100+ Science Fiction Facts - from Sci-FI Tech, Concepts & Mindblowing Ideas

Do you believe that you’re part of a widespread Good vs. Evil struggle and that you fight every day on the Good side?

If you feel as though your movement is the Good and your enemies the Evil, then you are ultimately looking at whatever your experience is through a very blurred, low resolution lens and, in most cases, it’s not because you’re stupid, but because you’ve been co-opted. You need a better mythology.

Star Trek, a science fiction mainstay, has millions of fans, fondly called Trekkies. They are very interested in the many innovative, but fictional technologies featured in the long-running franchise, many of which have become a reality(like the Communicator or the Floppy Disc).

The fictional Star Trek universe, called the Trekiverse, has spaceships flying at ‘warp’ speeds, many times faster than the speed of light. The sub-light speed cruise modes of spaceships are called Impulse Drive.

The book is a classic example of hard SF. There is almost no plot and the science trumps the narrative. The fun of such a book is imagining the world of Rama, and the philosophical and practical implications of such a scenario. More so than the limited drama caused by interpresonal relationship. Who cares who is sleeping with who and the power dinamics within the group?

The event of Rama is the main character, not just the setting for a traditional novel. 

Is math an accurate description of our univers, as Plato believed? Or just a useful creation of the human mind?

If we were ever to make contact with an alien species, how might we communicate with them? If Plato is right, then all mathematical truth would have to be universal. Alien mathematics would have to be the same as our mathematics. But if math is something invented, there would be no reason to think alien math has anything to do with our own. And we might never be able to communicate with them.

In 2007, the Discovery shuttle launched into space the ‘Lightsaber’, a Star Wars weapon resembling a Tubelight, to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the first movie.

The close-up images of Saturn's moon Mimas, released by NASA resembled the shape of the Death Star. They also mentioned ‘The Force’ while talking about another moon of Saturn, Lapetus.

There are no computers in Dune. The interstellar ships are operated by humans and the fighting is done with blades, not lasers. Before the events in the books, Herbert imagined a war between humans and AI, after which technology became banned. Personal shields, immune to projectile weapons, elevated the use of swords.

Herbert was distrustful of technology. After experimenting with psychedelic drugs, he became convinced that our progress relied more on the expansion of our consciousness. That's why the spice plays such a key role in his books.

Future humans terraform a planet and, through an unfortunate accident, infect it with a nano-virus that significantly accelerate the evolution of spiders. With their new found biological advantages, the spiders evolve from a species of lonely predators into a space traveling civilisation.

While the spiders were on the fast track of evolution, we follow the wondering of the last humans, traveling in an ark-ship called Ghilghames, in search of a new home.

The book ends with an epic conflict between the last humans and the new sentient spiders. 

Think of AI not as an invention but as a discovery tool, like a powerful camera unveiling the hidden complexities in data. This perspective sees AI as revealing, not creating intelligence. It's about uncovering intelligence already present in large datasets, such as natural language and images. This approach suggests intelligence is more an inherent property of data, waiting to be discovered, rather than something engineered.

This idea de-emphasizes a human-centric view of intelligence, proposing instead that intelligence emerges from simple processes applied to the right data.

Despite these breakthroughs, some scientists shy away from acknowledging quantum entanglement experiments. Doing so challenges their current worldview, as it introduces a reality beyond the spacetime framework, potentially causing a crisis of faith in the scientific establishment.

Over time, scientists demystified quantum entanglement, realizing its applications. Entangled particles became tools for quantum computers, enabling powerful computations, facilitating secure quantum cryptography, and achieving data teleportation between locations.

Forget the classic concepts of heaven and hell. The reality is a fascinating cycle of reincarnation, where each life is a chapter in the vast epic of your soul's journey, enriching your understanding and empathy with every iteration.

