Comments on: BigDog

By: An amazing robot « ::: Think Macro :::

An amazing robot « ::: Think Macro ::: — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:43:25 +0000

[...] An amazing robot Recycling a video I first saw on Crooked Timber: [...]

By: Roy Belmont

Roy Belmont — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 04:21:42 +0000

No, taj, I love the machine. It’s the techno-chauvinism in some sections of the audience, that makes me puke. I love the 1989 Lotus Elan. I love my Asus dual-core that I built my ownself. My Geo Metro. My electric guitar. My Canon Rebel…
It’s the chauvinist cliches I’m speaking to.
Primary being ajay’s trope of “If you don’t like the automobile and its triumphant dominating presence you have to go directly back to the horse-drawn wagon, and contract polio.” As though progress is inevitably linear.
Alternate futures that incorporate robot donkeys that act like giant flies are fine with me, it’s this one I’m having trouble with.

By: taj

taj — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:23:58 +0000

As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, what is amazing about this is not necessarily that future wars will be fought with fewer donkeys.

The level of physical and environmental awareness that these folks have been able to pack into an autonomous unit can very well lead to safer vehicles and better traffic flow.

By: taj

taj — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:15:02 +0000

Roy, are you really this upset about a robot with legs?

By: Roy Belmont

Roy Belmont — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 05:19:07 +0000

They could lead to a career in politics as easily, or mainstream journalism.
Something does have to be the leading cause of death for children, and it happens to be traffic accidents. If it was gunshot wounds, as it is for a disgustingly high percentage of young black males, that were killing white children at the same consistent rate as car wrecks, every mother and father in the US would be screaming for immediate action. Deny that.
And thanks to some odd but happy coincidences virtually all children don’t know that car wrecks are killing them, and neither do most of their parents.
Though they do know, because they’ve been taught forcefully and vividly how bad illegal drugs are, and Muslim terrorists, and how much more wonderful life is today than it ever ever was ever before.
It could well be ajay’s right about this, they don’t have to know that cars are killing more children than anything else because it’s such a trivial thing, and such a natural thing now that all those diseases have been routed. So that instead of carrying on an immune system honed from generation to generation, they’re Darwined out randomly, the selection process being plain old bad luck, or an inability to read the future.
Like ajay, I’m a big fan of clear thought, but I’m likely a lot more tolerant of unclear thought than he is, since I’ve seen firsthand how easily minds can be damaged at the lower ends of this upside-down world. The idea that what you bring to the race is all that matters is insane, and profoundly inhuman. And very common in Wall Street and Washington.
Considering where we are now, dead oceans, dying glaciers, bizarre shifts in an increasingly unstable climate, arrogant crowing about the triumphs of modernity is past offensive, it’s bloody, and sociopathic.

By: ajay

ajay — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 23:44:01 +0000

Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death in the US for people under 30. That means children

Well, something has to be the leading cause of death for children under 30. That it is traffic accidents is really a consequence of the fact that relatively speaking almost no one under 30 in the US dies of diphtheria, typhus, typhoid, rubella, measles, cholera, pertussis, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, tetanus, malaria, infantile diarrhoea, gas gangrene, industrial accidents, black lung, botulism, heavy metal poisoning, hypothermia, kwashiorkor, pellagra, scurvy, syphilis, beri-beri, house fires, murder or malnutrition any more. It’s not that traffic accidents are solely the result of the internal combustion engine; they were common in the horse-drawn age too. It’s just that all the previously more-common causes of death are now no longer nearly as common.

Fortunately for roy belmont, intemperate language and an inability to think clearly are also much declined as causes of death from the days when
they could lead, respectively, to death in a duel or death at (say) the Little Big Horn.

By: Roy Belmont

Roy Belmont — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:55:51 +0000

By: Roy Belmont

Roy Belmont — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:55:30 +0000

One of the more insidious ways the automobile was grafted onto human physiology was with that bullshit “Well, if you don’t like this, then go back to that.” “That” being the cliched stereotype awful, brutal, primitive, ugly, dangerous past, and don’t forget those way-too-short lifespans! And, and, no medicine! And dirt! And worms and fleas! Might get eaten by a bear! Or a lion!
Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death in the US for people under 30. That means children. CDC.
The choice is not between cars and one-horse shays, pick one. The choice is first between this way and any other way.
Once you decide to go a different direction you have a near-infinite number of possible paths to choose from.
The self-interest and sniveling greed that saturates that b.s. binary is fully exposed and no longer viable.

By: ajay

ajay — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:27:16 +0000

Thanks. Of course, I still think it’s a little more than obscene that you now have a robot that is 1000 times the cost of the living-breathing equivalent but I dare you to say that it is 1000 times as good.

In other news, juicy is disgusted by the existence of automobiles. “What’s wrong with horse-drawn wagons?”

By: Juicy

Juicy — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 06:00:34 +0000

52: Really? How exciting. Too bad they’re not working on a cure for the millions of people, governments and investment banks who buy overpriced stuff they don’t need.

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:22:45 +0000

Of course, I still think it’s a little more than obscene that you now have a robot that is 1000 times the cost of the living-breathing equivalent but I dare you to say that it is 1000 times as good. Enjoy your recession.

MIT is automating non sequiturs as we speak.

By: Juicy

Juicy — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:08:51 +0000

42: All very good points Ajay. Thanks. Of course, I still think it’s a little more than obscene that you now have a robot that is 1000 times the cost of the living-breathing equivalent but I dare you to say that it is 1000 times as good. Enjoy your recession.

By: lemuel pitkin

lemuel pitkin — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:22:57 +0000

Cool—thanks, RB!

By: roac

roac — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:20:30 +0000

Well, maybe. The thing about paths in areas immediately behind a static front is that the other side is going to know where they are and register mortars and artillery on them. If these thingies could make their own routes for each trip, their survival rate would go up.

A question that hadn’t occurred to me is whether any of the sensors that are enabling this to avoid obstacles will work in the dark.

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:15:45 +0000

Or does it turn out that there are just certain solutions to the problem of getting around on legs? You may be interested in breve which is an environment that has a somewhat ugly screensaver in which - through trial and error - various monstrosities learn to move themselves.