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finally creating a good-ideas page.
author Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date Sun, 12 Apr 2015 17:31:34 -0700
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children e9c46842080b
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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@145 40 <hr/>
rlm@145 41 #+END_HTML
rlm@145 42
rlm@145 43 ** The Ocean becomes a Drop
rlm@145 44 Upload faces challenges to grow into they type of person that can
rlm@145 45 join the greater society -- a god. They have to go though quests
rlm@145 46 that replicate all the things that humanity had to accomplish, like
rlm@145 47 going to the moon, by themselves.
rlm@145 48
rlm@145 49 ** Butterfly Drone
rlm@145 50 If big butterflies used to exist, then maybe we could make
rlm@145 51 butterfly-inspired drones!
rlm@145 52
rlm@145 53 ** Methylation Sex-Symmetry Breaking
rlm@145 54 Human sex cells have methylation patterns that encode male/female
rlm@145 55 origin. If you combine two male patterns, the fetus grows "too
rlm@145 56 fast" and dies. Two female patterns causes the fetus to enter a
rlm@145 57 "vegatable" state and fail to develop. Evolutionary biologists say
rlm@145 58 that this reflects the asymmetry of energy investement for creating
rlm@145 59 offspring. If that's true, then species that cast-spawn will lack
rlm@145 60 this asymmetry, and give clues about how to remove it in humans. If
rlm@145 61 even cast spawners like sea urchins have it, then that means
rlm@145 62 there's something deeper going on!
rlm@145 63
rlm@145 64 ** Homosexual Reproduction
rlm@145 65 You take genetic material from two males and put it into an egg
rlm@145 66 cell that has had all genetic material removed. Or, you take the
rlm@145 67 genetic material from one egg and put it in another egg. This would
rlm@145 68 allow homosexual couples to genetically reproduce. One technical
rlm@145 69 challenge blocking this technique is that human gametes have
rlm@145 70 methylation patterns that encode male/female origin, and only a
rlm@145 71 male+female pattern gives rise to viable offspring. You could
rlm@145 72 "recondition" male / female gametes to give them the opposite
rlm@145 73 pattern, perhaps by incubating them in the appropriate
rlm@145 74 environment. You also could try taking stem cells and making them
rlm@145 75 form the appropriate structures in vitro.
rlm@145 76
rlm@145 77 ** Poly-Vitrification
rlm@145 78 Large molecules such as PVP are able to vitrify at around -20C, and
rlm@145 79 at farily small concentrations. IF they could be introduced into
rlm@145 80 cells, they would be quite useful as vitrification agents. However,
rlm@145 81 it's difficult to get them in because they are so big. So instead,
rlm@145 82 use smaller agents which combine together into polymers at low
rlm@145 83 temperature. In particular, Fructose, trehalose, and glycerol seem
rlm@145 84 to have the desired properties (though you need to make versions of
rlm@145 85 fructose and trehalose that can penetrate).
rlm@145 86
rlm@145 87 ** Whole Brain Perfusion Embedding
rlm@145 88 Do the standard EM embedding protocol, but skip the osmium step,
rlm@145 89 and use the "perfusion pausing" method to prevent overextraction
rlm@145 90 during the dehydration and embedding steps. I think that you can
rlm@145 91 perfuse resins into the brain, simply because you can perfuse
rlm@145 92 viscous rubber when doing vascular casts.
rlm@145 93
rlm@145 94 ** Very Slow Physiological Pressure Perfusion
rlm@145 95 Less extreme example of the "perfusion pausing" trick -- just keep
rlm@145 96 the perfusion running and don't put the perfusion target into the
rlm@145 97 liquid as deep.
rlm@145 98
rlm@145 99 ** Perfusion Pausing
rlm@145 100 One problem with doing perfusion of heads / organs where the veins
rlm@145 101 freely leak fluid is that if you STOP the perfusion, you rapidly
rlm@145 102 loose pressure in the organ as your perfusate leaks out. You can
rlm@145 103 prevent this by submerging the organ/head/rat whatever in fluid at
rlm@145 104 an appropriate deepness. You would have to slowly decrease the flow
rlm@145 105 rate while simultaneously lowering the perfusing object into the
rlm@145 106 fluid. To start again, reverse the process -- reengage the
rlm@145 107 peristaltic pump slowly while removing the organ from the fluid.
rlm@145 108
rlm@145 109 ** Textbook Mimiricy Evolution
rlm@145 110 As surgery becomes more common, there develops a distinct selective
rlm@145 111 pressure for individuals' organ layouts to look more like the
rlm@145 112 medical textbooks!
rlm@145 113
rlm@145 114 ** Transparent Skin
rlm@145 115 Temporary / permament transparent skin. Allows for examination of
rlm@145 116 organs / muscles and visual prevention of disease and detection or
rlm@145 117 abnormalities / good things eg. excercise optimization.
rlm@145 118
rlm@145 119 ** Sweet Information
rlm@145 120 Candy with a whole book written in it. Eat a book!
rlm@145 121
rlm@145 122 ** Targeted Immunosuppressant
rlm@145 123 Just kill off the B-cells and friends that would cause problems in
rlm@145 124 a organ-transplant / other situation. AIDS is good at killing these
rlm@145 125 cells -- maybe make it can be modified to just target the ones that
rlm@145 126 will cause problems. Then you can premptively kill off that part of
rlm@145 127 someone's immune system before a transplant. ALSO, you can kill off
rlm@145 128 everyone's defenses against other blood types and make people
rlm@145 129 effectively type AB+ w.r.t blood transfusions. Actually, why not
rlm@145 130 give babies this treatment so that they're automatically compatable
rlm@145 131 with all blood types? It would be like a blood transfusion
rlm@145 132 vaccine. The immune system does this already when it's first
rlm@145 133 growing; maybe it can be "retrained" to accept new things, or the
rlm@145 134 mechanism of immune cell death be co-opted for these purposes.
rlm@145 135
rlm@145 136 ** Fuck-you Tetris
rlm@145 137 Tetris that actively gives you the worst possible piece.
rlm@145 138
rlm@145 139 ** Pockets
rlm@145 140 More things should have them! Chairs, tables, cups, hats,
rlm@145 141 trashcans, basically anything is better with a pocket.
rlm@145 142
rlm@145 143 ** Colored Shower Head
rlm@145 144 A shower head add-on that measures the temp of the water and
rlm@145 145 changes the color of the water streams w/ an LED to show you the
rlm@145 146 temperature. That way you can align to the color you want and see
rlm@145 147 the temperature without feeling it.
rlm@145 148
rlm@145 149 ** Giant Dragonflies
rlm@145 150 We could rapidly MAKE giant dragonflies by evolving modern
rlm@145 151 dragonflies in an very oxygen rich environment!
rlm@145 152
rlm@145 153 ** Whirlpool of Light
rlm@145 154 Shine a laser out into space. But the planet is spinning! What you
rlm@145 155 get is a spiral of light! And as this signal expands, does it
rlm@145 156 eventually reveal it's quantized nature?
rlm@145 157
rlm@145 158 ** Perfusion Cooking
rlm@145 159 You do cardiac bypass on an animal like a pig, then pump in tasty,
rlm@145 160 tasty perfusate (like marinade) into the animal's
rlm@145 161 vasculature. Then, you switch out to saline and increase the
rlm@145 162 temperature of the saline to rapidly and uniformly cook the
rlm@145 163 animal. It could be the tastiest meat ever!
rlm@145 164
rlm@145 165 ** Timestamp Verification
rlm@145 166 You sign your message, and it has a timestamp at the top, with a +-
rlm@145 167 percision number. Then you send it over to the public timestamp
rlm@145 168 server, which only signs the message if it gets the message within
rlm@145 169 the timestamp window. Or the computer just signs the message but
rlm@145 170 puts a timestamp at the beginning. So if everyone trusts the
rlm@145 171 timestamp server, you can get reliable timestamps, and prove
rlm@145 172 priority on ideas, etc.
