March 2018 – Militant Futurist

March 30, 2018May 31, 2018

Roundup of interesting internet articles, March 2018 edition

This is the 100th anniversary of the German Spring Offensive, the Central Powers’ last, desperate gamble to win WWI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Offensive

During WWII, the British and Americans were able to accurately estimate how many tanks the Germans were making by analyzing the serial numbers on destroyed German tanks they found on the battlefield.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

BAE is pitching its advanced 40mm cannon for light tanks. They claim its ability to rapidly shuffle between ammunition types is a battlefield force multiplier (some interesting case examples are described).
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19671/us-army-eyes-adding-unique-40mm-cannon-to-its-stryker-and-bradley-armored-vehicles

Israel officially admitted it blew up Syria’s sole nuclear reactor in 2007, but even had they left it alone, any Syrian nuclear weapons program would probably have gone nowhere.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/nightmare-avoided-did-israels-air-force-stop-syria-getting-25060

Some clear thinking on Putin’s latest, publicity-driven announcement about Russia’s new nuclear weapons, death rays, and phasers.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/putins-phony-arms-race-217339

Putin has already canceled development of one of Russia’s fearsome experimental nuclear missiles we saw CGI videos of just a few weeks ago. [Drumroll] They don’t have enough money.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19588/russia-halts-years-of-work-on-ballistic-missile-to-pay-for-hypersonic-weapons

As China’s military surges ahead, India’s is stuck in neutral.
http://www.janes.com/article/78584/indian-army-struggles-with-resource-crunch

The “Scenarios” section of the paper describes some interesting cases where drones and AI could be used for crimes and terrorism in the near future.
https://www.eff.org/files/2018/02/20/malicious_ai_report_final.pdf

The U.S.M.C. is upgrading its aging F/A-18 Hornets with vastly better radars.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19508/the-best-of-the-usmcs-aging-f-a-18-hornets-to-receive-aesa-radar-upgrade

Another cool idea on paper that turned out way less cool (and more expensive) in practice.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19237/navy-ditches-its-plan-to-upgrade-34-destroyers-with-hybrid-electric-drives

The Air Force wants to make its nuclear bombs smaller-yield but more accurate. All nuclear bombs will also be smart bombs.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19263/get-to-know-americas-long-serving-b61-family-of-nuclear-bombs

By omitting any design requirements related to low-altitude bombing strikes, the B-21 will be stealthier and higher-flying than the B-2.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/14919/the-b-21s-three-decade-old-shape-hints-at-new-high-altitude-capabilities

Photos from the U.S. invasion of Iraq, 15 years on. It’s remarkable seeing the hodgepodge of camouflage colors and styles our troops wore during the invasion. In spite of being the world’s best-funded military, apparently there was a widespread shortage of khaki clothing in the run-up to our big invasion of a desert country whose landscape is dominated by shades of brown.
https://qz.com/1232700/iraq-war-anniversary-photos-of-the-iraq-invasion-15-years-ago/

This might be a perfect example of how “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.”
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/20/politics/syria-regime-forces-building-up-us/index.html

Despite rumor, spy satellites can’t read car license plates. However, that doesn’t mean we couldn’t build one that could. According to the inescapable laws of optics, its lens would have to be at least 60 feet in diameter (the Hubble telescope’s lens is only eight feet wide, and the Saturn V rockets were only 33 feet wide).
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3868/is-photography-from-a-satellite-good-enough-to-make-out-a-person-on-the-ground

The Predator drone is headed for retirement. (Dang, I feel old.)
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19122/usaf-officially-retires-mq-1-predator-while-mq-9-reaper-set-to-gain-air-to-air-missiles

China demonstrates an add-on kit that allows its 1960s-vintage Type 59 tanks to be remote-operated. I doubt the technology is well-developed, though it does make me wonder if obsolete military gear could be given new leases on life if they were remote-controlled or robot-operated.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/21/china-testing-unmanned-tank/

If we switch to machine armies, social cohesion could weaken since nations would no longer have large institutions (militaries) for indoctrinating their human citizens and infusing them with patriotism and loyalty. If humans no longer died in wars, populations would slowly lose national myths of shared sacrifice and heroism that underpin their national identities.
http://warisboring.com/what-happens-to-us-when-robots-fight-our-wars/

