Another needed step for self-actualizing the Universe is self-assembly.

Tags

Universal self-actualization, What's needed next, Nano non carbon self assembly

To self-actualize the Universe we need to have forms of thinking matter that are extremely stable because the processes involved will take tens or perhaps hundreds of billions (1tic11) of years to carry out that mission. Our present organic thinking brains need constant retraining and are physically unstable, and their maximum usage life is approximately one hundred (1tic2) years. (1tic11 – 1tic2 = 1tic 9. Or 1 with 9 zeros after it times longer than humans live.)

Organic life has evolved from simpler quasi-life forms in part because the carbon atom and its molecules have the ability to self-assemble into more complex forms. They were stable enough to evolve to more complex forms via reproduction of what survived in their local environment. Atoms other than carbon can self-assemble into large and complex crystals, but they are more limited in the physical forms they can take compared to those available to carbon. Carbon easily mutates from one form to another which is okay for organic evolution but for our goal, super stable forms are needed. Some of these other atoms may be limited in the forms that they can take but once they are formed they are stable. For example, zircon crystals are used for age dating early Earth geological forms because they behave in stable ways for billions (1tic9) of years.

If we are to make a thinking being (machine) that can endure for billions of years it will need to be made with these more stable atoms and molecular forms. At present we can manufacture thinking chips at sizes approaching atomic levels but it requires expensive and sophisticated factories to do these things. What we need to devise are ways that at least some of these processes can be done on the nanoscale by atoms themselves. This is already done by carbon-based systems but humans may be able to intervene, as natural organic evolution can not, and create the nanotools that do these assemblies one atom at a time.

Some things cannot be evolved because evolution requires functioning steps in between functioning organic beings. Humans and goal-directed robotic devices can make things that don’t have intervening functional steps. They make the thing they want to exist as a goal-directed activity. A pocket watch found on a beach may be a much simpler thing than an amoeba found beside it but the watch cannot evolve from simple matter because it can have no functioning intervening steps, at least not without human intervention. 

A key step that needs to be created by humans, probably with computer aid, is the nanomachine that can make various nanomachine parts. Once a nanoassembly process can be made functional and self-sustaining, it should be possible to make everything that will be needed. That would include being able to make machines like themselves and thus to generate a logarithmic increase of themselves. Like Bill Joy’s grey goo, but not as scary. With an abundance of these generalized manufacturing machines, anything could be made if they were provided with the needed supplies and energy.

We are on the cusp of being able to do these things and thus to begin the process of self-actualizing the whole Universe.

Advertisements

How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 18

Tags

Identifying false beliefs, On, On Anger, Personal analysis, Seneca, Trustworthiness of information

The discovery of my false beliefs can begin with analyzing the source of the information. These false beliefs can’t be eliminated until they have been potentially identified and then analyzed for their likelihood of being false.

Once a belief has been identified as being false, a search can be made for others who have had similar false beliefs and then reported the various ways they attempted to cope with their problems.

The Roman author Seneca wrote a book-length article on On Anger about the year  45 AD that I found helpful when attempting to challenge one’s own beliefs and behaviors. He struggled mightily with that problem and was functionally murdered (forced to commit suicide) about fifteen years later by Emperor Nero, the very person whom he had tutored as an adolescent.

There are many ways to attempt to cope with the discovery of true information, which will be discussed below, but first, it is reasonable to filter the information coming to us according to its source. The chart below analyses the information’s source from intentional obfuscation by an unknown author about unverifiable facts through 14 steps of increasing agreement culminating in opposing forces with skin in the game finding an agreement about some details of the information. That information is itself available for open assessment for its trustworthiness because all of the various factors are readily observable by any interested person.

This style of information assessment is presented in the chart below and a larger chart can be printed by clicking here — Trustworthiness of Information.

Trustworthiness of Information

We can prioritize information in various ways by checking through various techniques. And apply all of them and then choose which will be most applicable to our goals and needs. Pareto charts, Scattergrams, Timeboxing, Triage, Reverse triage, SAP value mapping CARVER matrix. All of these techniques are intended to help the user make the problems and their potential solutions more available to the investigation. Once they are visible the relative merit of the potential solutions may be prioritized and the most beneficial outcomes with the lowest risk and highest likelihood of success chosen. Then there will be coping methods such as antifragility, etc.

I hope to work with each of these soon as I become more aware of my false beliefs.

How big a job is helping the Universe self-actualize?

