rlm@145: #+title: Big List O' Ideas rlm@145: #+author: Robert McIntyre rlm@145: #+email: rlm@mit.edu rlm@145: #+description: list of ideas from Robert McIntyre rlm@145: #+keywords: aurellem ideas half-baked random rlm@145: #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org rlm@145: #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org rlm@145: #+babel: :mkdirp yes :noweb yes :exports both rlm@145: #+HTML_HEAD_EXTRA: rlm@145: #+OPTIONS: num:nil rlm@145: rlm@145: * Ideas rlm@145: # :PROPERTIES: rlm@145: # :HTML_CONTAINER_CLASS: ideas rlm@145: # :END: rlm@145: rlm@145: This is a list of all the good ideas I've had that I felt like writing rlm@145: down for the past ~ 10 years. Some of them could be practical rlm@145: inventions and are "just" waiting for that 95% perspiration to bring rlm@145: them to fruition, some are ideas for science fiction, and some are rlm@145: simple observations. They are arranged roughly in reverse rlm@145: chronological order, with the most recent ideas at the top of the rlm@145: list. The ones at the bottom of the list are heavily influenced by my rlm@145: time at MIT, the ones at the top, by my time at 21st Century Medicine. rlm@145: rlm@145: If you find some of these interesting and would like to collaborate on rlm@145: them with me or discuss them in more detail, I'd love to hear from rlm@145: you. You can email me at ideas@aurellem.org. rlm@145: rlm@145: If you want to use one of these ideas as your own and run with it, rlm@145: please feel free. I'd love to hear about it if you do. rlm@145: rlm@145: #+begin_quote rlm@145: There's no end to what a man can accomplish if he doesn't care about rlm@145: getting credit. rlm@145: #+end_quote rlm@145: rlm@145: rlm@145: #+BEGIN_HTML rlm@157:
rlm@145: #+END_HTML rlm@145: rlm@162: rlm@162: rlm@162: ** A simple merge procedure for uploads rlm@162: Putting aside the philosophical problems around mind-uploading for rlm@162: a moment, imagine that you were /already/ a computer program rlm@162: running on a suitable robotic body. Let's say that the program is rlm@162: based off a detailed emulation of your brain -- no one really rlm@162: understands exactly /how/ the program is doing its computations, rlm@162: only that it faithfully recreates the original biological rlm@162: computations. At this point, you might want to be able to exist in rlm@162: multiple places at once while still maintining a coherent unity of rlm@162: identity, but how do you do it? You /can't/ modifiy your mind to rlm@162: handle multiple bodies at once, because this would require rlm@162: extensive understanding of exactly how your program is doing its rlm@162: computations in order to scale it to multiple bodies. But you can't rlm@162: just copy yourself either, because the copies will eventually rlm@162: diverge leading to a loss of unity of identity. You can't easily rlm@162: merge copies together after they've "diverged" because again, you'd rlm@162: have to come up with a coherent theory of mind to merge the rlm@162: datastructures. One simple way to do merges is this: First, you rlm@162: need to acchitect the robot bodies to record every single bit rlm@162: that's passing through all sensory nerves throughout a small time rlm@162: interval that's insufficient to create significant divergence. For rlm@162: sake of argument I'll assume that you do this each day. This stream rlm@162: of data represents the ultimate "life recording" and can be easily rlm@162: accomplished either in simulation of physical reality by using rlm@162: custom sensory organs, like in [[http://aurellem.org/#CORTEX][=CORTEX=]]. This set of information, rlm@162: if played back to a copy of you in the exact mental state right rlm@162: before the start of recording, would perfectaly match with the rlm@162: choices of the individual and serve as an adequate replacement for rlm@162: the world, even though it contains almost no information compared rlm@162: to the world! Once you can do the "full life records," then the rlm@162: procedure works like this: At the morning of Day 1 you "checkout" rlm@162: the one copy of you from yesterday and make around 10 copies which rlm@162: each live out their day. Each copy records a full "life recording" rlm@162: for the day. Then one copy is chosen as the "trunk" and the rest as rlm@162: branches. The trunk replays the life-recordings of the branches in rlm@162: accelerated time over the night, and the branches are then deleted rlm@162: leaving only one individual that remembers 10 consecutive days rlm@162: spent in different contexts. Then you repeat the process for Day 2 rlm@162: and so on. I'll call this the "small delta-T approximation" method rlm@162: for mind-merging. It works as long as the timeframe is not too long rlm@162: an is limited by how fast you can faithfully replay life rlm@162: recordings. You don't have to be "offline" for any amount of time rlm@162: while doing this: You can also alternate two sets of 10, one for rlm@162: the day and one for the night, and have the night and day trunks be rlm@162: generated from the last day / night group's trunk, rlm@162: respectively. This trades having to "sleep" for the day/night crews rlm@162: not being able to remember what happened last night/day rlm@162: respectively. The more you know about how brains work, the faster rlm@162: you can integrate previous experience and the more copies you can rlm@162: sustain. This methods means that you never lose any experience, but rlm@162: if you're willing to lose some nonessential experiences, a more rlm@162: extreme version of this might be to make a copy of yourself that rlm@162: accomplishes a task and then reports anything of note in a written rlm@162: report. rlm@162: rlm@157: ** Earth, Air, Water rlm@157: rlm@157: Probably all intelligent species name their planet "dirt" in their rlm@157: language, unless the're aquatic or flying, then they'd name it rlm@157: "water" and "air" respectively. rlm@157: rlm@155: ** Cure for Color Blindness rlm@155: rlm@155: Could it be possible to administer some retroviruses via direct rlm@155: injection to the retina, to cause some of the cells in the retina rlm@155: to begin expressing different color pigments? The brain ought to rlm@155: easily sort out the rest and enable color vision. Furthremore, rlm@155: could we add some more colors to baesline human eyes? Theory -- rlm@155: people who are color blind have better color spatial accuity for rlm@159: the colors they can see, because this is the tradeoff involved with rlm@159: the retrovirus therapy: Re-purposing color detectors to see new rlm@159: colors at the expense of spatial acuity for the old set of colors. rlm@155: rlm@155: ** Passion of the Christ Missed Opportunity rlm@155: rlm@155: In the Passion of the Christ, they do the entire show using Latin, rlm@155: Aramaic, etc, with subtitles. They should have had a part where rlm@155: Jesus does the sermon on the mount, he turns to the camera, and rlm@155: starts speaking in English, with no subtitles. It would have been rlm@155: 1.) biblically accurate and 2.) awesome. It would have been such a rlm@159: powerful example to convey Jesus' divinity, and show off another rlm@159: miracle. It felt like they were setting up for it the entire movie, rlm@159: and they missed it! rlm@155: rlm@155: ** Xenobiotic Chimeric Methalation Rewriting rlm@155: rlm@155: You make chimeric sea urchins with human reproductive stem cells, rlm@159: so that the sea urchins produce sea urchin-like HUMAN sperm and rlm@159: eggs. Then you can have two human males / females reproduce without rlm@159: the methylation problem, by using the sea urchins as rlm@159: intermediades. And the normal ethical problems of human/animal rlm@159: chimeras are avoided because the sea urchins don't have brains to rlm@159: begin with. rlm@155: rlm@155: ** Physical PGP Signatures rlm@155: rlm@155: You punch into your phone "I want to sign a contract" It gives you rlm@155: a gensym (or you enter a name) like: rlm@155: https://contracts.example.com/car-insurance-2015-09-26 rlm@155: rlm@155: Then you sign your name, date, and include the link on the contract rlm@155: under "PGP sig". Then you take a picture with your phone and enter rlm@155: your signing password. It gets uploaded to your website and the rlm@155: image gets PGP signed with your key. Now you have a timestamped rlm@155: archive of the contract, and anyone can verify it by looking at the rlm@155: physical contract itself! rlm@155: rlm@155: ** The Digital Third Eye rlm@155: rlm@155: You wire in a third optical input to the human brain, but it rlm@155: doesn't tranduce light form the real world, bus instead is rlm@155: connected to the "internet of things" and shows you metadata about rlm@155: things you are looking at // serves as an interface to your own rlm@155: mind and body. Then eventually simply real things without metadata rlm@155: seem flat and fake compared to the objects in cities and other rlm@155: annotated areas. This third eye doesn't occupy any of your normal rlm@155: visual field but actually EXPANDS your visual field. rlm@155: rlm@155: ** Ultimate Limits of Monogamy rlm@155: rlm@155: Let's say that you're immortal and monogamous. The longer you live rlm@155: with your partner, the more you build an internal model of them, rlm@155: and they you. Eventually these models may become complete, and then rlm@155: you two are actually one single recursive entity which references rlm@155: itself. As you offload more processing to the other (such as old rlm@155: couples actually do -- "remember when we were at that place, rlm@155: what-was-his-name honey?"), then computationally you are a single rlm@155: mind distributed across two bodies. (There's a reason why old rlm@155: couples often die as a pair). You might decide to actually merge rlm@155: bodies eventually. But then, you were both