Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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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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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” | >

Synopsis: In this talk we articulate a positive vision of the future that is both viable given what we know, and also utterly radical in its implications. We introduce two key insights that, when taken together, synergize in powerful ways. Namely, (a) the long-tails of pleasure and pain, and (b) the correlation between wellbeing, productivity, and intelligence. This informs us how to distribute resources if we want to maximize wellbeing. Given the weight of the extremes, it is important to take them into account. But because of the causal significance of more typical hedonic ranges, engineering our baseline is a key consideration. This makes it natural to break down the task of paradise engineering into three components:

Avoid negative extremes.
increase hedonic baseline, and.
achieve new heights of experience.

With regards to : the future of consciousness is anodyne. It lacks extreme suffering in any of its guises. We will see how, if we aim right, a significant proportion of extreme suffering can be prevented with pragmatic technologies already available. Even just applying what we know today would be as significant for the reduction of suffering as the advent of anesthesia was in the context of surgery.

On : the future of consciousness is engaging. From novelty generation to Buddhist annealing, baseline-enhancing interventions will change the way we think of life. It is not only about making everyday fun, but also the economics of it.

And : the future of consciousness is ecstatic. A science of ecstasy will allow us to safely and reliably sample from a wide range of time-tested ultra-blissful peak experiences. A common cause with other sentient beings, and indeed with the interests of consciousness at large, can be forged in the knowledge of such deep experiences.

They give you a genuine, non-sentimental, reason to live. Together, action on these three levels can significantly advance the cause of eliminating suffering and engineering paradise. And our assessment is: there is a lot of low-hanging fruit in this space. Let’s pick it up!

Continue reading “The Future of Consciousness — Andrés Gómez Emilsson” | >

Things can always get smaller.

That might also be true for one of our much-debated energy sources. Even though experts claim that nuclear energy is a reliable and sustainable energy source, the nuclear energy debate continues, with small-scale nuclear reactors being developed around the world. They are said to be a safer and less expensive form of nuclear power. On the other hand, full-scale nuclear reactors are large, expensive, and take a long time to build, and making them smaller, portable, cheaper, and safer could ensure that solar, wind, and hydro are not getting all the attention.

In this video from the YouTube channel Undecided with Matt Ferrell, you can delve into the world of tiny modular reactors, which are gaining popularity as the first versions come up in China and new facilities open in Canada. The YouTuber even refers to former SpaceX engineers who have scaled things down to the level of a microreactor, and ask whether this could be the future of nuclear energy. If you want to learn more, make sure you watch the video above, and as always, enjoy!

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It will be used to power oil and gas production.

Hywind Tampen, the world’s largest floating wind farm, located off the coast of Norway, has become operational, a company press release said. Of the 11 turbines involved in the project, the first turbine began power production on November 13, with another six scheduled to go online this year.

With the impending doom of climate change and the recent upshoot of fuel prices, countries around the world are looking to switch aggressively to renewable energy. While those in the tropics are looking at solar power, others that can access winds over the seas are looking to build offshore wind farms.

Although increasing the size of wind turbines is a straightforward way to increase the energy output of these facilities, it also comes with increased costs for constructing these structures. Floating wind farms are being looked at as a possible solution to this problem, and Hywind Tampen is the first real-world test of this kind.

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The 693-square-foot array is designed to provide 5G broadband connectivity directly with cellular devices via 3GPP standard frequencies.

Bluewalker 3 satellite, a test satellite by Texas-based firm AST SpaceMobile deployed its largest commercial communications array ever flow in space, in low Earth orbit, the company announced on Monday. The satellite was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in September, Interesting Engineering.

AST SpaceMobile.

The 693-square-foot (64 square meters) array is designed to directly provide 5G broadband connectivity with cellular devices via 3GPP standard frequencies. According to the release, the satellite could have a field of view of over 30,000 square miles on the surface of the Earth.

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It’s commonly believed that many of these prehistoric animals were vicious carnivores.

Researchers used artificial intelligence (AI) to discover information on dinosaurs, specifically to find out if a certain dinosaur was a predator or not. AI has shown that the dinosaur typically thought to be a carnivore may actually have been an herbivore.

The new analysis was done by using deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) — computing systems based on neural networks of the brain — to track the fossils of these prehistoric reptiles.

Dr anthony romilio/ the university of queensland.

The study was published recently in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface.

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