Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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It’s time we talked about loop quantum gravity. What exactly is it? What are the loops? And can it really defeat string theory in our quest for a Theory of Everything?

Hosted by Matt O’Dowd.
Written by Graeme Gossel & Matt O’Dowd.
Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer.
Directed by: Andrew Kornhaber.
Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber.

End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRl6-nb4iOnsij-vnpAjp0Q

Continue reading “Loop Quantum Gravity Explained” | >

Greg Bear, the affable San Diego native who wrote such highly acclaimed and plausible science fiction novels as “Blood Music,” “Darwin’s Radio” and “Eon” and who helped create San Diego Comic-Con, died Saturday in Seattle. He was 71.

His books included “Blood Music” and “Darwin’s Radio,” which helped establish him as a “hard” sci-writer who created plausible tales with the help of scientists.

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The concept of linking many minds together to act in concert, or even fuse into a new singular entity, has been popular in science fiction for decades. Today we will explore the idea and Networked Intelligence in general, to see how realistic it is, and what benefits or concerns might arise from it.

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Listen or Download the audio of this episode from Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/isaac-arthur-148927746/hive-minds.
Cover Art by Jakub Grygier: https://www.artstation.com/artist/jakub_grygier.

Graphics Team:
Edward Nardella.
Jarred Eagley.
Justin Dixon.
Katie Byrne.
Kris Holland.
Misho Yordanov.
Murat Mamkegh.
Pierre Demet.
Sergio Botero.
Stefan Blandin.

Script Editing:
Andy Popescu.
Connor Hogan.
Edward Nardella.
Eustratius Graham.
Gregory Leal.
Jefferson Eagley.
Luca de Rosa.
Mark Warburton.
Michael Gusevsky.
Mitch Armstrong.
MolbOrg.
Naomi Kern.
Philip Baldock.
Sigmund Kopperud.
Tiffany Penner.

Music.
AJ Prasad, “Cold Shadows“
Lee Rosevere, “It’s such a beautiful day“
Kai Engel, “Morbid Imagination“
Sergey Cheremisinov, “Jump in Infinity“
Markus Junnikkala, “A Memory of Earth“
Brandon Liew, “Into the Storm”

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In this video, we’ll sit down in our time machine and go forward a few millenniums into the future, to see where we would be progressing as a civilization.

Chapters:
0:00 Opening.
0:51 The levels of civilization.
2:13 Timelapse of the future.
5:25 Year 2141
6:34 Year 2768
8:43 Conclusion.

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Music tracks in this video:

Continue reading “The Future of Human Civilization (2022 — 3355 AD)” | >

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have discovered that the safe operation of a negative pressure room—a space in a hospital or biological research laboratory designed to protect outside areas from exposure to deadly pathogens—can be disrupted by an attacker armed with little more than a smartphone.

According to UCI cyber-physical systems security experts, who shared their findings with attendees at the Association for Computing Machinery’s recent Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Los Angeles, mechanisms that control airflow in and out of biocontainment facilities can be tricked into functioning irregularly by a sound of a particular frequency, possibly tucked surreptitiously into a popular song.

“Someone could play a piece of music loaded on their smartphone or get it to transmit from a television or other audio device in or near a negative room,” said senior co-author Mohammad Al Faruque, UCI professor of electrical engineering and computer science. “If that music is embedded with a tone that matches the of the pressure controls of one of these spaces, it could cause a malfunction and a leak of deadly microbes.”

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A trip deep into the far future, to the End of Earth.
Visit our sponsor, Brilliant: https://brilliant.org/IsaacArthur/
For most of human history, the end of Earth, the Universe, and Time itself were all identical, now we know the world will end in 4 billion years, long before the Universe begins to wind down. Today we will ask how we can extend that, and keep Earth around for far longer.

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Listen or Download the audio of this episode from Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/isaac-arthur-148927746/dying-earth.
Cover Art by Jakub Grygier: https://www.artstation.com/artist/jakub_grygier.

Script Editing.
Edward Nardella.
Keith Blockus.
Mark Warburton.
Matthew Acker.
MolbOrg.
N Kern.
Sigmund Kopperud (Wicked Woxel)

Graphics Team:
Edward Nardella.
Jeremy Jozwik.
Jarred Eagley.
Justin Dixon.
Jeremy Jozwik.
Katie Byrne.
Kris Holland of Mafic Stufios: www.maficstudios.com.
Luuk Warringa.
Mihail Yordanov.
Murat Mamkegh.
Nick Talmers Nieuwoudt.
Pierre Demet.
Sergio Botero: https://www.artstation.com/sboterod?fref=gc.
Stefan Blandin.

Music Supervisor.
Luca De Rosa.

Music:

Continue reading “Civilizations at the End of Time: Dying Earth” | >

It’s not really a Star Wars story unless there’s a lovable or memorable droid stealing the spotlight. But, when you really stop and think about it, there’s also something profoundly tragic about the role artificial lifeforms play in the Star Wars universe.

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WISHLIST
Send research materials for video essays:
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REFERENCES
• Race in American Science Fiction by Isiah Lavender III
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10364882-race-in-american-science-fiction.
• Imagining Slaves and Robots in Literature, Film, and Pop Culture by Gregory Jerome Hampton.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26371201-imagining-slave…ar-culture.
• The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature (Chapter 15) Beyond the Borders of the Neo-Slave Narrative by Jeffrey Allen Tucker.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39293853-the-cambridge-c…literature.
• Asimov on Science Fiction in Science Fiction Digest, October-November 1981
https://archive.org/details/sfdigest19811011
• Janelle Monae’s “Many Moons” music video.

NOVELS REFERENCED

Continue reading “The Tragedy of Droids in Star Wars” | >

Rats love to dance 🕺:3

The team had two alternate hypotheses: The first was that the optimal music tempo for beat synchronicity would be determined by the time constant of the body. This is different between species and much faster for compared to humans (think of how quickly a rat can scuttle). The second was that the optimal tempo would instead be determined by the time constant of the brain, which is surprisingly similar across species.

“After conducting our research with 20 human participants and 10 rats, our results suggest that the optimal tempo for beat synchronization depends on the time constant in the brain,” said Takahashi. “This demonstrates that the animal brain can be useful in elucidating the perceptual mechanisms of music.”

The rats were fitted with wireless, miniature accelerometers, which could measure the slightest head movements. Human participants also wore accelerometers on headphones. They were then played one-minute excerpts from Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 448, at four different tempos: Seventy-five percent, 100%, 200% and 400% of the original speed.

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Making room for optimism.

2bsirius video about:
Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three “laws” of prediction:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
For Shermer:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shermers-last-law.
Full text of Shermers article:

Shermer’s Last Law

For background on Arthur C. Clarke:
http://www.technobohemia.com/techboblog/2010/2/5/clarkes-3-l…ction.html.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke.

Music “Wonders of Other Worlds: Ritual” by Kevin Macleod:
http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/

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