Dune is the best-selling SF novel of all time. Created by Frank Herbert in the 1960s, it changed SF forever with its deeply philosophical flavor of science fiction. The story takes place in a distant future where humanity is divided into a feudal system, ruled by an emperor and armies that fight using blades. There is no technology except for a magical drug called "spice" that can only be found on the planet Arrakis, home of the giant sand worms.

Paul is a prince from House Atreides who leads the Fremen, the natives of Arrakis, against the enemies of his house and then the empire at large.

The fictional Lightsabers are technically laser beams, which have diverse usage at low watts, like scanning UPCs, mapping buildings, remote sensing of the ozone layer or carbon dioxide levels.

Industrial lasers can burn and cut as well but have bulky power supplies, unsuitable for a lightsaber fight.

The book makes us question about life issues such as loneliness, empathy, and humanity. The initial suffering of people with intellectual disabilities being considered as humorous toys by others of the same species, says a lot about how we humans deal with the perception of inferiority we have of the other. 

To what extent is research that plans to change human characteristics acceptable? Is human testing acceptable? 

Pros: Facilitates effective collaboration irrespective of physical distance.

Provides an immersive experience, enhancing the feeling of shared space.

Real-time data viewing and manipulation enhance collaborative work.

Cons: Adoption may require investment in VR headsets or mixed-reality rooms.

Potential challenges in user adaptation and comfort.

EVs run on batteries instead of gasoline. You’ve probably seen them on the road, or maybe you own one yourself. They have been around for more than a century, but only recently have they gained popularity as a viable alternative to conventional cars. They are booming on a global level. There's a bunch of reasons coming together to shape the growing electric vehicle market.

You might think that EVs are a recent invention, but they actually date back to the 19th century, when the first electric carriages and trams were developed. However, EVs lost their popularity in the early 20th century, due to the mass production of cheaper and more powerful gasoline cars, such as the Ford Model T. EVs remained a niche product for decades, until the oil crises of the 1970s and the environmental concerns of the 1990s revived the interest in alternative fuels.

Ever since I started studying the art & science of decision-making, one thing has become extremely evident.

Our life is a series of choices we make, and the consequences we experience.

That’s it.

Nothing more, nothing less.

When stories are done well, they are like artificial sweeteners - they fool the mind into thinking we're consuming the real thing.

For example, children sometimes really believe that puppets are alive. Even animals sometimes react to pictures as if they are real things.

Neuralink was founded in 2016 by Elon Musk and a team of seven scientists and engineers. The company was inspired by the concept of “ neural lace ” in the science fiction series The Culture by Iain M. Banks. Neuralink aims to create a generalized BCI that can treat serious brain diseases in the short-term and enable human enhancement in the long-term.

H.G. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds tells the story of an alien invasion in the United Kingdom that threatens the existence of mankind. The novel started with, "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own."

George Orwell's 1984 shows the future of mankind in a dystopian state. It shows society under a tyrannical government, where "Big Brother" is watching your every move.

Hyperion is a planet on the outskirt of the Hegemony, home to mysterious Time Tombs, a structure that somehow makes the time to flow backwards. Speculation regarding the purpose of the tombs and the reason they were sent traveling backward in time is one of the mysteries.

The Shrike, a legendary indestructible shape-shifting being made of blades protects the Tombs. A new religion develops around the reverence of the Shrike. It is said that the Shriek will grant one wish to a person from a 7-people pilgrimage and kill the rest. Our heroes are on such a pilgrimage. 

The book is a collection of short stories that combione combine SF and magic, celebrating the wonders of our everyday life with sprinkles of magic.

The influence of Chinese culture that was common in every story, such as the introduction of literomancy that details the history and beauty of the Chinese language. Liu also draws on the popular chinese character “Sun Wukong” as an imaginary companion of a litigator who makes a brave choice.

Liu also retells Chinese folklore such as the story of Guan Yu, the popular Chinese military general, in All the Flavours.

Last week, after five months of striking, the Writers Guild (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) reached a tentative agreement. “We can say, with great pride,” the WGA wrote , “that this deal is exceptional — with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership.” 

