thoughts: org/good-ideas.org annotate

annotate org/good-ideas.org @ 164:7a6b855cfb99 tip

more ideas, other stuff.

author	Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date	Tue, 12 Jul 2016 21:16:25 -0700
parents	bdeaad2b1507
children

rev	line source
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@164	43 ** copper + ethylene glycol
rlm@164	44 If red blood cells are rendered impermeabale to EG when Cu is
rlm@164	45 present, then maybe you can destroy RBCs by a mixture of EG and Cu?
rlm@164	46 (By osmotically crushing them?)
rlm@162	47
rlm@164	48 ** Qualia Intuition Explained
rlm@164	49 Let's say that you lacked the sense of smell. How could you learn
rlm@164	50 what "acrid" means without it? How could you explain it to someone,
rlm@164	51 without analogy to other smells? It's true that linguistically,
rlm@164	52 there's no way to communicate thsi concept to someone who can't
rlm@164	53 smell. We mind-project this real linguistic separation into reality
rlm@164	54 and get qualia, thinking that because it's beyond the reach of
rlm@164	55 language it's also beyond physical reality as well!
rlm@162	56
rlm@164	57 ** Spinal Relay
rlm@164	58 You have a small air-gapped repeater built into your spine in order
rlm@164	59 to help with spinal injury, connect with prosthetics, and to
rlm@164	60 monitor/control your body. Also, you could add the ability to save
rlm@164	61 "macros"! Would want to also pair with suitable encryption!
rlm@164	62
rlm@164	63 ** Human Cysts
rlm@164	64 There should be communities of people with varying enforced
rlm@164	65 separations from the rest of society in order to gaurd against
rlm@164	66 various catastrophies.
rlm@164	67
rlm@164	68 ** Bioelectric Synthesis
rlm@164	69 Have a device which stores a lot of energy, and processes blood by
rlm@164	70 creating sugar from waste produces over the day. You still need
rlm@164	71 water, vitamins, minerals, etc, but this can handle the bulk of
rlm@164	72 your energy demands and be recharged from the wall.
rlm@164	73
rlm@164	74 ** Chelation as a Method to Improve Cryoprotectant Permeability
rlm@164	75 Copper (and potentially other metallic ions) can reduce
rlm@164	76 cryoprotectant permeability, so chelation might help to make them
rlm@164	77 more permeable. Perhaps this could be why dog brains are more
rlm@164	78 premeable to glycerol than most other animals?
rlm@164	79
rlm@164	80 ** Transgender Fruit Analogy
rlm@164	81 A tomato is a fruit but its a vegetable inside.
rlm@164	82
rlm@164	83 ** Video Game Controllers as Actual Controllers
rlm@164	84 Console controlers like the n64 trident are excellent, durable
rlm@164	85 tools for fine control. We should use them to control all sorts of
rlm@164	86 things like robots by default. You should use it for your projects,
rlm@164	87 since it's unlikely you'll be able to come up with something
rlm@164	88 better. Compared to console controllers, the ones we use for
rlm@164	89 robots/RC stuff are hopelessly clunky.
rlm@164	90
rlm@164	91 ** Bubble Computers
rlm@164	92 Bubbles and water droplets moving from place to place are great
rlm@164	93 analoges for "holes" in transistors. You could totally build a
rlm@164	94 computer with nonlinear bubble accumulators.
rlm@164	95
rlm@164	96 ** Dark Blood Bag
rlm@164	97 Blood bags in hospitals should be dark colored to protect the blood
rlm@164	98 from damage from light.
rlm@164	99
rlm@164	100 ** Chimeric double-male double-female organism
rlm@164	101 Chimeric organism with XX and XX patterns from two males and two
rlm@164	102 females. On average, it has the correct methylation pattern. Would
rlm@164	103 it work? Could half of the cells then be programmed to die at a
rlm@164	104 later stage after the organism has "bootstrapped"?
rlm@164	105
rlm@164	106 ** Fixed protein packets as drug delivery mechanism
rlm@164	107 Group of fixed proteins in a network which is used as
rlm@164	108 medicine. Hemoglobin, for false blood, maybe?
rlm@164	109
rlm@164	110 ** Proof of the Afterlife
rlm@164	111 Website where you enter your pgp signed encrypted file, then swear
rlm@164	112 by all the gods that you'll haunt me (Robert McIntyre) with the
rlm@164	113 decryption password when you die, along with whatever other
rlm@164	114 messages you have. protocol -- I video, throw rock (to prove you're
rlm@164	115 not just faking), get password. Like James Randi's prize.
rlm@164	116
rlm@164	117 ** Medieval name for ethylene glycol
rlm@164	118 Icebane
rlm@164	119
rlm@164	120 ** Overflow Hikau
rlm@164	121 A hiku about buffer overflows, with garbage C code inside.
rlm@164	122
rlm@164	123 ** The White Knight
rlm@164	124 The son of a nobleman and steeped in the knightly tradition since
rlm@164	125 birth, he rides across the land with his family greatsword,
rlm@164	126 "Privilege", defending the principles of chivalry, and his codes of
rlm@164	127 honor.
rlm@164	128
rlm@164	129 WHITE KNIGHT: (*rides up to a peasant on his magnificent white
rlm@164	130 stallion*) Hold, Peasant! You would eat bread while sitting on the
rlm@164	131 ground? Where is your honor, that you would not eat like a man,
rlm@164	132 sitting at the dinner table?
rlm@164	133
rlm@164	134 Peasant: I haven't /got/ any dinner table...
rlm@164	135
rlm@164	136 WHITE KNIGHT: (*decapitates peasant with Privlege, without even
rlm@164	137 dismounting from his horse*) Another day spent defending the honor
rlm@164	138 of everyone!
rlm@164	139
rlm@164	140 Basically, the White Knight is /such/ an asshole.
rlm@164	141
rlm@164	142 ** Technological Deflation
rlm@164	143 Even the richest robber baron from the 1920's could not afford a
rlm@164	144 cardiac bypass surgery, even with literally all the money they
rlm@164	145 had. As technology advances, the price of bread may go up, but the
rlm@164	146 capabilities which money gives you also dramatically increase.
rlm@164	147
rlm@164	148 ** Mental Integrity Test
rlm@164	149 If your brain starts to decay, you might not notice the damage
rlm@164	150 until it's too late. This would be a mental integrity test that you
rlm@164	151 take every few weeks that measures your performance and compares it
rlm@164	152 to a baseline. The tests are all designed to catch the early signs
rlm@164	153 of degenerative brain diseases. For example, you might use
rlm@164	154 performamce on a smell-memory assoaction test to detect early-onset
rlm@164	155 Alzheimer's.
rlm@164	156
rlm@164	157 ** Mind Bank
rlm@164	158 This is a brain bank that has brains well-enough preserved that the
rlm@164	159 minds inside are still viable.
rlm@164	160
rlm@164	161 ** Online paper reviews for scientific papers
rlm@164	162 This really needs to be a thing and would be great for the
rlm@164	163 scientific community. I want an online thing like yelp or something
rlm@164	164 that lets you comment on scientific papers and rate them for
rlm@164	165 clairty, etc.
rlm@164	166
rlm@164	167 ** Binary-Continuous Feedback
rlm@164	168 I was fascinated by a soda machine that shut itself off by filling
rlm@164	169 a carefully balanced cup, which fell away from the fill-switch once
rlm@164	170 the cup had become heavy enough. Makes me think of minsky's
rlm@164	171 "ultimate machine" or Dylan's autosearch engine.
rlm@164	172
rlm@164	173 ** Trolley Cryonics
rlm@164	174 According to the book "Moral Tribes", people can more rationally
rlm@164	175 think about death when it exists in a "non-primary action
rlm@164	176 path". Perhaps this could be a good way to explain cryonics / organ
rlm@164	177 donation?
rlm@164	178
rlm@164	179 ** Binary Metric
rlm@164	180 You make up new unit names for "2 centimeters", "4 centimeters",
rlm@164	181 "16 centimeters", as well as "1/2 centimeters", "1/4 centimeters",
rlm@164	182 etc. Names might be duocentimeter, quatrocentimeter,
rlm@164	183 hemidemisemiliter, etc. Then no one will be happy! BUT, it helps
rlm@164	184 solve metric's problem of intermediate units. (a centimeter is too
rlm@164	185 small, a meter is too large!)
rlm@164	186
rlm@162	187 ** A simple merge procedure for uploads
rlm@162	188 Putting aside the philosophical problems around mind-uploading for
rlm@162	189 a moment, imagine that you were /already/ a computer program
rlm@162	190 running on a suitable robotic body. Let's say that the program is
rlm@162	191 based off a detailed emulation of your brain -- no one really
rlm@162	192 understands exactly /how/ the program is doing its computations,
rlm@162	193 only that it faithfully recreates the original biological
rlm@162	194 computations. At this point, you might want to be able to exist in
rlm@162	195 multiple places at once while still maintining a coherent unity of
rlm@162	196 identity, but how do you do it? You /can't/ modifiy your mind to
rlm@162	197 handle multiple bodies at once, because this would require
rlm@162	198 extensive understanding of exactly how your program is doing its
rlm@162	199 computations in order to scale it to multiple bodies. But you can't
rlm@162	200 just copy yourself either, because the copies will eventually
rlm@162	201 diverge leading to a loss of unity of identity. You can't easily
rlm@162	202 merge copies together after they've "diverged" because again, you'd
rlm@162	203 have to come up with a coherent theory of mind to merge the
rlm@162	204 datastructures. One simple way to do merges is this: First, you
rlm@162	205 need to acchitect the robot bodies to record every single bit
rlm@162	206 that's passing through all sensory nerves throughout a small time
rlm@162	207 interval that's insufficient to create significant divergence. For
rlm@162	208 sake of argument I'll assume that you do this each day. This stream
rlm@162	209 of data represents the ultimate "life recording" and can be easily
rlm@162	210 accomplished either in simulation of physical reality by using
rlm@162	211 custom sensory organs, like in [[http://aurellem.org/#CORTEX][=CORTEX=]]. This set of information,
rlm@162	212 if played back to a copy of you in the exact mental state right
rlm@162	213 before the start of recording, would perfectaly match with the
rlm@162	214 choices of the individual and serve as an adequate replacement for
rlm@162	215 the world, even though it contains almost no information compared
rlm@162	216 to the world! Once you can do the "full life records," then the
rlm@162	217 procedure works like this: At the morning of Day 1 you "checkout"
rlm@162	218 the one copy of you from yesterday and make around 10 copies which
rlm@162	219 each live out their day. Each copy records a full "life recording"
rlm@162	220 for the day. Then one copy is chosen as the "trunk" and the rest as
rlm@162	221 branches. The trunk replays the life-recordings of the branches in
rlm@162	222 accelerated time over the night, and the branches are then deleted
rlm@162	223 leaving only one individual that remembers 10 consecutive days
rlm@162	224 spent in different contexts. Then you repeat the process for Day 2
rlm@162	225 and so on. I'll call this the "small delta-T approximation" method
rlm@162	226 for mind-merging. It works as long as the timeframe is not too long
rlm@162	227 an is limited by how fast you can faithfully replay life
rlm@162	228 recordings. You don't have to be "offline" for any amount of time
rlm@162	229 while doing this: You can also alternate two sets of 10, one for
rlm@162	230 the day and one for the night, and have the night and day trunks be
rlm@162	231 generated from the last day / night group's trunk,
rlm@162	232 respectively. This trades having to "sleep" for the day/night crews
rlm@162	233 not being able to remember what happened last night/day
rlm@162	234 respectively. The more you know about how brains work, the faster
rlm@162	235 you can integrate previous experience and the more copies you can
rlm@162	236 sustain. This methods means that you never lose any experience, but
rlm@162	237 if you're willing to lose some nonessential experiences, a more
rlm@162	238 extreme version of this might be to make a copy of yourself that
rlm@162	239 accomplishes a task and then reports anything of note in a written
rlm@162	240 report.