rlm@145 173
rlm@145 174 ** The Great Computing Slow-Down
rlm@145 175 In general, our computers are getting faster and faster according
rlm@145 176 to Moore's law. However, eventually our brains will be made of the
rlm@145 177 same stuff our computers are made of! This has very interesting
rlm@145 178 consequences -- I can add 2+2 and get four in about a second. Since
rlm@145 179 my neurons actually work at around 10-60 hertz in parallel, this
rlm@145 180 means that it takes me around 10-30 operations to do this
rlm@145 181 addition. That's actually not bad in terms of computing time. If my
rlm@145 182 neurons were as fast as the latest transitors, then most
rlm@145 183 calculators (made with earlier transistors) would be SLOWER than me
rlm@145 184 at adding numbers. Only the newest, most optimized calculators
rlm@145 185 would be faster, and then only about 10 times faster! This means
rlm@145 186 that once we begin to think at the speed of our technology, that
rlm@145 187 technology will suddenly seem pitifully slow in comparison to how
rlm@145 188 it seems now. And no amount of technical progress will remedy it,
rlm@145 189 because that same progress will also make us all think
rlm@145 190 faster. We'll either have to settle with living in "slow time" to
rlm@145 191 do some computations, or learn to make smarter hardware with
rlm@145 192 special optimizations. But this is actually really hard, because
rlm@145 193 we'll be working with machines that will appear to us about as fast
rlm@145 194 as MECHANICAL computers. So, in the future, all the cool parties
rlm@145 195 will be in cyperspace at vastly accelerated speeds compared to how
rlm@145 196 we exist now. But at these parties, the computers will SUCK! Of
rlm@145 197 course, this is one of the few things that can save us from AI
rlm@145 198 risk, because those AI's won't seem so scary when the're build out
rlm@145 199 of rickety old mechanical parts form our perspective.
rlm@145 200
rlm@145 201 ** Unitary Reverse Evolution of Chaos+Minds
rlm@145 202 Chaotic systems diverge exponentially in state space. Do you get
rlm@145 203 anything interesting when part of the physical system associated
rlm@145 204 with the chaotic system is a object that performs some sort of
rlm@145 205 computation? Is it possible for the computational system to play a
rlm@145 206 percision-enabling role in determining the final/initial conditions
rlm@145 207 of the chaotic system, just by tracing out thoughts in its decision
rlm@145 208 paths? This is probably too vague of an idea right now, I just
rlm@145 209 wanted to write it down.
rlm@145 210
rlm@145 211 ** Microwave-Time
rlm@145 212 The cooking time you enter on most microwaves is insane. It's
rlm@145 213 expressed in what I call a "hybrid base", a combination of base 10
rlm@145 214 and base 60. You can get absurd things like 100 < 61, and 120 ==
rlm@145 215 80! I wonder if these hybrid base systems could be very useful for
rlm@145 216 some purposes!
rlm@145 217
rlm@145 218 ** Three Eyes
rlm@145 219 If you had three eyes, would you still draw cubes like we currently
rlm@145 220 draw them? Or would all 2D-representations of 3D space always look
rlm@145 221 hopelessly fake?
rlm@145 222
rlm@145 223 ** Digital Taste/Smell Assay
rlm@145 224 Get a grid of bacteria, each expressing a human taste/smell
rlm@145 225 receptor linked to some sort of fluorscent activity or ion
rlm@145 226 pump. Use a camera / electrical grid to transduce the smell / taste
rlm@145 227 signal into bits! Inspired by gel-sight from MIT.
rlm@145 228
rlm@145 229 ** Childrens' Tool Shop
rlm@145 230 I think that kids should be provided with tool shops -- these would
rlm@145 231 be nice sheds with a good collection of tools to do various things
rlm@145 232 -- circuit components and soldering irons, wires, a small lathe,
rlm@145 233 drill press, belt sander, a centrifuge, microscope, and telescope,
rlm@145 234 etc. The idea is that the kid can now think, "I could use X to do
rlm@145 235 this thing that I'm thinking about" -- the building becomes an
rlm@145 236 extension of the kid's body & mind.
rlm@145 237
rlm@145 238 ** Fluid Display
rlm@145 239 Like the previous idea about matching refractances between glass
rlm@145 240 and liquid, except you make a lot of switchable glass tubes in
rlm@145 241 various patterns in the glass, and actively pump colored liquid
rlm@145 242 through the tubes (the tubes have glass-like fluid in them by
rlm@145 243 default.) The result is that you can cause the tubes to appear and
rlm@145 244 dissappear, and vary their colors as well!
rlm@145 245
rlm@145 246 ** Immunoincompatibility
rlm@145 247 Take the human genome, and refactor it so that it doesn't use a
rlm@145 248 particular codon at all. Then remove the support from our ribosomes
rlm@145 249 for that codon. What does this do for us? It makes us immune to
rlm@145 250 almost all viruses! There is at least one bacteria that already
rlm@145 251 does this to great effect.
rlm@145 252
rlm@145 253 ** Life Cycle
rlm@145 254 It's called a cycle, right? So, the thing that repeats itself over
rlm@145 255 and over, right? Not much of a cycle if you don't come back after
rlm@145 256 you die, if you ask me!
rlm@145 257
rlm@145 258 ** Car with no Blind Spots
rlm@145 259 Use some cameras in the back of the car to augment the rear-view
rlm@145 260 mirror so that you never have to turn around in order to lane
rlm@145 261 change.
rlm@145 262
rlm@145 263 ** Metabolic Windows and Freezing
rlm@145 264 You freeze a set of cells using some cryo protocol and 60%
rlm@145 265 survive. How can this be explained? It seems to me that if the
rlm@145 266 cells are the same, and the conditions homogoneous, then all the
rlm@145 267 cells should either die or live. However, suppose that there is a
rlm@145 268 metabolic cycle that needs to be in a certain phase for the cell to
rlm@145 269 survive. If the cells are asynchronous, then you might end up with
rlm@145 270 some cells dying because there were in the wrong part of their
rlm@145 271 cycle. This implies that you might be able to cryoprotect cells by
rlm@145 272 causing them to enter a certain metabolic mode before freezing.
rlm@145 273
rlm@145 274 ** Cryonics Color Appeal
rlm@145 275 Perfusate used by cryonics companies could have red food coloring
rlm@145 276 in it. It's just a nice touch so that the cryonics patient looks
rlm@145 277 more life-like than with clear CPAs, and hopefully might get
rlm@145 278 treated with more respect.
rlm@145 279
rlm@145 280 ** Paramagnetic CPA
rlm@145 281 you take a CPA that can be influenced by magnetic fields so that
rlm@145 282 its degrees of freedom are limited. Then, you release the field,
rlm@145 283 instantaly increasing the size of the state space of the system and
rlm@145 284 dramatically decreasing the temperature enough to plunge the system
rlm@145 285 past homogenous nucleation temperature and directly to the glass
rlm@145 286 transition temperature, creating a doubly unstable glass at much
rlm@145 287 lower CPA concentrations than possible at conventional CPA
rlm@145 288 concentrations. A major technical limitation facing this technique
rlm@145 289 is that it's a very minor effect -- you can only get about 0.1C
rlm@145 290 with most systems that have been studied so far.
rlm@145 291
rlm@145 292 - room temp noodles :: how does the physics of cooking noodles work?
rlm@145 293 Could you use a vacuum instead of heat to force water into the
rlm@145 294 noodle?
rlm@145 295
rlm@145 296 - personal carbon offset :: feel bad about contribuiting to global
rlm@145 297 warming by using electricity / driving a car? Forget trying to
rlm@145 298 "conserve" or "minimize your carbon footprint". Follow the
rlm@145 299 Platinum rule -- make the world BETTER off than you found it!
