From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 1 00:05:19 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 10:05:19 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? (was Type vs. instance...) In-Reply-To: References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <015601c7010a$6a7d5d50$450a4e0c@MyComputer> <008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer> <3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com> <059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 01/05/07, Heartland wrote: This *is* about survival. Why would I care at all about any of this if it > wasn't > about survival? You haven't answered yet (that I have noticed) what you would do if medical science discovered that you didn't actually survive a situation you hitherto believed harmless, such as falling asleep or being photographed by a traffic camera. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 00:15:26 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:15:26 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future? References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070427155653.0230c178@satx.rr.com><200704290451.l3T4ppht015948@andromeda.ziaspace.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070429113755.02274c98@satx.rr.com><009601c78a81$f49eca90$d9074e0c@MyComputer><093701c78ae6$33d42200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <008001c78b42$cae8df30$41074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <09a601c78b86$46c91410$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> John writes > "Lee Corbin" > >> I would say that we could familiarize someone with all that is known about >> Napoleon (which is far, far short of what the actual historical Napoleon >> knew about himself), then hypnotize this actor to believe that he is the >> real Napoleon. But then we would *not* have resurrected the real McCoy. > > A good thought experiment should only investigate one thing at a time or > things become too muddy to be useful. Up to now we have investigated a > perfect copy, or at least as perfect as Mr. Hinesburg allows. But now you > start talking about a crappy copy, a very crappy copy indeed.... Yes, sorry---it could clearly have been done with fewer words. > I don't recall if I specifically said that the copying process must be done > with some skill before I was comfortable with it, but it was certainly implied; Oh, of course it was. I'm only attacking your statement that "subjectivity" can be any requirement. Our new hypnotized mental patient with an incredible memory of what the real Napoleon did subjectively believes he's Napoleon just as much as the real Napoleon once did. Only our new "Napoleon" is simpy mistaken. But it's not possible to say that he has a different "subjectivity" about the question, at least insofar as that makes much sense to me. > Me: >>>you lambasted me for saying the High Priest thought atoms were sacred, but >>>in your above quotation you throw around the word "replaced" as if the >>>meaning were obvious; but what is actually being "replaced"? > > You: >> You are replaced (even by your exact duplicate) if your historical >> collection of atoms are physically seized and terminated, and replaced by >> something or some one. > > Read the above again, it says you are replaced if you are replaced. While I > certainly agree that is true I don't find it terribly useful. Heh, heh. Yes, I didn't see the circularity :-) Okay, it's fun, so let me try again: ahem, You are replaced if your historical collection of atoms at any point in time is physically seized, terminated, and deposited in a trash heap, and someone else, something else, some other collection of atoms is at once brought to the precise physical location you once held. >> Where you and I agree (and peculiarly, so many people do not due, I think >> to certain things they learned before age 1 that they have not been able >> to overcome), that if you (your present collection of atoms) are replaced >> in the sense that I just said by an exact duplicate, then it does not >> matter. > > Huh? Then what are we arguing about? Just (1) your attacking Heartland for things that he didn't (and still does not) believe, which is a waste of bandwith and muddies progress that we can make, and (2) your employing for the purpose a very dubious concept of "subjectivity" for the purpose. That's all. (Now it is *also* true that IIRC you and I have substantial and profound disagreements about whether it's wise to allow oneself to be replaced by a recent copy say, a day different that one. Precisely, if it's now Wednesday and a copy of you was made Tuesday (and has been resting comfortably in a Las Vegas hotel room), and the Universe will not permit there to be two instances of said person on Thursday, then one instance really *should* sacrifice itself so that the instance of himself gets $10M, rather than merely allow the other Las Vegas version to be vaporized. But 'tis true that we were not back to that old disagreement in the present war with Heartland, where you and I are completely on the same side.) > "Replaced" means exchanging something with something different, exchanging > something with an exact copy means absolutely positively NOTHING has > happened. This is not empty rhetoric, it is the key idea behind "exchange > forces", one of the foundations of modern Physics. For more Google > "Identity Of Indiscernibles" or "Leibniz". I totally agree, up to, of course, as you said, the limits imposed by Mr. Hindbutt. But even those fine quantum distinctions matter not a whit to me---hell, I'm satisfied to lose a few hours' memory for $10M, or, what is the same thing to me, that I get replaced by a frozen version of myself made yesterday (so long as the money is indeed placed into our bank account). >> I don't get it, John. That guy has said over and over that the atoms are >> not the problem > > True, Heartland has said over and over that atoms are not the problem, and > he has said over and over that atoms are the problem. Then he took a > different tack and said the problem is discontinuity in the thought process; > but only objective discontinuity is important, the fact that it would be > imposable to subjectively detect this objective discontinuity is irrelevant > to subjectivity.... Well, maybe he has been or maybe he has not been changing his tune. It doesn't matter. We need to target the current state of his beliefs to the degree that we find that *they* are inconsistent, or merely---as I suggest ---fundamentally awkward and difficult to support. > Let me repeat that, according to Heartland subjective experience is > unimportant to subjectivity! And that my friend does not make > one tiny particle of sense. I don't know why you keep going back to this "subjectivity" crap, nor what it means. Thought I do look forward to another possible opportunity for a lambasting. >> any cessation of process is equal to death to him. > > And so going to the dentist is a death sentence to him. Huh? I don't think so! There is a continuous process in the dentist's chair, and unless the dentist uses anesthesia so powerful that it flatlines Slawomir for a while, he's not really afraid of dentists vis-a-vis identity. >> I can't find exactly what set me off > > You said it on 4-28. Apparently what set you off was when I said: > > " According to him the whole ball game is something that is imposable to > detect subjectively but nevertheless (for reasons never explained) I should > be very concerned about it, subjectively. To say this is silly is a vast > understatement." Hmm. Maybe. But that doesn't sound like "begging the question". Maybe I had confused your earlier remarks with someone elses. Again, I am here only objecting to what "subjectivity" has to do with it, unless you can explain and make it useful. And---again---I object to characterizing his beliefs as having anything to do with atoms: In fact---Slawomir correct me if I am wrong---he's perfectly aware that he loses and gains atoms every day by the hundreds of trillions, and at least billions with every breath. But since it's a continual process, it doesn't halt or suspect the total Slawomir process---and that's his current criterion for his own survival. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 00:32:34 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:32:34 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? References: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: <09b201c78b88$63ee1930$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Natasha writes > It was called to my attention that there have been some problems > on the list. Since I am not a moderator I have not followed the > thread on this and since I have been travelling for several weeks, > I did not know there was a problem. Well, thanks for your interest. Your advice is always quite welcome, I am sure. > But because we share this list as a venue to discuss and challenge > ideas, I think that we all need to take a look at this: > From: Eugen Leitl > > On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 01:53:25PM +1000, Brett Paatsch wrote: > > John Grigg wrote: > > > > > Attempting to impeach the current president is not a realistic plan > > > > Why would you think that? > > Folks, killthread. This is completely off-topic for the list. Gene killed the thread. I missed that post somehow, myself, or I would have shut up immediately (not that I'm sure I said anything further). > Brett responded: > > "Eugen, just so you and I are absolutely clear. If you kill this > > thread, or call for it to be killed again. If your are that censorious, I > > will remember it and hold it against you whilst you and I live. I would > > oppose your reanimation. I will regard you as in the aggregate an > > entropic vector. I was similarly threaten by Brett, as were a number of people. Clearly, that is beyond the pale. And if Brett is reading this, he really needs to chill. As they say. > > I am willing to be censored off the list, it is a private list after > > all, but actions (like censorship) are facts that shape reactions. > > Being a person in a world of persons, I take things personally. > > Fair warning. Uh oh. The threat has just become more ominous. > > If I am censored off the list I would take that as diagnostic of the > > degeneration of the list. It is one thing to take issue with a person's > > arguments and say so. It is another to stop other people from > > hearing Oh, okay---he's back to objecting to a thread being killed. Perfectly sensible. We all are occasionally miffed by that. > > those arguments and expressing their reactions which may include > > opposition to them. I regard censorship as a form of killing - as do > > you by the use of your word killthread. Whoa. Like in killing *people* or something??? > > You are yourself a transient information thread that the universe > > has yet to rule on." Yikes, back to being very ominous again. > Like Brett I do not like being censored. But there is a difference > between being censored and being sensible. The extropy list does > have rules and guidelines and list members are required to follow > them in order to post on this list. Whether or not Brett's thread is > on topic for this list is one issue at stake. Now, there are many > variables involved that can add one way or another... Yes; it takes a judicious hand at the helm. While it is a shame that threads ever need to be, ah, suppressed, the evidence is that unmoderated lists too often degenerate into real junk. The life of a moderator may not be an easy one, and we should always respect ones of good judgment that do help preserve the health of a list. The Extropian list has always been lucky in having volunteers of sound judgment take on this role, even if from time to time, naturally, mistakes are made. > And, finally, I do not like is the content of your (Brett's) response > to the list moderator (Eugene) requesting that the thread be killed. > You made a threat and does not sit well with me and I'm sure > others. That's for damn sure! > But putting that aside, what do other list members think of this thread? It's hard to say. In general, as far as overtly political thread so, I suppose that so long as an effort is made to put something of a transhumanist spin on the discussion that's fine. Also, if it really is something that people are spending a *lot* of time dwelling on (like 9/11 on 9/12), then it's natural for us to discuss it. I do believe, though, that a *simple* debating of political issues needs to be avoided, and at some point a moderator is justified in squelching it. Thanks for jumping in, Natasha. Lee From velvethum at hotmail.com Tue May 1 00:44:17 2007 From: velvethum at hotmail.com (Heartland) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:44:17 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><015601c7010a$6a7d5d50$450a4e0c@MyComputer><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Stathis writes : >> >> If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before, >> >> then that's what matters in survival. Heartland replied: >> That doesn't matter at all. Why should it matter? Is there an argument for >> why this >> should matter? If it exists, I would love to read it. Stathis responds: > The problem I have is with your definition of death. Stathis asks today: > You haven't answered yet (that I have noticed) what you would do if medical > science discovered that you didn't actually survive a situation you hitherto > believed harmless, such as falling asleep or being photographed by a traffic > camera. Can you please answer my questions first? After all, I asked you first. Thanks. H. From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 1 00:42:43 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 19:42:43 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future? In-Reply-To: <09a601c78b86$46c91410$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070427155653.0230c178@satx.rr.com> <200704290451.l3T4ppht015948@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070429113755.02274c98@satx.rr.com> <009601c78a81$f49eca90$d9074e0c@MyComputer> <093701c78ae6$33d42200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <008001c78b42$cae8df30$41074e0c@MyComputer> <09a601c78b86$46c91410$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070430194023.0242d968@satx.rr.com> At 05:15 PM 4/30/2007 -0700, LC wrote to JKC: > > Mr. Hinesburg >Mr. Hindbutt Well played, sir! Oh, I say, well played! Vernor fon Krautschnitzel From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 1 00:45:59 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:45:59 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] About ESP, etc. In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070430165437.023ad610@satx.rr.com> References: <20070427102544.GA9439@leitl.org> <20070428090423.GO9439@leitl.org> <084d01c78a46$fe3ccdd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <46349D88.3010102@pooq.com> <08a601c78a84$01c3e500$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070429181651.022df8b0@satx.rr.com> <094a01c78ae9$b6e89f60$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430005641.023829a8@satx.rr.com> <3cf171fe0704300828u5c7d492qf53b9c8e5d18eea4@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430120621.02428758@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430143128.02366818@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430165437.023ad610@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:00:53 -0400, Damien Broderick wrote: > This comment might have had the unfortunate effect of deterring the > knowledgeable from further comments that might help disambiguatecheaters > from psychics in such games. Please don't be put off! No problem, I'm still with you... > A card-counter, according to most of the card-counting strategies I > have seen, plays the optimal strategy at all times; sticks the > minimum bet most of the time and increases it minimally when the odds > favor winning. Yes. > Since the optimal strategy is known it can be observed > that the player is following it; he profits only because he places > higher bets during his winning streaks. Not exactly. The counter places higher bets when the odds are in his favor. Such favorable conditions may or may not be "during his winning streaks" and in fact almost half the time they are not. (Counters believe in statistics, not streaks!) > A psychic, on the other hand, may get cues that cause cardplay to > deviate from the optimal strategy: Yes, that would be a clue that our player has some kind of psychic advantage. > Behavioral clues that a player is a "clairvoyant" who can reliably > "see through" one thickness of pasteboard: > > -Always buys the "insurance" side-bet if the dealer actually does > have a hidden blackjack, and never buys it otherwise. [Optimal > strategy never buys insurance -- lacking inside information, it's a > sucker bet that increases your overall loss rate.] The insurance bet is a sucker bet only for non-counters. Optimal *counting" strategy calls for taking the insurance bet when the count is even mildly positive (indicating a probability that the dealer's hole card is a ten or a face-card), which is the case about half the time that the dealer shows an ace. Optimal *basic* (non-counting) strategy does however call for declining the insurance bet every time. > -Never busts when requesting another card. [This may cause him to > decline a card when the optimal strategy calls for one.] Yes, an infallible clairvoyant would never bust, (that is, unless he was going to lose anyway and sees that taking a bust card would make some future hand a winner, but this supposition starts to get complicated...) > -Doubles down whenever his third card brings him to 21, or to a > number that will beat the dealer's initial hand of 17 or better > (standard rules require the dealer to stand on such a hand). [This > will almost certainly produce double-down bets when the optimal > strategy says otherwise.] Yes. > -Keeps initial bet at a constant level. [Inconsistent with card > counting.] No, like a card-counter, an optimizing infallible clairvoyant would increase his bet when he anticipates a winning hand. Note that he'd also bet the table minimum when he anticipates a losing hand, and that losing hands would happen quite often even despite his special powers (excluding psycho-kinesis). > Behavioral clues that a player is a "precognitive" who gets ashort-term > warning only of good or bad outcomes, without details: > -Bets the lower limit most of the time, but unpredictably raises betto > the upper limit, and is always dealt a blackjack when thishappens. > [Inconsistent with card-counting. Over the long run,probably also > inconsistent with dealer's sanity. I am assuming thatthe precog gets > immediate feedback on the outcome of one decision orevent at a time, and > winning on a dealt blackjack is the only*immediate* good outcome > possible when deciding whether to play another hand.] Not sure what you mean here or in what else you wrote. Seems to me our precog as you define him may or may not play like a card-counter, depending on what he is having precognitions *about*. If he is intuitive about the statistics of the deck then he would play like a counter; but if his intuitions were about the next cards in the deck and the dealer's hole card then he would play like a clairvoyant. Of course there is some overlap here. -gts From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 00:50:38 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:50:38 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><015601c7010a$6a7d5d50$450a4e0c@MyComputer><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <09c201c78b8b$342b33b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Heartland writes > Lee: > >> Well, not John Clark, IIRC, would go to the extreme that >> I, Robin Hanson, and many others would, namely, an >> instance of us would choose vaporization so that a recent >> duplicate frozen in the next room would get $10M, and >> we would be making that choice for *entirely* selfish >> reasons. > > Frankly, that scares me, Lee. Please do not get offended by the analogy I'm about > to make but I can't help but think that if we replace "$10M" with "opportunity to > board alien spaceship hiding behind Hale-Bopp comet" the choice you would make, it > seems to me, would be equally unwise as the choice made by 39 members of Heaven's > Gate a decade ago. A major difference is that there *was* no such alien spaceship :-) whereas there really are negotiable $10M checks! > Lee: >> We should focus on what it is about us that we treasure. None of us >> is really interested in how my bit string varies from moment to moment, >> or from year to year. We are interested in survival. > > This *is* about survival. Why would I care at all about any of this if it wasn't > about survival? I agree. You shouldn't. Evidently you wouldn't. I stated it in a way that could be misunderstood. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. > If you believe that preservation of memories = survival, and memories are nothing > but strings, why shouldn't you be interested in how a string varies from moment to > moment? How can you expect to know how to survive if you're not interested in > conditions necessary for survival? I don't get it, and I don't need to. I *am* interested in how "my string" varies, even varies from moment to moment. Assuming that "my string" is just a digital readout of my state, that is. So long as it remains 99.99999999999% the same from moment to moment, that's okay. And even if it's only 99.99999% the same---in case I am disintegrated and a copy you made of me yesterday is teleported to my present location---that's still fine (provided that there is something in it for us Lee Corbins, e.g. a nice fat check---because I will not lose memories for nothing). > > What I would like to learn from you, above all else, is why you think memories > should matter so much? There are so many other things you could be focused on > preserving into the future. Why memories, let alone your memories? Some simple thought experiments may suffice for an answer. Let's suppose that tomorrow morning you woke up with *my* memories and I woke up with *yours*. (An alien trickster who knows an incredible amount about how brains work has been very busy with his nanotechnological devices.) What would happen? Well, first, that inital statement is not very precise; because I used the word "you" and "I" rather sloppily. But hopefully it painted the right picture: my memories are placed into your body displacing yours, and your memories are placed in my body displacing mine. Here is what would happen. A being (whose identity I am not going to beg yet) awakes in Santa Clara California and says to himself "What the hell am I doing here? I remember going to bed last night. I am Slawomir, because I remember being him yesterday, but now it seems I have a new body". This is *exactly* what he would say when questioned by the authorities. In an exactly similar way, the story would be repeated where you live: I would wake up in your body and be wont to say things like "what the hell happened? Where am I? Whose body and whose house is this??". When we talked on the phone, we would agree that we had exchanged *bodies* not memories. The creature in Santa Clara California would want the old Slawomir body back (I assure you), and rightfully consider it *his* body! Clear enough? Don't you agree that it is our memories that determine who we think we are (and, I go on to claim, who we in fact are). Lee From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Tue May 1 00:54:10 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:54:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [extropy-chat] Yesterday's Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life In-Reply-To: <470a3c520704300032k7921415bm841865662a983990@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <565682.9936.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I am fascinated by the possibilities of "Second Life" but have not yet actually ventured there with an avatar. My understanding of the website is sketchy but I would have thought recording and making available the presentations would have been relatively simple. In fact, I had expected easy access video streams showing the speakers communicating through their avatars. I realize written texts are available online but I was hoping for the a bit more of the "Second Life" experience. lol At a later point will I be able to see things as they were originally broadcast? Best wishes, John Grigg Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/seminar_on_h_and_religion_in_sl/ Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life Sunday, April 29, 2007, uvvy island in SL The event was organized by the Second Life Chapter of the World Transhumanist Association . Speakers: Giulio Prisco, Executive Director, World Transhumanist Association (yours truly). I summarized my article/book precis Engineering Transcendence. Extropia Dasilva, Fascinating and Mysterious Virtual Personality. Extropia is a "transhumanist avatar" who writes some of the best mind expanding stuff about first and second life, the universe and everything. Her talk Climbing Technological Mount Improbable is available online. James Hughes, Executive Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies . James presented his paper "The Compatibility of Religious and Transhumanist Views of Metaphysics, Suffering, Virtue and Transcendence in an Enhanced Future" (link). Lincoln Cannon, President, Mormon Transhumanist Association. Lincoln presented the fascinating blend of Mormonism and Transhumanism developed by the MTA. My presentation started, as usual, with a personal introduction slide where I said that I am with the WTA but am now speaking on behalf of Giulio Prisco, Giulio Perhaps (my avatar in SL), Yours Truly, the Fat Ugly Guy here (my avatar again) and Myself. I presented my own views on transhumanism and religion, which are not and cannot be represented as official WTA views. I think the "cosmic" part of transhumanism *is* an alternative to religion, firmly based on the scientific worldview, but able to provide much of what most people search in a religion. My conclusion: "Our Manifest Destiny: our species will spread to the stars, merge with its technology, and acquire god-like powers. Uploading technology will permit cybernetic immortality with the safeguard of backup copies. With "future magic", we may find a way one day to bring back all persons who have ever lived. This can be an alternative to religion, based on science, rationality and humanism. I am very interested in the current experimental activities to memetically engineer transhumanist alternatives to religion, based on science, but still able to offer hope in "another life" even for those who are already dead". Extropia gave, as usual, a very thoughtful and challenging presentation of current trends towards a Singularity and beyond. Her conclusion: "If the technological Singularity is not the summit of Mount Improbable after all, one might ask what is. Will science reveal the answer? Or maybe philosophy? Perhaps theology? Or should we conjecture that these are all manifestations of a grander overarching conceptual framework that we currently cannot comprehend, but may come to appreciate as we ascend to a state that might appropriately be defined as 'God'? I like to think so!". James had a monster presentation of interfaces, similarities and differences, and possible cross-talks between transhumanism and religions. James is, of course, a smart politician who knows better than trying to be too explicit on whether transhumanism can or cannot be an alternative to religion. His conclusion: "Transhumanism is potentially compatible with many metaphysics, theodicies, soteriologies and eschatologies. Religious will incorporate the H+ project into their faiths to create trans-spiritualities. The future religious landscape will be much more interesting". This concept of infecting religions with transhumanist memes is not so different from my concept of engineering religions based on transhumanism, and basically similar to an equivalent strategy, often discussed on the lists, to develop a transhumanist memetic presence in political movements. Lincoln affirmed the basic compatibility between Mormonism and Transhumanism. He stated that the views of the MTA are received "with interest" by the larger Mormon community. His conclusions: "We believe that scientific knowledge and technological power are among the means ordained of God to enable such exaltation, including realization of diverse prophetic visions of transfiguration, immortality, resurrection, renewal of this world, and the discovery and creation of worlds without end". This is, I believe, a perfect explanation of why, despite what fundamentalists may say, transhumanism is not at all incompatible with religion but, on the contrary, each of the two sets of sensibilities can boost the other in a positive feedback loop. This was a very good event and I was especially pleased to see some of the newcomers join the Second Life Chapter of the WTA. Technical notes: All speakers with the exception of Extropia used audio streaming for presentations and answers to questions from the audience. James Hughes and Lincoln Cannon used the Shoutcast plugin for Winamp to stream to our Shoutcast server, and I used Nicecast on a Mac to do the same. The technical challenge was the coordination of sound streams coming from different remote locations (basically, the previous speaker has to stop broadcasting, the next speaker must start broadcasting, nobody must start broadcasting at any moment different from the scheduled moment, and an occasional restart of the Shoutcast server may be required). Audio worked very well for James and Lincoln (their voices were crystal clear). It worked very well also for me but with some interruptions (I had to restart broadcasting several times). This was due to a combination of other speakers starting their broadcast while mine was still on and the fact that my Internet connection was not so reliable yesterday. About 60 persons attended, with a peak audience of 45. There was not too much lag despite uvvy island being only a Class 4 sim. Extropia's talk was disturbed by a griefer who, of course, was kicked out and banned from the region. He may even have been (you never know) one of the well known outspoken enemies of transhumanism. I can see his point - our ideas *are* a danger for the narrow, fundamentalist mentality they represent. This page on the uvvy wiki has more pictures and will be updated with pictures, links, transcripts, audio and video clips as they become available. _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 01:23:44 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:23:44 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? References: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> <09b201c78b88$63ee1930$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <09c801c78b8f$67adb510$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Further thoughts on when threads should be "killed". (The scare quotes are to prevent certain people from forming connections that make the termination of a particular discussion reminiscent of the termination of real folks.) An important consideration is list volume. If the list is quiet, it could be a mistake to "kill" even the most off-topic or silly thread. This is because it could contribute to a great silence falling over a list, a silence that could be self-supporting. E.g., it could help generate the unconscious impression that not so many people are reading posts on the list, or that checking the list from time to time to see what is new on it might be a waste of time (if no one is posting or reading it). But when volume is heavy, precisely the opposite: the "killing" of off-topic threads attracts rather than repels more readers of the kind we want reading our posts. Lee From bret at bonfireproductions.com Tue May 1 01:03:13 2007 From: bret at bonfireproductions.com (Bret Kulakovich) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:03:13 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> References: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: As if the insult that follows this remark is not enough, this single statement alone: Brett Paasch wrote: > I would oppose your reanimation. Is utterly contemptible. I wrote Eugen offlist to say so. Call me whatever you want. But oppose my capability to attempt to return? Especially on a list where it is the intent - the heavily invested intent for some - of some/many members? And for what is this opposition raised? Teleological or eschatological argument? Pattern versus thread? No. Presidential impeachment. One of the largest wastes of pixels out there. I've offered before that I thought this list was under attack in a manner like alt.syntax.tactical used to do back in the days before "threadjack" was a word. Fortunately we have people willing enough to derail the list without a conspiracy. If you want to plot impeachment, there are probably thousands of lists one can join. I'm sure one would even send you a t-shirt. Meanwhile, I want to know what everyone's SL names are, and talk about the talk. ~ Bret (with one 't' and considered saying "the original Bret" since I don't recall one being on here back when I joined the first time, but wouldn't want to insult the Bret Collective either. My rant is over, back to watching Blues Clues.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 01:31:17 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:31:17 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Back to putting it to rest References: <80511.15042.qm@web37202.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <09d901c78b90$cec72e60$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Well, Anna, you're hardly going to be able to stop people from little one-liners like this. His venom is directed toward someone of his own ilk, not towards religion per se. In other words, some people here really do not respect religions at all, and that is going to come out from time to time. Lee ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anna Taylor" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 4:01 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Back to putting it to rest (was How to be copiedinto the future?). > --- John K Clark wrote: >> But then again who cares about this newfangled >> scientific method, it's not in The Bible. > > See, this is exactly what I was talking about. You > are using Religion as ridicule. Is that all you could > come up with as a rebuttal? ... From msd001 at gmail.com Tue May 1 01:54:02 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:54:02 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] About ESP, etc. In-Reply-To: References: <20070427102544.GA9439@leitl.org> <094a01c78ae9$b6e89f60$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430005641.023829a8@satx.rr.com> <3cf171fe0704300828u5c7d492qf53b9c8e5d18eea4@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430120621.02428758@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430143128.02366818@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430165437.023ad610@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <62c14240704301854p594d0c4fk49adfb5f942ad027@mail.gmail.com> Can (should) precognition be explained as a subconscious assembly of potentially non-obvious clues? I could see a "hunch" coming up from an intuitive impulse to hit when the card-counter says stand. Is that precog, luck, or an otherwise less-than-explicable good move? (assuming this action leads to a win) I wonder if this could be a form of learning by trial and error. Not knowing how to play blackjack and betting with virtual money, I learned the basics of the game just by doing it repeatedly. After a while, there's as much instinct to what is going on as any hard rules. (i was maybe 10 at the time, so i certainly wasn't doing a statistical analysis of probability of winning on a 13 when the dealer is showing a 6) Did you ever watch Jeopardy and know the answer to questions only a moment before they answer the question? (ok, question the answer *g*) I was often suprised that I got Jeopardy questions with as high a rate as I did - mostly without a conscious awareness of how or when i learned the material being presented. Is that precog, or lightening fast random access to a lifetime of stored facts that had otherwise no memory trigger? I'll buy that scenario, it seems more likely than precognition, right? Then what about Card Sharks? That's another game show that I seemed to 'guess' correctly more often than maybe I should have. I'll also go with the idea of card counting for that game show too, but it still seems weird. As if the amount of language required to state the cumulative subconscious knowledge required to track the deck and probabilistically assess the current situation in order to make the correct guess from moment to moment were too difficult to express and therefor Occams razor seems to point to precognition as a simpler explanation just a few thoughts From mbb386 at main.nc.us Tue May 1 01:55:08 2007 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:55:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: References: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: <40770.72.236.103.131.1177984508.squirrel@main.nc.us> I commented offlist that I appreciated the moderator comment. I've never blocked an extropy list member but I came very close that day. Regards, MB From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 01:58:22 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:58:22 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><015601c7010a$6a7d5d50$450a4e0c@MyComputer><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <09e401c78b94$4f939080$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis wrote (and I hope that I'm not doing damage by getting it out of context) > If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before, > then that's what matters in survival. But this "think" can be mistaken, can't it? It seems to me that you are saying a lot of what John Clark was saying (when I was taking him literally). What about my example of a nut who knows a lot about Napoleon and has begun to *think* that he is Napoleon. Is that all that matter's in Napoleon's survival? Lee From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Tue May 1 01:41:02 2007 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:41:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: <880958.25542.qm@web37210.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi Natasha, I hope you enjoyed your stay in Montreal and that people where hospitable. I am curious to know why Brett didn't politely, on list, ask Eugen why he thought that the thread should be killed? Thanks Anna:) --- Natasha Vita-More wrote: > It was called to my attention that there have been > some problems on the > list. Since I am not a moderator I have not > followed the thread on this > and since I have been travelling for several weeks, > I did not know there > was a problem. But because we share this list as a > venue to discuss and > challenge ideas, I think that we all need to take a > look at this: > > > From: Eugen Leitl > <eugen > at > leitl.org> > > >> On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 01:53:25PM +1000, Brett > Paatsch wrote: > > >John Grigg wrote: > > > > > > Attempting to impeach the current president is > not a realistic plan > > > > > > Why would you think that? > > > > Folks, killthread. This is completely off-topic > for the list. > > Brett responded: > > > "Eugen, just so you and I are absolutely clear. If > you kill this thread, or > call for it to be killed again. If your are that > censorious, I will > remember it and hold it against you whilst you and I > live. I would oppose > your reanimation. I will regard you as in the > aggregate an entropic vector. > > > I am willing to be censored off the list, it is a > private list after all, > but actions (like censorship) are facts that shape > reactions. Being a > person in a world of persons, I take things > personally. Fair warning. > > > If I am censored off the list I would take that as > diagnostic of the > > degeneration of the list. It is one thing to take > issue with a persons > > arguments and say so. It is another to stop other > people from hearing > > those arguments and expressing their reactions which > may include > > opposition to them. I regard censorship as a form of > killing - as do > > you by the use of your word killthread. > > > You are yourself a transient information thread that > the universe > > has yet to rule on." > > Like Brett I do not like being censored. But there > is a difference between > being censored and being sensible. The extropy list > does have rules and > guidelines and list members are required to follow > them in order to post on > this list. Whether or not Brett's thread is on > topic for this list is one > issue at stake. Now, there are many variables > involved that can add one > way or another such as a post may be a topic the > list members want to > engage in but it is not a transhumanist topic per > se. Or, it can be a > topic that is curious for list members but the way > in which it is presented > to the list, or the language used or implications of > the meaning of the > posts can cause a moderator to request that the > thread be put to > rest. These variables are important to pay > attention to. > > Further, and not totally unrelated, I was censored > from the Cryonics list > when I was being an activist to help a fellow > cryonicist. Now this was > truly strange and frankly made me think much less of > cryonicists than I had > prior. But I also understood that it touched a > nerve with other list > members and I did not take it personally, retaliate, > or blame them. I > belive that I was in the wrong for not paying > attention to the feelings of > other list members. I was too busy to read > responses, and that was also my > mistake. I was so driven to do something worthwhile > that it backfired on me. > > I see what you (Brett) are doing as something > different but sharing some > similarities. You posted on a topic that you are > passionate about. The > difference with you and me is that you are blaming > and making accusations > and insulting list members. I would not do this > because even if people do > not agree with me, I do my best to accept the > differences. You are also > different than me in the way you handled this. > Instead of approaching the > topic from a constructive inclusive manner, you made > assumptions and > accusations. This never sits well with list > members. > > And, finally, I do not like is the content of your > (Brett) response to the > list moderator (Eugene) requesting that the thread > be killed. You made a > threat and does not sit well with me and I'm sure > others. But putting that > aside, what do other list members think of this > thread? > > Lastly, I do think this is a topic that warrants > objective examination and > search for resolution. I invite you to think about > this. > > In hopes of resolution rather than slamming doors, > > Natasha > > > Natasha > Vita-More > PhD Candidate, > Planetary > Collegium > Proactionary Principle Core Group, > Extropy > Institute > Member, Association of > Professional Futurists > Founder, > Transhumanist Arts & > Culture > Advisory Committee, > Zero Gravity Arts > Consortium > > 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 > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Tue May 1 01:50:07 2007 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:50:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [extropy-chat] Back to putting it to rest In-Reply-To: <09d901c78b90$cec72e60$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <69816.43671.qm@web37213.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Thank you Lee. I know that it will come up time and again and again, and I'll get bored, and stop trying to get my point accross. On the other hand, once in while, I like a good debate:) Putting it to rest, Anna:) --- Lee Corbin wrote: > Well, Anna, you're hardly going to be able to stop > people > from little one-liners like this. His venom is > directed toward > someone of his own ilk, not towards religion per se. > > > In other words, some people here really do not > respect > religions at all, and that is going to come out from > time to > time. > > Lee > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Anna Taylor" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 4:01 PM > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Back to putting it to > rest (was How to be copiedinto the future?). > > > > --- John K Clark wrote: > >> But then again who cares about this newfangled > >> scientific method, it's not in The Bible. > > > > See, this is exactly what I was talking about. > You > > are using Religion as ridicule. Is that all you > could > > come up with as a rebuttal? ... > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail at http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/try_beta?.intl=ca From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 1 02:25:46 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 12:25:46 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer> <3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com> <059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 01/05/07, Heartland wrote: Stathis writes : > >> >> If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before, > >> >> then that's what matters in survival. > > Heartland replied: > >> That doesn't matter at all. Why should it matter? Is there an argument > for > >> why this > >> should matter? If it exists, I would love to read it. Because that's how people define survival, as in not dying. If someone did claim that sleep was death, the response would be, "No, I went to sleep last night, and I don't feel dead; so whatever evidence you show suggesting that everyone does die when they fall asleep, that just means your definition of death is wrong, or at least different to what everyone in the history of the world who ever thought about death understood by that term." It would be like science discovering that cats and dogs are actually the same species: we would still see them as distinct and would come up with a new definition of species or subspecies to take the place of the old one. Stathis responds: > > The problem I have is with your definition of death. > > Stathis asks today: > > You haven't answered yet (that I have noticed) what you would do if > medical > > science discovered that you didn't actually survive a situation you > hitherto > > believed harmless, such as falling asleep or being photographed by a > traffic > > camera. > > Can you please answer my questions first? After all, I asked you first. > Thanks. > (Sorry, I thought I was answering it - see above). -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 1 02:44:52 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 12:44:52 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <09e401c78b94$4f939080$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer> <3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com> <059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <09e401c78b94$4f939080$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 01/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: Stathis wrote (and I hope that I'm not doing damage by getting > it out of context) > > > If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before, > > then that's what matters in survival. > > But this "think" can be mistaken, can't it? It seems to me that you are > saying a lot of what John Clark was saying (when I was taking him > literally). What about my example of a nut who knows a lot about > Napoleon and has begun to *think* that he is Napoleon. Is that > all that matter's in Napoleon's survival? It would have to be more than just a belief, of course. It would have to include all the memories, thought patterns, abilities etc. that we would normally require for a person to qualify as the same person from day to day. It would be impossible in practice for one person to emulate another with the required fidelity, although I don't see why there should be a problem with it in principle. After all, mind uploading involves teaching a computer to believe it is you, and the computer ostensibly has less in common with you than you have in common with a madman. Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jay.dugger at gmail.com Tue May 1 02:58:45 2007 From: jay.dugger at gmail.com (Jay Dugger) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:58:45 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] i am a strange loop In-Reply-To: <200704291538.l3TFclbc019536@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200704291538.l3TFclbc019536@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <5366105b0704301958w14890af7vac8370eff3cafaab@mail.gmail.com> 21:57 Monday, 30 April 2007 > > I noticed Hofstadter has a new book called I Am a Strange Loop. Anyone read > it? > No, but it's on my list for my trip to Florida next month. Q: How do you know you're a nerd? A: When you look forward to spending a month of summer in a beachside hotel in Florida so you can read a new book by Hofstadter. -- Jay Dugger http://jaydugger.suprglu.com Sometimes the delete key serves best. From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 1 03:08:03 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:08:03 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] About ESP, etc. In-Reply-To: <62c14240704301854p594d0c4fk49adfb5f942ad027@mail.gmail.com > References: <20070427102544.GA9439@leitl.org> <094a01c78ae9$b6e89f60$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430005641.023829a8@satx.rr.com> <3cf171fe0704300828u5c7d492qf53b9c8e5d18eea4@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430120621.02428758@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430143128.02366818@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430165437.023ad610@satx.rr.com> <62c14240704301854p594d0c4fk49adfb5f942ad027@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070430220311.0247f278@satx.rr.com> At 09:54 PM 4/30/2007 -0400, Mike Dougherty wrote: >Can (should) precognition be explained as a subconscious assembly of >potentially non-obvious clues? In ordinary life, what seems to be prophetic probably is just what you identify, if it's not a chance coincidence. In the lab, with suitable blinding, no--by definition. Obviously coincidence can never be ruled out, but when the chance probability of a match or a sequence of matches surpasses a certain predefined improbable value, something genuinely anomalous is indicated. >Did you ever watch Jeopardy and know the answer to questions only a >moment before they answer the question? > I was often suprised that I got Jeopardy questions with as high a >rate as I did - mostly without a conscious awareness of how or when i >learned the material being presented. Is that precog, or lightening >fast random access to a lifetime of stored facts that had otherwise no >memory trigger? Could be either; probably the latter, given the observed infrequency of psi effects. Damien Broderick From Thomas at thomasoliver.net Tue May 1 01:52:56 2007 From: Thomas at thomasoliver.net (Thomas) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:52:56 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? References: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: <46369D78.2080009@thomasoliver.net> Natasha Vita-More wrote: > [...] because we share this list as a venue to discuss and challenge > ideas [...] Yes. > From: Eugen Leitl > >>> On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 01:53:25PM +1000, Brett Paatsch wrote: >> >John Grigg wrote: >> > >> > Attempting to impeach the current president is not a >realistic plan >> > >> > Why would you think that? >> >> Folks, killthread. This is completely off-topic for the list. > Not completely off-topic since many of Bush's efforts have worked against the extropian, especially funding war at the expense of medical and technological progress. >Brett responded: > . . . rather emotionally, offering nothing positive towards reinstating the thread. Moderation seems appropriate when we're confronted with such venomous content, but the thread itself needs no censorship. It had already nearly died. Still, the pattern of Brett's recent posts seemed to call for moderation at some point. I typed a response to his attack on Max, but decided not to post it for fear of adding fuel to a disturbance. > [...] Whether or not Brett's thread is on topic for this list is one > issue at stake. [...] but the way in which it is presented to the > list, or the language used or implications of the meaning of the posts > can cause a moderator to request that the thread be put to rest. Yes, I got the impression Eugen called for killthread as a tactful way of moderating emotionalism. > [...] Instead of approaching the topic from a constructive inclusive > manner, you made assumptions and accusations. This never sits well > with list members. Not when it gets "un fun." > [...] what do other list members think of this thread? We can't resurrect it if it never dies. If we do, lets hope it has a new identity. : ) > Lastly, I do think this is a topic that warrants objective examination > and search for resolution. I invite you to think about this. Sure. -- Thomas From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 04:50:12 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:50:12 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis replied a while ago to Heartland and said: Stathis wrote : >> >> If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before, >> >> then that's what matters in survival. Heartland replied: >> That doesn't matter at all. Why should it matter? Is there an argument for >> why this >> should matter? If it exists, I would love to read it. Stathis now says > Because that's how people define survival, as in not dying. If someone > did claim that sleep was death, the response would be, "No, I went to > sleep last night, and I don't feel dead; so whatever evidence you show > suggesting that everyone does die when they fall asleep, that just means > your definition of death is wrong, Here is where I agree with those who say that "day-persons" (e.g. see Mike Perry's "Forever For All") are *conceivable* though they aren't (as yet) real. To me it is a question of objective truth whether I am the same person as the Lee Corbin of yesterday. It is possible that I remember being him, and function just dandy in society because I have (just barely) enough of his memories (like stuff at work) to get by. Now this could have happened every day of my life, exactly as in the thought experiments we inflict on Heartland. Namely, Lee is replaced each night by a copy whose memories have been vastly changed from from the Lee's of the day before (though just enough to evade being exposed as an imposter). If I found out that this was going on, then I would be most alarmed, and would insist that this nightly process be terminated (however glad I was that it had happened the previous night). I would realize, with some sadness, that I really had lived only one day. This is what Heartland and Damien and all of them are afraid of when it comes to teleportation, and what Heartland is afraid of when it comes to process interruption. Now for you and I, however, it is just like you *did* just write in an email to me: Stathis to Lee just now: > It would have to be more than just a belief, of course. It would have to > include all the memories, thought patterns, abilities etc. that we would > normally require for a person to qualify as the same person from day > to day. Er, you mean that you and I and John Clark require from day to day. The mensheviks on this list do not believe in our criteria of identity. > It would be impossible in practice for one person to emulate another > with the required fidelity, although I don't see why there should be a > problem with it in principle. Right. In principle I could be imitated by someone who would fool everyone I know, though it would take God-like powers to know what to include in the ersatz Lee and what to leave out. As I reiterate, who is known as Lee would not be the same person from day to day, alas. > After all, mind uploading involves teaching a computer to believe > it is you, and the computer ostensibly has less in common with > you than you have in common with a madman. Well---if that is going to be the case, I do not want to be uploaded, because it would not constitute survival. An upload machine would not need God-like knowledge of what to fiendishly include (just enough to fool people) and what to omit. I would settle for a fairly mechanical process that made an electronic version of me that passed insofar as everyone I know. To summarize, I disagree with your extra or alternative criterion expressed in your remarks to Heartland: > Because that's how people define survival, as in not dying. If someone > did claim that sleep was death, the response would be, "No, I went to > sleep last night, and I don't feel dead; so whatever evidence you show > suggesting that everyone does die when they fall asleep, that just means > your definition of death is wrong, Don't you agree that in truth that would be an inadequate response? Would it not---as you wrote to me later---have to be accompanied by better evidence than that, namely objective knowledge that the memories of the yesterday person were incredibly similar to the today person (as in actual fact in daily life they really are)? Lee From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue May 1 03:30:09 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 23:30:09 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] Yesterday's Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life In-Reply-To: <565682.9936.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <470a3c520704300032k7921415bm841865662a983990@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070430232017.041b5198@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 05:54 PM 4/30/2007 -0700, John Grigg wrote: >I am fascinated by the possibilities of "Second Life" but have not yet >actually ventured there with an avatar. snip The thing that is most interesting about Second Life is that as *crude* as it is, it sucked in something close to 1 in a thousand of the US population. (Agreed many may be from outside the US.) I have been working on an unpublishable novel where the big problem of a hundred years hence is to prevent all the physical state human population from vanishing into simulations. I started it before Second Life. I never dreamed I would see such an example before I finished it. Keith From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 1 05:47:05 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 00:47:05 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Yesterday's Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life References: <470a3c520704300032k7921415bm841865662a983990@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070501004355.022a1a88@satx.rr.com> At 11:30 PM 4/30/2007 -0400, Keith wrote: >I have been working on an unpublishable novel where the big problem of a >hundred years hence is to prevent all the physical state human population >from vanishing into simulations. > >I started it before Second Life. I never dreamed I would see such an >example before I finished it. I wrote one 30 years ago, published finally in 1982, in which almost all remnant humans have withdrawn into simulations (under the lofty custodianship of human-AI cyborgs). I never dreamed it would take so long. :) Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 1 05:59:43 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 00:59:43 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer> <3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com> <059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> At 09:50 PM 4/30/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: >Namely, Lee is replaced each night by a copy whose memories have been >vastly changed from from the Lee's of the day before (though just enough >to evade being exposed as an imposter). ... > >This is what Heartland and Damien and all of them are afraid of when it >comes to teleportation No, like most organisms I'm afraid of being killed. It doesn't make any difference if someone recompiles an exact copy of me in a galaxy far, far away. Certain biases driven by my genes might be persuaded that such simulacra should become twice as precious to me as my genes estimate my kids and sibs should be, but so far they haven't even done such a great job in urging me to reproduce or keep in touch with my sister and brothers most of the time, let alone bequeath them my fortune. Damien Broderick From jonkc at att.net Tue May 1 06:03:36 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 02:03:36 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future? References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070427155653.0230c178@satx.rr.com><200704290451.l3T4ppht015948@andromeda.ziaspace.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070429113755.02274c98@satx.rr.com><009601c78a81$f49eca90$d9074e0c@MyComputer><093701c78ae6$33d42200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><008001c78b42$cae8df30$41074e0c@MyComputer><09a601c78b86$46c91410$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430194023.0242d968@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <002401c78bb6$78209b20$290b4e0c@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" >> > Mr. Hinesburg > >>Mr. Hindbutt > > Well played, sir! Oh, I say, well played! > > Vernor fon Krautschnitzel And so Damien from this brilliant response can I assume the only objection you have with my ideas is my spelling? John K Clark From velvethum at hotmail.com Tue May 1 06:10:22 2007 From: velvethum at hotmail.com (Heartland) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 02:10:22 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Stathis: >> >> >> If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before, >> >> >> then that's what matters in survival. Heartland: >> That doesn't matter at all. Why should it matter? Is there an argument for why >> this should matter? If it exists, I would love to read it. Stathis: > Because that's how people define survival, as in not dying. That argument breaks down quite easily. What you're saying here is that if I think I-now survived, then it must be true that I-before survived and that this mechanism for determining truth (I think it is true -> it is true) is reliable just because most people use this mechanism. Let's apply this logic to something that has nothing to do with survival so that emotional attachments to our ideas about survival don't blind us to the fact that this argument doesn't work. Many centuries ago someone believed Sun revolved around Earth. Even though overwhelming majority of people at the time shared that belief, was it really true that all these centuries ago Sun actually revolved around the Earth? Did people's (subjective) beliefs cause Sun to revolve around Earth? Of course not, so the argument is not a reliable way of finding truth. Just because I-now thinks I-before survived does not cause "I-before survived" statement to be true. In other words, I-now cannot subjectively determine if I-before survived. I-now can determine that I-before survived based on objective evidence only. The only thing that I-now can determine subjectively is I-now's survival (I think therefore I am therefore I survive) which is what I think you've been focusing on exclusively while completely ignoring I-before's fate. Stathis: >> > You haven't answered yet (that I have noticed) what you would do if >> medical >> > science discovered that you didn't actually survive a situation you >> hitherto >> > believed harmless, such as falling asleep or being photographed by a >> traffic >> > camera. This question is posed in such a way that it assumes the conclusion you haven't proven yet. You said, "what you would do if...you didn't actually survive... ." Now think about it for a minute. You're asking me what I would do after I died. Well, not much because I would not exist anymore and people who don't exist are incapable of doing anything. You assume your conclusion which is that someone-before-being-fatally-photographed and someone-after-being-fatally-photographed is the same person. You have not shown that yet. H. From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 1 06:21:16 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 16:21:16 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com> <059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 01/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > After all, mind uploading involves teaching a computer to believe > > it is you, and the computer ostensibly has less in common with > > you than you have in common with a madman. > > Well---if that is going to be the case, I do not want to be uploaded, > because it would not constitute survival. An upload machine would > not need God-like knowledge of what to fiendishly include (just > enough to fool people) and what to omit. I would settle for a fairly > mechanical process that made an electronic version of me that > passed insofar as everyone I know. I don't really understand your objection here. Taking a general purpose computer and programming it to be Lee is equivalent to taking some person off the street, wiping his mind, and programming him to be Lee, isn't it? Whether these procedures are technically possible is a separate question. To summarize, I disagree with your extra or alternative criterion > expressed in your remarks to Heartland: > > > Because that's how people define survival, as in not dying. If someone > > did claim that sleep was death, the response would be, "No, I went to > > sleep last night, and I don't feel dead; so whatever evidence you show > > suggesting that everyone does die when they fall asleep, that just means > > your definition of death is wrong, > > Don't you agree that in truth that would be an inadequate response? > Would it not---as you wrote to me later---have to be accompanied > by better evidence than that, namely objective knowledge that the > memories of the yesterday person were incredibly similar to the > today person (as in actual fact in daily life they really are)? The objective evidence would rapidly impinge on the subjective evidence, if the two did not match. If everyone recognised you, things were in the same place you put them yesterday, letters you wrote years ago are as you remember them, and so on, then you can say you have survived. I think this much would be evident within moments of waking up. The alternative situation is to have memories removed and false memories implanted while you are asleep. If this were to happen to a sufficient extent tonight, then it would be equivalent to death. So you could physically die but survive mentally, or physically survive but die mentally. It doesn't matter what happens to your body as long as your mind continues. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 1 06:32:06 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 16:32:06 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 01/05/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > > At 09:50 PM 4/30/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: > > >Namely, Lee is replaced each night by a copy whose memories have been > >vastly changed from from the Lee's of the day before (though just enough > >to evade being exposed as an imposter). ... > > > >This is what Heartland and Damien and all of them are afraid of when it > >comes to teleportation > > No, like most organisms I'm afraid of being killed. It doesn't make > any difference if someone recompiles an exact copy of me in a galaxy > far, far away. Certain biases driven by my genes might be persuaded > that such simulacra should become twice as precious to me as my genes > estimate my kids and sibs should be, but so far they haven't even > done such a great job in urging me to reproduce or keep in touch with > my sister and brothers most of the time, let alone bequeath them my > fortune. And yet you leave your fortune to your tomorrow-self, rather than blowing it all before you go to sleep tonight. How do you know that tomorrow-self isn't just some guy who happens to have all your memories? If someone claimed that criterion X is a sure sign of death, and it so happens that criterion X occurs every night to every person, wouldn't you answer that - even without knowing the details of criterion X - it must be a load of crap because you know you *don't* die every night? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at att.net Tue May 1 06:33:47 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 02:33:47 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? References: <880958.25542.qm@web37210.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <005401c78bba$b2e46940$290b4e0c@MyComputer> I haven't been following this thread but I don't need to read it to know it's not censorship. The Extropian list is private property, if the owners don't want a particular subject discussed that is entirely their prerogative. If you disagree with it then start your own list. That said I personally don't like any thread being killed unless it is boring or stupid. I hope the Extropians don't become as kill thread happy as the SL4 list when their central dogma is threatened. I don't believe that list has managed their private property well. John K Clark From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 06:36:01 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 23:36:01 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer> <3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com> <059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <0a3c01c78bbb$8db4cc90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Damien writes > At 09:50 PM 4/30/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: > >> Namely, Lee is replaced each night by a copy whose memories have been >> vastly changed from from the Lee's of the day before (though just enough >> to evade being exposed as an imposter). ... >> >> [That means that *tonight* it will---gulp!---happen to moi. And the >> imposter will only think he's me, have just enough memories to fool >> you all, and my *death* goes unnoticed! But I die, just the same.] >> >> This is what Heartland and Damien and all of them are afraid of when it >> comes to teleportation > > No, like most organisms I'm afraid of being killed. Now that I've spruced up my account a bit, just what is the difference between me no longer living (and happening to be replaced by someone that only has sufficient memories to fool himself and other people), and you being teleported. Just how are our fears different? Lee > It doesn't make > any difference if someone recompiles an exact copy of me in a galaxy > far, far away. Certain biases driven by my genes might be persuaded > that such simulacra should become twice as precious to me as my genes > estimate my kids and sibs should be, but so far they haven't even > done such a great job in urging me to reproduce or keep in touch with > my sister and brothers most of the time, let alone bequeath them my fortune. From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 1 06:48:29 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 01:48:29 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future? In-Reply-To: <002401c78bb6$78209b20$290b4e0c@MyComputer> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070427155653.0230c178@satx.rr.com> <200704290451.l3T4ppht015948@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070429113755.02274c98@satx.rr.com> <009601c78a81$f49eca90$d9074e0c@MyComputer> <093701c78ae6$33d42200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <008001c78b42$cae8df30$41074e0c@MyComputer> <09a601c78b86$46c91410$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430194023.0242d968@satx.rr.com> <002401c78bb6$78209b20$290b4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070501014753.022ca5e0@satx.rr.com> >And so Damien from this brilliant response can I assume the only objection >you have with my ideas is my spelling? Laugh and the world laughs with you. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 06:54:29 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 23:54:29 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com> <059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0a4401c78bbd$aa0f55c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > On 01/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > > After all, mind uploading involves teaching a computer to believe > > > it is you, and the computer ostensibly has less in common with > > > you than you have in common with a madman. > > > > Well---if that is going to be the case, [then] I do not want to be uploaded, > > because it would not constitute survival. A [genuine] upload machine > > would [should] not need God-like knowledge of what to fiendishly include > > (just enough to fool people) and what to omit. [In practice] I would settle > > for a fairly mechanical process that made an electronic version of me that > > passed insofar as everyone I know. > > I don't really understand your objection here. Taking a general > purpose computer and programming it to be Lee is equivalent > to taking some person off the street, wiping his mind, and > programming him to be Lee, isn't it? Whether these procedures > are technically possible is a separate question. Now that, I agree with, provided that those processes capture all my memories. What I object to is someone just using the criterion "Well, lessee, it claims to be Lee, it passes some cheap tests that aren't very thorough, and we believe that it's telling the truth when it says it remembers being Lee. So okay, it's Lee. If someone now shows us evidence that in *reality* it only has enough of Lee's memories to superficially resemble Lee enough to fool people, and that in *actuality* huge amounts of Lee are missing---well, that don't matter none. It's still Lee because (a) it remembers being Lee (b) it claims to remember---and on some of the things we can check really does remember---all Lee's shit, so the subjectivity requirement is satisfied. Case closed." You see that that "subjectivity requirement" is quite vapid? Even irrelevant? Besides, being a "subjectivity" requirement is on the face of it immeasurable and highly suspicious anyway. I won't settle for anything less---when they haul out the uploading apparatus---than a well-nigh invincible guarantee that *all* my memories (or---okay, 99.99999% of them) will be captured by the process. No "subjectivity" requirement is acceptable to me. > > To summarize, I disagree with your extra or alternative criterion > > expressed in your remarks to Heartland: > > > > > Because that's how people define survival, as in not dying. If someone > > > did claim that sleep was death, the response would be, "No, I went to > > > sleep last night, and I don't feel dead; so whatever evidence you show > > > suggesting that everyone does die when they fall asleep, that just means > > > your definition of death is wrong, > > > > Don't you agree that in truth that would be an inadequate response? > > Would it not---as you wrote to me later---have to be accompanied > > by better evidence than that, namely objective knowledge that the > > memories of the yesterday person were incredibly similar to the > > today person (as in actual fact in daily life they really are)? > > The objective evidence would rapidly impinge on the subjective evidence, > if the two did not match. If everyone recognised you, things were in the > same place you put them yesterday, letters you wrote years ago are as > you remember them, and so on, then you can say you have survived. Well, if *everything* along those lines works as you say, then yes. But this is hardly the "subjectivity" requirement that I thought that you and John Clark were pressing on Heartland. After all, the new being that is supposed to be me may artificially suddenly "remember" old letters I wrote, as sometimes in dreams we seem to remember having seen absurd situations before, or we are not startled by clearly bizarre things. Just because this imposter claims to be me and says he remembers every old artifact of mine that you show him is not sufficient. We need objective evidence that he has all my old memories. > I think this much would be evident within moments of waking up. And I say that the new creature may be deluding himself as well as you. > The alternative situation is to have memories removed and false > memories implanted while you are asleep. If this were to happen > to a sufficient extent tonight, then it would be equivalent to death. Yes, of course. > So you could physically die but survive mentally, or physically > survive but die mentally. It doesn't matter what happens to your > body as long as your mind continues. That much is right. But it has to be the real McCoy. Lee From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 1 07:08:21 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 08:08:21 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] War and technological progress Message-ID: On 5/1/07, Thomas wrote: > Not completely off-topic since many of Bush's efforts have worked > against the extropian, especially funding war at the expense of medical > and technological progress. > Not true! I have supported the proposition before that war funding vastly increases technological and medical developments. Look at all the stuff DARPA is funding. WWII certainly generated a great leap forward in technology and medicine. (The downside, of course, is that war tends to kill a lot of people). Agreed that Bush has opposed funding some stem cell research, but that was on religious grounds, nothing to do with the war funding. BillK From andres at neuralgrid.net Tue May 1 05:00:41 2007 From: andres at neuralgrid.net (Andres Colon) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 01:00:41 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> References: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: Brett Paasch wrote: I would oppose your reanimation. This is my first day on this list. I only want to say I was shocked and disappointed to see someone say such a thing as Brett did. Hopefully this is not common on this list. Andr?s, Thoughtware.tv -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 1 07:24:02 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 08:24:02 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Yesterday's Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070501004355.022a1a88@satx.rr.com> References: <470a3c520704300032k7921415bm841865662a983990@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501004355.022a1a88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/1/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > I wrote one 30 years ago, published finally in 1982, in which almost > all remnant humans have withdrawn into simulations (under the lofty > custodianship of human-AI cyborgs). I never dreamed it would take so long. :) > This scenario is often offered as the reason for Fermi's paradox. This writer uses EP failings in modern man to support his thesis. Quotes: As a result, brains must evolve short-cuts: fitness-promoting tricks, cons, recipes and heuristics that work, on average, under ancestrally normal conditions. The result is that we don't seek reproductive success directly; we seek tasty foods that have tended to promote survival, and luscious mates who have tended to produce bright, healthy babies. The modern result? Fast food and pornography. Fitness-faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our psychological resistance to it. This is the Great Temptation for any technological species?to shape their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and reproductive success without the substance. -------------- Sounds reasonable to me. BillK From andrew at ceruleansystems.com Tue May 1 07:18:45 2007 From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 00:18:45 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: <005401c78bba$b2e46940$290b4e0c@MyComputer> References: <880958.25542.qm@web37210.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <005401c78bba$b2e46940$290b4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: On Apr 30, 2007, at 11:33 PM, John K Clark wrote: > That said I personally don't like any thread being killed unless it is > boring or stupid. I hope the Extropians don't become as kill thread > happy as > the SL4 list when their central dogma is threatened. Speaking entirely for myself, as best I can determine the SL4 list moderators don't like any thread being killed unless it is boring or stupid. Or off-topic. Interpret that how you will. Cheers, J. Andrew Rogers From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 1 07:47:03 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 00:47:03 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] War and technological progress In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4636F077.1020702@mac.com> BillK wrote: > On 5/1/07, Thomas wrote: > > >> Not completely off-topic since many of Bush's efforts have worked >> against the extropian, especially funding war at the expense of medical >> and technological progress. >> >> > > > Not true! > I have supported the proposition before that war funding vastly > increases technological and medical developments. Look at all the > stuff DARPA is funding. > Show me what we got out of Iraq. It looks to me like we just pour nearly a trillion dollars into sand and blood with squat to show for it. The glory days of DARPA are behind it. What do you have in mind that is so hot as to justify all the ill of this so-called war? > WWII certainly generated a great leap forward in technology and medicine. > (The downside, of course, is that war tends to kill a lot of people). > > Agreed that Bush has opposed funding some stem cell research, but that > was on religious grounds, nothing to do with the war funding. > The money for this contretemps had to come from somewhere. Where? What could it have bought for us instead? - samantha From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 1 07:52:02 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 17:52:02 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com> <059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 01/05/07, Heartland wrote: > > Stathis: > >> >> >> If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before, > >> >> >> then that's what matters in survival. > > Heartland: > >> That doesn't matter at all. Why should it matter? Is there an argument > for why > >> this should matter? If it exists, I would love to read it. > > Stathis: > > Because that's how people define survival, as in not dying. > > That argument breaks down quite easily. What you're saying here is that if > I think > I-now survived, then it must be true that I-before survived and that this > mechanism > for determining truth (I think it is true -> it is true) is reliable just > because > most people use this mechanism. Let's apply this logic to something that > has > nothing to do with survival so that emotional attachments to our ideas > about > survival don't blind us to the fact that this argument doesn't work. > > Many centuries ago someone believed Sun revolved around Earth. Even though > overwhelming majority of people at the time shared that belief, was it > really true > that all these centuries ago Sun actually revolved around the Earth? Did > people's > (subjective) beliefs cause Sun to revolve around Earth? Of course not, so > the > argument is not a reliable way of finding truth. No, the appropriate analogy is this. Many centuries ago people believed Sun revolved around Earth. They also believed that their faces felt warm when they looked at the Sun. The former is an empirical belief about the world, which scientific evidence proved wrong. The latter is just an expression of how people feel. Even if it could be shown by science that the Sun was not really there at all - that it was just a projection on a big screen - that still would not have changed the fact that when you look at what *appears* to be the Sun, your face feels warm. People might have been surprised and even upset to learn that the Sun was an illusion, but in the end they would have said, "Oh well, we've lived with it this long, the important thing is that the illusion, or whatever it is, continue." Just because I-now thinks I-before survived does not cause "I-before > survived" > statement to be true. In other words, I-now cannot subjectively determine > if > I-before survived. I-now can determine that I-before survived based on > objective > evidence only. > > The only thing that I-now can determine subjectively is I-now's survival > (I think > therefore I am therefore I survive) which is what I think you've been > focusing on > exclusively while completely ignoring I-before's fate. Suppose it is claimed that there is some objective criterion X for death, easily shown by medical tests to have occurred or not occurred in the preceding 24 hours. There is no doubt that criterion X is a real physical effect, and there is no doubt that the tests accurately detect its presence or absence. The question is, how do we know that criterion X actually tests for death? Stathis: > >> > You haven't answered yet (that I have noticed) what you would do if > >> medical > >> > science discovered that you didn't actually survive a situation you > >> hitherto > >> > believed harmless, such as falling asleep or being photographed by a > >> traffic > >> > camera. > > This question is posed in such a way that it assumes the conclusion you > haven't > proven yet. You said, "what you would do if...you didn't actually > survive... ." Now > think about it for a minute. You're asking me what I would do after I > died. Well, > not much because I would not exist anymore and people who don't exist are > incapable > of doing anything. You assume your conclusion which is that > someone-before-being-fatally-photographed and > someone-after-being-fatally-photographed is the same person. You have not > shown > that yet. Yes I have: just as clearly as you have shown that a flat EEG means death, despite the person actually believing that "he" has survived. I'm telling you that when you were zapped by that camera today, you were killed, and the person reading this is actually someone else who has only been alive for a few hours. Can you show me any evidence that I am wrong about this? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at att.net Tue May 1 08:02:42 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 04:02:42 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future?. References: <640411.85381.qm@web37402.mail.mud.yahoo.com><013c01c788f3$06c458b0$f60a4e0c@MyComputer><38A94159-536C-45C8-81E5-DDA4DFE9FC25@randallsquared.com><076f01c78914$571c6b60$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><07a201c78995$38a5c970$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><1A7A74FD-3240-435A-B117-6F3B0B522232@randallsquared.com><083c01c78a08$a753b1c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><086701c78a4b$33d7cef0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><7.0.1.0.2.20070429135619.0236cb40@satx.rr.com><00ba01c78b6b$b62ccf60$dc0a4e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430170213.023ad358@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <03cc01c78bc8$0dd60b80$290b4e0c@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" Me: >> Why does randomness and stupidity beat >> intelligence? You: > In the general sense, because they had 4 billion years It took 4 billion years because random mutation and natural selection is incredibly STUPID! Intelligence is not stupid, that's why it's called intelligence. There is an entire galaxy of solutions unavailable to evolution, but not to intelligence. Every large change evolution makes consists of lots of small changes, and every single one of those small changes must confer an IMMEDIATE advantage to the organism; evolution just doesn't understand the concept of one step backward two steps forward. Imagine if you had to turn a prop airplane engine into a jet with a million tiny changes and ever change must improve the performance of the engine, and you had to make the changes while the engine was running. It just couldn't be done. That's probably why evolution was never able to come up with some apparently simple things, like a macroscopic body part that could move in 360 degrees. And also consider the fact that the fastest signals in the brain move at about 100 meters a second, most are far slower; the signals in a AI would move at 300,000,000 meters a second and would have a far shorter distance to travel. > I thought the claim was that a perfect copy could be contrived and swapped > in instantaneously. Nano couldn't do that. That is true, I used the word "instantaneously" because I thought it would make a cleaner thought experiment, but if I had said "after 5 minutes" would it really make a cosmic difference? John K Clark From jonkc at att.net Tue May 1 08:41:37 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 04:41:37 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] META My position on the secular sin of censorship --Was Take a stand References: <01a501c785e4$d96ee670$e7e18f9b@homepc> Message-ID: <074401c78bcc$b7d1d5c0$290b4e0c@MyComputer> Brett Paatsch Wrote about Eugen Leitl > I would oppose your reanimation. Eugen may or may not be right about this particular kill thread (I haven't followed it but I have a hunch he probably isn't right) however to say something like that about a fine man like Eugen tells me you must be very small, so small it would require an electron microscope to see you. John K Clark From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 1 09:32:56 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 19:32:56 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Yesterday's Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life In-Reply-To: References: <470a3c520704300032k7921415bm841865662a983990@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501004355.022a1a88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 01/05/07, BillK wrote: This scenario is often offered as the reason for Fermi's paradox. > > > > This writer uses EP failings in modern man to support his thesis. > > Quotes: > As a result, brains must evolve short-cuts: fitness-promoting tricks, > cons, recipes and heuristics that work, on average, under ancestrally > normal conditions. The result is that we don't seek reproductive > success directly; we seek tasty foods that have tended to promote > survival, and luscious mates who have tended to produce bright, > healthy babies. The modern result? Fast food and pornography. > > Fitness-faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our > psychological resistance to it. Yes, but evolution always comes up with a solution. Out of a zillion civilizations there will always be some individuals who, perhaps perversely, wish to expand and explore the universe despite the goodies available via virtual reality without leaving home. Those individuals will tend to populate the universe, just as a single antibiotic-resistant bacterium will take over a petri dish. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 1 10:47:45 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 11:47:45 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Yesterday's Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life In-Reply-To: References: <470a3c520704300032k7921415bm841865662a983990@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501004355.022a1a88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/1/07, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > Yes, but evolution always comes up with a solution. Out of a zillion > civilizations there will always be some individuals who, perhaps perversely, > wish to expand and explore the universe despite the goodies available via > virtual reality without leaving home. Those individuals will tend to > populate the universe, just as a single antibiotic-resistant bacterium will > take over a petri dish. > You can always hope. Sounds like a big dose of wishful thinking to me. The point is that evolution doesn't have sufficient time to react. The loners will be the 'Amish' in a future society. And in your scenario, you still have to answer the question, 'Where are they?'. Even at sub-light speeds they should be all over our galaxy by now. We might be the first, or only, in our galaxy, but answering the question means deciding between a range of unlikely choices. BillK From neptune at superlink.net Tue May 1 10:28:35 2007 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 06:28:35 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] War and technological progress References: Message-ID: <003401c78bdb$79fef840$6b893cd1@pavilion> On Tuesday, May 01, 2007 3:08 AM BillK pharos at gmail.com wrote: > On 5/1/07, Thomas wrote: > > > Not completely off-topic since many of Bush's efforts have worked > > against the extropian, especially funding war at the expense of medical > > and technological progress. > > Not true! > I have supported the proposition before that war funding vastly > increases technological and medical developments. Look at all the > stuff DARPA is funding. > WWII certainly generated a great leap forward in technology and medicine. > (The downside, of course, is that war tends to kill a lot of people). > > Agreed that Bush has opposed funding some stem cell research, but that > was on religious grounds, nothing to do with the war funding. To fund the war, one must use one of three possible means: taxation, inflation, or borrowing (i.e., deficit spending). All of these mean less wealth for other purposes. Now it's true that some war spending will go to research and development and some of that might lead to progress in various fields. (Even so, I suspect most such R&D spending will be on new ways for the government to hurt or kill people, and that is probably the least extropian use I can think of.) However, it's merely falling for the broken window fallacy to believe that this has an overall benefit. In other words, the benefit must be weighed against the cost -- and the cost is not just people being killed or injured (though, that alone, is the most serious cost of war). Were this not so, then you should advocate a society constantly at war. Such as society would have, by this view, the most technological and economic progress over any alternatives. Regards, Dan From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 1 11:32:30 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 13:32:30 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Yesterday's Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life In-Reply-To: References: <470a3c520704300032k7921415bm841865662a983990@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501004355.022a1a88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20070501113230.GA17691@leitl.org> On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 11:47:45AM +0100, BillK wrote: > You can always hope. Hope for what? That it happens, or that it doesn't happen? > Sounds like a big dose of wishful thinking to me. Evolutionary theory sounds like wishful thinking to you? Really. > The point is that evolution doesn't have sufficient time to react. An argument is missing here. > The loners will be the 'Amish' in a future society. The point is that these 'Amish' will inherit the universe. As to the solipsists, well, you won't ever meet any. These self-select into invisibility. > And in your scenario, you still have to answer the question, > 'Where are they?'. Even at sub-light speeds they should be all over > our galaxy by now. You've just answered your own questions. If they're not here, they're not anywhere. In fact, they *are* here. Look into the mirror. > We might be the first, or only, in our galaxy, but answering the > question means deciding between a range of unlikely choices. No, it means that there is at least one coefficient in the Drake equation which is pretty damn close to zero. -- 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 russell.wallace at gmail.com Tue May 1 12:29:12 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 13:29:12 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: References: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705010529s6a86c8f6m1b93891d758abc0d@mail.gmail.com> On 5/1/07, Andres Colon wrote: > > This is my first day on this list. I only want to say I was shocked and > disappointed to see someone say such a thing as Brett did. Hopefully this is > not common on this list. > I missed the original, having killfiled Brett a long while back, but I'm happy to say that sort of thing isn't at all common on this list; I can't remember the last time anyone else said anything like that. Considering the strong emotions sometimes raised here, the standard of discussion is generally very civilized, and I'll pause to thank the moderators for doing a good job. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue May 1 14:25:12 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 10:25:12 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] Yesterday's Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070501004355.022a1a88@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520704300032k7921415bm841865662a983990@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501004355.022a1a88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070501102134.03ae5df0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 08:24 AM 5/1/2007 +0100, you wrote: >On 5/1/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > > I wrote one 30 years ago, published finally in 1982, in which almost > > all remnant humans have withdrawn into simulations (under the lofty > > custodianship of human-AI cyborgs). I never dreamed it would take so > long. :) > > > >This scenario is often offered as the reason for Fermi's paradox. > > >This writer uses EP failings in modern man to support his thesis. > >Quotes: >As a result, brains must evolve short-cuts: fitness-promoting tricks, >cons, recipes and heuristics that work, on average, under ancestrally >normal conditions. The result is that we don't seek reproductive >success directly; we seek tasty foods that have tended to promote >survival, and luscious mates who have tended to produce bright, >healthy babies. The modern result? Fast food and pornography. > >Fitness-faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our >psychological resistance to it. > >This is the Great Temptation for any technological species?to shape >their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and >reproductive success without the substance. >-------------- I wrote about this 20 years ago in a nanotechnology context. "Another problem is how to improve ourselves without getting completely lost. Today the mental modules at the root of our personalities change slowly if at all. When our deepest desires can be quickly modified with trivial effort, how much of us will survive? The results of modifying ourselves could be as tragic as being modified by others.* This and nanotechnology based "super dope" that make everyone happy but without ambition (or even the desire to eat) are among the subtle dangers we face. It is time for those of us who are concerned about our futures to start thinking about these problems." But the idea has been around *much* longer. I remember a short story about a time traveler who finds the world almost deserted, then he is grabbed and stuffed in an entertainment machine becoming the lead in a cowboy movie. Keith From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 1 14:49:04 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 07:49:04 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Yesterday's Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life In-Reply-To: References: <470a3c520704300032k7921415bm841865662a983990@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501004355.022a1a88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <46375360.1050100@mac.com> BillK wrote: > On 5/1/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > >> I wrote one 30 years ago, published finally in 1982, in which almost >> all remnant humans have withdrawn into simulations (under the lofty >> custodianship of human-AI cyborgs). I never dreamed it would take so long. :) >> >> > > This scenario is often offered as the reason for Fermi's paradox. > > > This writer uses EP failings in modern man to support his thesis. > > Quotes: > As a result, brains must evolve short-cuts: fitness-promoting tricks, > cons, recipes and heuristics that work, on average, under ancestrally > normal conditions. The result is that we don't seek reproductive > success directly; we seek tasty foods that have tended to promote > survival, and luscious mates who have tended to produce bright, > healthy babies. The modern result? Fast food and pornography. > > Fitness-faking technology tends to evolve much faster than our > psychological resistance to it. > > This is the Great Temptation for any technological species?to shape > their subjective reality to provide the cues of survival and > reproductive success without the substance. > -------------- > It is a truism that any evolved intelligences will have evolved a package of cognitive, psychological and physical leading to reproductive fitness in its evolutionary environment. As an intelligence species advances its knowledge and technology the environment that it must deal with changes quite rapidly and becomes much more complex. Thus for the species to continue to thrive it must be able to address and change many of it evolution programmed characteristics or find fruitful ways to satisfy them without being overly limited by such or constrained from creating a viable future. It also must dramatically increase its effective intelligence. As I see it this will be true of any and all naturally evolved intelligent species throughout the universe. The difficulty of going beyond evolutionary programming to this extent probably accounts in large part for the seeming dearth of post Singularity species. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 1 14:58:02 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 07:58:02 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: References: <20070427102544.GA9439@leitl.org> <20070428090423.GO9439@leitl.org> <084d01c78a46$fe3ccdd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <4637557A.9090601@mac.com> Heartland wrote: > Heartland: > >>> The reality is that it takes many steps to change someone's mind. >>> At each step you need to convince him/her of some point that is >>> necessary to build your argument. It's a slow process that could >>> take years or even decades depending on how emotionally >>> attached a person is to his/her irrational beliefs... >>> > > Lee: > >> Tch, tch, tch. You don't get it. The other beliefs are *not* irrational. >> I wish that you and John Clark could see this. It's possible that they're >> not even incorrect. It's possible that it's a "conflict of visions" sort of >> phenomenon. >> Please define "rational". Without a working agreed definition statements about the rationality/irrationality of X are without meaning. By my working definition, rationality is adherence to reality, seeking to understand and perfect one's understanding of reality. Beliefs that start with rigorous adherence to a particular dogma without any appreciable evidence and even in contradiction to what is know of reality can in no wise be "rational" by such a definition. Beliefs that are self-contradictory cannot be based in reality. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 1 15:10:10 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 08:10:10 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Mr. Bush's Magical Effectiveness In-Reply-To: <085601c78a48$653e5250$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427183950.042a2270@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070428134420.03fc0dd0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <082b01c78a02$58f8da60$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8131F430-7FB9-4CDD-A277-9006B6624AE3@randallsquared.com> <085601c78a48$653e5250$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <46375852.6030309@mac.com> Lee Corbin wrote: > Randall writes > > >> On Apr 28, 2007, at 10:01 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: >> >> >>> Goering understood Germany of the first half of >>> the 20th century, but he did not truly understand >>> the nature of freer countries where dissent had >>> a long tradition. Do you think that Bush today >>> could simply fabricate a "Gulf of Tonkin incident" >>> the way LBJ did and get a declaration of war >>> out of Congress against Iran? Of course not. >>> >> Of course, he could. >> > > And now with a Democratic Congress???? What > are you smoking. He can't even keep the leader > of the House of Representatives from executing > her own foreign policy. Somehow I just think that > if Bush said that a terrrrrrible event happened in > the Persian Gulf and we needed to go to war with > Iran right now, he'd be asked for a lot of evidence. > Actually, the understatement of my last sentence > is staggering. > > >> It would be a lot harder now than the mere >> suggestion of WMDs was, but he could certainly >> do it and have a good chance of working, for a while. >> > > No way. Besides, as I said earlier, for a lot of us > the WMD wasn't really the issue. On the Extropians > list at the time I listed *five* reasons that I thought > invading Iraq was a good idea. The WMD was > probably about reason #4. (The idea being that > while there was no immanent threat, just as Bush > said, it seemed clear that Hussein's heart was set > on getting some nukes sooner or later, and he seemed > just crazy enough to use them on us, or have some > unaccountable stooges do it for him. > That thinking was obviously fallacious as I pointed out at the time. I was right. Did you learn anything from it? It doesn't seem like it. We had been monitoring and bombing the infrastructure of Iraq for a decade. There was no room to put together the technology to become a full nuclear power. At the most Hussein could have bought a few loose nukes like any other well-funded hothead in the world. Was he stupid enough to use them against us? I doubt it very much. Does that possibility justify invasion and the death of hundreds of thousands and loss of hundreds of billions of dollars? No way. And here we are willing to make excuses for the creatures we allow to run our country to do something equally stupid and reprehensible in Iran. Seeing such I seriously doubt this species is long for this universe. > But that's not the main point. You don't think--- > especially since there has been no serious terrorist > attack against the U.S. in the last five years that > a (now Democratic controlled!) Congress would > give him carte blanche all over again?? > > I think there are those in power quite capable of concocting any type of incident they deem necessary to further their agenda. I also think that the only real reason we went to Iraq and are hot on Iran is oil and the Peak thereof. As we are studiously not doing adequate work to find actually workable alternate energy that underlying motivation is not going away. - samantha From natasha at natasha.cc Tue May 1 15:50:47 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 10:50:47 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: References: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20070501104728.0401fbb8@pop-server.austin.rr.com> At 12:00 AM 5/1/2007, you wrote: >Brett Paasch wrote: >>I would oppose your reanimation. > >This is my first day on this list. I only want to say I was shocked and >disappointed to see someone say such a thing as Brett did. Hopefully this >is not common on this list. Welcome Andres. No it is not common on this list; not at all. Emotions can rise and fall and we have had some heated political discussions over the many, many years. But never with such extreme ill will. Natasha Natasha Vita-More PhD Candidate, Planetary Collegium Proactionary Principle Core Group, Extropy Institute Member, Association of Professional Futurists Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture Advisory Committee, Zero Gravity Arts Consortium 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: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 15:48:45 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 08:48:45 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds References: <20070427102544.GA9439@leitl.org><20070428090423.GO9439@leitl.org><084d01c78a46$fe3ccdd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4637557A.9090601@mac.com> Message-ID: <0a8901c78c08$9ccb88c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Samantha writes > [Lee wrote] > >> Tch, tch, tch. You don't get it. The other beliefs are *not* irrational. >> I wish that you and John Clark could see this. It's possible that they're >> not even incorrect. It's possible that it's a "conflict of visions" sort of >> phenomenon. > > Please define "rational". No, *you* define "rational"! [Er, she does later on...] I gave up on that months ago as I questioned over and over again the way that people were throwing the word and the concept around. I will define (loosely) what "irrational" means, "loosely" because strict definitions are not possible outside math. As Cassius J. Kaiser once wrote "If he says that he has defined all his terms, and proved all his propositions, then either he is a performer of logical miracles, or he is an ass, and, as you know, logical miracles are impossible". :-) "Irrational" means to me that someone is being inconsistent, or that their behavior shows signs of instability, or that their arguments over and over again do not seem to hold together coherently. By saying above, as I did, that someone's arguments were not necessarily *irrational*, all I was doing was chiding those who were not seeing the actual integrity (wholeness) of their adversary's argument. > Without a working agreed definition statements about the > rationality/irrationality of X are without meaning. Oh! Here you go on to brave a definition of rationality. This should be good. > By my working definition, rationality is adherence to reality, > seeking to understand and perfect one's understanding of reality. "Adherence to reality" is rather too vague, as I am sure you realized as you wrote that, and even people who are irrational (on my usage and yours, probably) are *seeking* to understand---it's just that they're obviously not doing a very good job of it. > Beliefs that start with rigorous adherence to a particular dogma without > any appreciable evidence and even in contradiction to what is know of > reality can in no wise be "rational" by such a definition. Beliefs that > are self-contradictory cannot be based in reality. Right. So long as you have added together "without any appreciable evidence" AND "even in contradition to what is known" . One of the principles of PCR is that one may forward any conjecture for whatever reason: what matters is how successful it is in resisting criticism, not where you got it. It doesn't matter if your God happened to pass it on in a dream or whatever. Lee From ben at goertzel.org Tue May 1 15:51:14 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 11:51:14 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] Army binoculars and psi Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705010851w190f675eyea1f6ec1d0dbed33@mail.gmail.com> Damien -- Hey, maybe these new army binoculars will inadvertently exploit unconscious precognition ;-) http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/05/binoculars -- Ben -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 1 15:50:22 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 08:50:22 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Putting God to Rest In-Reply-To: <20070424232500.88193.qmail@web37211.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20070424232500.88193.qmail@web37211.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <463761BE.6090808@mac.com> Sorry for the late response. Anna Taylor wrote: > --- Samantha Atkins wrote: > > >> Actually everyone has a right to believe whatever >> they wish but they have no right whatsoever to >> respect or kind treatment for believing pernicious >> nonsense. The nonsense itself has no "rights" at >> all. There is no "debate" implied or required here. >> > > There is no debate for you. Are you implying that any > and all people that believe in God should have no > right to respect? > > I have no need to debate a subject I have studied long and hard and reached completion on. I certainly have no need to "debate" with those who believe nonsense such as bible inerrancy that it is clearly erroneous or bizarre notions at blatant contradiction with reality like the world only being a few thousand years old. Those people deserve not one iota of respect. Just because a set of ideas is shrouded in "religion" does not mean they should be automatically respected more. They stand or fall on their own merits. I never said that belief in God per se deserves disrespect. It depends. >> What, by debating how many angels can dance on a >> nanobot? How does that help anyone? >> > > I choose to respect her beliefs and in that I try to > incorporate ideas to integrate within her reality. > Are you saying the best approach is to simply tell her > she's a complete idiot for believing in Religion? How > does that help anyone? > > Depends on the "Religion". If they particular beliefs are nonsense and even harmful nonsense then not saying so can be tacit support. This does not mean that it makes sense to say so in all circumstances. >> What business do you have speaking about God and what >> God might object to? >> > > I have taken the time to learn theology so I feel I > have every business discusing God with my mother. > > Not the same thing. Context was lost. If you act contrary to your own understanding that is not a good thing. If you do not believe in God and yet speak about what God wants then that is a clear contradiction. >> You know you are talking nonsense yet you >> condescendingly talk religious baby talk to them to >> try to get your point across to those who believe. >> This is dishonest and perhaps cowardly. Are you >> ashamed to be an atheist? >> > > There are many things I respect about Religion > therefore I don't believe it's nonsense. If taking > the time to understand someone else's point of view > is dishonest and cowardly, then yes I am. I don't > understand how a post about common courtesy for other > people's beliefs has anything to do with me being > ashamed to be an atheist. > > If you do not believe what you are couching you arguments in then that is dishonest. If you hide your own beliefs and best understanding then perhaps you are acting out of fear and not "respect" at all. I am not talking here about "common courtesy" and I think you know it. >> You don't? Then why aren't you a believer? >> > > Who cares whether I am a believer or not? I thought > this list was about Transhumanism, future technology, > prolonging life etc., if it is, whether the majority > is Atheist has no relevancy to the fact that the > minority have every right to be respected. If the > Extropy list is set on defining that "to be Extropian > one must be atheist" then fine but until that is > clearly stated everybody on this list deserves the > right to be respected. When you denounce Religion, > you are not respecting their beliefs. > > You said at one time that you are not a believer. Then you speak as if you are or see nothing problematic about being one. So I am a bit confused where you stand on the matter or in my attempts to understand your position. No one has the right to automatic respect. Respect is earned or it is a sham meaning nothing. I don't know why you want to go down this path of "if X then Y" about hypotheticals not remotely in evidence. I speak for myself not for the list. Much of religion is reprehensible. That is my experience and very considered opinion. It came from many years of my life diligently exploring the subject both theoretically and as a serious practitioner. How dare you tell me that my considered opinion is disrespectful of those who believe! What a cheap shot. >> You may do something worse than not try. You seem >> to sort of pretend to take her side. >> > > What if I grew up in Religion and decided it wasn't > for me? Does that mean I am pretending to take her > side? What if I understand her point of view, just > simply don't agree?. I may not change her mind about > God but bringing up ideas such as Cryonics from her > point of view is a creative way at getting my point > accross, that to me seems more logical than calling > her beliefs "bullshit". > > If you decided it is not for you then why act as if it is is all I am saying. I understand her point of view myself. >> If God exists and is as the majority of Christians >> believe then I would most certainly be on the "other >> side". Such a Being would be monstrously evil. >> > > I would like for you to explain to me what are the > common beliefs about God that the majority of > Christians have. "Such a Being would be Monstrously > evil" is the reason why I brought up the point to > begin with. > > Presumably you grew up in it so you are perfectly aware of such. Start with the doctrine of eternal damnation for one measly lifetime where the proper dogma was somehow not properly believed and go on from there. To create imperfect beings and then punish them eternally for not being perfect is about as definitive of Evil as it gets. >> Do you see what is wrong with telling many of us >> here that we must "respect their beliefs" in a >> similar fashion to what you choose to do or we aren't >> reasonable people? Thank you for your opinion but >> it is certainly not binding on me. >> > > I am not saying that you have to respect their > beliefs, I am saying you should respect the people on > this list that may be religious. > By what, being silently about my own conclusions on the matter? No way. > >> Then I do not believe you are through learning about >> religion. If you knew it better you would have a >> problem with it. >> > > Why should I have a problem with it? Explain to me > why religion as a whole is that bad. I am aware why I > don't believe but I would like to hear your rational > point of views. > That is a long subject. Perhaps later. > >> What for? What is it about a group of people who >> are more shut of religion saying what they think of >> it that bothers you so much? >> > > I loathe disrespect. This list is not about Religion > therefore out of respect for those that are religious, > comments and statements that ridicule their beliefs > should not be made. What is wrong with that? > > I think you may have an odd notion of what respect entails or how and when it should be shown. If I have found through my own study that X is ridiculous I would no be doing anyone any favors by refusing to say so. It certainly would not be any sign of "respect". The world of the Enlightenment in under attack in the US by many religious organizations. Such automatic "respect" could lead to the destruction of much we hold dear. >> You grant religious folks room to believe and >> practice all manner of zany and even dangerous things >> and respect them doing so and don't go out your way >> to challenge them. Yet a few things set by atheists >> here and you feel utter frustration and get upset? >> Why? I think you may need to examine what is going on >> in you more deeply. >> > > I think it's the other way around. Your blatant hate > does nothing to change the minds of those that are > religious so why state the opinion in the first place? > Have you ever thought that I consider many on this > list as being rational and logical and in that > respect, I choose to defend the ones that are being > subjected to ridicule and contempt? I'm sorry you > don't understand that. > > I have no "blatant hate" and it is very hateful of you to say I do. Your responses seem contradictory to me. > Obviously my point wasn't well received, I apologize > for that. It wasn't my intention to start a battle > between the religious and the atheists, I was just > trying to give the same respect to those that are > Atheists as to those that aren't. You can guarantee I > will never bring up Religion again, what a fuss! > > No you were not. You were telling atheists in effect to shut up. - samantha From natasha at natasha.cc Tue May 1 16:07:35 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 11:07:35 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: <880958.25542.qm@web37210.