rlm@162	241
rlm@157	242 ** Earth, Air, Water
rlm@157	243
rlm@157	244 Probably all intelligent species name their planet "dirt" in their
rlm@157	245 language, unless the're aquatic or flying, then they'd name it
rlm@157	246 "water" and "air" respectively.
rlm@157	247
rlm@155	248 ** Cure for Color Blindness
rlm@155	249
rlm@155	250 Could it be possible to administer some retroviruses via direct
rlm@155	251 injection to the retina, to cause some of the cells in the retina
rlm@155	252 to begin expressing different color pigments? The brain ought to
rlm@155	253 easily sort out the rest and enable color vision. Furthremore,
rlm@155	254 could we add some more colors to baesline human eyes? Theory --
rlm@155	255 people who are color blind have better color spatial accuity for
rlm@159	256 the colors they can see, because this is the tradeoff involved with
rlm@159	257 the retrovirus therapy: Re-purposing color detectors to see new
rlm@159	258 colors at the expense of spatial acuity for the old set of colors.
rlm@155	259
rlm@155	260 ** Passion of the Christ Missed Opportunity
rlm@155	261
rlm@155	262 In the Passion of the Christ, they do the entire show using Latin,
rlm@155	263 Aramaic, etc, with subtitles. They should have had a part where
rlm@155	264 Jesus does the sermon on the mount, he turns to the camera, and
rlm@155	265 starts speaking in English, with no subtitles. It would have been
rlm@155	266 1.) biblically accurate and 2.) awesome. It would have been such a
rlm@159	267 powerful example to convey Jesus' divinity, and show off another
rlm@159	268 miracle. It felt like they were setting up for it the entire movie,
rlm@159	269 and they missed it!
rlm@155	270
rlm@155	271 ** Xenobiotic Chimeric Methalation Rewriting
rlm@155	272
rlm@155	273 You make chimeric sea urchins with human reproductive stem cells,
rlm@159	274 so that the sea urchins produce sea urchin-like HUMAN sperm and
rlm@159	275 eggs. Then you can have two human males / females reproduce without
rlm@159	276 the methylation problem, by using the sea urchins as
rlm@159	277 intermediades. And the normal ethical problems of human/animal
rlm@159	278 chimeras are avoided because the sea urchins don't have brains to
rlm@159	279 begin with.
rlm@155	280
rlm@155	281 ** Physical PGP Signatures
rlm@155	282
rlm@155	283 You punch into your phone "I want to sign a contract" It gives you
rlm@155	284 a gensym (or you enter a name) like:
rlm@155	285 https://contracts.example.com/car-insurance-2015-09-26
rlm@155	286
rlm@155	287 Then you sign your name, date, and include the link on the contract
rlm@155	288 under "PGP sig". Then you take a picture with your phone and enter
rlm@155	289 your signing password. It gets uploaded to your website and the
rlm@155	290 image gets PGP signed with your key. Now you have a timestamped
rlm@155	291 archive of the contract, and anyone can verify it by looking at the
rlm@155	292 physical contract itself!
rlm@155	293
rlm@155	294 ** The Digital Third Eye
rlm@155	295
rlm@155	296 You wire in a third optical input to the human brain, but it
rlm@155	297 doesn't tranduce light form the real world, bus instead is
rlm@155	298 connected to the "internet of things" and shows you metadata about
rlm@155	299 things you are looking at // serves as an interface to your own
rlm@155	300 mind and body. Then eventually simply real things without metadata
rlm@155	301 seem flat and fake compared to the objects in cities and other
rlm@155	302 annotated areas. This third eye doesn't occupy any of your normal
rlm@155	303 visual field but actually EXPANDS your visual field.
rlm@155	304
rlm@155	305 ** Ultimate Limits of Monogamy
rlm@155	306
rlm@155	307 Let's say that you're immortal and monogamous. The longer you live
rlm@155	308 with your partner, the more you build an internal model of them,
rlm@155	309 and they you. Eventually these models may become complete, and then
rlm@155	310 you two are actually one single recursive entity which references
rlm@155	311 itself. As you offload more processing to the other (such as old
rlm@155	312 couples actually do -- "remember when we were at that place,
rlm@155	313 what-was-his-name honey?"), then computationally you are a single
rlm@155	314 mind distributed across two bodies. (There's a reason why old
rlm@155	315 couples often die as a pair). You might decide to actually merge
rlm@155	316 bodies eventually. But then, you were both monogamous, so the
rlm@155	317 combined person will be monogamous (and lonely because it lacks a
rlm@155	318 partner). So you get married again, rinse, wash, repeat. All the
rlm@155	319 monogamous people within a certain "compatability group" eventually
rlm@155	320 become one. Our "social center of mass" doesn't lie within our own
rlm@155	321 bodies!
rlm@155	322
rlm@155	323 ** Dream Rewinding
rlm@155	324
rlm@155	325 How to record a complete dream without disturbing it or modifying
rlm@155	326 your brain? you need to be an upload: split yourself, and one of
rlm@155	327 you stays awake whike the other sleeps. then you detect a dream in
rlm@155	328 progress by monotoring rapid eye movememt in your sleeping self,
rlm@155	329 and you wake yourself up every few minutes and tell yoursef about
rlm@155	330 the dream. Then sleeping-your restarts the dream, continuation
rlm@155	331 passing style, forgetting everything that was just said, and you
rlm@155	332 repeat this process until the dream is over. Then awake-you and
rlm@155	333 sleeping-you merge each other by taking sleeping-you and replaying
rlm@155	334 the memories of awake-you, and you write a final report on the
rlm@155	335 dream using the "saccade" reports to jog your memory.
rlm@155	336
rlm@155	337 It would really let you directly test theories of memory because
rlm@155	338 you can test a person every second if you want to. I see a couple
rlm@155	339 ways this could play out: you could report a dream that follows a
rlm@155	340 linear narrative, with the story advancing a little bit each time
rlm@155	341 (the "storytelling" hypothesis), you might say something totally
rlm@155	342 different each time (the "garbage memory access" hypothesis), or
rlm@155	343 something even weider like where you report exactly the same thing
rlm@155	344 between seconds 0-20, then something totally different during
rlm@155	345 seconds 20-40, etc.
rlm@155	346
rlm@155	347 ** Denser than Osmium
rlm@155	348
rlm@155	349 Do the "misicibility" thing with an osmium alloy to get something
rlm@155	350 even more dense. Basically osmium + something else might be denser
rlm@155	351 then pure osmium.
rlm@155	352
rlm@155	353 ** AI Hypnosis
rlm@155	354
rlm@155	355 Hypnosis might be good for studying AI, becuse it might probide a
rlm@155	356 "debugger" for ananlyzing the human mind. I briefly tried this
rlm@155	357 while at MIT, but it needs MUCH more work to be properly
rlm@155	358 evaulated. Also, things you can do under hypnosis provide
rlm@155	359 constraints on what the mind's capabilities are. Also, hypnosis
rlm@155	360 iteslf is a worthwhile thing to study in its own right.
rlm@155	361
rlm@146	362 ** The Ocean Becomes a Drop
rlm@151	363 Upload faces challenges to grow into the type of person that can
rlm@145	364 join the greater society -- a god. They have to go though quests
rlm@145	365 that replicate all the things that humanity had to accomplish, like
rlm@145	366 going to the moon, by themselves.
rlm@145	367
rlm@145	368 ** Butterfly Drone
rlm@145	369 If big butterflies used to exist, then maybe we could make
rlm@145	370 butterfly-inspired drones!
rlm@145	371
rlm@145	372 ** Methylation Sex-Symmetry Breaking
rlm@145	373 Human sex cells have methylation patterns that encode male/female
rlm@145	374 origin. If you combine two male patterns, the fetus grows "too
rlm@145	375 fast" and dies. Two female patterns causes the fetus to enter a
rlm@145	376 "vegatable" state and fail to develop. Evolutionary biologists say
rlm@145	377 that this reflects the asymmetry of energy investement for creating
rlm@145	378 offspring. If that's true, then species that cast-spawn will lack
rlm@145	379 this asymmetry, and give clues about how to remove it in humans. If
rlm@145	380 even cast spawners like sea urchins have it, then that means
rlm@145	381 there's something deeper going on!
rlm@145	382
rlm@145	383 ** Homosexual Reproduction
rlm@145	384 You take genetic material from two males and put it into an egg
rlm@145	385 cell that has had all genetic material removed. Or, you take the
rlm@145	386 genetic material from one egg and put it in another egg. This would
rlm@145	387 allow homosexual couples to genetically reproduce. One technical
rlm@145	388 challenge blocking this technique is that human gametes have
rlm@145	389 methylation patterns that encode male/female origin, and only a
rlm@145	390 male+female pattern gives rise to viable offspring. You could
rlm@145	391 "recondition" male / female gametes to give them the opposite
rlm@145	392 pattern, perhaps by incubating them in the appropriate
rlm@145	393 environment. You also could try taking stem cells and making them
rlm@145	394 form the appropriate structures in vitro.
rlm@145	395
rlm@145	396 ** Poly-Vitrification
rlm@145	397 Large molecules such as PVP are able to vitrify at around -20C, and
rlm@145	398 at farily small concentrations. IF they could be introduced into
rlm@145	399 cells, they would be quite useful as vitrification agents. However,
rlm@145	400 it's difficult to get them in because they are so big. So instead,
rlm@145	401 use smaller agents which combine together into polymers at low
rlm@145	402 temperature. In particular, Fructose, trehalose, and glycerol seem
rlm@145	403 to have the desired properties (though you need to make versions of
rlm@145	404 fructose and trehalose that can penetrate).
