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author Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date Thu, 28 Jan 2016 09:35:51 -0800
parents 9bf4f0d5af68
children ba80a6a67b55
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rlm@145 1 #+title: Big List O' Ideas
rlm@145 2 #+author: Robert McIntyre
rlm@145 3 #+email: rlm@mit.edu
rlm@145 4 #+description: list of ideas from Robert McIntyre
rlm@145 5 #+keywords: aurellem ideas half-baked random
rlm@145 6 #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
rlm@145 7 #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
rlm@145 8 #+babel: :mkdirp yes :noweb yes :exports both
rlm@145 9 #+HTML_HEAD_EXTRA: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../css/ideas.css" />
rlm@145 10 #+OPTIONS: num:nil
rlm@145 11
rlm@145 12 * Ideas
rlm@145 13 # :PROPERTIES:
rlm@145 14 # :HTML_CONTAINER_CLASS: ideas
rlm@145 15 # :END:
rlm@145 16
rlm@145 17 This is a list of all the good ideas I've had that I felt like writing
rlm@145 18 down for the past ~ 10 years. Some of them could be practical
rlm@145 19 inventions and are "just" waiting for that 95% perspiration to bring
rlm@145 20 them to fruition, some are ideas for science fiction, and some are
rlm@145 21 simple observations. They are arranged roughly in reverse
rlm@145 22 chronological order, with the most recent ideas at the top of the
rlm@145 23 list. The ones at the bottom of the list are heavily influenced by my
rlm@145 24 time at MIT, the ones at the top, by my time at 21st Century Medicine.
rlm@145 25
rlm@145 26 If you find some of these interesting and would like to collaborate on
rlm@145 27 them with me or discuss them in more detail, I'd love to hear from
rlm@145 28 you. You can email me at ideas@aurellem.org.
rlm@145 29
rlm@145 30 If you want to use one of these ideas as your own and run with it,
rlm@145 31 please feel free. I'd love to hear about it if you do.
rlm@145 32
rlm@145 33 #+begin_quote
rlm@145 34 There's no end to what a man can accomplish if he doesn't care about
rlm@145 35 getting credit.
rlm@145 36 #+end_quote
rlm@145 37
rlm@145 38
rlm@145 39 #+BEGIN_HTML
rlm@157 40 <hr/>
rlm@145 41 #+END_HTML
rlm@145 42
rlm@157 43 ** Earth, Air, Water
rlm@157 44
rlm@157 45 Probably all intelligent species name their planet "dirt" in their
rlm@157 46 language, unless the're aquatic or flying, then they'd name it
rlm@157 47 "water" and "air" respectively.
rlm@157 48
rlm@155 49 ** Cure for Color Blindness
rlm@155 50
rlm@155 51 Could it be possible to administer some retroviruses via direct
rlm@155 52 injection to the retina, to cause some of the cells in the retina
rlm@155 53 to begin expressing different color pigments? The brain ought to
rlm@155 54 easily sort out the rest and enable color vision. Furthremore,
rlm@155 55 could we add some more colors to baesline human eyes? Theory --
rlm@155 56 people who are color blind have better color spatial accuity for
rlm@155 57 the colors they can see, because this it the tradeoff here involved
rlm@155 58 with the retrovirus therapy. Re-purposing color detectors to see
rlm@155 59 new colors at the expense of spatial acuity for the old set of
rlm@155 60 colors.
rlm@155 61
rlm@155 62 ** Passion of the Christ Missed Opportunity
rlm@155 63
rlm@155 64 In the Passion of the Christ, they do the entire show using Latin,
rlm@155 65 Aramaic, etc, with subtitles. They should have had a part where
rlm@155 66 Jesus does the sermon on the mount, he turns to the camera, and
rlm@155 67 starts speaking in English, with no subtitles. It would have been
rlm@155 68 1.) biblically accurate and 2.) awesome. It would have been such a
rlm@155 69 powerful example of Jesus' divinity, and it felt like they were
rlm@155 70 setting up for it the entire movie, and they missed it!
rlm@155 71
rlm@155 72 ** Xenobiotic Chimeric Methalation Rewriting
rlm@155 73
rlm@155 74 You make chimeric sea urchins with human reproductive stem cells,
rlm@155 75 so that the sea urchins produce sea urchin like HUMAN sperm and
rlm@155 76 eggs. Then you can have two males / females reproduce without the
rlm@155 77 methylation problem, by using the sea urchins as intermediades. And
rlm@155 78 the normal problems of human chimeras are avoided because the sea
rlm@155 79 urchins are too simple.
rlm@155 80
rlm@155 81 ** Physical PGP Signatures
rlm@155 82
rlm@155 83 You punch into your phone "I want to sign a contract" It gives you
rlm@155 84 a gensym (or you enter a name) like:
rlm@155 85 https://contracts.example.com/car-insurance-2015-09-26
rlm@155 86
rlm@155 87 Then you sign your name, date, and include the link on the contract
rlm@155 88 under "PGP sig". Then you take a picture with your phone and enter
rlm@155 89 your signing password. It gets uploaded to your website and the
rlm@155 90 image gets PGP signed with your key. Now you have a timestamped
rlm@155 91 archive of the contract, and anyone can verify it by looking at the
rlm@155 92 physical contract itself!
rlm@155 93
rlm@155 94 ** The Digital Third Eye
rlm@155 95
rlm@155 96 You wire in a third optical input to the human brain, but it
rlm@155 97 doesn't tranduce light form the real world, bus instead is
rlm@155 98 connected to the "internet of things" and shows you metadata about
rlm@155 99 things you are looking at // serves as an interface to your own
rlm@155 100 mind and body. Then eventually simply real things without metadata
rlm@155 101 seem flat and fake compared to the objects in cities and other
rlm@155 102 annotated areas. This third eye doesn't occupy any of your normal
rlm@155 103 visual field but actually EXPANDS your visual field.
rlm@155 104
rlm@155 105 ** Ultimate Limits of Monogamy
rlm@155 106
rlm@155 107 Let's say that you're immortal and monogamous. The longer you live
rlm@155 108 with your partner, the more you build an internal model of them,
rlm@155 109 and they you. Eventually these models may become complete, and then
rlm@155 110 you two are actually one single recursive entity which references
rlm@155 111 itself. As you offload more processing to the other (such as old
rlm@155 112 couples actually do -- "remember when we were at that place,
rlm@155 113 what-was-his-name honey?"), then computationally you are a single
rlm@155 114 mind distributed across two bodies. (There's a reason why old
rlm@155 115 couples often die as a pair). You might decide to actually merge
rlm@155 116 bodies eventually. But then, you were both monogamous, so the
rlm@155 117 combined person will be monogamous (and lonely because it lacks a
rlm@155 118 partner). So you get married again, rinse, wash, repeat. All the
rlm@155 119 monogamous people within a certain "compatability group" eventually
rlm@155 120 become one. Our "social center of mass" doesn't lie within our own
rlm@155 121 bodies!
rlm@155 122
rlm@155 123 ** Dream Rewinding
rlm@155 124
rlm@155 125 How to record a complete dream without disturbing it or modifying
rlm@155 126 your brain? you need to be an upload: split yourself, and one of
rlm@155 127 you stays awake whike the other sleeps. then you detect a dream in
rlm@155 128 progress by monotoring rapid eye movememt in your sleeping self,
rlm@155 129 and you wake yourself up every few minutes and tell yoursef about
rlm@155 130 the dream. Then sleeping-your restarts the dream, continuation
rlm@155 131 passing style, forgetting everything that was just said, and you
rlm@155 132 repeat this process until the dream is over. Then awake-you and
rlm@155 133 sleeping-you merge each other by taking sleeping-you and replaying
rlm@155 134 the memories of awake-you, and you write a final report on the
rlm@155 135 dream using the "saccade" reports to jog your memory.
rlm@155 136
rlm@155 137 It would really let you directly test theories of memory because
rlm@155 138 you can test a person every second if you want to. I see a couple
rlm@155 139 ways this could play out: you could report a dream that follows a
rlm@155 140 linear narrative, with the story advancing a little bit each time
rlm@155 141 (the "storytelling" hypothesis), you might say something totally
rlm@155 142 different each time (the "garbage memory access" hypothesis), or
rlm@155 143 something even weider like where you report exactly the same thing
rlm@155 144 between seconds 0-20, then something totally different during
rlm@155 145 seconds 20-40, etc.
rlm@155 146
rlm@155 147 ** Denser than Osmium
rlm@155 148
rlm@155 149 Do the "misicibility" thing with an osmium alloy to get something
rlm@155 150 even more dense. Basically osmium + something else might be denser
rlm@155 151 then pure osmium.
rlm@155 152
rlm@155 153 ** AI Hypnosis
rlm@155 154
rlm@155 155 Hypnosis might be good for studying AI, becuse it might probide a
rlm@155 156 "debugger" for ananlyzing the human mind. I briefly tried this
rlm@155 157 while at MIT, but it needs MUCH more work to be properly
rlm@155 158 evaulated. Also, things you can do under hypnosis provide
rlm@155 159 constraints on what the mind's capabilities are. Also, hypnosis
rlm@155 160 iteslf is a worthwhile thing to study in its own right.
rlm@155 161
rlm@146 162 ** The Ocean Becomes a Drop
rlm@151 163 Upload faces challenges to grow into the type of person that can
rlm@145 164 join the greater society -- a god. They have to go though quests
rlm@145 165 that replicate all the things that humanity had to accomplish, like
rlm@145 166 going to the moon, by themselves.
