Richard Feynman was an amazing person. He was already sick with cancer and still took on this crucial role to find out what really happened.

*quality

I'm currently reading "Superintelligence" by Nick Bostrom and it's pretty *fear inducing.

If we ever do hit the singularity... it doesn't really matter what we do.

First up, if it's an AGI is to be any use, it needs to be at least as smart as us. Which means, by definition, it will be capable of writing its own AGI.

There are any number of nightmare scenarios where even a seemly benevolent goal might be disastrous for humanity.

"Multivac, fix the environment!"
"Ok, what's the major issue with the environment?"
/wipes out humanity

"Multivac, solve the Riemann hypothesis!"
"Ok, but I'll need a lot of processing power"
/converts entire planet to a giant cpu

Even if, by some miracle, we end up developing a benevolent AI that understands our needs and is aligned with them, (e.g. the Culture Minds), we are no longer in control.

We might be along for the ride, but we're certainly not driving.

The other thing that's interesting is a question of scale. We tend to think of intelligence in human terms, like this.

infants..... children.....mentally impaired..Sarah Palin.....normal people.....Neil deGrasse Tyson.....Feynman, Einstein, Newton, etc.

But that ignores all the lower intelligences:

bacteria...Trump......insects.....sheep.....dogs...chimps, dolphins, etc............................... dumb human..smart human.

But from a superintelligence's point of view, the scale looks more like this
bacteria.. humanity ... Tesla ................................................... ..................................................................................................
..................................................................................................
............................................................................................. AI

I love the way this works. I first heard about it from Richard Feynman here:
https://videosift.com/video/How-a-Train-Stays-on-a-Track-not-as-simple-as-you-thought

This is an excellent explanation for someone of his age and his skill with video editing obviously helps a lot. It held my interest, the world needs more entertaining and educating videos like these.

My only criticism - and some youtubers have already pointed this out - is that the explanation of time dilation "..the same bodily change that happens on earth takes much longer to occur when you are moving so fast.." is wrong.

Signals sent within the body can be analogous to a clock - any fixed duration measured between two ~lightspeed reference frames will be different, including seconds measured by an atomic clock - but time dilation specifically has nothing to do with the mechanics behind how you measure the time or the time it takes a signal to travel. It's a property of the nature of spacetime. Time itself actually slows down. There's no 'trick' to understanding how or why, it's just a property that it has. We can forgive him because he'd already demonstrated that physics is the same in any inertial reference frame and there is no "preferential" reference frame; therefore the motion of the reference frame can't be responsible for the observed difference, so he obviously already really knew all this.

There's no shame in getting that wrong, because he'll be taught more and better about it as he progresses through school. Generally the arbitrary subjects are the hardest to live with because you just have to accept them as they are rather than 'understand'. Quantum mechanics is the same - you just have to accept the rules and apply the maths. Everyone struggles with it, even Feynman said "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

What a truly beautiful, inspirational, human being.
I couldn't figure out who he reminded me of until 8 mins in. And it is my hero, the genius, Richard Feynman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjmtJpzoW0o This man is a Geordie version..;)

I bet you're remembering the clip of Richard Feynman explaining that function here on the sift?
http://videosift.com/video/How-a-Train-Stays-on-a-Track-not-as-simple-as-you-thought

I remember being fascinated by that. I don't think it has anything to do with this function in bicycles, but on the other hand I had no idea that was how trains stayed centered over the tracks either...

Seems as though she's paraphrased Feynman's video.

Instinctively, I know it's a reflection. What is closest to the plane of the mirror on one side will appear closest to the plane on the refection. We don't flip horizontal or vertically, we reflect. What is on our right stays to the right, and what is left, stays to to the left.
I love Feynman, and I can listen to him for hours. but I didn't need his discussion to understand it either.

From a scientific point of view, I suppose it's good to lay it out. A solid foundation is the best thing to build off of, and finding the words to describe seemingly abstract ideas is always a challenge. This one was easy, but I know they get harder.

Watch Feynman. He was the true genius of the 20th century.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'element 118, richard feynman, physicist, honors, chemistry, physics' to 'element 117, richard feynman, physicist, honors, chemistry, physics' - edited by RhesusMonk

I think this is a very important point. I watched a movie about the Challenger disaster yesterday with Richard Feynman on the committee. Richard Feynman was some sort of kook, who asked the experts at NASA what was the failure rate of the Challenger. They said there was a 1 in 100,000 chance that a Space Shuttle would fail catastrophically (Destroyed and all Crew Dead). Feynman knew that was "a wish" because that would mean if you launched Space Shuttles every day it would be 274 years until one failed (on average). Furthermore he polled the engineers of the shuttles and their numbers were 1 in 200 some as low as 1 in 50.

You throw numbers at people and a lot of times they don't know what to do with them. How to categorized what they're hearing. And if you throw science at them which specifically NASA was doing to the public to try and confuse them, it takes a brilliant mind such as Feynmans to explain in basic terms what is going on.

The same method to determine whether or not the world is heading for serious ecological collapse is why we are all standing here today. Why our medicines work, why our machines work, why the little rectangles that we gaze at all day bring us the entire world.

If you are curious about this sort of thing, and you come at it with an open mind and work off of a basis of scientific knowledge to understand the world, you will come to the conclusion that global climate change is happening and it's getting very serious. If you come at this with cynicism, or superiority, or especially politics you won't get it and that's on you, not science.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Cruel Bombs, nuclear weapons, tests, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Bikini, Feynman, vsauce' to 'Cruel Bombs, nuclear weapons, tests, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Bikini, Feynman, vsauce, ww2' - edited by xxovercastxx

Feynman- What is fire? has been added as a related post - related requested by braschlosan.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Feynman-What-is-fire

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