The Wil McCarthy Center for Enlightened Discourse

Saturday, December 12, 2009, 8:58:06 AM
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hello everybody under the sun

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Jason, I should probably add this question to the Programmable Matter FAQ, because it comes up fairly often. The answer is no, you can't create a heavy, radioactive nucleus simply by moving electrons around. The mass, inertia, and nuclear properties of programmable materials will remain constant no matter what commands you send down the wire.

As for the fax questions, the question of souls is revealed in THE COLLAPSIUM as a major philosophical issue for the early Queendom. They don't know the answer, or any way to deduce the answer, but they remain intensely interested in the subject.

Fax machines do have to obey conservation of mass, and they cannot transmute one element into another. Thus, they need to have a supply of all the important elements on hand, in their "mass buffer." However, the collapsiter network allows mass to be teleported from one fax to another, so in the Queendom's later years the mass buffers are replenished automatically from the stores of a consortium known as the Elementals.

Hi, Wil! I'm interested in the quantum dots. I was wondering: Which elements may NOT be mimicked? Can you program a rod made of quantum dots to simulate uranium? And switch it to an inert state when the uranium is no longer needed, or before a meltdown? Is this a possibility beyond fun sci-fi? Thanks.

Heya Wil, I was just wondering about faxes as well. I'm a bit confused at one part (since the book is science-fiction, I know you can't give me a map of how it works and all, but I was just wondering if you could this). When people enter a fax machine, it seems to store their pattern and then recycle their body into a fresh form. I was wondering, if someone say, had a body part severed such as a leg or arm, how would it re-supply the body part, since matter cannot be made? Or COULD it even do that? I was thinking along the lines that perhaps the fax could change any material it had with it to any material it needed.

Also, wouldn't the answer to Tom's question be it neither proves nor dissproves the theory that we have souls, since intelligence and living lies with the brain, which is recycled as well in the fax?

Wil, I like seeing issues 'outside the box'. I enjoy using critical thinking. What's pressing me is the issue of the alarming obesity that is plaguing America today. My interest is looking at AIDS(HIV)and notice that these people that are aflicted by AIDS all loose alot of weight. Since science is twiking with genes, etc., could it be possible that science can create an artificial AIDS virus and inject it into obese people. The virus will have a pre-programed time life so that it will simply render itself usless after the obese person has lost an expected amount of weight. Perhaps it sounds like science fiction, but on the other hand, it's possible it could be done. Thank you for your great mind.

Wil, does the faxing of people prove or disprove the existance of souls? at first I thought that faxing disproved it but then surely souls could be as numerous as stars? And if those souls are attached at each faxing... I would love to see you write a book on the afterlife or afterfax, something along Mark Twain's vision would seem to agree with a version you could create.

Zach, the ultimate fate of the universe seems to change every time astronomers, cosmologists, or particle physicists make a new discovery. Big Crunch, Big Rip, Big Wimper, endless logarithmic expansion... Whom should we believe, and on what basis? What discoveries have yet to be made, which will overturn all existing theories?

At the opening of THE COLLAPSIUM, Bruno's aim is to bypass the theoretical debate entirely by taking direct measurements from the end of time. With a truly open mind, he doesn't have any particular expectations about what he'll find, or a favorite theory. He's just very, very curious.

Hello, Wil, I read The Collapsium a few months ago and I've re-read it a few times. I was wondering why the Big Crunch theory wouldn't (or if it did) come across de Towaji's mind? It seems like a plausible theory, I was just wondering, though.

I finally read and digested Julian Barbour's THE END OF TIME. Interesting. He doesn't prove anything, but he argues his case entertainingly. Basically, he's found a way to resurrect the Victorian "block universe", wherein the past and future are unique and immutable, the passage of time is an illusion, and the dynamic 3D universe can be described as a static 4D one. Minkowski reconciled the block universe with general relativity, and now Barbour has a scheme for reconciling it with quantum mechanics. It's a bit ugly -- a space with as many dimensions as there are particles in the universe -- but really it's no worse than Wheeler's infinite branching of infinite universes.

