From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Tue Jul 3 10:01:01 2007 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 03:01:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Signs Message-ID: <868442.29208.qm@web60521.mail.yahoo.com> Amara should get a kick out of this: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/01/ap/preswho/main3003506.shtml First his limosine Cadillac 1 and now his boat. Some people just can't take a hint. ;-) Stuart LaForge alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Ralph Waldo Emerson ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/222 From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Jul 3 14:31:00 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 07:31:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Signs In-Reply-To: <868442.29208.qm@web60521.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200707031442.l63EgucD003501@lily.ziaspace.com> Cool, the ExI server is back up, good. {8-] spike > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of The Avantguardian > Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 3:01 AM > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [ExI] Signs > > Amara should get a kick out of this: > > http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/01/ap/preswho/main3003506.shtml > > First his limosine Cadillac 1 and now his boat. Some > people just can't take a hint. ;-) > > > > Stuart LaForge > alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu > > "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and > leave a trail." - Ralph Waldo Emerson > > > > __________________________________________________________________________ > __________ > Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's > Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. > http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/222 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From pharos at gmail.com Tue Jul 3 16:30:53 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 17:30:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Status report? Message-ID: The Exi Archives are not back up yet. Any chance of a status report from those up to their waist in the swamp, fighting the alligators? BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Jul 3 18:16:11 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2007 13:16:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] NASA report on re-engineering global warming Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070703131538.024726b0@satx.rr.com> http://event.arc.nasa.gov/main/home/reports/SolarRadiationCP.pdf From nvitamore at austin.rr.com Tue Jul 3 19:57:40 2007 From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com) Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 15:57:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Future: modern government Message-ID: <380-22007723195740411@M2W020.mail2web.com> I was just reading a comment by Fillon in an address before the newly elected parliment: "We must renew our political democracy, modernize our social democracy, and support our intellectual and scientific excellence." Le Fran?ais moderne? While I like modernizing institutions so that they function with up-to-date techniques and methods, I chuckled in thinking about how this might affect the core postmodernists' interesting by trying dribble. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft? Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail From amara at amara.com Tue Jul 3 20:40:49 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 22:40:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dawn launch pics (encapsulation with aerodynamical fairing) Message-ID: Here you see pictures of the task of encapsulating the Dawn spacecraft to protect it during launch and ascent by giving it an aerodynamically smooth nose cone via a 'fairing'. http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=173 The 'go' for launch is pending a final review of the weather and availability of support (airplane and ship) for post-launch tracking. The decision will be made Thursday, as I understand. The launch window opens up on Saturday, for five days. If Dawn misses it, then the launch will be pushed back to September. (Partly because of competition with the launch window of the Mars Phoenix spacecraft, getting ready now on the adjacent launch pad.) Amara -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, ITALIA Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson From pharos at gmail.com Wed Jul 4 10:38:04 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 11:38:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Status report? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 7/3/07, BillK wrote: > The Exi Archives are not back up yet. > > Any chance of a status report from those up to their waist in the > swamp, fighting the alligators? > The Archives are back online now. Are all systems go now? BillK From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Jul 4 15:45:32 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2007 10:45:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Status report? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200707041545.l64FjbKp006918@ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com> At 05:38 AM 7/4/2007, you wrote: >On 7/3/07, BillK wrote: > > The Exi Archives are not back up yet. > > > > Any chance of a status report from those up to their waist in the > > swamp, fighting the alligators? John Klos our technical advisor and administrator just emailed me and said that the archives are back up. Many thanks, Natasha Natasha Vita-More PhD Candidate, Planetary Collegium Transhumanist Arts & Culture Extropy Institute If you draw a circle in the sand and study only what's inside the circle, then that is a closed-system perspective. If you study what is inside the circle and everything outside the circle, then that is an open system perspective. - Buckminster Fuller -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070704/96b12fbb/attachment.html From neville_06 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 4 15:54:32 2007 From: neville_06 at yahoo.com (neville late) Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 08:54:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Future: modern government In-Reply-To: <380-22007723195740411@M2W020.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <785647.53645.qm@web57508.mail.re1.yahoo.com> First, though those at the top of the government tend to be intelligent, the middle and lower layers are staffed with too many dim-witted outdated thinkers and sinecurists. But all we can realistically do is wait for them to die off-- and unfortunately thanks to the very life extension we advocate they are living longer to reach full retirement instead of dying in office, say, of lung cancer as so many smoking bureaucrats did in the past. The solution, then? Early retirement :) "nvitamore at austin.rr.com" wrote: I was just reading a comment by Fillon in an address before the newly elected parliment: "We must renew our political democracy, modernize our social democracy, and support our intellectual and scientific excellence." Le Fran?ais moderne? While I like modernizing institutions so that they function with up-to-date techniques and methods, I chuckled in thinking about how this might affect the core postmodernists' interesting by trying dribble. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft? Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --------------------------------- Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, photos & more. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070704/147203c6/attachment.html From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 4 17:26:27 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:26:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] UFO proponent finds extropes naive Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070704122021.02304d88@satx.rr.com> http://www.ballardian.com/ufopunk-mac-tonnies-strange-blue-world Interesting, irritating interview, with nice insights into J. G. Ballard's fiction and tiresome misunderstandings of evolution, singularity, etc. From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 4 17:28:25 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:28:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] resend: POST MORTAL concludes today Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070704122742.022d5288@satx.rr.com> The final instalment of my and Barbara Lamar's free online novel POST MORTAL SYNDROME is up today [well, it was when I first sent this, before it bounced] at where all 56 eps will remain archived, I understand, for the next six months or so. Don't feel shy about posting comments, pro or con, in the box at the site. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Jul 4 17:32:03 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:32:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] resend: Re: Is this really the case? Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070704123112.0246a7d8@satx.rr.com> At 02:00 PM 6/29/2007 -0400, Josh wrote: >In answer to Anne's original query. IMHO, the answer is yes for much of >the U.S. And elsewhere. Consider this depraved lunacy: Floods are judgment on society, say bishops By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 11:50pm BST 30/06/2007 The summer floods are God's judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society, claim senior Church of England bishops. One, the Bishop of Carlisle, even said that the introduction of pro-gay laws had provoked God to send the storms that have left thousands homeless. The bishops argued that while those affected are innocent victims, the flooding was a result of western civilisation's decision to ignore biblical teaching. The Rt Rev Graham Dow, said that the floods were not only a result of a lack of respect for the planet, but also a judgment for decadence. "This is a strong and definite judgment because the world has been arrogant in going its own way," he said. "We are reaping the consequences of our moral degradation, as well as the environmental damage that we have caused." The Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev James Jones, previously seen as a future Archbishop of Canterbury or York, said: "People no longer see natural disasters as an act of God. However, we are now reaping what we have sown. If we live in a profligate way then there are going to be consequences." God is exposing us to the truth of what we have done." The Bishops spoke as flood-hit communities were warned to expect up to two inches of rain - this weekend. From eugen at leitl.org Wed Jul 4 18:58:19 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 20:58:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] resend: Re: Is this really the case? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070704123112.0246a7d8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070704123112.0246a7d8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20070704185819.GD7079@leitl.org> On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 12:32:03PM -0500, Damien Broderick wrote: > The summer floods are God's judgment on the immorality and greed of > modern society, claim senior Church of England bishops. Given that linearisation of the aquifiers and sealing of the landscape reducing precipitation retention capacity (and, possibly, statistically relevant more extreme weather as a result of anthropogenic climate forcing) he's actually quite correct. Immorality, check, greed, check, but largely, stupidity (biiig check). God, ok, he completely blows his point there. Bummer. Better luck, next time. > One, the Bishop of Carlisle, even said that the introduction of > pro-gay laws had provoked God to send the storms that have left > thousands homeless. This would be so deliciously hilarious, if the guy wasn't completely nuts. He'll be, like, ravaged by rabid squirrels, next. > The bishops argued that while those affected are innocent victims, That's some friendly fire there. Looks remarkably sloppy for a omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent being. Unless this is a very kinky BDSM "Show some respect!" session. (Pst. "Love Jesus!" is your safeword. Mohammed is not an option. Buddha is straight out. Only Jesus(tm) will deliver you from the valley of shadow). > the flooding was a result of western civilisation's decision to > ignore biblical teaching. The Rt Rev Graham Dow, said that the floods > were not only a result of a lack of respect for the planet, but also -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 4 20:32:20 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2007 16:32:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] agency-based personal identity In-Reply-To: References: <3AC703DA-F965-47C3-B030-BE5EE179F855@thomasoliver.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:59:24 -0400, Jef Allbright wrote: > Consider a newborn infant. It functions on its own behalf, at least > enough to find and suck on a nipple, but it yet lacks a model of > itself as a self. > > Is there agency? > It certainly acts on its environment relative to its values so there > is agency, not yet in its own mind, but assigned in the minds of other > observers. Are you suggesting here that the newborn has no intrinsic agency? That its agency exists only in the minds of observers? -gts From sentience at pobox.com Wed Jul 4 23:27:49 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2007 16:27:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A very surreal day Message-ID: <468C2CF5.3020009@pobox.com> Yeah. So. Um. You ever have one of those days where you're, like, checking Technorati to see if anyone has linked to singinst.org recently, and you come across a blog post which mentions that - - and as Buddha and Belldandy and the Flying Spaghetti Monster are my witnesses, I swear that I am not making any of this up and moreover it checks out and doesn't look like a joke - - where was I? Right. So apparently there's this guy in New York whose name I can't remember ever hearing, and who doesn't seem to have ever emailed me, who's written and directed a play called: _Yudkowski Returns: The Rise And Fall And Rise Again of Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski_ "In a seemingly deserted island, Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski and his artificial intelligence drones and cohorts wage a war to keep their circular narrative from ending. Their only weapon? The hope that humanity can finally evolve. (90 min)" Written and directed by Bob Saietta (possibly a.k.a. Bobby Silverman). This has already had one run and is being brought back for another, at something called "The Pretentious Festival" at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn, NY: http://www.bricktheater.com/pretentious/ If you're going to be in New York on: Tue 7/24 8pm Tue 7/26 7:30pm Sat 7/28 3pm Sat 7/28 9pm Sun 7/29 3pm You can buy tickets for $10: http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/section/synopsis/show/133057 * Yudkowski Returns! reviewed by Robert Weinstein Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski, the lead character in Yudkowski Returns (The Rise And Fall And Rise Again Of Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski) wishes he were Japanese. He sits at a desk scattered with seemingly random paraphernalia, downloads episodes