Nutritional Supplements

I wish that Ray and Terry were more forthcoming about optimal nutritional supplements instead of just offering a few hundred different options. My guess is there are legal issues with recommending specific compounds and dosages.

If I were going to take one and only one supplement what should I take? Or what if I only wanted to take 2 supplements?

I think the answer is Vitamin D first, then magnesium second (preferably as the citrate form to enhance absorption).  So what is third?  Omega-3 oils or Vitamin C or CoQ-10 (as ubiquinol)? I'm willing to take about 10 pills per day, but not 40.  So which 10 would you recommend?

I understand that some of this depends on deficiencies, and everyone is different. But it would be easy to make a recommendation in the case of no deficiency.  So what would be the top 10 supplements to take for a person with no deficiencies?

Finding new planets

Here's a great sketch from XKCD showing the distances involved in searching for new planets. 

A world with free energy

If the fossil fuel companies are smart they will move into energy storage and distribution. If they are dumb they will try to block this transition with legislation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/09/19/the-coming-era-of-unlimited-and-free-clean-energy/

I just wish we could have have achieved this with superchimneys. 

The Singularity may be far off

Last summer Tim Dettmers published "The Brain vs Deep Learning Part I: Computational Complexity" an in-depth analysis of the computational power of the human mind, and also of the future trends in high performance computing (HPC). He makes a strong argument that not only have we underestimated the computing power of a human brain, we have also overestimated the growth potential of HPC.

I found this to be one of the most serious and extensive blog posts I have ever seen. I also thought his topics were interesting and relevant for the Singularity.

In the end he presented no obvious reason that the Singularity is impossible, or so far in the future we don't need to discuss it. His analysis predicts the Singularity may be decades or even a century further in the future than Ray Kurzweil has predicted. So we may not live to see it, especially if all we have are CMOS transistors to get there.

But if Optalysys or D-Wave or other new platforms are successful we should have the opportunity to see it, especially if we use Ray Kurzweil's methods for life-extension.

Robot financial advisors

Would you trust your retirement plan to a robot?  In the future you may not have a choice because all the human advisors are unemployed. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/the-robots-are-coming-for-wall-street.html

Virtual Reality with Transcranial Stimulation

I thought it was still science fiction but a Google search shows multiple medical studies which combine virtual reality with transcranial stimulation.

Effects of the addition of transcranial direct current stimulation to virtual reality therapy

Combination transcranial direct current stimulation and virtual reality therapy

Facilitation of corticospinal excitability by virtual reality exercise following anodal transcranial direct current stimulation

Effects of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation combined with virtual reality

And it looks like Neuroelectrics is on the verge of commercializing it.

So how soon will Facebook, Microsoft, or Apple combine a virtual reality helmet with transcranial stimulation?  Look for small companies like Neuroelectrics to be acquired by the major players in virtual reality.

Help for snoring

I wonder how much of snoring is due to weak and flabby muscles at the back of the throat?  If those muscles were toned and strong would that help reduce or eliminate snoring?

I'm trying a test.  About 10 times per day I do a few very strong swallows.  The idea is to build up muscle strength by exercising the back of my throat.  I'm going to do this for a few weeks to see if it reduces my snoring.

Saving a star

If we could create a wormhole at an arbitrary position we could prolong the lifetime of a star to nearly infinity.  All we need to do is open a small wormhole at the center of the star and put the end out in empty space.  A steady flow of helium rich material would stream out preventing the helium from building up to the point where the star begins creating lithium and carbon.

At some point the mass of the star would drop too much and we would then open a wormhole into the core of a gas giant like Jupiter.  The other end of the wormhole could be opened at the surface of the star and hydrogen rich material would accumulate at the surface creating a continuous flow of hydrogen from the surface towards the fusion core.

I wonder if any jets in Active Galactic Nuclei are artificial.  They could be evidence of advanced species who are extending the lifetime of their star to trillions of years. The composition of those jets might match the stellar core material of an older star.

Nervana Brain Stimulation

The Nervana stereo headphones deliver electrical pulses to the vagus nerve to induce feelings of calm and relaxation.  Even their advertising image looks like the Singularity.  Here is one review.

Mortality rates for the elderly

Ray Kurzweil claims we are on the verge of medical immortality where the life expectancy of the elderly increases more than one year every year, pushing death further away each year we live.