BTW, this site is eligible for the prestigious Wooden Rocket Award. Woo hoo! Nominations accepted at http://www.woodenrocket.com .

Unfortunately, the price of commodities -- including skilled workers -- has little to do with the cost of creating them, and everything to do with supply and demand. In a glut (oversupply) or economic downturn (underdemand), inventory is sold off below cost just to keep the cash flowing. It's true there are always new career paths for workers displaced by automation or offshore labor; 90% find new employment within two years. But those months of unemployment really hurt, and on average the workers eat a 20% lifelong pay cut. In a perfect world this would be offset by ever-lower prices for goods and services, but in *our* world, the costs of housing, education, and health care are climbing exponentially. Which is why you hear such clamor from the left to subsidize these things.

To turn this in a more science-fictional direction, here's a fun brainstorm: in a hypothetical future country wracked by brilliant automation, strong AI, cheap foreign labor and an oversupply of all forms of IP (music, movies, books, great ideas, etc.), what jobs will still exist in nontrivial numbers?

Here's a partial list off the top of my head: Doctors (tho not as many as today). Nurses and med-techs. Lawyers, accountants, and clerical workers (tho not nearly as many, since the bulk of the work can be automated or offshored). Plumbers, electricians, network technicians, mechanics, and general handymen. Construction workers. Architects (grunt work done by foreigners and machines, but you'll always need a smart human on the ground). Chefs, waiters, and a handful of busboys (although the Fully Automated McDonald's spells the death of that industry's bottom end). Realtors and landlords. Teachers. Cops, judges, and firemen. Farmers (tho not as many). Bankers, investors, venture capitalists. Prostitutes and masseurs/masseuses. Cosmetologists, decorators, and image consultants. Reporters and reviewers. Live entertainers and event promoters/organizers. Politicians (the actual bureaucracy can be AI'ed and outsourced). Celebrities (yes, we'll always have these).

Wil,
People are paid as little as possible. it's an
optimization function. If someone has to get a
graduate degree to guard prisoners, then that job
will be better compensated because:
a) it takes a significant investment in time and money to get the degree.
b) few people will have the degree to take the work.
c) nobody desires that employment.

Consider also the $325/hr lawyer. What are you going to do, not hire him ? would you preferr tohire the legal clerk ?

The CEO thing may seem like a scam, but it isn't.
Its more like an ethical laps by the controllers of the company. consider an example:
you are a major shareholder in a publicly traded corperation. you need to hire a CEO. two applicants have equal skills and each would lead your compnay toward respectable growth and profits. One is unknown. The other is J.C. himself. Which one is better for the company ?
doesn't matter. Which one is better for your
stock value ? (remember stock value is just the markets perception, not reality)
J.C could raise the stock value, any your personal net worth, an incredible amount. How much of the company's money is that worth to you ? in this case the company's assets may go down slightly, but the net work (stock) could multiply.
(spending a little copper turns it all into gold, but the weight is less !)

These guys are making money from fame, just like arnold. (he's not really worth $500k/min on just his acting talents)

Your comment about sharks is interesting.
what you mean to say is "his sharks" vs "my sharks" it is interesting that copyright law was equivalent to patent law (17 years!) when they where started by Ben several hundered years ago.
is there anything less expensive than free thought?

gar.

It is clear to me that not all jobs are of equal value to society, and that the pay rate of theose jobs is not always the best indicator of the jobs value. Middle management jobs filled by MBA's tend to be fairly high paying but they accomplish absolutely nothing for society. Skilled labor jobs that build infrastructure or manufacture goods generally are lower paying but leave the society vastly improved. Fast food jobs leave us all overly well fed. Teachers and health workers are much more valuable. I think we need to start rewarding those who work in areas that are vital for our long term social structure to survive, not just pay people who have degrees and look good in a suit. The worst thing is the CEOs who are being paid such unbelievable amounts of money, and getting bonuses based only on stock value, even if the way they get the stocks to increase is by gutting the company. these sharks are eating us alive.