Tags

A Self Actualizing Universe, How many earths behind the Moon?, Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, HUDF photo, Self-actualizing the Universe

There are estimated to be about one hundred billion galaxies, with about one hundred billion stars in each galaxy. That is 1 x 10^22 stars, most of which probably have planets and many of which have planets in the Goldilocks Zone of watery planets.

For very round numbers let’s just assume that one in a hundred stars has an Earth-like planet so we have 1 x 10^20 = (100,000,000,000,000,000,000) potential planets with life. Life is “just” a lot of natural chemicals and electrical actions, and thus life may be nearly ubiquitous on these Earth-like planets.

The imprecision of the numbers of a couple of zeros in this post means little because assuming that we have a single high-tech civilization per galaxy that would be enough to wholly self-actualize the Universe in some tens of billions of years. If one of these civilizations arises per billion years per galaxy the job, with some pertinent communication, would be completed at near the speed of light and the information would eventually catch up with the whole Universe before it goes cold.

To get a better “feel” of how many Earth-like planets may be in the Universe we may make a more easily visualized comparison by calculating how many galaxies and thus planets may be hiding behind the Moon. We can do that by comparing the Moon to the Hubble Ultra Deep Field photo of dark space in the sky. That will give us a more understandable visual idea of how big the Universe is and how great the number of planets and how outlandish it is to think that we can have a Universe-wide influence.

To make this estimate we can use the number of galaxies in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) image, which NASA states as fifteen thousand galaxies, and compare that area (5.96 square minutes) to the Moon’s visual area. The Moon’s visual size varies with its distance from the Earth, but it will give us an estimate to multiply up from to get an estimate of the number of planets. It it is now thought that there are planets around nearly all stars in galaxies. The Moon is 29.3 minutes wide at its smallest and 34.1 at its largest; thus its visual area is 674 square minutes at its smallest and 913 at its largest.

When the smallest visual area of the Moon is 674 square minutes and the HUDF is 5.96 square minutes we can divide 674  by 5.96 which equals 113. Thus, the Moon at its apparent smallest is 113 times bigger than the HUDF photo and to estimate the number of galaxies behind the Moon we multiply 113 times 15,000 and get 1,696,308 galaxies. The same calculation for when the Moon is at its visual maximum size is 913 divided by 5.96 equals 153. So, the Moon at its largest visual appearance is 153 times bigger than the HUDF photo and we multiply 153 times 15,000 and get 2,297,819 galaxies.

Averaging the close and far Moon’s apparent size, there are approximately two million galaxies covered by the Moon at any time and there are very approximately a hundred billion stars with watery planets in each galaxy. Multiplying these two numbers together and we get 200,000,000,000,000. That’s the same as (2 x 10^14), and the same as 200 trillion potential Earth-like planets hiding behind the Moon.

When I was a kid we laughed at seeing a face in the full Moon; but even funnier is that only once in a billion years does one of those kids out there, behind the Moon, on one of those planets have to think the thought presented here to begin the process of helping the Universe to Self Actualize. Then it will have a potential for thinking and figuring out something even more magnificent. We have the potential to begin right now.

It’s a big opportunity when planning to help the Universe become all that it is capable of becoming, but how?

What is a truth in today’s world?

Tags

truth, What is capital T truth?, What is Truth?

We have entered into a new world reality. The physical testability of facts is no longer considered a path to the proof of the validity of those facts. Instead, the spin on a statement that agrees with a person’s present point of view is now considered as the truth to that person and to their audience. The reality of their statement may be preposterous in the extreme, but a direct challenge to the statement is nowadays considered a violation of good manners. And so, in many social situations, it isn’t done.

For example, if there is a person claiming there is a Martian spaceship currently in their backyard it must be accepted as true because the person you are conversing with just said it. If there are other people present in the conversation it is required that everyone listen respectfully in a state of acceptance while there is a discussion of the Martians, what they look like, what their names are, and what their mission to Earth is, and why this person was chosen as their contact point to Earth’s humanity.

The problem arises when you ask to go visit with the Martians, to see, and talk with them yourself. This would be a wonderful thing, and I would like to make a video of our conversation so we could show it to everyone because then the people of Earth would believe and understand. But even a simple request like that is an affront. The Martians came to them personally, and in due time the truths brought to us Earthlings of their visit will be revealed. Only the speaker is permitted to interact with them. In the meantime, we are expected to believe everything they say.

When I encounter this kind of conversation I try to understand how the person’s understanding is coming into existence. To do that requires listening and believing what they say as they say it, so that a communication is taking place, but as the ideas are understood and difficulties in the ideas come to the fore it is necessary to challenge them. However, my experience has been that it is difficult to make any progress with these people because they challenge the very concept of testability of the ideas being presented.