rlm@145	405
rlm@145	406 ** Whole Brain Perfusion Embedding
rlm@145	407 Do the standard EM embedding protocol, but skip the osmium step,
rlm@145	408 and use the "perfusion pausing" method to prevent overextraction
rlm@145	409 during the dehydration and embedding steps. I think that you can
rlm@145	410 perfuse resins into the brain, simply because you can perfuse
rlm@145	411 viscous rubber when doing vascular casts.
rlm@145	412
rlm@145	413 ** Very Slow Physiological Pressure Perfusion
rlm@145	414 Less extreme example of the "perfusion pausing" trick -- just keep
rlm@145	415 the perfusion running and don't put the perfusion target into the
rlm@145	416 liquid as deep.
rlm@145	417
rlm@145	418 ** Perfusion Pausing
rlm@145	419 One problem with doing perfusion of heads / organs where the veins
rlm@145	420 freely leak fluid is that if you STOP the perfusion, you rapidly
rlm@145	421 loose pressure in the organ as your perfusate leaks out. You can
rlm@145	422 prevent this by submerging the organ/head/rat whatever in fluid at
rlm@145	423 an appropriate deepness. You would have to slowly decrease the flow
rlm@145	424 rate while simultaneously lowering the perfusing object into the
rlm@145	425 fluid. To start again, reverse the process -- reengage the
rlm@145	426 peristaltic pump slowly while removing the organ from the fluid.
rlm@145	427
rlm@145	428 ** Textbook Mimiricy Evolution
rlm@145	429 As surgery becomes more common, there develops a distinct selective
rlm@145	430 pressure for individuals' organ layouts to look more like the
rlm@145	431 medical textbooks!
rlm@145	432
rlm@145	433 ** Transparent Skin
rlm@145	434 Temporary / permament transparent skin. Allows for examination of
rlm@145	435 organs / muscles and visual prevention of disease and detection or
rlm@145	436 abnormalities / good things eg. excercise optimization.
rlm@145	437
rlm@145	438 ** Sweet Information
rlm@145	439 Candy with a whole book written in it. Eat a book!
rlm@145	440
rlm@145	441 ** Targeted Immunosuppressant
rlm@145	442 Just kill off the B-cells and friends that would cause problems in
rlm@145	443 a organ-transplant / other situation. AIDS is good at killing these
rlm@145	444 cells -- maybe make it can be modified to just target the ones that
rlm@145	445 will cause problems. Then you can premptively kill off that part of
rlm@145	446 someone's immune system before a transplant. ALSO, you can kill off
rlm@145	447 everyone's defenses against other blood types and make people
rlm@145	448 effectively type AB+ w.r.t blood transfusions. Actually, why not
rlm@145	449 give babies this treatment so that they're automatically compatable
rlm@145	450 with all blood types? It would be like a blood transfusion
rlm@145	451 vaccine. The immune system does this already when it's first
rlm@145	452 growing; maybe it can be "retrained" to accept new things, or the
rlm@145	453 mechanism of immune cell death be co-opted for these purposes.
rlm@145	454
rlm@145	455 ** Fuck-you Tetris
rlm@159	456 Tetris that actively gives you the worst possible
rlm@159	457 piece. Implemented! http://fph.altervista.org/prog/bastet.html ,
rlm@159	458 https://github.com/johnny-morrice/solumns/releases
rlm@145	459
rlm@145	460 ** Pockets
rlm@145	461 More things should have them! Chairs, tables, cups, hats,
rlm@145	462 trashcans, basically anything is better with a pocket.
rlm@145	463
rlm@145	464 ** Colored Shower Head
rlm@145	465 A shower head add-on that measures the temp of the water and
rlm@145	466 changes the color of the water streams w/ an LED to show you the
rlm@145	467 temperature. That way you can align to the color you want and see
rlm@145	468 the temperature without feeling it.
rlm@145	469
rlm@145	470 ** Giant Dragonflies
rlm@145	471 We could rapidly MAKE giant dragonflies by evolving modern
rlm@145	472 dragonflies in an very oxygen rich environment!
rlm@145	473
rlm@145	474 ** Whirlpool of Light
rlm@145	475 Shine a laser out into space. But the planet is spinning! What you
rlm@145	476 get is a spiral of light! And as this signal expands, does it
rlm@145	477 eventually reveal it's quantized nature?
rlm@145	478
rlm@145	479 ** Perfusion Cooking
rlm@145	480 You do cardiac bypass on an animal like a pig, then pump in tasty,
rlm@145	481 tasty perfusate (like marinade) into the animal's
rlm@145	482 vasculature. Then, you switch out to saline and increase the
rlm@145	483 temperature of the saline to rapidly and uniformly cook the
rlm@145	484 animal. It could be the tastiest meat ever!
rlm@145	485
rlm@145	486 ** Timestamp Verification
rlm@145	487 You sign your message, and it has a timestamp at the top, with a +-
rlm@145	488 percision number. Then you send it over to the public timestamp
rlm@145	489 server, which only signs the message if it gets the message within
rlm@145	490 the timestamp window. Or the computer just signs the message but
rlm@145	491 puts a timestamp at the beginning. So if everyone trusts the
rlm@145	492 timestamp server, you can get reliable timestamps, and prove
rlm@145	493 priority on ideas, etc.
rlm@145	494
rlm@145	495 ** The Great Computing Slow-Down
rlm@145	496 In general, our computers are getting faster and faster according
rlm@145	497 to Moore's law. However, eventually our brains will be made of the
rlm@145	498 same stuff our computers are made of! This has very interesting
rlm@145	499 consequences -- I can add 2+2 and get four in about a second. Since
rlm@145	500 my neurons actually work at around 10-60 hertz in parallel, this
rlm@145	501 means that it takes me around 10-30 operations to do this
rlm@145	502 addition. That's actually not bad in terms of computing time. If my
rlm@145	503 neurons were as fast as the latest transitors, then most
rlm@145	504 calculators (made with earlier transistors) would be SLOWER than me
rlm@145	505 at adding numbers. Only the newest, most optimized calculators
rlm@145	506 would be faster, and then only about 10 times faster! This means
rlm@145	507 that once we begin to think at the speed of our technology, that
rlm@145	508 technology will suddenly seem pitifully slow in comparison to how
rlm@145	509 it seems now. And no amount of technical progress will remedy it,
rlm@145	510 because that same progress will also make us all think
rlm@145	511 faster. We'll either have to settle with living in "slow time" to
rlm@145	512 do some computations, or learn to make smarter hardware with
rlm@145	513 special optimizations. But this is actually really hard, because
rlm@145	514 we'll be working with machines that will appear to us about as fast
rlm@145	515 as MECHANICAL computers. So, in the future, all the cool parties
rlm@145	516 will be in cyperspace at vastly accelerated speeds compared to how
rlm@145	517 we exist now. But at these parties, the computers will SUCK! Of
rlm@145	518 course, this is one of the few things that can save us from AI
rlm@145	519 risk, because those AI's won't seem so scary when the're build out
rlm@145	520 of rickety old mechanical parts form our perspective.
rlm@145	521
rlm@145	522 ** Unitary Reverse Evolution of Chaos+Minds
rlm@145	523 Chaotic systems diverge exponentially in state space. Do you get
rlm@145	524 anything interesting when part of the physical system associated
rlm@145	525 with the chaotic system is a object that performs some sort of
rlm@145	526 computation? Is it possible for the computational system to play a
rlm@145	527 percision-enabling role in determining the final/initial conditions
rlm@145	528 of the chaotic system, just by tracing out thoughts in its decision
rlm@145	529 paths? This is probably too vague of an idea right now, I just
rlm@145	530 wanted to write it down.
rlm@145	531
rlm@145	532 ** Microwave-Time
rlm@145	533 The cooking time you enter on most microwaves is insane. It's
rlm@145	534 expressed in what I call a "hybrid base", a combination of base 10
rlm@145	535 and base 60. You can get absurd things like 100 < 61, and 120 ==
rlm@145	536 80! I wonder if these hybrid base systems could be very useful for
rlm@162	537 some purposes! Dylan [[http://logical.ai/microwave/org/sawtooth.html][wrote a blog post on this subject!]]
rlm@145	538
rlm@145	539 ** Three Eyes
rlm@145	540 If you had three eyes, would you still draw cubes like we currently
rlm@145	541 draw them? Or would all 2D-representations of 3D space always look
rlm@145	542 hopelessly fake?
rlm@145	543
rlm@145	544 ** Digital Taste/Smell Assay
rlm@145	545 Get a grid of bacteria, each expressing a human taste/smell
rlm@145	546 receptor linked to some sort of fluorscent activity or ion
rlm@145	547 pump. Use a camera / electrical grid to transduce the smell / taste
rlm@145	548 signal into bits! Inspired by gel-sight from MIT.
rlm@145	549
rlm@145	550 ** Childrens' Tool Shop
rlm@145	551 I think that kids should be provided with tool shops -- these would
rlm@145	552 be nice sheds with a good collection of tools to do various things
rlm@145	553 -- circuit components and soldering irons, wires, a small lathe,
rlm@145	554 drill press, belt sander, a centrifuge, microscope, and telescope,
rlm@145	555 etc. The idea is that the kid can now think, "I could use X to do
rlm@145	556 this thing that I'm thinking about" -- the building becomes an
rlm@145	557 extension of the kid's body & mind.
rlm@145	558
rlm@145	559 ** Fluid Display
rlm@145	560 Like the previous idea about matching refractances between glass
rlm@145	561 and liquid, except you make a lot of switchable glass tubes in
rlm@145	562 various patterns in the glass, and actively pump colored liquid
rlm@145	563 through the tubes (the tubes have glass-like fluid in them by
rlm@145	564 default.) The result is that you can cause the tubes to appear and
rlm@145	565 dissappear, and vary their colors as well!
rlm@145	566
rlm@145	567 ** Immunoincompatibility
rlm@145	568 Take the human genome, and refactor it so that it doesn't use a
rlm@145	569 particular codon at all. Then remove the support from our ribosomes
rlm@145	570 for that codon. What does this do for us? It makes us immune to
rlm@145	571 almost all viruses! There is at least one bacteria that already
rlm@145	572 does this to great effect.
rlm@145	573
rlm@145	574 ** Life Cycle
rlm@145	575 It's called a cycle, right? So, the thing that repeats itself over
rlm@145	576 and over, right? Not much of a cycle if you don't come back after
rlm@145	577 you die, if you ask me!