Not really science related I supose but deffiantely makes it easier to believe doom and gloom scifi novels...

> I maintain that the surplus 10% will be exported, perhaps to other walmart stores.

Alas, this is not the experience most towns have had. America has suffered 30 straight years of declines in manufacturing employment. It's true that *overall* employment has held fairly steady, but there's a large segment of the population that used to be middle-to-upper-middle-class and now isn't.

Wil,
1) agreed
2) I doubt that all the employees would be hired or all would go out of buisness. but okay
3) 10% local production is 1/2 of the earlier 20%, I maintain that the surplus 10% will be exported, perhaps to other walmart stores.


4) good work, but I'm not sure I Understand who the "Town" is. You are saying the "town" only saves 2.40 per head ? is see 20,000 people each saving $20/month or $400,000/month. if this were true the 'Town" would be losing some sales tax revenue, but peoples spending habbits are relativly 'budget driven'. I propose that they will still spend the $100/month. So the question is: Given the same budger, Is it better for people to get more stuff ?
As a wise friend once said: "Stuff is cheap, Storage is expensive."

Thats the nice thing about free trade; we all work just as hard, we just get more stuff.

-Gar.
"Everything in moderation, including this rule'

Hello, Gar. You raise good points, but I think you'll agree there's a happy medium somewhere between full automation and full employment. In the extreme case -- a world of nearly free goods and zero jobs -- everyone starves to death.

Consider the Parable of the Wal-Mart: a small town of 20,000 supports 20 retail and grocery businesses, each making 10% profit for the owner and employing 4 people at $10 per hour. 20% of the food and manufactured goods are locally produced at a 10% profit, employing another 100 people at $10 an hour, and the town's citizens each spend $100 per month on retail goods. Thus, the town has a monthly gross retail expense of $2 million, offset by $200K in retail profits, $40K in agricultural and manufacturing profits, $128K in retail wages and $160K in other wages, for a net expense of 1.472 million.

Then Super Wal-Mart moves in, offering groceries and consumer goods at a 20% discount. All of the locally-owned businesses fail, but their 20 owners and 80 employees are hired at $6 an hour by Wal-Mart. We'll also generously assume that 10% of the goods are still locally produced, at the same labor rates as before but with proportionally less employment. So the town now spends $80 a head on retail goods -- a gross expense of $1.6 million -- but recovers $0 in retail profits, $16K in ag/ind profits, $64K in ag/industrial wages, and $96K in retail wages, for a net retail expense of 1.424 million.

Wal-Mart is definitely more efficient than the 20 local businesses, but the real savings to the town amount to only $2.40 a head, at the cost of 60 jobs, several dozen taxable businesses, and a considerable degree of local pride and control. This may be a net gain for some communities, but in general it's a tyranny-of-the-masses things which trades small majority gains for sharp minority losses. This gets us farther from the society we claim to want.

Wil,
Ignoring all the positive effects of exporting jobs, such as world stability and opening up new markets, then think of exporting jobs as equivalent to automation.
For your examples:
1) manufacturing - a movement of manufacturing jobs is the historical equivalent of an increase in efficiency due to robotic assembly.
2) textiles - = sewing machines and automatic looms.
3) web design & programming - equavelent to the increase of efficiency with higher level languages.
4) engineering, consider the number of engineers employed doing math in world war II. The invention of the calculator and computer has not meant mass unemployment for engineers.

Another thing to consider: with the massive US ownership of overseas businesses, we arn'e throwing away our jobs, we are increasing our economic scope. "They" are us. We are individually and collectivly stronger with international trade.
===>>> bigger pie and bigger slice.