rlm@145 300 This would be a small, self contained system that sucks C02 out
rlm@145 301 of the air. It uses electricity, but it's so efficient at
rlm@145 302 removing CO2 that it more than offsets the CO2 produced by even a
rlm@145 303 coal plant to produce that electricity. This way, you can still
rlm@145 304 drive even a gas guzzler, but have a net negative carbon
rlm@145 305 footprint! Maybe something cool could be done with the carbon as
rlm@145 306 well. Use as much electricity as you want, but negate the damage
rlm@145 307 to the enviroment with more technology.
rlm@145 308
rlm@145 309 - undoing spermogenesis :: with enough sperm, you can derive the
rlm@145 310 donor's entire genome. You gain more confidence in the alleles
rlm@145 311 for a particular gene the more sperm you have. Each additional
rlm@145 312 sperm gives you the same sort of information you'd get flipping a
rlm@145 313 coin and trying to decide whether the coin is H/T of H/H. Is
rlm@145 314 there enough sperm in the the average load for you to be as
rlm@145 315 confident as mitosis?
rlm@145 316
rlm@145 317 - mars life :: we could engineer life that could survive on mars
rlm@145 318 (probably some non-vascular photosynthetic poikilohydric creature
rlm@145 319 like a lichen) by taking an extremophile from Antarctica and
rlm@145 320 evolving it in increasingly Martian conditions. This could be an
rlm@145 321 easy start to a terraforming process.
rlm@145 322
rlm@145 323 - problem with Aubrey de Grey's ideas :: Aubrey de Grey says that we
rlm@145 324 might be able to live forever by continually repairing our bodies
rlm@145 325 at the cellular level -- he details 7 different mechanisms of
rlm@145 326 damage and says that if all of them are dealt with /together/
rlm@145 327 that it would stop aging. (You can't miss even one because
rlm@145 328 they're all fatal.) However, it doesn't take into account that
rlm@145 329 we are also beings of information and that there is a very real
rlm@145 330 software component to our existence. Even if our biological
rlm@145 331 chassies can be maintained forever, I think it is unlikely that
rlm@145 332 our minds will operate well far outside of the design constraints
rlm@145 333 that we've evolved to handle. Say I programmed a webserver with
rlm@145 334 the express goal of it being able to serve webpages for month on
rlm@145 335 some stock server. I'll do fairly rigorous testing to make sure
rlm@145 336 that it can handle the expected load then then some. Now say that
rlm@145 337 you want to keep a particular instance of this webserver running
rlm@145 338 indefinitely. (The program instance is like your mind and the
rlm@145 339 computer it's running on is like your body). You might very well
rlm@145 340 be able to keep the physical computer infrastructure running for
rlm@145 341 forever by replacing hard drives / ram / CPUs, etc. However,
rlm@145 342 since I designed the webserver to work for a month, it probably
rlm@145 343 has memory leaks, rare stochastic bugs, or other built in limits
rlm@145 344 / constraints (think log files or some date rollover shenanigans)
rlm@145 345 that will ultimately kill the webserver even with eternally
rlm@145 346 perfect hardware. Do you really expect that a webserver
rlm@145 347 engineered to work for 1 month will run for 10 years without
rlm@145 348 catastrophically crashing? Not even Apache can do this! In fact,
rlm@145 349 if I put in the extreme effort to make it that robust, I've
rlm@145 350 wasted time that I could have spent on other projects by pursuing
rlm@145 351 an unnecessary engineering goal. Likewise, human minds have only
rlm@145 352 ever run for at most 122 years before they are destroyed due to
rlm@145 353 hardware degradation. Fixing the hardware doesn't change any
rlm@145 354 software bugs that are almost certainly present in the human
rlm@145 355 mind. Think of all the pathological things that can go wrong with
rlm@145 356 a webserver, multiply it by a million, and that likely how
rlm@145 357 evolution has designed our minds. For example, consider memory :
rlm@145 358 why should you expect that we have evolved the ability to
rlm@145 359 coherently organize memories past say 150 years? There's been
rlm@145 360 absolutely no selective pressure for this ability, so you can bet
rlm@145 361 that if there's any fitness to be gained from not having
rlm@145 362 unlimited memory potential (such as better metabolic efficiency),
rlm@145 363 we have it! You might think that maybe we would just forget
rlm@145 364 things the same way that we sort of forget things that happen
rlm@145 365 earlier in our lives, but complicated information processing
rlm@145 366 systems don't have to fail gracefully when they're pushed far
rlm@145 367 past their design constraints. A 150 year old person is just as
rlm@145 368 likely to suffer a catastrophic psychosis due to software
rlm@145 369 limitations associated with memory as he is to do something with
rlm@145 370 all those memories we might consider reasonable. More likely, in
rlm@145 371 fact, since there are so very many ways for a complicated
rlm@145 372 software system to break and so few ways for it to run
rlm@145 373 successfully. Therefore, I think Aubrey de Grey's "hardware-only"
rlm@145 374 approach is missing a very important component of longevity
rlm@145 375 science, and any successful effort to make people live orders of
rlm@145 376 magnitude longer than they do naturally will need to deal with
rlm@145 377 people's software as well as their hardware.
rlm@145 378
rlm@145 379 - validating neurocryopreservation :: Problem : you want to test
rlm@145 380 whether a brain is functionally preserved through vitrification,
rlm@145 381 but you don't want to figure out how to preserve all the other
rlm@145 382 organs in the animal. It might be possible to keep the rest of
rlm@145 383 the body at almost 0C and vitrify just the head for only a few
rlm@145 384 minutes. Induce hypothermia, then separate out the head's blood
rlm@145 385 supply from the rest of the body, then just cryoptotect and
rlm@145 386 vitrify the head. Might need some sort of thermal guard to keep
rlm@145 387 the outer head / neck from becoming too cold. You leave the
rlm@145 388 spinal cord intact! Then you devitrify to 0C, remove
rlm@145 389 cryoprotectant, and then reattach the blood supply. You can
rlm@145 390 determine brain preservation using behavioral assays!
rlm@145 391
rlm@145 392 - freezing water purifier :: you slowly freeze water, but also run
rlm@145 393 liquid water over the frozen mass. This takes away basically all
rlm@145 394 impurities and creates "washed ice" then you melt the ice. Maybe
rlm@145 395 you could re-use the heat from creating the ice to melt the ice?
rlm@145 396
rlm@145 397 - ultra strength :: allow a person to visualize their muscle
rlm@145 398 recruitment patterns. Give them adrenaline and let them feel what
rlm@145 399 it's like to have the normal limits removed. See if they can
rlm@145 400 replicate the effects.
rlm@145 401
rlm@145 402 - phone names :: make a PX record for domain names that's like the MX
rlm@145 403 record, except that it is a phone number instead of an IP
rlm@145 404 address. That way, you can use the domain name registration
rlm@145 405 system to provide names for phone numbers. Then, as long as you
rlm@145 406 control the domain, you can point people to your current phone
rlm@145 407 number by updating that record.
rlm@145 408
rlm@145 409 - edible flowers :: Edible white flowers that you put in a colored
rlm@145 410 solution with flavor. When the flower turns the right color, it
rlm@145 411 is also flavored and ready to eat!
rlm@145 412
rlm@145 413 - lead bone :: Could you fill in all the empty spaces in a bone with
rlm@145 414 lead? Might be cool!
rlm@145 415
rlm@145 416 - the quest for life :: Many stories that have immortal characters
rlm@145 417 have the "immortal who wants to become mortal" trope. I want to
rlm@145 418 story where the protagonist loses their immortality and feels
rlm@145 419 /angry/ and ashamed about losing something that's so absolutely
rlm@145 420 crucial to their identity. A reverse of "death makes life worth
rlm@145 421 living", they feel that living forever is what makes life worth
rlm@145 422 living. Now they've "lost their sunrise" or their "connection to
rlm@145 423 the timeless universe" or something. So they go on a quest to get
rlm@145 424 it back, learning about themselves along the way, and regaining
rlm@145 425 the precious thing they lost in the beginning. Which, it they can
rlm@145 426 actually gain their immortality back, means that they never lost
rlm@145 427 it in the first place!
