Why the heck haven't we built a machine that can replic

>>7953234
How would we stop it?

>>7953235
well if it can make everything except microchips, stop supplying it with microchips.

>>7953238
Well if that's the case, then what's the point?

What do you gain from having the robot make itself instead of some other robot doing the job?

>>7953234
>Why the heck haven't we built a machine that can replicate itself?
Because that's hard.

The null machine (denoted 0) is the machine with no components. Every second it creates an arbitrary number of copies of itself.

>>7953234
So its our fault you can't get laid now?

>>7953234
> Dirt

you know what Dirt is?

>>7953234
why haven't YOU?

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>>7953241
One way we could generate clean nearly limitless energy is space based solar power, you put a crapload of solar panels in orbit and beam power down to receivers on the ground.

It is expensive to do this because of the cost of launching stuff from Earth. But lucky for us, there is a big blob of silicon rich matter orbiting the Earth. The Moon.

We could launch a factory to the Moon, but in order to get enough silicon to make a solar power sat in a reasonable time(not decades), we have to launch an impractically huge factory.

However, if our factory can replicate, we can keep expanding production using resources that are already up there instead of launching them. This still makes sense to do even if we have to launch up microchips. Microchips weigh practically nothing in relation to the rest of our factory.

To give you an idea of just how light weight microchips are, an apple A9 system on a chip has dimensions of 15.0×14.5 x ~ 1 mm, assuming this is all silicon it masses about half a gram. So for a 1 ton launch you can send up 2,000,000 of these things! That's two million 1.85 GHz cpus with their own 2 gigs of ram!

You can think of this as a way to multiply the amount of mass we can put up there.

>>7953234
not dirt, sand is better

>>7953295
I mean with our current limitations in mind, not some scifi future scenario.

Obviously self-replicating machines and Von Neumann Probes are the future, but they don't mean shit for us now.

We don't have the means to regulate the expansion of such machines, and without advanced regulatory AI they couldn't even help us.

You wanted to know why we haven't made them, and it's because we don't have a reason to.
Yet.

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>>7953243
What makes it hard?

>>7953249
kek

>>7953265
it has an elemental composition of pic related.

>>7953299
>We don't have the means to regulate the expansion of such machines, and without advanced regulatory AI they couldn't even help us.
if you mean what I think you mean then you're really stupid.

>>7953302
WHY ARENT WE HARVESTING ALL OF THAT LUNAR TITANIUM??

>>7953234
We have multiple different biological models that are able to replicate, however process is somewhat slow, flawed and copies are not bit to bit similar.

>>7953305
How, then, do you tell a bunch of self-regulating robots to stop regulating themselves?

You could treat it like a cell does and have them stop replicating when a certain number are produced, but what if something goes wrong?
If even one robot messes up, the whole world is grey goo.

>>7953299
>>I mean with our current limitations in mind, not some scifi future scenario.
what are our current limitations that prevent these things?

>>we don't have a reason to.
Is clean power not a good enough reason?

>>7953311
that is a trivially easy problem and confirms your idiocy. it can be solved with £1 a radio receiver.

>>7953313
Beaming power from orbital solar panels is not current technology.

Moon factories are not current tech.

>>7953316
And if that goes wrong? (it will eventually)

There needs to be a way to stop them. It's not trivial, and treating it with such impunity would doom mankind.

>>7953318
>And if that goes wrong? (it will eventually)
if it goes wrong then the robot wouldn't be able to run. it's called active low.

your lack of knowledge and dunning-kruger inspired arrogance is irritating. pick up a damn book before spewing your crap, idiot.

>>7953311
>>but what if something goes wrong?
What happens if you copy a program incorrectly, does the program still work? More often then not, if even a few bits change it does not. Why should you expect a factory running off a similar program to not immediately crash if a 'mutation' like this occurred?

I am not arguing that evolution is impossible, it's just highly unlikely.

>>7953318
>>Moon factories are not current tech.
what technology don't we have to make moon factories?

>>7953336
If you copy a program incorrectly it doesn't go off and engulf the planet in unstoppable self-replicating robots.

It's not even a mutation. All you'd need is for something to go wrong with the way it inhibits reproduction, which is extremely likely when you have sandbots making sandbots making sandbots.

Just one onco-robot would envelop the planet like a cancer.

>what technology don't we have to make moon factories?
We have no moon factories, so there's that.

>>7953337
don't bother trying with this fella, lads. it's clearly a hopeless cause.

>>7953336
we have all the tech, but why bother going to the moon and constantly supplying a moon base when we have literally oceans and deserts full of sand to get silicon from? A Lunar base is redundant for exploration purposes unless you can make the moon self sufficient/habitable. It's why we are aiming for Mars instead of the moon-base.

What's the point in spending all the money bringing materials so you can launch things from the moon? If you used the fuel to get to the moon, you can use just a little more to get to other planets.

you might as well launch/ construct them from home. The only way a lunar base would be useful was if you could make solid and liquid rocket fuel there using lunar materials.

>>7953339
Smarter people than anybody in this thread have said the same things for decades.
rachel.org/lib/safe_exponential_manufacturing.040601.pdf

We don't need self replicating robots right now, and we can't even handle it.

>>7953337
If you copy a program incorrectly it doesn't turn into a nasty computer virus that takes over the internet.