rlm@145 167
rlm@145 168 ** Butterfly Drone
rlm@145 169 If big butterflies used to exist, then maybe we could make
rlm@145 170 butterfly-inspired drones!
rlm@145 171
rlm@145 172 ** Methylation Sex-Symmetry Breaking
rlm@145 173 Human sex cells have methylation patterns that encode male/female
rlm@145 174 origin. If you combine two male patterns, the fetus grows "too
rlm@145 175 fast" and dies. Two female patterns causes the fetus to enter a
rlm@145 176 "vegatable" state and fail to develop. Evolutionary biologists say
rlm@145 177 that this reflects the asymmetry of energy investement for creating
rlm@145 178 offspring. If that's true, then species that cast-spawn will lack
rlm@145 179 this asymmetry, and give clues about how to remove it in humans. If
rlm@145 180 even cast spawners like sea urchins have it, then that means
rlm@145 181 there's something deeper going on!
rlm@145 182
rlm@145 183 ** Homosexual Reproduction
rlm@145 184 You take genetic material from two males and put it into an egg
rlm@145 185 cell that has had all genetic material removed. Or, you take the
rlm@145 186 genetic material from one egg and put it in another egg. This would
rlm@145 187 allow homosexual couples to genetically reproduce. One technical
rlm@145 188 challenge blocking this technique is that human gametes have
rlm@145 189 methylation patterns that encode male/female origin, and only a
rlm@145 190 male+female pattern gives rise to viable offspring. You could
rlm@145 191 "recondition" male / female gametes to give them the opposite
rlm@145 192 pattern, perhaps by incubating them in the appropriate
rlm@145 193 environment. You also could try taking stem cells and making them
rlm@145 194 form the appropriate structures in vitro.
rlm@145 195
rlm@145 196 ** Poly-Vitrification
rlm@145 197 Large molecules such as PVP are able to vitrify at around -20C, and
rlm@145 198 at farily small concentrations. IF they could be introduced into
rlm@145 199 cells, they would be quite useful as vitrification agents. However,
rlm@145 200 it's difficult to get them in because they are so big. So instead,
rlm@145 201 use smaller agents which combine together into polymers at low
rlm@145 202 temperature. In particular, Fructose, trehalose, and glycerol seem
rlm@145 203 to have the desired properties (though you need to make versions of
rlm@145 204 fructose and trehalose that can penetrate).
rlm@145 205
rlm@145 206 ** Whole Brain Perfusion Embedding
rlm@145 207 Do the standard EM embedding protocol, but skip the osmium step,
rlm@145 208 and use the "perfusion pausing" method to prevent overextraction
rlm@145 209 during the dehydration and embedding steps. I think that you can
rlm@145 210 perfuse resins into the brain, simply because you can perfuse
rlm@145 211 viscous rubber when doing vascular casts.
rlm@145 212
rlm@145 213 ** Very Slow Physiological Pressure Perfusion
rlm@145 214 Less extreme example of the "perfusion pausing" trick -- just keep
rlm@145 215 the perfusion running and don't put the perfusion target into the
rlm@145 216 liquid as deep.
rlm@145 217
rlm@145 218 ** Perfusion Pausing
rlm@145 219 One problem with doing perfusion of heads / organs where the veins
rlm@145 220 freely leak fluid is that if you STOP the perfusion, you rapidly
rlm@145 221 loose pressure in the organ as your perfusate leaks out. You can
rlm@145 222 prevent this by submerging the organ/head/rat whatever in fluid at
rlm@145 223 an appropriate deepness. You would have to slowly decrease the flow
rlm@145 224 rate while simultaneously lowering the perfusing object into the
rlm@145 225 fluid. To start again, reverse the process -- reengage the
rlm@145 226 peristaltic pump slowly while removing the organ from the fluid.
rlm@145 227
rlm@145 228 ** Textbook Mimiricy Evolution
rlm@145 229 As surgery becomes more common, there develops a distinct selective
rlm@145 230 pressure for individuals' organ layouts to look more like the
rlm@145 231 medical textbooks!
rlm@145 232
rlm@145 233 ** Transparent Skin
rlm@145 234 Temporary / permament transparent skin. Allows for examination of
rlm@145 235 organs / muscles and visual prevention of disease and detection or
rlm@145 236 abnormalities / good things eg. excercise optimization.
rlm@145 237
rlm@145 238 ** Sweet Information
rlm@145 239 Candy with a whole book written in it. Eat a book!
rlm@145 240
rlm@145 241 ** Targeted Immunosuppressant
rlm@145 242 Just kill off the B-cells and friends that would cause problems in
rlm@145 243 a organ-transplant / other situation. AIDS is good at killing these
rlm@145 244 cells -- maybe make it can be modified to just target the ones that
rlm@145 245 will cause problems. Then you can premptively kill off that part of
rlm@145 246 someone's immune system before a transplant. ALSO, you can kill off
rlm@145 247 everyone's defenses against other blood types and make people
rlm@145 248 effectively type AB+ w.r.t blood transfusions. Actually, why not
rlm@145 249 give babies this treatment so that they're automatically compatable
rlm@145 250 with all blood types? It would be like a blood transfusion
rlm@145 251 vaccine. The immune system does this already when it's first
rlm@145 252 growing; maybe it can be "retrained" to accept new things, or the
rlm@145 253 mechanism of immune cell death be co-opted for these purposes.
rlm@145 254
rlm@145 255 ** Fuck-you Tetris
rlm@145 256 Tetris that actively gives you the worst possible piece.
rlm@145 257
rlm@145 258 ** Pockets
rlm@145 259 More things should have them! Chairs, tables, cups, hats,
rlm@145 260 trashcans, basically anything is better with a pocket.
rlm@145 261
rlm@145 262 ** Colored Shower Head
rlm@145 263 A shower head add-on that measures the temp of the water and
rlm@145 264 changes the color of the water streams w/ an LED to show you the
rlm@145 265 temperature. That way you can align to the color you want and see
rlm@145 266 the temperature without feeling it.
rlm@145 267
rlm@145 268 ** Giant Dragonflies
rlm@145 269 We could rapidly MAKE giant dragonflies by evolving modern
rlm@145 270 dragonflies in an very oxygen rich environment!
rlm@145 271
rlm@145 272 ** Whirlpool of Light
rlm@145 273 Shine a laser out into space. But the planet is spinning! What you
rlm@145 274 get is a spiral of light! And as this signal expands, does it
rlm@145 275 eventually reveal it's quantized nature?
rlm@145 276
rlm@145 277 ** Perfusion Cooking
rlm@145 278 You do cardiac bypass on an animal like a pig, then pump in tasty,
rlm@145 279 tasty perfusate (like marinade) into the animal's
rlm@145 280 vasculature. Then, you switch out to saline and increase the
rlm@145 281 temperature of the saline to rapidly and uniformly cook the
rlm@145 282 animal. It could be the tastiest meat ever!
rlm@145 283
rlm@145 284 ** Timestamp Verification
rlm@145 285 You sign your message, and it has a timestamp at the top, with a +-
rlm@145 286 percision number. Then you send it over to the public timestamp
rlm@145 287 server, which only signs the message if it gets the message within
rlm@145 288 the timestamp window. Or the computer just signs the message but
rlm@145 289 puts a timestamp at the beginning. So if everyone trusts the
rlm@145 290 timestamp server, you can get reliable timestamps, and prove
rlm@145 291 priority on ideas, etc.
rlm@145 292
rlm@145 293 ** The Great Computing Slow-Down
rlm@145 294 In general, our computers are getting faster and faster according
rlm@145 295 to Moore's law. However, eventually our brains will be made of the
rlm@145 296 same stuff our computers are made of! This has very interesting
rlm@145 297 consequences -- I can add 2+2 and get four in about a second. Since
rlm@145 298 my neurons actually work at around 10-60 hertz in parallel, this
rlm@145 299 means that it takes me around 10-30 operations to do this
rlm@145 300 addition. That's actually not bad in terms of computing time. If my
rlm@145 301 neurons were as fast as the latest transitors, then most
rlm@145 302 calculators (made with earlier transistors) would be SLOWER than me
rlm@145 303 at adding numbers. Only the newest, most optimized calculators
rlm@145 304 would be faster, and then only about 10 times faster! This means
rlm@145 305 that once we begin to think at the speed of our technology, that
rlm@145 306 technology will suddenly seem pitifully slow in comparison to how
rlm@145 307 it seems now. And no amount of technical progress will remedy it,
rlm@145 308 because that same progress will also make us all think
rlm@145 309 faster. We'll either have to settle with living in "slow time" to
rlm@145 310 do some computations, or learn to make smarter hardware with
rlm@145 311 special optimizations. But this is actually really hard, because
rlm@145 312 we'll be working with machines that will appear to us about as fast
rlm@145 313 as MECHANICAL computers. So, in the future, all the cool parties
rlm@145 314 will be in cyperspace at vastly accelerated speeds compared to how
rlm@145 315 we exist now. But at these parties, the computers will SUCK! Of
rlm@145 316 course, this is one of the few things that can save us from AI
rlm@145 317 risk, because those AI's won't seem so scary when the're build out
rlm@145 318 of rickety old mechanical parts form our perspective.
