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[smirk]

Of course, there's also been various distributed computing science projects that anybody could donate cpu power to over the internet for years already.

Yup! I've been running BOINC for years now; SETI@home and a couple others. Though I imagine just renting Amazon's hardware for a while would be much less of a logistical headache for shorter-term projects. But the structure is there already, like a loving, benevolent botnet.

[Max White]

So, to relate to the topic at hand... How long before I can rent out peoples intelligence to enhance my own for a given time?

[Frumple]

... just as soon as you incorporate and get up enough money to pay people to work for you, and enough money to pay the lawyers that make sure the entirety of those people's creative works are legally yours.

[Max White]

You know I think I just thought of the script for a new Neill Blomkamp movie...

In a future where the rich have unparalleled access to the worlds greatest intellects, and the poor aren't given the chance to think for themselves.

Seriously, renting minds is the best pretentious social commentary thingy yet!

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Let me guess: It ends when Matt Damon leads the poor on a righteous quest to eat all the rich people's brains.

[Max White]

Best. Movie. EVER.

[misko27]

You know I think I just thought of the script for a new Neill Blomkamp movie...

In a future where the rich have unparalleled access to the worlds greatest intellects, and the poor aren't given the chance to think for themselves.
Seriously, renting minds is the best pretentious social commentary thingy yet!

It seems like it would fall hugely flat logically, as the point of these things tends to be "We are all equal", when in that situation the rich would be leagues above any protagonist, and presumably the viewer, so either the movie would have to portray them as prone to ridiculous mistakes (which would be easily avoidable to an actual person of massive wealth and intelligence) or make the protagonist a rogue one of these (which still has the problem that these people should be so far above us in intelligence as to be wholly inscrutable), or perhaps getting help from one of these ultra-rich people (which defeats the purpose).

I mean, these would be unethical people of massive wealth and unparalleled intellect. They'd steamroll anyone who could even consider stopping them. Given that they could augment themselves in other ways, these would be humans-as-gods powered by a permanently enslaved forsaken underclass (whom they could simply reduce to brains in jars), as robots do what the poor once did.  That would be an interesting book or movie, but it'd be pretty bleak.

Or it could be brain-eating, whatever.

[Tack]

Why not just use electronic hardware?

I wouldn't mind a wireless adapter linking me up to a few gigaflops of extra storage.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Why not just use electronic hardware?

I wouldn't mind a wireless adapter linking me up to a few gigaflops of extra storage.

And you aren't the first.

[LordBucket]

your brain isn't actually equip to see UV at all really, just the white distortion of all the other colors
from UV radiation. It thinks it is looking at white!

I suspect this might be a failure on the part of language to describe what these people are experiencing, rather than a failure of the brain to process the information. We have a word for white, blue, etc. and we all know the experience that is associated with those colors. We don't really have a word for the color that is UV and a conveniently agreed upon experience for it.

Even if the brain is processing a unique experience for the input of UV, it would be difficult to communicate that to someone who hadn't experienced it.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Sure we have a word for it: ultraviolet.

I haven't heard of the people describing it as "well, this doesn't really fit, but white-blue-white-violet". It's just "white-blue-white-violet".

[LordBucket]

Sure we have a word for it: ultraviolet.

Ok, but what colors is ultraviolet? Describe it to me, please. And if you saw it...would you know it was ultraviolet unless someone told you? Also keep in mind that we have one word "ulraviolet" for a frequency range, but the experience that is that range might not be singular. For example, if you look at "red" on a light chart, you'll see several different shades that could reasonably be described as red, and it's a more or less smooth transition that's difficult to say here is where it's "red" and here is where it's "magenta." UV is probably similar.

I haven't heard of the people describing it as "well, this doesn't really fit, but
white-blue-white-violet". It's just "white-blue-white-violet".

And I haven't heard anyone try to describe it at all. But if they were to try...I can see how it might be difficult.

[Max White]

You would recognize it as something new though. While it would be impossible to actually describe, it would be easy to give the description of "impossible to describe".

I get it, you really want to be able to see a new color that easily, but wishful thinking doesn't make it true.

[LordBucket]

It came up earlier in the thread that the brain adapts to new inputs very easily. I see no reason to suspect it wouldn't be true in this case.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's not the problem. The problem is that we have trichromatic vision. Even if the brain does possess the level of neuroplasticity necessary (and that's not a certainty), you at least need to augment human vision to be tetrachromatic (technically we are, but that's just from rods and cones coexisting in a very small window of light conditions). Fortunately, tetrachromatic vision has been documented as an existent mutation, so this is a lot less difficult than most projects of this sort.

No, the difficulty is finding a rare true tetrachromatic human and convince her (odds are high that it's a her) to have her eye lens removed in the name of science.