of Lost and analyzes the homoerotic subtext of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He orders Chinese food. He puts on his Psycho-Sociological Hat, dances around the theatre and leaps into the narcissistic void of his psyche created by a recent breakup. He restages significant moments while putting others in newfound contexts depending on his ability to understand them. And he is not alone. He has the audience, whom he addresses frequently and with a plastered-on smile, and he has The Assistant, a friendly, disheveled, and increasingly confused woman who is at different times his girlfriend, his girlfriend-as-ex, his confidante, and his conscience. Is she real? I'm not confident Dr. Yudkowski knows. But their isolation?his voluntary, hers more problematic?creates an incredibly complex relationship which plays out as they wait on the appearance of The Singularity, an Artificial Intelligence technology that can solve all of life's unsolvable problems. It makes sense of the nonsensical and will bring an end to all of humanity's conflicts as well as Dr. Yudkowski's isolation and, quite possibly, The Assistant's existence. [ Continued at: http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/P07rev_02.htm#400 * Apparently I'm played by Patrick McCaffrey: "A charming assistant introduces the entrance of (cue the cheesy music...) Doctor Yudkowski, played by Patrick, who exudes all the charisma and appeal that Tom Cruise should have had in _Magnolia_." That was from the original blog post I found, at: http://tba-ny.blogspot.com/2007/07/bobby-silverman-my-nemesis-where-has.html I know what you're all wondering: "How does Eliezer look in the director's vision of what his life *should* be like?" Apparently I look like this: http://www.amrep.org/people/patrick.html * Since no one had the courtesy to notify me that a play had been produced about my life - and possibly Erin's, though I don't know if The Assistant is based on her - if anyone in New York goes to this, do please bring back some photos. Though it would probably appeal more to the taste of my enemies than my friends, unless you have a very liberal sense of humor. I used to describe myself as a D-list celebrity. But I guess that when they produce a play about your life, with your name in the title, and they don't bother to tell you, it means you've officially been promoted to a C-list celebrity. I think next I'm supposed to release a sex tape of myself or something - no wait, that's how you go from the B-list to the A-list. It's been a very surreal day. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From ben at goertzel.org Thu Jul 5 02:02:56 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 22:02:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A very surreal day In-Reply-To: <468C2CF5.3020009@pobox.com> References: <468C2CF5.3020009@pobox.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0707041902n4f692d67r2c27058b3078a89c@mail.gmail.com> Wow, that is hilarious!!! Someone has **got** to sneak a video camera in there, and post the thing on YouTube.... If I were free any of those days I would definitely take the train up to NY to check it out ;-) ben On 7/4/07, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > > Yeah. > > So. > > Um. > > You ever have one of those days where you're, like, checking > Technorati to see if anyone has linked to singinst.org recently, and > you come across a blog post which mentions that - > > - and as Buddha and Belldandy and the Flying Spaghetti Monster are my > witnesses, I swear that I am not making any of this up and moreover it > checks out and doesn't look like a joke - > > - where was I? Right. So apparently there's this guy in New York > whose name I can't remember ever hearing, and who doesn't seem to have > ever emailed me, who's written and directed a play called: > > _Yudkowski Returns: The Rise And Fall And Rise Again of Dr. Eliezer > Yudkowski_ > > "In a seemingly deserted island, Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski and his > artificial intelligence drones and cohorts wage a war to keep their > circular narrative from ending. Their only weapon? The hope that > humanity can finally evolve. (90 min)" > > Written and directed by Bob Saietta (possibly a.k.a. Bobby Silverman). > > This has already had one run and is being brought back for another, at > something called "The Pretentious Festival" at the Brick Theater in > Brooklyn, NY: > > http://www.bricktheater.com/pretentious/ > > If you're going to be in New York on: > > Tue 7/24 8pm > Tue 7/26 7:30pm > Sat 7/28 3pm > Sat 7/28 9pm > Sun 7/29 3pm > > You can buy tickets for $10: > > http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/section/synopsis/show/133057 > > * > > Yudkowski Returns! > reviewed by Robert Weinstein > > Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski, the lead character in Yudkowski Returns (The > Rise And Fall And Rise Again Of Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski) wishes he were > Japanese. He sits at a desk scattered with seemingly random > paraphernalia, downloads episodes of Lost and analyzes the homoerotic > subtext of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He orders Chinese food. He puts > on his Psycho-Sociological Hat, dances around the theatre and leaps > into the narcissistic void of his psyche created by a recent breakup. > He restages significant moments while putting others in newfound > contexts depending on his ability to understand them. And he is not alone. > > He has the audience, whom he addresses frequently and with a > plastered-on smile, and he has The Assistant, a friendly, disheveled, > and increasingly confused woman who is at different times his > girlfriend, his girlfriend-as-ex, his confidante, and his conscience. > Is she real? I'm not confident Dr. Yudkowski knows. But their > isolation?his voluntary, hers more problematic?creates an incredibly > complex relationship which plays out as they wait on the appearance of > The Singularity, an Artificial Intelligence technology that can solve > all of life's unsolvable problems. It makes sense of the nonsensical > and will bring an end to all of humanity's conflicts as well as Dr. > Yudkowski's isolation and, quite possibly, The Assistant's existence. > > [ Continued at: > http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/P07rev_02.htm#400 > > * > > Apparently I'm played by Patrick McCaffrey: > > "A charming assistant introduces the entrance of (cue the cheesy > music...) Doctor Yudkowski, played by Patrick, who exudes all the > charisma and appeal that Tom Cruise should have had in _Magnolia_." > > That was from the original blog post I found, at: > > http://tba-ny.blogspot.com/2007/07/bobby-silverman-my-nemesis-where-has.html > > I know what you're all wondering: "How does Eliezer look in the > director's vision of what his life *should* be like?" Apparently I > look like this: > > http://www.amrep.org/people/patrick.html > > * > > Since no one had the courtesy to notify me that a play had been > produced about my life - and possibly Erin's, though I don't know if > The Assistant is based on her - if anyone in New York goes to this, do > please bring back some photos. Though it would probably appeal more > to the taste of my enemies than my friends, unless you have a very > liberal sense of humor. > > I used to describe myself as a D-list celebrity. But I guess that > when they produce a play about your life, with your name in the title, > and they don't bother to tell you, it means you've officially been > promoted to a C-list celebrity. I think next I'm supposed to release > a sex tape of myself or something - no wait, that's how you go from > the B-list to the A-list. > > It's been a very surreal day. > > -- > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ > Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070704/0ccfba49/attachment.html From eugen at leitl.org Thu Jul 5 08:11:37 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 10:11:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] Dawn launch (No turning back) Message-ID: <20070705081137.GU7079@leitl.org> Forwarding this, because it bounced. ----- Forwarded message from Amara Graps ----- From: Amara Graps Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 07:21:34 +0200 To: wta-talk at transhumanism.org, extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: [wta-talk] Dawn launch (No turning back) Reply-To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List The decision has been made to begin fueling the rocket tanks Thursday, July 5, starting at 4 AM. Once fueling begins there is no option but to launch, since defueling and refueling requires a new tank that will not be available until November - beyond Dawn's last window for the next decade. Our launch window opens this Saturday just after 4 PM for 30 minutes then around the same time for following two days, after which we would have to stand down for 3 days as a radar ship (being repaired) gets into position for post-launch tracking off of the coast of West Africa to replace an AWACS aircraft that has been standing in for it. We may then have one or two more available launch days after that. Preparation Pics: http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=173 Amara -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, ITALIA Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson _______________________________________________ wta-talk mailing list wta-talk at transhumanism.org http://www.transhumanism.org/mailman/listinfo/wta-talk ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From tyleremerson at gmail.com Thu Jul 5 14:13:34 2007 From: tyleremerson at gmail.com (Tyler Emerson) Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 07:13:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Looking for PHP programmer to help finish SIAI Donor Network Message-ID: <632d2cda0707050713o33797731h655403d8c4c8ee97@mail.gmail.com> Are you experienced in PHP? I'm looking for someone to help finish the back-end PHP programming for the forthcoming SIAI Donor Network. Here's a preview: http://www.singinst.org/community/ http://www.singinst.org/community/donors_list.html http://www.singinst.org/community/tyleremerson_profile_main.html http://www.singinst.org/community/tyleremerson_favorites.html If you can help with this, please send me an email for details, tyleremerson at gmail.com. Thanks, Tyler -- Tyler Emerson Executive Director Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence P.O . Box 50182, Palo Alto, CA 94303 USA emerson at singinst.org | www.singinst.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070705/60937234/attachment.html From amara at amara.com Thu Jul 5 14:22:51 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 16:22:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dawn launch (24 hour delay to Sunday) Message-ID: (new status) Given the thunderstorms in the area, and that the launch vehicle is not sufficiently cool today to begin to load the fuel and oxidizer, the launch has been delayed 24 hours to Sunday, ~4pm EST. That first opportunity will last ~30 minutes. The next two opportunities will follow on sequential days: July 9, and July 10, at about the same time. If Dawn has not launched by July 10, then there will be a stand-down of a few days while the launch team at Cape Canaveral works on the Phoenix mission spacecraft, to reduce the impact to their launch window, and while different ships for post-launch tracking move into position. Then Dawn opportunities will pick up again on July 14, and continue until July 19, if necessary. You can watch the launch over the web: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, Italia From kevin at kevinfreels.com Thu Jul 5 16:13:16 2007 From: kevin at kevinfreels.com (kevin at kevinfreels.com) Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2007 09:13:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Article - robot thinks it's a rodent... Message-ID: <20070705091316.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.16c8e28dd9.wbe@email.secureserver.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070705/91961931/attachment.html From pgptag at gmail.com Sat Jul 7 17:01:31 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2007 19:01:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Resignation as WTA Executive Director Message-ID: <470a3c520707071001m38a2429ao8a30b0dce891d8bd@mail.gmail.com> I have just offered my resignation as Executive Director of the WTA, for the reasons stated in my letter to the Board pasted below. I will stay on the Board. G. Friends, I have made the decision to resign as Executive Director, effective immediately. There are two main reasons: 1) My business is, slowly and painfully but steadily, beginning to take off. Achieving this has demanded nearly all my time and energy in the last few months, and I have been unable to dedicate sufficient time and energy to the WTA. I have often said to myself "next week", but work and financial pressures are increasing and, realistically, I do not think this may change before the end of the year at least. 2) I do have opinions, and at times strong opinions, about some of the issues frequently discussed on the public lists. It has been suggested that the Executive Director should be above the parts and refrain from supporting one or the other side in a public debate, since his words could be constructed as official positions of the WTA. I basically agree with this interpretation, and I do not intend to refrain from expressing my ideas and opinions. Therefore, this is the only possible course of action. I will, of course, stay on the Board and try to do my best. From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Jul 7 21:49:19 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2007 14:49:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] aging in italy In-Reply-To: <20070705091316.