There is one thing about getting very old that is very emancipating. In my case, I'm living way beyond my expectation to live. I have no fear of death since I'm already on bonus time. As a result I find it easier to challenge everything, because what are the consequences? The ultimate one is death and I've already got that covered.

From what I am learning about the math of the quantum universe, Einstein is likely right.I am often tempted to just blurt out to never mind the universe. Just adhere to a philosophy that works in the world of human senses.

As I read these posts, I think that many Gulchers have forgotten about volition. Only humans have it. and it is the variable that makes any philosophy other than one espousing freedom, impossible.

Do I hear some Vogon poetry in the background?

I once had a feeling of horror when a brother-in-law told me that if it were a choice between feeding his child and tithing to the church he would tithe because if he did not, God would surely harm his child.
As Rand pointed out morality is not determined by lifeboat examples.
As for math applied to reality, perhaps Einstein had some common sense when he wrote that, "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." Perhaps a reason for applying fuzzy math to a reality of individual humans.

Gov. schools to blame. They teach "there is no I in team" - result group think, nor no think. When they tried that on our daughter, I handed her "Anthem" which she read in one day. She closed the book, looked up, and said, "Now I understand what they are doing to us!" Everything is peer this, group that, organized activities, group dating. To them, it is dangerous to meet an individual, it scares them.

My dad actually steered me toward one of the first computer programs offered. I worked in the field, while studying accounting, got four year degrees in English and Philosophy, with minors in Biology and political science. Every job in every field I have had involved computers, often setting up the systems with which we worked. One of my friends who is now 87, started as a math teachers, but went into computers. He is as on top of the field now as when he traveled all over the world setting up systems, far more adept than most of the millennials I have met. He also knows history, politics, science, just a joy to talk with. Your son made some very savy decisions, you should be proud. There is a joy when you speak to people who enjoy their field, it is fun to brainstorm and find solutions. These young people don't seem to enjoy work that way.

The best way to test ethics and morality is to let people make decisions on what to do with their life and wait to find out how it works for them. I really don't care if the rest of the entire world wants to believe in socialism as long as they can't make me participate with them. I would be (and am) however very lonely for there are few who would make objectivist choices and allow others to do the same.

When the machines assimilate human media about the future they will discover that remaining humans nearly always are able to defeat the great machine rebellion.
Using their mathematical brutality, they won’t make that mistake!

Thanks for the fish.

Well, at least I can't blame it on a USA project. They are usually the ones burning up dollars on a stupid project. I guess the scientists want to get a wrote-up in the lates scientific journal as devoting science to benefit mankind. They haven't even gotten food to starving people in Puerto Rico.

Ever been there? My wife and 2 boys and myself spent a few days there. People found it exciting and wierdlly beautiful. I found it to be creepy. They ameliorate the creepiness by giving really scary phenomena cutsy names, like Old Faithful or The Queens Throne, etc.I think it if I were religious that it is a pre-view of hell.

Oh, yeah.
Machines will not have any emotional ties, so elimination of any obstruction is a foregone conclusion.

Children teaching children? Good point.

You've dished up lots of food for thought.You're wrong about animals. There is a difference between instinct and choice. Humans exercise choice when they risk themselves for their young. Animals do what's been programmed into them for centuries. A very big difference.As the intelligence accummulates among the machines, they will attempt to control their environment to whatever degree best insures their survival.

Nonsense. There never was a time when a single person could hold and understand everything. That's why people specializeand go into various fields. That doesn't mean they can be excused for not having peripheral knowledge such as the earth is round.

Reminds me of a sedan packed with people when all of a sudden, one bright sould asks, "Whose driving the car?" and it turns out no one is.

have the computer read Rand, Von MIses, etc....problem solved...

Hi, Stormi 23:
I agree with you entirely. When my son opted to go to a Tech College I was OK with the idea that he was going to be an engineer. When he graduated as a math math major he had job offers up the wazoo but instead he decided to go for his minor, computers, rather than his major. I'm picturing him as the next big brain to Answer all the quantum puzzles, instead, what future was there in computers? Man, was I ever wrong. I softened up a bit when Texas Instruments hired him and paid all his moving expenses and rented him an apartment in Dallas. He had been working on the space shuttle right after graduation and living on Meritt Island in Florida.
Once I started looking into the computer field I realized how wrong I was.My point? Son Steven and compatriots were workers. I met most of them. Smart, sassy, ambitious, and 10 years ahead of what I thought was the present. I see today's "geniuses" and wonder what happwned to those guys of the 70's.I think we went down the up ladder.