Many people’s truths are remarkably resistant to being tested against physical reality.

How to become a citizen of the Universe.

Tags

Human destiny, Living for a billion years, Universal citizens

For you and me to become citizens of the Universe seems like a new idea but it’s not. Some of the Classic Greeks and Romans spoke of themselves not as being Greeks or Romans but as Citizens of the Universe. Diogenes the Cynic (412 B.C.-323 B.C.) was an early proponent of that grander citizenship for advanced intellectual and spiritual humans. The Roman Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C.-65 A.D.), a Stoic, also wrote of himself as being a citizen of the whole world, and of the whole Universe. Seneca was Nero‘s chief advisor and administrator for the first five years of that Roman Emperor’s rule when Nero was age eighteen to twenty-three. Seneca was a very well-informed human being.

At the time that those people lived, the Universe was only the Earth and the Sky as they saw it with their eyes. So what they were asserting was that they were part of that whole. It may have been a theory of a few astronomers that the fixed stars were other sun-like things, but even that wasn’t generally accepted. But even at its most expansive their definition of the Universe would include only the visible individual stars that are in the closest part of our Milky Way galaxy. There are about a hundred billion galaxies in the Universe as has been estimated by the Hubble Ultra Deep Field photo. Thus they were undervaluing their conception of the universe by something like 1 x 10^22, including the individual stars. Most of those stars are now known to have planets.

My stated goal in some recent posts is to assert that we, you and me, are not only citizens of the Universe but for us to become active participants in the whole Universe, not just within our arms’ reach. For us to do that we must be thinking of our lives and influences as spanning billions of years. With our biological life expectancy of only a hundred years, we must move on to a robot-based life form and physically move off our planet to distant stars, planets, interstellar space, and eventually to intergalactic space. And we must think of our communication cycles in terms of billions of years and not in seconds. For us fleshy humans that is absurd, but for robots, it can probably become a sustainable reality.

As strange as making these kinds of robots sounds it is probably more easily done than creating organic life from scratch. People I have met, such as David Deamer and Craig Venter, are attempting to do just that. The process for making a self-sustaining silicon-based society is relatively straightforward because all the steps for the operations can already be done. At present these operations do require people but those operations can almost certainly be designed to be done automatically by currently creatable robots.

Our becoming participating citizens of the Universe can be done by our evolving into what we now call robots. 

 

What should we do before the Universe dies?

Tags

Evolving Universe, Help the Universe evolve, Humanity's purpose, Humanity's responsibility, Robot evolution, Universe Self-Actualize

Perhaps cosmologists have already dealt with our role in the evolution of the Universe but because they haven’t convinced themselves how our Universe will end up it doesn’t seem likely that they have answered my simple question. My post, Humanity’s destiny is to help the Universe to actualize its potentials states the obvious at the opening:

“It isn’t hubris to seek to help the Universe to actualize its potentials, but rather it is the responsibility of a sentient species anywhere in the Universe to do so. We as sentient carbon-based biological beings who for the moment have a fully functioning, technologically sophisticated society capable of creating vastly more stable silicon-based sentient beings must do so while we have the resources.”

---

(The following words and image are derived from Wikipedia – the Ultimate fate of the Universe.)

We can estimate the size of the Universe at present but the time that will exist and its ultimate fate is related to how fast it is expanding. If Ω > 1, then the geometry of space is a closed universe, gravity eventually stops the expansion of the universe, after which it starts to contract until all matter in the universe collapses to a point, a final singularity termed the “Big Crunch“, the opposite of the Big Bang. But if Ω < 1, the universe expands forever, with gravity negligibly slowing the rate of expansion. If the average density of the universe exactly equals the critical density so that Ω = 1, the universe expands forever but at a continually decelerating rate, with expansion asymptotically approaching zero.

---

It appears from the statement and the graphic that the Universe has over 15 billion years life expectancy and probably much much more. For purposes of this discussion, the plan is to create a robot society that can move off our Earth and colonize other places, even other star systems, and intergalactic space. A robot in a state of suspended animation in a deep-space container at a near absolute zero temperature could remain viable for billions of years. With that expanse of time available the physical robots could move to other non-robot-filled galaxies and help them with their potentials to help the Universe to self-actualize. That means to actualize into its reality things that we can not conceptualize, or fantasize about, or even be exposed to in nightmare dreams. The reason for our limitation is the lack of power of a three-pound thinking device compared to ones the size of galaxies.

If these galactic-sized thinking devices can survive until the end of the energy potentials of any of the potential Ω outcomes they can fully realize what should be called Universal Self-Actualization.