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.16c8e28dd9.wbe@email.secureserver.net> Message-ID: <200707072209.l67M91x2008387@lily.ziaspace.com> Amara and our European friends might be interested in D'Emilio's take on aging in Europe: http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Jul07/0,4670,AgingItaly,00.html Italy's Aged Turn to Foreigners for Care Saturday, July 07, 2007 By FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writer ROME - As a police officer, Luigi Marzano was used to being in command. He still walks ramrod straight, but at 97 and deep into retirement, his memory is weakening and he has turned over command of his household to a virtual stranger half his age. Rita Duda, who left Ukraine in search of work, lays out caffe latte and cookies each day for Marzano's breakfast, shops for him, and, every afternoon after his nap accompanies him to a bench on the corner, which he shares with ladies and gentlemen in their 70s and 80s while their caretakers _ Ukrainians, Moldavians, Poles and Romanians _ catch up on gossip. Marzano is one of a swelling number of Italians entrusting themselves to an army of foreign workers from eastern Europe, South America, Asia and Africa who are doing what families here are increasingly can't or won't do _ take care of their elderly. Long life and low birthrates have conspired to change family life, which long had been the one institution Italians could count on while history rolled past, with its parade of conquerors and short-lived governments. Italy's demographics _ and Europe's as a whole _ give new meaning to the term "Old World." Twenty-four of the world's 25 oldest countries are in Europe, noted a joint report by the European Commission and AARP, a U.S. lobby for the elderly. Japan's population, with 27 percent of it older than 60 in 2005, is a shade grayer than Italy's 26 percent. Italian life expectancy is 78.3 years for men and 84 for women. But more significantly, Italy holds the world record for the highest percentage of what experts call the "old old." One out of every five elderly Italians is over 80. Meanwhile, the incentives to have children are few. Italians joke that by the time their children qualify for scant public day care, they are too old for it. Tax breaks for minor dependents are miserly. Costly housing makes it hard to give a child his or her own room. Italy, home to the Vatican and predominantly Catholic, legalized abortion in 1978, and Italians upheld the law in a 1981 referendum, despite fierce opposition by the Vatican to abortion. And Italians have long tended to ignore Vatican teaching forbidding contraception. Now, with so many living so long _ and with retirement possible as early as age 57 _ Italy is paying the price in medical care, pensions and social security, for having so few children. While decisions to have one or no children might make for easier lifestyles when young, a generation or two later the choice means fewer children and grandchildren to help the aged. "Without Rita, I wouldn't be able to manage," said Marzano, running his cane through his fingers and fretting about how he'll manage this summer with substitute home companions when Duda, a 48-year-old divorced woman, visits her family in Ukraine. Marzano has outlived his wife, sister, three brothers and a son. His other son lives in the neighborhood with his daughter-in-law, who is in poor health. On Thursday afternoons, when Duda is off, a granddaughter comes to keep him company. On Sundays, Duda's other day off, his son's family bring him lunch, but they don't stay with him to eat it, Marzano said. "I would have thought I would have lived with my son; I would never have thought that it would be like this," said Marzano. Duda and others, paid for by the elderly's children or by the elderly themselves, are Italy's fast-growing substitute for "assisted living" facilities, which are nearly nonexistent in this country. Putting grandma or grandpa in a nursing home when they no longer are self-sufficient hasn't caught on much here, possibly because Italians tend to distrust institutions. So the emphasis here remains on the home, even while home is ever more likely to mean home alone. In 1950, Italy had five adult children for every elderly parent. Now five has shrunk to a a statistical 1.5 and by 2050 there won't even be one adult child for every elderly person, said Antonio Golini, a demographer at Rome's La Sapienza University. So dependent have Italians become on the foreign caregivers that when the government offered an amnesty a few years ago for illegal immigrants, it placed no limits on the number of foreigners a family could employ if the workers cared for elderly. Golini has been crusading for years for Italians to have more children, accept more immigrants and work longer. "My terror is that we will reach old age abandoned," Golini, 69, said in an interview. Italy's "grayest" region is Liguria, in the northwest, where 27.5 percent of its population is over 65. There is a waiting list for a program providing the elderly with $475 a month to help pay for home companions. "Old people, and especially those who are alone and not independent, are going to be one of the emergencies Italy will have to face in the future," said Massimiliano Costa, Liguria's commissioner for social policy. Emilio Mortillo, a bioethicist at Aging Society, a think tank in Rome, pointed out that some parts of Italy's affluent north have more retirees than workers, and predicted that Italians will have to increasingly rely on immigrants to help them cope. But immigration is relatively new to Italy, and surveys show many Italians blame immigrants for crime. So some elderly, fearful of admitting foreigners to their homes, turn to another old fixture of Italy _ nuns of the Roman Catholic Church. Waiting for nuns to serve her dinner at the Pius X home for the aged in Rome, 83-year-old Maria Laura Riva De Filippis said her daughter didn't want a foreigner to care for her mother at home. "And rightly so. You hear so many stories about them, my daughter would say," said De Filippis. "My daughter said I could live with her, but she kept telling me: 'I leave for work at 8 a.m. and you'll be alone all day.'" Since nuns labor for God instead of a paycheck, room and board at homes for oldsters run by religious orders cost much less than at traditional nursing homes. Caring for the elderly as a business also makes economic sense for the nuns. When there were no longer enough children to fill the classrooms, the Disciples of Sisters of Eucharistic Jesus converted a nursery and elementary school in Rome's middle-class Garbatella neighborhood into a rest home. "Our mothers stayed at home caring for their mothers and their mothers-in-law," said Sister Maria Cecilia at the home. "Now women work and don't even have time to care for their own children." The residents, whom the nuns call "guests," pay $1,770 month _ modest compared with the United States where monthly costs in a large city can easily top $10,000. Ninety-year-old Italia Matteucci, elegant in a long pearl necklace, pearl stud earrings, a red cardigan and a wool plaid skirt, pays for her room in the former elementary school out of her monthly pension check. She had been living alone in a studio apartment but "I was afraid that they'd find me dead there some day," and so she turned to the nuns. Her 68-year-old daughter has health problems, and her two grandsons, in their 30s, rarely come either, said Matteucci. Many of the caregivers come from countries where families are large and the concept of abandoning oldsters is inconceivable. "In my country you don't see this," said Rosa Elena Floris, an Ecuadorean taking a course for home companions at Rome's Catholic Sacred Heart University. "We're always at the side" of the elderly. Floris cared for an Italian woman for eight years until she died at 89. "The woman had a son and a daughter, but she almost never saw them," recalled Floris. "They would call and say, 'Is everything OK? Did she take her medicine?'" When the university first offered the course, in 1999, only foreigners enrolled, said Dr. Flavia Caretta, a geriatrics specialist who runs the program. But this year's course had a sprinkling of Italians, suggesting they see a growth industry offering a career. The foreign caretakers earn about $1,500 monthly, handsome compared to wages in their homelands, or about 30 percent less if they live in and receive room and board. Among the remedies for aging societies are raising the retirement age to save on pensions, and encouraging bigger families. This year German lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to gradually raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 by 2012. Spain uses incentives to encourage people to work beyond 65. Poland, with one of Europe's lowest fertility rates, recently began a costly program of tax exemptions, longer maternity leaves and better preschool services to encourage bigger families. But Italy's center-left government, pressured by unions which make up much of Premier Romano Prodi's constituency, is going in the other direction. It has promised to undo the previous, conservative government's reform to raise the retirement age from 57 to 60. ___ Daniele Pinto in Rome contributed to this report. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070707/ad57e11d/attachment.html From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Jul 8 06:27:58 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2007 23:27:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] keith in the news again In-Reply-To: <20070705081137.GU7079@leitl.org> Message-ID: <200707080641.l686fXDS015196@lily.ziaspace.com> There is a long article about Keith in today's San Jose Merky News. Unlike his Palo Alto treatment, this one is relatively fair and balanced. It is about his efforts to get a pardon from Aaaahnold. Lets hope for the best on that. spike From amara at amara.com Sun Jul 8 07:16:53 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 09:16:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dawn non-launch (delay to September/October) Message-ID: Hello! Some non-news about Dawn's launch. When I last gave a report, the launch was slipped to Sunday because of worry that the thunderstorms/lightning in the area would be too dangerous to fuel the tanks plus the tanks were too warm to begin. Then the launch date slipped to Monday because of continuing concern with the weather and the availability of the radar ship for post-launch tracking. However the ship got delayed and the next set of launch days in July were less favorable for giving enough data acquisition time at the targets (Vesta and Ceres). Therefore, a new launch window (about 30 days) of September/October, after other Cape Canaveral launch activities (Mars Phoenix, space shuttle) is now the focus for Dawn's launch. The later launch date gives more time at the targets, however the mission costs are building, and that window is in the middle of hurricane season, but the Dawn managers think that it is the best decision. I don't know if the fueling of the tanks were actually started and if Dawn is sitting, in the midst of the fueled tanks. Or not. I suspect the thunderstorms blocked the decision to begin the fueling, but I am unable to get official Dawn project email news here in Rome because our IFSI mail server has been down all weekend. All of this info through unofficial channels via Planetary Science Institute (M. Sykes). Ciao, Amara -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, Italia From amara at amara.com Sun Jul 8 11:21:09 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 13:21:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dawn's Early Light: Ceres and Vesta Message-ID: In support of Dawn, to help answer the public's question: "Why Ceres and Vesta?" Here is one answer, some of which I would have said at the Dawn Science Symposium, if the original, original plan for everything held. Dawn's Early Light: Ceres and Vesta http://www.scientificblogging.com/amaragraps/dawns_early_light_ceres_and_vesta where I finish with : ----------- My Dawn Rocky Road Science List Given that it is summer, and I'm located in Italy, where gelato is a larger deity than Jupiter, here is my own rocky road list of science questions that I would like the Dawn mission to help answer. * Where is the snow line and hence the emergence of water in the formation of the inner solar system? * How common are low temperature, aqueous processes in the early solar system? * What heated the asteroids? * When did the heating, melting, and differentiation occur in Vesta? * Where and when did most of the asteroids in the asteroid belt go? * Was the growth of Ceres truncated by Jupiter? When? * How fast is the step from asteroid-sized planetesimals to full-sized planets? ----------- Good luck to us all for the upcoming September / October launch and the Dawn odyssey (*)! (*) Odyssey: 1. An extended adventurous voyage or trip. 2. An intellectual quest Amara -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, Italia From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun Jul 8 21:14:57 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 08 Jul 2007 16:14:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "Faithfully honing the killer instinct" Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070708161016.021c19b8@satx.rr.com> Faithfully honing the killer instinct * Two years ago, Britons were horrified to discover that terrorist attacks in London were the work of home-grown fanatics. Now Ed Husain reveals his experience of how Islamism motivates violence ---------- * June 30, 2007 FOR children like me, growing up in Britain in the 1980s was not easy. The National Front was at its peak. I can still see a gang of shaven-headed, tattooed thugs standing tall above us, hurling abuse as we walked to the local library to return our books. Our head teacher, Susie Powlesland, and the other teachers raced to us, held our hands firmly and roared at the hate-filled bigots. "Go away! Leave us alone!" they would bellow to taunts of "Paki lovers" from the thugs. Little did I know then that one day I, too, would be filled with abhorrence of others. The colour-blind humanity of most of my teachers at Sir William Burrough primary school at Limehouse in east London, their strength in the face of tyranny, taught us lessons for the rest of our lives. Britain was our home, we were children of this soil and no amount of intimidation would change that; we belonged here. And yet, lurking in the background were forces that were preparing to seize the hearts and minds of Britain's Muslim children. I was the eldest of four, with a younger brother and twin sisters. My father was born in British India, my mother in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and we children in Mile End in London. In ethnic terms I consider myself Indian. Somewhere in my family line there is also Arab ancestry. This mixed heritage of being British by birth, Asian by descent and Muslim by conviction was set to tear me apart in later life. After joining Tower Hamlets College in east London in my late teens, I became active in the institution's Islamic Society, managed by members of Young Muslim Organisation (UK), a youth wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party that has its headquarters in Pakistan. (Islamism refers to the belief Islam is a political ideology as well as a religion.) By secret ballot I was elected president. The college had a majority Muslim population and the Islamic Society had an extremely high profile. The events I organised attracted crowds of more than 200 students. In essence, I was running an Islamist front organisation operating on campus to recruit for the wider movement and maintain a strong Islamist presence. With the help of my members I was successful on both counts. Many students at college found the literalist approach of Wahhabism (Saudi fundamentalism) attractive and I soon saw several of my fellow students heading to jihad training in Afghanistan in response to Koranic verses urging Muslims to rise up against violence. That the violence in question was of pagans in Mecca in the seventh century might not offer obvious justification for a so-called jihad in the modern world, but who was I to argue with my literalist members? Through YMO, we had introduced many of them to 20th century Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood intellectual Sayyid Qutb's Milestones; had Qutb not called for a jihad against Muslim rulers on the grounds that they were non-believers? Qutb's Milestones, combined with Wahhabi literalism, made a potent and dangerous cocktail. In the multicultural Britain of the '80s and '90s, we were free to practise our religion and develop our culture as we wanted. Our teachers left us alone, so long as we didn't engage in public expressions of homophobia or intimidation of non-Muslims. But Britishness and the British values of democracy, tolerance, respect, compromise and pluralism had no meaning for us. Like me, most of the students at college had no real