I have claimed that today a 100 year old human has a life expectancy of only one year and this number has changed very little in the past few millennia. This report indicates the value is closer to 2.5 years. If Ray Kurzweil is right this number is increasing significantly. 

If major changes were occurring in this area then we should see a dramatic increase in the number of people over 110. But we don't. It is extremely rare to find someone over 110,  And considering the large population of our planet it might even be harder to live to 110 today than it was 100 years ago. 

Medical immortality is unreachable until the life expectancy of centenarians begins to increase dramatically.

Ray Kurzweil is correct about one aspect of this discussion, the odds of living to be 100 years old are increasing every year and I agree that the number of centenarians will rise every year. It's very reasonable to think that in a few decades everyone should expect to live to be 100. But then they will have to accept that they probably won't make it to see 110.

Fermat Near Misses

A few years ago I read about an equation which Homer Simpson pondered.  It was a Fermat near miss (FNM), an equation which almost satisfies Fermat's Last theorem.  Here is an example I found a few days ago.  It's a cubic equation which misses satisfying Fermat's Last Theorem by a very small error.

49193³ + 50920³ = 63086³

The sum of the 2 cubes on the left is 251072400480057.  The cube root of the sum = 63085.9999999994.  The error is 0.0000000006

In more precise terms, an FNM is a pair of integers raised to an exponent n, and their sum is almost exactly the nth root of an integer. I wrote a perl script to find these Fermat misses.  Some of them are quite interesting.  A trivial miss is where a>>b so b^n ~ 0.00 and a = c.  A prime miss is where all 4 numbers a,b,c, and n are prime.  David X Cohen worked hard to find a FNM which does not violate parity.

My perl script uses double precision floating point numbers so the relative error is limited to 1e-16.  Noam Elkies at Harvard has apparently written a more precise program because he finds FNM which have errors far below 1e-16.

While this is simply a mathematical curiosity I wonder at the implications that FNM can be found to any arbitrary precision. For example, suppose we wanted to find a FNM with an error of 1 over google, 1e-100. Is there any reason this is not possible?  Just as we can prove that 0.9999..... = 1.000... I wonder about the implications of a FNM with an infinite number of digits. It's amazing to think that Fermat's Last Theorem can be violated to any arbitrary but finite precision with no harm or foul to mathematical rules.

The search for gold

If we are ever invaded by aliens there are 3 primary motivations which probably apply to them just as well as to humans.

3rd   Power:   They want to dominate/enslave/exterminate us

2nd  Sex:    They want to have sex with us

1st   Money:  No they don't want our money.  But they do want our gold.  Few people outside of the astrophysics community understand just how rare gold really is in this universe.  We are gold rich relative to just about every other location in the universe. 

So if aliens invade and it's not clear what they want, they probably want our gold.

Electric Medicine

Continuing with the theme of electronic manipulation of the human body, here is an article by Eliza Strickland at IEEE Spectrum on the push by big pharma into electronic treatment of disease and chronic conditions.  Here's a quote from the article:

Slaoui has led GSK’s major research effort in “electroceuticals,” in which devices treat diseases by sending electric pulses through the body’s nerves. As nerve cells communicate naturally via electric pulses, this technique tries to speak the native language of the nervous system. In an interview with Spectrum before his talk at SXSW Interactive on Friday, Slaoui said he’s convinced that doctors will soon be prescribing such treatments: “The only question is, how many different disease will be treated with bioelectric medicine?”

I wonder if someday people will wear a VR helmet at the doctor's office which inserts nano-electrodes into the spinal column to heal a variety of diseases.  Or maybe they have the helmet at home and the doctor simply sends some code to deliver the appropriate signals.

Then the next logical step is hacking the nervous system.  I'm sure people will soon begin experimenting with a variety of electromagnetic sequences to deliver pleasure, stimulate learning, accelerate athletic ability, and begin our evolution to a posthuman world.

Never - Explaining the Fermi Paradox

The Fermi Paradox is the most profound measurement in the history of Darwinism.  If intelligent life is so easily produced by evolution then why do we see zero evidence of alien intelligence?

Most theories of the Great Silence require the use of the word never: 

Intelligent species never build self-replicating exploration craft. They never build galactic scale artifacts. They never exhibit visible advanced technology. They never build berserkers. They never develop FTL spacecraft. They never reveal any evidence of their existence. They never remain corporeal long enough to be detected. They never survive their nuclear age.

