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Old 01-31-2018, 03:08 AM   #11
vicky_molokh
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Default Re: Is TS optimistic or pessimistic?

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The real problem is LAIs, not SAIs. There are things a bioroid can do that an LAI won't be effective at, but most of them aren't the types of things canon suggests bioroids are used for.
Canon is very consistent about biosophonts drastically underestimating LAIs outside the Caliphate. They're not given sapient rights even in most jurisdictions which give them to SAIs, and not trusted with tasks SAIs and bioroids are. Even though the only serious argument against LAIs is that they're (very high-functioning) autists. And those are still considered persons if they're human in most jurisdictions, and trusted with tasks that don't require people skills. IOW, the reason they're not replacing bioroids seems to be memetic more than performance-based.
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Old 02-01-2018, 11:18 PM   #12
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Default Re: Is TS optimistic or pessimistic?

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Canon is very consistent about biosophonts drastically underestimating LAIs outside the Caliphate. They're not given sapient rights even in most jurisdictions which give them to SAIs, and not trusted with tasks SAIs and bioroids are. Even though the only serious argument against LAIs is that they're (very high-functioning) autists. And those are still considered persons if they're human in most jurisdictions, and trusted with tasks that don't require people skills. IOW, the reason they're not replacing bioroids seems to be memetic more than performance-based.
Human high-functional autists have full human rights because they are human. If you want a rational reason to deny rights to LAI's, it's because they can be built or modified to disregard law, morals, and ethics without compromising their narrow functionality. A similarly modified SAI would be impaired similarly to a brainhacked biosapient.
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Old 02-02-2018, 01:35 AM   #13
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Default Re: Is TS optimistic or pessimistic?

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Human high-functional autists have full human rights because they are human. If you want a rational reason to deny rights to LAI's, it's because they can be built or modified to disregard law, morals, and ethics without compromising their narrow functionality. A similarly modified SAI would be impaired similarly to a brainhacked biosapient.
Building or modifying a SAI and a LAI to disregard the law etc. would be mutually equivalent actions - both can be done, both are 'crippling' if you consider only Honesty-bound AIs to be 'whole'. If a jurisdiction considers sapience to be the reason for reason for granting rights, then LAIs are as sapient as SAIs. They're just aspies. But such a difference exists in humans too.
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Old 02-04-2018, 09:23 PM   #14
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Default Re: Is TS optimistic or pessimistic?

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As Anthony says, both.
We can be reasonably sure that the combination of 'near-current-day launch tech' won't be around in combination with the extent of space activities shown in THS. We might have that much space activity, or more, but if we do we'll probably be using some better means of getting from sea level to LEO than THS does.

(It's the old line about space flight, that first step is a female canid. If you can get to LEO easily and cheaply, a lot of other stuff suddenly becomes practical too.)

We almost surely won't see the degree of Mars-terraforming (or any other) by 2100 that THS shows, unless some major-league superscience also occurs. Terraformation is hard, and again, you need that cheaper/better access to space to make it practical. At most, one might expect to see a terraforming project having started by 2100, with many centuries still to go, again, unless some superscience voids all assumptions.
After working in the space industry for the past ten years, we are not going to make any substantial gains until me manage something like a beanstalk to move people and materials into space. Individual rockets are just too much of a bottleneck.
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Old 02-04-2018, 09:36 PM   #15
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After working in the space industry for the past ten years, we are not going to make any substantial gains until me manage something like a beanstalk to move people and materials into space. Individual rockets are just too much of a bottleneck.
Any significant upgrade in rocketry would solve that too.
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Old 02-04-2018, 10:07 PM   #16
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Any significant upgrade in rocketry would solve that too.
Guess it will be a contest to see which we get first - miracle engine versus miracle material.
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Old 02-04-2018, 10:35 PM   #17
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Guess it will be a contest to see which we get first - miracle engine versus miracle material.
Or something totally unexpected and out of the box.

Note that old SF often used to be fairly realistic about this, in pre-Apollo days. A favorite example of mine was the old movie Forbidden Planet, in which the introduction says that 'men and women' first reached the Moon in the last decade of the 21C, then interplanetary and interstellar travel followed relatively shortly.

Apollo brought about that event over a century earlier, and for a while led to a wave of SF that assumed large-scale space flight was coming much sooner than used to be the common assumption. But the thinking behind the more pessimistic estimates was actually sound. Absent the special-case politics of Apollo, it's likely that manned travel to the Moon might very well have first come in the mid-21C or later.
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Old 02-04-2018, 11:24 PM   #18
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Or something totally unexpected and out of the box.

Note that old SF often used to be fairly realistic about this, in pre-Apollo days. A favorite example of mine was the old movie Forbidden Planet, in which the introduction says that 'men and women' first reached the Moon in the last decade of the 21C, then interplanetary and interstellar travel followed relatively shortly.

Apollo brought about that event over a century earlier, and for a while led to a wave of SF that assumed large-scale space flight was coming much sooner than used to be the common assumption. But the thinking behind the more pessimistic estimates was actually sound. Absent the special-case politics of Apollo, it's likely that manned travel to the Moon might very well have first come in the mid-21C or later.
Instead of "miracle" let me say "future" as some of these technologies are being conceived of and developed now in various ways versus "we don't have a clue." There are just some barriers that may not have to do with technology, e.g. using nuclear fission engines on launch vehicles.

Did you really want to use"realistic" with "and interstellar travel followed relatively shortly"? ;)
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Old 02-04-2018, 11:43 PM   #19
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Guess it will be a contest to see which we get first - miracle engine versus miracle material.
Miracle material almost certainly lets you build miracle engine, likely easier than building a beanstalk.
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Old 02-04-2018, 11:55 PM   #20
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Instead of "miracle" let me say "future" as some of these technologies are being conceived of and developed now in various ways versus "we don't have a clue." There are just some barriers that may not have to do with technology, e.g. using nuclear fission engines on launch vehicles.

Did you really want to use"realistic" with "and interstellar travel followed relatively shortly"? ;)
Sure.

We don't know what technology is assumed to have been used to achieve Lunar flight in the 2090s, or enabled interplanetary travel and star flight shortly thereafter. The 2100s are far enough in the future from the 1950s (when the movie was made) that it's not problematic, in comparison to the space flight of THS using nearly current-day launch methods. The 'realistic' part was the distant advent of major space flight.

The gap between 1956 (which IIRC is when Forbidden Planet came out), and 2100 is as big as the gap between 1956 and 1810. In 1810, the first crude locomotives were being constructed, and rail travel had yet to be made practical. The standard means of land transport was animal power, the standard means of sea travel was wind sailing. Communications were at the speed of a horse or a sail ship. The instantaneous communication of the telegraph was still over 20 years in the future. The repeating rifle did not yet exist. Yet ~130 years later, an airplane dropped a bomb that destroyed an entire city in one blast, and world-wide communications were taking place at the speed of light.

If a capability gap as great as the difference between 1810 and 1956 lay between 1956 and 2100, the planets and stars would not be that big a credibility issue.
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