diff 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
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     1.1 --- a/org/good-ideas.org	Sun Apr 24 21:52:01 2016 -0700
     1.2 +++ b/org/good-ideas.org	Tue Jul 12 21:16:25 2016 -0700
     1.3 @@ -40,8 +40,150 @@
     1.4    <hr/>
     1.5    #+END_HTML
     1.6  
     1.7 +** copper + ethylene glycol 
     1.8 +   If red blood cells are rendered impermeabale to EG when Cu is
     1.9 +   present, then maybe you can destroy RBCs by a mixture of EG and Cu?
    1.10 +   (By osmotically crushing them?)
    1.11  
    1.12 +** Qualia Intuition Explained
    1.13 +   Let's say that you lacked the sense of smell. How could you learn
    1.14 +   what "acrid" means without it? How could you explain it to someone,
    1.15 +   without analogy to other smells? It's true that linguistically,
    1.16 +   there's no way to communicate thsi concept to someone who can't
    1.17 +   smell. We mind-project this real linguistic separation into reality
    1.18 +   and get qualia, thinking that because it's beyond the reach of
    1.19 +   language it's also beyond physical reality as well!
    1.20  
    1.21 +** Spinal Relay 
    1.22 +   You have a small air-gapped repeater built into your spine in order
    1.23 +   to help with spinal injury, connect with prosthetics, and to
    1.24 +   monitor/control your body. Also, you could add the ability to save
    1.25 +   "macros"! Would want to also pair with suitable encryption!
    1.26 +
    1.27 +** Human Cysts
    1.28 +   There should be communities of people with varying enforced
    1.29 +   separations from the rest of society in order to gaurd against
    1.30 +   various catastrophies.
    1.31 +
    1.32 +** Bioelectric Synthesis 
    1.33 +   Have a device which stores a lot of energy, and processes blood by
    1.34 +   creating sugar from waste produces over the day. You still need
    1.35 +   water, vitamins, minerals, etc, but this can handle the bulk of
    1.36 +   your energy demands and be recharged from the wall.
    1.37 +
    1.38 +** Chelation as a Method to Improve Cryoprotectant Permeability
    1.39 +   Copper (and potentially other metallic ions) can reduce
    1.40 +   cryoprotectant permeability, so chelation might help to make them
    1.41 +   more permeable. Perhaps this could be why dog brains are more
    1.42 +   premeable to glycerol than most other animals?
    1.43 +
    1.44 +** Transgender Fruit Analogy
    1.45 +   A tomato is a fruit but its a vegetable inside.
    1.46 +
    1.47 +** Video Game Controllers as Actual Controllers 
    1.48 +   Console controlers like the n64 trident are excellent, durable
    1.49 +   tools for fine control. We should use them to control all sorts of
    1.50 +   things like robots by default. You should use it for your projects,
    1.51 +   since it's unlikely you'll be able to come up with something
    1.52 +   better. Compared to console controllers, the ones we use for
    1.53 +   robots/RC stuff are hopelessly clunky.
    1.54 +
    1.55 +** Bubble Computers
    1.56 +   Bubbles and water droplets moving from place to place are great
    1.57 +   analoges for "holes" in transistors. You could totally build a
    1.58 +   computer with nonlinear bubble accumulators.
    1.59 +
    1.60 +** Dark Blood Bag
    1.61 +   Blood bags in hospitals should be dark colored to protect the blood
    1.62 +   from damage from light.
    1.63 +
    1.64 +** Chimeric double-male double-female organism
    1.65 +   Chimeric organism with XX and XX patterns from two males and two
    1.66 +   females. On average, it has the correct methylation pattern. Would
    1.67 +   it work? Could half of the cells then be programmed to die at a
    1.68 +   later stage after the organism has "bootstrapped"?
    1.69 +
    1.70 +** Fixed protein packets as drug delivery mechanism
    1.71 +   Group of fixed proteins in a network which is used as
    1.72 +   medicine. Hemoglobin, for false blood, maybe?
