From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Jul 07 2003 - 12:00:49 MDT
Erik Starck [mailto:es@popido.com] wrote,
> >Since NASA was previously approved to have a 1000-man permanent colony on
> >the moon in the 1970's, I don't see how the above prediction
> contradicts my
> >position. [snip]
>
> You are of course correct. A curious question: what plans did
> NASA have for
> the 1000-man colony? What would they do on the moon? What was the motive
> for sending a 1000 people on a high risk voyage to what's basically a big
> rock?
I don't know a lot of details. Google could find few details. Here are a
few proposals, but I don't know which one would match what I remember.
<http://www.astronautix.com/craft/aporbase.htm> shows what was already
approved and budgeted by NASA as part of the Apollo program, which was later
cancelled.
<http://www.astronautix.com/craft/proelena.htm> shows project Selena which
was an alternative to Apollo and focused on expanding the moon habitat
modules.
<http://www.astronautix.com/articles/propter1.htm> shows a 1959 Army report
that focused on the military significance of having a moon base before the
Russians.
> 120 years has been the approximated maximum life span for (biologically
> unmodified) humans for a long time, AFAIK much longer than the 80s. The
> _actual_ average life span however is still steadily increasing.
> Thus, for
> most people, their personal predictions have increased.
Is anybody seriously thinking they have achieved a 120+ year lifespan with
today's technology?
> > > Conclusion: time will be on our side.
> >Perhaps in the future, but it has not been so in the past decade
> or two of life-extension therapies.
>
> Wasn't it the future we were talking about?
No. I was talking about history. The life expectancy of life-extensionists
has shrunk in recent decades. In the 1980's life extensionists believed
that their current diet would let them live to 120 years and beyond. They
no longer believe that. As these individuals gained more knowledge, they
have scaled back their life-expectancy numbers.
My observations are not about the future. My observations was that
currently known capabilities are less than "currently known" capability in
previous decades. Some abilities (like space travel) have been lost. Some
abilities (like life extension and cryonics) have been revised. Some
abilities (like AI and robotics) have been corrected.
> >AI research has never been limited
> >by processing power. It is not like folding@home where we know
> what to do but can't get enough cpu power. AI programs simply don't work
>
> There are 2 dimensions to any software program:
> 1. How much computation per time unit does it have available?
> 2. What does it do with the computation?
>
> So, it's very much a speed issue. For example, you say a "very slow" AI
> program would be fine. Ok, then lets call the speed at which this program
> would make the Turing test h. "Very slow" can't just mean half
> the speed of
> h or even a tenth of the speed of h, because if it did Moore's law would
> fill the gap in a couple of years. No, "very slow" must mean at the order
> of a million times slower than h (about 20 years of CPU-development with
> Moore's law). Something that would take the h-program 1 second to figure
> out would take this AI program 12 days. Most people wouldn't call that a
> conscious program.
Agreed. But my point is that we cannot make this slow AI that you describe.
It is not available but too slow to be useful. It does not exist, because
we can't make it work. If we could make that slow one work, we could easily
build faster hardware, run parallel processes, and all sorts of other
techniques. But it doesn't exist. We don't know how to build it. All
previous attempts have failed. Moore's law won't make it work. We have to
redesign something fundamentally new to get this to work. People who keep
quoting Moore's law don't understand that. In fact, most computer designers
that I know hate Moore's law, because it is almost always wrong and used
incorrectly.
> >People who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. And I am afraid that
> >this is exactly what is happening.
>
> Maybe. What do you think must be done to avoid this?
Stop quoting slogans and propaganda, do some technological reading, and
learn the real history and current state of technology. That's what I think
should be done.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISM, CISSP, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified InfoSec Manager, Certified IS Security Pro, NSA-certified InfoSec Assessor, IBM-certified Security Consultant, SANS-cert GSEC <HarveyNewstrom.com> <Newstaff.com>
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