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[LordBucket]

Making unviable embryos

What do you mean unviable? They're totally viable. Here are some fully grown sheep carrying humanoid hearts and liver. Here are cows producing human breast milk. Here are goats that produce spider silk

This stuff is totally viable. And check the dates on some of those links. A few of them are over 5 years old.

replacing a relatively similar part of a biological
system (pig-to-human blood) does not human/animal hybrids make,
especially if you're talking about the kind of creepy furry-esq
thing I suspect you might be talking about.

That seems a rather arbitrary requirement, but even so...if they're making sheep with human livers and so forth, how tough could it to make a human girl with cat ears and a tail?

Maybe they're not doing it, for ethical and legal reasons...but the technology is definitely there.

And if you're cherry picking specifically and exclusively the hybrid embyros, the article says they're destroying them to meet legal guidelines. Nowhere does it say they wouldn't continue to be viable past the legal date.

Inducing Chimaerism I'll give you, but all of the other points still stand.

Of the other points in the post you're referring to:


Bionic man: you agreed it was possible, but pointed out the mechnical version wouldn't be as good as the biological version.

Watch this

Simply combine that with the implant videos already linked. Also check out the Kevin Warwick material regarding the implant he made that fed him ultrasonic input. Replacement eyes with low light vision, and vision into the infrared, and similar, is probably possible right now.


Moonbase: You agreed that we have the technology now, your only objection is that it would take 10 years to actually do. *shrug* Ok. So you agree we have the tech right now.


Immortality: This one is debatable, but the primary problem is the loss of telomeres on DNA, and that problem has basically been solved by the ability of stem cells to replicate indefinitely.

As to the rest:

We're within single digits of years of reasonable funded research of global telepathic communication, humanoid robots capable of passing the turing test, and again...so much else. We can probably have a post-scarcity world before the end of the decade if we really wanted to.

No we aren't, no we aren't, and no we aren't.

Single digits of years of reasonably funded research. That's obviously more difficult to give you links to demonstrate what I believe is possible in under ten years, but take a look at other things that have already been discussed. From the previous post, watch this video then compare that to any Asimo video from ten years ago and do some common sense checking. if what we already have improves as much as robots have improved in the past ten years, totally it's possible we could have mobile humanoid robots able to pass a turing test. As for global telepathy, I've already linked articles and videos showing most of the necessary ingredients. Now add in this video of a guy putting on a helmet and using it to type text by thinking about it.

Just add the wireless transmission of video, and the decoding of the ordinary brain-processed video linked in the previous post, hook the things up to the internet, and yeah...you've got global telepathy.

All of this stuff is possible. Maybe we will, maybe we won't actually do any particular one of them. I don't have a jetpack either. But all of this is totally possible, and your insistence that it isn't, that it "can't" happen, or that we "don't have" things we've had for 5-10 years already... is pretty much ridiculous. Take a good look at what already exists, and what has already existed for 5-10 years before you get too attached to beliefs of what may be possible in the future.

[alway]

Replacement eyes with low light vision, and vision into the infrared, and similar, is probably possible right now.

While I agree with most of what you said, this is false; though for different reasons than being unable to make a better one. You can buy cameras with much better resolution and such than we get with our eyes (as demonstrated in that excellent XCKD comic; our eyes are actually pretty terrible, but the processing smooths things over). The problem is the bit between the eye and the brain. The optic nerve does tons of processing on what we see before it reaches our brains. It's where prosthetic eyes currently are limited. In fact, there was a recent improvement demonstrated in mice; they used exactly the same camera and such as had previously been used, but added processing to mimic some of the function of the optic nerve, restoring enough sight for the mice to even recognize other mice. So, we aren't quite at the point of being able to create better prosthetic eyes than our natural eyesight, but we will be within 5-10 years or so.

