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The Replicator thread

Started by P3nT4gR4m, May 14, 2014, 07:58:26 PM

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P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: Junkenstein on May 14, 2014, 05:49:33 PM
QuoteThis disparity in ownership and the greed factor of massive stockpiling will become irrelevant in the next couple of decades. In case nobody has noticed yet we are on a roadmap to the invention of Star-Trek Replicatorstm. Anything that can be manufactured, sold and consumed will be manufactured and consumed on the spot. There's no middleman. There's no "sold".

A molecular printer spits out any consumable on command. The only time a human gets involved is ordering then using the output. No-one sources the components, no-one assembles it, no one delivers it, no one manages the process of coordinating supply to production to order fulfilment. Who get's paid? What costs money? How does one earn money? Who's going to want to collect money? What use is it to them? These are the kinds of questions that come with replication.

I'd say you're being pretty optimistic about the timescale involved though I'd be delighted if you were right. If you're talking about a full on post scarcity society, I can only think of a couple of theoretical models off-hand and both pretty much change it into a reputation/social standing tool.

The main problem before reaching this stage is getting everyone in the position of relative privilege to stop fucking over several nations and actually co-operate on a long term basis. Probably worth a new thread to discuss this further if you care to?

My timescale predictions are optimistic by the standards of anyone who thinks it's twice that or more, and pessimistic by those who think it'll be sooner. Truth is no one knows. I make a best guess based on shit going on now, where that came from and how long it took to get there.

So this, right now, is pre-replicators

Shit going on now is they're printing really fucking tiny and they're poking individual atoms around now and forming them into complex lattices and tubes. For me (as an interested layman) this level of fucking tiny skillz has been coming to my notice, increasingly over the last 10-15 years.

Computation has miniaturised and seems headed to graphene with recent breakthroughs in stamping tri-laminate sheets to provide transistor function. Before replicators we'll have nanoscale "smart plastics" only they won't be plastic, they'll be graphene(and stuff to follow it)-based polymers functioning as nanoscale robotic supercomputer clusters, forming physical arrangements on command, increasing in granular resolution as the tech matures and miniaturises.

So this covers all the solid, synthetic, electronic objects we rely on to live. Furniture, Kitchen equipment, clothing, transport, utility. It's all imbued with the ability to rearrange form and function on a verbal command. This shit is super-strong (hundreds of times stronger than steel, super-conductive (most conductive material on earth) and super-lightweight (laminate panels, 3 atoms thick). You won't need much of it to build assume the shape of your dwelling of choice. Get this - this shit requires carbon, yknow? That shit that everything is made of. Graphene has recycling built in. We can make the motherfucker out of our 20c garbage.

Biotechnology will do the same for organics, nutrients, medicine, printing custom flaura and fauna, downloaded from Wiki-Bioforms. Learning to code biology (once we suss it out) gives us access to an already existing self replicating nanotechnology which produces all the stuff you need to keep consciousness alive, that the nanomachine tech path cannot provide. This distinction itself becomes moot as bio borrows from nano and nano copies bio and the two disciplines merge and create a unified smart matter platform.

My prediction:

10 years would surprise me (but not too much).

40 years would seem feasible if there were no breakthroughs and shots from nowhere-leaps in tech over the next ten years.

20-30 years is not ridiculous - the part of 20-30 that is 20 is, by definition, not ridiculous and it sounds fucking awesome and it makes me happier than 30-40 and it's more realistic than 10.

Replicator? Pretty much but it's not a beam of light so y'know what I'm betting will happen? People will go "Yeah but all that that is, is them little na-ner machines making it look like it's a replicator.

But fuck those future assholes, my question is asked of the assholes right now - how long can we go on pretending that there's not enough shit to go round?

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Junkenstein

I've written 3 separate responses to this and this poxy fucking computer keeps eating them.

Trying again in notepad, will paste over shortly.
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

Junkenstein

Let's try again:

QuoteBut fuck those future assholes, my question is asked of the assholes right now - how long can we go on pretending that there's not enough shit to go round?

This is kind of the heart of the matter. With a totally perfectly equitable distribution system there probably is more than sufficent food, shelter, water, etc, etc, for each individual. The calculation gets made every so often about how much land one person which results in everyone getting a slice globally.

The reality as far as I understand it is that the western world is largely based and maintained on the exploitation of developing countries and economies. It's kind of like the military industrial complex issue. Once you gear yourself towards doing that, it's very difficult to stop it. It becomes a comfortable and familiar way to prosper and it's normalised largely though distance and ubiquity.

Think of places like Foxconn. Outrage occurs periodically, but everyone wants their new phone so fuck those guys. I would sincerly suggest that we can pretend there's not enough shit to go around just as easily as we can dismiss any worries of workers overseas. The society we live in isn't particularly built for sharing or co-operation from what I've seen.