rlm@145 428
rlm@145 429 - world-map :: take a small table and paint the continents in
rlm@145 430 toothpaste on the table. Make a slightly raised barrier around
rlm@145 431 the table. Slowly pour water onto the table, and it will form the
rlm@145 432 oceans!
rlm@145 433
rlm@145 434 - stage magic rituals :: rituals should incorporate elements of stage
rlm@145 435 magic. For example in Teller's rendition of Shakespeare's
rlm@145 436 Tempest, they have a scene where they levitate a crown in front
rlm@145 437 of someone, then put it on his head. They also have a wedding
rlm@145 438 ceremony where they levitated the bride as well. Actual weddings
rlm@145 439 and other ceremonies should incorporate stage magic as an
rlm@145 440 enhancement to the gravitas!
rlm@145 441
rlm@145 442 - isotope time dilation :: use a cyclotron to speed up rare isotopes
rlm@145 443 developed in nuclear fusion experiments. The relativistic time
rlm@145 444 dilation will stop the isotopes from decaying, and allow time to
rlm@145 445 study them. This is based on radioactive isotopes that fall
rlm@145 446 through the earth's atmosphere that take hundreds of times longer
rlm@145 447 to decay than normal.
rlm@145 448
rlm@145 449 - marsupial stimulation :: You take a freshly pouched marsupial baby,
rlm@145 450 and show it videos and other interactive things while it matures
rlm@145 451 in the pouch. What mental effects would this have?
rlm@145 452
rlm@145 453 - The dynamically well tempered clavier :: Some older ways of tuning
rlm@145 454 instruments sound better, but we use the even-tempered scale
rlm@145 455 today because it makes it easier to switch keys. With electronic
rlm@145 456 music, why not make key-annotations and dynamically re-tune the
rlm@145 457 piece to sound good in the current key? Could be done as a
rlm@145 458 midi+annotation -> midi compiler for initial experimentation.
rlm@145 459
rlm@145 460 - death always implies damage :: is is possible for a corpse to differ
rlm@145 461 from a living person only in the fact that one is dead and the
rlm@145 462 other is alive? NO! A corpse must always have some sort of
rlm@145 463 molecular damage which causes the loss of function!
rlm@145 464
rlm@145 465 - inner eye :: Surgically install a bunch of tiny cameras inside a
rlm@145 466 person. Then, you can activate them all and get a picture of your
rlm@145 467 internal organs for diagnostic purposes.
rlm@145 468
rlm@145 469 - chaos rails :: The homoclinic tangle (which I call the "rails of
rlm@145 470 chaos") is very beautiful. We couldn't even visualize it before
rlm@145 471 computers because it's so complicated! Someone should make a
rlm@145 472 visualization of it. Here's my inital [[/thoughts/images/rails-of-chaos.png][The Rails of Chaos]]
rlm@145 473
rlm@145 474 - cryonics middle ages :: some people say that cryonics is an
rlm@145 475 experiment and that it is foolish to wait until we have revived a
rlm@145 476 human. There is a middle ground where the procedure has a dismal
rlm@145 477 success rate on humans, say 1 in 20, so that you'd be a fool to
rlm@145 478 try revival. Nonetheless, this very risky procedure could be the
rlm@145 479 legal proof of concept needed to create a new class of life
rlm@145 480 between "living" and "dead": "stasis".
rlm@145 481
rlm@145 482 - Minds and Mirrors :: neat thought experiment -- if you take a mirror
rlm@145 483 of someone by actually reversing a person's chirality molecule by
rlm@145 484 molecule, then will the only be able to read mirror writing? The
rlm@145 485 answer is yes, by analogy to a purely mechanical scan-tron
rlm@145 486 device. This is one of the only interesting transforms I know
rlm@145 487 that can take a human brain and change it in subtle,
rlm@145 488 non-destructive ways. It's also an argument against dualism.
rlm@145 489
rlm@145 490 - biosphere in a bottle :: There are around 15 million species. 15
rlm@145 491 million stem cells will fill only a tiny size, far less than a cubic
rlm@145 492 inch. Preserve a single cell from every species on earth in this
rlm@145 493 small space, and you will have a record of our current biosphere
rlm@145 494 that can be protected. "Hold the genetic data of all species in
rlm@145 495 your hand!"
rlm@145 496
rlm@145 497 - chaos lock :: The "arrow of time" points in the direction of
rlm@145 498 increasing entropy. The time evolution of chaotic systems depend
rlm@145 499 exquisitely on their initial state. If you take a measurement of
rlm@145 500 a chaotic system at any given point of time, you can evolve that
rlm@145 501 system backwards or forwards based on your measurement. So let's
rlm@145 502 say you start the chaotic system in a VERY low entropy state,
rlm@145 503 then let it run for a while, then take a measurement with some
rlm@145 504 uncertainty. Your measurement is pretty good, but obviously not
rlm@145 505 PERFECT. If you evolve the chaotic system back in time, then you
rlm@145 506 will see that you don't really reach a state with low entropy an
rlm@145 507 hour before (the entropy is easy to measure with surrogates like
rlm@145 508 alignment, etc). So use this technique to SEARCH for a more
rlm@145 509 accurate measurement! This potentially can give you many more
rlm@145 510 orders of magnitude than you could get alone just using an
rlm@145 511 instrument. Sometimes it will give you bad results, the the odds
rlm@145 512 of it doing that are infinitesimal, and you can just measure a
rlm@145 513 couple of times.
rlm@145 514
rlm@145 515 - cryo-evolution :: perhaps there would be a way to rapidly evolve a
rlm@145 516 symbiotic bacterial organism that could protect human tissues
rlm@145 517 from freezing damage.
rlm@145 518
rlm@145 519 - suicide parasite :: sometimes, people kill themselves for no good
rlm@145 520 reason. We often explain this with things like "hidden
rlm@145 521 depression" or we say that they had something like chronic jaw or
rlm@145 522 back pain. I think that smells of rationalization. I don't buy
rlm@145 523 it. I propose that in many suicide cases there is a disease that
rlm@145 524 causes the suicidal behavior. We already know that certain
rlm@145 525 parasites have mind-bending properties in other animals, even
rlm@145 526 mammals like mice. It's not much of a stretch to imagine a
rlm@145 527 parasite that causes suicides in humans. Some problems:
rlm@145 528 - What does the suicide parasite get out of it? :: This might be
rlm@145 529 answered by the whole thing being a glitch caused by
rlm@145 530 cross-species contamination. Toxoplasma works this way.
rlm@145 531 - What predictions does a disease model make :: suicide should
rlm@145 532 be more common among people who share a contagion
rlm@145 533 vector. There should be suicides that don't make any
rlm@145 534 sense : people who weren't really depressed, who had no
rlm@145 535 reason to kill themselves. People who have killed themselves
rlm@145 536 should have a higher incidence of some unknown parasite in
rlm@145 537 their brains.
rlm@145 538
rlm@145 539 - domestic insects :: People should eat more bugs because they're much
rlm@145 540 more efficient, so why not do some major domestication research
rlm@145 541 to make very appealing bugs? Beetles, in particular, seem to be
rlm@145 542 excellent targets for domestication because they have extreme
rlm@145 543 levels of genetic malleability. Remember that lobster was once
rlm@145 544 seen as an animal only fit for prisoners to consume!
rlm@145 545
rlm@145 546 - birth-clones :: What if each person was intentionally split at birth
rlm@145 547 into a normal embryo and a few "backup" cells which are then
rlm@145 548 frozen. The backup cells are created just the same way as natural
rlm@145 549 identical twins. The backups can be used to regenerate
rlm@145 550 organs. etc. Also, it would be a good sci-fi concept, because you
rlm@145 551 could have a culture where people reward people who were
rlm@145 552 especially awesome are "reborn" from their backups. Imagine
rlm@145 553 having a young Bach every generation, etc.
rlm@145 554
rlm@145 555 - pronunciation guide :: a simple webpage where you type in a word and
rlm@145 556 it returns a simple, English sentence describing exactly how to
rlm@145 557 pronounce the word. For people who don't want to learn IPA.
