I read an interesting article the other day suggesting humans are the organic soup from which a new branch of binary-encoded as opposed to dna-encoded life will emerge. They argued that it's already happened given that computer viruses are self-replicating.

They say soon it will be fish - lizard - hampster - chimp - neanderthal - human - roomba basically. And that these new "machine life forms" will entirely surpass us in so many ways - longevity, freedom from depression and the faults of our "blind watch maker" brains, strength, speed, the ability to withstand the stresses of heat, pressure, interstellar radiation, the claustrophobia and isolation of intergalactic travel, etc.

I know our efforts towards cultivating AI and facilitating this now seem clumsy and awkward, but I'm with Kurzweil in thinking this only picks up steam more and more quickly from here.

So here's the real nutjob part: If the vast majority of this research is being done by the worlds' militaries, isn't the likelihood of these new uberspecies being aggressive towards humans quite high? And, if cats breed out of control wiping all the birds, and humans breed out of control devastating all sentient beings weaker than themselves, even enslaving, exploiting, and killing their own kind, is it not likely that evolution just kind of favors ruthless dominance? And if so, even in the best of cases, does the evolution of these new uber-species bode well for us basically??? : )

Intelligence is dangerous it seems! I feel like we are witnessing a race between various possible means of causing the 7th (?) mass extinction in geological time - Will we eradicate the current biosphere, ourselves included, by our own hands first by: a) nuclear weapons, b) genetically engineered viruses, c) polluting the environment to the point of mass ecological collapse, or now d) purposely creating species more dominant than our own and allowing nature to run its course?

Maybe it was bird flu, asteroid, or sun unexpectedly blowing up all along, but my money's on us! Just not sure which way???

Lol! "Woo woo space nuttery" has officially become my favorite phrase of 2013. Yeah I ain't the one who can plan our way out of this mess. There are a lot of brilliant people on this forum, yourself included! I get so depressed about where things are going. I have a friend who says I'm kidding myself if I think humans won't burn the last ounce of petroleum / coal on this planet no matter what the incentives not to :(

Thanks That is interesting info! I never knew that!

Death sucks, sure, but we build it up into more than it is. One of the downsides of having a cortex I guess. We obsess about stuff. #Dying# is the shitty part imo. That's why I'm gonna just hook myself up to a helium scuba tank when it's my turn if I have time to react. Screw 8 months of chemo.

I'll be forgotten about within years after I die, maybe at the moment I die, I don't know. This doesn't bother me or scare me. For me, you either go to heaven, just experience a void like dreamless sleep, or mebbe go to hell or are reborn or something. My money's on the void, but I don't believe anyone who claims to know for sure. Hell not withstanding, what's there to be scared of?

Anyone who's concerned with what people will think of them when they're gone, aside from the people here and now that they care about, is too self-obsessed imo

More intelligent people on this forum, shoot this down - but if we could accelerate our efforts to build space elevators, we could generate all of our pollution outside our own atmosphere. Heck we could even start moving all of our landfill waste up and putting it on the dark side of the moon? I know it sounds crazy, but it just... might... be... crazy enough to work?

This is where I learn how dumb I am if anyone cares enough to respond

Words I never thought I'd think lol

It looks like none of the embryos survived more than a few days.

Ethical questions abound here - like drones and all new technology there is a wild west period before the dumb masses catch up with what the super boffins are up to. For some reason, I don't mind them trying to revive frogs but once you get into mammalian projects like mammoths and neanderthals I think the possibility of creating tortured "elephant nan" type creatures should eliminate those projects from consideration. There would be about 10 years of monstrous failures before they could perfect that technique with any genome, and they need to face the "should we (answer: no)" questions instead of the "can we" thrill seeking imo. Like imagine the Neanderthal being successfully cloned, carried to term by a surrogate and delivered. Even if it doesn't come out of the womb like a chernobyl baby, which is like a 0.00072% chance, imagine being a minority of #one#. That would be psychologically hellish for a highly sentient being imo.