bond with mainstream Britain. Yes, we attended a British educational institution in London, but there was nothing particularly British about it. It might as well have been in Cairo or Karachi. Cut off from Britain, isolated from the Eastern culture of our parents, Islamism provided us with a purpose and a place in life. More significantly, we felt as though we were the pioneers, at the cutting edge of this new global development of confronting the West in its own backyard. My interest in Hizb ut-Tahrir (The Liberation Party, www.hizb.org.uk) came at a critical time. At college there were others who were also coming under its influence. There were seven of us, all members of YMO or sympathisers, who wanted to know what the Hizb was really about. Wahhabis had put out information that the group was deviant in creedal matters. Many in the East London Mosque believed Hizb members were Shia, and Sunni Islamists believed them to be infidels. Arab Islamists familiar with the Hizb from the Middle East suggested the group members were American agents. Who were they really? From its literature and by asking members of the Hizb I learned that in 1952 Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani, founder of the Hizb, had applied to the Jordanian interior ministry to establish a political party with Islam as its ideology. The Hizb was, from its inception, committed to establishing an Islamic state dedicated to propagating its ideology. The Jordanian monarchy rejected the application on the grounds that the Hizb was committed to overthrowing the king. Uncowed, it gained momentum in neighbouring Arab countries and was eventually outlawed in every country in which it operated. Its aims were considered seditious, its plans destructive and its politics iconoclastic. And yet the Hizb survived and thrived in the prisons of the Arab world, filled with political detainees of various Islamist groups. Two men, Farid Kasim and Jamal Harwood, were central figures inside the Hizb in Britain. Farid was a Sheffield University-trained town planner and worked for Islington Borough Council. Jamal was a Canadian who had converted to Islam and worked as an accountant with J.P. Morgan in London. Along with Salim Fredericks, another long-time member, these were the men who introduced the Hizb to British Muslims. Under their leadership and the guidance of Hizb's charismatic pugnacious leader at the time, the Syrian-born cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed (who had been expelled from Saudi Arabia), the Hizb targeted the Tower Hamlets borough with determination. For the Hizb, Tower Hamlets was Britain's most densely populated Muslim area. I would spend hours in discussion with members of the Hizb, questioning them on matters ranging from the dialectical materialism of Marxists to abstruse points in Muslim jurisprudence. Whatever questions I asked, Hizb members always had answers. Although its members had addressed the students at Tower Hamlets College before, their reception had been lukewarm until I, as Islamic Society president, offered them direct access to the Islamised youth on campus: a fact that escaped me at the time. Sensing a fertile recruiting ground, the Hizb moved key members into a flat in Chicksand House, a two-minute walk from Brick Lane. Within weeks the flat became the Hizb's headquarters in Tower Hamlets, housing members such as the Kenyan radical Abdullah Hameed, who studied at Brunel University, and the undergraduate Burhan Haneef as well as others from Greenwich University. Burhan, whom we called Bernie, was studying politics at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Originally from Slough in Berkshire, he was an exceptionally warm, witty, and wayward member of the Hizb. His door was always open to us. Following long sessions with Bernie and another Hizb member, Patrick Ghani, who was studying at the Whitechapel-based London Hospital Medical College, I and seven members of the Islamic Society had created a separate Hizb faction at college. No longer was I just the president of the Islamic Society: I was also the local leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The concept of the Muslim nation, as opposed to disparate ethnic communities, was key. To the Hizb, Indians, Malaysians, Turks, Indonesians, Arabs and Africans were all part of a single, global Muslim nation, an ummah. We were weak because we were divided. Muslim lands (not countries) were poor because the Muslims of Sudan, Somalia, Bangladesh and Kashmir did not share in the oil wealth of the Gulf countries. Oil, we argued, was a gift from God to Muslims: all Muslims, and not just Gulf Arabs. Muslims were one nation under one God. Nabhani argued for the complete destruction of the existing political order, particularly in Muslim countries, so that it could be replaced by a caliphate. If we had such an Islamic state, then the caliph would send the Islamic army to slaughter the Serbs: this was was our answer to the Balkan conflict. The international community said it refused to arm Bosnian Muslims to prevent an escalation of the conflict. But we knew there was a conspiracy to reduce the number of Muslims in Europe. Bosnia acted as a catalyst for extremism among large numbers of young Muslims in Britain. It was a serious political wake-up call for hundreds of us, semi-radicalised by the emotional Islamism of Jamaat-e-Islami but given a clear, radical outlook on life by Hizb. On university campuses across the country our shabab or party activists were creating a storm. In 1992-93, BBC television's Newsnight program covered our rise. Local newspapers in Britain, including the Evening Standard, wrote about the Hizb's activities. The Jewish Chronicle campaigned against the Hizb. We circulated newspaper cuttings among the shabab and celebrated our prominence. All other Islamist groups looked on bemused. How had the Hizb raised its profile so quickly and so successfully? Boosted by the intense media interest, we went from strength to strength. Nothing gave us greater motivation than to hear our ideas being amplified in the national media, reaching new audiences of millions. To us it did not matter whether the coverage was favourable or otherwise. We were resigned to biased reporting, but we knew that there was a crucial constituency of Muslims who would look on us as their leaders, their spokesmen against the attacks of the infidels. It was this recognition we needed more than anything else. The British media provided us with it and more: Arab dictators were increasingly worried about the rising profile of a group they had banned four decades ago. Britain breathed new life into the Hizb. When Yasser Arafat and king Hussein of Jordan visited London, our shabab were there in large numbers, calling for the removal from office of these and other Arab leaders. We were concerned about Omar's application for political asylum. I worried that the Hizb's high profile in Britain might jeopardise the chances of him staying in Britain. I raised this with Bernie, too. "Oh no," he said. "On the contrary. The British are like snakes; they manoeuvre carefully. They need Omar in Britain. Most likely Omar will be the ambassador for the khilafah (caliphate) here or leave to reside in the Islamic state. The kuffar (infidels) know that: allowing Omar to stay in Britain will give them a good start, a diplomatic advantage, when they have to deal with the Islamic state. "Having Omar serves them well for the future. Britain's domestic security agency MI5 knows exactly what we're doing, what we're about, and yet it has, in effect, given us the green light to operate in Britain." Bernie's words about the intelligence service proved to be correct. It was not until the events of July 7, 2005 (the day of the London suicide bombings by home-grown Islamic terrorists), that British intelligence admitted it had been a mistake to allow Islamists of all shades to put down serious ideological roots among Britain's Muslims. On a personal level, my relationship with God had deteriorated. If we were working to establish God's rule on earth, as we claimed, then Hizb activists were the most unlikely candidates God could have chosen. My comrades were heady and headstrong young people. We were ecstatic at the thought that soon a real Islamic state would emerge in the Middle East, reverse history, and allow a return to the glory days of Islam. Yet as I had become more active in the Hizb, my inner consciousness of God had hit an all-time low. Externally I portrayed signs of piety to maintain a standing among my target audience, but I was no longer an observant Muslim. We sermonised about the need for Muslims to return to Islam, but many of the shabab did not know how to pray. I witnessed at least four new converts to Islam at different university campuses, convinced of the superiority of the Islamic political ideology as an alternative to capitalism but lacking basic knowledge of worship. Within three weeks of their conversion they were lecturing others about the need for a khilafah, the role of the future Muslim army and the duties of citizens in the future Islamic state. But when it came to reciting the Koran or maintaining basic Muslim etiquette, they were clueless. When Patrick and Bernie came to ask me about basic verses of the Koran for recital in prayers after they had delivered sermons at prayer rooms in universities, I began to realise how little these people knew about the Koran. I was getting older and the Hizb seemed suddenly like pretentious, counterfeit intellectualism. Despite huge political success, I despised myself for appearing pious and upright in Muslim eyes when all the while I knew that there was a vacuum in my soul where God should be. At home, I no longer knew I had a family. By day I was active on campus and in the evenings I kept myself away from my parents and siblings. I could not bear discussions with my parents any longer. All subjects returned to what my father called my "going astray to the enemies of Islam". Those words angered me. My life was consumed by fury, inner confusion, a desire to dominate everything and my abject failure to be a good Muslim. I had started out on this journey wanting more Islam and ended up losing its essence. Nevertheless, in public I was still the mighty leader of the Hizb on campus, the challenger of kuffar in the name of Islam, the leader of Muslims. I went around college with my Hizb friend Majid Nawaz (who would later be tortured in the notorious jails of Cairo after advocating Hizb's extremist ideas in Egypt during his Arabic language placement year) and many of our new recruits, maintaining a visible presence and making ourselves available to the ummah. Of the many faces I encountered on a daily basis, there was one belonging to a girl called Faye that did what mine used to do a lot: smile. As an Islamist I had lost my ability to smile. Slowly, we became very good friends. Faye was no ordinary girl: her genuine and illuminating smile, caring eyes, her endearing face with its olive complexion and her warm ways drew me to her. I discovered that we had identical ancestral and social backgrounds, and a common interest in learning Arabic. We also shared a desire to travel. The new threshold of our relationship was to mark a milestone in many ways. We would write to each other and Faye's letters and verses spoke of a God that was close, loving, caring, facilitating, forgiving and merciful. Faye was close to God: she prayed regularly. I, by contrast, believed in a God who was full of vengeance, a legislator, a controller, a punisher. I could not envisage a future without Faye. I marshalled sufficient courage to write and ask if she would consider me for her husband. She paused for thought for a week and eventually said yes, but on condition that we both complete our studies and pursue careers. Love illuminated beyond all expectations. I now started to spend more time studying with her in the town hall library across the road from the college building. One afternoon a new recruit to the Hizb rushed over to ask me to go to the college immediately. Some black Christian boys had been hogging the pool table and were refusing to let a group of Muslims play. Things could get nasty. I rushed over to find a stand-off involving a dozen pool cues and a roomful of injured pride. How dare the inferior Christians refuse Muslims a game? We spoke about jihad but we never anticipated real violence. Not yet, anyway. It was not party policy to engage in violence before the caliphate came about. We believed that fighting as individuals was futile: our aims were greater. An army would fight entire nations with the military force of the Islamic state, not by vigilante gang warfare. One afternoon as I sat in the library, buried in my books, I heard voices outside. On the other side of the street a small crowd had gathered and Dave Gomer, the student affairs manager, was pushing people away. Within minutes an ambulance arrived and from where I stood, I could see a boy lying on the ground next to a pool of blood: one of the Christian boys who had been involved in the row over the pool table. Majid and I left the scene with heavy hearts. We both knew that whatever had happened at college, as Hizb activists we were responsible. It was we who had encouraged Muslim fervour, a sense of separation from others, a belief that Muslims were worthier than other humans. And those ideas had been inculcated in us by Hizb. Majid had seen the whole thing. Apparently the boy, a Christian student of Nigerian extraction, had been throwing his weight around and being offensive towards Muslims and about their attitudes. Someone had phoned Saeed, a local black Muslim and Hizb supporter, who turned up within 15 minutes. The pair confronted each other outside. The black boy drew a knife. Saeed remained calm, looked the boy in the eye and said, "Put that knife away or I will have to kill you." The boy did not respond. Perhaps he thought Saeed was bluffing. Saeed walked closer and warned him again. Exactly what happened next is unclear, but within seconds Saeed had pulled out a dagger and thrust it into the boy's chest. This was murder. And had I not been with Faye in the library, I would probably have somehow been involved. It was a narrow escape. Dismayed, Majid went to see Omar Bakri and gave him a full explanation of what had happened, explaining that Saeed had acted in self-defence and asking Omar to stand beside the college's Muslims. Instead the Hizb leadership issued a condemnation of what had happened, saying that it was a non-violent party. This myth was swallowed by investigators who never really understood the seriousness of the Hizb's form of violence. Even today, this is a primary reason for Western failure in the war on terror: an innate inability to understand the Islamist psyche. That murder, the direct result of Hizb's ideas, served as a wake-up call for me. Now, every time I saw a leaflet with Hizb's flag and masthead posted above images of the globe, I felt nauseous. Soon Saeed was arrested, charged, and convicted of murder. Just as I had become a member of the Hizb over a period of time, my departure from the organisation did not occur on a specific date. My first move away was to dissociate myself from the halaqah or local branch, a move prompted by the taking of an innocent life, Omar Bakri's subsequent deceit and my horror when I realised how poisonous was the atmosphere I had helped create. Most important of these was the murder: the Hizb's ideas had led to the belief that the life of a kafir, or unbeliever, was of little consequence in achieving Muslim dominance. I could not bear to be associated with such ideas any longer. I was frightened of where they might lead. I had advocated the ideas of Muslim domination, confrontation and jihad, never for one moment thinking that their catastrophic consequences would reach my doorstep. I had completely confused Islamism with Islam. Copyright Ed Husain, 2007 This is an edited extract from The Islamist by Ed Husain (Penguin Australia, $24.95). From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Sun Jul 8 23:04:12 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 16:04:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Neuroscience Question In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070708161016.021c19b8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <740687.14990.qm@web37410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I have a geeky question. Do the neurons of different major reasons of the brain differ significantly in physical structure? For example, do temporal lobe neurons have a significantly different cellular anatomy than neurons in the cerebellum? Or are the anatomies not significantly different? If I'm not mistaken, different regions are dominated by the activities of different neurotransmitters, but is that the only significant difference? Or are the various high-level functionalities (eg. vision, memory, motor-function) different and discrete precisely because of their *order* within the final meta-algorithm that is the complete mind? Jeffrey Herrlich ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. http://travel.yahoo.com/ From neilh at caltech.edu Sun Jul 8 23:33:34 2007 From: neilh at caltech.edu (Neil Halelamien) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 16:33:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Article - robot thinks it's a rodent... In-Reply-To: <20070705091316.