rlm@145 319
rlm@145 320 ** Unitary Reverse Evolution of Chaos+Minds
rlm@145 321 Chaotic systems diverge exponentially in state space. Do you get
rlm@145 322 anything interesting when part of the physical system associated
rlm@145 323 with the chaotic system is a object that performs some sort of
rlm@145 324 computation? Is it possible for the computational system to play a
rlm@145 325 percision-enabling role in determining the final/initial conditions
rlm@145 326 of the chaotic system, just by tracing out thoughts in its decision
rlm@145 327 paths? This is probably too vague of an idea right now, I just
rlm@145 328 wanted to write it down.
rlm@145 329
rlm@145 330 ** Microwave-Time
rlm@145 331 The cooking time you enter on most microwaves is insane. It's
rlm@145 332 expressed in what I call a "hybrid base", a combination of base 10
rlm@145 333 and base 60. You can get absurd things like 100 < 61, and 120 ==
rlm@145 334 80! I wonder if these hybrid base systems could be very useful for
rlm@145 335 some purposes!
rlm@145 336
rlm@145 337 ** Three Eyes
rlm@145 338 If you had three eyes, would you still draw cubes like we currently
rlm@145 339 draw them? Or would all 2D-representations of 3D space always look
rlm@145 340 hopelessly fake?
rlm@145 341
rlm@145 342 ** Digital Taste/Smell Assay
rlm@145 343 Get a grid of bacteria, each expressing a human taste/smell
rlm@145 344 receptor linked to some sort of fluorscent activity or ion
rlm@145 345 pump. Use a camera / electrical grid to transduce the smell / taste
rlm@145 346 signal into bits! Inspired by gel-sight from MIT.
rlm@145 347
rlm@145 348 ** Childrens' Tool Shop
rlm@145 349 I think that kids should be provided with tool shops -- these would
rlm@145 350 be nice sheds with a good collection of tools to do various things
rlm@145 351 -- circuit components and soldering irons, wires, a small lathe,
rlm@145 352 drill press, belt sander, a centrifuge, microscope, and telescope,
rlm@145 353 etc. The idea is that the kid can now think, "I could use X to do
rlm@145 354 this thing that I'm thinking about" -- the building becomes an
rlm@145 355 extension of the kid's body & mind.
rlm@145 356
rlm@145 357 ** Fluid Display
rlm@145 358 Like the previous idea about matching refractances between glass
rlm@145 359 and liquid, except you make a lot of switchable glass tubes in
rlm@145 360 various patterns in the glass, and actively pump colored liquid
rlm@145 361 through the tubes (the tubes have glass-like fluid in them by
rlm@145 362 default.) The result is that you can cause the tubes to appear and
rlm@145 363 dissappear, and vary their colors as well!
rlm@145 364
rlm@145 365 ** Immunoincompatibility
rlm@145 366 Take the human genome, and refactor it so that it doesn't use a
rlm@145 367 particular codon at all. Then remove the support from our ribosomes
rlm@145 368 for that codon. What does this do for us? It makes us immune to
rlm@145 369 almost all viruses! There is at least one bacteria that already
rlm@145 370 does this to great effect.
rlm@145 371
rlm@145 372 ** Life Cycle
rlm@145 373 It's called a cycle, right? So, the thing that repeats itself over
rlm@145 374 and over, right? Not much of a cycle if you don't come back after
rlm@145 375 you die, if you ask me!
rlm@145 376
rlm@145 377 ** Car with no Blind Spots
rlm@145 378 Use some cameras in the back of the car to augment the rear-view
rlm@145 379 mirror so that you never have to turn around in order to lane
rlm@145 380 change.
rlm@145 381
rlm@145 382 ** Metabolic Windows and Freezing
rlm@145 383 You freeze a set of cells using some cryo protocol and 60%
rlm@145 384 survive. How can this be explained? It seems to me that if the
rlm@145 385 cells are the same, and the conditions homogoneous, then all the
rlm@145 386 cells should either die or live. However, suppose that there is a
rlm@145 387 metabolic cycle that needs to be in a certain phase for the cell to
rlm@145 388 survive. If the cells are asynchronous, then you might end up with
rlm@145 389 some cells dying because there were in the wrong part of their
rlm@145 390 cycle. This implies that you might be able to cryoprotect cells by
rlm@145 391 causing them to enter a certain metabolic mode before freezing.
rlm@145 392
rlm@145 393 ** Cryonics Color Appeal
rlm@145 394 Perfusate used by cryonics companies could have red food coloring
rlm@145 395 in it. It's just a nice touch so that the cryonics patient looks
rlm@145 396 more life-like than with clear CPAs, and hopefully might get
rlm@145 397 treated with more respect.
rlm@145 398
rlm@145 399 ** Paramagnetic CPA
rlm@145 400 you take a CPA that can be influenced by magnetic fields so that
rlm@145 401 its degrees of freedom are limited. Then, you release the field,
rlm@145 402 instantaly increasing the size of the state space of the system and
rlm@145 403 dramatically decreasing the temperature enough to plunge the system
rlm@145 404 past homogenous nucleation temperature and directly to the glass
rlm@145 405 transition temperature, creating a doubly unstable glass at much
rlm@145 406 lower CPA concentrations than possible at conventional CPA
rlm@145 407 concentrations. A major technical limitation facing this technique
rlm@145 408 is that it's a very minor effect -- you can only get about 0.1C
rlm@145 409 with most systems that have been studied so far.
rlm@145 410
rlm@146 411 ** Room Temp Ramen
rlm@146 412 How does the physics of cooking noodles work? Could you use a
rlm@146 413 vacuum instead of heat to force water into the noodle?
rlm@145 414
rlm@146 415 ** Personal Carbon Offset
rlm@146 416 Feel bad about contribuiting to global warming by using electricity
rlm@146 417 / driving a car? Forget trying to "conserve" or "minimize your
rlm@146 418 carbon footprint". Follow the Platinum rule -- make the world
rlm@146 419 BETTER off than you found it! This would be a small, self
rlm@146 420 contained system that sucks C02 out of the air. It uses
rlm@146 421 electricity, but it's so efficient at removing CO2 that it more
rlm@146 422 than offsets the CO2 produced by even a coal plant to produce that
rlm@146 423 electricity. This way, you can still drive even a gas guzzler, but
rlm@146 424 have a net negative carbon footprint! Maybe something cool could be
rlm@146 425 done with the carbon as well. Use as much electricity as you want,
rlm@146 426 but negate the damage to the enviroment with more technology.
rlm@145 427
rlm@146 428 ** Undoing Spermogenesis
rlm@146 429 With enough sperm, you can derive the donor's entire genome. You
rlm@146 430 gain more confidence in the alleles for a particular gene the more
rlm@146 431 sperm you have. Each additional sperm gives you the same sort of
rlm@146 432 information you'd get flipping a coin and trying to decide whether
rlm@146 433 the coin is H/T of H/H. Is there enough sperm in the the average
rlm@146 434 load for you to be as confident as mitosis?
rlm@145 435
rlm@146 436 ** Mars Life
rlm@146 437 We could engineer life that could survive on mars (probably some
rlm@146 438 non-vascular photosynthetic poikilohydric creature like a lichen)
rlm@146 439 by taking an extremophile from Antarctica and evolving it in
rlm@146 440 increasingly Martian conditions. This could be an easy start to a
rlm@146 441 terraforming process.
rlm@145 442
rlm@146 443 ** Problem with Aubrey de Grey's Ideas
rlm@146 444 Aubrey de Grey says that we might be able to live forever by
rlm@146 445 continually repairing our bodies at the cellular level -- he
rlm@146 446 details 7 different mechanisms of damage and says that if all of
rlm@146 447 them are dealt with /together/ that it would stop aging. (You can't
rlm@146 448 miss even one because they're all fatal.) However, it doesn't take
rlm@146 449 into account that we are also beings of information and that there
rlm@146 450 is a very real software component to our existence. Even if our
rlm@146 451 biological chassies can be maintained forever, I think it is
rlm@146 452 unlikely that our minds will operate well far outside of the design
rlm@146 453 constraints that we've evolved to handle. Say I programmed a
rlm@146 454 webserver with the express goal of it being able to serve webpages
rlm@146 455 for month on some stock server. I'll do fairly rigorous testing to
rlm@146 456 make sure that it can handle the expected load then then some. Now
rlm@146 457 say that you want to keep a particular instance of this webserver
rlm@146 458 running indefinitely. (The program instance is like your mind and
rlm@146 459 the computer it's running on is like your body). You might very
rlm@146 460 well be able to keep the physical computer infrastructure running
rlm@146 461 for forever by replacing hard drives / ram / CPUs, etc. However,
rlm@146 462 since I designed the webserver to work for a month, it probably has
rlm@146 463 memory leaks, rare stochastic bugs, or other built in limits /
rlm@146 464 constraints (think log files or some date rollover shenanigans)
rlm@146 465 that will ultimately kill the webserver even with eternally perfect
rlm@146 466 hardware. Do you really expect that a webserver engineered to work
rlm@146 467 for 1 month will run for 10 years without catastrophically
rlm@146 468 crashing? Not even Apache can do this! In fact, if I put in the
rlm@146 469 extreme effort to make it that robust, I've wasted time that I
rlm@146 470 could have spent on other projects by pursuing an unnecessary
rlm@146 471 engineering goal. Likewise, human minds have only ever run for at
rlm@146 472 most 122 years before they are destroyed due to hardware
rlm@146 473 degradation. Fixing the hardware doesn't change any software bugs
rlm@146 474 that are almost certainly present in the human mind. Think of all
rlm@146 475 the pathological things that can go wrong with a webserver,
rlm@146 476 multiply it by a million, and that likely how evolution has
rlm@146 477 designed our minds. For example, consider memory : why should you
rlm@146 478 expect that we have evolved the ability to coherently organize
rlm@146 479 memories past say 150 years? There's been absolutely no selective
rlm@146 480 pressure for this ability, so you can bet that if there's any
rlm@146 481 fitness to be gained from not having unlimited memory potential
rlm@146 482 (such as better metabolic efficiency), we have it! You might think
rlm@146 483 that maybe we would just forget things the same way that we sort of
rlm@146 484 forget things that happen earlier in our lives, but complicated
rlm@146 485 information processing systems don't have to fail gracefully when
rlm@146 486 they're pushed far past their design constraints. A 150 year old
rlm@146 487 person is just as likely to suffer a catastrophic psychosis due to
rlm@146 488 software limitations associated with memory as he is to do
rlm@146 489 something with all those memories we might consider
rlm@146 490 reasonable. More likely, in fact, since there are so very many ways
rlm@146 491 for a complicated software system to break and so few ways for it
rlm@146 492 to run successfully. Therefore, I think Aubrey de Grey's
rlm@146 493 "hardware-only" approach is missing a very important component of
rlm@146 494 longevity science, and any successful effort to make people live
rlm@146 495 orders of magnitude longer than they do naturally will need to deal
rlm@146 496 with people's software as well as their hardware.