rlm@145	578
rlm@145	579 ** Car with no Blind Spots
rlm@145	580 Use some cameras in the back of the car to augment the rear-view
rlm@145	581 mirror so that you never have to turn around in order to lane
rlm@145	582 change.
rlm@145	583
rlm@145	584 ** Metabolic Windows and Freezing
rlm@145	585 You freeze a set of cells using some cryo protocol and 60%
rlm@145	586 survive. How can this be explained? It seems to me that if the
rlm@145	587 cells are the same, and the conditions homogoneous, then all the
rlm@145	588 cells should either die or live. However, suppose that there is a
rlm@145	589 metabolic cycle that needs to be in a certain phase for the cell to
rlm@145	590 survive. If the cells are asynchronous, then you might end up with
rlm@145	591 some cells dying because there were in the wrong part of their
rlm@145	592 cycle. This implies that you might be able to cryoprotect cells by
rlm@145	593 causing them to enter a certain metabolic mode before freezing.
rlm@145	594
rlm@145	595 ** Cryonics Color Appeal
rlm@145	596 Perfusate used by cryonics companies could have red food coloring
rlm@145	597 in it. It's just a nice touch so that the cryonics patient looks
rlm@145	598 more life-like than with clear CPAs, and hopefully might get
rlm@145	599 treated with more respect.
rlm@145	600
rlm@145	601 ** Paramagnetic CPA
rlm@145	602 you take a CPA that can be influenced by magnetic fields so that
rlm@145	603 its degrees of freedom are limited. Then, you release the field,
rlm@145	604 instantaly increasing the size of the state space of the system and
rlm@145	605 dramatically decreasing the temperature enough to plunge the system
rlm@145	606 past homogenous nucleation temperature and directly to the glass
rlm@145	607 transition temperature, creating a doubly unstable glass at much
rlm@145	608 lower CPA concentrations than possible at conventional CPA
rlm@145	609 concentrations. A major technical limitation facing this technique
rlm@145	610 is that it's a very minor effect -- you can only get about 0.1C
rlm@145	611 with most systems that have been studied so far.
rlm@145	612
rlm@146	613 ** Room Temp Ramen
rlm@146	614 How does the physics of cooking noodles work? Could you use a
rlm@146	615 vacuum instead of heat to force water into the noodle?
rlm@145	616
rlm@146	617 ** Personal Carbon Offset
rlm@146	618 Feel bad about contribuiting to global warming by using electricity
rlm@146	619 / driving a car? Forget trying to "conserve" or "minimize your
rlm@146	620 carbon footprint". Follow the Platinum rule -- make the world
rlm@146	621 BETTER off than you found it! This would be a small, self
rlm@146	622 contained system that sucks C02 out of the air. It uses
rlm@146	623 electricity, but it's so efficient at removing CO2 that it more
rlm@146	624 than offsets the CO2 produced by even a coal plant to produce that
rlm@146	625 electricity. This way, you can still drive even a gas guzzler, but
rlm@146	626 have a net negative carbon footprint! Maybe something cool could be
rlm@146	627 done with the carbon as well. Use as much electricity as you want,
rlm@146	628 but negate the damage to the enviroment with more technology.
rlm@145	629
rlm@146	630 ** Undoing Spermogenesis
rlm@146	631 With enough sperm, you can derive the donor's entire genome. You
rlm@146	632 gain more confidence in the alleles for a particular gene the more
rlm@146	633 sperm you have. Each additional sperm gives you the same sort of
rlm@146	634 information you'd get flipping a coin and trying to decide whether
rlm@146	635 the coin is H/T of H/H. Is there enough sperm in the the average
rlm@146	636 load for you to be as confident as mitosis?
rlm@145	637
rlm@146	638 ** Mars Life
rlm@146	639 We could engineer life that could survive on mars (probably some
rlm@146	640 non-vascular photosynthetic poikilohydric creature like a lichen)
rlm@146	641 by taking an extremophile from Antarctica and evolving it in
rlm@146	642 increasingly Martian conditions. This could be an easy start to a
rlm@146	643 terraforming process.
rlm@145	644
rlm@146	645 ** Problem with Aubrey de Grey's Ideas
rlm@146	646 Aubrey de Grey says that we might be able to live forever by
rlm@146	647 continually repairing our bodies at the cellular level -- he
rlm@146	648 details 7 different mechanisms of damage and says that if all of
rlm@146	649 them are dealt with /together/ that it would stop aging. (You can't
rlm@146	650 miss even one because they're all fatal.) However, it doesn't take
rlm@146	651 into account that we are also beings of information and that there
rlm@146	652 is a very real software component to our existence. Even if our
rlm@146	653 biological chassies can be maintained forever, I think it is
rlm@146	654 unlikely that our minds will operate well far outside of the design
rlm@146	655 constraints that we've evolved to handle. Say I programmed a
rlm@146	656 webserver with the express goal of it being able to serve webpages
rlm@146	657 for month on some stock server. I'll do fairly rigorous testing to
rlm@146	658 make sure that it can handle the expected load then then some. Now
rlm@146	659 say that you want to keep a particular instance of this webserver
rlm@146	660 running indefinitely. (The program instance is like your mind and
rlm@146	661 the computer it's running on is like your body). You might very
rlm@146	662 well be able to keep the physical computer infrastructure running
rlm@146	663 for forever by replacing hard drives / ram / CPUs, etc. However,
rlm@146	664 since I designed the webserver to work for a month, it probably has
rlm@146	665 memory leaks, rare stochastic bugs, or other built in limits /
rlm@146	666 constraints (think log files or some date rollover shenanigans)
rlm@146	667 that will ultimately kill the webserver even with eternally perfect
rlm@146	668 hardware. Do you really expect that a webserver engineered to work
rlm@146	669 for 1 month will run for 10 years without catastrophically
rlm@146	670 crashing? Not even Apache can do this! In fact, if I put in the
rlm@146	671 extreme effort to make it that robust, I've wasted time that I
rlm@146	672 could have spent on other projects by pursuing an unnecessary
rlm@146	673 engineering goal. Likewise, human minds have only ever run for at
rlm@146	674 most 122 years before they are destroyed due to hardware
rlm@146	675 degradation. Fixing the hardware doesn't change any software bugs
rlm@146	676 that are almost certainly present in the human mind. Think of all
rlm@146	677 the pathological things that can go wrong with a webserver,
rlm@146	678 multiply it by a million, and that likely how evolution has
rlm@146	679 designed our minds. For example, consider memory : why should you
rlm@146	680 expect that we have evolved the ability to coherently organize
rlm@146	681 memories past say 150 years? There's been absolutely no selective
rlm@146	682 pressure for this ability, so you can bet that if there's any
rlm@146	683 fitness to be gained from not having unlimited memory potential
rlm@146	684 (such as better metabolic efficiency), we have it! You might think
rlm@146	685 that maybe we would just forget things the same way that we sort of
rlm@146	686 forget things that happen earlier in our lives, but complicated
rlm@146	687 information processing systems don't have to fail gracefully when
rlm@146	688 they're pushed far past their design constraints. A 150 year old
rlm@146	689 person is just as likely to suffer a catastrophic psychosis due to
rlm@146	690 software limitations associated with memory as he is to do
rlm@146	691 something with all those memories we might consider
rlm@146	692 reasonable. More likely, in fact, since there are so very many ways
rlm@146	693 for a complicated software system to break and so few ways for it
rlm@146	694 to run successfully. Therefore, I think Aubrey de Grey's
rlm@146	695 "hardware-only" approach is missing a very important component of
rlm@146	696 longevity science, and any successful effort to make people live
rlm@146	697 orders of magnitude longer than they do naturally will need to deal
rlm@146	698 with people's software as well as their hardware.
rlm@145	699
rlm@146	700 ** Validating Neurocryopreservation
rlm@146	701 Problem : you want to test whether a brain is functionally
rlm@146	702 preserved through vitrification, but you don't want to figure out
rlm@146	703 how to preserve all the other organs in the animal. It might be
rlm@146	704 possible to keep the rest of the body at almost 0C and vitrify just
rlm@146	705 the head for only a few minutes. Induce hypothermia, then separate
rlm@146	706 out the head's blood supply from the rest of the body, then just
rlm@146	707 cryoptotect and vitrify the head. Might need some sort of thermal
rlm@146	708 guard to keep the outer head / neck from becoming too cold. You
rlm@146	709 leave the spinal cord intact! Then you devitrify to 0C, remove
rlm@146	710 cryoprotectant, and then reattach the blood supply. You can
rlm@146	711 determine brain preservation using behavioral assays!
rlm@145	712
rlm@146	713 ** Freezing Water Purifier
rlm@146	714 You slowly freeze water, but also run liquid water over the frozen
rlm@146	715 mass. This takes away basically all impurities and creates "washed
rlm@146	716 ice" then you melt the ice. Maybe you could re-use the heat from
rlm@146	717 creating the ice to melt the ice?
rlm@145	718
rlm@146	719 ** Ultra Strength
rlm@146	720 Allow a person to visualize their muscle recruitment patterns. Give
rlm@146	721 them adrenaline and let them feel what it's like to have the normal
rlm@146	722 limits removed. See if they can replicate the effects.
rlm@145	723
rlm@146	724 ** Phone Names
rlm@146	725 Make a PX record for domain names that's like the MX record, except
rlm@146	726 that it is a phone number instead of an IP address. That way, you
rlm@146	727 can use the domain name registration system to provide names for
rlm@146	728 phone numbers. Then, as long as you control the domain, you can
rlm@146	729 point people to your current phone number by updating that record.
rlm@145	730
rlm@146	731 ** Edible Flowers
rlm@146	732 Edible white flowers that you put in a colored solution with
rlm@146	733 flavor. When the flower turns the right color, it is also flavored
rlm@146	734 and ready to eat!
rlm@145	735
rlm@146	736 ** Lead Bone
rlm@146	737 Could you fill in all the empty spaces in a bone with lead? Might
rlm@146	738 be cool!
rlm@145	739
rlm@146	740 ** The Quest for Life
rlm@146	741 Many stories that have immortal characters have the "immortal who
rlm@146	742 wants to become mortal" trope. I want to story where the
rlm@146	743 protagonist loses their immortality and feels /angry/ and ashamed
rlm@146	744 about losing something that's so absolutely crucial to their
rlm@146	745 identity. A reverse of "death makes life worth living", they feel
rlm@146	746 that living forever is what makes life worth living. Now they've
rlm@146	747 "lost their sunrise" or their "connection to the timeless universe"
rlm@146	748 or something. So they go on a quest to get it back, learning about
rlm@146	749 themselves along the way, and regaining the precious thing they
rlm@146	750 lost in the beginning. Which, it they can actually gain their
rlm@146	751 immortality back, means that they never lost it in the first place!
