Asteroid retrieval by rotary rocket, by Jerome Pearson

On 2/10/06, victoriatangoman wrote:
(...)
> I think you'r right, but having more kids is an economically
> irrational decision, in that parents assume the majority of the costs
> and society receives the majority of the benefits.

Yes, but still it is a strong hardwired drive in people's brain - in
other words, when people decide to have children they are thinking
with their genes and not their pockets ;-). The pockets, though, are
in average winning in developed countries: since the cost of raising a
child is very high in those countries (basically because the
expectations of education for that child are much higher than in a
developing country, I would think), pockets wins genes in the mind of
most people.

BTW, besides gene propagation, people get another personal benefit
from having children: an increased likelihood of being cared of (by
their children or grandchildren) at old age. However, in welfare
societies (like most if not all developed countries), that personal
benefit is not so attractive since one has government sponsored
retirement and health care. So less reason for people to breed.

(...)
> I'd agree that there's little market right now for bulky and
> rudimentary robots with limited function. However, as their utility
> increases I think you'll see demand increase.

Agreed. If the Japanese ever get to create robots so sleek, agile and
smart as those portrayed in the movie "I, Robot", I myself would like
to buy one ;-).

Supposing that the price is affordable. Mass production would likely
achieve affordable enough prices, I think. In the case of cost/benefit
of robots, I would say that the price threshold for a human-equivalent
robot would be about the price of a car. A base that on a research
that, trying to evaluate the price of slaves in Ancient Rome, came to
the conclusion that they were about the same price of a car today.

BTW, there is another (theoretic, at least) alternative to humanoid
robots. In theory, I think that it is possible to create genetically
altered humans (let us call them "replicants" after Blade Runner) that
would have no emotions, no "free will" and would obey us mindlessly.
In other words, they would be mentally indistinguishable from domestic
robots portrayed in science fiction. So, if it is ethical to use
emotionless mindless "free-will-free" machines as slaves then
replicants are ethical too. Perhaps it may be even possible to build
them with accelerated growth so that their creators do not spend so
much time and money raising them to adulthood and have profit raising
them to perform menial tasks.

>From the fact that research on genetically altered organisms, assisted
human reproduction and neurochemistry has often advanced by leaps and
jumps, I suspect that perhaps the research for creating such creatures
could proceed faster than A.I. and robotics research even considering
the slow pace of human growth. Unfortunately, since the research
process necessary to achieve those creatures *would* raise many
ethical objections basically all over the world, I wouldn't expect
someone researching them in the foreseeable future. They would come to
reality only if somewhere in the distant feature a power structure
with different moral values and wanting those creatures for some
reason lasts long enough to conduct the research to create them.