As for the individual greed and immoral behavior,
This kind of activity needs to be punished. Michael Doglas says he is frequently told that his role in the movie Wall street was inspiring
(the gree is good speach) His response is that he was the villian not the hero.

-gar.

Okay, the economy is picking up and so, finally, is hiring. But with jobs being America's #1 export these days, will there ever be another boom? Worse, if we push all our workers not only out of manufacturing and textiles, but web design, programming, and even engineering, won't America be starved for the sort of hands-on experience from which innovation springs? It seems to me that we can't possibly continue to be the world's creativity engine if every new industry gets offshored the moment it begins to mature. Biotech is next! Our tax dollars are pouring into a dense network of intellectual property which will, in the end, be exploited in Asia for the profit of a handful of American patent holders.

Meanwhile, the globalization movement is in the hands of fascists and feudalists who seem bent on turning everyone into renters, debtors, captive consumers, and 60-hour-a-week wage slaves. Globalization may be good for the third world, but here in the first world it's mainly to the benefit of plutocrats.

And greed seems, finally, to have come out of the closet. The American dream is not to make a living but to make a _killing_, somewhere/somehow, no matter who gets hurt. For the lower classes it's bogus lawsuits (which drive up the price of everything, most especially labor), while the upper classes and big corporations (who are mostly one and the same) favor the buying of abusive legislation. And grassroots resistance movements, which seek to wrest control from these plutocrats, are being hunted down and destroyed with a fervor otherwise reserved for terrorists.

MP3.com -- one of the few avenues left for a band to rise to prominence without selling its soul to a multinational -- was shut down today. Score one for Clear Channel and RIAA. Meanwhile, Red Hat isn't Red Hat anymore, SUSE isn't SUSE, and SCO, following in the salted footsteps of MPAA, is accusing INDIVIDUAL LINUX USERS of source-code piracy and shaking us down for $800 apiece PER COMPUTER. Double that if we don't pay right away. This bid will almost certainly fail in court, but meanwhile its chilling effect could freeze the penguin in its tracks. Surely this is SCO's real motive; to frighten the UNIX genie back into some sort of monopolist bottle.

I see all this as part of a pattern -- the death of guilt, the rise of an almost African sort of screw-you zero-sum jerkiness -- and I'm really hacked off about it but have no earthly idea what's to be done. Vote democrat? Ha.

Wil,
If the nature of coincidence is the inteligence
of the observer, why can't I sleep?

Maximillion

Good luck, Blake. Try not to pin too much of your self esteem on a single project, though. The nature of this game is to keep trying and improving. I myself have three complete novels and dozens of short stories in my reject trunk, which is sitting here at my feet as I type this. I could go back and publish some of this material now -- I've even had offers on some of it -- but the simple fact is, it's not very good. Hence the trunk.

By some estimates, an author has to churn out a million words over 5-10 years before finding his or her true voice. Of course, some few get published on their very first try, and you could be one of these. Good luck!

Hello to all who visit this fine site. Wil (if I may call you that), this is the kid who emailed you back in March about how long in advance you have to complete your books for publishing. I really appreciate you taking the time to answer my query. The first book in my three-part series is finished, and copyrighted (yay!), and I'm putting final polishes on it for a series of submissions to agents such as the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency--crossing my fingers on that one but not especially likely--and Donald Maass Lit. Fun stuff. The game now is about getting my foot in the door...

Anyway, I wanted to thank you for your insight--your line, 'write because you love it' carried special weight during the times when I feared my work was talentless and void of true potential. There have been dizzying highs and nauseating lows all along the way, but with any luck by this time next year you could be holding a copy of Redshift Sisyphus (admittedly the second title isn't as strong as the first; I never intended it to be split up like this). You'll find a number of small references to your work, especially Bloom, and I assure you they're all out of admiration.

Now the real race begins...

