Robert Freitas, a nanomedicine and futurist researcher, hosts papers on xenopsychology, extraterrestrial law, self-replicating probes, and the Fermi paradox.
Commenters cite his work on self-replicating space probes and alien psychology, with one calling the xenopsychology topic amusing.
>Our discovery is that every region of the neocortex learns 3D models of objects much like a CAD program.
Citation needed. If this was the case, certainly we'd have some experiments that show this? Especially since every part of the neocortex is supposed to be doing it.
Now if we can make artificial neural networks that work with 3D data, learning such things as 3D data to value, 3D data to 3D data mappings that would be damn useful. IE, estimating how much it would cost to make something from a CAD model or how aerodynamic a thing is without running costly CFD.
I'd also argue that we don't need 'truly intelligent machines' to "build structures, mine resources, and independently solve complex problems"
Ants and termites are capable of doing similar tasks and I'm doubtful the author considers them 'truly intelligent'.
>it should be possible to design intelligent machines that sense and act at the molecular scale.
>These machines would think about protein folding and gene expression in the same way you and I think about computers and staplers.
>They could think and act a million times as fast as a human.
So if the author means in simulated environments, we are quite slow at simulating molecules. For molecular simulation, we need something like femtosecond(10^-15 s) time steps whereas each time step is on the order of milliseconds. We are trillions of times slower than realtime. This is for completely classical systems, if we take into account quantum effects, it's much…
From the 1984 essay Xenopsychology by Robert Freitas Jr:
http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm
The elements of human nature:
Age-grading, athletic sports, bodily adornment, calendar, cleanliness training, community organizations, cooking, cooperative labor, cosmology, courtship, dancing, decorative art. divination, division of labor, dream interpretation, education, eschatology, ethics, ethnobotany, etiquette, faith healing. family feasting, firemaking, folklore, food taboos, funeral rites, games, gestures, gift giving, government, greetings, hairstyles, hospitality, housing, hygiene, incest taboos, inheritance rules, joking, kin groups, kinship nomenclature, language, law, luck superstitions, magic,. marriage, mealtimes, medicine, obstetrics, penal sanctions, personal names, population policy, postnatal care, pregnancy usages, property rights, propitiation of supernatural beings, puberty customs, religious rituals, residence rules, sexual restrictions, soul concepts, status differentiation, surgery, toolmaking, trade, visiting, weaving, and weather control.
The elements of an insect-like intelligence:
Age-grading, antennal rites, body licking, calendar, cannibalism, caste determinism, caste laws, colony-foundation rules, colony organization, cleanliness training, communal nurseries, cooperative labor, cosmology, courtship, division of labor, drone control, education, eschatology, ethics, etiquette, euthanasia, firemaking, food taboos, gift-giving,…
Worthwhile to invest in I think is the bigger question - from a practical 'can we build a self replicating probe fleet that would eventually cover the galaxy', there's at least evidence that it's possible in the next hundred years or so.
http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ComparisonReproNov1980.htm
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2005/2005.12303.pdf
In general I do think it makes sense to not just contemplate interstellar visitors as living things making the trek or biological civilizations expanding, but there's a wide variety of artificial ~things~ that could end up in our solar system for whatever reason.
There are decades old papers [0] on this subject that explicitly use humans as a analogy and call it "reproduction" because of the need to learn or evolve for local conditions. I don't think using terms in a way they've been used since the first serious analysis of the concept is going to confuse anyone.
I think it's pretty extreme to imagine their nth descendants caring about the goals of the parent civilization.
It's an example to demonstrate the concept in familiar terms, not a psychohistorical prediction.
[0] https://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ReproJBISJuly1980.htm
> It has been theorized that a self-replicating starship utilizing relatively conventional theoretical methods of interstellar travel (i.e., no exotic faster-than-light propulsion such as "warp drive", and speeds limited to an "average cruising speed" of 0.1c.) could spread throughout a galaxy the size of the Milky Way in as little as half a million years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft
citing http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ComparisonReproNov1980.htm
http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Xenopsychology.htm
This is an interesting essay on the minds of our ocean-dwelling aliens.