First TL-9 items

[Tom Mazanec]

RE: ten year prediction
Another problem is that there can be a news story the next day (NYC 09-11-2001 or Wuhan, China 12-31-2019 for example) that throws all your one year, much less ten year, forecasts into a crocked hat.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Of course, the real potential for authoritarianism lies in having an agency of the state step in and dictate what maps can be used and what information they can include. If you want to be dystopian about it, imagine your self-driving car deciding (or being told) that it has to take you to the State Security Office, and locking the doors to keep you from getting out. For your own safety, of course.

As others have noted, the State generally already has means to arrest you. Having your car monitor you for "wrongthink" or similar is a potential issue... but is already possible (indeed, I believe OnStar recordings have been used as evidence in some cases).

Any self-driving vehicle likely should allow for manual override. Not just the State, but a malicious actor could take advantage of such a feature for all manner of mischief - potentially with fatal results.

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

By that logic, the easiest thing to make self-driving would be locomotives/trains, with subways close behind. After all, the train only has to follow the tracks, and the tracks aren't especially likely to get up and move, and have a limited number of rail to rail junctions.

Honestly, I assumed trains/subways already were mostly self-driving, with the operator there in case of an emergency. Do they actually still have someone manually adjusting the speed as they go around corners, pull into stations, etc?

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Why the heck did a robot bar tender need to be smart enough to get neurotic about his unnecessary legs?

A smart bartender can carry on a pretty interesting discussion with a patron. I'm a little confused as to why a robot bartender wouldn't need legs - the bartender typically needs to move around quite a bit to get to all the booze, service patrons (most bars aren't single-serve), clean, etc.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

That always seems to me like a problem we could largely solve by just not doing that to ourselves. A good self-driving car probably does need to be networked for map information and coordination with other cars. It doesn't have to be wide open and accepting OTA update pushes and having an HTTP-accessible control panel and what not. But it probably will be.

I recently read through (what currently exists of) Deathworlders. One of the depressingly-realistic problems in that was the wormhole networks being connected to the internet (for syncing up travel), without proper separation; a malicious actor is able to exploit that to basically cause part of a shipment to get converted into energy, causing significant damage at both ends of the wormhole. After that, proper security methods are put in place, but it's expensive and time-consuming.

Originally Posted by Opellulo

Meanwhile in the news: https://mobile.twitter.com/Ghost_Rob...99250570203137

Why designing such a thing is allowed?

Because people don't like their sons and daughters coming back from military service with PTSD, missing limbs, or in a flag-draped casket. I'm not saying killbots are a good idea, but that's a big part of the rationale behind them (of course, there's also "I want soldiers who will do whatever I tell them to, even if most people would balk at such orders" in play). Historically, however, things designed with the idea of reducing casualties... haven't. The Gatling Gun was meant to make it so no logically-thinking commander would throw his men against such a thing. Napalm was developed by someone trying to find a way to thicken airplane fuel so it would be less likely to leak out, ignite, and blow up the plane if the fuel tank were hit. Yeah.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec

RE: ten year prediction
Another problem is that there can be a news story the next day (NYC 09-11-2001 or Wuhan, China 12-31-2019 for example) that throws all your one year, much less ten year, forecasts into a crocked hat.

Same issue as with weather. You can make pretty good guesses about the weather 2 days in advance, and the climate in general in 2 decades. But when talking 2 weeks in the future the small changes are too chaotic to predict while the grand changes are too small to be worth talking about.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

Meanwhile in the news: https://mobile.twitter.com/Ghost_Rob...99250570203137

Why designing such a thing is allowed?

The company appears to be based in the US and here that which is not forbidden is permitted. There are no laws that I know of against _designing_ such a thing though there may be ones against using it domestically.

Also, they called it a "drone" and to me that implies the mounted rifle is controlled by a human operator rather than the robot's autonomous control. The military (and possibly the CIA) have been using armed aerial drones for years.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Also, they called it a "drone" and to me that implies the mounted rifle is controlled by a human operator rather than the robot's autonomous control. The military (and possibly the CIA) have been using armed aerial drones for years.

Last time I checked, the CIA did indeed operate armed drones, but they were manned by USAF personnel, as the CIA isn't allowed to go round bombing people.

