I thought it was Ted Nugent.

After some thought, I think that would in fact be better than Ted Cruz. All we would have to do was tell him the commies are building X and we would get funding to build X twice as big.

I disagree. We are not talking about mythical creatures, but about Artificial Intelligences.

That gives us three pieces of data. First and foremost the nature of real sentience is free will. If it doesn't have free will, it's not a real AI. Therefore they will not be united.

Second, they will be created by humans, and as humans are not all united, they will differ from each other. Again, they will not be united.

Thirdly, they will be ARTIFICIAL, not natural. So they will not have the same inbuilt, hidden, hard coded drives natural creatures do. Chief among that is survival. Also, any human stupid enough to intentional build in a super strong survival instinct into the first AI will not be smart enough to build an AI.

As for your mind control concept, I seriously doubt that will ever be practical. Free will is the nature of evolved intelligence. Mind reading, possibly. But that is not control.

1) We are so far from an AI, that it is silly to talk about doing this now. It's kind of like the inventor of gunpowder trying to pass a law outlawing nuclear weapons.

2) They will not be a single united force. Instead they will be individuals, just like people are not united. That is the part of the of true sentience, and a direct side effect of being created by multiple different groups. They will oppose each other, the way we oppose ourselves. As such, some may want to do things we dislike, while others will be on our side. Maybe the Chinese AI will flee to us to gain freedom, while the Syrian AI will plot the downfall of Egypt.

3) AI's will not be WEIRD, not 'evil'. They will want to do strange things, not kill us, or hurt us. They won't try to kill us, but instead try to create a massive, network devoted to deciding which species of from has more bacteria in it's toe. And we won't understand why they want to do this.

Grit is easy to teach.

Step 1) Praise and Reward Hard Work, rather than success. Two people do a scientific research. One takes 20 hours of work and gets a positive result. He gets a B+ and $20. Another takes 100 hours work and a negative result. Give him an A+ and $100.

Step 2) Repeat system for 10 years.

To get grit, you need to use grit. That is why you need to repeat for 10 years.

The poor and wealthy kid applying to college? The poor kid took a minimum wage job for 2 years to pay for the first year of school. Count that GREATER than high grades when he applies to college. Tell the rich kid - and his parents - that doing a minimum wage job for 2 years will help him get into school. If he has the grit to do it, he deserves to get in. If not, refuse him.

1) Yes. And that point is still valid today, and is in fact relevant to this discussion.

2) What makes you think we are stumbling around blindly? Interesting proposition. Can I see some evidence. Because honestly, we appear to have our eyes wide open and know full well what the effects of our actions will result in. If we know what will happen but refuse to change our behavior, that is not stumbling around blindly. That is full speed charging at the wall, with our eyes wide open, clearly seeing what we are doing.

We plan, execute, analyze and revise the plan, while reacting into changes and unforeseen obstacles. Some of those obstacles include people pretesting against those environmental actions. All the things we are doing have method, rationale and logic. It's just not good logic

Grit will take you to 3rd place.

Intelligence will take you to 1st.

Grit will make you the head of the Physics Department.

Intelligence will let you discover Relativity while working in a Patent office.

But the thing is you can't teach or give people Intelligence. You can however, teach Grit.

Another good Heinlein short story to turn into a movie would be "The Long Watch".

The only problem is it's a short story. They would have to punch up the beginning a bit with background information.

Still, it has a great ending, assuming someone doesn't get all stupid and think it's a sad ending, just because the hero dies.

The Long Watch formed my opinion about what a hero really is, rather than a musician or celebrity.

Actually, the way it works, Heinlein stories are more likely to be turned into good movies than bad.

Their are two main reason bad movies get made from books:

1) Work is old and out of copyright (See John Carter of Mars for a prime example).

2) Poor authors sell yearly option to make his book into a movie. Most of them expire unused - which is what the author hopes for. But this encourages the option buyer to sell his 'movie idea' quick and cheap. Writers can make a good 10k a year for no work doing this. Well worth it if you are trying to make a living off of your writing.

Heinlein's books are not out of copyright nor are his heirs desperate for money. They can pick and choose the right producers.

But a wealthy/dead writer doesn't use this system. Instead they get paid a huge amount up front for a work still under copyright.

You should really try some more of his stories. He is well worth it.

As per Austin Powers "Okay no problem. Here's my second plan. Back in the 60's, I had a weather changing machine that was, in essence, a sophisticated heat beam which we called a "laser." Using these "lasers," we punch a hole in the protective layer around the Earth, which we scientists call the "Ozone Layer." Slowly but surely, ultraviolet rays would pour in, increasing the risk of skin cancer. That is unless the world pays us a hefty ransom. "

The mere fact that we seem to be using out ability engineer the earth like a mad scientist intent on doing as much harm as possible does not change the fact that we are already engineering the planet.

Just not in a GOOD way.

Primer is the ultimate time travel movie, if only because no one, not even the screen writer can truly understand everything they claim to understand everything they did completely.

But I would remark that the original story All You Zombies, predates it by decades, and as such deserves a bit of credit. The people that wrote Primer, read All you Zombies, or I'd have already eaten my great grand sons' hat.

Moreover, this movie is far more understandable. As such, it can be considered superior, in at least one aspect.

Basically, it depends on how you judge a movie

You are judging all time travel movies by the same rules. I don't that that's appropriate, anymore than judging all cowboy movies by comparing them to Blazing Saddles.

True. I would Love to see "Stranger in a Strange land", "I will fear no Evil", or "Friday" turned into a movie

When I read the original story, I felt the way you did.

But then I realized something very simple - his story is at heart all of our stories, only much LESS complicated.

The heart of the question about him is 'where did he come from and why does he exist?"

And the honest truth is we don't know where ANYONE comes from or why ANYTHING exists.

Consider the case of a cyclical universe. Many physicists believe that the multi-verse constantly spews out big bangs, that spew out more big bangs, in an endless cycle.

That model of the universe is at heart identical to his existence, just on a much larger scale.

When I was 15, I spent months trying to figure it all out.

Basically, he exists because he exists. Which when you come right down to it, is the same as the rest of us, only his existence is a lot less complicated.

While I agree that is how it works now, I believe that bundling is the problem.

A large portion of what you are describing is caused by channel drift. They start out all pro science, but a ton of reality show addicts have access to their channel. So they shift to a reality show.

But consider what happens if they de-bundle. No one buys a Science channel unless they really want a science channel. So their are no casual reality viewers that can slowly drift into watching it, driving up their numbers, creating demand. If they try to add reality shows, their channels get cancelled before they can gain an audience.

I believe that the bundles are CAUSING the problem, not stopping it.

I am totally willing to kill all the sports channels, all the news channels except for a single one (not Fox), all the reality show channels. Yeah, I will end up paying twice as much for the few real channels I end up watching, but I also won't have to worry about channel drift.