stinkychops said:
Oh no, I'm sorry that I've come across this way. I'm actually very interested in these discussions and when I get interested my points of doubt seem to sound, aggressive. Very well. Don't accuse me of invoking damn magic when I haven't and I won't one have my high priestesses melt your balls off
I am not annoyed at all about your thoughts towards the military but I disagree with your perception of the goods and bads of them.
Overall I just struggle to see this working. Wars between major powers aren't fought in this manner. The life-forms would have to be carbon based if they're going to be complex. I think rights will have to apply to them if they have beyond instinctive thought.
I would argue with you on evolution but I'm not sure I'm reading your post correctly and its besides the point.
One possibility is that they do somehow create these things, and they work on instincts. Evolution won't apply to them because they won't breed and as such they will never rebel/take over. Another is that they are inneffective and barbaric, as well as too costly and they sit on the dusty bench of human knowledge. Another possibility is that they go batshit and scientists move off to equiping regular soldiers with invisibility.
My point on energy stands.
Goods and bads of military? The military is great: It's almost a perfect (compared to what we've seen) application of from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. Of course, they take those who will keep the equations working for them best, those of higher ability and lesser need, but still. Don't like homophobia? I'm pissed that LGBT can't get equal marriage rights. US military WILL allow gays and lesbians to serve. It will take some more time, but it IS coming. Just as allowing blacks to fight alongside everyone else made a difference, this will too. US military doesn't always care how wars are fought, they sometimes care about wars might be fought, and they love expanding what they know about science because the information alone is worth it. On the flip side, that information has led to nuclear weapons. Granted, we were in a race with Nazi Germany when the atomic age started. Sometimes having the information alone is a terrible genie in a bottle waiting to be let out, and of course America is still the only country to ever use an atomic age weapon in combat, for some (good/bad????) very fucked up reasons of need and of arrogance.
One of those high priestesses I mentioned above works for the military as a chaplain to spiritualists and pagans. We have interesting discussions regarding military policy, which she helps shape in her arena and watches carefully in others.
I'm not certain if carbon is an absolute need for complex life forms (remember, the universe may yet have surprises in store for you), but whether or not it's irrelevant to the discussion of new life making us obsolete. As for rights? Good luck with that: The only rights we have are the rights we grant ourselves and each other, and history is a long battle over what rights anyone gets. As for evolution: Evolution is a process nature uses and we have co-opted to create new things. I can show you the parallels between technological evolution and natural. That being the case, A-life could well be driven by its own evolutionary processes. Breeding isn't always required. For A-life to work, some form of reproduction will be needed: Old structures within an entity will need replaced by new ones. We require new cells, and all of breeding stems from the original structures of life's solutions for reproduction and expansion. This is where it gets interesting: Expansion. What happens when one A-Life entity escapes and expands in anyway shape or form?
Here's another possibility: A-life developed for infiltration, works in the real world the way a worm or virus works in a computer. A long way off but not completely far-fetched. Computer scientist and mathematician comes along, sees an opportunity. Sees intelligence not as a function of a formula, but as a function of form. Re-tools A-life so it's a neural net, it's entire being the structure for it's 'brain'. Military decides to activate 'kill switch' and it fails. You now have a sci-fi/horror novel on your hands, except this one is possible.
On the energy thing: We only get so much energy from our food. An a-life could get energy from more sources more efficiently.
We live in a universe of endless possibilities, and the US military loves exploring those possibilities for more reasons than open combat in the field. We may be closer to a-life applications than we are to full-spectrum invisibility (I looked up meta-materials a bit heavily when I first heard of them). When you say, "It'll never happen" you sound like every old codger who said we'd never fly. Some things are more likely than others, but we don't, and may never know, what the full boundaries are.
Finally: There's another reason why I suspect we will eventually make ourselves obsolete. We're human. Many of us, especially men, have this desperate need to know the ends of things. It comes up in religion, it comes up in disaster movies, it comes up in physics etc. etc. etc. When we don't know the ends of things we make those ends up. Sometimes as stories, sometimes violently with a suicide bomb, and sometimes quietly and unwittingly, exploring a new section of forest we've never looked at before (guess where Ebola comes from?), sometimes in a lab looking for something better than what we have. Better than what we have eventually becomes better than what we are. Sure enough, centuries down the road, some idiot is going to try and create the 'new humans'. Except, it won't be human. The most successful life forms in terms of pure survival on this planet are bugs. There are cockroaches evolving faster than our ability to come up with ways of killing them. Some scientist will copy this in a lab, some engineer will try to implement it, and God help us then...