However, the other general problem with the implant group I have is this: why? Outside of a few sorts of direct neural ports (ghost in the shell style), most technology would be better off used externally.  Implants would mean:
1. space constraints; you either need to clear out existing tissue or make it small enough to not impact it significantly
2. heat constraints; my CPU reaches and maintains temperatures in excess of 40C even with its cooling systems in place; put that in your body's tissue and you're going to have problems
3. rejection risk; if the bio-neutral coating wears out or is damaged at some point over several decades, you're going to require immediate emergency surgery to excise the implant
4. upgrade restraints; once it's in, you can't upgrade the hardware without surgery
among others.
Mobile technology also grows in parallel with the technologies which would be implantable. It would be restrained by none of the above limitations, with the only real restraint being where you put it. But wearable electronics and similar technologies pretty much solve that issue.

There is also another interesting possibility, though a bit farther down the road, and admittedly I haven't read up on it much, would be direct neural access via imaging and transcranial stimulation. Both of these exist today, but I'm pretty sure with some AI (and by this I mean AI in the general sense, not artificial minds sense) improvements, I suspect more careful analysis of data could result in technology nearly as good as neural implants without the implant, in a similar manner to how the Square Kilometer Array will combine its noisy, gap-filled data into a single coherent whole. At this point, both are plagued by being noisy data sets with lots of interference; but I suspect with additional study and application of AI methods, it could at least be improved from affecting a region of the brain to affecting a small chunk of neurons within that region.

[Loud Whispers]

Wasn't there a woman who had camera implants on her eyes? IIRC she had to get them removed because the batteries failed. And by failed I mean broke. While implanted on her skull.

[Scoops Novel]

Global telepathy would need us to completely understand the brain, and that going to be quite a while to say the least. The same thing goes for advanced AI.

[Blacksmith]

Limb prosthetics are already superior to natural limbs as well, in some ways. They aren't natural limbs, of course, but they do allow us to choose what trade-offs we make and optimize things a bit for a desired task. And most of the benefit comes from the fact that we can use expensive and fancy materials better than the body can manufacture.

And also, yes, our fucking production telepathy devices are terrible at the moment. First hand experiences there, and that was just for a basic MMI. However, there's quite a few impressive, if expensive, prototypes around, and the only thing preventing direct wireless brain-to-brain telepathy at the moment is that no one wants to learn to do so. It would probably be pretty damn hard! People have a hard time figuring out what their own brain is telling them, after all.

We may not have the technology, immediately, for some of these, but we are spending a pittance on researching most of them. If we wanted, we could probably even have really strong AI within a decade, and that's probably the toughest on there.

As far as "people being compensated for their work", you could always deal with them by ignoring them. We've got clear evidence that some people will make money off stuff not protected by copyright, and other people will produce without any need for compensation. So if it's really a big deal, we can just... stop. There are plenty of people who need nothing but Admiration as an incentive to produce.

[Scoops Novel]

Lordbucket, the floors is yours in my first contact thread. Should be interesting to get a mix of different views.

[Armok]

I'm with LordBucket on everything. You're the only sane person in this thread it seems. *brohoof*

[alway]

Interesting article about stealing data from people's minds: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/hacking-human-brain-personal-data-using-300-shelf-brain-scanner
Put a bunch of images on screen, look for a brain signal showing recognition of something in the image, then refine the images onscreen to narrow down the search. It could be done today using the Emotiv EEG headset. The other good point it works in is it could be done by integrating it into a game without the user being conscious their mind was being... mined... for info. Any game in which numbers feature (which is most games) could have extra numbers slipped in to search for recognition. 

Stuff relevant to implantation: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/cyborg-tissue-scaffold-fuses-transistors-and-artificial-cells
Scaffold on which tissue can grow while simultaneously monitoring electrical impulses within that tissue. A rather important component, since AFAIK, the major problem with neuro-interfacing chips thus far has been inability of the nerve cells to maintain their binding to the chip. If this manages to be able to interface neurons with electronics without that synapse-shriveling effect, it may be a really good step towards viable neural implants (as most are limited to about 100 days or so, last I checked, before the neuron's synapses stop interacting with them properly).