    1.73 +
    1.74 +** Proof of the Afterlife
    1.75 +   Website where you enter your pgp signed encrypted file, then swear
    1.76 +   by all the gods that you'll haunt me (Robert McIntyre) with the
    1.77 +   decryption password when you die, along with whatever other
    1.78 +   messages you have. protocol -- I video, throw rock (to prove you're
    1.79 +   not just faking), get password. Like James Randi's prize.
    1.80 +
    1.81 +** Medieval name for ethylene glycol
    1.82 +   Icebane
    1.83 +
    1.84 +** Overflow Hikau
    1.85 +    A hiku about buffer overflows, with garbage C code inside.
    1.86 +
    1.87 +** The White Knight
    1.88 +   The son of a nobleman and steeped in the knightly tradition since
    1.89 +   birth, he rides across the land with his family greatsword,
    1.90 +   "Privilege", defending the principles of chivalry, and his codes of
    1.91 +   honor.
    1.92 +   
    1.93 +   WHITE KNIGHT: (*rides up to a peasant on his magnificent white
    1.94 +   stallion*) Hold, Peasant! You would eat bread while sitting on the
    1.95 +   ground? Where is your honor, that you would not eat like a man,
    1.96 +   sitting at the dinner table?
    1.97 +   
    1.98 +   Peasant: I haven't /got/ any dinner table...
    1.99 +
   1.100 +   WHITE KNIGHT: (*decapitates peasant with Privlege, without even
   1.101 +   dismounting from his horse*) Another day spent defending the honor
   1.102 +   of everyone!
   1.103 +
   1.104 +   Basically, the White Knight is /such/ an asshole.
   1.105 +
   1.106 +** Technological Deflation
   1.107 +   Even the richest robber baron from the 1920's could not afford a
   1.108 +   cardiac bypass surgery, even with literally all the money they
   1.109 +   had. As technology advances, the price of bread may go up, but the
   1.110 +   capabilities which money gives you also dramatically increase.
   1.111 +
   1.112 +** Mental Integrity Test
   1.113 +   If your brain starts to decay, you might not notice the damage
   1.114 +   until it's too late. This would be a mental integrity test that you
   1.115 +   take every few weeks that measures your performance and compares it
   1.116 +   to a baseline. The tests are all designed to catch the early signs
   1.117 +   of degenerative brain diseases. For example, you might use
   1.118 +   performamce on a smell-memory assoaction test to detect early-onset
   1.119 +   Alzheimer's.
   1.120 +
   1.121 +** Mind Bank
   1.122 +   This is a brain bank that has brains well-enough preserved that the
   1.123 +   minds inside are still viable.   
   1.124 +
   1.125 +** Online paper reviews for scientific papers
   1.126 +   This really needs to be a thing and would be great for the
   1.127 +   scientific community. I want an online thing like yelp or something
   1.128 +   that lets you comment on scientific papers and rate them for
   1.129 +   clairty, etc.
   1.130 +
   1.131 +** Binary-Continuous Feedback
   1.132 +   I was fascinated by a soda machine that shut itself off by filling
   1.133 +   a carefully balanced cup, which fell away from the fill-switch once
   1.134 +   the cup had become heavy enough. Makes me think of minsky's
   1.135 +   "ultimate machine" or Dylan's autosearch engine.
   1.136 +
   1.137 +** Trolley Cryonics 
   1.138 +   According to the book "Moral Tribes", people can more rationally
   1.139 +   think about death when it exists in a "non-primary action
   1.140 +   path". Perhaps this could be a good way to explain cryonics / organ
   1.141 +   donation? 
   1.142 +
   1.143 +** Binary Metric
   1.144 +   You make up new unit names for "2 centimeters", "4 centimeters",
   1.145 +   "16 centimeters", as well as "1/2 centimeters", "1/4 centimeters",
   1.146 +   etc. Names might be duocentimeter, quatrocentimeter,
   1.147 +   hemidemisemiliter, etc. Then no one will be happy!  BUT, it helps
   1.148 +   solve metric's problem of intermediate units. (a centimeter is too
   1.149 +   small, a meter is too large!)
   1.150 +   
   1.151  ** A simple merge procedure for uploads
   1.152     Putting aside the philosophical problems around mind-uploading for
   1.153     a moment, imagine that you were /already/ a computer program