Will we ever have holodecks as dangerous as the ones on Star Trek?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Holographic bees. Massive holodecks full of bees. There's your moneymaker.

Then you can transfer the HON-ay into MON-ay.

 

[Kor]

Holographic bees. Massive holodecks full of bees. There's your moneymaker.

Then you can transfer the HON-ay into MON-ay.

You win this thread.

Kor

 

[Timewalker]

Holographic bees wouldn't work on real flowers.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Met a lot of holo-bees, have we?

 

[Timewalker]

How would they work on real flowers, without a source of power to keep them together? Do they all get miniature mobile emitters? You can hardly make the entire world into a holodeck.

 

[Avro Arrow]

How would they work on real flowers, without a source of power to keep them together? Do they all get miniature mobile emitters?

Wait, yes, that's it exactly... all holo-bees are generated from light bees! It fits perfectly!

 

[at Quark's]

I think any holodeck tech will be quite a ways off. However, an on demand lucid dreaming tech could happen far sooner. If there was a machine you could hook up to and then go right into a lucid dream I probably wouldn't care about a holodeck.

You'd probably want slightly more. To dream lucidly doesn't automatically mean you can control said dream; all it really means is you are aware you're dreaming-- though of course it does increase the chances of controlling it..

I've had plenty of lucid dreams; some I could effortlessly take control of and make whatever I wanted to happen, happen; others, I could only influence slightly or even not at all after putting lots of effort into it-- it can vary greatly per dream. And I've read similar experiences on the web.

 

[Kor]

Whenever I become lucid in a dream, I wake up within a few moments.

Kor

 

[Spot261]

Whenever I become lucid in real life, I fall asleep within a few moments.

 

[HIjol]

Lucidity is real life is not all it is cracked up to bee.

Beelieve me!

Nuke the Bees!

 

[rahullak]

Here's a thought, though it might have been discussed before on TBBS. If the computer on the ENT-D, could create a sentient Moriarty, why isn't the computer sentient in itself? The computer programmed sentience into Moriarty in order to beat Data. Can something that creates sentience not be sentient in itself?

 

[TwoJakes]

I can plant a seed that later becomes a flower, that doesn't make me a flower.

 

[SWHouston]

Computers can not be sentience. You may write a program that tells them they are, and in that script identify the things which we identify with sentience. But, a rock is a rock is a rock.

 

[TwoJakes]

All Moriarty was, was a interactive computer game. My smartphone could repeatedly play back a recording of "I am a self aware sentent being," but that would not make the object that is my smartphone alive or aware.

 

[MAGolding]

Guess again. I've actually been stun more than once. I'm not saying I was stung by a swarm, but I would say I've been stung five times. I'll admit I deserved it the first time because I saw several bumblebees; and I was a toddler who was fascinated with insects at the time, so I decided to mess with them and see about catching one; and one landed on my arm; and she let me have it; but the other four were their fault. There was one time when I was outside playing and happened to brush up against a flower and got stung. There was one time I felt something land on the back of my neck and went to squish whatever it was and got stung; and there were two times I was picking up fruit in our yard because I had been told to; and I got stung on two occasions, once on my hand and once on my leg.

My main beef with the bees is that we have two many Africanized honeybees, and nobody's doing enough to get rid of them. They just say run or declare areas where they are a quarantine zone where nobody's allowed to go instead of wiping out as many as they can. If necessary, use nuclear weapons against them. They're the ones that are probably responsible for honeybees being in trouble if they are. I've already had the talk with the bug man and found out you won't get fined and put it jail if you get stung. You'll only get in trouble if you find a nest in your yard and spray it.
God bless, Jason Irelan

Africa, of course isn't full of Africanized honeybees. It is full of African honeybees. And Humans have lived with them for hundreds of thousands of years without being exterminated, despite the danger to individuals. But if all bees, both harmless and deadly, died out it would cause a terrible ecological disaster, and humans might also become extinct due to lack of some crops pollinated by bees.

I have been stung a few times. Once I was lawn mowing and mowed over an insect nest in the ground. The mower sucked up a bunch of bees, wasps, or hornets (species unidentified by me), and then a bunch chased me for several hundred feet stinging me about a dozen times. I didn't know the nest was there or plan to provoke the insects, but they were definitely provoked by having a lawn mower pass over their hole.

One summer I lived in a bedroom with a wild wasp or hornet living in a hole in the ceiling. I didn't bother it and it didn't bother me.

Kor said:

I killed a bee that somehow showed up out of nowhere inside my car while I was driving down the highway. It was either him or me, you know?

What is the exact legislation that makes it illegal to kill honey bees? That's right... there is none.

Don't they teach you in driving school to have iron self control while driving a vehicle, to never lose control of the vehicle even if you suffer intense pain from being shot or having a heart attack? They should.

In Eric Frank Russell's novel Wasp (1957) the protagonist is an Earthman recruited to be a saboteur and secret agent in the enemy Sirian Empire. His role in undermining the Sirian war effort is compared to a tiny wasp that terrorizes the driver of a car and causes it to crash, killing the occupants.

Are you allergic to insect stings, so that a single one could kill you? If you are not, it was not a case of "it was him or me". You were not in danger of dying if stung, and trying to kill the bee could have distracted you from driving safely. Out of control automobiles are far more dangerous than insect stings, except for a small minority of people highly allergic to insect stings.

 

[Tallguy]

No. The holodecks in Star Trek were often not only a danger to the people inside them but TO THE ENTIRE SHIP. Oh, and every once in a while they created a new life form because someone kinda asked them to.

 

[matthunter]

Here's a thought, though it might have been discussed before on TBBS. If the computer on the ENT-D, could create a sentient Moriarty, why isn't the computer sentient in itself? The computer programmed sentience into Moriarty in order to beat Data. Can something that creates sentience not be sentient in itself?

Potentially - the human brain - without developmental input - will stay at a very primitive, instinctual level. Barring spiritual/religious arguments, we don't know what makes us sentient. Picard, in fact, pointed that out clearly in The Measure of a Man when defending Data... if we can't tell why or how we're sentient, how can we dismiss the possibility of machine sentience?

The general theme in Trek has been that of emergent intelligence - design an adaptive program that can interact with the world and incorporate new information and it could develop self-awareness. In being asked to create Moriarty, the E-D computer had to create an adaptive construct that could react to Data's actions and deviate from traditional Holmesian storylines. The Doctor on Voyager was designed to adapt to new medical situations but was forced into even more adaptation having to deal with being activated far longer than anticipated and facing situations outside the expected norms. Data himself had some "formative" years where he laid down initial positronic pathways (his "childhood" as Juliana Tainer referred to it).

In short, if you can design an adaptive enough positronic net/holomatrix/AI program that has the bare bones needed to learn and incorporate experiences then it could develop true sentience, the same way our brains develop from very basic, instinctual infant forms.