rlm@145 497
rlm@146 498 ** Validating Neurocryopreservation
rlm@146 499 Problem : you want to test whether a brain is functionally
rlm@146 500 preserved through vitrification, but you don't want to figure out
rlm@146 501 how to preserve all the other organs in the animal. It might be
rlm@146 502 possible to keep the rest of the body at almost 0C and vitrify just
rlm@146 503 the head for only a few minutes. Induce hypothermia, then separate
rlm@146 504 out the head's blood supply from the rest of the body, then just
rlm@146 505 cryoptotect and vitrify the head. Might need some sort of thermal
rlm@146 506 guard to keep the outer head / neck from becoming too cold. You
rlm@146 507 leave the spinal cord intact! Then you devitrify to 0C, remove
rlm@146 508 cryoprotectant, and then reattach the blood supply. You can
rlm@146 509 determine brain preservation using behavioral assays!
rlm@145 510
rlm@146 511 ** Freezing Water Purifier
rlm@146 512 You slowly freeze water, but also run liquid water over the frozen
rlm@146 513 mass. This takes away basically all impurities and creates "washed
rlm@146 514 ice" then you melt the ice. Maybe you could re-use the heat from
rlm@146 515 creating the ice to melt the ice?
rlm@145 516
rlm@146 517 ** Ultra Strength
rlm@146 518 Allow a person to visualize their muscle recruitment patterns. Give
rlm@146 519 them adrenaline and let them feel what it's like to have the normal
rlm@146 520 limits removed. See if they can replicate the effects.
rlm@145 521
rlm@146 522 ** Phone Names
rlm@146 523 Make a PX record for domain names that's like the MX record, except
rlm@146 524 that it is a phone number instead of an IP address. That way, you
rlm@146 525 can use the domain name registration system to provide names for
rlm@146 526 phone numbers. Then, as long as you control the domain, you can
rlm@146 527 point people to your current phone number by updating that record.
rlm@145 528
rlm@146 529 ** Edible Flowers
rlm@146 530 Edible white flowers that you put in a colored solution with
rlm@146 531 flavor. When the flower turns the right color, it is also flavored
rlm@146 532 and ready to eat!
rlm@145 533
rlm@146 534 ** Lead Bone
rlm@146 535 Could you fill in all the empty spaces in a bone with lead? Might
rlm@146 536 be cool!
rlm@145 537
rlm@146 538 ** The Quest for Life
rlm@146 539 Many stories that have immortal characters have the "immortal who
rlm@146 540 wants to become mortal" trope. I want to story where the
rlm@146 541 protagonist loses their immortality and feels /angry/ and ashamed
rlm@146 542 about losing something that's so absolutely crucial to their
rlm@146 543 identity. A reverse of "death makes life worth living", they feel
rlm@146 544 that living forever is what makes life worth living. Now they've
rlm@146 545 "lost their sunrise" or their "connection to the timeless universe"
rlm@146 546 or something. So they go on a quest to get it back, learning about
rlm@146 547 themselves along the way, and regaining the precious thing they
rlm@146 548 lost in the beginning. Which, it they can actually gain their
rlm@146 549 immortality back, means that they never lost it in the first place!
rlm@145 550
rlm@146 551 ** World Map
rlm@146 552 Take a small table and paint the continents in toothpaste on the
rlm@146 553 table. Make a slightly raised barrier around the table. Slowly pour
rlm@146 554 water onto the table, and it will form the oceans!
rlm@145 555
rlm@146 556 ** Stage Magic Rituals
rlm@146 557 Rituals should incorporate elements of stage magic. For example in
rlm@146 558 Teller's rendition of Shakespeare's Tempest, they have a scene
rlm@146 559 where they levitate a crown in front of someone, then put it on his
rlm@146 560 head. They also have a wedding ceremony where they levitated the
rlm@146 561 bride as well. Actual weddings and other ceremonies should
rlm@146 562 incorporate stage magic as an enhancement to the gravitas!
rlm@145 563
rlm@146 564 ** Isotope Time Dilation
rlm@146 565 Use a cyclotron to speed up rare isotopes developed in nuclear
rlm@146 566 fusion experiments. The relativistic time dilation will stop the
rlm@146 567 isotopes from decaying, and allow time to study them. This is based
rlm@146 568 on radioactive isotopes that fall through the earth's atmosphere
rlm@146 569 that take hundreds of times longer to decay than normal.
rlm@145 570
rlm@146 571 ** Marsupial Stimulation
rlm@146 572 You take a freshly pouched marsupial baby, and show it videos and
rlm@146 573 other interactive things while it matures in the pouch. What mental
rlm@146 574 effects would this have?
rlm@145 575
rlm@146 576 ** The Dynamically Well-Tempered Clavier
rlm@146 577 Some older ways of tuning instruments sound better, but we use the
rlm@146 578 even-tempered scale today because it makes it easier to switch
rlm@146 579 keys. With electronic music, why not make key-annotations and
rlm@146 580 dynamically re-tune the piece to sound good in the current key?
rlm@146 581 Could be done as a midi+annotation -> midi compiler for initial
rlm@146 582 experimentation.
rlm@145 583
rlm@146 584 ** Death Always Implies Damage
rlm@146 585 is is possible for a corpse to differ from a living person only in
rlm@146 586 the fact that one is dead and the other is alive? NO! A corpse must
rlm@146 587 always have some sort of molecular damage which causes the loss of
rlm@146 588 function!
rlm@145 589
rlm@146 590 ** Inner Eye
rlm@146 591 Surgically install a bunch of tiny cameras inside a person. Then,
rlm@146 592 you can activate them all and get a picture of your internal organs
rlm@146 593 for diagnostic purposes.
rlm@145 594
rlm@146 595 ** Chaos Rails
rlm@146 596 The homoclinic tangle (which I call the "rails of chaos") is very
rlm@146 597 beautiful. We couldn't even visualize it before computers because
rlm@146 598 it's so complicated! Someone should make a visualization of
rlm@146 599 it. Here's my inital stab at it: [[../images/rails-of-chaos.png][The Rails of Chaos]]
rlm@145 600
rlm@146 601 ** Cryonics Middle Ages
rlm@146 602 Some people say that cryonics is an experiment and that it is
rlm@146 603 foolish to wait until we have revived a human. There is a middle
rlm@146 604 ground where the procedure has a dismal success rate on humans, say
rlm@146 605 1 in 20, so that you'd be a fool to try revival. Nonetheless, this
rlm@146 606 very risky procedure could be the legal proof of concept needed to
rlm@146 607 create a new class of life between "living" and "dead": "stasis".
rlm@145 608
rlm@146 609 ** Minds and Mirrors
rlm@146 610 Neat thought experiment -- if you take a mirror of someone by
rlm@146 611 actually reversing a person's chirality molecule by molecule, then
rlm@146 612 will the only be able to read mirror writing? The answer is yes, by
rlm@146 613 analogy to a purely mechanical scan-tron device. This is one of the
rlm@146 614 only interesting transforms I know that can take a human brain and
rlm@146 615 change it in subtle, non-destructive ways. It's also an argument
rlm@146 616 against dualism.
rlm@145 617
rlm@146 618 ** Biosphere in a Bottle
rlm@146 619 There are around 15 million species. 15 million stem cells will
rlm@146 620 fill only a tiny size, far less than a cubic inch. Preserve a
rlm@146 621 single cell from every species on earth in this small space, and
rlm@146 622 you will have a record of our current biosphere that can be
rlm@146 623 protected. "Hold the genetic data of all species in your hand!"
rlm@145 624
rlm@146 625 ** Chaos Lock
rlm@146 626 The "arrow of time" points in the direction of increasing
rlm@146 627 entropy. The time evolution of chaotic systems depend exquisitely
rlm@146 628 on their initial state. If you take a measurement of a chaotic
rlm@146 629 system at any given point of time, you can evolve that system
rlm@146 630 backwards or forwards based on your measurement. So let's say you
rlm@146 631 start the chaotic system in a VERY low entropy state, then let it
rlm@146 632 run for a while, then take a measurement with some
rlm@146 633 uncertainty. Your measurement is pretty good, but obviously not
rlm@146 634 PERFECT. If you evolve the chaotic system back in time, then you
rlm@146 635 will see that you don't really reach a state with low entropy an
rlm@146 636 hour before (the entropy is easy to measure with surrogates like
rlm@146 637 alignment, etc). So use this technique to SEARCH for a more
rlm@146 638 accurate measurement! This potentially can give you many more
rlm@146 639 orders of magnitude than you could get alone just using an
rlm@146 640 instrument. Sometimes it will give you bad results, the the odds of
rlm@146 641 it doing that are infinitesimal, and you can just measure a couple
rlm@146 642 of times.
rlm@145 643
rlm@146 644 ** Cryo Evolution
rlm@146 645 Perhaps there would be a way to rapidly evolve a symbiotic
rlm@146 646 bacterial organism that could protect human tissues from freezing
rlm@146 647 damage.
rlm@145 648
rlm@146 649 ** Suicide Parasite
rlm@146 650 Sometimes, people kill themselves for no good reason. We often
rlm@146 651 explain this with things like "hidden depression" or we say that
rlm@146 652 they had something like chronic jaw or back pain. I think that
rlm@146 653 smells of rationalization. I don't buy it. I propose that in many
rlm@146 654 suicide cases there is a disease that causes the suicidal
rlm@146 655 behavior. We already know that certain parasites have mind-bending
rlm@146 656 properties in other animals, even mammals like mice. It's not much
rlm@146 657 of a stretch to imagine a parasite that causes suicides in
rlm@146 658 humans. Some problems:
rlm@151 659
rlm@146 660 *What does the suicide parasite get out of it?* : This might be
rlm@146 661 answered by the whole thing being a glitch caused by cross-species
rlm@146 662 contamination. Toxoplasma works this way.
rlm@145 663
rlm@146 664 *What predictions does a disease model make* : suicide should be
rlm@146 665 more common among people who share a contagion vector. There should
rlm@146 666 be suicides that don't make any sense : people who weren't really
rlm@146 667 depressed, who had no reason to kill themselves. People who have
rlm@146 668 killed themselves should have a higher incidence of some unknown
rlm@146 669 parasite in their brains.
rlm@145 670
rlm@146 671 ** Domestic Insects
rlm@146 672 People should eat more bugs because they're much more efficient, so
rlm@146 673 why not do some major domestication research to make very appealing
rlm@146 674 bugs? Beetles, in particular, seem to be excellent targets for
rlm@146 675 domestication because they have extreme levels of genetic
rlm@146 676 malleability. Remember that lobster was once seen as an animal only
rlm@146 677 fit for prisoners to consume!
rlm@145 678
rlm@146 679 ** Birth-Clones
rlm@146 680 What if each person was intentionally split at birth into a normal
rlm@146 681 embryo and a few "backup" cells which are then frozen. The backup
rlm@146 682 cells are created just the same way as natural identical twins. The
rlm@146 683 backups can be used to regenerate organs. etc. Also, it would be a
rlm@146 684 good sci-fi concept, because you could have a culture where people
rlm@146 685 reward people who were especially awesome are "reborn" from their
rlm@146 686 backups. Imagine having a young Bach every generation, etc.
rlm@145 687
rlm@146 688 ** Pronunciation Guide
rlm@146 689 A simple webpage where you type in a word and it returns a simple,
rlm@146 690 English sentence describing exactly how to pronounce the word. For
rlm@146 691 people who don't want to learn IPA.
rlm@145 692
rlm@146 693 ** Learning to Teleport
rlm@146 694 This is a story about a person who is struggling with his/her
rlm@146 695 society's ideas about teleportation. It's considered a fundamental
rlm@146 696 part of being a member of that society (after all, the difference
rlm@146 697 between animals and humans is that humans are creatures of pure
rlm@146 698 information while animals are burdened with base matter, "that's
rlm@146 699 how you travel the stars, etc") Humans are born normally, grow up,
rlm@146 700 and then eventually transcend via destructive upload. Analogies to
rlm@146 701 jumping off a diving board into a pool (which I simply /could not
rlm@146 702 do/ for a long time), etc.
rlm@145 703
rlm@146 704 ** No-Float-Ice
rlm@146 705 Cup that has cross beams at the bottom where ice forms. Then when
rlm@146 706 you drink liquid from the glass, the ice stays at the bottom and
rlm@146 707 doesn't hit your lips. For bars and fancy things.
rlm@145 708
rlm@146 709 ** Bitcoins for Immigrants
rlm@146 710 A common case with Mexican immigrants (illegal or not) is that they
rlm@146 711 want to send money they've earned in the US back to their families
rlm@146 712 in Mexico. They currently do this through things like Money Gram or
rlm@146 713 Western Union, and they get fleeced in the process with
rlm@146 714 fees. Bitcoin could greatly reduce the cost of sending money from
rlm@146 715 America to Mexico, but I don't believe that it's currently used for
rlm@146 716 that among Mexican immigrants currently due to lack of knowledge. I
rlm@146 717 bet you could set up physical locations like those obnoxious
rlm@146 718 Western Union huts in places like Texas, Arizona, etc, and greatly
rlm@146 719 undercut them. Or, perhaps some educational seminars about bitcoin
rlm@146 720 might be in order. There's some money to be made there because
rlm@146 721 there is great demand, and it's a good thing to boot!
rlm@145 722
rlm@146 723 ** Reverse Eye-Tracking
rlm@146 724 A painting that is actually a digital screen with a camera. It
rlm@146 725 records people's eye tracks permanently. It's "artistic" because
rlm@146 726 paintings are normally these things that you look at without
rlm@146 727 changing, but this one is changed the second you look at it,
rlm@146 728 recording where /you/ looked forever for others to see. Make it be
rlm@146 729 a painting of a woman and see the trolling as the breasts and groin
rlm@146 730 area light up with interest from all the males passing by. Then
rlm@146 731 watch as the painting turns into a commentary on perception and
rlm@146 732 popularity -- a sort of eigenvector of perception! Will all
rlm@146 733 paintings turn into the same thing eventually?
rlm@145 734
rlm@146 735 ** Smart Toilets
rlm@146 736 Instead of using indirect measures like infrared detectors of the
rlm@146 737 presence of a person, use computer vision to directly measure
rlm@146 738 whether the toilet needs to be flushed. I think a lot of things
rlm@146 739 will end up going this way as we get better computer vision.
rlm@145 740
rlm@146 741 ** Validate Chemopreservation
rlm@146 742 Chemopreservation is difficult to validate because it destroys the
rlm@146 743 functionality of a brain, and brain simulation will take a long
rlm@146 744 time to mature as a technology. However, one very powerful way to
rlm@146 745 validate chemopreservation would be to have a person/animal learn
rlm@146 746 something with high complexity such as a number or the solution to
rlm@146 747 a maze, or a flashbulb memory. Then you preserve their brain
rlm@146 748 chemically, slice it up, and read /that specific memory/ from the
rlm@146 749 detailed brain scan. Much more difficult, but much more doable.
rlm@145 750
rlm@146 751 ** Candy Screw
rlm@146 752 Edible candy screw with candy nuts that you can screw as well.
rlm@145 753
rlm@146 754 ** Better Bibliography
rlm@146 755 When writing a thesis or paper, have the bibliography not just be
rlm@146 756 an opaque list of resources, but have it be a list of /summaries/
rlm@146 757 and /qualities/ that each paper has in the context of the paper
rlm@146 758 being written. When examining a bibliography, I want to know if
rlm@146 759 reading the papers in the bibliography are worth my time, and I
rlm@146 760 also am probably also interested in exactly the things that are
rlm@146 761 being discussed in the paper I'm reading. The bibliography is the
rlm@146 762 perfect place to provide information about the referenced papers
rlm@146 763 from the author's perspective. I will use this biographic form in
rlm@146 764 my own thesis!
rlm@145 765
rlm@146 766 ** Chess Visual
rlm@146 767 To show the vast size of the game trees considered by computers,
rlm@146 768 show two people playing chess in a void. They are floating in
rlm@146 769 space, and there is a simple chess board between them. Then, as
rlm@146 770 they play, the game tree's they are considering are drawn behind
rlm@146 771 him. The root of the tree starts centered in their heads or
rlm@146 772 whatever they use to think, and the tree grows out from behind,
rlm@146 773 never crossing the dividing plane between the two players. Each
rlm@146 774 player's tree is a different color. As they grow, there are
rlm@146 775 animations for pruning, etc. Eventually, they look like the
rlm@146 776 hemispheres of a brain, wings, etc. A human's tree might
rlm@146 777 occasionally have a long chain, while the computer tree would be
rlm@146 778 more uniform. You could compare deep blue and a modern laptop. Use
rlm@146 779 actual data when fighting two computers!