The rational part of our mind knows that what we're looking at, or reading, isn't real. However, the perceptual areas of our brains are very closely connected to our emotions.

Emotions force us to interpret the world differently. Research reveals how fear can affect vision, moods can make us more or less susceptible to visual illusions, and desire can change the apparent size of goal-relevant objects.

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the best-selling books Sapiens and Homo Deus thinks that science fiction shapes the understanding of people on issues such as intelligence and biotechnology, which will likely change our society in the future.

Science fiction wrestles with concepts such as AI taking over the jobs of workers. One good science fiction movie is worth a hundred articles in Science of Nature.

A nebula with a majestic composition of elements and gases.

Crab Nebula image taken by JWST and Hubble Space Telescope revealing the details in infrared light(electromagnetic waves) MIRI and NIRCam.

Frank Herbert's Sources of Inspiration:

• Studying sand dunes for work
• Experimentation with psychedelic drugs in the 60s
• Basing Paul on historical figures like Alexander the Great or Lawrence of Arabia
• Comparing the fremen to Arab bedouins and the Harkonens to Soviets

In Dune, Herbert weaves historical lessons through an allegorical tale that is both complex and intriguing.

The BCI and neurotechnology industry faces potential disruptors that could reshape the landscape without warning. Wildcard elements include groundbreaking or failed developments, supply chain vulnerabilities, and radical innovations. Navigating these unknown unknowns is crucial for stakeholders to anticipate and adapt to uncertain industry shifts.

• Breakthroughs or failures
• Major events/crises
• Rapid advancements/paradigm shifts

Quantum entanglement, defying conventional physics, poses challenges to concepts like causality and locality. Many scientists find these features counterintuitive, leading them to view it as an improbable phenomenon. Acceptance would demand a paradigm shift in understanding our physical reality and the universe, a leap some physicists are hesitant to make.

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that focuses on imaginary elements such as superheroes, alternate worlds, aliens, etc. Science fiction may include elements of fantasy but always have a basis in science, whereas fantasy is only imaginative.

Space opera is a form of science fiction where the story takes place in outer space. Space operas are action or adventure-themed and include space travel, interstellar wars or heroes trying to save the world.

Space science is a field filled with intriguing mysteries that continue to captivate scientists and astronomers.

Here are some of the top mysteries in space science:

The Star Wars films are probably the most well-known example of science fiction in popular culture.

The Matrix is another sci-fi film that tells the story of a world where humans are completely controlled, and life on Earth is a simulation occurring in the mind. Neo, the protagonist, is shown that his life is an illusion and he is tasked with saving humanity.

• Books and novels leave their impact on young minds.
• All kinds of fiction helps young minds develop emotional intelligence and critical thinking skills
• There is a common misconception that reading junk novels and wild sci-fi stories is a waste of time.

New research suggests that reading science fiction and fantasy helps young people cope with the stress and anxiety of thier complicated existence.

Social science does kind of lead you down the road to ignorance because it is about social. And anything social is about groupthink and group behavior and individuals can search for truth but groups search for consensus. The last place you’re going to find truth is in large group.

The nature of what science is is being corrupted and that started the day we let the so-called social sciences masquerade as sciences. Physics, molecular biology, chemistry, mathematics, the theory of computation, etc. is real science.

The connection between depression and aging

The concept of reversing aging and the potential for new technologies to transform our understanding and approach to aging. Aging may not be as irreversible as previously thought. The important lesson is to stay informed and proactive in managing personal health, especially regarding advancements in medical and biological sciences.

• Age might not be as fixed as we once believed
• New technology could change our understanding and management of aging
• Stay informed and proactive in staying healthy

As the Technocore AI civilisation was evolving into an ultimate form it met the Human Ultimate. It met God. What they realized is that God’s trinity is made of:

1. the Void Which Binds
2. Intellect
3. Empathy

The machines did not poses Empathy so:

• they tried to bait the Human God using empathy as its weakness. This is the role of the Shrike.
• they worked on developing empathy by trying to understand poetry. It's why they focused on reviving John Keats. To understand the human spirit through poetry.