I’m skeptical that air delivery drones will become practical and widespread for at least 20 years. There are simply too many downsides. Self-driving delivery trucks are a more conservative and promising technology in the short term.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/03/22/amazon-issued-patent-for-delivery-drones-that-can-react-to-screaming-flailing-arms/

Self-driving cars killed their first human this month. It was, of course, inevitable. The investigation is ongoing, but it’s possible human error–in the form of Uber executives deciding not to use the best sensors on their self-driving cabs–was responsible.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-selfdriving-sensors-insight/ubers-use-of-fewer-safety-sensors-prompts-questions-after-arizona-crash-idUSKBN1H337Q

One of the world’s most successful roboticists, Rodney Brooks, discusses the future of the field.
https://youtu.be/ig1qaqyMIXc

‘Using this iterative algorithm, IBM’s quantum computer successfully calculated the ground state energy of all three molecules, setting a world record for quantum simulation.’
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/quantum-computer-simulates-largest-molecule-yet-sparking-hope-future-drug-discoveries

After being fed data on 12.4 million chemical reactions, a deep learning neural network program was able to correctly create reagent and synthesis steps for other chemical compounds. Human judges couldn’t tell the machine’s work from that of human chemists, meaning a “Turing Test” of sorts was passed.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03977-w

AI could be used to analyze microscopy images of cells.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/03/12/images-of-machine-learning

‘Arranging two layers of atom-thick graphene so that the pattern of their carbon atoms is offset by an angle of 1.1º makes the material a superconductor.’
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02773-w

Some geoengineering proposals for slowing Antarctica’s melting and keeping sea levels the same.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03036-4

Saudi Arabia wants to build the world’s largest solar power plant in the same location where “The Animatrix” predicted that the solar-powered “Zero One” machine city will be.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/03/28/why-saudi-arabia-is-trying-to-pull-off-an-utterly-massive-new-solar-project/

According to some estimates, nuclear power has a smaller carbon footprint than solar or wind.
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/03/wind-energys-carbon-footprint/

Two articles about how much more efficient our machines are at converting energy to work than the human body is.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/nuclear-fusion/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2013/McKenziewalking.html

‘For many animals, the potential benefits of drawing free energy from sunlight might be offset by the considerable risks of extra UV exposure and overheating.’
http://blogs.plos.org/retort/2010/12/20/why-animals-so-rarely-photosynthesize/

If you could see ultraviolet light, the world would look more detailed, and people’s faces would look uglier.
https://youtu.be/hsROOnw12AA

Don’t smoke or sunbathe.
https://www.today.com/slideshow/effects-smoking-sun-stress-skin-twins-33422340

Reason #10237 that you don’t want to be obese.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-43502144

Many chronically ill people with mild genetic disorders are not being properly diagnosed.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/health/genetic-mutations-diagnosis.html

The humble cockroach’s genome is a marvel of complexity.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/science/american-cockroach-genome.html

‘Unlike us, hummingbirds can use the glucose that they’re ingesting in nectar and can move it through their guts, through their circulatory system, and to their muscle cells so fast that they can essentially keep that pipeline going in real time.’
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/science/hummingbirds-fructose-metabolism.html

‘Dogs can be cloned up to five days after they die and cats up to three, as long as the corpses are kept cool.’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pet-cloning-not-just-celebrities-anymore-050630990.html

SETI’s senior astronomer thinks that advanced aliens have gravitational microlensing telescopes that can see the signals sent out by your TV remote control from light years away.
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23738

This is a new and slightly insane solution to the Fermi Paradox: “The Planetarium Hypothesis.”
https://computationaltheology.blogspot.com/2012/05/superintelligent-solution-to-fermi.html

A mind-blowing article about the anthropic principle, quantum immortality, and (indirectly) the Fermi Paradox.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/03/human-existence-will-look-more-miraculous-the-longer-we-survive/554513/

One of the declassified UFO videos released by the NY Times last December could have just been a fighter plane in the distance, flying with its afterburners on.
https://youtu.be/oO5dP3sF2sw

Stephen Spielberg is skeptical of virtual reality’s potential as a filmmaking tool because it would be much harder to keep viewers focused on the action. I agree there’s less value-add than some people assume: If you were watching “The Matrix” in V.R., what would be the benefit of being able to turn away from a fight scene and look at the brick wall behind you?
https://www.apnews.com/afd5a41e2cb14fc0ab5521fa548e38ae/Q&A:-Spielberg-likes-VR,-but-not-necessarily-for-filmmaking