rlm@145 780
rlm@146 781 ** Tamper Proof Gold Bars
rlm@146 782 [[Http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/gold-plated-tungsten-alloy-bar.html][This site]] offers gold plated tungsten bars as "novelty" items. One
rlm@146 783 reason to prefer coins is because they are much harder to
rlm@146 784 counterfeit because there is less surface area to mass
rlm@146 785 ratio. However, gold bars are still a great design because they can
rlm@146 786 hold a lot of value in a small space. A gold bar could be given the
rlm@146 787 same protections (and more) that gold coins have to offer by
rlm@146 788 changing it into a "gold book", which would have hundreds of
rlm@146 789 "pages" of gold bound together. This could be implemented with
rlm@146 790 multiple steel rods going through the book which can be removed, or
rlm@146 791 some more classier mechanism for holding the pages. The point is
rlm@146 792 that the bar can be EASILY subdivided (and people would perform
rlm@146 793 this test before buying), thus guaranteeing it's authenticity.
rlm@145 794
rlm@146 795 ** High School Science
rlm@146 796 This is a lesson in scientific ethics. The goal is to calculate
rlm@146 797 /g/, the local gravitational acceleration. The students are told
rlm@146 798 that the textbook says it's /exactly/ 9.81 before they start the
rlm@146 799 experiment. See how they doctor their results to get closer to the
rlm@146 800 textbook value. It's neat because for any given school, /g/ is
rlm@146 801 probably *not* exactly equal to 9.81, because that is just an
rlm@146 802 average!
rlm@145 803
rlm@146 804 ** Opencourseware Subtitles
rlm@146 805 There are people who type up lectures at MIT while they are being
rlm@146 806 given, so that hearing impared students can follow along. These
rlm@146 807 recordings should be kept and given to OCW for subtitles. If the
rlm@146 808 timestamps of keys are recorded, then it is easy to make subtitles.
rlm@145 809
rlm@146 810 ** Screen Locking Timing
rlm@146 811 You use your computer camera to see if you are sitting in front of
rlm@146 812 the computer. If you are, then the screen will never lock. If you
rlm@146 813 are, then the screen will lock with a 30-40 second timeout. It's an
rlm@146 814 extension of using inactivity to initiate the countdown, just with
rlm@146 815 more information.
rlm@145 816
rlm@146 817 ** Mirror Toilet
rlm@146 818 A toilet with a square basin made of mirror instead of
rlm@146 819 porcelain. That way, you can see how good of a wipe job you have
rlm@146 820 done / watch how your excretion system works.
rlm@145 821
rlm@146 822 ** X-ray telepresence
rlm@146 823 given that a doctor is operating on a patient via telepresence, one
rlm@146 824 cool things you can do is shine X-rays into the patient to view the
rlm@146 825 insides during real time. (This doesn't expose either the doctor or
rlm@146 826 patient to chronically damaging amounts of X-rays) If the system
rlm@146 827 was coupled with a Bayesian model of the layout of the structure,
rlm@146 828 and the x-rays were only fired whenever the uncertainty of the
rlm@146 829 model reached a certain threshold, then the radiation damage and
rlm@146 830 surgery risk could be minimized.
rlm@145 831
rlm@146 832 ** Superfluid Vascular System
rlm@146 833 I wonder what would happen if you replaced the blood in a human
rlm@146 834 with a superfluid. What would the physical dynamics be? Would the
rlm@146 835 superfluid flow through the vasculature, or would it ignore it and
rlm@146 836 travel through the cells, or something else entirely. Since
rlm@146 837 superfluids need to be cold to retain their superfluidity, how
rlm@146 838 would the dynamics change during perfusion of a superfluid, where
rlm@146 839 the fluid gains and looses superfluidity as it goes deeper into the
rlm@146 840 body and is cooled by superfluid from upstream. In summary there
rlm@146 841 are two things to simulate 1.) replace all blood in human with
rlm@146 842 superfluid instantly. 2.) perfuse superfluid into human.
rlm@145 843
rlm@146 844 ** Projective Guessing
rlm@146 845 I think that we read and see things by making a really good guess
rlm@146 846 about what we're expecting to see, and then searching for our guess
rlm@146 847 in what we see. If it really doesn't match, then we start to make
rlm@146 848 more guesses / analyze the image from first principles, but most
rlm@146 849 stuff is projective guessing.
rlm@145 850
rlm@146 851 ** Intestinal Flora Maintenance
rlm@146 852 Why not inoculate babies at birth with "ideal" gut flora instead of
rlm@146 853 whatever bullshit they naturally get, thus giving them optimal
rlm@146 854 digestive/nutrient extraction capabilities. Might also be able to
rlm@146 855 make their farts not stink for life, too. MORE IMPORTANTLY, might
rlm@146 856 help to preventatively stop some forms of /colic/, which affects 1
rlm@146 857 in 5 babies and causes constant screaming and pain for about 5
rlm@146 858 weeks.
rlm@145 859
rlm@146 860 ** Server Culture -- Mirrors
rlm@146 861 Make a distributed system where people can mirror the websites of
rlm@146 862 people they like -- essentially cover the server costs of favored
rlm@146 863 websites. This could make popular websites run at no cost. The
rlm@146 864 system would require that the mirrored content be the same as the
rlm@146 865 official source. Sort of like bit-torrent for websites.
rlm@145 866
rlm@146 867 ** Map Programming
rlm@146 868 One problem with functional programming is that in order to remain
rlm@146 869 functional, you have to pass up arguments up into each calling
rlm@146 870 function to get the full range of behavior from the lower level
rlm@146 871 functions. Normally people come to a compromise involving
rlm@146 872 abstraction and sparing use of dynamic variables to configure
rlm@146 873 runtime behavior. What would be the advantages of making a
rlm@146 874 programming language where every function receives one argument, a
rlm@146 875 map, which contains all the symbol bindings it would ever need?
rlm@146 876 This map is passed on to all subordinate functions. This way, you
rlm@146 877 could replace functions on the fly, and arrange for there to be
rlm@146 878 sensible defaults, etc. Might cause more harm than good but is an
rlm@146 879 interesting idea.
rlm@145 880
rlm@146 881 ** Rest Nest
rlm@146 882 A small EEG device you would attach to your head when you go to
rlm@146 883 sleep at night. ML algorithms would determine your particular sleep
rlm@146 884 cycles. This would mostly be an alarm clock that you could give a
rlm@146 885 time range, say 7:00AM - 7:15AM, and it would wake you up during an
rlm@146 886 ideal time corresponding to then end of one of your 90 min sleep
rlm@146 887 cycles. You would feel much more rested upon waking up, and would
rlm@146 888 wake up faster. There might be some other uses for the EEG data as
rlm@146 889 well.
rlm@145 890
rlm@146 891 ** Image Compression
rlm@146 892 Use a library like gimp or opencv to process an image to make it
rlm@146 893 have less entropy, then store the reverse of those operations along
rlm@146 894 with the compressed simpler image as a super-compressed image file
rlm@146 895 (possibly accepting some losses). Trades file size for
rlm@146 896 decompression time, and allows one to cheat by using information in
rlm@146 897 gimp/opencv to compress the image.
rlm@145 898
rlm@146 899 ** Aldehyde-Stabalized Cryopreservation
rlm@146 900 Why not use a fixative to buy enough time to ramp up
rlm@146 901 cryoprotectants to an acceptable level at room temperature? Then,
rlm@146 902 the whole system can be rapidly cooled and vitrified. This method
rlm@146 903 "severs the biological link" in that the fixatives are highly
rlm@146 904 toxic, but current vitrification procedures do this anyway since
rlm@146 905 there can be a lot of freezing damage.
rlm@145 906
rlm@146 907 ** Dilated Security Camera
rlm@146 908 A security camera that would capture full video footage of
rlm@146 909 everything at 60fps but then decide to keep only every 1 frame
rlm@146 910 every 5 seconds unless there's something "interesting" happening.
rlm@145 911
rlm@146 912 ** Bitcoin Wallet
rlm@146 913 Part of "server culture", this would be something like
rlm@146 914 "coin.your-domain.com" which would serve as your personal trusted
rlm@146 915 access to your own bitcoins from anywhere.
rlm@145 916
rlm@146 917 ** Libpay
rlm@146 918 This would be a free library which would enable micro-donations to
rlm@146 919 software projects and other projects, so that you could donate a
rlm@146 920 penny to "emacs" and it would be automatically split up to every
rlm@146 921 person who has ever contributed to emacs in proportion to the
rlm@146 922 amount of community esteem, code quantity, bugs fixed, whatever the
rlm@146 923 community decides. This might make it possible for programmers to
rlm@146 924 live entirely off of free programming.
rlm@145 925
rlm@146 926 ** Pronouns
rlm@146 927 Use capital letters A-Z instead of pronouns. They solve pronoun
rlm@146 928 referents and gender neutrality, are short to say, and you can
rlm@146 929 encode useful information into the choice of letter. For example,
rlm@146 930 instead of "Meetings shall be presided over by the president,
rlm@146 931 unless she is absent." USE "Meetings shall be presided over by the
rlm@146 932 president, unless P is absent." We already use this a little, since
rlm@146 933 I and U are reserved for the subject and object respectively.
rlm@145 934
rlm@146 935 ** Phone DSP
rlm@146 936 Software app that inserts an audio DSP between the input to a phone
rlm@146 937 and the output. The DSP is delicious and configurable, and can
rlm@146 938 allow men to make their voices deeper, etc. The app would allow you
rlm@146 939 to hear your own voice as others hear it. Most people hate how
rlm@146 940 their own voice sounds. The app would also allow one to immediately
rlm@146 941 change the parameters of the DSP using good presets.
rlm@145 942
rlm@146 943 ** Restaurant Receipts
rlm@146 944 Use a carbon copy receipt instead of two stupid copies.