rlm@145	752
rlm@146	753 ** World Map
rlm@146	754 Take a small table and paint the continents in toothpaste on the
rlm@146	755 table. Make a slightly raised barrier around the table. Slowly pour
rlm@146	756 water onto the table, and it will form the oceans!
rlm@145	757
rlm@146	758 ** Stage Magic Rituals
rlm@146	759 Rituals should incorporate elements of stage magic. For example in
rlm@146	760 Teller's rendition of Shakespeare's Tempest, they have a scene
rlm@146	761 where they levitate a crown in front of someone, then put it on his
rlm@146	762 head. They also have a wedding ceremony where they levitated the
rlm@146	763 bride as well. Actual weddings and other ceremonies should
rlm@146	764 incorporate stage magic as an enhancement to the gravitas!
rlm@145	765
rlm@146	766 ** Isotope Time Dilation
rlm@146	767 Use a cyclotron to speed up rare isotopes developed in nuclear
rlm@146	768 fusion experiments. The relativistic time dilation will stop the
rlm@146	769 isotopes from decaying, and allow time to study them. This is based
rlm@146	770 on radioactive isotopes that fall through the earth's atmosphere
rlm@146	771 that take hundreds of times longer to decay than normal.
rlm@145	772
rlm@146	773 ** Marsupial Stimulation
rlm@146	774 You take a freshly pouched marsupial baby, and show it videos and
rlm@146	775 other interactive things while it matures in the pouch. What mental
rlm@146	776 effects would this have?
rlm@145	777
rlm@146	778 ** The Dynamically Well-Tempered Clavier
rlm@146	779 Some older ways of tuning instruments sound better, but we use the
rlm@146	780 even-tempered scale today because it makes it easier to switch
rlm@146	781 keys. With electronic music, why not make key-annotations and
rlm@146	782 dynamically re-tune the piece to sound good in the current key?
rlm@146	783 Could be done as a midi+annotation -> midi compiler for initial
rlm@146	784 experimentation.
rlm@145	785
rlm@146	786 ** Death Always Implies Damage
rlm@146	787 is is possible for a corpse to differ from a living person only in
rlm@146	788 the fact that one is dead and the other is alive? NO! A corpse must
rlm@146	789 always have some sort of molecular damage which causes the loss of
rlm@146	790 function!
rlm@145	791
rlm@146	792 ** Inner Eye
rlm@146	793 Surgically install a bunch of tiny cameras inside a person. Then,
rlm@146	794 you can activate them all and get a picture of your internal organs
rlm@146	795 for diagnostic purposes.
rlm@145	796
rlm@146	797 ** Chaos Rails
rlm@146	798 The homoclinic tangle (which I call the "rails of chaos") is very
rlm@146	799 beautiful. We couldn't even visualize it before computers because
rlm@146	800 it's so complicated! Someone should make a visualization of
rlm@146	801 it. Here's my inital stab at it: [[../images/rails-of-chaos.png][The Rails of Chaos]]
rlm@145	802
rlm@146	803 ** Cryonics Middle Ages
rlm@146	804 Some people say that cryonics is an experiment and that it is
rlm@146	805 foolish to wait until we have revived a human. There is a middle
rlm@146	806 ground where the procedure has a dismal success rate on humans, say
rlm@146	807 1 in 20, so that you'd be a fool to try revival. Nonetheless, this
rlm@146	808 very risky procedure could be the legal proof of concept needed to
rlm@146	809 create a new class of life between "living" and "dead": "stasis".
rlm@145	810
rlm@146	811 ** Minds and Mirrors
rlm@146	812 Neat thought experiment -- if you take a mirror of someone by
rlm@146	813 actually reversing a person's chirality molecule by molecule, then
rlm@146	814 will the only be able to read mirror writing? The answer is yes, by
rlm@146	815 analogy to a purely mechanical scan-tron device. This is one of the
rlm@146	816 only interesting transforms I know that can take a human brain and
rlm@146	817 change it in subtle, non-destructive ways. It's also an argument
rlm@146	818 against dualism.
rlm@145	819
rlm@146	820 ** Biosphere in a Bottle
rlm@146	821 There are around 15 million species. 15 million stem cells will
rlm@146	822 fill only a tiny size, far less than a cubic inch. Preserve a
rlm@146	823 single cell from every species on earth in this small space, and
rlm@146	824 you will have a record of our current biosphere that can be
rlm@146	825 protected. "Hold the genetic data of all species in your hand!"
rlm@145	826
rlm@146	827 ** Chaos Lock
rlm@146	828 The "arrow of time" points in the direction of increasing
rlm@146	829 entropy. The time evolution of chaotic systems depend exquisitely
rlm@146	830 on their initial state. If you take a measurement of a chaotic
rlm@146	831 system at any given point of time, you can evolve that system
rlm@146	832 backwards or forwards based on your measurement. So let's say you
rlm@146	833 start the chaotic system in a VERY low entropy state, then let it
rlm@146	834 run for a while, then take a measurement with some
rlm@146	835 uncertainty. Your measurement is pretty good, but obviously not
rlm@146	836 PERFECT. If you evolve the chaotic system back in time, then you
rlm@146	837 will see that you don't really reach a state with low entropy an
rlm@146	838 hour before (the entropy is easy to measure with surrogates like
rlm@146	839 alignment, etc). So use this technique to SEARCH for a more
rlm@146	840 accurate measurement! This potentially can give you many more
rlm@146	841 orders of magnitude than you could get alone just using an
rlm@146	842 instrument. Sometimes it will give you bad results, the the odds of
rlm@146	843 it doing that are infinitesimal, and you can just measure a couple
rlm@146	844 of times.
rlm@145	845
rlm@146	846 ** Cryo Evolution
rlm@146	847 Perhaps there would be a way to rapidly evolve a symbiotic
rlm@146	848 bacterial organism that could protect human tissues from freezing
rlm@146	849 damage.
rlm@145	850
rlm@146	851 ** Suicide Parasite
rlm@146	852 Sometimes, people kill themselves for no good reason. We often
rlm@146	853 explain this with things like "hidden depression" or we say that
rlm@146	854 they had something like chronic jaw or back pain. I think that
rlm@146	855 smells of rationalization. I don't buy it. I propose that in many
rlm@146	856 suicide cases there is a disease that causes the suicidal
rlm@146	857 behavior. We already know that certain parasites have mind-bending
rlm@146	858 properties in other animals, even mammals like mice. It's not much
rlm@146	859 of a stretch to imagine a parasite that causes suicides in
rlm@146	860 humans. Some problems:
rlm@151	861
rlm@146	862 What does the suicide parasite get out of it? : This might be
rlm@146	863 answered by the whole thing being a glitch caused by cross-species
rlm@146	864 contamination. Toxoplasma works this way.
rlm@145	865
rlm@146	866 What predictions does a disease model make : suicide should be
rlm@146	867 more common among people who share a contagion vector. There should
rlm@146	868 be suicides that don't make any sense : people who weren't really
rlm@146	869 depressed, who had no reason to kill themselves. People who have
rlm@146	870 killed themselves should have a higher incidence of some unknown
rlm@146	871 parasite in their brains.
rlm@145	872
rlm@146	873 ** Domestic Insects
rlm@146	874 People should eat more bugs because they're much more efficient, so
rlm@146	875 why not do some major domestication research to make very appealing
rlm@146	876 bugs? Beetles, in particular, seem to be excellent targets for
rlm@146	877 domestication because they have extreme levels of genetic
rlm@146	878 malleability. Remember that lobster was once seen as an animal only
rlm@146	879 fit for prisoners to consume!
rlm@145	880
rlm@146	881 ** Birth-Clones
rlm@146	882 What if each person was intentionally split at birth into a normal
rlm@146	883 embryo and a few "backup" cells which are then frozen. The backup
rlm@146	884 cells are created just the same way as natural identical twins. The
rlm@146	885 backups can be used to regenerate organs. etc. Also, it would be a
rlm@146	886 good sci-fi concept, because you could have a culture where people
rlm@146	887 reward people who were especially awesome are "reborn" from their
rlm@146	888 backups. Imagine having a young Bach every generation, etc.
rlm@145	889
rlm@146	890 ** Pronunciation Guide
rlm@146	891 A simple webpage where you type in a word and it returns a simple,
rlm@146	892 English sentence describing exactly how to pronounce the word. For
rlm@146	893 people who don't want to learn IPA.
rlm@145	894
rlm@146	895 ** Learning to Teleport
rlm@146	896 This is a story about a person who is struggling with his/her
rlm@146	897 society's ideas about teleportation. It's considered a fundamental
rlm@146	898 part of being a member of that society (after all, the difference
rlm@146	899 between animals and humans is that humans are creatures of pure
rlm@146	900 information while animals are burdened with base matter, "that's
rlm@146	901 how you travel the stars, etc") Humans are born normally, grow up,
rlm@146	902 and then eventually transcend via destructive upload. Analogies to
rlm@146	903 jumping off a diving board into a pool (which I simply /could not
rlm@146	904 do/ for a long time), etc.
rlm@145	905
rlm@146	906 ** No-Float-Ice
rlm@146	907 Cup that has cross beams at the bottom where ice forms. Then when
rlm@146	908 you drink liquid from the glass, the ice stays at the bottom and
rlm@146	909 doesn't hit your lips. For bars and fancy things.
rlm@145	910
rlm@146	911 ** Bitcoins for Immigrants
rlm@146	912 A common case with Mexican immigrants (illegal or not) is that they
rlm@146	913 want to send money they've earned in the US back to their families
rlm@146	914 in Mexico. They currently do this through things like Money Gram or
rlm@146	915 Western Union, and they get fleeced in the process with
rlm@146	916 fees. Bitcoin could greatly reduce the cost of sending money from
rlm@146	917 America to Mexico, but I don't believe that it's currently used for
rlm@146	918 that among Mexican immigrants currently due to lack of knowledge. I
rlm@146	919 bet you could set up physical locations like those obnoxious
rlm@146	920 Western Union huts in places like Texas, Arizona, etc, and greatly
rlm@146	921 undercut them. Or, perhaps some educational seminars about bitcoin
rlm@146	922 might be in order. There's some money to be made there because
rlm@146	923 there is great demand, and it's a good thing to boot!