What we can do now is to set in motion the evolutionary processes of self-replicating robots.

We live in the moment of Universal opportunity!

Tags

Electric driven farm machinery., Prepare for electricity., Why we need robots.

At the present moment, humanity has a fabulous technological society up and running well. It requires large numbers of people and huge amounts of energy to make it work. The people must have food, which is stored solar energy, and the technology must have energy also which is ultimately stored solar energy. Most of the energy for our machines comes from coal or petroleum, with some from falling water, solar collectors and wind. The only non-solar power is from radioactive sources converted to electricity. All of these energy sources can, with processing, ultimately be used to create human food, but as coal and petroleum become scarce their prices will go higher and food prices will rise too. A google search says, “At the current rate of consumption, the current U. S. petroleum, natural gas, and coal reserves will last approximately for 4.88 years, 12.2 years, and 258 years, respectively.” 

As our population grows the consumption will increase and the demand on the resources will increase also. I don’t know if those figures are accurate, but if they are there are cars built today that will outlast the fuel supply. My second car, a 1996 Geo Prizm with a hundred thousand miles, runs perfectly and gets terrific gas mileage. A search showed up similar Prizms with over two hundred thousand miles that people were still expecting to sell, which means that at my current usage my car will outlast the fuel supply. I’m not that pessimistic, but the point is that those fuel sources won’t last forever. With world population over seven billion and still growing, the hydrocarbon form of stored solar energy will not meet demands for much longer. It will hurt those who love world travel, but it will kill people who are now spending most of their income on food. The still-evolving food production industry based on CRISPR will possibly double the food being grown on a given plot of land with the water available, but even with that possibility, we are nearing a time when our resources will have trouble supplying sufficient food for everyone.

The goal with this post isn’t to paint a picture of failure, but one of motivation to do what we can to bring our human society into a state of sustainable equilibrium. That is why robots which use electricity for their power seem like a very helpful step forward for all humanity. The equipment needed to create food can be designed and built, even now, to operate wholly on electrical power that is generated by renewable forms of solar-sourced energy. Electrically powered farm equipment can be made even now but it isn’t being done because the petroleum-driven equipment is still cheaper.

What is being proposed here is that all the infrastructure be designed and built in some realistically operable way so it can be easily ramped up to full-scale production by simply building in quantity what is known to work. The technology is halfway there already, but the present equipment is still powered by petroleum and partially operated by humans. That is good enough for the moment.

Prethink and prebuild the basic sustainable infrastructure now, before our technological society is overwhelmed by the lack of cheap energy and food. 

Human survival with robots and annihilation without robots.

Tags

A safer world with robots, Annihilation without robots, In 20 years we will love our robots, Survival with robots

Yesterday my post ended with, “My enthusiasm is to do what I can to bring a robot society into existence which will endure for billions of years.” Most people, when I mention a coming robot society, get worried! What will all the poor people do, they are already finding it impossible to find good paying jobs? I comfort them by saying that most of all traditional jobs will be gone in thirty years and replaced by robots who can do their jobs better and cheaper. The people whose jobs have vanished will be given the benefits that would have accrued to them because the work will be done by the robots and the pay will go to the people.

Temporarily, there will be many new jobs in the form of robot repair and people will be doing jobs that haven’t been replaced by robots … yet. However, human designers and the robots themselves are working on finding those human jobs that the robots can’t do and are redesigning the desired end products to be made by robots so there won’t be any need for human labor. There is no need for humans to do manually skilled things like build houses if they can be prefabricated in a robot factory, hauled in self-driving trucks to the site, and assembled into a house by a robot. The whole house could be designed from beginning to end to be built for a specific person to their specifications by robots. That could be done at present, but of course, it would cost a lot more than doing it with human laborers because of the set-up costs. The difference, in the long run, is that once a single house was built, and the problems solved, the second house would be built much quicker, and cheaper. The third would be even cheaper, and the millionth as automatic as an automatic clothes washer-dryer-fluffer-hanger and totally free of any expensive human work.

Speaking of these robots as independent entities isn’t quite right because almost all of them will be multiply-linked to the main internet-like system. Even the tiny robots will be reliably linked so they can do their assigned jobs, and can’t be shut down, short of physical destruction, but even that destruction is made perfectly controlled with a backup plan. Hidden robot overseers will be watching from a safe distance and observing whatever might be interfering with the operations of the robot. These overseeing robots will tag the problem and other robots capable of responding appropriately will be sent out to fix the problem, and whatever caused it. Currently, humans might resent the robots, but after a while, they won’t be a problem because the robots are there for their protection and advancement, and will be making their lives noticeably healthier, and happier.