Thanks Will for your opinion on the subject. I must admit that I am quite happy my ex handed me Bloom to read. I have really enjoyed the books of your that I have read so far. My own unpublished stuff couldn't be called Hard SF, guess what I am shooting for is more like Rigid SF. :)
I hadn't considered the injured and medical requirement - there's interesting story fodder there I think.
thanks again

Bob, it should be no problem to depressurize a spaceship for combat. As you say, it would be much easier in many ways. However, if the crew is human this simply moves the atmosphere problems closer to the skin. A holed suit would be a big problem for the affected person, and probably the people around him, and first aid would be very difficult. You might want a pressurized sickbay, or a bunch of pressurized glove boxes and a quick-release suit design which, with proper medical authentication codes, pops open immediately.

Wil - I'm very interested in your, and the other bright people here- opinions on an engineering detail to my own fiction. How practical is it to pump the atmospheric pressure of your warship down before combat in space? seems to me it would be very useful, prevent equipment and personnel from leaving the scene when the ship get 'hulled', and make moving from compartment to compartment easier. (none of that 14 psi on one side 0 on the non-sense) but is it practical from an engineer's viewpoint?
thanks

Hi, Chereece, Gordon and Alaric! I'll look forward to meeting you.

I am not sure if this is the right forum for this but I just wanted to say thank you to you for the entertainment (and facts) that you have provided. My sons and I are new fans of yours and have saved up enough money for a trip to Bubonicon and we are anxious to get your autograph and thank you in person. Thanks for your time! Your friends, Chereece, Gordon and Alaric

Interesting speculation, Topher. Time certainly does behave differently from space, and that explanation resonates well. If you don't pursue this, hopefully someone will! FWIW, I know at least one amateur scientist who, despite having no PhD in any field, publishes semi-regular papers in respected physics journals.

Mike, the robots I worked on were not related to MIT in any way. Most of them were bulldozers, and quite enormous. Alas, the Army canceled our program just when we were really getting somewhere, so there are only a few dozen of them out there in the working world.

I recently finished The Collapsium, great reading. Speculating about the fundamentals of physics like some of the previous entries here interests me.

As far as time being a dirived unit, f=ma has the units mass*distance/time^2 and e=mc^2 has the units mass* distance^2/time^2. how about setting time^2 as the fundamental unit? would sorta explain why you cant have negative time, its always squared and positive. and if the diference between energy and force units is distance, what happens if you add a third distance, and get the units mass*distance^3/time^2, now we have mass, three length dimensions and a time^2 fundamental unit, all the things we observe around us... of course I have no idea what to set it equal to, total potential of a quantum volume or something I imagine.

I was reading one of your Lab Notes at scifi.com and say in your bio blurb that you worked on landmine clearing robots. Is this by any chance the same line of robots developed by the MIT AI labs, whose search algo was adapted for use in I-robotics Roomba?

Regards.
Mike

Don't thank me, thank Random House, who gave away 500 free harcovers at an open-bar party that came out of BLOOM's publicity budget. Of course I was obligated to drink as much as possible, to maximize the utility of those dollars, so you'll forgive me if I don't remember who you are.

The article you mention is "Wil's Speculative Fiction Career Planning Guide", and it can be found in these pages under Science Fact / Advice For Writers.

Hi Wil,

Thanks again for that free copy of Bloom back in 98' in Boulder. I have to admit, I was a bit dubious at the time but now I've read most of your books so how do you like that?

I had a question, I've seen a web page where you describe the experience of getting published and how things evolve from there. It had a graph of book sales in time, if that helps. I suspect your recent visit with AB might give your nice smooth curve a sizeable ramp and congrats for that.

Thanks.

Hi Wil,

Thanks again for that free copy of Bloom back in 98' in Boulder. I have to admit, I was a bit dubious at the time but now I've read most of your books so how do you like that?

