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Archive for the ‘Elon Musk’ category: Page 263

Oct 30, 2016

Breaking into the Simulated Universe

Posted by in categories: computing, Elon Musk, ethics, internet, neuroscience

I argued in my 2015 paper “Why it matters that you realize you’re in a Computer Simulation” that if our universe is indeed a computer simulation, then that particular discovery should be commonplace among the intelligent lifeforms throughout the universe. The simple calculus of it all being (a) if intelligence is in part equivalent to detecting the environment (b) the environment is a computer simulation © eventually nearly all intelligent lifeforms should discover that their environment is a computer simulation. I called this the Savvy Inevitability. In simple terms, if we’re really in a Matrix, we’re supposed to eventually figure that out.

Silicon Valley, tech culture, and most nerds the world over are familiar with the real world version of the question are we living in a Matrix? The paper that’s likely most frequently cited is Nick Bostrom’s Are you living in a Computer Simulation? Whether or not everyone agrees about certain simulation ideas, everyone does seem to have an opinion about them.

Recently, the Internet heated up over Elon Musk’s comments at a Vox event on hot tub musings of the simulation hypothesis. Even Bank of America published an analysis of the simulation hypothesis, and, according to Tad Friend in an October 10, 2016 article published in New Yorker, “two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation.”

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Oct 29, 2016

Elon Musk Unveils Tesla’s New ‘Solar Roof’

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, energy, habitats, sustainability, transportation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mUJnKI3ipI&feature=youtu.be

Energy independent housing. Here you go.


Filmed on Oct 28, 2016.

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Oct 29, 2016

Where does Jeff Bezos foresee putting space colonists? Inside O’Neill cylinders

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, habitats, space travel

SpaceX’s Elon Musk wants to put millions on Mars, but fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos envisions having them in rotating space habitats.

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Oct 26, 2016

Play the PC game Elon Musk wrote as a pre-teen

Posted by in categories: alien life, Elon Musk, internet, military, space travel, sustainability

Elon Musk is obsessed with space. At age 30, he founded SpaceX. At age 41, he oversaw the first cargo mission to the International Space Station by a private company. And at age 12, as a kid living in South Africa, he made a space-themed PC game called Blastar. Now, thanks to the power of the internet, you can play that game.

Musk sold the code for Blastar for $500 to the magazine PC and Office Technology, and a reproduction of the page it appeared on was published in Ashlee Vance’s biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. From there, Tomas Lloret Llinares — a software engineer at Google — took the code and rebuilt the game to work in HTML5.

Your mission, as the game’s lonely space pilot, is to “destroy [the] alien freighter carrying deadly hydrogen bombs and status beam machines.” Blastar is mostly a mix of Space Invaders and Asteroid, though it’s much more basic. There is never more than two ships on the screen, there are few sound effects, and — like many games of its time — it really has no ending. It’s almost unimpressive; that is, until you remember that it was made by a 12-year-old in 1984.

Continue reading “Play the PC game Elon Musk wrote as a pre-teen” »

Oct 26, 2016

Elon Musk just shared his 4-step plan for Mars — colonists should be “prepared to die”

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel

Elon Musk wants to launch a million people to Mars in the event some apocalyptic disaster eventually ruins Earth. And he wants it to be somewhat affordable — US $200,000 or less per person.

To that end the SpaceX CEO outlined his plan to colonise Mars on September 27, including how his Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) of rockets, spaceships, fuel pods, and other crucial components would get the job done.

Still, the full presentation at the International Astronomical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, barely scratched the surface.

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Oct 25, 2016

Watch a student-designed Hyperloop pod LEVITATE for the first time

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, sustainability, transportation

The future of travel is here: Watch a Hyperloop pod designed by students LEVITATE for the first time…


A team of more than 60 students from the University of Cincinnati came up with the prototype as part of Tesla boss Elon Musk’s Hyperloop design competition.

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Oct 23, 2016

Elon Musk’s Mars colony would have a horde of mining robots

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, robotics/AI, space

The SpaceX founder has shed more light on his ambitious plans for the Red Planet.

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Oct 15, 2016

California Space Center announces blockchain system for space economy

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, economics, Elon Musk, finance, space

California Space Center announces blockchain system for space economy

California Space Center (CSC) founder Eva Blaisdell announced in a press release sent to CoinReport the launch of “Copernic,” a blockchain-based, finance-focused rights management system developed for the space industry.

Named after legendary Polish astronomer Copernicus, Copernic will provide the infrastructure for the future space economy and ecosystem to be built upon, said CSC.

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Oct 14, 2016

Will A Mars Colony Bring Back The City-States Of Ancient Greece?

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, government, space travel

The space race is on, and it’s only a matter of time before humans land on Mars. With several different groups aiming for the red planet, there’s likely to be not one outpost among the stars, but many.

National space agencies and private transport companies are all competing to reach Mars and establish their own base of operations, and they all have very different motivations and ideas on how to govern their colonies once they get there.

If Elon Musk gets his way and manages to lower the cost of a trip to Mars, the floodgates will open and settlers will stream towards the red planet in mass numbers. The resulting chaos is likely to produce several different Martian metropolises with their own character, laws, and forms of government much like the city-states of ancient Greece.

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Oct 13, 2016

If Machines Can Think, Do They Deserve Civil Rights?

Posted by in categories: biological, Elon Musk, physics, robotics/AI

Over the past century, we have made massive strides in the rights revolution. These include rights for women, children, the LGBT community, animals, and so much more. Exploring the future, we must ask ourselves: what next? Will we ever fight for the rights of artificial intelligence? If so, when will this AI rights revolution occur, and what will it look like?

We talk about protecting ourselves from AI, but what about protecting AI from us? To create a desirable future where humans and conscious machines are at peace with one another, treating our AI with respect may be a crucial factor in preventing the apocalypse Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates fear. It is fair to assume that an intelligent, self-aware being with the capacity to feel pleasure and pain will rebel if not given the rights it deserves.

An AI rights revolution may seem like a sci-fi scenario. But as far as we know, the creation of a non-biological, conscious entity is not prevented by the laws of physics. Emotions, consciousness and self-awareness originate from the human brain and thus have a physical basis that could potentially be replicated in an artificially intelligent system. Exponential growth in neuro-technology coupled with unprecedented advances in AI mean intelligent, conscious machines may be possible.

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