So how can we change this? I'd guess that an economic system that is somehow built on mutual reward or increased gains for actually co-operating. How that would work in reality, I have no idea. It probably wouldn't.

More to follow as I fish out bits of text from notepad.
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

P3nT4gR4m

You seem to have pretty much the same take on some of the obstacles we have to overcome as I have so we are in agreement there. Where I see it going is that, in spite of the best efforts of the monkeys with all the bananas, we're on a collision course with a situation where there's nothing left for humans (slaves) to do or make.

This doesn't suddenly happen, like we wake up one morning and all our shit is free and we phone the office or the plant and tell them to go fuck themselves. Between now and then (whenever then is) It's just going to become increasingly evident.

Humans are dumb - nobody might notice for a decade or more but hopefully some smart fucker will point out that the rapidly shrinking number of people who are actually employed anymore, are all in the service sector. Nobody is manufacturing anything and all the companies who used to make stuff are hanging onto IP patents and bitching and whining about how everyone is ripping off this, that and the next thing of theirs but now no one is listening since there's no one actually employed in the factories that aren't making anything.

These new technologies are disruptive but they're not just disruptive to existing business paradigms, they're disruptive to the whole idea of most existing forms of business as an actual thing. Lawyers and perhaps doctors and a few others will still be hanging on by their teeth but anyone who was making or shipping things will not be doing that. Simple as. Sooner or later computation becomes so highly optimised and shrunk down that the energy requirements will satisfied by next gen solar collectors, built into the devices themselves. All the devices.

Anyone involved in power from fossil fuels to nuclear, windfarms, solar arrays ... Gone. We don't need them anymore. The petrochemical/warfare economy will collapse. It'll try it's best not to and things might get a bit messy for a while but it'll disappear. I doubt that very many will miss it. We'll have been using currency less and less by the time it just sort of fizzles out. This is a process that starts now and finishes either 20-30 years time or we (collectively - as a species) get the fucking picture at some point in between.

20-30 years, then - I get bragging rights if it's 2034

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Junkenstein

#4
Well, you've hit on something that I had in my notes on this. Energy and the supply and maintenance of supply.

30/40 years seems incredibly optimistic to me in this regard. Sure it's getting more efficient but nowhere near the scale of moore's law.

What I'd expect to see more in this regard would be relatively hostile environments converted to Energy collection areas. I assume you've seen shit like this:

(Solar Collector tower, Spain)

I see something like that and it baffles me why giant multi-nation-multi-corporation entities aren't going hell for leather to cover deserts in them. Essentially free, relatively no maintenance energy. The only reason I see preventing such things is the efficiency of the setup. The required levels of skilled labour could be relatively easily sourced within this generation, certainly in the next with increasing internet access.

On the replicator side of things, once things like clothes and shoes can be accomplished then it's another sizeable shift in economic occupations. It occurs to me that maybe we should be focusing on technologies that make shitty third world jobs obsolete or non-cost effective. Short term impact? Probably horrific. Long term impact? Possibly something akin to the industrial revolution.

More notes on planned obsolesce and how this may factor in to come. Some common objects have become considerably more robust in the past, say 20 years. I'm thinking light-bulbs here in particular. Now 3D printing can potentially solve a lot of problems but that still leaves a number of other industries potentially making lots of cash. The best way I can think to avoid this would involve a fundamental redesign of all kinds of shit that you don't even notice exists half the time.

In terms of timescales, I'm considerably up from where you're at. I'd say 80-90 years just for us to get it together collectively and stop arbitrarily hating people due to gender/skin colour/sexuality/all the other petty shit that makes no sense. Even that I would say is wildly optimistic and heavily reliant on everyone CALMING THE FUCK DOWN for a decade or two. This isn't for complete progress in this area either, just to get those who hold intolerant views to the same area we hold people condoning slavery today.

We're in an age of (bullshit) information and sensationalism. That shit needs to go on a societal level because with proper information distributed factually, no-one moves forward.

Idea (flesh out) - Make the world a saner place campaign. Start with simple shit like "boycott X due to (VERY) good reason". Move it up and progress to "Support Y due to REASONS". More suited to O:M thread.
Nine naked Men just walking down the road will cause a heap of trouble for all concerned.

P3nT4gR4m

I think you're looking at things from a - society driving technology - angle, where I'm seeing a - technology driving society - scenario. The tech happens. The rules change. If we were relying on human beings wising up here, it'd prolly never happen but we're not. The tech is coming. The seeds are already planted. They're growing now. No democratic consensus, rigged or otherwise, is going to do bugger all much to stop it.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark