[extropy-chat] Re:Just trying to figure it out

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Anna Tylor <femmechakra at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >you are absotuly right, I should have written that this is the first
> time I 
> >have ever posted anything.  My apologies to everyone.

No worries.  Everyone's a newbie to these things at some time.

> >Again you are right, inexperience is the problem or better yet the
> way I 
> >communicate
> >may be the bigger problem but I still thought I understood it.

Ah, and there lies one of the biggest problems in communicating
complex ideas: the whole point of communication is to get other people
to understand something.  It does not matter how well you understand
it, save that this helps you to find ways to express your ideas to
others.  Indeed, while learning hard topics, I have often found it a
useful tactic to try to explain the concepts to an imaginary child -
mostly to force myself to restate the concept in clear and simple terms
(literally, in terms that an average child would understand).

> Anyhow 
> >thank you for
> >taking the time to respond.  If you do have a few more minutes could
> you at 
> >least look
> >at what I thought I was reading and tell me if at least some of it
> makes 
> >sense, it would be much appreciated.

I already commented on your earlier work, but I see you have added more
comments.  I shall respond to those.

> >A model of mind-body is proposed: a potential ideal of
> >computational leverage
> >>I am proposing that a computer can enhance the mind to such an
> extent that 
> >>it becomes a new mind-body experience

Your restatement is clearer.  You should use that instead.

I also suspect you would find a lot of agreement, at least among those
who make extensive use of the Internet, that computers can enhance the
mind such that it would not be totally inaccurate to call it "a new
mind-body experience".  This is an extension of the old concept by
vehicle operators, of being so in tune with their machine that they are
said to become one with it, or that the machine reacts so quickly and
precisely under their control that it is, at least in practical terms,
essentially a (removable, and thus temporary) extension of their body.

> >Mechanisms that are based upon primitive properties of the universe
> (such 
> >as space, time, and number of dimensions) derived from modern
> physics 
> >consistency arguments.
> >>With the use of primitive tools, simple observation, and graphing,
> a human 
> >>with no knowledge of existing theories could probably come up with
> simple, 
> >>uncomplicated ideas that may benefit humans that have
> >>huge knowledge and expertise.

Again your restatement is clearer.  I believe that you are on the path
to a much clearer document.  Perhaps it would work if you collected
your thoughts, rewrote the work, then went away from it for a day or
two (to clear your short term memory of thoughts associated with it)
then reread it, looking for ways to restate things even more clearly.
(In this case, any understanding located solely in your short term
memory would be lost - but that's a good thing, since it lets you
identify many of the confusing points in your wording, and you still
understand your thoughts well enough to restate them.)  This only works
for a few cycles, though, before the understanding filters into your
medium and long term memory - and that is when you truly need other
people (who, themselves, do not already understand what you are trying
to say from having read and reread your words) to review your work.

That said - I would disagree with the point you are making here.  Yes,
it is not statistically impossible for an untrained human being to
come up with ideas that are of use to humans with lots of training and
experience.  In practice, while it does happen from time to time, it is
very unlikely, and most of the time when untrained humans think they
have ideas that are of use to the trained, they are not in fact of any
significant use - to the point that the cost of the time to listen to
and comprehend the idea dwarfs any potential benefit to the trained
individual.  (Trained individuals rarely have lots of time to spare,
as their training makes their time valuable.  It is not too inaccurate
to view their time as a resource, in the same sense as money - at least
to the point of making cost-benefit decisions as to where they want to
spend their limited time.)

Of course, this only applies when the idea is within the field of the
trained individual's training.  A typical CFO is usually not very well
trained in engineering, while a typical CTO is usually not very well
trained in finance; the better CFOs and CTOs know to defer to each
other when the topic of conversation drifts to the other's specialty.
Then again, "trained" is a relative term: CFOs and CTOs both tend to
understand both engineering and finance better than a typical 10 year
old child (and thus are "trained" in both fields as compared to said
child), for example.

> >The ideal solution for unlimited intelligence would require a
> sparse, high 
> >dimensional spacetime (unrestricted locality) and a formalized
> observer 
> >mechanism (mobile observer framework based on a superset of inertial
> frame 
> >properties).
> >>Therefore the ideal solution is that
> >>the human with ideas needs to contact people that can
> >>help to explain some "Kook" ideas that someone may have
> >>(high dimensional spacetime-being the internet) and use
> >>some form of communication such as the extropy chat (observer
> framework).

Again, your restatement is clearer - but again, I disagree.

One of the basic findings of those who have extensively used the
Internet to aid their mind, is that the Internet - specifically, its
automated resources - are often the *first* resource one should turn to
when trying to validate new ideas.  If you've thought of it, it often
turns out that other people have thought of it before - and since many
pre-Internet sources of wisdom have been uploaded to the Internet
already, that's 4000+ years of wisdom that are online today even though
the Internet has been around for barely 1% of that (and been heavily
used for even less time).  There are a certain few exceptions, such as
thoughts on extremely new technology the likes of which were never
conceived of before - but for example, the concept of "one with the
machine" probably dates back to as far as there have been fast,
reliable machines for people to be one with (and the basic concept
actually predates what we would today call "machines": "one with his
sword" is something that might have been said of certain mideval
knights, or at least certain samurai from the same years, and the
concept may be older than that), and many documents about this can be
found online.

An example of this in action: going to http://www.google.com/ and
searching on "one with his car" brings up over a thousand results
(which is actually surprisingly low), the first of which -
http://www.kriyayoga.com/love_blog/post.php/269 - is a good poetic
description of the concept.

And so forth.  Quite a lot of people on this list would take the
existence and use of such things as obvious and granted: almost
everyone who is reading this knows of and uses such things.  My
favorite statement of how basic and fundamental this has become - as
has the concept of checking the automated resources (which really do
have all the time in the world to give you information, or effectively
so given how little strain one person's manual searching puts on these
things, as opposed to the significant time a person would spend
listening to and answering a query) - is a certain alias someone
created for Google: http://www.stopbeingsuchalazyfuck.com/

Note the emotional accusation: by asking people instead of looking
things up yourself, you know you're being irresponsible.  This is
almost never actually the case - the *answerer* may know of this
alternate path, but *you* did not.  However, you know it now - and you
might want to use it a lot, before you try to describe what it's like
to use it a lot.  There are enough people who really do use it a lot,
who will be insulted (or worse) by inaccurate depictions of what it's
like to use it a lot (and thus to be one with the Internet).

A more detailed version of this advice, as applying specifically to
technical topics (rather than the metaphoric topic you're writing
about, but close enough to be relevant) is at
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

A quick skim of the rest of your essay seems to follow similar lines.
I think I've said enough to set you on the right path - and I've got
other things I need to do tonight.