Second, digital information can more or less be copied perfectly with no degradation. Does the hash of GENOME.py not match after we copied, woops, delete it and start again.

>>7953348
>If you copy a program incorrectly it doesn't turn into a nasty computer virus that takes over the internet.
If you design a self-replicating program that has exactly one byte of information inhibiting it from becoming a worm, and that byte gets fucked up...

You now have a self-replicating worm that takes over the internet.

How do you delete a rockbot that accidentally got too much CaCO3 instead of BaCO3 by accident?

>>7953348
fortunately only archaic dataforms like floppy and computer cassettes really deal with that sort of data morphing over time

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>>7953341
>>when we have literally oceans and deserts full of sand to get silicon from?
because it costs a lot to get that silicon into orbit.

>>What's the point in spending all the money bringing materials so you can launch things from the moon?
because it cost a lot less to launch stuff from the Moon than it does from earth.

>>If you used the fuel to get to the moon,
because you only have to use fuel to get to the moon once(plus a couple light weight launches for the chips). Heck, you don't even need fuel to launch stuff from the Moon, you can use a big ass electromagnetic launcher to get stuff directly to a big catcher at a langrange point.

>>you might as well launch/ construct them from home.
pic related is a space colony. Like a space solar power satellite, it's a fucking huge structure that requires a fucking huge amount of mass. It is impractical to launch all of this from Earth.

>>if you could make solid and liquid rocket fuel there using lunar materials.
so as you can see from>>7953302, lunar soil contains a fair amount of extractable magnesium and a shit load of oxygen. Rocket engines have been made that run on LOX and magnesium powder:
http://www.wickmanspacecraft.com/lsp.html

>>7953352
>>If you design a self-replicating program that has exactly one byte of information inhibiting it from becoming a worm,
This never happens. Second we can design our systems so that at the very least, megabytes of data must all mutate at the same time for the safeties to be bypassed. It is exceptionally unlikely that MILLIONS of bits all flip at the exact same time and in just the right manner.

>>You now have a self-replicating worm that takes over the internet.
so why hasn't this happened? Why haven't we had a wild computer virus emerge spontaneously from the ether?

>>How do you delete a rockbot that accidentally got too much CaCO3 instead of BaCO3 by accident?

and how's that gonna cause a problem?
you don't, it just dies

>>7953366
You're under the assumption that launching rockets from the moon is cheaper since the lunar gravity is weaker than earth's. That's correct, but unless You can make rockets/fuel on the moon, It isn't useful to have a base there. At that point, all you're doing is ferrying materials from earth to the moon to launch them from the moon.

>>7953376
and at that point you ought to not stop on the moon at all.

>>7953373
My point is that the digital analogy is retarded.

Siltbot doesn't play by computer rules. If there's a real mechanical failure in the mechanism preventing its metastasis, it will replicate out of control.

It doesn't work like bits and bytes. This is real physical stuff that can and will go wrong.
If its antenna picks up something funky, or if it shorts out a particular spot it'll just keep on pumping out babies.
Or if its factory parts get bent and it starts making slightly off copies of itself that don't have good self-regulation.

Or maybe it just grabs the wrong combo of materials in the wrong environment and something breaks.
You mean to tell me a nanobot is gonna know the difference between barium and calcium when our coral reefs don't?

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>>7953378
>1 robot's uvspec/ ir sensor breaks
>it thinks people are silicon now
> they start harvesting the lunarians to make robots
>people become squishy fleshcubes

>even worse, fleshcube robots work

>>7953383
>fleshcubes make retarded halfbots
>halfbots make shitbots
>shitbots are functionally comatose

but now you have a shit ton of things that waste materials

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>>7953376
So there's this handy thing called a mass driver which you can be used to shoot stuff into near orbit using just electricity. You put what you want to launch in a superconducting bucket, stick the bucket in a nice long coilgun, get it up to the desired speed, and slow down the bucket while letting the payload go flying.

Such a system is entirely reusable, is cheap to operate, and capable of launching lots of material per unit time.

You do need to add a small rocket to your payload if you want it to go into a stable orbit, but this need not be very large.

You can get rid of the need to attach rockets to your payload and significantly reduce the need to launch propellant if you you launch said payload to a 'catcher' at L1 or L2. L1 and L2 are uphill with respect to the Moon, so stuff launched there from the Moon will slow down. Get the trajectory just right and you can get it to hit a giant basket, or catcher, with low speed relative to the catcher. Because the speed is low, you don't need to send as much propellant up to keep the catcher in place.

Some designs for catchers even propose to use lunar regolith accelerated by another electric mass driver as propellant.

see more on this here
http://www.permanent.com/space-transportation-mass-drivers.html
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/colonies_chap06.html

>>but unless You can make rockets/fuel on the moon
but you can anon: >>7953366

Alternatively, you can take lunar regolith and throw it backwards for propulsion. This can be done just as in current ion engines:
http://technology.nasa.gov/patent/NPO-TOPS-32

>>7953406
You're talking about tech that exists right here right now, and you're saying we should use a mass driver?

Sure it "can" be done, but we're not there yet.
We "could" create plasma TVs in the 1970s, but we weren't there yet technologically.

>>7953378
>>Siltbot doesn't play by computer rules.
so what are you going to use to control it? Cams and shit? Weird analog shit? Fucking magic?

If you haven't figured it out already, the correct answer is a computer.