rlm@145 945
rlm@146 946 ** Crossdressing
rlm@146 947 Easiest way to disguise oneself as a woman is to wear a burka.
rlm@145 948
rlm@146 949 ** Book-Mode
rlm@146 950 Intelligent color highlighting for books and articles. It would
rlm@146 951 disambiguate pronouns and involved references. For example, if
rlm@146 952 "Rachael" was assigned the color red, and "the blonde haired girl"
rlm@146 953 refers to "Rachael", then "the blonde haired girl" would be colored
rlm@146 954 red. Also, you could disambiguate multi part run-on sentences by
rlm@146 955 highlighting each subcomponent. Maybe would also have applications
rlm@146 956 to scientific reading.
rlm@145 957
rlm@146 958 ** Handheld Light Rain Measurement
rlm@146 959 This would be a clear, teflon coated plastic disk with a camera
rlm@146 960 underneath the disk. You would be able to hold the device out and
rlm@146 961 it would measure the rate of accumulation of water droplets from
rlm@146 962 fine mists and light rain by using computer vision to measure the
rlm@146 963 diameters of the drops.
rlm@145 964
rlm@146 965 ** Big Brother Farming
rlm@146 966 This would be a vision system that would individually monitor each
rlm@146 967 plant and turn on water, etc to ensure maximum/uniform growth for
rlm@146 968 each plant.
rlm@145 969
rlm@146 970 ** Discrete Faucet
rlm@146 971 A faucet with discrete ticks instead of continuous.
rlm@145 972
rlm@146 973 ** Laser Circle
rlm@146 974 Take a glass microfiliment and shine a laser at one end at an
rlm@146 975 oblique angle. It will make a perfect, large circle on the wall,
rlm@146 976 converting a laser beam into a laser cone, preserving most of the
rlm@146 977 energy of the laser.
rlm@145 978
rlm@146 979 ** Invisible Glass
rlm@146 980 Take a container of liquid and embed a glass sculpture made out of
rlm@146 981 glass that has exactly the same index of refraction and color of
rlm@146 982 the liquid. Then the sculpture will be totally invisible in the
rlm@146 983 container, and will only be revealed when the liquid is
rlm@146 984 drained. The container might be a fancy wine/spirit bottle or an
rlm@146 985 hourglass.
rlm@145 986
rlm@146 987 ** Caterpillar people
rlm@146 988 A race of caterpillar like creatures gains intelligence after eons
rlm@146 989 of predation by birds, etc. These caterpillar creatures still
rlm@146 990 undergo metamorphosis into a large butterfly-like creature. The
rlm@146 991 metamorphosis process turns the caterpillar's brain into mush and
rlm@146 992 reforms it into a minimal, dumb, truly insect-like mind, completely
rlm@146 993 destroying the person the caterpillar was. The society develops all
rlm@146 994 sorts of customs and religious interpretations of the
rlm@146 995 metamorphosis. It is viewed as good and natural by some since it is
rlm@146 996 part of their life cycle and necessary to propagate the species, as
rlm@146 997 only the butterflies can mate. Some think that the butterflies are
rlm@146 998 still the same person because they have the same soul, even they no
rlm@146 999 longer posses the memories or personality of the original
rlm@146 1000 caterpillar. Some see the butterfly form as the "true form" of the
rlm@146 1001 species, since the butterflies can fly, mate, and are
rlm@146 1002 beautiful. Many make a big deal out of the fact that 1-2% of the
rlm@146 1003 caterpillar's mind is actually preserved in the butterfly. Some see
rlm@146 1004 it as a terrible tragedy and argue that the caterpillars should try
rlm@146 1005 to stop the metamorphosis by technology. Practically, some very
rlm@146 1006 important members of society undergo hormone therapy and/or surgery
rlm@146 1007 to prevent metamorphosis so that they can live longer as
rlm@146 1008 themselves.
rlm@145 1009
rlm@146 1010 This is a continuation of Marvin Minsky's ideas about pain being
rlm@146 1011 something that preserves our bodies while destroying our minds,
rlm@146 1012 something that is a remnant from our too harsh animal days that
rlm@146 1013 hasn't caught up to the fact that we have very complex brains
rlm@146 1014 now. It's a worst-case scenario about a maladaptive genetic
rlm@146 1015 legacy. Also, it's inspired by "There She Is!!!", which makes a
rlm@146 1016 compelling point about homosexuality by introducing a second gender
rlm@146 1017 characteristic (bunny/cat, male/female), which makes homophobia
rlm@146 1018 look very silly. Here, our own biological legacy of pain and death
rlm@146 1019 is made to look like the tragedy it is through the lens of the the
rlm@146 1020 caterpillar people.
rlm@145 1021
rlm@146 1022 ** Relationships as a Business
rlm@146 1023 [[http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Turnover-Crisis.aspx][Turnover-Crisis]] is an excellent talk about the "culture of
rlm@146 1024 quitting," which is about better business by letting people go
rlm@146 1025 instead of keeping them around past their "apex". Focuses on
rlm@146 1026 information transfer. Cool idea of an alumni network, which for
rlm@146 1027 relationships would be a group of satisfied ex-lovers, who would
rlm@146 1028 recommend new people your way, and who might consider coming to you
rlm@146 1029 again, refreshed from their time away with new
rlm@146 1030 stories/experiences. I should look for examples of this and how
rlm@146 1031 they worked out.
rlm@145 1032
rlm@146 1033 ** Psychic Crystal
rlm@146 1034 In a science fiction story, this would be an object that is very
rlm@146 1035 easy to move physically but is extremely difficult to move with
rlm@146 1036 telekinesis.
rlm@145 1037
rlm@146 1038 ** True Reflection
rlm@146 1039 There's a "true mirror" in the MIT student center -- it's two
rlm@146 1040 normal mirrors at right angles, like staring at a corner of a
rlm@146 1041 room. The light reflects so that it shows you what you actually
rlm@146 1042 look like, instead of your mirror image.
rlm@145 1043
rlm@146 1044 ** Remote Control Wasp
rlm@146 1045 Use computer to drive wings with remote power/logic.
rlm@145 1046
rlm@146 1047 ** Encrypted Email Phone Book
rlm@146 1048 Public (distributed?) database of email->private-key pairs, to
rlm@146 1049 enable automatic encryption.
rlm@146 1050
rlm@146 1051 ** Universal Eye Color
rlm@146 1052 Every equivalent creature will see each others' eyes as black --
rlm@146 1053 it's universal. Even if the creatures see in radio waves, and their
rlm@146 1054 eyes are 2m long pieces of jagged metal, when those creatures look
rlm@146 1055 at each other, they will see black, the absence of light and color
rlm@146 1056 (since it's being absorbed by the sensor array).
rlm@146 1057
rlm@146 1058 ** Intelligent Microwave
rlm@146 1059 It learns where the hot nodes of its fields are, and uses them to
rlm@146 1060 evenly heat any food item. It has an infrared camera or something
rlm@146 1061 to keep track of how hot the food is. That way, you don't get bowls
rlm@146 1062 where the edges are boiling, while the center is still
rlm@146 1063 frozen. Requires a little bit of intelligence/vision, since the
rlm@146 1064 exact pattern of heating totally depends on the exact shape of the
rlm@146 1065 food. Wouldn't need a carousel, and wouldn't need a timer, just a
rlm@146 1066 desired temperature. Could also detect ice, and automatically
rlm@146 1067 defrost the parts which are frozen. Might be able to work much
rlm@146 1068 faster since it can avoid overheating; might have problems with
rlm@146 1069 heating the insides of thick things, might need a weight sensor
rlm@146 1070 too.
rlm@145 1071
rlm@151 1072 *+* Would be much cleaner than other microwaves, since food would
rlm@151 1073 "sputter" and splash liquid much less.
rlm@145 1074
rlm@151 1075 *+* Throw in some SIFT+R processing to match previously cooked
rlm@151 1076 foods and learn the exact heating profiles for things that have
rlm@151 1077 been cooked before -- it can get faster the more it's used.
rlm@145 1078
rlm@146 1079 ** Flesh Pillow
rlm@146 1080 A pillow like the arm or torso of a human, complete with simulated
rlm@146 1081 temperature, bones, and heartbeat.
rlm@145 1082
rlm@146 1083 ** Light Filter
rlm@146 1084 Works like light-tweezers to mechanically separate fluids with
rlm@146 1085 different indexes of refraction.
rlm@145 1086
rlm@146 1087 ** Silver Socks
rlm@146 1088 Socks laced with silver for the antimicrobial properties.
rlm@145 1089
rlm@146 1090 ** Rod of Moses
rlm@146 1091 Device to distill urine through evaporation and easily dispose of
rlm@146 1092 urea crystals for use in desert -- produce drinkable water and live
rlm@146 1093 an extra few days!
rlm@145 1094
rlm@146 1095 ** Lottery Scraper
rlm@146 1096 Web scraper which monitors various lotteries, looking for "special"
rlm@146 1097 gimmick changes in the rules (like 4x winnings on Wednesdays) and
rlm@146 1098 computes expected value...
rlm@145 1099
rlm@146 1100 ** Memristiors Novel Design
rlm@146 1101 Make an evolutionary algorithm to make old stuff using all four
rlm@146 1102 basic circuit elements.
rlm@145 1103
rlm@146 1104 ** Conductive Concrete
rlm@146 1105 Concrete that has embedded metal fibers so that it can conduct
rlm@146 1106 electricity.