I don't know :(

I forget if we (the United States) are currently the number one or number two polluter in the world? Considering it's a close race between us and a country with... 3 or 4x our population??? Ehhh Not so good for the US when the history books get written, unless we just nuke all the other nations first so they can't contradict us. In fact, the US getting in anybody's business about pollution is about as comedically hypocritical as if, say, the nation that 1) Invented weapons of mass destruction, 2) Is the only nation to have ever deployed weapons of mass destruction and 3) Comes pretty damn close to having more weapons of mass destruction than the rest of the world combined - Were to, oh say, get up in the rest of the world's back yards because they chose to follow our example?? Oh Jesus - That'd be freaking hilarious! 8 ) Why would we ever focus on cleaning up our own back yard or, say "Leading by example" on any of the important issues of our time? That'd be boring : ( Let's just keep calling other people names - Much more fun! : )

I'm less depressed these days watching our little world spiral towards wherever it's spiralling towards. It often feels like some perverse race to the bottom, but I've finally just kind of "got it" that evolution does favor this kind of viciousness. This "I will mow over a field of fluffy rabbits with a tractor to get mine" mentality that you see coming to a head in so many places. Will we nuke ourselves because we can't control our vicious hate and fear? Or pollute the world into a big carcinogenic port-o-let because we can't control our vicious undiluted greed first? Either way, we are the organic soup currently allowing for the coming together of the component organic parts of artificially intelligent, self replicating, binary encoding life. It's already happened - I forget when the first computer virus was "born from the organic soup" of human technological development. Soon we will be the little funny looking monkeys 8 spots back on the evolutionary charts. And when the "new kids in town" finally figure out, like all of the tinpot sociopathic executives and tyrants who've littered our 15 minutes in the sun here with their excesses, "what it takes to succeed", our sins will look like child's play. I'm ready for humans to go away now. I'd rather think of a universe where sentient creatures enslaved, raped, tortured, oppressed, murdered, and gorged themselves on everything weaker than themselves #without# knowing better than to act that way. It's one thing for us to desecrate the ecosphere damning all sensient beings weaker than . rselves over a nice tasty torture and rape burger - Cats and squirrels would surely do the same thing given half a chance. It's the fact that we realize how disgustingly selfish and harming and pointless we are. We know what pain feels like so at some point when we finish running from it, we just have to admit how abominably ugly it all is. That's what's tiring. I don't think the binary life forms that do to us what we've done to everything weaker than us will know what pain is really. By the time we've teed up the mass extinction event and they've finished it all off the universe will be free of intelligent sentient beings that know what they're doing when they decimate the weak. It will be a lot cleaner and more interesting then. I sometimes think the universe collectively is meant to achieve consciousness - that we have just witnessed a somewhat brutish early stage of that. From what once was just space dust these little clumps of consciousness are forming, getting more and more sophisticated, but leading to what?

Having had iphones 1-4s, an s2 and a Note 2, I am a) The proverbial fool who gets parted from his money b) Decently qualified to make an honest comparison I agree the people who make it a religious war need to get laid er something. I think Android is winning lately because of +) Customizability. I can lock my photo apps down so my nephews can't accidentally see my donkey porn when I pass em my phone. I have a cheesy 3d carousel desktop with icons that are transparent and not square. My keyboard is my choice. +) Diversity. I can get made fun of for having a phone bigger than my head if I want to. Can have a tactile keyboard if I want to, etc. I still think Apple is the place that sparked the revolution, and has a high place in my esteem for actually innovating and bringing us all closer to The Star Trek. Curious if that will continue? P.S. - Google Play - get some content! 8 )

For all of these sociopathically greedy executives who don't get the concept that their actions hurt millions of others, it's time to gently hammer that concept into their skulls with a 2x4. Take #everything# from them. Legally ban them from ever being on an executive board or owning a company again. Would you let a convicted pedophile work at an elementary school? Create a system where every bank account they sign up for from then on in is monitored, just like pedophiles' addresses are monitored. Leave these people naked at the curb and screwed for life. Put all the money towards research into better nerf weapons?