So here's what you do, you encrypt a necessary part of its genome(gene) so that the only way it can be decoded is with a signal from earth and make it so that when this decoded signal is used it isn't stored. Now if you make it so that it is completely impossible for this gene to be copied, we can make it so that it has to receive this gene from Earth. We can encrypt this copy too.

Provided the encryption is strong enough, it will be very unlikely that the machine will stumble upon the correct encryption code. And we can make it so that the in order to bypass any of these things, a bunch of highly highly improbable events must happen.

>> nanobot
the fuck you talking about nanobots for? This shit's at the macroscale. If you're talking about molecular assemblers, you ain't using analog for that. If you're talking about self assembling nanobots, there is no reason why they'd be more capable than biology.

>>7953431
It doesn't matter what kind of current day computers you pop in that thing, there will always be the chance that the 19,000th generation moonbot has a fucked up arm or something.

Which it uses to make 50,000 more broken robots.
Even if it doesn't result in full on ecophagy, it would be a financial disaster.

When you take out the element of human intervention, you open yourself up to all sorts of problems.
And when you don't take out the element of human intervention, what's the fucking point?

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>>7953430
>>but we're not there yet.
what makes a mass driver impossible with current technology?

If you don't care about complete reusability, we have the technology. Current railguns have achieved projectile velocities(>2.5 km/s) greater than lunar escape velocity(2.38 km/s).

>>7953406
mass drivers are too energy/actual money expensive. why do it if it doesn't really save you any money?

Conventional rocketry is superior from that perspective.

You want to drop an 800 billion $ investment on something that could never give you any returns? Why don't we focus on harvesting materials on earth first. and then the moon, and then we can think about putting giant railguns on the lunar surface.

>>7953433
>>7953433
There is, but the chances of this happening can be made exceptionally low. You can make it so that you need a lot more than a fucked up arm to cause it to replicate out of control. You can make it so that in order to get out of control replication you have to have an entire subsystem form randomly all at the same time out of the ether.

>>When you take out the element of human intervention, you open yourself up to all sorts of problems.
>>And when you don't take out the element of human intervention, what's the fucking point?

Your statement is self contradictory.

>>7953336
>what technology don't we have to make moon factories?
its not a question of technology
its a question of feasibility

Why would you build a factory on the moon when you can make one on earth?

does the benefit of making this factory on the moon outweigh the cost of putting it up there and maintaining it?

>>7953433
>And when you don't take out the element of human intervention, what's the fucking point?
Having a few people overseeing operations from an office is cheap as shit compared to doing everything by hand.

>>7953434
If it were actually possible right now we would have done it already.

It was possible to make a 4K television in the 70s too I'm sure. But we didn't because we "couldn't."

Cost-benefit is as much a part of tech as anything else. If we haven't reached a point as a society where it's cost-effective, then we haven't truly reached that level of technology.

Theory is only half the battle.

>>7953443
>Your statement is self contradictory.
No it isn't.

The whole appeal of self-replicating robots is that humans don't have to lift a finger. They regulate themselves.
Humans don't need to construct and inspect them by hand.

But if humans have to actively participate (and they do right now), then why even make them?

>>7953446
You're saying a few people can regulate thousands of extremely complicated moving-parts robots with very specific resource needs to make sure nothing goes wrong across hundreds and hundreds of generations?

Not even bringing up the ecological/geological nightmare, this would be a mess of logistics. You'd pretty much need AI management for it to expand to beneficial levels.

>>7953234
What good is a robot that replicates itself, if the outcome is just another replicator robot that doesn't help humanity at all. it just eats out earth resources for the fuck of it.

A small factory working with solar cells are much more efficient and actually useful.

>>7953449
>You're saying a few people can regulate thousands of extremely complicated moving-parts robots with very specific resource needs to make sure nothing goes wrong across hundreds and hundreds of generations?
Yes.
With the appropriate amount of automation, that shouldn't be terrible difficult. The people don't NEED to do everything by hand, they just need to handle large-scale planning and handle situations where things break.

>>7953450
>What good is a robot that replicates itself, if the outcome is just another replicator robot that doesn't help humanity at all.
The robots would also be able to do other tasks as well.

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>>7953440
>>mass drivers are too energy/actual money expensive.

So you want to put 3,000,000 metric tons of solar power satellite into geostationary orbit so you can supply the US with 300 GW of clean power.

Elon Musk thinks he can bring launch costs down to $500 a pound, so it would cost $3.31 trillion dollars to do this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy

>> too energy/actual money expensive
bullshit. Electricity is cheap, rocket fuel is not. It takes minimum 9.3 km/s of delta V to get to low earth orbit from earth's surface, the kinetic energy of 1 kg at this speed is ~ 12 KWh, a KWh cost around 12 cents. And this is for the ridiculous case of launching from Earth.

>>7953453
You really aren't getting the fact that things would break *constantly*

Even if the robots have inbuilt robo-apoptosis, it probably isn't enough to catch all the broken ones. And we've established that broken ones will breed other broken ones in some cases too.
Do you know how often machines wear down even when carefully hand crafted across many years?

You'd need to assess the state of every new robot to make sure it isn't going haywire. Otherwise you have an extremely expensive blunder on your hands.

Computers can only do so much to help here. It would be impossible from a logistics and budget standpoint to have that many skilled workers.
Unless you make it so small-scale that it doesn't even pay for itself.

