diversity.

To me, emotions are neurotransmitters, a unique ratio of neurotransmitters. I'm no expert but one day endocrinologists and neurologists might be able to identify each unique ratio of neurotransmitters and assign them a name of an emotion. The brain was designed ultimately to adapt to a dynamic environment, we have base instincts but we also have the ability to adapt, to form higher level instincts built upon the foundation of base instincts. Like a young boy, entering into the woods for the first time, is emotionally unbiased, he is without fear and full of pure unadulterated curiosity. He explores, finds harmless creatures and plays with them. He goes out the next day and the next. These experiences have a lot of information, like the presence of trees, the smells, the shapes and colors of the harmless creatures. Each memory has patterns and emotions that are connected to them. One day he goes out into the forest and smells an awful smell which triggers a base instinct, the instinct that helps us recognize rotten food and to warn us not to eat it. His curiosity wins the battle and he continues his exploration. He comes upon a large furry brown creature, the creature stands on his hind legs and roars. The roar is so load and unexpected that it startles him. He also has a base instinct concerning roars. His flight or fight mode kicks in and he decides to flee. The next day, he entered into the forest, except this time he is cautious. He is looking around for anything big brown and furry. The recent experience from the day before has now biased him, ultimately overpowering the memories and their attached emotions from the days before the bear. An hour passes and he sees no bear. He begins to relax a little but the memory of the bear is never truly gone, he is no longer pure, his perspective, his emotional disposition towards the forest has become more complex. Now it is curiosity with a latent fear. He goes out into the forest the next day and then the next. The fear becomes ever more subtle and his fearless curiosity returns but never to the purity it once was. He smells an awful smell. Chills go up his spine, goose bumps cover his body, his heart beat quickens and sweat secretes from his facial pores. The awful smell in the present linked to the awful smell in his past memory of the bear. He connected to the emotions of fear attached to that memory. He cautiously explores only to discover that the smell is a rotting corpse of a smaller animal. He begins to relax again. Emotions are ultimately a survival mechanism, a way for our brains to create custom instincts for unique, dynamic and ever-changing environments. As we experience more and more, our stereotypes evolve, they become more granular, more accurate and precise. As with the example of the boy and the bear, his stereotype was oversimplified, he associated all bad smells with the bear and fear. Then he experiences a new explanation for awful smells, unbiasing himself. The next time he smells an awful smell, his fear response will not be as strong as it was. Stereotyping is a survival mechanism and the most accurate stereotype structures can be found in those with higher intelligence quotients and/or a more diverse array of experiences. I also believe that we are as simple as we can be emotionally when we are young. As we grow older, experiences complexify us, make us emotionally less pure and simple. However, with advance years, our stereotype construct can come full circle, we can achieve a perspective that is simple and fits all our experiences, a high-level philosophy, which allows us to return to emotional simplicity.

I think we should just pick a point, dependent is not a very good line because even a 1 year old infant is dependent on it's mother but killing a 1 year old infant is considered murder. You could say that it is life when the gestation has reached the point where there are neurons and some form of consciousness, albeit limited consciousness, below the average mammal. You could say it's life the moment it's possible that there is unique DNA, such as the fertilization of the egg by a sperm cell. It's really a philosophical question of what and when we consider an embryo or fertilized egg to be a human being, a citizen with rights, that the government must protect. We aren't logically consistent with all life. We have different rights for animals than we do human beings so the precedent seems to be human level consciousness gives us those rights but considering we extend those rights to infants it seems the philosophy is more, the potential of human level consciousness. The embryo and fertilized egg has the potential for human level consciousness. If we can make pro-lifers and pro-choicers happy at the same time, shouldn't we? If we can give the women the right to her body, the right to abort an unborn human being while simultaneously protecting the life of the unborn human being, shouldn't we? Shouldn't we strive to be more logically consistent, especially when technology opens up a new option to us? We can simply change the abortion procedure to preserve the blastocyst, cryogenically freeze it and maybe one day it will be born. Some claim that the procedure has a 90% success rate but that could be improved upon with more demand. The cost of cryogenic storage would also go down with more demand, liquid nitrogen isn't very expensive. We can also look at other contexts, such as the rights we extend animals, which do not have the potential of human level consciousness. We still protect them from cruelty, such as the Florida man who ran over a mother duck and her ducklings with a lawn mower. The philosophy behind this seems to be to prevent unnecessary killings. We then turn around and have duck hunting seasons but as omnivores we hunt and consume ducks as a matter of our primal natures. If we take the apparent philosophy of protecting the rights of anything with the potential of human level consciousness and preventing unnecessary killing, then the synthesis of pro-life and pro-choice, the safe removal of blastocysts and cryogenic storage is truly the best fit philosophy.

Supertankers, thats what the moon factory will be building. To be honest I assumed the moon would have richer deposits, some besides regolith. From what I've been reading, it might all be regolith, 20 km of regolith. If that's the case then mining asteroids would be more efficient. I will have to do some more research. It could very well be more practical to mine thorium on the moon and the rest in the asteroid belt.