monogamous, so the rlm@155: combined person will be monogamous (and lonely because it lacks a rlm@155: partner). So you get married again, rinse, wash, repeat. All the rlm@155: monogamous people within a certain "compatability group" eventually rlm@155: become one. Our "social center of mass" doesn't lie within our own rlm@155: bodies! rlm@155: rlm@155: ** Dream Rewinding rlm@155: rlm@155: How to record a complete dream without disturbing it or modifying rlm@155: your brain? you need to be an upload: split yourself, and one of rlm@155: you stays awake whike the other sleeps. then you detect a dream in rlm@155: progress by monotoring rapid eye movememt in your sleeping self, rlm@155: and you wake yourself up every few minutes and tell yoursef about rlm@155: the dream. Then sleeping-your restarts the dream, continuation rlm@155: passing style, forgetting everything that was just said, and you rlm@155: repeat this process until the dream is over. Then awake-you and rlm@155: sleeping-you merge each other by taking sleeping-you and replaying rlm@155: the memories of awake-you, and you write a final report on the rlm@155: dream using the "saccade" reports to jog your memory. rlm@155: rlm@155: It would really let you directly test theories of memory because rlm@155: you can test a person every second if you want to. I see a couple rlm@155: ways this could play out: you could report a dream that follows a rlm@155: linear narrative, with the story advancing a little bit each time rlm@155: (the "storytelling" hypothesis), you might say something totally rlm@155: different each time (the "garbage memory access" hypothesis), or rlm@155: something even weider like where you report exactly the same thing rlm@155: between seconds 0-20, then something totally different during rlm@155: seconds 20-40, etc. rlm@155: rlm@155: ** Denser than Osmium rlm@155: rlm@155: Do the "misicibility" thing with an osmium alloy to get something rlm@155: even more dense. Basically osmium + something else might be denser rlm@155: then pure osmium. rlm@155: rlm@155: ** AI Hypnosis rlm@155: rlm@155: Hypnosis might be good for studying AI, becuse it might probide a rlm@155: "debugger" for ananlyzing the human mind. I briefly tried this rlm@155: while at MIT, but it needs MUCH more work to be properly rlm@155: evaulated. Also, things you can do under hypnosis provide rlm@155: constraints on what the mind's capabilities are. Also, hypnosis rlm@155: iteslf is a worthwhile thing to study in its own right. rlm@155: rlm@146: ** The Ocean Becomes a Drop rlm@151: Upload faces challenges to grow into the type of person that can rlm@145: join the greater society -- a god. They have to go though quests rlm@145: that replicate all the things that humanity had to accomplish, like rlm@145: going to the moon, by themselves. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Butterfly Drone rlm@145: If big butterflies used to exist, then maybe we could make rlm@145: butterfly-inspired drones! rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Methylation Sex-Symmetry Breaking rlm@145: Human sex cells have methylation patterns that encode male/female rlm@145: origin. If you combine two male patterns, the fetus grows "too rlm@145: fast" and dies. Two female patterns causes the fetus to enter a rlm@145: "vegatable" state and fail to develop. Evolutionary biologists say rlm@145: that this reflects the asymmetry of energy investement for creating rlm@145: offspring. If that's true, then species that cast-spawn will lack rlm@145: this asymmetry, and give clues about how to remove it in humans. If rlm@145: even cast spawners like sea urchins have it, then that means rlm@145: there's something deeper going on! rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Homosexual Reproduction rlm@145: You take genetic material from two males and put it into an egg rlm@145: cell that has had all genetic material removed. Or, you take the rlm@145: genetic material from one egg and put it in another egg. This would rlm@145: allow homosexual couples to genetically reproduce. One technical rlm@145: challenge blocking this technique is that human gametes have rlm@145: methylation patterns that encode male/female origin, and only a rlm@145: male+female pattern gives rise to viable offspring. You could rlm@145: "recondition" male / female gametes to give them the opposite rlm@145: pattern, perhaps by incubating them in the appropriate rlm@145: environment. You also could try taking stem cells and making them rlm@145: form the appropriate structures in vitro. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Poly-Vitrification rlm@145: Large molecules such as PVP are able to vitrify at around -20C, and rlm@145: at farily small concentrations. IF they could be introduced into rlm@145: cells, they would be quite useful as vitrification agents. However, rlm@145: it's difficult to get them in because they are so big. So instead, rlm@145: use smaller agents which combine together into polymers at low rlm@145: temperature. In particular, Fructose, trehalose, and glycerol seem rlm@145: to have the desired properties (though you need to make versions of rlm@145: fructose and trehalose that can penetrate). rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Whole Brain Perfusion Embedding rlm@145: Do the standard EM embedding protocol, but skip the osmium step, rlm@145: and use the "perfusion pausing" method to prevent overextraction rlm@145: during the dehydration and embedding steps. I think that you can rlm@145: perfuse resins into the brain, simply because you can perfuse rlm@145: viscous rubber when doing vascular casts. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Very Slow Physiological Pressure Perfusion rlm@145: Less extreme example of the "perfusion pausing" trick -- just keep rlm@145: the perfusion running and don't put the perfusion target into the rlm@145: liquid as deep. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Perfusion Pausing rlm@145: One problem with doing perfusion of heads / organs where the veins rlm@145: freely leak fluid is that if you STOP the perfusion, you rapidly rlm@145: loose pressure in the organ as your perfusate leaks out. You can rlm@145: prevent this by submerging the organ/head/rat whatever in fluid at rlm@145: an appropriate deepness. You would have to slowly decrease the flow rlm@145: rate while simultaneously lowering the perfusing object into the rlm@145: fluid. To start again, reverse the process -- reengage the rlm@145: peristaltic pump slowly while removing the organ from the fluid. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Textbook Mimiricy Evolution rlm@145: As surgery becomes more common, there develops a distinct selective rlm@145: pressure for individuals' organ layouts to look more like the rlm@145: medical textbooks! rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Transparent Skin rlm@145: Temporary / permament transparent skin. Allows for examination of rlm@145: organs / muscles and visual prevention of disease and detection or rlm@145: abnormalities / good things eg. excercise optimization. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Sweet Information rlm@145: Candy with a whole book written in it. Eat a book! rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Targeted Immunosuppressant rlm@145: Just kill off the B-cells and friends that would cause problems in rlm@145: a organ-transplant / other situation. AIDS is good at killing these rlm@145: cells -- maybe make it can be modified to just target the ones that rlm@145: will cause problems. Then you can premptively kill off that part of rlm@145: someone's immune system before a transplant. ALSO, you can kill off rlm@145: everyone's defenses against other blood types and make people rlm@145: effectively type AB+ w.r.t blood transfusions. Actually, why not rlm@145: give babies this treatment so that they're automatically compatable rlm@145: with all blood types? It would be like a blood transfusion rlm@145: vaccine. The immune system does this already when it's first rlm@145: growing; maybe it can be "retrained" to accept new things, or the rlm@145: mechanism of immune cell death be co-opted for these purposes. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Fuck-you Tetris rlm@159: Tetris that actively gives you the worst possible rlm@159: piece. Implemented! http://fph.altervista.org/prog/bastet.html , rlm@159: https://github.com/johnny-morrice/solumns/releases rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Pockets rlm@145: More things should have them! Chairs, tables, cups, hats, rlm@145: trashcans, basically anything is better with a pocket. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Colored Shower Head rlm@145: A shower head add-on that measures the temp of the water and rlm@145: changes the color of the water streams w/ an LED to show you the rlm@145: temperature. That way you can align to the color you want and see rlm@145: the temperature without feeling it. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Giant Dragonflies rlm@145: We could rapidly MAKE giant dragonflies by evolving modern rlm@145: dragonflies in an very oxygen rich environment! rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Whirlpool of Light rlm@145: Shine a laser out into space. But the planet is spinning! What you rlm@145: get is a spiral of light! And as this signal expands, does it rlm@145: eventually reveal it's quantized nature? rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Perfusion Cooking rlm@145: You do cardiac bypass on an animal like a pig, then pump in tasty, rlm@145: tasty perfusate (like marinade) into the animal's rlm@145: vasculature. Then, you switch out to saline and increase the rlm@145: temperature of the saline to rapidly and uniformly cook the rlm@145: animal. It could be the tastiest meat ever! rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Timestamp Verification rlm@145: You sign your message, and it has a timestamp at the top, with a +- rlm@145: percision number. Then you send it over to the public timestamp rlm@145: server, which only signs the message if it gets the message within rlm@145: the timestamp window. Or the computer just signs the message but rlm@145: puts a timestamp at the beginning. So if everyone trusts the rlm@145: timestamp server, you can get reliable timestamps, and prove rlm@145: priority on ideas, etc. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** The Great Computing Slow-Down rlm@145: In general, our computers are getting faster and faster according rlm@145: to Moore's law. However, eventually our brains will be made of the rlm@145: same stuff our computers are made of! This has very interesting rlm@145: consequences -- I can add 2+2 and get four in about a second. Since rlm@145: my neurons actually work at around 10-60 hertz in parallel, this rlm@145: means that it takes me around 10-30 operations to do this rlm@145: addition. That's actually not bad in terms of computing time. If my rlm@145: neurons were as fast as the latest transitors, then most rlm@145: calculators (made with earlier transistors) would be SLOWER than me rlm@145: at adding numbers. Only the newest, most optimized calculators rlm@145: would be faster, and then only about 10 times faster! This means rlm@145: that once we begin to think at the speed of our technology, that rlm@145: technology will suddenly seem pitifully slow in comparison to how rlm@145: it seems now. And no amount of technical progress will remedy it, rlm@145: because that same progress will also make us all think rlm@145: faster. We'll either have to settle with living in "slow time" to rlm@145: do some computations, or learn to make smarter hardware with rlm@145: special optimizations. But this is actually really hard, because rlm@145: we'll be working with machines that will appear to us about as fast rlm@145: as MECHANICAL computers. So, in the future, all the cool parties rlm@145: will be in cyperspace at vastly accelerated speeds compared to how rlm@145: we exist now. But at these parties, the computers will SUCK! Of rlm@145: course, this is one of the few things that can save us from AI rlm@145: risk, because those AI's won't seem so scary when the're build out rlm@145: of rickety old mechanical parts form our perspective. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Unitary Reverse Evolution of Chaos+Minds rlm@145: Chaotic systems diverge exponentially in state space. Do you get rlm@145: anything interesting when part of the physical system associated rlm@145: with the chaotic system is a object that performs some sort of rlm@145: computation? Is it possible for the computational system to play a rlm@145: percision-enabling role in determining the final/initial conditions rlm@145: of the chaotic system, just by tracing out thoughts in its decision rlm@145: paths? This is probably too vague of an idea right now, I just rlm@145: wanted to write it down. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Microwave-Time rlm@145: The cooking time you enter on most microwaves is insane. It's rlm@145: expressed in what I call a "hybrid base", a combination of base 10 rlm@145: and base 60. You can get absurd things like 100 < 61, and 120 == rlm@145: 80! I wonder if these hybrid base systems could be very useful for rlm@162: some purposes! Dylan [[http://logical.ai/microwave/org/sawtooth.html][wrote a blog post on this subject!]] rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Three Eyes rlm@145: If you had three eyes, would you still draw cubes like we currently rlm@145: draw them? Or would all 2D-representations of 3D space always look rlm@145: hopelessly fake? rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Digital Taste/Smell Assay rlm@145: Get a grid of bacteria, each expressing a human taste/smell rlm@145: receptor linked to some sort of fluorscent activity or ion rlm@145: pump. Use a camera / electrical grid to transduce the smell / taste rlm@145: signal into bits! Inspired by gel-sight from MIT. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Childrens' Tool Shop rlm@145: I think that kids should be provided with tool shops -- these would rlm@145: be nice sheds with a good collection of tools to do various things rlm@145: -- circuit components and soldering irons, wires, a small lathe, rlm@145: drill press, belt sander, a centrifuge, microscope, and telescope, rlm@145: etc. The idea is that the kid can now think, "I could use X to do rlm@145: this thing that I'm thinking about" -- the building becomes an rlm@145: extension of the kid's body & mind. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Fluid Display rlm@145: Like the previous idea about matching refractances between glass rlm@145: and liquid, except you make a lot of switchable glass tubes in rlm@145: various patterns in the glass, and actively pump colored liquid rlm@145: through the tubes (the tubes have glass-like fluid in them by rlm@145: default.) The result is that you can cause the tubes to appear and rlm@145: dissappear, and vary their colors as well! rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Immunoincompatibility rlm@145: Take the human genome, and refactor it so that it doesn't use a rlm@145: particular codon at all. Then remove the support from our ribosomes rlm@145: for that codon. What does this do for us? It makes us immune to rlm@145: almost all viruses! There is at least one bacteria that already rlm@145: does this to great effect. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Life Cycle rlm@145: It's called a cycle, right? So, the thing that repeats itself over rlm@145: and over, right? Not much of a cycle if you don't come back after rlm@145: you die, if you ask me! rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Car with no Blind Spots rlm@145: Use some cameras in the back of the car to augment the rear-view rlm@145: mirror so that you never have to turn around in order to lane rlm@145: change. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Metabolic Windows and Freezing rlm@145: You freeze a set of cells using some cryo protocol and 60% rlm@145: survive. How can this be explained? It seems to me that if the rlm@145: cells are the same, and the conditions homogoneous, then all the rlm@145: cells should either die or live. However, suppose that there is a rlm@145: metabolic cycle that needs to be in a certain phase for the cell to rlm@145: survive. If the cells are asynchronous, then you might end up with rlm@145: some cells dying because there were in the wrong part of their rlm@145: cycle. This implies that you might be able to cryoprotect cells by rlm@145: causing them to enter a certain metabolic mode before freezing. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Cryonics Color Appeal rlm@145: Perfusate used by cryonics companies could have red food coloring rlm@145: in it. It's just a nice touch so that the cryonics patient looks rlm@145: more life-like than with clear CPAs, and hopefully might get rlm@145: treated with more respect. rlm@145: rlm@145: ** Paramagnetic CPA rlm@145: you take a CPA that can be influenced by magnetic fields so that rlm@145: its degrees of freedom are limited. Then, you release the field, rlm@145: instantaly increasing the size of the state space of the system and rlm@145: dramatically decreasing the temperature enough to plunge the system rlm@145: past homogenous nucleation temperature and directly to the glass rlm@145: transition temperature, creating a doubly unstable glass at much rlm@145: lower CPA concentrations than possible at conventional CPA rlm@145: concentrations. A major technical limitation facing this technique rlm@145: is that it's a very minor effect -- you can only get about 0.1C rlm@145: with most systems that have been studied so far. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Room Temp Ramen rlm@146: How does the physics of cooking noodles work? Could you use a rlm@146: vacuum instead of heat to force water into the noodle? rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Personal Carbon Offset rlm@146: Feel bad about contribuiting to global warming by using electricity rlm@146: / driving a car? Forget trying to "conserve" or "minimize your rlm@146: carbon footprint". Follow the Platinum rule -- make the world rlm@146: BETTER off than you found it! This would be a small, self rlm@146: contained system that sucks C02 out of the air. It uses rlm@146: electricity, but it's so efficient at removing CO2 that it more rlm@146: than offsets the CO2 produced by even a coal plant to produce that rlm@146: electricity. This way, you can still drive even a gas guzzler, but rlm@146: have a net negative carbon footprint! Maybe something cool could be rlm@146: done with the carbon as well. Use as much electricity as you want, rlm@146: but negate the damage to the enviroment with more technology. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Undoing Spermogenesis rlm@146: With enough sperm, you can derive the donor's entire genome. You rlm@146: gain more confidence in the alleles for a particular gene the more rlm@146: sperm you have. Each additional sperm gives you the same sort of rlm@146: information you'd get flipping a coin and trying to decide whether rlm@146: the coin is H/T of H/H. Is there enough sperm in the the average rlm@146: load for you to be as confident as mitosis? rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Mars Life rlm@146: We could engineer life that could survive on mars (probably some rlm@146: non-vascular photosynthetic poikilohydric creature like a lichen) rlm@146: by taking an extremophile from Antarctica and evolving it in rlm@146: increasingly Martian conditions. This could be an easy start to a rlm@146: terraforming process. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Problem with Aubrey de Grey's Ideas rlm@146: Aubrey de Grey says that we might be able to live forever by rlm@146: continually repairing our bodies at the cellular level -- he rlm@146: details 7 different mechanisms of damage and says that if all of rlm@146: them are dealt with /together/ that it would stop aging. (You can't rlm@146: miss even one because they're all fatal.) However, it doesn't take rlm@146: into account that we are also beings of information and that there rlm@146: is a very real software component to our existence. Even if our rlm@146: biological chassies can be maintained forever, I think it is rlm@146: unlikely that our minds will operate well far outside of the design rlm@146: constraints that we've evolved to handle. Say I programmed a rlm@146: webserver with the express goal of it being able to serve webpages rlm@146: for month on some stock server. I'll do fairly rigorous testing to rlm@146: make sure that it can handle the expected load then then some. Now rlm@146: say that you want to keep a particular instance of this webserver rlm@146: running indefinitely. (The program instance is like your mind and rlm@146: the computer it's running on is like your body). You might very rlm@146: well be able to keep the physical computer infrastructure running rlm@146: for forever by replacing hard drives / ram / CPUs, etc. However, rlm@146: since I designed the webserver to work for a month, it probably has rlm@146: memory leaks, rare stochastic bugs, or other built in limits / rlm@146: constraints (think log files or some date rollover shenanigans) rlm@146: that will ultimately kill the webserver even with eternally perfect rlm@146: hardware. Do you really expect that a webserver engineered to work rlm@146: for 1 month will run for 10 years without catastrophically rlm@146: crashing? Not even Apache can do this! In fact, if I put in the rlm@146: extreme effort to make it that robust, I've wasted time that I rlm@146: could have spent on other projects by pursuing an unnecessary rlm@146: engineering goal. Likewise, human minds have only ever run for at rlm@146: most 122 years before they are destroyed due to hardware rlm@146: degradation. Fixing the hardware doesn't change any software bugs rlm@146: that are almost certainly present in the human mind. Think of all rlm@146: the pathological things that can go wrong with a webserver, rlm@146: multiply it by a million, and that likely how evolution has rlm@146: designed our minds. For example, consider memory : why should you rlm@146: expect that we have evolved the ability to coherently organize rlm@146: memories past say 150 years? There's been absolutely no selective rlm@146: pressure for this ability, so you can bet that if there's any rlm@146: fitness to be gained from not having unlimited memory potential rlm@146: (such as better metabolic efficiency), we have it! You might think rlm@146: that maybe we would just forget things the same way that we sort of rlm@146: forget things that happen earlier in our lives, but complicated rlm@146: information processing systems don't have to fail gracefully when rlm@146: they're pushed far past their design constraints. A 150 year old rlm@146: person is just as likely to suffer a catastrophic psychosis due to rlm@146: software limitations associated with memory as he is to do rlm@146: something with all those memories we might consider rlm@146: reasonable. More likely, in fact, since there are so very many ways rlm@146: for a complicated software system to break and so few ways for it rlm@146: to run successfully. Therefore, I think Aubrey de Grey's rlm@146: "hardware-only" approach is missing a very important component of rlm@146: longevity science, and any successful effort to make people live rlm@146: orders of magnitude longer than they do naturally will need to deal rlm@146: with people's software as well as their hardware. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Validating Neurocryopreservation rlm@146: Problem : you want to test whether a brain is functionally rlm@146: preserved through vitrification, but you don't want to figure out rlm@146: how to preserve all the other organs in the animal. It might be rlm@146: possible to keep the rest of the body at almost 0C and vitrify just rlm@146: the head for only a few minutes. Induce hypothermia, then separate rlm@146: out the head's blood supply from the rest of the body, then just rlm@146: cryoptotect and vitrify the head. Might need some sort of thermal rlm@146: guard to keep the outer head / neck from becoming too cold. You rlm@146: leave the spinal cord intact! Then you devitrify to 0C, remove rlm@146: cryoprotectant, and then reattach the blood supply. You can rlm@146: determine brain preservation using behavioral assays! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Freezing Water Purifier rlm@146: You slowly freeze water, but also run liquid water over the frozen rlm@146: mass. This takes away basically all impurities and creates "washed rlm@146: ice" then you melt the ice. Maybe you could re-use the heat from rlm@146: creating the ice to melt the ice? rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Ultra Strength rlm@146: Allow a person to visualize their muscle recruitment patterns. Give rlm@146: them adrenaline and let them feel what it's like to have the normal rlm@146: limits removed. See if they can replicate the effects. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Phone Names rlm@146: Make a PX record for domain names that's like the MX record, except rlm@146: that it is a phone number instead of an IP address. That way, you rlm@146: can use the domain name registration system to provide names for rlm@146: phone numbers. Then, as long as you control the domain, you can rlm@146: point people to your current phone number by updating that record. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Edible Flowers rlm@146: Edible white flowers that you put in a colored solution with rlm@146: flavor. When the flower turns the right color, it is also flavored rlm@146: and ready to eat! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Lead Bone rlm@146: Could you fill in all the empty spaces in a bone with lead? Might rlm@146: be cool! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** The Quest for Life rlm@146: Many stories that have immortal characters have the "immortal who rlm@146: wants to become mortal" trope. I want to story where the rlm@146: protagonist loses their immortality and feels /angry/ and ashamed rlm@146: about losing something that's so absolutely crucial to their rlm@146: identity. A reverse of "death makes life worth living", they feel rlm@146: that living forever is what makes life worth living. Now they've rlm@146: "lost their sunrise" or their "connection to the timeless universe" rlm@146: or something. So they go on a quest to get it back, learning about rlm@146: themselves along the way, and regaining the precious thing they rlm@146: lost in the beginning. Which, it they can actually gain their rlm@146: immortality back, means that they never lost it in the first place! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** World Map rlm@146: Take a small table and paint the continents in toothpaste on the rlm@146: table. Make a slightly raised barrier around the table. Slowly pour rlm@146: water onto the table, and it will form the oceans! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Stage Magic Rituals rlm@146: Rituals should incorporate elements of stage magic. For example in rlm@146: Teller's rendition of Shakespeare's Tempest, they have a scene rlm@146: where they levitate a crown in front of someone, then put it on his rlm@146: head. They also have a wedding ceremony where they levitated the rlm@146: bride as well. Actual weddings and other ceremonies should rlm@146: incorporate stage magic as an enhancement to the gravitas! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Isotope Time Dilation rlm@146: Use a cyclotron to speed up rare isotopes developed in nuclear rlm@146: fusion experiments. The relativistic time dilation will stop the rlm@146: isotopes from decaying, and allow time to study them. This is based rlm@146: on radioactive isotopes that fall through the earth's atmosphere rlm@146: that take hundreds of times longer to decay than normal. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Marsupial Stimulation rlm@146: You take a freshly pouched marsupial baby, and show it videos and rlm@146: other interactive things while it matures in the pouch. What mental rlm@146: effects would this have? rlm@145: rlm@146: ** The Dynamically Well-Tempered Clavier rlm@146: Some older ways of tuning instruments sound better, but we use the rlm@146: even-tempered scale today because it makes it easier to switch rlm@146: keys. With electronic music, why not make key-annotations and rlm@146: dynamically re-tune the piece to sound good in the current key? rlm@146: Could be done as a midi+annotation -> midi compiler for initial rlm@146: experimentation. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Death Always Implies Damage rlm@146: is is possible for a corpse to differ from a living person only in rlm@146: the fact that one is dead and the other is alive? NO! A corpse must rlm@146: always have some sort of molecular damage which causes the loss of rlm@146: function! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Inner Eye rlm@146: Surgically install a bunch of tiny cameras inside a person. Then, rlm@146: you can activate them all and get a picture of your internal organs rlm@146: for diagnostic purposes. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Chaos Rails rlm@146: The homoclinic tangle (which I call the "rails of chaos") is very rlm@146: beautiful. We couldn't even visualize it before computers because rlm@146: it's so complicated! Someone should make a visualization of rlm@146: it. Here's my inital stab at it: [[../images/rails-of-chaos.png][The Rails of Chaos]] rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Cryonics Middle Ages rlm@146: Some people say that cryonics is an experiment and that it is rlm@146: foolish to wait until we have revived a human. There is a middle rlm@146: ground where the procedure has a dismal success rate on humans, say rlm@146: 1 in 20, so that you'd be a fool to try revival. Nonetheless, this rlm@146: very risky procedure could be the legal proof of concept needed to rlm@146: create a new class of life between "living" and "dead": "stasis". rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Minds and Mirrors rlm@146: Neat thought experiment -- if you take a mirror of someone by rlm@146: actually reversing a person's chirality molecule by molecule, then rlm@146: will the only be able to read mirror writing? The answer is yes, by rlm@146: analogy to a purely mechanical scan-tron device. This is one of the rlm@146: only interesting transforms I know that can take a human brain and rlm@146: change it in subtle, non-destructive ways. It's also an argument rlm@146: against dualism. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Biosphere in a Bottle rlm@146: There are around 15 million species. 15 million stem cells will rlm@146: fill only a tiny size, far less than a cubic inch. Preserve a rlm@146: single cell from every species on earth in this small space, and rlm@146: you will have a record of our current biosphere that can be rlm@146: protected. "Hold the genetic data of all species in your hand!" rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Chaos Lock rlm@146: The "arrow of time" points in the direction of increasing rlm@146: entropy. The time evolution of chaotic systems depend exquisitely rlm@146: on their initial state. If you take a measurement of a chaotic rlm@146: system at any given point of time, you can evolve that system rlm@146: backwards or forwards based on your measurement. So let's say you rlm@146: start the chaotic system in a VERY low entropy state, then let it rlm@146: run for a while, then take a measurement with some rlm@146: uncertainty. Your measurement is pretty good, but obviously not rlm@146: PERFECT. If you evolve the chaotic system back in time, then you rlm@146: will see that you don't really reach a state with low entropy an rlm@146: hour before (the entropy is easy to measure with surrogates like rlm@146: alignment, etc). So use this technique to SEARCH for a more rlm@146: accurate measurement! This potentially can give you many more rlm@146: orders of magnitude than you could get alone just using an rlm@146: instrument. Sometimes it will give you bad results, the the odds of rlm@146: it doing that are infinitesimal, and you can just measure a couple rlm@146: of times. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Cryo Evolution rlm@146: Perhaps there would be a way to rapidly evolve a symbiotic rlm@146: bacterial organism that could protect human tissues from freezing rlm@146: damage. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Suicide Parasite rlm@146: Sometimes, people kill themselves for no good reason. We often rlm@146: explain this with things like "hidden depression" or we say that rlm@146: they had something like chronic jaw or back pain. I think that rlm@146: smells of rationalization. I don't buy it. I propose that in many rlm@146: suicide cases there is a disease that causes the suicidal rlm@146: behavior. We already know that certain parasites have mind-bending rlm@146: properties in other animals, even mammals like mice. It's not much rlm@146: of a stretch to imagine a parasite that causes suicides in rlm@146: humans. Some problems: rlm@151: rlm@146: *What does the suicide parasite get out of it?* : This might be rlm@146: answered by the whole thing being a glitch caused by cross-species rlm@146: contamination. Toxoplasma works this way. rlm@145: rlm@146: *What predictions does a disease model make* : suicide should be rlm@146: more common among people who share a contagion vector. There should rlm@146: be suicides that don't make any sense : people who weren't really rlm@146: depressed, who had no reason to kill themselves. People who have rlm@146: killed themselves should have a higher incidence of some unknown rlm@146: parasite in their brains. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Domestic Insects rlm@146: People should eat more bugs because they're much more efficient, so rlm@146: why not do some major domestication research to make very appealing rlm@146: bugs? Beetles, in particular, seem to be excellent targets for rlm@146: domestication because they have extreme levels of genetic rlm@146: malleability. Remember that lobster was once seen as an animal only rlm@146: fit for prisoners to consume! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Birth-Clones rlm@146: What if each person was intentionally split at birth into a normal rlm@146: embryo and a few "backup" cells which are then frozen. The backup rlm@146: cells are created just the same way as natural identical twins. The rlm@146: backups can be used to regenerate organs. etc. Also, it would be a rlm@146: good sci-fi concept, because you could have a culture where people rlm@146: reward people who were especially awesome are "reborn" from their rlm@146: backups. Imagine having a young Bach every generation, etc. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Pronunciation Guide rlm@146: A simple webpage where you type in a word and it returns a simple, rlm@146: English sentence describing exactly how to pronounce the word. For rlm@146: people who don't want to learn IPA. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Learning to Teleport rlm@146: This is a story about a person who is struggling with his/her rlm@146: society's ideas about teleportation. It's considered a fundamental rlm@146: part of being a member of that society (after all, the difference rlm@146: between animals and humans is that humans are creatures of pure rlm@146: information while animals are burdened with base matter, "that's rlm@146: how you travel the stars, etc") Humans are born normally, grow up, rlm@146: and then eventually transcend via destructive upload. Analogies to rlm@146: jumping off a diving board into a pool (which I simply /could not rlm@146: do/ for a long time), etc. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** No-Float-Ice rlm@146: Cup that has cross beams at the bottom where ice forms. Then when rlm@146: you drink liquid from the glass, the ice stays at the bottom and rlm@146: doesn't hit your lips. For bars and fancy things. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Bitcoins for Immigrants rlm@146: A common case with Mexican immigrants (illegal or not) is that they rlm@146: want to send money they've earned in the US back to their families rlm@146: in Mexico. They currently do this through things like Money Gram or rlm@146: Western Union, and they get fleeced in the process with rlm@146: fees. Bitcoin could greatly reduce the cost of sending money from rlm@146: America to Mexico, but I don't believe that it's currently used for rlm@146: that among Mexican immigrants currently due to lack of knowledge. I rlm@146: bet you could set up physical locations like those obnoxious rlm@146: Western Union huts in places like Texas, Arizona, etc, and greatly rlm@146: undercut them. Or, perhaps some educational seminars about bitcoin rlm@146: might be in order. There's some money to be made there because rlm@146: there is great demand, and it's a good thing to boot! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Reverse Eye-Tracking rlm@146: A painting that is actually a digital screen with a camera. It rlm@146: records people's eye tracks permanently. It's "artistic" because rlm@146: paintings are normally these things that you look at without rlm@146: changing, but this one is changed the second you look at it, rlm@146: recording where /you/ looked forever for others to see. Make it be rlm@146: a painting of a woman and see the trolling as the breasts and groin rlm@146: area light up with interest from all the males passing by. Then rlm@146: watch as the painting turns into a commentary on perception and rlm@146: popularity -- a sort of eigenvector of perception! Will all rlm@146: paintings turn into the same thing eventually? rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Smart Toilets rlm@146: Instead of using indirect measures like infrared detectors of the rlm@146: presence of a person, use computer vision to directly measure rlm@146: whether the toilet needs to be flushed. I think a lot of things rlm@146: will end up going this way as we get better computer vision. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Validate Chemopreservation rlm@146: Chemopreservation is difficult to validate because it destroys the rlm@146: functionality of a brain, and brain simulation will take a long rlm@146: time to mature as a technology. However, one very powerful way to rlm@146: validate chemopreservation would be to have a person/animal learn rlm@146: something with high complexity such as a number or the solution to rlm@146: a maze, or a flashbulb memory. Then you preserve their brain rlm@146: chemically, slice it up, and read /that specific memory/ from the rlm@146: detailed brain scan. Much more difficult, but much more doable. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Candy Screw rlm@146: Edible candy screw with candy nuts that you can screw as well. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Better Bibliography rlm@146: When writing a thesis or paper, have the bibliography not just be rlm@146: an opaque list of resources, but have it be a list of /summaries/ rlm@146: and /qualities/ that each paper has in the context of the paper rlm@146: being written. When examining a bibliography, I want to know if rlm@146: reading the papers in the bibliography are worth my time, and I rlm@146: also am probably also interested in exactly the things that are rlm@146: being discussed in the paper I'm reading. The bibliography is the rlm@146: perfect place to provide information about the referenced papers rlm@146: from the author's perspective. I will use this biographic form in rlm@146: my own thesis! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Chess Visual rlm@146: To show the vast size of the game trees considered by computers, rlm@146: show two people playing chess in a void. They are floating in rlm@146: space, and there is a simple chess board between them. Then, as rlm@146: they play, the game tree's they are considering are drawn behind rlm@146: him. The root of the tree starts centered in their heads or rlm@146: whatever they use to think, and the tree grows out from behind, rlm@146: never crossing the dividing plane between the two players. Each rlm@146: player's tree is a different color. As they grow, there are rlm@146: animations for pruning, etc. Eventually, they look like the rlm@146: hemispheres of a brain, wings, etc. A human's tree might rlm@146: occasionally have a long chain, while the computer tree would be rlm@146: more uniform. You could compare deep blue and a modern laptop. Use rlm@146: actual data when fighting two computers! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Tamper Proof Gold Bars rlm@146: [[Http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/gold-plated-tungsten-alloy-bar.html][This site]] offers gold plated tungsten bars as "novelty" items. One rlm@146: reason to prefer coins is because they are much harder to rlm@146: counterfeit because there is less surface area to mass rlm@146: ratio. However, gold bars are still a great design because they can rlm@146: hold a lot of value in a small space. A gold bar could be given the rlm@146: same protections (and more) that gold coins have to offer by rlm@146: changing it into a "gold book", which would have hundreds of rlm@146: "pages" of gold bound together. This could be implemented with rlm@146: multiple steel rods going through the book which can be removed, or rlm@146: some more classier mechanism for holding the pages. The point is rlm@146: that the bar can be EASILY subdivided (and people would perform rlm@146: this test before buying), thus guaranteeing it's authenticity. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** High School Science rlm@146: This is a lesson in scientific ethics. The goal is to calculate rlm@146: /g/, the local gravitational acceleration. The students are told rlm@146: that the textbook says it's /exactly/ 9.81 before they start the rlm@146: experiment. See how they doctor their results to get closer to the rlm@146: textbook value. It's neat because for any given school, /g/ is rlm@146: probably *not* exactly equal to 9.81, because that is just an rlm@146: average! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Opencourseware Subtitles rlm@146: There are people who type up lectures at MIT while they are being rlm@146: given, so that hearing impared students can follow along. These rlm@146: recordings should be kept and given to OCW for subtitles. If the rlm@146: timestamps of keys are recorded, then it is easy to make subtitles. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Screen Locking Timing rlm@146: You use your computer camera to see if you are sitting in front of rlm@146: the computer. If you are, then the screen will never lock. If you rlm@146: are, then the screen will lock with a 30-40 second timeout. It's an rlm@146: extension of using inactivity to initiate the countdown, just with rlm@146: more information. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Mirror Toilet rlm@146: A toilet with a square basin made of mirror instead of rlm@146: porcelain. That way, you can see how good of a wipe job you have rlm@146: done / watch how your excretion system works. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** X-ray telepresence rlm@146: given that a doctor is operating on a patient via telepresence, one rlm@146: cool things you can do is shine X-rays into the patient to view the rlm@146: insides during real time. (This doesn't expose either the doctor or rlm@146: patient to chronically damaging amounts of X-rays) If the system rlm@146: was coupled with a Bayesian model of the layout of the structure, rlm@146: and the x-rays were only fired whenever the uncertainty of the rlm@146: model reached a certain threshold, then the radiation damage and rlm@146: surgery risk could be minimized. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Superfluid Vascular System rlm@146: I wonder what would happen if you replaced the blood in a human rlm@146: with a superfluid. What would the physical dynamics be? Would the rlm@146: superfluid flow through the vasculature, or would it ignore it and rlm@146: travel through the cells, or something else entirely. Since rlm@146: superfluids need to be cold to retain their superfluidity, how rlm@146: would the dynamics change during perfusion of a superfluid, where rlm@146: the fluid gains and looses superfluidity as it goes deeper into the rlm@146: body and is cooled by superfluid from upstream. In summary there rlm@146: are two things to simulate 1.) replace all blood in human with rlm@146: superfluid instantly. 2.) perfuse superfluid into human. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Projective Guessing rlm@146: I think that we read and see things by making a really good guess rlm@146: about what we're expecting to see, and then searching for our guess rlm@146: in what we see. If it really doesn't match, then we start to make rlm@146: more guesses / analyze the image from first principles, but most rlm@146: stuff is projective guessing. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Intestinal Flora Maintenance rlm@146: Why not inoculate babies at birth with "ideal" gut flora instead of rlm@146: whatever bullshit they naturally get, thus giving them optimal rlm@146: digestive/nutrient extraction capabilities. Might also be able to rlm@146: make their farts not stink for life, too. MORE IMPORTANTLY, might rlm@146: help to preventatively stop some forms of /colic/, which affects 1 rlm@146: in 5 babies and causes constant screaming and pain for about 5 rlm@146: weeks. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Server Culture -- Mirrors rlm@146: Make a distributed system where people can mirror the websites of rlm@146: people they like -- essentially cover the server costs of favored rlm@146: websites. This could make popular websites run at no cost. The rlm@146: system would require that the mirrored content be the same as the rlm@146: official source. Sort of like bit-torrent for websites. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Map Programming rlm@146: One problem with functional programming is that in order to remain rlm@146: functional, you have to pass up arguments up into each calling rlm@146: function to get the full range of behavior from the lower level rlm@146: functions. Normally people come to a compromise involving rlm@146: abstraction and sparing use of dynamic variables to configure rlm@146: runtime behavior. What would be the advantages of making a rlm@146: programming language where every function receives one argument, a rlm@146: map, which contains all the symbol bindings it would ever need? rlm@146: This map is passed on to all subordinate functions. This way, you rlm@146: could replace functions on the fly, and arrange for there to be rlm@146: sensible defaults, etc. Might cause more harm than good but is an rlm@146: interesting idea. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Rest Nest rlm@146: A small EEG device you would attach to your head when you go to rlm@146: sleep at night. ML algorithms would determine your particular sleep rlm@146: cycles. This would mostly be an alarm clock that you could give a rlm@146: time range, say 7:00AM - 7:15AM, and it would wake you up during an rlm@146: ideal time corresponding to then end of one of your 90 min sleep rlm@146: cycles. You would feel much more rested upon waking up, and would rlm@146: wake up faster. There might be some other uses for the EEG data as rlm@146: well. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Image Compression rlm@146: Use a library like gimp or opencv to process an image to make it rlm@146: have less entropy, then store the reverse of those operations along rlm@146: with the compressed simpler image as a super-compressed image file rlm@146: (possibly accepting some losses). Trades file size for rlm@146: decompression time, and allows one to cheat by using information in rlm@146: gimp/opencv to compress the image. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Aldehyde-Stabalized Cryopreservation rlm@146: Why not use a fixative to buy enough time to ramp up rlm@146: cryoprotectants to an acceptable level at room temperature? Then, rlm@146: the whole system can be rapidly cooled and vitrified. This method rlm@146: "severs the biological link" in that the fixatives are highly rlm@146: toxic, but current vitrification procedures do this anyway since rlm@146: there can be a lot of freezing damage. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Dilated Security Camera rlm@146: A security camera that would capture full video footage of rlm@146: everything at 60fps but then decide to keep only every 1 frame rlm@146: every 5 seconds unless there's something "interesting" happening. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Bitcoin Wallet rlm@146: Part of "server culture", this would be something like rlm@146: "coin.your-domain.com" which would serve as your personal trusted rlm@146: access to your own bitcoins from anywhere. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Libpay rlm@146: This would be a free library which would enable micro-donations to rlm@146: software projects and other projects, so that you could donate a rlm@146: penny to "emacs" and it would be automatically split up to every rlm@146: person who has ever contributed to emacs in proportion to the rlm@146: amount of community esteem, code quantity, bugs fixed, whatever the rlm@146: community decides. This might make it possible for programmers to rlm@146: live entirely off of free programming. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Pronouns rlm@146: Use capital letters A-Z instead of pronouns. They solve pronoun rlm@146: referents and gender neutrality, are short to say, and you can rlm@146: encode useful information into the choice of letter. For example, rlm@146: instead of "Meetings shall be presided over by the president, rlm@146: unless she is absent." USE "Meetings shall be presided over by the rlm@146: president, unless P is absent." We already use this a little, since rlm@146: I and U are reserved for the subject and object respectively. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Phone DSP rlm@146: Software app that inserts an audio DSP between the input to a phone rlm@146: and the output. The DSP is delicious and configurable, and can rlm@146: allow men to make their voices deeper, etc. The app would allow you rlm@146: to hear your own voice as others hear it. Most people hate how rlm@146: their own voice sounds. The app would also allow one to immediately rlm@146: change the parameters of the DSP using good presets. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Restaurant Receipts rlm@146: Use a carbon copy receipt instead of two stupid copies. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Crossdressing rlm@146: Easiest way to disguise oneself as a woman is to wear a burka. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Book-Mode rlm@146: Intelligent color highlighting for books and articles. It would rlm@146: disambiguate pronouns and involved references. For example, if rlm@146: "Rachael" was assigned the color red, and "the blonde haired girl" rlm@146: refers to "Rachael", then "the blonde haired girl" would be colored rlm@146: red. Also, you could disambiguate multi part run-on sentences by rlm@146: highlighting each subcomponent. Maybe would also have applications rlm@146: to scientific reading. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Handheld Light Rain Measurement rlm@146: This would be a clear, teflon coated plastic disk with a camera rlm@146: underneath the disk. You would be able to hold the device out and rlm@146: it would measure the rate of accumulation of water droplets from rlm@146: fine mists and light rain by using computer vision to measure the rlm@146: diameters of the drops. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Big Brother Farming rlm@146: This would be a vision system that would individually monitor each rlm@146: plant and turn on water, etc to ensure maximum/uniform growth for rlm@146: each plant. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Discrete Faucet rlm@146: A faucet with discrete ticks instead of continuous. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Laser Circle rlm@146: Take a glass microfiliment and shine a laser at one end at an rlm@146: oblique angle. It will make a perfect, large circle on the wall, rlm@146: converting a laser beam into a laser cone, preserving most of the rlm@146: energy of the laser. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Invisible Glass rlm@146: Take a container of liquid and embed a glass sculpture made out of rlm@146: glass that has exactly the same index of refraction and color of rlm@146: the liquid. Then the sculpture will be totally invisible in the rlm@146: container, and will only be revealed when the liquid is rlm@146: drained. The container might be a fancy wine/spirit bottle or an rlm@146: hourglass. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Caterpillar people rlm@146: A race of caterpillar like creatures gains intelligence after eons rlm@146: of predation by birds, etc. These caterpillar creatures still rlm@146: undergo metamorphosis into a large butterfly-like creature. The rlm@146: metamorphosis process turns the caterpillar's brain into mush and rlm@146: reforms it into a minimal, dumb, truly insect-like mind, completely rlm@146: destroying the person the caterpillar was. The society develops all rlm@146: sorts of customs and religious interpretations of the rlm@146: metamorphosis. It is viewed as good and natural by some since it is rlm@146: part of their life cycle and necessary to propagate the species, as rlm@146: only the butterflies can mate. Some think that the butterflies are rlm@146: still the same person because they have the same soul, even they no rlm@146: longer posses the memories or personality of the original rlm@146: caterpillar. Some see the butterfly form as the "true form" of the rlm@146: species, since the butterflies can fly, mate, and are rlm@146: beautiful. Many make a big deal out of the fact that 1-2% of the rlm@146: caterpillar's mind is actually preserved in the butterfly. Some see rlm@146: it as a terrible tragedy and argue that the caterpillars should try rlm@146: to stop the metamorphosis by technology. Practically, some very rlm@146: important members of society undergo hormone therapy and/or surgery rlm@146: to prevent metamorphosis so that they can live longer as rlm@146: themselves. rlm@145: rlm@146: This is a continuation of Marvin Minsky's ideas about pain being rlm@146: something that preserves our bodies while destroying our minds, rlm@146: something that is a remnant from our too harsh animal days that rlm@146: hasn't caught up to the fact that we have very complex brains rlm@146: now. It's a worst-case scenario about a maladaptive genetic rlm@146: legacy. Also, it's inspired by "There She Is!!!", which makes a rlm@146: compelling point about homosexuality by introducing a second gender rlm@146: characteristic (bunny/cat, male/female), which makes homophobia rlm@146: look very silly. Here, our own biological legacy of pain and death rlm@146: is made to look like the tragedy it is through the lens of the the rlm@146: caterpillar people. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Relationships as a Business rlm@146: [[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: quitting," which is about better business by letting people go rlm@146: instead of keeping them around past their "apex". Focuses on rlm@146: information transfer. Cool idea of an alumni network, which for rlm@146: relationships would be a group of satisfied ex-lovers, who would rlm@146: recommend new people your way, and who might consider coming to you rlm@146: again, refreshed from their time away with new rlm@146: stories/experiences. I should look for examples of this and how rlm@146: they worked out. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Psychic Crystal rlm@146: In a science fiction story, this would be an object that is very rlm@146: easy to move physically but is extremely difficult to move with rlm@146: telekinesis. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** True Reflection rlm@146: There's a "true mirror" in the MIT student center -- it's two rlm@146: normal mirrors at right angles, like staring at a corner of a rlm@146: room. The light reflects so that it shows you what you actually rlm@146: look like, instead of your mirror image. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Remote Control Wasp rlm@146: Use computer to drive wings with remote power/logic. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Encrypted Email Phone Book rlm@146: Public (distributed?) database of email->private-key pairs, to rlm@146: enable automatic encryption. rlm@146: rlm@146: ** Universal Eye Color rlm@146: Every equivalent creature will see each others' eyes as black -- rlm@146: it's universal. Even if the creatures see in radio waves, and their rlm@146: eyes are 2m long pieces of jagged metal, when those creatures look rlm@146: at each other, they will see black, the absence of light and color rlm@146: (since it's being absorbed by the sensor array). rlm@146: rlm@146: ** Intelligent Microwave rlm@146: It learns where the hot nodes of its fields are, and uses them to rlm@146: evenly heat any food item. It has an infrared camera or something rlm@146: to keep track of how hot the food is. That way, you don't get bowls rlm@146: where the edges are boiling, while the center is still rlm@146: frozen. Requires a little bit of intelligence/vision, since the rlm@146: exact pattern of heating totally depends on the exact shape of the rlm@146: food. Wouldn't need a carousel, and wouldn't need a timer, just a rlm@146: desired temperature. Could also detect ice, and automatically rlm@146: defrost the parts which are frozen. Might be able to work much rlm@146: faster since it can avoid overheating; might have problems with rlm@146: heating the insides of thick things, might need a weight sensor rlm@146: too. rlm@145: rlm@151: *+* Would be much cleaner than other microwaves, since food would rlm@151: "sputter" and splash liquid much less. rlm@145: rlm@151: *+* Throw in some SIFT+R processing to match previously cooked rlm@151: foods and learn the exact heating profiles for things that have rlm@151: been cooked before -- it can get faster the more it's used. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Flesh Pillow rlm@146: A pillow like the arm or torso of a human, complete with simulated rlm@146: temperature, bones, and heartbeat. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Light Filter rlm@146: Works like light-tweezers to mechanically separate fluids with rlm@146: different indexes of refraction. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Silver Socks rlm@146: Socks laced with silver for the antimicrobial properties. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Rod of Moses rlm@146: Device to distill urine through evaporation and easily dispose of rlm@146: urea crystals for use in desert -- produce drinkable water and live rlm@146: an extra few days! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Lottery Scraper rlm@146: Web scraper which monitors various lotteries, looking for "special" rlm@146: gimmick changes in the rules (like 4x winnings on Wednesdays) and rlm@146: computes expected value... rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Memristiors Novel Design rlm@146: Make an evolutionary algorithm to make old stuff using all four rlm@146: basic circuit elements. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Conductive Concrete rlm@146: Concrete that has embedded metal fibers so that it can conduct rlm@146: electricity. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Little Bitty Melting Pot rlm@146: Might be useful for some types of manufacturing/3D printing -- how rlm@146: small can an induction melter be made, for example. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** True Pure Tones rlm@146: Hear a true pure tone by direct stimulation of the nerves of the rlm@146: ear. Like when Adelson "saw green". rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Mechanical analogue to the electrical op-amp rlm@146: would be an object with two levers -- you pull on one lever and the rlm@146: other moves the same way, no matter what's in the way or what it is rlm@146: driving. This analogy could be useful to teach op amps to people. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Light Capacitor rlm@146: Suspend some ball of material with a high index of refraction and rlm@146: shine light into it so it gets stuck -- would the light stay rlm@146: trapped forever? Could you build up unlimited quantities of light rlm@146: inside the sphere (which could then be released slowly by rlm@146: frustrated internal reflection? rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Reading Comprehension rlm@146: use the screen capture routine to make a quiz program that rlm@146: constructs questions about the content you seemed to gloss over rlm@146: while reading. could be easy if the pdf came with embedded rlm@146: questions. Dylan: automatically generate word-cloud about the rlm@146: parts you found most interesting; help others who read the same rlm@146: stuff by drawing attention to the interesting parts. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Optimize an Article rlm@146: Capture reading of a scientific article via screen capture while rlm@146: people read it, then use it to make the article better. like the rlm@146: movie-pruning idea. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Movie Pruning rlm@146: Movies always are too long at first. One way to shorten them rlm@146: ``scientifically" is to record blink rate during the move and then rlm@146: remove / shorten the frames of the parts in which there are a lot rlm@146: of blinking (average this over multiple people) better yet, put it rlm@146: online and do it across thousands of people. I got this from rlm@146: youtube in which there is an episode of kill bill which is composed rlm@146: entirely of the parts in which people had their eyes rlm@146: closed. slogan: want to make a movie people can't take their eyes rlm@146: off of? Just take those parts out! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Explosive Thermite Epoxy Putty rlm@146: One part would contain the rust, one part the aluminum. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Concrete Epoxy rlm@146: Epoxy with sand/ some other solid material. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Hard Sword rlm@146: Make a samurai sword, but use osmiridum instead of martensite for rlm@146: the cutting part; it should be a better sword. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Close Range Wireless rlm@146: use the induction technology used to recharge electric toothbrushes rlm@146: with no metal links to send data without any metal at all! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Perfect Pitch rlm@146: Learn perfect pitch using another sense in combination (sight or rlm@146: touch). rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Bio Metallic Structure rlm@146: Metal grids with seeds inside, which grow together and form a rlm@146: durable biological matrix. The metal substrate delivers rlm@146: water. (maybe use plastic instead of metal?) Dylan: enrich plants rlm@146: with inorganic compounds; electrical interfaces in cellular plant rlm@146: matter => remote-controlled photosynthetic/bioluminescent rlm@146: structures. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Conducting Extracellular Matrix rlm@146: To allow better control of organic systems and an enhanced nervous rlm@146: system. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Cross-Modal Memory Hashing rlm@146: A way to retrieve memories more robustly. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Greener than Green rlm@146: If you stare at a red light, then you get a green after-image. If rlm@146: you immediately look at something green while still seeing the rlm@146: green after-image, you will experience a Green like none you've rlm@146: ever seen before -- color so intense it's beyond the range of rlm@146: anything that exists in the world. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Wooden Refrigerator rlm@146: To give food a better taste Dylan: like barrels for wine, or planks rlm@146: for salmon. Maybe just have "flavor planks" for your pre-existing rlm@146: fridge. Need to mitigate effect of temperature on volatility? rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Radioactive Transmutation Molecule by Molecule rlm@146: Create precious metals or something else economically rlm@146: advantageous. Best transmutation I can come up with is mercury into rlm@146: gold, but it's not economically viable. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Preservation Via Crowding rlm@146: Inoculate food with tons of harmless bacteria so that there's no rlm@146: room for bad bacteria as a method of preservation rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Old-School Preservation rlm@146: Pasteur - style holding jar with siphon as a way to store rlm@146: sterilized liquids at room temperature indefinitely w/o rlm@146: refrigeration. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Restaurant Policy rlm@146: Throw rude people out of restaurant as a matter of course -- make rlm@146: ambiance much better. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Clean Windows rlm@146: Make something that mixes soap with fire hydrant water (and reduces rlm@146: the pressure a bit) and use it to clean windows of buildings. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Ocarina rlm@146: Make an ocarina out of pure silver. Might have really good acoustic rlm@146: properties. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Fire Pen rlm@146: Pen which burns words on to the page, thus never needing any rlm@146: ink. Is there a way to make it runnable from body heat? rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Website to Design Your Own Soda rlm@146: and label, and have it mailed to you / sell it from your own online rlm@146: store. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Ocean Power rlm@146: Solar panels that float on the ocean. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Handcuffs with More Than Two Cuffs (3?) rlm@146: Great for daisy chaining people, binding them to environment, etc. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Vector Based SOUND Files rlm@146: Like the pictures but with SOUND. codify sound in a language with rlm@146: enough symbols so that it can describe everything and encode it in rlm@146: that. would be like going from speech to text or smtg. Could also rlm@146: store sound as an image of the wavefront encoded as a vector image. rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Genetically Engineered Glowing Fruit rlm@146: They have some animals that can glow, but glowing fruit that you rlm@146: eat would be AWESOME! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** The Body as a Key to Memory rlm@146: IF memories are encoded using particular sensory impressions, what rlm@146: happens if the sensory organ itself changes? those memories would rlm@146: become inaccessible. maybe this is why we can't remember much from rlm@146: our childhoods. also, could this happen throughout life as well? rlm@146: Could S remember stuff from his childhood? rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Lighter Flint on Spring rlm@146: Make hot, throw it at something, and it makes sparkles! rlm@145: rlm@146: ** Rare Bubbles rlm@146: Engineer a material which has both ductility and high surface rlm@146: tension to make the "third" minimal-surface-energy solution to a rlm@146: bubble suspended between two equal-diameter rings. (Solutions are rlm@146: cylindrical catenary curve, two separated half-bubbles, and a rlm@146: double-cone) rlm@146: rlm@146: ** Magic Textbook rlm@146: whose content can be varied continuously alter level of difficulty, rlm@146: rigor, diction, emphasize crossover with certain other discipline, rlm@146: etc. Content generated dynamically from knowledge base, along with rlm@146: questions that are moreover altered to guide knowledge rlm@146: acquisition. Motivation: One book of knowledge. /One./ rlm@145: rlm@145: rlm@145: #+BEGIN_HTML rlm@145:

Still want more? Visit the Raw rlm@145: Ideas page, but prepare for extreme half-bakedness.

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