rlm@145	924
rlm@146	925 ** Reverse Eye-Tracking
rlm@146	926 A painting that is actually a digital screen with a camera. It
rlm@146	927 records people's eye tracks permanently. It's "artistic" because
rlm@146	928 paintings are normally these things that you look at without
rlm@146	929 changing, but this one is changed the second you look at it,
rlm@146	930 recording where /you/ looked forever for others to see. Make it be
rlm@146	931 a painting of a woman and see the trolling as the breasts and groin
rlm@146	932 area light up with interest from all the males passing by. Then
rlm@146	933 watch as the painting turns into a commentary on perception and
rlm@146	934 popularity -- a sort of eigenvector of perception! Will all
rlm@146	935 paintings turn into the same thing eventually?
rlm@145	936
rlm@146	937 ** Smart Toilets
rlm@146	938 Instead of using indirect measures like infrared detectors of the
rlm@146	939 presence of a person, use computer vision to directly measure
rlm@146	940 whether the toilet needs to be flushed. I think a lot of things
rlm@146	941 will end up going this way as we get better computer vision.
rlm@145	942
rlm@146	943 ** Validate Chemopreservation
rlm@146	944 Chemopreservation is difficult to validate because it destroys the
rlm@146	945 functionality of a brain, and brain simulation will take a long
rlm@146	946 time to mature as a technology. However, one very powerful way to
rlm@146	947 validate chemopreservation would be to have a person/animal learn
rlm@146	948 something with high complexity such as a number or the solution to
rlm@146	949 a maze, or a flashbulb memory. Then you preserve their brain
rlm@146	950 chemically, slice it up, and read /that specific memory/ from the
rlm@146	951 detailed brain scan. Much more difficult, but much more doable.
rlm@145	952
rlm@146	953 ** Candy Screw
rlm@146	954 Edible candy screw with candy nuts that you can screw as well.
rlm@145	955
rlm@146	956 ** Better Bibliography
rlm@146	957 When writing a thesis or paper, have the bibliography not just be
rlm@146	958 an opaque list of resources, but have it be a list of /summaries/
rlm@146	959 and /qualities/ that each paper has in the context of the paper
rlm@146	960 being written. When examining a bibliography, I want to know if
rlm@146	961 reading the papers in the bibliography are worth my time, and I
rlm@146	962 also am probably also interested in exactly the things that are
rlm@146	963 being discussed in the paper I'm reading. The bibliography is the
rlm@146	964 perfect place to provide information about the referenced papers
rlm@146	965 from the author's perspective. I will use this biographic form in
rlm@146	966 my own thesis!
rlm@145	967
rlm@146	968 ** Chess Visual
rlm@146	969 To show the vast size of the game trees considered by computers,
rlm@146	970 show two people playing chess in a void. They are floating in
rlm@146	971 space, and there is a simple chess board between them. Then, as
rlm@146	972 they play, the game tree's they are considering are drawn behind
rlm@146	973 him. The root of the tree starts centered in their heads or
rlm@146	974 whatever they use to think, and the tree grows out from behind,
rlm@146	975 never crossing the dividing plane between the two players. Each
rlm@146	976 player's tree is a different color. As they grow, there are
rlm@146	977 animations for pruning, etc. Eventually, they look like the
rlm@146	978 hemispheres of a brain, wings, etc. A human's tree might
rlm@146	979 occasionally have a long chain, while the computer tree would be
rlm@146	980 more uniform. You could compare deep blue and a modern laptop. Use
rlm@146	981 actual data when fighting two computers!
rlm@145	982
rlm@146	983 ** Tamper Proof Gold Bars
rlm@146	984 [[Http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/gold-plated-tungsten-alloy-bar.html][This site]] offers gold plated tungsten bars as "novelty" items. One
rlm@146	985 reason to prefer coins is because they are much harder to
rlm@146	986 counterfeit because there is less surface area to mass
rlm@146	987 ratio. However, gold bars are still a great design because they can
rlm@146	988 hold a lot of value in a small space. A gold bar could be given the
rlm@146	989 same protections (and more) that gold coins have to offer by
rlm@146	990 changing it into a "gold book", which would have hundreds of
rlm@146	991 "pages" of gold bound together. This could be implemented with
rlm@146	992 multiple steel rods going through the book which can be removed, or
rlm@146	993 some more classier mechanism for holding the pages. The point is
rlm@146	994 that the bar can be EASILY subdivided (and people would perform
rlm@146	995 this test before buying), thus guaranteeing it's authenticity.
rlm@145	996
rlm@146	997 ** High School Science
rlm@146	998 This is a lesson in scientific ethics. The goal is to calculate
rlm@146	999 /g/, the local gravitational acceleration. The students are told
rlm@146	1000 that the textbook says it's /exactly/ 9.81 before they start the
rlm@146	1001 experiment. See how they doctor their results to get closer to the
rlm@146	1002 textbook value. It's neat because for any given school, /g/ is
rlm@146	1003 probably not exactly equal to 9.81, because that is just an
rlm@146	1004 average!
rlm@145	1005
rlm@146	1006 ** Opencourseware Subtitles
rlm@146	1007 There are people who type up lectures at MIT while they are being
rlm@146	1008 given, so that hearing impared students can follow along. These
rlm@146	1009 recordings should be kept and given to OCW for subtitles. If the
rlm@146	1010 timestamps of keys are recorded, then it is easy to make subtitles.
rlm@145	1011
rlm@146	1012 ** Screen Locking Timing
rlm@146	1013 You use your computer camera to see if you are sitting in front of
rlm@146	1014 the computer. If you are, then the screen will never lock. If you
rlm@146	1015 are, then the screen will lock with a 30-40 second timeout. It's an
rlm@146	1016 extension of using inactivity to initiate the countdown, just with
rlm@146	1017 more information.
rlm@145	1018
rlm@146	1019 ** Mirror Toilet
rlm@146	1020 A toilet with a square basin made of mirror instead of
rlm@146	1021 porcelain. That way, you can see how good of a wipe job you have
rlm@146	1022 done / watch how your excretion system works.
rlm@145	1023
rlm@146	1024 ** X-ray telepresence
rlm@146	1025 given that a doctor is operating on a patient via telepresence, one
rlm@146	1026 cool things you can do is shine X-rays into the patient to view the
rlm@146	1027 insides during real time. (This doesn't expose either the doctor or
rlm@146	1028 patient to chronically damaging amounts of X-rays) If the system
rlm@146	1029 was coupled with a Bayesian model of the layout of the structure,
rlm@146	1030 and the x-rays were only fired whenever the uncertainty of the
rlm@146	1031 model reached a certain threshold, then the radiation damage and
rlm@146	1032 surgery risk could be minimized.
rlm@145	1033
rlm@146	1034 ** Superfluid Vascular System
rlm@146	1035 I wonder what would happen if you replaced the blood in a human
rlm@146	1036 with a superfluid. What would the physical dynamics be? Would the
rlm@146	1037 superfluid flow through the vasculature, or would it ignore it and
rlm@146	1038 travel through the cells, or something else entirely. Since
rlm@146	1039 superfluids need to be cold to retain their superfluidity, how
rlm@146	1040 would the dynamics change during perfusion of a superfluid, where
rlm@146	1041 the fluid gains and looses superfluidity as it goes deeper into the
rlm@146	1042 body and is cooled by superfluid from upstream. In summary there
rlm@146	1043 are two things to simulate 1.) replace all blood in human with
rlm@146	1044 superfluid instantly. 2.) perfuse superfluid into human.
rlm@145	1045
rlm@146	1046 ** Projective Guessing
rlm@146	1047 I think that we read and see things by making a really good guess
rlm@146	1048 about what we're expecting to see, and then searching for our guess
rlm@146	1049 in what we see. If it really doesn't match, then we start to make
rlm@146	1050 more guesses / analyze the image from first principles, but most
rlm@146	1051 stuff is projective guessing.
rlm@145	1052
rlm@146	1053 ** Intestinal Flora Maintenance
rlm@146	1054 Why not inoculate babies at birth with "ideal" gut flora instead of
rlm@146	1055 whatever bullshit they naturally get, thus giving them optimal
rlm@146	1056 digestive/nutrient extraction capabilities. Might also be able to
rlm@146	1057 make their farts not stink for life, too. MORE IMPORTANTLY, might
rlm@146	1058 help to preventatively stop some forms of /colic/, which affects 1
rlm@146	1059 in 5 babies and causes constant screaming and pain for about 5
rlm@146	1060 weeks.
rlm@145	1061
rlm@146	1062 ** Server Culture -- Mirrors
rlm@146	1063 Make a distributed system where people can mirror the websites of
rlm@146	1064 people they like -- essentially cover the server costs of favored
rlm@146	1065 websites. This could make popular websites run at no cost. The
rlm@146	1066 system would require that the mirrored content be the same as the
rlm@146	1067 official source. Sort of like bit-torrent for websites.
rlm@145	1068
rlm@146	1069 ** Map Programming
rlm@146	1070 One problem with functional programming is that in order to remain
rlm@146	1071 functional, you have to pass up arguments up into each calling
rlm@146	1072 function to get the full range of behavior from the lower level
rlm@146	1073 functions. Normally people come to a compromise involving
rlm@146	1074 abstraction and sparing use of dynamic variables to configure
rlm@146	1075 runtime behavior. What would be the advantages of making a
rlm@146	1076 programming language where every function receives one argument, a
rlm@146	1077 map, which contains all the symbol bindings it would ever need?
rlm@146	1078 This map is passed on to all subordinate functions. This way, you
rlm@146	1079 could replace functions on the fly, and arrange for there to be
rlm@146	1080 sensible defaults, etc. Might cause more harm than good but is an
rlm@146	1081 interesting idea.
rlm@145	1082
rlm@146	1083 ** Rest Nest
rlm@146	1084 A small EEG device you would attach to your head when you go to
rlm@146	1085 sleep at night. ML algorithms would determine your particular sleep
rlm@146	1086 cycles. This would mostly be an alarm clock that you could give a
rlm@146	1087 time range, say 7:00AM - 7:15AM, and it would wake you up during an
rlm@146	1088 ideal time corresponding to then end of one of your 90 min sleep
rlm@146	1089 cycles. You would feel much more rested upon waking up, and would
rlm@146	1090 wake up faster. There might be some other uses for the EEG data as
rlm@146	1091 well.
rlm@145	1092
rlm@146	1093 ** Image Compression
rlm@146	1094 Use a library like gimp or opencv to process an image to make it
rlm@146	1095 have less entropy, then store the reverse of those operations along
rlm@146	1096 with the compressed simpler image as a super-compressed image file
rlm@146	1097 (possibly accepting some losses). Trades file size for
rlm@146	1098 decompression time, and allows one to cheat by using information in
rlm@146	1099 gimp/opencv to compress the image.