There is a reason nobody has done this yet.

>tfw biochemists will create life in my lifetime
>tfw that will be an actual self-replicating machine

Can you imagine how spooky will it be? Someone guess the right sequence of reactions and bang, you've got something completely new that will be 100% unrelatable and strange in 1-2kk years.

>>7953462
>You really aren't getting the fact that things would break *constantly*
Yes I am, but most of those failures wil require little-to-no human intervention.

>And we've established that broken ones will breed other broken ones in some cases too.
Those cases are much rarer, and go further up the ladder of intervention.

>Do you know how often machines wear down even when carefully hand crafted across many years?
Machines wearing out would be very easy to automatically detect and manage.

>You'd need to assess the state of every new robot to make sure it isn't going haywire.
Easy to automate. As would be testing the tester. And if things go badly wrong, you switch to human intervention.

Unless the system you're thinking of is utterly VAST, I'm not seeing how this isn't a manageable problem,

>>7953445
because the cost of getting stuff into orbit is very large. Please refer to this handy delta V chart, note how it takes 10 km/s of delta V to get to LEO from Earth's surface and 6.3 km/s to get to LEO from the moon's surface. In terms of energy alone this is huge.

>> maintaining it?
if it performs much of the maintenance itself, this cost can be low

>>7953462
>>And we've established that broken ones will breed other broken ones in some cases too.
We've not established this. Why would broken robots breed more broken robots? In general when machines break, they perform WORSE than their non-broken counterparts.

If we design our system such that a huge fucking change has to happen all at once, then the chances of this happening can be highly, highly, highly improbable.

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>>7953479

>>7953459
we cant just beam solar energy from satellites to earth

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>>7953234
REEEEE i hate popsci fags

>>7953498
why the fuck not? Yes you need a fuck huge microwave transmitter, but you can do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O44WM1Q9H8

>>7953234
Threads like this confirm again and again what a bunch of clueless faggots post on /sci (or pretty good b8 - or shitposters).

>>7953476
Even if the machine were vast, each robot could be designed to perform repairs on its neighboring robots, effectively managing the complexity of the system.

>>7953528
>Even if the machine were vast, each robot could be designed to perform repairs on its neighboring robots, effectively managing the complexity of the system.
That's not how I'd organise it, but okay.

>>7953235
Invent a machine that infiltrates and de-assembles self-replicating machines. A machine virus if you will.

>>7953476
>most of those failures wil require little-to-no human intervention.
>Easy to automate
>>7953528
>each robot could be designed to perform repairs on its neighboring robots
>>7953601
>a machine that infiltrates and de-assembles self-replicating machines

Are you forgetting the premise that this has to be possible TODAY?
We can barely even maintain robots ourselves.
And now you're saying we need to build robots sophisticated enough to maintain themselves and others?

We don't live in the fucking Jetsons.

We can barely make robots with fine articulation skills, let alone the ability to solder tiny microchips...etc. And that's WITH human intervention.

I think this would be possible using plants. Since they already replicate themselves from dirt, all we have to do is modify them so that they are also machines.

>>7953295
This is fucking stupid. I want you to reread what you said and realize how stupid it is.

>>7953234
What would be the point? Every kind of Life is a von Neumann machine. >>7953295
The problem with solar power is how bloody expensive per unit energy it is. Yes, theoretically if we could use robots to do everything in building solar panels we can overturn the entire world economy as well. That's obviously not fucking happening. Robots can barely walk.

>>7953336
>if you copy a program incorrectly, does this program still work?
No, it does not. Practically all the time. Removing so much as a bracket fucks everything up.

What if we didnt pay for it? If everyone on /sci/ banded together we could just easily TAKE what we want or need. Why wait for funds? Some of us might die in the process but when people look back on all the improvements weve made they will think twice.

We lost so much money to those damn scientists!
>bbBut we have this unlimited energy now.....
>a-a-and weve terraformed mars to be as habitable as earth, but its atmosphere is cleaner....
But we have a financial crisis now!
>But everyone has free food, noone is hungry
THEY OWE ME FOR MY MATERIALS AND WORK
>all sickness and disease has been reduced by 90%, few people are sick
BUT I WANTED TO BE RICH

-

You wouldnt let somebody sell you sandcastlebuckets of ocean water at a beach would you?
>No, you take your own sandcastle bucket and take as many fucking buckets as you please.

I thought "Anonymous" was about connecting the power of the people? The fuck happened?
Anonymous is nothing more than a mask for the weak now.

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>>7953858
m8 wtf are u on about?

>>7953866
People complaining about funds for projects.

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>>7953858

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>>7953819
OP here, I am aware of this, what I would like to know is why?

What are the technical challenges that prevent robots from doing these things? Is it the problem of AI not being good enough or is it just a matter of solving a whole bunch of highly specific engineering problems?

Do we make a bunch of humanoid robots that are as smart as people and have them construct factories and robots the way people do? This necessitates big advances in AI.

Or can we design our robots and factory equipment in such a way that fine articulation isn't needed for assembly and all we need for control is a bunch of vacuum tubes and relays. Wasps, bees, and ants are capable of doing relatively complex things with simple behavior, so why can't we do the same with robots? This necessitates solving a bunch of highly specific engineering problems.

