VERY nice clip. Surprised to see Professor Freeman Dyson there. I just met the man just a days ago. We were both heading to the same place, and accompanied him to a talk near Harvard College. He was among a few other amazing speakers. They discussed the future of mankind, the search for exoplanets, detecting live elsewhere and the like.

>> ^NetRunner:
Aging death was created through natural selection amongst the original immortal organisms, IMO.

Aging death was not likely an evolutionary selection. DNA has improved its ability to replicate without error and to self-repair, not the other way around. But of course, there are still things that muck up DNA beyond its capabilities (e.g., excessive UV radiation). So biological systems still break down frequently.


Maybe the key is for us all to get very, very small. That or lots of space travel. Or Dyson Spheres. I think based on our society right now, we're more likely to digitize and shrink down, since it's cheaper, and we're all about cost effectiveness.
Eventually we'll do the Dyson Sphere, but probably not until we've hit some unimaginably high population, like 100 trillion people maybe.

I think you've got the answer in the first part there. By the time we have the technology to build a Dyson sphere, we won't need it.

Aging death was created through natural selection amongst the original immortal organisms, IMO.

Before aging, evolution took too long. Once a species started having death through aging, the ancestors would cease to consume resources, allowing its slightly more evolved young to have more. In a short period of time, species with short lifetimes would evolve much more quickly, and gain tremendous advantage over species with long lifetimes.

That's why the dominant life form on earth is bacteria and viruses, to this day.

Humans might be able to come up with a way to make our evolution self-directed, and possible within individual living organisms (ourselves), which would make death unnecessary from an evolutionary standpoint.

Depending on how we deal with the carrying capacity of the Earth when people are immortal will be key in how we settle the question of what we do with immortality.

Maybe the key is for us all to get very, very small. That or lots of space travel. Or Dyson Spheres. I think based on our society right now, we're more likely to digitize and shrink down, since it's cheaper, and we're all about cost effectiveness.

Eventually we'll do the Dyson Sphere, but probably not until we've hit some unimaginably high population, like 100 trillion people maybe.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

^That's my personal belief on why we don't see the ETs. When the virtual becomes as real as the real - civilizations turn inward. If you can create a virtual galaxy simulated down to the atomic level - why bother with real space. For one thing FTL travel would be no problem in the simulated galaxy.

For that matter, we may be living in one now. To simulate a galaxy at the atomic level- we're talking about Dyson spheres of computronium.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'TED, Dyson, Thermonuclear, Saturn, Space, Orion' to 'TED, George Dyson, Dyson, Thermonuclear, Saturn, Space, Orion' - edited by kulpims

yup. Freeman Dyson. Lick that man!

Yeah Freeman Dyson is the man. So imagine each one of those explosions is a low yield nuclear payload being shot out the back of the spacecraft at regular intervals with the shockwave bouncing off a well designed aluminum pusher plate.

Would have been an amazing launch to witness.

I thought Dyson already had his hands full developing Skynet

upvote solely for the comment on gay marriage ... the dyson is becoming a problem

*Comedy and *viral for sure, but absolutely not cute. (Please read the FAQ.) *nochannel

Was that a Dyson?

Maybe we can attract more women to VideoSift by tagging all the videos submitted "oprah", "dyson", "sanjaya" and "hunk".

I keed! I keed!