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> <880958.25542.qm@web37210.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20070501105209.0495af48@pop-server.austin.rr.com> At 08:41 PM 4/30/2007, you wrote: >Hi Natasha, > >I hope you enjoyed your stay in Montreal and that >people where hospitable. Very. It was hard work and challenging, but I was able to accomplish a lot. >I am curious to know why Brett didn't politely, on >list, ask Eugen why he thought that the thread should >be killed? It appears that his emotions were running on explosive ingredients. Not everyone can be civil when emotions are out of wack. Killing a thread is not something that is done easily. Natasha >Thanks >Anna:) > > > >--- Natasha Vita-More wrote: > > > It was called to my attention that there have been > > some problems on the > > list. Since I am not a moderator I have not > > followed the thread on this > > and since I have been travelling for several weeks, > > I did not know there > > was a problem. But because we share this list as a > > venue to discuss and > > challenge ideas, I think that we all need to take a > > look at this: > > > > > > From: Eugen Leitl > > ><eugen > > at > > leitl.org> > > > > >> On Mon, Apr 23, 2007 at 01:53:25PM +1000, Brett > > Paatsch wrote: > > > >John Grigg wrote: > > > > > > > > Attempting to impeach the current president is > > not a realistic plan > > > > > > > > Why would you think that? > > > > > > Folks, killthread. This is completely off-topic > > for the list. > > > > Brett responded: > > > > > > "Eugen, just so you and I are absolutely clear. If > > you kill this thread, or > > call for it to be killed again. If your are that > > censorious, I will > > remember it and hold it against you whilst you and I > > live. I would oppose > > your reanimation. I will regard you as in the > > aggregate an entropic vector. > > > > > > I am willing to be censored off the list, it is a > > private list after all, > > but actions (like censorship) are facts that shape > > reactions. Being a > > person in a world of persons, I take things > > personally. Fair warning. > > > > > > If I am censored off the list I would take that as > > diagnostic of the > > > > degeneration of the list. It is one thing to take > > issue with a persons > > > > arguments and say so. It is another to stop other > > people from hearing > > > > those arguments and expressing their reactions which > > may include > > > > opposition to them. I regard censorship as a form of > > killing - as do > > > > you by the use of your word killthread. > > > > > > You are yourself a transient information thread that > > the universe > > > > has yet to rule on." > > > > Like Brett I do not like being censored. But there > > is a difference between > > being censored and being sensible. The extropy list > > does have rules and > > guidelines and list members are required to follow > > them in order to post on > > this list. Whether or not Brett's thread is on > > topic for this list is one > > issue at stake. Now, there are many variables > > involved that can add one > > way or another such as a post may be a topic the > > list members want to > > engage in but it is not a transhumanist topic per > > se. Or, it can be a > > topic that is curious for list members but the way > > in which it is presented > > to the list, or the language used or implications of > > the meaning of the > > posts can cause a moderator to request that the > > thread be put to > > rest. These variables are important to pay > > attention to. > > > > Further, and not totally unrelated, I was censored > > from the Cryonics list > > when I was being an activist to help a fellow > > cryonicist. Now this was > > truly strange and frankly made me think much less of > > cryonicists than I had > > prior. But I also understood that it touched a > > nerve with other list > > members and I did not take it personally, retaliate, > > or blame them. I > > belive that I was in the wrong for not paying > > attention to the feelings of > > other list members. I was too busy to read > > responses, and that was also my > > mistake. I was so driven to do something worthwhile > > that it backfired on me. > > > > I see what you (Brett) are doing as something > > different but sharing some > > similarities. You posted on a topic that you are > > passionate about. The > > difference with you and me is that you are blaming > > and making accusations > > and insulting list members. I would not do this > > because even if people do > > not agree with me, I do my best to accept the > > differences. You are also > > different than me in the way you handled this. > > Instead of approaching the > > topic from a constructive inclusive manner, you made > > assumptions and > > accusations. This never sits well with list > > members. > > > > And, finally, I do not like is the content of your > > (Brett) response to the > > list moderator (Eugene) requesting that the thread > > be killed. You made a > > threat and does not sit well with me and I'm sure > > others. But putting that > > aside, what do other list members think of this > > thread? > > > > Lastly, I do think this is a topic that warrants > > objective examination and > > search for resolution. I invite you to think about > > this. > > > > In hopes of resolution rather than slamming doors, > > > > Natasha > > > > > > Natasha > > Vita-More > > PhD Candidate, > > Planetary > > Collegium > > Proactionary Principle Core Group, > > Extropy > > Institute > > Member, Association of > > Professional Futurists > > Founder, > > Transhumanist Arts & > > Culture > > Advisory Committee, > > Zero Gravity Arts > > Consortium > > > > 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 > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > > Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to > Yahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat Natasha Vita-More PhD Candidate, Planetary Collegium Proactionary Principle Core Group, Extropy Institute Member, Association of Professional Futurists Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture Advisory Committee, Zero Gravity Arts Consortium 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: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 16:35:36 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 09:35:36 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Back to Causes of War References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com><5.1.0.14.0.20070427183950.042a2270@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070428134420.03fc0dd0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <0a9701c78c0e$f224d780$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Keith---in that amazing post that could launch a thousand threads---wrote > [Lee wrote] >> You seem to contend sometimes that it's war fever among a small ruling >> elite, at other times that an entire tribe or nation has "grim prospects", >> and at other times that it's current deprivation of an entire band, and so on. >> Can you summarize? > > No. > > We are just working from such different data bases that I think I should > not respond again until you have read the Azar Gat paper. Let me know > when you have. > > http://cniss.wustl.edu/workshoppapers/gatpres1.pdf Okay, I read it. And it didn't take 15 minutes: I had to ponder a lot of the paragraphs :-) For me, the most striking thing about the paper was his relentless illustration of the *normal* condition of human tribes, namely to be at constant war with one another. On to the trash heap went my views, for example, that the American Indians of the Northwest Coast were peaceable, and that the poor sweet !Kung of the Kalahari Desert (who, he says, are popularly known as the "harmless people") were not violent. "Richard Lee who contributedd to the creation of this impression, nevertheless reports (1979) that in his study area in the period 1963-1969, there were 22 cases of homicide; 19 of the victims were males, as were all of the 25 killers. This amounts to a rate of 0.29 person per thousand per year, and had been 0.42 before the coming of firm state authority." What's this? "Firm state authority"? Ah, he means colonialism! No wonder I never heard about any of this in high school or college---the damned leftists who run our educational systems have zero incentive to do anything but suppress information like that. Professor Gat is relentless: "Among the Eskimo of the central Canadian arctic, who lacked group warfare, violent death, in so-called 'blood feuds' and 'homicide' was estimated by one authority at one person per thousand per year, 10 times the 1990 USA rate." Except for this tack, there was little that was new in the paper for me. Anyone who has kept up at all with the EP literature---say, Matt Ridley's books (1995, etc.), Miller's "The Mating Mind", Cosmides and Toomey's numerous papers, and so on, will not be shocked by anything in the paper, though he or she will see a lot of his or her believes carefully documented. What Gat does is very thoroughly detail the behavior of human groups in the EEA and in modern primitive societies still struggling under non- colonial control by the civilized powers. The real question (not addressed at all by this paper whose focus is entirely as I just stated) is Why are modern nations so *peaceful*? And the original main purpose of this thread and its predecessors was to address the causes of all wars, not just primitive fighting. I *will* summarize what I have written here on the topic. First, civilized societies are not necessarily more peaceful, even the literate ones! E.g. the Maya or the proto-nations and nations of Western Europe 500 AD - 1500 AD Sometimes peace was establish in the old days---as in approximately 100 AD - 180 AD---when some fairly reasonable empire could maintain it (by force). Second, a sea-change seems to have overcome the West around 1700 or 1800: gone were the constant wars of preceding generations. Especially per capita, wars became fewer and fewer over time. Go graph the number of wars and the amount of blood shed between England and France: it monotonically decreases from 1000 AD to 1815, and then stops altogether. (Of course there were fluctuations, but my point is that the wars really did become fewer over the centuries and of less severity.) What caused this sea-change? My answer is that it simply became more profitable to maintain peace than to try to plunder adjacent nations. For one thing, there was less comparative plunder than ever before (compared to the wealth of generating your own), and another thing, the dang wars just got too expensive and the ability of the other nation to inflict reciprocal damage kept growing. So an era of game-theoretic cooperation has emerged. Three, the causes of modern era war are too numerous to allow generalization. Keith sometimes said that population pressure causes war, and it is true that high population growth in modern nations *facilitates* war, but it doesn't cause it. For example, the high birth rates in Germany, England, and France before WWI made for aggressive nations in two ways: first, young people are usually quite willing and able to go to war (until 1950 or so in the West); they have the vitality and the group instinct I submit, and second, they provide enough cannon fodder to make the wars a go. Keith sometimes said that it was 'grim prospects' that caused war. Certainly that is a factor, maybe a major factor, in the EEA as Professor Gat documents. And *sometimes* it is a contributing factor in modern wars, if taken not too literally. Again WWI affords a great example: the English were scared to death that the Germans would overtake them economically (1914 in fact was the very first year in which this occurred---see "The Illusion of Victory", a rather new book by Thomas Fleming). And the Germans were scared to death that Russia and the Slavs in general were going to surpass them in a variety of ways. Paul Johnson in "Modern Times" states this as a attitudinal fact among the German intelligencia apparently stemming from various wacked-out German philosophers. But throughout pre-modern times in the last millenium, a typical cause of war was one prince's avarice towards the domains of his neighbors. Most of the English-French wars were of this kind, for example, as were the endless wars between the various Italian city states. Another typical cause was vast population movement---the Avars or the Huns or someone would be on the move (chased by another tribe even more formidable) and the poor Romans or anyone else within range had to bear the consequences. Yet none of these explanations account for all modern wars---exceptions can be found for any and all of them. E.g. the Great Patriotic war, which included the largest and most deadly battles ever fought, was caused entirely by one man's irrational urges and his warped philosophy. Lee From jef at jefallbright.net Tue May 1 15:49:33 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 08:49:33 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: <4637557A.9090601@mac.com> References: <20070427102544.GA9439@leitl.org> <20070428090423.GO9439@leitl.org> <084d01c78a46$fe3ccdd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4637557A.9090601@mac.com> Message-ID: On 5/1/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Please define "rational". Without a working agreed definition > statements about the rationality/irrationality of X are without > meaning. By my working definition, rationality is adherence to reality, > seeking to understand and perfect one's understanding of reality. > Beliefs that start with rigorous adherence to a particular dogma without > any appreciable evidence and even in contradiction to what is know of > reality can in no wise be "rational" by such a definition. Beliefs that > are self-contradictory cannot be based in reality. Interesting that I see this in nearly opposite terms. Rather than "beliefs that are self contradictory cannot be based in reality", I see all beliefs being based in reality and contradictions tending to resolve with increasing context of awareness. Rather than rationality being "adherence to reality", I see rationality as necessarily subjective decision-making based on what remains after discarding what seems to be unreality. Of course we're both describing the same process, but your view assumes both consistency and objectivity. Mine assumes only consistency. While this might appear to be polemical hair-splitting, it is very pertinent to understanding how independent subjective agents progress toward increasing agreement about the nature of their common reality. - Jef From max at maxmore.com Tue May 1 17:11:11 2007 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 12:11:11 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: spiked-survey: What's the Greatest Innovation? Message-ID: <200705011711.l41HB0gC006942@ms-smtp-01.texas.rr.com> >Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 04:45:00 -0700 >From: sp!ked >Subject: spiked-survey: What's the Greatest Innovation? >To: max at maxmore.com >Original-recipient: rfc822;maxmore at austin.rr.com > > > >The internet, the alphabet, the discovery of nuclear fusion, x-rays, >the brick, rockets, the eraser: all of these have been identified as >the greatest innovations in history in a new survey. > >Over 100 key thinkers and experts from the fields of science, >technology and medicine - including six Nobel laureates - >participated in the brand new spiked/Pfizer survey >'What's the >Greatest Innovation?', which goes live on spiked today. > >In his introduction to the survey, spiked's editor-at-large Mick >Hume says: 'Some choose "sexy" looking innovations, others apologise >for the apparent dullness of their arcane choices. But whatever the >appearances, almost all of our respondents exude a sense of >certainty about the improvement that innovations in their field are >making to our world, and the potential for more of the same.' Read >his survey overview here. > >The survey has also featured in the British press >here. > >The survey will roll through May and June. If you want to join the >debate, come along to our event in London on Wednesday 6 June. Book >tickets here. From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 1 18:26:04 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 13:26:04 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] What's the Greatest Innovation? In-Reply-To: <200705011711.l41HB0gC006942@ms-smtp-01.texas.rr.com> References: <200705011711.l41HB0gC006942@ms-smtp-01.texas.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070501132526.0228aba8@satx.rr.com> I like Frank Wilczek's reply: The greatest innovation in physics, and I think in all of science, was the discovery that important behaviour of natural objects can be described with mathematical precision. This was the centrepiece of the 17th century scientific revolution, after which we've never looked back. It sharply divides the sort of rough-and-ready intuitive semi-understanding that comes to us naturally, and even satisfied such powerful and such sophisticated minds as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, from today's science. All the subsequent 'revolutions', including electromagnetic field theory, relativity, and quantum mechanics, were inevitable after that discovery; as were the technologies of the Industrial and Information revolutions. You can't find what you're not looking for; but if you know what to look for, and it's there, eventually you'll find it! From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 1 19:20:58 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 14:20:58 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future?. In-Reply-To: <03cc01c78bc8$0dd60b80$290b4e0c@MyComputer> References: <640411.85381.qm@web37402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <013c01c788f3$06c458b0$f60a4e0c@MyComputer> <38A94159-536C-45C8-81E5-DDA4DFE9FC25@randallsquared.com> <076f01c78914$571c6b60$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <07a201c78995$38a5c970$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <1A7A74FD-3240-435A-B117-6F3B0B522232@randallsquared.com> <083c01c78a08$a753b1c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <086701c78a4b$33d7cef0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070429135619.0236cb40@satx.rr.com> <00ba01c78b6b$b62ccf60$dc0a4e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070430170213.023ad358@satx.rr.com> <03cc01c78bc8$0dd60b80$290b4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070501141902.022b9d60@satx.rr.com> At 04:02 AM 5/1/2007 -0400, John K Clark wrote: >Me: > >> Why does randomness and stupidity beat > >> intelligence? > >You: > > In the general sense, because they had 4 billion years > >It took 4 billion years because random mutation and natural selection is >incredibly STUPID! Intelligence is not stupid, that's why it's called >intelligence. I didn't know that! Drat, now I'm going to have to reorganize my whole worldview. From Thomas at thomasoliver.net Tue May 1 19:19:28 2007 From: Thomas at thomasoliver.net (Thomas) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 12:19:28 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] War and technological progress References: Message-ID: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> BillK wrote: >On 5/1/07, Thomas wrote: > > > >>Not completely off-topic since many of Bush's efforts have worked >>against the extropian, especially funding war at the expense of medical >>and technological progress >> > >Not true! >I have supported the proposition before that war funding vastly >increases technological and medical developments. Look at all the >stuff DARPA is funding. >WWII certainly generated a great leap forward in technology and medicine. >(The downside, of course, is that war tends to kill a lot of people). > >Agreed that Bush has opposed funding some stem cell research, but that >was on religious grounds, nothing to do with the war funding. > > >BillK > That's a good point, but I didn't say all the war funding diminished medical and technological progress. Still, these increased developments cannot be vast enough to justify the deaths and the enormous disproportion of the allocations. I doubt this war will prove as proportionally fruitful for progress as WWII. We had much better leadership then. I say, if we have to have a leader, lets think about how to get a better one. I just looked at the Cost of War figure: $421 billion and rising! Over $6 billion of that came from my state and over 5 million homes with renewable electricity could have been built with that money.1 Instead of a preemptive war on a non aggressor nation or a hype "War on Terror" or a "War on Drugs" lets have a War on Aging and fund nano research to the tune of $40 billion (one tenth the cost of the war) or so for starters. Does your general "Not true!" mean you think Bush a good leader for us? Does it mean you think war the best choice for achieving progress? Does it mean you think me seriously wrong or deceitful? Or do you perhaps think Bush impeachable for mixing politics and religion on the stem cell issue? -- Thomas 1. http://database.nationalpriorities.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/nppdatabase.woa/1/wo/bHOa5it2urn2Tsu6pQGUow/0.0.1.1.6.1 From hilarleo at gmail.com Tue May 1 18:32:04 2007 From: hilarleo at gmail.com (leo) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 11:32:04 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 43, Issue 53 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: hello hello [new here] there's at least one widely read and mathematically memorable short story about a few such implicit issues of such transhuman societies: "WANG'S CARPETS" by Greg Egan in Dozois' "Best Science Fiction, Thirteenth Annual..." (& according to one reader poll "... #13 (1995) is perhaps the best of all of Gardner's Annuals..." ). _Wang_ refers to the mathematician Wang Hao ? the carpets are living embodiments of Wang tiles, and provide a further model of transhuman societies. & although I dont know it meself, "this story, minorly reworked, became a section of the novel Diaspora". leo 'somewhere' in Second Life At 11:30 PM 4/30/2007 -0400, Keith wrote: >I have been working on an unpublishable novel where the big problem of a >hundred years hence is to prevent all the physical state human population >from vanishing into simulations. > >I started it before Second Life. I never dreamed I would see such an >example before I finished it. I wrote one 30 years ago, published finally in 1982, in which almost all remnant humans have withdrawn into simulations (under the lofty custodianship of human-AI cyborgs). I never dreamed it would take so long. :) Damien Broderick From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 1 19:54:54 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 21:54:54 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] War and technological progress In-Reply-To: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> References: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> Message-ID: <20070501195454.GL17691@leitl.org> On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 12:19:28PM -0700, Thomas wrote: > I just looked at the Cost of War > > figure: $421 billion and rising! Over $6 billion of that came from my > state and over 5 million homes with renewable electricity could have > been built with that money.1 Instead of a preemptive war on a non > aggressor nation or a hype "War on Terror" or a "War on Drugs" lets have > a War on Aging and fund nano research to the tune of $40 billion (one > tenth the cost of the war) or so for starters. > > Does your general "Not true!" mean you think Bush a good leader for us? > Does it mean you think war the best choice for achieving progress? > Does it mean you think me seriously wrong or deceitful? Or do you > perhaps think Bush impeachable for mixing politics and religion on the > stem cell issue? -- Thomas My opinion as a moderator that tagespolitik should have no channel time, on this list. There are ample opportunities to discuss that elsewhere. http://www.google.com/search?q=impeachment http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=impeach+bush&btnG=Search etc. (My private opinion: don't waste time about talking impeachment online, just get off the internets, and do it, for a change). We now return to our usual programming. -- 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 rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 1 20:17:23 2007 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 16:17:23 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] i am a strange loop In-Reply-To: <5366105b0704301958w14890af7vac8370eff3cafaab@mail.gmail.com> References: <200704291538.l3TFclbc019536@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <5366105b0704301958w14890af7vac8370eff3cafaab@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7641ddc60705011317i25e60e53wf5fe24ef591fe0d5@mail.gmail.com> Spike wrote: > > > > I noticed Hofstadter has a new book called I Am a Strange Loop. Anyone read > > it? ### I did. A bit of a disappointment. A nice explanation of Godel's incompleteness theorem but otherwise hardly anything new for me. Marred by Hofstadster's persistent claim that the self is an "illusion" - but an "indispensable illusion", "necessary for survival", and an illusion with great predictive power. This is a quite bizarre terminology - after all, an illusion is usually a false sensory perception, which is not conducive to survival, and does not increase predictive power. The way I see it, for the most part that perception which is indispensable for survival and does so through allowing predictions, is the truth, or something reasonably close to it. But I agree with the main thrust of the book, that level-crossing self-reference is the essential part of the self. Additional annoyances include paeans to compassion, occasional bits of leftist politics, very poor treatment of the "inverted spectrum" problem in the analysis of qualia, too much personal reminiscing, and general goody-two-shoes-ness. If you ever followed a recrudescence of the identity thread on this list from start to end, you may have little to learn from the book. Otherwise, it's a passable introductory text to the meaning of (conscious) life. Rafal From velvethum at hotmail.com Tue May 1 20:34:02 2007 From: velvethum at hotmail.com (Heartland) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 16:34:02 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><015601c7010a$6a7d5d50$450a4e0c@MyComputer><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <09c201c78b8b$342b33b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Lee: >>> Well, not John Clark, IIRC, would go to the extreme that >>> I, Robin Hanson, and many others would, namely, an >>> instance of us would choose vaporization so that a recent >>> duplicate frozen in the next room would get $10M, and >>> we would be making that choice for *entirely* selfish >>> reasons. Heartland: >> Frankly, that scares me, Lee. Please do not get offended by the analogy I'm >> about >> to make but I can't help but think that if we replace "$10M" with "opportunity >> to >> board alien spaceship hiding behind Hale-Bopp comet" the choice you would make, >> it >> seems to me, would be equally unwise as the choice made by 39 members of >> Heaven's >> Gate a decade ago. Lee: > A major difference is that there *was* no such alien spaceship :-) > whereas there really are negotiable $10M checks! Ah yes, the checks will be there, alright. It's just that it's going to be awfully hard to cash them in the netherworld. :) Heartland: >> If you believe that preservation of memories = survival, and memories are >> nothing >> but strings, why shouldn't you be interested in how a string varies from moment >> to >> moment? How can you expect to know how to survive if you're not interested in >> conditions necessary for survival? Lee: > I *am* interested in how "my string" varies, even varies from moment to moment. > Assuming that "my string" is just a digital readout of my state, that is. So > long as > it remains 99.99999999999% the same from moment to moment, that's okay. > And even if it's only 99.99999% the same---in case I am disintegrated and a > copy you made of me yesterday is teleported to my present location---that's > still fine (provided that there is something in it for us Lee Corbins, e.g. a > nice fat > check---because I will not lose memories for nothing). What if the strings were 98% the same from moment to moment? Please explain why 99.99999999999% would be okay and 52% or 1% would not be okay. Where's the dividing line (give me a percentage) between "okay" and "not okay?" Also, quantify the time interval between moments. Should we compare two strings every nanosecond, microsecond, second, minute, hour or perhaps a week to make it more practical and less annoying? Please justify all your choices. Heartland: >> What I would like to learn from you, above all else, is why you think memories >> should matter so much? There are so many other things you could be focused on >> preserving into the future. Why memories, let alone your memories? Lee's answer: > Some simple thought experiments may suffice for an answer. Let's suppose that > tomorrow morning you woke up with *my* memories and I woke up with *yours*. > (An alien trickster who knows an incredible amount about how brains work has > been very busy with his nanotechnological devices.) What would happen? Ha, I think I've heard this tune before. :) I vow to be more thorough in my investigation this time. Lee: > Here is what would happen. A being (whose identity > I am not going to beg yet) awakes in Santa Clara California and says to himself > "What the hell am I doing here? I remember going to bed last night. I am > Slawomir, because I remember being him yesterday, but now it seems I have > a new body". This is *exactly* what he would say when questioned by the > authorities. In an exactly similar way, the story would be repeated where you > live: I would wake up in your body and be wont to say things like "what the > hell happened? Where am I? Whose body and whose house is this??". This is how it would go down, yes. Lee: > When we talked on the phone, we would agree that we had exchanged *bodies* > not memories. The creature in Santa Clara California would want the old Slawomir > body back (I assure you), and rightfully consider it *his* body! > > Clear enough? Not yet. Lee: > Don't you agree that it is our memories that determine who > we think we are (and, I go on to claim, who we in fact are). Yes. (surprised?) But if I prefer "memory content" instead of "memories" as a determinant of who we are because "memory content" or just "memory" implies also skills, beliefs, and patterns of perception, not just recollections of past events. At this point you still have not answered the question I was really asking so let me ask it again using different words: Why do you think preserving *who we are* matters? There are so many other things you could be focused on preserving into the future so why it is most important to preserve who we are, let alone who *you* are? H. From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 1 20:43:59 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 21:43:59 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] War and technological progress In-Reply-To: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> References: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> Message-ID: On 5/1/07, Thomas wrote: > That's a good point, but I didn't say all the war funding diminished > medical and technological progress. Still, these increased developments > cannot be vast enough to justify the deaths and the enormous > disproportion of the allocations. I doubt this war will prove as > proportionally fruitful for progress as WWII. We had much better > leadership then. > > > Does your general "Not true!" mean you think Bush a good leader for us? > Does it mean you think war the best choice for achieving progress? > Does it mean you think me seriously wrong or deceitful? Or do you > perhaps think Bush impeachable for mixing politics and religion on the > stem cell issue? -- Thomas > I don't do political discussion. So Bush is irrelevant to my comments. And my comments are not intended to justify any war. Just the facts. Many people are so overpowered by the horror of war that they refuse to recognise that many technical advances come out of the pressure cooker of wartime. WWII was remarkable in this respect. A bit of googling will bring out a list of stuff that the current war is producing. Some pretty unbelievable stuff is in there. Driverless cars, for dog's sake! See: Darpa projects include robot vehicles, computer language translation, unmanned air vehicles for observation and combat, swarms of bot devices, laser weapons, remote surgery, many battlefield medical improvements, etc. Agreed, wars concentrate on weapons technology. But radar was weapons tech, so was jet planes, so was O&M for controlling factory production. When the war stops, all the tech gets reused for civilians. It doesn't justify the war or the many deaths. But new tech arrives quicker when a nation is perceived as being in a fight for survival. BillK From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue May 1 22:11:05 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 18:11:05 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] Back to Causes of War Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070501180704.04180df0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 09:35 AM 5/1/2007 -0700, you wrote: >Keith---in that amazing post that could launch a thousand threads---wrote snip > > > > We are just working from such different data bases that I think I should > > not respond again until you have read the Azar Gat paper. Let me know > > when you have. > > > > http://cniss.wustl.edu/workshoppapers/gatpres1.pdf > >Okay, I read it. And it didn't take 15 minutes: I had to ponder a lot of the >paragraphs :-) > >For me, the most striking thing about the paper was his relentless >illustration >of the *normal* condition of human tribes, namely to be at constant war >with one another. snip Not entirely constant. Modulated by conditions, since war is, as he points out, only one conditional strategy. >What Gat does is very thoroughly detail the behavior of human groups >in the EEA and in modern primitive societies still struggling under non- >colonial control by the civilized powers. > >The real question (not addressed at all by this paper whose focus is >entirely as I just stated) is Why are modern nations so *peaceful*? It is the converse of Gat's discussion, bottom of page 7 and top of page 8. ****** "The main point of all this is that resource competition and conflict existed in most hunter-gatherer societies; but how significant they were, how they ranked in comparison to other possible reasons for conflict, and what resource specifically was mostly in conflict - depended on the particular conditions of the human and natural environment in question. Scarcities and stresses, and hence the causes and occurrence of conflict, varied. The concept of 'territoriality', which was brought to the fore in the 1960s by Ardrey (1966), Page 8 Lorenz (1966), and Tinbergen (1968), has been more subtly defined in this light. Like aggression, territoriality is not a blind instinct. It is subservient to the evolutionary calculus, especially in humans, whose habitats are so diverse. Among hunter-gatherers, territories vary dramatically in size - territorial behaviour itself can gain or lose in significance - in direct relation to the resources and resource competition. The same applies to population density, another popular explanation in the 1960s for violence. In other than the most extreme cases, _it [violence] is mainly in relation to resource scarcity and hence as a factor in resource competition_ that population density would function as a trigger for fighting. Otherwise, Tokyo and the Netherlands would have been among the most violent places on earth." ****** (In carefully rereading this, I need to acknowledge that Gat anticipated my formulation of "income per capita.") >And the original main purpose of this thread and its predecessors was >to address the causes of all wars, not just primitive fighting. > >I *will* summarize what I have written here on the topic. First, civilized >societies are not necessarily more peaceful, even the literate ones! E.g. the >Maya or the proto-nations and nations of Western Europe 500 AD - >1500 AD Sometimes peace was establish in the old days---as in >approximately 100 AD - 180 AD---when some fairly reasonable empire >could maintain it (by force). > >Second, a sea-change seems to have overcome the West around 1700 or >1800: gone were the constant wars of preceding generations. Especially >per capita, wars became fewer and fewer over time. Go graph the number >of wars and the amount of blood shed between England and France: it >monotonically decreases from 1000 AD to 1815, and then stops altogether. >(Of course there were fluctuations, but my point is that the wars really did >become fewer over the centuries and of less severity.) What caused this >sea-change? You need to consider what else happened over this time. There was a huge growth of income over this period of time, and some of the time even a growth in income per capita. >My answer is that it simply became more profitable to maintain peace than >to try to plunder adjacent nations. For one thing, there was less comparative >plunder than ever before (compared to the wealth of generating your own), >and another thing, the dang wars just got too expensive and the ability of >the other nation to inflict reciprocal damage kept growing. So an era >of game-theoretic cooperation has emerged. > >Three, the causes of modern era war are too numerous to allow generalization. >Keith sometimes said that population pressure causes war, That not exactly the case. "All wars arise from population pressure." (Heinlein 1959 p. 145) "Major Reid (Heinlein's character in Starship Troopers)was on the mark if you take "population pressure" to mean a falling ratio of resources to population (roughly income per capita in modern terms). There are sound evolutionary reasons why falling resources per capita (or the prospect of same) usually drives human populations into war. Wars and related social disruptions are here seen to be the outcome of a behavioral switch activated by particular environmental situations and mediated by xenophobic memes.[1]" >and it is true that >high population growth in modern nations *facilitates* war, but it doesn't >cause it. For example, the high birth rates in Germany, England, and France >before WWI made for aggressive nations in two ways: first, young people >are usually quite willing and able to go to war (until 1950 or so in the >West); >they have the vitality and the group instinct I submit, and second, they >provide enough cannon fodder to make the wars a go. > >Keith sometimes said that it was 'grim prospects' that caused war. Again not exactly that simple. Grim prospects are sensed. They are *part* of a causation chain. In the EEA (and even today) it was usually population growth that led to grim prospects. Sensing grim prospects turned up the average population gain on xenophobic memes. High levels of xenophobic memes caused war violence. >Certainly >that is a factor, maybe a major factor, in the EEA as Professor Gat documents. >And *sometimes* it is a contributing factor in modern wars, if taken not too >literally. Again WWI affords a great example: the English were scared to >death that the Germans would overtake them economically (1914 in fact >was the very first year in which this occurred---see "The Illusion of >Victory", >a rather new book by Thomas Fleming). And the Germans were scared to >death that Russia and the Slavs in general were going to surpass them in a >variety of ways. Paul Johnson in "Modern Times" states this as a attitudinal >fact among the German intelligencia apparently stemming from various >wacked-out German philosophers. I should add that fear of others *is* the result of xenophobic memes (such as the English fearing the Germans or the Germans fearing the Russians and Slavs). >But throughout pre-modern times in the last millenium, a typical cause of >war was one prince's avarice towards the domains of his neighbors. Most >of the English-French wars were of this kind, for example, as were the >endless wars between the various Italian city states. Another typical >cause was vast population movement---the Avars or the Huns or someone >would be on the move (chased by another tribe even more formidable) and >the poor Romans or anyone else within range had to bear the consequences. > >Yet none of these explanations account for all modern wars---exceptions >can be found for any and all of them. E.g. the Great Patriotic war, which >included the largest and most deadly battles ever fought, was caused >entirely by one man's irrational urges and his warped philosophy. I think you put too much causation on particular people and too little on the situation that allowed their madness to flourish. Consider forest fires as an analogy. You can classify fires by how they were started, lightening, careless campers, power lines sparking and aircraft crashes. You can also say a lot about the influence of the weather, with forest fires being more likely when the temperature is high, the humidity low and gusty winds. But the ultimate reason you get a forest fire is the slow accumulation of fuel. The ultimate reason you get a war is the slow accumulation of people (in excess of what the economy can support). Slow it down till the economic growth is as high or higher than the population growth and no wars. Since you read Gat's excellent paper, I should get you to read "Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War." It should not take longer than Gat's paper to read. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/17/194059/296 There is a close print version in _Mankind Quarterly_ last summer. Incidentally, where you mention "young people are usually quite willing and able to go to war," this is the "excess males" causation theory of war. I forget what the proposed threshold was, but China (due to selective abortion) is way above the point these researchers said would cause a war. The EP model say China will not be inclined to start a war as long as its population is experiencing a growth in income per capita. Of course, China could get into a war if it were attacked. Before you say that's impossible, consider Pearl Harbor. Keith Henson From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 1 23:19:37 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 09:19:37 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Yesterday's Seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20070501102134.03ae5df0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> References: <470a3c520704300032k7921415bm841865662a983990@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501004355.022a1a88@satx.rr.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070501102134.03ae5df0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: On 02/05/07, Keith Henson wrote: "Another problem is how to improve ourselves without getting completely > lost. > Today the mental modules at the root of our personalities change slowly if > at > all. When our deepest desires can be quickly modified with trivial > effort, how > much of us will survive? The results of modifying ourselves could be as > tragic > as being modified by others.* This and nanotechnology based "super dope" > that > make everyone happy but without ambition (or even the desire to eat) are > among > the subtle dangers we face. It is time for those of us who are concerned > about > our futures to start thinking about these problems." > The crude technology will allow us to become happy without ambition - we have that in currently available drugs. The more refined technology will allow to become happy *with* ambition. If you could modify yourself so that you experience pleasure sitting around doing nothing or the same amount of pleasure doing something that, all else being equal, you consider more worthwhile than sitting around doing nothing, which would you you choose? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 1 23:25:58 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 16:25:58 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] i am a strange loop References: <200704291538.l3TFclbc019536@andromeda.ziaspace.com><5366105b0704301958w14890af7vac8370eff3cafaab@mail.gmail.com> <7641ddc60705011317i25e60e53wf5fe24ef591fe0d5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0ab401c78c48$1cf264d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Rafal: Thanks for the terrific review! Lee ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rafal Smigrodzki" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 1:17 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] i am a strange loop > Spike wrote: >> > >> > I noticed Hofstadter has a new book called I Am a Strange Loop. Anyone read >> > it? > > ### I did. A bit of a disappointment. A nice explanation of Godel's > incompleteness theorem but otherwise hardly anything new for me. > Marred by Hofstadster's persistent claim that the self is an > "illusion" - but an "indispensable illusion", "necessary for > survival", and an illusion with great predictive power. This is a > quite bizarre terminology - after all, an illusion is usually a false > sensory perception, which is not conducive to survival, and does not > increase predictive power. The way I see it, for the most part that > perception which is indispensable for survival and does so through > allowing predictions, is the truth, or something reasonably close to > it. But I agree with the main thrust of the book, that level-crossing > self-reference is the essential part of the self. > > Additional annoyances include paeans to compassion, occasional bits of > leftist politics, very poor treatment of the "inverted spectrum" > problem in the analysis of qualia, too much personal reminiscing, and > general goody-two-shoes-ness. > > If you ever followed a recrudescence of the identity thread on this > list from start to end, you may have little to learn from the book. > Otherwise, it's a passable introductory text to the meaning of > (conscious) life. > > Rafal > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From neptune at superlink.net Tue May 1 23:56:45 2007 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 19:56:45 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] War and technological progress Message-ID: <004001c78c4c$60ab7140$09893cd1@pavilion> On Tuesday, May 01, 2007 3:08 AM BillK pharos at gmail.com wrote: > On 5/1/07, Thomas wrote: > >> Not completely off-topic since many of Bush's efforts have worked >> against the extropian, especially funding war at the expense of >> medical >> and technological progress. > > Not true! > I have supported the proposition before that war funding vastly > increases technological and medical developments. Look at all the > stuff DARPA is funding. > WWII certainly generated a great leap forward in technology and > medicine. > (The downside, of course, is that war tends to kill a lot of people). > > Agreed that Bush has opposed funding some stem cell research, but that > was on religious grounds, nothing to do with the war funding. To fund the war, one must use one of three possible means: taxation, inflation, or borrowing (i.e., deficit spending). All of these mean less wealth for other purposes. Now it's true that some war spending will go to research and development and some of that might lead to progress in various fields. (Even so, I suspect most such R&D spending will be on new ways for the government to hurt or kill people, and that is probably the least extropian use I can think of.) However, it's merely falling for the broken window fallacy to believe that this has an overall benefit. In other words, the benefit must be weighed against the cost -- and the cost is not just people being killed or injured (though, that alone, is the most serious cost of war). Were this not so, then you should advocate a society constantly at war. Such as society would have, by this view, the most technological and economic progress over any alternatives. Regards, Dan From hkhenson at rogers.com Wed May 2 00:45:04 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 20:45:04 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] Back to Causes of War In-Reply-To: <07ab01c7899a$20e16600$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427191216.046d48e8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070501200547.02c281f0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 06:34 AM 4/28/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: >Keith writes in a reply to BillK snip > > No. And there should be evidence. You should see a drop in wars after a > > major plagues because the drop in population should make for a brighter > > (less economically stressed) future for those who are left. > >I will try to check it out. Well documented causes exist for the >wars between England and France that broke out in the 1300s. >The plague came later (1346) but I don't think slowed the war >any except for a bit of financial exhaustion among the rulers. >The 15th century was still very war-prone in Europe. One of the things you need to keep in mind is how fast the population rebounded. The Black Death killed about 25% of the European population at the time. As a guess the dip recovered in a generation or so since humans have the ability to double (or more) per generation. Hungary recovered in less than 50 years from 25% of their population being killed in wars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Muhi Keith From nvitamore at austin.rr.com Wed May 2 00:36:11 2007 From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 20:36:11 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism Message-ID: <380-2200753203611342@M2W015.mail2web.com> While I was away at a conference there was some discussion about posthumans and posthumanism. In my research in preparing my paper on BioArt, many of the theoreticians and curators I spoke with referred to the posthuman and discounted the transhuman (including isms). I have known for some time that there is an academic dismissing of transhumanism and an embracing of posthumanism, in large part due to Kathryn Hayles book which does not cover transhumanism. This book also does not mention Max's published article "On Becoming Posthuman" and also importantly Robert Peppernell who wrote "The Posthuman Condition." I know that UK professors are annoyed at Hayles' borrowing ideas from Pepperell and not recognizing him. Many of the reasons for this and I'd like to discuss it with you all in this thread. First I'd like to hear your thoughts if you have any. Thanks, Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- myhosting.com - Premium Microsoft? Windows? and Linux web and application hosting - http://link.myhosting.com/myhosting From msd001 at gmail.com Wed May 2 00:59:26 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 20:59:26 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future?. In-Reply-To: <00ba01c78b6b$b62ccf60$dc0a4e0c@MyComputer> References: <640411.85381.qm@web37402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <076f01c78914$571c6b60$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <07a201c78995$38a5c970$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <1A7A74FD-3240-435A-B117-6F3B0B522232@randallsquared.com> <083c01c78a08$a753b1c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <086701c78a4b$33d7cef0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070429135619.0236cb40@satx.rr.com> <00ba01c78b6b$b62ccf60$dc0a4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <62c14240705011759y2d5a77c2l579e1ad8284268c3@mail.gmail.com> On 4/30/07, John K Clark wrote: > managed to bring you into existence? Why does randomness and stupidity beat > intelligence? If you ever get a good answer to that question, please be sure to post it to this list - I'm sure many of us would be interested... From brent.allsop at comcast.net Wed May 2 00:53:09 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 18:53:09 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] What's the Greatest Innovation? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070501132526.0228aba8@satx.rr.com> References: <200705011711.l41HB0gC006942@ms-smtp-01.texas.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501132526.0228aba8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4637E0F5.8040502@comcast.net> Damien Broderick wrote: > I like Frank Wilczek's reply: > > The greatest innovation in physics, and I think in all of science, > was the discovery that important behaviour of natural objects can be > described with mathematical precision. Yes, I really like this too, as long as you add "The greatest innovation in all of science" TO DATE. And as I'm always claiming, I believe we are on the verge of the scientific achievement that will surpass this one. True, mathematics can powerfully represent the behavior of the universe. And it can also represent or model its phenomenal qualities (i.e. 0=green, 1=red). But obviously such abstract modeling in no way captures what is really important about red, green, and the difference between them and all the other phenomenal (spiritual, if you will) properties our brain uses to represent our phenomenal conscious knowledge. Once we scientifically finally pierce this spiritual veil and start effing and sharing these ineffable properties, we will finally be able to alter the universe, starting with the expansion of our brain, in such a way that our spirits (our phenomenal knowledge of ourselves, that has no referent in reality.) will finally break out of these mortal spirit prison walls that is our skull. No longer will the rest of the universe be ineffable because our abstract mathematical representation will finally be grounded in truly phenomenal scientifically demonstrable reality. Any such scientific achievement will have a way more dramatic effect on the world than anything else TO DATE don't you think? Brent Allsop From nvitamore at austin.rr.com Tue May 1 23:23:53 2007 From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 19:23:53 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] Post-human book - Italian Message-ID: <380-22007521232353594@M2W013.mail2web.com> Does anyone have a few moments to translate Italian? thanks, Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://link.mail2web.com/mail2web From brent.allsop at comcast.net Wed May 2 01:51:16 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 19:51:16 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <380-2200753203611342@M2W015.mail2web.com> References: <380-2200753203611342@M2W015.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <4637EE94.3020902@comcast.net> Natasha, This would be a great example that could demonstrate the power of the Canonizer. Through a canonization process, everyone could propose and discover the facts and things everyone agreed on. These could be wikied into the "agreement statement" on this contentious topic (i.e. anyone that objects to a particular piece of information means it must be put in some sub POV statement). Then everyone could work to wiki the position statements in the appropriate tree structure below the agreement statement so that all POV camps and sub camps could be adequately represented. Then everyone could "join" or support the position statements that most appropriately included their POV on this issue. Once we saw all relevant support by all the relevant parties, for precisely what they believed on such an issue, we could quantitatively determine and specify with authority just what the correct and justified terminology is right? If only us extropians started out joining camps, you could point out our authoritative reasons and beliefs to these academics, and if they disagree, they would be free to add their own POV so it can all be fairly represented. If they refused to participate, then oh well, we win right? I have a prototype of all the structured wiki functionality already running at http://test.canonizer.com. And I bet I'll have the support system so people can "join" (or support or vote for) their camps before any position statements were fully developed. Natasha, do you (or anyone else) have some type of beginning write up, even if only crude and incomplete, that specifies some of the facts and your POV that we could start with? We could even start with what you've said on the issue here. Brent Allsop nvitamore at austin.rr.com wrote: > While I was away at a conference there was some discussion about posthumans > and posthumanism. In my research in preparing my paper on BioArt, many of > the theoreticians and curators I spoke with referred to the posthuman and > discounted the transhuman (including isms). I have known for some time > that there is an academic dismissing of transhumanism and an embracing of > posthumanism, in large part due to Kathryn Hayles book which does not cover > transhumanism. This book also does not mention Max's published article "On > Becoming Posthuman" and also importantly Robert Peppernell who wrote "The > Posthuman Condition." I know that UK professors are annoyed at Hayles' > borrowing ideas from Pepperell and not recognizing him. > > Many of the reasons for this and I'd like to discuss it with you all in > this thread. First I'd like to hear your thoughts if you have any. > > Thanks, > Natasha > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > myhosting.com - Premium Microsoft? Windows? and Linux web and application > hosting - http://link.myhosting.com/myhosting > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From jonkc at att.net Wed May 2 03:30:39 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 23:30:39 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why?. References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <001801c78c6a$4b7a0b60$06084e0c@MyComputer> Heartland, High Priest of the Unique Atom and Sacred Original Cult Wrote: > Just because I-now thinks I-before survived does not cause "I-before > survived" statement to be true. It is of course possible that my subjective experience could be disconnected from reality, that dog I'm looking at might not objectively exist, I could be having a hallucination; but you go much further. According to you I don't even think I see a dog, I just think I think I see a dog. I don't feel pain when I put my hand in that fire, I just think I think I feel pain when I put my hand in that fire.. I can't think, I just think I think. I'm not really alive, I just think I'm alive A bigger load of crap I've never seen! I think. > Many centuries ago someone believed Sun revolved around Earth. Painting yourself as the heroic revolutionary just doesn't work very well when the idea you are peddling is the conventional one believed by generations of schoolchildren. To say your idea is wrong would be giving it too much credit, it's not even that, it's gibberish; popular gibberish to be sure but gibberish nevertheless. John K Clark From sjatkins at mac.com Wed May 2 04:31:12 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 21:31:12 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <380-2200753203611342@M2W015.mail2web.com> References: <380-2200753203611342@M2W015.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <46381410.20305@mac.com> nvitamore at austin.rr.com wrote: > While I was away at a conference there was some discussion about posthumans > and posthumanism. In my research in preparing my paper on BioArt, many of > the theoreticians and curators I spoke with referred to the posthuman and > discounted the transhuman (including isms). I have known for some time > that there is an academic dismissing of transhumanism and an embracing of > posthumanism, in large part due to Kathryn Hayles book which does not cover > transhumanism. This book also does not mention Max's published article "On > Becoming Posthuman" and also importantly Robert Peppernell who wrote "The > Posthuman Condition." I know that UK professors are annoyed at Hayles' > borrowing ideas from Pepperell and not recognizing him. > > Many of the reasons for this and I'd like to discuss it with you all in > this thread. First I'd like to hear your thoughts if you have any. > I don't have many on this topic as I have not read some of the works you mentioned. It does seem as if many have less trouble creating interesting posthuman imaginings than imagining how we get there from here. To get there from here we much go through transhumanism. Unless of course Eliezer or someone similar creates the Friendly AI that uplifts us pretty much in one go. But I don't believe that will work. It is like ultra high acceleration. There is no bridge, no development, no growing into between who you are, much less who the vast majority is, and there in such a scenario. I don't think many would survive or survive with any meaningful sense of continuity. - samantha From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 2 04:31:43 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 21:31:43 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future?. In-Reply-To: <094401c78ae9$02d40190$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200705020451.l424pK7D002267@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Lee Corbin ... > > When I am uploaded, it'll be me iff the similarity is sufficient. ... Lee Lee it would not hurt to remind your non-mathematically oriented readers that iff = if and only if. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 2 04:59:35 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 23:59:35 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future?. In-Reply-To: <200705020451.l424pK7D002267@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <094401c78ae9$02d40190$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <200705020451.l424pK7D002267@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070501235842.022401d8@satx.rr.com> At 09:31 PM 5/1/2007 -0700, spike wrote: >iff = if and only if. Logical, Captain. But does ifo = if only? ifo! From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 2 05:03:54 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 22:03:54 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><015601c7010a$6a7d5d50$450a4e0c@MyComputer><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <09c201c78b8b$342b33b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0ac701c78c77$dfd7d7d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Heartland writes > Lee: >> I *am* interested in how "my string" varies, even varies from >> moment to moment. Assuming that "my string" is just a >> digital readout of my state, that is. So long as it remains >> 99.99999999999% the same from moment to moment, >> that's okay. And even if it's only 99.99999% the same--- >> in case I am disintegrated and a copy you made of me >> yesterday is teleported to my present location---that's >> still fine (provided that there is something in it for us >> Lee Corbins, e.g. a nice fat >> check---because I will not lose memories for nothing). > > > What if the strings were 98% the same from moment to moment? > Please explain why 99.99999999999% would be okay and 52% > or 1% would not be okay. Yikes! Are you kidding? I would "estimate" that maybe around age 17 the legal entity known as Lee Corbin had 50% of the core memories that make me who I am. To be summarily replaced by a 17-year old version of me would be, in my calculus, like dying by about one-half. From "moment to moment" is a very rough period of time, but the idea is that I should remain very much the same person for years and years. > Where's the dividing line (give me a percentage) between "okay" > and "not okay?" Also, quantify the time interval between moments. I have now explained the basic meaning of those. Since identity *is* memory, then it's a tautology that to the degree I lose some I become someone else. If it was not some very high figure like 99.99999999999% from moment to moment, then I would too rapidly become someone else. Even as it is, I am annoyed that I am rapidly (over the decades) becoming someone else. > Should we compare two strings every nanosecond, microsecond, > second, minute, hour or perhaps a week to make it more practical > and less annoying? Please justify all your choices. Ah, when you wrote above "Where's the dividing line (give me a percentage)" I was afraid that this was just another symptom of your apparent belief that life and death is like 1 and 0, and that there are sharp dividing lines. There are not. To what degree is the Ship of Theseus not the same ship after a number of years? We know that *eventually* --- were it slowly transformed into the Queen Mary --- that it would be silly to think of it as the same ship. Yet there can be no absolute dividing line (unless you believe in something quite akin to souls). > Lee: >> When we talked on the phone, we would agree that we had exchanged *bodies* >> not memories. The creature in Santa Clara California would want the old Slawomir >> body back (I assure you), and rightfully consider it *his* body! >> >> Clear enough? > > Not yet. Eh? Why not. This seems simple. If we had a 100% swap of memories, then I would be in your body, and vice versa. What is unclear? > Lee: >> Don't you agree that it is our memories that determine who >> we think we are (and, I go on to claim, who we in fact are). > > Yes. (surprised?) > But if I prefer "memory content" instead of "memories" as a determinant of who we > are because "memory content" or just "memory" implies also skills, beliefs, and > patterns of perception, not just recollections of past events. Yes; I have not been especially consistent myself on to what degree these other things are important. But how important to *identity* are they? Consider if you lost some. You would then seek medical advice and complain that *you* had lost these patterns. An exactly similar scenario about swapping entire memory can be easily seen: the Slawomir complaints would issue from wherever the bulk of the Slawomir memories were. Not from where the skill set went. To press the point, if I woke up tomorrow with your beliefs, then (except for the peculiar aspect that I could not recall their development), I would suppose that I had somehow abruptly changed my mind, that's all. > At this point you still have not answered the question I was really asking so let > me ask it again using different words: > > Why do you think preserving *who we are* matters? There > are so many other things you could be focused on preserving > into the future so why it is most important to preserve who > we are, let alone who *you* are? Ya know, it's just this prejudice I have, ya see? I want to stick around a while, and that means that I have to get more runtime, and that means that my memories must be encased in a running process somewhere sometime. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 2 05:08:35 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 22:08:35 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] War and technological progress References: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> Message-ID: <0acb01c78c78$93e2d8b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> BillK writes > I just looked at the Cost of War > > figure: $421 billion and rising! Over $6 billion of that came from my > state and over 5 million homes with renewable electricity could have > been built with that money.1 Instead of a preemptive war on a non > aggressor nation or a hype "War on Terror" or a "War on Drugs" lets have > a War on Aging and fund nano research to the tune of $40 billion (one > tenth the cost of the war) or so for starters. Another way to look at the facts is to say that the Defense Department takes about 4% of GNP and entitlements about 10% of GNP. Sorry I don't have links for that---but I believe that to be approximately correct. And of course, the so-called "aggressor war" is based upon the perception (rightly or wrongly) that after Al Qaeda wins in Iraq, to the great glee of the half of America that is more scared of the Bush and Christian agenda, then Al Qaeda will get a huge surge of new recruits. History loves a winner. And then we'll see if the war just quietly goes away. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 2 05:31:57 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 22:31:57 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Back to Causes of War References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427183950.042a2270@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070428134420.03fc0dd0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070501160428.0406a860@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <0ad801c78c7b$63eb75b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Keith writes, quoting Gat > "The main point of all this is that resource competition and conflict > existed in most > hunter-gatherer societies; but how significant they were, how they ranked > in comparison to > other possible reasons for conflict, and what resource specifically was > mostly in conflict - > depended on the particular conditions of the human and natural environment > in question. > Scarcities and stresses, and hence the causes and occurrence of conflict, > varied. The > concept of 'territoriality', which was brought to the fore in the 1960s by > Ardrey (1966), > Page 8 > Lorenz (1966), and Tinbergen (1968), has been more subtly defined in this > light. Like > aggression, territoriality is not a blind instinct. It is subservient to > the evolutionary > calculus, especially in humans, whose habitats are so diverse. Among > hunter-gatherers, > territories vary dramatically in size - territorial behaviour itself can > gain or lose in > significance - in direct relation to the resources and resource > competition. The same > applies to population density, another popular explanation in the 1960s for > violence. In > other than the most extreme cases, > > _it [violence] is mainly in relation to resource scarcity and hence as a > factor in resource competition_ > > that population density would function as a trigger for fighting. > Otherwise, Tokyo and the Netherlands would have been > among the most violent places on earth." Yes, those places would today soon revert to a "Lord of the Flies" scenario. But I *thought* that our inquiry was more general, namely into the causes---proximal or distal ---of war throughout history. >>And the original main purpose of this thread and its predecessors was >>to address the causes of all wars, not just primitive fighting. >> >>I *will* summarize what I have written here on the topic. First, civilized >>societies are not necessarily more peaceful, even the literate ones! E.g. the >>Maya or the proto-nations and nations of Western Europe 500 AD - >>1500 AD Sometimes peace was establish in the old days---as in >>approximately 100 AD - 180 AD---when some fairly reasonable empire >>could maintain it (by force). >> >>Second, a sea-change seems to have overcome the West around 1700 or >>1800: gone were the constant wars of preceding generations. Especially >>per capita, wars became fewer and fewer over time. Go graph the number >>of wars and the amount of blood shed between England and France: it >>monotonically decreases from 1000 AD to 1815, and then stops altogether. >>(Of course there were fluctuations, but my point is that the wars really did >>become fewer over the centuries and of less severity.) What caused this >>sea-change? > > You need to consider what else happened over this time. There was a huge > growth of income over this period of time, and some of the time even a > growth in income per capita. Yes, of course. Such growth went hand in hand with leaders of nations being less rapacious. >>My answer is that it simply became more profitable to maintain peace than >>to try to plunder adjacent nations. For one thing, there was less comparative >>plunder than ever before (compared to the wealth of generating your own), >>and another thing, the dang wars just got too expensive and the ability of >>the other nation to inflict reciprocal damage kept growing. So an era >>of game-theoretic cooperation has emerged. >> >>Three, the causes of modern era war are too numerous to allow generalization. >>Keith sometimes said that population pressure causes war, > > That not exactly the case. > > "All wars arise from population pressure." (Heinlein 1959 p. 145) > "Major Reid (Heinlein's character in Starship Troopers)was on the mark if > you take "population pressure" to mean a falling ratio of resources to > population (roughly income per capita in modern terms). There are sound > evolutionary reasons why falling resources per capita (or the prospect of > same) usually drives human populations into war. Wars and related social > disruptions are here seen to be the outcome of a behavioral switch > activated by particular environmental situations and mediated by xenophobic > memes.[1]" Au contraire, it *is* exactly the case. Heinlein is quite wrong. While falling resources per capita is *one* reason indeed, you have been giving the impression, and Heinlein certainly does above, that it is the *sole* cause. It's not, as I have demonstrated with example after example. Sometimes very prosperous nations with very good prospects go to war because their leaders get greedy, or they are playing a game of international one- upsmanship, or they simply want to expand their nation's territory at the expense of smaller weaker adjacent nations. >>and it is true that >>high population growth in modern nations *facilitates* war, but it doesn't >>cause it. For example, the high birth rates in Germany, England, and France >>before WWI made for aggressive nations in two ways: first, young people >>are usually quite willing and able to go to war (until 1950 or so in the >>West); >>they have the vitality and the group instinct I submit, and second, they >>provide enough cannon fodder to make the wars a go. >> >>Keith sometimes said that it was 'grim prospects' that caused war. > > Again not exactly that simple. Grim prospects are sensed. They are *part* > of a causation chain. Yes. > In the EEA (and even today) it was usually population growth that led to > grim prospects. > > Sensing grim prospects turned up the average population gain on xenophobic > memes. > > High levels of xenophobic memes caused war violence. But this is *not* the only mechanism, at least since we've left the EEA. As I said, >>Certainly >>that is a factor, maybe a major factor, in the EEA as Professor Gat documents. >>And *sometimes* it is a contributing factor in modern wars, if taken not too >>literally. Again WWI affords a great example: the English were scared to >>death that the Germans would overtake them economically (1914 in fact >>was the very first year in which this occurred---see "The Illusion of >>Victory", >>a rather new book by Thomas Fleming). And the Germans were scared to >>death that Russia and the Slavs in general were going to surpass them in a >>variety of ways. Paul Johnson in "Modern Times" states this as a attitudinal >>fact among the German intelligencia apparently stemming from various >>wacked-out German philosophers. > > I should add that fear of others *is* the result of xenophobic memes (such > as the English fearing the Germans or the Germans fearing the Russians and > Slavs). Yes, but your tone implies that this is to be considered a bad thing. Of course, it would be relatively heavenly if a magic wand were passed over the Earth, and there was no xenophobia. But it wouldn't last long, becuse it's not an ESS. Sooner or later some gang would get going, and we'd be right back to Sargon I and the first empires. Realistically, the main thing about xenophobic genes is that you don't want *your side* to lose them, or into the dustbin of history you go. Or are going, like now. >>But throughout pre-modern times in the last millenium, a typical cause of >>war was one prince's avarice towards the domains of his neighbors. Most >>of the English-French wars were of this kind, for example, as were the >>endless wars between the various Italian city states. Another typical >>cause was vast population movement---the Avars or the Huns or someone >>would be on the move (chased by another tribe even more formidable) and >>the poor Romans or anyone else within range had to bear the consequences. >> >>Yet none of these explanations account for all modern wars---exceptions >>can be found for any and all of them. E.g. the Great Patriotic war, which >>included the largest and most deadly battles ever fought, was caused >>entirely by one man's irrational urges and his warped philosophy. > > I think you put too much causation on particular people and too little on > the situation that allowed their madness to flourish. To some degree, we have perhaps been arguing between distal and proximal causes. But it's not alway "madness" either. It's often a good survival strategy. Especially in some some circumstances as Machiavelli explained. > Consider forest fires as an analogy. You can classify fires by how they > were started, lightening, careless campers, power lines sparking and > aircraft crashes. You can also say a lot about the influence of the > weather, with forest fires being more likely when the temperature is high, > the humidity low and gusty winds. > > But the ultimate reason you get a forest fire is the slow accumulation of fuel. In the forest fire case, yes, it can come to be an inevitability. That is, if a people becomes deprived enough, then they will either individually or socially get violent. But to the degree---again---that this is also a historical inquiry, then we simply have that this does *not* explain all modern wars. Too many wars occurred in which evidence of over- population, resource depravation, etc., is not present. > The ultimate reason you get a war is the slow accumulation of people (in > excess of what the economy can support). Slow it down till the economic > growth is as high or higher than the population growth and no wars. You don't think that of all the wars in Europe between 1300 and 1800 I could not find ones in which economic growth on both sides was as high as the population growth? > Incidentally, where you mention "young people are usually quite willing and > able to go to war," this is the "excess males" causation theory of war. I > forget what the proposed threshold was, but China (due to selective > abortion) is way above the point these researchers said would cause a > war. The EP model say China will not be inclined to start a war as long as > its population is experiencing a growth in income per capita. I would counter that they are *less* likely to go on a rampage. But even the U.S.---as seen by its enemies in the rest of the world---has gone on a rampage even though there has been prosperity beyond economic growth. In fact, a leader of China could very well use a well-known historical gambit: get into a war if you feel that you are losing political control at home. > Of course, China could get into a war if it were attacked. > Before you say that's impossible, consider Pearl Harbor. What? You're kidding! You mean nations actually get into wars when other nations attack them? Well---I guess I'll just have to add that to my list of the causes of war :-) Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 2 05:37:19 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 22:37:19 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Back to Causes of War References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427191216.046d48e8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070501200547.02c281f0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <0ae001c78c7c$1a7a3b40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Keith writes > [Lee wrote] > >> Well documented causes exist for the >> wars between England and France that broke out in the 1300s. >> The plague came later (1346) but I don't think slowed the war >> any except for a bit of financial exhaustion among the rulers. >> The 15th century was still very war-prone in Europe. > > One of the things you need to keep in mind is how fast the population > rebounded. The Black Death killed about 25% of the European population at > the time. As a guess the dip recovered in a generation or so since humans > have the ability to double (or more) per generation. Not true. It took more than a century for Europe to reach its pre-plague population levels. "War and Peace and War", by Peter Turchin, or, The Penquin "Atlas of World Population History" history says about 150 years: it was not until 1500 that Europe got back to its 1300 level. Lee > Hungary recovered in less than 50 years from 25% of their population being > killed in wars. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Muhi That's two generations, anyway, to pick a nit for Hungary. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 2 05:44:02 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 22:44:02 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why?. References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <001801c78c6a$4b7a0b60$06084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <0ae501c78c7d$81e4bac0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> IN the Eternal Exchange between John Clark and Heartland, the words are being misinterpreted by both sides---really a sign of bad writing. Here is the latest example. John writes > Heartland, High Priest of the Unique Atom and Sacred Original Cult Wrote: > >> Just because I-now thinks I-before survived does not cause "I-before >> survived" statement to be true. One needs to phrase "I-now" and "I-before" much much more carefully to avoid misunderstanding. I can see why John got upset at that phrase. But if you had written instead, "Just because an entity legally known as Slawomir the High Priest at time 1 believes that Slawomir the etc. at time 0 survived, does not make it true". Now *that* statement is utterly clear---and correct! > It is of course possible that my subjective experience could be disconnected > from reality, that dog I'm looking at might not objectively exist, I could > be having a hallucination; but you go much further. Actually, all that is necessary is that some AI did some great surgery on the former John Clark, as explained in previous posts. Of course, your point is taken that this is extremely improbable, and that for all normal intents and purposes, there is no reason to believe that anything weird happened. In this, John seems utterly correct. And it is Slawomir who tries to make the case that something as innocent as a temporarily flat EEG makes a 1/0 difference in survival. Lee From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 2 05:59:03 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 15:59:03 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] War and technological progress In-Reply-To: <0acb01c78c78$93e2d8b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> <0acb01c78c78$93e2d8b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 02/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: And of course, the so-called "aggressor war" is based upon the > perception (rightly or wrongly) that after Al Qaeda wins in Iraq, > to the great glee of the half of America that is more scared of > the Bush and Christian agenda, then Al Qaeda will get a huge > surge of new recruits. History loves a winner. And then we'll > see if the war just quietly goes away. Do you think that the American invasion of Iraq has discouraged those who wish to martyr themselves for Islam? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 2 06:25:27 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 23:25:27 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] War and technological progress References: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> <0acb01c78c78$93e2d8b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0aea01c78c83$1d6a5220$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > > And of course, the so-called "aggressor war" is based upon the > > perception (rightly or wrongly) that after Al Qaeda wins in Iraq, > > to the great glee of the half of America that is more scared of > > the Bush and Christian agenda, then Al Qaeda will get a huge > > surge of new recruits. History loves a winner. And then we'll > > see if the war just quietly goes away. > > Do you think that the American invasion of Iraq has discouraged > those who wish to martyr themselves for Islam? People have their own agendas, and are influenced by what you do less than is usually thought. For example, consider the Battered Wife Syndrome: her lament is "What am I doing that makes *him* so angry?" Well, you can tell her over and over again that it's *not* her, it's him---but she is so constituted as to be unable to believe that. She must believe that it's her fault. So it is with the West. "What are we doing that makes *them* so angry?" Well---yes, it is true: if the woman were to stop breathing, to take an extreme example, *he* would probably stop beating her. And if the West were to stop exporting filth around the world, stop corrupting the Muslim youth with everything from clothing styles to bad attitudes, tendentious movies, acceptance of homosexuality, defiance of parents, and so on and on, and also were to become pure isolationists, stop being on Israel's side, profusely apologize for placing troops on the Sacred Soil of Saudi Arabia to repel aggression in Kuwait, etc., yes, Al Qaeda might very well turn its attention elsewhere. But then, evil does triumph when good people do nothing. > Do you think that the American invasion of Iraq has discouraged > those who wish to martyr themselves for Islam? It doesn't matter. People have their own agendas. Lee From velvethum at hotmail.com Wed May 2 07:00:14 2007 From: velvethum at hotmail.com (Heartland) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 03:00:14 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why?. References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><001801c78c6a$4b7a0b60$06084e0c@MyComputer> <0ae501c78c7d$81e4bac0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Lee: > IN the Eternal Exchange between John Clark and Heartland, Eternal exchange? Are you kidding? Burts of clueless heckling interrupting my conversations with other people, maybe, but an "exchange?" Lee: > One needs to phrase "I-now" and "I-before" much much more carefully > to avoid misunderstanding. I can see why John got upset at that phrase. > But if you had written instead, "Just because an entity legally known > as Slawomir the High Priest at time 1 believes that Slawomir the etc. > at time 0 survived, does not make it true". That joke has gone stale a long time ago, don't you think? Actually, a good joke has at least some truth in it. This one had none, as you know. Perhaps you don't. Lee: > Now *that* statement is utterly clear---and correct! The original terms were correct enough and they were, in fact, Stathis' terms. H. From velvethum at hotmail.com Wed May 2 07:55:57 2007 From: velvethum at hotmail.com (Heartland) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 03:55:57 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: Lee: >> >This is what Heartland and Damien and all of them are afraid of when it >> >comes to teleportation Damien: >> No, like most organisms I'm afraid of being killed. It doesn't make >> any difference if someone recompiles an exact copy of me in a galaxy >> far, far away. Certain biases driven by my genes might be persuaded >> that such simulacra should become twice as precious to me as my genes >> estimate my kids and sibs should be, but so far they haven't even >> done such a great job in urging me to reproduce or keep in touch with >> my sister and brothers most of the time, let alone bequeath them my >> fortune. Stathis to Damien: > And yet you leave your fortune to your tomorrow-self, rather than blowing it > all before you go to sleep tonight. How do you know that tomorrow-self isn't > just some guy who happens to have all your memories? If someone claimed > that criterion X is a sure sign of death, and it so happens that criterion X > occurs every night to every person, wouldn't you answer that - even without > knowing the details of criterion X - it must be a load of crap because you > know you *don't* die every night? It seems that you first assume, "I don't die every night" and then tailor your definition of death and all the other statements about survival to fit that assumption. It should be the other way around. Only after you find out what death is first you can begin answering questions such as, "When do I die?" Stathis to Lee: > The alternative situation > is to have memories removed and false memories implanted while you are > asleep. If this were to happen to a sufficient extent tonight, then it would > be equivalent to death. Wouldn't you agree that this is an arbitrary definition of death? After all, every portion of Lee's body would function properly and without interruptions, including the brain. Would it really make sense to say Lee died during the night even though Lee's body (all of it) has remained in perfect health throughout the night? Would you be successful in convincing any practicing physician to issue a death certificate for the "deceased?" Stathis to Lee: > So you could physically die but survive mentally, Then I'm afraid you believe in soul. Mental supervenes on the physical. If the physical is no more, the mental is no more too. H. From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 2 08:07:44 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 09:07:44 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/2/07, Heartland wrote: > > Wouldn't you agree that this is an arbitrary definition of death? After all, every > portion of Lee's body would function properly and without interruptions, including > the brain. Would it really make sense to say Lee died during the night even though > Lee's body (all of it) has remained in perfect health throughout the night? Would > you be successful in convincing any practicing physician to issue a death > certificate for the "deceased?" > This News article is probably relevant: The new science of resuscitation is changing the way doctors think about heart attacks?and death itself. May 7, 2007 issue - Consider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn't lost blood. All that's happened is his heart has stopped beating?the definition of "clinical death"?and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died? As recently as 1993, when Dr. Sherwin Nuland wrote the best seller "How We Die," the conventional answer was that it was his cells that had died. The patient couldn't be revived because the tissues of his brain and heart had suffered irreversible damage from lack of oxygen. This process was understood to begin after just four or five minutes. If the patient doesn't receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation within that time, and if his heart can't be restarted soon thereafter, he is unlikely to recover. That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "After one hour," he says, "we couldn't see evidence the cells had died. We thought we'd done something wrong." In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later. But if the cells are still alive, why can't doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. It was that "astounding" discovery, Becker says, that led him to his post as the director of Penn's Center for Resuscitation Science, a newly created research institute operating on one of medicine's newest frontiers: treating the dead. With this realization came another: that standard emergency-room procedure has it exactly backward. When someone collapses on the street of cardiac arrest, if he's lucky he will receive immediate CPR, maintaining circulation until he can be revived in the hospital. But the rest will have gone 10 or 15 minutes or more without a heartbeat by the time they reach the emergency department. And then what happens? "We give them oxygen," Becker says. "We jolt the heart with the paddles, we pump in epinephrine to force it to beat, so it's taking up more oxygen." Blood-starved heart muscle is suddenly flooded with oxygen, precisely the situation that leads to cell death. Instead, Becker says, we should aim to reduce oxygen uptake, slow metabolism and adjust the blood chemistry for gradual and safe reperfusion. Researchers are still working out how best to do this. etc............ BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 2 10:33:07 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 20:33:07 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why?. In-Reply-To: References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <001801c78c6a$4b7a0b60$06084e0c@MyComputer> <0ae501c78c7d$81e4bac0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 02/05/07, Heartland wrote: Lee: > > One needs to phrase "I-now" and "I-before" much much more carefully > > to avoid misunderstanding. I can see why John got upset at that phrase. > > But if you had written instead, "Just because an entity legally known > > as Slawomir the High Priest at time 1 believes that Slawomir the etc. > > at time 0 survived, does not make it true". > > That joke has gone stale a long time ago, don't you think? Actually, a > good joke > has at least some truth in it. This one had none, as you know. Perhaps you > don't. > > Lee: > > Now *that* statement is utterly clear---and correct! > > The original terms were correct enough and they were, in fact, Stathis' > terms. One of the problems in this debate is that the terminology can seem to imply the conclusion which is at issue in the first place. This is where I find the concept of the observer moment useful. An observer moment, or OM, unambiguously specifies an instance of conscious experience. Even if all hell breaks loose with duplications, we can always point to Stathis no. 347b at 20:01:04 hrs on 2nd May 2007 in Melbourne, Australia, and everyone will know what we mean regardless of their view on personal identity. This terminology does not imply that OM's have any special ontological status of their own, nor that, for example, Stathis no. 347b is or isn't the "same person" as Stathis no. 347b one second later, or Stathis 356a at the same time in the adjacent room. How the OM's are related to form individuals, and what death means in terms of the existence of non-existence of certain OM's, is then the problem of personal identity, restated more cumbersomely but also more precisely. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 2 10:42:06 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 12:42:06 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why?. In-Reply-To: References: <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <001801c78c6a$4b7a0b60$06084e0c@MyComputer> <0ae501c78c7d$81e4bac0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <20070502104206.GD17691@leitl.org> On Wed, May 02, 2007 at 08:33:07PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > One of the problems in this debate is that the terminology can seem to > imply the conclusion which is at issue in the first place. This is > where I find the concept of the observer moment useful. An observer > moment, or OM, unambiguously specifies an instance of conscious > experience. Even if all hell breaks loose with duplications, we can It's hardly a moment, though. "Conscious experience", whatever that means. implies a trajectory segment long enough for higher-order processes to happen, which puts it into some 100 ms country. > always point to Stathis no. 347b at 20:01:04 hrs on 2nd May 2007 in > Melbourne, Australia, and everyone will know what we mean regardless > of their view on personal identity. This terminology does not imply We don't know, because there's no way for us to observe that. It would take a heavily instrumented individual to make even crude measurements upon that trajectory slice. > that OM's have any special ontological status of their own, nor that, > for example, Stathis no. 347b is or isn't the "same person" as Stathis If personhood refers to isomorphisms in the person pattern, of course such trajectory segments can belong to the same person. If you define personhood by static frames, then every single trajectrory frame is a brand new person (an even more extreme view than Slawomir's). > no. 347b one second later, or Stathis 356a at the same time in the > adjacent room. How the OM's are related to form individuals, and what > death means in terms of the existence of non-existence of certain > OM's, is then the problem of personal identity, restated more > cumbersomely but also more precisely. -- 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 stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 2 11:33:51 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 21:33:51 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 02/05/07, Heartland wrote: Stathis to Damien: > > And yet you leave your fortune to your tomorrow-self, rather than > blowing it > > all before you go to sleep tonight. How do you know that tomorrow-self > isn't > > just some guy who happens to have all your memories? If someone claimed > > that criterion X is a sure sign of death, and it so happens that > criterion X > > occurs every night to every person, wouldn't you answer that - even > without > > knowing the details of criterion X - it must be a load of crap because > you > > know you *don't* die every night? > > It seems that you first assume, "I don't die every night" and then tailor > your > definition of death and all the other statements about survival to fit > that > assumption. It should be the other way around. Only after you find out > what death > is first you can begin answering questions such as, "When do I die?" That's the very question I'm asking: how would you define death? Given that we can agree on whether or not criterion X has occurred, how do we then move on to decide whether or not X is a good criterion for death? Stathis to Lee: > > The alternative situation > > is to have memories removed and false memories implanted while you are > > asleep. If this were to happen to a sufficient extent tonight, then it > would > > be equivalent to death. > > Wouldn't you agree that this is an arbitrary definition of death? The arbitrariness of the definition of death - yours and mine - is what is at issue. After all, every > portion of Lee's body would function properly and without interruptions, > including > the brain. Would it really make sense to say Lee died during the night > even though > Lee's body (all of it) has remained in perfect health throughout the > night? Would > you be successful in convincing any practicing physician to issue a death > certificate for the "deceased?" Losing all your memories and personality would be like the end stage of dementia. If you knew you were going to wake up tomorrow in this state it might be a little bit better than not waking up at all, but not much better. The status of these patients in hospital is similar to the status of patients in a persistent vegetative state, except that there is sometimes a hope that the latter might recover. Stathis to Lee: > > So you could physically die but survive mentally, > > Then I'm afraid you believe in soul. Mental supervenes on the physical. If > the > physical is no more, the mental is no more too. I believe that the mind can survive in different hardware. You have agreed to as much when you allowed that swapping out the atoms in your brain for "different" atoms does not necessarily kill you. However, you claim that even brief interruption of the activity in the brain *does* kill you. If the mental supervenes on the physical, and the same atoms are going about their business in the same way a moment later, then the same mental process should be being implemented despite the interruption. That is, if the post-interruption physical state is exactly the same as if it would have been had there been no interruption, and yet the interruption gives rise to a different person, then the difference must be due to some non-physical factor. Worse than that, the difference must be due to some non-mental factor as well, since if the physical state is the same the mental state must also be the same. So the interruption causes a non-physical, non-mental change which results in one person dying and another being born in their place. Even if this were coherent (and I don't believe it is), it would imply the existence of a soul. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sondre-list at bjellas.com Wed May 2 11:45:30 2007 From: sondre-list at bjellas.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Sondre_Bjell=E5s?=) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 13:45:30 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Remove the extropy-chat from subject line? Message-ID: <003101c78caf$62b2d100$28187300$@com> Is it possible for the list administrators to remove the [extropy-chat] text that is appended to the subjects of all the threads on this list? The text introduces clutter in the headlines and it makes it harder to recognize the individual threads (especially on my tablet pc machine which only does 1024x768). I would expect people use the To-Address to filter e-mails from the extropy list, so there is really no need for all the extra bytes. Regards, Sondre From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 2 12:07:48 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 22:07:48 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why?. In-Reply-To: <20070502104206.GD17691@leitl.org> References: <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <001801c78c6a$4b7a0b60$06084e0c@MyComputer> <0ae501c78c7d$81e4bac0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <20070502104206.GD17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 02/05/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: If personhood refers to isomorphisms in the person pattern, of course > such trajectory segments can belong to the same person. If you define > personhood by static frames, then every single trajectrory frame > is a brand new person (an even more extreme view than Slawomir's). The fact that personhood seems straightforward is just a contingent fact of the world we evolved in: we are born, grow old and die, and at each point in time there is only one of us. The situation would be very different if copying, merging and splitting were commonplace. We would be forced to define a person by name(s), attributes, timestamp and perhaps a tree diagram just so that we know to whom we are referring. What this would mean subjectively for survival, anticipation, responsibility and so on would add another layer of complexity which our (unmodified) sense of self would struggle to cope with. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 2 12:28:45 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 22:28:45 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] War and technological progress In-Reply-To: <0aea01c78c83$1d6a5220$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> <0acb01c78c78$93e2d8b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0aea01c78c83$1d6a5220$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 02/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > Do you think that the American invasion of Iraq has discouraged > > those who wish to martyr themselves for Islam? > > People have their own agendas, and are influenced by what you > do less than is usually thought. For example, consider the Battered > Wife Syndrome: her lament is "What am I doing that makes *him* > so angry?" > > Well, you can tell her over and over again that it's *not* her, it's > him---but she is so constituted as to be unable to believe that. > She must believe that it's her fault. > > So it is with the West. "What are we doing that makes *them* so > angry?" Well---yes, it is true: if the woman were to stop breathing, > to take an extreme example, *he* would probably stop beating her. > And if the West were to stop exporting filth around the world, stop > corrupting the Muslim youth with everything from clothing styles to > bad attitudes, tendentious movies, acceptance of homosexuality, > defiance of parents, and so on and on, and also were to > become pure isolationists, stop being on Israel's side, profusely > apologize for placing troops on the Sacred Soil of Saudi Arabia > to repel aggression in Kuwait, etc., yes, Al Qaeda might very well > turn its attention elsewhere. But then, evil does triumph when good > people do nothing. Evil also triumphs when evil people think they are doing good but are actually doing evil, or good people think they are doing good but are actually doing evil. If we only had the people who know they are evil to contend with, the world would be a much more peaceful place. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 2 12:43:42 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 14:43:42 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Remove the extropy-chat from subject line? In-Reply-To: <003101c78caf$62b2d100$28187300$@com> References: <003101c78caf$62b2d100$28187300$@com> Message-ID: <20070502124342.GH17691@leitl.org> On Wed, May 02, 2007 at 01:45:30PM +0200, Sondre Bjell?s wrote: > Is it possible for the list administrators to remove the [extropy-chat] text > that is appended to the subjects of all the threads on this list? The text It's possible, but I wouldn't remove it altogether, and not overnight. Some filters people to sort list messages into folders use that as a tag. I could imagine shortening that to [extro], [xtr] or even [exi] (assuming, Max/Natasha would agree to the latter), which would reduce clutter. Yeas/nays please to me privately; I'll tally. > introduces clutter in the headlines and it makes it harder to recognize the > individual threads (especially on my tablet pc machine which only does > 1024x768). > > I would expect people use the To-Address to filter e-mails from the extropy > list, so there is really no need for all the extra bytes. H -- 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 lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 2 16:04:35 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 09:04:35 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why?. References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><001801c78c6a$4b7a0b60$06084e0c@MyComputer> <0ae501c78c7d$81e4bac0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0af701c78cd3$b980c2c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> John Clark had written > Heartland... wrote: > > > Just because I-now thinks I-before survived does not cause "I-before > > survived" statement to be true. and then John (understandably) criticized the statement (from the way that he would naturally interpret those statements. I offered a criticism of both the way that the above was written, and I made the serious error of using an unoriginal joke: Slawomir responds: > Lee: >> One needs to phrase "I-now" and "I-before" much much more carefully >> to avoid misunderstanding. I can see why John got upset at that phrase. >> But if you had written instead, "Just because an entity legally known >> as Slawomir the High Priest at time 1 believes that Slawomir the etc. >> at time 0 survived, does not make it true". > > That joke has gone stale a long time ago, don't you think? Actually, a good joke > has at least some truth in it. This one had none, as you know. Perhaps you don't. My sincere apologies---and my even deeper apologies to the list for a bad attempt at levity that derailed serious thought on the part of my discussion partner. Please allow me to rephase: One needs to phrase "I-now" and "I-before" much much more carefully to avoid misunderstanding. I can see why John got upset at that phrase. But if you had written instead, "Just because an entity legally known and univerally recognized as Mr. X at time 1 believes that entity universally recognized at time 0 survived, does not make it true". Do you or do you not concede that this would have been clearer, and would have very possibly prevented John Clark from misunderstanding you? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 2 16:29:23 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 09:29:23 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes On 02/05/07, Heartland wrote: > > Stathis to Damien: > > > And yet you leave your fortune to your tomorrow-self, rather than blowing it > > > all before you go to sleep tonight. How do you know that tomorrow-self isn't > > > just some guy who happens to have all your memories? If someone claimed > > > that criterion X is a sure sign of death, and it so happens that criterion X > > > occurs every night to every person, wouldn't you answer that - even without > > > knowing the details of criterion X - it must be a load of crap because you > > > know you *don't* die every night? (Actually, I agree with Stathis, but see below for why.) > > It seems that you first assume, "I don't die every night" and then tailor your > > definition of death and all the other statements about survival to fit that > > assumption. It should be the other way around. Only after you find out what death > > is first you can begin answering questions such as, "When do I die?" > > That's the very question I'm asking: how would you define death? > Given that we can agree on whether or not criterion X has occurred, > how do we then move on to decide whether or not X is a good > criterion for death? To me, this is a lot of math-envy. Following Euclid, we must define all our terms and prove all our propositions. Rubbish. So-called "definitions" in philosophy (which are not neologisms) need to be extensionsal, not intensional. (Go look those words up for their philosophical usage.) In other words, we *must* start with what death ordinarily means to everyone in the world, and work backwards for any attempts at refinement. Consider a historical analogy: What is temperature? Well, originally people knew that there is hot and cold, warm and cool, etc., and knew that it was a linear matter. They later, with scientific instruments, attempted to elucidate more of the meaning of "hot", "cold", etc. It would have been folly to have reached into their nether regions and *defined* temperature as this or that. Can you hear sensible people at the time refusing to go ahead, challenging each other with "What do you *mean* by temperature? How do you *define* it?" Now we *all* know what we mean by death in daily life! It's absurd! Suppose that there is a really evil organization that you know of that does kill people. (Pardon me for being circular, but this really is elementary!) If you get a call tonight just before retiring, and they say "By the way, we are killing *you* tonight. It will happen while you are fast asleep?'' Would any of these crazy philosophers reply "Oh, that's all right. I die every day anyway". OF COURSE NOT. Notions such as "maybe we die every instant" or "maybe we die whenever our EEGs go flat", are misconceived, and very harmful for understanding. Let's get serious! You can't get out of paradoxes by making up definitions! If doctors today are---surprisingly---able to save the lives of people that we formerly thought were dead, then we have to realize that they weren't really dead! It should *not* be a matter of struggling for some asinine definition! Stathis goes on > The arbitrariness of the definition of death - yours and mine - is what is at issue. That's just inviting the wrong approach. We all know what death is! We should *not* be trying to *define* it! We need simply to try to understand when it has occurred and when it has not---which, given memory erasure, duplicates, cryonics, partial memory loss, etc., is far from trivial. But it is putting the cart before the horse to *define* it. We need instead to understand, like I say, whether it has occurred, or to what extent it has occurred. And if that proves fruitless, then we simply eventually have to abandon the term altogether, and use paraphrases. Lee From natasha at natasha.cc Wed May 2 16:16:01 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 11:16:01 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <4637EE94.3020902@comcast.net> References: <380-2200753203611342@M2W015.mail2web.com> <4637EE94.3020902@comcast.net> Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20070502111501.0408f150@pop-server.austin.rr.com> At 08:51 PM 5/1/2007, Brent Allsop wrote: >Natasha, > >This would be a great example that could demonstrate the power of the >Canonizer. Through a canonization process, everyone could propose and >discover the facts and things everyone agreed on. These could be wikied >into the "agreement statement" on this contentious topic (i.e. anyone that >objects to a particular piece of information means it must be put in some >sub POV statement). Then everyone could work to wiki the position >statements in the appropriate tree structure below the agreement statement >so that all POV camps and sub camps could be adequately represented. Then >everyone could "join" or support the position statements that most >appropriately included their POV on this issue. > >Once we saw all relevant support by all the relevant parties, for >precisely what they believed on such an issue, we could quantitatively >determine and specify with authority just what the correct and justified >terminology is right? If only us extropians started out joining camps, >you could point out our authoritative reasons and beliefs to these >academics, and if they disagree, they would be free to add their own POV >so it can all be fairly represented. If they refused to participate, then >oh well, we win right? > >I have a prototype of all the structured wiki functionality already >running at http://test.canonizer.com. And I bet I'll have the support >system so people can "join" (or support or vote for) their camps before >any position statements were fully developed. > >Natasha, do you (or anyone else) have some type of beginning write up, >even if only crude and incomplete, that specifies some of the facts and >your POV that we could start with? We could even start with what you've >said on the issue here. Okay, let me give this some thought today and respond a little later. 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: From jonkc at att.net Wed May 2 17:17:12 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 13:17:12 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future?, References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com><08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> Stathis: >> If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before, then that's >> what matters in survival. Heartland, High Priest of the Unique Atom and Sacred Original Cult Wrote: > That doesn't matter at all. No, what matters to you is not continuity of process but continuity of atoms; and what matters to you is objective temporal continuity, subjective continuity doesn't matter at all to subjective experience (!), at least according to you. > Why should it matter? Because subjectivity is the most important thing in the universe. > Of course it's subjective so it's not valid evidence at all. That pretty much sums up the absurdity of your position, the idea that I need objective proof in order for me to believe I am having a subject experience. The feeling of being alive is a subjective experience and I don't need your precious space time trajectories of my individual atoms to prove to me that I feel alive any more than I need proof that the sensation I feel when I put my hand in a fire I find unpleasant. Direct experience outranks even the Scientific Method. John K Clark From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Wed May 2 18:14:44 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 11:14:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20070501105209.0495af48@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: <227320.10260.