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.16c8e28dd9.wbe@email.secureserver.net> References: <20070705091316.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.16c8e28dd9.wbe@email.secureserver.net> Message-ID: Having a localization algorithm based on place fields isn't quite the same as "thinking like a rodent." That said, I wonder what's so novel about this research that's been responsible for it has been getting so much press recently... It's not like it's the first time somebody's used place fields for robot navigation: http://www.ri.cmu.edu/pubs/pub_1873.html http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040120 On 7/5/07, kevin at kevinfreels.com wrote: > > > http://www.24x7updates.com/articles/20070705/robot_with_simulated_rat_brain_thinks_it_s_a_rodent-id-106439.html > > Thought this was interesting. The big question of course, is that if this > robot thinks and acts like a rodent and you can't tell the behaviour apart, > does it qualify for the sames humane treatment we are supposed to give to > animals? > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070708/c2ba83d5/attachment.html From jrd1415 at gmail.com Mon Jul 9 00:54:41 2007 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 17:54:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dawn's Early Light: Ceres and Vesta In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 7/8/07, Amara Graps wrote: > ...here is my own rocky road list of science > questions that I would like the Dawn mission to help answer. > > * Where is the snow line and hence the emergence of water in the > formation of the inner solar system? < snip> This is one of my questions as well. Well, sort of. I'm interested in primordial methane and other hydrocarbon species. I want to know how much of these were accreted during the earth's formation. Some years ago I discovered the dispute over the origins of the earth's "paleo"hydrocarbon inventory -- you know, oil, gas, coal, tar sands, oil shale, etc. Soviet theory, adopted (if not plagiarized) by Cornel's Thomas Gold, theorized a primordial origin, while the conventional (western) view posited a paleobiological origin, ie the "fossil" fuel idea. I came to favor the primordial origin, and tried to find out just how much primordial hydrocarbon had been accreted into the primordial earth. This led me to look into the process by which the solar system formed from the ejecta of novae and supenovae. As I understand it, local ejecta density from multiple sources increases to a point where gravitational forces come to dominate. The "cloud" begins to "infall"(ie contract), spin, and heat up. The interaction of the forces and particles forms the material into a disc. As the infalling, spinning, and heating continue, the constituent material is "processed", simultaneously thermally fractionating and physically clumping together, forming a spatial distribution of "particles" of diverse sizes and compositions. This was an ongoing process featuring an ever increasing particle size, starting with molecules and "dust", and ending with a star, planetary bodies, and a remnant of the starting materials. When the bulk of the starting material had been "swept up", the infalling and heating effectively ended, leaving us with the solar system as we know it. What I learned regarding the formation of the solar system gave sharper focus to my question about primordial hydrocarbon inclusion in the forming earth. I then had a notion of the factors upon which the answer would depend. Which seemed to be: (1) Quantity and variety of hydrocarbon species in of the starting materials, and their thermal characteristics (freezing and boiling points, and, to a lesser extent, their decomposition temperature); (2) The time dependent radial thermal gradient in the protoplanetary disc; (3) The time dependent spatial distribution of hydrocarbon species (varies over time as a result of thermally driven fractionation) in the protoplanetary disc. (4) The time dependency and "clumping" behavior of the range of smaller bodies which eventually fuse to form the planetary bodies. You see, the gravitational infalling heats up the protoplanetary disc, creating a radial thermal gradient -- hottest at r=0, and decreasing outward. Volatile species sublimate and "boil off" outward in the disc. (Thus the rocky inner planets and the outer gas giants.) This takes time. Meanwhile, non-volatiles and ices(solidified volatiles) are clumping to form ever larger bodies, which, it would seem to me, would entrap volatiles, protecting/preventing them from boil-off. The larger the body, the greater the protection. So, regarding the inclusion of hydrocarbons in the primordial earth, it would seem there were these two processes working against each other: disc heating which drives volatiles radially outward in the disc, and particle "clumping" which tends to trap volatiles in the interiors of ever-larger"particles"/bodies despite ambient disc temperatures otherwise sufficient to boil off unprotected volatiles. And that's where I left it. Sorry about no links. It's been a few years since I explored this matter. Not sure why I chose to write this. Hope it's not too tedious. Maybe someone out there can help with filling in the blanks. Life is grand. -- Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles From joseph at josephbloch.com Mon Jul 9 01:25:27 2007 From: joseph at josephbloch.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 21:25:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] keith in the news again In-Reply-To: <200707080641.l686fXDS015196@lily.ziaspace.com> References: <20070705081137.GU7079@leitl.org> <200707080641.l686fXDS015196@lily.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <099301c7c1c8$08d86d90$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> There's a relatively brief story from the Saturday paper here: http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_6322465 (I'm guessing the longer article from the Sunday paper will be available on the web tomorrow.) Joseph http://www.josephbloch.com > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike > Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 2:28 AM > To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: [ExI] keith in the news again > > > > There is a long article about Keith in today's San Jose Merky News. Unlike > his Palo Alto treatment, this one is relatively fair and balanced. It is > about his efforts to get a pardon from Aaaahnold. Lets hope for the best on > that. > > spike > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at comcast.net Mon Jul 9 01:43:09 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 18:43:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] keith in the news again In-Reply-To: <099301c7c1c8$08d86d90$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> Message-ID: <200707090153.l691rajY018034@lily.ziaspace.com> > Joseph Bloch: > There's a relatively brief story from the Saturday paper here: > > http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_6322465 This is a shortened version, perhaps 20% of the text that was in Saturday's dead trees version of the Merc. I don't know where to find a full text online version of that article. I didn't get today's (Sunday's) paper. Lets see if the governator will terminate Keith's sentence or grant a paaahdon. spike > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Joseph Bloch > Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 6:25 PM > To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: Re: [ExI] keith in the news again > > There's a relatively brief story from the Saturday paper here: > > http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_6322465 > > (I'm guessing the longer article from the Sunday paper will be available > on > the web tomorrow.) > > Joseph > http://www.josephbloch.com > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike > > Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 2:28 AM > > To: 'ExI chat list' > > Subject: [ExI] keith in the news again > > > > > > > > There is a long article about Keith in today's San Jose Merky News. > Unlike > > his Palo Alto treatment, this one is relatively fair and balanced. It > is > > about his efforts to get a pardon from Aaaahnold. Lets hope for the > best > on > > that. > > > > spike > > From amara at amara.com Mon Jul 9 13:49:41 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2007 15:49:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dawn's Early Light: Ceres and Vesta Message-ID: Dear Jeff, In your description, I didn't see the emphasis on the condensation sequence that should be there, and I think your time sequence is not really in order. The molecules didn't form during the planet forming part, but much before, and were incorporated into the solids that became the planetesimals, that became the embryos, that became the planets. After the molecular cloud collapses (triggered by a supernova or few, or some other kind of 'shock') to form the "solar blob", which becomes then a "protostar+ gas/dust disk (because angular moment is transferred out, while material transferred in), which becomes a star+gas/dust disk (fusion has turned on in the protostar), then we have a solar nebula, where solids form dependent on the temperature and pressure profile of the nebula, which is time-dependent, as the nebula disk cools too. So one sees a molecule formation pattern as a function of heliocentric distance and time. It's very model dependent, as you can imagine. I say that I would like to know where was snow line during our solar system formation, which you interpreted as a large unknown. The physical process _is_ known, clear, and well-defined, but what is not known well is the temperature and thickness of the solar nebula at the time of the condensation sequence. There are many solar nebula models out giving temperature and pressure estimates. ------------- This page talks about the condensation sequence: http://cosserv3.fau.edu/~cis/AST2002/Lectures/C5/Trans/Trans.html Condensation: In solar nebula - dust and gas condense to form grains of solid matter Condensation: gas atoms stick together to form grains * allows smallest grains to grow quickly * less effective as grains gets larger Type of matter that can condense depends on temperature of solar nebula Condensation Sequence: Which types of materials can condense from a gas depends on the temperature * the lower the temperature, the lower the density of material that can condense * $T < 1500degK, (1250degC) - only refractory (ie. high melting point) materials can condense ---> high density materials ---> e.g. metals, metal oxides * $T<1000degK, (750degC) - high & medium melting point materials condense ---> medium and high density materials ---> e.g. silicates (rocky material) * $T<150degK (100degC) - volatile (ie. low melting point) AND refractory materials can condense ---> low, medium and high density materials ---> e.g. ices of water, ammonia, methane Temperature of solar nebula decreases with increasing distance from proto-Sun ---> Close to proto-Sun: only refractory materials (eg. metallic grains) condense ---> Medium distance from proto-Sun: silicate (rocky) & metallic grains condense ---> Furthest from proto-Sun: volatile and refractory materials ie. ice, silicate & metallic grains condense Also: solar nebula cools with time: Close to proto-Sun: * First metallic grains condense * Later metallic AND silicate grains condense ------------- Another facet I didn't see in your description is why there are terrestrial planets, gas giants, ice giants, in exactly that order as a function of distance from the Sun. The solar system's structure has a very good logic behind, that builds further on the earlier steps of the condensation sequence. The refractory molecules, volatile molecules, etc. form in their particular locations based on the solar nebula temperature profile, and they form planets and hold gases (atmospheres) based on what body's gravity can hold that molecule at that particular temperature. Jupiter with its solid core and its location could attract hydrogen and helium and all of those light gases, because at that temperature further from the Sun, the molecules do not have enough kinetic energy to escape from proto-Jupiter's gravity. So it builds and grows into a gas giant. Earth could not hold hold a hydrogen atmosphere.. the molecules there have too much kinetic energy and overcome proto-Earth's gravity immediately. And the idea hold for the other planets. Amara -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, Italia From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Mon Jul 9 13:43:01 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2007 06:43:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Neuroscience Question In-Reply-To: <740687.14990.qm@web37410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <826717.62378.qm@web37414.