.... is a method, proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964,  of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is able to use. 

The Kardashev scale has 3 categories:

• Type I civilization, also called a planetary civilization, can use and store all of the energy available on its planet.
• Type II civilization, also called a stellar civilization, can use and control energy at the scale of its planetary system.
• Type III civilization, also called a galactic civilization, can control energy at the scale of its entire host galaxy.

It's been more than 30 years since the first "Star Wars."

The cultural influence of the Star Wars Films, novels, comics, television shows, games, toys, and documentaries has been so great that over 390,000 people stated their religion as Jedi.

Star Wars also showed that merchandising could make even more money than the movies do.

"DON'T DIE" by Bryan Johnson explores how to overcome the fear of death, transform oneself, and strive for a longer life. It follows a group of friends discussing these topics through personal stories, science, and philosophy.

The protagonist, Scribe, gathers friends to reflect on life's deeper questions and plan for the future. The book challenges readers to contemplate human existence and evolution. 

• Explores confronting mortality, personal transformation, and longevity
• Inspires readers to reflect on life, death, and human potential
• Promotes open discussions about life's mysteries

Paul's history is Greek. Atreides, Leto, and all are Greek names. Leto's banner was a bull, an ancient Greek symbol. Like Alexander the Great, Paul had a great dad, a powerful mom who belonged to a religious sect & had to blend with the desert people to rule over them.

But Paul's story is also that of T. E. Lawrence, a famous Englishman who led the Arabs against the Ottoman occupation during WW1. Like Paul, Lawrence adopted the culture of the Arab population and was a big advocate for Arab nationalism.

However, Paul is not a good guy. His accession serves as a warning against prophets.

In the 1970s book, humanity has colonized the our star system. After a significant asteroid impact, a guard system is implemented to watch out for deeps space objects. Rama is such an object, initially thought to be an asteroid, but later to be discovered to be an alien ship.

A crew, led by Cmd. Norton, explores the ship, discovering it is hosting an evolving environment, able to sustain live, populated with weird 3-legged spider-like creatures. 

The ship accelerates and lives the solar system leaving humanity to meditate on the first alien interaction. 

• Sci-Fi fans have often been categorized as geeks, who are disconnected from reality.
• The fantasy world they encapsulate their minds in requires creating story worlds that increase their emotional quotient, mental resilience and problem solving skills.
• Good science fiction writing engages the reader in real human dilemmas, helping young readers make sense of the world.
• Stories like Hunger Games or Beggars In Spain help many young people understand complex social, economical and political issues.

Feudalism is the system of government in "Dune," similar to the Middle Ages or "Game of Thrones." This is because Frank Herbert believed feudalism was the natural political order. He believed most people want to be led and that freedom was a burden for most. So, in "Dune," society is divided into houses:

• The Atreides represent the civilized West.
• The Harkonnen are the Soviets, which Herbert despised (he was related to Joseph McCarthy, a U.S. anti-communist).
• The Corrinos, the house of the Emperor, are the Ottomans who created the modern standing army (like the Sardaukar in "Dune").

• A hologram: As seen in the first Star Wars movie, a hologram is a 3D image made from the interference of light beams from a laser onto a 2D surface. In 2018, researchers created a real hologram. At present, it can only be done on a very small scale.
• Bionic limbs: After losing his hand, Luke Skywalker receives a bionic version that can function like a normal hand. Recently researchers have developed a way for amputees to control each of their prosthetic fingers using an ultrasonic sensor.

.. is a subgenre of SF in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife & high tech". Unlike traditional SF, cyberpunk focuses on the side-effects of the drug of futurism: evil corporation, pollution, inequality, corruption sustained by amazing tech and gizmos.