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Following Brett's post to the list, he wrote me off-list, and we've had a few conversations since. Yes, in my opinion, Brett got quite carried away with his emotions because he felt passionately about the subject matter. But, let's not make more of this than it warrants. Brett is not the devil. He had a moment of poor judgment (IMO) fueled by his emotions. It's happened to me too, although perhaps not quite to that degree. We all have flaws. I suspect it was an empty threat, intended only to add emphasis to his disapproval. Regarding the killthread itself: If it had been me, I probably wouldn't have killthreaded it, at least not at that point. But that is both irrelevant *and* beside the point, since I am neither Eugen or a list moderator. Best Wishes, Jeffrey Herrlich __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 2 19:01:41 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 12:01:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705021912.l42JC7jN029130@andromeda.ziaspace.com> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Bret Kulakovich Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? As if the insult that follows this remark is not enough, this single statement alone: Brett Paasch wrote: I would oppose your reanimation. Is utterly contemptible. I wrote Eugen offlist to say so...~ Bret Hi Bret with one t, I received several notes offlist to this effect too. Saying one would oppose your reanimation is the technogeeks way of saying go to hell. spike From amara at amara.com Wed May 2 20:28:57 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 22:28:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) Message-ID: Steven Colbert on a(nother) biography about Albert Einstein.. "Relativity is just science's way of flip-flopping. Space or time, mass or energy? Which is it, pick a side [...] And I'm sorry, E equals m c squared? C does not stand for the speed of light, c is for cookie." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7BwDw2Fmb8 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 amara at amara.com Wed May 2 20:14:05 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 22:14:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Introduction to the Philosophy of Liberty Message-ID: Twenty years ago during my more active philosophy days, I found in my philosophy circles what was then an unusual little comic book called: "The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: Amidst Vultures, Beggars, Con Men and Kings" by Ken Schoolland. I bought it, read it, and told myself that I would use it in the future to help teach my kids some of my own philosophy, and so I settled it in good company next to my other comic books on my bookshelf and forgot about it. After following a very random thought today, I checked in on the ISIL website news, and encountered this simple, charming animation "Introduction to the Philosophy of Liberty", written by, yes, the same Ken Schoolland. http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.html Ten minutes Flash Animation. Many basic principles, such as self-ownershop, as seen in this animation, are at the root of transhumanist thought. I appreciated how they carefully constructed the philosophical principles, building block by building block (as they should ... :-) ). Enjoy, 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 benboc at lineone.net Wed May 2 21:44:10 2007 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 22:44:10 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Putting God to Rest In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4639062A.60702@lineone.net> Putting God to Rest Anna Taylor wrote: > I don't know how to compare >an equation to a belief? It's comparing "I believe >that God doesn't exist because there is no known >proof" compared to "I believe in something that I >don't need proof for." Not quite. The comparison is between "I don't believe that god exists because there is no known proof" and "I believe in something that there is no proof for". I hope you can see that there is a difference between believing that something does not exist and not believing that something does exist. It's quite a big difference, and i think that not appreciating this difference is what leads some people to claim that atheism is a faith-based position, when in fact it isn't. Atheism is 'not believing in god/s', rather than 'believing in not god/s'. Many (if not all) religious people hold irrational beliefs about self-contradictory things. Things which cannot logically be true. Hence the comparison to 2+2=5. To be religious you must think that there is such a thing as 'the supernatural', which, to many of us (but not all) is an oxymoron. 'Spiritual' experiences are a different thing. They are subjective states of mind. The fact that many people mistakenly link them to the 'supernatural' is what leads to confusion about Atheists/Brights/Agnostics/etc. having spiritual experiences. Another thing that can muddy the waters is the fact that there are many things we don't know. I think it's important to bear in mind that just because something can't be currently explained, that doesn't mean it belongs to the realm of the supernatural. If you are a rationalist, you see a mystery as something with a logical explanation that we don't yet understand, rather than something mystical and unexplainable. ben zaiboc From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 2 22:13:05 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 15:13:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future? References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com><08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> John writes > Stathis: >>> If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before, then that's >>> what matters in survival. > > Heartland, High Priest of the Unique Atom and Sacred Original Cult Wrote: > > > That doesn't matter at all. > > No, what matters to you is not continuity of process but continuity of > atoms; I still don't understand why you persist in making this claim. Would not Heartland instantly agree that each second he loses and gains billions of atoms? Why, for all we know, he'd be perfectly happy to have a heart bypass operation, and lose quadrillions upon quadrillions of his atoms. Moreover, it would not surprise me in the least if he'd quickly sign up for hippocampus replacement, if it guaranteed a wonderful memory enhancement. (Now of course, his guarantees would be more stringent than yours and mine; he might insist upon being conscious throughout the operation, for instance.) BUT ISN'T IT PATENTLY WRONG TO KEEP ON SAYING THAT FOR HIM IT'S ALL ABOUT ATOMS?? > and what matters to you is objective temporal continuity, subjective > continuity doesn't matter at all to subjective experience (!), at least > according to you. > >> Why should it matter? > > Because subjectivity is the most important thing in the universe. > > > Of course it's subjective so it's not valid evidence at all. > > That pretty much sums up the absurdity of your position, the idea that I > need objective proof in order for me to believe I am having a subject > experience. Here I have to agree with Heartland a little more than I agree with you: Yes, you have to believe in your subjective experience as real, and indeed, the most real thing that there is. But you may be simply mistaken about the way that things *seem* to you subjectively. It may be that you are *not* the same John Clark as the world knew yesterday. You're clever enough that I don't need to spell that out in a thought experiment. So subjectivity---just as he says---is a quite *useless* social concept, quite useless to throw around in intelligent discussion with other people who have no access to your subjectivity. Hell, for all I know, John Clark may be a Giant Lookup Table and not be conscious at all! I am the only thing in the universe that I know for sure is conscious, although it would be stupid to bet against other people being so. > The feeling of being alive is a subjective experience and I don't > need your precious space time trajectories of my individual atoms to prove > to me that I feel alive any more than I need proof that the sensation I feel > when I put my hand in a fire I find unpleasant. Direct experience outranks > even the Scientific Method. Who, besides you, gives a ---- about your subjective experience? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 2 22:36:26 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 15:36:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Introduction to the Philosophy of Liberty References: Message-ID: <0b4701c78d0a$bccba300$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Amara writes > After following a very random thought today, I checked in on the ISIL > website news, and encountered this simple, charming animation "Introduction > to the Philosophy of Liberty", written by, yes, the same Ken Schoolland. > > http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.html > Ten minutes Flash Animation. > > Many basic principles, such as self-ownershop, as seen in this animation, > are at the root of transhumanist thought. I appreciated how they > carefully constructed the philosophical principles, building block by > building block (as they should ... :-) ). Well, I started to watch that with an anticipation of disappointment, because I have become increasingly disillusioned by the hyper-individualist ethos of not only many of those around me, but to which in some measure I myself had at various times succumbed. But I was greatly reassured. Just as you said, it carefully laid the foundations of human liberty, and emphasized that our lives are our *own*, and no one else's. It went on to explain how our time and the products of time (our privately created property) are also our own, and cannot be taken from us by force without also taking our liberty. Unfortunately, about two-thirds of the way through, I began to notice that something very important was missing. Nothing whatsoever was being said about the Rule of Law. Yes, private property was emphasized, and rightly so. But the other equally important foundation of progress and civilization was not mentioned EVEN ONCE in the ten minute show. Nothing at all was said or implied about just how obedience to democratically enacted laws is to be achieved! Nothing was said about the force that duly elected officials can and should be required to bear upon murderers, thieves, and other law-breakers. This whole problem was passed over in the most deafening silence. I'm forced to conclude that once again we see the sad spectacle of an anarchist philosophy being passed off as an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy, or a real-world possibility. Only in dream land. The video suggested the following solution to the problem of aggression from others: everyone should just never initiate the use of force. Isn't that simple? Isn't that nice? But saying that to a gang of hoodlums who is about to mug Ken Schoolland will do him no good, and he knows it! He'll holler for the cops to initiate force against those who are about to rob or kill him, even though these criminals made no action at all threatening to the cops. Would---in that terrible situation---he recommend that the police *not* initiate the use of force? There are many "free-riders" who, having grown up under systems of relative liberty, simply have lost sight of how the liberty evolved in the first place. An extremely important component of our freedom is the Rule of Law. Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 2 22:45:35 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 17:45:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future? In-Reply-To: <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502174011.02364218@satx.rr.com> At 03:13 PM 5/2/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: >Who, besides you, gives a ---- about your subjective experience? Well, I for one give a shit about John Clark's subjective experience. I'd be sad if it stopped or was impaired. This is partly due to empathy, partly to curiosity about how a rather different subjectivity seems to experience the world. (By contrrast, while my curiosity is aroused by reports of the disordered subjectivity of the mass murderer Cho, I don't really give a flying fuck about its self-destruction.) Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 2 23:00:48 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 18:00:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502175528.022fa5f0@satx.rr.com> At 10:28 PM 5/2/2007 +0200, Amara quoth Colbert: >C does not stand for the speed of light, c is for cookie." I stared at this in dumb bewilderment for a while. This is a joke? This is supposed to be hilariously *funny*? But obviously it was, so it occurred to me that it must be some tag familiar to generations of USians. Isn't there a show that kids watch called "Sesame Street"? And lo! google tells me this refers to the refrain of something called the Cookie Monster. Talk about generation gap... And it can only get more severe. Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 2 23:04:44 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 16:04:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future? References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070502174011.02364218@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <0b4b01c78d0e$4ae700a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Damien writes > At 03:13 PM 5/2/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: > >>Who, besides you, gives a ---- about your subjective experience? > > Well, I for one give a shit about John Clark's subjective experience. > I'd be sad if it stopped or was impaired. This is partly due to > empathy, partly to curiosity... Let me hastily amend what I said, and thank you for---what to me amounts to me as---the correction. I meant *only* as a part of an intellectual argument. Assertions about one's subjective experience (e.g, in this context whether it is the "same" as it was before) are totally worthless. But my mistake to have written such, as it stands literally. Lee > about how a rather different > subjectivity seems to experience the world. (By contrrast, while my > curiosity is aroused by reports of the disordered subjectivity of the > mass murderer Cho, I don't really give a flying fuck about its > self-destruction.) > > Damien Broderick From jcowan5 at sympatico.ca Wed May 2 23:36:07 2007 From: jcowan5 at sympatico.ca (Josh Cowan) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 19:36:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502175528.022fa5f0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502175528.022fa5f0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: Perhaps you'd have preferred a "Wiggles" reference? At least that deals with the geographical issue. Josh On May 2, 2007, at 7:00 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 10:28 PM 5/2/2007 +0200, Amara quoth Colbert: > >> C does not stand for the speed of light, c is for cookie." > > I stared at this in dumb bewilderment for a while. This is a joke? > This is supposed to be hilariously *funny*? But obviously it was, so > it occurred to me that it must be some tag familiar to generations of > USians. Isn't there a show that kids watch called "Sesame Street"? > And lo! google tells me this refers to the refrain of something > called the Cookie Monster. Talk about generation gap... And it can > only get more severe. > > Damien Broderick > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 2 23:54:37 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 18:54:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502175528.022fa5f0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502185415.023364d0@satx.rr.com> >Perhaps you'd have preferred a "Wiggles" reference? a *what*? From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 3 00:02:20 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 09:32:20 +0930 Subject: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502175528.022fa5f0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0705021702s9b2fe7dka37f064723a03a99@mail.gmail.com> It's a generation gap, not a culture gap. I watched sesame street, pronounced "zed" as "zee" for years... Emlyn On 03/05/07, Josh Cowan wrote: > Perhaps you'd have preferred a "Wiggles" reference? At least that deals > with the geographical issue. > > Josh > On May 2, 2007, at 7:00 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > > > At 10:28 PM 5/2/2007 +0200, Amara quoth Colbert: > > > >> C does not stand for the speed of light, c is for cookie." > > > > I stared at this in dumb bewilderment for a while. This is a joke? > > This is supposed to be hilariously *funny*? But obviously it was, so > > it occurred to me that it must be some tag familiar to generations of > > USians. Isn't there a show that kids watch called "Sesame Street"? > > And lo! google tells me this refers to the refrain of something > > called the Cookie Monster. Talk about generation gap... And it can > > only get more severe. > > > > Damien Broderick > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From jcowan5 at sympatico.ca Thu May 3 00:03:04 2007 From: jcowan5 at sympatico.ca (Josh Cowan) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 20:03:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502185415.023364d0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502175528.022fa5f0@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070502185415.023364d0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20153a4a03c3d4c11ee12977cbeef995@sympatico.ca> "The Wiggles" Australia's highest grossing entertainers for the year 2005. They share the same demographic as Sesame Street... Oh, never mind. ; ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wiggles On May 2, 2007, at 7:54 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > >> Perhaps you'd have preferred a "Wiggles" reference? > > a *what*? > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 3 00:10:13 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 19:10:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0705021702s9b2fe7dka37f064723a03a99@mail.gmail.com > References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502175528.022fa5f0@satx.rr.com> <710b78fc0705021702s9b2fe7dka37f064723a03a99@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502190649.022c64b0@satx.rr.com> At 09:32 AM 5/3/2007 +0930, Emlyn wrote: >It's a generation gap, not a culture gap. I watched sesame street, >pronounced "zed" as "zee" for years... Yep. When I was a lot closer to 20 or 30 than I am now, I wandered into an Aussie rumpus room where the TV set was minding a bunch o' smalls. "This is a care-f," said the woman's voice, possibly from Sesame Street, showing a carf ambling beside a cow. "Say `care-f'!" All the little Aussies dutifully cried: "`Caaaaaare-f'!" And yet--oddly enuff, Aussies maintain an idiosyncratic accent even so, unless they've been to very posh schools. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 3 00:14:15 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 19:14:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) In-Reply-To: <20153a4a03c3d4c11ee12977cbeef995@sympatico.ca> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502175528.022fa5f0@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070502185415.023364d0@satx.rr.com> <20153a4a03c3d4c11ee12977cbeef995@sympatico.ca> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502191223.022d6d38@satx.rr.com> At 08:03 PM 5/2/2007 -0400, Josh wrote: >"The Wiggles" Australia's highest grossing entertainers for the year >2005. They share the same demographic as Sesame Street... Oh, never >mind. ; ) As an Aussie pal commented: "It's an issue issue. Parents watch telly with their smallsters. I got the reference immediately." I don't even have grandkids to watch with (thank dog). Damien Broderick From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 3 00:21:32 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 09:51:32 +0930 Subject: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502190649.022c64b0@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502175528.022fa5f0@satx.rr.com> <710b78fc0705021702s9b2fe7dka37f064723a03a99@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070502190649.022c64b0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0705021721w47a6f315vd4fced258037ca18@mail.gmail.com> On 03/05/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 09:32 AM 5/3/2007 +0930, Emlyn wrote: > > >It's a generation gap, not a culture gap. I watched sesame street, > >pronounced "zed" as "zee" for years... > > Yep. When I was a lot closer to 20 or 30 than I am now, I wandered > into an Aussie rumpus room where the TV set was minding a bunch o' smalls. > > "This is a care-f," said the woman's voice, possibly from Sesame > Street, showing a carf ambling beside a cow. "Say `care-f'!" > > All the little Aussies dutifully cried: "`Caaaaaare-f'!" > > And yet--oddly enuff, Aussies maintain an idiosyncratic accent even > so, unless they've been to very posh schools. > > Damien Broderick Too true. It's normal to resentfully protect Australian spelling anomalies (which are really British spelling in almost all cases I think), such as colour and gaol. Australian English is something I used to care about a lot, but I find I'm starting to succumb to the charms of the dark side. It's the internet doing it to me, damnit. Some introspection tells me I identify with the net far more than with Australia now. And online, there are two kinds of english: International English (needs another name... English' ?), a kind of creole spoken by people from non-english speaking backgrounds (eg: all of codeproject.com), and American English for the sticklers (like myself). American English has become the high ground! Yee gods! Emlyn From jcowan5 at sympatico.ca Thu May 3 00:56:49 2007 From: jcowan5 at sympatico.ca (Josh Cowan) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 20:56:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0705021721w47a6f315vd4fced258037ca18@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502175528.022fa5f0@satx.rr.com> <710b78fc0705021702s9b2fe7dka37f064723a03a99@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070502190649.022c64b0@satx.rr.com> <710b78fc0705021721w47a6f315vd4fced258037ca18@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2f21eaaf58a9472df4b5b512fa7c4d52@sympatico.ca> On May 2, 2007, at 8:21 PM, Emlyn wrote: Snip: > > Australian English is something I used to care about a lot, but I find > I'm starting to succumb to the charms of the dark side. It's the > internet doing it to me, damnit. Some introspection tells me I > identify with the net far more than with Australia now. And online, > there are two kinds of english: International English (needs another > name... English' ?), a kind of creole spoken by people from > non-english speaking backgrounds (eg: all of codeproject.com), and > American English for the sticklers (like myself). American English has > become the high ground! Yee gods! > I've been wondering, when a sentient AI is created if there will be issues for speakers of certain languages in dealing with a gender neutral entity? For example, I've just started learning French and it seems all nouns are assigned a gender. What about a being that is gender neutral? O.K., I know this issues isn't up there with whether one dies every observer moment but still... Josh Cowan From mfj.eav at gmail.com Thu May 3 01:56:55 2007 From: mfj.eav at gmail.com (Morris Johnson) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 18:56:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] benefits of USA War??? Message-ID: <61c8738e0705021856l398ba17drd3c1dfdeb60788db@mail.gmail.com> For discussion purposes I'm going to troll and speculate on the war dividend. Higher energy costs are diverting billions into the hands of energy related capital market liquidity. Energy independance is creating the new farm program which is based on subsidizing biofuels instead of wheat and corn. Biofuels companies all know they have a dead horse without these subsidies so will innovate up the value chain to complex bio products for industry, chemical feedstocks, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals and so forth. The capital market wil drive genetic modifications to create ever more effecient production of the raw materials , microbial and processing plant network capabilities. The security and AI spinoffs may be the first military AI built to digest in real time all web connected data, public, and private, encrypted or not. The war is driving more greenhouse gasses into circulation and make the need for robust long range global meterological planning hardware and software. Perhaps weather modication technology including satellites are next. These are things industry and the free market might be too risk averse and fragmented to capitalize at such a rate if the direct order to get it done regardless of the costs was not backed by an open military expenditure checkbook. The sad thing is that instead of 60% profit the 60% is human death and property destruction and cultural genocide..but hey I'll leave it up to the rest of you to put the positive spin on those..... Morris -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 3 01:57:02 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 11:57:02 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 03/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Stathis writes > > On 02/05/07, Heartland wrote: > > > > Stathis to Damien: > > > > And yet you leave your fortune to your tomorrow-self, rather than > blowing it > > > > all before you go to sleep tonight. How do you know that > tomorrow-self isn't > > > > just some guy who happens to have all your memories? If someone > claimed > > > > that criterion X is a sure sign of death, and it so happens that > criterion X > > > > occurs every night to every person, wouldn't you answer that - even > without > > > > knowing the details of criterion X - it must be a load of crap > because you > > > > know you *don't* die every night? > > (Actually, I agree with Stathis, but see below for why.) > > > > It seems that you first assume, "I don't die every night" and then > tailor your > > > definition of death and all the other statements about survival to fit > that > > > assumption. It should be the other way around. Only after you find out > what death > > > is first you can begin answering questions such as, "When do I die?" > > > > That's the very question I'm asking: how would you define death? > > Given that we can agree on whether or not criterion X has occurred, > > how do we then move on to decide whether or not X is a good > > criterion for death? > > To me, this is a lot of math-envy. Following Euclid, we must define all > our terms and prove all our propositions. Rubbish. So-called > "definitions" > in philosophy (which are not neologisms) need to be extensionsal, not > intensional. (Go look those words up for their philosophical usage.) > In other words, we *must* start with what death ordinarily means to > everyone in the world, and work backwards for any attempts at > refinement. > > Consider a historical analogy: What is temperature? Well, originally > people knew that there is hot and cold, warm and cool, etc., and knew > that it was a linear matter. They later, with scientific instruments, > attempted to elucidate more of the meaning of "hot", "cold", etc. > It would have been folly to have reached into their nether regions > and *defined* temperature as this or that. Can you hear sensible > people at the time refusing to go ahead, challenging each other > with "What do you *mean* by temperature? How do you *define* > it?" > > Now we *all* know what we mean by death in daily life! It's absurd! > Suppose that there is a really evil organization that you know of that > does kill people. (Pardon me for being circular, but this really is > elementary!) If you get a call tonight just before retiring, and they > say "By the way, we are killing *you* tonight. It will happen while > you are fast asleep?'' Would any of these crazy philosophers reply > "Oh, that's all right. I die every day anyway". > > OF COURSE NOT. > > Notions such as "maybe we die every instant" or "maybe we die > whenever our EEGs go flat", are misconceived, and very harmful > for understanding. Let's get serious! You can't get out of paradoxes > by making up definitions! Well, I thought I was making the same point you are making, and I'm sorry that my attempt at rigor has fallen flat. It seems to me that Heartland is claiming that there is some objective criterion for death which trumps what an ordinary person would understand by the term. That would mean that you could have a test and be informed that, even though you don't realise it, you died in the last hour (with the appropriate adjustment to the pronouns that that would entail). But all that would mean is that the test is not a valid test for what is commonly understood by the word "death"; or alternatively, that the newly-defined "death" is not the same as the thing that people have always worried about when they were worrying about dying, and perhaps we need a new word in its place (although it would be more sensible to keep the traditional meaning and come up with another word for what the test shows). To push your temperature analogy further, it would be like science discovering the melting point of tungsten, and then declaring that boiling water should no longer be called "hot". Even if everyone agreed that this was an appropriate linguistic change, no scientific discovery will have any bearing on the hot-like sensation you get when you put your hand into boiling water. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 02:05:09 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 19:05:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502175528.022fa5f0@satx.rr.com><710b78fc0705021702s9b2fe7dka37f064723a03a99@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070502190649.022c64b0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <0b6701c78d27$85fa68d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Vas ist das "carf" oder "care-f"? Meine Aussie so gut nicht ist. L. Von ZeCorbin ----- Original Message ----- From: "Damien Broderick" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 5:10 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] C does not stand for the speed of light... (Colbert) > At 09:32 AM 5/3/2007 +0930, Emlyn wrote: > >>It's a generation gap, not a culture gap. I watched sesame street, >>pronounced "zed" as "zee" for years... > > Yep. When I was a lot closer to 20 or 30 than I am now, I wandered > into an Aussie rumpus room where the TV set was minding a bunch o' smalls. > > "This is a care-f," said the woman's voice, possibly from Sesame > Street, showing a carf ambling beside a cow. "Say `care-f'!" > > All the little Aussies dutifully cried: "`Caaaaaare-f'!" > > And yet--oddly enuff, Aussies maintain an idiosyncratic accent even > so, unless they've been to very posh schools. > > Damien Broderick > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at comcast.net Thu May 3 01:53:44 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 18:53:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] pronunciation standards and cow lifeforms In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502190649.022c64b0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200705030208.l4328WQq015739@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Broderick ... > > "This is a care-f," said the woman's voice, possibly from Sesame > Street, showing a carf ambling beside a cow. "Say `care-f'!" > > All the little Aussies dutifully cried: "`Caaaaaare-f'! Damien Broderick This brings up two unrelated questions. We use the internet as a standardizer of spellings. Could not we figure out some means of making it function also as a standardizer of pronunciation? Consider that American society once had a standard of pronunciation back in the bad old days when our main information pipe was the television, or back further in the worse old days when there were only three channels. (Yes my young friends, it was that bad.) That standard was the evening newscaster Walter Cronkite. He sounded like he knew things, he had no detectable regional dialect. Everyone could understand him. But network news has been on the decline for some time, certainly ever since the internet showed up. Cronkite's network CBS has burned away its credibility as a news source, and besides we can read faster than Cronkite or anyone can talk, so now we use the internet. How can we use it to help standardize pronunciation? Since you mention cows and "carfs," we often see references to cowboys, usually in the rugged independent persona of the American cowboy. We can picture an American cowboy, with the leather chaps, the bandana, the six shooter etc. But nearly every country on this planet devours beef, so they must have cows too, so they need cowboys. Would not the European cowboy or cowhuman have all the same needs as her American counterpart, and would not the European cowpeople develop all the same characteristics? Would not the European cowperson share much of the same equipment, and develop the same attitudes, a similar independent cussedness? spike From velvethum at hotmail.com Thu May 3 02:10:05 2007 From: velvethum at hotmail.com (Heartland) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 22:10:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><015601c7010a$6a7d5d50$450a4e0c@MyComputer><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <09c201c78b8b$342b33b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0ac701c78c77$dfd7d7d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Heartland: >> What if the strings were 98% the same from moment to moment? >> Please explain why 99.99999999999% would be okay and 52% >> or 1% would not be okay. Lee: > Yikes! Are you kidding? I would "estimate" that maybe around > age 17 the legal entity known as Lee Corbin had 50% of the > core memories that make me who I am. To be summarily > replaced by a 17-year old version of me would be, in my calculus, > like dying by about one-half. From "moment to moment" is a > very rough period of time, but the idea is that I should remain > very much the same person for years and years. The rules of this calculus are all arbitrary, subjective (thus unverifiable) and messy. I really don't know why you keep asserting there is such a thing as "degree of death," and implying this assumption is unassailable. My usual response to such statements is, "Can you be little pregnant too?" Lee: > Ah, when you wrote above "Where's the dividing line (give me a > percentage)" I was afraid that this was just another symptom of > your apparent belief that life and death is like 1 and 0, and that > there are sharp dividing lines. There are not. Of course there are. Life and death *is* like 1 and 0. There's no such thing as "degree of life" either. A small flame or an inferno is still fire. Lee: > To what degree > is the Ship of Theseus not the same ship after a number of years? > We know that *eventually* --- were it slowly transformed into > the Queen Mary --- that it would be silly to think of it as the same > ship. It would still be a ship, wouldn't it? :-) Who cares to what degree Queen Mary contains Ship of Theseus if the thing still allows me to sail from point A to B? Lee: >>> When we talked on the phone, we would agree that we had exchanged >>> *bodies* not memories. The creature in Santa Clara California would want the >>> old Slawomir body back (I assure you), and rightfully consider it >>> *his* body! Clear enough? Heartland: >> Not yet. Lee: > Eh? Why not. This seems simple. If we had a 100% swap of memories, > then I would be in your body, and vice versa. What is unclear? The scenario itself was clear enough, yes. It's the way you answered the original question that was a bit less clear. >> Lee: >>> Don't you agree that it is our memories that determine who >>> we think we are (and, I go on to claim, who we in fact are). Heartland: >> Yes. (surprised?) >> But if I prefer "memory content" instead of "memories" as a >> determinant of who we are because "memory content" or just "memory" >> implies also skills, beliefs, and patterns of perception, not just >> recollections of past events. Lee: > Yes; I have not been especially consistent myself on to what degree > these other things are important. But how important to *identity* > are they? I might ask you, to what degree specific memories are important? After all, I could abstract a single memory from specific memories of the people who went to a zoo and file it under "Standard Zoo Experience." There's nothing special about our memories. The higher the abstraction level, the more alike they become (eventually approaching the same type). Actually, in light of this, I would like to update/retract my quoted comment above. Memory is a poor determinant of who we are, if at all. An alien examining humans would have a similarly hard time identifying essential differences between individuals as we would identifying essential differences between individual ants. None of our personal memories are terribly special, important or worth preserving. They are a luxury, not a necessity. Heartland: >> At this point you still have not answered the question I was really >> asking so let me ask it again using different words: >> >> Why do you think preserving *who we are* matters? There >> are so many other things you could be focused on preserving >> into the future so why it is most important to preserve who >> we are, let alone who *you* are? Lee: > Ya know, it's just this prejudice I have, ya see? So your motivation to preserve memories reduces to a personal prejudice? I'm afraid you have to do better than that, Lee. I would like you to tell me precisely what's hiding behind that prejudice. Only then we can move on to the *really* good stuff. Perhaps Stathis will take the bait. :-) H From velvethum at hotmail.com Thu May 3 02:20:28 2007 From: velvethum at hotmail.com (Heartland) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 22:20:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? References: <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><001801c78c6a$4b7a0b60$06084e0c@MyComputer><0ae501c78c7d$81e4bac0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <20070502104206.GD17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: Stathis to Heartland: >> One of the problems in this debate is that the terminology can seem to >> imply the conclusion which is at issue in the first place. This is >> where I find the concept of the observer moment useful. An observer >> moment, or OM, unambiguously specifies an instance of conscious >> experience. Even if all hell breaks loose with duplications, we can Eugen to Stathis: > It's hardly a moment, though. "Conscious experience", whatever that means. > implies a trajectory segment long enough for higher-order processes to > happen, which puts it into some 100 ms country. What Eugen points out is, of course, exactly what I've been trying to point out to you (Stathis) and others several times before by saying that any process (and minds are undoubtedly processes, not patterns) is undefined across time intervals = 0. This means that there's no such thing as a "snapshot of process." Using your terminology, there's no such thing as observer *moment.* If anything, there can only be observer *intervals.* Heartland: >>> It seems that you first assume, "I don't die every night" and then >>> tailor your >>> definition of death and all the other statements about survival to >>> fit that >>> assumption. It should be the other way around. Only after you find >>> out what death >>> is first you can begin answering questions such as, "When do I die?" Stathis: >> That's the very question I'm asking: how would you define death? >> Given that we can agree on whether or not criterion X has occurred, >> how do we then move on to decide whether or not X is a good >> criterion for death? First we should decide what death means and that will inform us when death occurs, not the other way around. (Lee, I completely disagree with you on this point too.) Definition of death should follow from a definition of life. Life is a physical (dynamic) process (its activity, to be precise), not a (static) pattern. Absence of that activity is death even though I realize this is not immediately obvious. Lee to Stathis: > Notions such as "maybe we die every instant" or "maybe we die > whenever our EEGs go flat", are misconceived, and very harmful > for understanding. Let's get serious! You can't get out of paradoxes > by making up definitions! Paradoxes indicate that there's something wrong with your definitions, assumptions or derivation. Correcting definitions so they don't lead to paradoxes later is exactly the right course of action. Stathis to Lee: >>>> The alternative situation >>>> is to have memories removed and false memories implanted while you >>>> are asleep. If this were to happen to a sufficient extent tonight, >>>> then it would be equivalent to death. Heartland: >>> Wouldn't you agree that this is an arbitrary definition of death? Stathis: >> The arbitrariness of the definition of death - yours and mine - is >> what is at issue. Yes. You and many others define it in terms of likeness. I define it in terms of utility. I argue that utility has priority over likeness as the latter is a consequence of the former. Survival should be about preservation of our ability to derive benefit rather than about preservation of likeness. Heartland: >>> Wouldn't you agree that this is an arbitrary definition of death? After all, >>> every >>> portion of Lee's body would function properly and without >>> interruptions, including >>> the brain. Would it really make sense to say Lee died during the >>> night even though >>> Lee's body (all of it) has remained in perfect health throughout the >>> night? Would >>> you be successful in convincing any practicing physician to issue a >>> death certificate for the "deceased?" Stathis: >> Losing all your memories and personality would be like the end stage >> of dementia. If you knew you were going to wake up tomorrow in this >> state it might be a little bit better than not waking up at all, but >> not much better. The status of these patients in hospital is similar >> to the status of patients in a persistent vegetative state, except >> that there is sometimes a hope that the latter might recover. But the guy who wakes up can still score 136 on an IQ test and remember exactly what happened 20 years ago. His body and mind are still healthy, yet you argue that death certificate should have been issued. Stathis to Lee: >>>> So you could physically die but survive mentally, Heartland: >>> Then I'm afraid you believe in soul. Mental supervenes on the >>> physical. If the >>> physical is no more, the mental is no more too. Stathis: >> I believe that the mind can survive in different hardware. Okay, that's better. Stathis: You have agreed to as much when you allowed that swapping out the atoms in >> your brain for "different" atoms does not necessarily kill you. Yes. Stathis: >> However, you claim that even brief interruption of the activity in >> the brain *does* kill you. If the mental supervenes on the physical, >> and the same atoms are going about their business in the same way a >> moment later, then the same mental process should be being >> implemented despite the interruption. Obviously you're using the word "same" as in "same type," not as in "same instance." You're not showing inconsistencies within my own argument, but merely pointing out that this argument is inconsistent with your beliefs. What I'm saying is supposed to be inconsistent with your beliefs. :-) Stathis: That is, if the >> post-interruption physical state is exactly the same as if it would >> have been had there been no interruption, and yet the interruption >> gives rise to a different person, then the difference must be due to >> some non-physical factor. Worse than that, the difference must be >> due to some non-mental factor as well, since if the physical state >> is the same the mental state must also be the same. So the >> interruption causes a non-physical, non-mental change which results >> in one person dying and another being born in their place. Even if >> this were coherent (and I don't believe it is), it would imply the >> existence of a soul. Here's the deal. If you assume "same" to mean "same type," you can accuse me of a belief in soul and be "right" within your own framework of assumptions. If I assume "same" to mean "same instance," I can show you (and I think I did) that you believe in souls too and I'm going to be "right" as well. Of course, I knew from the beginning that we would be locked in the stalemate like this which is precisely why I offered you "master and servant" scenario to think about right at the beginning of our discussion hoping you would reevaluate your ideas about what it means to survive. Should survival reduce to preservation of some degree of my likeness (type), as Lee suggests, or should it reduce to preservation of my (current instance's) ability to derive benefit which is what I advocate? In other words, what should survive and why? H. From velvethum at hotmail.com Thu May 3 02:29:24 2007 From: velvethum at hotmail.com (Heartland) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 22:29:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><001801c78c6a$4b7a0b60$06084e0c@MyComputer><0ae501c78c7d$81e4bac0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0af701c78cd3$b980c2c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Lee: > One needs to phrase "I-now" and "I-before" much much more carefully > to avoid misunderstanding. I can see why John got upset at that > phrase. But if you had written instead, "Just because an entity legally known > and univerally recognized as Mr. X at time 1 believes that entity > universally recognized at time 0 survived, does not make it true". > > Do you or do you not concede that this would have been clearer, and > would have very possibly prevented John Clark from misunderstanding > you? I'm sure the heckler would still call for my immediate stoning even if I used your phrase. It should be abundantly clear by now that it doesn't really matter what I say at this point. :-) H. From hkhenson at rogers.com Thu May 3 02:40:33 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 22:40:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] War and technological progress In-Reply-To: <0aea01c78c83$1d6a5220$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> <0acb01c78c78$93e2d8b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070502223811.041ddc10@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 11:25 PM 5/1/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: snip >And if the West were to stop exporting filth around the world, stop >corrupting the Muslim youth with everything from clothing styles to >bad attitudes, tendentious movies, acceptance of homosexuality, >defiance of parents, and so on and on, and also were to >become pure isolationists, stop being on Israel's side, profusely >apologize for placing troops on the Sacred Soil of Saudi Arabia >to repel aggression in Kuwait, etc., yes, Al Qaeda might very well >turn its attention elsewhere. EP theory says no. There is nothing that the Western countries can do that will keep them from being targets of attacks by Al Qaeda. The drive comes from the local situation. Keith From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Thu May 3 02:11:57 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 19:11:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] war and technological progress Message-ID: <602833.18952.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> BillK wrote: I don't do political discussion. So Bush is irrelevant to my comments. > I respect your right to not engage in political discussion but I do think politics & presidents in the real world have *much* to do with whether or not we get the enlightened Transhumanist world we are hoping to one day live in. I believe some of the people on this list think there is a "purity" that comes from avoiding current political issues and leadership. BillK continues: And my comments are not intended to justify any war. Just the facts. Many people are so overpowered by the horror of war that they refuse to recognise that many technical advances come out of the pressure cooker of wartime. WWII was remarkable in this respect. A bit of googling will bring out a list of stuff that the current war is producing. Some pretty unbelievable stuff is in there. Driverless cars, for dog's sake! See: Darpa projects include robot vehicles, computer language translation, unmanned air vehicles for observation and combat, swarms of bot devices, laser weapons, remote surgery, many battlefield medical improvements, etc. Agreed, wars concentrate on weapons technology. But radar was weapons tech, so was jet planes, so was O&M for controlling factory production. When the war stops, all the tech gets reused for civilians. It doesn't justify the war or the many deaths. But new tech arrives quicker when a nation is perceived as being in a fight for survival. > The list you gave is quite amazing. I think robot cars could save many lives considering how many humans (drunk or sober) tend to drive. It feels like every time I turn around I hear of another person who was killed while driving their car. I'm truly sick of it. When it comes to new tech coming down the pike don't forget all the effort and money going into the domestic "war on terror." The ability for computer software to successfully recognize and track people would have come about anyway, but things are moving along much faster due to the current climate. It is the implementation of some of these technologies which concerns me as an American citizen who values his civil liberties. I remember a Transhumanist friend telling me how bothered he was by all the "so-called" technological progress, which ultimately he viewed as meaningless. The people of his generation would still be "dying on time" due to anti-aging research being neglected, and so what was the point? In a very sarcastic tone he would say "they should all be buried with their favorite damn gadgets, since this is where the world's research and development money was spent!" John Grigg --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Thu May 3 02:26:18 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 19:26:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20070430092816.04586720@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: <861121.46464.qm@web35602.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Natasha Vita-More wrote: I see what you (Brett) are doing as something different but sharing some similarities. You posted on a topic that you are passionate about. The difference with you and me is that you are blaming and making accusations and insulting list members. I would not do this because even if people do not agree with me, I do my best to accept the differences. You are also different than me in the way you handled this. Instead of approaching the topic from a constructive inclusive manner, you made assumptions and accusations. This never sits well with list members. And, finally, I do not like is the content of your (Brett) response to the list moderator (Eugene) requesting that the thread be killed. You made a threat and does not sit well with me and I'm sure others. But putting that aside, what do other list members think of this thread? Lastly, I do think this is a topic that warrants objective examination and search for resolution. I invite you to think about this. In hopes of resolution rather than slamming doors > I"m grateful to Natasha for weighing in on this matter. I personally feel Brett and I had the right to discuss what we did and not be stopped. But on the other hand Eugene Leitl is a moderator and a prominent list contributor who I respect (and I will add, like). I suppose I thought I had a better feel for Eugene's personality (I have never met him in person) and I was surprised by the killthread order which seemed to come almost out of the blue. I cringed as I read Brett's response to Eugene. I generally really enjoy Brett's posts for their insights on world politics and where the U.S. fits in and so I was very sad to see Brett temporarily lose his cool. But I realize that can happen to almost anyone. Natasha wrote: >In hopes of resolution rather than slamming doors I also hope we can all learn from this and that no grudges will be held. Sincerely, John Grigg --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Thu May 3 03:06:28 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 20:06:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: <1177914296.3449.262.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Fred C. Moulton ... > > > On 4/29/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > > > > > I had the good fortune while I was a Christian conservative... ... > > As far as I know there has not been a study of the religious background > of participants on this email list. However I would not be surprised > that there would be quite a few from fundamentalist backgrounds. And I > think there is a reason for this. > > My hypothesis is that fundamentalist religious movements often have a > strong emphasis on be doctrinally correct and thus place a high value on > study of the text of that religion... Fred Fred these are some very astute insights, thanks. As a former fundamentalist christian, now atheist, my view is very close to yours, with an addition. In any debate, the participants must find some basic agreement, without which there can be no meaningful discourse. In dealing with religious beliefs, I witness so much meaningless debate because there is disagreement on a most basic question. This question is not whether or not the belief is true, but rather what is the nature of the belief. The basic question upon which the participants must agree is this: does it matter whether or not a belief is true? Most of us here have a fundamentalist's outlook: of course it matters. But to many non-fundamentalist believers, it really does not matter whether or not a belief is true. The terms true and false do not really apply to their religion. For most, religion is a philosophy. It would be like asking is democrat or republican true? Those terms do not apply, these are philosophies. They hold some true and some false notions, with much gray area. A philosophy would not be like a science, in which true or false are applicable and it matters. Fundamentalists treat religion the same as a science. After thinking about this for years, long after realizing that the religion I knew was not true, I finally realized that it matters to me if my religion is true. I love true things. Religion should be treated as any scientific theory. In that sense, altho I am now an atheist, I still have the fundamentalist's outlook, ja? spike From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Thu May 3 03:01:47 2007 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 23:01:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Putting God to Rest Message-ID: <311064.76726.qm@web37201.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi Samantha, I debated replying to your points as I feel I don't want to bore people and I don't feel like dealing with meta:) Here are my last thoughts and hope we can continue this offlist. I did enjoy your points and would like to discuss it further. Thanks for your input, Anna:) >I have no need to debate a subject I have studied >long and hard and reached completion on. I certainly >have no need to "debate" with those who believe >nonsense such as bible inerrancy that it is clearly >erroneous or bizarre notions at blatant contradiction >with .... There are a lot of people that believe in nonsense whether it be in the field of philosophy, science, math, physics, psychology, the inerrancy is taught to people. I could see why you would not respect someone that is harmfully teaching something. I believe most on this list would not allow anybody to teach inerrancy. >Depends on the "Religion". If particular beliefs are >nonsense and even harmful nonsense then not saying so >can be tacit support. This does not mean that it >makes sense to say so in all circumstances. I agree but i'm not sure how you are using the word "Religion". Many people have their beliefs as to what religion represents to them. I believe as of date, that there are four factors when it comes to religion. The books, (scriptures, texts,writings, etc.), the preachers, the believers and the "unindentified beliefs". >>>>What business do you have speaking about God and >>>>what God might object to? >>>I have taken the time to learn theology so I feel I >>>have every business discusing God with my mother. >>Not the same thing. Context was lost. If you act >>contrary to your own understanding that is not a >>good thing. If you do not believe in God and yet >>speak about what God wants then that is a clear >>contradiction. Yes I agree, I should have been more clear about that. We can still have rational debate about what scriptures make sense and we can still discuss what is being preached. Considering that she is an open minded individual, we can even discuss Transhumanism, cryonics, future technology etc. We don't necessarily discuss "God" as a spirit, as our images don't reflect in that area:) >You said at one time that you are not a believer. >Then you speak as if you are or see nothing >problematic about being one. So I am a bit confused >where you stand on the matter or in my attempts to >understand your position. No one has the right to >automatic respect. Respect is earned or it is a sham >meaning nothing. Within any religious realm people believe in Something as opposed to Nothing. They become religious for that fact. Nothing means to me, "it's of no interest to me". The belief in unindentified beliefs as opposed to the disbelief of unindentified beliefs. I can relate to both. I did give the example that Isaac Newton was a scientist yet had religious beliefs. I respect both sides and feel that religious or not, it has no relevancy to this list. >I don't know why you want to go down this path of "if >X then Y" about hypotheticals not remotely in >evidence. I speak for myself not for the list. Much >of religion is reprehensible. That is my experience >and very considered opinion. It came from many years >of my life diligently exploring the subject both >theoretically and as a serious practitioner. How dare >you tell me that my considered opinion is >disrespectful of those who believe! What a cheap >shot. I didn't want to go down any path of "if X then Y". I was trying to get the point accross about the common courtesy and respect for other people's beliefs. I apologize if that's the way you took it, it wasn't my intention. (I try not do cheap shots as it's against my religion:) >Presumably you grew up in it so you are perfectly >aware of such. Start with the doctrine of eternal >damnation for one measly lifetime where the proper >dogma was somehow not properly believed and go on >from there. To create imperfect beings and then >punish them eternally for not being perfect is about >as definitive of Evil as it gets. I brought up the fact that preachers in religious orders may/can/will/want to/etc., be harmful and may even create evil within the realm of unindentified beliefs. That does not mean that all religions, beliefs, and books cause such beliefs. >I think you may have an odd notion of what respect >entails or how and when it should be shown. If I have >found through my own study that X is ridiculous I >would no be doing anyone any favors by refusing to >say so. It certainly would not be any sign >of "respect". The world of the Enlightenment in under >attack in the US by many religious organizations. >Such automatic "respect" could lead to the >destruction of much we hold dear. I know that I respect many on the list no matter what are their "unindentified beliefs". Obviously I find many on the list to be rational. In that, how they choose to label their Enlightment is irrelevant to me as long as ridicule on either side is taken out of the equation. There is no discussion within ridicule. I read that in psychology that ridicule is used to enhance one's own lack of self-confidence, i'm not sure if it is correct, but that's what I heard. >I have no "blatant hate" and it is very hateful of >you to say I do. Your responses seem contradictory to >me. Yes, my apology, (damn emotions:). Although at times I feel that your comments are rather harsh, I find your points rational and clear. >No you were not. You were telling atheists in effect >to shut up. Actually I was telling both sides to shut up and stop ridiculing. What's the point? Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail at http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/try_beta?.intl=ca From randall at randallsquared.com Thu May 3 03:49:51 2007 From: randall at randallsquared.com (Randall Randall) Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 23:49:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <0A79BD0F-1CDC-474C-B2DB-EE8E23F0345A@randallsquared.com> On May 2, 2007, at 11:06 PM, spike wrote: > In any debate, the participants must find some basic agreement, > without > which there can be no meaningful discourse. In dealing with religious > beliefs, I witness so much meaningless debate because there is > disagreement > on a most basic question. This question is not whether or not the > belief is > true, but rather what is the nature of the belief. The basic > question upon > which the participants must agree is this: does it matter whether > or not a > belief is true? > > Most of us here have a fundamentalist's outlook: of course it > matters. But > to many non-fundamentalist believers, it really does not matter > whether or > not a belief is true. The terms true and false do not really apply > to their > religion. For most, religion is a philosophy. It would be like > asking is > democrat or republican true? Those terms do not apply, these are > philosophies. They hold some true and some false notions, with > much gray > area. A philosophy would not be like a science, in which true or > false are > applicable and it matters. Fundamentalists treat religion the same > as a > science. > > After thinking about this for years, long after realizing that the > religion > I knew was not true, I finally realized that it matters to me if my > religion > is true. I love true things. Religion should be treated as any > scientific > theory. In that sense, altho I am now an atheist, I still have the > fundamentalist's outlook, ja? > This is a wonderful post, and if there's still a post of the week or month or whatever, I nominate this one. Thanks, Spike! -- Randall Randall "This is a fascinating question, right up there with whether rocks fall because of gravity or being dropped, and whether 3+5=5+3 because addition is commutative or because they both equal 8." - Scott Aaronson From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 3 04:26:34 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 23:26:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1177914296.3449.262.camel@localhost.localdomain> <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502232030.022ade40@satx.rr.com> At 08:06 PM 5/2/2007 -0700, spike wrote: >After thinking about this for years, long after realizing that the religion >I knew was not true, I finally realized that it matters to me if my religion >is true. I love true things. Religion should be treated as any scientific >theory. In that sense, altho I am now an atheist, I still have the >fundamentalist's outlook, ja? You don't have to have been a fundamentalist. I discussed something similar about being brought up Catholic (in my book FEROCIOUS MINDS): < Half a century and more ago, I was raised within an Australian working class family so fervently Roman Catholic, as vectored through a clergy steeped in Irish tradition, that its beliefs and chosen way of life seem to me now to have verged on derangement. The often vicious moralizing constraints of Catholicism--the kind I was exposed to from pulpit and primary school nuns, and later from Jesuit and Christian Brothers, and later again in the French-influenced seminary where I spent my last two years of school, aged 15 to 17--had the usual double impact. While I managed to avoid being sexually molested, still my relationships with my own body and with other people were at least somewhat harmed by wretched men and women terrified of the flesh yet apparently obsessed by it, a sorry saga that is now so boring and ubiquitous in the laments of Catholic and ex-Catholic writers world-wide that I will not tire you with it. At the same time, this ancient tradition of purportedly rational belief--Aristotle! Aquinas! Duns Scotus!--provided a durable framework for viewing the world as a place that made sense, that had moral depth and called out a certain strength of mind, if not always of heart, in those persuaded (or more often, in the first instance, brainwashed) by its principles. The odd thing about such an upbringing is that after you break free you retain a background metaphysics (think of James Joyce) that prevails even when you come to understand that in fact the universe is *not* intentional, was not designed by a higher intelligence. That it is, in fact, neither benign nor malign but just *there*, evolving in the darkness, cooling into eternity. Absurdly, you tend to respond to the world with an optimism that is strictly unfounded. (Of course, some luckless souls, like nauseated Jean-Paul Sartre or the Australian novelist Gerald Murnane, respond instead with a deeply irrational and lifelong terror. Curiously, theological fright can be a source of considerable art as well as personal heartache, or so I have observed without, I'm relieved to say, experiencing it.) Luckily, we live at a time when science and technology are yielding solutions to many of the miseries of human life. Perhaps, indeed, that will eventually include an answer to our otherwise inevitable mortality. Confidence in the human prospect is not now as fatuous or gratuitous as it was a thousand years ago, and is more firmly grounded than the famous optimism of the encyclopedic Enlightenment in the second half of the eighteenth century, crushed prematurely by Romanticism and the Terror in France, and then more dreadfully by murderous totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century. Plainly, for an evolved consciousness in an uncaring universe, no `technical fix' for the drawbacks of life can solve these deep metaphysical conundrums. Still, the incessant biological decay that now causes us to age and die might be remedied within the next half century, granting us, or more plausibly our children or grandchildren, the space, time and basic comfort and security to work our way toward some answers that are not wholly contrived out of self-delusion. We find ourselves in an epoch I believe might become a full reawakening of the Enlightenment's best hopes. > Damien Broderick From sti at pooq.com Thu May 3 04:33:00 2007 From: sti at pooq.com (Stirling Westrup) Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 00:33:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <463965FC.3050009@pooq.com> spike wrote: > After thinking about this for years, long after realizing that the religion > I knew was not true, I finally realized that it matters to me if my religion > is true. I love true things. Religion should be treated as any scientific > theory. In that sense, altho I am now an atheist, I still have the > fundamentalist's outlook, ja? This jives very well with my own outlook. When I posted earlier that I am one who is willing to be proven wrong in an argument, I began to wonder why I was different. I think it stems from a determination at a very young age that I want what I believe to be true. Not, mind you, that I want to falsely believe that I am right. I took the motto "Truth, at any cost." and have pretty much stuck to it. If someone proves me wrong in a debate, he had done me a service, and I tend to look at it that way. From sjatkins at mac.com Thu May 3 05:11:43 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 22:11:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] War and technological progress In-Reply-To: References: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> Message-ID: <46396F0F.3070301@mac.com> BillK wrote: > On 5/1/07, Thomas wrote: > >> That's a good point, but I didn't say all the war funding diminished >> medical and technological progress. Still, these increased developments >> cannot be vast enough to justify the deaths and the enormous >> disproportion of the allocations. I doubt this war will prove as >> proportionally fruitful for progress as WWII. We had much better >> leadership then. >> >> > > >> Does your general "Not true!" mean you think Bush a good leader for us? >> Does it mean you think war the best choice for achieving progress? >> Does it mean you think me seriously wrong or deceitful? Or do you >> perhaps think Bush impeachable for mixing politics and religion on the >> stem cell issue? -- Thomas >> >> > > > I don't do political discussion. So Bush is irrelevant to my comments. > > And my comments are not intended to justify any war. > > Just the facts. Many people are so overpowered by the horror of war > that they refuse to recognise that many technical advances come out of > the pressure cooker of wartime. > And many do not. Also wars are notoriously disruptive economically. We won't even get into the lives lost and all of those potentials gone. So why is this such an important point to you? If it is going nowhere and is not balance with other factors and costs then I don't really see much point. Driverless cars were being worked on quite separately from this war and I think your bit of googling can show you as much. What Darpa projects include and what would be and in many cases was being done otherwise could be explored if this was an objective discussion. I do not agree that new tech arrives quicker generally through war. And we most certainly are not in a fight for survival. - samantha > WWII was remarkable in this respect. > > A bit of googling will bring out a list of stuff that the current war > is producing. Some pretty unbelievable stuff is in there. Driverless > cars, for dog's sake! > > See: > > Darpa projects include robot vehicles, computer language translation, > unmanned air > vehicles for observation and combat, swarms of bot devices, laser > weapons, remote surgery, many battlefield medical improvements, etc. > > Agreed, wars concentrate on weapons technology. But radar was weapons > tech, so was jet planes, so was O&M for controlling factory > production. When the war stops, all the tech gets reused for > civilians. > > It doesn't justify the war or the many deaths. But new tech arrives > quicker when a nation is perceived as being in a fight for survival. > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From sjatkins at mac.com Thu May 3 05:24:35 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 22:24:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Introduction to the Philosophy of Liberty In-Reply-To: <0b4701c78d0a$bccba300$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <0b4701c78d0a$bccba300$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <46397213.8000303@mac.com> Lee Corbin wrote: > Amara writes > > >> After following a very random thought today, I checked in on the ISIL >> website news, and encountered this simple, charming animation "Introduction >> to the Philosophy of Liberty", written by, yes, the same Ken Schoolland. >> >> http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.html >> Ten minutes Flash Animation. >> >> Many basic principles, such as self-ownershop, as seen in this animation, >> are at the root of transhumanist thought. I appreciated how they >> carefully constructed the philosophical principles, building block by >> building block (as they should ... :-) ). >> > > Well, I started to watch that with an anticipation of disappointment, because > I have become increasingly disillusioned by the hyper-individualist ethos of > not only many of those around me, but to which in some measure I myself > had at various times succumbed. > > But I was greatly reassured. Just as you said, it carefully laid the foundations > of human liberty, and emphasized that our lives are our *own*, and no one > else's. It went on to explain how our time and the products of time (our > privately created property) are also our own, and cannot be taken from us > by force without also taking our liberty. > > Unfortunately, about two-thirds of the way through, I began to notice that > something very important was missing. Nothing whatsoever was being said > about the Rule of Law. Yes, private property was emphasized, and rightly > so. But the other equally important foundation of progress and civilization > was not mentioned EVEN ONCE in the ten minute show. > > Nothing at all was said or implied about just how obedience to democratically > enacted laws is to be achieved! Rational law is not the same as "democratically enacted law". The latter can be and often are extremely deleterious and anti-liberty. Take the democratically enacted laws declaring war on some drugs as a case in point. In ten minutes it probably would not be possible to say what liberty consistent law would be like in much detail much less how such laws are to be enforced. You cannot meaningfully conflate the vast majority of "law breakers" as the law is today with murderers and thieves. Anti-anarchist arguments would need a lot cleaner and more careful development than the swipe presented here. There is nothing in not initiating force that say a gang initiating force should not be forcefully stopped. That their are specialist for counteracting the initiation of force changes things not at all. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Thu May 3 05:33:35 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 22:33:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] War and technological progress In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20070502223811.041ddc10@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> References: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> <0acb01c78c78$93e2d8b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <5.1.0.14.0.20070502223811.041ddc10@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <4639742F.6040306@mac.com> Keith Henson wrote: > At 11:25 PM 5/1/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: > > snip > > >> And if the West were to stop exporting filth around the world, stop >> corrupting the Muslim youth with everything from clothing styles to >> bad attitudes, tendentious movies, acceptance of homosexuality, >> defiance of parents, and so on and on, and also were to >> become pure isolationists, stop being on Israel's side, profusely >> apologize for placing troops on the Sacred Soil of Saudi Arabia >> to repel aggression in Kuwait, etc., yes, Al Qaeda might very well >> turn its attention elsewhere. >> > > EP theory says no. There is nothing that the Western countries can do that > will keep them from being targets of attacks by Al Qaeda. The drive comes > from the local situation. > > I would rather know what we can do to keep our government or some within it from stealing all our freedoms after staging things like 911 to stampede the people. Focus on Al Qaeda is studiously missing the point and letting the evil wizard[s] behind the curtain continue. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Thu May 3 05:42:16 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 22:42:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <46397638.5010008@mac.com> spike wrote: >> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Fred C. Moulton >> > ... > >>>> On 4/29/07, Lee Corbin wrote: >>>> >>>> I had the good fortune while I was a Christian conservative... >>>> > ... > >> As far as I know there has not been a study of the religious background >> of participants on this email list. However I would not be surprised >> that there would be quite a few from fundamentalist backgrounds. And I >> think there is a reason for this. >> >> My hypothesis is that fundamentalist religious movements often have a >> strong emphasis on be doctrinally correct and thus place a high value on >> study of the text of that religion... Fred >> > > > > Fred these are some very astute insights, thanks. As a former > fundamentalist christian, now atheist, my view is very close to yours, with > an addition. > > In any debate, the participants must find some basic agreement, without > which there can be no meaningful discourse. In dealing with religious > beliefs, I witness so much meaningless debate because there is disagreement > on a most basic question. This question is not whether or not the belief is > true, but rather what is the nature of the belief. The basic question upon > which the participants must agree is this: does it matter whether or not a > belief is true? > > Most of us here have a fundamentalist's outlook: of course it matters. But > to many non-fundamentalist believers, it really does not matter whether or > not a belief is true. The terms true and false do not really apply to their > religion. For most, religion is a philosophy. It would be like asking is > democrat or republican true? Those terms do not apply, these are > philosophies. They hold some true and some false notions, with much gray > area. A philosophy would not be like a science, in which true or false are > applicable and it matters. Fundamentalists treat religion the same as a > science. > > After thinking about this for years, long after realizing that the religion > I knew was not true, I finally realized that it matters to me if my religion > is true. I love true things. Religion should be treated as any scientific > theory. In that sense, altho I am now an atheist, I still have the > fundamentalist's outlook, ja? > > hahaha. Not in the least. I would need to assume that the people that look at religion as really "philosophy" and that it would seem also assume that philosophy is not really philosophy and doesn't really require a love of truth and search for it but is more some rather murky "philosophy of life" are in fact the correct and most mature and "right" ones. But this is again as assumption of right vs. wrong and even true view versus false so this is no escape from your assumed position that to care about truth is to be a fundamentalist. I wish that fundamentalists cared about the truth. I do not believe that the majority of them do at all. They care only to assert that they have the only Truth while not needing to understand or inquire at all. This is not at all the same thing. But I am very sure you know that. - s From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 3 06:45:53 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 16:45:53 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: References: <092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <001801c78c6a$4b7a0b60$06084e0c@MyComputer> <0ae501c78c7d$81e4bac0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <20070502104206.GD17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 03/05/07, Heartland wrote: > > Stathis to Heartland: > >> One of the problems in this debate is that the terminology can seem > to > >> imply the conclusion which is at issue in the first place. This is > >> where I find the concept of the observer moment useful. An observer > >> moment, or OM, unambiguously specifies an instance of conscious > >> experience. Even if all hell breaks loose with duplications, we can > > Eugen to Stathis: > > It's hardly a moment, though. "Conscious experience", whatever that > means. > > implies a trajectory segment long enough for higher-order processes to > > happen, which puts it into some 100 ms country. > > What Eugen points out is, of course, exactly what I've been trying to > point out > to you (Stathis) and others several times before by saying that any > process (and > minds are undoubtedly processes, not patterns) is undefined across time > intervals = > 0. This means that there's no such thing as a "snapshot of process." Using > your > terminology, there's no such thing as observer *moment.* If anything, > there can > only be observer *intervals.* That's OK, my main purpose in making this point was to avoid confusion when the pronouns and proper names seem to refer to the "same" person when the whole argument is over what should qualify as "same", so you can consider the observer as extended over time as long as no-one is claiming there is some significant change during the interval. Having said that, it seems you are assuming as fundamental to physics that time is continuous and linear, whereas as far as I am aware discrete, and/or non-linear (i.e. block universe) time is consistent with all experimental observations. And even if it could be shown that time is continuous and linear, you still have the problem of how to conceptualise an infinitesimal interval, during which by definition there is no room for any change. First we should decide what death means and that will inform us when death > occurs, > not the other way around. (Lee, I completely disagree with you on this > point too.) > Definition of death should > follow from a definition of life. Life is a physical (dynamic) process > (its > activity, to be precise), not a (static) pattern. Absence of that activity > is death > even though I realize this is not immediately obvious. This is the problem. A lot of people will say that temporary suspension of the processes that characterise life is *not* death. I would go as far as suggesting that the great majority of people would say this. Where does this leave you with your definition? Who decides what death actually is? Stathis: > >> The arbitrariness of the definition of death - yours and mine - is > >> what is at issue. > > Yes. You and many others define it in terms of likeness. I define it in > terms of > utility. I argue that utility has priority over likeness as the latter is > a > consequence of the former. Survival should be about preservation of our > ability to > derive benefit rather than about preservation of likeness. You are assuming that which is at issue in this statement. I would say that what you are calling preservation of likeness *is* survival. To put it slightly differently, if it's only my likeness that survives after a period of interrupted neural activity, then it's also only my likeness that survives a period of normal neural activity. You have to come up with a reason why the interruption should change anything. Stathis: > >> I believe that the mind can survive in different hardware. > > Okay, that's better. > > Stathis: > You have agreed to as much when you allowed that swapping out the atoms in > >> your brain for "different" atoms does not necessarily kill you. > > Yes. > > Stathis: > >> However, you claim that even brief interruption of the activity in > >> the brain *does* kill you. If the mental supervenes on the physical, > >> and the same atoms are going about their business in the same way a > >> moment later, then the same mental process should be being > >> implemented despite the interruption. > > Obviously you're using the word "same" as in "same type," not as in "same > instance." You're not showing inconsistencies within my own argument, but > merely > pointing out that this argument is inconsistent with your beliefs. What > I'm saying > is supposed to be inconsistent with your beliefs. :-) You seem to be agreeing that there might be absolutely no difference between the instance and the type, other than the past history. Suppose you discover that yesterday there was a nanosecond interruption in your brain processes with the result that today you are a different instance of Heartland. Heartland1's family are very upset at this news, and out of pity for them you (Heartland2) decide to sacrifice your life to bring back Heartland1 by means of time travel. So you send someone back into the past to prevent the brain interruption which caused Heartland1's death. As a result - nothing physical or mental changes. Your brain is exactly the same, and your thoughts are exactly the same, because the brief interruption (although it killed you) did not result in any observable change the next day. However, despite this, the original Heartland1 is now still alive and Heartland2 is dead. Heartland1 and his family rejoice, while Heartland2 doesn't do anything - he is dead and gone. So you could be alive or dead, one person or a different person, with no physical or mental change whatsoever. Isn't this a little strange? Stathis: > That is, if the > >> post-interruption physical state is exactly the same as if it would > >> have been had there been no interruption, and yet the interruption > >> gives rise to a different person, then the difference must be due to > >> some non-physical factor. Worse than that, the difference must be > >> due to some non-mental factor as well, since if the physical state > >> is the same the mental state must also be the same. So the > >> interruption causes a non-physical, non-mental change which results > >> in one person dying and another being born in their place. Even if > >> this were coherent (and I don't believe it is), it would imply the > >> existence of a soul. > > Here's the deal. If you assume "same" to mean "same type," you can accuse > me of a > belief in soul and be "right" within your own framework of assumptions. If > I assume > "same" to mean "same instance," I can show you (and I think I did) that > you > believe in souls too and I'm going to be "right" as well. Of course, I > knew from > the beginning that we would be locked in the stalemate like this which is > precisely > why I offered you "master and servant" scenario to think about right at > the > beginning of our discussion hoping you would reevaluate your ideas about > what it > means to survive. Should survival reduce to preservation of some degree of > my > likeness (type), as Lee suggests, or should it reduce to preservation of > my > (current instance's) > ability to derive benefit which is what I advocate? In other words, what > should > survive and why? Within the framework you are proposing, I argue that it is impossible to distinguish between an instance and a type. I could claim that your instance changes whenever you observe a red light and you would have no counterargument that could not also be used against your claim that your instance changes whenever your brain activity is temporarily interrupted. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 3 07:03:15 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 17:03:15 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <1177914296.3449.262.camel@localhost.localdomain> <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 03/05/07, spike wrote: Most of us here have a fundamentalist's outlook: of course it matters. But > to many non-fundamentalist believers, it really does not matter whether or > not a belief is true. The terms true and false do not really apply to > their > religion. For most, religion is a philosophy. It would be like asking is > democrat or republican true? Those terms do not apply, these are > philosophies. They hold some true and some false notions, with much gray > area. A philosophy would not be like a science, in which true or false > are > applicable and it matters. Fundamentalists treat religion the same as a > science. Liberal theologians sometimes treat religion as if it is obviously just fantasy: we know that there are no virgin births, people don't rise from the dead, etc. (at least not 2000 years ago), but they are inspiring stories nonetheless, like the mythology of any culture. Would you say that these people are more or less honest than the fundamentalists, who after all have to convince themselves of something a rational person would not believe and call it "faith"? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Thu May 3 07:35:29 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 00:35:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Putting God to Rest In-Reply-To: <311064.76726.qm@web37201.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <805521.57863.qm@web35613.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I just wanted to say to Anna Taylor (and anyone else who is interested) that the Mormon Transhumanist Association website would be a good potential place to continue this discussion. You certainly don't have to be a Mormon or even a Theist to post there. http://transfigurism.org/community/ Best wishes, John Grigg Anna Taylor wrote: Hi Samantha, I debated replying to your points as I feel I don't want to bore people and I don't feel like dealing with meta:) Here are my last thoughts and hope we can continue this offlist. I did enjoy your points and would like to discuss it further. Thanks for your input, Anna:) >I have no need to debate a subject I have studied >long and hard and reached completion on. I certainly >have no need to "debate" with those who believe >nonsense such as bible inerrancy that it is clearly >erroneous or bizarre notions at blatant contradiction >with .... There are a lot of people that believe in nonsense whether it be in the field of philosophy, science, math, physics, psychology, the inerrancy is taught to people. I could see why you would not respect someone that is harmfully teaching something. I believe most on this list would not allow anybody to teach inerrancy. >Depends on the "Religion". If particular beliefs are >nonsense and even harmful nonsense then not saying so >can be tacit support. This does not mean that it >makes sense to say so in all circumstances. I agree but i'm not sure how you are using the word "Religion". Many people have their beliefs as to what religion represents to them. I believe as of date, that there are four factors when it comes to religion. The books, (scriptures, texts,writings, etc.), the preachers, the believers and the "unindentified beliefs". >>>>What business do you have speaking about God and >>>>what God might object to? >>>I have taken the time to learn theology so I feel I >>>have every business discusing God with my mother. >>Not the same thing. Context was lost. If you act >>contrary to your own understanding that is not a >>good thing. If you do not believe in God and yet >>speak about what God wants then that is a clear >>contradiction. Yes I agree, I should have been more clear about that. We can still have rational debate about what scriptures make sense and we can still discuss what is being preached. Considering that she is an open minded individual, we can even discuss Transhumanism, cryonics, future technology etc. We don't necessarily discuss "God" as a spirit, as our images don't reflect in that area:) >You said at one time that you are not a believer. >Then you speak as if you are or see nothing >problematic about being one. So I am a bit confused >where you stand on the matter or in my attempts to >understand your position. No one has the right to >automatic respect. Respect is earned or it is a sham >meaning nothing. Within any religious realm people believe in Something as opposed to Nothing. They become religious for that fact. Nothing means to me, "it's of no interest to me". The belief in unindentified beliefs as opposed to the disbelief of unindentified beliefs. I can relate to both. I did give the example that Isaac Newton was a scientist yet had religious beliefs. I respect both sides and feel that religious or not, it has no relevancy to this list. >I don't know why you want to go down this path of "if >X then Y" about hypotheticals not remotely in >evidence. I speak for myself not for the list. Much >of religion is reprehensible. That is my experience >and very considered opinion. It came from many years >of my life diligently exploring the subject both >theoretically and as a serious practitioner. How dare >you tell me that my considered opinion is >disrespectful of those who believe! What a cheap >shot. I didn't want to go down any path of "if X then Y". I was trying to get the point accross about the common courtesy and respect for other people's beliefs. I apologize if that's the way you took it, it wasn't my intention. (I try not do cheap shots as it's against my religion:) >Presumably you grew up in it so you are perfectly >aware of such. Start with the doctrine of eternal >damnation for one measly lifetime where the proper >dogma was somehow not properly believed and go on >from there. To create imperfect beings and then >punish them eternally for not being perfect is about >as definitive of Evil as it gets. I brought up the fact that preachers in religious orders may/can/will/want to/etc., be harmful and may even create evil within the realm of unindentified beliefs. That does not mean that all religions, beliefs, and books cause such beliefs. >I think you may have an odd notion of what respect >entails or how and when it should be shown. If I have >found through my own study that X is ridiculous I >would no be doing anyone any favors by refusing to >say so. It certainly would not be any sign >of "respect". The world of the Enlightenment in under >attack in the US by many religious organizations. >Such automatic "respect" could lead to the >destruction of much we hold dear. I know that I respect many on the list no matter what are their "unindentified beliefs". Obviously I find many on the list to be rational. In that, how they choose to label their Enlightment is irrelevant to me as long as ridicule on either side is taken out of the equation. There is no discussion within ridicule. I read that in psychology that ridicule is used to enhance one's own lack of self-confidence, i'm not sure if it is correct, but that's what I heard. >I have no "blatant hate" and it is very hateful of >you to say I do. Your responses seem contradictory to >me. Yes, my apology, (damn emotions:). Although at times I feel that your comments are rather harsh, I find your points rational and clear. >No you were not. You were telling atheists in effect >to shut up. Actually I was telling both sides to shut up and stop ridiculing. What's the point? Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail at http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/try_beta?.intl=ca _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 3 08:08:01 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 10:08:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: References: <20070502104206.GD17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20070503080801.GH17691@leitl.org> On Wed, May 02, 2007 at 10:20:28PM -0400, Heartland wrote: > > It's hardly a moment, though. "Conscious experience", whatever that means. > > implies a trajectory segment long enough for higher-order processes to > > happen, which puts it into some 100 ms country. > > What Eugen points out is, of course, exactly what I've been trying to point out > to you (Stathis) and others several times before by saying that any process (and > minds are undoubtedly processes, not patterns) is undefined across time intervals = A process is a spatiotemporal pattern. Exhaustively described by the sum of 3d coordinate changes of atoms across the fourth axis, time. (Classically). Of course the mental processes occur many storeys upstairs, involving structures in nm-um range and temporal processes in ms range. > 0. This means that there's no such thing as a "snapshot of process." Using your Of course there is. Both in numerical simulations are snapshots essential (because hardware dies, and then you roll back to the last snapshot) and in physiology. Neural processes routinely reassemble themselves after a disruption (grand mal, concussion, anaesthesia, hypothermia, etc.). Cryonic suspension of a given personal process is a snapshot. > terminology, there's no such thing as observer *moment.* If anything, there can > only be observer *intervals.* Yes, I agree that observer-moments do not make much sense. The length of the interval is not sharply defined either, there are subconscious processes which are really quick, and higher-level processes (the sum of underwater activity) which can take their sweet time. > First we should decide what death means and that will inform us when death occurs, Death has no meaning at all, especially if you haven't agreed where to draw that arbitrary, rapidly receding line in the sand. Critical care medicine routinely keeps pushing the limits back, and by golly, we have some good chances to see that boundary pushed back indefinitely at least for organ transplant purposes. And the brain is just an organ. > not the other way around. (Lee, I completely disagree with you on this point too.) > Definition of death should > follow from a definition of life. Life is a physical (dynamic) process (its > activity, to be precise), not a (static) pattern. Absence of that activity is death > even though I realize this is not immediately obvious. Why don't you stick to information-theoretic death. It's a classic. -- 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 desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Thu May 3 08:16:48 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 01:16:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <259627.59434.qm@web35606.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On 03/05/07, spike wrote: Most of us here have a fundamentalist's outlook: of course it matters. But to many non-fundamentalist believers, it really does not matter whether or not a belief is true. The terms true and false do not really apply to their religion. For most, religion is a philosophy. It would be like asking is democrat or republican true? Those terms do not apply, these are philosophies. They hold some true and some false notions, with much gray area. A philosophy would not be like a science, in which true or false are applicable and it matters. Fundamentalists treat religion the same as a science. Stathis wrote: Liberal theologians sometimes treat religion as if it is obviously just fantasy: we know that there are no virgin births, people don't rise from the dead, etc. (at least not 2000 years ago), but they are inspiring stories nonetheless, like the mythology of any culture. Would you say that these people are more or less honest than the fundamentalists, who after all have to convince themselves of something a rational person would not believe and call it "faith"? > Retired Episcopal Bishop (and some say heretic), John Shelby Spong, wrote "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture." I listened to him speak when he visited Anchorage, Alaska and found him to be a capable orator who amazingly did not have horns or a tail. There was a sizeable public showing to listen to him as he tried to build on common ground regarding the life of Christ. Afterward, I told him about my two years as a Mormon missionary in the Bible Belt and he smiled and wryly said "well, you must know about rejection, too..." John --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 3 08:49:02 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 18:49:02 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future? In-Reply-To: <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 03/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > John writes > > > That pretty much sums up the absurdity of [Heartland's] position, the > idea that I > > need objective proof in order for me to believe I am having a subject > > experience. > > Here I have to agree with Heartland a little more than I agree with > you: Yes, you have to believe in your subjective experience as real, > and indeed, the most real thing that there is. But you may be > simply mistaken about the way that things *seem* to you subjectively. > It may be that you are *not* the same John Clark as the world knew > yesterday. You're clever enough that I don't need to spell that out > in a thought experiment. > > So subjectivity---just as he says---is a quite *useless* social concept, > quite useless to throw around in intelligent discussion with other people > who have no access to your subjectivity. Hell, for all I know, John > Clark may be a Giant Lookup Table and not be conscious at all! I > am the only thing in the universe that I know for sure is conscious, > although it would be stupid to bet against other people being so. The main reason you are interested in objective facts about yourself is so that your subjective experiences can continue in the same manner as they always have. It wouldn't be very good if you objectively behaved like Lee but in fact were a zombie (assuming such a thing is possible). On the other hand, it wouldn't be so bad if your subjective experience survived in a rich virtual reality environment, encoded in such a way that no external observer could prove that it was in fact you. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 3 09:53:56 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 19:53:56 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <20070503080801.GH17691@leitl.org> References: <20070502104206.GD17691@leitl.org> <20070503080801.GH17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 03/05/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: Yes, I agree that observer-moments do not make much sense. The length > of the interval is not sharply defined either, there are subconscious > processes which are really quick, and higher-level processes (the sum > of underwater activity) which can take their sweet time. We could imagine splitting up the process of observation as finely as physics will allow, halting and restarting a cognitive process in mid-thought. A single observation could then be spread over multiple physically separate implementations. Then there is the issue of where one observation ends and another begins. Consider an interval t1t2t3, during which a person observes a moving object. Say a single unit t is too short a period for a perceptible change, so the object is perceived only after the interval t1t2. But then what about the interval t2t3? It is long enough for perception to occur, but that then means there is a difference between the perception during t1t2 and the perception during t2t3, when we previously said that t was too short an interval to perceive a change. The division between the intervals t could coincide with physically separate instantiations. So if intervals of consciousness can be divided up at all, I think it is not unreasonable to divide them up arbitrarily, as the context dictates. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From scerir at libero.it Thu May 3 12:18:37 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 14:18:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] pronunciation standards and cow lifeforms References: <200705030208.l4328WQq015739@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <000301c78d7d$2e29fac0$c4bd1f97@archimede> > Would not the European cowboy or cowhuman > have all the same needs as her American counterpart, > and would not the European cowpeople develop > all the same characteristics? > spike Cows? I didn't see a cow in the last 20 years, around here. They are gone. But in Tuscany, I suppose, still there is that old super-breed called "Chianina" http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/cattle/chianina/ http://www.ilr.it/tuscany/siena/valdichiana/Chianina/Default.htm Ever seen a Florentine steak? Usually it weighs around 2.0/2.5 pounds, and it comes from a "Chianina" http://italianfood.about.com/b/a/257556.htm http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bistecca_fiorentina Between Rome and Naples still there is the "Bubalus Frisch" (Buffalo, or Bufalo in Italian) and those famous "mozzarelle di Bufalo" http://www.viaitalia.net/mozzarella_di_bufala.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozzarella_di_Bufala_Campana But as you can see (link below) both the Buffalos and the Chianina cows do not live 'en plein air' anymore http://www.fornobravo.com/brick_oven_cooking/pizza_ingredients/ mozzarella/mozzarella1.html From jonkc at att.net Thu May 3 13:41:27 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 09:41:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future? References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com><08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <00fc01c78d88$c703eb60$a1044e0c@MyComputer> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 6:13 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future? > John writes > >> Stathis: >>>> If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before, then >>>> that's >>>> what matters in survival. >> >> Heartland, High Priest of the Unique Atom and Sacred Original Cult Wrote: >> >> > That doesn't matter at all. >> >> No, what matters to you is not continuity of process but continuity of >> atoms; > > I still don't understand why you persist in making this claim. Would > not Heartland instantly agree that each second he loses and gains > billions of atoms? Why, for all we know, he'd be perfectly happy > to have a heart bypass operation, and lose quadrillions upon > quadrillions of his atoms. Moreover, it would not surprise me in > the least if he'd quickly sign up for hippocampus replacement, > if it guaranteed a wonderful memory enhancement. (Now of course, > his guarantees would be more stringent than yours and mine; he > might insist upon being conscious throughout the operation, for > instance.) BUT ISN'T IT PATENTLY WRONG TO KEEP > ON SAYING THAT FOR HIM IT'S ALL ABOUT ATOMS?? > >> and what matters to you is objective temporal continuity, subjective >> continuity doesn't matter at all to subjective experience (!), at least >> according to you. >> >>> Why should it matter? >> >> Because subjectivity is the most important thing in the universe. >> >> > Of course it's subjective so it's not valid evidence at all. >> >> That pretty much sums up the absurdity of your position, the idea that I >> need objective proof in order for me to believe I am having a subject >> experience. > > Here I have to agree with Heartland a little more than I agree with > you: Yes, you have to believe in your subjective experience as real, > and indeed, the most real thing that there is. But you may be > simply mistaken about the way that things *seem* to you subjectively. > It may be that you are *not* the same John Clark as the world knew > yesterday. You're clever enough that I don't need to spell that out > in a thought experiment. > > So subjectivity---just as he says---is a quite *useless* social concept, > quite useless to throw around in intelligent discussion with other people > who have no access to your subjectivity. Hell, for all I know, John > Clark may be a Giant Lookup Table and not be conscious at all! I > am the only thing in the universe that I know for sure is conscious, > although it would be stupid to bet against other people being so. > >> The feeling of being alive is a subjective experience and I don't >> need your precious space time trajectories of my individual atoms to >> prove >> to me that I feel alive any more than I need proof that the sensation I >> feel >> when I put my hand in a fire I find unpleasant. Direct experience >> outranks >> even the Scientific Method. > > Who, besides you, gives a ---- about your subjective experience? > > Lee > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From pharos at gmail.com Thu May 3 13:44:35 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 14:44:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] pronunciation standards and cow lifeforms In-Reply-To: <200705030208.l4328WQq015739@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070502190649.022c64b0@satx.rr.com> <200705030208.l4328WQq015739@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 5/3/07, spike wrote: > Since you mention cows and "carfs," we often see references to cowboys, > usually in the rugged independent persona of the American cowboy. We can > picture an American cowboy, with the leather chaps, the bandana, the six > shooter etc. But nearly every country on this planet devours beef, so they > must have cows too, so they need cowboys. Would not the European cowboy or > cowhuman have all the same needs as her American counterpart, and would not > the European cowpeople develop all the same characteristics? Would not the > European cowperson share much of the same equipment, and develop the same > attitudes, a similar independent cussedness? > Nope, pardner. We euro cowboys tend to frequent discos and nightclubs. :) Cowboys developed in the Americas and Australia, where the climate was dry and grass sparse and large herds of cattle required vast amounts of land in order to obtain sufficient forage. The need to cover distances greater than a person on foot could manage gave rise to the development of the horseback-mounted cowboy. They were also used on large cattle drives to markets or railheads. Europe has pretty well been fenced in since before the US began, and has lush green grassy meadows for the cows. BillK From jonkc at att.net Thu May 3 13:45:44 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 09:45:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future? References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com><08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> "Lee Corbin" > Would not Heartland instantly agree that each second he loses and gains > billions of atoms? Ask him. I'm the one who first brought up that point but I never got a coherent response from him over it. > Who, besides you, gives a ---- about your subjective experience? Nobody, but you care about your subjective experience and want it to continue, that's why you jump out of the way when a car is coming toward you. And I believe the missing word is "fuck". Me: >>what matters to you is not continuity of process but continuity of atoms; You: >I still don't understand why you persist in making this claim. Even Heartland admits that you could stop a mind and then start it up again there would be no way for it to know anything had happened unless it could observe the outside world. There would be continuity of the subjective process, however Heartland insists that is not important, that is to say subjective experience is not important to subjectivity, the important thing is that the atom's behavior has not been continuous. And that is why he is High Priest of the Unique Atom and Sacred Original Cult. > BUT ISN'T IT PATENTLY WRONG TO KEEP ON SAYING THAT FOR HIM IT'S ALL ABOUT ATOMS?? No it is not. For well over a year we exchanged post after post with him talking about space time trajectories of atoms and Bose Einstein Condensations trying to convene me that atoms are unique and they somehow confer that property to human beings. To this day he has not retracted one word of it. And I'm supposed to pretend that never happened? I don't think so. On May 9 2006 I listed 11 very specific objections I had to his ideas, he never responded. 1) Mr. Heartland says having someone tomorrow who remembers being you today is not sufficient to conclude you have survived into tomorrow, he says more is required but he never explains what or why. This leads to rather odd conclusions, like anesthesia is equivalent to death and you may have died yesterday and not even know it. Mr. Hartland thinks your subjectivity is an "illusion" (illusions are a subjective phenomena by the way) created by a copy of you, Mr. Hartland says he hates this and thinks it is a great tragedy, but even if true he never explains why this is supposed to be upsetting. 2) Mr. Heartland says atoms are what makes us unique, but he ignores the fact that our atoms get recycled every few weeks. 3) Mr. Heartland says atoms are what makes us unique, but science can find no difference between one atom and another. Mr. Heartland points out, quite correctly, that subjectivity and consciousness are what we should be concerned about, but then he says particular atoms are what makes our consciousness unique. It's true that the scientific method can not investigate consciousness directly so nobody will ever be able to prove the idea is wrong, nobody will ever prove that there isn't a difference between atoms that the scientific method can't detect, but theologians since the middle ages have been making the exact same argument about the existence of the human soul. It seems a little too pat that the only difference between atoms is something the scientific method can not see but nevertheless is of profound astronomical importance, it's just like saying atoms have souls. 4) Mr. Heartland says the history (or if you want to sound scientific brainy and cool "the space time trajectory") of atoms are what makes atoms unique; but many atoms have no history and even for those that do it is not permanent, the entire record of an atom's past exploits can be erased from the universe and it's not difficult to do. This is not theory, this has been proven in the lab and any theory that just ignores that fact can not be called scientific. 5) Mr. Heartland insists his theory is consistent and logically rigorous but he is unwilling or unable to answer the simplest questions about it, like is A the original or B. Instead Mr. Heartland thinks informing us that A=A and B=B is sufficient. 6) Several times Mr. Heartland informed us that location is vital in determining which mind is which, but he never explained why because mind by itself can never determine it's location. Also Mr. Heartland never explains the position relative to what as we've known for over a century that absolute position is meaningless. 7) Mr. Heartland, wrote "This "self" concept is too overrated in a sense that it has no influence over whether my subjective experience exists or not" and then he wrote "My copy" is not me". This would seem to belie Mr. Heartland's claim of rigorous logical consistency. 8) Mr. Heartland wrote "Mind is not a brain" and he was absolutely correct about that, but when I asked him if mind is more like a brick or more like a symphony he said mind "is definitely more like a brick, a 4-D object". This would seem to belie Mr. Heartland's claim of rigorous logical consistency. 9) As noted above Mr. Heartland thinks mind is a "4-D mind object", but he is unable on unwilling to give the 4-D coordinates of the vital things the constitute mind, like fun or red or fast or logic or love or fear or the number eleven or my memory of yesterday. 10) Mr. Heartland wrote "creation of two identical brains, like writing identical number types "1" twice, would produce two separate instances of the same brain type" but if so he never explained why two calculators that add 2 +2 would not produce answers that were profoundly different; and if they are profoundly different he never explained how it is possible to do science. 11) Mr. Heartland insists that if two CD's are synchronized and playing the same symphony then two symphonies are playing, but a CD is just a number thus there must be profound differences even between the same number, and 9 is not equal to 9. If true Mr. Heartland is unable to explain how it is nevertheless possible to do science. John K Clark From hkhenson at rogers.com Thu May 3 14:17:52 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 10:17:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Back to Causes of War In-Reply-To: <0ad801c78c7b$63eb75b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427183950.042a2270@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070428134420.03fc0dd0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070501160428.0406a860@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070502094316.02c52020@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 10:31 PM 5/1/2007 -0700, you wrote: >Keith writes, quoting Gat snip > > _it [violence] is mainly in relation to resource scarcity and hence as a > > factor in resource competition_ > > > > that population density would function as a trigger for fighting. > > Otherwise, Tokyo and the Netherlands would have been > > among the most violent places on earth." > >Yes, those places would today soon revert to a "Lord of >the Flies" scenario. But I *thought* that our inquiry was >more general, namely into the causes---proximal or distal >---of war throughout history. It is. And my case, if you read EP memes and war, is that wars are largely if not entirely due to human psychological mechanisms out of our stone age past. > >>And the original main purpose of this thread and its predecessors was > >>to address the causes of all wars, not just primitive fighting. snip > >>Second, a sea-change seems to have overcome the West around 1700 or > >>1800: gone were the constant wars of preceding generations. Especially > >>per capita, wars became fewer and fewer over time. Go graph the number > >>of wars and the amount of blood shed between England and France: it > >>monotonically decreases from 1000 AD to 1815, and then stops altogether. > >>(Of course there were fluctuations, but my point is that the wars > really did > >>become fewer over the centuries and of less severity.) What caused this > >>sea-change? > > > > You need to consider what else happened over this time. There was a huge > > growth of income over this period of time, and some of the time even a > > growth in income per capita. > >Yes, of course. Such growth went hand in hand with leaders of >nations being less rapacious. Right. And while there was no doubt feedback both directions, I make the case that the sea change in wars was due to the population on average *not* seeing a bleak future. > >>My answer is that it simply became more profitable to maintain peace than > >>to try to plunder adjacent nations. For one thing, there was less > comparative > >>plunder than ever before (compared to the wealth of generating your own), > >>and another thing, the dang wars just got too expensive and the ability of > >>the other nation to inflict reciprocal damage kept growing. So an era > >>of game-theoretic cooperation has emerged. > >> > >>Three, the causes of modern era war are too numerous to allow > generalization. > >>Keith sometimes said that population pressure causes war, > > > > That not exactly the case. > > > > "All wars arise from population pressure." (Heinlein 1959 p. 145) > > "Major Reid (Heinlein's character in Starship Troopers)was on the mark if > > you take "population pressure" to mean a falling ratio of resources to > > population (roughly income per capita in modern terms). There are sound > > evolutionary reasons why falling resources per capita (or the prospect of > > same) usually drives human populations into war. Wars and related social > > disruptions are here seen to be the outcome of a behavioral switch > > activated by particular environmental situations and mediated by > xenophobic > > memes.