rlm@145 558
rlm@145 559 - Learning to Teleport :: This is a story about a person who is
rlm@145 560 struggling with his/her society's ideas about teleportation. It's
rlm@145 561 considered a fundamental part of being a member of that society
rlm@145 562 (after all, the difference between animals and humans is that
rlm@145 563 humans are creatures of pure information while animals are
rlm@145 564 burdened with base matter, "that's how you travel the stars,
rlm@145 565 etc") Humans are born normally, grow up, and then eventually
rlm@145 566 transcend via destructive upload. Analogies to jumping off a
rlm@145 567 diving board into a pool (which I simply /could not do/ for a
rlm@145 568 long time), etc.
rlm@145 569
rlm@145 570 - no-float-ice :: cup that has cross beams at the bottom where ice
rlm@145 571 forms. Then when you drink liquid from the glass, the ice stays
rlm@145 572 at the bottom and doesn't hit your lips. For bars and fancy
rlm@145 573 things.
rlm@145 574
rlm@145 575 - bitcoins for immigrants :: A common case with Mexican immigrants
rlm@145 576 (illegal or not) is that they want to send money they've earned
rlm@145 577 in the US back to their families in Mexico. They currently do
rlm@145 578 this through things like Money Gram or Western Union, and they
rlm@145 579 get fleeced in the process with fees. Bitcoin could greatly
rlm@145 580 reduce the cost of sending money from America to Mexico, but I
rlm@145 581 don't believe that it's currently used for that among Mexican
rlm@145 582 immigrants currently due to lack of knowledge. I bet you could
rlm@145 583 set up physical locations like those obnoxious Western Union huts
rlm@145 584 in places like Texas, Arizona, etc, and greatly undercut
rlm@145 585 them. Or, perhaps some educational seminars about bitcoin might
rlm@145 586 be in order. There's some money to be made there because there is
rlm@145 587 great demand, and it's a good thing to boot!
rlm@145 588
rlm@145 589 - reverse eye-tracking :: A painting that is actually a digital screen
rlm@145 590 with a camera. It records people's eye tracks permanently. It's
rlm@145 591 "artistic" because paintings are normally these things that you
rlm@145 592 look at without changing, but this one is changed the second you
rlm@145 593 look at it, recording where /you/ looked forever for others to
rlm@145 594 see. Make it be a painting of a woman and see the trolling as the
rlm@145 595 breasts and groin area light up with interest from all the males
rlm@145 596 passing by.
rlm@145 597
rlm@145 598 - smart toilets :: Instead of using indirect measures like infrared
rlm@145 599 detectors of the presence of a person, use computer vision to
rlm@145 600 directly measure whether the toilet needs to be flushed. I think
rlm@145 601 a lot of things will end up going this way as we get better
rlm@145 602 computer vision.
rlm@145 603
rlm@145 604 - validate chemopreservation :: chemopreservation is difficult to
rlm@145 605 validate because it destroys the functionality of a brain, and
rlm@145 606 brain simulation will take a long time to mature as a
rlm@145 607 technology. However, one very powerful way to validate
rlm@145 608 chemopreservation would be to have a person/animal learn
rlm@145 609 something with high complexity such as a number or the solution
rlm@145 610 to a maze, or a flashbulb memory. Then you preserve their brain
rlm@145 611 chemically, slice it up, and read /that specific memory/ from the
rlm@145 612 detailed brain scan. Much more difficult, but much more doable.
rlm@145 613
rlm@145 614 - candy screw :: edible candy screw with candy nuts that you can screw
rlm@145 615 as well.
rlm@145 616
rlm@145 617 - better bibliography :: when writing a thesis or paper, have the
rlm@145 618 bibliography not just be an opaque list of resources, but have it
rlm@145 619 be a list of /summaries/ and /qualities/ that each paper has in
rlm@145 620 the context of the paper being written. When examining a
rlm@145 621 bibliography, I want to know if reading the papers in the
rlm@145 622 bibliography are worth my time, and I also am probably also
rlm@145 623 interested in exactly the things that are being discussed in the
rlm@145 624 paper I'm reading. The bibliography is the perfect place to
rlm@145 625 provide information about the referenced papers from the
rlm@145 626 author's perspective. I will use this biographic form in my own
rlm@145 627 thesis!
rlm@145 628
rlm@145 629 - chess visual :: to show the vast size of the game trees considered
rlm@145 630 by computers, show two people playing chess in a void. They are
rlm@145 631 floating in space, and there is a simple chess board between
rlm@145 632 them. Then, as they play, the game tree's they are considering
rlm@145 633 are drawn behind him. The root of the tree starts centered in
rlm@145 634 their heads or whatever they use to think, and the tree grows out
rlm@145 635 from behind, never crossing the dividing plane between the two
rlm@145 636 players. Each player's tree is a different color. As they grow,
rlm@145 637 there are animations for pruning, etc. Eventually, they look like
rlm@145 638 the hemispheres of a brain, wings, etc. A human's tree might
rlm@145 639 occasionally have a long chain, while the computer tree would be
rlm@145 640 more uniform. You could compare deep blue and a modern
rlm@145 641 laptop. Use actual data when fighting two computers!
rlm@145 642
rlm@145 643 - tamper proof gold bars :: [[http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/gold-plated-tungsten-alloy-bar.html][this site]] offers gold plated tungsten bars
rlm@145 644 as "novelty" items. One reason to prefer coins is because they
rlm@145 645 are much harder to counterfeit because there is less surface area
rlm@145 646 to mass ratio. However, gold bars are still a great design
rlm@145 647 because they can hold a lot of value in a small space. A gold bar
rlm@145 648 could be given the same protections (and more) that gold coins
rlm@145 649 have to offer by changing it into a "gold book", which would have
rlm@145 650 hundreds of "pages" of gold bound together. This could be
rlm@145 651 implemented with multiple steel rods going through the book which
rlm@145 652 can be removed, or some more classier mechanism for holding the
rlm@145 653 pages. The point is that the bar can be EASILY subdivided (and
rlm@145 654 people would perform this test before buying), thus guaranteeing
rlm@145 655 it's authenticity.
rlm@145 656
rlm@145 657 - high school science :: this is a lesson in scientific ethics. The
rlm@145 658 goal is to calculate /g/, the local gravitational
rlm@145 659 acceleration. The students are told that the textbook says it's
rlm@145 660 /exactly/ 9.81 before they start the experiment. See how they
rlm@145 661 doctor their results to get closer to the textbook value. It's
rlm@145 662 neat because for any given school, /g/ is probably *not* exactly
rlm@145 663 equal to 9.81, because that is just an average!
rlm@145 664
rlm@145 665 - opencourseware subtitles :: there are people who type up lectures at
rlm@145 666 MIT while they are being given, so that hearing impared students
rlm@145 667 can follow along. These recordings should be kept and given to
rlm@145 668 OCW for subtitles. If the timestamps of keys are recorded, then
rlm@145 669 it is easy to make subtitles.
rlm@145 670
rlm@145 671 - screen locking timing :: you use your computer camera to see if you
rlm@145 672 are sitting in front of the computer. If you are, then the screen
rlm@145 673 will never lock. If you are, then the screen will lock with a
rlm@145 674 30-40 second timeout. It's an extension of using inactivity to
rlm@145 675 initiate the countdown, just with more information.
rlm@145 676
rlm@145 677 - mirror toilet :: a toilet with a square basin made of mirror instead
rlm@145 678 of porcelain. That way, you can see how good of a wipe job you
rlm@145 679 have done / watch how your excretion system works.
rlm@145 680
rlm@145 681 - X-ray telepresence :: given that a doctor is operating on a patient
rlm@145 682 via telepresence, one cool things you can do is shine X-rays into
rlm@145 683 the patient to view the insides during real time. (This doesn't
rlm@145 684 expose either the doctor or patient to chronically damaging
rlm@145 685 amounts of X-rays) If the system was coupled with a Bayesian
rlm@145 686 model of the layout of the structure, and the x-rays were only
rlm@145 687 fired whenever the uncertainty of the model reached a certain
rlm@145 688 threshold, then the radiation damage and surgery risk could be
rlm@145 689 minimized.