I am biased toward approach two. Pic related is the Grid Lock self 'replicating' system[1]. It's a bunch of self-aligning blocks with functions like motor, track, and gripper. Because the blocks are self-aligning, you don't need fine articulation to connect them to each other. In addition, most parts of the blocks are designed to be made via machining of wax patterns and investment casting. Most of the blocks are also design such that complex articulation is not need to assemble them[2].

While it can perform all actions necessary to replicate itself from blocks, it does not. It makes too many errors. Possibly because the blocks are made from plastic which isn't very stiff. Arguably this is an engineering problem


[1] http://diyhpl.us/~nmz787/pdf/An_architecture_for_universal_construction_via_modular_robotic_components.pdf
[2] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gregory_Chirikjian/publication/221344470_Towards_cyclic_fabrication_systems_for_modular_robotics_and_rapid_manufacturing/links/0f31753badd8e896f9000000.pdf

>>7954054
It's an issue of need.

Why make self replicators when you can just make the factory?

We don't need every glass of milk to come with a cow. That's not a worthwhile use of resources.

It's pretty inefficient to have 10,000 copies of a robot factory when you can just build one.
Yes I'm sure there will be some niche uses for it when we become spacemens, but we just aren't desperately craving Von Neumann bots right now.
We still barely even use robots for work at all, so it's stupid to wonder why they aren't super scifi advanced.

>>7953234
>>7953341
>we have all the tech

not really. We have some designs and thoughts about the minimum tech needed to make a self-replicating factory like your pic (four key items: basalt extrusion, casting, ion beam epitaxy, and laser machining). And even that needed "vitamins", like microprocessors made on earth.

If you think about it, industrialized nations are examples of self-supporting machines like this. You just need to work at trimming off everything that is unnecessary, automating what's left, and adding a bit extra to work in hostile barren environments like the lunar surface.

Maybe the closest examples are automated warehouses like Amazon. Still a LOT of engineering problems to solve so you don't have to send in a repair guy when any little unexpected thing breaks.

>>7953234
>What are the technical challenges to doing this?
Not so much technical as physical, but dirt as you know it doesn't have the structural complexity necessary to arbitrarily rearrange certain parts of its state such that intelligent computation occurs. If you hadn't noticed, life tends to feed on other life and dirt is more or less the leftovers of the ecology.

Anything more complex will require some level of autonomy in finding the right resources. Basically, dirt is too crumbly.

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OP here
>>7954270
And if you do pic related you can get useful stuff out of dirt

>>7954195
I am not interested in whether we need it or not, I would like to know what the unsolved technical challenges are involved with doing so.

Is it just an engineering problem or do we need a ton of far out tech.(nanomachines or shit)

>>7954305
Whether we need it has everything to do with why we don't have it.

If we needed it we'd have it in a decade no problem.

Do I need to start quoting Jeff Goldblum here?

>>7954309
So let's say that for some reason we need it. How would we be able to make it work within 10 years?

>>7953234
>pic
>putting big ass dishes on top of the solar panels, blocking light

>Why the heck haven't we built a machine that can replicate itself?

We have those already they are just really shitty. Google them
.

>Why haven't we made a machine that can make a copy of itself from dirt?
>Or at the very least a machine that makes all of it's components except microchips from dirt?

The amount of dirt needed to get enough of the building materials, the amount of energy needed to do this, the amount of time taken, the amount complexity, and the size of this in all respects is just absurd as fuck.

There are far easier methods. However, if you absolutely must use dirt tech then you'd need to go micro scale and harness solar energy. It'd be fragile as hell if you used modern metallurgicallly-structured technology.

Instead, you'd need to use biotech. Essentially, a type of plant life, maybe partly synthetic mostly carbon in structure.

>>7953447
>If it were actually possible right now we would have done it already.

I'm sorry but this is highly naive. It all comes down to money and motivation. Less than 0.0000001% of the population has the money or the motivation. You think you have the motivation for any random tech you can think of? If you did, you'd be doing it, not thinking about it.

And by "motivation", I mean we "need" it, in every sense of the word. When humans "need" something, they tend to get shit done.

>>7954327
>>7954305
I'm thinking biotech.

Cycle 1: Need 1, Perform Human-needed task.
Cycle 2: Need 2, Self-replicate
Cycle 3: Death and recycling

Self-replicating biobot, has to do the job in the 1st cycle of it's life to fulfill Need 1. 2nd cycle it does nothing but collect materials and replicate. 3rd cycle is early death in order to prevent corruption of code due to old age; it is recycled at this point.

If you have a fully working prototype at 10 years, I'll be surprised.

>>7954305
Look at those temperatures. Unless you want to use quantum tunneling/cold fusion/alchemy to mix your elements, you're not getting anything out of dirt. Steels mills don't come in miniature.

>>7954327
>let's say that for some reason we need it
You don't. That's why nobody knows. You don't know because you don't have a real reason to know. If you want someone else do to the research for you, it's because you don't have a real reason to know. Nobody else is going to try to run the quantum numbers at any rate faster than /actually giving a shit/. 10 years means absolutely nothing in the context of value-based economies. What you're asking isn't actually a question of principle, it's one of economic availability. 300 years ago the answer would have been 300+n years, but nowadays we have the clarity of mind think, "n is subjective, based only on our willingness to get it done." You're literally asking that anon to regress a level to answer a question not worth answering.

