We’re rescheduling later this week. Stay tuned.
Author Archives: Phil Bowermaster
Friday Video
So I’m two days late. Sue me.
Zombie warnings:
Via GeekPress, who does not endorse this kind of activity.
2200 Will Never Come
Michael Anissimov explains:
2200 will never come. Our brains will be accelerated by a factor of millions before 2100. 2200 won’t be for millions of years.
It’s not an entry — just an offhand comment in a thread about a picture of Mars terra-formed. Gotta love Michael’s blog. The Nuclear Test is great, too.
Life in the Real World
We noted last week the possibility that our entire universe may just be a low-res 3D rendering of the real 2D universe, which exists out on the boundary of what we normally think of us “the universe.” The hologram that we live in is extremely coarse compared to the boundary universe — our “pixels” are 19 orders of magnitude greater than those used in the real universe.
I’m thinking that the real universe needs higher resolution in order to contain the same structures that our universe does, only in two dimensions rather than three. But surely four or five orders of magnitude would take care of that? That still puts the boundary universe at a resolution 15 orders of magnitude higher than what’s possible here.
So the boundary universe is potentially encoded at a level of detail 1,000,000,000,000,000 times greater than our universe. This raises some questions.
– What is the boundary universe doing with all that information? Is it keeping better track of things than we are in this universe? Is information about the past available in more detailed form there?
– Are we just a projection of the boundary universe, or are we what’s going on in there? I mean — is what’s happening in there just a two-dimensional version of a guy at a keyboard, is there some kind of uberPhil in the boundary universe writing a blog post that is 15 orders of magnitude more sophisticated than this one?
– If this (highly improbable) picture of the universe were to turn out to be true, should all metaphysical and cosmological speculations (including the ones I’m making right now) be tabled until we understand the boundary universe better?
Anyhow, that’s what goes on in my head up here in the big, grainy, blurry holographic construct that we call the universe.
A Day to Remember
Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, “Because it is there.”
Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
And, of course, tomorrow is also a day to remember:
There’s a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, ‘He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.’ Well, today we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake’s, complete.
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honoured us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’
Next Sunday, too:
In the skies today we saw destruction and tragedy. Yet farther than we can see, there is comfort and hope. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power, and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”
The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.
May God bless the grieving families. And may — may God continue to bless America.
And while we’re on the subject, we should also remember these brave individuals:
FastForward Radio — Setting the Future Agenda Part 2
Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon resumed their discussion about how to set the agenda for the future — the Speculist way.
Listening Options:
Stream our latest shows:
Or:
Or download MP3′s for all the archived shows at:
Unstress Your Cells
FuturePundit has the scoop on some interesting research reported in Cell Metabolism
A new study in the January 7th issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, helps to explain why obese people and animals fail to respond to leptin, a hormone produced by fat that signals the brain to stop eating. What’s more, they show that two FDA-approved drugs might restore leptin sensitivity, offering a novel treatment for obesity.
” Most importantly, our study is the first success in sensitizing obese mice on a high-fat diet to leptin,” said Umut Ozcan of Harvard Medical School. “If it works in humans, it could treat obesity.”
When leptin was first discovered some 13 years ago, it led to great excitement in the field, Ozcan said. Studies showed that leptin administered to obese mice that lacked the hormone lost weight. The buzz over leptin’s potential as an obesity therapy soon waned, however, because obese animals and people don’t respond to the hormone. Efforts to find drugs that act as leptin sensitizers over the years have also failed.
A part of cells known as the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is involved in many cellular processes including protein manufacturing, lipid and carbohydrate synthesis, and other functions. Stress in the ER appears to play a role in a metabolic disorder linked to obesity. These researchers decided that perhaps ER stress played a role in reduced response of the brain’s hypothalamus to leptin.
Leptin looked exciting, at first, but it didn’t seem to pan out. Now we know why.
So, you want to cut your appetite? Stop stressing the endoplasmic reticulum. Gosh, if only it were as easy as it sounds!
As a side benefit, cutting the ER stress might be crucial to fighting aging as well. See how all this stuff works together?
Friday Videos — Case Tape 347
Mild language warning applies.
Nicely put together — like a really compact version of Cloverfield.
FastForward Radio — Setting the Future Agenda Part 1
Phil, Stephen, and Michael, with special guest PJ Manney, set the agenda for the future the Speculist way.
Listening Options:
Stream our latest shows:
Or:
Or download MP3′s for all the archived shows at:
The gang started with this question: “What are we most looking forward to in the coming years?” Possibilities include d
- The end of aging and other diseases?
- New production technologies and the end of poverty and hunger?
- New energy technologies?
- Technologies to clean up the environment?
- Artificial intelligence?
- Artificial Virtual Worlds?
- The REAL Space Age?
Time only permitted getting through half the list on this program. Sunday they will finish working through the list and discuss what should be on the agenda, how we prioritize the agenda items, and what dependencies exist between them.
Government Jobs
The worrying graph shown below has made the rounds in the blogosphere over the past few days.
Here we see how the United States now has more people employed by government than work in manufacturing and construction. Some read these numbers and see certain doom. It’s the tipping point! How can the economy possibly survive when fewer and fewer of us produce any wealth, while more and more of us get a share of what wealth is produced through labor that is not productive (at least not in the economic sense)?
To begin to answer that question, I offer the following two videos. You only need to watch a little of the first one to get the basic idea. The second one is pretty short
So how many human beings are required to assemble a Ford Model T in the early 20th century versus a Toyota (the comments suggest possibly a Tercel) in the early 21st century? It’s all about the productivity numbers. These figures are what you have to consider before bemoaning the loss of jobs in manufacturing and construction:
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Over time, these increases in productivity mean that it takes fewer and fewer people to produce goods. So unless we’re going to produce way more than we could ever consume, it’s inevitable that more and more people will be employed in non-productive jobs. A possible endgame is that one day the robots will do all the real work, and those of us who aren’t government bureaucrats will work in the corporate world with job titles like “Director of Organizational Emphasis” or “Senior Manager, Strategic Thoughtspace.”
Or maybe we’ll drop the charade and just let the robots put us all on some kind of allowance. If everyone gets whatever they need (in the material sense) from helpful productive robots, a very different economy takes hold. In that world, the “wealthiest” individuals might be those who come up with the best ideas, or who display the most talent, or who hold the most sway with other people — or with the robots.
It’s a daunting idea, but it certainly sounds like more fun than having us all end up working for the government.
UPDATE: Yeah, but that future when the machines are capable of taking over is decades, maybe centuries away, right?