On Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 7:13:37 AM UTC-5 [email protected] wrote: > On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 6:56 PM Lawrence Crowell <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> >> Have you found an error in John Von Neumann's work that proves his >>> probe won't work? >>> >> >> > The main point I am making is that lots of future predictions do not >> happen. >> > > Not happened YET, but there is plenty of time. Just 200 years ago nobody > knew what electricity was and a wood fired steam engine was high tech, and > 10,000 years ago a sharp flint rock was high-tech, and it will be a billion > years or so before the sun gets too hot for life to exist on Earth. > Liquid nitrogen gives you time. >
I find it amusing that people invoke the issue of the sun heating up Earth. That will not start to be a potential issue for another 500 million years. A billion years from now things might be tough. However, the real issue with human survival is over the next century or so. Homo sapiens will not exist into geological time spans of the future. As a rule long lasting species are small and are a genetic "trunk" for speciation. We are not a trunk, but a far off branch --- not even that but more like a twig. > > > >> > The big wheel in space, Luna city and piloted missions to Mars and >> Jupiter have simply not happened. >> > > True they have not happened, but not because they violate some law of > physics or even because current technology is not advanced enough to do so; > they have not been built because nobody could find any Scientific, > economic, or military reason to do so, and it's entirely possible nobody > ever will. However I'm quite confident nobody will ever run out of reasons > to stop pursuing immortality or in making sure your AI is smarter than the > other guy's AI. > The return on investment with that sort of manned space flight has not been demonstrated. To do it right the initial investment has to be large. Elon Musk's idea of a martian spaceship is a sort of hail Mary pass. > > > One thing that has happened is the idea science as the basis for >> explanation for the universe has in the minds of some people also come to >> replace religion. >> > > Yes certainly, but you almost make that sound like a bad thing. Religion > sucks, Science doesn't because religion (and magic) doesn't work, but > Science does. > > > In the case of N2 freezing this involves immortality, or at least >> unbounded lifespan that avoids mortality. >> > > Yes. > > John K Clark > I did not comment on the von Neumann probes. The idea is sort of interesting and it is a cyber-space-based idea analogous to biology. So far self-replicating algorithms, search engines and viruses as examples, have only worked in a virtual sense. I do not know how realistic this is with micro-probes in the solar system. Maybe they would drift around dormant for along time before landing, presumably at low velocity, into an asteroid. Using science to replace religion is a Faustian bargain. I think it has some clouding if not corrupting influence on science. If people shift their hopes and fears associated with religion to science, then we can expect policies and economics to shift accordingly. I am not sure an aim of science is either to disprove religion, which in fact it can't do, or to offer up the promises attributed to religion. LC -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/5ecf7249-93b2-413a-a6b3-cce7f60763bbn%40googlegroups.com.
