Elon Musk and Kevin Rose

If you have't already seen it, Kevin Rose interviews Elon Musk: [VIDEO] Also, Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about if there was a space race with China the US would be on Mars in 18 months: [LINK] It would be truly amazing if a private company was the first to set foot on another planet.

Why does the link lead to AllThingsD ?!?!?!?!? either point to the YouTube video itself [VIDEO] or to the show page at [LINK] Don't give News Corp the traffic it doesn't deserve.

That was my leading theory, and "cross between a rail-gun and a Concorde" all but confirms it. Flight path like a Concorde, propulsion like a rail-gun. Exploit the natural vacuum above our heads without expensive tunnels. Let's look at the attributes Elon has described publicly, and see how they compare to a launch loop: [LINK] * could be cheaper than CA high-speed rail? Check (no right-of-way). * "theoretically fastest way" from A-B? Check. * can't crash? Check (w/ well-designed rails). * immune to weather? Check. * twice as fast as a plane? Check. * lower energy cost than a car? Check. * self-powering with solar panels? Check. * stores power w/o batteries? Check. [VIDEO] * requires aerodynamic expertise? Check. * "ground-based Concorde – as fast as a Concorde, but on the ground"? Arguably. All weight is supported by the ground, and cars take a Concorde-like path. * rails are not needed? BZZT!! However, he may be talking about the "right-of-way" aspect of rails here. [LINK] * leaves right when you arrive? Check (w/ individual pods). [LINK] * isn't a vac tunnel? Check. Of all the ideas that have been kicked around, the launch loop seems to fit best. Elon would certainly have been exposed to the idea when brainstorming for SpaceX. My only question for the past few weeks has been, "How do you build the thing?" It doesn't inertially support itself in the air until the rotor is spun up, and the rotor can only be spun up when it's fully constructed between the endpoints. Catch-22!

It's funny that most people that are actually working on AGI have stopped even bothering to provide arguments for why they think AGI it's possible to the general public, because they know they're close and that "they'll just prove that it's possible to build it by fucking building it" instead of doing armchair thinking, while AGI detractors don't lose any opportunity to launch pseudo-arguments like missiles :) ...just to bite the bate a bit: > We have no proof that artificial general intelligence can exist. Well, we had no proof that fire can be produced ultil the first paleohumans learned to make fire. We had no proof that mechanized flight was possible until we built the first flying machines. We had no proof that space flight is possible before we made it possible etc. These kinds of arguments only make some sort of sense when you reason from first principle instead of reasoning by analogy : for example if you found an argument that, starting from the current known basic laws of physics, would after some logical steps (no, analogies with "what we now know exists" don't count as logical steps) arrive at the conclusion that AGI is not possible. Elon Musk has a cute and short explanation of "reasoning from first principle" vs. "reasoning by analogy": [VIDEO] . My point is that the way you and other people like you reason "by analogy" is just plain wrong. It's a useful way of thinking, that can help you make lots of very good business decision and profit from them. But when yo