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Sorry, I need to clarify. I realize that there are various cell types *within* the macro-regions (eg. glial cells, mirror neurons, etc.) But what I'm interested to know is whether there is significant (cellular) anatomical differences *between* the macro-regions? For example, are the mirror neurons in one macro-region significantly different from the mirror neurons in a different macro-region? And if not, then is it the "order of activation" if you will, that accounts for the different functionalities? Jeffrey Herrlich --- A B wrote: > I have a geeky question. Do the neurons of different > major reasons of the brain differ significantly in > physical structure? For example, do temporal lobe > neurons have a significantly different cellular > anatomy than neurons in the cerebellum? Or are the > anatomies not significantly different? If I'm not > mistaken, different regions are dominated by the > activities of different neurotransmitters, but is > that > the only significant difference? Or are the various > high-level functionalities (eg. vision, memory, > motor-function) different and discrete precisely > because of their *order* within the final > meta-algorithm that is the complete mind? > > Jeffrey Herrlich > > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Need a vacation? Get great deals > to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. > http://travel.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for earth-friendly autos? Browse Top Cars by "Green Rating" at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center. http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/ From george at betterhumans.com Mon Jul 9 14:59:54 2007 From: george at betterhumans.com (George Dvorsky) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2007 10:59:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] keith in the news again In-Reply-To: <200707090153.l691rajY018034@lily.ziaspace.com> References: <099301c7c1c8$08d86d90$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> <200707090153.l691rajY018034@lily.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: Fingers are crossed. -G From scerir at libero.it Mon Jul 9 18:35:19 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2007 20:35:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] test References: <200707072209.l67M91x2008387@lily.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <001b01c7c257$e7f16a10$52ba1f97@archimede> test http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUKL0989530020070709 http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSSP14117220070430?feedType=RSS http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSPAR05104120070531 http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200703/s1883294.htm http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1521253.htm http://www.enn.com/globe.html?id=1612 From tyleremerson at gmail.com Tue Jul 10 00:20:27 2007 From: tyleremerson at gmail.com (Tyler Emerson) Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:20:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] When is it Optimal to Launch a Friendly AI? Message-ID: <4692D0CB.5070307@gmail.com> From Seth Baum at the SIAI Blog: http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/07/09/when-is-it-optimal-to-launch-a-friendly-ai/ From kevin at kevinfreels.com Tue Jul 10 04:39:50 2007 From: kevin at kevinfreels.com (kevinfreels.com) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2007 23:39:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Resources for young minds Message-ID: <000c01c7c2ac$5b170ff0$660fa8c0@kevin> I am looking on the internet for some nice free video and/or interactive resources for young minds. Specifically I am searching for animations which put things into perspective and show just how complex the cosmos is. For example, I saw a show on the Science channel once that showed how the Earth's orbit wobbles over time, and how the entire solar system wobbles through the galactic plane over time. I've also seen excellent representations of leaving the Earth and going outwards to the point where thousands of galaxies are simply points of light which keep shrinking. Other things I am after are things which do a good job putting time and numbers into perspective to help kids (and many adults I know) grasp the difference between 1000 years, 10,000, 100,000 and millions of years. Small perspectives are good as well. Anything that can help people to understand the smallness of atoms, the space between them, and what "nano" really means would be great. Anything that shows evolution as a process and allows interaction and random (or non-random) mutation through multiple generations would be neat too. I would like to gather as many links to good material like this and put together a blog so it can all be found in one place. Any good. If it is more acceptabel to email me offlist that's fine as well. Thanks in advance! Kevin Freels -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070709/b7e1af9e/attachment.html From kevin at kevinfreels.com Tue Jul 10 04:41:29 2007 From: kevin at kevinfreels.com (kevinfreels.com) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2007 23:41:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] test Message-ID: <002601c7c2ac$95c3f780$660fa8c0@kevin> Am I bouncing? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070709/e0221537/attachment.html From scerir at libero.it Tue Jul 10 05:58:46 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:58:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Psi quantum observation experiment References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070628175620.022251d8@satx.rr.com><02a201c7ba11$174e3440$10074e0c@MyComputer><7.0.1.0.2.20070629010300.02206c30@satx.rr.com><02b901c7ba15$99c36ef0$10074e0c@MyComputer><7.0.1.0.2.20070629013916.022a8188@satx.rr.com><02fe01c7ba1e$99936f30$10074e0c@MyComputer><62c14240706290450q741024fbt9b8e134cce88623d@mail.gmail.com><002501c7baf7$f0638190$d8901f97@archimede> <009601c7bb37$b891b260$1c044e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <003901c7c2b7$63ab1a70$0f921f97@archimede> John K Clark wrote (about 10 days ago): > So what has changed after more than a century? > Not one God damn thing! A more unproductive area > of "research" you could not find. I understand. The area seems to be unproductive. But let me quote a quantish theorist [1][2]. 'Scientists need to stop wasting time and resources on attempts to prove the already proven existence of psychic phenomena and concentrate more on determining how it works.' I think that quote is rather extreme. I do not think it is 'already proven'. But I wish to read simple and clean experiments performed. I'm very surprised that Dean Radin is, after all these years, one of the very few having performed interferometric experiments. s. [1] http://thisquantumworld.com/wordpress/2007/07/01/the-scientific-fallacy/ [2] Not sure quantum theorists can talk about psi things, since also QT has unexplained effects (vector potentials, etc.), not to mention 'subjective' interpretations and 'post-selections' of states. From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Jul 10 06:48:38 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 01:48:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Psi quantum observation experiment In-Reply-To: <003901c7c2b7$63ab1a70$0f921f97@archimede> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070628175620.022251d8@satx.rr.com> <02a201c7ba11$174e3440$10074e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070629010300.02206c30@satx.rr.com> <02b901c7ba15$99c36ef0$10074e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070629013916.022a8188@satx.rr.com> <02fe01c7ba1e$99936f30$10074e0c@MyComputer> <62c14240706290450q741024fbt9b8e134cce88623d@mail.gmail.com> <002501c7baf7$f0638190$d8901f97@archimede> <009601c7bb37$b891b260$1c044e0c@MyComputer> <003901c7c2b7$63ab1a70$0f921f97@archimede> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070710014303.023626a8@satx.rr.com> At 07:58 AM 7/10/2007 +0200, Serafino wrote: >But let me quote a quantish theorist [1][2]. >'Scientists need to stop wasting time and resources >on attempts to prove the already proven existence >of psychic phenomena and concentrate more on >determining how it works.' > >[1] >http://thisquantumworld.com/wordpress/2007/07/01/the-scientific-fallacy/ Sadly, this quantish person says: "As another example of how scientists tend to handle unwelcome data, let's look at the reaction to Schwartz's publication of The Afterlife Experiments. In my view, Schwartz' results are proof, beyond any reasonable doubt, of life after death." I had the unhappy experience of ploughing with gritted teeth and rising gorge through Schwartz's appalling book. The more interesting parapsychologists I spoke to tended to reject his supposed scientific work (of that time), sometimes with disdain and even contempt, to my relief. On the other hand, some of his quite recent attempts at triple blind mediumship does show some promise. It's all in the details. Damien Broderick From jonkc at att.net Tue Jul 10 16:47:45 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 12:47:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] High resolution MRI References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070628175620.022251d8@satx.rr.com><02a201c7ba11$174e3440$10074e0c@MyComputer><7.0.1.0.2.20070629010300.02206c30@satx.rr.com><02b901c7ba15$99c36ef0$10074e0c@MyComputer><7.0.1.0.2.20070629013916.022a8188@satx.rr.com><02fe01c7ba1e$99936f30$10074e0c@MyComputer><62c14240706290450q741024fbt9b8e134cce88623d@mail.gmail.com><002501c7baf7$f0638190$d8901f97@archimede><009601c7bb37$b891b260$1c044e0c@MyComputer><003901c7c2b7$63ab1a70$0f921f97@archimede> <7.0.1.0.2.20070710014303.023626a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <002701c7c312$18615c90$12084e0c@MyComputer> Some scientists at Duke University have made a MRI image of a mouse brain with "100,000 times higher resolution than a clinical MRI scan". 100,000! http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070709145329.htm John K Clark From sentience at pobox.com Wed Jul 11 02:54:44 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:54:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Power of Intelligence Message-ID: <46944674.6070204@pobox.com> http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/07/10/the-power-of-intelligence/ -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From sentience at pobox.com Wed Jul 11 04:05:51 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:05:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Power of Intelligence In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070710223114.0222bdd8@satx.rr.com> References: <46944674.6070204@pobox.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070710223114.0222bdd8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4694571F.7050201@pobox.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > At 07:54 PM 7/10/2007 -0700, Eli wrote: > >> http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/07/10/the-power-of-intelligence/ > > > "If you saw a movie of a nuclear explosion going off, and you were told > an Earthly life form had done it, you would never in your wildest dreams > imagine that the Soft Pink Things could be responsible. After all, Soft > Pink Things aren't radioactive." > > Not until after the nuclear explosion, anyway. But those were the Soft > Yellowish Things, I guess. And in Australia and the Pacific, the Soft > Black or Brownish Things. > > Not your point, I know. But a point. That's what I get for thinking in cliches. Fixed. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Jul 11 04:47:31 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:47:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] snow in argentina and birthday greetings In-Reply-To: <001b01c7c257$e7f16a10$52ba1f97@archimede> Message-ID: <200707110459.l6B4xPY5005917@lily.ziaspace.com> Snow in Argentina for the first time since Woodrow Wilson occupied the white house: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6286484.stm And South Africa saw some rare snow too: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL2777696020070627 People perished. So if we decide humans are causing climate change and that the planet is warming, are we then liable for these cold snaps? Who? Those who are not doing their share to contribute to the warming? Do we have one population responsible for heat deaths and another responsible for cold deaths? spike Happy Birthday Anders Sandberg! From emlynoregan at gmail.com Wed Jul 11 10:08:32 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:38:32 +0930 Subject: [ExI] keith in the news again In-Reply-To: References: <099301c7c1c8$08d86d90$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> <200707090153.l691rajY018034@lily.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0707110308j4d442b3cnc485c311294c863d@mail.gmail.com> A bit of Keith Henson trivia, btw... I've been reading the 30th aniversary edition of The Selfish Gene (by Richard Dawkins, of course). In the notes to page 198, refering to his original sentence "blind faith can justify anything", Keith gets a mention for coining the term "Memoids". I'd be pretty happy with a mention in The Selfish Gene! Emlyn On 10/07/07, George Dvorsky wrote: > Fingers are crossed. > > -G > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From amara at amara.com Wed Jul 11 13:27:36 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:27:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dawn's Early Light: Ceres and Vesta Message-ID: Dear Jeff, You might like this too. It is an excellent overview. Montmerle, Thierry; Augereau, Jean-Charles; Chaussidon, Marc; Gounelle, Mathieu; Marty, Bernard; Morbidelli, Alessandro 2006: "Solar System Formation and Early Evolution: the First 100 Million Years" Earth, Moon and Planets 37 http://www.obs-nice.fr/morby/papers/EMP1.pdf Ciao, Amara -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, Italia From neilh at caltech.edu Wed Jul 11 19:54:38 2007 From: neilh at caltech.edu (Neil Halelamien) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:54:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] High resolution MRI In-Reply-To: <002701c7c312$18615c90$12084e0c@MyComputer> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070628175620.022251d8@satx.rr.com> <02b901c7ba15$99c36ef0$10074e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070629013916.022a8188@satx.rr.com> <02fe01c7ba1e$99936f30$10074e0c@MyComputer> <62c14240706290450q741024fbt9b8e134cce88623d@mail.gmail.com> <002501c7baf7$f0638190$d8901f97@archimede> <009601c7bb37$b891b260$1c044e0c@MyComputer> <003901c7c2b7$63ab1a70$0f921f97@archimede> <7.0.1.0.2.20070710014303.023626a8@satx.rr.com> <002701c7c312$18615c90$12084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: The NeuroImage article is here, although I think it requires an institutional subscription: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WNP-4NX8MST-7&_user=1010281&_coverDate=06%2F07%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050264&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1010281&md5=0d9d038b1101b4c523e05e0c7cdcd4e3 Here's the abstract: Magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM), when used in conjunction with active staining, can produce high-resolution, high-contrast images of the mouse brain. Using MRM, we imaged in situ the fixed, actively stained brains of C57BL/6J mice in order to characterize the neuroanatomical phenotype and produce a digital atlas. The brains were scanned within the cranium vault to preserve the brain morphology, avoid shape distortions, and to allow an unbiased shape analysis. The high-resolution imaging used a T1-weighted scan at 21.5 mm isotropic resolution, and an eight-echo multiecho scan, post-processed to obtain an enhanced T2 image at 43 mm resolution. The two image sets were used to segment the brain into 33 anatomical structures. Volume, area, and shape characteristics were extracted for all segmented brain structures. We also analyzed the