The genre spans across many mediums:

• Books (Neuromancer or Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep?)
• Movies (Blade Runner, Robocop, Total Recall)
• Anime (Akira, Ghost in the Shell)
• Computer games (Shadowrun, Syndicate)
• Comics (Judge Dredd)

Science fiction often predicts the future, with most popular stories almost always having elements of fixing a society on the verge of decline, or which is already in a state of dystopia.

It is ultimately a positive genre, a portal in which we can see where our world may be headed, drawing from contemporary life, breakthroughs in medical and space science, technology and even history.

• Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series (the one with Captain Picard) had the holodeck, a place where anything imaginable was experienced, like a past memory.
• The 2009 movie Avatar used virtual reality as the main storyline.
• The real world now uses virtual reality to tackle real-world problems, like doctors learning to use surgical instruments, for example.
• The military uses simulated war games to train soldiers for the real thing.

Earth is ravaged by the effects of climate change, the economy and culture are largely globalized & civilization has powerful computers, which have enabled the creation of Copies, whole-brain emulations of "scanned" humans. 

Paul Durham offers wealthy Copies prime real estate in an advanced supercomputer which, according to his pitch, will never be shut down. He hires Maria Deluca to design an Autoverse program which, given a powerful enough computer, could generate a planet's worth of evolvable Autoverse life. 

1. Identify a small number of ambitious outcomes to pursue with your deep work hours
2. Find your lag (the goal you’re trying to achieve) and lead metrics (the behaviors you’ll do to reach the goal)
3. Develop a scoreboard where you track your time spend in a state of deep work
4. Analyze the results and be accountable for the results, always working to hit the metrics you had previously identified

• The mobile phone. In Star Trek, the communicator was often used to communicate back to the USS Enterprise. In 1973, the first mobile phone was invented by Martin Cooper.
• The universal translator. To understand galactic foreigners, Star Trek characters used a universal communicator. Now products like Sourcenext's Pocketalk and Skype's new voice translation service can provide instant translation between languages.

The novel picks up where it left off, with the pilgrims entering the Shrike Valley. They find themselves caught up in a war between the Hegemony and the Ousters, a group of humans who have rejected the Hegemony's rule.

The AI plays a major role in this novel as it’s goals and relationship with humanity are explored in depth. They had something to do with the Shrike and the upcoming war. Hint hint!

Like the famous medieval book, Dan Simmons’s book deals with 7 characters (a Jesuit priest, a military genius, a scholar, a private detective, a poet, a starship master & a diplomat) who meet on a pilgrimage. To pass the time each of them tells their story as a way to answer the question ”Why are you here?”.

The book is thus a collection of distinct genre-beneding stories:

• psychological horror story
• part war story, part erotic novel
• supernatural thriller
• detective story
• family drama
• political thriller

You get to understand the universe and the themes to these individual stories.

Dark matter and dark energy make up a significant portion of the universe, but their nature remains a mystery. Dark matter does not interact with light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation, while dark energy is thought to be responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe.

Our (human) intelligence is what allowed our species to develop the world we live in today: science, technology, math, physics, chemistry, medicine etc. Without the application of intelligence we would all still be living in the forest, gathering or hunting for food.

What AI offers us is the opportunity to profoundly augment human intelligence to make all of these outcomes of intelligence much, much better:

• Better tutoring for kids
• Assistants for every scientist
• Better decision-making for every leader
• Productivity growth
• An explosion of creative industries
• Reduce casualties in wars
• etc...

Every new technology that matters, from electric lighting to automobiles to radio to the Internet, has sparked a moral panic.

That's not to say new technologies haven't led to bad outcomes. Most new tech is also being used for bad.

But a moral panic is by its very nature irrational – it takes what may be a legitimate concern and inflates it into a level of hysteria that ironically makes it harder to confront actually serious concerns.

Our sense of smell relies on receptors in the nose that detect airborne molecules and transmit signals to the brain, where they are interpreted as specific odors. Replicating this process digitally involves capturing, encoding, and transmitting scent information to simulate the perception of smell artificially. Digital smell, also known as olfactory technology or digital scent technology, refers to the reproduction or simulation of smells using digital devices such as computers, smartphones, or virtual reality systems.