rlm@145 690
rlm@145 691 - superfluid vascular system :: I wonder what would happen if you
rlm@145 692 replaced the blood in a human with a superfluid. What would the
rlm@145 693 physical dynamics be? Would the superfluid flow through the
rlm@145 694 vasculature, or would it ignore it and travel through the cells,
rlm@145 695 or something else entirely. Since superfluids need to be cold to
rlm@145 696 retain their superfluidity, how would the dynamics change during
rlm@145 697 perfusion of a superfluid, where the fluid gains and looses
rlm@145 698 superfluidity as it goes deeper into the body and is cooled by
rlm@145 699 superfluid from upstream. In summary there are two things to
rlm@145 700 simulate 1.) replace all blood in human with superfluid
rlm@145 701 instantly. 2.) perfuse superfluid into human.
rlm@145 702
rlm@145 703 - projective guessing :: I think that we read and see things by
rlm@145 704 making a really good guess about what we're expecting to see,
rlm@145 705 and then searching for our guess in what we see. If it really
rlm@145 706 doesn't match, then we start to make more guesses / analyze the
rlm@145 707 image from first principles, but most stuff is projective
rlm@145 708 guessing.
rlm@145 709
rlm@145 710 - Intestinal flora maintenance :: why not inoculate babies at birth
rlm@145 711 with "ideal" gut flora instead of whatever bullshit they
rlm@145 712 naturally get, thus giving them optimal digestive/nutrient
rlm@145 713 extraction capabilities. Might also be able to make their farts
rlm@145 714 not stink for life, too. MORE IMPORTANTLY, might help to
rlm@145 715 preventatively stop some forms of /colic/, which affects 1 in 5
rlm@145 716 babies and causes constant screaming and pain for about 5 weeks.
rlm@145 717
rlm@145 718 - server culture -- mirrors :: make a distributed system where people
rlm@145 719 can mirror the websites of people they like -- essentially cover
rlm@145 720 the server costs of favored websites. This could make popular
rlm@145 721 websites run at no cost. The system would require that the
rlm@145 722 mirrored content be the same as the official source. Sort of like
rlm@145 723 bit-torrent for websites.
rlm@145 724
rlm@145 725 - map programming :: one problem with functional programming is that
rlm@145 726 in order to remain functional, you have to pass up arguments up
rlm@145 727 into each calling function to get the full range of behavior
rlm@145 728 from the lower level functions. Normally people come to a
rlm@145 729 compromise involving abstraction and sparing use of dynamic
rlm@145 730 variables to configure runtime behavior. What would be the
rlm@145 731 advantages of making a programming language where every function
rlm@145 732 receives one argument, a map, which contains all the symbol
rlm@145 733 bindings it would ever need? This map is passed on to all
rlm@145 734 subordinate functions. This way, you could replace functions on
rlm@145 735 the fly, and arrange for there to be sensible defaults,
rlm@145 736 etc. Might cause more harm than good but is an interesting idea.
rlm@145 737
rlm@145 738 - rest nest :: a small EEG device you would attach to your head when
rlm@145 739 you go to sleep at night. ML algorithms would determine your
rlm@145 740 particular sleep cycles. This would mostly be an alarm clock that
rlm@145 741 you could give a time range, say 7:00AM - 7:15AM, and it would
rlm@145 742 wake you up during an ideal time corresponding to then end of one
rlm@145 743 of your 90 min sleep cycles. You would feel much more rested upon
rlm@145 744 waking up, and would wake up faster. There might be some other
rlm@145 745 uses for the EEG data as well.
rlm@145 746
rlm@145 747 - image compression :: use a library like gimp or opencv to process an
rlm@145 748 image to make it have less entropy, then store the reverse of
rlm@145 749 those operations along with the compressed simpler image as a
rlm@145 750 super-compressed image file (possibly accepting some
rlm@145 751 losses). Trades file size for decompression time, and allows one
rlm@145 752 to cheat by using information in gimp/opencv to compress the
rlm@145 753 image.
rlm@145 754
rlm@145 755 - aldehyde-stabalized cryopreservation :: why not use a fixative to
rlm@145 756 buy enough time to ramp up cryoprotectants to an acceptable level
rlm@145 757 at room temperature? Then, the whole system can be rapidly cooled
rlm@145 758 and vitrified. This method "severs the biological link" in that
rlm@145 759 the fixatives are highly toxic, but current vitrification
rlm@145 760 procedures do this anyway since there can be a lot of freezing
rlm@145 761 damage.
rlm@145 762
rlm@145 763 - dilated security camera :: a security camera that would capture
rlm@145 764 full video footage of everything at 60fps but then decide to keep
rlm@145 765 only every 1 frame every 5 seconds unless there's something
rlm@145 766 "interesting" happening.
rlm@145 767
rlm@145 768 - bitcoin wallet :: Part of "server culture", this would be something
rlm@145 769 like "coin.your-domain.com" which would serve as
rlm@145 770 your personal trusted access to your own bitcoins
rlm@145 771 from anywhere.
rlm@145 772
rlm@145 773 - libpay :: this would be a free library which would enable
rlm@145 774 micro-donations to software projects and other projects,
rlm@145 775 so that you could donate a penny to "emacs" and it would
rlm@145 776 be automatically split up to every person who has ever
rlm@145 777 contributed to emacs in proportion to the amount of
rlm@145 778 community esteem, code quantity, bugs fixed, whatever the
rlm@145 779 community decides. This might make it possible for
rlm@145 780 programmers to live entirely off of free programming.
rlm@145 781
rlm@145 782 - pronouns :: use capital letters A-Z instead of pronouns. They solve
rlm@145 783 pronoun referents and gender neutrality, are short to
rlm@145 784 say, and you can encode useful information into the
rlm@145 785 choice of letter. For example, instead of "Meetings
rlm@145 786 shall be presided over by the president, unless she is
rlm@145 787 absent." USE "Meetings shall be presided over by the
rlm@145 788 president, unless P is absent." We already use this a
rlm@145 789 little, since I and U are reserved for the subject and
rlm@145 790 object respectively.
rlm@145 791
rlm@145 792 - phone DSP :: software app that inserts an audio DSP between the
rlm@145 793 input to a phone and the output. The DSP is delicious
rlm@145 794 and configurable, and can allow men to make their
rlm@145 795 voices deeper, etc. The app would allow you to hear
rlm@145 796 your own voice as others hear it. Most people hate how
rlm@145 797 their own voice sounds. The app would also allow one to
rlm@145 798 immediately change the parameters of the DSP using good
rlm@145 799 presets.
rlm@145 800
rlm@145 801 - restaurant receipts :: use a carbon copy receipt instead of two stupid
rlm@145 802 copies.
rlm@145 803
rlm@145 804 - crossdressing :: Easiest way to disguise oneself as a woman is to
rlm@145 805 wear a burka.
rlm@145 806
rlm@145 807 - book-mode :: intelligent color highlighting for books and
rlm@145 808 articles. It would disambiguate pronouns and involved
rlm@145 809 references. For example, if "Rachael" was assigned the
rlm@145 810 color red, and "the blonde haired girl" refers to
rlm@145 811 "Rachael", then "the blonde haired girl" would be
rlm@145 812 colored red. Also, you could disambiguate multi part
rlm@145 813 run-on sentences by highlighting each
rlm@145 814 subcomponent. Maybe would also have applications to
rlm@145 815 scientific reading.
rlm@145 816
rlm@145 817 - Handheld light Rain measurement :: this would be a clear, teflon
rlm@145 818 coated plastic disk with a camera underneath the disk. You would
rlm@145 819 be able to hold the device out and it would measure the rate of
rlm@145 820 accumulation of water droplets from fine mists and light rain by
rlm@145 821 using computer vision to measure the diameters of the drops.
