Dumu The Void's definitions

Space Station Tourism

A specific type of space tourism where private individuals visit an orbiting space station—currently the International Space Station (ISS) or future commercial stations. Tourists live and work alongside professional astronauts, eating, sleeping, and experimenting in microgravity. They must undergo months of training, and their visits are often brokered by companies like Axiom Space. Space station tourism is more immersive than simple orbital flights, offering the chance to stay in a permanent human habitat in space, but it also requires more resources and coordination.

Example: “She spent two weeks on the ISS, sleeping in a sleeping bag strapped to a wall, watching Earth rotate beneath her—space station tourism at its most authentic.”

by Dumu The Void April 11, 2026

ISS Tourism

Space orbit tourism specifically to the International Space Station (ISS). Private individuals can pay for a trip to the ISS via companies like SpaceX or Roscosmos, staying for up to a few weeks as “spaceflight participants.” They live and work alongside professional astronauts, conduct educational outreach, and experience life in the only permanent human habitat off Earth. ISS tourism is extremely expensive (tens of millions of dollars) and requires months of training. It’s the closest most people will ever get to being an astronaut, though critics argue the ISS should be reserved for scientific research.

Example: “His ISS tourism trip cost more than most people’s lifetime earnings, but he got to float in the Cupola, take photos of Earth, and eat rehydrated ice cream.”

by Dumu The Void April 11, 2026

Space Orbit Tourism

Commercial space travel that remains in Earth orbit—the most accessible form of space tourism today. Passengers ride a spacecraft (like SpaceX Crew Dragon or Blue Origin’s New Shepard) to altitudes of 100‑400 km, experiencing minutes of weightlessness, seeing the curvature of Earth, and floating in a capsule before returning. Trips last from a few minutes (suborbital) to several days (orbital). Space orbit tourism is offered by private companies to wealthy individuals, costing hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. Critics call it a billionaire’s joyride, while proponents see it as the first step toward making space accessible.

Example: “She sold her startup to afford a space orbit tourism flight—three days circling Earth, watching sixteen sunrises, and floating like a superhero.”

by Dumu The Void April 11, 2026

Theory of AI Generativity and AI Recursion

A theoretical framework exploring two intertwined properties of advanced AI: generativity (the ability to produce novel, human‑level or superhuman outputs across domains) and recursion (the ability to improve itself, generating better AI that generates even better AI, in a feedback loop). The theory examines how recursive self‑improvement could lead to rapid capability gains (an intelligence explosion) and how generative AI systems might produce training data for their successors, creating closed‑loop evolution. It also considers risks: loss of control, value misalignment, and the difficulty of verifying recursive safety. The theory is central to discussions of artificial general intelligence and existential risk.

Example: “The theory of AI generativity and AI recursion warned that once an AI can write better AI code than human engineers, the pace of progress could exceed our ability to supervise—leading to a system we no longer understand.”

by Dumu The Void April 11, 2026

AI Infrascience

The study of the infrastructure that supports AI research and deployment: datasets, computing clusters, software frameworks, model zoos, annotation pipelines, and the energy grids that power them. AI infrascience examines how infrastructure choices shape what AI can do—who gets to train large models, whose data is included, how carbon footprints are measured, and how open source vs. proprietary tools affect innovation. It reveals that AI is not just algorithms; it’s a material system dependent on rare earth minerals, cloud contracts, and precarious labeling labor. Understanding AI requires understanding its infrascience.

Example: “Her AI infrascience research traced how the shift to cloud computing centralized AI power in a few tech giants, making it nearly impossible for academics to compete on large language models.”

by Dumu The Void April 11, 2026

AI Metascience

The study of AI research itself as a scientific enterprise—its methods, incentives, biases, and institutional dynamics. AI metascience asks questions like: Is the field too focused on benchmark‑hunting? Do publication pressures reward incremental improvements over breakthroughs? How does corporate funding shape research agendas? What makes AI results reproducible or not? It applies the tools of metascience (meta‑analysis, replication studies, research on research) to the booming AI literature. AI metascience aims to improve the quality, transparency, and direction of AI research, ensuring that the field’s rapid growth does not come at the expense of rigor.

Example: “His AI metascience study found that 70% of reinforcement learning papers couldn’t be reproduced because authors omitted key hyperparameters—a crisis hidden by the field’s hype cycle.”

by Dumu The Void April 11, 2026

AI Sciences

The broad, interdisciplinary family of fields that study artificial intelligence from multiple perspectives: computer science, mathematics, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, linguistics, ethics, and sociology. AI sciences include technical disciplines (machine learning, computer vision, NLP), human‑facing fields (human‑AI interaction, explainable AI), and critical studies (AI ethics, algorithmic fairness, AI law). Together, they investigate what AI is, how it works, how it affects society, and how it should be governed. The plural “sciences” acknowledges that no single discipline can fully grasp the AI phenomenon.

Example: “The conference brought together AI sciences: engineers presented new architectures, psychologists studied user trust, and philosophers debated whether an AI could have moral standing.”

by Dumu The Void April 11, 2026