>>7954395
>You think you have the motivation for any random tech you can think of?
1. You need imagination to dream of random tech.
2. You need motivation to bother trying.
3. You need the skills to carry through.

Motivation is rarely the issue; most people would jump at the chance. The hard economic truth is that most people don't have the SKILLS.

>>7953234
did von neumann do this like 60 years ago

>>7954451
>Motivation is rarely the issue;

Motivation is starving and needing food. Motivation is having your country invaded by an outside force.

The hard truth you dreamers don't understand is that no one is motivated to do this shit because there's literally no driving force making them do it.

>>7954395
>>the amount of dirt needed to get the build material
If you build it from common elements then you don't need to mine huge amounts of material.
>> fragile
Why would modern metallurgical structured technology be fragile?
>> biotech
Biology is currently difficult to work with. we cannot engineer biology to perform arbitrary tasks at the current time and won't for the forseeable future. This is because biological systems are very complicated and we do not understand them.

biology has limitations. For one, biology is like 3% efficient at solar conversion. If there was a better way it would have already evolved.

Biology is limited in what it can work with. Biology doesn't work well in dry environments and doesn't work at all in vacuum or at high temperatures

>>7954416
admittedly yes, there is some potential for explosions and what not, but I do not understand your point about mixing stuff.

Steel mills don't come in miniature, but these processes still work at a small scale. Even if said process is inefficient, as long as the system replicates rapidly it is not a problem.

Here's a link to the paper on this system: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222331160_Exponential_growth_of_large_self-reproducing_machine_systems

>>7954195
One use case presented in the above paper is putting one in a desert and having it build a build huge solar arrays for power. A 0.01 km^2 system might be able to expand to 10^6 km^2 solar array in less than a decade. This single array would provide 23 times the current power generation.

The only way to get this amount of solar in such a short time period is with self replicating systems

And yes this is a government scale project

>>7954557
The soft truth you trauma victims don't understand is that people don't like boredom and will jump at the chance to make any moment in their life even a fraction more interesting than it currently is/was. The fact is that motivation doesn't cause skills to spontaneously form, but boredom literally does. It is literally the neurons in your brain reaching a state of such little activity that they randomly fire to create metabolic noise in their constituent cells. Literally, boredom creates the perfect neurological conditions for skillset expansion.

What trauma victims don't understand is that we're motivated by merely being alive, us dreamers are.

>>7954589
>there is some potential for explosions and what not
No there isn't. Grey goo is a fantasy that I thought Von Neumann demonstrated the computational complexity of to a sufficient degree that idiots wouldn't ask about self-replicating systems as reality-bounded possibilities. You will NOT get dirt to trigger an exothermic reaction with itself.

>>7954589
>Even if said process is inefficient, as long as the system replicates rapidly it is not a problem.
No, it is *precisely* the problem with self-replicating systems. If they are so ineffective that they only self-replicate at one cycle per 300,000 years, then you have a serious problem with the rate of self-replication. Efficiency *IS* the rate of replication in a self-replicating system. Do you even know what a computer is?

>>7954595
>people don't like boredom

Humans excel at being lazy. Like posting on 4chan instead of doing something productive.

You should probably stick to your popsci though.

>>7954589
>If you build it from common elements then you don't need to mine huge amounts of material.

You have to extract small amounts from huge amounts of materials.

>Why would modern metallurgical structured technology be fragile?

Because you can't get enough from dirt to make it robust.

>Biology is currently difficult to work with
>we cannot engineer biology to perform arbitrary tasks at the current time and won't for the forseeable future.

it is the same as any other tech. Pour money and motivation into it and you have what you need. It just happens to be the best way to extract and use materials from dirt.

>biology has limitations

Everything does.

>Biology is limited in what it can work with

Same with everything else.

>>7954619
Yeah I'd say laziness is a bigger driver than boredom.

bored guy: drinks some beer and turns on the tv

lazy guy: builds machine (cotton gin, etc.) so he doesn't have to do so much work

>>7953309
Titanium is really common on Earth. They put titanium powder in most white paints.

The problem titanium is it really wants to stay a powder, and it is a costly process to make titanium alloys that are actually usable.

>>7954619
>lazy
Literally has nothing to do with boredom.
>>7954628
Laziness relates to innovation, not motivation.

>>7954648
>>7954628
>totally missing the point
>answers with lazy logic

Oh the irony.

>>7954648
innovation is nothing without motivation

>I just invented a warp drive
>eh...let's test it some other time

>>7954611
>>7954617
Ummm ok.... How about you read the study then come back. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222331160_Exponential_growth_of_large_self-reproducing_machine_systems

The potential for explosion comes from the processes of reducing CO and CO2 at high temperatures. Should a leak occur or oxygen get into the furnace an explosion could occur

>>cycle time
the study above makes a decent case that this could be less than 6 months

>>7954624
>> extract small amounts from huge amounts
and what exactly are you extracting? Iron? That's common as fuck. Copper? Don't need it, aluminum does the same thing and it is way more abundant.

>>same as any other tech
industrial robots have been around for >50 years, genetically engineered biobots don't exist.

>> best way to extract materials from dirt
Aside from water, plants extract practically nothing from the soil. A large majority of a plant's mass comes from CO2 in the air.