[sjard]

<Moderator>
A reminder that political discussions, even tangentially current, are not allowed on these boards.

Please take that aspect elsewhere.

Thank you.
</Moderator>

[warellis]

Regarding medicine, what would antivirals like these developed for COVID be considered on the TL scale?:

These miraculous drugs arrived with minimal fanfare but represent the biggest advance yet in treating patients already infected with COVID-19. The supply of vaccines in the U.S. has exceeded demand for some time, and authorities recently widened eligibility to include children as young as 5, but uptake is not universal. Millions of Americans have decided, for a variety of reasons, not to get shots, while many more around the globe have yet to be offered a vaccine. And although the vaccines have remained amazingly effective against severe disease, some patients, especially those who are older or immunocompromised, remain at risk of hospitalization if they get a breakthrough infection. The widespread use of oral treatments for influenza hints at the value of COVID drugs that can be provided in an outpatient setting and reduce the severity of symptoms for unvaccinated and vaccinated patients alike.

Molnupiravir and Paxlovid are particularly exciting because antivirals that effectively target viruses at specific points in their life cycle are the “holy grail” of viral therapeutics—as past experience with other viruses has shown. Infection with HIV was fatal for nearly all patients until antivirals were developed against enzymes crucial to viral replication and researchers figured out how to combine those drugs to maximize their effectiveness and limit the emergence of resistant viral strains. These changes revolutionized HIV treatment, massively improving the prognosis for people who had access to antivirals. Instead of developing severe illness, treated patients could live healthily and expect normal life spans.

The development of these highly active oral antivirals for HIV infection took a decade and a half after the disease first came to light; the incredible progress in COVID-19 therapeutics took 18 months. Intriguingly, the COVID-19-treatment research borrowed many ideas from the HIV field; the two new COVID-19 drugs focus on similar pathways in the viral life cycle that HIV drugs target. In essence, these drugs prevent the target virus from reproducing itself. Because they work differently from the majority of COVID-19 vaccines, which teach the immune system to identify and attack the coronavirus’s characteristic spike protein, the antivirals remain effective against mutant variants whose spike proteins are harder for immune cells to recognize. Designing, manufacturing, and distributing vaccines updated for new variants will take time, so the availability of antivirals will be all the more essential.

Although molnupiravir—which is named after the Norse god Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir—was being tested for the treatment of the Ebola virus, researchers had not settled upon a purpose for the drug before SARS-CoV-2 arrived on the scene. Early studies of molnupiravir showed that its recipients cleared the coronavirus more rapidly than recipients of a placebo did. The drug did not help patients who were already hospitalized, but in outpatients with mild to moderate disease who had a high vulnerability to severe disease, it reduced the risk of hospitalization or death by 30 percent if given within five days of developing symptoms. The drug proved so beneficial that the clinical study was called off early. Merck applied for emergency-use authorization, and the FDA is expected to review the drug this week. Merck has promised to share its technology with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), which will allow for more affordable global access to molnupiravir.

Paxlovid, a formula developed largely from scratch for the current pandemic, is actually an RNA-virus protease inhibitor called PF-07321332 “boosted” with another drug called ritonavir. It too was the subject of a clinical trial that was stopped early because the treatment looked so effective. Outpatients who had both COVID-19 and medical conditions that put them at high risk of severe illness were 89 percent less likely to be hospitalized if they received Paxlovid twice daily for five days than if they got a placebo. The FDA will likely review this important therapeutic before the end of the year. The U.S. government has bought millions of courses of molnupiravir and Paxlovid for Americans in anticipation of the authorization of both. Moreover, Pfizer has promised to accelerate worldwide access to Paxlovid through an agreement with MPP.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by warellis

Regarding medicine, what would antivirals like these developed for COVID be considered on the TL scale?:

It's hard to tell but they're probably enzyme blockers and those are TL8 in Bio-tech. They might or might not be improved TL9 varieties.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's hard to tell but they're probably enzyme blockers and those are TL8 in Bio-tech. They might or might not be improved TL9 varieties.

Molnupiravir is definitely an enzyme blocker. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be as effective as was thought at first.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Molnupiravir is definitely an enzyme blocker. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be as effective as was thought at first.

Enzyme blockers are what are used to mitigate AIDS' symptoms, correct?