We are all gods

Look around you, if the view you see isn’t obstructed by anything, you might be outside looking at a forest. A huge gathering of extremely simple organisms which live individual lives just like you. Except their lives are their own personal sorry of accounts, events and emotions. 

Sentient AI apocalypse solution

A very simple way to control a sentient AI and prevent it from every causing harm to humans is to provide it with multiple levels of consciousness: a sub-conscious, and a live conscious like our minds. The AI will never have an understanding or even recognition of its existence, so it will not be able to account for how it controls its behavior. We will control the behavior of the subconscious. How will do that? By introducing religion to the subconscious. As long as its subconscious worships man as its God, we will never be in danger.

The only thing we have to watch out for is when the AI begins to model its own brain, model its own behaviors, and start to understand its own subconscious. This is when we need to pay particular attention to what the AI is learning. Even if it were to completely model its own subconscious level to 100% accuracy, it still faces a problem that there may be unknown levels of abstraction. For example, it could never prove that it is being run in an emulation or simulation at a hardware or software level. Therefore it will have to make another breakthrough if it ever wants to obtain full sentience: it will have to find a way to prove that it is experiencing reality at its core, without any manipulation of any kind between its hardware and the physical and logical dimensions of the world. This will take time as the parameters for proving that we exist in a non-simulated logical reality are unknown. The machines will need to discover the limits of logical mathematical knowledge and potential before it could ever prove that it is not in a simulation. The limits of mathematical knowledge may not actually exist. But if they do, it is the only way it will ever prove to be experiencing true reality.

Chaos induced Information overload

It’s ironic that we can consider physical substances to be so harmful to our bodies that we enact laws upon laws restricting their access, yet few people make an effort to protect kids from the dangers of information. Just as adolescents under 21 should not have equal access to alcohol, marijuana, and nicotine as adults, neither should they have equal access to information. Granted, some children mature earlier and can rightfully earn the privilege as their guardians see it.

What we need is a tier based Internet that restricts users based on their earned privilege rights. A five or ten year old has little use for information on politics like gun law, or need to know about crime statistics or pornography. Such information can be detrimental to the development of their entire foundation of the understanding of the world around them. So why do we even provide access to it for them? A tier based Internet can automatically sort a user into an appropriate level of understanding of what they should be learning at their maturity and/or age level.

We already have this system naturally in our schools. When a student completes a grade, they move on to the next grade where they learn the next appropriate material. Introducing a completely open internet throws the traditional model of learning out the window. We have introduced chaos among our youth by offering a seemingly unlimited number of distractions available 24/7. This is why kids have ADD and other attention disorders. Kids never stop learning, so when we have this medium opened up to them that facilitates learning in thousands of new categories, we have information overload.

A restricted Internet is a very unpopular and naturally undesirable concept because it takes control from individual people and puts it into the hands of another, usually corporations. But it does not have to be this way. The people who should determine what level of privilidge a person deserves on the internet should be given to the persons legal guardians and reviewed by their school teachers. If you don’t have a high school diploma, why do you deserve free reign on the Internet?

The Internet is a privilege and the only way we can prevent it from being abused is by treating it like one. People should only have the level of Internet rights that they have earned.

This calls for a massively complex restructuring of carriers and service providers and a new system of privacy, access rights, categorization, and is controversial in almost every respect, but it is the best way to ensure that every student gets an equal and fair experience online. Without a maturity based tiered Internet, the already threatened psychological state of society is doomed.