I had a question, I've seen a web page where you describe the experience of getting published and how things evolve from there. It had a graph of book sales in time, if that helps. I suspect your recent visit with AB might give your nice smooth curve a sizeable ramp and congrats for that.

Thanks.

Well, any successful theory of quantum gravity is all right with me, with or without strings attached. Robert, there is a book called THE END OF TIME, by Julian Barbour, which discusses the possibility of time as a derived rather than a fundamental quality, much as physicists are currently trying to do away with mass. That is, mass may arise from the interaction of charged particles with the "vacuum" of empty space. I haven't read the book myself, but am intrigued by it and will probably pick it up at some point.

Hi Wil, Last night when you were being interviewed by Art, the two of you started discussing someones theory about a cat in a box, and until you open the box your not really sure if the cat is there. I have been trying to recall this theory for a couple of weeks now and can't seem to pull it out of my memory banks. Unfortunately I was on the verge of dreaming when I heard it, and couldn't even wake myself enough to know for certain that I wasn't hallucinating the whole thing. Who's theory is it and what exactly does it say?
Thanks

I have not as of this time had the pleasure of reading any of your books, a lapse that I intend to correct. My THEORY OF EVERYTHING is based on the premise that time does not exist! Put that in your pipe and smoke it Sherlock and all of us wannabe sci-fi writers can have a virtual field day. After all it is the only explanation that makes no sense at all! So what else is new?

I have not as of this time had the pleasure of reading any of your books, a lapse that I intend to correct. My THEORY OF EVERYTHING is based on the premise that time does not exist! Put that in your pipe and smoke it Sherlock and all of us wannabe sci-fi writers can have a virtual field day. After all it is the only explanation that makes no sense at all! So what else is new?

Hello Wil.
I have been plowing through your books since comming across Collapsium. I enjoy your work.
Reading up on your guest book, I read your comments on string theory. There are some efforts going on to perform experiments that could help constrain the "phase space" of predictions a bit.
Here is the one I am most familliar with. :-)
http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~varney

Have a good one.
Mike

I assumed Ruthe was talking about a Bussard ramjet, a hypothetical design for interstellar (nor interplanetary) travel. There's some doubt these days about whether it'll work at all, though. Re spin-gee and motion sickness, note that the Mars Society has raised dozens of generations of rats on a small, rapidly spinning platform, with no apparent ill effects. Even fish get motion sickness, believe it or not, but mammals seem to be highly adaptable.

For Ruthie:
The ramjet is a very reliable engine due to the lack of moving parts. However, it is an air-breathing design. Therefore, to use it to travel in vaccuum, a HUGE air supply would be required. A better alternative is the nuclear rocket or the elctro-static rocket.
As far is rotating a habitat is concerned, (assuming the habitat is a tether or large enough radiused shell design) gravity in the .5G range is quite feasible. More "Gs" are easily created, however, a bad case of "sea sickness" would probabbly make for a long trip. :-)

Fascinating. Loved your articles on Hemopure & especially on school violence. How right! After 39 yrs teaching HS Eng in a rural "safe" environment, I've seen & tried to combat it. Look forward to seeing you in April. cm

With my latest overhaul there are lots of new goodies here, including a free MP3 audio book of THE WELLSTONE. Work is proceeding on the next book in the series, tentatively titled LOST IN TRANSMISSION.

If there are lurkers here, hey, feel free to jump in with an answer, question, or comment. Ruthie, I'm not aware of any ramjet designs for interplanetary travel -- among other problems, the required speeds are just too high. Spinning your habitat will probably keep your astronauts healthier than zero-g, yes. Occasional acceleration, especially of the sort needed for minor course correction, will not have a significant effect on bone density and such.

Radiation? Europa explorers would need a well-shielded habitat. It's possible they could venture outdoors fairly safely when Europa was faced away from the charged particle flux, but the Jovian environment is fairly complex, so I'm not sure. I'll bet your local library has a book or two about Jupiter, and its moons and magnetic fields.