>>7954679
The point wasn't coherent enough to warrant anything beyond what I said. Ought I try harder?
>>7954683
Innovation is everything motivation strives for. Even Tesla's notes would have been great reading if not for Edison.

>>7954701
>How about you read the study then come back
Well...
>Should a leak occur or oxygen get into the furnace an explosion could occur
Partly because you're not even showing me that you understand basic physics. A furnace is more or less a continuous explosion, but we say it burn. You're not thinking like a nanoscientist, so I don't really have to refute anything.
>this could be less than 6 months
For? Until you exhibit comprehension of the things you're asking about, I have to assume you're not in a mindset that's ready to understand the answers.
>>7954701
>aluminum does the same thing
Oy...
>what is nanoscale

>>7954727
the furnace is electric. Has to be, hydrogen reduction of CO2--> CO--> C is endothermic. It's also being operated by dumb robots that might fail to pull a vacuum in said furnace before injecting hydrogen.

>>not thinking like a nanoscientist
we don't have fucking molecular assemblers, where did you get the idea that any of this takes place at the nanoscale? These are macroscale replicators I am talking about.

This could actually be a pretty cool rube goldberg project. Build a machine that's completely fucking useless, save for building more of itself.

>>7954780
>macroscale replicators
Oh. You mean self-building ROBOTS. I see now. No wonder this sounded completely useless. I'd never have imagined anyone would think to do this on anything above microscopic scales.

>>7954864
Ding ding ding!

>>7953234
It's hard, and would be far less efficient than the self-replicating machine ecosystem known as the "global industrial economy".

Also, building versatile robotic manipulators and programming them to carry out the enormous variety of required tasks, even given preprocessed industrial feedstock, would be a massive undertaking with very little gain relative to just building a really nice machine shop and staffing it with humans.

>>7954864
The general idea is that, once it's done replicating itself, you now have an enormous base of automated, versatile programmable industrial processing and logistics. The metals, chemicals, and plastics produced by the system can be diverted for other uses, all the CNC mills and 3D printers and extruders and casting machines and whatever that previously churned out robot components, and the logistics and transport that supplied them, can be programmed to churn out other components with those materials; all the fine manipulators and assemblers that built those components into robots could assemble them into other things.

NASA looked into them in the 70s for colonizing the Moon.

>>7953243
kek lololo

>>7954959
sounds like a huge waste of time and resources just to build a factory...

>>7954395
>I'm sorry but this is highly naive. It all comes down to money and motivation.
Read my post again please. That's literally my entire point.

It wasn't "possible" to build a super TV in the 1970s because nobody needed it badly enough. It wasn't that the theory didn't exist, but there was no motivation.


Also to all the idiots (>>7954780) saying macroreplicators would work, "what the fuck is the square cube law."

>>7953234

There are about 30 million scientists worldwide.

Hiring maybe a thousandth of the best amongst them to build your machine would probably get it done real quick, but only the richest countries and the largest corporate conglomerates would have that kind of money to swing around and none of them need your machine for anything.

>>7954959
>versatile programmable industrial processing
So you want a robot economy because robots are easier to dictate. Exactly who benefits from this?

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>>7953234

Easy now. You don't realize the significance of taking that step. If you do that, the next chapter in the story of life begins, and we're not a part of it.

>>7955634
I realize it just fine thank you. It's why I've worn the name these past few months. Boundary manipulation is inherent for any fairy.

Because that's expensive and not profitable and also useless

>>7955425
How the fuck does the square cube law prevent macroscale replicating machines?

>>7955373
You get exponentially increasing production for the cost of building one factory.

>>7955782
Nanobot eats dirt, builds another nanobot. Ad infinitum.

Macrobot eats dirt. Macrobot eats more dirt. Macrobot eats entire mountain of dirt just to get enough resources for another macrobot.
By then all the resources are already exhausted.

Bigger things need disproportionately big volumes because of the square cube law.

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>>7953430
>> plasma TV
Funny you should mention that, we have had plasma displays for a while now. In fact one of their first uses was as a display for computer terminals.

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>>7953459
You've underestimated the cost associated with a lunar railgun by a factor of 100

Popsci fags. when will they learn.

>The Fairy Queen added to filter

>>7953482
I want to be the space truck driver.

>>7955819
And those costs are?

Oh look some cost estimates on lunar mass drivers:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/1980-massdriver.htm

We could also make mass drivers that self replicate:
http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/880Chirikjian.pdf

>>7955790
Why would the resources be exhausted if you only mine away one mountain. There are more mountains out there.

And what fucking resource are you extracting that require you to sift through an entire mountain to get? Aluminum, iron, silicon, magnesium, and titanium have concentrations of greater than a percent in lunar soils/in earths crust. You don't use rare elements in self replicating machines

we are surrounded by uncountable self-replicating machines (life). and we have successfully performed biogenesis. aside from that, whatever happened to rep-rap?

>>7955862

>articles from the 80s are evidence

kek

>>7953337
>Just one onco-robot would envelop the planet like a cancer.

Just one human would envelop the planet like a cancer

>>7955906
>whatever happened to rep-rap

you still need to put the plastic parts together with bolts from the hardware store, lol

>>7956226
No because we lack the means to self replicate.

You need at least 2-160 humans.