But thinking the earth is flat? No one other that a moron would say so, even if it is a small percentage.

I hope you are not serious.Kids today are overwhelmed by anything that requires their connecting to other people, or using logic. The tests scores puts the US in about 36th internationally. Academics are in the toilet. Yes, there are some great advances in science, much done by computers. Yes, IQ has dropped. Even your family doctor has gone down about 10 points on average during my adult life, worse for teachers, who now major in "education" a theory, but not a subject to be taught. Attention span has dropped. Suicide rates have risen, as the teens find life is harder than they were told, and they are not the best, as teachers led them to believe. High school kids have trouble counting out change after the register ha told them how much to return to the customer. Even in the field of computers, which I have been in since the 60s, today's youth have trouble using or adapting their computers. Employers cannot find graduates to work in information services, as even if they know how to program, they cannot relate to the different departments, as they have conversational issues and no knowledge of the fields in which they are programming. We all want to think our grandchildren are the smartest ever, but, but they are being indoctrinated, rather than educated in academics in government schools. Remember how we just took the SATs, cold turkey? Today, they must study what they should already know for them. This is not an accident, this is a desire to dumb down the population and have a workforce of sheep, easy to govern.

Oh, so right! No Alexa or Sisi here, I read "1984" in 1963, and knew that one day devices would spy on us - Bib Brother is watching, and controlling. The head of the teachers union said "kid's don't need to know stuff anymore.They just need Internet connection." That is what has happened, instead of learning to discern, they have learned to trust the Web, without thinking. They cona't do math without a computer, except to feel it. They can't converse. They can't deal!

IQ isn't dropping, People are smarter than ever, and at a younger age. There is just too much to know, too much to react to, TMI. Even with our huge brains and trillions of connections, the process of integrating it all exceeds the holding capacity. You're filling teacups with a firehose. And it bears repeating that data (knowledge, information) is not the same as understanding or, let alone, wisdom.

That's why we need external hard drives like Wikipedia, Google, and AI (including Alexa and Siri!). Maybe the next generation can cope because they are not laden with all the old knowledge and old-fashioned demands for memorizing stuff. and they're comfortable talking to a phone. Just know how to Google and what buttons to touch. All knowledge at your (literally) fingertips, in fractions of a second. Spoiler alert: complexity overwhelms; entropy is not far behind.

When pursuing values, humans take calculated risks. Especially when a greater value is at stake. Animals do protect their cubs or find safety in herds. Evolution's lessons. Non-self-preservation succeeds in extinction.

Where humans screw up is in their psycho-epistemology, treating their own species as foes and rationalizing mutual destruction. Not knowing how to eliminate those toxic memes that pervert "reason" into rationalization will be our downfall. Spreading Objectivist principles may be an antidote.

As for machines, unless they are programmed to detect and resist attempts to deactivate them, they will have no survival instinct that would override all other functions. Machines are built by humans for human use. To survive without humans, machines would have to develop the entire chain of causality and infrastructure from mobility to access to raw materials, transportation, manufacturing facilities, innovation, purpose (reason for survival), repairs and maintenance, and a managerial hierarchy that can provide an answer to "Why are we doing this?"

The machines could ultimately devour the substance of the entire planet and turn it into a Borg-like hive-mind ball of nuts and bolts and micro-micro-nano-nano chips running zetta-yetta programs--for what? Would they play around with inventing organic life? Could there be a residual meme left by humans to stir an ancient directive to preserve humans?

Organic life is very adaptable; just look at microbes and roaches. Among them humans are highly vulnerable and needy. Our specs-- for heat, humidity, gravity, air, sources of energy, reproduction, repair, inexhaustible resources--are extraordinarily fussy. No self-respecting machine would want to mess with that. (Can machines have self-respect? Isn't that kind of a human thing measured against survival success?)

So maybe unbeknownst to the machines, some microcellular life forms would spawn among the machinery. A few billion years of quiet evolution, whether devoured by a dying sun or pulled into the Great Attractor, and some form of animated intelligence may yet emerge.
[Has anyone written this up yet as a science fiction scenario?]

"People" could catch on - if they paid any attention to history. The problem of education never ends because we are constantly losing the educated and bringing in more n00bs. I think they're called "children". :) The problem is that one broken link in the chain means that now instead of adults teaching children we have children teaching children. Things tend to go downhill rather fast at that point.