[1]" > >Au contraire, it *is* exactly the case. Heinlein is quite wrong. While >falling >resources per capita is *one* reason indeed, you have been giving the >impression, and Heinlein certainly does above, that it is the *sole* cause. >It's not, as I have demonstrated with example after example. Sometimes >very prosperous nations with very good prospects go to war because their >leaders get greedy, or they are playing a game of international one- >upsmanship, or they simply want to expand their nation's territory at >the expense of smaller weaker adjacent nations. It is not the reality of the current situation that activates stone age psychological traits, but perception of that reality no matter how divergent perception is from physical reality. And leaders don't take a country into wars without population support. Now they are able to play off the stone age traits, especially lying about being attacked or in the current war, lying about who was responsible. snip > > I should add that fear of others *is* the result of xenophobic memes (such > > as the English fearing the Germans or the Germans fearing the Russians and > > Slavs). > >Yes, but your tone implies that this is to be considered a bad thing. >Of course, it would be relatively heavenly if a magic wand were >passed over the Earth, and there was no xenophobia. But it wouldn't >last long, becuse it's not an ESS. Sooner or later some gang would >get going, and we'd be right back to Sargon I and the first empires. >Realistically, the main thing about xenophobic genes is that you don't >want *your side* to lose them, or into the dustbin of history you go. >Or are going, like now. Xenophobic memes and the genes for being infected by xenophobic memes are entirely different things. A trait that deep in our evolution isn't something people could lose at least without gene surgery impossible to imagine right now. The spread and high influence of xenophobic memes is (in this EP model) a conditional response. Humans are not automatically xenophobic like chimps are. Xenophobia in a population rises when people (on average) see a bleak future. I make the case this evolved trait is mechanistic. The way to correct a bleak future back in the stone age was to kill neighbors which is what xenophobic memes work the warriors up to. The *other* and faster way to get heavy xenophobia going is to be attacked. After 9/11 several murders happened that were the expression of instant xenophobia. (Mostly against non-Arabs.) > >>But throughout pre-modern times in the last millenium, a typical cause of > >>war was one prince's avarice towards the domains of his neighbors. Most > >>of the English-French wars were of this kind, for example, as were the > >>endless wars between the various Italian city states. Another typical > >>cause was vast population movement---the Avars or the Huns or someone > >>would be on the move (chased by another tribe even more formidable) and > >>the poor Romans or anyone else within range had to bear the consequences. Missed making this point, but there is no doubt that the vast population movements were due to population pressure, that is population growth beyond what could be supported by the local ecosystem/economy. > >>Yet none of these explanations account for all modern wars---exceptions > >>can be found for any and all of them. E.g. the Great Patriotic war, which > >>included the largest and most deadly battles ever fought, was caused > >>entirely by one man's irrational urges and his warped philosophy. > > > > I think you put too much causation on particular people and too little on > > the situation that allowed their madness to flourish. > >To some degree, we have perhaps been arguing between distal and proximal >causes. But it's not always "madness" either. It's often a good survival >strategy. Especially in some some circumstances as Machiavelli explained. Oh, I agree. But what is it that survives? > > Consider forest fires as an analogy. You can classify fires by how they > > were started, lightening, careless campers, power lines sparking and > > aircraft crashes. You can also say a lot about the influence of the > > weather, with forest fires being more likely when the temperature is high, > > the humidity low and gusty winds. > > > > But the ultimate reason you get a forest fire is the slow accumulation > of fuel. > >In the forest fire case, yes, it can come to be an inevitability. That is, if >a people becomes deprived enough, then they will either individually >or socially get violent. But to the degree---again---that this is also a >historical inquiry, then we simply have that this does *not* explain >all modern wars. Too many wars occurred in which evidence of over- >population, resource depravation, etc., is not present. None of these are needed to trip wars. As I mentioned with the US Civil War, all it took was perception in the south of a bleak future, that is without slaves. And they were right. > > The ultimate reason you get a war is the slow accumulation of people (in > > excess of what the economy can support). Slow it down till the economic > > growth is as high or higher than the population growth and no wars. > >You don't think that of all the wars in Europe between 1300 and >1800 I could not find ones in which economic growth on both >sides was as high as the population growth? Given the model, you can inject factors anywhere in the chain. False perception of a bleak future would do to up the gain of xenophobic memes leading to war. False belief the country had been attacked would do it. In fact this last is *widely* exploited by leaders, consider the US entry into the Vietnam war or the events that triggered the 1846 war with Mexico or the Spanish American war. > > Incidentally, where you mention "young people are usually quite willing > and > > able to go to war," this is the "excess males" causation theory of war. I > > forget what the proposed threshold was, but China (due to selective > > abortion) is way above the point these researchers said would cause a > > war. The EP model say China will not be inclined to start a war as > long as > > its population is experiencing a growth in income per capita. > >I would counter that they are *less* likely to go on a rampage. >But even the U.S.---as seen by its enemies in the rest of the >world---has gone on a rampage even though there has been >prosperity beyond economic growth. The psychological factor at work there was the perception by the population that the US had been attacked. 9/11 certainly was an event which would trip "we been attacked!!!" sensor. That's why a majority of the US population supported the "war leader." >In fact, a leader of China >could very well use a well-known historical gambit: get into a >war if you feel that you are losing political control at home. That's true. The Falklands war was of that kind, an attempt to displace population unhappiness with a failing economy with an external enemy, but then both the leaders and the population also had darn good reason to be looking into a bleak future. > > Of course, China could get into a war if it were attacked. > > Before you say that's impossible, consider Pearl Harbor. > >What? You're kidding! You mean nations actually get into >wars when other nations attack them? Well---I guess I'll >just have to add that to my list of the causes of war :-) Historically it's been used by a third country making both parties think they were attacked. The factors involved are additive if not multiplicative. I make no claim it is easy to untangle the complexities that are partly the result of polity scale up from bands of at most a hundred people to nations a million times larger. However, it is better to have a even a poor model than to have none at all. A poor model can be tested and improved or it may lead to a better model. And in this model, it leads to an understanding of the long range importance of low or even zero population growth unless you want to have wars. Keith From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 14:38:31 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 07:38:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com><0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes Notions such as "maybe we die every instant" or "maybe we die whenever our EEGs go flat", are misconceived, and very harmful for understanding. Let's get serious! You can't get out of paradoxes by making up definitions! > Well, I thought I was making the same point you are making, and I'm sorry that my attempt at rigor has fallen flat. It seems to me > that Heartland is claiming that there is some objective criterion for death which trumps what an ordinary person would understand > by the term.< Sorry---maybe you were making the same point, but maybe not. Let's look at your next sentence: > That would mean that you could have a test and be informed that, even though you don't realise it, you died in the last hour (with > the appropriate adjustment to the pronouns that that would entail). < Why isn't that *theoretically* possible? Why isn't it *possible* that this could have happened? I can imagine being suddenly shown overwhelming evidence including video tapes of Lee's behavior over the last weeks---how in some ways it resembled how I act today and in some ways not, and have to conclude that by some TREMENDOUS agency beyond our present unassisted human ability, the old Lee had indeed been replaced by *me*. (One easy way is to show that Lee actually commited moral crimes of which I am incapable.) > But all that would mean is that the test is not a valid test for what is commonly understood by the word "death"; or > alternatively, that the newly-defined "death" is not the same as the thing that people have always worried about when they were > worrying about dying, and perhaps we need a new word in its place (although it would be more sensible to keep the traditional > meaning and come up with another word for what the test shows). < I agree that in all *practical* situations that have come up, and will even come up in teleportation and uploading, you are entirely correct. We need to nail down the thing that, as you say, people have traditionally been worrying about. That's why Heartland is out to lunch entertaining conjectures that an EEG going flat for a tenth of a second is *necessarily* death, just because his arcane definition says it is. Clearly, we cannot treat life and death as 1 and 0, as well you and I already know. > To push your temperature analogy further, it would be like science discovering the melting point of tungsten, and then declaring that boiling water should no longer be called "hot". Even if everyone agreed that this was an appropriate linguistic change, no scientific discovery will have any bearing on the hot-like sensation you get when you put your hand into boiling water. < Precisely. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 14:43:03 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 07:43:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] War and technological progress References: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> <0acb01c78c78$93e2d8b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <5.1.0.14.0.20070502223811.041ddc10@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <0bc101c78d92$03560860$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Keith writes > At 11:25 PM 5/1/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: > >>And if the West were to stop exporting filth around the world, stop >>corrupting the Muslim youth with everything from clothing styles to >>bad attitudes, tendentious movies, acceptance of homosexuality, >>defiance of parents, and so on and on, and also were to >>become pure isolationists, stop being on Israel's side, profusely >>apologize for placing troops on the Sacred Soil of Saudi Arabia >>to repel aggression in Kuwait, etc., yes, Al Qaeda might very well >>turn its attention elsewhere. > > EP theory says no. There is nothing that the Western countries can do that > will keep them from being targets of attacks by Al Qaeda. The drive comes > from the local situation. What do you mean, "the local situation"? We need to make sure that you would not have said the same thing in WWII along the lines of "The Americans will never stop attacking the Japanese, no matter how much the Japs surrender. EP says that the drive to wipe 'em out comes from the local situation." Please explain, thanks. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 14:49:11 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 07:49:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook (was Changing other poster's minds) References: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <0bcd01c78d92$b9405090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Spike's great comments cannot pass without remark! >> My hypothesis is that fundamentalist religious movements often have a >> strong emphasis on be doctrinally correct and thus place a high value on >> study of the text of that religion... Fred > > > ...I witness so much meaningless debate because there is disagreement > on a most basic question. This question is not whether or not the belief is > true, but rather what is the nature of the belief. The basic question upon > which the participants must agree is this: does it matter whether or not a > belief is true? > > Most of us here have a fundamentalist's outlook: of course it matters. That is *so* right. I have felt exactly the same thing for decades. The fundamentalists and I are basically on the same side because we believe that there *is* a truth to the matter. But I can't quite say it as well as you do: > But to many non-fundamentalist believers, it really does not matter whether > or not a belief is true. The terms true and false do not really apply to their > religion. For most, religion is a philosophy. It would be like asking is > democrat or republican true? Those terms do not apply, these are > philosophies. They hold some true and some false notions, with much gray > area. A philosophy would not be like a science, in which true or false are > applicable and it matters. Fundamentalists treat religion the same as a > science. Yes, and, as I say, most well spoken. One good sign, however, is that the post-modern crap is fading from view. And even by 1980 I noticed that the "truth is relative" crowd had seemed to retreat a little. > After thinking about this for years, long after realizing that the religion > I knew was not true, I finally realized that it matters to me if my religion > is true. I love true things. Religion should be treated as any scientific > theory. In that sense, altho I am now an atheist, I still have the > fundamentalist's outlook, ja? That's the way it seems to me! Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 14:53:14 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 07:53:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Introduction to the Philosophy of Liberty References: <0b4701c78d0a$bccba300$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <46397213.8000303@mac.com> Message-ID: <0bd301c78d93$6d9097d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Samantha writes > Lee Corbin wrote: > >> Unfortunately, about two-thirds of the way through, I began to notice that >> something very important was missing. Nothing whatsoever was being said >> about the Rule of Law. Yes, private property was emphasized, and rightly >> so. But the other equally important foundation of progress and civilization >> was not mentioned EVEN ONCE in the ten minute show. >> >> Nothing at all was said or implied about just how obedience to democratically >> enacted laws is to be achieved! > > Rational law is not the same as "democratically enacted law". But at any moment in time, it is our best approximation! What would be better? You and your friends getting together and writing out new laws for us all? > The latter can be and often are extremely deleterious and anti-liberty. > Take the democratically enacted laws declaring war on some drugs as a > case in point. In ten minutes it probably would not be possible to > say what liberty consistent law would be like in much detail much less > how such laws are to be enforced. You cannot meaningfully conflate the > vast majority of "law breakers" as the law is today with murderers and > thieves. I agree. > Anti-anarchist arguments would need a lot cleaner and more careful > development than the swipe presented here. There is nothing in not > initiating force that say a gang initiating force should not be > forcefully stopped. That their are specialist for counteracting the > initiation of force changes things not at all. Agreed. thanks, Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 14:59:01 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 07:59:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Changing Other Poster's Minds References: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <46397638.5010008@mac.com> Message-ID: <0be301c78d94$22284850$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Samantha writes > spike wrote: > >> After thinking about this for years, long after realizing that the religion >> I knew was not true, I finally realized that it matters to me if my religion >> is true. I love true things. Religion should be treated as any scientific >> theory. In that sense, altho I am now an atheist, I still have the >> fundamentalist's outlook, ja? > > hahaha. Not in the least. I would need to assume that the people that > look at religion as really "philosophy" and that it would seem also > assume that philosophy is not really philosophy and doesn't really > require a love of truth and search for it but is more some rather murky > "philosophy of life" are in fact the correct and most mature and "right" > ones. But this is again as assumption of right vs. wrong and even true > view versus false so this is no escape from your assumed position that > to care about truth is to be a fundamentalist. I wish that > fundamentalists cared about the truth. In a sense, I agree with you. But the more *fundamental* (pardon the pun) issue here is about the nature of truth. Spike is targeting relativists, and in my book they need to be overcome at a different level "before" we take on those who agree with us that there is just one truth. > I do not believe that the majority of them do at all. They care only to > assert that they have the only Truth while not needing to understand > or inquire at all. This is not at all the same thing. But I am very sure > you know that. Yes, I am sure that Spike does too. But it's just a difference in our methodology towards truth. They consult sacred works; we criticize and conjecture and refutation. 'Tis true, our more fundamentalist battle seems won, but I am dismayed from time to time to see relativism pop up here and on SL4. "Oh yes I believe in God", says what you and I know to be an atheist, etc. See, on that page, the fundamentalists and we are on the same page. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 15:03:14 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 08:03:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook References: <1177914296.3449.262.camel@localhost.localdomain><200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <0bfc01c78d94$d65e50d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > Liberal theologians sometimes treat religion as if it is obviously just fantasy: Ah, thank you. That is a great term for what I was trying to describe. It's the liberal theologians to whom I feel less affinity than the fundmentalists. > we know that there are no virgin births, people don't rise from the dead, etc. > (at least not 2000 years ago), but they are inspiring stories nonetheless, > like the mythology of any culture. > Would you say that these people are more or less honest than the > fundamentalists, who after all have to convince themselves of > something a rational person would not believe and call it "faith"? Question right on target! I would say that these people are *less* honest by far than the fundamentalists. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 15:06:15 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 08:06:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? References: <20070502104206.GD17691@leitl.org> <20070503080801.GH17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <0bfd01c78d94$d6761e90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Eugen writes > Yes, I agree that observer-moments do not make much sense. The length > of the interval is not sharply defined either, there are subconscious > processes which are really quick, and higher-level processes (the sum > of underwater activity) which can take their sweet time. > > > First we should decide what death means and that will inform us when death occurs, > > Death has no meaning at all, especially if you haven't agreed where to > draw that arbitrary, rapidly receding line in the sand. Yet below you say "Why don't you stick to information-theoretic death. It's a classic." So which is it? Lee > Critical care medicine routinely keeps pushing the limits back, > and by golly, we have some good chances to see that boundary > pushed back indefinitely at least for organ transplant > purposes. And the brain is just an organ. > >> not the other way around. (Lee, I completely disagree with you on this point too.) >> Definition of death should >> follow from a definition of life. Life is a physical (dynamic) process (its >> activity, to be precise), not a (static) pattern. Absence of that activity is death >> even though I realize this is not immediately obvious. > > Why don't you stick to information-theoretic death. It's a classic. > > -- > Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 15:16:44 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 08:16:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com><08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> John Clark wrote > Ask him. I'm the one who first brought up that point but I never got a > coherent response from him over it. > >> Who, besides you, gives a ---- about your subjective experience? > > Nobody, but you care about your subjective experience and want it to > continue, that's why you jump out of the way when a car is coming toward > you. And I believe the missing word is "fuck". I am starting to be more and more affected by what I am reading lately about history and sociology (e.g. Fukuyama's "Trust", essays on "social capital"), and even what John C. Wright had to say and the way he said it. Why are we allowing the level of our discourse to continue to degenerate? All for the sake of our not-so-new idol "plain talk", that came in in the 1950's? Can it really be true that there are no deleterious consequences? Isn't the logical end to such a progression "rap"? Do we want to go down to the level of the Math Forum that replaced the old usenet group? Half the posts were overrun with expletives *even* in their subject lines! I heard yesterday that Ronald Reagan never swore. I wonder if it's true. If it is, then he was the *only* president that I know of of whom it's true, and that includes George Washington, about which hardly anything negative can be said. Just raising the issue---asking questions at this point---that's all. Lee From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 3 15:20:30 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 17:20:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <0bfd01c78d94$d6761e90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20070503080801.GH17691@leitl.org> <0bfd01c78d94$d6761e90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <20070503152030.GR17691@leitl.org> On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 08:06:15AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: > Yet below you say "Why don't you stick to information-theoretic death. > It's a classic." So which is it? Current medicine and law does not (yet) subscribe to the information theoretic death, as many people here do. As to the classical medicine, what is pushing the envelope is http://ccforum.com/content/9/6/538/abstract http://eugen.leitl.org/cc3894.pdf -- 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 lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 15:22:35 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 08:22:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><015601c7010a$6a7d5d50$450a4e0c@MyComputer><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><09c201c78b8b$342b33b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0ac701c78c77$dfd7d7d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0c0501c78d96$f2d562b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Heartland writes >> Yikes! Are you kidding? I would "estimate" that maybe around >> age 17 the legal entity known as Lee Corbin had 50% of the >> core memories that make me who I am. To be summarily >> replaced by a 17-year old version of me would be, in my calculus, >> like dying by about one-half. From "moment to moment" is a >> very rough period of time, but the idea is that I should remain >> very much the same person for years and years. > > The rules of this calculus are all arbitrary, subjective (thus unverifiable) and > messy. Of course. But they're the best I have when between Scylla and Charybdis. On the one hand, I'm confident I'm the same person I was last month, and on the other, I am not the same person I was at age 2. So, while obviously a gradual process, I *clearly* was intermediate somewhere when I was 17. > I really don't know why you keep asserting there is such a thing as > "degree of death," and implying this assumption is unassailable. My usual > response to such statements is, "Can you be little pregnant too?" No, you cannot be a little bit pregnant. But do you really believe that there was a *point* in time, an exact second, in which you became alive? How could that possibly be?????????? Why do you refuse to accept that it's on a continuum? It's driving you to say silly things like > Of course there are. Life and death *is* like 1 and 0. There's no such thing as > "degree of life" either. A small flame or an inferno is still fire. Until we get past this point, there is no point in further discussions with you about this topic. Sorry---I have enjoyed it, and thanks. Lee From velvethum at hotmail.com Thu May 3 15:38:28 2007 From: velvethum at hotmail.com (Heartland) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 11:38:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] How to be copied into the future? References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com><08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer><0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: Lee: >> Would not Heartland instantly agree that each second he loses and gains >> billions of atoms? John K Clark: > Ask him. I'm the one who first brought up that point but I never got a > coherent response from him over it. If Lee had asked me this question 10 years ago, 2 years ago or a week ago the answer would have still been the same -- "Yes, I would." Lee: >> BUT ISN'T IT PATENTLY WRONG TO KEEP > ON SAYING THAT FOR HIM IT'S ALL ABOUT ATOMS?? John K Clark: > No it is not. For well over a year we exchanged post after post with him > talking about space time trajectories of atoms and Bose Einstein > Condensations trying to convene me that atoms are unique and they somehow > confer that property to human beings. Nope. I never attempted to "convene" anyone in my life, I swear. :) And if I had attempted it, I would have never dared to try to convince the assembled crowd of something as ridiculous as *that*. Besides, I would have to be crazy to spend "well over a year" on such a sure-to-be-fruitless pursuit. For the last time (I have a feeling I'm going to regret this), it's the trajectories that are unique, not the atoms (possibly being replaced each hour) traveling along these trajectories. If you're going to insist on calling me "priest," at least call me a Priest of Verifiably Unique Trajectories. At least get *that* right. BTW, Leibniz is the equivalent of Christ in our church. Our equivalent of the Bible? Leibniz's law. :-) John K Clark: > On May 9 2006 I listed 11 very specific objections I had to his ideas, he > never responded. > > 1) Mr. Heartland says .... What followed was a nauseous mix of spin manufactured at the "Zombie Strawman" factory. Please ignore. From russell.wallace at gmail.com Thu May 3 15:55:05 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 16:55:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> On 5/3/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Why are we allowing the level of our discourse to continue to degenerate? > All for the sake of our not-so-new idol "plain talk", that came in in the > 1950's? Can it really be true that there are no deleterious consequences? > Isn't the logical end to such a progression "rap"? I agree that it is not good if the level of discourse degenerates. I don't agree, however, that the occasional use of profanity where it is appropriate constitutes degeneration. Constant, gratuitous use of profanity would be another matter - as would constant, gratuitous use of any emotionally-charged words. Swear words, like most words, have both appropriate and inappropriate uses. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 3 16:00:21 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 18:00:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] How to be copied into the future? In-Reply-To: References: <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <20070503160021.GV17691@leitl.org> On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 11:38:28AM -0400, Heartland wrote: > What followed was a nauseous mix of spin manufactured at the "Zombie Strawman" > factory. Please ignore. Notice that I'm only letting this thread continue because there are at least two people apart from you who are sufficiently interested. I'm quite sure many more are just bored out of their wits, and hit delete. -- 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 randall at randallsquared.com Thu May 3 16:04:36 2007 From: randall at randallsquared.com (Randall Randall) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 12:04:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com><08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <009D94D0-7812-402D-AF5B-0B149E7970EA@randallsquared.com> On May 3, 2007, at 11:16 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > John Clark wrote >> Ask him. I'm the one who first brought up that point but I never >> got a >> coherent response from him over it. >> >>> Who, besides you, gives a ---- about your subjective experience? >> >> Nobody, but you care about your subjective experience and want it to >> continue, that's why you jump out of the way when a car is coming >> toward >> you. And I believe the missing word is "fuck". > > I am starting to be more and more affected by what I am reading > lately about history and sociology (e.g. Fukuyama's "Trust", essays > on "social capital"), and even what John C. Wright had to say and > the way he said it. > > Why are we allowing the level of our discourse to continue to > degenerate? > All for the sake of our not-so-new idol "plain talk", that came in > in the > 1950's? Can it really be true that there are no deleterious > consequences? How one writes is, in part, a measure of the level of respect one has for readers. It's often quite clear from one's writing how one views the reader, but I think it used to be more common for familiarity to be interpreted as contempt. > Isn't the logical end to such a progression "rap"? Well, as entertainment, rap can be great. :) It's just not usually best for persuasion. -- Randall Randall "Is it asking too much to be given time [...] I'll watch the stars go out." -- Dubstar, Stars From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 3 16:32:26 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 11:32:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.co m> References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> At 04:55 PM 5/3/2007 +0100, Russell wrote: >On 5/3/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote: >Why are we allowing the level of our discourse to continue to degenerate? > >I agree that it is not good if the level of discourse degenerates. I >don't agree, however, that the occasional use of profanity where it >is appropriate constitutes degeneration. The slightly farcical aspect here is that Lee was the one who introduced the foul epithet "----". I was shocked, shocked I say. Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Thu May 3 16:34:56 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 17:34:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> References: <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/3/07, Russell Wallace wrote: > I agree that it is not good if the level of discourse degenerates. I don't > agree, however, that the occasional use of profanity where it is appropriate > constitutes degeneration. Constant, gratuitous use of profanity would be > another matter - as would constant, gratuitous use of any > emotionally-charged words. Swear words, like most words, have both > appropriate and inappropriate uses. > Try telling that to the teenagers! I can only speak for the UK, but the constant use of swearing in their normal conversation is very prevalent. You only need to walk around the mall, or listen on public transport, whenever a group get together. They don't think of it as swearing, it is just normal for them. When they get angry, and want to swear, they run into problems communicating their displeasure because they haven't got any 'forbidden' words left to use. So violence is the easy way of expressing anger. Look at the stuff they post in chat rooms, on MySpace, or text messages. It is almost constant, never-ending profanity and explicit sexual references. (All with spelling mistakes as they use 'text' language and a sort of pidgin English). They do tend to tone it down when talking to adults. So maybe there is hope for them growing out of it. BillK From ben at goertzel.org Thu May 3 16:37:37 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 12:37:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> References: <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705030937v47f29ba9u3da6ccc5848ced69@mail.gmail.com> On 5/3/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > > At 04:55 PM 5/3/2007 +0100, Russell wrote: > >On 5/3/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> > wrote: > >Why are we allowing the level of our discourse to continue to degenerate? > > > >I agree that it is not good if the level of discourse degenerates. I > >don't agree, however, that the occasional use of profanity where it > >is appropriate constitutes degeneration. > > The slightly farcical aspect here is that Lee was the one who > introduced the foul epithet "----". I was shocked, shocked I say. > > Damien Broderick Exactly. What the FUCK is your problem, people? Are you all a bunch of ass-raping, baby--molesting, feces-fondue-ingesting cockmaster fuckwads or what?? Your mothers all wear combat boots!! I say you betta get off your goddamn adipose asses and start talking about something MORE BLOODY INTERESTING... or else after the Singularity has passed and I'm in charge I WON'T REANIMATE YOUR SOULS HAHAHAHA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at goertzel.org Thu May 3 16:39:16 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 12:39:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705030937v47f29ba9u3da6ccc5848ced69@mail.gmail.com> References: <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> <3cf171fe0705030937v47f29ba9u3da6ccc5848ced69@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705030939n695d4ecbo2409b6244f05d0f3@mail.gmail.com> > > > > Exactly. What the FUCK is your problem, people? Are you all a bunch of > ass-raping, baby--molesting, feces-fondue-ingesting cockmaster fuckwads > or what?? Your mothers all wear combat boots!! I say you betta get off > your goddamn adipose asses and start talking about something MORE BLOODY > INTERESTING... or else after the Singularity has passed and I'm in charge > I WON'T REANIMATE YOUR SOULS HAHAHAHA Oh, and by the way ... in case there are any goddamn bloody retards on here ... I wasn't serious ;-) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell.wallace at gmail.com Thu May 3 16:45:38 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 17:45:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook (was Changing other poster's minds) In-Reply-To: <0bcd01c78d92$b9405090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <0bcd01c78d92$b9405090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705030945u24ca8c67h4f44b205c66b3a6e@mail.gmail.com> On 5/3/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Yes, and, as I say, most well spoken. One good sign, however, is that the > post-modern crap is fading from view. And even by 1980 I noticed that > the "truth is relative" crowd had seemed to retreat a little. > I'm certainly not one of the "truth is relative" crowd, but I find myself in more sympathy with the liberal theologians than with the fundamentalists of either side. First, it is not at all clear to me that there is a fact of the matter regarding the existence of God. When the gods are said to live atop Mount Olympus, there's data to be had: climb the mountain and see whether you encounter gods or not. But the monotheistic God is typically placed outside our universe. How do you propose to step outside the universe to see whether you encounter God? Okay, there is one known way to do that. But the word "afterlife" is arguably a dodgy one if you think about the first part: "after". That refers to time. But if you're talking about what happens outside our universe, you can't be talking about the physicist's time, the imaginary dimension of relativity, that which is measured by clocks. It's not that science says there is no afterlife: it's that it cannot make statements about whether or not there is, because there's no data and the very term is not a scientific one. If "after" can't refer to objective time, presumably it refers to subjective time. So then we would say there is an afterlife if we have continued subjective experiences after we die. Does science have anything to say about that? Well yes it does, at least to those of us who subscribe to the pattern theory of identity. Science at least suggests the existence of at least some levels of the Tegmark multiverse; and that means all possible continuations of your subjective experience do indeed occur. So yes, in a sense there is an afterlife. What does that mean in practical terms, for what we will actually experience? Nobody knows - nobody from whom we have verified testimony, at least. And that's before you even get into things like the Simulation Argument. I'm not saying SA is true, I'm not saying it's false - I don't know either way. I am saying, let he who thinks he can disprove the existence of God have that debate with the SA folk and let me know who wins. So much for the material question. But an important point being missed here is that there are different kinds of truth. If the facts are all we're interested in, shouldn't we throw out all our copies of Hamlet, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars? There aren't really any such things as ghosts or elves or the Force, after all, so why waste time on stories about them? Because those stories contain profound moral truths, wisdom about the human condition and how we should live; and this is a sort of knowledge that we cannot live without, any more than we can live without knowing how to grow wheat or make penicillin. And that is the purpose of religion. Sure, Noah's flood didn't literally occur any more than the War of the Ring did, but that doesn't make the Bible valueless. Do you not think he who sets out to destroy something that performs a vital function, should provide a viable, proven replacement _before_ he begins the task of destruction? Where, then, is your replacement for the religion you would destroy? Perhaps you - most of you reading this list - find you personally, as individuals, don't need to believe in God. But for most people it's the only thing that's ever been enough. All attempts thus far at creating a non-religious moral framework have been utter failures. Come up with something that works first, or desist from attempting to destroy that which already works, if you want to end up going anywhere except into the fossil record. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moses2k at gmail.com Thu May 3 17:03:07 2007 From: moses2k at gmail.com (Chris Petersen) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 12:03:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705030939n695d4ecbo2409b6244f05d0f3@mail.gmail.com> References: <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> <3cf171fe0705030937v47f29ba9u3da6ccc5848ced69@mail.gmail.com> <3cf171fe0705030939n695d4ecbo2409b6244f05d0f3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3aff9e290705031003p2fe530f0qf8c33a909a189aa2@mail.gmail.com> On 5/3/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > > > > Exactly. What the FUCK is your problem, people? Are you all a bunch of > > ass-raping, baby--molesting, feces-fondue-ingesting cockmaster fuckwads > > or what?? Your mothers all wear combat boots!! I say you betta get off > > your goddamn adipose asses and start talking about something MORE BLOODY > > INTERESTING... or else after the Singularity has passed and I'm in charge > > I WON'T REANIMATE YOUR SOULS HAHAHAHA > I hope Novamente Baby doesn't hear you speaking like that. :) -Chris -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From asa at nada.kth.se Thu May 3 16:57:45 2007 From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 18:57:45 +0200 (MEST) Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <54380.86.155.201.236.1178211465.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se> Damien Broderick wrote: > The slightly farcical aspect here is that Lee was the one who > introduced the foul epithet "----". I was shocked, shocked I say. What is the problem of good old (excuse my french) &/#(?, $?%* or ?&??+? When I was a kid I made up my own foul words, which allowed me to swear in polite company. Dialogs is all about communication, and just as one should not waste ink or time on useless words there is seldom a need for strengthening curse-words. "Fuck" and "quite" can often be removed from a text with no loss of meaning. -- Anders Sandberg, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From jonkc at att.net Thu May 3 17:41:43 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 13:41:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] How to be copied into the future? References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com><08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer><0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <01aa01c78daa$56452fc0$a1044e0c@MyComputer> Heartland, High Priest of the Unique Atom and Sacred Original Cult Wrote: > it's the trajectories that are unique, not the atoms (possibly being > replaced each hour) traveling along these trajectories. In the first place space time trajectories are not unique; their shape depends on the reference frame observing them. But forget that, the trajectories must be trajectories of SOMETHING, it can only be of atoms and if atoms are not unique as you say above then how in the world can their trajectories be unique? And if they are so important why is it so easy to erase them from the universe just by cooling the atoms? And just what atomic trajectories are important and what ones are not, when I take a piss are those atoms still important, do I still have to calculate all those piss trajectory atoms to figure out if I'm still me? And what exactly is the connection between those atomic space-time trajectories and subjectivity? You say it is of supreme importance in providing us our sense of who we are, but don't say why, nor to you say how you figured this out, you don't even give us a hint as to why one should have the slightest thing to do with the other. John K Clark From hkhenson at rogers.com Thu May 3 17:19:57 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 13:19:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] War and technological progress In-Reply-To: <4639742F.6040306@mac.com> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070502223811.041ddc10@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> <0acb01c78c78$93e2d8b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <5.1.0.14.0.20070502223811.041ddc10@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070503130558.041df300@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 10:33 PM 5/2/2007 -0700, samantha wrote: >Keith Henson wrote: snip > > EP theory says no. There is nothing that the Western countries can do > that > > will keep them from being targets of attacks by Al Qaeda. The drive comes > > from the local situation. > >I would rather know what we can do to keep our government or some within >it from stealing all our freedoms after staging things like 911 to >stampede the people. EP is a major tool which lets us under stand human nature and why things like wars occur. But I have found it remarkable difficult to turn into concrete programs. For example, had we understood the implications 50 years ago would it have made any difference in the population growth in the places now on the brink of war? >Focus on Al Qaeda is studiously missing the point >and letting the evil wizard[s] behind the curtain continue. This goes beyond first level EEA, but I think the case could be made that civilizations under little economic or social stress are more likely to be places of relative freedom. The frontier closed within in the life of my parents. (I put in an example here, but decided in this environment self censorship was probably the best idea.) Which bring us around to space elevators and solar power satellites as a way to make the future brighter and provide for human expansion (if humans don't just leave physical reality entirely). Keith From kevin at kevinfreels.com Thu May 3 18:04:13 2007 From: kevin at kevinfreels.com (kevin at kevinfreels.com) Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 11:04:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook (was Changing other poster's minds) Message-ID: <20070503110413.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.ee5d2d7f8f.wbe@email.secureserver.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 3 19:27:20 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 21:27:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <20070503192720.GH17691@leitl.org> On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 07:38:31AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: > Notions such as "maybe we die every instant" or "maybe we die > whenever our EEGs go flat", are misconceived, and very harmful But this is precisely what Slawomir is saying. Flat EEG lacunes are literally death, to him. > for understanding. Let's get serious! You can't get out of paradoxes > by making up definitions! People have been known to produce paradoxes by sticking to the wrong kinds of definitions. > > > That would mean that you could have a test and be informed that, even though you don't realise it, you died in the last hour (with > > the appropriate adjustment to the pronouns that that would entail). > < > > Why isn't that *theoretically* possible? Why isn't it *possible* > that this could have happened? I can imagine being suddenly It is possible, but it is relatively demanding technically, and it would be a pointless prank practically. > shown overwhelming evidence including video tapes of Lee's > behavior over the last weeks---how in some ways it resembled > how I act today and in some ways not, and have to conclude > that by some TREMENDOUS agency beyond our present > unassisted human ability, the old Lee had indeed been replaced You can say that again. > by *me*. (One easy way is to show that Lee actually commited Which means you're a synthetic, brand-new person. Perhaps only loosely modelled upon the orignal Lee, if at all. Making up new people from scratch is not very easy. > moral crimes of which I am incapable.) Endless fun ensues when you're to prove that to the judge. > I agree that in all *practical* situations that have come up, and > will even come up in teleportation and uploading, you are entirely > correct. We need to nail down the thing that, as you say, people > have traditionally been worrying about. That's why Heartland > is out to lunch entertaining conjectures that an EEG going flat > for a tenth of a second is *necessarily* death, just because his > arcane definition says it is. Clearly, we cannot treat life and death I'm glad we're on the same page here. > as 1 and 0, as well you and I already know. For some reason, many still subscribe to the boolean notion of identity. -- 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 pj at pj-manney.com Thu May 3 19:13:15 2007 From: pj at pj-manney.com (pjmanney) Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 15:13:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs Message-ID: <33071395.831301178219595803.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> On 5/3/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > Exactly.??What the FUCK is your problem, people???Are you all a bunch of > > ass-raping, baby--molesting, feces-fondue-ingesting cockmaster fuckwads?? > > or what????Your mothers all wear combat boots!!??I say you betta get off > > your goddamn adipose asses and start talking about something MORE BLOODY > > INTERESTING... or else after the Singularity has passed and I'm in charge?? > > I WON'T REANIMATE YOUR SOULS HAHAHAHA > Chris wrote: >I hope Novamente Baby doesn't hear you speaking like that. :) Or the Novamente Baby will teach the other AI babies on the AI playground and we'll all be knee-deep in swearing AIs. But I'm from New York. I'll just swear back at them. [If the AIs are anything like my kids, they'll delight in swearing in all the languages their compatriots teach them, too. Mine have got Korean, Japanese and German profanities so far... How proud am I...? :-/ ] [Thanks, Ben, for contributing to my daily laugh.] PJ From ben at goertzel.org Thu May 3 21:39:16 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 17:39:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <33071395.831301178219595803.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> References: <33071395.831301178219595803.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705031439g38e5d27k7c9a2352e6f90aaa@mail.gmail.com> Yes, the plan is that Novababy will have its language faculties tuned on a text corpus consisting of transcripts from re-runs from South Park, Family Guy and American Dad .. This will ensure that it has the proper empathy for human psychology, guaranteeing appropriately Friendly AI ... On 5/3/07, pjmanney wrote: > > On 5/3/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > > Exactly.What the FUCK is your problem, people?Are you all a bunch of > > > ass-raping, baby--molesting, feces-fondue-ingesting cockmaster > fuckwads > > > or what??Your mothers all wear combat boots!!I say you betta get off > > > your goddamn adipose asses and start talking about something MORE > BLOODY > > > INTERESTING... or else after the Singularity has passed and I'm in > charge > > > I WON'T REANIMATE YOUR SOULS HAHAHAHA > > > > Chris wrote: > >I hope Novamente Baby doesn't hear you speaking like that. :) > > Or the Novamente Baby will teach the other AI babies on the AI playground > and we'll all be knee-deep in swearing AIs. > > But I'm from New York. I'll just swear back at them. > > [If the AIs are anything like my kids, they'll delight in swearing in all > the languages their compatriots teach them, too. Mine have got Korean, > Japanese and German profanities so far... How proud am I...? :-/ ] > > [Thanks, Ben, for contributing to my daily laugh.] > > PJ > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From amara at amara.com Thu May 3 22:09:09 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 00:09:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Introduction to the Philosophy of Liberty Message-ID: Lee Corbin: >I'm forced to conclude that once again we see the sad spectacle of an >anarchist philosophy being passed off as an Evolutionarily Stable >Strategy, or a real-world possibility. Only in dream land. The video >suggested the following solution to the problem of aggression from >others: everyone should just never initiate the use of force. Isn't >that simple? Isn't that nice? You were expecting PPL in a one minute slot? Aren't you expecting a lot in 10 minutes? The concepts presented for 'never initiating force' and self-ownership and voluntarist actions are already the foundation for PPL and a large step in the direction of the kind of contracts necessary for customary law (a la Bruce Benson). 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 lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 22:36:53 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 15:36:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook References: <20070503110413.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.ee5d2d7f8f.wbe@email.secureserver.net> Message-ID: <0c4501c78dd4$355fc340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Russell and Kevin stand up for aspects of religion: Kevin says > Very good points [Russell] ...All of them. One thing I would like to add is > that most mainstream religions don't allow you to look at the boble as you have. > You see the bible as I do - a great source of wisdom and examples... of human > morality. But what we are up against is the Christian dogma that states that if > you do not believe that noah fit 2 of every species into this "ark", or if you do > not believe that Jesus literally walked on water as a miracle (not on rocks), > you are damned to hell... Now if one contemporary politician wrote a lot of "lies" about another, would you defend these if his *moral* point was well taken? Isn't there a basic lack of respect for the truth itself in your analysis here? It's *not* just that certain people want to damn others, it's that they says lots and lots of things that you and I just know are not true. > This is the battle that has to be won. Not necessarily the removal > of the religion itself, but the changing of the dogma surrounding it. But you focused on the dogmatic parts that featured intolerance. Good untruths are okay? Russell had said > On 5/3/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Yes, and, as I say, most well spoken. One good sign, however, is that the > > post-modern crap is fading from view. And even by 1980 I noticed that > > the "truth is relative" crowd had seemed to retreat a little. > > > I'm certainly not one of the "truth is relative" crowd, but I find myself in > more sympathy with the liberal theologians than with the fundamentalists > of either side. Just out of curiosity, have you read Bartley's "The Retreat to Commitment?" > First, it is not at all clear to me that there is a fact of the matter regarding > the existence of God. How about Santa Claus? Do you really think that there is a fact of the matter regarding an individual who lives at the north pole and arranges for gifts to somewhat magically be delivered on Christmas day to deserving children around the world? Do you think that there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not the Angel Moroni delivered eight golden tablets for the inspection of Joseph Smith? Is there a fact of the matter whether water can be turned into wine any time around the first century AD? > If the facts are all we're interested in, shouldn't we throw out all our > copies of Hamlet, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars? There aren't > really any such things as ghosts or elves or the Force, after all, so > why waste time on stories about them? It is perfectly clear, even to any child, that these are *stories* of make-believe. Thus there is a huge difference between them and religious doctrines that for no-foolin' make all sorts of preposterous claims. Either we're going to stick together and denouce falsehoods or we're not. > Because those stories contain profound moral truths, wisdom > about the human condition and how we should live; and this is > a sort of knowledge that we cannot live without, Oh, no argument there. No, the question is about whether you want to denounce falsehood or not. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 22:44:44 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 15:44:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? References: <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <20070503192720.GH17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <0c4901c78dd4$e938deb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Eugen writes > On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 07:38:31AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: > >> Notions such as "maybe we die every instant" or "maybe we die >> whenever our EEGs go flat", are misconceived, and very harmful > > But this is precisely what Slawomir is saying. Flat EEG lacunes > are literally death, to him. I'm still hoping that he'll reply and pin down exactly when the Slawomir life function went from 0 to 1 around the time---I guess---that he was conceived. I read recently somewhere that conception is a *process* that actually requires hours. Unfortunately, I didn't record where because I did not anticipate that I'd be arguing with anyone who believes in a quantum soul or its equivalent. To be more precise, I didn't think that I'd be arguing with anyone who believes that living/dead is like 1/0. I appreciate and agree with the remainder of your remarks. Lee > People have been known to produce paradoxes by sticking to the > wrong kinds of definitions. > >> > That would mean that you could have a test and be informed that, even though you don't realise it, you died in the last hour >> > (with >> > the appropriate adjustment to the pronouns that that would entail). >> >> Why isn't that *theoretically* possible? Why isn't it *possible* >> that this could have happened? I can imagine being suddenly > > It is possible, but it is relatively demanding technically, and > it would be a pointless prank practically. >> ... > ... >> I agree that in all *practical* situations that have come up, and >> will even come up in teleportation and uploading, you are entirely >> correct. We need to nail down the thing that, as you say, people >> have traditionally been worrying about. That's why Heartland >> is out to lunch entertaining conjectures that an EEG going flat >> for a tenth of a second is *necessarily* death, just because his >> arcane definition says it is. Clearly, we cannot treat life and death > > I'm glad we're on the same page here. > >> as 1 and 0, as well you and I already know. > > For some reason, many still subscribe to the boolean notion of identity. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 3 22:48:11 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 15:48:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs References: <33071395.831301178219595803.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Message-ID: <0c5201c78dd5$9f174000$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> pjmanney writes > On 5/3/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > >> > Exactly. What the FUCK is your problem, people? Are you all a bunch of >> > ass-raping, baby--molesting, feces-fondue-ingesting cockmaster fuckwads >> > or what?? Your mothers all wear combat boots!! I say you betta get off >> > your goddamn adipose asses and start talking about something MORE BLOODY >> > INTERESTING... or else after the Singularity has passed and I'm in charge >> > I WON'T REANIMATE YOUR SOULS HAHAHAHA > ... > [Thanks, Ben, for contributing to my daily laugh.] Oh yes, that is quite hilarious, isn't it? I hope Ben puts it prominently on his website. Surely nothing wrong with that, right? Lee From russell.wallace at gmail.com Thu May 3 22:56:27 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 23:56:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook In-Reply-To: <0c4501c78dd4$355fc340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20070503110413.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.ee5d2d7f8f.wbe@email.secureserver.net> <0c4501c78dd4$355fc340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705031556n1fb28cbeu30963165d0cf8d68@mail.gmail.com> On 5/3/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > How about Santa Claus? Do you really think that there is a fact of the > matter regarding an individual who lives at the north pole and arranges > for gifts to somewhat magically be delivered on Christmas day to > deserving children around the world? There are various sources of data that entitle me to claim there is a fact of the matter in this case, such as the observed absence of Santa's workshop at the geographical north pole. This would be equivalent to the example I gave about the absence of gods on top of Mount Olympus. If a variant of the Santa Claus story placed him in a Platonic realm outside our universe and didn't insist he _literally_ climbs down chimneys on Christmas Eve, it would stop being so clear to me that there was a fact of the matter, and I would start evaluating the story on other criteria. Which reminds me of a Terry Pratchett quote... *rummage* here we are: Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies. Susan: So we can believe the big ones? Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing. Susan: They're not the same at all. Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged. Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point? Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become? And my question stands: do you not agree that he who sets out to destroy something vital, should first have a viable replacement ready? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at goertzel.org Thu May 3 23:00:45 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 19:00:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <0c5201c78dd5$9f174000$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <33071395.831301178219595803.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> <0c5201c78dd5$9f174000$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705031600r6d470179r133895566606902@mail.gmail.com> Lee, as Jeff Allbright is fond of pointing out ... it's all about context ;-) ben On 5/3/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > pjmanney writes > > > > On 5/3/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > > >> > Exactly. What the FUCK is your problem, people? Are you all a bunch > of > >> > ass-raping, baby--molesting, feces-fondue-ingesting cockmaster > fuckwads > >> > or what?? Your mothers all wear combat boots!! I say you betta get > off > >> > your goddamn adipose asses and start talking about something MORE > BLOODY > >> > INTERESTING... or else after the Singularity has passed and I'm in > charge > >> > I WON'T REANIMATE YOUR SOULS HAHAHAHA > > ... > > [Thanks, Ben, for contributing to my daily laugh.] > > Oh yes, that is quite hilarious, isn't it? I hope Ben puts it prominently > on his website. > Surely nothing wrong with that, right? > > Lee > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From bret at bonfireproductions.com Thu May 3 23:05:56 2007 From: bret at bonfireproductions.com (Bret Kulakovich) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 19:05:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or sensible? In-Reply-To: <200705021912.l42JC7jN029130@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705021912.l42JC7jN029130@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <9637E08C-5A0D-4793-B7DC-62209D8C8B54@bonfireproductions.com> Hahaha - surely. However spike - we have no control of who will make it back first - and I think in the heat of the argument it was meant with more sincerity! ~]3 On May 2, 2007, at 3:01 PM, spike wrote: > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Bret Kulakovich > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] META: "Killthread": Is it censorship or > sensible? > > > As if the insult that follows this remark is not enough, this single > statement alone: > > Brett Paasch wrote: I would oppose your reanimation. > > Is utterly contemptible. I wrote Eugen offlist to say so...~ Bret > > > Hi Bret with one t, I received several notes offlist to this effect > too. > Saying one would oppose your reanimation is the technogeeks way of > saying go > to hell. > > spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From jef at jefallbright.net Thu May 3 23:50:23 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 16:50:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705031600r6d470179r133895566606902@mail.gmail.com> References: <33071395.831301178219595803.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> <0c5201c78dd5$9f174000$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <3cf171fe0705031600r6d470179r133895566606902@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/3/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > Lee, as Jeff Allbright is fond of pointing out ... it's all about context > ;-) I was considering writing a high-minded essay in five paragraphs about the importance of respect when I saw Ben's post and realized the fucker had made my point for me and had done it in one. - Jef From michaelanissimov at gmail.com Fri May 4 00:23:36 2007 From: michaelanissimov at gmail.com (Michael Anissimov) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 17:23:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Weird Speech for Tokyo Governor Candidate Message-ID: <51ce64f10705031723v706fd008hf8f0f6a0c971809a@mail.gmail.com> I saw this linked from Bryan Caplan and Arnold Kling's Econlog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr9_uLlH3yk You'll probably get a few lulz out of it. -- Michael Anissimov Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com http://acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 4 00:44:14 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 10:44:14 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook (was Changing other poster's minds) In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705030945u24ca8c67h4f44b205c66b3a6e@mail.gmail.com> References: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <0bcd01c78d92$b9405090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030945u24ca8c67h4f44b205c66b3a6e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 04/05/07, Russell Wallace wrote: First, it is not at all clear to me that there is a fact of the matter > regarding the existence of God. When the gods are said to live atop Mount > Olympus, there's data to be had: climb the mountain and see whether you > encounter gods or not. But the monotheistic God is typically placed outside > our universe. How do you propose to step outside the universe to see whether > you encounter God? Inaccessibility is not license to posit the existence of anything that takes your fancy. What if I say that Santa Claus exists, but he lives just beyond the edge of the visible universe. Would you say that there is no "truth of the matter" regarding the existence of this Santa Claus? Well yes it does, at least to those of us who subscribe to the pattern > theory of identity. Science at least suggests the existence of at least some > levels of the Tegmark multiverse; and that means all possible continuations > of your subjective experience do indeed occur. So yes, in a sense there is > an afterlife. What does that mean in practical terms, for what we will > actually experience? Nobody knows - nobody from whom we have verified > testimony, at least. > > And that's before you even get into things like the Simulation Argument. > I'm not saying SA is true, I'm not saying it's false - I don't know either > way. I am saying, let he who thinks he can disprove the existence of God > have that debate with the SA folk and let me know who wins. The SA is to religion as speculation about extraterrestrial life is to speculation about the existence of Klingons and Romulans. So much for the material question. But an important point being missed here > is that there are different kinds of truth. > > If the facts are all we're interested in, shouldn't we throw out all our > copies of Hamlet, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars? There aren't really any > such things as ghosts or elves or the Force, after all, so why waste time on > stories about them? > > Because those stories contain profound moral truths, wisdom about the > human condition and how we should live; and this is a sort of knowledge that > we cannot live without, any more than we can live without knowing how to > grow wheat or make penicillin. > > And that is the purpose of religion. Sure, Noah's flood didn't literally > occur any more than the War of the Ring did, but that doesn't make the Bible > valueless. I am happy to include the Bible as a great work of literature, but I don't see the slightest reason why it should be taken any more seriously as a description of reality than, say, the Iliad and the Odyssey. If we had Homeric fundamentalists alive today we could have the same discussions with them as we do with Christian fundamentalists. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell.wallace at gmail.com Fri May 4 01:16:12 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 02:16:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook (was Changing other poster's minds) In-Reply-To: References: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <0bcd01c78d92$b9405090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030945u24ca8c67h4f44b205c66b3a6e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705031816l15c40272v7f971bfea5edfb86@mail.gmail.com> On 5/4/07, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > Inaccessibility is not license to posit the existence of anything that > takes your fancy. What if I say that Santa Claus exists, but he lives just > beyond the edge of the visible universe. Would you say that there is no > "truth of the matter" regarding the existence of this Santa Claus? > Inaccessibility by itself isn't, but infinity in some cases is. Replace "just beyond" with "somewhere beyond" and, given that our best theories suggest the universe is infinite or at least exponentially larger than our Hubble volume, I would say there is no basis for claiming his nonexistence in that sense. I am happy to include the Bible as a great work of literature, but I don't > see the slightest reason why it should be taken any more seriously as a > description of reality than, say, the Iliad and the Odyssey. If we had > Homeric fundamentalists alive today we could have the same discussions with > them as we do with Christian fundamentalists. > I'm not defending fundamentalism - on any side. I think "the Bible proves the Earth was created in 4004 BC" is as false, counterproductive and irrational as "science proves there is no God". The way I got into this conversation was when I saw people praising fundamentalists as more rational than moderates! It's the moderate religious view that has faith in God (which can be neither proven nor disproven) and sees the Bible as a source of moral truth without insisting that every word in it be taken literally, that I'm defending. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 4 01:24:56 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 21:24:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705031556n1fb28cbeu30963165d0cf8d68@mail.gmail.com> References: <20070503110413.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.ee5d2d7f8f.wbe@email.secureserver.net> <0c4501c78dd4$355fc340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705031556n1fb28cbeu30963165d0cf8d68@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705031824m15ed1d9bk267779ce0dc80f7a@mail.gmail.com> On 5/3/07, Russell Wallace wrote: > And my question stands: do you not agree that he who sets out to destroy > something vital, should first have a viable replacement ready? That would definately be the polite thing to do. Some would argue that the destruction of that vital thing will provide the impetus for discovery of the replacement. I would not argue that point, but I have heard of it. (A coworker has explained that we should consume fossil fuels more ravenously, so when none/few are left we will have no choice but to find a viable alternative. Until that point there is insufficient motivation to be fully innovative) From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 4 01:38:26 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 21:38:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] War and technological progress In-Reply-To: <0bc101c78d92$03560860$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <463792C0.8010402@thomasoliver.net> <0acb01c78c78$93e2d8b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <5.1.0.14.0.20070502223811.041ddc10@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070503213342.041d7920@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 07:43 AM 5/3/2007 -0700, you wrote: >Keith writes > > > At 11:25 PM 5/1/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: > > > >>And if the West were to stop exporting filth around the world, stop > >>corrupting the Muslim youth with everything from clothing styles to > >>bad attitudes, tendentious movies, acceptance of homosexuality, > >>defiance of parents, and so on and on, and also were to > >>become pure isolationists, stop being on Israel's side, profusely > >>apologize for placing troops on the Sacred Soil of Saudi Arabia > >>to repel aggression in Kuwait, etc., yes, Al Qaeda might very well > >>turn its attention elsewhere. > > > > EP theory says no. There is nothing that the Western countries can do > that > > will keep them from being targets of attacks by Al Qaeda. The drive comes > > from the local situation. > >What do you mean, "the local situation"? We need to make sure that >you would not have said the same thing in WWII along the lines of >"The Americans will never stop attacking the Japanese, no matter >how much the Japs surrender. EP says that the drive to wipe 'em >out comes from the local situation." > >Please explain, thanks. The problem which leads to western countries being targets is one we *can't* fix. Mapped to the EEA we are "neighbors" and rich neighbors at that. As long as a good fraction of the Islamic population sees bleak prospects, then circulating xenophobic memes will excite the fringe warriors to do and/or die efforts. Bummer. Keith From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 4 01:35:13 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 21:35:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705030939n695d4ecbo2409b6244f05d0f3@mail.gmail.com> References: <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> <3cf171fe0705030937v47f29ba9u3da6ccc5848ced69@mail.gmail.com> <3cf171fe0705030939n695d4ecbo2409b6244f05d0f3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705031835i29e9738fn18487318e9a2240b@mail.gmail.com> On 5/3/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > > > > > > Exactly. What the FUCK is your problem, people? Are you all a bunch of > > ass-raping, baby--molesting, feces-fondue-ingesting cockmaster fuckwads > > or what?? Your mothers all wear combat boots!! I say you betta get off > > your goddamn adipose asses and start talking about something MORE BLOODY > > INTERESTING... or else after the Singularity has passed and I'm in charge > > I WON'T REANIMATE YOUR SOULS HAHAHAHA > > > Oh, and by the way ... in case there are any goddamn bloody retards on here > ... > I wasn't serious ;-) You were really in character up to the "adipose asses" bit. The way this thread started reminded me of the plea I made in AGI to have more exact language for the sake (not _necessarily_ of simplified language grounding) of some concession to the reader. I unconsciously maintain multiple sentence parsings and the more complex the topic, usually the more superpositions of meaning the words/sentences can yield. Normally everything cancels out through context - but when I'm trying to learn new ideas from the smart people on the lists I am subscribed to, the ambiguity of casual language adds up to confusion. I like Randall's point that how one writes is measure of respect for the reader... From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 4 01:56:43 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 18:56:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <0c0501c78d96$f2d562b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200705040156.l441ui1D009673@andromeda.ziaspace.com> ... > > "Can you be little pregnant too?" > > No, you cannot be a little bit pregnant... Lee This popular turn of speech has an entirely different meaning to those who have repeatedly suffered miscarriages while trying to have a baby. Many women can conceive but for whatever reason the embryo doesn't make it all the way. So at the moment of conception, the unfortunately lady is, in an all too real sense, only 10% pregnant. Two months later, she could be described as being ~30% pregnant. spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 4 03:03:38 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 20:03:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs References: <33071395.831301178219595803.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> <0c5201c78dd5$9f174000$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <3cf171fe0705031600r6d470179r133895566606902@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0c6701c78df9$73c54630$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Ben writes, > Lee, as Jeff Allbright is fond of pointing out ... it's all about context ;-) Sure, but of course, only a retard, as you yourself pointed out, would fail to see the humor of it. Lee > On 5/3/07, Benjamin Goertzel < ben at goertzel.org> wrote: > >> > Exactly. What the FUCK is your problem, people? Are you all a bunch of >> > ass-raping, baby--molesting, feces-fondue-ingesting cockmaster fuckwads >> > or what?? Your mothers all wear combat boots!! I say you betta get off >> > your goddamn adipose asses and start talking about something MORE BLOODY >> > INTERESTING... or else after the Singularity has passed and I'm in charge >> > I WON'T REANIMATE YOUR SOULS HAHAHAHA > ... > [Thanks, Ben, for contributing to my daily laugh.] Oh yes, that is quite hilarious, isn't it? I hope Ben puts it prominently on his website. Surely nothing wrong with that, right? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 4 03:34:21 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 20:34:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Back to Causes of War References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427183950.042a2270@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070428134420.03fc0dd0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070501160428.0406a860@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070502094316.02c52020@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <0c7201c78dfd$a8f02060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Keith writes >>Yes, those places would today soon revert to a "Lord of >>the Flies" scenario. But I *thought* that our inquiry was >>more general, namely into the causes---proximal or distal >>---of war throughout history. > > It is. And my case, if you read EP memes and war, is that wars are largely > if not entirely due to human psychological mechanisms out of our stone age > past. Yes. If there was no such thing as human nature, or we altered it some way, then wars could indeed become a thing of the past. An important point, however, is that to a very large extent, wars are already becoming a thing of the past (on a per-capita basis). >>Yes, of course. Such growth went hand in hand with leaders of >>nations being less rapacious. > > Right. And while there was no doubt feedback both directions, I make the > case that the sea change in wars was due to the population on average *not* > seeing a bleak future. The way that this is difficult to accept as a proximal cause of war is that history---at least recent modern history---does not tend to bear it out. The French peasantry were worse off in the 17th century than in the 18th when they finally revolted. And, yes, Louis XVI did start a lot of wars to extend the boundaries of France (which happen to be France's present boundaries). But the two had *nothing* to do with each other. If the peasants had had futures less bleak, then they might have provided even more revenue for the state. (They were by no means ready yet for revolt.) >>Au contraire, it *is* exactly the case. Heinlein is quite wrong. While falling >>resources per capita is *one* reason indeed, you have been giving the >>impression, and Heinlein certainly does above, that it is the *sole* cause. >>It's not, as I have demonstrated with example after example. Sometimes >>very prosperous nations with very good prospects go to war because their >>leaders get greedy, or they are playing a game of international one- >>upsmanship, or they simply want to expand their nation's territory at >>the expense of smaller weaker adjacent nations. > > It is not the reality of the current situation that activates stone age > psychological traits, but perception of that reality no matter how > divergent perception is from physical reality. And leaders don't take a > country into wars without population support. Among western democracies, mainly, that is. But one cannot generalize over the past thousand or two years. > Now they are able to play off the stone age traits, especially lying about > being attacked or in the current war, lying about who was responsible. The democratic West needed to believe that Saddam Hussein was an enemy. That was easy. They also needed to believe that if not an imminent threat, he would be sooner or later (which I believed and still think would have become the case---imagine the arms race going on right now between Iran and Iraq). The banner of WMD was waved over the people and they fell for it like sheep? Not exactly. Every intelligence agency in the world believed that Hussein had the WMD, and he behaved and acted as though he did too. Perhaps he even did, and managed to get them across the border during the interminable allied build-up occupying the whole fall of 2002 and spring of 2003 while the U.S. waited for U.N. sanction. Anyway, the so-called responsible leaders of Congress almost to a man and woman---who have their own incredibly expensive staffs to help them come to responsible conclusions---voted overwhelmingly to support the war. > The spread and high influence of xenophobic memes is (in this EP model) a > conditional response. Humans are not automatically xenophobic like chimps > are. Oh, who says? It was entirely natural, I claim, for each American Indian tribe to have the notion that they were "the people" embedded into their languages, and that other tribes weren't even people. (Naturally, there had to be a few exceptions.) It was an ESS. Tribes without such xenophobia didn't thrive as well. > Xenophobia in a population rises when people (on average) see a bleak > future. I make the case this evolved trait is mechanistic. The way to > correct a bleak future back in the stone age was to kill neighbors which is > what xenophobic memes work the warriors up to. I dispute that xenophobia rises only when people see a bleak future. Just visit a high school or college campus in California and see the self- segregation happening in the cafeteria. People naturally prefer their own "kind" (however it happens to be culturally determined at a given time), and a consequent diminution of trust of "the others". >> > But the ultimate reason you get a forest fire is the slow accumulation >> > of fuel. >> >>In the forest fire case, yes, it can come to be an inevitability. That is, if >>a people becomes deprived enough, then they will either individually >>or socially get violent. But to the degree---again---that this is also a >>historical inquiry, then we simply have that this does *not* explain >>all modern wars. Too many wars occurred in which evidence of over- >>population, resource depravation, etc., is not present. > > None of these are needed to trip wars. As I mentioned with the US Civil > War, all it took was perception in the south of a bleak future, that is > without slaves. And they were right. Why need I parade the many counter-examples again? Princes of Italian city states, King Louis XVI, Hitler's attack on the U.S.S.R. These simply did *not* require perception of a bleak future on anyone's part. It was aggrandisement of the leaders of one kind or another. >> > The ultimate reason you get a war is the slow accumulation of people (in >> > excess of what the economy can support). Slow it down till the economic >> > growth is as high or higher than the population growth and no wars. >> >>You don't think that of all the wars in Europe between 1300 and >>1800 I could not find ones in which economic growth on both >>sides was as high as the population growth? > > Given the model, you can inject factors anywhere in the chain. False > perception of a bleak future would do to up the gain of xenophobic memes > leading to war. False belief the country had been attacked would do > it. In fact this last is *widely* exploited by leaders, consider the US > entry into the Vietnam war or the events that triggered the 1846 war with > Mexico or the Spanish American war. Either bleak futures or false perceptions of bleak futures---the hypothesis visibly widens over the many exchanges. Now any attack or insult to a country (e.g. 1898 or 1846) is categorized as "perception of bleak future". Come now. > The psychological factor at work there was the perception by the population > that the US had been attacked. 9/11 certainly was an event which would > trip the "we have been attacked!!!" sensor. That's why a majority of the US > population supported the "war leader." Quite right. Not bleak prospects or anticipation of same, but an in-built tribal defense mechanism absolutely *necessary* to the preservation of EEA bands, tribes, city-states, and modern nations. France *had* to put 4 million men on the line in 1940 against the German menace ---ten percent of their entire population!---and at least that gave them a fighting chance. Without any such support when attacked---or in their case when attack was imminent (an idiot could see that Hitler would turn on the west soon)---then there would have been no France to fall. > The factors involved are additive if not multiplicative. I make no claim > it is easy to untangle the complexities that are partly the result of polity > scale up from bands of at most a hundred people to nations a million > times larger. Good. > However, it is better to have a even a poor model than to have none at > all. A poor model can be tested and improved or it may lead to a better > model. And in this model, it leads to an understanding of the long range > importance of low or even zero population growth unless you want to > have wars. Yes, we always need better models---or, when we can't get anything worthy of the name---better explanations. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 4 03:41:01 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 20:41:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook References: <20070503110413.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.ee5d2d7f8f.wbe@email.secureserver.net><0c4501c78dd4$355fc340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705031556n1fb28cbeu30963165d0cf8d68@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0c7701c78dfe$5d000340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Russell Wallace writes > On 5/3/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > How about Santa Claus? Do you really think that there is a fact of the > > matter regarding an individual who lives at the north pole and arranges > > for gifts to somewhat magically be delivered on Christmas day to > > deserving children around the world? > > There are various sources of data that entitle me to claim there is a > fact of the matter in this case, such as the observed absence of Santa's > workshop at the geographical north pole. This would be equivalent to > the example I gave about the absence of gods on top of Mount Olympus. And what about my examples of golden tablets from Moroni, Muhummad rising to heaven on a winged horse, virgin births, the whole lot? But maybe you'd rather skip that, which would be okay, and cut to the chase here, for you, which seems to be > And my question stands: do you not agree that he who sets out to > destroy something vital, should first have a viable replacement ready? Yes and no. I concur that the west has perhaps committed suicide by abadoning its religion. But the source of its strength---open inquiry also perhaps laid the seeds of its ruin. Well, that is too bad. But what I am concerned about *here* is a search for truth. On this list, it is necessary to say what is true, and to separate it from what is false. The final line from the Terry Pratchett piece: > Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become? In these discussions, I simply refuse to believe things that I know not to be true. Lee ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Which reminds me of a Terry Pratchett quote... *rummage* here we are: Death: Humans need fantasy to *be* human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies. Susan: So we can believe the big ones? Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing. Susan: They're not the same at all. Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged. Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point? Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become? From moulton at moulton.com Fri May 4 03:41:33 2007 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 20:41:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <1178250094.3449.592.camel@localhost.localdomain> On Wed, 2007-05-02 at 20:06 -0700, spike wrote: > After thinking about this for years, long after realizing that the religion > I knew was not true, I finally realized that it matters to me if my religion > is true. I love true things. Religion should be treated as any scientific > theory. In that sense, altho I am now an atheist, I still have the > fundamentalist's outlook, ja? > Spike Interesting points. Given the history of the term "fundamentalist" I prefer to restrict my usage of it. This I use the term for referring to fundamentalists in the sense of religious faith and try to use other terms to refer to the persons who are deeply and critically interested in the accuracy and validity of ideas but who do not have faith. Of course coming up with the other terms is not a simple matter. Fred From russell.wallace at gmail.com Fri May 4 04:14:30 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 05:14:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook In-Reply-To: <0c7701c78dfe$5d000340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20070503110413.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.ee5d2d7f8f.wbe@email.secureserver.net> <0c4501c78dd4$355fc340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705031556n1fb28cbeu30963165d0cf8d68@mail.gmail.com> <0c7701c78dfe$5d000340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705032114t48fc24d5r73df7986f416b726@mail.gmail.com> On 5/4/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > And what about my examples of golden tablets from Moroni, Muhummad > rising to heaven on a winged horse, virgin births, the whole lot? As I said earlier, I am not defending the idea that all the events described in the Bible and other religious texts should be regarded as having literally occured; the way I got into this discussion was noticing you making the quite stunning remark that you favored fundamentalism of all sides over rational moderation. Yes and no. I concur that the west has perhaps committed suicide > by abadoning its religion. But the source of its strength---open inquiry > also perhaps laid the seeds of its ruin. Open inquiry is a freedom. It's up to us what use we make of it. If we use it to destroy the basis of continued life, well then it will cease to exist when we do. But we have free will; we can choose otherwise. Well, that is too bad. Perhaps, but I haven't given up on the survival of our values and the civilization that supports them, however slim the odds may be. But what > I am concerned about *here* is a search for truth. On this list, it is > necessary to say what is true, and to separate it from what is false. And the truth is that a) you cannot either prove or disprove the existence of God and b) the real motive driving fanatical atheism derives from precisely the same evolutionary psychology as the motive driving fanatical religion. A dispassionate quest for the truth would eschew both. In these discussions, I simply refuse to believe things that I know not > to be true. I'm not asking you to believe anything. I'm asking you to refrain from consigning science to the trash heap of history, particularly on the basis of mere assumptions. The other day I had a conversation with a moderate Christian who believed there must be flaws in evolutionary theory. It was more productive than previous such conversations because I've finally figured out what's going on: he thinks that because he's been told by people like Dawkins - professionals he trusts to know what they're talking about - that evolution disproves the existence of God, and he therefore _correctly_ (given the information available to him) discards, or at least becomes very skeptical of, evolution. So on this occasion I was able to tell him Dawkins is full of shit, and try to communicate the real grandeur of evolution as we now understand it. But there is only one of me, and I can't explain this to every Christian in the world. I can't personally undo the work of every saboteur. If you won't refrain from attempting to destroy religion, will you refrain from attempting to destroy science? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moulton at moulton.com Fri May 4 04:17:07 2007 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 21:17:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: <46397638.5010008@mac.com> References: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <46397638.5010008@mac.com> Message-ID: <1178252227.3449.618.camel@localhost.localdomain> On Wed, 2007-05-02 at 22:42 -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote: > I wish that > fundamentalists cared about the truth. I do not believe that the > majority of them do at all. They care only to assert that they have > the only Truth while not needing to understand or inquire at all. This > is not at all the same thing. But I am very sure you know that. I realize now that I should have been more nuanced in my post. Even within what we broadly call fundamentalists there are differences of outlook and emphasis. Fundamentalists will typically say that "Truth" with a capital T derives from (or is a component of) their particular god/deity. Within the overall category of Fundamentalists there is a subset who agree with the previous sentence but also state that it is important to be doctrinally correct in both theology as well as personal practice. Thus for them the part of their religious life is the search for truth in the study of their religious texts; and following the "truth" that they find. Historically this has lead to numerous schisms amongst the Protestants as they search for truth. Of course they conceive of the methods for determining "truth" differently that most people on this list. However if you ask them if they are searching for truth they will say that they are. But of course they have not read The Retreat to Commitment by Bartley. Fred From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 4 04:20:38 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 21:20:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook In-Reply-To: <0c7701c78dfe$5d000340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200705040420.l444Khxw016444@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Lee Corbin ... > ... Muhummad rising to heaven on a winged horse... Heretic! It was a hoofed bird. spike From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 4 04:32:59 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 21:32:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: <1178250094.3449.592.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Fred C. Moulton > Subject: Re: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds > > On Wed, 2007-05-02 at 20:06 -0700, spike wrote: > > ... altho I am now an atheist, I still have the > > fundamentalist's outlook, ja? > > > > Spike > > Interesting points. Given the history of the term "fundamentalist" I > prefer to restrict my usage of it. This I use the term for referring to > fundamentalists in the sense of religious faith and try to use other > terms to refer to the persons who are deeply and critically interested > in the accuracy and validity of ideas but who do not have faith. Of > course coming up with the other terms is not a simple matter. > > Fred Fred, something I left out of my post is that religion for me was an extremely positive experience. I cannot even think of a negative part of it. The family aspects of religion, my friends, the music, the scholarly aspects, all of it was good to me, more positive for me than for anyone else I know. I loved my church and my church life. My friends and acquaintances were absolutely astounded that I could ever give it up, thought I had gone insane. I had gone sane however. I had no choice: I realized I could not control what I believe, and I no longer believed the doctrine to be true. True matters more than happy. So, into the old bit bucket with it, all of it. I miss it to this day I confess. But truth makes me happy too, even the grim truth of our temporary nature in a vast uncaring universe. spike From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 4 04:43:14 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 00:43:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Back to Causes of War In-Reply-To: <0c7201c78dfd$a8f02060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427183950.042a2270@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070428134420.03fc0dd0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070501160428.0406a860@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070502094316.02c52020@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070504004034.0419d960@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 08:34 PM 5/3/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: snip > > However, it is better to have a even a poor model than to have none at > > all. A poor model can be tested and improved or it may lead to a better > > model. And in this model, it leads to an understanding of the long range > > importance of low or even zero population growth unless you want to > > have wars. > >Yes, we always need better models---or, when we can't get anything >worthy of the name---better explanations. I think you should read my EP memes and war paper/model. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/17/194059/296 Let me know when you have done so. Keith From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 4 04:52:46 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 23:52:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] a trifle of nomenclature In-Reply-To: <0c7201c78dfd$a8f02060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427183950.042a2270@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070428134420.03fc0dd0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070501160428.0406a860@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070502094316.02c52020@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <0c7201c78dfd$a8f02060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070503234959.023aa080@satx.rr.com> At 08:34 PM 5/3/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: >Every intelligence agency in the world believed that Hussein >had the WMD, and he behaved and acted as though he did too. I was under the impression that this was his given name, but no--and neither is Hussein his surname. Here's the good oil: What a relief to know that! Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 4 04:49:08 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 21:49:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook References: <20070503110413.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.ee5d2d7f8f.wbe@email.secureserver.net><0c4501c78dd4$355fc340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><8d71341e0705031556n1fb28cbeu30963165d0cf8d68@mail.gmail.com><0c7701c78dfe$5d000340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705032114t48fc24d5r73df7986f416b726@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0c9401c78e08$2aff85a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Russell writes > As I said earlier, I am not defending the idea that all the events > described in the Bible and other religious texts should be regarded > as having literally occured; the way I got into this discussion was > noticing you making the quite stunning remark that you favored > fundamentalism of all sides over rational moderation. Egads! Can hardly believe I would have said such a thing. Never mind. I repudiate it. Perhaps you think that modern liberal theology is "rational moderation". It's not. It's a *retreat* from rationalism to commitment, as explained in Bartley's book---"The Retreat To Commitment"---which is (or should be), the bible of Pan Critical Rationalism. (Sorry for the word choice :-) > > Yes and no. I concur that the west has perhaps committed suicide > > by abadoning its religion. But the source of its strength---open inquiry > > also perhaps laid the seeds of its ruin. > > Open inquiry is a freedom. It's up to us what use we make of it. > If we use it to destroy the basis of continued life, well then it wil > cease to exist when we do. But we have free will; we can choose > otherwise. Well, if by "we" you mean the entire collective consciousness of the West, or *all* the people living there. That cannot happen. As you say (or implied, at least) the people appear to need something beyond mere rationality. By losing faith in God, and having failed to be able to replace it with anything that causes (1) large families, (2) high confidence in ourselves and our institutions, and (3) tighter moral precepts and higher abhorence of vulgarity and coarseness, indeed the West may be doomed. Heaven knows that only the Singularity can save us, to mix a mess of metaphors. The Americans passed up (1) by refusing either to go along with Brigham Young's great ideas, and by not taking Galton seriously enough. And about (2)? How did we lose (2)? The Marxists and anthropologists like Boas and his followers mainly did the trick, and they also took down (3) while they were at it. Or, it may be that there is a natural cycle to these things, and if they hadn't done it, the society would have lost its asabiya (or social capital) some other way. > > ...that is too bad. > > Perhaps, but I haven't given up on the survival of our values and the > civilization that supports them, however slim the odds may be. Good man. > And the truth is that a) you cannot either prove or disprove the > existence of God and b) the real motive driving fanatical atheism > derives from precisely the same evolutionary psychology as the > motive driving fanatical religion. A dispassionate quest for the > truth would eschew both. Nah. You can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the Tooth Fairy either. But I'll let Stathis continue---he's on a roll. Lee From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 4 05:16:31 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 22:16:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] pronunciation standards and cow lifeforms In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705040516.l445GWx6003104@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK ... > > On 5/3/07, spike wrote: ... > > ... But nearly every country on this planet devours beef, so > they must have cows too... >... > > > > Nope, pardner. We euro cowboys tend to frequent discos and nightclubs. :) ... > > > > Europe has pretty well been fenced in since before the US began, and > has lush green grassy meadows for the cows. BillK This article just appeared on CNN, as if on cue, about cows in the Swiss alps. It explains so much. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/DESTINATIONS/05/03/cow.culture/index.html Many amusing passages, including this: ...Olle tells me that even cows become victims of the mountains, occasionally wandering off cliffs. He says, "Alpine farmers expect to lose some of their cows in 'hiking accidents.' These days cows are double the weight of cows a hundred years ago ... and no less stupid. If one wanders off a cliff in search of greener grass, the others follow. One time at the high Alp above our village, 40 cows performed this stunt. They died like lemmings... {8^D spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 4 05:33:19 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 22:33:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] a trifle of nomenclature References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427183950.042a2270@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070428134420.03fc0dd0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070501160428.0406a860@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070502094316.02c52020@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <0c7201c78dfd$a8f02060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503234959.023aa080@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <0ca301c78e0d$c7168790$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Damien writes >>Every intelligence agency in the world believed that Hussein >>had the WMD, and he behaved and acted as though he did too. > > I was under the impression that this was his given name, but no--and > neither is Hussein his surname. Here's the good oil: > ... He should have been addressed, even internationally, as he wished to be addressed (Miss Manners again). If we don't know, then it's a trade-off between brevity (as in Saddam, or Hussein) and politeness, which for us would be Mr. Hussein, in order to show respect. (I am making no comment on the alleged deliberate mispronunciation of "Hussein" by Bush the First in order to rattle him.) Lee > simply his last name on second reference. But in the case of the > leader of Iraq, neither Saddam nor Hussein is technically a surname. > > Journalists have worried that choosing to address the leader by his > first name is somehow rude and smacks of the dismissive tone that > President George Bush (and his father before him) has often been > accused of using. > > The country's main news wire service, the Canadian Press, along with > its sister organization in the U.S., the Associated Press, have > decided to go with "Saddam." The National Post and Toronto Star > newspapers follow a similar pattern. CTV, meanwhile, has chosen to > use "Hussein," while The Globe and Mail uses the more formal "Mr. > Hussein." CBC seems to work around the problem by referring to him > only as "Saddam Hussein" in their broadcasts. > > Associated Press explains its position of using the Iraqi leader's > first name this way: > > "He is not usually referred to as 'Hussein' by people in Iraq or > elsewhere in the Middle East. Political leaders and Iraqi citizens > call him simply Saddam or by both names -- Saddam Hussein. Both > Arabic- and English-language newspapers follow the same practice, and > some that use both names in copy reduce it to Saddam in headlines.'' > > John Miller, who teaches "Covering Diversity" at the School of > Journalism at Ryerson University says this issue could be simple: if > most world leaders are referred to by their second name, then the > leader of Iraq should be treated the same. > > But CTV's Ellen Pinchuk, who is reporting from Baghdad, says the > people of Iraq don't address their leader by name at all. Pinchuk > says the Iraqis she's spoken to say they categorically do not refer > to their president as "Saddam." When speaking of him in the press, > they prefer to call him "Mr. President Saddam Hussein" on first > reference, and then simply, "Mr. President," or "His Excellency." > > "Many are not comfortable pronouncing his actual name in public > within hearing distance of anyone," Pinchuk says. > > The issue is complicated by the Arabic system of family names. The > Associated Press recently explained its decision to refer to the > Iraqi leader as "Saddam" this way: > > "Hussein is not his family name. Saddam is his given name, and > Hussein is his father's given name; this is common practice in Arab > families. His full name is Saddam Hussein al-Majd al-Tikriti, but he > uses neither al-Majd, which is akin to a family name, nor al-Tikriti, > which is a name for his extended family, or clan, derived from the > Tikrit region where the president is from." > > Tim Harrison, a professor of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at > the University of Toronto explains that Arabic names are structured > so that their full names offer a sort of genealogy of the family. So, > Hussein is not the president's last name; it is the name of his > father, Hussein Abdul al Majid al Tikriti. The Iraqi leader's son is > likewise named after him: Odai Saddam Hussein. > > Strictly speaking, Hussein's family name is "al Majid." But this full > name is never used in Iraq, except in very formal contexts, "perhaps > to position him in the broader tribal confederation that he's from," > Harrison explained to CTV News Online.> > > What a relief to know that! > > Damien Broderick > > > From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 4 06:00:01 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 23:00:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Back to Causes of War In-Reply-To: <0c7201c78dfd$a8f02060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427183950.042a2270@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070428134420.03fc0dd0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070501160428.0406a860@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070502094316.02c52020@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <0c7201c78dfd$a8f02060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <26144470-2272-4443-980D-070EA647205E@mac.com> On May 3, 2007, at 8:34 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > The democratic West needed to believe that Saddam Hussein was an > enemy. That was easy. Really? Despite its abuses Iraq was one of the more secular and progressive of Arab nations. > They also needed to believe that if not an > imminent threat, he would be sooner or later (which I believed and > still think would have become the case---imagine the arms race > going on right now between Iran and Iraq). What are you on about? There is no arms race between Iraq and Iran now. Or is this a hypothetical if things had been different? There was a time when a nation had to be actually taking war like actions toward us before war was justified, not merely a suspicion that a nation might sooner or later become a threat unless we disposed its leader and even invaded. > The banner of WMD > was waved over the people and they fell for it like sheep? Not > exactly. Every intelligence agency in the world believed that Hussein > had the WMD, No they didn't. French intelligence warned repeatedly that our intel was bogus on this. Germany expressed its own doubts. Some elements of British intelligence did not want to play ball with the party line. In any event the intelligence was in fact wrong and highly cooked and it did in fact serve to stampede the American people. Remember back when they were floating stories of how Iraq could drop a nuke on the west coast at will? What a farce. > and he behaved and acted as though he did too. How was that? He kept insisting the had no such thing. We didn't believe him and made an arse of ourselves. > Perhaps he even did, and managed to get them across the border > during the interminable allied build-up occupying the whole fall of > 2002 > and spring of 2003 while the U.S. waited for U.N. sanction. Yeah, right. What will it take for you to admit we were simply WRONG and you and many others were likely hoodwinked on purpose by the administration? > Anyway, > the so-called responsible leaders of Congress almost to a man and > woman---who have their own incredibly expensive staffs to help them > come to responsible conclusions---voted overwhelmingly to support > the war. > Do you think they did it for the reasons given to the people? I hope not. I would hate to think that the entire legislature is that stupid. There is only one non-stupid reason for what we did. Peak Oil is real and those in positions to know are quite aware of it. I believe they are also aware of how deeply unsound our economy is which I think a likely secondary factor. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 4 06:05:30 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 23:05:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook In-Reply-To: <0c7701c78dfe$5d000340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20070503110413.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.ee5d2d7f8f.wbe@email.secureserver.net> <0c4501c78dd4$355fc340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705031556n1fb28cbeu30963165d0cf8d68@mail.gmail.com> <0c7701c78dfe$5d000340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On May 3, 2007, at 8:41 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Russell Wallace writes > >> On 5/3/07, Lee Corbin wrote: >>> How about Santa Claus? Do you really think that there is a fact >>> of the >>> matter regarding an individual who lives at the north pole and >>> arranges >>> for gifts to somewhat magically be delivered on Christmas day to >>> deserving children around the world? >> >> There are various sources of data that entitle me to claim there is a >> fact of the matter in this case, such as the observed absence of >> Santa's >> workshop at the geographical north pole. This would be equivalent to >> the example I gave about the absence of gods on top of Mount Olympus. > > And what about my examples of golden tablets from Moroni, Muhummad > rising to heaven on a winged horse, virgin births, the whole lot? > > But maybe you'd rather skip that, which would be okay, and cut to the > chase here, for you, which seems to be > >> And my question stands: do you not agree that he who sets out to >> destroy something vital, should first have a viable replacement >> ready? > > Yes and no. I concur that the west has perhaps committed suicide > by abadoning its religion. But the source of its strength---open > inquiry > also perhaps laid the seeds of its ruin. The Enlightenment needs to complete its work. It was not to blame per se for what ills we have along with our many gains from more "religious" times. This country was not designed to be a Christian nation no matter how many revisionists claim that it was. The Christian political forces in this country are incredibly regressive and strengthening them would make this country much worse than it is. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 4 06:19:05 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 23:19:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705032114t48fc24d5r73df7986f416b726@mail.gmail.com> References: <20070503110413.