I just read your article in Speculations issue #49. Thank you for the great advice for us wannabeez.

I have some questions concerning manned space habitat vehicles. How viable are ram jet engines and how often do they need to be replaced?
Would I want my habitat to spin while traveling from point A(moon) to point B(Mars)or would it be better to get to be using occasional thrust manuevers for steering?
Also could humans explore Europa for long periods of time or would they o.d. on radiation even with a "plasma" shield.

Yes, yes, Hawking is a Brit. Mea culpa, and believe me, you're not the first to note it. In my defense, I can only say there's a Cambridge here as well, and his voice encoder speaks American. But yeah, it's a goof.

Nano, I think wellstone and utility fog are a great match, although they're three orders of magnitude apart in size. But the one would seem to enhance the utility of the other, ayuh. More generally, I think the convergence of molecular nanotechnology, nanoelectronics and quantum dots will be enormously powerful.

I have just finished reading The Collapsium which I think is an interesting book on many different levels. However, I have one question: Is Stephen Hawking not English? I know he is not a Nobel laureate (yet). Otherwise steady as you go.

Wil,

Do you think that J. Hall's Utility Fog and your own Wellstone (programmable matter) concepts are compatable? To merge the metaphors, is the scaling of the two agreeable to create a "Quantum Cloud", utility foglets with a quantum well on each appendage ( and maybe one or two on the chassis ). This would enable speedy form change via the foglets and superior material variability via creation of psuedo atoms. Any thoughts?

I wrote an Atlantis article for SciFi.com in 2001. You can find it at:
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue215/labnotes.html

why dont you have anything on alatis the lost empire.

Hmm. I saw something about this once on a discussion board at santafe.edu -- someone had worked it out at least as far as the number of state variables, although I don't think the actual rule base was codified. You could of course peruse chapters 10-22 of BLOOM with an eye toward working this out -- I never kept a complete list myself, but wouldn't mind seeing one.

Does anyone have a copy of the rules used by John Strashiem in his version of Conway's Game of Life?

Superstring theory isn't something I've written about. I'm vaguely bugged by the circulatory of its reasoning; just because it "fits" and is internally consistent doesn't make it true. I'd like to see some testable predictions, other than the late lamented proton decay.

For the Human Genome project and related subjects, see my monthly column at scifi.com -- http://www.scifi.com/sfw . On any given week, you have a 25% chance to see me there, along with 3 years' worth of archived columns.

Mr.Mccarthy.Did you write any stories about superstring theory or Human Genome?

Mr.Mccarthy.Did you write any stories about superstring theory or Human Genome?

My agent is also named McCarthy, although we've identified no common relations. Hers are from Kerry, mine from Cork. Produces some confusion, though.

Dear Wil, My maiden name is McCarthy, and I am always glad to hear of another one of us who does well. My cousin Chris is also a "rocket scientist" You will find his name and site if you type in Dr. McCarhy, Phd. My dad is always looking for McCarthys' that are noteworthy. He even has a scarpbook full of stranger names McCarthy, who he claims, are surely somehow related. I will print out some of your site and give it to him to add to his srapebook and meanwhile, I will look into some of your books. Hey, why don't you check out Dr. Chris McCarthy. You have to admit there aren't a whole lot of rocket scientists, with our name. Maybe you and Chris and I are somehow related like my Dad says. See ya Cathy

I don't know whether the whole brain could be reprogrammed through the optic nerves or not. Certainly, visual imagery can have a persuasive effect on the conscious mind (i.e., the frontal and temporal lobes), and can frighten or gratify the limbic system (particularly the amygdala). This was partly addressed in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and some Star Trek episode where Geordi was reprogrammed to kill by a Romulan spy. The triggering of epilepsy with rhythmic flashes of light is well documented, but is more of a hack-and-crash then any sort of actual reprogramming. David Langford has even half-jokingly suggested "basilisks"; computer-generated images which kill the viewer through neural overload.