>>7956236
My bad

Just >= 2 humans would envelop this planet like a cancer

>>7955911
Is this good enough for you? Here is a recent study that looks at the financial viability of Earth launched and space launched space solar power systems. Earth launched systems are not found to be financially viable.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120001744.pdf

>>7953234
because real life isn't your sci fi animes, kevin.

>>7957914
>>7958918
why? anything from here on will be a repeat of the earlier points

>>7958928
That first bump was a self replicating bump.
Check the second one for defects.

>>7958928
Well I can't know that for sure. I think I might have to make this a general

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Self replicating bump

>>7953234

3D Printers?

>The year 2082
>Self-replicating dildo drones have anal-probed most of mankind.
>Some individuals could avoid clogged anuses and run arond as free shitters.
>Others had their asses clogged, unable to even shitpost.
>In the underground the unprobed formed the Resistance.
>With the dildo drones ability to self-replicate - how long will it take until their hideout is discovered ?
>The Rebels keep their asses tight as they await the upcoming final battle.
>A battle that could either bring shitfucking freedom or clogged asses.
>A battle man versus machine.
>A battle for the future of mankind or it's darkest hour.
>Tight asses versus replicating dildo drones.
>With lasers, for some reason.
>Punks that are good with computers.
>Michael Bay, exploding in 3D. Twice.
>Almost bearable 3D effects.
>Special effects so random that you most often won't know wtf just happened.
>Terrible actors.
>Plotholes.
>People that want their money back before the film even made it to the cinemas.

No excuses, no butts, watch it.

>>7955541
No, you want a robot economy because there isn't already a human economy on the Moon, and it'd be really expensive to ship one up there.

>>7962497
That's amazing

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>>7953235

>>7953234
>Why the heck haven't we built a machine that can replicate itself?
We did, computer viruses.

As for physical - let's be honest, such a machine would be absurdly complex and require shitton of power.
>Walk until you find sand
>Find sand
>Have an internal furnace to melt salt
>Somehow filter out impurities
>Find components for microchips, somehow
>Including gold and copper
>Good luck finding those just laying around

That's absurd, really.

>>7964940
I remember their was a short story thing from the 50's about this, can't remember the name at all...

But, the massive factories were developed to sustain the population after some catacysim, with facilities to produce vehicles to deliver goods to the survivors, ore probes, trucks and with massive self drilling mine tunnels under the factory's.

Eventually the factories start to battle each other for resources as everything has been lined and processed to make general goods no one wants, so the factories start sending shit into space to reproduce and make more factories on other planets

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>>7953234
>Why the heck haven't we built a machine that can replicate itself?
Because there is no point. Assembling machine that can make machines will always be better at it's job than making similar machine that can replicate itself.
>Why haven't we made a machine that can make a copy of itself from dirt?
If you will build a machine from dirt using tools from dirt that can be made with the same tools from dirt, you could easily create this kind of machine. We haven't done that because dirt is shit at engineering.
>What are the technical challenges to doing this?
For normal machine there is no unsolved problems to make one.
For dirt one, we don't know how to make dirt useful in constructing machines.

This is so simple, why do you even need to ask?

>>7963521
>expensive to ship
This is why my incredible foresight led me to make the moon from fairy dust rather than robots.

>>7964940
This.

A more reasonable possibility would be a fleet of specialized machines each fulfilling a different role in the automated process.

Various resource gatherers, resource refining facilities, component manufacturers, assemblers, etc

>>7965061
This is generally what is meant by talk of macroscale replicating machines, and indeed is what the NASA study in the OP discussed.

It's immediately obvious that a single monolithic self-replicating mechanism is silly, which is why nobody discusses it and it's immediately obvious that's not what "self-replicating machine" exclusively means because it's assumed the discussor isn't stupid.

Hell, there aren't even any known nontrivial monolithic microscale replicators. Even bacteria are made of lots of individual separated subsystems moving around each other and separately associating - ribosomes, enzymes, proteins, plasmids, various RNAs, cytoskeletal elements, microcompartments...

>>7966668
Why the fuck is a macroscale replicator silly? All the elements are in dirt, they just need to be separated. All the energy to do the separation is there you just need solar cells.

We don't have to obtain elements only at places where they in high concentrations. We can design things to work with other elements.

>>7966704
A *monolithic* replicator is silly, even if you don't plan to have it do all of its own mining and refining. A lot of the materials which must be processed have fundamentally different requirements for processing, forming, and finishing; trying to use the same tools for all of them instead of several separated modules is pointlessly inefficient, and likely to make overall manufacturing complexity worse. Also, it means you can't make use of partially constructed systems, or flexibly tune capabilities to needs, or move around individual subsystems without moving your massive factory-sized constructor. If you have a subsystem that is under or over capacity, you can build more of that specific subsystem or devote less resources to building more. You can replace individual pieces without having to disassemble a single enormous machine. You can reconfigure and reprogram the same machinery to specialize in different tasks, so the same set of machines can produce Part A and part B without requiring more mechanical complexity in the design of the original machines.

And a macroscale replicating *system* is clearly possible, because the industrial manufacturing ecosystem can obviously make all its own parts.

It requires less fine manufacturing to build a toolbox than a Swiss Army knife, and the toolbox is more useful anyway.

>>7953234
It's almost like you WANT grey goo apocalypse

>>7966920
No they've just been reading rationalist propaganda. Whenever you accept any of their premises it makes you sound like that.