The idea of "beaming" someone up was that a person could be dematerialised and then converted back into matter at their destination.

Although scientists can't teleport humans yet, they can teleport balls of energy known as photons. Teleportation is based on a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement.

The entities in Rama are very simple and they don't show signs of traditional "intelligence", being guided by the environment more than reason. 

A common assumption is intelligence should be hard. Complex algorithms pick the best course of action by analizing all the parametrs of a complex model. This is what humans do when they play chess, for example. 

What about a coachroch? Their avoid danger by always running away from light, a very simple heuristic, called Idiothetic behaviour. 

The coachroach did not have to reason his situation. His direct perception had enough information to plot a path to action.

The story about the nature of consciousness follows Ana & Derek as they raise digital creatures (Jax, Marco & Polo) from pets to almost-human intelligent creatures.

The core idea is that consciousness can not be programmed but evolved: "it takes at least twenty years of steady effort to produce a useful person, & I see no reason that teaching an artificial being would go any faster." AI needs to be raised like children. Being a parent raises some heavy issues: what is love and how do we get it? Why does the world contain evil pain and loss? How can we discover dignity? Who is in power and why?

if we want to give an AI any responsibilities then it will need good answers to these questions. That's not going to happen by loading the works of Kant into the computer's memory.

The story is set in a universe where there are 2 sister planets, which run on completely different ideologies:

• Urras: an Earth-like planet, with many states, the most powerful one described as a capitalist one
• Anarres is an arid planet with an anarchic society: no rulers, no private property, and no government. 

The story follows  Shevek, a brilliant temporal physicist from Anarres. We follow him growing up on Anarres and on a trip to Urras, in a series of alternating chapters. Each chapter is a philosophical exploration of concepts such as freedom, love, or property.

Half of the alternating chapters deal with Shevek growing up on Anarres, becoming a top scientist ... only to discover the utopian anarchy suffers from a lack of innovation, maintaining the status quo with social norms.

Having no chance to develop his theory on Anarres, Shevek travels to capitalist Urras, where science is much more developed and he is treated as a hero. But he soon finds out the regime was simply trying to take advantage of him and use his theories for economic and military benefit. He makes his discoveries available to everyone and escapes back to Anarres. 

Father Dure was a disciple of Teilhard de Chardin, a controversial Jesuit priest from the XX century. Teilhard’s God is not a mystical concept, but a cosmic one. He proposed that the cosmic body of Christ "extends throughout the universe and comprises all things that attain their fulfillment in Christ .. the Body of Christ is the one single thing that is being made in creation."

This process of God expansion and evolution will continue, it is proposed, until its full realization at Omega, a point which coincides with the fully realized Christ. It is at this point that God will be "all in all”.

• Global EV market valued at $163.01 billion in 2020.
• Projected to reach $823.75 billion by 2030.
• CAGR of 18.2% from 2021 to 2030.
• EV sales exceeded 10 million in 2022.
• Accounted for 14% of all new car sales.
• China, Europe, and the United States are leading.
• China alone contributes around 60% of global EV sales.

The conversation ignites with a dilemma: Are UFO sightings evidence of hidden advanced propulsion technologies developed in secrecy, or do they signify visitations from extraterrestrial beings? This debate sets the stage for a deep dive into the mysteries that hover over humanity's understanding of the universe.

A supernova remanent present 6500 light years away in constellation Taurus.

1. Doubly Ionsized Sulphur - red-orange
2. Ionized Iron - blue
3. Dust - yellow-white, green
4. Synchrotron emission - white

From the beginning of time humanity connected to a collective sense of meaning through myths & stories. In the West, a lot of our identity is shaped by Christian stories. 

With the advent of technology, we moved away from superstition and embraced rationality & technology. SF in a way is plucking that hole, discussing the philosophy of science. Dune, for example, shares a lot of its narrative ark with Jesus's hero journey but replaces the historical background of Ancient Rome with space feudal lords. 