Microsoft predicts that V.R. goggles capable of displaying lifelike images will exist by 2028, but you’ll still need to have the headset plugged into a bigger computer that does graphics rendering. This is close to other estimates I’ve read over the years.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/creating-perfect-illusion-will-take-create-life-like-virtual-reality-headsets/

Progress in preserving mammal brains. Sometimes I think that human cryonics just needs a few hundred million dollars of R&D to become viable, and once we finally make the necessary advances, we’ll look back and wince hard at the realization that we could have made it work decades earlier with 10% of the money we spend on Air Jordans.
http://www.brainpreservation.org/large-mammal-announcement/
http://www.brainpreservation.org/small-mammal-announcement/

Some examples of chuckle-worthy bad futurism.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ten-notable-apocalypses-that-obviously-didnt-happen-9126331/

Investing your money according to the predictions of professional money managers yields no better results that investing it in an index fund.
http://www.aei.org/publication/more-evidence-that-its-very-hard-to-beat-the-market-over-time-95-of-financial-professionals-cant-do-it/

In the latest bad news for Bitcoin, someone embedded child porn into the blockchain.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/20/child-abuse-imagery-bitcoin-blockchain-illegal-content

Genetics, damage to specific parts of the brain, and direct electrical stimulation of part of the brain can all make people happy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/03/pleasure-shock-deep-brain-stimulation-happiness/556043/

IBM predicts we’ll soon have aquatic sensors that do real-time monitoring of water quality in oceans, lakes and rivers, and that AIs will be created to spot and counteract bias. I essentially agree with both predictions.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/03/ibm-ai-predictions-include-ai-powered-ocean-microbots.html

Every shipwreck will be found someday. ‘Today’s crews employ devices that can detect the magnetic field of a washing machine buried in sea mud. Their sonar can sweep the depths like a flashlight. Year after year, the number of shipwrecks still lost dwindles.’
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-uss-cyclops-20180312-story.html

Future mass surveillance will mean no more misplaced or stolen things.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/new-tracking-technology-could-make-lost-belongings-a-thing-of-the-past/2018/02/28/f7a7e59c-18cc-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html

By the time Africa is ready to industrialize through cheap factory labor and export-driven trade, it might be too late since rich countries will have robots that work even cheaper.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43459138

To receive 5G signal in your house, there will need to be a direct line of sight between your device and a small cell box, which will probably be mounted on an existing light pole or power line pole, so in the near future, we’re going to have to pay much closer attention to trimming trees and bushes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/wireless-firms-seek-to-preempt-local-authority-to-install-5g-equipment-in-neighborhoods/2018/03/18/8f8d5a96-2191-11e8-86f6-54bfff693d2b_story.html

“Digital immortality” will first manifest itself as long-dead actors, resurrected through CGI to star in new films.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/03/17/hollywood-actors-writing-wills-control-cgi-selves-beyond-grave/

200 years after it was published, “Frankenstein” continues to be misused by foes of science.
http://reason.com/archives/2018/03/04/victor-frankenstein-is-the-rea

March 28, 2018

Was Stephen Hawking any smarter than you?

…when it came to subjects outside of his expertise?

That is the question. I ask it because, in the aftermath of Stephen Hawking’s death, I’ve seen several news articles about alarmist predictions he made towards the end of his life. This article is actually one of the less sensational ones I read: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43408961

Stephen Hawking was literally a genius and one of the world’s greatest minds, but his education and professional expertise were in theoretical physics and cosmology (the study of how our universe was created and how it evolved). Moreover, his most important contributions pertained to black holes, an interesting yet extremely esoteric subject. Put simply, though Stephen Hawking was unquestionably brilliant, his brilliance was narrowly focused and didn’t equip him to make pronouncements about topics like global warming and killer robots. While everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, I disliked how Hawking’s opinions always carried special weight and attracted public attention, even when those opinions were about things far outside his expertise.

As I said in my past blog entry Rules for good futurism, predictions always be analyzed systematically, and the first step in the analysis is to ensure that the person who made the prediction actually has relevant academic or professional credentials. In several instances, Hawking failed this basic test.

In 2017, he predicted:

“We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible. Trump’s [decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement] could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid.”