Some people argue against hypnosis as a real phenomenon, but I was successfully hypnotized once -- placed into an actual trance state that was neither sleep nor wakefulness. Could I have been "programmed" in this state with a verbal suggestion? Probably not in any significant way.

To do what you're asking -- hack the brain with nothing but a TV screen -- You would have to identify pathways between the visual cortex and the areas you wanted to reprogram, determine exactly what effects you wanted to achieve at the cellular level, and then derive the set of signals down the pathway which would do this. I'm not sure it's possible at all, but if it is, you'd probably need the power of a quantum computer to identify the desired sequence of flashes out of the essentially infinite possibilities.

But yeah, sure, go with it.

Hello, Wil. I just started reading _Bloom_, and thought I'd look you up online. I've got to say, I was immensely pleased at this discussion room's very existence, especially its title! Thanks for putting the page together.

I've been thinking lately about something I remember from _Snow Crash_ by Neal Stephenson. If you've read it, you may recall that a flickering image of rapidly changing screenfuls of numbers managed to...hypnotize people, sort of. Through their open eyes (or the open eyes of their virtual avatars), their brains were de-/re-programmed. This also reminded me of the incident in 1997 in which rapidly flashing images on a Pokemon cartoon induced seizures in Japanese people of various ages, mainly kids. I'm having trouble digging up anything deeper on this phenomenon -- i.e. in the Stephensonesque vein of total brain reprogramming -- via the net and actual libraries. Ergo, I'd kind of like to discuss it here. Do you know of other science fact or fiction work along these lines, and what the phenomenon would be called? I can't find anything on it in _How the Mind Works_ by Steven Pinker, as well as a host of other nonfiction sources. Maybe it's mostly fictitious, or highly obscure. Anyway, this is a concept that is just beginning to take shape for me in a fictional format. Insofar as I can, I would very much like to RETAIN the intellectual property rights to this little nascent germ of an idea, so I can disucss it online and get some input, and still be able to run with it.

Cheers,

Rick Clark
Colorado Springs

Hi Will. I just wanted to say that I'm in the process of reading <i>Bloom</i> for the third time, and that I really enjoy it. One of the things that struck me about <i>Bloom</i> was the way you took the care to flesh out the Munie and Gladholder societies...that's so refreshing to read about in Sci-fi! Probably my favorite part of the book was the <i>Pasteur</i>'s stay in Saint Helier...you handled the interaction between two strikingly divergant societies really well. :-) Oh, and I found it really entertaining how you prefaced nearly every chapter with Strasheim's notes or writings. It gave the whole story a very "real" feeling, like, that there are <i>real</i> people aboard this ship, not just faceless plot devices.

For the luvva'god man, you must write a sequel. In the mean time, however, I'm gonna go find copies of <i>The Collapsium</i> and <i>Flies from The Amber</i>. They sound good too. :-)

Keep up the great work.

Yeah, it's interesting. You'd think something as fundamental as gravity would be well understood by now, but truthfully we don't know where it comes from or how it is generated. Why is the expansion of the universe speeding up? Probably related to the Pioneer and Voyager results; either something wrong with our notions of gravity, or else a "dark energy" force pushing things apart. Cosmic-scale Casimir forces?

I also note with interest that as of this month, we know the percentage of dark matter accounted for by neutrinos -- about 50%. In the midst of paychecks and allergy season, it's easy to forget what astonishing times we're priveleged to be living in.

Been keeping an eye on Pioneer?

Seems there is unexplained force acting on it out
in deep space. The Sun seems just a bit stronger
than expected. See
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/05/21/gravity.mystery/index.html
and
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0104064
Might some of this force be explained by way of
delayed gravitational potential by a receeding
object?
Or, or, how about the speeding up of light away
from gravity wells (or both)?

Just checking that you are keeping up.

"One Does Not Beg The Sun For Mercy"