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more ideas, other stuff.
author Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date Tue, 12 Jul 2016 21:16:25 -0700
parents bdeaad2b1507
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43 43 ** copper + ethylene glycol
44 44 If red blood cells are rendered impermeabale to EG when Cu is
45 present, then maybe you can destroy RBCs by a mixture of EG and Cu?
46 (By osmotically crushing them?)
47
48 ** Qualia Intuition Explained
49 Let's say that you lacked the sense of smell. How could you learn
50 what "acrid" means without it? How could you explain it to someone,
51 without analogy to other smells? It's true that linguistically,
52 there's no way to communicate thsi concept to someone who can't
53 smell. We mind-project this real linguistic separation into reality
54 and get qualia, thinking that because it's beyond the reach of
55 language it's also beyond physical reality as well!
56
57 ** Spinal Relay
58 You have a small air-gapped repeater built into your spine in order
59 to help with spinal injury, connect with prosthetics, and to
60 monitor/control your body. Also, you could add the ability to save
61 "macros"! Would want to also pair with suitable encryption!
62
63 ** Human Cysts
64 There should be communities of people with varying enforced
65 separations from the rest of society in order to gaurd against
66 various catastrophies.
67
68 ** Bioelectric Synthesis
69 Have a device which stores a lot of energy, and processes blood by
70 creating sugar from waste produces over the day. You still need
71 water, vitamins, minerals, etc, but this can handle the bulk of
72 your energy demands and be recharged from the wall.
73
74 ** Chelation as a Method to Improve Cryoprotectant Permeability
75 Copper (and potentially other metallic ions) can reduce
76 cryoprotectant permeability, so chelation might help to make them
77 more permeable. Perhaps this could be why dog brains are more
78 premeable to glycerol than most other animals?
79
80 ** Transgender Fruit Analogy
81 A tomato is a fruit but its a vegetable inside.
82
83 ** Video Game Controllers as Actual Controllers
84 Console controlers like the n64 trident are excellent, durable
85 tools for fine control. We should use them to control all sorts of
86 things like robots by default. You should use it for your projects,
87 since it's unlikely you'll be able to come up with something
88 better. Compared to console controllers, the ones we use for
89 robots/RC stuff are hopelessly clunky.
90
91 ** Bubble Computers
92 Bubbles and water droplets moving from place to place are great
93 analoges for "holes" in transistors. You could totally build a
94 computer with nonlinear bubble accumulators.
95
96 ** Dark Blood Bag
97 Blood bags in hospitals should be dark colored to protect the blood
98 from damage from light.
99
100 ** Chimeric double-male double-female organism
101 Chimeric organism with XX and XX patterns from two males and two
102 females. On average, it has the correct methylation pattern. Would
103 it work? Could half of the cells then be programmed to die at a
104 later stage after the organism has "bootstrapped"?
105
106 ** Fixed protein packets as drug delivery mechanism
107 Group of fixed proteins in a network which is used as
108 medicine. Hemoglobin, for false blood, maybe?
109
110 ** Proof of the Afterlife
111 Website where you enter your pgp signed encrypted file, then swear
112 by all the gods that you'll haunt me (Robert McIntyre) with the
113 decryption password when you die, along with whatever other
114 messages you have. protocol -- I video, throw rock (to prove you're
115 not just faking), get password. Like James Randi's prize.
116
117 ** Medieval name for ethylene glycol
118 Icebane
119
120 ** Overflow Hikau
121 A hiku about buffer overflows, with garbage C code inside.
122
123 ** The White Knight
124 The son of a nobleman and steeped in the knightly tradition since
125 birth, he rides across the land with his family greatsword,
126 "Privilege", defending the principles of chivalry, and his codes of
127 honor.
128
129 WHITE KNIGHT: (*rides up to a peasant on his magnificent white
130 stallion*) Hold, Peasant! You would eat bread while sitting on the
131 ground? Where is your honor, that you would not eat like a man,
132 sitting at the dinner table?
133
134 Peasant: I haven't /got/ any dinner table...
135
136 WHITE KNIGHT: (*decapitates peasant with Privlege, without even
137 dismounting from his horse*) Another day spent defending the honor
138 of everyone!
139
140 Basically, the White Knight is /such/ an asshole.
141
142 ** Technological Deflation
143 Even the richest robber baron from the 1920's could not afford a
144 cardiac bypass surgery, even with literally all the money they
145 had. As technology advances, the price of bread may go up, but the
146 capabilities which money gives you also dramatically increase.
147
148 ** Mental Integrity Test
149 If your brain starts to decay, you might not notice the damage
150 until it's too late. This would be a mental integrity test that you
151 take every few weeks that measures your performance and compares it
152 to a baseline. The tests are all designed to catch the early signs
153 of degenerative brain diseases. For example, you might use
154 performamce on a smell-memory assoaction test to detect early-onset
155 Alzheimer's.
156
157 ** Mind Bank
158 This is a brain bank that has brains well-enough preserved that the
159 minds inside are still viable.
160
161 ** Online paper reviews for scientific papers
162 This really needs to be a thing and would be great for the
163 scientific community. I want an online thing like yelp or something
164 that lets you comment on scientific papers and rate them for
165 clairty, etc.
166
167 ** Binary-Continuous Feedback
168 I was fascinated by a soda machine that shut itself off by filling
169 a carefully balanced cup, which fell away from the fill-switch once
170 the cup had become heavy enough. Makes me think of minsky's
171 "ultimate machine" or Dylan's autosearch engine.
172
173 ** Trolley Cryonics
174 According to the book "Moral Tribes", people can more rationally
175 think about death when it exists in a "non-primary action
176 path". Perhaps this could be a good way to explain cryonics / organ
177 donation?
178
179 ** Binary Metric
180 You make up new unit names for "2 centimeters", "4 centimeters",
181 "16 centimeters", as well as "1/2 centimeters", "1/4 centimeters",
182 etc. Names might be duocentimeter, quatrocentimeter,
183 hemidemisemiliter, etc. Then no one will be happy! BUT, it helps
184 solve metric's problem of intermediate units. (a centimeter is too
185 small, a meter is too large!)
186
45 ** A simple merge procedure for uploads 187 ** A simple merge procedure for uploads
46 Putting aside the philosophical problems around mind-uploading for 188 Putting aside the philosophical problems around mind-uploading for
47 a moment, imagine that you were /already/ a computer program 189 a moment, imagine that you were /already/ a computer program
48 running on a suitable robotic body. Let's say that the program is 190 running on a suitable robotic body. Let's say that the program is
49 based off a detailed emulation of your brain -- no one really 191 based off a detailed emulation of your brain -- no one really