variability of volumes, areas and shape characteristics. The coefficient of variation of volume had an average value of 7.0. Average anatomical images of the brain for both the T1 weighted and T2 images were generated, together with an average shape atlas, and a probabilistic atlas for 33 major structures. These atlases, with their associated metadata, will serve as baseline for identifying neuroanatomical phenotypes of additional strains, and mouse models now under study. Our efforts were directed toward creating a baseline for comparison with other mouse strains and models of neurodegenerative diseases. On 7/10/07, John K Clark wrote: > > Some scientists at Duke University have made a MRI image of a mouse > brain with "100,000 times higher resolution than a clinical MRI scan". > 100,000! > > http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070709145329.htm > > John K Clark > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070711/2ab0dbf2/attachment.html From neilh at caltech.edu Wed Jul 11 20:14:18 2007 From: neilh at caltech.edu (Neil Halelamien) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 13:14:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] High resolution MRI In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070628175620.022251d8@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070629013916.022a8188@satx.rr.com> <02fe01c7ba1e$99936f30$10074e0c@MyComputer> <62c14240706290450q741024fbt9b8e134cce88623d@mail.gmail.com> <002501c7baf7$f0638190$d8901f97@archimede> <009601c7bb37$b891b260$1c044e0c@MyComputer> <003901c7c2b7$63ab1a70$0f921f97@archimede> <7.0.1.0.2.20070710014303.023626a8@satx.rr.com> <002701c7c312$18615c90$12084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: Also, some of the things which distinguish this from a typical clinical MRI and various other notes: * unlike a lot of other mouse brain MRI research, the brains were left inside the cranium, preventing structural distortion/damage * the brains were fixed and treated with an MRI contrast agent * they used a 9.4T magnet (in contrast, typical clinical MRI is maybe 1-3T) * if I understand correctly, algorithms were then used to automatically segment the different brain areas (33 total) apart from each other, and the area data from the 6 brains was combined to form the atlas * in general, the research is kind of neat, combining a number of already-existing techniques to create a useful atlas On 7/11/07, Neil Halelamien wrote: > > The NeuroImage article is here, although I think it requires an > institutional subscription: > > http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WNP-4NX8MST-7&_user=1010281&_coverDate=06%2F07%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050264&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1010281&md5=0d9d038b1101b4c523e05e0c7cdcd4e3 > > > Here's the abstract: > Magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM), when used in conjunction with active > staining, can > produce high-resolution, high-contrast images of the mouse brain. Using > MRM, we imaged in > situ the fixed, actively stained brains of C57BL/6J mice in order to > characterize the > neuroanatomical phenotype and produce a digital atlas. The brains were > scanned within the > cranium vault to preserve the brain morphology, avoid shape distortions, > and to allow an > unbiased shape analysis. The high-resolution imaging used a T1-weighted > scan at 21.5 mm > isotropic resolution, and an eight-echo multiecho scan, post-processed to > obtain an enhanced T2 > image at 43 mm resolution. The two image sets were used to segment the > brain into 33 > anatomical structures. Volume, area, and shape characteristics were > extracted for all segmented > brain structures. We also analyzed the variability of volumes, areas and > shape characteristics. > The coefficient of variation of volume had an average value of 7.0. > Average anatomical images > of the brain for both the T1 weighted and T2 images were generated, > together with an average > shape atlas, and a probabilistic atlas for 33 major structures. These > atlases, with their associated > metadata, will serve as baseline for identifying neuroanatomical > phenotypes of additional strains, > and mouse models now under study. Our efforts were directed toward > creating a baseline for > comparison with other mouse strains and models of neurodegenerative > diseases. > > On 7/10/07, John K Clark wrote: > > > > Some scientists at Duke University have made a MRI image of a mouse > > brain with "100,000 times higher resolution than a clinical MRI scan". > > 100,000! > > > > http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070709145329.htm > > > > John K Clark > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070711/193dc448/attachment.html From theo75 at clara.co.uk Wed Jul 11 20:09:58 2007 From: theo75 at clara.co.uk (t.theodorus ibrahim) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:09:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Power of Intelligence In-Reply-To: <4694571F.7050201@pobox.com> Message-ID: <01db01c7c3f7$7764c660$0202fea9@BrandLondon.local> Kudos Eliezer. Kudos :-) Theo -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eliezer S. Yudkowsky Sent: 11 July 2007 05:06 To: sl4 at sl4.org Cc: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] The Power of Intelligence Damien Broderick wrote: > At 07:54 PM 7/10/2007 -0700, Eli wrote: > >> http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/07/10/the-power-of-intelligence/ > > > "If you saw a movie of a nuclear explosion going off, and you were > told an Earthly life form had done it, you would never in your wildest > dreams imagine that the Soft Pink Things could be responsible. After > all, Soft Pink Things aren't radioactive." > > Not until after the nuclear explosion, anyway. But those were the Soft > Yellowish Things, I guess. And in Australia and the Pacific, the Soft > Black or Brownish Things. > > Not your point, I know. But a point. That's what I get for thinking in cliches. Fixed. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.10.2/894 - Release Date: 10/07/2007 17:44 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.10.2/894 - Release Date: 10/07/2007 17:44 From neilh at caltech.edu Wed Jul 11 20:20:58 2007 From: neilh at caltech.edu (Neil Halelamien) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 13:20:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] High resolution MRI In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070628175620.022251d8@satx.rr.com> <02fe01c7ba1e$99936f30$10074e0c@MyComputer> <62c14240706290450q741024fbt9b8e134cce88623d@mail.gmail.com> <002501c7baf7$f0638190$d8901f97@archimede> <009601c7bb37$b891b260$1c044e0c@MyComputer> <003901c7c2b7$63ab1a70$0f921f97@archimede> <7.0.1.0.2.20070710014303.023626a8@satx.rr.com> <002701c7c312$18615c90$12084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: And actually, I just realized the authors have another article which might be more relevant than the one I just linked: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WNP-4NS2GHH-B&_user=1010281&_coverDate=05%2F18%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050264&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1010281&md5=7ee12fd37f3f16b1609426fd70b456d4 Title: "High-throughput morphologic phenotyping of the mouse brain with magnetic resonance histology" Abstract: The Mouse Biomedical Informatics Research Network (MBIRN) has been established to integrate imaging studies of the mouse brain ranging from three-dimensional (3D) studies of the whole brain to focused regions at a sub-cellular scale. Magnetic resonance (MR) histology provides the entry point for many morphologic comparisons of the whole brain. We describe a standardized protocol that allows acquisition of 3D MR histology (43-?m resolution) images of the fixed, stained mouse brain with acquisition times < 30 min. A higher resolution protocol with isotropic spatial resolution of 21.5 ?m can be executed in 2 h. A third acquisition protocol provides an alternative image contrast (at 43-?m isotropic resolution), which is exploited in a statistically driven algorithm that segments 33 of the most critical structures in the brain. The entire process, from specimen perfusion, fixation and staining, image acquisition and reconstruction, post-processing, segmentation, archiving, and analysis, is integrated through a structured workflow. This yields a searchable database for archive and query of the very large (1.2 GB) images acquired with this standardized protocol. These methods have been applied to a collection of both male and female adult murine brains ranging over 4 strains and 6 neurologic knockout models. These collection and acquisition methods are now available to the neuroscience community as a standard web-deliverable service. On 7/11/07, Neil Halelamien wrote: > > Also, some of the things which distinguish this from a typical clinical > MRI and various other notes: > > * unlike a lot of other mouse brain MRI research, the brains were left > inside the cranium, preventing structural distortion/damage > * the brains were fixed and treated with an MRI contrast agent > * they used a 9.4T magnet (in contrast, typical clinical MRI is maybe > 1-3T) > * if I understand correctly, algorithms were then used to automatically > segment the different brain areas (33 total) apart from each other, and the > area data from the 6 brains was combined to form the atlas > * in general, the research is kind of neat, combining a number of > already-existing techniques to create a useful atlas > > On 7/11/07, Neil Halelamien < neilh at caltech.edu> wrote: > > > > The NeuroImage article is here, although I think it requires an > > institutional subscription: > > > > http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WNP-4NX8MST-7&_user=1010281&_coverDate=06%2F07%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050264&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1010281&md5=0d9d038b1101b4c523e05e0c7cdcd4e3 > > > > > > Here's the abstract: > > Magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM), when used in conjunction with > > active staining, can > > produce high-resolution, high-contrast images of the mouse brain. Using > > MRM, we imaged in > > situ the fixed, actively stained brains of C57BL/6J mice in order to > > characterize the > > neuroanatomical phenotype and produce a digital atlas. The brains were > > scanned within the > > cranium vault to preserve the brain morphology, avoid shape distortions, > > and to allow an > > unbiased shape analysis. The high-resolution imaging used a T1-weighted > > scan at 21.5 mm > > isotropic resolution, and an eight-echo multiecho scan, post-processed > > to obtain an enhanced T2 > > image at 43 mm resolution. The two image sets were used to segment the > > brain into 33 > > anatomical structures. Volume, area, and shape characteristics were > > extracted for all segmented > > brain structures. We also analyzed the variability of volumes, areas and > > shape characteristics. > > The coefficient of variation of volume had an average value of 7.0. > > Average anatomical images > > of the brain for both the T1 weighted and T2 images were generated, > > together with an average > > shape atlas, and a probabilistic atlas for 33 major structures. These > > atlases, with their associated > > metadata, will serve as baseline for identifying neuroanatomical > > phenotypes of additional strains, > > and mouse models now under study. Our efforts were directed toward > > creating a baseline for > > comparison with other mouse strains and models of neurodegenerative > > diseases. > > > > On 7/10/07, John K Clark < jonkc at att.net> wrote: > > > > > > Some scientists at Duke University have made a MRI image of a mouse > > > brain with "100,000 times higher resolution than a clinical MRI scan". > > > 100,000! > > > > > > http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070709145329.htm > > > > > > John K Clark > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > extropy-chat mailing list > > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070711/b66c9937/attachment.html From neville_06 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 11 23:29:18 2007 From: neville_06 at yahoo.com (neville late) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:29:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] A very surreal day In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0707041902n4f692d67r2c27058b3078a89c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <246172.92443.qm@web57515.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Not so strange, in the past it would have been unbelievable but now that anyone can pick someone's name and rep off the web. I'll warrant you more of these bizarre entertainment (if that is what you may call it) productions done by strangers will occur. So apparently there's this guy in New York whose name I can't remember ever hearing, and who doesn't seem to have ever emailed me, who's written and directed a play called: _Yudkowski Returns: The Rise And Fall And Rise Again of Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski_ "In a seemingly deserted island, Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski and his artificial intelligence drones and cohorts wage a war to keep their circular narrative from ending. Their only weapon? The hope that humanity can finally evolve. (90 min)" Written and directed by Bob Saietta (possibly a.k.a. Bobby Silverman). This has already had one run and is being brought back for another, at something called "The Pretentious Festival" at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn, NY: http://www.bricktheater.com/pretentious/ If you're going to be in New York on: Tue 7/24 8pm Tue 7/26 7:30pm Sat 7/28 3pm Sat 7/28 9pm Sun 7/29 3pm You can buy tickets for $10: http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/section/synopsis/show/133057 * Yudkowski Returns! reviewed by Robert Weinstein Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski, the lead character in Yudkowski Returns (The Rise And Fall And Rise Again Of Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski) wishes he were Japanese. He sits at a desk scattered with seemingly random paraphernalia, downloads episodes of Lost and analyzes the homoerotic subtext of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He orders Chinese food. He puts on his Psycho-Sociological Hat, dances around the theatre and leaps into the narcissistic void of his psyche created by a recent breakup. He restages significant moments while putting others in newfound contexts depending on his ability to understand them. And he is not alone. He has the audience, whom he addresses frequently and with a plastered-on smile, and he has The Assistant, a friendly, disheveled, and increasingly confused woman who is at different times his girlfriend, his girlfriend-as-ex, his confidante, and his conscience. Is she real? I'm not confident Dr. Yudkowski knows. But their isolation?his voluntary, hers more problematic?creates an incredibly complex relationship which plays out as they wait on the appearance of The Singularity, an Artificial Intelligence technology that can solve all of life's unsolvable problems. It makes sense of the nonsensical and will bring an end to all of humanity's conflicts as well as Dr. Yudkowski's isolation and, quite possibly, The Assistant's existence. [ Continued at: http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/P07rev_02.htm#400 * Apparently I'm played by Patrick McCaffrey: "A charming assistant introduces the entrance of (cue the cheesy music...) Doctor Yudkowski, played by Patrick, who exudes all the charisma and appeal that Tom Cruise should have had in _Magnolia_." That was from the original blog post I found, at: http://tba-ny.blogspot.com/2007/07/bobby-silverman-my-nemesis-where-has.html I know what you're all wondering: "How does Eliezer look in the director's vision of what his life *should* be like?" Apparently I look like this: http://www.amrep.org/people/patrick.html * Since no one had the courtesy to notify me that a play had been produced about my life - and possibly Erin's, though I don't know if The Assistant is based on her - if anyone in New York goes to this, do please bring back some photos. Though it would probably appeal more to the taste of my enemies than my friends, unless you have a very liberal sense of humor. I used to describe myself as a D-list celebrity. But I guess that when they produce a play about your life, with your name in the title, and they don't bother to tell you, it means you've officially been promoted to a C-list celebrity. I think next I'm supposed to release a sex tape of myself or something - no wait, that's how you go from the B-list to the A-list. --------------------------------- Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. --------------------------------- Be a PS3 game guru. Get your game face on with the latest PS3 news and previews at Yahoo! Games. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070711/82c70df9/attachment.html From jrd1415 at gmail.com Thu Jul 12 04:36:00 2007 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:36:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dawn's Early Light: Ceres and Vesta In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thank you for your response, Amara. On 7/9/07, Amara Graps wrote: > Dear Jeff, > > In your description, I didn't see the emphasis on the condensation > sequence that should be there, I was desperately trying to be brief with a subject which gets more complex by the day. When I was a kid, we had the sun, the planets, the asteroid belt and the occasional comet. It was simple and it was static. I started by referring to your interest in "the snow line" (water ice) as similar to my interest in the methane (in particular, hydrocarbon species in general) "snow" line. Aren't these two points along the condensation sequence? And there are a bunch of hydrocarbon species all with different pressure/temp condensation values, no? More points in the sequence, no? Then nitrogen, oxygen, CN, CO, HC, and of course, hydrogen, all with condensation values corresponding to lower temps and greater heliocentric distances (than methane), no? I didn't mention N, O, CN, etc, because I was focusing on methane/hydrocarbons. However, communication is hit and miss, and inferences aren't always apparent. But no matter. One has to start somewhere, and that's what I did, and I must say, with great success. You jumped right in, gave me something to work with, and energized me to revisit the subject. And I've been having a great time doing just that. Much thanks. I can only hope you're having as much fun as I am. (It's a welcome respite from the gloomy and frustrating political crap that I've been obsessing over for the last six years.) > and I think your time sequence is not > really in order. The molecules didn't form during the planet forming > part, but much before, By gas and plasma phase chemistry in the interstellar medium. I was hip to that. Like hydrogen ions impinging on graphite grains. (Which I only just learned yesterday in my reading provoked by this thread.) There are so many delightful details. On my walk in the woods today with the dogs, I began wondering about the interaction cross section for a hydrogen atom (or ion) in the interstellar medium. I read that there is on average one H atom per cc and 1/100 th that much non-H, so I thought, "How far must a H atom travel, statistically speaking, before striking a non-H atom?" It's easy to accept the "primordial soup" of the early earth as a vast and diverse chemical experiment, but the vast expanse and "emptiness"(not!) of interstellar space? Who woulda thunk it? I'm one happy camper, with an abundant serotonin flow. Loved you use of "solar blob", > After the molecular cloud collapses (triggered by a supernova or few, or > some other kind of 'shock') to form the "solar blob"... A technical term, no doubt. ;-) . > and were incorporated into the solids that became > the planetesimals, that became the embryos, that became the planets. > > After the molecular cloud collapses (triggered by a supernova or few, or > some other kind of 'shock') to form the "solar blob", which becomes then > a "protostar+ gas/dust disk (because angular moment is transferred out, > while material transferred in), which becomes a star+gas/dust disk > (fusion has turned on in the protostar), then we have a solar nebula, > where solids form dependent on the temperature and pressure profile of > the nebula, which is time-dependent, as the nebula disk cools too. So > one sees a molecule formation pattern as a function of heliocentric > distance and time. It's very model dependent, as you can imagine. I say > that I would like to know where was snow line during our solar system > formation, which you interpreted as a large unknown. Please forgive me. It certainly is unknown TO ME, because, well, I'm just an amateur. A dilletante, if you will. If I had access to the models, and the skill and diligence to study them, it might not be quite so unknown to me. But speaking of clear communication.... When you speak of the snow line, I get the impression of a static location. I infer from the way you speak of it that it's *effectively* static during the planet-forming period. But the process of contraction and compression heating of the gas cloud, and then (the discontinuity of) solar ignition and the new heating and cooling regime brought on by that... well, the condensation sequence would I think, (before reading the materials on the condensation profile which you have provided) be changing quite a bit re heliocentric distance over that time scale. Anyway, I have quite a homework assignment to catch up with, condensation sequence and that new stuff you posted a link for today, so I'll leave it at that. -- Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles PS You've got a little somethin' waitin' for ya back in the states. From max at maxmore.com Thu Jul 12 05:02:39 2007 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:02:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The unscientific nature of existing climate forecasts Message-ID: <200707120502.l6C52eUL002915@ms-smtp-01.texas.rr.com> My commentary on an incisive new paper by forecasting experts Armstrong and Green: Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists versus Scientific Forecasts by J. Scott Armstrong, Kesten C. Green http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.aspx?coid=CO770716334614 Max Max More, Ph.D. Strategic Philosopher www.maxmore.com max at maxmore.com From pharos at gmail.com Thu Jul 12 05:20:14 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:20:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The unscientific nature of existing climate forecasts In-Reply-To: <200707120502.l6C52eUL002915@ms-smtp-01.texas.rr.com> References: <200707120502.l6C52eUL002915@ms-smtp-01.texas.rr.com> Message-ID: On 7/12/07, Max More wrote: > My commentary on an incisive new paper by forecasting experts > Armstrong and Green: > > Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists versus Scientific Forecasts > by J. Scott Armstrong, Kesten C. Green > http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.aspx?coid=CO770716334614 > I have lived in the UK long enough to know from personal experience that the UK climate is warmer than it used to be. The winters are now so mild overall that the birds and flowers are getting confused, think spring has arrived and get caught by a sudden cold snap. The winter snows have almost disappeared. I remember years ago driving to work between walls of snow and being unable to even get the car out of the garage for over a week. Spring flowers bloom weeks earlier than they used to and many summer flowers now bloom right on to December before a frost kills them off. It is not just my opinion. Many local news reports say similar. After all, the weather is England's favorite topic of conversation. :) BillK From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu Jul 12 06:44:39 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:14:39 +0930 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] The Power of Intelligence In-Reply-To: <46944674.6070204@pobox.com> References: <46944674.6070204@pobox.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0707112344l2f9580c1k6ea90ba2af412746@mail.gmail.com> I love the idea of selling this stuff to VCs. ROFL! btw, should be: Hard-nosed venture capitalist: So tell us, once you've got it working, how will you make people pay for it? Are you thinking of charging for AI subscription on a monthly basis or are you going for a lump-sum payment? SIAI: (pause) yes. Both actually. It'll be like World of Warcraft, but more lucrative. ug. Must shower now. Emlyn On 11/07/07, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/07/10/the-power-of-intelligence/ > > -- > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ > Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence > _______________________________________________ > wta-talk mailing list > wta-talk at transhumanism.org > http://www.transhumanism.org/mailman/listinfo/wta-talk > From jwmillerusa at gmail.com Thu Jul 12 03:03:34 2007 From: jwmillerusa at gmail.com (Jeff Miller) Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 03:03:34 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Neuroscience Question In-Reply-To: <826717.62378.qm@web37414.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <740687.14990.qm@web37410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <826717.62378.qm@web37414.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > --- A B wrote: > > I have a geeky question. Do the neurons of different > > major reasons of the brain differ significantly in > > physical structure? As I understand it, cell types vary significantly among the fundamental brain regions (cortex, cerebellum, thalamus, hippocampus, brainstem, etc). HOWEVER, the cerebral cortex (aka isocortex, aka neocortex), consists of the same neuron types, structured in a similar way, throughout. (This is the inspiration for one of its names, "isocortex".) That is the leading theory, at least --- with the exception of one neuron type (see below). The isocortex constitutes approximately 85% of the human brain (by mass), and is responsible for a large part of its advanced activities, including sensory processing (visual, auditory, somatosensory), motor control, language understanding and generation, logic, math, and spatial visualization. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I play one in _Yudkowski Returns: The Rise And Fall And Rise Again of Dr. Eliezer Yudkowski_. ;) (Actually I'm an "AGI" researcher with a keen interest in modeling the brain.) Are you familiar with the work of Vernon Mountcastle? He pioneered this theory in: "An Organizing Principle for Cerebral Function: The Unit Model and the Distributed System", The Mindful Brain (Gerald M. Edelman and Vernon B. rountcastle, eds.) (1978) Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. This excellent paper of his is available online: "The columnar organization of the neocortex", VB Mountcastle, 1997 http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/120/4/701 Vernon Mountcastle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Mountcastle The exceptional neuron type is called a "spindle" neuron. I will quote briefly from Koch's "The Quest for Consciousness": "... In fact, small and large excitatory pyramidal neurons and spiny stellate cells, as well as inhibitory basket, nonspiny stellate cells, double bouquet neurons, and other members of the diverse menagerie of inhibitory neurons, are found in all mammals. The sole exception, so far, are spindle neurons, a class of giant cells restricted to two neocortical regions in the frontal lobe. Found in high densities in humans, they are much sparser in the great apes and altogether absent in monkeys, cats, and rodents. A few tantalizing hints point toward their possible involvement in self monitoring and self awareness. ... Spindle neurons, the Korkzieher cells of von Economo and Koskinas (1925), are characterized by elongated and large cell bodies in the lower part of layer 5, the output layer of the cortex (Nimchinsky et al., 1999). Absent in newborn infants, their numbers stabilize in adults at about 40,000 neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex and 100,000 or so in FI, another frontal area. These regions are involved in self-evaluation, monitoring, and attentional control." Jeff Miller "The geek shall inherit the Earth." From asa at nada.kth.se Thu Jul 12 13:34:17 2007 From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:34:17 +0200 (MEST) Subject: [ExI] Neuroscience Question In-Reply-To: References: <740687.14990.qm@web37410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <826717.62378.qm@web37414.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1442.213.112.92.96.1184247257.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se> Jeff Miller wrote: > As I understand it, cell types vary significantly among the fundamental > brain regions (cortex, cerebellum, thalamus, hippocampus, brainstem, etc). > > HOWEVER, the cerebral cortex (aka isocortex, aka neocortex), consists of > the same neuron types, structured in a similar way, throughout. (This is > the inspiration for one of its names, "isocortex".) That is the leading > theory, at least --- with the exception of one neuron type (see below). Roughly right. The cortex has nearly identical structure everywhere, with the same six layers, apparently the same local circuit diagram, the same kinds of neurons and so on. BUT there are small variations between cortical regions. The most famous one is the Band of Gennari, a whitish line in layer 4C of primary visual cortex due to the high prevalence of myelinated axons from the lateral geniculate nucleus. Motor cortex has some very large-bodied pyramidal cells (Betz cells) that are not found elsewhere. The classic brain areas defined by Brodmann were defined based on differences in cytoarchitecture; they seem to fit functional areas surprisingly well, but there is a lot of individual variability. My own guess is that we have a basic circuit that adapts depending on what kinds of connections and input signals it gets, and this adaptation can change cell numbers, types and function quite profoundly. -- Anders Sandberg, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Jul 12 20:02:55 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:02:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [wta-talk] The Power of Intelligence In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0707112344l2f9580c1k6ea90ba2af412746@mail.gmail.com> References: <46944674.6070204@pobox.com> <710b78fc0707112344l2f9580c1k6ea90ba2af412746@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240707121302u76fee43ey3b50cefbfcdd0ca9@mail.gmail.com> On 7/12/07, Emlyn wrote: > Hard-