rlm@145 822
rlm@145 823 - Big Brother Farming :: This would be a vision system that would
rlm@145 824 individually monitor each plant and turn on water, etc to ensure
rlm@145 825 maximum/uniform growth for each plant.
rlm@145 826
rlm@145 827 - Discrete Faucet :: A faucet with discrete ticks instead of
rlm@145 828 continuous.
rlm@145 829
rlm@145 830 - Laser Circle :: take a glass microfiliment and shine a laser at one
rlm@145 831 end at an oblique angle. It will make a perfect,
rlm@145 832 large circle on the wall, converting a laser beam
rlm@145 833 into a laser cone, preserving most of the energy of
rlm@145 834 the laser.
rlm@145 835
rlm@145 836 - Invisible Glass :: Take a container of liquid and embed a
rlm@145 837 glass sculpture made out of glass that has exactly the same index
rlm@145 838 of refraction and color of the liquid. Then the sculpture will be
rlm@145 839 totally invisible in the container, and will only be revealed
rlm@145 840 when the liquid is drained. The container might be a fancy
rlm@145 841 wine/spirit bottle or an hourglass.
rlm@145 842
rlm@145 843 - Caterpillar people :: A race of caterpillar like creatures gains
rlm@145 844 intelligence after eons of predation by birds, etc. These
rlm@145 845 caterpillar creatures still undergo metamorphosis into a large
rlm@145 846 butterfly-like creature. The metamorphosis process turns the
rlm@145 847 caterpillar's brain into mush and reforms it into a minimal,
rlm@145 848 dumb, truly insect-like mind, completely destroying the person
rlm@145 849 the caterpillar was. The society develops all sorts of customs and
rlm@145 850 religious interpretations of the metamorphosis. It is viewed as
rlm@145 851 good and natural by some since it is part of their life cycle and
rlm@145 852 necessary to propagate the species, as only the butterflies can
rlm@145 853 mate. Some think that the butterflies are still the same person
rlm@145 854 because they have the same soul, even they no longer posses the
rlm@145 855 memories or personality of the original caterpillar. Some see the
rlm@145 856 butterfly form as the "true form" of the species, since the
rlm@145 857 butterflies can fly, mate, and are beautiful. Many make a big
rlm@145 858 deal out of the fact that 1-2% of the caterpillar's mind is
rlm@145 859 actually preserved in the butterfly. Some see it as a terrible
rlm@145 860 tragedy and argue that the caterpillars should try to stop the
rlm@145 861 metamorphosis by technology. Practically, some very important
rlm@145 862 members of society undergo hormone therapy and/or surgery to
rlm@145 863 prevent metamorphosis so that they can live longer as themselves.
rlm@145 864
rlm@145 865 This is a continuation of Marvin Minsky's ideas about pain being
rlm@145 866 something that preserves our bodies while destroying our minds,
rlm@145 867 something that is a remnant from our too harsh animal days that
rlm@145 868 hasn't caught up to the fact that we have very complex brains
rlm@145 869 now. It's a worst-case scenario about a maladaptive genetic
rlm@145 870 legacy. Also, it's inspired by "There She Is!!!", which makes a
rlm@145 871 compelling point about homosexuality by introducing a second
rlm@145 872 gender characteristic (bunny/cat, male/female), which makes
rlm@145 873 homophobia look very silly. Here, our own biological legacy of
rlm@145 874 pain and death is made to look like the tragedy it is through the
rlm@145 875 lens of the the caterpillar people.
rlm@145 876
rlm@145 877 - relationships as a business :: [[http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Turnover-Crisis.aspx][Turnover-Crisis]] is an excellent talk
rlm@145 878 about the "culture of quitting," which is about better business
rlm@145 879 by letting people go instead of keeping them around past their
rlm@145 880 "apex". Focuses on information transfer. Cool idea of an alumni
rlm@145 881 network, which for relationships would be a group of satisfied
rlm@145 882 ex-lovers, who would recommend new people your way, and who might
rlm@145 883 consider coming to you again, refreshed from their time away with
rlm@145 884 new stories/experiences. I should look for examples of this and
rlm@145 885 how they worked out.
rlm@145 886
rlm@145 887 - psychic crystal :: in a science fiction story, this would be an
rlm@145 888 object that is very easy to move physically but is extremely
rlm@145 889 difficult to move with telekinesis.
rlm@145 890
rlm@145 891 - true reflection :: There's a "true mirror" in the MIT student center
rlm@145 892 -- it's two normal mirrors at right angles, like staring at a
rlm@145 893 corner of a room. The light reflects so that it shows you what
rlm@145 894 you actually look like, instead of your mirror image.
rlm@145 895
rlm@145 896 - remote control wasp :: use computer to drive wings with remote
rlm@145 897 power/logic.
rlm@145 898
rlm@145 899 - encrypted email phone book :: public (distributed?) database of
rlm@145 900 email->private-key pairs, to enable automatic encryption.
rlm@145 901
rlm@145 902 - universal eye color :: every equivalent creature will see each
rlm@145 903 others' eyes as black -- it's universal. Even if the creatures
rlm@145 904 see in radio waves, and their eyes are 2m long pieces of jagged
rlm@145 905 metal, when those creatures look at each other, they will see
rlm@145 906 black, the absence of light and color (since it's being absorbed
rlm@145 907 by the sensor array).
rlm@145 908
rlm@145 909 - intelligent microwave :: it learns where the hot nodes of its fields
rlm@145 910 are, and uses them to evenly heat any food item. It has an infrared
rlm@145 911 camera or something to keep track of how hot the food is. That way,
rlm@145 912 you don't get bowls where the edges are boiling, while the center is
rlm@145 913 still frozen. Requires a little bit of intelligence/vision, since
rlm@145 914 the exact pattern of heating totally depends on the exact shape of
rlm@145 915 the food. Wouldn't need a carousel, and wouldn't need a timer,
rlm@145 916 just a desired temperature. Could also detect ice, and automatically
rlm@145 917 defrost the parts which are frozen. Might be able to work much
rlm@145 918 faster since it can avoid overheating; might have problems with
rlm@145 919 heating the insides of thick things, might need a weight sensor too.
rlm@145 920
rlm@145 921 + Would be much cleaner than other microwaves, since food would
rlm@145 922 "sputter" and splash liquid much less.
rlm@145 923
rlm@145 924 + Throw in some SIFT+R processing to match previously cooked foods
rlm@145 925 and learn the exact heating profiles for things that have been
rlm@145 926 cooked before -- it can get faster the more it's used.
rlm@145 927
rlm@145 928 - Flesh pillow :: a pillow like the arm or torso of a human, complete
rlm@145 929 with simulated temperature, bones, and heartbeat.
rlm@145 930
rlm@145 931 - light filter :: (like light tweezers) to mechanically separate
rlm@145 932 fluids with different index of refraction
rlm@145 933
rlm@145 934 - silver socks :: socks laced with silver for the antimicrobial
rlm@145 935 properties.
rlm@145 936
rlm@145 937 - Rod of Moses :: device to distill urine through evaporation and
rlm@145 938 easily dispose of urea crystals for use in desert -- produce
rlm@145 939 drinkable water and live an extra few days!
rlm@145 940
rlm@145 941 - lottery scraper :: web scraper which monitors various lotteries,
rlm@145 942 looking for "special" gimmick changes in the rules (like 4x
rlm@145 943 winnings on Wednesdays) and computes expected value...
rlm@145 944
rlm@145 945 - Memristiors novel design :: make an evolutionary algorithm to make
rlm@145 946 old stuff using all four basic circuit elements.
rlm@145 947
rlm@145 948 - Conductive concrete :: concrete that has embedded metal fibers so
rlm@145 949 that it can conduct electricity.
rlm@145 950
rlm@145 951 - little bitty melting pot :: might be useful for some types of
rlm@145 952 manufacturing/3D printing -- how small can an induction melter be
rlm@145 953 made, for example.