SF, the good SF at lest, is working on the same big questions we keep asking as human beings, but from a place of scientific understanding rather than assuming everything is God-made:

• What is our purpose in an infinite universe that does not seem to care about us?
• Are we alone or there are other consciousness we can interact with?
• Can we make our own path using technology? 
• Can we escape death? Can we become Gods?
• What makes us human in materialistic universe?
• What is good and evil if there is no ultimate judge?
• How do we know what's real?
• etc...

The first movie of the blockbuster franchise, retroactively titled as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, exploded into the movie theatres in 1977. It became a global cultural phenomenon and gave birth to a pop-culture empire, which included sequels, prequels, books, comics, games, TV series and even radio shows.

The franchise also affected real-world space technology in numerous ways.

But today, many scientists doubt Darwin’s theory. We have learned a lot about our existence, and to many of our finest thinkers it seems almost impossible that life on Earth has evolved through evolution.

Just take a look at the complex human DNA. In recent years it was discovered that all life is based on these very complex strains of information that are present in each and every cell of our bodies.

Every human life starts with one cell that is already stuffed with information. It contains a very detailed manual on how your body should grow. Just from the information in this single cell your complete body builds and grows. The human that grows from there is fully complete with a brain, arms, legs and somtimes a big nose or small ears ;).

But DNA not only contains this blueprint—it also describes how all cells, all organs, all muscles and limbs will work together. For example, will this person be excellent at playing soccer or maybe become a great designer? DNA plays a major role in setting these future events in motion. Unbelievable, isn’t it?

DNA is the blueprint for your body. Researchers have calculated that if you were to write down the information that is stored in human DNA, you would need more than a million pages! That’s over 3,300 books! This complex code is not just at the heart of a human being.

Many scientists still believe that life has evolved through a series of tiny steps and many chemical processes—in effect, that DNA has evolved over millions of years. Yet more and more scientists are recognising that DNA is so incredibly complex that it is impossible that it could be the result of accidental chemical reactions.

In the late 80s, Patrick Stewart was the classy and dashing Captain Picard, the main character of the Star Trek series, which started in 1966, originally starring Captain Kirk (and Spock!). The idea of exploring strange new worlds in the galaxy, speeding at warp-speed in a beautiful ocean cruiser-like spaceship was too good to resist.

Captain Picard may be fictional, but he’s my mentor nonetheless. He was portrayed as having an introverted, intuitive, thinking, and judging (INTJ) type personality and his analytical problem-solving skills provide leadership lessons to us even now.

Stories, fiction included, act as a kind of replacement for life. You can learn information from them very effortlessly. You'll also remember false information without realizing and will find fictional stories emotionally arousing.

The reason we react to fiction as though it were real is that our mind does not even realize that fiction is fiction.

We may be finding that our taste in books and movies is taking an apocalyptic direction these days. We may even identify with the stories and the characters.
This sounds a bit like torture because we use fiction to imaginatively aggravate our wounds, instead of to soothe them.

The Technocore is the sentient AI civilisation in Hyperion. Less is known about its purpose but we know there are 3 factions: 

• The Stables - wishing to keep the human-machine symbiosis
• The Volatiles - wishing to end humankind
• The Ultimates - wishing to transcend towards an Ultimate Intelligence

The Ultimates are the most forward looking. Their goal is to evolve into Ultimate God-like being, existing outside space-time. 

As the AI was working on becoming God, the humans are struggling with accepting one:

• Sol, a Jew scholar who's daughter is aging backwards, rejected him for cruelty and demand for obedience: “Abraham’s path of obedience can no longer be followed, even if there is a God demanding such obedience.”
• Father Dure, a Jesuit priest who was revived by a mysterious crucifix, was struggling with God as a clever algorithm. Not accepting that some things are beyond intellect.