Stephen Hawking had no education in climatology and contributed nothing to the field. Moreover, his words suggest that he may not even have understood the Paris Climate Agreement, which has been criticized as weak to the point of being almost meaningless (countries can make up whatever pollution goals they want–including goals to increase their emissions–and there’s no punishment for failing to meet them). To that end, consider that even though President Trump effectively withdrew the U.S. from the Agreement in mid-2017, U.S. carbon emissions for that year still fell, whereas China–one of the Agreement’s signatories–saw its carbon emissions grow. Both of those trends are continuing well into 2018.

Hawking’s gloomy vision of a Venus-like future Earth is also unsupported by reputable climate models. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) most extreme estimates of future global warming fall well below 250 degrees (Celsius or Fahrenheit), and there is still considerable doubt over whether the catastrophic climate “tipping points” Hawking appears to be referencing exist, and if so, whether we are nearing any of them. Finally, Venus’ sulfuric acid rain was caused by volcanic activity, and not by global warming. Even if the Earth gets much hotter in the future, that won’t make volcanoes erupt more.

Stephen Hawking also made predictions about intelligent aliens in 2010:

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans…We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

Though Stephen Hawking spent his life studying “space stuff” like black holes and the expansion of the universe, that left him scarcely better-equipped than an average person to speculate about aliens. While it’s possible that advanced aliens could come here with hostile intent, his apparent certainty in this outcome–made clear through his use of the definite “would be”–is unsupported by any facts. We have no clue what advanced aliens would be like, so we can’t even assign gross probabilities to how they would behave towards us (hostile, helpful, indifferent).

While I agree with Hawking that we should err on the side of caution and minimize humanity’s “leakage” of radio signals into space to hide from any hostile aliens that might be listening, I think it’s very important to realize that this is just a prudent course of action any person would settle upon if they thought hard about the problem. Stephen Hawking’s superior intellect did not let him go any farther, and the insight didn’t become any more valid once he made it known he shared it. To be clear, Hawking was not the first to advocate such a cautious course of action: three years before his aforementioned prediction, an American diplomat and science writer named “Michael Michaud” said the same thing in his book Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials. I suspect the idea actually predates Michaud by many years, but I didn’t have enough time to research its origins further.

In 2014, Hawking also shared thoughts about home-grown threats to humanity, in the form of hostile A.I.:

“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race…It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”

Again, Stephen Hawking’s prediction is nothing new, nor does he appear credentialed to speak on this matter with real authority. The idea of a robot uprising destroying the human race dates back to the famous 1920 Czech play Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the theory that intelligent machines could enter a cycle of runaway self-improvement was first postulated by the British mathematician I.J. Good in 1965, and the observation that computers are getting smarter at a faster rate than humans are should be obvious to anyone who compares their cell phone to the one they had ten years ago. There’s nothing insightful about Hawking restating a few, closely related ideas that have been embedded in the popular consciousness in one way or another for decades (mostly thanks to science fiction films).

And even though Stephen Hawking famously used computers and a robotic wheelchair to overcome his speech- and motor impairments, he had no experience working on artificial intelligence, which is a sub-field of computer science (his education was instead in physics and math). Similarly, I depend on my car for daily transportation and am proficient at using it, but that doesn’t mean I know anything about automotive engineering.

And in 2016, he issued this dire (depending on your time horizon I guess) warning:

“I don’t think we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet…Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years. By that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race.”

From past comments, it’s likely Hawking saw extreme climate change, nuclear or biological war, alien invasion, hostile A.I. uprising, and extinction-level natural events like asteroid impacts as the potential causes of that epic “disaster,” but he never explained how he calculated that one or more of them would happen for sure by his 1,000 to 10,000 year deadline, meaning his prediction runs afoul of another step in my analysis: “Be skeptical of predictions that are unsupported by independently verifiable data.” In truth, the probabilities of any of those misfortunes happening are unknown, making a future risk assessment impossible. For example, it’s entirely likely that a planet- or even continent-killing asteroid isn’t on course to hit Earth for another 20,000 years, by which time we’ll have space weapons that can easily deflect it.

In closing, Stephen Hawking’s discoveries in theoretical physics and cosmology changed our view of the universe itself, but his doomsday predictions added nothing new. Let me be clear: I didn’t write this to denigrate Hawking or to make myself sound smarter than he was, but rather, I wrote it as a reminder that no one knows everything, and future predictions should always be carefully scrutinized, regardless of how famous, smart, or seemingly benevolent the person making them may be. As a scientist, I think he would have actually appreciated these precepts, even if they worked against him in the handful of instances I’ve highlighted.

