scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/3m7ors.md

[BST] How would you deal with gaining a Tinker/"Mad Scientist" power?

• Author: u/MugaSofer *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3m7ors/bst_how_would_you_deal_with_gaining_a_tinkermad/

• Score: 14

• Created: 2015-09-24T16:02:59

Post:

• You can build technology several generations ahead of it's time.
• You can't break the laws of physics.
• You can't explain how it works; anyone attempting to understand your designs must work it out from first principles.
• Nobody else can repair or maintain your designs.
• Nobody else understands which parts of your process are essential and which are incidental, and it's too complicated for you to explain.

What would you do? Can you still swing a Randi Prize?

Comments:

u/m1el [+18] (37 minutes later)

Many, many problems have faster solutions with computational tech that is generations ahead. Creating an extremely powerful computer would allow me to push computational chemistry ages forward. Advances in medicine, materials, etc.

Self-replicating robots also sounds fun: conquer the rest of Sol, build self-replicating ships from asteroids and conquer the Milky Way.

u/rineSample [+3] (an hour later)

Same here. I would absolutely build Asimov's Multivac.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+16] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)

Construct Carlos Wu's Autodoc from the later Bey Shaeffer/Louis Wu novels.

I would stay the ^%&%^&%^* away from James Randi. I don't want him stealing my psychic powers.

u/None [+9] (3 hours later)

[deleted]

u/ArgentStonecutter [+10] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (3 hours later)

  Oh dear where did the meta go
  Shif-ting memes give me vertigo
  Fan fic-tion's shifted the paradigm
  Randi's no longer so fair...

Needs work...

u/None [+15] (2 hours later)

The "can't break the laws of physics" restriction seems a bit arbitrary. I mean, this is mad science. And odds are if it follows the laws of physics, anyone should be able to work out how stuff works with math and a working prototype.

Besides, it might not break the laws of physics, but it might use them in a way we can't conceive of yet. People used to think that heavier than air flight was impossible to achieve for humans.

u/MugaSofer [+5] (2 hours later)

You're right.

u/None [+12] (2 hours later)

Make the simplest possible devices demonstrating your principles and send them to scientists from every tangentially related field of study. You can do other things too, but this is a priority.

Also, modular designs. Can you make machines such that if a part breaks, they can just send you a request for component 26-alpha-b and connect themselves?

u/Nighzmarquls [+2] (3 hours later)

After that building a factory that builds the parts would be a priority.

u/ulyssessword [+8] (an hour later)

I would focus on meta-technologies. Computers that can fold proteins, advanced materials (or better yet, factories that make the materials), scanning and sensory devices and anything else that produces useful information and materials where it doesn't matter what it's origins are.

u/puesyomero [+5] The Culture (an hour later)

I would focus on safe power generators, self repairing machines and if reasonably certain I could do it right, friendly AI. on reflection it would be wiser to work first on enhancing my intellect to properly understand the principles and consequences behind my creations and not blunder into a catastrophe.

u/Uncaffeinated [+6] (9 hours later)

Make a device that explains its own principle of operation.

u/Sceptically [+1] (21 hours later)

Like in the last panel?

u/Uncaffeinated [+2] (22 hours later)

I hadn't heard of it.

I was thinking more of theoretical research into program obfuscation, where the standard counterexample is essentially that you can't obfuscate a program which prints out its own source code (the actual details are a bit more technical).

u/Sceptically [+2] (a day later)

Here, have some source code:

>+++++++++[<++++++++>-]<.>++++++[<+++++>-]<-.+++++++..+++.>>
+++++++[<++++++>-]<++.------------.<++++++++.--------.+++.------.--------.
>+.>++++++++++.

u/xamueljones [+1] My arch-enemy is entropy (a day later)

Oh dear, you had to bring up Brainfuck.

It's very aptly named....freaking programmers....

u/Sceptically [+2] (a day later)

You prefer Whitespace?

u/xamueljones [+5] My arch-enemy is entropy (2 days later)

ಠ_ಠ

And here I thought Brainfuck was the worst....after a little research, I have concluded that Brainfuck is actually the BEST of all the more... esotric languages such as Whitespace, Lolcode, INTERCAL, Befunge, and Malbolge.