What I was saying was that there wasn't any law specifically about abortion, there were laws about other things and they used the laws about other things and their underlying logic, to extrapolate what the law would be but in the process they took interpretation so far beyond the literal text that it was more like legislation and a prediction of what would have been legislated using past laws as a precedent. So, they went from interpreting the legal system to interpreting the future, lol. Also, in some cases, I will look for an example, the Supreme court has said that the law was too vague and the Legislative branch needs to be more specific. It's contradictory, two different philosophies that we switch between. Sometimes we are literal interpreters, you aren't allowed to write any laws that are open-ended and can be applied to anything and everything and other times we can take the underlying logic of one law and apply it somewhere which has no specific law written for it. And all branches of the government are guilty of this flip-flopping. Sometimes the Executive branch invents new laws with interpretation, like Death Warrants.. Sometimes the Judicial branch does it, like Roe v. Wade.. Sometimes the Judicial Branch strikes down the Legislative branch because they make it too open-ended like Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition.. lol And of course the Executive branch is hypocritical too because it turns around and uses rigid interpretation to defend itself and then flip-flops and uses loose interpretation to give itself more power.

The moonbase page, the part for calculating the feeder, crusher, separator, hauler, loader and excavator might be way too conservative. I calculated it for each element independently. Regolith has a little bit of everything so there would be some synergy. It could be divided by 4-5. I originally did it with the intention of mining ores richer with the desired element but we don't even know if rich deposits even exist. It could all be regolith.

I don't consider Roe v. Wade The Debate. Roe v. Wade was a debate about the interpretation of the existing legal system. That interpretation or precedent can always be overruled in the future by the Supreme Court. It can also be overwritten with new and direct legislation. I think it's kind of hypocritical, the Supreme Court has ruled against the Legislative branch as being too vague in it's legislation on occasion, too unspecific and open-ended. Yet Roe v. Wade is exactly that, no specific law, just a bunch of philosophical precedents from other laws. I would consider the precedent set by Roe v. Wage to be overreaching, the Judicial branch crossed the line and became a legislator. I think Roe v. Wade is weak sauce and it's up to the people to decide. I am perfectly fine if individual states illegalize it or make it illegal to deliberately kill the embryo and require people to store the blastocyst. That reminds me, Death Warrants. "You're being too vague!" "You were vague last week!" "Ya but I wasn't vague this week." "Hypocrite" It has begun!

You asked specifically about networking devices. I use to work in the web hosting industry and most of the commercial Cisco networking devices you can't even flash the firmware unless you hook up a laptop to the console port. If it was flashed somehow through like a console plug that's left plugged in then it wouldn't go unnoticed since the switch or router would have an outage and basically throw a bunch of alerts that would be investigated. As far as a home router, it's unlikely they would know what kind of router you have. If they had that information, well, anyone that breaks in your house, already has you hacked way more easily than a pure internet approach. Consumer routers are so many and so diverse. They only last like a year before having to be replaced. Almost all are closed-source so creating a working firmware would require reverse engineering the factory firmware. There are routers that have this done already, like DD-WRT and OpenWRT. It's possible they could get the source code for that, modify it to say, create a backdoor into your network. However, they would need access to your intranet before they could flash your router and if they had that access they could create a backdoor without all that trouble. Most routers have uPnP on and if not, they could probably log into your routers using the default login and just open up a port for themselves. I think it's an unrealistic fear, unless you're Iran. Keep your firmware up-to-date and check your md5sum. Do you let people connect to the same VLAN with their mobile devices?

awesome. i use to play red alert, red alert 2 and tiberian sun

Our economy is filled with things we don't need that we want because it makes us feel better, lol. In America, literally the only thing people talk about is abortion, it's like they are oblivious that 99% of what elected representatives do is manipulate the economy with taxes. We have politicians that say they are pro-life and literally don't invest a single minute of their entire term on the issue and there are a lot of people that voted for them based on that single position. They think, "well he's pro-life, I'm pro-life, he must think like me and he will do what I would do on all the other issues." It's like a magic show over here, they pander people, tell them what they want to hear and then help out their rich buddies and corporations by manipulating the economy in their favor. Just settling this debate, by any means necessary, would be progress because then maybe we can focus on something else.

I am actually really annoyed I haven't seen this come up in the public political debate. Scientists have successfully removed a blastocyst, about 200 cell embryo, cryogenically frozen it, for 20 years, and successfully implanted it into a surrogate and a healthy baby was born. Why couldn't politicians just settle the debate and make it so that doctors, as they usually do, attempt to preserve life. The doctors, instead of destroying the embryo during the abortion procedure, would attempt to preserve it. There are already embryo adoption agencies opening up. While we are beating around this bush, I think we need more gender equality around this subject. The mother-to-be and doctor should be legally obligated to make a reasonable effort to inform the father-to-be. If there is some issue with the father, that's what court is for. Some fathers-to-be are being victimized by mothers-to-be because of this loophole. If the father was the rape victim, the court should award him full custody. If the mother is the rape victim, then she should get it. However, the father can't make the mother get an abortion or not get one, it's still her body. Also, if employers give maternal leave I also think they should be legally required to give paternal leave.

