From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun Jun 06 1999 - 22:59:04 MDT
Eugene Leitl wrote:
>
> I think if we restrict the discussion to technologically advanced
> weapons (depleted uranium vs buckshot, particle beam vs. Uzi) and
> keep the politics out of it things would be perfectly appropriate for
> this list.
Okay. If I'm voting for "Guns I'd most like to have", I nominate the
SHAKK from "Patton's Spaceship" by John Barnes, the Lazy Gun from
"Against a Dark Background" by Iain M. Banks, and the willygun from
"Sten" by Alan Cole and Chris Bunch. Star Trek's phasers get a
runner-up nomination.
Back in real life, I've heard rumors of an amateur shoulder-mounted
"bazooka" laser, I believe pulsed infrared, that could punch through
steel. Anyone hear anything about that?
I've had some ideas about nonlethal and inconspicuous self-defense for
the extremely rich. I'd like to see two things: First, a pulsed laser
that would automatically target enemy eyes and render them blind for a
few minutes without permanent damage. Preferably the bulk of the laser
would be on your belt, which would pump into an optical fiber (can
lasers do that?), and the targeting equipment would be a small,
motorized mirror set in your shirt button.
The real challenge, I think, would be the targeting, which would require
visual AI plus some way of picking one face out of a crowd. There are
methods that can track where your eyes are focusing, and I think once
you used that to indicate the face, then neural-networks vision is good
enough to pick out the eyes. So I think this is actually possible,
although it would be expensive. You'd also need a way to indicate an
order to fire; probably a particular pattern of bent fingers.
The second thing I'd like to see would be some way of launching
something like small bullets (but preferably without the noise) that
could automatically target guns and knock them out of someone's hand.
Pretty much the same tech as the eye-targeting laser, I think, except
that it'd be harder to make it inconspicuous.
If you can do all that, then you have "sufficiently advanced
technology". Consider: Person A pulls a gun. Person B raises her
hands in a peculiar gesture. Person A's gun is knocked out of his hand
and he shouts "Aargh, I'm blind!" How's that for using the Force?
Obviously this is way more expensive than bodyguards, but it'd be more fun.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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