After all, Brainfuck is only using 4 characters while the other programs are using crazy things like only three types of whitespace characters, Internet memes as commands, two-dimensional coding where you have to 'map' out a program instead of writing it linearly in one-dimension, or actually self-modifying it's own code to make it difficult to understand.

I said it before, and I'll say it again...freaking programmers...and I'm in training to become one.

I'm a fool!

u/Sceptically [+1] (2 days later)

Self-modifying code is actually more common in the wild than you'd think. Some of the better viruses, for example, have made use of it for decades.

u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (2 days later)

That's true, but I was talking about Malbolge where all code you write in that language is automatically self-modifying.

u/captainNematode [+2] (3 hours later)

How's this prohibition on explanation work? Am I struck mute when trying to write down or discuss how I've built things? Can people observe me while I work extra slowly on my technology? Do I understand how any of it works or which bits are essential and incidental, or am I building stuff in some sort of dissociative fugue or magically summoning them from the aether or something? Does understanding of the technology require intuitions concerning 97-dimensional hyperphysics or w/e, or is it in principle graspable by merely human minds?

Anyway, I'd try integrate myself into the broader research community. Maybe make something marketable and use it to make a bit of startup capital or persuade investors, and then hire scientists from all the fields tangential to my persuasion. If I don't understand how my tech works but I do "make" it myself, I'd try to iteratively vary the construction process and distill the important components from the unimportant. No single human has complete understanding of how, say, a laptop works. Science and engineering are a collaborative enterprise, and hopefully I could work alongside the great minds of many fields to reverse engineer, bit by bit, how all the components of my magic tech work. Reed Richards, when partnered with researchers far smarter (in a real sense, not a technomagic sense) than him, won't be useless for long.

u/Jiro_T [+8] (4 hours later)

Some fiction uses the idea that mad scientists and tinker types don't actually create devices that use scientific principles at all--rather their own mind is unconsciously powering the devices psychically. Is your mad scientist character like one of these, or is he building devices that work based on normal science, but just doesn't understand them once he's done making them?

u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+3] Roll the Dice on Fate (5 hours later)

I would focus on robotic systems capable of building and maintaining each other. Who cares if no-one can copy or repair my designs? I'll just make the whole thing do that by itself. Then it could von-neuman and create dozens of factories from my technology, making whatever it is I programmed it to make. Super advanced materials, computronium, whatever.

There would, of course, be safety protocols to stop it pulling a skynet.

u/scruiser [+3] CYOA (7 hours later)

Several people have mentioned the obvious stuff already... For a more specialized answer, build a limited AI that automatically records and analyzes what I am doing, so that I can get around the whole nobody being able to replicate it issue.

u/chaosmosis [+3] and with strange aeons, even death may die (7 hours later)

Nobody else understands which parts of your process are essential and which are incidental, and it's too complicated for you to explain.

I feel like if you built many different designs, you might be able to show via example which parts mattered and how they worked. This is device A that does X, this is device A1, this is device A2, etc.

Also, despite the rules of Worm, it makes little sense to say that all tinker devices must break over time and thus require maintenance. Just build something very robust, or something very modular and simple that doesn't require understanding to be maintained. What kind of idiot genius are you, anyway?

As a last resort, you could possibly build repair robots that are designed to also repair each other. So long as they don't all break at once you should hopefully be okay, and have indefinitely maintained technology.

u/MugaSofer [+5] (22 hours later)

Also, despite the rules of Worm, it makes little sense to say that all tinker devices must break over time and thus require maintenance. Just build something very robust, or something very modular and simple that doesn't require understanding to be maintained.

That's possible. I think the idea in Worm was that focusing on that as a design goal meant sacrificing other things - and of course everything breaks down eventually - but there were characters who did stuff like that. Containment foam worked fine, for instance.

u/bobyn123 [+2] (6 hours later)

Clearly the only sane answer is to raise a robot army, all of when are capable of sentience, then tell them to conquer the world in 24 hours.

u/robryk [+2] (3 days later)

I would first create a simulation of me.

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