rlm@145	1100
rlm@146	1101 ** Aldehyde-Stabalized Cryopreservation
rlm@146	1102 Why not use a fixative to buy enough time to ramp up
rlm@146	1103 cryoprotectants to an acceptable level at room temperature? Then,
rlm@146	1104 the whole system can be rapidly cooled and vitrified. This method
rlm@146	1105 "severs the biological link" in that the fixatives are highly
rlm@146	1106 toxic, but current vitrification procedures do this anyway since
rlm@146	1107 there can be a lot of freezing damage.
rlm@145	1108
rlm@146	1109 ** Dilated Security Camera
rlm@146	1110 A security camera that would capture full video footage of
rlm@146	1111 everything at 60fps but then decide to keep only every 1 frame
rlm@146	1112 every 5 seconds unless there's something "interesting" happening.
rlm@145	1113
rlm@146	1114 ** Bitcoin Wallet
rlm@146	1115 Part of "server culture", this would be something like
rlm@146	1116 "coin.your-domain.com" which would serve as your personal trusted
rlm@146	1117 access to your own bitcoins from anywhere.
rlm@145	1118
rlm@146	1119 ** Libpay
rlm@146	1120 This would be a free library which would enable micro-donations to
rlm@146	1121 software projects and other projects, so that you could donate a
rlm@146	1122 penny to "emacs" and it would be automatically split up to every
rlm@146	1123 person who has ever contributed to emacs in proportion to the
rlm@146	1124 amount of community esteem, code quantity, bugs fixed, whatever the
rlm@146	1125 community decides. This might make it possible for programmers to
rlm@146	1126 live entirely off of free programming.
rlm@145	1127
rlm@146	1128 ** Pronouns
rlm@146	1129 Use capital letters A-Z instead of pronouns. They solve pronoun
rlm@146	1130 referents and gender neutrality, are short to say, and you can
rlm@146	1131 encode useful information into the choice of letter. For example,
rlm@146	1132 instead of "Meetings shall be presided over by the president,
rlm@146	1133 unless she is absent." USE "Meetings shall be presided over by the
rlm@146	1134 president, unless P is absent." We already use this a little, since
rlm@146	1135 I and U are reserved for the subject and object respectively.
rlm@145	1136
rlm@146	1137 ** Phone DSP
rlm@146	1138 Software app that inserts an audio DSP between the input to a phone
rlm@146	1139 and the output. The DSP is delicious and configurable, and can
rlm@146	1140 allow men to make their voices deeper, etc. The app would allow you
rlm@146	1141 to hear your own voice as others hear it. Most people hate how
rlm@146	1142 their own voice sounds. The app would also allow one to immediately
rlm@146	1143 change the parameters of the DSP using good presets.
rlm@145	1144
rlm@146	1145 ** Restaurant Receipts
rlm@146	1146 Use a carbon copy receipt instead of two stupid copies.
rlm@145	1147
rlm@146	1148 ** Crossdressing
rlm@146	1149 Easiest way to disguise oneself as a woman is to wear a burka.
rlm@145	1150
rlm@146	1151 ** Book-Mode
rlm@146	1152 Intelligent color highlighting for books and articles. It would
rlm@146	1153 disambiguate pronouns and involved references. For example, if
rlm@146	1154 "Rachael" was assigned the color red, and "the blonde haired girl"
rlm@146	1155 refers to "Rachael", then "the blonde haired girl" would be colored
rlm@146	1156 red. Also, you could disambiguate multi part run-on sentences by
rlm@146	1157 highlighting each subcomponent. Maybe would also have applications
rlm@146	1158 to scientific reading.
rlm@145	1159
rlm@146	1160 ** Handheld Light Rain Measurement
rlm@146	1161 This would be a clear, teflon coated plastic disk with a camera
rlm@146	1162 underneath the disk. You would be able to hold the device out and
rlm@146	1163 it would measure the rate of accumulation of water droplets from
rlm@146	1164 fine mists and light rain by using computer vision to measure the
rlm@146	1165 diameters of the drops.
rlm@145	1166
rlm@146	1167 ** Big Brother Farming
rlm@146	1168 This would be a vision system that would individually monitor each
rlm@146	1169 plant and turn on water, etc to ensure maximum/uniform growth for
rlm@146	1170 each plant.
rlm@145	1171
rlm@146	1172 ** Discrete Faucet
rlm@146	1173 A faucet with discrete ticks instead of continuous.
rlm@145	1174
rlm@146	1175 ** Laser Circle
rlm@146	1176 Take a glass microfiliment and shine a laser at one end at an
rlm@146	1177 oblique angle. It will make a perfect, large circle on the wall,
rlm@146	1178 converting a laser beam into a laser cone, preserving most of the
rlm@146	1179 energy of the laser.
rlm@145	1180
rlm@146	1181 ** Invisible Glass
rlm@146	1182 Take a container of liquid and embed a glass sculpture made out of
rlm@146	1183 glass that has exactly the same index of refraction and color of
rlm@146	1184 the liquid. Then the sculpture will be totally invisible in the
rlm@146	1185 container, and will only be revealed when the liquid is
rlm@146	1186 drained. The container might be a fancy wine/spirit bottle or an
rlm@146	1187 hourglass.
rlm@145	1188
rlm@146	1189 ** Caterpillar people
rlm@146	1190 A race of caterpillar like creatures gains intelligence after eons
rlm@146	1191 of predation by birds, etc. These caterpillar creatures still
rlm@146	1192 undergo metamorphosis into a large butterfly-like creature. The
rlm@146	1193 metamorphosis process turns the caterpillar's brain into mush and
rlm@146	1194 reforms it into a minimal, dumb, truly insect-like mind, completely
rlm@146	1195 destroying the person the caterpillar was. The society develops all
rlm@146	1196 sorts of customs and religious interpretations of the
rlm@146	1197 metamorphosis. It is viewed as good and natural by some since it is
rlm@146	1198 part of their life cycle and necessary to propagate the species, as
rlm@146	1199 only the butterflies can mate. Some think that the butterflies are
rlm@146	1200 still the same person because they have the same soul, even they no
rlm@146	1201 longer posses the memories or personality of the original
rlm@146	1202 caterpillar. Some see the butterfly form as the "true form" of the
rlm@146	1203 species, since the butterflies can fly, mate, and are
rlm@146	1204 beautiful. Many make a big deal out of the fact that 1-2% of the
rlm@146	1205 caterpillar's mind is actually preserved in the butterfly. Some see
rlm@146	1206 it as a terrible tragedy and argue that the caterpillars should try
rlm@146	1207 to stop the metamorphosis by technology. Practically, some very
rlm@146	1208 important members of society undergo hormone therapy and/or surgery
rlm@146	1209 to prevent metamorphosis so that they can live longer as
rlm@146	1210 themselves.
rlm@145	1211
rlm@146	1212 This is a continuation of Marvin Minsky's ideas about pain being
rlm@146	1213 something that preserves our bodies while destroying our minds,
rlm@146	1214 something that is a remnant from our too harsh animal days that
rlm@146	1215 hasn't caught up to the fact that we have very complex brains
rlm@146	1216 now. It's a worst-case scenario about a maladaptive genetic
rlm@146	1217 legacy. Also, it's inspired by "There She Is!!!", which makes a
rlm@146	1218 compelling point about homosexuality by introducing a second gender
rlm@146	1219 characteristic (bunny/cat, male/female), which makes homophobia
rlm@146	1220 look very silly. Here, our own biological legacy of pain and death
rlm@146	1221 is made to look like the tragedy it is through the lens of the the
rlm@146	1222 caterpillar people.
rlm@145	1223
rlm@146	1224 ** Relationships as a Business
rlm@146	1225 [[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	1226 quitting," which is about better business by letting people go
rlm@146	1227 instead of keeping them around past their "apex". Focuses on
rlm@146	1228 information transfer. Cool idea of an alumni network, which for
rlm@146	1229 relationships would be a group of satisfied ex-lovers, who would
rlm@146	1230 recommend new people your way, and who might consider coming to you
rlm@146	1231 again, refreshed from their time away with new
rlm@146	1232 stories/experiences. I should look for examples of this and how
rlm@146	1233 they worked out.
rlm@145	1234
rlm@146	1235 ** Psychic Crystal
rlm@146	1236 In a science fiction story, this would be an object that is very
rlm@146	1237 easy to move physically but is extremely difficult to move with
rlm@146	1238 telekinesis.
rlm@145	1239
rlm@146	1240 ** True Reflection
rlm@146	1241 There's a "true mirror" in the MIT student center -- it's two
rlm@146	1242 normal mirrors at right angles, like staring at a corner of a
rlm@146	1243 room. The light reflects so that it shows you what you actually
rlm@146	1244 look like, instead of your mirror image.
rlm@145	1245
rlm@146	1246 ** Remote Control Wasp
rlm@146	1247 Use computer to drive wings with remote power/logic.
rlm@145	1248
rlm@146	1249 ** Encrypted Email Phone Book
rlm@146	1250 Public (distributed?) database of email->private-key pairs, to
rlm@146	1251 enable automatic encryption.
rlm@146	1252
rlm@146	1253 ** Universal Eye Color
rlm@146	1254 Every equivalent creature will see each others' eyes as black --
rlm@146	1255 it's universal. Even if the creatures see in radio waves, and their
rlm@146	1256 eyes are 2m long pieces of jagged metal, when those creatures look
rlm@146	1257 at each other, they will see black, the absence of light and color
rlm@146	1258 (since it's being absorbed by the sensor array).
rlm@146	1259
rlm@146	1260 ** Intelligent Microwave
rlm@146	1261 It learns where the hot nodes of its fields are, and uses them to
rlm@146	1262 evenly heat any food item. It has an infrared camera or something
rlm@146	1263 to keep track of how hot the food is. That way, you don't get bowls
rlm@146	1264 where the edges are boiling, while the center is still
rlm@146	1265 frozen. Requires a little bit of intelligence/vision, since the
rlm@146	1266 exact pattern of heating totally depends on the exact shape of the
rlm@146	1267 food. Wouldn't need a carousel, and wouldn't need a timer, just a
rlm@146	1268 desired temperature. Could also detect ice, and automatically
rlm@146	1269 defrost the parts which are frozen. Might be able to work much
rlm@146	1270 faster since it can avoid overheating; might have problems with
rlm@146	1271 heating the insides of thick things, might need a weight sensor
rlm@146	1272 too.
rlm@145	1273
rlm@151	1274 + Would be much cleaner than other microwaves, since food would
rlm@151	1275 "sputter" and splash liquid much less.
rlm@145	1276
rlm@151	1277 + Throw in some SIFT+R processing to match previously cooked
rlm@151	1278 foods and learn the exact heating profiles for things that have
rlm@151	1279 been cooked before -- it can get faster the more it's used.