Links

March 8, 2018

Bing predicted the 2018 Oscars with high accuracy

Microsoft’s “Bing Predicts” algorithm correctly guessed 21 out of 24 Academy Award winners this year, making it as accurate as the best human experts and more accurate than guesses obtained from polls of thousands of human non-experts.

Wikipedia describes Bing Predicts as “a prediction engine developed by Microsoft that uses machine learning from data on trending social media topics (and sentiment towards those topics), along with trending searches on Bing. It predicts the outcomes of political elections, popular reality shows, and major sporting events.”

Bing Predicts did better than 29 out of 30 professional film critics who posted their 2018 Oscar guesses on the prediction website www.goldderby.com. The highest-performing human expert, sports host and film critic Adnan Virk, tied Bing Predicts by correctly guessing 21 of the Award winners.

Moreover, Bing Predicts’ accuracy rate of 87.5% (21/24) surpassed the 85.7% accuracy rate (6/7) derived from a large survey of human non-experts. New Scientist magazine conducted the survey to test the value of the “wisdom of the crowd” for predicting future events, and over 6,000 people participated.

Bing Predicts’ accuracy has been high for previous Academy Awards, though this year was one of its best:

2017 Oscars: 17/24
2016 Oscars: 17/24
2015 Oscars: 20/24
2014 Oscars: 21/24

Bing also excels at predicting outcomes of elections, sports games, and other major competitions. A few examples include:

Bing Predicts made nearly perfect guesses about the outcomes of soccer matches at the 2014 World Cup.
Bing Predicts correctly guessed Scotland would vote to stay in the U.K. in the 2014 referendum
Bing Predicts guessed the outcomes of the U.S. 2014 Midterm elections with 95% accuracy.

I have to wonder, if machines continue improving their powers of prediction and their intelligence, will they someday suck the fun, risk and mystery out of every aspect of life?

For example, what would be the fun in watching sports if the outcome of every event were known with 99% certainty beforehand? How would our lives change if AIs constantly calculated and told us of the odds of success for every action–big (career choice or marriage) or small (where to eat lunch)–that we were contemplating? Taken to an even greater extreme, what would it be like if machines intervened to prevent us from making self-destructive or even just sub-optimal choices, and always impelled us towards the safe course of action?

As constraining and un-free as such a future might sound, what if it were demonstrably superior in terms of allocating human labor, and achieving some optimal balance between maximized productivity, maximized average happiness, and minimization of extreme human suffering? It would certainly be in keeping with the long-running historical trend for things overall to improve with time, while narrower aspects of life (such as overcrowding or certain types of pollution) worsen.

Links

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/oscars/bing-predicts-who-will-win-the-oscars/ss-BBJvArd
http://www.goldderby.com/article/2018/oscars-2018-adnan-virk-espn-tops-all-experts-predicting-winners/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2162869-how-new-scientist-readers-predicted-the-oscar-winners/
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/02/24/and-the-oscar-goes-la-la-land-if-bing-predicts-right
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-bing-oscars-2016-2016-2
https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/23/8089593/microsoft-bing-oscar-predictions
https://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsoft-bing-15-16-world-cup/
https://qz.com/267900/scotland-independence-referendum-prediction/
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2846248/microsoft-subnet/forget-the-pollsters-microsofts-bing-predicted-midterm-election-with-95-accuracy.html

March 1, 2018

Roundup of interesting internet articles, February 2018 edition

A recent meta-analysis that “proved” antidepressants work was grossly overhyped by the media.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2018/02/24/about-antidepressant-study/#.WphBmPnwaUm

The media has also be grossly misrepresenting medical progress towards treating Alzheimer’s disease.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/02/15/more-rough-alzheimers-news

Sometimes, the hype-ready headlines are made up by the scientists BEFORE being passed on to the media.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/02/05/where-does-the-news-hype-come-from

An Ivy-league scientist deliberately dressed up shoddy scientific papers about dietetics to attract publicity.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemlee/brian-wansink-cornell-p-hacking

“These observations suggest that despite the overall ability of reviewers to discriminate between extremely strong grant applications and the remainder, they have limited ability to accurately predict future productivity of meritorious applications in the range relevant to current paylines.”
https://elifesciences.org/articles/13323v1

Fake Science Paper About ‘Star Trek’ and Warp 10 Was Accepted by ‘Predatory Journals’
https://www.space.com/39672-fake-star-trek-science-paper-published.html