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.ee5d2d7f8f.wbe@email.secureserver.net> <0c4501c78dd4$355fc340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705031556n1fb28cbeu30963165d0cf8d68@mail.gmail.com> <0c7701c78dfe$5d000340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705032114t48fc24d5r73df7986f416b726@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On May 3, 2007, at 9:14 PM, Russell Wallace wrote: > > Open inquiry is a freedom. It's up to us what use we make of it. If > we use it to destroy the basis of continued life, well then it will > cease to exist when we do. But we have free will; we can choose > otherwise. > Yes! > Well, that is too bad. > > Perhaps, but I haven't given up on the survival of our values and > the civilization that supports them, however slim the odds may be. > It is a delicate matter to come to a good working understanding of what aspect of what is in that civilization are the true underpinnings of what we value and wish to keep and what is not so important. I know many fundamentalist who are basically good hearted and in many ways noble people. But they have in their head that the dogma they have adhered to is a critical element of all that is good in their lives and the world. To question it is in their mind to give up on everything or threaten everything they value. It is a very limiting position to be in. > But what > I am concerned about *here* is a search for truth. On this list, > it is > necessary to say what is true, and to separate it from what is false. > > And the truth is that a) you cannot either prove or disprove the > existence of God It is not difficult to prove that God as commonly conceived is contradictory enough to be impossible. It is not difficult to prove that the Bible is full of contradictions and thus cannot be inherent. It is up to those who assert something as improbable as God to give good evidence in any case. They have not done so. > and b) the real motive driving fanatical atheism derives from > precisely the same evolutionary psychology as the motive driving > fanatical religion. A dispassionate quest for the truth would > eschew both. Psychologizing motives is a waste of time. Calling atheism that is honest and upfront "fanatical" is unjustifiable. I don't believe dispassion is a universal virtue. Caring for the truth more than your belief is important. But that is a very passionate endeavor. > So on this occasion I was able to tell him Dawkins is full of shit, > and try to communicate the real grandeur of evolution as we now > understand it. But there is only one of me, and I can't explain > this to every Christian in the world. I can't personally undo the > work of every saboteur. > Calling Dawkins a saboteur is completely irresponsible. If you disagree with his argument (as I largely do) then show where it is flawed. But don't put down such a man just because you find one of his opinions inconvenient or even embarrassing. Do we have so little cohesion among ourselves compared to believers? Are we so ill at ease with our minority status that we vilify our own? - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 4 06:24:59 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 23:24:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Changing Other Poster's Minds In-Reply-To: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On May 3, 2007, at 9:32 PM, spike wrote: > > Fred, something I left out of my post is that religion for me was an > extremely positive experience. I cannot even think of a negative > part of > it. The family aspects of religion, my friends, the music, the > scholarly > aspects, all of it was good to me, more positive for me than for > anyone else > I know. I loved my church and my church life. My friends and > acquaintances > were absolutely astounded that I could ever give it up, thought I > had gone > insane. I had gone sane however. I had no choice: I realized I > could not > control what I believe, and I no longer believed the doctrine to be > true. > True matters more than happy. I know very much what that is like. It was very difficult for me to let go of my religious life. But try as I might, and I tried mighty hard, I couldn't make it out to be true. I also could not abide the places of blindness within my religious community to much outside of importance and value. > So, into the old bit bucket with it, all of > it. I miss it to this day I confess. There are considerable parts that I miss too. - samantha From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 4 06:32:09 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 16:32:09 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook (was Changing other poster's minds) In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705031816l15c40272v7f971bfea5edfb86@mail.gmail.com> References: <200705030322.l433M2Qk004995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <0bcd01c78d92$b9405090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030945u24ca8c67h4f44b205c66b3a6e@mail.gmail.com> <8d71341e0705031816l15c40272v7f971bfea5edfb86@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 04/05/07, Russell Wallace wrote: > > On 5/4/07, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > > > > Inaccessibility is not license to posit the existence of anything that > > takes your fancy. What if I say that Santa Claus exists, but he lives just > > beyond the edge of the visible universe. Would you say that there is no > > "truth of the matter" regarding the existence of this Santa Claus? > > > > Inaccessibility by itself isn't, but infinity in some cases is. Replace > "just beyond" with "somewhere beyond" and, given that our best theories > suggest the universe is infinite or at least exponentially larger than our > Hubble volume, I would say there is no basis for claiming his nonexistence > in that sense. > The ultimate example of this is the theory that everything that possibly can exist, does exist: Tegmark Level 4 multiverse, or David Lewis's modal realism. But I suspect that theists would not be satisfied with God having a similar ontological status to other imaginary beings, even if there is a sense in which those beings do exist. I am happy to include the Bible as a great work of literature, but I don't > > see the slightest reason why it should be taken any more seriously as a > > description of reality than, say, the Iliad and the Odyssey. If we had > > Homeric fundamentalists alive today we could have the same discussions with > > them as we do with Christian fundamentalists. > > > > I'm not defending fundamentalism - on any side. I think "the Bible proves > the Earth was created in 4004 BC" is as false, counterproductive and > irrational as "science proves there is no God". The way I got into this > conversation was when I saw people praising fundamentalists as more rational > than moderates! It's the moderate religious view that has faith in God > (which can be neither proven nor disproven) and sees the Bible as a source > of moral truth without insisting that every word in it be taken literally, > that I'm defending. > OK, I just used your post as an opportunity for a rant :) -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell.wallace at gmail.com Fri May 4 06:52:54 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 07:52:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fundamentalism and a Scientific Outlook In-Reply-To: References: <20070503110413.38f036b76284185e041b1b237c97abe6.ee5d2d7f8f.wbe@email.secureserver.net> <0c4501c78dd4$355fc340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705031556n1fb28cbeu30963165d0cf8d68@mail.gmail.com> <0c7701c78dfe$5d000340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705032114t48fc24d5r73df7986f416b726@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705032352m76c81f82gf6008c2c3e07aba7@mail.gmail.com> On 5/4/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > Calling Dawkins a saboteur is completely irresponsible. If you > disagree with his argument (as I largely do) then show where it is > flawed. But don't put down such a man just because you find one of > his opinions inconvenient or even embarrassing. Do we have so > little cohesion among ourselves compared to believers? Are we so > ill at ease with our minority status that we vilify our own? > I just spent several posts explaining where I disagree with the arguments in question. As for why I'm pissed off with them, look at it from my perspective: obviously I'm not going to change your opinion on the question of religion being worth preserving, so consider the other issue - do you agree with me that science is worth preserving? Assuming the answer is yes, if you saw someone taking actions that, in your estimation, were precisely those that would maximize the probability of science being consigned to the trash heap of history, would you not get pissed off with him too? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sentience at pobox.com Fri May 4 08:42:11 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 01:42:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> Samantha Atkins wrote: > On May 3, 2007, at 9:32 PM, spike wrote: > >> Fred, something I left out of my post is that religion for me was >> an extremely positive experience. I cannot even think of a >> negative part of it. The family aspects of religion, my friends, >> the music, the scholarly aspects, all of it was good to me, more >> positive for me than for anyone else I know. I loved my church >> and my church life. My friends and acquaintances were absolutely >> astounded that I could ever give it up, thought I had gone >> insane. I had gone sane however. I had no choice: I realized I >> could not control what I believe, and I no longer believed the >> doctrine to be true. True matters more than happy. > > I know very much what that is like. It was very difficult for me > to let go of my religious life. But try as I might, and I tried > mighty hard, I couldn't make it out to be true. I also could not > abide the places of blindness within my religious community to much > outside of importance and value. > >> So, into the old bit bucket with it, all of it. I miss it to >> this day I confess. > > There are considerable parts that I miss too. Samantha, Spike, what do you miss? Fools try to build "rational religions" but because they are just blindly imitating religion, they only invent sad little mockeries; hymns to the nonexistence of God. You have to start by accepting "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" as a non-negotiable requirement, and then consider the desires that religion grew up organically to satisfy. You have to create a vision of what humanity would have been if we had never made the mistake of religion in the first place, never believed in anything supernatural, never departed the way of rationality, but had still had the same desires and grown up other organic institutions to fulfill them. The humanity that never made the mistake would write hymns, when they saw something worth writing a hymn to; but it wouldn't be a hymn to the nonexistence of God, because they wouldn't have the idea of God in the first place. Would this world still have marriages and funeral ceremonies? Yes, but they would be different marriages and funeral ceremonies. They certainly would not be performed "in the name of Bayes" because nobody wants to hear about bloody probability theory while they're trying to get married - that's an example of the blind imitation that usually gets done by fools who set out to invent "rational replacements for religion". But even human beings who don't have heads stuffed full of blatant nonsense will still want to celebrate marriages. They just won't invoke invisible sky wizards to seal the deal. Even a rationalist still feels a need to find something to say when a friend or family member dies. It just won't be false comfort. If you have a need that can be satisfied without believing in false propositions, maybe we can get it back for you, one of these days. If it was satisfied by a church in the old days, it may take a while to construct the community, though. What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all right. But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the truth should be. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 4 09:28:22 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 19:28:22 +1000 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 04/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > It seems to me > > that Heartland is claiming that there is some objective criterion for > death which trumps what an ordinary person would understand > > by the term.< > > > That would mean that you could have a test and be informed that, even > though you don't realise it, you died in the last hour (with > > the appropriate adjustment to the pronouns that that would entail). > < > > Why isn't that *theoretically* possible? Why isn't it *possible* > that this could have happened? I can imagine being suddenly > shown overwhelming evidence including video tapes of Lee's > behavior over the last weeks---how in some ways it resembled > how I act today and in some ways not, and have to conclude > that by some TREMENDOUS agency beyond our present > unassisted human ability, the old Lee had indeed been replaced > by *me*. (One easy way is to show that Lee actually commited > moral crimes of which I am incapable.) I neglected to specify that you have not noticed anything unusual happen in the last hour, and neither has anyone else, other than the test result. I think it is enough to leave it as vague as this, because it is how we know that we remain the same person from moment to moment in ordinary life. People do, as a matter of fact, quite often develop delusions that they are someone else, and it is generally immediately and unequivocally evident that this is the case. But although it's crazy to go around believing that you are someone you are not, it would also be crazy if you started wondering whether you really are the person you think you are, and as a result started demanding more and more stringent tests to ascertain that you aren't deluded. (That's rather paradoxical, like the case of the man who had an irrational fear that he was going mad, to the extent that he was actually diagnosed as being delusional and treated with antipsychotics). -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 4 10:47:40 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 20:47:40 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> Message-ID: On 04/05/07, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a > higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all > right. But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, > and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under > the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the > truth should be. You obviously believe that the truth is better than falsehood and you're probably right. However, it is at least logically possible that widespread belief in a Noble Lie might have a net positive effect. In that case, is it still better to destroy the Lie regardless of the consequences? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From neptune at superlink.net Fri May 4 11:23:31 2007 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 07:23:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] POL: DHEA ban Message-ID: <008101c78e3e$ac97e220$a2893cd1@pavilion> This is what the Life Extension Foundation wants its US members to send to the US Congress. Regards, Dan ___________________________________________________ I am writing to urge you to vote AGAINST any legislation that would restrict my free access to a dietary supplement called dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). Senate bill 762 (S.762) and House Resolution 1249 (H.R. 1249) seek to classify DHEA as a controlled substance under the anabolic steroid category, something that this over-the-counter dietary supplement is not. DHEA has been freely sold to Americans for over 10 years and can provide aging Americans with a safe alternative to expensive prescription drugs. According to the United States government's Medline Medical Dictionary, an "anabolic steroid" is defined as "any of a group of usually synthetic hormones that are derivatives of testosterone, are used medically especially to promote tissue growth, and are sometimes abused by athletes to increase the size and strength of their muscles and improve endurance." (Reference: Medline Medical Dictionary-March 12, 2007) Based on the government's own definition of "anabolic steroid", DHEA does not fit into this category. DHEA is produced mainly in the adrenal glands and serves as a natural precursor and balancer to many hormones in the body. Controlled clinical trials indicate that its use in young men does not result in performance-related gains and it is not associated with the myriad of side effects that accompany anabolic steroid abuse. Anabolic steroid drug abuse is purported to result in cardiovascular conditions such as hypertension, atherosclerosis, and blood clotting, liver conditions such as jaundice and hepatic carcinoma, tendon damage, reduced fertility and breast enlargement (in males), and adverse psychological and behavioral effects. DHEA does not exert such effects. Moreover, surveys of weightlifters and other athletes conducted by researchers at Harvard University show that DHEA is rarely used to increase muscle size-strength or improve endurance. Therefore, the notion that DHEA is in any way comparable to controlled anabolic steroid drugs is scientifically unfounded and legally invalid. I ask that you vote NO on S.762 and H.R.1249 and any other bills that contain language that would in any way restrict my free access to DHEA. Please write me to let me know your position on this critically important issue. Sincerely, ___________________________________________________ From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 4 12:27:55 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 05:27:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0a2601c78bac$ce5b8a90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > On 04/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > [Stathis wrote] > > > It seems to me that Heartland is claiming that there is some > > > objective criterion for death which trumps what an ordinary > > > person would understand by the term. > > > That would mean that you could have a test and be informed > > > that, even though you don't realise it, you died in the last hour (with > > > the appropriate adjustment to the pronouns that that would entail). > > > > Why isn't that *theoretically* possible? Why isn't it *possible* > > that this could have happened? I can imagine being suddenly > > shown overwhelming evidence including video tapes of Lee's > > behavior over the last weeks---how in some ways it resembled > > how I act today and in some ways not, and have to conclude > > that by some TREMENDOUS agency beyond our present > > unassisted human ability, the old Lee had indeed been replaced > > by *me*. (One easy way is to show that Lee actually commited > > moral crimes of which I am incapable.) > > I neglected to specify that you have not noticed anything unusual > happen in the last hour, I claim to have already dispatched such a "subjectivity" criterion--- by raising the (remote) possibility of someone tampering with my memories in just the right way > and neither has anyone else, other than the test result. I think it is > enough to leave it as vague as this, because it is how we know > that we remain the same person from moment to moment in > ordinary life. We're not far apart! I would amend what you have just written to say that we cannot "know" that we remain the same person from moment to moment---it is a conjecture, of course, like anything else. And Heartland has a point in saying that any part of it that is subjective is pretty weak. We strongly and rightly *believe* that we are the same person from moment to moment, and from day to day, because it has withstood the test of criticism for ages, and we cannot parsimoniously believe that some tremendous agency has been messing with our minds. But the key overriding evidence would be *objective* evidence. Again, one could be shown some videos that would make one doubt that he was the same person he was even an hour ago, or a few minutes ago. Do you agree with this: Were objective scientific means of measuring approximately how much memory change was going on, then we would be the same person from moment to moment if and only if the objective facts were that our memories had undergone only the usual small quotidian changes to which we are accustomed to (or we think we are familiar with) in daily life. The "subjective criterion"---when we are engaged at a basic level as with Heartland---is worthless. > People do, as a matter of fact, quite often develop delusions that > they are someone else, and it is generally immediately and > unequivocally evident that this is the case. But although it's > crazy to go around believing that you are someone you are > not, it would also be crazy if you started wondering whether > you really are the person you think you are, and as a result > started demanding more and more stringent tests to ascertain > that you aren't deluded. I totally agree! And that is because it is so remarkably unlikely that agencies have been altering your memories. We simply *must* fall back (outside extraordinary circumstances) on the usual meanings that every other English speaker employs. We *know* (or, in this discussion I should write "know") that we are the same person from day to day, because alternative hypothesis are without any substantiation. Lee > (That's rather paradoxical, like the case of the man who had an > irrational fear that he was going mad, to the extent that he was > actually diagnosed as being delusional and treated with antipsychotics). From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 4 12:34:09 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 05:34:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> Message-ID: <0cd801c78e48$b55737d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Eliezer writes >> There are considerable parts that I miss too. > > Samantha, Spike, what do you miss? I thought that Spike was quite eloquent on the subject. As for me, it so happens that my meek Methodist upbringing was not at all inspirational. In fact, by the time I was 15 I suspected that the liberal theologians who ran my Sunday school classes were closet atheists, and I started looking around for alternative religions. So I don't miss anything, really. In fact, at age 18 I openly and exuberantly declared my atheism, it was because I finally knew that there was no deity with vague and perhaps threatening powers looking over my shoulder all the time. My brother experienced the same relief a year or two later. > What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a > higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all > right. Heh, heh. By age twelve or thirteen, I was not at *all* confident that this Being was doing very well by me. Things were considerably worse than if someone sensible were at the Helm, though I could not have put (and would dared not have put) those feelings into words. Lee But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, > and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under > the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the > truth should be. From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 4 12:50:03 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 13:50:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] POL: DHEA ban In-Reply-To: <008101c78e3e$ac97e220$a2893cd1@pavilion> References: <008101c78e3e$ac97e220$a2893cd1@pavilion> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Technotranscendence wrote: > This is what the Life Extension Foundation wants its US members to send > to the US Congress. > > Regards, > > Dan > ___________________________________________________ > I am writing to urge you to vote AGAINST any legislation that would > restrict my free access to a dietary supplement called > dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). > Wikipedia and Skeptic's dictionary don't think much of DHEA. Quote: In short, taking DHEA is a high-risk gamble based on insubstantial evidence. The main voices in favor of DHEA as a miracle drug are those who are selling it or who make a good living selling books or programs advocating "natural cures." BillK From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Fri May 4 13:41:18 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 06:41:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> Message-ID: <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I just watched an excellent (but at times painful for me) documentary about the Mormon Church and it touches on some of the themes of this thread. You can watch the entire film from this website: http://www.pbs.org/mormons/view/ John Grigg "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote: Samantha Atkins wrote: > On May 3, 2007, at 9:32 PM, spike wrote: > >> Fred, something I left out of my post is that religion for me was >> an extremely positive experience. I cannot even think of a >> negative part of it. The family aspects of religion, my friends, >> the music, the scholarly aspects, all of it was good to me, more >> positive for me than for anyone else I know. I loved my church >> and my church life. My friends and acquaintances were absolutely >> astounded that I could ever give it up, thought I had gone >> insane. I had gone sane however. I had no choice: I realized I >> could not control what I believe, and I no longer believed the >> doctrine to be true. True matters more than happy. > > I know very much what that is like. It was very difficult for me > to let go of my religious life. But try as I might, and I tried > mighty hard, I couldn't make it out to be true. I also could not > abide the places of blindness within my religious community to much > outside of importance and value. > >> So, into the old bit bucket with it, all of it. I miss it to >> this day I confess. > > There are considerable parts that I miss too. Samantha, Spike, what do you miss? Fools try to build "rational religions" but because they are just blindly imitating religion, they only invent sad little mockeries; hymns to the nonexistence of God. You have to start by accepting "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" as a non-negotiable requirement, and then consider the desires that religion grew up organically to satisfy. You have to create a vision of what humanity would have been if we had never made the mistake of religion in the first place, never believed in anything supernatural, never departed the way of rationality, but had still had the same desires and grown up other organic institutions to fulfill them. The humanity that never made the mistake would write hymns, when they saw something worth writing a hymn to; but it wouldn't be a hymn to the nonexistence of God, because they wouldn't have the idea of God in the first place. Would this world still have marriages and funeral ceremonies? Yes, but they would be different marriages and funeral ceremonies. They certainly would not be performed "in the name of Bayes" because nobody wants to hear about bloody probability theory while they're trying to get married - that's an example of the blind imitation that usually gets done by fools who set out to invent "rational replacements for religion". But even human beings who don't have heads stuffed full of blatant nonsense will still want to celebrate marriages. They just won't invoke invisible sky wizards to seal the deal. Even a rationalist still feels a need to find something to say when a friend or family member dies. It just won't be false comfort. If you have a need that can be satisfied without believing in false propositions, maybe we can get it back for you, one of these days. If it was satisfied by a church in the old days, it may take a while to construct the community, though. What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all right. But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the truth should be. -- 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 --------------------------------- Need Mail bonding? Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From torsteinhaldorsen at gmail.com Fri May 4 14:26:32 2007 From: torsteinhaldorsen at gmail.com (Torstein Haldorsen) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 16:26:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I am one of these fools you speak of. That is to say, I've been thinking about how we can best fill the void left by deleting religion for some time. However, I see no reason why it should be impossible to design an up-to-date, rational worldview to fill the roles that ancient religions currently play in many peoples lives, without violating rationality. The awesomeness of existence in-it-self, and the inherent beauty of the universe, from sub atomic to cosmological scales is nothing short of poetic. To me, this is worthy of ten thousand hymns... Hey, the answers provided by existing worldviews are so feeble when viewed from an enlightened 21st century viewpoint that if such a project were to be undertaken today, it would probably yield better answers almost by default, seeing how we have several thousand years of collective experience to learn from. We can provide better answers to "the great questions in life" than what was possible some-thousand years ago. Community-building is obviously the tricky part, and it would be cool to have some off-list input on this. Some of the philosophically inclined people on this list probably have the mental horsepower to have a reasonable chance to pull of such a project. Updating peoples world-views with the last couple of thousand years of cultural and scientific progress, and facilitating the transition to a post religious society seems like a worthwhile project to me. Humanity as a whole has come incredibly far in our understanding of Life, The Universe and Everything, when compared to the level understanding attained by average people through going to church and watching television. I'd be happy if you guys would be so kind and provide some input on the subject. My pet post-religious alternative is available at WWW.KHALA.NET PS: Bonus points if you guys succeed in playing the devil's advocate, and shooting this thing down, so I can free up time for other projects. -TT *"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" * wrote: > > Samantha Atkins wrote: > > On May 3, 2007, at 9:32 PM, spike wrote: > > > >> Fred, something I left out of my post is that religion for me was > >> an extremely positive experience. I cannot even think of a > >> negative part of it. The family aspects of religion, my friends, > >> the music, the scholarly aspects, all of it was good to me, more > >> positive for me than for anyone else I know. I loved my church > >> and my church life. My friends and acquaintances were absolutely > >> astounded that I could ever give it up, thought I had gone > >> insane. I had gone sane however. I had no choice: I realized I > >> could not control what I believe, and I no longer believed the > >> doctrine to be true. True matters more than happy. > > > > I know very much what that is like. It was very difficult for me > > to let go of my religious life. But try as I might, and I tried > > mighty hard, I couldn't make it out to be true. I also could not > > abide the places of blindness within my religious community to much > > outside of importance and value. > > > >> So, into the old bit bucket with it, all of it. I miss it to > >> this day I confess. > > > > There are considerable parts that I miss too. > > Samantha, Spike, what do you miss? > > Fools try to build "rational religions" but because they are just > blindly imitating religion, they only invent sad little mockeries; > hymns to the nonexistence of God. You have to start by accepting > "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" as a > non-negotiable requirement, and then consider the desires that > religion grew up organically to satisfy. You have to create a vision > of what humanity would have been if we had never made the mistake of > religion in the first place, never believed in anything supernatural, > never departed the way of rationality, but had still had the same > desires and grown up other organic institutions to fulfill them. > > The humanity that never made the mistake would write hymns, when they > saw something worth writing a hymn to; but it wouldn't be a hymn to > the nonexistence of God, because they wouldn't have the idea of God in > the first place. Would this world still have marriages and funeral > ceremonies? Yes, but they would be different marriages and funeral > ceremonies. They certainly would not be performed "in the name of > Bayes" because nobody wants to hear about bloody probability theory > while they're trying to get married - that's an example of the blind > imitation that usually gets done by fools who set out to invent > "rational replacements for religion". But even human beings who don't > have heads stuffed full of blatant nonsense will still want to > celebrate marriages. They just won't invoke invisible sky wizards to > seal the deal. Even a rationalist still feels a need to find > something to say when a friend or family member dies. It just won't > be false comfort. > > If you have a need that can be satisfied without believing in false > propositions, maybe we can get it back for you, one of these days. If > it was satisfied by a church in the old days, it may take a while to > construct the community, though. > > What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a > higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all > right. But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, > and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under > the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the > truth should be. > > -- > 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 > > > ------------------------------ > Need Mail bonding? > Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&Afor great > tips from Yahoo! Answersusers. > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com Fri May 4 06:16:03 2007 From: ilsa.bartlett at gmail.com (ilsa) Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 23:16:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] lifehouse method music Message-ID: <9b9887c80705032316k2f0e049ai61ea29d4d7bbff09@mail.gmail.com> Method Music Posted by: "Lawrence Ball" Lawrenceball at planettree.demon.co.uk lawrence2001uk Wed May 2, 2007 4:46 pm (PST) I hope none of you think this is spam! :-) Dear All, do try getting a musical portrait online at http://www.lifehouse-method.com It is free to have three pieces made before August 1 It is the result of three years music and programming work collaborating with Pete Townshend and Dave Snowdon Its a kind of cyber-oracle, a contemporary musical I Ching............ Do let me know how you found the experience also! Perhaps off-group? all best wishes Lawrence http://www.lawrenceball.org PERSONAL WEB SITE http://www.myspace.com/planettreemusic CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FESTIVAL AT PETE TOWNSHEND"S OCEANIC STUDIOS APRIL 20-25 2007 http://www.myspace.com/lifehousemethod THE METHOD - MUSICAL PORTRAITURE OVER THE WEB AND NEW ALBUM - OUT 25 APRIL - PROJECTS WITH PETE TOWNSHEND http://www.myspace.com/lawrenceballmusic LB MYSPACE MUSIC SITE -- don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person. john coletrane www.mikyo.com/ilsa http://rewiring.blogspot.com www.hotlux.com/angel.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 4 15:05:57 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 08:05:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Back to Causes of War References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070427124007.0465bbc8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070427183950.042a2270@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070428134420.03fc0dd0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070501160428.0406a860@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070502094316.02c52020@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070504004034.0419d960@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <0ce901c78e5e$68e003d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Keith writes > At 08:34 PM 5/3/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: > > snip > >> > However, it is better to have a even a poor model than to have none at >> > all. A poor model can be tested and improved or it may lead to a better >> > model. And in this model, it leads to an understanding of the long range >> > importance of low or even zero population growth unless you want to >> > have wars. >> >> Yes, we always need better models---or, when we can't get anything >> worthy of the name---better explanations. > > I think you should read my EP memes and war paper/model. > > http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/17/194059/296 > > Let me know when you have done so. Yes. I printed it out. I will let you know when I have finished it. Lee From alex at ramonsky.com Fri May 4 15:17:33 2007 From: alex at ramonsky.com (Alex Ramonsky) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 16:17:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Damien - Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs References: <17645.97982.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <463B4E8D.4050609@ramonsky.com> Damien Broderick wrote: >The slightly farcical aspect here is that Lee was the one who >introduced the foul epithet "----". I was shocked, shocked I say. > > > It's a variety of Tourette's syndrome, in which sufferers suddenly emit streams of punctuation for no apparent reason. -One of the new textually-transmitted diseases, against which humor is the only known prophylactic. : ) AR ****** From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 4 15:57:45 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 08:57:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > On 04/05/07, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > > > What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a > > higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all > > right. But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, > > and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under > > the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the > > truth should be. > > You obviously believe that the truth is better than falsehood and you're > probably right. However, it is at least logically possible that widespread > belief in a Noble Lie might have a net positive effect. In that case, is it > still better to destroy the Lie regardless of the consequences? This simple question highlights the immaturity of our cultural understanding of morality (issues involving what is "better" as above.) It's a category error to confuse the Truth that we value with the instrumental truth that we apply to promoting our values. We are defined, to a large extent (the extent we would care about), by our values. And anyone would agree that their values, whatever they may be, are best promoted by applying methods from their best available model of reality, i.e. truth. The "Nobel Lie" that you refer to would be in the category of subjective values, not in the category of (increasingly) objective instrumental methods. And it would persist to the extent that it survived the ongoing process of competition between and selection for, values that "work." As for the viability of a "rational religion", it can be clarified in those same terms. We can ask whether what we value in such organizations, e.g. enjoyment of fellowship, ritual, shared purpose and activities, can thrive apart from the methods (largely fear-based) derived from that more traditional model of reality. It seems to me that the answer is a very weak "yes", to the extent that people find comfort in the exercise of rational decision-making. I say "weak" because only a very small fraction of the present population find comfort in passing through the void and coming out the other side lacking all previously assumed means of support, but just as whole and much freer than before. For the rest of the population, smaller-context evolved creature comforts will trump the wisdom of insecurity nearly every time. - Jef From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 4 16:10:34 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 09:10:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Damien - Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <463B4E8D.4050609@ramonsky.com> References: <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> <463B4E8D.4050609@ramonsky.com> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Alex Ramonsky wrote: > > Damien Broderick wrote: > > >The slightly farcical aspect here is that Lee was the one who > >introduced the foul epithet "----". I was shocked, shocked I say. > > > It's a variety of Tourette's syndrome, in which sufferers suddenly emit > streams of punctuation for no apparent reason. -One of the new > textually-transmitted diseases, against which humor is the only known > prophylactic. : ) It's described in the technical literature as punctuated disequilibrium. - Jef From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 4 16:18:05 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 09:18:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning Message-ID: <0cfd01c78e68$37a56e40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Now my very small company at which I have been happily employed for around ten years has been bought out by a giant corporation. We still manage, despite certain new difficulties and obstacles, to support our product for our single customer efficiently, almost as well as before. However, the corporation requires that we take many online "classes", which consist of multimedia presentations of (and endless varieties of) materials, everything from "Rational Unified Processes" to classes on Java. (If you are already a capable and intelligent software engineer, and you don't know what RUP is, then just remain that way and consider yourself lucky.) Among my many beefs, I am annoyed at the manner in which the online courses are conducted. The text is good, even the diagrams are quite good, but the animations are silly and redundant. And quite often they're visually distracting, as one is trying to focus on the ideas behind a paragraph of text. On this list recently, a link to a multimedia presentation regarding the basic principles of an individual's self ownership, individual liberty, and respect for private property, and so on, was suggested. It is a "Ten minute Flash Animation" and is at http://www.isil.org/resources/introduction.html I found it very slow paced. Now, I myself happen to be able---under some conditions---to absorb knowledge via straightforward, old- fashioned, outmoded, linear text. I am afraid that music and animation for the most part add nothing to my learning. Moreover, they can in some cases, such as in the above flash animation, actually *decrease* knowledge acquisition and comprehension per unit of time expended. In short, I became impatient during the ten minute presentation. Did anyone else experience my frustration? On the other hand, are there testimonials as to the effectiveness of said presentation? Lee From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 4 16:12:28 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 12:12:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] POL: DHEA ban In-Reply-To: References: <008101c78e3e$ac97e220$a2893cd1@pavilion> <008101c78e3e$ac97e220$a2893cd1@pavilion> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070504120719.041dd1c0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 01:50 PM 5/4/2007 +0100, you wrote: snip >Wikipedia and Skeptic's dictionary don't think much of DHEA. > > I read Wikipedia as fairly neutral on the subject. Memetics is a well understood subject among extropians, but the skeptics rejected the meme about memes for about ten years. In general transhumanists, libertarians and the like oppose government rules on consumables. Keith From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 4 17:00:10 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 10:00:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com><359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <0d1501c78e6d$d3c15230$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Torstein writes > I am one of these fools you [Eliezer, below] speak of. That is to say, I've been > thinking about how we can best fill the void left by deleting religion for some time. > > However, I see no reason why it should be impossible to design an up-to-date, > rational worldview to fill the roles that ancient religions currently play in many > peoples lives, In your urge to re-design, are at all or have you ever been dismayed at the mess made by some of your predecessors who tried their hands at redesigning economic systems, nations, governments, or even housing projects? It is for absolute sure that Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and American urban planners of the 1950s beyond number also believed that it would be, at least conceptually, "a simple matter" to design an up-to-date rational economic system, or urban neighborhood system, or what have you. I advise extreme caution and humility in the face of thousands of years of evolved systems that work, however badly from our points of view. Lee ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Whatever needs are being psychologically met by the world's religion, I predict that it will be flatly impossible without superhuman assistance, to design rational up-to-date replacements. without violating rationality. The awesomeness of existence in-it-self, and the inherent beauty of the universe, from sub atomic to cosmological scales is nothing short of poetic. To me, this is worthy of ten thousand hymns... Hey, the answers provided by existing worldviews are so feeble when viewed from an enlightened 21st century viewpoint that if such a project were to be undertaken today, it would probably yield better answers almost by default, seeing how we have several thousand years of collective experience to learn from. We can provide better answers to "the great questions in life" than what was possible some-thousand years ago. Community-building is obviously the tricky part, and it would be cool to have some off-list input on this. Some of the philosophically inclined people on this list probably have the mental horsepower to have a reasonable chance to pull of such a project. Updating peoples world-views with the last couple of thousand years of cultural and scientific progress, and facilitating the transition to a post religious society seems like a worthwhile project to me. Humanity as a whole has come incredibly far in our understanding of Life, The Universe and Everything, when compared to the level understanding attained by average people through going to church and watching television. I'd be happy if you guys would be so kind and provide some input on the subject. My pet post-religious alternative is available at WWW.KHALA.NET PS: Bonus points if you guys succeed in playing the devil's advocate, and shooting this thing down, so I can free up time for other projects. -TT "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote: Samantha Atkins wrote: > On May 3, 2007, at 9:32 PM, spike wrote: > >> Fred, something I left out of my post is that religion for me was >> an extremely positive experience. I cannot even think of a >> negative part of it. The family aspects of religion, my friends, >> the music, the scholarly aspects, all of it was good to me, more >> positive for me than for anyone else I know. I loved my church >> and my church life. My friends and acquaintances were absolutely >> astounded that I could ever give it up, thought I had gone >> insane. I had gone sane however. I had no choice: I realized I >> could not control what I believe, and I no longer believed the >> doctrine to be true. True matters more than happy. > > I know very much what that is like. It was very difficult for me > to let go of my religious life. But try as I might, and I tried > mighty hard, I couldn't make it out to be true. I also could not > abide the places of blindness within my religious community to much > outside of importance and value. > >> So, into the old bit bucket with it, all of it. I miss it to >> this day I confess. > > There are considerable parts that I miss too. Samantha, Spike, what do you miss? Fools try to build "rational religions" but because they are just blindly imitating religion, they only invent sad little mockeries; hymns to the nonexistence of God. You have to start by accepting "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" as a non-negotiable requirement, and then consider the desires that religion grew up organically to satisfy. You have to create a vision of what humanity would have been if we had never made the mistake of religion in the first place, never believed in anything supernatural, never departed the way of rationality, but had still had the same desires and grown up other organic institutions to fulfill them. The humanity that never made the mistake would write hymns, when they saw something worth writing a hymn to; but it wouldn't be a hymn to the nonexistence of God, because they wouldn't have the idea of God in the first place. Would this world still have marriages and funeral ceremonies? Yes, but they would be different marriages and funeral ceremonies. They certainly would not be performed "in the name of Bayes" because nobody wants to hear about bloody probability theory while they're trying to get married - that's an example of the blind imitation that usually gets done by fools who set out to invent "rational replacements for religion". But even human beings who don't have heads stuffed full of blatant nonsense will still want to celebrate marriages. They just won't invoke invisible sky wizards to seal the deal. Even a rationalist still feels a need to find something to say when a friend or family member dies. It just won't be false comfort. If you have a need that can be satisfied without believing in false propositions, maybe we can get it back for you, one of these days. If it was satisfied by a church in the old days, it may take a while to construct the community, though. What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all right. But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the truth should be. -- 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 Need Mail bonding? Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users. _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 4 17:14:05 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 10:14:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs References: <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer><0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer><0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com><463B4E8D.4050609@ramonsky.com> Message-ID: <0d1c01c78e6f$ee32f720$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Jef writes >> > The slightly farcical aspect here is that Lee was the one who >> > introduced the foul epithet "----". I was shocked, shocked I say. >> >> It's a variety of Tourette's syndrome, in which sufferers suddenly emit >> streams of punctuation for no apparent reason. -One of the new >> textually-transmitted diseases, against which humor is the only known >> prophylactic. : ) > > It's described in the technical literature as punctuated disequilibrium. Yes, yes, yes, have a good laugh! Laugh and the world laughs with you. Laughter is the best medicine. It also helps you avoid *real* problems, making it conveniently unnecessary to ignore reports like BillK's where he wrote on 5/3, 9:34 AM > I can only speak for the UK, but the constant use of swearing in their > [teenagers'] normal conversation is very prevalent. You only need to > walk around the mall, or listen on public transport, whenever a group > get together. They don't think of it as swearing, it is just normal for > them. When they get angry, and want to swear, they run into problems > communicating their displeasure because they haven't got any > 'forbidden' words left to use. So violence is the easy way of > expressing anger. Tut tut, BillK, you just gotta learn to laugh! Moreover, let Randall clue you into some really great Rap, and soon you can be singin' and dancin' away at just how da whores oughtta be cut up and fucked. (I, certainly, dare not replace the latter with "------", after all, to avoid shocking certain sensitive types.) Lee > Look at the stuff they post in chat rooms, on MySpace, or text > messages. It is almost constant, never-ending profanity and explicit > sexual references. (All with spelling mistakes as they use 'text' > language and a sort of pidgin English). From ben at goertzel.org Fri May 4 17:19:59 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 13:19:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <0d1c01c78e6f$ee32f720$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> <463B4E8D.4050609@ramonsky.com> <0d1c01c78e6f$ee32f720$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705041019v113a91aanb6a85343dcbb5714@mail.gmail.com> > > > Tut tut, BillK, you just gotta learn to laugh! Moreover, let Randall > clue you into some really great Rap, and soon you can be singin' > and dancin' away at just how da whores oughtta be cut up and fucked. > (I, certainly, dare not replace the latter with "------", after all, to > avoid > shocking certain sensitive types.) > > Lee > BTW Lee, not all hip-hop is violent and/or idiotic. Most of it is, but then as Theodore Sturgeon famously said, 95% of anything is bullshit. It's not my favorite style of music, but condemning a genre of music based on its worst examples is sorta like condemning all orchestral music based on elevator Muzak E.g. buy some CD's by the Roots, that's a fairly intelligent hip-hop band, and they actually play real instruments ;-) -- Ben G -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 4 17:33:20 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 18:33:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705041019v113a91aanb6a85343dcbb5714@mail.gmail.com> References: <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> <463B4E8D.4050609@ramonsky.com> <0d1c01c78e6f$ee32f720$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <3cf171fe0705041019v113a91aanb6a85343dcbb5714@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > BTW Lee, not all hip-hop is violent and/or idiotic. > > Most of it is, but then as Theodore Sturgeon famously said, 95% of > anything is bullshit. > > It's not my favorite style of music, but condemning a genre of music > based on its worst examples is sorta like condemning all orchestral > music based on elevator Muzak > > E.g. buy some CD's by the Roots, that's a fairly intelligent hip-hop band, > and they actually play real instruments ;-) > Well, tie me kangaroo down, sport! We've got extropians defending rap music! It's the end of civilization as we know it. BillK From ben at goertzel.org Fri May 4 17:39:33 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 13:39:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: References: <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> <463B4E8D.4050609@ramonsky.com> <0d1c01c78e6f$ee32f720$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <3cf171fe0705041019v113a91aanb6a85343dcbb5714@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705041039t3e6628e3i408ed4aea547a5bc@mail.gmail.com> Here you will find a serious essay on *"Why Hip-Hop is a Transhumanist Force" [not by me] ;-D -- Ben G *http://www.marsdust.com/flossin.htm On 5/4/07, BillK wrote: > > On 5/4/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > > > BTW Lee, not all hip-hop is violent and/or idiotic. > > > > Most of it is, but then as Theodore Sturgeon famously said, 95% of > > anything is bullshit. > > > > It's not my favorite style of music, but condemning a genre of music > > based on its worst examples is sorta like condemning all orchestral > > music based on elevator Muzak > > > > E.g. buy some CD's by the Roots, that's a fairly intelligent hip-hop > band, > > and they actually play real instruments ;-) > > > > > Well, tie me kangaroo down, sport! > We've got extropians defending rap music! > > It's the end of civilization as we know it. > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > 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: From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 4 17:01:45 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 10:01:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning In-Reply-To: <0cfd01c78e68$37a56e40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <0cfd01c78e68$37a56e40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > I found it very slow paced. Now, I myself happen to be able---under > some conditions---to absorb knowledge via straightforward, old- > fashioned, outmoded, linear text. I am afraid that music and animation > for the most part add nothing to my learning. Moreover, they can in > some cases, such as in the above flash animation, actually *decrease* > knowledge acquisition and comprehension per unit of time expended. > In short, I became impatient during the ten minute presentation. > > Did anyone else experience my frustration? On the other hand, are > there testimonials as to the effectiveness of said presentation? It depends very much on the nature of the audience. For me there are very few joys greater than integrating new knowledge, the more widely applicable in principle the better, succinctly written. Such writing is like poetry to me, each word performing its intended function within a structure elegant at multiple levels. I imagine a near-optimum format of intertwingled hypertext with link emphasis corresponding to awareness of the reader's background (take a quiz before reading, remember the results for a future context?) I find that nearly all television is too inefficient and distracting with its multitude of hooks to the lowest levels of human biases, most books are so redundantly redundant that I find myself repeatedly skimming for significant content rather than fully engaged in reading, and with live lectures or classroom-style training I often find more of interest in the audience interactions than in the primary content. Good Dog, save us from regression to the mean! Praise Google and better tools to come! - Jef From ben at goertzel.org Fri May 4 18:17:09 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 14:17:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: References: <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> <463B4E8D.4050609@ramonsky.com> <0d1c01c78e6f$ee32f720$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <3cf171fe0705041019v113a91aanb6a85343dcbb5714@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705041117h6e66caeat7621b3b12132d1e4@mail.gmail.com> > > > Well, tie me kangaroo down, sport! > We've got extropians defending rap music! > > It's the end of civilization as we know it. > > > BillK " Yo, enter the last era Your scholarship into the world of politics and mascara, we operate within this artificial op-era I bring hip-hop terror like the Fuhrer The Ace Ventura into the horror Laboratory laborer, venture beyond the border I'll struc-ture a style destroy your whole aura Plus you're a-drenalin'll rise before your eyes and mortalize, my image hit the skies Deceive the devil in disguise My music I parenthesize Represent the wise, do this be how we enterprise Kid no compromise (yeah, yeah) I'm thinkin fast like drama Dyin I wear your mind away like Alzheimer I pull a mic up out my bomber big up to Bahama The A-O this year we leavin em in trauma Then after me, I plan to leave behind, the legacy or history of the family, the fifth dynasty For humanity, to bear witness to this Del-val-syllable stylist You know the time kid " -- The Roots, "Universe At War" ;-) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 4 18:17:30 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 13:17:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Oz Big Dry Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070504131432.024b5680@satx.rr.com> May 4, 2007 Op-Ed Columnist, nytimes.com The Aussie ?Big Dry? By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN SYDNEY, Australia Almost everywhere you travel these days, people are talking about their weather ? and how it has changed. Nowhere have I found this more true, though, than in Australia, where ?the big dry,? a six-year record drought, has parched the Aussie breadbasket so severely that on April 19, Prime Minister John Howard actually asked the whole country to pray for rain. ?I told people you have to pray for rain,? Mr. Howard remarked to me, adding, ?I said it without a hint of irony.? And here?s what?s really funny: It actually started to rain! But not enough, which is one reason Australia is about to have its first election in which climate change will be a top issue. In just 12 months, climate change has gone from being a nonissue here to being one that could tip the vote. In the process, Prime Minister John Howard, a conservative now in his 11th year in office, has moved from being a climate skeptic to what he calls a ?climate realist,? who knows that he must offer programs to reduce global-warming greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, but wants to do it without economic pain or imposed targets, like Kyoto?s. He is proposing emissions trading and nuclear power. The Labor Party, led by Kevin Rudd, proposes a hard target ? a 60 percent reduction in Australian CO2 emissions from 2000 levels by 2050 ? and subsidies for Aussies to retrofit their homes with energy-saving systems. The whole issue has come from the bottom up, and it has come on so quickly that neither party can be sure it has its finger on the public?s pulse. ?What was considered left a year ago is now center, and in six months it will be conservative ? that is how quickly the debate about climate change is moving here,? said Michael Roux, chairman of RI Capital, a Melbourne investment firm. ?It is being led by young people around the dinner table with their parents, and the C.E.O.?s and politicians are all playing catch-up.? I asked Mr. Howard how it had happened. ?It was a perfect storm,? he said. First came a warning from Nicholas Stern of Britain, who said climate change was not only real but could be economically devastating for Australia. Then the prolonged drought forced Mr. Howard to declare last month that ?if it doesn?t rain in sufficient volume over the next six to eight weeks, there will be no water allocations for irrigation purposes? until May 2008 for crops and cattle in the Murray-Darling river basin, which accounts for 41 percent of Australian agriculture. It was as if the pharaoh had banned irrigation from the Nile. Australians were shocked. Then the traditional Australian bush fires, which usually come in January, started in October because everything was so dry. Finally, in the middle of all this, Al Gore came to Australia and showed his film, ?An Inconvenient Truth.? ?The coincidence of all those things ... shifted the whole debate,? Mr. Howard said. While he tends to focus on the economic costs of acting too aggressively on climate change, his challenger, Mr. Rudd, has been focusing on the costs of not acting. Today, Mr. Rudd said, Australian businesses are demanding that the politicians ?get a regulatory environment settled? on carbon emissions trading so companies know what framework they will have to operate in ? because they know change is coming. When you look at the climate debate around the world, remarked Peter Garrett, the former lead singer for the Australian band Midnight Oil, who now heads the Labor Party?s climate efforts, there are two kinds of conservatives. The ones like George Bush and John Howard, he said, deep down remain very skeptical about environmentalism and climate change ?because they have been someone else?s agenda for so long,? but they also know they must now offer policies to at least defuse this issue politically. And then there are conservatives like Arnold Schwarzenegger and David Cameron, the Tory Party leader in London, who understand that climate is becoming a huge defining issue and actually want to take it away from liberals by being more forward-leaning than they are. In short, climate change is the first issue in a long time that could really scramble Western politics. Traditional conservatives can now build bridges to green liberals; traditional liberals can make common cause with green businesses; young climate voters are newly up for grabs. And while coal-mining unions oppose global warming restrictions, service unions, which serve coastal tourist hotels, need to embrace them. You can see all of this and more in Australia today. Politics gets interesting when it stops raining. ________________ From max at maxmore.com Fri May 4 17:07:25 2007 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 12:07:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200705041707.l44H7RaO023799@ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com> A question for those, like spike, who found religion to be "an extremely positive experience"--especially those of a Fundamentalist belief system: Did you take seriously the idea of Hell as a place of eternal torment and damnation? In the period just before I shucked off my Christian beliefs in my early-mid teens, I DID take the idea seriously. As a result, I found the process of losing the religion highly distressing. For about a year I kept thinking "What if I'm wrong?" followed by thoughts of eternal, horrible misery. (It didn't help that my (half-)brother assured me, one Christmas Day, that I would indeed go to Hell for rejecting Jesus.) That painful experience no doubt fed the following period of aggressive, sometimes obnoxious, atheism. I'm curious how others felt as they struggled out of those chains. Max >"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote: >Samantha Atkins wrote: > > On May 3, 2007, at 9:32 PM, spike wrote: > > > >> Fred, something I left out of my post is that religion for me was > >> an extremely positive experience. I cannot even think of a > >> negative part of it. The family aspects of religion, my friends, > >> the music, the scholarly aspects, all of it was good to me, more > >> positive for me than for anyone else I know. I loved my church > >> and my church life. My friends and acquaintances were absolutely > >> astounded that I could ever give it up, thought I had gone > >> insane. I had gone sane however. I had no choice: I realized I > >> could not control what I believe, and I no longer believed the > >> doctrine to be true. True matters more than happy. > > > > I know very much what that is like. It was very difficult for me > > to let go of my religious life. But try as I might, and I tried > > mighty hard, I couldn't make it out to be true. I also could not > > abide the places of blindness within my religious community to much > > outside of importance and value. > > > >> So, into the old bit bucket with it, all of it. I miss it to > >> this day I confess. > > > > There are considerable parts that I miss too. > >Samantha, Spike, what do you miss? > >Fools try to build "rational religions" but because they are just >blindly imitating religion, they only invent sad little mockeries; >hymns to the nonexistence of God. You have to start by accepting >"That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" as a >non-negotiable requirement, and then consider the desires that >religion grew up organically to satisfy. You have to create a vision >of what humanity would have been if we had never made the mistake of >religion in the first place, never believed in anything supernatural, >never departed the way of rationality, but had still had the same >desires and grown up other organic institutions to fulfill them. > >The humanity that never made the mistake would write hymns, when they >saw something worth writing a hymn to; but it wouldn't be a hymn to >the nonexistence of God, because they wouldn't have the idea of God in >the first place. Would this world still have marriages and funeral >ceremonies? Yes, but they would be different marriages and funeral >ceremonies. They certainly would not be performed "in the name of >Bayes" because nobody wants to hear about bloody probability theory >while they're trying to get married - that's an example of the blind >imitation that usually gets done by fools who set out to invent >"rational replacements for religion". But even human beings who don't >have heads stuffed full of blatant nonsense will still want to >celebrate marriages. They just won't invoke invisible sky wizards to >seal the deal. Even a rationalist still feels a need to find >something to say when a friend or family member dies. It just won't >be false comfort. > >If you have a need that can be satisfied without believing in false >propositions, maybe we can get it back for you, one of these days. If >it was satisfied by a church in the old days, it may take a while to >construct the community, though. > >What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a >higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all >right. But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, >and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under >the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the >truth should be. > >-- >Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ >Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence >_______________________________________________ From brian at posthuman.com Fri May 4 18:32:56 2007 From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 13:32:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning In-Reply-To: <0cfd01c78e68$37a56e40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <0cfd01c78e68$37a56e40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <463B7C58.9000006@posthuman.com> In my firefox browser I use the flashblock add-on so I can control which annoying animations I'm exposed to. Also there is a user pref you can set in the browser to limit animated gif images to only cycling through once. -- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/ From sparkle_robot at yahoo.com Fri May 4 18:16:56 2007 From: sparkle_robot at yahoo.com (Anne Corwin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 11:16:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning In-Reply-To: <0cfd01c78e68$37a56e40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <921538.41890.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Lee said: "Did anyone else experience my frustration? On the other hand, are there testimonials as to the effectiveness of said presentation?" I've taken similar courses, and yes, I also find the animations and "multimedia" features to be a hindrance rather than a help to knowledge acquisition. Generally I turn off the sound on those things (if possible) and just read the text and look at the diagrams. There are, though, good and bad ways to use multimedia, and there are contexts in which animation can be used to further understanding (e.g., if I were learning about fluid dynamics, it would be helpful to watch an animation of fluids flowing through a system). I think that the main problem is that people are tending toward improper and gratuitous use of that sort of multimedia, under the erroneous assumption that bright colors and moving objects are more "high tech" than text and therefore "better". But the fact of the matter is that some forms of information ARE better transmitted via text -- just because bright colors and moving objects tend to attract attention doesn't mean they are better at getting informational content into a person's brain. I doubt I would read this mailing list if its communications consisted of lively Flash animations popping into my inbox every day, featuring little talking penguins arguing in cartoon voices about free will and uploading. - Anne "Like and equal are not the same thing at all!" - Meg Murry, "A Wrinkle In Time" --------------------------------- Bored stiff? Loosen up... Download and play hundreds of games for free on Yahoo! Games. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 4 18:52:49 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 14:52:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070504144717.0427e8b0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 08:57 AM 5/4/2007 -0700, Jef wrote: >On 5/4/07, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > > On 04/05/07, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > > > > > What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a > > > higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all > > > right. But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, > > > and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under > > > the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the > > > truth should be. > > > > You obviously believe that the truth is better than falsehood and you're > > probably right. However, it is at least logically possible that widespread > > belief in a Noble Lie might have a net positive effect. In that case, is it > > still better to destroy the Lie regardless of the consequences? snip >The "Nobel Lie" that you refer to would be in the category of >subjective values, not in the category of (increasingly) objective >instrumental methods. And it would persist to the extent that it >survived the ongoing process of competition between and selection for, >values that "work." I can thing of one lie, perhaps noble, perhaps not, that I think is required. But it's a lie a rational religion would make taboo to talk about. Keith From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 4 18:45:14 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 14:45:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <33071395.831301178219595803.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> References: <33071395.831301178219595803.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Message-ID: > What the FUCK is your problem, people? Are you all a bunch of > ass-raping, baby--molesting, feces-fondue-ingesting cockmaster fuckwads > or what?? Your mothers all wear combat boots!! I say you betta get off > your goddamn adipose asses and start talking about something MORE BLOODY > INTERESTING... or else after the Singularity has passed and I'm in > charge I WON'T REANIMATE YOUR SOULS HAHAHAHA Say whatever you want about me, but that bit about my mother wearing combat boots was really over-the-top. Leave my mother out of this! -gts From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 4 18:54:05 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 11:54:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20070504144717.0427e8b0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070504144717.0427e8b0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Keith Henson wrote: > At 08:57 AM 5/4/2007 -0700, Jef wrote: > >On 5/4/07, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > > > > On 04/05/07, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > > > > > > > What I miss most myself is comfort, the reassurance that there's a > > > > higher power watching over you and that everything will turn out all > > > > right. But I know I can never have *that* back this side of the dawn, > > > > and maybe not even then. That feeling of comfort falls directly under > > > > the non-negotiable prescription: That which can be destroyed by the > > > > truth should be. > > > > > > You obviously believe that the truth is better than falsehood and you're > > > probably right. However, it is at least logically possible that widespread > > > belief in a Noble Lie might have a net positive effect. In that case, is it > > > still better to destroy the Lie regardless of the consequences? > > snip > > >The "Noble Lie" that you refer to would be in the category of > >subjective values, not in the category of (increasingly) objective > >instrumental methods. And it would persist to the extent that it > >survived the ongoing process of competition between and selection for, > >values that "work." > > I can thing of one lie, perhaps noble, perhaps not, that I think is required. > > But it's a lie a rational religion would make taboo to talk about. Well, there's the essential lie of the intrinsic value of the self. - Jef From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 4 18:46:23 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 14:46:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <33071395.831301178219595803.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> References: <33071395.831301178219595803.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Message-ID: > What the FUCK is your problem, people? Are you all a bunch of > ass-raping, baby--molesting, feces-fondue-ingesting cockmaster fuckwads > or what?? Your mothers all wear combat boots!! I say you betta get off > your goddamn adipose asses and start talking about something MORE BLOODY > INTERESTING... or else after the Singularity has passed and I'm in > charge I WON'T REANIMATE YOUR SOULS HAHAHAHA Say whatever you want about me, but that bit about my mother wearing combat boots was really over-the-top! -gts From davidmc at gmail.com Fri May 4 19:20:49 2007 From: davidmc at gmail.com (David McFadzean) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 13:20:49 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20070504144717.0427e8b0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070504144717.0427e8b0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Keith Henson wrote: > I can thin[k] of one lie, perhaps noble, perhaps not, that I think is required. > > But it's a lie a rational religion would make taboo to talk about. I can think of one rational religion, perhaps foolish, perhaps not, that has no taboos about talking about anything. What is your required noble lie, Keith? From torsteinhaldorsen at gmail.com Fri May 4 19:21:28 2007 From: torsteinhaldorsen at gmail.com (Torstein Haldorsen) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 21:21:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <0d1501c78e6d$d3c15230$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0d1501c78e6d$d3c15230$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Hi Lee, thanks for your reply! Actually, I have given this some thought. While I do not in any way consider my self in league with Marx or Lenin, the unfortunate fate of their cause serves to prove that the road to hell may very well be paved with good intentions. The penultimate rule for any effort must to do no harm, or at least to try and minimize the potential for suffering. Now all the examples you cite have in common that they impose a relatively fixed model from the top down. This is akin to creating a static, "better" model, and imposing it on a national level, say.. This model may have faults that one at the time of design is unable to percieve. What I'm suggesting is that we try to create a rational, modular, and dynamic open worldview that may be adopted on an individual level as an ALTERNATIVE to the existing "religions", or to non-religious atheism for that matter... This may preserve and cultivate the positive aspects we find in existing religions, for instance the deep sense of meaning, a deep sense of belonging, and the communal aspects of religion, while at the same time concentrating our factual knowledge of the world, and trying to approximate the truths of life to the best level of accuracy possible. I suggest that we try to create an ever-improving open source alternative to the existing worldviews and put it on the "religious marketplace". If it were to prove memetically fit for survival it could, over time diffuse or be adopted by a portion of the global population, for instance rational atheists and others who currently do not subscribe to any existing organized worldview. Again, that which can be destroyed by truth should be. In the 21st century, we cannot provide supernatural explanations to natural phenomena. We can however try and find the best explanations we currently have, our best approximations to the truths of life, the universe and everything, and try to structure and organize these truths into a humanly cognizable framework. Now, to contrast this with Marx and Lenin and the others.. Boy, they failed on a lot of counts. Among these: Having fundamental flaws in the model. Not seeing or improving upon these flaws. Allowing for coercion and the supression of democracy, engaging in groupthink, eliminating dissent, violating human rights, and last but not least; requiring the defeat of of the prevailing paradigm (market capitalism) in order to suceed. This means that from the outset they created adversaries with a vested interest in their demise. No bloody revolution is needed in this case fortunately, although fundamentalists of all creeds and nationalities tend to prove ever so slightly unsupportive of anything new. We do not need to upend the existing organized worldviews in order to put a rational alternative on the market. Co-existence is a good thing, the more we can influence existing alternatives with rational, scientifially sound ideas, the better. One problem with _the existing_ organized worldviews is that they have no safeguards against beeing abused. This results in political leaders declaring war in the name of God, and doing other wicked things in the name of the greater good. Now, having political leaders with a faith that includes and accepts the philosophy of eye for an eye was never a very good idea, but it becomes a potentially catastrophic existential risk when such people are in command of a significant nuclear arsenal, not just sticks and stones as was the case when the prevailing paradigm of monotheistic religion evolved. Principal safeguards against beeing misused could, should and must be developed, and applied at the very top level. This would be one of many significant funtional improvements upon the existing alternatives. I think it is possible to carefully design safety-valves to disencourage abuse, and reduce potential negative outcomes. I think it is possible to harness and amplify the positive features of existing religions without resorting to fairytales. I also believe that it is time to cautiously and with great humility start to lay the groundwork for a creating a vastly better post-religious worldview for a significant portion of the worlds population. Wouldn't it be ethically wrong not to do so, letting things remain as they have for the last several hunded, if not thousand years? Things have been at a virtual standstill, for a looooooooong time. Way to long. It's time to see some progress... We shouldn't necessarily limit ourselves to sharing our ideas with a tiny sub-fraction of philosophically inclined tech-geeks. Proactionary extropian values could have a significant part in such a philosophy / post-religion / what-you-wanna-call-it. -TT On 5/4/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Torstein writes > > > I am one of these fools you [Eliezer, below] speak of. That is to say, > I've been > > thinking about how we can best fill the void left by deleting religion > for some time. > > > > However, I see no reason why it should be impossible to design an > up-to-date, > > rational worldview to fill the roles that ancient religions currently > play in many > > peoples lives, > > In your urge to re-design, are at all or have you ever been dismayed at > the > mess made by some of your predecessors who tried their hands at > redesigning economic systems, nations, governments, or even housing > projects? > It is for absolute sure that Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and > American urban planners of the 1950s beyond number also believed that it > would be, at least conceptually, "a simple matter" to design an up-to-date > rational economic system, or urban neighborhood system, or what have you. > > I advise extreme caution and humility in the face of thousands of years of > evolved systems that work, however badly from our points of view. > > Lee > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Whatever needs are being psychologically met by the world's religion, I > predict > that it will be flatly impossible without superhuman assistance, to design > rational > up-to-date replacements. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 4 19:37:04 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 12:37:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0d1501c78e6d$d3c15230$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Torstein Haldorsen wrote: > This may preserve and cultivate the positive aspects we find in existing > religions, for instance the deep sense of meaning, a deep > sense of belonging, and the communal aspects of religion, > while at the same time concentrating our factual knowledge of the world, and > trying to approximate the truths of life to the best level of accuracy > possible. I suggest that we try to create an ever-improving open source > alternative to the existing worldviews and put it on the "religious > marketplace". This is all good, but how would you expect it to compete successfully in today's world, in a market of evolved organisms susceptible to more traditional promises that have shown their great appeal to deep motivational instincts? As an engineer, I like the design of your product, but have you ever worked in Sales and Marketing? - Jef From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 4 19:54:16 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 15:54:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning In-Reply-To: <921538.41890.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <0cfd01c78e68$37a56e40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <921538.41890.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705041254r7c4edc7fi3b2a07882663e394@mail.gmail.com> On 5/4/07, Anne Corwin wrote: > Lee said: > "Did anyone else experience my frustration? On the other hand, are > there testimonials as to the effectiveness of said presentation?" > > There are, though, good and bad ways to use multimedia, and there are > contexts in which animation can be used to further understanding (e.g., if I > were learning about fluid dynamics, it would be helpful to watch an It may be a generational thing. I heard this same argument about the difference between radio broadcast and television entertainment. The person I was speaking with was reminiscing about how vivid their imagination was to fill in the details of the radio broadcast, and that TV has robbed us of the opportunity to be mentally creative in our imagination. I suppose the same was said about radio vs. reading a book. Taken to the opposite extreme, we could extrapolate to a more compressed symbol delivery than current multimedia. While it might allow for a greater "width" of information, I doubt those of us alive today will consider it has the same "depth." From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 4 18:42:59 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 14:42:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070504143742.042a2b78@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 04:26 PM 5/4/2007 +0200, you wrote: >I am one of these fools you speak of. That is to say, I've been thinking >about how we can best fill the void left by deleting religion for some time. > >However, I see no reason why it should be impossible to design an >up-to-date, rational worldview to fill the roles that ancient religions >currently play in many peoples lives, without violating rationality. snip You should read Pascal Boyer's _Religion Explained_. It will definitely help you in a design task. It is a deep book where you might get more out of it by rereading parts of it, particularly the last two chapters. You might also want to read my paper "Sex, Drugs and Cults." I came to an understanding of what makes cults work the hard way and there is no reason you should not profit from my experiences. Keith From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 4 21:01:29 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 16:01:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <0d1c01c78e6f$ee32f720$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070503112734.02304578@satx.rr.com> <463B4E8D.4050609@ramonsky.com> <0d1c01c78e6f$ee32f720$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070504155406.02579528@satx.rr.com> At 10:14 AM 5/4/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: >Yes, yes, yes, have a good laugh! Laugh and the world laughs with you. >Laughter is the best medicine. > >It also helps you avoid *real* problems, making it conveniently unnecessary >to ignore reports like BillK's where he wrote on 5/3, 9:34 AM > > > I can only speak for the UK, but the constant use of swearing in their > > [teenagers'] normal conversation is very prevalent. Actually, I agree pretty much entirely with Lee on this. When I was a kid I worked briefly as a laborer packing and moving stuff at university, and later in an army barracks where I slept with a bunch of ordinary shiftless humans. The routine, mindless but apparently hostility-jammed streams of obscenities were genuinely distressing. Hearing the same thing from children on public transport etc is infuriating. But it's still mildly entertaining when someone uses (rather than quotes) "----" as an advance-purchase get out of jail free card. If you're going to call someone a -ock---cker, why not just suck it up and *call* the swine a lock-picker? Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 4 21:06:44 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 16:06:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning In-Reply-To: <921538.41890.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <0cfd01c78e68$37a56e40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <921538.41890.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070504160527.021c0348@satx.rr.com> At 11:16 AM 5/4/2007 -0700, Anne wrote: >I doubt I would read this mailing list if its communications >consisted of lively Flash animations popping into my inbox every >day, featuring little talking penguins arguing in cartoon voices >about free will and uploading. But I could have sworn that *is* wh-- From torsteinhaldorsen at gmail.com Fri May 4 21:27:42 2007 From: torsteinhaldorsen at gmail.com (Torstein Haldorsen) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 23:27:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0d1501c78e6d$d3c15230$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Jef, I am currently a student of computer science and as such i have fairly limited real world work experience. Still, any one persons skillset is generally not sufficient to successfully pull of an entirely category-defying project such as this. Although I have had a number of advisors who have provided valuable feedback in different areas, I have not been successful in recruiting people who have been able to make independent contributions to this project, pushing it forward so to speak. A quick search will reveal the extent to which I have promoted it so far, which is really very little. Now, while I believe this idea is quite profound, and find it intellectually pleasing to have a "religion" of my own design, this could easily be entirely normal delusions of grandeur. I don't know, but i really love this project, I believe in the potential of the idea, and i would love to be able to work on it full time, somehow, some time in the future. Successful marketing and also sales - if you wanna call it that, is absolutely essential for any project to succeed, but one needs to have a marketable "package" first. And also, I would like such a solution to have qualities that are immediately recognizable as superior to what's already out there. Just to get there a lot of hard, consistent theoretical groundwork is needed. If anyone would like to chip in on the theoretical / planning side here, I would be very much appreciate it. As i said, if anyone can play the devils advocate and successfully convince me why it _wont work_ or why I shouldn't go through with it I would be grateful also, as I could stop spending a such ridiculous amount of time on a maniac project that is exceedingly likely to fail at any rate. Actually, all further input is appreciated... -TT On 5/4/07, Jef Allbright wrote: > > On 5/4/07, Torstein Haldorsen wrote: > > > This may preserve and cultivate the positive aspects we find in existing > > religions, for instance the deep sense of meaning, a deep > > sense of belonging, and the communal aspects of religion, > > while at the same time concentrating our factual knowledge of the world, > and > > trying to approximate the truths of life to the best level of accuracy > > possible. I suggest that we try to create an ever-improving open source > > alternative to the existing worldviews and put it on the "religious > > marketplace". > > This is all good, but how would you expect it to compete successfully > in today's world, in a market of evolved organisms susceptible to more > traditional promises that have shown their great appeal to deep > motivational instincts? > > As an engineer, I like the design of your product, but have you ever > worked in Sales and Marketing? > > - Jef > _______________________________________________ > 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: From ben at goertzel.org Fri May 4 21:27:59 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 17:27:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Killer apps for AI-controlled avatars in virtual worlds ?? Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705041427q2da4e3dn82683330afc3ef6f@mail.gmail.com> Hi all, In repentance for posting obscenities and hip-hop lyrics on this list, I've decided to start an at least slightly more interesting thread ;-) My company Novamente LLC is considering, in the future, using our AI software to control humanlike avatars in virtual worlds like Second Life. My question is: what applications do y'all think will be most exciting and popular, for this kind of product? Of course, once these twins REALLY have humanlike functionality then they'll be free and independent minds just like us, but with a different embodiment. But my question pertains to the proto-AGI stage, when the AI avatars are fairly sophisticated but not yet human-level in terms of autonomous thinking. I think "digital twins" will be good fun ... the AI tries to imitate your words and behaviors until ultimately it becomes a "digital ditto".... I also can see a role for "digital shopkeepers" in SL, to run stores when people don't want to sit their in their avatars and "man" them... Of course, a digital matchmaker could be nice -- you could send it to go around and find dates for you... I wonder if anyone on this list can come up with any other nifty ideas? I have a feeling there are a lot of great practical applications for sub-human-level AI-controlled avatars, that I'm not thinking of yet... thx Ben Goertzel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pj at pj-manney.com Fri May 4 21:30:18 2007 From: pj at pj-manney.com (pjmanney) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 17:30:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning Message-ID: <1813998.71771178314218461.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Why do Lee and company think that multimedia presentations were made for the likes of them and then rain on others' parades when they don't respond to them? Why do people well versed in neurology and psychology not understand people learn through different perceptions? Not all people learn best through text. Why can't you get that it IS, in part, generational. Old language = words. New language = moving pictures. But it is also a function of education level. If you are someone who excelled at tertiary education, the odds are you can cope with text. If you didn't, my guess is philosophy wasn't your best subject. Get a grip, people. The rest of the world isn't like you. [And Bill, I listen to Eminem... On an iPod! Bwahahahaha! ] PJ From pj at pj-manney.com Fri May 4 21:47:42 2007 From: pj at pj-manney.com (pjmanney) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 17:47:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs Message-ID: <22424063.73271178315262253.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Ben G. wrote: >Here you will find a serious essay on >"Why Hip-Hop is a Transhumanist Force" >[not by me] >http://www.marsdust.com/flossin.htm And you know what? The guy's right. Because change is inevitable. For a group of people who can type incessantly about how life is change and how big change is coming, you are all remarkably change-adverse when it comes in this minor form into your own lives. Restructure politcs. Reinvent religion. Rebuild humanity. Is it all just talk, folks? Can't you take a little culture clash? A little artistic evolution? Interesting. What will happen to you when your Singularity arrives? PJ (with her dander up) From hkhenson at rogers.com Fri May 4 21:50:42 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 17:50:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070504144717.0427e8b0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070504144717.0427e8b0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070504174840.02c2b6a0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 01:20 PM 5/4/2007 -0600, David wrote: >On 5/4/07, Keith Henson wrote: > > I can think of one lie, perhaps noble, perhaps not, that I think is > required. > > > > But it's a lie a rational religion would make taboo to talk about. > >I can think of one rational religion, perhaps foolish, perhaps not, >that has no taboos about talking about anything. > >What is your required noble lie, Keith? It's taboo to talk about it. Keith From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 4 22:03:35 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 15:03:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0d1501c78e6d$d3c15230$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Torstein Haldorsen wrote: > > Now, while I believe this idea is quite profound, and find it intellectually > pleasing to have a "religion" of my own design, this could easily be > entirely normal delusions of grandeur. I don't know, but i really love this > project, I believe in the potential of the idea, and i would love to be able > to work on it full time, somehow, some time in the future. I share many of the values that you've expressed here. My intent was to provide some additional context for your consideration, and I would suggest that you consider also the related suggestions from Keith as to the seductive features of cults. You might also consider that a defining trait of religions is that they tend to reduce, rather than expand the range of awareness and self-determination of their individual members, always with promises of a greater good. To the extent that your project expands rather than restricts the decision-making context of its members, and increases rather than decreases their ability to determine their own future, they you'll have my support. - Jef From nvitamore at austin.rr.com Fri May 4 21:51:12 2007 From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 17:51:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning Message-ID: <380-22007554215112301@M2W004.mail2web.com> From: Jef Allbright On 5/4/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > I found it very slow paced. Now, I myself happen to be able---under > some conditions---to absorb knowledge via straightforward, old- > fashioned, outmoded, linear text. I am afraid that music and animation > for the most part add nothing to my learning. Add nothing? Well, I suppose there is indeed truth to unique differences in learning styles. Visuals have always added to my learning, and in great part. >Moreover, they can in > some cases, such as in the above flash animation, actually *decrease* > knowledge acquisition and comprehension per unit of time expended. I do agree with this. But flash is often used as a marketing/advertising concept and not particularilyy applied to learning formats. This was piece was not flashy in the flash loading and waiting sense. > Did anyone else experience my frustration? On the other hand, are > there testimonials as to the effectiveness of said presentation? No. I thought it had a certain charm. If anything it could have been shorter, but one-half perhaps. "It depends very much on the nature of the audience. For me there are very few joys greater than integrating new knowledge, the more widely applicable in principle the better, succinctly written. Such writing is like poetry to me, each word performing its intended function within a structure elegant at multiple levels. I imagine a near-optimum format of intertwingled hypertext with link emphasis corresponding to awareness of the reader's background (take a quiz before reading, remember the results for a future context?)" Yes, nice. "I find that nearly all television is too inefficient and distracting with its multitude of hooks to the lowest levels of human biases, most books are so redundantly redundant that I find myself repeatedly skimming for significant content rather than fully engaged in reading, and with live lectures or classroom-style training I often find more of interest in the audience interactions than in the primary content." Yes. Me 2. Just as an aside, like PJ, I listen to Eminem ... "lose yourself ..." uhmum yaah. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://link.mail2web.com/mail2web From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 4 22:36:15 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 15:36:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Killer apps for AI-controlled avatars in virtual worlds ?? In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705041427q2da4e3dn82683330afc3ef6f@mail.gmail.com> References: <3cf171fe0705041427q2da4e3dn82683330afc3ef6f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > Hi all, > > In repentance for posting obscenities and hip-hop lyrics on this list, > I've decided to start an at least slightly more interesting thread ;-) > > My company Novamente LLC is considering, in the future, using our AI > software to control humanlike avatars in virtual worlds like Second Life. > > My question is: what applications do y'all think will be most exciting > and popular, for this kind of product? > > Of course, once these twins REALLY have humanlike functionality > then they'll be free and independent minds just like us, but with > a different embodiment. But my question pertains to the proto-AGI > stage, when the AI avatars are fairly sophisticated but not yet > human-level in terms of autonomous thinking. Well one application is obvious, considering the spread of the pixel-sex trade in Second Life, and it wouldn't require a lot of high-level intelligence to animate virtual prostitutes. But for more general applications, thinking along the lines of more intelligently interactive PDAs should be a good bet. More sophisticated phone answering, with intelligent message-taking (ensuring the important points are taken), prioritization and forwarding; flexibly interactive appointment-taking on your behalf -- these are areas where we expect a human and are disappointed when we get a machine. If the machine agent can effectively represent the specifics of its principle in such cases when the principle isn't available, it should be a net positive. Another area where personality counts, but doesn't require a high level of intelligence, is in artificial pets. Another application would be in the motivational aspects of training materials. Similarly, but more suited to physical robotics, would be therapeutic devices that sense affect and respond with appropriate motivational behavior. In general, anywhere you're dealing with human affect and emotion at a non-critical level of verisimilitude, but real humans are not as effective or economic or scalable. - Jef From sparkle_robot at yahoo.com Fri May 4 22:17:38 2007 From: sparkle_robot at yahoo.com (Anne Corwin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 15:17:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning In-Reply-To: <1813998.71771178314218461.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Message-ID: <241700.22552.qm@web56513.mail.re3.yahoo.com> I don't think there was necessarily any parade-raining here. What I think is that when someone wants, say, their employees to learn something, they ought to offer multiple means of getting the information. That's part of acknowledging diversity -- realizing that not everyone learns the same way, and offering your teaching mechanisms accordingly. Which means that people who learn best via text have every reason to be annoyed when the text is obscured by layers of blinking smiley faces and "Punch the Monkey!" animations -- nobody is suggesting that multimedia go away, but rather, that perhaps it might sometimes be a bit gratuitous. I had a manager a while back who was very verbally-oriented -- he preferred spontaneous verbal/auditory interaction, whereas I am more text-oriented and visual. We had some difficulties communicating -- I had a hard time listening to him, and he had a hard time dealing with the e-mails I sent. But then I got the idea of writing down my thoughts before talking to him -- basically I wrote what I would have written in the e-mail, printed it, and then went to his office and read it to him. That worked out quite well. And that's the kind of model I see as being a useful one for thinking about communication in the future -- one that makes heavy use of translation and accomodation of processing differences. - Anne "Like and equal are not the same thing at all!" - Meg Murry, "A Wrinkle In Time" --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jef at jefallbright.net Fri May 4 23:08:10 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 16:08:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning In-Reply-To: <241700.22552.qm@web56513.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <1813998.71771178314218461.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> <241700.22552.qm@web56513.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Anne Corwin wrote: > I had a manager a while back who was very verbally-oriented -- he preferred > spontaneous verbal/auditory interaction, whereas I am more text-oriented and > visual. We had some difficulties communicating -- I had a hard time > listening to him, and he had a hard time dealing with the e-mails I sent. > But then I got the idea of writing down my thoughts before talking to him -- > basically I wrote what I would have written in the e-mail, printed it, and > then went to his office and read it to him. That worked out quite well. > And that's the kind of model I see as being a useful one for thinking about > communication in the future -- one that makes heavy use of translation and > accomodation of processing differences. Excellent that you put the strategy into practice and it worked. I (try to remember to) do something similar when I realize that I'm talking with someone who perceives differently than I do. For example, my thinking is extremely visual/analytical (I actually think in terms of graphs and geometric shapes) so I tend to use phrases like "I see" and "in the bigger picture" and "what do you think" and "does that make sense." When I'm trying to be understood by certain other types of perceivers, translating to "that sounds right", "how do you feel about", "does that feel right" etc. Likewise, drawing relationships on a whiteboard versus modeling with hands or other objects can make a big difference in rapport and understanding. - Jef From ben at goertzel.org Fri May 4 23:20:20 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 19:20:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Killer apps for AI-controlled avatars in virtual worlds ?? In-Reply-To: References: <3cf171fe0705041427q2da4e3dn82683330afc3ef6f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705041620g7f024cb8q3e601c421bd7d69c@mail.gmail.com> Hi, Well one application is obvious, considering the spread of the > pixel-sex trade in Second Life, and it wouldn't require a lot of > high-level intelligence to animate virtual prostitutes. But I wonder if anyone would really like this, apart from the immediate novelty value? I don't regularly make use of prostitutes in the physical or virtual world, so I don't have a great understanding of the psychology of people who do.... But isn't the fact that it's a HUMAN at the other end of the avatar important for the psychology of e-sex? At least, I think this would require a very convincing illusion of humanity. But of course, giving a convincing illusion of humanity in that particular context might not be very hard.... A student of mine once wrote a chat bot that impersonated a hot and horny young 15 year old in online chat rooms. It did very well and attracted a lot of email ;-p But for more general applications, thinking along the lines of more > intelligently interactive PDAs should be a good bet. More > sophisticated phone answering, with intelligent message-taking > (ensuring the important points are taken), prioritization and > forwarding; flexibly interactive appointment-taking on your behalf -- > these are areas where we expect a human and are disappointed when we > get a machine. If the machine agent can effectively represent the > specifics of its principle in such cases when the principle isn't > available, it should be a net positive. Yah, I see ... the famous virtual secretary, which according to the AI gurus of the 1960's was "right around the corner" ;-) Presumably with a direct link into "Google Docs and Spreadsheets" + Google Calendar or some such... Another area where personality counts, but doesn't require a high > level of intelligence, is in artificial pets. That is quite possibly where we'll start ... I already have thought a lot about that space though, which is why my question was about humanlike avatars specifically... > > Similarly, but more suited to physical robotics, would be therapeutic > devices that sense affect and respond with appropriate motivational > behavior. > That is interesting. Ideally we would want to work with some physical device that automatically senses affect from the person's body and voice, though.... Sensing affect from text is hard, which is one of the problems with email and chat communication. (Chat is better for affect than email, but achieves this at great cost in terms of loss of subtle non-emotional content). -- Ben -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From randall at randallsquared.com Fri May 4 23:29:45 2007 From: randall at randallsquared.com (Randall Randall) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 19:29:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20070504174840.02c2b6a0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070504144717.0427e8b0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070504144717.0427e8b0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070504174840.02c2b6a0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <77690C5E-9322-4485-9FAC-F70661B7B3FE@randallsquared.com> On May 4, 2007, at 5:50 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > At 01:20 PM 5/4/2007 -0600, David wrote: >> On 5/4/07, Keith Henson wrote: >>> I can think of one lie, perhaps noble, perhaps not, that I think is >> required. >>> >>> But it's a lie a rational religion would make taboo to talk about. >> >> I can think of one rational religion, perhaps foolish, perhaps not, >> that has no taboos about talking about anything. >> >> What is your required noble lie, Keith? > > It's taboo to talk about it. Haha. That was... predictable. -- Randall Randall "Who made up all the rules / We follow them like fools ; Believe them to be true / Don't care to think them through." - "They", Jem Griffiths From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 4 23:42:02 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 16:42:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <200705041707.l44H7RaO023799@ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com> Message-ID: <200705042355.l44Nt9vl026933@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Max More > Subject: Re: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion > > A question for those, like spike, who found religion to be "an > extremely positive experience"--especially those of a Fundamentalist > belief system: Did you take seriously the idea of Hell as a place of > eternal torment and damnation? Max Hi Max, Not in my case, because Seventh Day Adventist doesn't have that doctrine. Perhaps that sect's designers in the 1840s sat down and asked themselves what is the most egregious doctrine in all of christianity. To anyone with even a modicum of ethical intuition, that one should top the list, the bit about god tormenting for eternity anyone who misbehaves for a short human lifetime. So they got rid of it. In that system, those who are wicked just die in a rain of fire that doesn't last any longer than any flesh mortal would survive in such a dire sitch. They are damned for all eternity in that they stay dead and gone forever; god "opposes their reanimation" to borrow a phrase from a recent poster. spike From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 4 23:45:07 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 16:45:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <200705041707.l44H7RaO023799@ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com> Message-ID: <200705042355.l44Nt9vm026933@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Max More ... > ...It didn't help that my (half-)brother > assured me, one Christmas Day, that I would indeed go to Hell for > rejecting Jesus.) ... > > Max Bad news for you Max: the Christians say you will go to hell forever if you reject jesus. The Islmists say you will go to hell forever if you accept jesus. DIYD,DIYD. Thank you very much, religionistas, so comforting are you. spike From hkhenson at rogers.com Sat May 5 00:04:49 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 20:04:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning In-Reply-To: References: <241700.22552.qm@web56513.mail.re3.yahoo.com> <1813998.71771178314218461.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> <241700.22552.qm@web56513.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070504200048.02c28c10@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 04:08 PM 5/4/2007 -0700, Jef wrote: >On 5/4/07, Anne Corwin wrote: > > > I had a manager a while back who was very verbally-oriented -- he preferred > > spontaneous verbal/auditory interaction, whereas I am more > text-oriented and > > visual. snip > For >example, my thinking is extremely visual/analytical (I actually think >in terms of graphs and geometric shapes) snip >Likewise, drawing >relationships on a whiteboard versus modeling with hands or other >objects can make a big difference in rapport and understanding. There are times when even a white board won't do. For the moving cable, step taper space elevator I had to build a model because I could not describe or even create a 2D picture how the pulleys would be threaded. Keith From pj at pj-manney.com Fri May 4 23:59:13 2007 From: pj at pj-manney.com (pjmanney) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 19:59:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning Message-ID: <17803950.81371178323153070.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> >I don't think there was necessarily any parade-raining here.< You were not the object of my tirade. I knew you would understand by virtue of your own experiences. >Which means that people who learn best via text have every reason to be annoyed when the text is obscured by layers of blinking smiley faces and "Punch the Monkey!" animations -- nobody is suggesting that multimedia go away, but rather, that perhaps it might sometimes be a bit gratuitous.< Do not confuse marketing with multimedia. No one likes marketing. I'm visual and they drive me nuts. For those who deride multimedia, a little history may be in order. The modern multimedia presentation was conceived by Charles Eames (yes, he of the plywood chairs) and George Nelson (yes, he of the slat bench and groovy clocks) in a presentation they originally designed for the University of Georgia, Athens (where Nelson taught) and subsequently taught in 1953 at UCLA. Back in the bad old days of audiovisual, it took eight people to make the lecture 'run.' Now, you'd need one person and a laptop. Their point was that by "using 'high-speed techniques such as film, sildes, sound, music, narration,' they designed a course... whose stated goals included 'the breaking down of barriers between fields of learning... making people a little more intuitive... increasing communication between people and things.'" [from EAMES DESIGN, by Neuhart, Neuhart and Eames] They sounded very extropian for 1953, didn't they? It was not received well by most of the academics they lectured. Interestingly, the mid-century academics made many of the same old-fogey points I read on the list today. Because the world moved on. The evolution of memetic dispersion won the day. BTW, the Eameses were brilliant in the development and use of multimedia teaching. They created the famous Mathematica exhibit, The Powers of Ten movie, etc. Just those two examples alone (out of dozens) did more to teach the fundamentals of math and science to those who might not have understood the concepts otherwise than anything else I've ever seen. There are scholars now who credit those presentations to inspiring their pursuit of math/science careers. A psych prof in Ohio writes well on the subject of the Eameses and multimedia, considering them in the cognitive psychological vanguard. I completely agree...: http://peripersonalspace.wordpress.com/2006/11/16/in-the-cognitive-psychological-vanguard-charles-and-ray-eames/ http://peripersonalspace.wordpress.com/2006/11/17/charles-and-ray-eames-psychologically-inspired/ >That worked out quite well.? And that's the kind of model I see as being a useful one for thinking about communication in the future -- one that makes heavy use of translation and accomodation of processing differences.< Excellent strategy, Anne, and you get my point completely. It's about translation. Whatever works. PJ From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Fri May 4 23:33:42 2007 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 19:33:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <616815.26067.qm@web37214.