December 04, 2008
Kleptotechnology, ergonomic guns, medical sf and quantum undecidability
A few things I just ran across:
Ask Nature - the Biomimicry Design Portal: biomimetics, architecture, biology, innovation inspired by nature, industrial design - Ask Nature - the Biomimicry Design Portal: biomimetics, architecture, biology, innovation inspired by nature, industrial design - a portal aiming at organising cool and useful solutions to problems where nature already has workable solutions. Slick interface, already some useful information. I'm just concerned with how easy it will be to fill it: while people with particular interests might curate some pages, the ideal process would be to have someone or something scan every new (and old!) biology paper for a solution that fits into the taxonomy and then add it.
The FDA-approved handgun makes Spider Jerusalem's "prescription truncheon" a reality. If one believes the right to bear arms is important, clearly people with arthritis should be helped. But as a commenter on MedGadget points out, it does not look enough like a gun to be useful as a deterrent, and this might reduce its utility quite a lot. I also have a suspicion that it is hard to aim.
Also on MedGadget: their 2008 medical sf contest. "Different Day, Same Chip" may not be too exciting, but it does caricature an all-too likely possibility. "30 Minutes of Clinical Ethics" suggests where all the bioethicists will end up. Maybe having deciders around is not a bad idea, except that I see a lot of potential for blameshifting. "APA 4000" is the kind of story that makes singularitarians happy, without even having any superintelligence around.
And then there is Mathematical undecidability and quantum randomness. A cute little paper that theoretically and experimentally demonstrates that you can tell decideable from undecideable propositions apart by making quantum mechanical measurements on a corresponding system. Except that the undecidability isn't the full Gödel-kind, but a more garden variety kind where information limited axioms cannot constrain the formal system enough to handle even fairly everyday questions. Still, it is an interesting idea.