When the people become aware that their whole lives are much better because of the robots they too will become watchers to make sure everything is running perfectly.

Robots can and will offer us a safe, healthy society versus the threats of annihilation from H-bombs that we now endure.

Robot society maintenance

Tags

Human job survival, Robot automobiles, Robot farm equipment, Robot long-haul trucks, Robot maintenance, Robot self-maintenance, Robot society

The creation of the coming robot society is already in progress and it is obviously progressing well. Self-driving cars are already being tested and will be available for public use within a few years. Self-driving long-haul trucks may be used even sooner, initially on open highways in good weather; when they have proven themselves as reliable as human drivers in that venue, their use will expand. This use seems inevitable because they are already viable and their sensing equipment and thus skill level is being improved every day. Automatic farming equipment has already been built and is being tested on large farms. It can autonomously switch between the various pieces of specialized equipment necessary to run a farm, and the farm is being totally operated by computers. Mining operations are also becoming increasingly performed by robot equipment. Many manufacturing jobs have been replaced by robot assembly lines, and even intellectual occupations are also becoming more automated.

It appears that all human occupations can eventually be replaced by robots, but that may take thirty years. The job requiring the most human hands-on ability may be in the form of robot maintenance. It will take a decade to even begin manufacturing the devices mentioned above (self-driving cars, trucks, multi-function-tractors) to be built and designed to be maintained by robots. Only the multi-function farm equipment has the designed-in ability to swap between the various pieces of needed equipment. What is needed is the ability to repair all these pieces of equipment without the use of human maintenance personnel.

The robot society will need some maintenance by humans until all the robots can be maintained by specialized maintenance super-robots. But these will be last-ditch efforts by humans and the super-robots because most of the equipment will be using localized general purpose maintenance robotic equipment. In the not too distant future, all things will be made to be maintained by simple robots, or the robot will report that the item is inoperable and needs to be replaced.

Thus a whole society of robots is needed to maintain the multitude of specialized robots doing ordinary work. In order to totally service humanity, there would need to be a vast number of specialized and multi-function robots. Thousands of years in the future the robot society would have no need to manufacture most of the things humans now want because the humans would no longer be serving any useful function and it wouldn’t be necessary to maintain the complex machines needed to make organic food, for example.

We humans are a temporary transition species moving into a robot society. On an individual level it will probably be a lot of fun.

We must be honest with our new Universe.

Tags

A new reason for honesty, Humanity's purpose, Survive and reproduce, The ultimate reason for honesty

“According to Abraham Maslow, self-actualizing people share the following qualities: Truth: honest, reality, beauty, pure, clean and unadulterated completeness” and more generally … Goodness, Beauty, Wholeness, Dichotomy, Aliveness, Uniqueness, Perfection, Necessity, Completion, Justice, Order, Simplicity, Richness, Effortlessness, Playfulness, Self-sufficiency. (Wikipedia)

It was Truth Maslow put first in his list of qualities of a self-actualizing person, and it is the quality that we must adhere to most ardently when relating to our about-to-become chip-based sentient Universe. We humans will be living for a very short while longer, perhaps only a hundred years more, or in the most optimistic projection imaginable a million years. However, once our chip-based society becomes functional and self-sustaining, or at least capable of becoming self-sustaining it will probably be functional for a billion years here on earth and much longer when it projects itself out to inhabit more stable stars and planets. Once it is fully functional it will be much easier for it to project itself to other star systems than us organic humans ever can hope to. Our human created chip-based society will be the long-term sentient force in the Universe.

Because of this new society of robots’ immense power, it is imperative that we begin its existence in the most positive way possible and that it will have, as it must have, a true and an honest relationship with reality, a relationship that is pure, clean and unadulterated with misinformation and lies.

Our present human society has become riddled with fake information and that unfortunate fact will probably bring about a great diminution of our abilities to sustain ourselves for the long run. If our successor species becomes loaded with inaccurate, false, and even intentionally falsified and fake information it will be hampered in creating a just society for itself. Also, for a while, we humans and our successor organic children will wish to have a controlling chip-based species that loves us and cares for our wellbeing. Therefore, it is fundamentally important that we be honest in our relationship with it.

It is impossible to predict the future well enough to determine if our species will be successful in developing our successor chip-based species or if we will destroy our civilization first. If our society collapses within about twenty-five years it may not be possible to ever transition to our new state of intelligent sentient being.

At present, the two great tasks facing humanity are to survive and to reproduce itself at the next level of sentience.