Fake professors working at a fake college where they run a fake scientific journal:
http://groverlab.org/hnbfpr/2017-12-10-csu.html

Generally speaking, the scientific literature about the health effects of specific foods is so self-contradictory and poorly done that it might as well be ignored.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2018/02/26/coffee-causes-cancer-coffee-prevents-cancer-wait-what/#113d9f7915ee

What IS known for sure is that 1) being overweight damages one’s health, 2) eating too many calories contributes more to obesity than lack of exercise, and 3) Americans are getting fatter over time.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2018/02/22/peds.2017-3459#T2

Simple, absolute changes to one’s diet (e.g. “I will never drink sodas, never go to all you can eat buffets, and will only eat whole grain breads”) are the most effective for weight loss.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/well/eat/counting-calories-weight-loss-diet-dieting-low-carb-low-fat.html

The (short) list of nutritional supplements that doctors actually recommend people take and have scientifically proven benefits.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/supplements-are-a-30-billion-racket-heres-what-experts-actually-recommend/

“Biohacking” is bunk.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/biohacking-stunts-crispr/553511/

More on that.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/01/20/the-state-of-biohacking

A brain implant improved memory in lab tests. All the test subjects were epileptics. It’s possible the implants could boost the memories of people with normal brains.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/health/brain-implant-memory.html

Superhuman abilities aren’t always beneficial: Having a hyper-acute sense of smell is hellish.
https://gutsybeautifulcomplicated.com/2017/06/07/hyperosmia-when-odors-rule-your-life/

But the benefits of superior intellect are clear: Long-term studies of people in the top 1% of math ability suggest that there is no known “ceiling” to IQ, and that the benefits of IQ never plateau: All other things being equal, a person with an IQ of 200 should be able to do more complex cognitive tasks, and is likelier to have a better job and more money, than someone with an IQ of 180.
https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/01/DoingPsychScience2006.pdf

Human IQ is heritable, but also tends to regress towards the population mean of 100 across generations (see the “Your Kids and Regression” slide). This means two parents with IQs of 80 are likely to have children that are smarter, and two parents with IQs of 120 are likely to have children that are dumber.
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/seminars/data/media/2012/feb/hsu.pdf

‘According to the political scientist Charles Murray, meritocracy inevitably leads to a genetically-based caste system. Why? Because the traits selected for by the meritocratic sorting principle are genetically-based and, as such, likely to be passed on from parents to their children. Genetic variation means some highly able children will be born to people of average and below average intelligence, but the children of the meritocratic elite will, in aggregate, always have a competitive advantage and over several generations that leads to social ossification.’
https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-rise-and-fall-of-meritocracy-bbc.html

Among females, educational achievement and fertility are negatively correlated, but the long-term effects on the human genepool could be minimal, and the correlation’s directionality could change in the future.
https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/02/lets-not-panic-over-women-with-more-education-having-fewer-kids/273070/

Agreeableness is a heritable personality trait, and it influences one’s odds of divorce (which in turn partly determines income, since couples share money).
https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21736124-according-study-adopted-children-genes-play-role-likelihood

DNA-based scores are getting better at predicting intelligence, risks for common diseases, and more.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610251/forecasts-of-genetic-fate-just-got-a-lot-more-accurate/

An evolutionary “top 1%er.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43123658

An evolutionary “top 0.001er.” (It makes clones of itself instead of diluting its genome by reproducing with the other sex.)
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/attack-of-the-crayfish-clones/552236/

Two of Barbra Streisand’s dogs are clones of one of her dogs that died last year.
http://variety.com/2018/film/news/barbra-streisand-oscars-sexism-in-hollywood-clone-dogs-1202710585/

I saw this episode of Black Mirror last night. It’s completely right that killer robots will probably be small (though not necessarily dog-like), expendable, and able to function in spite of massive damage. The only inconsistencies in the depiction are:
1) The robot would have called for backup early on.
2) There would have been flying robots that could have zapped the woman out of the tree. Modern militaries don’t do it all with one type of weapon, and neither will future militaries made of robots.
https://youtu.be/OQFoyeCiMBE

It’s useful to think of future aerial drones as slow-flying, self-guided missiles.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42904204

