Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 11699

About ten years ago scientist Dave Bacon, now at Google, presented that a time-travelling quantum computer could rapidly solve a bunch of problems, known as NP-complete, which mathematicians have lumped together as being hard. The problem was, Bacon’s quantum computer was travelling around ‘closed timelike curves’. These are paths through the fabric of spacetime that loop back on themselves. General relativity lets such paths to exist through contortions in spacetime identified as wormholes.

Why send a message back in time, but lock it so that no one can ever read the contents? As it may be the key to resolving presently intractable problems. That’s the claim of an international collaboration.

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Friends have been asking me to write something on space exploration and my campaign policy on it, so here it is just out on TechCrunch:

When people think about rocket ships and space exploration, they often imagine traveling across the Milky Way, landing on mysterious planets and even meeting alien life forms.

In reality, humans’ drive to get off Planet Earth has led to tremendous technological advances in our mundane daily lives — ones we use right here at home on terra firma.

I recently walked through Boston’s Logan International Airport; a NASA display reminded me that GPS navigation, anti-icing systems, memory foam and LED lights were all originally created for space travel. Other inventions NASA science has created include the pacemaker, scratch-resistant lenses and the solar panel.

Continue reading “Space exploration will spur transhumanism and mitigate existential risk” | >

A tool able to generate remote forces would allow us to handle dangerous or fragile materials without contact or occlusions. Acoustic levitation is a suitable technology since it can trap particles in air or water. However, no approach has tried to endow humans with an intertwined way of controlling it. Previously, the acoustic elements were static, had to surround the particles and only translation was possible. Here, we present the basic manoeuvres that can be performed when levitators are attached to our moving hands. A Gauntlet of Levitation and a Sonic Screwdriver are presented with their manoeuvres for capturing, moving, transferring and combining particles. Manoeuvres can be performed manually or assisted by a computer for repeating patterns, stabilization and enhanced accuracy or speed. The presented prototypes still have limited forces but symbolize a milestone in our expectations of future technology.

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Interesting read on PTSD. Wonder how much this plays into DARPA’s own research around memory removal on PTSD patients. hmmm.

New research suggests that PTSD patients with a larger region of the brain that helps distinguish between safety and threat are more likely to respond to exposure-based therapy.

The study expands upon prior research that discovered having a smaller hippocampus is associated with increased risk of PTSD.

In the current study, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI), examined the relationship between hippocampus volume, and response to treatment in 50 participants with PTSD and 36 trauma-exposed healthy controls.

Continue reading “Size of Brain Region May Impact How Well Exposure Therapy Works for PTSD” | >

I do see delays of self-driving 18 wheelers across the US. Too many laws & regulations would need to change, consumer safety & protection advocacy groups, etc. will delay this in the US.

SAN FRANCISCO – Picture an 18-wheel truck barreling down the highway with 80,000 pounds of cargo and no one but a robot at the wheel.

To many, that might seem a frightening idea, even at a time when a few dozen of Google’s driverless cars are cruising city streets in California, Texas, Washington and Arizona.

But Anthony Levandowski, a robot-loving engineer who helped steer Google’s self-driving technology, is convinced autonomous big rigs will be the next big thing on the road to a safer transportation system.

Continue reading “U.S. startup pursues self-driving semis but big-rig bots still down the road” | >