A Hegelian Dialectic is when you take two opposite and seemingly contradictory things and combine them to create something new, the thesis, the anti-thesis and the synthesis. I am attempting to come up with a compromise between Moral Universalism and Moral Relativism. While oversimplified, I will define each. Moral Universalism, people believe in a logically consistent morality, a morality that is intuitive, that transcends the subjectivity of culture. They believe right is right and wrong is wrong no matter where you live or what culture you were brought up in. While there is overlap, I believe most modern supporters of Moral Universalism believe all victimless acts should be legal and all victimizing acts should be illegal. Moral Relativism, people believe that the most relative culture's belief system is right. If they moved to a different culture then they would happily and easily change their existing belief system and adopt the new culture's. They believe that in one culture pre-martial sex is wrong and in another culture it is not, that morality is based on whatever the majority of the relative culture believe. Moral Relativists are very flexible and open-minded people, perhaps too open-minded sometimes. How can you combine the two? If you have a federal government that was Moral Universalist, all victimless acts legal and all victimizing acts illegal, then the federal government allowed local governments to illegalize victimless acts and legalize victimizing acts, with the stipulation that they must inform and gain consent from all residents and guests. So for example, if a local government and culture wanted to legalize bridenapping, the act of sometimes but not always pre-arranged kidnapping of a potential bride by a potential groom, to be verbally abused into submission and if the groom and his family failed to get submission, then returned to the potential bride's family where they pay a recompense. That is inherently victimizing since the potential bride was kidnapped, against her will and without her consent. However, there are cultures that still practice it, even though it's illegal in their country, it's a long-standing tradition and law enforcers look the other way. How can we make that victimless? We would have to have an age of consent, such as 16 years old and once a person comes of age they would have to be educated on the tradition and consent to the culture's tradition. To be on the safe side, the tradition could be modified to require the potential groom to inform the local law enforcement of intent, so that they can know the whereabouts of the potential bride and know that she was not kidnapped under some other motive. In that case, the potential bride consented so it's not victimizing but otherwise the tradition is relatively the same. There is also the psychological side, if the bride knew she consented to the tradition she won't feel like a victim so there will be less of a chance of her developing Rape Trauma Syndrome. Now if the local government and culture failed to inform a guest for example and a guest was kidnapped then the entire local government and culture would be held responsible. The federal government would charge the local government with victimization. This will help manipulate cultures to prevent them from becoming cults. I also thought about indoctrination, even we Americans are indoctrinated in our sense of morality. To prevent this, we might have to do like a mandatory exchange program the year before the age of consent for victimizing cultural traditions. Another example is imprisonment. Technically if you are born into a country, have no means to leave, commit a social taboo like homosexual acts and are imprisoned, it's like the entire culture and government has victimized you. I believe at a certain age, the government should be required to educate every potential citizen on the laws and consequences, then give them a choice, to accept the laws and possible punishments or be excommunicated. Psychologically, just giving everyone the choice, regardless of the choice they make, could change the way criminals feel about incarceration. Just a thought. Discuss!

I am a amateur but had some free time and was curious about immortality and population growth. I created a spread sheet with a guesstimate of population growth with immortality. Population Growth. I did some ballpark numbers and found that our entire planet would be transformed into a continuous cityscape in a thousand years. I then played around with subterranean cities, with a million people, a storefront floor, with floors that are discrete such as one for trash and sewage, another for electricity and communications lines, another for residents only, etc. It could even have like 15 floors of hydroponics that use LEDs and carbon dioxide enrichment. This would make us scale-able for longer without destroying all that is green upon the Earth. Based on some ball park numbers, it could be profitable now with a large capital investment. There is also floating and submarine cities. Anyways, moving onto the topic, terraforming Venus. I have put together a spreadsheet, Terraforming Venus. The plan calls for building a StarTram with a 300 ton payload capability, which could cost anywhere between 60-100 billion USD. Once the StarTram is built, which would take about 20 years, we would send remote control, automated construction equipment to the moon. We would send a Surveyor, Excavator, Hauler, Loader, Feeder, Crusher, Separator, Smelters, Mold Caster, Part Caster, Grinder and Assembler. Each machine would weigh about 300 tons and have a 1 megawatt Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. For the first 18 years, the mobile, self-replicating moon factory will mine iron, aluminum, manganese, carbon, nickel and thorium. They would build more of themselves. Once they finished self-replicating, they would begin building a Venus Sunshade, a Venus Spacescraper and 250 million 20 gigaliter supertankers propelled by magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters, powered by 10 gigawatt liquid fluoride thorium reactors. It would take about a 100 years for the moon factory to produce that much steel and thorium. The Venus Sunshade would be deployed and the Venus Spacescraper would be landed. Then the 250 million supertankers would move water from Ceres to Venus and carbon dioxide from Venus to Mars. I believe this is the quickest method. I would really appreciate feedback on this, I put some time into it and don't really know anyone with expertise or interest in this particular hobby. Thank you, Blake