rlm@145	1280
rlm@146	1281 ** Flesh Pillow
rlm@146	1282 A pillow like the arm or torso of a human, complete with simulated
rlm@146	1283 temperature, bones, and heartbeat.
rlm@145	1284
rlm@146	1285 ** Light Filter
rlm@146	1286 Works like light-tweezers to mechanically separate fluids with
rlm@146	1287 different indexes of refraction.
rlm@145	1288
rlm@146	1289 ** Silver Socks
rlm@146	1290 Socks laced with silver for the antimicrobial properties.
rlm@145	1291
rlm@146	1292 ** Rod of Moses
rlm@146	1293 Device to distill urine through evaporation and easily dispose of
rlm@146	1294 urea crystals for use in desert -- produce drinkable water and live
rlm@146	1295 an extra few days!
rlm@145	1296
rlm@146	1297 ** Lottery Scraper
rlm@146	1298 Web scraper which monitors various lotteries, looking for "special"
rlm@146	1299 gimmick changes in the rules (like 4x winnings on Wednesdays) and
rlm@146	1300 computes expected value...
rlm@145	1301
rlm@146	1302 ** Memristiors Novel Design
rlm@146	1303 Make an evolutionary algorithm to make old stuff using all four
rlm@146	1304 basic circuit elements.
rlm@145	1305
rlm@146	1306 ** Conductive Concrete
rlm@146	1307 Concrete that has embedded metal fibers so that it can conduct
rlm@146	1308 electricity.
rlm@145	1309
rlm@146	1310 ** Little Bitty Melting Pot
rlm@146	1311 Might be useful for some types of manufacturing/3D printing -- how
rlm@146	1312 small can an induction melter be made, for example.
rlm@145	1313
rlm@146	1314 ** True Pure Tones
rlm@146	1315 Hear a true pure tone by direct stimulation of the nerves of the
rlm@146	1316 ear. Like when Adelson "saw green".
rlm@145	1317
rlm@146	1318 ** Mechanical analogue to the electrical op-amp
rlm@146	1319 would be an object with two levers -- you pull on one lever and the
rlm@146	1320 other moves the same way, no matter what's in the way or what it is
rlm@146	1321 driving. This analogy could be useful to teach op amps to people.
rlm@145	1322
rlm@146	1323 ** Light Capacitor
rlm@146	1324 Suspend some ball of material with a high index of refraction and
rlm@146	1325 shine light into it so it gets stuck -- would the light stay
rlm@146	1326 trapped forever? Could you build up unlimited quantities of light
rlm@146	1327 inside the sphere (which could then be released slowly by
rlm@146	1328 frustrated internal reflection?
rlm@145	1329
rlm@146	1330 ** Reading Comprehension
rlm@146	1331 use the screen capture routine to make a quiz program that
rlm@146	1332 constructs questions about the content you seemed to gloss over
rlm@146	1333 while reading. could be easy if the pdf came with embedded
rlm@146	1334 questions. Dylan: automatically generate word-cloud about the
rlm@146	1335 parts you found most interesting; help others who read the same
rlm@146	1336 stuff by drawing attention to the interesting parts.
rlm@145	1337
rlm@146	1338 ** Optimize an Article
rlm@146	1339 Capture reading of a scientific article via screen capture while
rlm@146	1340 people read it, then use it to make the article better. like the
rlm@146	1341 movie-pruning idea.
rlm@145	1342
rlm@146	1343 ** Movie Pruning
rlm@146	1344 Movies always are too long at first. One way to shorten them
rlm@146	1345 ``scientifically" is to record blink rate during the move and then
rlm@146	1346 remove / shorten the frames of the parts in which there are a lot
rlm@146	1347 of blinking (average this over multiple people) better yet, put it
rlm@146	1348 online and do it across thousands of people. I got this from
rlm@146	1349 youtube in which there is an episode of kill bill which is composed
rlm@146	1350 entirely of the parts in which people had their eyes
rlm@146	1351 closed. slogan: want to make a movie people can't take their eyes
rlm@146	1352 off of? Just take those parts out!
rlm@145	1353
rlm@146	1354 ** Explosive Thermite Epoxy Putty
rlm@146	1355 One part would contain the rust, one part the aluminum.
rlm@145	1356
rlm@146	1357 ** Concrete Epoxy
rlm@146	1358 Epoxy with sand/ some other solid material.
rlm@145	1359
rlm@146	1360 ** Hard Sword
rlm@146	1361 Make a samurai sword, but use osmiridum instead of martensite for
rlm@146	1362 the cutting part; it should be a better sword.
rlm@145	1363
rlm@146	1364 ** Close Range Wireless
rlm@146	1365 use the induction technology used to recharge electric toothbrushes
rlm@146	1366 with no metal links to send data without any metal at all!
rlm@145	1367
rlm@146	1368 ** Perfect Pitch
rlm@146	1369 Learn perfect pitch using another sense in combination (sight or
rlm@146	1370 touch).
rlm@145	1371
rlm@146	1372 ** Bio Metallic Structure
rlm@146	1373 Metal grids with seeds inside, which grow together and form a
rlm@146	1374 durable biological matrix. The metal substrate delivers
rlm@146	1375 water. (maybe use plastic instead of metal?) Dylan: enrich plants
rlm@146	1376 with inorganic compounds; electrical interfaces in cellular plant
rlm@146	1377 matter => remote-controlled photosynthetic/bioluminescent
rlm@146	1378 structures.
rlm@145	1379
rlm@146	1380 ** Conducting Extracellular Matrix
rlm@146	1381 To allow better control of organic systems and an enhanced nervous
rlm@146	1382 system.
rlm@145	1383
rlm@146	1384 ** Cross-Modal Memory Hashing
rlm@146	1385 A way to retrieve memories more robustly.
rlm@145	1386
rlm@146	1387 ** Greener than Green
rlm@146	1388 If you stare at a red light, then you get a green after-image. If
rlm@146	1389 you immediately look at something green while still seeing the
rlm@146	1390 green after-image, you will experience a Green like none you've
rlm@146	1391 ever seen before -- color so intense it's beyond the range of
rlm@146	1392 anything that exists in the world.
rlm@145	1393
rlm@146	1394 ** Wooden Refrigerator
rlm@146	1395 To give food a better taste Dylan: like barrels for wine, or planks
rlm@146	1396 for salmon. Maybe just have "flavor planks" for your pre-existing
rlm@146	1397 fridge. Need to mitigate effect of temperature on volatility?
rlm@145	1398
rlm@146	1399 ** Radioactive Transmutation Molecule by Molecule
rlm@146	1400 Create precious metals or something else economically
rlm@146	1401 advantageous. Best transmutation I can come up with is mercury into
rlm@146	1402 gold, but it's not economically viable.
rlm@145	1403
rlm@146	1404 ** Preservation Via Crowding
rlm@146	1405 Inoculate food with tons of harmless bacteria so that there's no
rlm@146	1406 room for bad bacteria as a method of preservation
rlm@145	1407
rlm@146	1408 ** Old-School Preservation
rlm@146	1409 Pasteur - style holding jar with siphon as a way to store
rlm@146	1410 sterilized liquids at room temperature indefinitely w/o
rlm@146	1411 refrigeration.
rlm@145	1412
rlm@146	1413 ** Restaurant Policy
rlm@146	1414 Throw rude people out of restaurant as a matter of course -- make
rlm@146	1415 ambiance much better.
rlm@145	1416
rlm@146	1417 ** Clean Windows
rlm@146	1418 Make something that mixes soap with fire hydrant water (and reduces
rlm@146	1419 the pressure a bit) and use it to clean windows of buildings.
rlm@145	1420
rlm@146	1421 ** Ocarina
rlm@146	1422 Make an ocarina out of pure silver. Might have really good acoustic
rlm@146	1423 properties.
rlm@145	1424
rlm@146	1425 ** Fire Pen
rlm@146	1426 Pen which burns words on to the page, thus never needing any
rlm@146	1427 ink. Is there a way to make it runnable from body heat?
rlm@145	1428
rlm@146	1429 ** Website to Design Your Own Soda
rlm@146	1430 and label, and have it mailed to you / sell it from your own online
rlm@146	1431 store.
rlm@145	1432
rlm@146	1433 ** Ocean Power
rlm@146	1434 Solar panels that float on the ocean.
rlm@145	1435
rlm@146	1436 ** Handcuffs with More Than Two Cuffs (3?)
rlm@146	1437 Great for daisy chaining people, binding them to environment, etc.
rlm@145	1438
rlm@146	1439 ** Vector Based SOUND Files
rlm@146	1440 Like the pictures but with SOUND. codify sound in a language with
rlm@146	1441 enough symbols so that it can describe everything and encode it in
rlm@146	1442 that. would be like going from speech to text or smtg. Could also
rlm@146	1443 store sound as an image of the wavefront encoded as a vector image.
rlm@145	1444
rlm@146	1445 ** Genetically Engineered Glowing Fruit
rlm@146	1446 They have some animals that can glow, but glowing fruit that you
rlm@146	1447 eat would be AWESOME!
rlm@145	1448
rlm@146	1449 ** The Body as a Key to Memory
rlm@146	1450 IF memories are encoded using particular sensory impressions, what
rlm@146	1451 happens if the sensory organ itself changes? those memories would
rlm@146	1452 become inaccessible. maybe this is why we can't remember much from
rlm@146	1453 our childhoods. also, could this happen throughout life as well?
rlm@146	1454 Could S remember stuff from his childhood?
rlm@145	1455
rlm@146	1456 ** Lighter Flint on Spring
rlm@146	1457 Make hot, throw it at something, and it makes sparkles!
rlm@145	1458
rlm@146	1459 ** Rare Bubbles
rlm@146	1460 Engineer a material which has both ductility and high surface
rlm@146	1461 tension to make the "third" minimal-surface-energy solution to a
rlm@146	1462 bubble suspended between two equal-diameter rings. (Solutions are
rlm@146	1463 cylindrical catenary curve, two separated half-bubbles, and a
rlm@146	1464 double-cone)
rlm@146	1465
rlm@146	1466 ** Magic Textbook
rlm@146	1467 whose content can be varied continuously alter level of difficulty,
rlm@146	1468 rigor, diction, emphasize crossover with certain other discipline,
rlm@146	1469 etc. Content generated dynamically from knowledge base, along with
rlm@146	1470 questions that are moreover altered to guide knowledge
rlm@146	1471 acquisition. Motivation: One book of knowledge. /One./
rlm@145	1472
rlm@145	1473
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rlm@145	1475 <p class="end"> Still want more? Visit the <a href="./ideas.html">Raw
rlm@145	1476 Ideas</a> page, but prepare for extreme half-bakedness. </p>
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