The pilgrims manifest a connection through pain that forms the binding agent for the pilgrimage. The theme is explored in all stories, both physically but also culturally:

• The evolution of religions. Christianity and Judaism are niche religions while the Shriek church is on the rise with a doctrine of ultimate destruction. 
• The “The Abraham Problem.” Why, exactly, did God want Abraham to offer his son as a blood sacrifice? What was His purpose?
• The pain of existence & the search of meaning. 
• The nature of sacrifice and the promise of a Messiah

AI is: The application of math & software code to teach computers how to generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it. Like any program it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output (useful across a wide range of fields, ranging from coding to medicine to law to the creative arts)

AI isn’t: Killer software and robots that will spring to life and decide to murder the human race or otherwise ruin everything, like you see in movies like Terminator.

Like any technology AI is a way to make everything we care about better.

The problem deals with explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than non-conscious. Or how does material existence leads to awareness.

Spira proposes that, consciousness is that through which all experiences is known. This definition aims to invoke more than explain. Following it, it results consciousness transcends all mathematical descriptions, which Hoffman agrees with. 

But even though the proposal seems to be that consciousness is fundamental and we can never get to a math model for it, incomplete explanations may have value.

Most scientists assume time & physical objects are fundamental. And that certain physical objects like brains poses a level of complexity that allows them to get conscious. 

Hoffman beliefs that it's the other way around. That consciousness creates physical systems. And that space-time is dead:

• proved by natural selection: because complex systems hide complexity -> space time is just an abstraction 
• the traditional physics has no operational meaning below the “Planck scale,” roughly 10 at the power of -20 times the size of a proton. 

The story happens 1000 yrs after the accidental destruction of Earth. 

• The human race expanded on 200 worlds, forming a federation called the Hegemony. 
• The humans are aided by a sentient independent AI civilisation called the TechnoCore. They provide the technology powering the Hegemony’s instantaneous travel (farcaster) and communication (fatline). No-one knows how the tech works or what the AI intentions are.
• The Ousters are a human-like society spread over much of our arm of our galaxy, preferring to explore the outer edges space. Initially they act as the boogie-man for the Hegemony.

In many schools today, kids are educated about the source of life on Earth.

Most scientists believe that the entire universe started with a ‘Big Bang’; this theory was based on the work of Albert Einstein and many others.

The Evolution Theory explains that life on Earth began with simple organisms. These small organisms developed over millions of years into animals and finally into human beings. This process, called ‘evolution’, was presented by Charles Darwin in 1859 and it has been adopted by many scientists ever since.

Arrakis is the only planet in the Dune Universe where the spice is produced. The spice is essential for interstellar travel, as the operators of spaceships need it to plot courses & for the religion in the empire as a conscience-enhancing drug.

• Frank Herbert consumed both magic mushrooms & LSD during the hippie revolution and came to believe that expanding our consciousness is a better path forward for humanity than technology.
• During his time, the importance of oil became obvious, which at that time came from the Middle East.

Herbert thus combined these two magical ingredients into one.

The Fremen are the Arabs, conquered by the Ottomans and ruled by the British and the French. Arabs became the model for the Fremen, the native population of Arrakis.

Like the Arabs sitting on piles of oil, the Fremen's planet is the only planet producing spice. And like the Arabs, their religion is heavily dependent on prophecies. 

Frank Herbert believed that the Arabs could form a new superpower if they managed to unite under one banner. A unification that has to be religious in nature, just like in his book. 

Three important points to help you perform better:

• When you’re in flow, five neurochemicals are released simultaneously.
• For flow to happen, some parts of your brain must be switched off, not on.
• What we think is possible changes every time we see a new achievement, which is why flow is so important.

Ted Chiang became famous for his short philosophical stories. His début collection, “Stories of Your Life and Others” (2002), garnered multiple awards and included “Story of Your Life,” which reëxamined the phenomena of time and memory in terms of language. 

In his second collection called "Exhalation", he addresses issues relating to bioethics, virtual reality, free will & determinism, time travel, and the uses of robotic forms of A.I.