The McKinsey Group predicts the U.S. economy will soon return to the high productivity growth rates it last experienced in the 1990s, thanks to the rollout/growth of several new technologies we keep hearing about, including autonomous vehicles.
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Global%20Themes/Meeting%20societys%20expectations/Solving%20the%20productivity%20puzzle/MGI-Solving-the-Productivity-Puzzle-Executive-summary-February2018.ashx

‘The robotaxis will be cars that last for 2 million miles and have lower operating costs. The interior seats will occasionally be swapped out or reupholstered. There will be no performance competition.’
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/02/the-robotaxi-future-will-not-care-about-car-brands-or-luxury.html

Quantum computers could vastly accelerate research in chemistry and materials science.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/microsoft-we-have-the-qubits-you-want-1519434417

A reminder that every exponential growth curve eventually flattens out.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/02/02/weve-reached-peak-smartphone-what-are-apple-and-samsung-going-to-do-now/

The first iSlave has already been born.
‘The wristbands also feature an ultrasonic unit that’s used to track where the worker is in relation to any particular inventory bin. If their hands are moving to the wrong item, the bracelet will buzz.’
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/1/16958918/amazon-patents-trackable-wristband-warehouse-employees

Amazon should combine the wristwatches with the “Jennifer Unit.” And then they should start calling their workers “Borg drones.” (And come to think of it, Amazon warehouses are giant cubes)
https://youtu.be/oC-ReBX0icU

Hitler’s mistakes led directly to defeat at the Battle of Kursk.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-the-battle-kursk-might-just-be-the-most-misunderstood-22931

It’s said that WWII played a major role in strengthening our sense of shared national identity because millions of Americans went through the homogenizing institution that was the U.S. military. But look at what happened to Yugoslavia when when it conscripted its citizens into regional militias dominated by different ethic groups.
http://warisboring.com/yugoslav-military-doctrine-hastened-the-countrys-collapse/

While America has largely come to grips over its acts of brutality during the Vietnam War, Vietnam’s communists still cover up their much worse record of wartime atrocities. None of them were brought to justice after the War.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/15/vietnam-war-government-accounts-1968-216973

Armored vehicles can only fit on cargo planes if the vehicles are small and light. To be small and light, armor must be sacrificed. Thin armor means the vehicles are easy to blow up in combat. The U.S. Army will never wish away this basic, physical reality.
http://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY2009/pdf/army/2009strykermgs.pdf

Diplomatic “end user agreements” partly (or wholly) explain why Turkey and Iraq both have tank fleets consisting of high-tech and low-tech vehicles.
http://warisboring.com/the-west-sold-tanks-to-the-middle-east-and-now-its-frustrated/

On the night of February 7-8, about 500 Russian mercenaries ignored repeated warnings from the U.S. military, and attacked an oil refinery in Syria that was held by American forces and American-friendly Syrian rebels. At least 100 and perhaps over 200 Russians died in the one-sided battle, in which they were torn apart by highly accurate U.S. artillery and ground attack aircraft and then ran away. The Kremlin has comically downplayed the scope of the defeat.
https://www.polygraph.info/a/us-wagner-russia-syria-scores-killed/29044339.html

…and in totally unrelated news, Russia dispatched two of its stealth fighters to Syria two weeks later.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18773/satellite-imagery-confirms-russia-deployed-stealthy-su-57-fighters-to-syria

The U.S. military’s plans to arm ships with nuclear cruise missiles is so potentially destablizing to international security that it might just be a bluff meant to pressure Russia into abandoning its own nuclear weapon improvement efforts.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18804/us-eyes-adding-nuclear-cruise-missiles-to-zumwalt-stealth-destroyers-as-well-as-submarines

The scientific evidence for the “nuclear winter” theory is surprisingly weak, and may have been clandestinely encouraged by the USSR in the 1980s to strengthen anti-nuclear activists in the West.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/nuclear-winter/

‘This major upgrade is part of a series of upgrades—which include a new digital countermeasures suite, infrared search and track system, new cockpit, among other enhancements—that are slated to allow the F-15C/D fleet to soldier on till 2040 AND POSSIBLY BEYOND. The aircraft that receive these upgrades are called “Golden Eagles.”‘
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18259/its-back-to-the-future-for-u-s-f-15c-eagles-and-conformal-fuel-tanks

Here’s an interesting argument that America’s costly aircraft carriers would be useless in a war with an advanced enemy (China or Russia), and are just expensive tools for beating up weak countries.
http://cimsec.org/age-strike-carrier/30906

