Archive for January, 2006

Saving the Sun

Posted in The Future, Humanity on January 25th, 2006

In about 4 to 5 billion years our Sun’s core will exhaust its supply of hydrogen and begin to expand into a red giant. THIS COULD KILL US ALL. Unless… we stop it.

Current technology is not enough to prevent this cataclysm, BUT by the time 4 to 5 billion years later rolls around, or even before then, if we are still alive, we will be MUCH more highly advanced. We will have advanced brain powers, either through nanosynaptic augmentations which increase our brains’ speed and ability by many orders of magnitude, or through a mental interface to a fourth dimensional collective mindspace which allows all humans to share thoughts and learn from each other (not unlike the ‘blogosphere), or something else*. Anyway, with our highly advanced brainpower and technology we will be able to handle many things.

Even a simpleton from 2006 like me can make the simple and obvious calculation that by feeding Jupiter, which is mostly hydrogen, into the Sun, we can get several million more years out of it. And it is not beyond the realm of imagination that future generations will have even more brilliant ideas than me. So, all in all, this “Sun dying and killing us all with it” thing is probably not as inevitable as all these scientists whine about it being sometimes.

kthxbye.

(*please note that this billions of years later enlightened superbrain future is much later in time than the future when the dystopian world government will use time travel to recruit our near future’s retired ‘bloggers to power their Orwellian propaganda machines.)

Our Green Neighbors

Posted in Humanity on January 10th, 2006

Plants. Are we smarter than them? I mean really? Most people would say that we are but what is that based on? We don’t know how they think, how they perceive. Plants chill out. They move really slow. Maybe that is smart. I mean they live a long time. There are lots of them.
Don’t get me wrong now, I love humans. Some of my best friends are human. But I can’t let that bias me.

Sure a plant is not going to ever win a chess game vs a human. No one would have the patience to teach it. But a human is not going to win the classic plant game of “live for 500 years and grow 100 feet tall” anytime soon either.

I’m sure some people would like to argue that plants don’t have a complex central nervous system or blah blah blah. But if you’re gonna base it all on physical biology, than you might as well just say humans and plants are both just sets of deterministic atoms and neither is smarter. And maybe that is true, but it is a boring answer.

Anyway my point here is you shouldn’t underestimate plants’ intelligence, because maybe they will rule the Earth someday, or maybe they already do.

kthxbye.