[Blacksmith]

We... don't really need any of that for a telepathy network at the moment. It's really just a money issue, plus the fact that surgey is expensive and most people don't really WANT a global telepathy network. And also the early adopters are gonna get shitty tech! No one wants shitty brain implants!

But seriously, telepathy is a solved problem. Unfortunately, it's a solved problem the same way jetpacks are a solved problem - you can't afford it, you don't know how to use it, and for practical reasons it's not all that useful.

[alway]

But seriously, telepathy is a solved problem. Unfortunately, it's a solved problem the same way jetpacks are a solved problem - you can't afford it, you don't know how to use it, and for practical reasons it's not all that useful.

No it isn't. We can monitor and stimulate nerves. You can send impulses like muscle controls or other stimulii external to the brain, but anything as far as thoughts go is farther in the future than strong AI. Thoughts and such exist on a higher level than the neurons; that is to say, a pattern of neuronal activity in one brain will not translate to the same thought if copied to a different brain. Being able to both fully decode and then re-encode something in the brain on the level required for anything useful, the symbolic level, requires A: an understanding of neurobiology far exceeding that required to create strong AI, and B: a way of noninvasively and repeatedly scanning a living brain for a complete mapping of thought process. That's damn near impossible, as it requires analyzing trillions of connections, their strengths, their full effects on the nerve cells they are attached to, etc; and it must be redone at the very least once a month, if not once a day or less, as the mapping changes as we form new memories and such. Also note that in doing such a mapping, you have just done the equivalent of uploading your consciousness to the computer in the form of an AI. And many, if not a large majority of the time, even the higher level symbolic representations can not be re-encoded in the framework of the second individual simply because of subtle difference in their thought processes.

[10ebbor10]

Besides, brains are in 3d, In order to scan and reproduce thoughts you need to put electrodes through the entire brain mass.

[LordBucket]

But seriously, telepathy is a solved problem. Unfortunately, it's a solved problem the same way jetpacks are a solved problem - you can't afford it, you don't know how to use it, and for practical reasons it's not all that useful.

No it isn't. We can monitor and stimulate nerves. You can send impulses like muscle controls or other stimulii external to the brain, but anything as far as thoughts go is farther in the future than strong AI. Thoughts and such exist on a higher level than the neurons; that is to say, a pattern of neuronal activity in one brain will not translate to the same thought if copied to a different brain. Being able to both fully decode and then re-encode something in the brain on the level required for anything useful, the symbolic level, requires A: an understanding of neurobiology far exceeding that required to create strong AI, and B: a way of noninvasively and repeatedly scanning a living brain for a complete mapping of thought process. That's damn near impossible, as it requires analyzing trillions of connections, their strengths, their full effects on the nerve cells they are attached to, etc; and it must be redone at the very least once a month, if not once a day or less, as the mapping changes as we form new memories and such. Also note that in doing such a mapping, you have just done the equivalent of uploading your consciousness to the computer in the form of an AI. And many, if not a large majority of the time, even the higher level symbolic representations can not be re-encoded in the framework of the second individual simply because of subtle difference in their thought processes.

There's so much wrong with this that I'm not going to bother going into it, but instead I'm going to dismiss it by pointing out the obvious: you're apparently using some particular definition of "telepathy" that is neither useful nor at all relevant to this discussion. There's no need to "understand" the brain, or convert thoughts, or decode anything. There's no need to analyze trillions of connections, or "map thought processes" or any of the stuff you're talking about at all.

If you can simply capture words from the verbal portion of the brain, transmit them via wireless connection and send them via vintage 1960s style email and allow others to receive email via that same wireless network and receive it in the audio and/or language processing centers of their brain...viola, you have telepathy.

The critical portion of that was already linked in one of my posts a few pages back in a video showing a guy wearing a strap on headpiece (no implant at all) that allowed him to type by thinking about letters. Give two people those headsets, hook them up to wireless internet and let them talk via any kind of instant messenger protocol and once again...viola, you have telepathy.