rlm@145 1107
rlm@146 1108 ** Little Bitty Melting Pot
rlm@146 1109 Might be useful for some types of manufacturing/3D printing -- how
rlm@146 1110 small can an induction melter be made, for example.
rlm@145 1111
rlm@146 1112 ** True Pure Tones
rlm@146 1113 Hear a true pure tone by direct stimulation of the nerves of the
rlm@146 1114 ear. Like when Adelson "saw green".
rlm@145 1115
rlm@146 1116 ** Mechanical analogue to the electrical op-amp
rlm@146 1117 would be an object with two levers -- you pull on one lever and the
rlm@146 1118 other moves the same way, no matter what's in the way or what it is
rlm@146 1119 driving. This analogy could be useful to teach op amps to people.
rlm@145 1120
rlm@146 1121 ** Light Capacitor
rlm@146 1122 Suspend some ball of material with a high index of refraction and
rlm@146 1123 shine light into it so it gets stuck -- would the light stay
rlm@146 1124 trapped forever? Could you build up unlimited quantities of light
rlm@146 1125 inside the sphere (which could then be released slowly by
rlm@146 1126 frustrated internal reflection?
rlm@145 1127
rlm@146 1128 ** Reading Comprehension
rlm@146 1129 use the screen capture routine to make a quiz program that
rlm@146 1130 constructs questions about the content you seemed to gloss over
rlm@146 1131 while reading. could be easy if the pdf came with embedded
rlm@146 1132 questions. Dylan: automatically generate word-cloud about the
rlm@146 1133 parts you found most interesting; help others who read the same
rlm@146 1134 stuff by drawing attention to the interesting parts.
rlm@145 1135
rlm@146 1136 ** Optimize an Article
rlm@146 1137 Capture reading of a scientific article via screen capture while
rlm@146 1138 people read it, then use it to make the article better. like the
rlm@146 1139 movie-pruning idea.
rlm@145 1140
rlm@146 1141 ** Movie Pruning
rlm@146 1142 Movies always are too long at first. One way to shorten them
rlm@146 1143 ``scientifically" is to record blink rate during the move and then
rlm@146 1144 remove / shorten the frames of the parts in which there are a lot
rlm@146 1145 of blinking (average this over multiple people) better yet, put it
rlm@146 1146 online and do it across thousands of people. I got this from
rlm@146 1147 youtube in which there is an episode of kill bill which is composed
rlm@146 1148 entirely of the parts in which people had their eyes
rlm@146 1149 closed. slogan: want to make a movie people can't take their eyes
rlm@146 1150 off of? Just take those parts out!
rlm@145 1151
rlm@146 1152 ** Explosive Thermite Epoxy Putty
rlm@146 1153 One part would contain the rust, one part the aluminum.
rlm@145 1154
rlm@146 1155 ** Concrete Epoxy
rlm@146 1156 Epoxy with sand/ some other solid material.
rlm@145 1157
rlm@146 1158 ** Hard Sword
rlm@146 1159 Make a samurai sword, but use osmiridum instead of martensite for
rlm@146 1160 the cutting part; it should be a better sword.
rlm@145 1161
rlm@146 1162 ** Close Range Wireless
rlm@146 1163 use the induction technology used to recharge electric toothbrushes
rlm@146 1164 with no metal links to send data without any metal at all!
rlm@145 1165
rlm@146 1166 ** Perfect Pitch
rlm@146 1167 Learn perfect pitch using another sense in combination (sight or
rlm@146 1168 touch).
rlm@145 1169
rlm@146 1170 ** Bio Metallic Structure
rlm@146 1171 Metal grids with seeds inside, which grow together and form a
rlm@146 1172 durable biological matrix. The metal substrate delivers
rlm@146 1173 water. (maybe use plastic instead of metal?) Dylan: enrich plants
rlm@146 1174 with inorganic compounds; electrical interfaces in cellular plant
rlm@146 1175 matter => remote-controlled photosynthetic/bioluminescent
rlm@146 1176 structures.
rlm@145 1177
rlm@146 1178 ** Conducting Extracellular Matrix
rlm@146 1179 To allow better control of organic systems and an enhanced nervous
rlm@146 1180 system.
rlm@145 1181
rlm@146 1182 ** Cross-Modal Memory Hashing
rlm@146 1183 A way to retrieve memories more robustly.
rlm@145 1184
rlm@146 1185 ** Greener than Green
rlm@146 1186 If you stare at a red light, then you get a green after-image. If
rlm@146 1187 you immediately look at something green while still seeing the
rlm@146 1188 green after-image, you will experience a Green like none you've
rlm@146 1189 ever seen before -- color so intense it's beyond the range of
rlm@146 1190 anything that exists in the world.
rlm@145 1191
rlm@146 1192 ** Wooden Refrigerator
rlm@146 1193 To give food a better taste Dylan: like barrels for wine, or planks
rlm@146 1194 for salmon. Maybe just have "flavor planks" for your pre-existing
rlm@146 1195 fridge. Need to mitigate effect of temperature on volatility?
rlm@145 1196
rlm@146 1197 ** Radioactive Transmutation Molecule by Molecule
rlm@146 1198 Create precious metals or something else economically
rlm@146 1199 advantageous. Best transmutation I can come up with is mercury into
rlm@146 1200 gold, but it's not economically viable.
rlm@145 1201
rlm@146 1202 ** Preservation Via Crowding
rlm@146 1203 Inoculate food with tons of harmless bacteria so that there's no
rlm@146 1204 room for bad bacteria as a method of preservation
rlm@145 1205
rlm@146 1206 ** Old-School Preservation
rlm@146 1207 Pasteur - style holding jar with siphon as a way to store
rlm@146 1208 sterilized liquids at room temperature indefinitely w/o
rlm@146 1209 refrigeration.
rlm@145 1210
rlm@146 1211 ** Restaurant Policy
rlm@146 1212 Throw rude people out of restaurant as a matter of course -- make
rlm@146 1213 ambiance much better.
rlm@145 1214
rlm@146 1215 ** Clean Windows
rlm@146 1216 Make something that mixes soap with fire hydrant water (and reduces
rlm@146 1217 the pressure a bit) and use it to clean windows of buildings.
rlm@145 1218
rlm@146 1219 ** Ocarina
rlm@146 1220 Make an ocarina out of pure silver. Might have really good acoustic
rlm@146 1221 properties.
rlm@145 1222
rlm@146 1223 ** Fire Pen
rlm@146 1224 Pen which burns words on to the page, thus never needing any
rlm@146 1225 ink. Is there a way to make it runnable from body heat?
rlm@145 1226
rlm@146 1227 ** Website to Design Your Own Soda
rlm@146 1228 and label, and have it mailed to you / sell it from your own online
rlm@146 1229 store.
rlm@145 1230
rlm@146 1231 ** Ocean Power
rlm@146 1232 Solar panels that float on the ocean.
rlm@145 1233
rlm@146 1234 ** Handcuffs with More Than Two Cuffs (3?)
rlm@146 1235 Great for daisy chaining people, binding them to environment, etc.
rlm@145 1236
rlm@146 1237 ** Vector Based SOUND Files
rlm@146 1238 Like the pictures but with SOUND. codify sound in a language with
rlm@146 1239 enough symbols so that it can describe everything and encode it in
rlm@146 1240 that. would be like going from speech to text or smtg. Could also
rlm@146 1241 store sound as an image of the wavefront encoded as a vector image.
rlm@145 1242
rlm@146 1243 ** Genetically Engineered Glowing Fruit
rlm@146 1244 They have some animals that can glow, but glowing fruit that you
rlm@146 1245 eat would be AWESOME!
rlm@145 1246
rlm@146 1247 ** The Body as a Key to Memory
rlm@146 1248 IF memories are encoded using particular sensory impressions, what
rlm@146 1249 happens if the sensory organ itself changes? those memories would
rlm@146 1250 become inaccessible. maybe this is why we can't remember much from
rlm@146 1251 our childhoods. also, could this happen throughout life as well?
rlm@146 1252 Could S remember stuff from his childhood?
rlm@145 1253
rlm@146 1254 ** Lighter Flint on Spring
rlm@146 1255 Make hot, throw it at something, and it makes sparkles!
rlm@145 1256
rlm@146 1257 ** Rare Bubbles
rlm@146 1258 Engineer a material which has both ductility and high surface
rlm@146 1259 tension to make the "third" minimal-surface-energy solution to a
rlm@146 1260 bubble suspended between two equal-diameter rings. (Solutions are
rlm@146 1261 cylindrical catenary curve, two separated half-bubbles, and a
rlm@146 1262 double-cone)
rlm@146 1263
rlm@146 1264 ** Magic Textbook
rlm@146 1265 whose content can be varied continuously alter level of difficulty,
rlm@146 1266 rigor, diction, emphasize crossover with certain other discipline,
rlm@146 1267 etc. Content generated dynamically from knowledge base, along with
rlm@146 1268 questions that are moreover altered to guide knowledge
rlm@146 1269 acquisition. Motivation: One book of knowledge. /One./
rlm@145 1270
rlm@145 1271
rlm@145 1272 #+BEGIN_HTML
rlm@145 1273 <p class="end"> Still want more? Visit the <a href="./ideas.html">Raw
rlm@145 1274 Ideas</a> page, but prepare for extreme half-bakedness. </p>
rlm@145 1275 #+END_HTML