rlm@145 954
rlm@145 955 - true pure tones :: hear a true pure tone by direct stimulation of the
rlm@145 956 nerves of the ear
rlm@145 957
rlm@145 958 - mechanical analogue to the electrical op-amp :: would be an object
rlm@145 959 with two levers -- you pull on one lever and the other moves the
rlm@145 960 same way, no matter what's in the way or what it is driving. This
rlm@145 961 analogy could be useful to teach op amps to people.
rlm@145 962
rlm@145 963 - light capacitor :: suspend some ball of material with a high index
rlm@145 964 of refraction and shine light into it so it gets stuck -- would
rlm@145 965 the light stay trapped forever? Could you build up unlimited
rlm@145 966 quantities of light inside the sphere (which could then be
rlm@145 967 released slowly by frustrated internal reflection?
rlm@145 968
rlm@145 969 - reading comprehension :: use the screen capture routine to make a
rlm@145 970 quiz program that constructs questions about the content you
rlm@145 971 seemed to gloss over while reading. could be easy if the pdf came
rlm@145 972 with embedded questions. Dylan: automatically generate
rlm@145 973 word-cloud about the parts you found most interesting; help
rlm@145 974 others who read the same stuff by drawing attention to the
rlm@145 975 interesting parts.
rlm@145 976
rlm@145 977 - optimize an article :: capture reading of a scientific article via
rlm@145 978 screen capture while people read it, then use it to make the
rlm@145 979 article better. like the movie-pruning idea.
rlm@145 980
rlm@145 981 - movie pruning :: Movies always are too long at first. One way to
rlm@145 982 shorten them ``scientifically" is to record blink rate during the
rlm@145 983 move and then remove / shorten the frames of the parts in which
rlm@145 984 there are a lot of blinking (average this over multiple people)
rlm@145 985 better yet, put it online and do it across thousands of people. I
rlm@145 986 got this from youtube in which there is an episode of kill bill
rlm@145 987 which is composed entirely of the parts in which people had their
rlm@145 988 eyes closed. slogan: want to make a movie people can't take their
rlm@145 989 eyes off of? Just take those parts out!
rlm@145 990
rlm@145 991 - explosive thermite epoxy putty :: one part would contain the rust,
rlm@145 992 one part the aluminum.
rlm@145 993
rlm@145 994 - concrete epoxy :: epoxy with sand/ some other solid material.
rlm@145 995
rlm@145 996 - hard sword :: make a samurai sword, but use osmiridum instead of
rlm@145 997 martensite for the cutting part; it should be a better
rlm@145 998 sword.
rlm@145 999
rlm@145 1000 - close range wireless :: use the induction technology used to
rlm@145 1001 recharge electric toothbrushes with no metal links to send data
rlm@145 1002 without any metal at all!
rlm@145 1003
rlm@145 1004 - perfect pitch :: learn perfect pitch using another sense in
rlm@145 1005 combination (sight or touch)
rlm@145 1006
rlm@145 1007 - bio metallic structure :: metal grids with seeds inside, which grow
rlm@145 1008 together and form a durable biological matrix. The metal
rlm@145 1009 substrate delivers water. (maybe use plastic instead of metal?)
rlm@145 1010 Dylan: enrich plants with inorganic compounds; electrical
rlm@145 1011 interfaces in cellular plant matter => remote-controlled
rlm@145 1012 photosynthetic/bioluminescent structures.
rlm@145 1013
rlm@145 1014 - conducting extracellular matrix :: to allow better control of
rlm@145 1015 organic systems and an enhanced nervous system.
rlm@145 1016
rlm@145 1017 - cross-modal memory hashing :: a way to retrieve memories more
rlm@145 1018 robustly.
rlm@145 1019
rlm@145 1020 - wooden refrigerator :: to give food a better taste Dylan: like
rlm@145 1021 barrels for wine, or planks for salmon. Maybe just have "flavor
rlm@145 1022 planks" for your pre-existing fridge. Need to mitigate effect of
rlm@145 1023 temperature on volatility?
rlm@145 1024
rlm@145 1025 - radioactive transmutation molecule by molecule :: create precious
rlm@145 1026 metals or something else economically advantageous. Best
rlm@145 1027 transmutation I can come up with is mercury into gold, but it's
rlm@145 1028 not economically viable.
rlm@145 1029
rlm@145 1030 - preservation via crowding :: inoculate food with tons of harmless
rlm@145 1031 bacteria so that there's no room for bad bacteria as a method of
rlm@145 1032 preservation
rlm@145 1033
rlm@145 1034 - old school preservation :: Pasteur - style holding jar with siphon
rlm@145 1035 as a way to store sterilized liquids at room temperature
rlm@145 1036 indefinitely w/o refrigeration.
rlm@145 1037
rlm@145 1038 - restaurant policy :: Throw rude people out of restaurant as a matter
rlm@145 1039 of course -- make ambiance much better.
rlm@145 1040
rlm@145 1041 - clean windows :: make something that mixes soap with fire hydrant
rlm@145 1042 water (and reduces the pressure a bit) and use it
rlm@145 1043 to clean windows of buildings.
rlm@145 1044
rlm@145 1045 - ocarina :: make an ocarina out of pure silver
rlm@145 1046
rlm@145 1047 - fire pen :: pen which burns words on to the page, thus never needing
rlm@145 1048 any ink. Is there a way to make it runnable from body heat?
rlm@145 1049
rlm@145 1050 - website to design your own soda :: and label, and have it mailed to
rlm@145 1051 you / sell it from your own online store.
rlm@145 1052
rlm@145 1053 - solar panels :: that float on the ocean
rlm@145 1054
rlm@145 1055 - handcuffs with more than two cuffs (3?) :: great for daisy chaining
rlm@145 1056 people, binding them to environment, etc.
rlm@145 1057
rlm@145 1058 - vector based SOUND files :: like the pictures but with SOUND. codify
rlm@145 1059 sound in a language with enough symbols so that it can describe
rlm@145 1060 everything and encode it in that. would be like going from speech
rlm@145 1061 to text or smtg. Could also store sound as an image of the
rlm@145 1062 wavefront encoded as a vector image.
rlm@145 1063
rlm@145 1064 - genetically engineered glowing fruit :: They have some animals that
rlm@145 1065 can glow, but glowing fruit that you eat would be AWESOME!
rlm@145 1066
rlm@145 1067 - The body as a key to memory :: IF memories are encoded using
rlm@145 1068 particular sensory impressions, what happens if the sensory organ
rlm@145 1069 itself changes? those memories would become inaccessible. maybe
rlm@145 1070 this is why we can't remember much from our childhoods. also,
rlm@145 1071 could this happen throughout life as well? Could S remember stuff
rlm@145 1072 from his childhood?
rlm@145 1073
rlm@145 1074 - lighter flint on spring :: make hot, throw it at something, and it
rlm@145 1075 makes sparkles!
rlm@145 1076
rlm@145 1077 - rare bubbles :: Engineer a material which has both ductility and high
rlm@145 1078 surface tension to make the "third"
rlm@145 1079 minimal-surface-energy solution to a bubble suspended
rlm@145 1080 between two equal-diameter rings. (Solutions are
rlm@145 1081 cylindrical catenary curve, two separated half-bubbles,
rlm@145 1082 and a double-cone)
rlm@145 1083
rlm@145 1084 - Textbook whose content can be varied continuously :: alter level of
rlm@145 1085 difficulty, rigor, diction, emphasize crossover with certain
rlm@145 1086 other discipline, etc. Content generated dynamically from
rlm@145 1087 knowledge base, along with questions that are moreover altered to
rlm@145 1088 guide knowledge acquisition. Motivation: One book of
rlm@145 1089 knowledge. /One./
rlm@145 1090
rlm@145 1091
rlm@145 1092 #+BEGIN_HTML
rlm@145 1093 <p class="end"> Still want more? Visit the <a href="./ideas.html">Raw
rlm@145 1094 Ideas</a> page, but prepare for extreme half-bakedness. </p>
rlm@145 1095 #+END_HTML