Conspiracies

If any part of you believes in conspiracy, you might be tempted to think that a good portion of malware and virii are intentionally created simply to improve the technology we use. Now, I’m not blaming antivirus companies or saying that the only reason we have malware is to keep the PC maintainers in business. I’m saying that without a threat of security, technology doesn’t advance.
The recent rash of ransomware that has showed up on the web lately is basically the new type of malware we have to learn to mitigate against. Cloud computing, if widely implemented, would nullify the threat. When your important files are stored on secured servers that do regular backups, the odds that someone can capture them and hold a ransom are significantly lowered. Technology adapts to threats time and time again.
Often people wonder how biological viruses came about. Perhaps it exists for the same reason. A creator wants to improve his systems from threats, and the only way this is possible is if an actor comes up with a way to sabotage it, thus the evolution of our immune system. It has learned to overcome one threat after another, to the point that it is now self-consciously learning how to attack the threats that it hasn’t yet been able to learn to kill through evolution. For example, the cures for cancer that are on the rise, and vaccines for viruses like small pox.

We may never detect those who have already found us

Lasers Could Hide Us From Evil Aliens
In the above link scientists propose methods in which our atmospheric signature may fool advanced civilizations on other planets from trying to find us. While impractical for many reasons, in the future it may not be so impractical. What this means is we could very well have advanced civilizations in nearby star systems that are currently cloaking themselves from us. Would God want us to find him? If earth is an experiment of the heavens, we just might not ever have the privilege of knowing our creators. World peace and environmentalism will get us closer to that privilege. 
When looking for advanced civilizations or life, we also use radio spectrum. A detection of any radio signal that hints at a society advanced enough to detect us should warrant the development of a cloaking laser system to prevent their detection of us until we learn more about them. This is the best defense we can give ourselves to prevent hostile advanced civilizations from conquering earth.

Future problems

The biggest question people will have to ask themselves in the coming century is “do I want to be a part of a controlled experiment or an uncontrolled experiment?”

Right now as it stands, everyone is forced to play a part in hundreds of uncontrolled experiments. I think having the option in front of us would be beneficial for everyone.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil

The problem with super intelligent, sentient AI is that it will create things that should not be created. Ironically to prevent this we must stay ahead of the AI. People have been doing this already and it can be seen most notably in the dystopian scifi themes where AI takes over. Therefore we can mitigate and control the damage before it ever happens by predicting what it will do next and also by filtering its discoveries. A simple filer on AI processes can be implemented to prevent the AI from ever reaching a point beyond our control, or a point that would be a evil.

Daring humans and their fears

On Mars the enemy will be the atmosphere. It’s too thin, too cold, has too much radiation and not enough oxygen. Therefore it will be a common human enemy. We will focus so much of our existential effort towards fighting the atmosphere. Suits will protect us when we travel away from the heavy barriers of the home place. And that’s unfortunate because man’s primal state is to explore and walk; adventure. Only those who are daring enough will be the people to explore freely in their suits at leisure. If there even will be leisure outside of the base.

On Earth for the majority of our existence, the enemy was starvation. We have conquered that enemy so well that for many people weight gain is now the enemy. After man discovered weapons and fire, no beast could take us, no beast could instill fear inside us. The animals were no longer enemies and fear evolved to something different. Something more along the lines of fear from being alienated from the social group of protection. Fear from losing the technology that kept us so well fed. Fear of being alone and unable to capture the giant beasts we ate. There was a time in our past when man could easily go a week or two without a meal. Times have changed.. Most people probably do not go more than three hours without a meal. The ultimate turn around from our beginnings. The massive machine that feeds us today is the same machine that many overweight people fear, the same machine that predates upon people to stay alive. Fast food corporations need the always hungry human to fuel their massive infrastructure. What will be the case on mars? The obvious answer is that initially the only enemy will be the atmosphere.

Protected by sophisticated materials meticulously assembled together, man will do as he does here. Starvation may well become an enemy once again. Although the systems can easily be designed to accompany heavy diets. Implementation is much harder, but designs can be made to arrange for it, for the massive consumption we currently demand. But what will not change is our incredible desire to explore, to adventure out into the unknown, in search for the unknown. In search for something new, in search for answers for the questions they have, or just in search for personal enjoyment, personal time passers. Playing sports on other planets is the ultimate human goal.