99% isn't good enough, the universe is too large. If 99% of species don't survive their nuclear age then 1% do and we should see some of those 1%. That's what so many proponents do not understand. 13 billion years is a very long time for the 1% to populate the Milky Way with robots or spaceships or colonies.

Even my preferred explanation uses never: There never has been a 2nd intelligent species.

Here's an answer to the FP which does not need the word never. Intelligent life is rare, and it did not evolve in any galaxy until about 1 million years ago.  In this case no species has had time to send out exploration craft far enough for humans to see them.  There might be 10 or even 1000 intelligent technological species in the Milky Way.  But if they are all young species then we won't know about them for millennia.  I can't explain why intelligence only arose recently, but neither can I explain the Fermi Paradox.

Would you trade places with Stephen Hawking?

He's a genius, one of the smartest physicists in history.  He taught us that black holes evaporate. He's an accomplished author, an actor, and he has a fantastic sense of humor.  He may or may not be a super-villain.  He's probably rich and he has flown in Zero G.  But he hasn't been able to move his body for nearly 40 years.  So would you take his place and live his life?

A Journal for Science Fiction

There is a new journal dedicated to Science Fiction from the Museum of Science Fiction

Volume 1 Issue #1 is now available.   Here is their Focus and Scope

MOSF Journal of Science Fiction seeks to uphold the spirit of educated inquiry and speculation through the publication of peer-reviewed, academic articles, essays and book reviews exploring the interdisciplinary nature of science fiction. The journal welcomes unsolicited, original submissions from academics around the world about science fiction in all media (literature, film, television, videogames, art, oral history, etc.). Issues are published three times a year and each issue will feature 8 to 12 academic articles.

Apple, Encryption, and China

If the US government can force Apple to decrypt 100 phones per year then it seems likely that an unnamed authoritarian regime could force Apple to decrypt as many as 100,000 phones per year.  I think that's what this argument is about.  Apple could not care less if they have to decrypt some phones for the FBI.  This is about setting a precedent to prevent large nation-states from forcing Apple to spend millions of dollars on engineering time.

The FBI and NSA understand this full well but they are ignoring this issue and making this ugly.  Foreign dissidents are irrelevant to the US government.

If Apple has to give its source code and private keys to the US then it will have to give code and keys to every nation state in the world.  This will end up in the Supreme Court and maybe the missing vote of conservative Justice Scalia will mean that the court is moderate enough to support Apple in this fight.  But most other nations don't have a court strong enough to stop the government.  In country after country Apple will be forced to comply with the encryption laws.

In the end we are moving into a world where strong encryption will be illegal in the US (and probably in every other country).  No phone, computer, or electronic device will be allowed to have unbreakable encryption.  And only criminals will use strong encryption.

Harry Kroto and Stephen Hawking

I wish I could have been there to see them together.

Longevity, Fasting, and Ketosis

The Feb 22 and 29th issue of Time magazine has several articles on longevity.  One entitled "It's the Little Things" dances around the concept of fasting and ketogenic diets.  Valter Longo of the USC Longevity Institute studied fasting.  But there was no mention of ketosis.  It now seems clear that the main reason fasting can prevent cancer is that cancer cells cannot metabolize ketones.  A fasting diet puts a person into ketosis, and there is not enough blood sugar for cancer cells to survive.  Cancer starves to death in ketosis.  If there are large tumors it's probably too late for ketosis to help.  If there are small tumors ketosis may be an effective weapon.  If there are not yet tumors then ketosis may prevent cancer.

Why are scientists and doctors ignoring the ketogenic diet as a weapon against cancer?  Here is a study of the use of ketosis for advanced cancer patients.  But it's not clear if they proved the patients were in ketosis with blood testing.  Trusting people to be honest about their diet is not scientific.

25 more answers to the Fermi Paradox

Stephen Webb is an author specializing the Fermi Paradox and other cosmological subjects. I have previous linked to his book 50 solutions to the Fermi Paradox.

A new edition of his book is available and he has added 25 more possible answers to the Fermi Paradox.  If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life

I still prefer Occam's Razor.  The reason we don't see any intelligent aliens is that there aren't any.