China’s fearsome island bases in the South China Sea could all be destroyed on the first day of fighting with the U.S.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/are-chinas-south-china-sea-bases-pointless-24546

The U.S. Army is developing truck-mounted multiple launch missiles that can be used against enemy ships and ground targets. The Marine Corps might also buy them. They could be used against Russia in the Baltic or against China in the South China Sea.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18427/the-army-eyes-getting-into-the-ship-killing-business-with-this-cruise-missile

Here’s a fascinating trove of declassified U.S. intelligence analyses of captured Soviet weapons. The recurring theme is that the Soviet scientists and engineers were about as smart as ours, but they had to make weapons that were less advanced and more conventional thanks to the inefficiencies and lagging technology of their factories. This philosophy led the Soviets to favor proven weapon designs and incremental upgrades to them. They preferred having an older, less efficient weapon they knew would work to having a higher-tech, more efficient weapon that hadn’t been put through its paces yet. The artificially low cost of factory labor in the USSR also manifested itself in some of their weapon components, which were obviously made by hand and to standards of precision that would be cost-prohibitive in the U.S.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2018-01-31/scavenging-intelligence-us-governments-secret-search-foreign

The differences in design philosophies carry over to the present day: ‘A sociological truth has emerged from the international effort: American engineers are more likely to try to finesse a structure, to make it as lightweight and as efficient as possible, while Russians build things stout.’
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/us-weighing-future-of-international-space-station/

The laws of optics establish inescapable tradeoffs between the size of a spy satellite and its photographic resolution. The size of a spy satellite, in turn, is capped by the sizes of our space rockets. Theoretically, a spy satellite that could read car license plates and discern human facial features from orbit could be built, but it would be massively expensive and an order of magnitude bigger than today’s biggest satellites.
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/09/future-spy-satellites-just-got-exponentially-smaller/140700/
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3868/is-photography-from-a-satellite-good-enough-to-make-out-a-person-on-the-ground

BLAST FROM THE PAST! “China plans moon landing around 2017”
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-11/04/content_491424.htm

The reality: “CHINESE SPACE STATION WILL CRASH TO EARTH IN MARCH CARRYING A ‘HIGHLY TOXIC’ CHEMICAL”
http://www.newsweek.com/tiangong-1-chinese-space-station-will-crash-earth-march-carrying-highly-toxic-770625

Our closest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, had a massive solar flare last year, which might have fried its planet, Proxima-b.
https://phys.org/news/2018-02-proxima-centauri-good-bad-day.html

He makes a great point at the end: A particular star system might be completely unsuited for the rise of organic life, but could still be riddled with non-indigenous aliens that used technology to get there. This weakens the case for focusing SETI’s surveillance efforts on stars that seem to have the “right” conditions for organic life.
https://youtu.be/j2AfvkQi7qI

‘In short, I can see no reason why an iPhone in 2-3 years time couldn’t match the performance of today’s DSLRs for 99% of occasions.’
https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/27/opinion-iphone-replace-dslr/

“Aesthetically, these [AI- taken] pictures aren’t masterworks. Emotionally, they’re on a higher plane.”
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/technology/future-cameras-ai-brains.html

There’s no reason why biometric recognition software couldn’t be applied to many species of animals just as it is with humans. Pairing that software with a global surveillance network would yield highly accurate, real-time monitoring of wild species populations.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/02/ai-used-to-track-pigs-and-facial-recognize-cows.html

Fish are unevenly distributed across the world’s oceans.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/02/22/588034042/new-maps-reveal-global-fishings-vast-scope-of-exploitation-of-the-ocean

“In 1942…the average dairy cow produced less than 5,000 pounds of milk in its lifetime. Now, the average cow produces over 21,000 pounds of milk.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/the-perfect-milk-machine-how-big-data-transformed-the-dairy-industry/256423/

“As a result of high costs, Gordon-Smith said, several vertical farms in North America have failed in recent years.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/vertical-farming-houston/552665/

“For the most sensitive pieces of equipment, work could only be done within a clean-room nested inside another, larger clean-room.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/02/22/assembly-of-the-worlds-most-powerful-x-ray-laser-has-begun-at-slac/

It’s interesting that they’re able to film scenes indoors but make them look naturally lit. Exactly how far are we from 100% CGI films that look completely real? When will the characters be 100% CGI?
https://io9.gizmodo.com/even-tv-dramas-without-dragons-in-them-are-packed-full-1822660136