While you're at it, go watch the also previously linked videos showing brain to computer interfaces extracting what the visual cortex is perceiving to digital video. Send that via the same method.

If I can look at hot chicks on the beach, and stream a video of what I'm seeing along with text and/or speech and/or text-to-speech saying "wow she's hot!" to my buddy in another state in real time and have him receive it...all with neither of us moving a muscle, or touching any kind of external device like a  computer/phone/etc...as far as I'm concerned that qualifies as telepathy.

I don't even know what the point is of all this other stuff you're talking about.

One final point that it I hesitate to mention because you're liable to read it and forget about all of the above and focus on it to the exclusion of all else: Data is data. Understanding or "mapping" data is irrelevant. So long as you have a means of sending and receiving data the actual nature of the data is not very important, because a very simple learning process will allow humans to do the necessary processing.

For example...no, wait. Giving an example is actually kind of redundant, because all possible examples would demonstrate this. Right now you're looking at little squiggly lines of light and dark on a screen, and yet you've learned to process those squiggles as things like words, sounds, and concepts. There is no fundamental relationship between these squiggles and the ideas going through your head as you look at them. It is purely a learned means of communication.

If I can send something to your brain and you can receive it and send something back...we are capable of telepathy. It doesn't really matter what it is you're sending. Raw sound, images, video, heat maps, morse code, anything. Through practice you would be able to learn to use that medium for communication, just like you've learned to press sequences of buttons that have nothing to do with your thoughts to make squiggly lines that have nothing to do with your thoughts...yet nevertheless are able to communicate your thoughts. Or, just like you're able to vibrate your vocal chords in ways that have nothing to do with you thoughts to make sounds that have nothing to do with your thoughts...yet nevertheless are able to communicate your thoughts.

It is no different.

[alway]

In that case, our definitions of what telepathy is are different. If you can't do anything more advanced than a cell phone, while simultaneously taking much more effort to learn how to do it, I don't see that as telepathy in a way in which anything useful is added when compared to it not being utilized. When I think of useful telepathy, I think of telepathy that adds something these other devices are incapable; namely, transmission of thoughts, not just words or other stimuli.

The problem with the method you demonstrated is that to do character-based transmission, you need to explicitly concentrate on each letter; an explicit spelling out of a word. This would take a rather long time to do anything with. That would likely be the case for any first or second generation of such technology. Now, further down the line, AI software would likely be able to work things out such that entire words could be used (as we usually think of full words, ignoring their spellings, when we think; or even when we type), which would make things faster.

However, it would still be fundamentally limited to language and similar stimuli without symbolic mappings. You could transmit a picture, but not the nuances of how looking at the image makes you feel. And here it isn't an issue of being able to train your brain to see it properly; you can't. That's because it isn't a stimuli being transferred, but rather a pattern of activity which may not be able to be duplicated within the setup of another brain. It would be like trying to explain the banking system to someone without a concept of personal property. You're sending a triggering stimuli, but not a meaning. It's like telling someone to press 'A5' on a jukebox and expecting them to hear the same melody playing from your jukebox. When in reality, their jukebox is loaded with entirely different songs, or doesn't even have an 'A5' at all. It's why Citizen Kane worked; at the start, the trigger 'Rosebud' is entirely meaningless to the audience. Only after the entire length of the film can the audience get any idea as to what that simple, 1 word trigger meant to the person saying it; and even then, they can only get some idea somewhat close to the meaning.

Or in summary, I don't really think it's deserving of the title 'telepathy' unless it is capable of transferring actual thoughts, not just the stimuli meant to trigger them.

[kaijyuu]

When I think telepathy, I think a sort of "sixth sense" type of communication. Non-verbal, non-visual, non-the-other-three.

Stimulating the auditory part of the brain (so you literally hear people talking to you, despite there being no sound) might still count though.

[MaximumZero]

Give me telepathy, and the ability to send made up visual/audio/tactile data, and DnD will be that much more awesome.