Americans are NOT stupid

blueznl · Post by **blueznl** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 3:39 pm

wow, much more impressive than sending three naked apes up there...

... that's what you get for putting mirrors on your ceiling...

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 3:50 pm

Kaeru Gaman wrote:
Trond wrote:He's saying that the plate could have been placed there by a robot.
hm...
so, in 1969
- building a Robot that is able to do such things
- and sending it to the Moon
- and landing it in a way that it keeps functionality
- and can place a plate that will reflect a leserbeam.....

wow, much more impressive than sending three naked apes up there...

Well, they built a Lander and a Rover etc and sent them to the Moon and landed them, keeping them functional, and I'm sure it can't of been too hard to point a mirror at the Earth, it's the big blue round shiney thing you can see from the Moon..... (anyway, I'm only winding you up, I'm sure they went there

)

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 3:58 pm

I'm also sure they went there, I just pointed out what looked like a misunderstanding.

Kaeru Gaman · Post by **Kaeru Gaman** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 4:09 pm

(anyway, I'm only winding you up, I'm sure they went there)

I'm just playing, too.

the rover and the lander itselves were quite Lo-Tec.
nothing compared to a robot that is still today bloody Hi-Tec.

compare a robot with a human being...

a human being can take decisions in unexpected situations.
still in 2007, 40 years after the moon-landing, we are not able to program an AI that is able do so.

a human being is robust.
it can get a physical shock that breaks its legs and chest, and still is able to take decisions, press buttons and pull levers.
a robot after such a shock is nothing more than a bunch of very expensive scrap metal that will never again do anything.

in 1969, a robot would have been a really, really heavy device, heavier than three human beings in scaphanders.
additionally, three human beings are a double-redundand system.
a single robot is not. if it fails, it's all failed.

and, a human being is cheap.
even with this expensive training much cheaper than such a robot would be.

so, bringing such a robot up there in 1969 would have been a thousand times less possible than bringing human beings up there.
cut out by Ockhams razor.

@Trond
yap, thanks.. I really didn't get the point of his post.

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 5:32 pm

Derek wrote: A robot like the one on Mars! (Robot that is, not plate)

After typing 'like the one on Mars' I thought people might think I meant 'like the plate on mars' which there isn't one (at least I don't think there is) so I put the bit in brackets, which, now that I have read it again, is just confusing and didn't help. It's been a long week and I'm tired so I'll use that as an excuse....

Nik · Post by **Nik** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 6:17 pm

Well actually the Russians did land a rover on the moon just one year later:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1

Btw: To me it seems the most advanced AI controlled robots (the ones on Mars being 90% remote controlled though a new software update now enables them to drive more than a few cm avoiding obstacles automatically) are the soccer playing robots you can see for example in this video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hrwrmotof0w
btw: those robots run fully on ai though they have wifi contact with each other and the referee (a computer program used to tell the robots the state of the game.
together with the Grand Challenge AI cars.

Kaeru Gaman · Post by **Kaeru Gaman** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 6:46 pm

true.
the rules are, no human being may intervene.
but it is ok, if a structured bunch of AIs communicate with each other.
human players can also do this by shouting, but they have no "god" avaliable to correct them if they all go wrong.

I think, this is a great chance for AI development.
competitions, where your AI can succeed or fail, only on the base what you have programmed before.
adds the unexpectedness to the competition, and makes it "real".
knowledge gained from these games will surely improve AI development for the future.

;------------------------------------------------------------
thanks for the Lunokhod-link.
seems, you proved me wrong someway....

sure, it wasn't AI-controlled but remote, but they managed to bring it safely there.

btw. this is an example for "filtered" information. I just didn't know about it, though I had the chance....

@topic "filtered information":
tell me who performed the first motor-flight, without looking it up in wiki....

Nik · Post by **Nik** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 7:21 pm

I think the official answer should be the wright brother, but I guess that's as much a lie as colossos being the first computer.

Kaeru Gaman · Post by **Kaeru Gaman** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 8:42 pm

it's not fully a "lie", but a "publicity"-thing (thus completely a "filter"-thing)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Jatho
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead

...colossos being the first computer.

the first computer was a device, build in the ancient, around the time of Archimedes....
they found a construction of gearwheels, where you can "input" a certain time,
and that "outputs" a certain planet-constellation on its upper surface.

a complex apparate that "computes" some "input" into some "output"
fits the definition of some "computer"
(no, sorry, I don't have a Wiki-Link at hand...)

Nik · Post by **Nik** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 9:23 pm

ok then it's a programmable device

Kaeru Gaman · Post by **Kaeru Gaman** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 9:37 pm

but "programmable" does not fit the definition of what was called "the first computer" before.... o_Ô

also the official definition relies on the I/O-fact, not on programmability in a various meaning...