Keith Povall has been an online pal for years. He lives in Walsall in the UK where he and his mate (that’s the way they talk) Wally the Welder frequent the White Horse pub, a traditional pub that Keith says is quickly dying out. So we decided to visit (via Google Hangout). I love all things British and could listen to these guys talk for hours. A few minute should be enough for most folks. I share my poorly produced video here for archival purposes.
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Scott Adams: Immortality
“The poor among us, and people with certain religious beliefs, will remain 100% human for as long as the more advanced beings – the cyborgs and robots – allow it. Life will be somewhat awkward when part of civilization is immortal and part is not. But the one thing we know for sure is that the richest cyborgs and robots will eventually consolidate power. For starters, only the people who have wealth will be able to afford the jump to immortality. So the first robots with human minds and the first immortal cyborgs will be rich. Just imagine how much money Larry Ellison will someday have if he stubbornly refuses to die and dilute his fortune across less-capable heirs. Eventually most of the world will be owned by five multi-trillionaire robots that live on yachts the size of Connecticut. The immortal cyborgs, with the limitations of their organic parts, will be mere millionaires who can’t stop complaining about “the Kevlar ceiling.”
“It’s hard to wrap your head around the idea that a digital representation of your mind, no matter how accurate, is still “you” in some sense. But I think that fear will go away as soon as we see the first robot that thinks and acts exactly like Uncle Bob did before he made the jump. If Uncle Bob the robot acts human enough, we’ll come to see him as the same entity that once inhabited an organic shell. When technology is sufficiently advanced, we’ll get past the magical thinking about spirits and souls and the specialness of having organic parts.”
Scott Adams: Government transparency
“Ninety percent of government corruption would disappear overnight if all government conversations were recorded.” Scott Adams imagines transparency on the workings of government:
“So let’s say government officials are required by law to hold work-related meeting in rooms that are wired to record everything happening. Every meeting would be encrypted and stored on government servers. One would still need a court order and a good reason to view any recordings, but I have to think it would keep most politicians from doing anything too outrageous. Even their phone calls would be recorded.”
Magnificent Flying Machine
Rolla is a medium/small town in central Missouri. I drove through it countless times during my affiliate relations days with Learfield. Just north of town is the municipal airport where, for as long as I can recall, a half-dozen vintage airplanes were parked near the runway. I was always curious but never stopped.
Today — for the first time in years — I drove past the airport and noticed most of the old planes had been moved built there was still one I could see from the highway so I stopped and asked if I could get a look at these magnificent machines. An airport employee said most of them had fallen into such disrepair they’d moved them to a remote corner of the airport and I couldn’t see these because I’d have to cross the runway and that was a no-no.
But one plane was still (barely) standing. My but how I would have loved to crawl through one of these. Imagining where they’d been and who had flown in them.
Letter to an Unknown Whistleblower
Tom Engelhardt’s Letter to an Unknown Whistleblower is the most encouraging thing I’ve read in a couple of years. An excerpt:
“I have no way of knowing what will first strike you as wrong. I just know that something will. It might be very specific and close at hand — something amiss you see in the program you’re working on, some outrageous expenditure of money or set of lies about what an agency or outfit is doing, or some act or set of acts that you, in growing up, had been taught were un-American. The possibilities are legion. After all, the national security system that they’ve built and engorged with taxpayer dollars, using fear and the excuse of American “safety,” has dispatched armies, and special ops outfits, and drones all over the world to commit mayhem and increase global instability, to kill civilians, wipe out wedding parties, kidnap and torture the innocent, assassinate by robot, and so on.”