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- Torstein Haldorsen wrote: >If anyone would like to chip in on the theoretical / >planning side here, I would be very much appreciate >it. I always hoped that if religion could be written at new, it would be called, "School of Philosophies and Enlightment". Was there an experience behind your choice of the name "Khala"? Just Curious Anna:) Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail at http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/try_beta?.intl=ca From spike66 at comcast.net Sat May 5 00:01:51 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 17:01:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Killer apps for AI-controlled avatars in virtual worlds ?? In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705041427q2da4e3dn82683330afc3ef6f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200705050001.l4501p3G013089@andromeda.ziaspace.com> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Benjamin Goertzel ... My company Novamente LLC is considering, in the future, using our AI software to control humanlike avatars in virtual worlds like Second Life. My question is: what applications do y'all think will be most exciting and popular, for this kind of product?...Ben Goertzel Ben I have one for you, altho it is on ethical shaky ground. Many second-lifers are too young to have ever played with Eliza or her many immitators. I talk to new kids in the company, college grads, who have never heard of it. Came and went while they were in diapers. So rig up an avatar with an eliza-engine to walk around and engage in conversation with unsuspecting second-lifers. Study how long it takes them to realize they are talking to a computer instead of another lonely-heart like themselves. I realize this is unPC of me to imply most of the population of second life are lonely-hearts, but some things never change. Your conversations could be a demonstration of another step towards Alan Turing's vison. spike From jef at jefallbright.net Sat May 5 00:31:02 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 17:31:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Killer apps for AI-controlled avatars in virtual worlds ?? In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705041620g7f024cb8q3e601c421bd7d69c@mail.gmail.com> References: <3cf171fe0705041427q2da4e3dn82683330afc3ef6f@mail.gmail.com> <3cf171fe0705041620g7f024cb8q3e601c421bd7d69c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Ben - Any comment on my suggestion of applying the technology to motivational enhancement for learning, the virtual learning assistant interacting with the student and providing intelligent feedback? Not so much a new idea as one that could be done better. - Jef On 5/4/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > Well one application is obvious, considering the spread of the > > pixel-sex trade in Second Life, and it wouldn't require a lot of > > high-level intelligence to animate virtual prostitutes. > > > But I wonder if anyone would really like this, apart from the > immediate novelty value? I don't regularly > make use of prostitutes in the physical or virtual world, > so I don't have a great understanding of the psychology of > people who do.... But isn't the fact that it's a HUMAN at > the other end of the avatar important for the psychology > of e-sex? At least, I think this would require a very convincing > illusion of humanity. But of course, giving a convincing illusion > of humanity in that particular context might not be very hard.... > > A student of mine once wrote a chat bot that impersonated > a hot and horny young 15 year old in online chat rooms. It > did very well and attracted a lot of email ;-p > > > But for more general applications, thinking along the lines of more > > intelligently interactive PDAs should be a good bet. More > > sophisticated phone answering, with intelligent message-taking > > (ensuring the important points are taken), prioritization and > > forwarding; flexibly interactive appointment-taking on your behalf -- > > these are areas where we expect a human and are disappointed when we > > get a machine. If the machine agent can effectively represent the > > specifics of its principle in such cases when the principle isn't > > available, it should be a net positive. > > Yah, I see ... the famous virtual secretary, which according to the AI > gurus of the 1960's was "right around the corner" ;-) > > Presumably with a direct link into "Google Docs and Spreadsheets" + > Google Calendar or some such... > > > Another area where personality counts, but doesn't require a high > > level of intelligence, is in artificial pets. > > That is quite possibly where we'll start ... I already have thought a > lot about that space though, which is why my question was about > humanlike avatars specifically... > > > > > Similarly, but more suited to physical robotics, would be therapeutic > > devices that sense affect and respond with appropriate motivational > > behavior. > > > > That is interesting. Ideally we would want to work with some > physical device that automatically senses affect from the person's > body and voice, though.... Sensing affect from text is hard, which is one > of the > problems with email and chat communication. (Chat is better for > affect than email, but achieves this at great cost in terms of loss > of subtle non-emotional content). > > -- Ben > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 5 01:01:27 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 11:01:27 +1000 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 04/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: We're not far apart! I would amend what you have just written to > say that we cannot "know" that we remain the same person from > moment to moment---it is a conjecture, of course, like anything > else. And Heartland has a point in saying that any part of it that is > subjective is pretty weak. We strongly and rightly *believe* > that we are the same person from moment to moment, and from > day to day, because it has withstood the test of criticism for ages, > and we cannot parsimoniously believe that some tremendous agency > has been messing with our minds. > > But the key overriding evidence would be *objective* evidence. > Again, one could be shown some videos that would make one > doubt that he was the same person he was even an hour ago, or > a few minutes ago. Do you agree with this: > > Were objective scientific means of measuring approximately > how much memory change was going on, then we would > be the same person from moment to moment if and only if > the objective facts were that our memories had undergone > only the usual small quotidian changes to which we are > accustomed to (or we think we are familiar with) in daily life. > > The "subjective criterion"---when we are engaged at a basic > level as with Heartland---is worthless. One would like the objective and the subjective evidence to match up, but if they don't, what basis is there for choosing one over the other? If your brain has been tampered with as expertly as you propose isn't it also possible that the objective evidence in the form of video tapes, other peoples' testimonials and so on, has also been tampered with? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at goertzel.org Sat May 5 01:30:16 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 21:30:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Killer apps for AI-controlled avatars in virtual worlds ?? In-Reply-To: References: <3cf171fe0705041427q2da4e3dn82683330afc3ef6f@mail.gmail.com> <3cf171fe0705041620g7f024cb8q3e601c421bd7d69c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705041830r6947354dte378686f9035a268@mail.gmail.com> I think it's a great idea, and I note that training simulations are a fairly major market. More for corporate and professional training than for kids or university students. However, to make an avatar that was really useful as a surrogate teacher would require a really advanced AGI, I think. Except of course if you're aiming at the preschool market -- a virtual Barney or Big Bird shouldn't be hard to put together with proto-toddler-level AGI technology!!! A near-term app of virtual agents is to serve as NPC's in training simulations -- the so-called "serious games" market. For instance, virtual criminals in police training sims, etc. ... -- Ben On 5/4/07, Jef Allbright wrote: > > Ben - > > Any comment on my suggestion of applying the technology to > motivational enhancement for learning, the virtual learning assistant > interacting with the student and providing intelligent feedback? Not > so much a new idea as one that could be done better. > > - Jef > > > > > On 5/4/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > > > > > > > Hi, > > > > > Well one application is obvious, considering the spread of the > > > pixel-sex trade in Second Life, and it wouldn't require a lot of > > > high-level intelligence to animate virtual prostitutes. > > > > > > But I wonder if anyone would really like this, apart from the > > immediate novelty value? I don't regularly > > make use of prostitutes in the physical or virtual world, > > so I don't have a great understanding of the psychology of > > people who do.... But isn't the fact that it's a HUMAN at > > the other end of the avatar important for the psychology > > of e-sex? At least, I think this would require a very convincing > > illusion of humanity. But of course, giving a convincing illusion > > of humanity in that particular context might not be very hard.... > > > > A student of mine once wrote a chat bot that impersonated > > a hot and horny young 15 year old in online chat rooms. It > > did very well and attracted a lot of email ;-p > > > > > But for more general applications, thinking along the lines of more > > > intelligently interactive PDAs should be a good bet. More > > > sophisticated phone answering, with intelligent message-taking > > > (ensuring the important points are taken), prioritization and > > > forwarding; flexibly interactive appointment-taking on your behalf -- > > > these are areas where we expect a human and are disappointed when we > > > get a machine. If the machine agent can effectively represent the > > > specifics of its principle in such cases when the principle isn't > > > available, it should be a net positive. > > > > Yah, I see ... the famous virtual secretary, which according to the AI > > gurus of the 1960's was "right around the corner" ;-) > > > > Presumably with a direct link into "Google Docs and Spreadsheets" + > > Google Calendar or some such... > > > > > Another area where personality counts, but doesn't require a high > > > level of intelligence, is in artificial pets. > > > > That is quite possibly where we'll start ... I already have thought a > > lot about that space though, which is why my question was about > > humanlike avatars specifically... > > > > > > > > Similarly, but more suited to physical robotics, would be therapeutic > > > devices that sense affect and respond with appropriate motivational > > > behavior. > > > > > > > That is interesting. Ideally we would want to work with some > > physical device that automatically senses affect from the person's > > body and voice, though.... Sensing affect from text is hard, which is > one > > of the > > problems with email and chat communication. (Chat is better for > > affect than email, but achieves this at great cost in terms of loss > > of subtle non-emotional content). > > > > -- Ben > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From moses2k at gmail.com Sat May 5 01:37:12 2007 From: moses2k at gmail.com (Chris Petersen) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 20:37:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <22424063.73271178315262253.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> References: <22424063.73271178315262253.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Message-ID: <3aff9e290705041837u33462b45n2d9829b1bf085c57@mail.gmail.com> Is anyone else concerned with a Failure of Frendliness in the form of a Monty Python 'killer jone' analog? Concerned in Conniptions, -Chris P.S. Analagous to how a SI might solve Chess on a 8x8 board, might it also be able to select the provably worst dis out of all 'your mother' jokes under 30 words in a given language? Your mother may never know... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 5 01:49:58 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 11:49:58 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070504144717.0427e8b0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: On 05/05/07, Jef Allbright wrote: Well, there's the essential lie of the intrinsic value of the self. > When I was in my teens, I realised one day that nothing matters; it's just that we think it matters. Whereas when it comes to the truth thinking that something is the case has no causal power, when it comes to values thinking that something is the case is the whole point. Therefore, values and the truth need have nothing in common. This was why religious and non-religious people alike sometimes talked about "a higher truth" or "Truth": they knew it was all crap and they had to dress it up to convince themselves otherwise. This is not to say that what matters to us doesn't *matter*, just that what matters isn't *true* other than in the trivial sense that it is the case that it matters to us. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Sat May 5 02:02:27 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 19:02:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> Message-ID: <200705050202.l4522bYR017703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eliezer S. Yudkowsky > Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion ... > > > >> So, into the old bit bucket with it, all of it. I miss it to > >> this day I confess. > > > > There are considerable parts that I miss too. > > Samantha, Spike, what do you miss? Eli, to this I have a good answer, altho not as short as the question. Imagine yourself as a somewhat geeky straight male, about 20 years old. It isn't hard to do. At least it isn't hard for me to do; I know *exactly* how it feels. For this thought experiment, you will be my college roommate Chalkie Whiterson. We are the kind of guys that normal girls gaze past, looking for someone else. Pretty much anyone else. You and I have never really had a sweetheart, nothing that amounted to anything. We are students at a Seventh Day Adventist college. There are about 1500 students here, on a campus isolated by distance from everything, in such places as College Place Washington, or Collegedale Tennessee. We have no car, so we hang around campus most of the time. Rather all of the time, but that is fine with us because we like it here. Who wouldn't? This place is filled with single young ladies! But these are special single young ladies, for you see, if one is SDA, one's future success in matrimony largely depends on finding a like-minded mate. Membership in this particular cult does have its lifestyle implications, such as eschewing of alcohol and drugs, fancy clothing, jewelry, not working on Saturday, for instance. The ladies realize this as well as we do. So now, even tho you and I are geeks, these ladies will accept us anyway. Or at least we will do in a pinch, for this is a closed society, immune mostly from outsiders and outside influence. Is it clear in your thought experiment that this campus is more sexually charged than a singles bar? In the bar, some are single, the rest are pretending to be. There is a spectrum of ages, looking for a companion for the evening. But on this campus almost everyone is single and under 30, looking for a companion for life. Sex is seldom mentioned here and even less seldom done, but it is on everyone's mind. Constantly. If not more often than constantly. SDA is a hybrid religion, nominally christian but borrowing heavily from Judaism. We observe the old testament sabbath, so on Friday evening at sunset, all the school books are put away, the radios and televisions turned off, the stores closed, everything closed except the church. Since there is nothing competing for attention, most of the students go there for a vespers service. There is singing, prayers, testimony. It is a highly emotional time, which itself results in endorphin rushes that cause our cheeks to glow. Some are moved to tears, even a few of the men on occasion. No less sexually charged is this environment than the rest of the campus the rest of the time. Most of the women are beautiful, the rest at least acceptable. Many of their faces have never seen makeup, so they have a most healthy and rosy countenance. They are well scrubbed, hair in place, tastefully and modestly dressed. And they want us, they want to be with us, they appear happy to see us. We don't understand why exactly, but clearly they do. We can see it in their faces, for they are mostly open and honest types. Afterwards we go to the back courtyard at the men's dormitory, where the men and women mingle and visit in larger or smaller groups. Some guys bring out their guitars, there is laughter, there is singing and companionship. Happy times are these, fine times indeed. The women must be back in the dorm by ten, so we walk them over, politely saying our goodnights. Then we make our way back to the dorm commons area, where the young men gather and talk. These conversations cover philosophy, religion, science, history, the future, perhaps the girl we spoke to that evening, things of interest but tending away from business or worldly concerns. Chalkie, you and I are technogeeks, engineering students, so we focus on things that will eventually take the form of extropianism: the future, science, technology, what computers will eventually be able to do and how humans will interact with them, that sort of thing. We enjoy the company of like-minded men interacting in the polite and respectful way that these young men behave when there are no women around for which to compete. Since tomorrow is the day of rest and there are no appointments other than church, there is no hurry to sleep. The quiet and often remarkably profound discussions continue until well after the clocks are showing single digits. We eventually go back to our room filled with the satisfaction of time well spent, looking forward to repeating the cycle next Friday night. Eli my young friend, THAT is what I miss. spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 5 02:40:38 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 19:40:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning References: <1813998.71771178314218461.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Message-ID: <0d7201c78ebf$1a654290$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> PJ and Natasha speak out: From: "pjmanney" > Why do Lee and company think that multimedia presentations > were made for the likes of them and then rain on others' parades > when they don't respond to them? I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I told my story, how it affects me, and I was just *wondering* how alone I was. Yes, for all I knew (or know) it is a strictly generational thing; on the other hand, perhaps diversity as Anne said. > Why do people well versed in neurology and psychology not > understand people learn through different perceptions? Not > all people learn best through text. Oh, quite right. Even "sight" vs. "phonics" methods of teaching reading are probably --- so I've always surmized --- something that should be determined for each child. (But that's a *very* old thought of mine, no doubt decades behind what is known now.) > Why can't you get that it IS, in part, generational. Old language > = words. New language = moving pictures. But it is also a > function of education level. If you are someone who excelled > at tertiary education, the odds are you can cope with text. > If you didn't, my guess is philosophy wasn't your best subject. Doubtless there are a *lot* of areas that weren't one's best subject if one had a hard time with linear thought, or with symbols on a page. Note that "function of education level" works both as cause and effect. Intellectually challenged people really are going to have harder times of all kinds of learning, but especially the text-based. (And I hope that I do not have to correct anyone's logic should they attempt to infer that I'm saying that people who have trouble with text are necessarily dumb.) > Get a grip, people. The rest of the world isn't like you. Ah, that I already knew, though thanks for the reminder. In fact, I admire those such as yourself who are so in tune that you are able to speak for the rest of the world. :-) Natasha writes > [Lee wrote] > > I am afraid that music and animation for > > the most part add nothing to my learning. > > Add nothing? Well, I suppose there is indeed truth to unique > differences in learning styles. Visuals have always added to my > learning, and in great part. To be differentiating between "visuals" and "music & animation", soft one. I was today in fact at lunch describing to colleagues how my own understanding of the fate of the Japanese aircraft carriers in the battle of Midway was *enormously* and very efficiently enhanced by a documentary. In fact, one could even say it had animation to a very limited degree: the damage wrought by the American dive- bombers was so devasstating because of the depth within the various levels of the aircraft carriers the explosions went off. Together with the *timing* of which bombs landed where and when, something indeed was accomplished that would have been a bit harder with pictures only, but exceedingly difficult without pictures at all. Lee P.S. Not to give unnecessary offense, but the term "soft ones" is from the science-fiction writer Keith Laumer, whose Groaci characters always started their sentences with the present participle or whatever it is, and who, having shells, regarded mammals as soft, e.g., "To be putting up your arms, soft ones!" Hoped that readers of old SF would enjoy that. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 5 02:48:41 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 19:48:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs References: <22424063.73271178315262253.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Message-ID: <0d7801c78ec0$816ba910$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> PJ writes > Restructure politcs. Reinvent religion. Rebuild humanity. Is it all > just talk, folks? Can't you take a little culture clash? A little artistic > evolution? > > Interesting. What will happen to you when your Singularity arrives? Cometh the time of our Glorious Singularity, all who surviveth and dwelleth therein forever shall have 4-digit IQs, and all shall breathe in the binary straight, without turning as they goeth. > For a group of people who can type incessantly about how life > is change and how big change is coming, you are all remarkably > change-adverse when it comes in this minor form into your own lives. Ah, but not all change is for the better. I recall someone on this list going on about how literate (and rightly so, I never got around to conceding) 19th century America was. If I could just remember who it was, I'd go back and quote all her posts on the subject... > PJ (with her dander up) which might help with the dander problem. :-) Lee From msd001 at gmail.com Sat May 5 03:05:35 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 23:05:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Killer apps for AI-controlled avatars in virtual worlds ?? In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705041830r6947354dte378686f9035a268@mail.gmail.com> References: <3cf171fe0705041427q2da4e3dn82683330afc3ef6f@mail.gmail.com> <3cf171fe0705041620g7f024cb8q3e601c421bd7d69c@mail.gmail.com> <3cf171fe0705041830r6947354dte378686f9035a268@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705042005h15b2724ejfc60ccc586141608@mail.gmail.com> On 5/4/07, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > I think it's a great idea, and I note that training simulations are a fairly > major market. More for corporate and professional training than for > kids or university students. I have yet to play with a Wii - but if there were a tennis trainer that actually imitated and commented on the person's playing ability, it might provide the sim version of a professional coach. I also envision the avatar being my digital bodyguard between me and the virtual environment: I don't have the attention span to present a different face (literally & figuratively) to everyone in a space. Suppose I don't want my mom to see the avatar I present to my friends... I should be able to present multiple avatars. I doubt I would be able to do that convincingly in real-time. If my AGI-assisted interface allowed me to time slice between 2+ copies of "my" identity, then I am software enhanced via the AGI agent. This is more than simple PDA, because over time an AGI would learn me as well as those others that I interact with. Eventually the AGI would be a second skin around (what I might believe is) my core identity. Call it a virtual cyborg for those who embrace the enhancement yet don't want the hardware implants. Identity security would be an issue here though, perhaps mitigated a bit if the AGI became keyed to the core identity so much that it were unusable by anyone else. From sjatkins at mac.com Sat May 5 03:06:56 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 20:06:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0d1501c78e6d$d3c15230$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <463BF4D0.7@mac.com> Torstein Haldorsen wrote: > Jef, > I am currently a student of computer science and as such i have fairly > limited real world work experience. > Still, any one persons skillset is generally not sufficient to > successfully pull of an entirely category-defying project such as this. > Although I have had a number of advisors who have provided valuable > feedback in different areas, I have not been successful in recruiting > people who have been able to make independent contributions to this > project, pushing it forward so to speak. > > A quick search will reveal the extent to which I have promoted it so > far, which is really very little. > > Now, while I believe this idea is quite profound, and find it > intellectually pleasing to have a "religion" of my own design, this > could easily be entirely normal delusions of grandeur. I don't know, > but i really love this project, I believe in the potential of the > idea, and i would love to be able to work on it full time, somehow, > some time in the future. > I have considered such a thing myself rather seriously. In particular I despair of enough humans embracing rationality and moving sufficiently beyond the many roots that religion feeds from to maximize our chances of survival. There is an apparent lot of power and appeal in those memes and psychological complexes. I thought that if they could be harnessed toward a more scientific worldview and transhumanist visions of transformation, immortality and transcendence then we would have much more of a chance. The more I looked at this though and the more I attempted to move forward with it the less I believed it was a good idea. You would be fighting an uphill battle against all the other religions and religious systems out there. You would be struggling to create a faith, a very powerful and magnetic meme complex, working primarily from an intellectual perspective. Unless you go in for full prophet and fanatical levels of dedication and devotion to the work you will not be a very powerful magnetic core for the work. If you are not then the work will be picked to death in committee and die a thousand deaths by multiple agendas. If you do form something cohesive you run high dangers of overlooking something critical that makes the result, if it takes hold, deadly. At every step of the way you will be tempted to use language largely owned by vastly different and inimical meme sets and your message will get lost in the stew of assumption about what you mean when you use those words. Increasingly I think that many of the roots that feed religion are aspects of our EP that we will seriously need to struggle to overcome if we are to have a viable future. Our future is in the realm of vision firmly grounded in science and reality. Great mystical sci-fi romps into the future while appealing on some levels don't seem to really have much traction or much relationship to the work needed personally or collectively. I could be wrong but I am quite discouraged regarding the viability of this sort of thing. > Successful marketing and also sales - if you wanna call it that, is > absolutely essential for any project to succeed, but one needs to have > a marketable "package" first. And also, I would like such a solution > to have qualities that are immediately recognizable as superior to > what's already out there. Just to get there a lot of hard, consistent > theoretical groundwork is needed. > In this realm a large part of marketing is inspiration especially of the highly contagious kind. Without charisma all the solid theory in the world will be useless. > If anyone would like to chip in on the theoretical / planning side > here, I would be very much appreciate it. > > As i said, if anyone can play the devils advocate and successfully > convince me why it _wont work_ or why I shouldn't go through with it I > would be grateful also, as I could stop spending a such ridiculous > amount of time on a maniac project that is exceedingly likely to fail > at any rate. > I think the few of us who are relatively awake and capable among all the world's billions are likely to accomplish far more if we see as clearly as we can where we want to go and build the technological (and perhaps cultural even political) tools for at least some of us to get there. I don't think any scheme to inspire or convert or persuade any large portion of the masses is going to work at this point. I rather liked believing that it could though. - samantha From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 5 03:10:29 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 20:10:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070501005517.0229a860@satx.rr.com> <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > On 04/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > > Again, one could be shown some videos that would make one > > doubt that he was the same person he was even an hour ago, or > > a few minutes ago. Do you agree with this: > > > > Were objective scientific means of measuring approximately > > how much memory change was going on, then we would > > be the same person from moment to moment if and only if > > the objective facts were that our memories had undergone > > only the usual small quotidian changes to which we are > > accustomed to (or we think we are familiar with) in daily life. > > One would like the objective and the subjective evidence to match up, > but if they don't, what basis is there for choosing one over the other? > If your brain has been tampered with as expertly as you propose isn't > it also possible that the objective evidence in the form of video tapes, > other peoples' testimonials and so on, has also been tampered with? We are fast approaching the problem you describe in the courtroom. These days, just how reliable can pictures (and soon videos) be? The solution---advocated by David Brin, I believe---is that testimony from real, live, 3D people must be provided, or at least via networks of reliability. Believability then becomes a matter of Bayesian statistics, sort of like it always has been :-) *Assuming* that right now your brain is not being tampered with, and *assuming* that you are not living in a temporary simulation, then it is possible to gingerly reach out and begin establishing reliability footholds. We do it in science all the time, for example, say, in gathering astronomical data. And so did they who first dared to try to quantify "hot" and "cold" on a linear scale. They had to constantly go back and forth between the objective and subjective, until things began falling into place, and they could begin building instruments more reliable than their own senses. So it could turn out with brain science. We now postulate that we are conscious, and that the higher animals are also, presumably, conscious, but not quite at the human level. Already comparisons between subjective accounts and objective brain scans are made by researchers. And so forth. So we assume when describing thought experiments, that the reality is as we describe it in the hypothesis. Remembering that nothing can be certain, that knowledge is always conjectural and contingent, we proceed slowly but surely. Lee From msd001 at gmail.com Sat May 5 03:14:49 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 23:14:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <200705050202.l4522bYR017703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <200705050202.l4522bYR017703@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705042014v52e91c23h5a38c078855c29ba@mail.gmail.com> On 5/4/07, spike wrote: > there is no hurry to sleep. The quiet and often remarkably profound > discussions continue until well after the clocks are showing single digits. > We eventually go back to our room filled with the satisfaction of time well > spent, looking forward to repeating the cycle next Friday night. > > Eli my young friend, THAT is what I miss. I wonder if that is a loss of religion or a loss of age-specific innocence? From spike66 at comcast.net Sat May 5 03:37:24 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 20:37:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <62c14240705042014v52e91c23h5a38c078855c29ba@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200705050347.l453lsTt006429@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty > Sent: Friday, May 04, 2007 8:15 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion > > On 5/4/07, spike wrote: > > there is no hurry to sleep. The quiet and often remarkably profound > > discussions continue until well after the clocks are showing single > digits. > > We eventually go back to our room filled with the satisfaction of time > well > > spent, looking forward to repeating the cycle next Friday night. > > > > Eli my young friend, THAT is what I miss. > > I wonder if that is a loss of religion or a loss of age-specific > innocence? Ja, I see your point. The place and time I described has a delightfully wholesome retro-ness about it, even today. I go back for class reunions occasionally and to see my old roommate. He went on to get a PhD in electrical engineering from Purdue, returned to our old school, teaches there to this day. I am always happy to see old friends, but it is never the same. Some of those old friends live in the neighborhood here; we get together often. Tomorrow in fact, with four couples from those days, with them I shall be. But that isn't the same either. Without the belief, the endorphin rush isn't there, for me anyway. I will ask how it is for them. Some still believe. Religion is a drug. It can be addictive. How well I know this feeling and the feeling of giving it up. That being said, the extro-schmoozes are a total blast: very cool discussions there happen. Too bad we don't have anything analogous to Friday evenings at old Walla Walla College. spike From sparkle_robot at yahoo.com Sat May 5 04:07:25 2007 From: sparkle_robot at yahoo.com (Anne Corwin) Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 21:07:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <933485.94237.qm@web56510.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Jef said: "For example, my thinking is extremely visual/analytical (I actually think in terms of graphs and geometric shapes) My thinking is...difficult to describe. It is strongly visually biased, but I'm also prone to synesthesia, so there's some degree of sensory mixing in there as well. Graphs and shapes and diagrams definitely feature prominently, though -- frequently, even writing for me is a process of "looking" at the diagrams in my mind's eye and attempting to describe them as best as possible. My brain seems to operate in "layers", wherein the most basic cognitive layer is largely non-linguistic. The layer on top of that is quasi-linguistic -- that is, there are a lot of words there, but they don't necessarily represent anything. Then the layer on top of *that* is linguistic -- when I am writing, I am basically "pulling" concepts up from the basic cognitive layer through the quasi-linguistic layer and fashioning them into something with some chance of being understood by someone who isn't me. And the linguistic layer is very text-biased as opposed to speech-biased; text gets "in" and "out" more easily than speech does. But the right diagram or graph has the potential to bypass the linguistic layer(s) entirely. Which is always nice. Jef said: "so I tend to use phrases like "I see" and "in the bigger picture" and "what do you think" and "does that make sense" I haven't examined my writing to see what sorts of phrases I tend to use, but I've heard the theory before about people's vocabulary choices and defaults reflecting their primary sensory modalities. It does make sense in some respects, but I haven't tested it myself -- maybe now that you've reminded me of it, I will start paying attention to it. It (the theory) does come across as a bit pop-sciencey, but there could be something to it. - Anne "Like and equal are not the same thing at all!" - Meg Murry, "A Wrinkle In Time" --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sentience at pobox.com Sat May 5 05:04:40 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Fri, 04 May 2007 22:04:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> Message-ID: <463C1068.5050407@pobox.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > You obviously believe that the truth is better than falsehood and you're > probably right. However, it is at least logically possible that > widespread belief in a Noble Lie might have a net positive effect. In > that case, is it still better to destroy the Lie regardless of the > consequences? By the logical definition of "net positive", no. In real life, yes. That is, I think the condition you have just logically defined would be quite extremely hard to fulfill. I suppose I would believe a lie if the alternative were the destruction of humanity, but in real life it works the other way around. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From alex at ramonsky.com Sat May 5 05:36:35 2007 From: alex at ramonsky.com (Alex Ramonsky) Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 06:36:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs References: <22424063.73271178315262253.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> <0d7801c78ec0$816ba910$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <463C17E3.4080208@ramonsky.com> Hi Lee, I believe you may be misjudging awareness here... I spend most of my life dealing with the mental problems of such kids as are spoken of below [and their parents]. Having it in your face all the time can get a bit much even when you think you're making a difference. When it does, I go online and have a laugh with friends. It charges my batteries to face another round of reality. I realise it could look entirely facile to those who don't know me, and I'm familiar with the exasperation when people seem to laugh an issue off that seems to me of great importance. But the joy of humor is one of the parts of being human that gives some people strength and inspiration enough to keep working on the less pleasant bits : ) ...So let's hear it for the giggles...and the rap...and the serious stuff that the things we enjoy keep us balanced enough to face. Best, AR ******** Lee Corbin wrote: Yes, yes, yes, have a good laugh! Laugh and the world laughs with you. Laughter is the best medicine. It also helps you avoid *real* problems, making it conveniently unnecessary to ignore reports like BillK's where he wrote on 5/3, 9:34 AM > I can only speak for the UK, but the constant use of swearing in their > [teenagers'] normal conversation is very prevalent. You only need to > walk around the mall, or listen on public transport, whenever a group > get together. They don't think of it as swearing, it is just normal for > them. When they get angry, and want to swear, they run into problems > communicating their displeasure because they haven't got any > 'forbidden' words left to use. So violence is the easy way of > expressing anger. Tut tut, BillK, you just gotta learn to laugh! Moreover, let Randall clue you into some really great Rap, and soon you can be singin' and dancin' away at just how da whores oughtta be cut up and fucked. (I, certainly, dare not replace the latter with "------", after all, to avoid shocking certain sensitive types.) Lee > Look at the stuff they post in chat rooms, on MySpace, or text > messages. It is almost constant, never-ending profanity and explicit > sexual references. (All with spelling mistakes as they use 'text' > language and a sort of pidgin English). From sjatkins at mac.com Sat May 5 07:56:04 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 00:56:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> Message-ID: <463C3894.8020502@mac.com> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > > Samantha, Spike, what do you miss? > > Great question. I am not sure how coherent my answer will be but I will give it a try. I miss a deep abiding belief that no matter how difficult things might be that it will all eventually turn out well. Once upon a time I thought that the triumph of the Good was a foregone conclusion. I thought that there was a Good that was coming more and more clearly into manifestation in this world. Sometimes it could lead to a complacence but I did not think that was correct. I was impatient for it to arrive more quickly. I miss the belief that people basically deeply yearn for the Good and mistakenly for a time think they want something else more or that there is no such thing. I used to believe that while we are evolved creatures that the natural impulse and path for intelligence is toward self-perfection and increase and that that increase leads inexorably toward the Good, toward mutual maximization of potential toward the highest flowering of All. I see it still sometimes as a possibility, as perhaps those conclusions being one way out the dangerous zone of species history we inhabit. But I don't believe it is inevitable or that it is the only way forward or especially that I or anyone else has much of a clear handle for it. For a time I believed that if I could fully open my heart to the uplifting potential of humanity and live fully out of love for it that I would be inspired and fully alive and maximally inspire others. I believed that if enough of us could do this it could make all the difference. Then I began to see it as an overlay of various mystical teachings I had absorbed during more credulous periods and doubt whether this would make much difference or even allow me room to do the more technical things that also need doing and believe I can be a part of. Much of my life I felt this call or something inside to live differently to show a way. I came to distrust that a lot. I miss many of these viewpoints though. They aren't all invalid but they are much more questionable than I once believed. I still thing that the work of navigating this period in history will take as much a shift in consciousness as accelerating technology. Slightly evolved chimps with godlike powers is not a stable or terribly desirable configuration. But I do not have the tool s and distrust some of the tool I have tried to produce such a shift in even myself. I miss communities of people who dropped far more boundaries with one another than most non-spiritual communities ever do. I miss inspiring others with images of how it all worked toward Good and how we really ultimately had nothing to fear. Now I have a lot of fear. Not just for myself but for everyone I have ever known headed for decay and death if not worse. I have fear for the entire species. I am not at all sure we have what it takes to make to to and through Singularity. I know we can't stay at the point we are, that either we will move forward and drastically or fall back and all to likely perish. But I am much too short on answers or happy notions of how to proceed. - samantha From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Sat May 5 08:04:19 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 01:04:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <200705042355.l44Nt9vl026933@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <822104.35995.qm@web35615.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The Mormon concept of "Hell" is to be cast out (I always envisioned it along the lines of General Zod & his two followers in Superman II when they get thrown into the Negative Zone) into "Outer Darkness," which is envisioned as a very bleak and cold place. Some modern-day Mormons like to conjecture it might be within a Black Hole. This is where Satan and his angels will ultimately wind up & just a relatively few humans such as Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Jeffery Dahmer, etc. Most of the world's "wicked" people will end up in the "Telestial Kingdom" which is the lowest sphere or level of Heaven. To the Mormon mind, "Hell" is ultimately to be seperated from God and to lose out on one's personal potential of having had the chance to become a god who is mated to another god & can create worlds and people them with their very own children. And so anyone who fails to achieve exaltation is damned and is essentially in the Mormon version of Hell. "As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become" is the popular quote. "Eternal Parenthood is Godhood" is another one. An added incentive to follow the rules is that Mormons believe everyone who is not exalted will be stripped of their ability to be sexually active. This thought really disturbs Mormons (who would not be disturbed!, lol) but also leads to conjecture on how this celibacy/abstinence is enforced. The Protestants and Catholics generally believe that disembodied spirits and the resurrected do not have the ability to engage in sexual activity and/or marry. I have had mainstream Christian friends who were very depressed over this doctrine. C.S. Lewis tried to explain away the need for sex in the next life by saying, "if as a sexually active adult you tried to explain to a young child who loves chocolate that sex is even better than chocolate, how really could you?" His point was that God was the adult and we were the young children who just could not understand. Family life is seen as the ideal in this life among Mormons and so to be excluded from that in the next life is seen as the ultimate punishment. No spouse, no sex, no children = Hell. John Grigg spike wrote: > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Max More > Subject: Re: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion > > A question for those, like spike, who found religion to be "an > extremely positive experience"--especially those of a Fundamentalist > belief system: Did you take seriously the idea of Hell as a place of > eternal torment and damnation? Max Hi Max, Not in my case, because Seventh Day Adventist doesn't have that doctrine. Perhaps that sect's designers in the 1840s sat down and asked themselves what is the most egregious doctrine in all of christianity. To anyone with even a modicum of ethical intuition, that one should top the list, the bit about god tormenting for eternity anyone who misbehaves for a short human lifetime. So they got rid of it. In that system, those who are wicked just die in a rain of fire that doesn't last any longer than any flesh mortal would survive in such a dire sitch. They are damned for all eternity in that they stay dead and gone forever; god "opposes their reanimation" to borrow a phrase from a recent poster. spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --------------------------------- Never miss an email again! Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. Check it out. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 5 08:32:00 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 18:32:00 +1000 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 05/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > One would like the objective and the subjective evidence to match up, > > but if they don't, what basis is there for choosing one over the other? > > If your brain has been tampered with as expertly as you propose isn't > > it also possible that the objective evidence in the form of video tapes, > > other peoples' testimonials and so on, has also been tampered with? > > We are fast approaching the problem you describe in the courtroom. > These days, just how reliable can pictures (and soon videos) be? > The solution---advocated by David Brin, I believe---is that testimony > from real, live, 3D people must be provided, or at least via networks of > reliability. > > Believability then becomes a matter of Bayesian statistics, sort of like > it always has been :-) > > *Assuming* that right now your brain is not being tampered with, and > *assuming* that you are not living in a temporary simulation, then it > is possible to gingerly reach out and begin establishing reliability > footholds. We do it in science all the time, for example, say, in > gathering > astronomical data. And so did they who first dared to try to quantify > "hot" and "cold" on a linear scale. > > They had to constantly go back and forth between the objective and > subjective, until things began falling into place, and they could begin > building instruments more reliable than their own senses. > > So it could turn out with brain science. We now postulate that we > are conscious, and that the higher animals are also, presumably, > conscious, but not quite at the human level. Already comparisons > between subjective accounts and objective brain scans are made > by researchers. And so forth. You can't escape subjectivity so easily when the subject *is* subjectivity. When I say I want to survive into the future, what I mean is that I want my subjectivity to survive. I don't really care what the objective facts are except insofar as they affect my subjective experience. If there is some precise neurological correlate of consciousness then that's good, because it means if I have my brain rewired I can be reassured that everything will continue as before. However, it would be OK with me if my subjectivity continued the same as before despite flouting all the known objective correlates of consciousness and personal identity. This begs the question, how could I possibly know that I have survived if I lack any objective evidence that I have survived? And if I can't know does that mean it would be pointless wanting to be resurrected in the far future, or in Heaven, because I simply couldn't be sure that I was me? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pgptag at gmail.com Sat May 5 11:28:57 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 13:28:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0d1501c78e6d$d3c15230$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <470a3c520705050428r2912178cm8e2651e1a27db4b8@mail.gmail.com> Hi Torstein, Too bad I had initially missed this thread. Yours is a very interesting project, and I agree with your text quoted below. Memetically engineering an alternative to religion was one of the themes of the seminar on Transhumanism and Religion in Second Life a few days ago: http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/seminar_on_h_and_religion_in_sl/ See also: http://qyxxql-merlin.livejournal.com/2776.html and a couple of parallel threads on wta-talk. I plan to give a much expanded version of my talk at TransVision07. So - how do you plan to proceed with your project, and how can we help? G. On 5/4/07, Torstein Haldorsen wrote: > What I'm suggesting is that we try to create a rational, modular, and > dynamic open worldview that may be adopted on an individual level as an > ALTERNATIVE to the existing "religions", or to non-religious atheism for > that matter... I think it is possible to harness and amplify the positive features of existing religions without resorting to fairytales. > > > This may preserve and cultivate the positive aspects we find in existing > religions, for instance the deep sense of meaning, a deep > sense of belonging, and the communal aspects of religion, > while at the same time concentrating our factual knowledge of the world, and > trying to approximate the truths of life to the best level of accuracy > possible. I suggest that we try to create an ever-improving open source > alternative to the existing worldviews and put it on the "religious > marketplace". > > If it were to prove memetically fit for survival it could, over time diffuse > or be adopted by a portion of the global population, > for instance rational atheists and others who currently do not subscribe to > any existing organized worldview. From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sat May 5 11:05:12 2007 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 07:05:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning In-Reply-To: <0d7201c78ebf$1a654290$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <1813998.71771178314218461.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> <0d7201c78ebf$1a654290$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <42448.72.236.102.67.1178363112.squirrel@main.nc.us> > > > I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade. I told my story, how it > affects me, and I was just *wondering* how alone I was. Yes, > for all I knew (or know) it is a strictly generational thing; on the > other hand, perhaps diversity as Anne said. Frequently I find animations and moving flashing bits of stuff to be distracting. Many times they seem to add *nothing* to my comprehension of material. In fact, I've used my hand to cover some flashing thing onscreen while I read text. That said, huge paragraphs of plain text can get very old as well. I can easily drown in the words. > >> Why do people well versed in neurology and psychology not >> understand people learn through different perceptions? Not >> all people learn best through text. > A great deal has to do with *what* people are trying to learn, in my experience. I recall daughter trying to learn some handwork and the confusion that I saw as she tried to follow the instructions - both text and pictures were bewildering - almost incomprehensible. But when my daughter could sit *next to* her grandmother and mimic her hand movements that worked pretty well. Once she knew how, the text and pictures were *fine*! :))) I do not know how well an animation would have worked, because of the "mirror movement" reversal. Regards, MB From neptune at superlink.net Sat May 5 13:15:32 2007 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 09:15:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] POL: DHEA ban References: <008101c78e3e$ac97e220$a2893cd1@pavilion> Message-ID: <002301c78f17$76b8f0c0$e0893cd1@pavilion> On Friday, May 04, 2007 8:50 AM BillK pharos at gmail.com wrote: > On 5/4/07, Technotranscendence wrote: > > This is what the Life Extension Foundation wants its US members to send > > to the US Congress. > > > > Regards, > > > > Dan > > ___________________________________________________ > > I am writing to urge you to vote AGAINST any legislation that would > > restrict my free access to a dietary supplement called > > dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). > > > > > > Wikipedia and Skeptic's dictionary don't think much of DHEA. > > > > Quote: > In short, taking DHEA is a high-risk gamble based on insubstantial evidence. > The main voices in favor of DHEA as a miracle drug are those who are > selling it or who make a good living selling books or programs > advocating "natural cures." I'm not sure LEF is touting DHEA (or any other substance) as a "miracle drug." Also, what is wrong with people taking the risk on DHEA? They certainly take risks on things that have the potential to do far more harm? As a general question to you: Do you see any scope for free choice at all in life? Or does it all come down to whatever the politicians tell you is okay? Regards, Dan From jef at jefallbright.net Sat May 5 14:57:14 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 07:57:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning In-Reply-To: <933485.94237.qm@web56510.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <933485.94237.qm@web56510.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Anne Corwin wrote: > Jef said: > > "For example, my thinking is extremely visual/analytical (I actually think > in terms of graphs and geometric shapes) > > My thinking is...difficult to describe. It is strongly visually biased, but > I'm also prone to synesthesia, so there's some degree of sensory mixing in > there as well. Graphs and shapes and diagrams definitely feature > prominently, though -- frequently, even writing for me is a process of > "looking" at the diagrams in my mind's eye and attempting to describe them > as best as possible. My brain seems to operate in "layers", wherein the > most basic cognitive layer is largely non-linguistic. The layer on top of > that is quasi-linguistic -- that is, there are a lot of words there, but > they don't necessarily represent anything. > > Then the layer on top of *that* is linguistic -- when I am writing, I am > basically "pulling" concepts up from the basic cognitive layer through the > quasi-linguistic layer and fashioning them into something with some chance > of being understood by someone who isn't me. And the linguistic layer is > very text-biased as opposed to speech-biased; text gets "in" and "out" more > easily than speech does. But the right diagram or graph has the potential > to bypass the linguistic layer(s) entirely. Which is always nice. I had hoped for enhanced visual communication in Second Life when I joined more than two years ago. I imagined being able to pop up visuals over my head to let the other person know what I was visualizing in my mind. Most would be prepared in advance, for common concepts that are difficult to describe in words. Some would be created dynamically, from changing data on the web (such as economic, socio-political, quality of life data, etc.), and other graphs and charts could be created on the fly from particular instance data. Animations to show change, 3D models for added dimensionality. I also dreamed of having a shared whiteboard to pop up whenever it might be handy. Still dreams at this time, and experiments to be performed to determine whether such visuals would be of much value to those who are less visual thinkers. Would a more kinesthetic person benefit from walking around inside a graph, climbing or flying over towering bars or walking on a surface plot as if it were a trampoline? Further on the topic of visualization, when I'm in a discussion with someone I find that a part of my brain automatically plots a graph of their worldview (that I'm receiving from them) onto my worldview (internal.) To the extent that our views are congruent, the graph forms a straight line. Any discontinuities or curves in the graph prompt me to look in that area for contradictions or differences in our views. Very handy and effortless, but perhaps quite unusual. I'd be very interested to know of others' similar experiences. - Jef From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 5 15:50:28 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 08:50:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs References: <22424063.73271178315262253.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> <0d7801c78ec0$816ba910$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <463C17E3.4080208@ramonsky.com> Message-ID: <0da801c78f2d$acf9f0b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Alex writes > Hi Lee, > I believe you may be misjudging awareness here... > I spend most of my life dealing with the mental problems > of such kids as are spoken of below [and their parents]. Alex is referring to BillK's narrative: > > I can only speak for the UK, but the constant use of swearing in their > > [teenagers'] normal conversation is very prevalent. You only need to > > walk around the mall, or listen on public transport, whenever a group > > get together. They don't think of it as swearing, it is just normal for > > them. When they get angry, and want to swear, they run into problems > > communicating their displeasure because they haven't got any > > 'forbidden' words left to use. So violence is the easy way of > > expressing anger. > Having it in your face all the time can get a bit much > even when you think you're making a difference. > When it does, I go online and have a laugh with > friends. It charges my batteries to face another > round of reality. > I realise it could look entirely facile to those who > don't know me, Not at all. It's very believable and (probably, given my own limitations) very wise. > and I'm familiar with the exasperation when people > seem to laugh an issue off that seems to me of great > importance. But the joy of humor is one of the parts > of being human that gives some people strength... Oh, I have *utterly* no problem with humor of any kind. But to illustrate the problem, let me turn to racial or ethnic humor. Yes: Axiom 1 is that humor gets a pass regardless, except when done in the presence of those who are its target, in which case it is rude. But what about when racist jokes indicate an *acceptance* of certain attitudes or beliefs on the part of the jokesters? Well, we all pretty much agree here that there is then a REAL PROBLEM quite apart from the humor, and the humor can be presented as evidence of this separate problem. What we definitely want to avoid is allowing our humor (say about you-name-it) to blind us to our prejudices, or, in the present instance, cause there to be within us a failure to be intolerable towards that which is unacceptable. > ...So let's hear it for the giggles...and the rap... Right there, of course, is where you're losing me. Axiom 0 is: there is no accounting for taste. It immediately follows that efforts on the part of someone to suggest that there is *real* value in Mendelssohn or Dvorak, and that those who can't see it are closing their eyes, or aren't "cool" are not only deeply misguided, but actually quite harmful. Are you speaking of making fun of rap, by parody? I don't think so! > and the serious stuff that the things we enjoy > keep us balanced enough to face. > Best, > AR Thanks Alex---but is there any danger here of some people using their own appreciation of rap to mask the kind of problems that BillK is addressing, all the way down to (see below) the replacement of standard written English with a sort of pidgen? Either one thinks that these *are* serious problems, or one does not. Lee -------------------------------------------------------------------- > Lee Corbin wrote: > > Yes, yes, yes, have a good laugh! Laugh and the world laughs with you. > Laughter is the best medicine. > > It also helps you avoid *real* problems, making it conveniently unnecessary > to ignore reports like BillK's where he wrote on 5/3, 9:34 AM > > > I can only speak for the UK, but the constant use of swearing in their > > [teenagers'] normal conversation is very prevalent. You only need to > > walk around the mall, or listen on public transport, whenever a group > > get together. They don't think of it as swearing, it is just normal for > > them. When they get angry, and want to swear, they run into problems > > communicating their displeasure because they haven't got any > > 'forbidden' words left to use. So violence is the easy way of > > expressing anger. > > Tut tut, BillK, you just gotta learn to laugh! Moreover, let Randall > clue you into some really great Rap, and soon you can be singin' > and dancin' away at just how da whores oughtta be cut up and fucked. > (I, certainly, dare not replace the latter with "------", after all, to > avoid shocking certain sensitive types.) > > Lee > > > Look at the stuff they post in chat rooms, on MySpace, or text > > messages. It is almost constant, never-ending profanity and explicit > > sexual references. (All with spelling mistakes as they use 'text' > > language and a sort of pidgin English). From benboc at lineone.net Sat May 5 15:43:16 2007 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 16:43:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> "nvitamore at austin.rr.com" wrote: > While I was away at a conference there was some discussion about > posthumans and posthumanism. In my research in preparing my paper on > BioArt, many of the theoreticians and curators I spoke with referred > to the posthuman and discounted the transhuman (including isms). I > have known for some time that there is an academic dismissing of > transhumanism and an embracing of posthumanism, in large part due to > Kathryn Hayles book which does not cover transhumanism. This book > also does not mention Max's published article "On Becoming Posthuman" > and also importantly Robert Peppernell who wrote "The Posthuman > Condition." I know that UK professors are annoyed at Hayles' > borrowing ideas from Pepperell and not recognizing him. > > Many of the reasons for this and I'd like to discuss it with you all > in this thread. First I'd like to hear your thoughts if you have > any. Two reasons i can think of: 1) Ignorance of tanshumanism. Maybe they think of transhumanism as something separate from the means to achieve a posthuman state. A lot of bizzarre-sounding ideas go under the banner of transhumanism. 2) Distancing themselves from the above-mentioned bizarre ideas, while still being able to talk about the future consequences. When these academics talk about posthumans, do they see them as existing in some remote future, or in the next 20 years? Oh, i just thought of another one: 3) It's just a game. To these people, 'posthuman' is like 'postmodern'. the last thing they want is to think it actually means something real. Any of those sound plausible? ben zaiboc From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 5 16:02:44 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 09:02:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes On 05/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > *Assuming* that right now your brain is not being tampered with, and > > *assuming* that you are not living in a temporary simulation, then it > > is possible to gingerly reach out and begin establishing reliability > > footholds. We do it in science all the time, for example, say, in gathering > > astronomical data. And so did they who first dared to try to quantify > > "hot" and "cold" on a linear scale. > > > > They had to constantly go back and forth between the objective and > > subjective, until things began falling into place, and they could begin > > building instruments more reliable than their own senses. > > > > So it could turn out with brain science. We now postulate that we > > are conscious, and that the higher animals are also, presumably, > > conscious, but not quite at the human level. Already comparisons > > between subjective accounts and objective brain scans are made > > by researchers. And so forth. > > You can't escape subjectivity so easily when the subject *is* subjectivity. > When I say I want to survive into the future, what I mean is that I want > my subjectivity to survive. I understand, and I agree. Though even here peculiar paradoxes await. Let's say you would find immortality sufficient, provided also that it was subjectively great beyond your wildest dreams, and it even included a vast community of somewhat like-minded individuals. Would y'all then be satisfied by the following? In 2061 an AI ruling Earth has extremely recently discovered certain astounding things, such as how using quantum effects to produce infinitely many computations over a finite interval of time. Now, how to deal with all the troglotyte humans? Well, maybe some of them will agree to this: Y'all will be down loaded into one grain of sand on a shore in Siciliy, and during the first second, you will subjectively experience one second of your great life. During the next half second you will experience you will experience the next second, during the next quarter second, the third second, so that at the end, objectively, of two seconds the Ruling AI has eliminated the resource problem insofar as regards y'all. Or do you want more? Do you want *objectively* to be around at all times and places in the future? > I don't really care what the objective facts are except insofar as > they affect my subjective experience. [Even given the above?] > If there is some precise neurological correlate of consciousness > then that's good, because it means if I have my brain rewired > I can be reassured that everything will continue as before. Yes, that's the important criterion, at least to me. > However, it would be OK with me if my subjectivity continued > the same as before despite flouting all the known objective correlates > of consciousness and personal identity. This begs the question, how > could I possibly know that I have survived if I lack any objective > evidence that I have survived? And if I can't know does that mean > it would be pointless wanting to be resurrected in the far future, > or in Heaven, because I simply couldn't be sure that I was me? I agree. So I assume that the objective correlates we get will be our best working guess, and I'll go with them. Even right now, no one knows for sure if even cryonics works, but it still remains true that the second stupidest thing that you can do is to die and be frozen. Lee From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 5 16:29:49 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 17:29:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] POL: DHEA ban In-Reply-To: <002301c78f17$76b8f0c0$e0893cd1@pavilion> References: <008101c78e3e$ac97e220$a2893cd1@pavilion> <002301c78f17$76b8f0c0$e0893cd1@pavilion> Message-ID: On 5/5/07, Technotranscendence wrote: > As a general question to you: Do you see any scope for free choice at > all in life? Or does it all come down to whatever the politicians tell > you is okay? > The general principle I follow is that society should help the weaker members of society. The ramifications of that, of course, leads to much complication. And I don't want to discuss all the differing political systems which might try to achieve this objective. :) In the specific case of buying drugs OTC, many people do not have the knowledge, experience, ability, time or inclination to investigate every product that might be offered. Even with the present regulatory system, the drug fraud industry is still huge. Billions of dollars are involved. For many endeavours, including drug testing, it is more efficient to have it done by a central organization. I don't agree with the view sometimes proposed in the more extreme libertarian circles that the weaker members of society deserve to get ripped off by the sharper crooks and con-men. (i.e. The attitude that it's their own fault if they are not as clever as me). Everybody is weak in some areas and relies on legislation to protect them in some of their dealings. It is certainly frustrating if a general law for the protection of the clueless forbids you doing something that you are very confident that you can do perfectly safely. (Over-confidence is a very human failing, of course. :) ). But if you are that sharp, you can probably find a way round the law without too much trouble. ;) BillK From natasha at natasha.cc Sat May 5 16:33:56 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 11:33:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20070505112321.0429cd68@pop-server.austin.rr.com> At 10:43 AM 5/5/2007, you wrote: >"nvitamore at austin.rr.com" wrote: > > > While I was away at a conference there was some discussion about > > posthumans and posthumanism. In my research in preparing my paper on > > BioArt, many of the theoreticians and curators I spoke with referred > > to the posthuman and discounted the transhuman (including isms). I > > have known for some time that there is an academic dismissing of > > transhumanism and an embracing of posthumanism, in large part due to > > Kathryn Hayles book which does not cover transhumanism. This book > > also does not mention Max's published article "On Becoming Posthuman" > > and also importantly Robert Peppernell who wrote "The Posthuman > > Condition." I know that UK professors are annoyed at Hayles' > > borrowing ideas from Pepperell and not recognizing him. > > > > Many of the reasons for this and I'd like to discuss it with you all > > in this thread. First I'd like to hear your thoughts if you have > > any. > >Two reasons i can think of: > >1) Ignorance of tanshumanism. Maybe they think of transhumanism as >something separate from the means to achieve a posthuman state. A lot of >bizzarre-sounding ideas go under the banner of transhumanism. Yes, this may be true to a degree. Although the ideas of transhumanism are not bizarre to anyone who thinks about the future outside academic and "futurist" business models. These domains are stiff and often rigid, no matter how much they assume they are thinking about the future. From first hand experience, academics are still in the postmodernism world and business folks are stuck in Future Studies which lacks knowledge about evolutionary ideas in can and will affect humanity. >2) Distancing themselves from the above-mentioned bizarre ideas, while >still being able to talk about the future consequences. Yes. >When these academics talk about posthumans, do they see them as existing >in some remote future, or in the next 20 years? Within a considered "assumable" future 50 years. But they are not multi-tracking for the most part and are hedging their bets with the domains that are tangible to them. There is fluent thinking in cybernetics, social change, philosophy, emergent technologies, but the framing of these areas are within staying "human" but being posthuman through machines and transference of identity or mind agents into other realities. There is concern about Hans Moravec, but almost as a joystick because Moravec is such a sweetheart and well liked that his ideas are not really truly taken seriously for the enormous potential they have in affecting the human. So, the assumptive thinking is that machines will not become more intelligent than humans and science fiction is okay to battle if one can be a liberal humanist and literary provocateur by using all sorts of big words and references, which is essential for academic writing (although some transhumanist have gotten away with not doing this.) >Oh, i just thought of another one: >3) It's just a game. To these people, 'posthuman' is like 'postmodern'. >the last thing they want is to think it actually means something real. Haha. Could be, but I think that Hayles is very well-versed in her area of knowledge, but could be true. 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: From eugen at leitl.org Sat May 5 16:38:35 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 18:38:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] POL: DHEA ban In-Reply-To: References: <008101c78e3e$ac97e220$a2893cd1@pavilion> <002301c78f17$76b8f0c0$e0893cd1@pavilion> Message-ID: <20070505163835.GJ17691@leitl.org> On Sat, May 05, 2007 at 05:29:49PM +0100, BillK wrote: > The general principle I follow is that society should help the weaker > members of society. That's good -- as long as that doesn't mean limiting choices to the rest of us. > In the specific case of buying drugs OTC, many people do not have the > knowledge, experience, ability, time or inclination to investigate > every product that might be offered. Even with the present regulatory Then these people should consult an expert. I'm perfectly capable of consulting primary literature and assessing the risk when incorporating a particular drug. > system, the drug fraud industry is still huge. Billions of dollars are How is that relevant? > involved. For many endeavours, including drug testing, it is more How is that relevant? > efficient to have it done by a central organization. "Centralized" and "efficient" don't mix very well. > I don't agree with the view sometimes proposed in the more extreme > libertarian circles that the weaker members of society deserve to get > ripped off by the sharper crooks and con-men. (i.e. The attitude that How would a "weaker member" of society know or care about DHEA, and why should "protection" of said "weaker members" result in limiting of choice to the rest of us? I do not subscribe to that logic, I must admit. > it's their own fault if they are not as clever as me). Everybody is > weak in some areas and relies on legislation to protect them in some > of their dealings. Protection of a group doesn't mean restriction of choice for another. > It is certainly frustrating if a general law for the protection of the > clueless forbids you doing something that you are very confident that > you can do perfectly safely. (Over-confidence is a very human failing, Now you're talking. > of course. :) ). But if you are that sharp, you can probably find a > way round the law without too much trouble. ;) No. The more sensible approach is that law shouldn't be there in the first place. -- 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 thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 5 17:15:55 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 12:15:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> At 04:43 PM 5/5/2007 +0100, ben zaiboc wrote: >Oh, i just thought of another one: >3) It's just a game. To these people, 'posthuman' is like 'postmodern'. >the last thing they want is to think it actually means something real. My guess is that this is closest to the real dynamic. "Post-" has been the cool prefix for more than 30 years. Postmodern, poststructural, postfeminist... (Although the latter has a negative flavor in the academy.) As one of those who quite early adopted "transhuman" from Sir Julian Huxley, I find it interesting on reflection that I'm also a theorist of "transrealism," an extension of Rudy Rucker's approach to imaginative writing. (It's true that before I published an academic book about transrealism, I also did one on postmodern science fiction and an encyclopaedia entry on that topic, so I don't wish to give the impression that they're mutually exclusive.) I suspect if European philosophes had adopted "transmodern" as their sexy word, Hayles and the others in that club would now be happily discussing "transhumans" rather than "posthumans". Damien Broderick From sjatkins at mac.com Sat May 5 17:41:07 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 10:41:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] POL: DHEA ban In-Reply-To: References: <008101c78e3e$ac97e220$a2893cd1@pavilion> <002301c78f17$76b8f0c0$e0893cd1@pavilion> Message-ID: <35F4FF4A-F939-4466-A98E-3F7029F01B78@mac.com> On May 5, 2007, at 9:29 AM, BillK wrote: > On 5/5/07, Technotranscendence wrote: > >> As a general question to you: Do you see any scope for free >> choice at >> all in life? Or does it all come down to whatever the politicians >> tell >> you is okay? >> > > > The general principle I follow is that society should help the weaker > members of society. > What does that, poor as that principle imho is, have to do with DHEA. DHEA is chemically a precursor to testosterone and estrogen type hormones. Supplementing it gets converted to these hormones as appropriate. The general dose taken is pretty low. It has been taken by many people for very many years so it is extremely doubtful there are any substantial risks. I take and have taken a very small amount of DHEA for over a decade. It definitely helped and was easier on my system experientially and financial than the subscription alternatives. Having made an informed choice and talked to my doctor about it I do not believe that a non-entity like "society" has any business butting in. If the above "principle" means that everyone is to be forced to live in such a way that the "weaker members" are safe then no thank you. I am not such a member myself and I refuse to be forced to live as if I am. It is the same "principle" as boring bright kids out of their mind in school because the "weaker" minds must be catered to. - samantha From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sat May 5 19:14:23 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 20:14:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705051214t3ad122carb32ded7e7835dc97@mail.gmail.com> On 5/4/07, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > You obviously believe that the truth is better than falsehood and you're > probably right. However, it is at least logically possible that widespread > belief in a Noble Lie might have a net positive effect. In that case, is it > still better to destroy the Lie regardless of the consequences? > This would be a conflict between utilitarian morality and ethical constraints. My answer would be that I am ethically probihited from lying even if I think it will have positive utility; but I am not ethically prohibited from keeping my mouth shut and refraining from comment either way, so that is what I would do. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sat May 5 19:23:33 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 20:23:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Evidence Message-ID: <8d71341e0705051223p616040c1g9959d5b32208bd4d@mail.gmail.com> On 5/5/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > We are fast approaching the problem you describe in the courtroom. > These days, just how reliable can pictures (and soon videos) be? > The solution---advocated by David Brin, I believe---is that testimony > from real, live, 3D people must be provided, or at least via networks of > reliability. > Indeed this has come up before, back in the 80s or thereabouts when computers were first coming into widespread use, the question was raised whether computer printouts could be accepted as evidence, because suddenly everyone had the necessary tools to generate any printed text they wanted. The solution put forward was that a printout can be accepted as evidence if a witness testifies that the information it contains is genuine. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Sat May 5 20:00:04 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 13:00:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <0d7201c78ebf$1a654290$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> A while back I suggested that someone NEEDS to make a pro-Transhumanism, pro-Singularity fictional (hollywood quality) movie in order to help spread the memes to the masses who are less reading-inclined. I was a little disappointed that there apparently wasn't much interest in getting something started (Except by maybe one or two people possibly). But I still think this would be a great, highly-leveraged opportunity to do some real, tangible good. Now personally, I pretty much SUCK at writing fiction, I'd probably be no better than average. But if *no-one* else, is interested, I'm going to *attempt* to start writing a free-of-charge screenplay. But without any help, the result could be pretty abysmal. Would someone else here *please* consider taking up the reigns entirely, or at least collaborating if they don't want to do it by themselves? Heartland, might you be interested,(I recall that you replied to the original post)? SINCERELY and with Best Wishes, Jeffrey Herrlich __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From sjatkins at mac.com Sat May 5 20:59:30 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 13:59:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705051214t3ad122carb32ded7e7835dc97@mail.gmail.com> References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <8d71341e0705051214t3ad122carb32ded7e7835dc97@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <463CF032.8080002@mac.com> Russell Wallace wrote: > On 5/4/07, *Stathis Papaioannou* > wrote: > > > You obviously believe that the truth is better than falsehood and > you're probably right. However, it is at least logically possible > that widespread belief in a Noble Lie might have a net positive > effect. In that case, is it still better to destroy the Lie > regardless of the consequences? > > Truth is not better than falsehood as a free floating abstraction. Truth is better than falsehood if you want to accomplish anything much in reality, rather than in fantasy. It is doubtful that most "Noble Lies" are at all noble. I do not believe that religion or religious beliefs are truly noble Noble Lies. > This would be a conflict between utilitarian morality and ethical > constraints. My answer would be that I am ethically probihited from > lying even if I think it will have positive utility; but I am not > ethically prohibited from keeping my mouth shut and refraining from > comment either way, so that is what I would do. When would you lie? Presumably you would lie to protect your own life, the lives of those you love or humanity. So what are the extenuations on your ethical prohibition against lying? - samantha From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sat May 5 21:14:28 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 22:14:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <463CF032.8080002@mac.com> References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <8d71341e0705051214t3ad122carb32ded7e7835dc97@mail.gmail.com> <463CF032.8080002@mac.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705051414q7c4ff32dl346278ce0aafd7df@mail.gmail.com> On 5/5/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > When would you lie? Presumably you would lie to protect your own life, > the lives of those you love or humanity. So what are the > extenuations on your ethical prohibition against lying? > *shrug* It hasn't been put to the test yet - most of the time telling the truth is the right thing to do in all ways, after all. At a guess, I'd say it's when the harm to be averted by lying is sufficiently direct and immediate to, in the colloquial sense of the words, constitute "fact rather than just theory"; from a utilitarian viewpoint, one could look at it as "is this definite enough that the usual fallibility argument for ethics doesn't apply"? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sat May 5 21:19:44 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 22:19:44 +0100 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <0d7201c78ebf$1a654290$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705051419x34134ca7waac5fb9e21fd47ee@mail.gmail.com> On 5/5/07, A B wrote: > > > A while back I suggested that someone NEEDS to make a > pro-Transhumanism, pro-Singularity fictional > (hollywood quality) movie in order to help spread the > memes to the masses who are less reading-inclined. I > was a little disappointed that there apparently wasn't > much interest in getting something started (Except by > maybe one or two people possibly). But I still think > this would be a great, highly-leveraged opportunity to > do some real, tangible good. Now personally, I pretty > much SUCK at writing fiction, I'd probably be no > better than average. But if *no-one* else, is > interested, I'm going to *attempt* to start writing a > free-of-charge screenplay. But without any help, the > result could be pretty abysmal. Would someone else > here *please* consider taking up the reigns entirely, > or at least collaborating if they don't want to do it > by themselves? Heartland, might you be interested,(I > recall that you replied to the original post)? > Sounds like a fine idea to me. I don't have any knowledge of or connections in the industry to get the movie made, nor enough spare time to do any large chunks of writing alas, but I'd be happy to look at early drafts and provide feedback if you want. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bkdelong at pobox.com Sat May 5 21:46:31 2007 From: bkdelong at pobox.com (B.K. DeLong) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 17:46:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <0d7201c78ebf$1a654290$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Why not just exploit what already exists and find a good fictional author like an Ian Mcdonald or a Cory Doctorow and then work to get their movie rights bought and push for the budget to be made available. On 5/5/07, A B wrote: > > > A while back I suggested that someone NEEDS to make a > pro-Transhumanism, pro-Singularity fictional > (hollywood quality) movie in order to help spread the > memes to the masses who are less reading-inclined. I > was a little disappointed that there apparently wasn't > much interest in getting something started (Except by > maybe one or two people possibly). But I still think > this would be a great, highly-leveraged opportunity to > do some real, tangible good. Now personally, I pretty > much SUCK at writing fiction, I'd probably be no > better than average. But if *no-one* else, is > interested, I'm going to *attempt* to start writing a > free-of-charge screenplay. But without any help, the > result could be pretty abysmal. Would someone else > here *please* consider taking up the reigns entirely, > or at least collaborating if they don't want to do it > by themselves? Heartland, might you be interested,(I > recall that you replied to the original post)? > > SINCERELY and with Best Wishes, > > Jeffrey Herrlich > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- B.K. DeLong (K3GRN) bkdelong at pobox.com +1.617.797.8471 http://www.wkdelong.org Son. http://www.ianetsec.com Work. http://www.bostonredcross.org Volunteer. http://www.carolingia.eastkingdom.org Service. http://bkdelong.livejournal.com Play. PGP Fingerprint: 38D4 D4D4 5819 8667 DFD5 A62D AF61 15FF 297D 67FE FOAF: http://foaf.brain-stream.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fauxever at sprynet.com Sat May 5 21:49:58 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 14:49:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! References: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004901c78f5f$53977b50$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "A B" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 1:00 PM Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! > > A while back I suggested that someone NEEDS to make a pro-Transhumanism, > pro-Singularity fictional (hollywood quality) movie in order to help > spread the memes to the masses who are less reading-inclined.... I think Damien Broderick's / Barbara Lamar's novel serialized in Cosmos would make a SUPER movie (and Post Mortal Syndrome's plot is more dynamic than A.I.'s - the Spielberg movie of a few years ago). http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/fiction/online/serials/post_mortal_syndrome So, who knows Steven Spielberg? Hmmm? Olga From bkdelong at pobox.com Sat May 5 22:08:42 2007 From: bkdelong at pobox.com (B.K. DeLong) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 18:08:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <004901c78f5f$53977b50$6501a8c0@brainiac> References: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <004901c78f5f$53977b50$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: There are several other Sci-Fi / Drama directors who are just as good as Spielberg. Lets not make it too unaccessible - plus he picks what he does. Maybe a project to look at all the current H+ movies, the directors that made them and approach them about doing one? On 5/5/07, Olga Bourlin wrote: > > From: "A B" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 1:00 PM > Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! > > > > A while back I suggested that someone NEEDS to make a pro-Transhumanism, > > pro-Singularity fictional (hollywood quality) movie in order to help > > spread the memes to the masses who are less reading-inclined.... > > I think Damien Broderick's / Barbara Lamar's novel serialized in Cosmos > would make a SUPER movie (and Post Mortal Syndrome's plot is more dynamic > than A.I.'s - the Spielberg movie of a few years ago). > > http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/fiction/online/serials/post_mortal_syndrome > > So, who knows Steven Spielberg? Hmmm? > > Olga > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- B.K. DeLong (K3GRN) bkdelong at pobox.com +1.617.797.8471 http://www.wkdelong.org Son. http://www.ianetsec.com Work. http://www.bostonredcross.org Volunteer. http://www.carolingia.eastkingdom.org Service. http://bkdelong.livejournal.com Play. PGP Fingerprint: 38D4 D4D4 5819 8667 DFD5 A62D AF61 15FF 297D 67FE FOAF: http://foaf.brain-stream.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jef at jefallbright.net Sat May 5 22:33:50 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 15:33:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705051414q7c4ff32dl346278ce0aafd7df@mail.gmail.com> References: <200705040433.l444X0DK010177@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <8d71341e0705051214t3ad122carb32ded7e7835dc97@mail.gmail.com> <463CF032.8080002@mac.com> <8d71341e0705051414q7c4ff32dl346278ce0aafd7df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/5/07, Russell Wallace wrote: > On 5/5/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > When would you lie? Presumably you would lie to protect your own life, > > the lives of those you love or humanity. So what are the > > extenuations on your ethical prohibition against lying? > > > > *shrug* It hasn't been put to the test yet - most of the time telling the > truth is the right thing to do in all ways, after all. At a guess, I'd say > it's when the harm to be averted by lying is sufficiently direct and > immediate to, in the colloquial sense of the words, constitute "fact rather > than just theory"; from a utilitarian viewpoint, one could look at it as "is > this definite enough that the usual fallibility argument for ethics doesn't > apply"? We teach our kids that telling the truth is good, and lying is bad. Because that's how much depth and subtlety they can grasp. When will we as a society be ready to grow up a little and realize it was never about speaking the truth and lying -- it was about the deeper principle of cooperative advantage, and the deeper principle behind that of the adaptive advantage of synergistic, positive-sum configurations? And the deeper principle... Never mind. We're not ready. - Jef From fauxever at sprynet.com Sat May 5 22:38:04 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 15:38:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! References: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com><004901c78f5f$53977b50$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <001801c78f66$0c03a4b0$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: B.K. DeLong To: ExI chat list Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 3:08 PM > There are several other Sci-Fi / Drama directors who are just as good as Spielberg. Lets not make it too unaccessible - plus he picks what he does. Maybe a project to look at all the current H+ movies, the directors that made them and approach them about doing one? I was been a tad unserious. But, seriously, any good keen director will do. Let's just get those movies OUT THERE! It would be *serious* entertainment, to boot ... Olga -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparkle_robot at yahoo.com Sat May 5 22:47:38 2007 From: sparkle_robot at yahoo.com (Anne Corwin) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 15:47:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49596.22686.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com> I like this idea. And don't laugh (okay, laugh if you want to) but after seeing the musical episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" I was thinking how cool it would be to have some sort of H+ themed musical. You know how show tunes tend to stick in people's heads? We could have lyrics like: "Some years ago they froze me They vitrified my head Most people laughed and mocked them, saying, "Why preserve the dead?" But now I stand before the world With body made anew And gaze about in wonderment At what this world's come through Through war and existential threat Through peril deep and dark And yet I live, a child once more Aloft on some strange ark. Some say it happened much too fast: An exponential function But others (those who rode the curve) Look back without compunction. I wander through the shining streets With eyes of diamond staring So much has changed: I don't know what to call that thing you're wearing! But still, some things remain the same: Like friendship, love, and heroism, And arguments on mailing lists On freedom and determinism." ...or maybe not. OK, back to working on some more, um, serious writing... - Anne A B wrote: A while back I suggested that someone NEEDS to make a pro-Transhumanism, pro-Singularity fictional (hollywood quality) movie in order to help spread the memes to the masses who are less reading-inclined. I was a little disappointed that there apparently wasn't much interest in getting something started (Except by maybe one or two people possibly). But I still think this would be a great, highly-leveraged opportunity to do some real, tangible good. Now personally, I pretty much SUCK at writing fiction, I'd probably be no better than average. But if *no-one* else, is interested, I'm going to *attempt* to start writing a free-of-charge screenplay. But without any help, the result could be pretty abysmal. Would someone else here *please* consider taking up the reigns entirely, or at least collaborating if they don't want to do it by themselves? Heartland, might you be interested,(I recall that you replied to the original post)? SINCERELY and with Best Wishes, Jeffrey Herrlich __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat "Like and equal are not the same thing at all!" - Meg Murry, "A Wrinkle In Time" --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sat May 5 23:02:32 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 00:02:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <49596.22686.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <49596.22686.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705051602k25090b64t7a5b9a08071a5ec6@mail.gmail.com> On 5/5/07, Anne Corwin wrote: > > But still, some things remain the same: > Like friendship, love, and heroism, > And arguments on mailing lists > On freedom and determinism." > *laughs* I like it! Nice one. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jcowan5 at sympatico.ca Sat May 5 23:19:03 2007 From: jcowan5 at sympatico.ca (Josh Cowan) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 19:19:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <49596.22686.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <49596.22686.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Anne, I think that was GREAT!! Kudos! On May 5, 2007, at 6:47 PM, Anne Corwin wrote: > I like this idea.? And don't laugh (okay, laugh if you want to) but > after seeing the musical episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" I was > thinking how cool it would be to have some sort of H+ themed musical.? > You know how show tunes tend to stick in people's heads?? We could > have lyrics like: > > "Some years ago they froze me > They vitrified my head > Most people laughed and mocked them, > saying, "Why preserve the dead?" > > But now I stand before the world > With body made anew > And gaze about in wonderment > At what this world's come through > > Through war and existential threat > Through peril deep and dark > And yet I live, a child once more > Aloft on some strange ark. > > Some say it happened much too fast: > An exponential function > But others (those who rode the curve) > Look back without compunction. > > I wander through the shining streets > With eyes of diamond staring > So much has changed: I don't know what > to call that thing you're wearing! > > But still, some things remain the same: > Like friendship, love, and heroism, > And arguments on mailing lists > On freedom and determinism." > > ...or maybe not.? OK, back to working on some more, um, serious > writing... > > - Anne > > A B wrote: >> A while back I suggested that someone NEEDS to make a >> pro-Transhumanism, pro-Singularity fictional >> (hollywood quality) movie in order to help spread the >> memes to the masses who are less reading-inclined. I >> was a little disappointed that there apparently wasn't >> much interest in getting something started (Except by >> maybe one or two people possibly). But I still think >> this would be a great, highly-leveraged opportunity to >> do some real, tangible good. Now personally, I pretty >> much SUCK at writing fiction, I'd probably be no >> better than average. But if *no-one* else, is >> interested, I'm going to *attempt* to start writing a >> free-of-charge screenplay. But without any help, the >> result could be pretty abysmal. Would someone else >> here *please* consider taking up the reigns entirely, >> or at least collaborating if they don't want to do it >> by themselves? Heartland, might you be interested,(I >> recall that you replied to the original post)? >> >> SINCERELY and with Best Wishes, >> >> Jeffrey Herrlich >> >> __________________________________________________ >> Do You Yahoo!? >> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around >> http://mail.yahoo.com >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > "Like and equal are not the same thing at all!" > - Meg Murry, "A Wrinkle In Time" > > Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? > Check out new cars at Yahoo! > Autos._______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 3101 bytes Desc: not available URL: From amara at kurzweilai.net Sat May 5 23:11:43 2007 From: amara at kurzweilai.net (Amara D. Angelica) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 19:11:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <0d7201c78ebf$1a654290$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <02bd01c78f6a$bf192530$650fa8c0@HP> Ray Kurzweil is producing a docudrama version of The Singularity Is Near, due for theatrical release in early 2008. Stay tuned for further details... From sparkle_robot at yahoo.com Sat May 5 23:21:13 2007 From: sparkle_robot at yahoo.com (Anne Corwin) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 16:21:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705051602k25090b64t7a5b9a08071a5ec6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <733897.72041.qm@web56502.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Weird...my message hasn't shown up in my own inbox yet, and yet you seem to have received it anyway. I'm not on some sort of moderation, am I? (Not that I don't necessarily deserve it for that bit of doggerel...) - Anne Russell Wallace wrote: On 5/5/07, Anne Corwin wrote: But still, some things remain the same: Like friendship, love, and heroism, And arguments on mailing lists On freedom and determinism." *laughs* I like it! Nice one. _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat "Like and equal are not the same thing at all!" - Meg Murry, "A Wrinkle In Time" --------------------------------- Looking for earth-friendly autos? Browse Top Cars by "Green Rating" at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Sat May 5 23:39:18 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 16:39:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <49596.22686.qm@web56515.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200705052357.l45NvE0g000060@andromeda.ziaspace.com> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anne Corwin Subject: Re: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! ...? We could have lyrics like: "Some years ago they froze me They vitrified my head Most people laughed and mocked them, saying, "Why preserve the dead?"... - Anne Woohoo! Anne! Thou hast hidden thy talent under a bushel. {8^D Thanks for this, made my day. spike From spike66 at comcast.net Sat May 5 23:46:16 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 16:46:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] calling computer groksters In-Reply-To: <463CF032.8080002@mac.com> Message-ID: <200705052357.l45NvpBd013652@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Please some of you computing cluemeisters, do offer me one on this: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/quantum-leap http://www.dwavesys.com/ Are we really about to get quantum computing? And if so will it allow us to fulfill our wildest dreams, such as discovering the next fifty Mersenne primes in a week? And world peace of course. spike From spike66 at comcast.net Sun May 6 00:02:27 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 17:02:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <733897.72041.qm@web56502.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200705060015.l460FrrG015188@andromeda.ziaspace.com> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anne Corwin Subject: Re: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! Weird...my message hasn't shown up in my own inbox yet, and yet you seem to have received it anyway.? I'm not on some sort of moderation, am I?? (Not that I don't necessarily deserve it for that bit of doggerel...) - Anne Anne, this is a quirk you will start to see often. It resulted from that quantum computer that is being developed. It computes faster than light, causing things to happen in reverse order. We not only received your poem before you did, we received it before you wrote it. Your great grandson, spike {8^D From natasha at natasha.cc Sun May 6 01:09:29 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 20:09:29 -0500 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <0d7201c78ebf$1a654290$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20070505200228.04c1fd90@pop-server.austin.rr.com> When I was in the film industry working with Zoetrope and Fox, and making videos, I really wanted to make a transhumanist film. That was in the 80s. I pitched ideas to Schl?ndorff , Malle and Bertolucci, and dear Paul Kohner; but they weren't interested in the future. Times have certainly changed. But If anyone has a story you want me to look at, I do have the contacts. It does not matter that I am hibernating in Austin and working on a PhD, I still have friends and supporters in the film industry. Best wishes, Natasha At 03:00 PM 5/5/2007, you wrote: > A while back I suggested that someone NEEDS to make a >pro-Transhumanism, pro-Singularity fictional >(hollywood quality) movie in order to help spread the >memes to the masses who are less reading-inclined. I >was a little disappointed that there apparently wasn't >much interest in getting something started (Except by >maybe one or two people possibly). But I still think >this would be a great, highly-leveraged opportunity to >do some real, tangible good. Now personally, I pretty >much SUCK at writing fiction, I'd probably be no >better than average. But if *no-one* else, is >interested, I'm going to *attempt* to start writing a >free-of-charge screenplay. But without any help, the >result could be pretty abysmal. Would someone else >here *please* consider taking up the reigns entirely, >or at least collaborating if they don't want to do it >by themselves? Heartland, might you be interested,(I >recall that you replied to the original post)? > >SINCERELY and with Best Wishes, > >Jeffrey Herrlich > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around >http://mail.yahoo.com >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat Natasha Vita-More Cultural Strategist - Designer - Futurist Proactionary Principle Core Group: Extropy Institute Member, Association of Professional Futurists Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture 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: From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 6 03:18:06 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 13:18:06 +1000 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 06/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: In 2061 an AI ruling Earth has extremely recently discovered certain > astounding things, such as how using quantum effects to produce > infinitely many computations over a finite interval of time. Now, how > to deal with all the troglotyte humans? Well, maybe some of them > will agree to this: Y'all will be down loaded into one grain of sand > on a shore in Siciliy, and during the first second, you will subjectively > experience one second of your great life. During the next half second > you will experience you will experience the next second, during the > next quarter second, the third second, so that at the end, objectively, > of two seconds the Ruling AI has eliminated the resource problem > insofar as regards y'all. > > Or do you want more? Do you want *objectively* to be around > at all times and places in the future? > Subjective immortality is acceptable. Your example raises another interesting issue in that the computation method proposed will allow all possible computations to be implemented in the two seconds. Not only will you be resurrected to live forever, so will every other possible variation on your mind, and every other possible mind. This obviates the problem of being certain that you are really you: the real you has to be in there somewhere, as well as versions of you arbitrarily close to the real you. Another consequence is that if you find yourself a conscious entity in this infinite computer, you can be sure that your past memories and future expectations will have corollaries in actual computations either in the past or in the future (not necessarily respectively). We could be living in such a world at the moment and not be aware of it. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pj at pj-manney.com Sun May 6 04:20:02 2007 From: pj at pj-manney.com (pjmanney) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 00:20:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! Message-ID: <13389336.125981178425202394.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Anne C. wrote: >"But still, some things remain the same: Like friendship, love, and heroism, And arguments on mailing lists On freedom and determinism."< This is hilarious! (Although I secretly hope we're still not doing the last two lines.) Come on, I know there are some tunesmiths among us. Anyone want to come up with a melody and sing it at/record it for Transvision 07? PJ From spike66 at comcast.net Sun May 6 05:03:23 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sat, 5 May 2007 22:03:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! Message-ID: <200705060513.l465DdBn016786@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Posted for Amara Angelica: -----Original Message----- From: Amara D. Angelica [mailto:amara at kurzweilai.net] Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 7:12 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: RE: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! Ray Kurzweil is producing a docudrama version of The Singularity Is Near, due for theatrical release in early 2008. Stay tuned for further details... From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 6 05:52:22 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 22:52:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <463D6D16.2040600@mac.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On 06/05/07, *Lee Corbin* > wrote: > > In 2061 an AI ruling Earth has extremely recently discovered certain > astounding things, such as how using quantum effects to produce > infinitely many computations over a finite interval of time. Now, how > to deal with all the troglotyte humans? Well, maybe some of them > will agree to this: Y'all will be down loaded into one grain of sand > on a shore in Siciliy, and during the first second, you will > subjectively > experience one second of your great life. During the next half second > you will experience you will experience the next second, during the > next quarter second, the third second, so that at the end, > objectively, > of two seconds the Ruling AI has eliminated the resource problem > insofar as regards y'all. > > Or do you want more? Do you want *objectively* to be around > at all times and places in the future? > > > Subjective immortality is acceptable. Your example raises another > interesting issue in that the computation method proposed will allow > all possible computations to be implemented in the two seconds. Sheesh. Didn't this sort of thing go out with Zeno's paradox? You can't cram infinite subjective time and and infinite number of experiences of infinite time into two seconds. We don't do that kind of magic around here. Stathis wrote: Not only will you be resurrected to live forever, so will every other possible variation on your mind, and every other possible mind. samantha Whatever for? In this fantasy of infinitely fast and infinitely abundant computational resources for playing a googleplex of variations of every mundane humane life and every posiible extension of it is there any meaning, any substance? Or has anything real become just one more possible permutation in the quantum foam? Everything literally and literally nothing at all. Bah. Stathis: This obviates the problem of being certain that you are really you: the real you has to be in there somewhere, as well as versions of you arbitrarily close to the real you. hehehehehe. How very comforting. Not. Stathis: Another consequence is that if you find yourself a conscious entity in this infinite computer, you can be sure that your past memories and future expectations will have corollaries in actual computations either in the past or in the future (not necessarily respectively). We could be living in such a world at the moment and not be awar! e of it. Yes and I could be a bacteria on a boil on the butt of a rat in some other dimension. Yawn. - s From pgptag at gmail.com Sun May 6 06:13:59 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 08:13:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> I always had some doubts on "transhumanism" as a marketing buzzword, but I like "posthumanism" even less. The term implies a rejection of our humanity and a desire to become something else. What we want to become is clear to us: we want to remain more or less ourselves but move to much better bodies and much smarter minds. But for our opponents it is easy to construct "posthuman" as eliminating tender and loving humans and replacing them with cold and heartless machines. If and when I will be a computational superintelligence roaming the galactic web, I will still be a human in better shape and with some more toys to play with. G. On 5/5/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 04:43 PM 5/5/2007 +0100, ben zaiboc wrote: > > >Oh, i just thought of another one: > >3) It's just a game. To these people, 'posthuman' is like 'postmodern'. > >the last thing they want is to think it actually means something real. > > My guess is that this is closest to the real dynamic. "Post-" has > been the cool prefix for more than 30 years. Postmodern, > poststructural, postfeminist... (Although the latter has a negative > flavor in the academy.) As one of those who quite early adopted > "transhuman" from Sir Julian Huxley, I find it interesting on > reflection that I'm also a theorist of "transrealism," an extension > of Rudy Rucker's approach to imaginative writing. (It's true that > before I published an academic book about transrealism, I also did > one on postmodern science fiction and an encyclopaedia entry on that > topic, so I don't wish to give the impression that they're mutually > exclusive.) I suspect if European philosophes had adopted > "transmodern" as their sexy word, Hayles and the others in that club > would now be happily discussing "transhumans" rather than "posthumans". > > Damien Broderick > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 6 06:20:10 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 01:20:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Vinge in Reason magazine Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070506011957.022b9108@satx.rr.com> http://reason.com/news/show/119237.html From sentience at pobox.com Sun May 6 06:28:51 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 23:28:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <463D75A3.9040801@pobox.com> Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > > If and when I will be a computational superintelligence roaming the > galactic web, I will still be a human in better shape and with some > more toys to play with. A million years from now, I'm going to remind you that you said that, and depending on how our senses of humor change over time, it will seem really funny or slightly sad. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From sentience at pobox.com Sun May 6 06:33:00 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 05 May 2007 23:33:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <463D769C.6010008@pobox.com> A B wrote: > Now personally, I pretty > much SUCK at writing fiction, I'd probably be no > better than average. But if *no-one* else, is > interested, I'm going to *attempt* to start writing a > free-of-charge screenplay. But without any help, the > result could be pretty abysmal. You're correct, it will suck. And I'm too slow a writer, I've tried. You are essentially stuck until a writer comes along. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 6 06:41:11 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 01:41:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.co m> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com> At 08:13 AM 5/6/2007 +0200, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: >I always had some doubts on "transhumanism" as a marketing buzzword, >but I like "posthumanism" even less. The term implies a rejection of >our humanity and a desire to become something else. True, but you do realize that the Foucauldian buzz word that overwhelmed pomo thinking was not just "posthumanist" but "antihumanist"? For all I know, it might still be the fashionable thing to be in the academe. (For anyone not sure what I just said, "Foucauldian" is the adjective from the ideas advanced by the late Michel Foucault, who blighted the minds of a couple of generations of very bright people indeed in the humanities, as did Louis Althusser, who ended by murdering his own wife. A bit more follows below, although, again, it's probably now out of touch with fashion.) Damien Broderick ========================= Twenty years after refusing on vaguely anarchist grounds to take out my Arts degree, I went back to university to brush up on whatever absurd doctrines had swept to power in the 1970s and 1980s. What I found in the libraries and seminars, as I wrote my doctoral dissertation in discourse theory, was a dazzling assemblage of brilliant nuance and narrow stupidity. It was built from a variety of components?deconstruction, new history, post-colonial writing, Lacanian psychoanalysis, women's studies, multiculturalism, antihumanism--but they shared certain core strategies. This free-wheeling post-Marxism liked to `interrogate' hegemonic beliefs, forgetting that interrogation is usually the privilege of terrorist regimes. Dubbing itself theory pure and simple, posthumanist opinion presented as the basis for all rigorous thought and practice. Yet its awful language could lead its practitioners into absurdity. All too often it was dead on the page and in the mind, and one could only wonder at the tone-deafness, the lack of rigour, of at least some of its acolytes. ... By and large, antihumanist theory seeks out `truth effects' produced by `author functions'. In lesser hands, theory has franchised a machine for processing splendour and misery into doctrine. Within this reigning academic doctrine, the human person has been unmasked as an ideological imposture. ... Kate Soper, in a useful and thorough-going response to the antihumanist program, makes the same point: "[U]nless individuals are to be credited with `naturally' possessing the capacities enabling them to recognize that which will constitute them as `subjects' (a position ruled out by Althusser's rejection of a humanist epistemology), then the subject is already presupposed to its formation, and Althusser's argument is circular. Subjects, he says, recognize themselves in ideology. But who does the recognizing if not the subject as conceived in humanism?" It is important, in my view, that we retain a clear acknowledgement that beneath all the powerful programming and intersocial construction of each human subjectivity in every culture, there is in some sort a `human nature' constrained by our evolutionary history which makes that process possible. At no time, even at birth, is the human infant correctly described, as Althusser does, as `this small animal?which only becomes human-sexual by crossing the infinite divide that separates life from humanity, the biological from the historical, "nature" from "culture" ' (Althusser, 1984). I am not arguing for a coarse `human engineering' postulate, but for a more nuanced use of the concept `human nature'. Victor Jeleniewski Seidler puts the objection to Althusserian global anti-essentialism well: "We can recognise the historical character of human qualities and needs and so recognise the competitive, individualistic, ego-centred `natures' that we grow up to accept as `normal', without concluding that `human nature' is simply a `product' of a particular mode of production. This would be to see people as passive objects, who are produced within a particular mode of production. It would be to share a misconception with much social theory which tends to deny, in different ways, the sources of resistance to the prevailing mode of determination and control, by assuming that people are `fitted' to a particular mode of production. This is to take up a fundamentally instrumental attitude towards people...." Posthumanist Marxism, as an interventionist political position, tends toward internal incoherence on this score. Post-Marxism tends toward the same failing. Consider Macdonell's odd account of the 1968 student/worker rebellion in France: "Instead of following the Marxist line that the masses make history, the [humanist-infiltrated] PCF line in 1968 was that the Party in the person of its leaders and `experts' makes history. Inflexible, underestimating the masses, the PCF acted to separate rather than weld together [oppositional] forces." Macdonell's account hangs on a simple internal contradiction, as follows: the party erred because (A) it wrongly supposed `leaders' rather than masses are responsible for making history, and (not-A) its `leaders' misled the masses. This logical inconsistency (it is not a `dialectical' insight) is bound to reappear within any antihumanist position. Indeed, pushed to its conclusion it vitiates the political will of both `leaders' and `masses'. Soper observes: "The real problem lies not in the assertion of the structured nature of experience, but in the conceptualisation of individuals as no more than social `effects'. For if we play no part in the formation of the structures that dominate us, what sense is there in trying to alter them? If, moreover, the experience of individual men and women is viewed as inessential to their existence, then the category of the `concrete individual' ceases to have any reference to human beings; within the confines of such a theory, one can no longer speak of individuals as `dominated' by social structures or in need of `liberation' from them, since they are not thought of as beings with `interests' to be affected." Oddly, Soper here blunts her own thrust. Finding Althusser's case weak on rhetorical grounds, she laments that `to convince workers of their impotence scarcely seems the best way of persuading them to participate in collective action'. Yet an obvious objection to Althusser is that to make any `appeal to the workers' requires one to recognise and depend upon their individual openness to persuasion, their need to be convinced (perhaps by actions as well as words). [etc] From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 6 07:06:29 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 17:06:29 +1000 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <463D6D16.2040600@mac.com> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <463D6D16.2040600@mac.com> Message-ID: On 06/05/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > > > > On 06/05/07, *Lee Corbin* > > wrote: > > > > In 2061 an AI ruling Earth has extremely recently discovered certain > > astounding things, such as how using quantum effects to produce > > infinitely many computations over a finite interval of time. Now, > how > > to deal with all the troglotyte humans? Well, maybe some of them > > will agree to this: Y'all will be down loaded into one grain of > sand > > on a shore in Siciliy, and during the first second, you will > > subjectively > > experience one second of your great life. During the next half > second > > you will experience you will experience the next second, during the > > next quarter second, the third second, so that at the end, > > objectively, > > of two seconds the Ruling AI has eliminated the resource problem > > insofar as regards y'all. > > > > Or do you want more? Do you want *objectively* to be around > > at all times and places in the future? > > > > > > Subjective immortality is acceptable. Your example raises another > > interesting issue in that the computation method proposed will allow > > all possible computations to be implemented in the two seconds. > > > Sheesh. Didn't this sort of thing go out with Zeno's paradox? You > can't cram infinite subjective time and and infinite number of > experiences of infinite time into two seconds. We don't do that kind > of magic around here. No, Zeno's paradox implies that motion is impossible due to this sort of mechanism (you have to move 1/2 metre before you move a metre, then another 1/4 metre, then another 1/8 metre... so you can never move the full metre), whereas you and I both know that motion is possible, which means you *can* fit an infinite number of time slices into a finite period. It isn't possible if there is a minimum quantum of time, which would mean that motion is not actually continuous but analogous to the frames of a film, but I don't know that this question has been decided with certainty one way or the other by physicists. Frank Tipler proposed that computation could go on forever using this mechanism in a (certain kind of) collapsing universe, while freeman Dyson proposed the exact opposite mechanism, slower and slower computation in an infinitely expanding universe. Either scenario allows for all possible computations, and of course either scenario may be impossible depending on what the real cosmology turns out to be. Stathis wrote: > Not only will you be resurrected to live forever, so will every other > possible variation on your mind, and every other possible mind. > > samantha > Whatever for? In this fantasy of infinitely fast and infinitely > abundant computational resources for playing a googleplex of variations > of every mundane humane life and every posiible extension of it is there > any meaning, any substance? Or has anything real become just one more > possible permutation in the quantum foam? Everything literally and > literally nothing at all. Bah. Any of the Tegmark multiverse levels would give rise to this situation. Would it upset you, for example, if it turns out to be the case that the universe is infinite, which would mean that every possible thing actually happens, infinitely often? Do you think that it is more likely that the universe is unique and finite? Stathis: > This obviates the problem of being certain that you are really you: the > real you has to be in there somewhere, as well as versions of you > arbitrarily close to the real you. > > hehehehehe. How very comforting. Not. This has to be the case if the universe is infinite or if the MWI of QM is true, to give two examples.These are not wild and unfounded speculation, like religious belief. There are good physical reasons supporting these scenarios, such as the theory that you don't cause something to exist by looking at it. Stathis: > Another consequence is that if you find yourself a conscious entity in > this infinite computer, you can be sure that your past memories and > future expectations will have corollaries in actual computations either > in the past or in the future (not necessarily respectively). We could be > living in such a world at the moment and not be awar! e of it. > > Yes and I could be a bacteria on a boil on the butt of a rat in some > other dimension. Yawn. I understand your scepticism, but it is irrational to ignore everything for which there is not direct and unequivocal evidence. For example, we have no evidence that an internal combustion engine would function properly in the Andromeda galaxy, but it is reasonable to suppose that it would. That the universe does not end where the visible universe ends is an analogously reasonable assumption, despite the present and perhaps perpetual absence of direct evidence in its support. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 6 07:58:01 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 09:58:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] calling computer groksters In-Reply-To: <200705052357.l45NvpBd013652@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <463CF032.8080002@mac.com> <200705052357.l45NvpBd013652@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <20070506075801.GO17691@leitl.org> On Sat, May 05, 2007 at 04:46:16PM -0700, spike wrote: > > Please some of you computing cluemeisters, do offer me one on this: > > http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/quantum-leap > > http://www.dwavesys.com/ > > Are we really about to get quantum computing? And if so will it allow us to > fulfill our wildest dreams, such as discovering the next fifty Mersenne > primes in a week? And world peace of course. http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/ is a good place to get the dirt on quantum computing and quantum snake oil.. -- 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 desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Sun May 6 07:36:57 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 00:36:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <463D769C.6010008@pobox.com> Message-ID: <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Why do any of us have to write an original screenplay if we really don't feel up to it? There are already so many great science fiction stories which I bet could be adapted to this cause (with permission of course). Also remember that *DAMIEN BRODERICK* and *CHARLES STROSS* are among us, and so we have just the people we need to help get the ball rolling. Best wishes, John Grigg : ) "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote: A B wrote: > Now personally, I pretty > much SUCK at writing fiction, I'd probably be no > better than average. But if *no-one* else, is > interested, I'm going to *attempt* to start writing a > free-of-charge screenplay. But without any help, the > result could be pretty abysmal. You're correct, it will suck. And I'm too slow a writer, I've tried. You are essentially stuck until a writer comes along. -- 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 --------------------------------- Don't get soaked. Take a quick peak at the forecast with theYahoo! Search weather shortcut. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 6 08:20:02 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 01:20:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <463D8FB2.80104@mac.com> Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > I always had some doubts on "transhumanism" as a marketing buzzword, > but I like "posthumanism" even less. The term implies a rejection of > our humanity and a desire to become something else. > > What we want to become is clear to us: we want to remain more or less > ourselves but move to much better bodies and much smarter minds. But > for our opponents it is easy to construct "posthuman" as eliminating > tender and loving humans and replacing them with cold and heartless > machines. > > If and when I will be a computational superintelligence roaming the > galactic web, I will still be a human in better shape and with some > more toys to play with. > I don't see how you can say that with such apparent confidence. You most likely will not find a normal human body form at all useful for roaming the galactic web and will find it a hindrance for many tasks. You are likely to have understood you EP and reworked your psychology to be substantially more supporting of your activities which are distinctly quite different from what EP was bred by an for. So psychologically you are very unlikely to have much in common with humans. With a vastly increased intelligence including greatly increase concentration upon likely many tasks in parallel, perfect memory, vastly improved decision processes and access to huge fully integrated stores of information it is quite unlikely that you experience of reality including you experience of yourself will be at all what we think of as human. So exactly how will you still be a human? Is it just a matter of how you plan to chose to label whatever it is that you become? - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 6 08:30:31 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 01:30:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <463D9227.7010400@mac.com> Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > What we want to become is clear to us: we want to remain more or less > ourselves but move to much better bodies and much smarter minds. But > for our opponents it is easy to construct "posthuman" as eliminating > tender and loving humans and replacing them with cold and heartless > machines. > Do you think you can speak for all of us and what "we" want? I don't want to remain more or less myself in many respects. I want to grow and change and create the design that will replace slow evolution for creatures such as me. Humans are not altogether or even mainly tender and loving. Humans are wonderful in many respects but also horrid, weak, of limited intelligence, and governed in large part by unconscious processes. I for one desire to help overcome some of these limitations and make it possible for others to do the same. I have no need to retain the label "human" if it is defined as keeping many of these things. I think it would be very human to be hung up on this but that is not necessarily a good thing. Why would those who had gone beyond many human limitations and foibles be necessarily cold and heartless? This should be challenged. That is much more productive in my opinion than clinging to the label "human" in response. - samantha From pgptag at gmail.com Sun May 6 08:48:25 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 10:48:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <463D8FB2.80104@mac.com> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> <463D8FB2.80104@mac.com> Message-ID: <470a3c520705060148p5dd72dd9ne24cb62789bb8a71@mail.gmail.com> I agree on all that you say Samantha, and your "human = just a matter of how you plan to chose to label whatever it is that you become" is a valid point. But I could say the same of that toddler who was playing with blocks so many years ago. I am not him according to every objective criteria that I can think of, but I am him in some other very real sense. G. On 5/6/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > > I always had some doubts on "transhumanism" as a marketing buzzword, > > but I like "posthumanism" even less. The term implies a rejection of > > our humanity and a desire to become something else. > > > > What we want to become is clear to us: we want to remain more or less > > ourselves but move to much better bodies and much smarter minds. But > > for our opponents it is easy to construct "posthuman" as eliminating > > tender and loving humans and replacing them with cold and heartless > > machines. > > > > If and when I will be a computational superintelligence roaming the > > galactic web, I will still be a human in better shape and with some > > more toys to play with. > > > I don't see how you can say that with such apparent confidence. You > most likely will not find a normal human body form at all useful for > roaming the galactic web and will find it a hindrance for many tasks. > You are likely to have understood you EP and reworked your psychology to > be substantially more supporting of your activities which are distinctly > quite different from what EP was bred by an for. So psychologically you > are very unlikely to have much in common with humans. With a vastly > increased intelligence including greatly increase concentration upon > likely many tasks in parallel, perfect memory, vastly improved decision > processes and access to huge fully integrated stores of information it > is quite unlikely that you experience of reality including you > experience of yourself will be at all what we think of as human. > > So exactly how will you still be a human? Is it just a matter of how > you plan to chose to label whatever it is that you become? > > - samantha > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 6 08:50:33 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 09:50:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Oz Big Dry In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070504131432.024b5680@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070504131432.024b5680@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/4/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > > May 4, 2007 > Op-Ed Columnist, nytimes.com > The Aussie 'Big Dry' > By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN > SYDNEY, Australia > > Almost everywhere you travel these days, people > are talking about their weather ? and how it has > changed. Nowhere have I found this more true, > though, than in Australia, where "the big dry," a > six-year record drought, has parched the Aussie > breadbasket so severely that on April 19, Prime > Minister John Howard actually asked the whole > country to pray for rain. "I told people you have > to pray for rain," Mr. Howard remarked to me, > adding, "I said it without a hint of irony." > > > Politics gets interesting when it stops raining. > April 03 2007 at 01:41AM Sydney - Nature lovers are making their way to Australia's normally parched interior for what some believe is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Huge monsoon rains in the north-east of the continent have swollen streams into raging rivers that are now gushing over the salt flats of Lake Eyre in outback South Australia. (with pictures) APRIL 02, 2007 Desert lake springs to life By Dan Nolan in Lake Eyre, Australia Lake Eyre draws in water from one-sixth of the Australian continent A rare phenomenon underway in Australia's biggest and driest lake is part of a change in weather systems that scientists say could end the country's worst drought in 100 years. The water has traveled a long way too, taking two months to snake its way through a maze of rivers and creeks left parched by Australia's worst drought in 100 years. Scientists believe the changes may herald an end to Australia's record drought That rain came with the demise of El Nino, the dry weather system dreaded by Australian farmers. It occurs when the waters of the Pacific Ocean are cooler causing reduced evaporation and therefore less rain clouds in northern Australia. But climate scientists believe it may now be switching to a wetter system known as La Nina ? a system not seen in Australia since 2000, the year Lake Eyre last flooded. "It doesn't guarantee rain," says Professor Matthew England from the Climate Change Research Centre. "But generally speaking a year where there's a La Nina event we'll see higher rainfall to the north of Australia and we're seeing the start of those effects this year with northern Australia getting a lot of rainfall." ---------------------------------- BillK From pgptag at gmail.com Sun May 6 08:55:10 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 10:55:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <463D75A3.9040801@pobox.com> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> <463D75A3.9040801@pobox.com> Message-ID: <470a3c520705060155p64b22c75lb84a271c264bc3c1@mail.gmail.com> It's a date Eli! My future self will buy your future self some good design background radiation, Moet Chandon brand. And perhaps they will play at being us for a few cycles. G. On 5/6/07, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > > > > If and when I will be a computational superintelligence roaming the > > galactic web, I will still be a human in better shape and with some > > more toys to play with. > > A million years from now, I'm going to remind you that you said that, > and depending on how our senses of humor change over time, it will > seem really funny or slightly sad. > > -- > 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 > From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 6 08:57:50 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 01:57:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <463D6D16.2040600@mac.com> Message-ID: <463D988E.8090600@mac.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On 06/05/07, *Samantha Atkins* > wrote: > > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > > > > On 06/05/07, *Lee Corbin* > > >> wrote: > > > > In 2061 an AI ruling Earth has extremely recently discovered > certain > > astounding things, such as how using quantum effects to produce > > infinitely many computations over a finite interval of time. > Now, how > > to deal with all the troglotyte humans? Well, maybe some of > them > > will agree to this: Y'all will be down loaded into one > grain of sand > > on a shore in Siciliy, and during the first second, you will > > subjectively > > experience one second of your great life. During the next > half second > > you will experience you will experience the next second, > during the > > next quarter second, the third second, so that at the end, > > objectively, > > of two seconds the Ruling AI has eliminated the resource problem > > insofar as regards y'all. > > > > Or do you want more? Do you want *objectively* to be around > > at all times and places in the future? > > > > > > Subjective immortality is acceptable. Your example raises another > > interesting issue in that the computation method proposed will allow > > all possible computations to be implemented in the two seconds. > > > Sheesh. Didn't this sort of thing go out with Zeno's paradox? You > can't cram infinite subjective time and and infinite number of > experiences of infinite time into two seconds. We don't do that kind > of magic around here. > > > No, Zeno's paradox implies that motion is impossible due to this sort > of mechanism (you have to move 1/2 metre before you move a metre, then > another 1/4 metre, then another 1/8 metre... so you can never move the > full metre), whereas you and I both know that motion is possible, > which means you *can* fit an infinite number of time slices into a > finite period. It isn't possible if there is a minimum quantum of time, There may well be a quanta of time. > which would mean that motion is not actually continuous but analogous > to the frames of a film, but I don't know that this question has been > decided with certainty one way or the other by physicists. Frank > Tipler proposed that computation could go on forever using this > mechanism in a (certain kind of) collapsing universe, while freeman > Dyson proposed the exact opposite mechanism, slower and slower > computation in an infinitely expanding universe. Either scenario > allows for all possible computations, and of course either scenario > may be impossible depending on what the real cosmology turns out to be. > I don't believe any scenario allows arbitrarily mixing orders of infinity. > > Stathis wrote: > Not only will you be resurrected to live forever, so will every other > possible variation on your mind, and every other possible mind. > > samantha > Whatever for? In this fantasy of infinitely fast and infinitely > abundant computational resources for playing a googleplex of > variations > of every mundane humane life and every posiible extension of it is > there > any meaning, any substance? Or has anything real become just one more > possible permutation in the quantum foam? Everything literally and > literally nothing at all. Bah. > > > Any of the Tegmark multiverse levels would give rise to this > situation. Would it upset you, for example, if it turns out to be the > case that the universe is infinite, which would mean that every > possible thing actually happens, infinitely often? Do you think that > it is more likely that the universe is unique and finite? > This is one of the reasons I have very little use for some of this thought and/or some of its interpretations. Again it seems to me that you are crossing up orders of infinity. I think you are engaging in a meaningless set of speculations. That there is a multiverse does not automatically presume that every possible variation of every being and event occurs somewhere/sometime within the multiverse. You can have a mulitverse of infinite diversity without all possible variations of any particular being or event occurring somewhere within it. > > Stathis: > This obviates the problem of being certain that you are really > you: the > real you has to be in there somewhere, as well as versions of you > arbitrarily close to the real you. > > hehehehehe. How very comforting. Not. > > > This has to be the case if the universe is infinite or if the MWI of > QM is true, to give two examples.These are not wild and unfounded > speculation, like religious belief. There are good physical reasons > supporting these scenarios, such as the theory that you don't cause > something to exist by looking at it. > No it doesn't have to be the case if the universe is infinite. If the universe is countably infinite then there is no way to map on to that infinite variations of everything within that infinity. Even if there an infinite number of such countably infinite universes there is no reason that any of them should be devoted to variations of any of the others. They could all be unique one to another. Speaking loosely recursive mapping of all conceivable variations seems to be what you are attempting to do. MWI has a various variants and interpretations only some of which claim that every possible variation of macro level things occurs. These speculations may be fun to entertain but I don't see how they have a lot of traction for getting ourselves where we would like to go. If you really believe what you are proposing then it is inevitable that you will become posthuman somewhere in your notion of the infinite multiverse so why worry or sweat it much? It can too easily become another pie in the sky in the sweet by and by. > Stathis: > Another consequence is that if you find yourself a conscious > entity in > this infinite computer, you can be sure that your past memories and > future expectations will have corollaries in actual computations > either > in the past or in the future (not necessarily respectively). We > could be > living in such a world at the moment and not be awar! e of it. > > Yes and I could be a bacteria on a boil on the butt of a rat in some > other dimension. Yawn. > > > I understand your scepticism, but it is irrational to ignore > everything for which there is not direct and unequivocal evidence. For > example, we have no evidence that an internal combustion engine would > function properly in the Andromeda galaxy, but it is reasonable to > suppose that it would. That the universe does not end where the > visible universe ends is an analogously reasonable assumption, despite > the present and perhaps perpetual absence of direct evidence in its > support. > It is highly questionable in my view to spend for now extremely limited time and productive years entertaining extreme hypothesis without evidence and with little or no predictive ability or explanatory power. I think you are more than bright enough to know that your internal combustion engine analogy does not have merit. And I said nothing at all about the universe ending where the visible universe ends (?). - samantha From ben at goertzel.org Sun May 6 09:27:54 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 05:27:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <463D769C.6010008@pobox.com> <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705060227x2572ab37s7dc81d1a106de084@mail.gmail.com> Unfortunately, I think the hardest part of getting a good H+ movie made would NOT be convincing a producer to take on a good H+ script (though that may be very hard), but rather keeping it from turning into something idiotic in the course of the movie-making process. The history of SF films is rather more dismal than the history of SF novels, I suppose because good SF is about ideas at least as much as human personalities and emotions; whereas mainstream film is almost entirely about human personalities and emotions and can barely deal with ideas at all. So, as I see it, the real key to getting an H+ film of any positive value (artistic, memetic, political or what have you) out there would be to find a producer, director and scriptwriter who ALL were sympathetic to the H+ set of ideas. If this happened, something really cool could come out of it, with potential to change peoples' minds as well as entertain them. But don't fool yourselves that simply putting the right script in the hands of a producer with money is gonna to it. Don't underestimate the degree to which the film industry can dumb down, and totally lose the point of, a great book or a great script (in SF, but not only in SF). We've all seen it happen time and time again. So if y'all are serious about this, the first step IMO would indeed by to find producers and/or directors who fundamentally "get it." Without that, it's not worth bothering. A distorted, confused, conceptually misleading H+ movie might still be popular, and might well leave the movement worse off than had it not been made. -- Ben G On 5/6/07, John Grigg wrote: > > Why do any of us have to write an original screenplay if we really don't > feel up to it? There are already so many great science fiction stories > which I bet could be adapted to this cause (with permission of course). > Also remember that *DAMIEN BRODERICK* and *CHARLES STROSS* are among us, and > so we have just the people we need to help get the ball rolling. > > Best wishes, > > John Grigg : ) > > *"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" * wrote: > > A B wrote: > > Now personally, I pretty > > much SUCK at writing fiction, I'd probably be no > > better than average. But if *no-one* else, is > > interested, I'm going to *attempt* to start writing a > > free-of-charge screenplay. But without any help, the > > result could be pretty abysmal. > > You're correct, it will suck. And I'm too slow a writer, I've tried. > You are essentially stuck until a writer comes along. > > -- > 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 > > > ------------------------------ > Don't get soaked. Take a quick peak at the forecast > with theYahoo! Search weather shortcut. > > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun May 6 11:23:16 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 05:23:16 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <463D9227.7010400@mac.com> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> <463D9227.7010400@mac.com> Message-ID: <463DBAA4.3060703@comcast.net> Samantha, I'm really in your camp with what you are saying here. This is all great! So what is your favorite term for what you want to become? (And I I hope others will more precisely specify what their favorite terms are.) Is it Transhuman, Posthuman, or something else? I think I'm still liking just the term Extropian. I'm enjoying what I am now. I'm infinitely thankful for all my ancestors did to freely create me, and for giving me way more than any of them had. I'm working to preserve everything I have been, (just keeping the bad primitive stuff as a memory of what I've been, and enhancing all the good stuff) and looking forward to so much more of everything at an ever accelerating and more exciting pace. And I'm hopping some day I can pay all my ancestors back for creating me by resurrecting them (including pre humans who are so deserving since they had so much less to work with, but still made things better). Extropian, to me, just means more of all good (including perfect memory of the bad), no matter what or where it all came from. Oh, and I don't like it when Giu1i0 talks about his future "computational superintelligence" because this apparently does not include the real phenomenal properties of consciousness, like red, green, warm.... Abstract (the type of representation is irrelevant) computation doesn't have that, and that very real phenomenal stuff we represent our knowledge and computation with is more important than anything! We should never talk about giving phenomenal (or spiritual if you will) stuff up. At least that is my POV. Upward, Brent Samantha Atkins wrote: > Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > >> What we want to become is clear to us: we want to remain more or less >> ourselves but move to much better bodies and much smarter minds. But >> for our opponents it is easy to construct "posthuman" as eliminating >> tender and loving humans and replacing them with cold and heartless >> machines. >> >> > > Do you think you can speak for all of us and what "we" want? I don't > want to remain more or less myself in many respects. I want to grow and > change and create the design that will replace slow evolution for > creatures such as me. Humans are not altogether or even mainly tender > and loving. Humans are wonderful in many respects but also horrid, > weak, of limited intelligence, and governed in large part by unconscious > processes. I for one desire to help overcome some of these > limitations and make it possible for others to do the same. I have no > need to retain the label "human" if it is defined as keeping many of > these things. I think it would be very human to be hung up on this but > that is not necessarily a good thing. > > Why would those who had gone beyond many human limitations and foibles > be necessarily cold and heartless? This should be challenged. That is > much more productive in my opinion than clinging to the label "human" in > response. > > - samantha > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 6 11:55:08 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 13:55:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <463DBAA4.3060703@comcast.net> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> <463D9227.7010400@mac.com> <463DBAA4.3060703@comcast.net> Message-ID: <20070506115508.GS17691@leitl.org> On Sun, May 06, 2007 at 05:23:16AM -0600, Brent Allsop wrote: > (And I I hope others will more precisely specify what their favorite > terms are.) The meaning of them, rather. Too many damn terms with too damn little meaning clinging to them are making the rounds. > Is it Transhuman, Posthuman, or something else? I don't see a particular distinction between posthuman or transhuman. It's still all plain old postbiology. (Human enhancement, if at all possible, is only a fleeting phase of development). If you want to define a transhuman as a slightly enhanced human, then I would consider it just a passing phase, as a kind of adolescence. > I think I'm still liking just the term Extropian. I'm enjoying what I > am now. I'm infinitely thankful for all my ancestors did to freely A baby very much enjoys being that, but eventually it will grow and become an adult. When I grow up, I want to be a distributed system. > create me, and for giving me way more than any of them had. I'm working > to preserve everything I have been, (just keeping the bad primitive > stuff as a memory of what I've been, and enhancing all the good stuff) > and looking forward to so much more of everything at an ever > accelerating and more exciting pace. And I'm hopping some day I can pay > all my ancestors back for creating me by resurrecting them (including > pre humans who are so deserving since they had so much less to work > with, but still made things better). Extropian, to me, just means more > of all good (including perfect memory of the bad), no matter what or > where it all came from. > > Oh, and I don't like it when Giu1i0 talks about his future > "computational superintelligence" because this apparently does not > include the real phenomenal properties of consciousness, like red, Why do you think it "apparently doesn't include" it? What is particularly real or unreal about neurons spiking in the space between your ears when you wrote that message? How do you know it's a meat brain between your ears, and not something else? Did you ever take a look? > green, warm.... Abstract (the type of representation is irrelevant) > computation doesn't have that, and that very real phenomenal stuff we If the type of representation is irrelevant, then you're just a computer made from meat. You can do no more of these fancy "real phenomenal stuff" as any other computer. So, how does it feel, being a zombie? > represent our knowledge and computation with is more important than > anything! We should never talk about giving phenomenal (or spiritual if > you will) stuff up. At least that is my POV. I don't know what spiritual really means (never had any of it), but if it floats your boat, sure. -- 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 eugen at leitl.org Sun May 6 11:59:11 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 13:59:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <463D75A3.9040801@pobox.com> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> <463D75A3.9040801@pobox.com> Message-ID: <20070506115911.GT17691@leitl.org> On Sat, May 05, 2007 at 11:28:51PM -0700, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > A million years from now, I'm going to remind you that you said that, > and depending on how our senses of humor change over time, it will > seem really funny or slightly sad. Assuming, "funny" and "sad" are appropriate descriptors for something quite huge, and unhuman. -- 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 stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 6 12:10:57 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 22:10:57 +1000 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <463D988E.8090600@mac.com> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <463D6D16.2040600@mac.com> <463D988E.8090600@mac.com> Message-ID: On 06/05/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Any of the Tegmark multiverse levels would give rise to this > > situation. Would it upset you, for example, if it turns out to be the > > case that the universe is infinite, which would mean that every > > possible thing actually happens, infinitely often? Do you think that > > it is more likely that the universe is unique and finite? > > > This is one of the reasons I have very little use for some of this > thought and/or some of its interpretations. Again it seems to me that > you are crossing up orders of infinity. I think you are engaging in > a meaningless set of speculations. That there is a multiverse does > not automatically presume that every possible variation of every being > and event occurs somewhere/sometime within the multiverse. You can have > a mulitverse of infinite diversity without all possible variations of > any particular being or event occurring somewhere within it. If the universe is infinite and uniform, then I think that everything that can happen, does happen. By infinite I mean that there exists a countable infinity of any given finite volume of space. By uniform I mean that the physical laws remain uniform everywhere and that physical parameters such as density and temperature limit towards some universal mean in any sufficiently large volume, an assumption that most astronomers make about subsets of our own Hubble volume. Now, with the conditions described there is a non-zero probability, call it p, that any given physically possible event E will be found to occur in a given volume of space, and this probability is uniform over the infinite volumes of space available. So the probability that E does not occur within n volumes of space is (1-p)^n. You can see that as n-> infinity, (1-p)^n approaches zero, which means that for sufficiently large finite n, Pr(E) can be made arbitrarily close to 1. E could be something like "an arbitrarily close functional analogue of my brain at the present moment". The argument falls down if: 1) p=0, that is E is physically impossible, and the fact that I am conscious is a miracle; or 2) the universe is finite; or 3) the universe is not uniform, such that p decreases as some function of distance from my current position, even if it doesn't actually fall to zero (Note that these considerations apply even if there is a unique universe with a finite lifespan; adding infinite time or multiple universes produces new opportunities for the realisation of E.) If you really believe what you are proposing then it is inevitable that > you will become posthuman somewhere in your notion of the infinite > multiverse so why worry or sweat it much? It can too easily become > another pie in the sky in the sweet by and by. > Everything we do is perfectly determined by the laws of physics anyway, so why worry about anything? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From velvethum at hotmail.com Sun May 6 12:07:24 2007 From: velvethum at hotmail.com (Heartland) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 08:07:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! References: <463D769C.6010008@pobox.com><160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3cf171fe0705060227x2572ab37s7dc81d1a106de084@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Ben Goertzel: > Unfortunately, I think the hardest part of getting a good H+ movie made > would NOT be convincing a producer to take on a good H+ script (though that > may be very hard), but rather keeping it from turning into something idiotic > in the course of the movie-making process. Right. Even if a script was good and you found someone to buy it, a studio would probably immediately ship it to its own writers to make it mainstream. By the 10th draft, your original H+ masterpiece full of great ideas might morph into a clich?-ridden B-movie designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator because, at the end of the day, people who fund these projects would care only about making money, not about promoting some philosophy people never heard about, so the producers would be reluctant to go for a story whose ideas/values might not reflect mainstream opinions, namely, a story that could only appeal to a very small audience. The studios might take more risks taking on controversial projects such as this if making, marketing and distributing movies wasn't so insanely expensive. Until that changes (and digital revolution might change that a bit in few years) or until H+ ideas become mainstream, I'm afraid we're stuck with SL0 Sci-Fi. Ben Goertzel: > So if y'all are serious about this, the first step IMO would indeed by to > find producers and/or directors who fundamentally "get it." Without that, > it's not worth bothering. Yes, it would probably take someone with Steven Spielberg or James Cameron's clout to get something like that made right now but these giants would still have to have a "perfect" script ready before committing to the project. Unless you know people like that and are an established writer or are a brilliant *and* successful writer already, I agree, don't bother. H. From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun May 6 14:24:17 2007 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 10:24:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] new serial starts on-line: POST MORTAL SYNDROME In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070415223601.02331a08@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070415182921.021641b8@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070415223601.02331a08@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <42958.72.236.103.18.1178461457.squirrel@main.nc.us> Damien, I'm enjoying this book! Thanks for posting it. :) I'm reminded of a late friend who was always badmouthing the medical profession and doctors. She sure ran to them quickly enough when she came down with cancer. But she tried every alternative she could find beforehand. Regards, MB From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 6 15:03:33 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 10:03:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Oz Big Dry In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070504131432.024b5680@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070506095646.021b7d00@satx.rr.com> At 09:50 AM 5/6/2007 +0100, BillK quoth: >On 5/4/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > > > Almost everywhere you travel these days, people > > are talking about their weather ? and how it has > > changed. Nowhere have I found this more true, > > though, than in Australia, where "the big dry," a > > six-year record drought, has parched the Aussie > > breadbasket > >APRIL 02, 2007 >Desert lake springs to life >By Dan Nolan in Lake Eyre, Australia > > >A rare phenomenon underway in Australia's biggest and driest lake is >part of a change in weather systems that scientists say could end the >country's worst drought in 100 years. > > >Scientists believe the changes may herald an end to Australia's record drought >That rain came with the demise of El Nino, the dry weather system >dreaded by Australian farmers. It occurs when the waters of the >Pacific Ocean are cooler causing reduced evaporation and therefore >less rain clouds in northern Australia. > >But climate scientists believe it may now be switching to a wetter >system known as La Nina ? a system not seen in Australia since 2000, >the year Lake Eyre last flooded. Yeah, such are the vagaries of climate. But having rain pissing down in the tropics and deserts of Oz doesn't automatically mean that "the breadbasket" is equally inundated, any more than copious rain in Mexico offers much relief to a drought in Canada. If your implication is that it's dodgy to link the recent unpleasantness with human-induced global warming rather than natural cycles, I agree, of course. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 6 15:17:33 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 10:17:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] new serial starts on-line: POST MORTAL SYNDROME In-Reply-To: <42958.72.236.103.18.1178461457.squirrel@main.nc.us> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070415182921.021641b8@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070415223601.02331a08@satx.rr.com> <42958.72.236.103.18.1178461457.squirrel@main.nc.us> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070506100549.021ba908@satx.rr.com> At 10:24 AM 5/6/2007 -0400, MB wrote: >Damien, > >I'm enjoying this book! Thanks for posting it. :) Well, thank you. I have to admit that Barbara and I now conclude we should have trimmed a lot more domestic chit-chat out of the opening chapters, because that slowed the thing down--which is okay in a novel you're reading on the train, but maybe not in daily portions. Now that we're at chapter 16, the story is coming together and the pace is speeding up. For a >H or extropian readership, a carefully not-too-shocking introduction might seem a bit boring. It's a trade-off. This is relevant to the discussion about a >H movie that tries to avoid slamming right into comic book extravaganza. It's a balancing act. Anyway, if anyone was put off following POST MORTAL SYNDROME by its conventional opening, I'd suggest going back and having a quick browse as the chapters continue to accumulate at the COSMOS site. I'd be interested in feedback--pro or con. Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 6 16:10:35 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 09:10:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0b2001c78cd7$411019e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0e3c01c78ff9$2469f160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > On 06/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Though even here peculiar paradoxes await. > > Let's say you would find immortality sufficient, provided also that it > > was subjectively great beyond your wildest dreams, and it even included > > a vast community of somewhat like-minded individuals. Would y'all then > > be satisfied by the following? That was my real question. Of course, you may not want---probably wisely---to answer for "y'all", but I was interested in your answer for yourself. My point has to do with objectivity vs. subjectivity. On *just* the subjective view, what's wrong? You live forever, etc. But *objectively*, your share of the future is rather small, we might say. I then went on in order to clarify that concern: > > In 2061 an AI ruling Earth has extremely recently discovered certain > > astounding things, such as how using quantum effects to produce > > infinitely many computations over a finite interval of time. Now, how > > to deal with all the troglotyte humans? ....next quarter second, > > the third second, so that at the end, objectively, after two seconds > > the Ruling AI has eliminated the resource problem insofar as regards > > y'all. Or do you want more? Do you want *objectively* to be around > > at all times and places in the future? > > Subjective immortality is acceptable. Hmm? I didn't know that I was asking anything about morality :-) I really do want to know if---under this admittedly very wild hypothesis ---you would find the prospect of such a future alluring or depressing. And whichever answer, why so? Lee From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Sun May 6 15:43:43 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 08:43:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <854800.86505.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Yes, getting a great script turned into a great film is a whole other matter of incredible difficulty (generally). The overwhelming desire in Hollywood to make money and appeal to everyone can result in dumbing down smart scripts and changing plotlines which might disturb someone. I really thought "The First Immortal" would be turned into a movie by Hallmark Pictures but it never happened (they call it being in "development hell"). James Halperin's book turned into a motion picture or mini series would have been a terrific Transhumanistic primer for the public. One of my favorite films with a Transhumanist theme is "Lawnmower Man" but it shows Hollywood's tendency to portray artificially enhanced humans as prone toward insanity and not trustworthy. Michael Crichton's novel about rampant killer nanotech, "Prey," will be coming out as a big budget film over the next year or two. But this will not exactly aid the Transhumanist cause. Thanks Michael Crichton! lol I had hoped the Spielberg film "A.I." would be just what we wanted but it was more of a fairy tale in science fiction trappings. I did love the scene where we get a brief look at the alien looking Posthumans and their city. Perhaps a decade from now (or sooner depending on how fast the technology improves & goes down in $$$ price) a group of talented Transhumanist filmmakers could "go it alone" and make a movie for well under a million dollars, which in today's money would run thirty or forty million at the very minimum for a similar product. A film with actors shot almost totally in front of a blue screen (like "300" or "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow") could be the way to go. This motion picture does not have to necessarily be a visual blockbuster ala James Cameron but simply a financially humble treatise on the human condition and how Transhumanism can change things for the far better. The Spierig Brothers who did the amazing SF/Horror flick "Undead" are fantastic examples of a very small budget (half mil) going really really far due to terrific homegrown CGI work. The aliens in this film looked much better than most of the creatures I've seen on Star Trek or Babylon 5! lol Grant Walther, who was like a big brother to me during my formative years, went to CalArts and several other top American & Canadian film schools. He had people like Ed Harris and Tim Burton as classmates but though he came close on several occasions, he never did find fame and fortune (on one occasion an Italian director he was about to work for dropped dead of a heart attack right before shooting was to start). I've seen some of his student films and know he has a great deal of talent but even that alone in Hollywood does not always get one where they want to go. My friend has many war stories about his time in Tinseltown and he has a certain amount of bitterness. I've tried to encourage him to try the "Indy film route" but he insists that should one of his award winning scripts be made into a film, it must get the full Hollywood big budget treatment with *A* list stars. Grant has a pile of "glowing" rejection letters saying his script about a guy trying to survive while building the Alaska Pipeline (loosely autobiographical) is terrific but just not financially viable. Paul Newman among others actually wrote him that! I'd like to see my friend give it one last shot with a new project and so I thought of him as this thread got started. As the old saying goes, "where there's a will there's a way." If nothing constructive happens around here I just might make a little film for YouTube with Legos people! Really. Or if I feel more ambitious I can combine forces with a cabal of local amateur filmmakers in my area who were kind enough to take a real interest in me and are professional graphic artists. John Grigg Heartland wrote: Ben Goertzel: > Unfortunately, I think the hardest part of getting a good H+ movie made > would NOT be convincing a producer to take on a good H+ script (though that > may be very hard), but rather keeping it from turning into something idiotic > in the course of the movie-making process. Right. Even if a script was good and you found someone to buy it, a studio would probably immediately ship it to its own writers to make it mainstream. By the 10th draft, your original H+ masterpiece full of great ideas might morph into a clich?-ridden B-movie designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator because, at the end of the day, people who fund these projects would care only about making money, not about promoting some philosophy people never heard about, so the producers would be reluctant to go for a story whose ideas/values might not reflect mainstream opinions, namely, a story that could only appeal to a very small audience. The studios might take more risks taking on controversial projects such as this if making, marketing and distributing movies wasn't so insanely expensive. Until that changes (and digital revolution might change that a bit in few years) or until H+ ideas become mainstream, I'm afraid we're stuck with SL0 Sci-Fi. Ben Goertzel: > So if y'all are serious about this, the first step IMO would indeed by to > find producers and/or directors who fundamentally "get it." Without that, > it's not worth bothering. Yes, it would probably take someone with Steven Spielberg or James Cameron's clout to get something like that made right now but these giants would still have to have a "perfect" script ready before committing to the project. Unless you know people like that and are an established writer or are a brilliant *and* successful writer already, I agree, don't bother. H. _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rpwl at lightlink.com Sun May 6 16:03:29 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 12:03:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <485186.66463.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <463DFC51.2060609@lightlink.com> Are you kidding? They will crucify you. The best money-making take on the idea of transhumanism is that what the transhumanists want to do is turn all humans into Borgs, or keep people in vats so they can feed off their essential juices (what was that garbage film again? Oh, yeah, The Matrix). Whatever script you come up with, whatever positive spin you put on the great transhumanist future, the movie that comes out of it will be the same. And besides, which version of the future are you going to portray? A few years back I started producing a story designed specifically to convey the idea that the singularity could (would inevitably) have a positive, beneficial outcome. If I had supreme exective power I could make it into a movie beneficial to the community, but, alas, they stopped selling tins of supreme executive power at my local supermarket, so I shelved the idea. Richard Loosemore. A B wrote: > A while back I suggested that someone NEEDS to make a > pro-Transhumanism, pro-Singularity fictional > (hollywood quality) movie in order to help spread the > memes to the masses who are less reading-inclined. I > was a little disappointed that there apparently wasn't > much interest in getting something started (Except by > maybe one or two people possibly). But I still think > this would be a great, highly-leveraged opportunity to > do some real, tangible good. Now personally, I pretty > much SUCK at writing fiction, I'd probably be no > better than average. But if *no-one* else, is > interested, I'm going to *attempt* to start writing a > free-of-charge screenplay. But without any help, the > result could be pretty abysmal. Would someone else > here *please* consider taking up the reigns entirely, > or at least collaborating if they don't want to do it > by themselves? Heartland, might you be interested,(I > recall that you replied to the original post)? > > SINCERELY and with Best Wishes, > > Jeffrey Herrlich From hkhenson at rogers.com Sun May 6 16:50:51 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 12:50:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705060227x2572ab37s7dc81d1a106de084@mail.gmail.co m> References: <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <463D769C.6010008@pobox.com> <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070506110705.0451fa38@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 05:27 AM 5/6/2007 -0400, Ben wrote: >Unfortunately, I think the hardest part of getting a good H+ movie made >would NOT be convincing a producer to take on a good H+ script (though >that may be very hard), but rather keeping it from turning into something >idiotic in the course of the movie-making process. > >The history of SF films is rather more dismal than the history of SF >novels, I suppose because good SF is about ideas at least as much as human >personalities and emotions; whereas mainstream film is almost entirely >about human personalities and emotions and can barely deal with ideas at all. > >So, as I see it, the real key to getting an H+ film of any positive value >(artistic, memetic, political or what have you) out there would be to find >a producer, director and scriptwriter who ALL were sympathetic to the H+ >set of ideas. If this happened, something really cool could come out of >it, with potential to change peoples' minds as well as entertain them. > >But don't fool yourselves that simply putting the right script in the >hands of a producer with money is gonna to it. Don't underestimate the >degree to which the film industry can dumb down, and totally lose the >point of, a great book or a great script (in SF, but not only in >SF). We've all seen it happen time and time again. > >So if y'all are serious about this, the first step IMO would indeed by to >find producers and/or directors who fundamentally "get it." Without that, >it's not worth bothering. > >A distorted, confused, conceptually misleading H+ movie might still be >popular, and might well leave the movement worse off than had it not been >made. I think Ben is exactly on target here. Consider Nano by John Robert Marlow. It seems to have been back written from a screen play and while it is ok for a Matrix type adventure it was so awful in other ways that I did something unusual and wrote a review of it: ******************* This book has a Vernor Vinge quote on the back cover and is about the coming technological Singularity (look it up using Google). And Vinge is right in what he says; the book will make a spectacular movie. But oh man is it painful to read. Not because of the story line. Even if a bit predictable it's ok for Matrix type violent adventure. The problem is the "science," or rather what is supposed to pass for science. Nanotechnology is not magic and most of my complaints are about gross violation of conservation of mass, thermodynamics, mass flows, doubling times and the like. But that's not all the places it will irritate you. On page 133 the good guys are trying to see who the bad guys are by analyzing a depleted uranium bullet. "We should have a signature on the uranium by the end of the day; from there we'll have the nation and reactor core of origin." I know what this story bit is imitating--Tom Clancy's "Sum of all Fears" where the origin of plutonium in a bomb is determined from impurities. But depleted uranium that's used for things like bullets never went near a reactor. It's "depleted" of the easy to fission isotope U235. This is the kind of error a knowledgeable editor should have caught. The scenes with nanotechnology devices are every bit as bad. Toward the end of the book he has nano disassemblers eating away at a seaport city. In a short time they have created a hole where massive amounts of seawater is pouring in. So where did a fair fraction of a cubic mile of dirt go? Early in the book the hero stops a car in seconds by growing a huge redwood tree in the middle of the street. Now, nanotechnology *can* grow redwoods a good deal faster than the natural way, but not *that* fast, not starting with a tenth of a cubic centimeter of nano machines. Eric Drexler makes a case for doubling in an energy- and material-rich environment of 20 minutes. Estimating a redwood at meter square by 100 meters tall, growing from a 0.1 cc is an expansion of a billion, 10 exp 9. Since 10 exp 3 is about 2 exp 10, we are talking 30 doublings, ten hours by Drexler's estimate. And you don't even want to think about Marlow's understanding of thermodynamics. Someone told him that heat is a problem when making nano things fast. So he "solves" it thus: "Thermal problems?" . . . . "If it becomes a problem you assemble water for evaporative cooling, then grab the atoms in the vapor and do it over again." *Sigh.* (Grabbing the vapor returns every bit of heat evaporation took away, and "assembling" water from atoms releases the searing heat of an oxy hydrogen flame.) I am reminded of the first "chemistry" teacher I had in high school. First day he told us that boiling water was a chemical reaction that broke up the water into hydrogen and oxygen which was called "steam." About half way into the first semester the FBI took him away. Fortunately for Mr. Marlow they don't do that for authors making such mistakes. The shame is that with some advice on science and engineering the story could have been written so that it didn't violate physical laws and been just as exciting. As Dr. Vinge says, it will make a spectacular movie. But if you know even a little about science or engineering reading the book will irritate the heck out of you. Keith Henson PS If you want an example of high adventure that does not violate physical laws try _The Revolution from Rosinante_ by Alexis A Gilliland. A bit dated (1981) but still it has an excellent treatment of computers that transcend humans and are starting to take care of humans the way humans take care of cats. Mr. Gilliland just gets science and engineering details *right.* *********************** You might want to read the other 19 customer reviews on Amazon. One of them contains: "Mainly accurate science - as a nanotechnology columnist the writer has a good overview of the field . . ." Incidentally, the Rosinante books include a subplot where an AI creates a religion specifically for humans who live in space and another AI becomes the main proselytizer for the religion. Some of you know I have been working on a post singularity novel. (An early draft of one chapter was serialized on sl4 and generated little or no comment.) A Hollywood screen writer proposed turning that chapter into a script. But instead of a poignant and ambiguous tale where the animals are left with Africa, the script writer wanted the female character to discover the medical clinics as an evil plot and lots of violence to destroy the AI clinics. There are worse things than no movies about H+ and the singularity. Keith From msd001 at gmail.com Sun May 6 17:11:26 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 13:11:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <470a3c520705060148p5dd72dd9ne24cb62789bb8a71@mail.gmail.com> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> <463D8FB2.80104@mac.com> <470a3c520705060148p5dd72dd9ne24cb62789bb8a71@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705061011w1af4dc97sdf4f522cedbe20bc@mail.gmail.com> On 5/6/07, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > I agree on all that you say Samantha, and your "human = just a matter > of how you plan to chose to label whatever it is that you become" is a > valid point. > But I could say the same of that toddler who was playing with blocks > so many years ago. I am not him according to every objective criteria > that I can think of, but I am him in some other very real sense. Won't the definition of "human" evolve with humans? I don't call people with bluetooth headsets and smartphones "cyborgs" - they're still human. How far beyond the mean does one have to be to get the exemption from humanity? On what dimension of measure? Physically you can be uploaded, does that remove your humanity by definition, or are the goals of your existance the measure of your humanity? I assumed this was what Giuli0 was talking about. Of course the lightspeed spread in all directions from humanity's seed point may cause the term to become almost meaninglessly general - but we'll address that as it happens. From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 6 18:09:19 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 11:09:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <463D6D16.2040600@mac.com> <463D988E.8090600@mac.com> Message-ID: On May 6, 2007, at 5:10 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On 06/05/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > > Any of the Tegmark multiverse levels would give rise to this > > situation. Would it upset you, for example, if it turns out to be > the > > case that the universe is infinite, which would mean that every > > possible thing actually happens, infinitely often? Do you think that > > it is more likely that the universe is unique and finite? > > > This is one of the reasons I have very little use for some of this > thought and/or some of its interpretations. Again it seems to me > that > you are crossing up orders of infinity. I think you are > engaging in > a meaningless set of speculations. That there is a multiverse does > not automatically presume that every possible variation of every being > and event occurs somewhere/sometime within the multiverse. You can > have > a mulitverse of infinite diversity without all possible variations of > any particular being or event occurring somewhere within it. > > If the universe is infinite and uniform, then I think that > everything that can happen, does happen. By infinite I mean that > there exists a countable infinity of any given finite volume of > space. By uniform I mean that the physical laws remain uniform > everywhere and that physical parameters such as density and > temperature limit towards some universal mean in any sufficiently > large volume, an assumption that most astronomers make about > subsets of our own Hubble volume. Now, with the conditions > described there is a non-zero probability, call it p, that any > given physically possible event E will be found to occur in a given > volume of space, and this probability is uniform over the infinite > volumes of space available. So the probability that E does not > occur within n volumes of space is (1-p)^n. You can see that as n-> > infinity, (1-p)^n approaches zero, which means that for > sufficiently large finite n, Pr(E) can be made arbitrarily close to > 1. E could be something like "an arbitrarily close functional > analogue of my brain at the present moment". Not so fast. If the number, n(E), of possible things that can occur is much larger (much less a different order of infinity) than the number of places/states/chances it could occur in then your argument fails. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 6 18:37:43 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 19:37:43 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Oz Big Dry In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070506095646.021b7d00@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070504131432.024b5680@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070506095646.021b7d00@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/6/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > Yeah, such are the vagaries of climate. But > having rain pissing down in the tropics and > deserts of Oz doesn't automatically mean that > "the breadbasket" is equally inundated, any more > than copious rain in Mexico offers much relief to a drought in Canada. > > If your implication is that it's dodgy to link > the recent unpleasantness with human-induced > global warming rather than natural cycles, I agree, of course. > Who can tell? I thought it was good news that some people think the climate cycle might be changing to break the drought at last. I was also amazed at the wildlife wonderland that Lake Eyre turns into. Reminded me of the South Africa deserts that change overnight into a glorious carpet of wild flowers after the rains arrive. BillK From davidmc at gmail.com Sun May 6 18:43:15 2007 From: davidmc at gmail.com (David McFadzean) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 12:43:15 -0600 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20070506110705.0451fa38@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> References: <463D769C.6010008@pobox.com> <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070506110705.0451fa38@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: Jeffrey Skoll is a Hollywood producer that may be friendly to H+ ideas (coming from the high tech industry)... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Skoll From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 6 18:53:36 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 13:53:36 -0500 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! References: <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <463D769C.6010008@pobox.com> <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070506134637.021d46f8@satx.rr.com> At 12:50 PM 5/6/2007 -0400, Keith wrote: >This is the kind of error a knowledgeable editor should have caught. "a knowledgeable editor"! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! First, see if you can find one who (a) can read intelligently, (b) knows grammar, (c) has a paid job any longer. They exist, but don't expect to stumble upon such a miracle in New York, especially in relation to mass market "product". Even with the small presses, where such niceties have been known to persist, you find things like the bio information on the back jacket flap of a recent novel of mine written with Rory Barnes: "Both authors are both far more..." Damien Broderick From natasha at natasha.cc Sun May 6 18:54:33 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 13:54:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Quote: James D. Watson on extreme life extension and/or reversing aging Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20070506135105.02d82290@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Quick question: Does anyone have such a quote or reference for Dr. Watson? (In his usual matter of fact, or impatient yet engaging tone?) Many thanks, Natasha Natasha Vita-More 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: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 6 19:00:08 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 14:00:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Oz Big Dry In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070504131432.024b5680@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070506095646.021b7d00@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070506135433.021e7420@satx.rr.com> At 07:37 PM 5/6/2007 +0100, BillK wrote: >I thought it was good news that some people think the climate cycle >might be changing to break the drought at last. As far as I can tell, the good news is that the (Oz relevant) climate cycle *isn't* changing. The Nino/Nina thing is just doing its stochastic long cycle thing. But if the temperature is additionally going up teeny bit by teeny bit, all those classic cycles might end up badly munged. On the other hand, if it's really mostly solar-cycle driven (as the concurrent Martian global warming hints), warming might settle down in the decade or two without any ostentatious human intervention. But getting off the coal/oil junk would be a way smart move anyhow. Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 6 20:13:23 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 13:13:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [MATH] Infinite Mappings References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><463D6D16.2040600@mac.com> <463D988E.8090600@mac.com> Message-ID: <0e5c01c7901b$758621f0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Samantha writes > No it doesn't have to be the case if the universe is infinite. If the > universe is countably infinite then there is no way to map on to that > infinite variations of everything within that infinity. You *could* have what is known as a dense set of infinite variations, but probably you mean the uncountable set of possible variations. More specifically, "infinite variations of everything" would include all binary choices, e.g., assuming the number of spaces countable, then 1 for the first space, 0 for the second, 0 for the third, 1 for the fourth, and so on, in all possible arrangements, which *does* provide uncountably many possibilities, as you say. On the other hand (going back to a dense set), if our universe were to consist of volumes containing a certain string, 1, 0, 1, 1, ..., then there is a countable set of universes that come arbitrarily close to it. (For example, all of those which are identical to ours out to however many places you'd like to go, but from then on end in a string of 1's, or a string of 0's.) Therefore, for all practical purposes :-) if there are countably many parallel universes, then they might still be arranged to resemble ours however closely as is desired. For what it is worth, however, David Deutsch has opined that the cardinality of the Everett multiverse is the cardinality of the continuum, which is, of course, uncountable. Lee From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Sun May 6 20:23:26 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 13:23:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! In-Reply-To: <02bd01c78f6a$bf192530$650fa8c0@HP> Message-ID: <138010.73013.qm@web37403.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Alright, maybe now is not the time. Perhaps the Kurzweil docudrama Amara told us about will kickstart the appropriate atmosphere for something positive with quality within a couple years. But on its own, right now hollywood would probably just mangle it, like ya'll have said. Oh dear, another one bites the dust. Best Wishes, Jeffrey Herrlich __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From sentience at pobox.com Sun May 6 21:00:29 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 14:00:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [MATH] Infinite Mappings In-Reply-To: <0e5c01c7901b$758621f0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><463D6D16.2040600@mac.com> <463D988E.8090600@mac.com> <0e5c01c7901b$758621f0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <463E41ED.3030201@pobox.com> Lee Corbin wrote: > > For what it is worth, however, David Deutsch has opined that > the cardinality of the Everett multiverse is the cardinality of > the continuum, which is, of course, uncountable. How the devil did Deutsch arrive at *that* idea? That sounds really really bizarre. Are you sure this is Deutsch? -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From Thomas at thomasoliver.net Sun May 6 17:52:27 2007 From: Thomas at thomasoliver.net (Thomas) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 10:52:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] We Need a Movie, People!! Dammit! References: <13389336.125981178425202394.JavaMail.servlet@perfora> Message-ID: <463E15DB.3020600@thomasoliver.net> I've been trying to break my addition to this list and now you come up with this! Do you have a genre preference, Anne? I think it should rock hard. I think I have a songwriting collaboration agreement for around here somewhere if you're interested. -- Thomas (the songmaker) pjmanney wrote: >Anne C. wrote: > > >>"But still, some things remain the same: >> >> >Like friendship, love, and heroism, >And arguments on mailing lists >On freedom and determinism."< > >This is hilarious! (Although I secretly hope we're still not doing the last two lines.) Come on, I know there are some tunesmiths among us. Anyone want to come up with a melody and sing it at/record it for Transvision 07? > >PJ > > From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 7 01:53:23 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 11:53:23 +1000 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: <0e3c01c78ff9$2469f160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0e3c01c78ff9$2469f160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 07/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Stathis writes > > > On 06/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > > > Though even here peculiar paradoxes await. > > > Let's say you would find immortality sufficient, provided also that it > > > was subjectively great beyond your wildest dreams, and it even > included > > > a vast community of somewhat like-minded individuals. Would y'all > then > > > be satisfied by the following? > > That was my real question. Of course, you may not want---probably > wisely---to answer for "y'all", but I was interested in your answer > for yourself. > > My point has to do with objectivity vs. subjectivity. On *just* the > subjective view, what's wrong? You live forever, etc. But *objectively*, > your share of the future is rather small, we might say. > > I then went on in order to clarify that concern: > > > > In 2061 an AI ruling Earth has extremely recently discovered certain > > > astounding things, such as how using quantum effects to produce > > > infinitely many computations over a finite interval of time. Now, how > > > to deal with all the troglotyte humans? ....next quarter second, > > > the third second, so that at the end, objectively, after two seconds > > > the Ruling AI has eliminated the resource problem insofar as regards > > > y'all. Or do you want more? Do you want *objectively* to be around > > > at all times and places in the future? > > > > Subjective immortality is acceptable. > > Hmm? I didn't know that I was asking anything about morality :-) > > I really do want to know if---under this admittedly very wild hypothesis > ---you would find the prospect of such a future alluring or depressing. > And whichever answer, why so? > I don't even see it as an issue: I would be quite happy with the scenario you propose, and I would be unhappy with objectively living forever while subjectively living for only a limited time. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 7 02:41:31 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 19:41:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [MATH] Infinite Mappings References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><463D6D16.2040600@mac.com><463D988E.8090600@mac.com><0e5c01c7901b$758621f0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <463E41ED.3030201@pobox.com> Message-ID: <0e6d01c79051$5c390560$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Eliezer writes > Lee Corbin wrote: >> >> For what it is worth, however, David Deutsch has opined that >> the cardinality of the Everett multiverse is the cardinality of >> the continuum, which is, of course, uncountable. > > How the devil did Deutsch arrive at *that* idea? I don't know, but quantum fields can take on continuously many values at a point, and, furthermore, the time at which a certain quantum event (e.g. a disintegration) may occur at any of continuously many times between, say t0 and t1. (Deutsch did once mention in a post on Fabric of Reality that he does not know (or it is not known) whether the angle at which a photon comes away from an emission is discrete or continuous, though I may be misremebering that and it could have been "countably infinite" for one of those two ---but I doubt it. Merely aleph-zero of anything doesn't seem to accord with QFT.) > That sounds really really bizarre. Are you sure this is Deutsch? Yes. I've quoted page 211 many times, but maybe not here. On p. 211 of "The Fabric of Reality" Deutsch writes "Let us start by imagining some parallel universes stacked like a pack of cards...(which greatly understates the complexity of the multiverse)... Now let us alter the model to take account of the fact that the multiverse is not a discrete set of universes but a continuum, and that not all the universes are different. In fact, for each universe that is present there is also a continuum of identical universes present, comprising a certain tiny but non-zero proportion of the multiverse. In our model, this proportion may be represented by the thickness of a card, where each card now represents all the universes of a gven type. However, unlike the thickness of a card, the proportion of each type of universe changes with time under quantum-mechanical laws of motion. Consequently, the proportion of universes having a given property also changes, and it changes continuously. In the case of a discrete variable changing from 0 to 1, suppose that the variable has the value 0 in all universes before the change begins, and that after the change, it has the value 1 in all universes. During the change, the proportion of universes in which the value is 0 falls smoothly from 100 percent to zero." Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 7 02:53:23 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 19:53:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0bb301c78d91$4f3cafa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0cd301c78e48$01796170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0e3c01c78ff9$2469f160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <0e7b01c79053$74033100$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > [Lee wrote, referencing two posts] > > > the third second, so that at the end, objectively, after two seconds > > the Ruling AI has eliminated the resource problem insofar as regards > > y'all. Or do you want more? Do you want *objectively* to be around > > at all times and places in the future? ... > > I really do want to know if---under this admittedly very wild hypothesis > > ---you would find the prospect of such a future alluring or depressing. > > And whichever answer, why so? > > I don't even see it as an issue: I would be quite happy with the > scenario you propose, and I would be unhappy with objectively > living forever while subjectively living for only a limited time. Thanks for the answer. I too would choose being subjectively immortal (i.e. getting infinitely much runtime) over being objectively immortal if the latter encompassed only finitely much runtime. However---I still have a strong desire to have both. Maybe it's just an unconscious hope that staying alive forever objectively has the added advantage that I'll "keep up with the times" in a certain sense, and may obtain benefit from an eventual change in the possibilities or the rules. (For example, if eternity exists, and the ruling AIs give me 1 second after 1 trillion years, then 1 second after 10 trillion years, then another after 100 trillion years, and so on, even though I am effectively immortal, I'm a bit disappointed by the overall paucity of my per-diem. It also may be just sheer egotism: if there is going to be such a *great* party, why shouldn't I and everyone else I know of get to go too? Lee From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 7 02:57:58 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 19:57:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <200705041707.l44H7RaO023799@ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com> References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200705041707.l44H7RaO023799@ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com> Message-ID: <463E95B6.4040705@mac.com> Max More wrote: > A question for those, like spike, who found religion to be "an > extremely positive experience"--especially those of a Fundamentalist > belief system: Did you take seriously the idea of Hell as a place of > eternal torment and damnation? > I was never of a fundamentalist persuasion and eschewed the idea of hell by about age 11. But I seem to have some affinity for meditative and mystical states. Around the end of the Vietnam war I was wide open to the "conscious expansion is our only hope" memes so I dived into various mostly Eastern religious mystical systems. I recovered for some time and then went through another serious bout many years later. > In the period just before I shucked off my Christian beliefs in my > early-mid teens, I DID take the idea seriously. As a result, I found > the process of losing the religion highly distressing. For about a > year I kept thinking "What if I'm wrong?" followed by thoughts of > eternal, horrible misery. (It didn't help that my (half-)brother > assured me, one Christmas Day, that I would indeed go to Hell for > rejecting Jesus.) > > I couldn't manage to believe that God would torment people eternally for one life of not managing to belief "the right stuff" or for being as imperfect as the preachers insisted we were created or doomed to be from birth. It made no sense and did not square with what my budding mysticism led me too either. > That painful experience no doubt fed the following period of > aggressive, sometimes obnoxious, atheism. I'm curious how others felt > as they struggled out of those chains. > > When I first turned atheist at 13 it was difficult at first to wrap my head around a naturalist worldview. I first built it up as a hypothetical way of looking at things in my head. Then with it seemed self consistent I gradually moved in. At first it was very jarring. But it soon felt as if a tremendous amount of guilt, metaphysical dread and seeing God (or worse) behind every bush was removed. But it still felt pretty lonely and bereft of part of myself for a long time. - samantha From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 7 03:18:19 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 13:18:19 +1000 Subject: [ExI] What should survive and why? In-Reply-To: References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com> <0d8901c78ec3$4ecca5b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <0da901c78f2f$13f47050$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <463D6D16.2040600@mac.com> <463D988E.8090600@mac.com> Message-ID: On 07/05/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > If the universe is infinite and uniform, then I think that everything that > can happen, does happen. By infinite I mean that there exists a countable > infinity of any given finite volume of space. By uniform I mean that the > physical laws remain uniform everywhere and that physical parameters such as > density and temperature limit towards some universal mean in any > sufficiently large volume, an assumption that most astronomers make about > subsets of our own Hubble volume. Now, with the conditions described there > is a non-zero probability, call it p, that any given physically possible > event E will be found to occur in a given volume of space, and this > probability is uniform over the infinite volumes of space available. So the > probability that E does not occur within n volumes of space is (1-p)^n. You > can see that as n-> infinity, (1-p)^n approaches zero, which means that for > sufficiently large finite n, Pr(E) can be made arbitrarily close to 1. E > could be something like "an arbitrarily close functional analogue of my > brain at the present moment". > > > Not so fast. If the number, n(E), of possible things that can occur is > much larger (much less a different order of infinity) than the number of > places/states/chances it could occur in then your argument fails. > That would be so, but the Bekenstein bound in quantum mechanics sets an upper limit to the amount of information or number of distinct physical states contained in a finite volume of space. So even if you specified E down to the quantum level (which is overkill: you don't care if your copy is identical to you aside from one atom in her hair), the number of possible things that can happen in a finite volume of space is finite. If the number of volumes is infinite, then E has to occur. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 7 04:24:51 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 14:24:51 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <463E95B6.4040705@mac.com> References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200705041707.l44H7RaO023799@ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com> <463E95B6.4040705@mac.com> Message-ID: On 07/05/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: I couldn't manage to believe that God would torment people eternally for > one life of not managing to belief "the right stuff" or for being as > imperfect as the preachers insisted we were created or doomed to be from > birth. It made no sense and did not square with what my budding > mysticism led me too either. > It's funny how people assume intimate knowledge of God's psychological states, personality, and behavioural predispositions. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Mon May 7 04:08:29 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 21:08:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <463E95B6.4040705@mac.com> Message-ID: <200705070431.l474V6Ln020081@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > Max More wrote: > > A question for those, like spike, who found religion to be "an > > extremely positive experience"--especially those of a Fundamentalist > > belief system... period of > > aggressive, sometimes obnoxious, atheism. I'm curious how others felt > > as they struggled out of those chains. Max At age 20, in college with a new and wonderful sweetheart, I was very happy and life was good. A professor used one of those nifty new inventions called the video tape recorder to tape Carl Sagan's Cosmos. We viewed these each Wednesday evening at our physics seminars. Those Cosmos episodes were a total mind blowing experience. In one of the chapters there is a short section about evolution that hit me like being whopped side the head with a 2 by. Max you once mentioned that you often had to waste time in your philosophy classes explaining the very basics of evolution to your students. It occurred to me after seeing Sagan's pitch that I had gone to public schools thru high school and had never heard a decent explanation of the whole concept. The teachers introduced paper tigers or avoided the topic all together. I didn't dig into it earlier because I was more of a physics/math/space/machines kinda guy, never did much with biology. I spent the next several months totally engrossed in studying evolution to try to debunk it, totally neglecting everything else including my engineering classes and the new sweetheart. I am amazed she didn't throw me back. I had been told that the evidence for evolution was scant and filled with inconsistency. Found to the contrary that there is a mountain of evidence for evolution, filled with consistency. Spent the next couple years trying to unify fundamentalist religion with evolution. I could not. Spent the next decade trying to decide if it matters. It does. The sweetheart married me anyway, 23 years and counting. {8-] Then the internet came along and changed everything. Then extropians showed up on the internet, and I found that there are others like me. If you have never seen Sagan's Cosmos, get that and do so forthwith. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 7 04:46:51 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 06 May 2007 23:46:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200705041707.l44H7RaO023799@ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com> <463E95B6.4040705@mac.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070506234304.0229c3f8@satx.rr.com> At 02:24 PM 5/7/2007 +1000, Stathis wrote: >It's funny how people assume intimate knowledge of God's >psychological states, personality, and behavioural predispositions. Not at all--it's extremely easy to do, especially with the eternal hell gadget there as a hint. Just pick any handy psychopathic, cruelly authoritarian yet (ahem) profoundly loving tyrant--since that's obviously the generic model--and Bob's your uncle. Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 7 05:13:21 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 22:13:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs References: <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer><0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer><0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <0e8501c79067$10d8e6b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> BillK wrote > the mall, or listen on public transport, whenever a group get > together. They don't think of it as swearing, it is just normal for > them. When they get angry, and want to swear, they run into problems > communicating their displeasure because they haven't got any > 'forbidden' words left to use. So violence is the easy way of > expressing anger. I have never heard this mechanism suggested before. Is it original with you, or can you recall where you first encountered it? It would be utterly amazing (in my eyes) if the proper role of profanity---or one of its entirely unobjectionable roles---is to forestall or replace violence. Lee From sparkle_robot at yahoo.com Mon May 7 05:34:10 2007 From: sparkle_robot at yahoo.com (Anne Corwin) Date: Sun, 6 May 2007 22:34:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <200705070431.l474V6Ln020081@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <555398.78602.qm@web56503.mail.re3.yahoo.com> I guess this question isn't technically directed at me (because I never found religion to be a particularly positive experience) but I'll comment anyway because I've been thinking about this subject rather a lot lately. I was raised Christian -- generic Protestant, I suppose, would be the most applicable term since my family attended numerous different church denominations during my formative years (though we spent the longest in a Presbyterian congregation). I "believed" by default, though I never felt any kind of real connection to religious teachings -- my overwhelming feeling was that this religion stuff represented material that I was supposed to accept, sort of like history lessons in school. But the ritual and community aspects of church fellowship always seemed extremely bizarre and somewhat unnerving to me. I never wanted to sing in church, in part because I had no idea what I was actually singing. I got scared when adults talked about things like "speaking in tongues" in the same way I (still) tend to get scared when I am around drunk people. I also had many, many questions about the Bible (in addition to problems with some of the stories) -- who wrote it, where it came from, and how could anyone really be sure about the translation? But I didn't really see myself as having a choice but to "be Christian" until early adolescence. What happened at that point was that I started learning that some people I respected and liked believed -- really believed -- that non-Christians were doomed to Hell. Even if they'd never heard of Jesus. Additionally, I found out that supposedly, even if a person was good and moral throughout their whole life, none of it mattered unless they "accepted" Jesus -- whereas a murderer could simply repent on his deathbed and be saved. So even though I didn't yet know much about evolution or the various logical arguments in favor of atheism at that time, I rejected organized religion on moral grounds at about age 13 or so. I don't recall if I told anyone about this; probably not. But I didn't call myself an "atheist" then; I only heard the word once in passing growing up, from some people at church who were talking about so-and-so's atheist husband (or something along those lines) and were expressing worry about him. When I got into my senior year of high school I read a book at the library called "Atheism: The Case Against God", and also came across some of the writings of people like Bertrand Russell, and that pretty much had me convinced that not only were atheists not "evil", they were probably on the right track. It was like the whole universe suddenly started making more sense when I realized that I wasn't the only person who found the notion of god(s) incoherent. I did go through a period of "what if I'm wrong"? at that point -- I still would have rejected religion on moral grounds regardless, but I went over and over the logic associated with nontheism for several years because I had a hard time understanding why more adults weren't atheists if atheism made so much sense. Part of me felt like maybe I was somehow being "arrogant" and presumptuous, and some of the religious literature I read at the time (since I was trying to get a diversity of viewpoints) seemed to confirm this, claiming that "people who called themselves atheists" are just egomaniacs who think they "don't need god". The logic all seemed to work out in favor of atheism but part of me had a hard time accepting that I'd "figured something (huge and important) out" that seemed to run counter to what I'd been raised with. I'd been okay with a moral rejection of religion for a while, but the idea of asserting that I lacked belief in god on rational grounds felt much weightier, since anyone can have an opinion (even a moral opinion) about something whether or not it "really" exists, but people who make positive or negative claims *about* existence are necessarily held to a higher standard of evidence. And I didn't know if I met that standard (and not having been raised atheistically, asserting a lack of belief in god *felt* like a positive claim even though I later learned that it was the god-believers making the positive claim). That was probably the most "painful" part for me in terms of breaking away from religion entirely -- I certainly never found it (religion) much of a comfort, but I was terribly concerned about making sure that my newfound atheism wasn't a kind of "subconscious rebellion" or manifestation of overconfidence bias. Though I've never been one to just believe something because it's the majority belief (since I had many, many experiences in direct contradiction of many majority beliefs while I was growing up, not the least of which was the fact that my own behavior was often met with the response, "but girls don't...!") religion was a tough one to fully detach from because of all the messages I got that what I was doing (in researching the origins of, and motives for, religious belief) was somehow self-serving or rooted in adolescent power-trip delusions. I wanted to seek truth, not "go on a power trip" or "assert my independence through rebellion", so it took a lot of reading and obsessive pondering and proofs, etc., before I was able to accept that my own motives were genuine. Eventually I did come to terms with the fact that there are a lot of reasons people believe in religious teachings that have nothing to do with rationality, and became quite comfortable with the whole atheism thing, but it definitely wasn't an easy process getting there. - Anne spike wrote: > Max More wrote: > > A question for those, like spike, who found religion to be "an > > extremely positive experience"--especially those of a Fundamentalist > > belief system... period of > > aggressive, sometimes obnoxious, atheism. I'm curious how others felt > > as they struggled out of those chains. Max "Like and equal are not the same thing at all!" - Meg Murry, "A Wrinkle In Time" --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Mon May 7 07:36:57 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 00:36:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <200705070431.l474V6Ln020081@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <747080.14550.qm@web35602.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Spike wrote: Those Cosmos episodes were a total mind blowing experience. > I was thirteen when I first viewed Cosmos and totally enthralled. My religious mother saw the value of the show and watched them right along with me. The mix of science, history and science fiction/speculation (coupled with excellent production values and special effects) sucked me in like no other program I have ever seen. I would eagerly watch the series again every time it was rebroadcast. I think I have seen it at least three times. It has been at least a decade since my last viewing so I should go to my local public library and check them out! I have not watched them since my exposure to Extropianism. Spike, I really enjoy how you share about your life and personal quest for truth. You and Max have a sense of humanity I don't always get from everyone here. I think part of the reason so many people see God as a dealer of punishment is that for most God is viewed ultimately as a parental/father figure. My own father was totally absent during my life (except for the last few years) and I think this affected my own personal views about God. John spike wrote: > Max More wrote: > > A question for those, like spike, who found religion to be "an > > extremely positive experience"--especially those of a Fundamentalist > > belief system... period of > > aggressive, sometimes obnoxious, atheism. I'm curious how others felt > > as they struggled out of those chains. Max At age 20, in college with a new and wonderful sweetheart, I was very happy and life was good. A professor used one of those nifty new inventions called the video tape recorder to tape Carl Sagan's Cosmos. We viewed these each Wednesday evening at our physics seminars. Those Cosmos episodes were a total mind blowing experience. In one of the chapters there is a short section about evolution that hit me like being whopped side the head with a 2 by. Max you once mentioned that you often had to waste time in your philosophy classes explaining the very basics of evolution to your students. It occurred to me after seeing Sagan's pitch that I had gone to public schools thru high school and had never heard a decent explanation of the whole concept. The teachers introduced paper tigers or avoided the topic all together. I didn't dig into it earlier because I was more of a physics/math/space/machines kinda guy, never did much with biology. I spent the next several months totally engrossed in studying evolution to try to debunk it, totally neglecting everything else including my engineering classes and the new sweetheart. I am amazed she didn't throw me back. I had been told that the evidence for evolution was scant and filled with inconsistency. Found to the contrary that there is a mountain of evidence for evolution, filled with consistency. Spent the next couple years trying to unify fundamentalist religion with evolution. I could not. Spent the next decade trying to decide if it matters. It does. The sweetheart married me anyway, 23 years and counting. {8-] Then the internet came along and changed everything. Then extropians showed up on the internet, and I found that there are others like me. If you have never seen Sagan's Cosmos, get that and do so forthwith. spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Mon May 7 07:33:20 2007 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 02:33:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <200705070431.l474V6Ln020081@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <463E95B6.4040705@mac.com> <200705070431.l474V6Ln020081@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <200705070733.l477XOnk026167@ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com> At 11:08 PM 5/6/2007, spike wrote: >If you have never seen Sagan's Cosmos, get that and do so forthwith. I bow before the memory of Sagan. Truly, a candle in the dark. Thanks for your personal story, spike. Max From scerir at libero.it Mon May 7 08:55:47 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 10:55:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] mixed items References: <555398.78602.qm@web56503.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000301c79085$81ab8460$96b91f97@archimede> quantum effect explains the mysteries of the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer in photosynthesis [any killer application?] http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/PBD-quantum-secrets.html http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/4/10 http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/quantum-secrets-photosynthesis-13007.html http://www.edn.com/blog/1470000147/post/590008459.html quantum effect explains (they say) the power of green tea http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=1818.php how a universe (maybe) arises out of itself http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=1818.php but see also http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9712344 http://www.arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0506027 http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0704.3074 and the famous dictum ... "Cosmologists are often wrong, but never in doubt." -Lev Landau From scerir at libero.it Mon May 7 09:03:14 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 11:03:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] mixed items Message-ID: <001301c79086$8c09ac10$96b91f97@archimede> > how a universe (maybe) arises out of itself > http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=1818.php no, it does not arise out of green tea :-) the correct link should be http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2007/4/23/81554/6492 From neptune at superlink.net Mon May 7 10:46:13 2007 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 06:46:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] POL: DHEA ban References: <008101c78e3e$ac97e220$a2893cd1@pavilion><002301c78f17$76b8f0c0$e0893cd1@pavilion> Message-ID: <000f01c79094$efa9f140$01893cd1@pavilion> On Saturday, May 05, 2007 12:29 PM BillK pharos at gmail.com wrote: > On 5/5/07, Technotranscendence wrote: > >> As a general question to you: Do you see any scope for free choice at >> all in life? Or does it all come down to whatever the politicians tell >> you is okay? > > The general principle I follow is that society should > help the weaker members of society. And the way to do this is by letting politicians have more power over the choice of all society's members? This leaves aside how one decides who are the weaker members of society and how they may be helped. There are serious difficulties that many overlook in deciding these two things. > The ramifications of that, of course, leads to much > complication. And I don't want to discuss all the > differing political systems which might try to achieve > this objective. :) But I would hope you would admit that some political systems are better at achieving this objective than others. Of course, you probably believe that ever more regulation -- ever more dimunition of the free choice of all society's members (save those who have power over the rest: the political class) -- somehow achieves this result. > In the specific case of buying drugs OTC, many > people do not have the knowledge, experience, > ability, time or inclination to investigate every > product that might be offered. Nor do politicians or other regulators (or doctors, for that matter). What would happen in a free society is people, in general, would either educate themselves or rely on other means of getting the information (or information substitutes*) to make the right decisions. Yes, this would not be perfect, but banning ever more substances or putting them under a perscription only regime is not perfect either. In fact, the latter only means that the "weaker members of society" might not be able to afford the formerly OTC substances. It also means some people who might be well informed and able to make decisions, but who lack money or fear reprisals (fines, jail time, etc.) will not be able to obtain formerly OTC substances -- even if they know and are willing to shoulder the risks. Finally, since the price of these formerly OTC substances will rise -- both their label price or the overall cost of getting them (e.g., if I want DHEA and they ban it, I'll probably have to use more costly means to obtain it, such as the gray or black markets) -- this means everyone in society will have LESS wealth to devote to other things. If, e.g., I have less money to use for non-DHEA purposes, other things being equal, I won't buy other things, donate as much money to charity, or leave as big a tip when I go out to eat. This will likely directly harm the "weaker members of society." > Even with the present regulatory system, the drug > fraud industry is still huge. Yes, it is. Some of it seems to have, too, in the most heavily regulated drug makers. How many people did Vioxx kill? > Billions of dollars are involved. For many endeavours, > including drug testing, it is more efficient to have it > done by a central organization. Actually, no. The actual record of the centralized control regime seems to that overall choice is decreased and insiders in the industry are able to keep competitors out. How so on the latter? The costs of bringing a drug to market -- in both terms of dollars and in terms of time -- have increased so that only big players -- not the weaker members of society -- have a good shot at making newer or better drugs. This decreases the innovativeness of the industry as a whole -- with all its attendant results on consumer choice, including the choice of the weaker members of society. (This is why drugs to treat or cure rare conditions -- including rare conditions that the weaker members of society suffer -- don't get much if any attention. The cost to bring them to market kind of imposes an entry tax that makes them unprofitable to develop and study in the first place.) And, if that worked, why didn't socialism in general work? Why don't, e.g., scientists adopt the same system in regards to science experiments in all fields? Why not have a FDA-like organization to certify findings in genomics, physics, mathematics, economics, geology, etc.? Why not the same in computers or software? > I don't agree with the view sometimes proposed in the > more extreme libertarian circles that the weaker > members of society deserve to get ripped off by the > sharper crooks and con-men. (i.e. The attitude that > it's their own fault if they are not as clever as me). I consider myself an extreme libertarian, but I don't think it's an issue of desert here. The problem is how do you either get people to become smarter so that they make better choices or, at least, have a means of dealing with their lack of smartness. The best way seems to be to have a free society -- meaning one with no regulation at all. Yes, some crooks and con-men will still prey on others. They can be legislated away; such types will always find a way to survive in any system. However, one can minimize the damage they do. > Everybody is weak in some areas and relies on > legislation to protect them in some of their dealings. Actually, that "[e]verybody is weak in some areas" is a good argument NOT to use "legislation to protect them in some of their dealings." Are not politicians and regulators weak? Might they either not know something (the ignorance problem) or have an agenda that clashes with their supposed role (the incentive problem)? If you believe that making laws or enforcing them somehow makes people more knowledgeable or more moral, then you are ripe for being taken in by the most harmful crooks and con-men around: the political class. > It is certainly frustrating if a general law for the > protection of the clueless forbids you doing > something that you are very confident that you can > do perfectly safely. (Over-confidence is a very human > failing, of course. :) ). But if you are that sharp, you > can probably find a way round the law without too > much trouble. ;) Don't you see how this undermines your position? First off, you're overconfident that legislation can solve these problems -- especially that legislators will not be corrupt, unconcerned, or even stupid. (It always amazes me how people are so afraid of either having freedom or others having freedom -- and, yes, freedom means the freedom to make mistakes as well as to succeed -- that they turn it over to people who are no better than them and who might be much worse.) Second, there is no "perfect safety." That, however, is not a reason to disallow free choice in this area, but a reason to allow it. After all, a regulator cannot guarantee perfect safety either, but once you have a regulator in place, then correcting mistakes becomes much harder and regulators are unlikely -- as common sense and history show -- to be any less human, especially in terms of failings like overconfidence, than anyone else. (In fact, they're probably more likely to accentuate overconfidence because some of them believe they have some moral sanction (i.e., have moral overconfidence) or because they believe they're smarter than the people they regulate (i.e., intellectual overconfidence). I'm ignoring the fact that they might not even care about the consumer or the weaker members of society. In that case, even if they're not overconfident, they can do a lot of damage. Why give them power?) Third, regarding being "sharp" I've answered that above. One, if you really care about the weaker members of society, then you've basically consigned them to a system they won't be sharp enough to navigate around. So why make it harder for them? Two, effort or wealth expended on being sharp -- to navigate around the system -- is effort or wealth that can't be used for other things. If you have to spend more time, money, and effort getting DHEA, that means less for other enjoyments -- including the enjoyment of helping others. (On this last point, imagine someone who is middle class and has made an informed decision to use DHEA. Let's say it now costs him $200 per year to use it -- just because he buys it OTC. He also donates $1000 a year to the local food bank. Let's say the ban goes into effect and now DHEA requires a perscription. This means he needs a doctor's visit and the price rises. Let's say the former costs $150 and the latter drives the price of his yearly supply up to $700. Let's say all his income, other costs, and other spending remain the same. Now, you put this charitable guy into a position where he has to choose between given up to $650 less to charity or getting less (maybe no) DHEA. Don't you see how they might harm the weaker members of society?) Three, this will also open up more avenues for the crook and the con-men. There will be more fake claims made by black or gray market crooks and con-men, especially when the prices are driven up. The price rise, after all, will be an incentive for them to more vigorously pursue illicit if not immoral profits in this area. (Note: making pot and similar drugs illegal has done little to keep people out of that market. The price has merely risen to where it becomes profitable to lie, cheat, steal, beat up, and kill over illegal drugs. The same happened with alcohol during Prohibition. Certainly, you don't see many people selling illegal booze today -- much less have gang wars over it.) Regards, Dan * An information substitute is something that allows for a person to make a decision without actually knowing the substitute. For instance, someone might get a recommendation from a friend or associate who knows more about the subject. In this case, the person does not really reduce her ignorance about the subject -- i.e., she doesn't suddently acquire knowledge or expertise -- but relies on her confidence about this knowledge surrogate's knowledge, expertise, or wisdom. People do this all the time when they rely on experts, word of mouth, or test done by organizations like UL and Consumer Reports. (To pre-empt one criticism: such information substitutes are not perfect and can fail. However, as long as people can freely choose among substitutes, the better substitutes will have a wider audience. E.g., an "expert" who makes more mistakes than average will lose out on people who will listen him -- all other things being equal.) From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 7 11:49:16 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 21:49:16 +1000 Subject: [ExI] POL: DHEA ban In-Reply-To: References: <008101c78e3e$ac97e220$a2893cd1@pavilion> <002301c78f17$76b8f0c0$e0893cd1@pavilion> Message-ID: On 06/05/07, BillK wrote: The general principle I follow is that society should help the weaker > members of society. > > The ramifications of that, of course, leads to much complication. And > I don't want to discuss all the differing political systems which > might try to achieve this objective. :) > > In the specific case of buying drugs OTC, many people do not have the > knowledge, experience, ability, time or inclination to investigate > every product that might be offered. Even with the present regulatory > system, the drug fraud industry is still huge. Billions of dollars are > involved. For many endeavours, including drug testing, it is more > efficient to have it done by a central organization. > > I don't agree with the view sometimes proposed in the more extreme > libertarian circles that the weaker members of society deserve to get > ripped off by the sharper crooks and con-men. (i.e. The attitude that > it's their own fault if they are not as clever as me). Everybody is > weak in some areas and relies on legislation to protect them in some > of their dealings. > > It is certainly frustrating if a general law for the protection of the > clueless forbids you doing something that you are very confident that > you can do perfectly safely. (Over-confidence is a very human failing, > of course. :) ). But if you are that sharp, you can probably find a > way round the law without too much trouble. ;) People are allowed to do all sorts of stupid things, spend all their money on stuff they don't need or that doesn't work, and if they are lucky they might be protected by laws forbidding false advertising or outright fraud. If you want to ruin yourself gambling on the horses, or kill yourself drinking and smoking, that's OK by the state. Why should drugs be different? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 7 11:57:07 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 12:57:07 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Avoiding Coarseness in our Dialogs In-Reply-To: <0e8501c79067$10d8e6b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <08ff01c78ac1$04a19cd0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <004d01c78cdd$c4f57470$220e4e0c@MyComputer> <0b4101c78d07$36b9c420$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010b01c78d89$61511c10$a1044e0c@MyComputer> <0c0401c78d96$3e9f5a30$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <8d71341e0705030855t6af4e309u4178d00a6dafca07@mail.gmail.com> <0e8501c79067$10d8e6b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 5/7/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > I have never heard this mechanism suggested before. Is it original > with you, or can you recall where you first encountered it? > > It would be utterly amazing (in my eyes) if the proper role of > profanity---or one of its entirely unobjectionable roles---is to > forestall or replace violence. > I doubt if it is original with me. (Although I understand that just making stuff up is a legitimate debating tactic) :) I don't know where I got the idea from, probably read it somewhere, so fire up some search engines and let's see..... Apparently the man you want to read is Professor Timothy Jay, PhD, Department of Psychology, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He has written several books on the subject. Quote: According to Dr. Timothy Jay, a psychologist and author of books on swearing, including "Cursing in America" and "Why We Curse," trashy talking is a basic human impulse. "This language fulfills emotional needs on two levels: my need, as a speaker, to cope with some emotion, like fear or surprise, and it conveys that feeling very effectively to someone else." In fact, says Jay, it can be a social safety valve: "It allows us to express our emotions without physicality?.Once you can tell people 'I hate you,' you no longer have to put yourself in jeopardy to prove it." Quote: Regardless of who is cursing or what the provocation may be, Dr. Jay said, the rationale for the eruption is often the same. "Time and again, people have told me that cursing is a coping mechanism for them, a way of reducing stress," he said in a telephone interview. "It's a form of anger management that is often underappreciated." Quote: Such behaviors are threat gestures, Professor de Waal said, and they are all a good sign. "A chimpanzee who is really gearing up for a fight doesn't waste time with gestures, but just goes ahead and attacks," he added. By the same token, he said, nothing is more deadly than a person who is too enraged for expletives - who cleanly and quietly picks up a gun and starts shooting. BillK From ben at goertzel.org Mon May 7 14:26:31 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 10:26:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> Hi, My son just pointed out this article (and the referenced academic paper) to me http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7168 Yet more evidence in favor of the reality of "cold fusion" ;-) -- Ben G -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 7 14:54:58 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 16:54:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070507145458.GS17691@leitl.org> On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 10:26:31AM -0400, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > My son just pointed out this article (and the referenced academic > paper) to me > [1]http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7168 > Yet more evidence in favor of the reality of "cold fusion" ;-) I've seen it already. Calling etching tracks on plastic evidence is... circumstantial. -- 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 jonkc at att.net Mon May 7 15:00:25 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 11:00:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Depleted Uranium (was: We Need a Movide People!! Dammit!) References: <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com><463D769C.6010008@pobox.com><160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070506110705.0451fa38@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <028b01c790b8$a251cac0$5e044e0c@MyComputer> "Keith Henson" > But depleted uranium that's used for things like bullets never went near > a reactor. It's "depleted" of the easy to fission isotope U235. It's true that depleted Uranium (U238) is depleted of easy to fission U235, but it's not true that it never comes near a reactor, nor is it innocuous stuff. If you want to manufacture Plutonium all you need to do is place depleted uranium near a reactor. And also, about 70% of the energy in an H bomb does not come from U235 or Plutonium or even the fusion reaction, it comes from common cheap depleted Uranium (U238). The fusion reaction makes lots of very high speed neutrons and those high speed neutrons can split even hard to split depleted Uranium; and that releases one hell of a lot of energy. John K Clark From davidmc at gmail.com Mon May 7 16:10:40 2007 From: davidmc at gmail.com (David McFadzean) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 10:10:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <200705070733.l477XOnk026167@ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com> References: <463E95B6.4040705@mac.com> <200705070431.l474V6Ln020081@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <200705070733.l477XOnk026167@ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/7/07, Max More wrote: > I bow before the memory of Sagan. Truly, a candle in the dark. The current issue of Skeptic magazine is a tribute to Sagan>> http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/index.html The Cosmos series is available as a collectors edition DVD boxed set, highly recommended. From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Mon May 7 18:42:28 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 11:42:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <832991.74609.qm@web37409.mail.mud.yahoo.com> It's weird; I wasn't raised with religion by any stretch of imagination. But even when I encountered it and heard about all the great things I could have... nothing clicked at all. I not only didn't believe any of it, I wasn't even attracted by all the "wonderful"(?) promises. I guess I'm missing that brain module. I dunno. On the other hand, I find the prospect of technological uplift very appealing and even possible, if we don't bungle things up too badly. Hmmm. Best Wishes, Jeffrey Herrlich __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From amara at amara.com Mon May 7 18:45:25 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 20:45:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Stranger Than Fiction: The Pope and the Fish Snacker Message-ID: Sometimes (often), I do wonder if I belong on this planet. Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) apparently sent an official, personal letter to the Vatican, asking Pope Benedict XVI to bless the company's upcoming, "Fish Snacker" sandwich so Catholics could eat it in good grace on Fridays during Lent. As a token of good faith, KFC offered the pope a free Fish Snacker sandwich to try for himself. Mark Morford: "Do Evil CEOs Sleep At Night? In other words: Does Kentucky Fried Chicken deserve a blessing from the pope?" http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/03/21/notes032107.DTL Archive: Mark Morford: My favorite 'newspaper columnist' (online San Francisco Chronicle: SFGate) http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/archive/ 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 jonkc at att.net Mon May 7 20:26:50 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 16:26:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer> Benjamin Goertzel > http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7168 They claim to have detected charged particles, if true (and it almost certainly isn't true) that may be of some interest, but the smoking gun, if you want to prove that cold fusion is real, is detecting neutrons. That is the Holly Grail. > Yet more evidence in favor of the reality of "cold fusion" ;-) Unfortunately no, it's just more evidence that somebody knows how to type. This "ACADEMIC PAPER" was printed in the "RESPECTED JOURNAL" Naturwissenschaften. I don't know who respects them because I have never heard of the rag and don't know anybody who has. They say their results are "easily reproduced" so even those numbskull idiotic brainless mainstream scientists can't long remain blind to this wonderful development! If you really believe in what they say here is a way to make a little extra money. I issue the following bet: If an article favorable to cold fusion, not counting Muon-catalyzed cold fusion or sonic induced cold fusion, appears in the top 3 physics journals on this planet, Science or Nature or Physical Review Letters before May 7 2008 I will send you $100, if it doesn't you will send me $10. So what do you say, will you take my bet? For me to accept I need to know your real name and how to contact you. So what do you say, Can you put your money where your mouth is? In case you're interested, Muon-catalyzed cold fusion is the real deal, it exists, no question about it, but I have some doubt it will ever produce useful amounts of energy. Sonic fusion is probably bullshit but I'm a little less certain of that than the electrolysis crap John K Clark From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 7 20:48:31 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 15:48:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Stranger Than Fiction: The Pope and the Fish Snacker In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070507154246.0242ecf0@satx.rr.com> At 08:45 PM 5/7/2007 +0200, Amara wrote: >Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) apparently sent an official, personal letter >to the Vatican, asking Pope Benedict XVI to bless the company's upcoming, >"Fish Snacker" sandwich so Catholics could eat it in good grace on Fridays >during Lent. Fishy as all this sounds, I feel a need to inform the theologically impaired that for four decades it hasn't been a mortal sin (worthy of eternal hellfire) or even a venial sin (a few thousand subjective years of ghastly torment in Purgatory) to eat meat on Friday. "In November 1966, the... bishops? conference?s "Complementary Norms on Penance and Abstinence" released American Catholics from a strict obligation under pain of sin to abstain from meat on Fridays outside of Lent." Unless Benedict changed it back recently, in which case KFC could bring out the Rat Zinger Special. Father Damien From ben at goertzel.org Mon May 7 20:51:43 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 16:51:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer> References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> <047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com> > > I issue the following bet: If an article > favorable to cold fusion, not counting Muon-catalyzed cold fusion or sonic > induced cold fusion, appears in the top 3 physics journals on this planet, > Science or Nature or Physical Review Letters before May 7 2008 I will > send you $100, if it doesn't you will send me $10. So what do you say, > will > you take my bet? For me to accept I need to know your real name and how > to contact you. So what do you say, Can you put your money where your > mouth is? Sorry, but I don't accept those journals as ultimate arbiters of truth. The outcome of the event your bet pertains to has more to do with sociology as with physics. So the bet doesn't interest me all that much. I will bet you $100 that one of those three journals publishes an article favorable to cold fusion (not counting muon-catalyzed or sonic induced) within the next 15 years. I reckon that has got to be enough time for the narrow-minded editors at those particular journals to accept the empirical evidence and lift their foolish ban on the topic... ;-) -- Ben -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at att.net Mon May 7 22:14:15 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 18:14:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com><047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer> <3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> Benjamin Goertzel > your bet pertains to has more to do with > sociology as with physics. Yes I know, ALL the editors at ALL the top Physics journals on planet Earth are ALL corrupt and ALL refuse to publish a wonderful and historic scientific paper that will live for eternity. Every fucking single one of them! If you believe that then there's this bridge I'd like to sell you. > I don't accept those journals as ultimate arbiters of truth. I don't accept them are the ULTIMATE arbiters of truth either, but I do maintain they are FAR better arbiters of the truth than some jackass posting crap on the net, or a nincompoop publishing some nonsense in a journal nobody ever heard of. > I will bet you $100 that one of those three journals publishes an article > favorable to cold fusion I made a real bet, I actually expected to get paid or have to pay up, you did not. I actually considered my finances and thought about how to cover my bet if more than expected expect took my bet and I was proven unrepentantly to be wrong. In my mind I was (and still am) willing to pay up regardless of what it costs if I am proven wrong. I don't believe that thought ever crossed your brain. And In 15 years it is likely that one or both of us will be dead, certainly we will have lost track of each other and will not know how to collect. And 15 years is one hell of a long time, even assuming no breakthroughs are made computers will be at least 2000 times as powerful as they are now; why is cold fusion such a retard? It's obvious you don't really want to make a real bet. I DO! If you want to call in the lawyers and make it legally binding that's fine by me. And why the hell should it take 15 years?! They said the results were "easily reproduced. John K Clark From ben at goertzel.org Mon May 7 22:32:40 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 18:32:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> <047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer> <3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com> <04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705071532r6ccc1905h5a427a896964e0c@mail.gmail.com> > > > > It's obvious you don't really want to make a real bet. I DO! If you want > to > call in the lawyers and make it legally binding that's fine by me. And why > the hell should it take 15 years?! They said the results were "easily > reproduced. > > John K Clark > I do want to make a real bet. I am 40 years old, in good health, and certainly don't expect to be dead in 15 years. If you expect to be dead in 15 years, I'm sincerely sorry! I'll even downgrade it to 10 years if that would make you happier... Long term bets are not my idea, BTW; are you familiar with http://www.longbets.org/ ? These are real bets. -- Ben Goertzel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 7 23:01:42 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 18:01:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> <047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer> <3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com> <04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com> Eugen, when JKC said >a nincompoop publishing some nonsense in a journal >nobody ever heard of... Naturwissenschaften. I don't know who >respects them because I have never heard of the rag and don't know >anybody who has. was he justified? I had a quick look online but couldn't properly evaluate this Springer publication without a German guide. It looks pretty establishment to me. Damien From hkhenson at rogers.com Mon May 7 19:29:55 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 15:29:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Depleted Uranium (was: We Need a Movide People!! Dammit!) In-Reply-To: <028b01c790b8$a251cac0$5e044e0c@MyComputer> References: <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <463D769C.6010008@pobox.com> <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070506110705.0451fa38@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070507150807.04554fb0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 11:00 AM 5/7/2007 -0400, you wrote: >"Keith Henson" > > > But depleted uranium that's used for things like bullets never went near > > a reactor. It's "depleted" of the easy to fission isotope U235. > >It's true that depleted Uranium (U238) is depleted of easy to fission U235, >but it's not true that it never comes near a reactor, I was specific about bullets. >nor is it innocuous >stuff. If you want to manufacture Plutonium all you need to do is place >depleted uranium near a reactor. More like deep inside in the neutron flux. I recently wrote about making super high grade Pu 239 by pumping a depleted uranium solution through a reactor core and sorting out the plutonium (chemically) before it picks up another neutron. To my surprise no calls from 3 letter agencies. >And also, about 70% of the energy in an H bomb does not come from U235 or >Plutonium or even the fusion reaction, it comes from common cheap depleted >Uranium (U238). The fusion reaction makes lots of very high speed neutrons >and those high speed neutrons can split even hard to split depleted Uranium; >and that releases one hell of a lot of energy. I know some of the H bombs were made this way. I am not sure any are still in active inventory because these monsters created an awful lot of fallout. But you are spot on. If you hit U 238 hard enough it fissions From jonkc at att.net Mon May 7 23:19:11 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 19:19:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com><047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer><3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com><04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <075d01c790fe$2cbc9d80$04074e0c@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" > It looks pretty establishment to me. So then Damien, do you accept my bet? John K Clark From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 7 23:55:22 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 18:55:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <075d01c790fe$2cbc9d80$04074e0c@MyComputer> References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> <047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer> <3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com> <04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com> <075d01c790fe$2cbc9d80$04074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070507185441.023390a8@satx.rr.com> At 07:19 PM 5/7/2007 -0400, John K Clark wrote: >So then Damien, do you accept my bet? With my psychic powers, it would be grossly unethical. Damien Broderick From ben at goertzel.org Tue May 8 01:58:02 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 21:58:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com> References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> <047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer> <3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com> <04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705071858gc054c3bo4c9b7055f7f27ec7@mail.gmail.com> The journal Naturwissenschaften is consistently in the top 10 multidisciplinary science journals as measured by impact factor: http://www.in-cites.com/research/2005/july_18_2005-1.html Which is a pretty flawed measure, but it's the most common quantative way of assessing publications. -- Ben G On 5/7/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > > Eugen, when JKC said > > >a nincompoop publishing some nonsense in a journal > >nobody ever heard of... Naturwissenschaften. I don't know who > >respects them because I have never heard of the rag and don't know > >anybody who has. > > was he justified? I had a quick look online but couldn't properly > evaluate this Springer publication without a German guide. It looks > pretty establishment to me. > > Damien > > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 8 03:20:50 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 05:20:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ACT] cold fusion Message-ID: <20070508032050.GY17691@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from "Perry E. Metzger" ----- From: "Perry E. Metzger" Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 15:45:24 -0400 To: act at crackmuppet.org Subject: [ACT] cold fusion [People should feel free to forward this if they like.] Some people got a brand new "cold fusion in Palladium" paper published in the last couple of weeks, and it has made several news sources, including the Kurzweil blog. See, for example: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7168 A friend asked me what I thought, so I did a quick Fermi estimate. The answer is, I have a lot of trouble believing it. See below for detailed calculations. The general hypothesis given is that, if the phenomenon is real, what is happening in such cases is that the deuterons are close enough together to tunnel over the coulomb barrier into each other -- it would have to be that because the number of deuterons with enough thermal energy to fuse with another is essentially zero. So, what sort of tunneling probabilities are we talking about? I don't now enough to do the calculation "right", but, as I said, lets do a "Fermi estimate". Lets consider the coulombic repulsion of two protons held 5fm apart. A helium nucleus is order 1fm. An elementary charge is 1.6E-19 coulombs. The potential energy between two particles of that charge is U = \frac{e^2}{4\pi\epsilon_0 r} So we're talking (1.6E-19 ^ 2) / (4 * 3.14159 * 8.854E-12 * 5E-15) Plug that in to calc and I get about 4.60E-14 Joules. That doesn't seem like a lot, but an electron-volt is just 1.60E-19 Joules -- so that's a barrier of 287,500 eV, which is pretty high for wee particles like this, and we're still probably several times too far away. Unfortunately, at this point I have a bit of a problem because the textbook solutions for tunneling through a potential well assume that we're talking about a square well (a step function) and the potential function here is not really like that. However, I've gone this far with the back-of-the-envelope, so lets go all the way. I doubt I'm *that* far off. The distance between nucleii in typical bonds is not less than about an angstrom, 1E-10m. I presume the way that Pd solvation would catalyze fusion would be by getting the deuterons closer together. So, lets do the calculation for .1 angstroms -- impossibly close given the energies that would require. We also need to estimate the thermal energy of the deuterons. Normally we'd say at room temperature (where these things are being run) that it would be about 3kT/2 with T=300K and k=1.38E-23J/K or so, but we'll double it just to be kind and say 3kT for a value of about 1.25E-20J. Given the height of the barrier this isn't going to make much of a difference anyway, even if I multiplied it by ten. The mass is about 3.32e-27kg. I'll assume that the potential energy barrier is pretty "smooth" and pick a value for the square well barrier of 2.3E-14J -- an "average" of zero and something order of magnitude of the maximum. I'll follow the formula in one of my texts that says that the probability of getting through is very roughly: prob = e^[-(2a/hbar)*sqrt(2m(U-E))] where "a" is the distance, U is the potential of the barrier and E is the kinetic energy of the particle attempting to tunnel. At .1 angstrom, the probability of tunneling across the square potential is somewhere in the range of 1 in 7.8E1021 events. Already we can see this isn't pretty. Now, how many "events" can we expect? Lets say we have a mole of deuterons (6.023E23) and that we have (probably far more than we can realistically expect, based on usual vibrational spectra, but it won't matter even if we're off by thousands) somewhere around around 1E10 collisions a second. Lets consider the events over 1 hour. 6.023E23*1E10*3600 is about 2.2E37. Divide. That means we can expect to wait something like 3.5E986 hours between seeing fusion events -- something like 3.9E970 times the life of the universe. I might be off by ten or twenty orders of magnitude. Who cares, though? This mechanism doesn't look like a realistic possibility. Perry _______________________________________________ ACT mailing list ACT at crackmuppet.org http://lists.crackmuppet.org/listinfo.cgi/act-crackmuppet.org ----- 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 thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 8 03:30:17 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 22:30:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705071858gc054c3bo4c9b7055f7f27ec7@mail.gmail.com > References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> <047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer> <3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com> <04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com> <3cf171fe0705071858gc054c3bo4c9b7055f7f27ec7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070507222137.02249b60@satx.rr.com> At 09:58 PM 5/7/2007 -0400, Ben wrote: >The journal Naturwissenschaften is consistently in the top 10 >multidisciplinary science journals as measured by impact >factor: > >http://www.in-cites.com/research/2005/july_18_2005-1.html > Hmm. 6th highest citation impact for 2000-2004, after Nature, Science, PNAS, IBM J. Res. Devel., and Annals NY Acad. Sci., where "total citations to a journal's published papers are divided by the total number of papers that the journal published, producing a citations-per-paper impact score over a five-year period" Pitiful excuse for a rag, then. Obviously COMPLETE BOGUS BULLSHIT. (Well, in modest support of that assessment, its score was just 3.67 cf. Nature's 50.99--but hardly "a journal nobody ever heard of"...) Damien Broderick From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 8 03:41:32 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 05:41:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Depleted Uranium (was: We Need a Movide People!! Dammit!) In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20070507150807.04554fb0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> References: <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <463D769C.6010008@pobox.com> <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070506110705.0451fa38@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070507150807.04554fb0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <20070508034132.GA17691@leitl.org> On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 03:29:55PM -0400, Keith Henson wrote: > More like deep inside in the neutron flux. I recently wrote about making > super high grade Pu 239 by pumping a depleted uranium solution through a > reactor core and sorting out the plutonium (chemically) before it picks up > another neutron. To my surprise no calls from 3 letter agencies. It takes a great deal more than suggesting something so well-known (and which takes a nuclear reactor) to get a call from a TLA. Try posting a detailed blueprint for a nuclear weapon in an arsenal, or at least something when has been tested. I listen very closely to when weapon designers talk, and it is very obvious that they're damn careful about what they say and what they don't say. -- 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 spike66 at comcast.net Tue May 8 03:47:53 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 20:47:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Stranger Than Fiction: The Pope and the Fish Snacker In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705080402.l4842uLt007995@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > Subject: [ExI] Stranger Than Fiction: The Pope and the Fish Snacker > > Sometimes (often), I do wonder if I belong on this planet. > > Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) apparently sent an official, personal letter > to the Vatican, asking Pope Benedict XVI to bless the company's upcoming, > "Fish Snacker" sandwich so Catholics could eat it in good grace on Fridays > during Lent... > > Mark Morford: > "Do Evil CEOs Sleep At Night? > In other words: Does Kentucky Fried Chicken deserve a blessing from the > pope?" > Archive: Mark Morford: My favorite 'newspaper columnist' > http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/archive/ > Amara Mark Morford has real literary talent. The article was worth the time to read just for this quote: In other words, KFC wants the Fish Snacker to be officially sanctioned for those days when Catholics don't eat meat but when they apparently have zero problem shoving a nasty frozen deep-fried chemical-blasted hunk of cholesterol and salt and fat and binding agents and mystery gunk made by one of the skankiest junk-food purveyors in America into their bloodstreams. You know, just the way Jesus intended. {8^D spike From jrd1415 at gmail.com Tue May 8 04:04:26 2007 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 21:04:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [ACT] cold fusion In-Reply-To: <20070508032050.GY17691@leitl.org> References: <20070508032050.GY17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: According to the abstract of: Further evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd/D lattice: emission of charged particles http://www.springerlink.com/content/75p4572645025112/ "A model based upon electron capture is proposed to explain the reaction products observed in the Pd/D-D2O system." I don't think this is the same as deuteron to deuteron fusion. -- Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles On 5/7/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > ----- Forwarded message from "Perry E. Metzger" ----- > > From: "Perry E. Metzger" > Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 15:45:24 -0400 > To: act at crackmuppet.org > Subject: [ACT] cold fusion > > > [People should feel free to forward this if they like.] > > Some people got a brand new "cold fusion in Palladium" paper published > in the last couple of weeks, and it has made several news sources, > including the Kurzweil blog. > > See, for example: > http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7168 > > A friend asked me what I thought, so I did a quick Fermi estimate. > > The answer is, I have a lot of trouble believing it. See below for > detailed calculations. > > The general hypothesis given is that, if the phenomenon is real, what > is happening in such cases is that the deuterons are close enough > together to tunnel over the coulomb barrier into each other -- it > would have to be that because the number of deuterons with enough > thermal energy to fuse with another is essentially zero. > > So, what sort of tunneling probabilities are we talking about? > > I don't now enough to do the calculation "right", but, as I said, lets > do a "Fermi estimate". Lets consider the coulombic repulsion of two > protons held 5fm apart. A helium nucleus is order 1fm. > > An elementary charge is 1.6E-19 coulombs. The potential energy between > two particles of that charge is > > U = \frac{e^2}{4\pi\epsilon_0 r} > > So we're talking (1.6E-19 ^ 2) / (4 * 3.14159 * 8.854E-12 * 5E-15) > > Plug that in to calc and I get about 4.60E-14 Joules. > > That doesn't seem like a lot, but an electron-volt is just 1.60E-19 > Joules -- so that's a barrier of 287,500 eV, which is pretty high for > wee particles like this, and we're still probably several times too far > away. > > Unfortunately, at this point I have a bit of a problem because the > textbook solutions for tunneling through a potential well assume that > we're talking about a square well (a step function) and the potential > function here is not really like that. However, I've gone this far > with the back-of-the-envelope, so lets go all the way. I doubt I'm > *that* far off. > > The distance between nucleii in typical bonds is not less than about > an angstrom, 1E-10m. I presume the way that Pd solvation would > catalyze fusion would be by getting the deuterons closer together. So, > lets do the calculation for .1 angstroms -- impossibly close given the > energies that would require. > > We also need to estimate the thermal energy of the deuterons. Normally > we'd say at room temperature (where these things are being run) that > it would be about 3kT/2 with T=300K and k=1.38E-23J/K or so, but > we'll double it just to be kind and say 3kT for a value of about > 1.25E-20J. Given the height of the barrier this isn't going to make > much of a difference anyway, even if I multiplied it by ten. > > The mass is about 3.32e-27kg. I'll assume that the potential energy > barrier is pretty "smooth" and pick a value for the square well > barrier of 2.3E-14J -- an "average" of zero and something order of > magnitude of the maximum. > > I'll follow the formula in one of my texts that says that the > probability of getting through is very roughly: > > prob = e^[-(2a/hbar)*sqrt(2m(U-E))] > > where "a" is the distance, U is the potential of the barrier and E is > the kinetic energy of the particle attempting to tunnel. > > At .1 angstrom, the probability of tunneling across the square > potential is somewhere in the range of 1 in 7.8E1021 events. Already > we can see this isn't pretty. > > Now, how many "events" can we expect? Lets say we have a mole of > deuterons (6.023E23) and that we have (probably far more than we can > realistically expect, based on usual vibrational spectra, but it won't > matter even if we're off by thousands) somewhere around around 1E10 > collisions a second. Lets consider the events over 1 hour. > > 6.023E23*1E10*3600 is about 2.2E37. Divide. > > That means we can expect to wait something like 3.5E986 hours between > seeing fusion events -- something like 3.9E970 times the life of the > universe. > > I might be off by ten or twenty orders of magnitude. Who cares, though? > This mechanism doesn't look like a realistic possibility. > > Perry > _______________________________________________ > ACT mailing list > ACT at crackmuppet.org > http://lists.crackmuppet.org/listinfo.cgi/act-crackmuppet.org > > ----- 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 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From fauxever at sprynet.com Tue May 8 04:08:26 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 21:08:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion References: <832991.74609.qm@web37409.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <003501c79126$8b0dca30$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "A B" To: "ExI chat list" > It's weird; I wasn't raised with religion by any > stretch of imagination. But even when I encountered it > and heard about all the great things I could have... > nothing clicked at all. I not only didn't believe any > of it, I wasn't even attracted by all the > "wonderful"(?) promises. You and me both! I could never "get" the "wonderful"(?) promises, either. All I was able to observe - even as a child - were the limitations, divisiveness, exclusivity and bigotry (within Christianity's various subsets, and among the various other religions). > I guess I'm missing that brain module. I dunno. We were born with the respective physical defects of ... lacking any religious bones in our bodies! (Another case of less is more, I daresay ...) :) Olga From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 8 05:36:30 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 15:36:30 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Depleted Uranium (was: We Need a Movide People!! Dammit!) In-Reply-To: <20070508034132.GA17691@leitl.org> References: <463D769C.6010008@pobox.com> <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070506110705.0451fa38@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070507150807.04554fb0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <20070508034132.GA17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 08/05/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 03:29:55PM -0400, Keith Henson wrote: > > > More like deep inside in the neutron flux. I recently wrote about > making > > super high grade Pu 239 by pumping a depleted uranium solution through a > > reactor core and sorting out the plutonium (chemically) before it picks > up > > another neutron. To my surprise no calls from 3 letter agencies. > > It takes a great deal more than suggesting something so well-known > (and which takes a nuclear reactor) to get a call from a TLA. > > Try posting a detailed blueprint for a nuclear weapon in an arsenal, > or at least something when has been tested. I listen very closely to > when weapon designers talk, and it is very obvious that they're damn > careful about what they say and what they don't say. > Surely all a terrorist with access to fissionable material would need is 1940's technology to be a real threat. Fancy modern delivery systems would be icing on the cake. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkhenson at rogers.com Tue May 8 04:08:37 2007 From: hkhenson at rogers.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 00:08:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Depleted Uranium (was: We Need a Movide People!! Dammit!) In-Reply-To: <20070508034132.GA17691@leitl.org> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20070507150807.04554fb0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <463D769C.6010008@pobox.com> <160714.32271.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070506110705.0451fa38@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20070507150807.04554fb0@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20070508000519.0437f5a8@pop.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com> At 05:41 AM 5/8/2007 +0200, you wrote: >On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 03:29:55PM -0400, Keith Henson wrote: > > > More like deep inside in the neutron flux. I recently wrote about making > > super high grade Pu 239 by pumping a depleted uranium solution through a > > reactor core and sorting out the plutonium (chemically) before it picks up > > another neutron. To my surprise no calls from 3 letter agencies. > >It takes a great deal more than suggesting something so well-known >(and which takes a nuclear reactor) to get a call from a TLA. That's a relief to me if it was well-known because I could not find it. Can you supply a URL? It would be a major comfort when a city get's nuked to know it wasn't due to my ideas. Keith From scerir at libero.it Tue May 8 06:25:13 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 08:25:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com><047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer><3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com><04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <003501c79139$a36fe050$89951f97@archimede> Damien > was he justified? it *was* a very good place to publish technical/philosophical papers, see i.e. E.Schr?dinger, "Die gegenw?rtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik", Naturwissenschaften, p.807-812 823-828 844-849 (1935), [the 'Schroedinger cat' paper] A.Einstein, "Dialog ?ber Einw?nde gegen die Relativit?tstheorie", Naturwissenschaften, p 697-702, (1918) [the gravitational 'twin paradox' paper] From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 8 07:19:53 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 09:19:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <003501c79139$a36fe050$89951f97@archimede> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com> <003501c79139$a36fe050$89951f97@archimede> Message-ID: <20070508071953.GL17691@leitl.org> On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 08:25:13AM +0200, scerir wrote: > Damien > > was he justified? > > it *was* a very good place to publish > technical/philosophical papers, see i.e. The emphasis is on the past tense here. While I've seen references to Naturwissenschaften, it's a low-ranking interdisciplinary publication these days. While I haven't seen the original paper, I'm a bit dubious about using CR-39 detectors as a sole incidence of high-energy radiation. Interestingly enough, the second link for CR-39 detector on Google is http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Roussetskiapplicatio.pdf -- 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 Tue May 8 07:49:10 2007 From: tyleremerson at gmail.com (Tyler Emerson) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 00:49:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] SIAI: Seeking Experienced Web Designer/Programmer Message-ID: <632d2cda0705080049n147a2a1cn2092d11c7f2a667d@mail.gmail.com> SIAI's web programmer/designer will be unavailable until May 22nd. I need someone to step-in to work with SIAI staff immediately on some critical design tasks. If interested, please send samples of your work. An hourly rate will be offered for your work. We need someone talented who can work fast. If your design and programming skill would have allowed you to create a similar or superior website than www.singinst.org or sss.stanford.edu, then let's talk. 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: From tyleremerson at gmail.com Tue May 8 07:52:34 2007 From: tyleremerson at gmail.com (Tyler Emerson) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 00:52:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] SIAI: Seeking Experienced Web Designer/Programmer Message-ID: <632d2cda0705080052p3efb0072ka98ccf8002b793ea@mail.gmail.com> SIAI's web programmer/designer will be unavailable until May 22nd. I need someone to step-in to work with SIAI staff immediately on some critical design tasks. If interested, please send samples of your work. An hourly rate will be offered for your work. We need someone talented who can work fast. If your design and programming skill would have allowed you to create a similar or superior website than www.singinst.org or sss.stanford.edu, then let's talk. 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: From scerir at libero.it Tue May 8 09:58:05 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 11:58:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com><003501c79139$a36fe050$89951f97@archimede> <20070508071953.GL17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <001e01c79157$6040f300$a3bc1f97@archimede> > > it *was* a very good place to publish > > technical/philosophical papers, see i.e. Eugen: > The emphasis is on the past tense here. Yes, it is not as important as the Rev.Mod.Physics, or the Physical Review, or Nature, or Science. Btw, I did not realize the reasons why Nature or Science do not publish (positive or negative) experiments about 'cold fusion'. I can imagine, very well, the true reasons, but they are different from what they say [1]. s. [1] Since it is on the web now ... try this link http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchieste/19102006_rapporto41.asp and then open the second 'pdf' from above, on the right side of the page, "la lettera del 23 luglio 2002" :-) From jonkc at att.net Tue May 8 14:53:34 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 10:53:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com><047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer><3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com><04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer><7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com><3cf171fe0705071858gc054c3bo4c9b7055f7f27ec7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070507222137.02249b60@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <00fe01c79180$b1466310$1f084e0c@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" > 6th highest citation impact for 2000-2004 And did you see who was #8? The Royal Society Of New Zealand! And in 2003 Scientific American was #5 and Naturwissenschaften was #7. Scientific American?! I don't know what sort of weed the guy who dreamed up that list was smoking but I'd like to get some. But if I'm wrong and Naturwissenschaften really is a wonderful journal then I just don't understand why nobody will take my bet. It's easy money. John K Clark From ben at goertzel.org Tue May 8 16:15:22 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 12:15:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <00fe01c79180$b1466310$1f084e0c@MyComputer> References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> <047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer> <3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com> <04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com> <3cf171fe0705071858gc054c3bo4c9b7055f7f27ec7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070507222137.02249b60@satx.rr.com> <00fe01c79180$b1466310$1f084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705080915s4050e1abse710ead7e521e45a@mail.gmail.com> Naturwissenschaften is a reasonably high-quality magazine, with a respectable impact factor. As for your bet: The problem is that, as discussed already, the decision of certain leading journals to ban papers on cold fusion seems to have been a particularly "subjective" human decision, even more so than the average decision within the (never of course totally "objective") scientific community. So whether or not one of those journals publishes a paper on CF in the next year depends on the mood and attitudinal changes of their editors, as much as on anything else. But I figure a big enough breakthrough in CF would overcome their bad attitudes toward CF. I am pretty confident a sufficiently large breakthrough will occur in the next 10-15 years, but maybe not the next 1 year, given the fairly small amount of attention and funding being devoted to CF... -- Ben On 5/8/07, John K Clark wrote: > > "Damien Broderick" > > > 6th highest citation impact for 2000-2004 > > And did you see who was #8? The Royal Society Of New Zealand! And in 2003 > Scientific American was #5 and Naturwissenschaften was #7. Scientific > American?! > > I don't know what sort of weed the guy who dreamed up that list was > smoking > but I'd like to get some. But if I'm wrong and Naturwissenschaften really > is > a wonderful journal then I just don't understand why nobody will take my > bet. It's easy money. > > 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: From benboc at lineone.net Tue May 8 19:22:29 2007 From: benboc at lineone.net (ben) Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 20:22:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Depleted Uranium In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4640CDF5.6090203@lineone.net> John K Clark wrote: > And also, about 70% of the energy in an H bomb does not come from > U235 or Plutonium or even the fusion reaction, it comes from common > cheap depleted Uranium (U238). The fusion reaction makes lots of very > high speed neutrons and those high speed neutrons can split even > hard to split depleted Uranium; and that releases one hell of a lot > of energy. Spot the deliberate mistake ;> ben zaiboc From jonkc at att.net Tue May 8 20:18:23 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 16:18:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com><047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer><3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com><04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer><7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com><3cf171fe0705071858gc054c3bo4c9b7055f7f27ec7@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070507222137.02249b60@satx.rr.com><00fe01c79180$b1466310$1f084e0c@MyComputer> <3cf171fe0705080915s4050e1abse710ead7e521e45a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <001d01c791ae$378c3120$1b084e0c@MyComputer> Benjamin Goertzel > Naturwissenschaften is a reasonably high-quality magazine, More respectable than Physical Review Letters if you believe that loony list because it's not even on it; but American Scientist and Scientific American are, and they are just one step above Popular Mechanics. And I'm sure The Proceedings Of The Royal Society Of New Zealand is nice, but is it really better than "Physical Review Letters"? > with a respectable impact factor. Not only have I never heard of Naturwissenschaften I've never heard of "impact factor" either. >As for your bet: The problem is that, as discussed already, > the decision of certain leading journals to ban papers on > cold fusion BULLSHIT! I have never heard any journal state such a ban, the only ban they have is against crappy papers. > I figure a big enough breakthrough in CF would > overcome their bad attitudes toward CF. I am pretty confident > a sufficiently large breakthrough will occur in the next 10-15 years, Why are you "pretty confident"? There was no big breakthrough in the last 15 years, in fact there were no small breakthroughs, there was nothing, NOT ONE THING. I have no reason to think the next 15 years will be one bit better. And won't anyone put their money where their mouth is? John K Clark From ben at goertzel.org Tue May 8 20:37:30 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 16:37:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <001d01c791ae$378c3120$1b084e0c@MyComputer> References: <3cf171fe0705070726p5a098100v6d822dda5c677b05@mail.gmail.com> <047701c790e6$10d327a0$04074e0c@MyComputer> <3cf171fe0705071351k503e69c0s7a371c6ad85e1182@mail.gmail.com> <04bc01c790f5$14bcc010$04074e0c@MyComputer> <7.0.1.0.2.20070507175723.023af718@satx.rr.com> <3cf171fe0705071858gc054c3bo4c9b7055f7f27ec7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070507222137.02249b60@satx.rr.com> <00fe01c79180$b1466310$1f084e0c@MyComputer> <3cf171fe0705080915s4050e1abse710ead7e521e45a@mail.gmail.com> <001d01c791ae$378c3120$1b084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705081337r1b12018bk63111c0a3cd4d779@mail.gmail.com> On 5/8/07, John K Clark wrote: > > Benjamin Goertzel > > > Naturwissenschaften is a reasonably high-quality magazine, > > More respectable than Physical Review Letters if you believe that loony > list > because it's not even on it; but American Scientist and Scientific > American > are, and they are just one step above Popular Mechanics. And I'm sure The > Proceedings Of The Royal Society Of New Zealand is nice, but is it really > better than "Physical Review Letters"? That was specifically a list of multidisciplinary science magazines, listed by impact factor. It did not include single-discipline journals. > with a respectable impact factor. > > Not only have I never heard of Naturwissenschaften I've never heard of > "impact factor" either. Well, essentially all contemporary academics have heard of it. To educate yourself, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor > I have never heard any journal state such a ban, the only ban they have is > against crappy papers. The politics of cold fusion have been complex. In several cases Nature has rejected cold fusion papers without appropriate refereeing. And early on, there was the key refusal by Nature to publish scientific correspondence which questioned the Caltech "null" calorimetry experiments. In another case, though, Science published a cold fusion paper although government officials tried to convince it not to: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/03/25/tbltpfusion.DTL > I figure a big enough breakthrough in CF would > > overcome their bad attitudes toward CF. I am pretty confident > > a sufficiently large breakthrough will occur in the next 10-15 years, > > Why are you "pretty confident"? There was no big breakthrough in the last > 15 > years, in fact there were no small breakthroughs, there was nothing, NOT > ONE > THING. Well that's just not true, there have been dozens of publications. > > And won't anyone put their money where their mouth is? You turned down my $100 bet, John. -- Ben G -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jcowan5 at sympatico.ca Tue May 8 20:43:25 2007 From: jcowan5 at sympatico.ca (Joshua Cowan) Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 20:43:25 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <001d01c791ae$378c3120$1b084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: It's probably just me, but sometimes I feel like I should chant "fight, fight, Fight" while keeping an eye out for the principal. :-) >From: "John K Clark" >Reply-To: ExI chat list >To: "ExI chat list" >Subject: Re: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. >Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 16:18:23 -0400 > >Benjamin Goertzel > > > Naturwissenschaften is a reasonably high-quality magazine, > >More respectable than Physical Review Letters if you believe that loony >list >because it's not even on it; but American Scientist and Scientific American >are, and they are just one step above Popular Mechanics. And I'm sure The >Proceedings Of The Royal Society Of New Zealand is nice, but is it really >better than "Physical Review Letters"? > > > with a respectable impact factor. > >Not only have I never heard of Naturwissenschaften I've never heard of >"impact factor" either. > > >As for your bet: The problem is that, as discussed already, > > the decision of certain leading journals to ban papers on > > cold fusion > >BULLSHIT! > >I have never heard any journal state such a ban, the only ban they have is >against crappy papers. > > > I figure a big enough breakthrough in CF would > > overcome their bad attitudes toward CF. I am pretty confident > > a sufficiently large breakthrough will occur in the next 10-15 years, > >Why are you "pretty confident"? There was no big breakthrough in the last >15 >years, in fact there were no small breakthroughs, there was nothing, NOT >ONE >THING. I have no reason to think the next 15 years will be one bit better. > >And won't anyone put their money where their mouth is? > >John K Clark > > > > > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Tue May 8 21:12:31 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 14:12:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <3cf171fe0705081337r1b12018bk63111c0a3cd4d779@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <798938.91646.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Wouldn't cold fusion be a direct and obvious violation of conservation of energy? You could just keep fusing the lighter elements and then eventually recover the input energy by fissioning (fissing?) the heavy-element end products. I know that it requires more input energy the heavier the element gets, but fat stars manage to do it. That seems more like an engineering difficulty rather than an immutable fundamental barrier. I don't know enough about it one way or another, but I'm really hoping that it can be validated. That'd be sweeeet. Best Wishes, Jeffrey Herrlich ____________________________________________________________________________________ Don't get soaked. Take a quick peak at the forecast with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#loc_weather From ben at goertzel.org Tue May 8 22:13:00 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 18:13:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <798938.91646.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <3cf171fe0705081337r1b12018bk63111c0a3cd4d779@mail.gmail.com> <798938.91646.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705081513g2fed20a8xcfd0336cb93160f0@mail.gmail.com> Short answer: No. Read "Excess Heat" ... On 5/8/07, A B wrote: > > > Wouldn't cold fusion be a direct and obvious violation > of conservation of energy? You could just keep fusing > the lighter elements and then eventually recover the > input energy by fissioning (fissing?) the > heavy-element end products. I know that it requires > more input energy the heavier the element gets, but > fat stars manage to do it. That seems more like an > engineering difficulty rather than an immutable > fundamental barrier. I don't know enough about it one > way or another, but I'm really hoping that it can be > validated. That'd be sweeeet. > > Best Wishes, > > Jeffrey Herrlich > > > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Don't get soaked. Take a quick peak at the forecast > with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut. > http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#loc_weather > _______________________________________________ > 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: From amara at amara.com Tue May 8 22:18:02 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 00:18:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: "The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever..." Message-ID: Well.. of all places. The transhumanists (congrats Michael!) are in "Psychology Today" and the author didn't paint us as flakes, despite the title of the piece. I am pleasantly surprised. "The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever... and Other Champions of the Lost Cause" By:Kathleen McGowan Page 5 of 5 http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20070227-000001&page=5 Ciao, Amara P.S. And I especially like the advertisement directly underneath the title: "Find a therapist near you..." -- 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 nvitamore at austin.rr.com Tue May 8 22:41:06 2007 From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 18:41:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever... Message-ID: <380-2200752822416365@M2W014.mail2web.com> (Thanks Amara) Congratulations Michael. You are a hero! Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft? Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail From nanogirl at halcyon.com Tue May 8 23:32:03 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 16:32:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] TEst References: <20061102062735.57668.qmail@web52612.mail.yahoo.com><015601c7010a$6a7d5d50$450a4e0c@MyComputer><008101c701b4$37b35870$250b4e0c@MyComputer><3C5E9884-5CD8-46CC-9841-28C6980CE600@randallsquared.com><059a01c701f8$841e1670$bb0a4e0c@MyComputer><092401c78ae4$1892f810$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <09c201c78b8b$342b33b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <006b01c791c9$9834ce40$0200a8c0@Nano> test -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From torsteinhaldorsen at gmail.com Wed May 9 01:21:46 2007 From: torsteinhaldorsen at gmail.com (Torstein Haldorsen) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 03:21:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever... In-Reply-To: <380-2200752822416365@M2W014.mail2web.com> References: <380-2200752822416365@M2W014.mail2web.com> Message-ID: If people didn't take a stand and fight for "lost causes" there would surely be no progress in the world. "Deviating from the mainstream by yourself is quite different than deviating from it with others who are successful, intelligent, insightful, and willing to discuss unpopular beliefs together," says Anissimov. Great quote, funny article and excellent PR. At least as good PR as one could hope for. -TT On 5/9/07, nvitamore at austin.rr.com wrote: > > (Thanks Amara) > > Congratulations Michael. You are a hero! > > Natasha > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on > Microsoft(r) > 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 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 9 03:49:08 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 20:49:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <200705070733.l477XOnk026167@ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com> Message-ID: <200705090354.l493s9i5015033@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Max More ... > > > I bow before the memory of Sagan. Truly, a candle in the dark. ... > Max Many of us here agree Max. Oh my had Sagan lived, how his mind would have been blown by the two biggie discoveries made since that sad day a few days before jingle bells 1996. Hard to believe he's been gone over a decade now, isn't it? The two big discoveries I am thinking about is the nature of gamma ray bursts and the open universe. Neither were anything like what I would have expected. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 9 05:06:03 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 00:06:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <200705090354.l493s9i5015033@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705070733.l477XOnk026167@ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com> <200705090354.l493s9i5015033@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070509000008.0224cf10@satx.rr.com> At 08:49 PM 5/8/2007 -0700, spike wrote: >The two big discoveries I am thinking about is the nature of gamma ray >bursts and the open universe. Well, my colleague Paul Davies published a book called THE RUNAWAY UNIVERSE back in 1979. Can't recall whether he had the amazing insight to propose an *accelerating* expansion, but he was pushing for a revival of the cosmological constant, which was very unfashionable at the time. Which gamma ray burst explanation are you thinking of? I've read about a whole variety. You mean that they're extragalactic? Jets? Damien Broderick From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 9 05:50:08 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 22:50:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] gamma ray bursts In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070509000008.0224cf10@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200705090607.l4967WCe015540@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien Broderick ... > > Which gamma ray burst explanation are you thinking of? Damien Broderick Ja, just the confirmation that they are extragalactic. I always hoped they were, just because I like really big explosions. My favorite models required they be big and far. It makes more sense that way too: I couldn't figure any model for how they are isolikely regardless of orientation with respect to the galactic plane if they were small and close. We have statistical techniques that would filter out even a small difference between on the plane and off. With BeppoSAX, the Compton BATSE and SWIFT, this is a fun time to be alive for those who gaze at the sky. spike I trademark and donate to the public domain the wonderful term isolikely. From jonkc at att.net Wed May 9 06:09:22 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 02:09:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Gamma Ray Bursts (was: The void left by deleting religion) References: <200705070733.l477XOnk026167@ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com><200705090354.l493s9i5015033@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070509000008.0224cf10@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <00a801c79200$9b381e30$9e084e0c@MyComputer> "Damien Broderick" > Which gamma ray burst explanation are you thinking of? There are lots of theories but I don't believe any gamma ray burst explanation is yet entirely satisfactory. > I've read about a whole variety. It seems you can group them into 2 categories, those that last between a tenth of a second and 2 seconds and those that last about 100 seconds. They don't last long but in that short time they produce about a thousand times as much energy as the sun will in it's entire 6 billion year history. They are the most energetic things in the known universe. >You mean that they're extragalactic? Yes, they are at cosmological distances, and it's a good think too, if one blew up anywhere in our galaxy we'd be dead meat. Fortunately that is unlikely, the precursors seem to be huge metal poor stars and the universe hasn't made stars like that for billions of years, so they're all billions of light years away. Modern stars have traces of metal in them and this greatly accelerates the solar wind so when a large star reaches the end of its life it has already lost a substantial percentage of its mass; ancient stars had little or no metal and thus kept most of their mass until the very end when they blew up. > Jets? Probably, otherwise they'd have to be even more energetic to be as bright as they are over such huge distances. A few years ago one was so bright it damaged some satellites and had a detectable effect on the upper atmosphere, and this from halfway across the universe. We only see the ones with the jets pointing our way. John K Clark From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 9 06:20:56 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 01:20:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Superhuman: The Uncharted Territory of Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <000c01c791d0$aea32120$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> References: <000c01c791d0$aea32120$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070509011155.02390750@satx.rr.com> >Meanwhile, in apparent agreement with Kass, a 2002 document edited >by then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger [now Pope], Communion and >Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, states, >"Disposing of death is in reality the most radical way of disposing of life." Uh... huh... That's fine, sweetie. You and your "flock" just hold firmly to that idea if you wish, and go away gently to do your thing. Just leave us alone to do ours, okay? We won't force you to stop dying, and you don't force us to stop living, is that fair? Damien Broderick From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 9 06:24:56 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 08:24:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cold fusion: some new results. In-Reply-To: <798938.91646.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <3cf171fe0705081337r1b12018bk63111c0a3cd4d779@mail.gmail.com> <798938.91646.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20070509062456.GW17691@leitl.org> On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 02:12:31PM -0700, A B wrote: > > Wouldn't cold fusion be a direct and obvious violation > of conservation of energy? You could just keep fusing It's turning mass defect directly into energy, via E=mc^2. Fusing lighter elements gives you more mass defect. Heavier elements fission, releasing energy. There is an island of stability, around iron: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_energy > the lighter elements and then eventually recover the > input energy by fissioning (fissing?) the > heavy-element end products. I know that it requires > more input energy the heavier the element gets, but You can't make energy from iron & Co via nuclear processes. About the only way to turn iron mass into energy is by matter-energy conversion via Hawking radiation (which has not yet been observed, and might not exist). > fat stars manage to do it. That seems more like an > engineering difficulty rather than an immutable > fundamental barrier. I don't know enough about it one > way or another, but I'm really hoping that it can be > validated. That'd be sweeeet. -- 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 michaelanissimov at gmail.com Wed May 9 08:28:36 2007 From: michaelanissimov at gmail.com (Michael Anissimov) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 01:28:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: "The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever..." In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51ce64f10705090128w16d4eab8g1742f7c431f780da@mail.gmail.com> On 5/8/07, Amara Graps wrote: > > > "The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever... and Other Champions of the Lost Cause" > By:Kathleen McGowan > > Page 5 of 5 > http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20070227-000001&page=5 I am strapping! Also I'm a boy even though I'm 23! Yay! -- Michael Anissimov Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com http://acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog From michaelanissimov at gmail.com Wed May 9 08:39:46 2007 From: michaelanissimov at gmail.com (Michael Anissimov) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 01:39:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever... In-Reply-To: <380-2200752822416365@M2W014.mail2web.com> References: <380-2200752822416365@M2W014.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <51ce64f10705090139h6f7d50ddk363ff0fd5c516772@mail.gmail.com> On 5/8/07, nvitamore at austin.rr.com wrote: > (Thanks Amara) > > Congratulations Michael. You are a hero! Thanks Natasha! Michael has defeated negative impression of H+ among Psychology Today readers! You gain 645 PR points. LEVEL UP! You are now Transhumanist Level 8. Rolodex skill up 5 Media diplomacy up 7 Memetic infectiousness up 4 You learn Extropian Storm. ITEM GET: 2-page spread in Psych Today. -- Michael Anissimov Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com http://acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog From pgptag at gmail.com Wed May 9 09:03:27 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 11:03:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever... In-Reply-To: <380-2200752822416365@M2W014.mail2web.com> References: <380-2200752822416365@M2W014.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <470a3c520705090203r1c30f1b6ke68a135fe8a9045f@mail.gmail.com> Kudos Michael! Also for the RU Sirius interview. G. On 5/9/07, nvitamore at austin.rr.com wrote: > (Thanks Amara) > > Congratulations Michael. You are a hero! > > Natasha > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft(r) > 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 > From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Wed May 9 09:58:35 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 02:58:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "U can be the President, I'd rather be the Pope" Message-ID: <799636.3426.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >Meanwhile, in apparent agreement with Kass, a 2002 document edited >by then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger [now Pope], Communion and >Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, states, >"Disposing of death is in reality the most radical way of disposing of life." Damien wrote: >Uh... huh... I think what the then Cardinal meant was that doing away with death would dispose of the meaning in life. But you would think such learned men would be clearer in their writings or with whatever they edit. I don't think either of us can be surprised by this stance of the Church due to the fact they are much more into the making of "new little Catholics." lol But to their credit they did establish hospitals all over the globe and many nuns and priests have lead noble and self-sacrificing lives in such places. As leader of the "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" Ratzinger was in charge of making sure Roman Catholic doctrine was kept "pure." He was the closest thing the Catholic Church has to a 16th century inquisitor! lol And in fact this body within the Church was established in the time of the Spanish Inquisition to contend with heresy (they were the "kinder & gentler" answer to the Inquisition). Damien wrote: That's fine, sweetie. You and your "flock" just hold firmly to that idea if you wish, and go away gently to do your thing. Just leave us alone to do ours, okay? We won't force you to stop dying, and you don't force us to stop living, is that fair? > But what if they force you to stop using birth control and insist you have tons of kids! lol I could see Roman Catholic leadership in about a century or less actually endorsing extreme life extension technologies because once their third world membership stop having large families (and start practicing birth control) they will get very concerned about their numbers shrinking. This post has me thinking about a SF novel Clifford D. Simak wrote years ago about a robot being elected pope. I never did read that, but I did read Bruce Sterling's "Holy Fire" which had a reference to a "chemical/neural revival" in the papacy due to some super-charged nootropics! lol Damien wrote: I found the previous pope much easier to like than Ratzinger. But I do admire this one for trying to open a dialogue with the Muslim world, though I was both shocked and amused when he dug deep into history and quoted a negative remark about Islam by a medieval King of Byzantium. I suppose Islamic leaders are still smarting over the various crusades called for by Pope Ratzinger's predecessors! One day I would like to peer into the various parallel realities of our world and see if there is one where President Bush allied himself with the Vatican and got the Pope to declare a modern-day Crusade because the goal was the full subjugation of the entire Middle East. This line of thought makes me wonder if there is still "room" for a Papacy-backed Crusade in our modern world. Alien invasion? An extended war with China? Or maybe a post-apocalyptic scenario where the Roman Catholic Church helps keep the vestiges of society together and they call for a Crusade to hold off some relentless invader. I realize that is a classic science fiction plotline. It will be very interesting to see how the Roman Catholic Church evolves over the next century or two. But I could say the same thing about the Mormons, the Evangelicals or for that matter the Jehovah's Witnesses. John Grigg P.S. "Sweetie?" I'm not sure if "His Holiness" is used to being called that! hee P.S. #2 This post should be read while listening to the Prince song "Pope" ; ) --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at goertzel.org Wed May 9 10:20:03 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 06:20:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: "The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever..." In-Reply-To: <51ce64f10705090128w16d4eab8g1742f7c431f780da@mail.gmail.com> References: <51ce64f10705090128w16d4eab8g1742f7c431f780da@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705090320k6d4c3565ifb75a3bafcfd6966@mail.gmail.com> > > > "The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever... and Other Champions of the Lost > Cause" > > By:Kathleen McGowan > > > > Page 5 of 5 > > > http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20070227-000001&page=5 > > I am strapping! Also I'm a boy even though I'm 23! Yay! Hmmm... I had noticed the boyishness but to be honest, the strapping-ness had escaped me up till now... I will have to keep my eye out for it next time I'm in California!!! Contratulations, though, Michael ;-) -- Ben G -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Wed May 9 11:14:34 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 04:14:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever... In-Reply-To: <51ce64f10705090139h6f7d50ddk363ff0fd5c516772@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <136281.30887.qm@web35602.mail.mud.yahoo.com> It's a fun article and I'm very glad Michael got such a cool write-up. I just wish Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey had also been treated respectfully. From the Psychology Today article: Life extentionists, cryogenics enthusiasts, and longevity buffs have an image problem, thanks in large part to guys like the inventor Ray Kurzweil, who sucks down hundreds of supplements and drinks 10 cups of green tea every day with the conviction that it will prolong his life. Also not helping: geneticist Aubrey de Grey, the wild-looking, raggedy-bearded Oxford professor who proclaims that at least one person alive today may live to be 1,000 years old. > Ray Kurzweil You lose 1,000 PR points! Aubrey de Grey You lose 2,000 PR points! You are both infected with "Media Scorn" Public image down 20 for each John : ( Michael Anissimov wrote: On 5/8/07, nvitamore at austin.rr.com wrote: > (Thanks Amara) > > Congratulations Michael. You are a hero! Thanks Natasha! Michael has defeated negative impression of H+ among Psychology Today readers! You gain 645 PR points. LEVEL UP! You are now Transhumanist Level 8. Rolodex skill up 5 Media diplomacy up 7 Memetic infectiousness up 4 You learn Extropian Storm. ITEM GET: 2-page spread in Psych Today. -- Michael Anissimov Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com http://acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jcowan5 at sympatico.ca Wed May 9 11:55:13 2007 From: jcowan5 at sympatico.ca (Joshua Cowan) Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 11:55:13 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants to LiveForever... Message-ID: Kudos to Michael! Does anyone know about or been interviewed for "Rapture for the Geeks" by Richard Dooling. It's scheduled to come out in fall 2008. "Harmony's John Glusman has acquired a new book by National Book Award finalist Richard Dooling entitled Rapture for the Geeks, a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the post-human universe." Gail Hochman at Brandt & Hochman sold world rights, pub date fall 2008." http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6431495.html From hemm at openlink.com.br Wed May 9 12:25:34 2007 From: hemm at openlink.com.br (Henrique Moraes Machado (oplnk)) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 09:25:34 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants to LiveForever... References: <136281.30887.qm@web35602.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <0fcb01c79235$254bb8f0$fe00a8c0@cpd01> John Grigg>It's a fun article and I'm very glad Michael got such a cool write-up. I just wish Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey >had also been treated respectfully. Indeed. The only bad thing I can say about Dr. de Grey is that he speaks insanely fast :-) From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 9 14:20:04 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 07:20:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: "The Boy Who Wants to LiveForever..." In-Reply-To: <51ce64f10705090128w16d4eab8g1742f7c431f780da@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200705091420.l49EKMpQ003654@andromeda.ziaspace.com> ... > > "The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever... and Other Champions of the Lost > Cause" > > By:Kathleen McGowan > > > > Page 5 of 5 > > http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20070227- 000001&page=5 > > I am strapping! Also I'm a boy even though I'm 23! Yay! > > -- > Michael Anissimov Strapping Michael? Having a sturdy muscular physique; robust? I will give you robust pal, perhaps even sturdy, but you are nearly as slender as I. We are not exactly California governor material here. {8^D I need to find this McGowan; if she thinks you are strapping, then she might describe my boney frame as "practically normal." {8^D spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 9 15:44:55 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 10:44:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: "The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever..." In-Reply-To: <51ce64f10705090128w16d4eab8g1742f7c431f780da@mail.gmail.co m> References: <51ce64f10705090128w16d4eab8g1742f7c431f780da@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070509103927.022252d0@satx.rr.com> At 01:28 AM 5/9/2007 -0700, Michael Anissimov wrote: > > "The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever... and Other Champions of the > Lost Cause" > > By:Kathleen McGowan >I am strapping! Also I'm a boy even though I'm 23! Yay! "The Boy Who Would Live Forever" is a Fred Pohl title (in the Gateway sequence), published in 2004. This might not be a coincidence. I haven't been able to trace any earlier form of the phrase to folklore, say. Damien Broderick From george at betterhumans.com Wed May 9 16:41:40 2007 From: george at betterhumans.com (George Dvorsky) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 12:41:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants to LiveForever... In-Reply-To: <0fcb01c79235$254bb8f0$fe00a8c0@cpd01> References: <136281.30887.qm@web35602.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0fcb01c79235$254bb8f0$fe00a8c0@cpd01> Message-ID: Is there a Web link for this yet? George From michaelanissimov at gmail.com Wed May 9 16:45:33 2007 From: michaelanissimov at gmail.com (Michael Anissimov) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 09:45:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants to LiveForever... In-Reply-To: <0fcb01c79235$254bb8f0$fe00a8c0@cpd01> References: <136281.30887.qm@web35602.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0fcb01c79235$254bb8f0$fe00a8c0@cpd01> Message-ID: <51ce64f10705090945r40061501va8a1d63a513874ee@mail.gmail.com> On 5/9/07, Henrique Moraes Machado (oplnk) wrote: > > Indeed. The only bad thing I can say about Dr. de Grey is that he speaks > insanely fast :-) Aubrey de Grey is one of the only people I know who I think speaks *fast enough*. The other is Michael Vassar. Listening to people talk is so much slower than typing and reading, we should minimize the disadvantage of speech by talking very rapidly. -- Michael Anissimov Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com http://acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog From jef at jefallbright.net Wed May 9 17:10:47 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 10:10:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants to LiveForever... In-Reply-To: <51ce64f10705090945r40061501va8a1d63a513874ee@mail.gmail.com> References: <136281.30887.qm@web35602.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0fcb01c79235$254bb8f0$fe00a8c0@cpd01> <51ce64f10705090945r40061501va8a1d63a513874ee@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/9/07, Michael Anissimov wrote: > On 5/9/07, Henrique Moraes Machado (oplnk) wrote: > > > > Indeed. The only bad thing I can say about Dr. de Grey is that he speaks > > insanely fast :-) > > Aubrey de Grey is one of the only people I know who I think speaks > *fast enough*. The other is Michael Vassar. Listening to people talk > is so much slower than typing and reading, we should minimize the > disadvantage of speech by talking very rapidly. Yes!. As long as the speech is well organized. Steve Jurvetson is another excellent fast speaker. By the way, Michael, I went to my old web site with the intention of updating a page where I referred to you as a "young transhumanist". No, not to add the adjective "strapping" but to update "young", possibly to "not so young." Unfortunately I found my site has been overtaken by thousands of instances of comment spam, so I'll do the update right after I finish cleaning and updating security. Congratulations on your excellent publicity. - Jef From sti at pooq.com Wed May 9 18:23:21 2007 From: sti at pooq.com (Stirling Westrup) Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 14:23:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants to In-Reply-To: References: <136281.30887.qm@web35602.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0fcb01c79235$254bb8f0$fe00a8c0@cpd01> Message-ID: <46421199.2070909@pooq.com> George Dvorsky wrote: > Is there a Web link for this yet? > You can find it here: http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/?p=404 From joseph at josephbloch.com Wed May 9 00:26:25 2007 From: joseph at josephbloch.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 20:26:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Superhuman: The Uncharted Territory of Transhumanism Message-ID: <000c01c791d0$aea32120$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> I did an email interview with the author of this article last year, and he later informed me that they only went with half of the whole article he submitted. Obviously, this is going to be approaching Transhumanism from a Catholic perspective, but still, I think it doesn't come across too badly. http://www.crisismagazine.com/may2007/pavlat.htm ?By responsible use of science, technology, and other rational means we shall eventually manage to become posthuman.? ?Nick Bostrom ?The moral challenge of transhumanism will transcend those of abortion and euthanasia. For this reason, the pro-life movement must become the pro-human movement.? ?Nigel M. Cameron Cryonics. Neural implants. Designer babies. Welcome to the future of transhumanism. This energetic movement, comprising thousands of adherents, actively promotes the enhancement of humans via cybernetics, genetics, medicine, surgery, nanotechnology, and a full panoply of other scientific advancements. This enhancement would, according to Nick Bostrom?s ?Transhumanist Declaration,? seek to advocate ?the moral right for those who wish to do so to extend their mental and physical (including reproductive) capacities and to improve their control over their own lives. [They] seek personal growth beyond [their] current biological limitations? (see www.transhumanism.org). This may sound like science fiction, but the philosophy behind the movement?improving or extending human life by whatever means possible?has already taken hold in society. Advances in modern medicine seem to offer us the very Fountain of Youth, and we seem fully prepared to embrace it. But at what cost? The question is not an easy one. Other issues touching on human life?abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia?have all been clearly defined by Church teaching. But the questions become more nuanced when we move from wholesale destruction of the person to varying degrees of interference with or enhancement of the body. The Church has not definitively spoken on many areas of the transhumanist agenda, nor have bioethicists made many public proclamations. ?We?re not even asking the right questions yet,? admits Rev. Nicanor Austriaco, a bioethicist at Providence College. Radical Anti-Aging Technology The search for eternal youth is an ancient human impulse, going back to the world?s earliest recorded epic, Gilgamesh. But with modern medical technology, we now seem closer to achieving that end than ever before. The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, claiming more than 11,000 members, ?seeks to disseminate information concerning innovative science and research as well as treatment modalities designed to prolong the human life span? (www.worldhealth.net). Among the most common lines of research are gene therapy, stem cell therapy to grow everything from new nerves to hair, the injection of human growth hormone, and cryonics, in which technicians would freeze people?s bodies in the hopes of reviving them after years of suspended animation or even death. But does this go too far? Theological critics of anti-aging technology have pointed out that aging has long been considered a consequence of the Fall, and that we are undoing God?s command when we radically extend life through medical means. Leon Kass, former chairman of the President?s Council on Bioethics, sees other, more philosophical problems with anti-aging research: ?The desire to prolong youthfulness is not only a childish desire to eat one?s life and keep it. . . . It seeks an endless present, isolated from anything truly eternal, and severed from any true continuity with past and future. It is in principle hostile to children, because children, those who come after, are those who will take one?s place; they are life?s answer to mortality? (First Things, May 2001). Meanwhile, in apparent agreement with Kass, a 2002 document edited by then?Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, states, ?Disposing of death is in reality the most radical way of disposing of life.? On the other hand, Father Austriaco points out, ?A careful reading of Communion and Stewardship does not seem to suggest that anything in Catholic tradition would oppose longevity research that seeks to delay aging in the human being.? He also says that while it is true that at the Fall, God withdrew ?supernatural gifts we would have had had we not sinned,? he points out that, despite God?s injunction that women would suffer in childbirth, the Church allows pain relief for women in labor per Pope Pius XII?s 1957 ?Allocution to Doctors on the Moral Problems of Analgesia,? which states: ?Man keeps, even after the fall, his right to dominate the forces of nature, to use them in his service, and thus to make profitable all the resources that it offers him to avoid or remove the physical pain [of labor and delivery].? By this reasoning, it would seem, anti-aging technology could be morally acceptable. ?We do all kinds of things in anticipation of the resurrection,? says Father Austriaco, who is currently conducting research into the aging mechanisms of yeast, in the hopes of one day applying that research to humans. Pro-life bioethicist Nigel M. Cameron, president of the Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future (www.thehumanfuture.org), agrees: ?There?s something very human, and very properly human, about the desire to keep the human machine going.? However, he adds a caveat: Supporting life extension is different than supporting efforts to eliminate death altogether. But other parts of Communion and Stewardship are less clear, such as the Vatican?s apparent nixing of any strategies that ?chang[e] the genetic identity of man as a human person.? On one hand, the document says that such changes clearly contradict Catholic bioecthical tradition, as they ?imply that man has full right of disposal over his own biological nature.? On the other hand, the document also points out that ?germ line genetic engineering with a therapeutic goal? might be acceptable if it is accomplished in a way that does not harm human embryos. Is extending the human lifespan beyond its current limits a ?therapeutic goal?? No document answers that question fully. Because the Vatican has not yet spoken definitively on this issue, several key questions remain unanswered: What kinds of radical anti-aging technology, if any, would be morally licit? If it becomes readily available, and the methods being used respect human dignity, will the use of this technology be obligatory for Catholics, under our moral requirement to take care of our health (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2288 and 2290)? How long a life is too long?or is there any such thing? How would married couples express their openness to new life if radical life extension meant that women were fertile for 50 to 100 years instead of 30? In terms of the Church?s social doctrine, how would one address the increased socioeconomic gap between rich and poor that could follow the advent of anti-aging technology, or the impact that anti-aging technology would have on Medicare, much less health insurance? Although we can give a cautious ?thumbs up? to some anti-aging technologies, we need to be cognizant of just how many questions currently have no answers. Computer Interfaces Human-machine interfaces are becoming ever more intimate. Amazing progress has been made in integrating technology with biology, progress that has helped people tremendously. For example, former football player Jesse Sullivan, who lost his arms in a utility line accident, now has two bionic arms that can move in response to his thoughts. Claudia Mitchell, who lost an arm in a motorcycle accident, now has a prosthesis so precise that she can peel an orange. Researcher William Craelius, working on a different track, has developed the Dextra, an artificial hand that allows users to type and even play the piano. The next generation of limbs will even allow wearers to sense touch and temperature. Going a step further, consider the case of quadriplegic Matthew Nagle, who ?can now pick up objects, open e-mails, change the channel on the television and play computer games? using only a link between a computer, a robotic arm, and electrodes implanted in his brain, according to London?s Independent. Scientists are also hard at work on a wearable exoskeleton that would respond to his thought commands, allowing him to move his body again. But what if technology is doing more than simply correcting a medical condition? Dr. Steve Mann of the University of Toronto has been called ?the first cyborg? by DK Publishing for his ?WearComp??wearable hardware that runs personal-applications software. ?The assumption of wearable computing,? reported Mann at a 1998 keynote speech, ?is that the user will be doing something else at the same time as . . . the computing. Thus the computer should serve to augment the intellect, or augment the senses.? Award-winning scientist and author Ray Kurzweil?an avid transhumanist and proponent of radical life-extending technology?has pointed out that, when it comes to computer interfaces, ?We already have people with computers in their brains?for example, Parkinson?s patients?and the latest generation of this FDA-approved neural implant allows you to download new software to your neural implant from outside the patient. . . . In the future we will have non-invasive ways of extending our physical capabilities as we merge with nonbiological systems.? So where do we draw the line? At what point does the interface between human and computer present a challenge for human personhood? Going back to Communion and Stewardship, we are told that ?the being created in [God?s] image cannot be the object of arbitrary human action,? and that four guidelines in particular apply: ?(1) there must be a question of an intervention in the part of the body that is either affected or is the direct cause of the life-threatening situation; (2) there can be no other alternatives for preserving life; (3) there is a proportionate chance of success in comparison with drawbacks; and (4) the patient must give assent to the intervention.? However, the document also points out that ?the fundamental faculties which essentially belong to human beings are never sacrificed, except when necessary to save life.? In other words, the Vatican, via a tradition called the ?therapeutic principle,? gives an enthusiastic green light to prosthetics that aim to restore ?the fundamental faculties? of injured persons, such as the ability to see, hear, and manipulate objects with one?s hands. That being said, David Plotz of Slate.com claims that ?the distinction between therapy and enhancement isn?t as clear as ethicists contend. Doctors practice enhancement all the time?even frivolous enhancement.? There are certainly those who would argue that vasectomies and tubal ligations are ?therapeutic.? Father Austriaco is interested in applying the traditional Catholic teaching on reproductive technologies??you can assist but not replace??to these newer technologies. Under this theory, someone who, in the future, was pursuing elective amputation in favor of an advanced prosthetic device should be rejected on ethical grounds because that would be intentionally ?replacing.? However, the types of applications pursued by Sullivan and Mitchell seem to fit the ?assisting? test perfectly, and would therefore be perfectly moral, as long as the programs did not become ?idols? to us. As to Kurzweil?s ideas, the Vatican has not yet clearly articulated a position, but Pope Benedict XVI recently used a visit to Lateran University to warn about the apparent ?primacy? given to ?a sort of ?artificial? intelligence which becomes more and more overshadowed by experimental technique.? He likened the ?appetite for discovery without keeping in mind the criteria which derive from a more profound vision? to the tragic flight of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. However elegant the pope?s observation, it remains more philosophical than doctrinally applicable. As Father Austriaco points out, transhumanists like Kurzweil are ?raising questions that are unprecedented in the Catholic moral tradition.? Super-Pills Another unprecedented situation is discussed in Alexandra Robbins?s latest book, The Overachievers, which describes the hyper-competitive world of high school academics. Robbins relates how today?s children, either self-driven or pushed by their parents, go to sometimes radical extremes to achieve their goals. Her book includes discussions of college-level classes and competitive sports, but it also focuses on chronic stress, teen suicide rates, and the phenomenon of Ritalin and Adderall abuse. Apparently, these medications (created to treat Attention Deficit Disorder), when taken by people without the disorder, produce a clarity and goal-orientation that can provide a competitive edge. Doctors have reported students asking for prescriptions who obviously do not suffer from ADD, and anecdotal reports of the drug?s use on college campuses and in the business world are common. Another drug in vogue for its off-label uses is Modafinil, a narcolepsy drug more popularly known as Provigil. The New York Times reports that the drug?which enables one to skip naps or even entire nights of sleep while staying alert and non-jittery?is ?becoming a fixture among college students, long-haul truckers, computer programmers and others determined to burn the midnight oil.? It is also used by soldiers on patrol in Iraq, according to the Ottawa Citizen. When it comes to Ritalin and Adderall use, the World Transhumanist Association?s (WTA) Joseph Bloch says, ?Assuming?and it is a huge assumption?that there are no longer-term side effects, I see nothing wrong with providing my children with any competitive advantage. The fact that it is pharmaceutical in nature is irrelevant.? When is a drug that enhances human abilities unacceptable for use? Steroid use for athletic enhancement has been nearly universally deemed unethical, and the Catechism expressly states that ?the use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life. Their use, except on strictly therapeutic grounds, is a grave offense? (2291). However, there may be some ?wiggle room? in the Catechism?s language that would allow people, for example, to enhance their own thinking abilities. Ampakines, which may in the next decade be available for Alzheimer?s patients, aid in the formation of new memories. Apparently they could also help a 40-year-old who simply wanted to regain the mental quickness of youth. Father Austriaco says that the use of ampakines for this reason may be licit, as it involves restoring ?the preternatural abilities of Adam and Eve before the Fall.? Pointing out that the account of the Fall in Genesis 3 includes the punishment that women would be dominated by men, he says it would be absurd to insist that the repression of women is in allegiance with Scripture. Therefore, he says, we can use science, including medicine, to mitigate the effects of the Fall. Cameron stakes out a middle ground, stating that steroids ?manipulate? human nature, while diet, nutrition, and exercise respect ?human integrity? and ?perfect the givenness of human nature.? When it comes to giving Ritalin to healthy children, Cameron allows that the trend is ?inevitable and understandable, but still bad.? Of course, even regular ?healthy living? can be taken to excess; the Catechism refers to this ?cult of the body,? which ?idoliz[es] physical perfection,? as a ?neo-pagan notion? (2289). Matthew Eppinette, assistant director of the Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity (www.cbhd.org), develops the idea further by saying, ?Society rightly recognizes conditions like anorexia and the Adonis complex as unhealthy, not just physically unhealthy, but also emotionally, mentally, and spiritually unhealthy.? In this light, one could accuse some purveyors of these trends of an unhealthy focus on what they wish bodies could do, rather than what is natural or healthy for them to do. Surgery Dennis Avner is the Stalking Cat. No, not a comic book character, but a part-Huron, part-Lakota Native American who has gone through tattooing and multiple surgeries?including subdermal and transdermal implants, upper lip bifurcation, and the pointing of his ears?in order to increase his physical resemblance to a tiger, his totem animal (see photos at www.stalkingcat.net). ?I?m just taking a very old tradition, that to my knowledge is not practiced anymore,? he told the Seattle Times. However, the same article quotes bioethicist Glenn McGee of Albany Medical College in New York as saying, ?It is possible to have a coherent view that is nonetheless detrimental to one?s well-being. This is a patient who?s being harmed by medicine in the interest of his tradition.? Of all possible types of body modification, none perhaps makes us as uncomfortable as surgery. It seems so radical, so risky, to go ?under the knife,? that we normally think of surgery as a last resort. That may well change. Dr. Stephen Genuis reports in Family Foundations that ?in 2005, there were more than 10 million cosmetic procedures undertaken in the United States, representing a 38 [percent] increase compared with 2000.? As of 2002, almost 24 percent of all married women in the United States had been made surgically infertile (the vast majority through elective tubal ligation), while about 15 percent of their male partners had had vasectomies (?Contraceptive Sterilization,? EnGenderHealth). Other elective medical procedures on the immediate horizon involve the use of stem cells. The theory, according to the Centre Daily Times, is that ?injecting stem cells into healthy muscles might increase [muscles?] size and even restore them to their youthful capacity. ?You could potentially find a 40-year-old man with 20-year-old legs,? [Paul] Griffiths [of CryoGenesis International] said.? The article focuses mostly on applications in the world of sporting, which is regularly rocked by steroid scandals. But bioethicist John Harris contends that ?enhancement in sports is only problematic because there are rules against it.? (The article, while implying that adult stem cells were being discussed instead of embryonic, did not specify.) Another way to keep in shape without exercising is through regular injections of such compounds as insulin-like growth factor (IGF), artificial hemoglobin, and EPO, ?a natural compound whose function is stimulating the bone marrow to produce more red blood cells,? according to Plotz. Striking at the philosophical underpinnings of such practices, Eppinette asks, ?What is the ultimate goal one is striving for? Is it to be healthy? Is it to live a very long life? Is it to maximize the competitiveness of one?s offspring? Is this the ultimate attainment? For people of faith, none of these seem to me to be ultimate.? This observation lies at the center of the argument surrounding surgical alterations: How would elective surgery bring us closer to God? Restorative surgery such as LASIK is remarkable, and the successes of plastic surgery have brought relief to many survivors of disfiguring accidents. However, some elective surgeries, such as sterilization, are plainly immoral, while plastic surgery techniques such as breast enhancement, while perhaps not ?grave matter,? seem to serve vanity and promote the valuing of women for their bodies instead of their full personhood. It is vital that the moral implications of future elective surgical techniques are examined now, before they come upon us. Genetics and Eugenics When it comes to beginning-of-life questions, Church teaching is clear. Still, the current state of affairs is bleak: England now permits ?preimplantation genetic diagnosis,? a technique where IVF-created embryos are diagnosed not only for birth defects, but for the potential of adult-onset diseases, even treatable ones. Prenatal testing has become common in Western nations, with the tacit assumption that a poor test result will prompt an abortion. Researchers estimate that 90 percent of all prenatal diagnoses of Down Syndrome result in abortion. On the flip side, those with sufficient wealth can ?shop? for sperm, eggs, and even embryos based on specific characteristics of the donors. Debate over some of these developments has already begun. For example, at a recent dinner in Washington, D.C., bioethicist Adrienne Ashe said that when people try to artificially create children with specific genetic traits, they are ?letting one trait stand in for a whole person,? which depersonalizes the child. ?The whole child-to-be is not imagined, just one or two characteristics,? she adds. Eppinette further contends that ??designer babies? are quite a change from how children have been traditionally viewed, namely as gifts to be received and nurtured.? Furthermore, genetic engineering and artificial chromosomes open the door to ?not just designer babies but designer baby boomers, something I am personally more interested in,? says Kurzweil. One question, of course, is what should happen to those who do not get ?treated.? Princeton professor and futurist Lee Silver opines, ?The economy, the media, the entertainment industry, and the knowledge industry [will be] controlled by members of the GenRich class. . . . Naturals [will] work as low-paid service providers or as laborers.? Cameron sees genetic manipulation as leading to a ?new feudalism,? wherein a ?very small number of people, basically a global elite,? will take advantage of a ?law of compounding,? using their genetic advantages to create a society with ?far greater disparities? in wealth and power than currently exist. Once a certain proportion of the population has had fundamental genetic or mechanical enhancements, these societal changes will become, he says, ?absolutely inevitable.? Some foresee an Earth in which natural reproduction is viewed as irresponsible, with IVF being the responsible choice for both society (since you?re selecting only the best genes) and your children (since you?re choosing what is best for them). Others, such as author John Glad, view eugenics as ?an integral component of an environmentalist policy? (Future Human Evolution, 2006). He continues, ?Abortion should be actively promoted, since it often serves as the last and even only resort for many low-IQ mothers.? The Vatican has been emphatic in its stance against nearly all eugenic plans and techniques. Even as far back as 1987, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith?s ?Instruction on Respect for Human Life? stated, ?Certain attempts to influence chromosomic or genetic inheritance are not therapeutic but are aimed at producing human beings selected according to sex or other predetermined qualities. These manipulations are contrary to the personal dignity of the human being and his or her integrity and identity.? Communion and Stewardship repeats the stance: ?Changing the genetic identity of man through the production of an infrahuman [i.e., inferior] being is radically immoral. The use of genetic modification to yield a superhuman or being with essentially new spiritual faculties is unthinkable.? More recently, this teaching was rearticulated by Castrill?n Cardinal Hoyos late in 2006, when he said, ?Genetic manipulation, when it is not therapeutic, that is, when it does not tend to the treatment of pathology of the genetic patrimony, must be radically condemned. . . . It pursues modifications in an arbitrary way, inducing to the formation of human individuals with different genetic patrimonies established according to one?s discretion. Eugenics, the creation of a superior human race, is an aberrant application.? Still, there are some gray areas?for instance, in the definitions of ?therapeutic,? ?reparative,? and ?augmentative? gene therapy. Kurzweil, when asked if there was a difference between genetic therapy for a person with Down Syndrome and for a person who wanted an IQ of 135 instead of 100, responded, ?In my opinion, no. We are the species that goes beyond our limitations.? One could take a similar approach along theological lines, but with a view toward licitly undoing the effects of the Fall through technology. Eppinette zeroes in on this exact distinction: ?We are in need of serious ethical, philosophical, and theological contemplation of where we draw the line between therapy and enhancement. The work of the late John Paul II on embodiment is both a foundation to build on as well as an example of the kind of reflection needed on just this point.? They Think We?re the Enemy So far, except for the issue of genetics and eugenics, surprisingly many of the advancements in modern medicine and technology are compatible with Catholicism. Unfortunately, many of their more radical proponents don?t feel the same way. In fact, several notable and opinion-leading transhumanists are strongly anti-Christian. For example, prominent transhumanist William Sims Bainbridge, the author of more than 15 books and numerous magazine and journal articles, opens an article with the following abstract: ?Cognitive science immediately threatens religious faith in two ways, by explaining away religion as an error resulting from accidents in the evolutionary history of the human nervous system, and by failing to find evidence that humans possess souls. Over the coming decades, information technology may undercut people?s need for religion by offering practical forms of cyberimmortality (CI). The plausibility of religion may also be eroded by the coming unification of science and the associated convergence of [new] technologies.? Even more troubling is language on the Web site for the Future Technologies Advisory Group (www.futuretag.net), a transhumanist organization specializing in consulting and media: ?While one of the objectives of the firm will be facilitating the penetration of transhumanist ideas in mainstream business and policy, we will not use the T word or insist on the transhumanist worldview too explicitly. Rather, we will focus on delivering practical advice appropriate to the intended audience.? The willingness expressed here to dissemble their true intentions is disconcerting. And yet there must be open and honest dialogue on these issues. ?We are moving way beyond these old challenges to human life,? argues Cameron, who says we need to change our focus of attention. We need to ?ask the right questions? and work toward finding ethical answers?answers consistent with the Catholic moral tradition?before the future arrives. Lines of communication need to be opened between Christian bioethicists and transhumanists. Cameron, for example, calls Kurzweil ?a man of genius? and ?no mere academic theorist,? while Kurzweil makes the surprising statement that through human-driven evolution, people can ?grow exponentially in intelligence, knowledge, creativity, beauty, and love, all of the qualities people ascribe to God without limit,? implying that ?we can view evolution as a spiritual process, moving ever closer to this ideal.? Men of this intellectual stature need forums in which they can communicate with each other. (To be fair, Cameron is already in contact with WTA president Nick Bostrom and others, but he?s one of the only pro-life leaders doing so.) Bloch writes that when transhumanist goals have been achieved, ?Many of humanity?s ills will be eliminated. I find that sufficient comfort in the continuing march from lives which are nasty, brutal, and short to those which are not quite as nasty, not as brutal, and hopefully longer.? Statements like this illustrate that many in this movement simply want a better future?an excellent starting point for dialogue. Catholic journalists need to be aware of the underlying agendas in some of these scientific movements (www.bioethics.com, co-edited by Eppinette, is an excellent source for keeping up-to-date). Pro-life politicians and lobbying groups need to stay attuned to scientific progress to know which technologies to support, which to oppose, and which to treat with a laissez-faire attitude of benign neglect. (A good starting point is the 2003 government report ?Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness,? available at bioethics.gov/reports/beyondtherapy/.) And bioethicists need to start asking the right questions. Eppinette advises us that, ?for people of faith, and Christians in particular, we know that technology is not to be our God, and technology is most definitely not our Savior. Each of us has to examine the role of technology in our own lives, and how it squares with what we consider to be most important in life. This does not mean that we become luddites, rejecting new forms of technology. What it means is that we carefully consider how technology fits into our lives, whether it helps or hinders the goals we?ve set for ourselves??which, he adds, may involve taking a closer look at those very goals. New technologies always bring new ethical dilemmas. We can?t afford to be unaware of the challenges facing us today. The future is almost here. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joseph at josephbloch.com Wed May 9 11:02:26 2007 From: joseph at josephbloch.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 07:02:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Superhuman: The Uncharted Territory of Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <000c01c791d0$aea32120$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> References: <000c01c791d0$aea32120$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> Message-ID: <000c01c79229$8896d810$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> And FYI, since the article in Crisis only printed a very small sample of the original interview I did with the author, I've posted the complete series of questions and answers on my blog: http://www.josephbloch.com . Joseph ________________________________ From: tt-bounces at postbiota.org [mailto:tt-bounces at postbiota.org] On Behalf Of Joseph Bloch Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 8:26 PM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org; tt at postbiota.org Subject: [tt] Superhuman: The Uncharted Territory of Transhumanism I did an email interview with the author of this article last year, and he later informed me that they only went with half of the whole article he submitted. Obviously, this is going to be approaching Transhumanism from a Catholic perspective, but still, I think it doesn't come across too badly. http://www.crisismagazine.com/may2007/pavlat.htm From nvitamore at austin.rr.com Wed May 9 19:56:44 2007 From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 15:56:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Academia: Transhumanism, Transhuman and Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism Message-ID: <380-22007539195644562@M2W015.mail2web.com> This is a follow-up: I have read your responses (on and off list) and it seems that the reasons for posthumanism's acceptance in academia is based, in large part, on Hayles book, etc. (keeping it short so I don't repeat myself); and the term "cyborg" because, in large part, due to Donna's manifesto. Since academia is not known for visionary thinking and is sorely institutional, causing some dogma and slaps on hands for reaching into cookie jars of new ideas outside what considered acceptable (while at the same time pushing us to find ?new knowledge?; it has been unsettling to see that the transhuman and transhumanism has been lagging behind. But not any longer! I have delivered a dozen papers so far on "transhumanism and transhumans (including posthuman") in Humanities Dept. in the US and approximately seven papers in the Technology Depart. in the UK. (Where at first the terms were not readily accepted, they are not used by my colleagues and other professors.) I recently gave a talk at the University of Houston's Future Studies department on transhumanism, and at the Montreal Summit last month delivered two papers which referenced in bold and highlight the meaning of transhumanism and transhuman in terms that readily fit into the department and academia. I think that the Dean of the University of Montreal may very well welcome lectures on transhumanism very soon. And there will be a conference in Milan in November in which I will strongly introduce transhumans and transhumanism (along with posthuman ) into the theoretical and design projects. I want to thank you all for being helpful and I hope you to even be more helpful to me. I need your support and advice -- especially now. Best wishes, Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft? Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 9 21:31:07 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 14:31:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: The Boy Who Wants toLiveForever... In-Reply-To: <51ce64f10705090945r40061501va8a1d63a513874ee@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200705092143.l49LhLYI010451@andromeda.ziaspace.com> On 5/9/07, Henrique Moraes Machado (oplnk) wrote: > > Indeed. The only bad thing I can say about Dr. de Grey is that he speaks > insanely fast :-) I admire that about AdG. Listening to a person speaking is so I/O bound. A typical listener can think circles around a typical speaker. Speaking so bandwidth limited, oy. spike From nanogirl at halcyon.com Wed May 9 22:25:45 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 15:25:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] test References: <632002.99831.qm@web37205.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <01f101c78a2e$d2cac020$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <006901c79289$121b6ab0$0200a8c0@Nano> still nothing from extropy today -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nvitamore at austin.rr.com Thu May 10 00:27:26 2007 From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 20:27:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Book: The Maze Game Message-ID: <380-22007541002726360@M2W005.mail2web.com> Has anyone read The Maze Game by Diana Slattery? Thanks, Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft? Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail From nvitamore at austin.rr.com Thu May 10 00:43:33 2007 From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 20:43:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Anyone FedUp Besides Me? Message-ID: <380-22007541004333785@M2W009.mail2web.com> Anyone reading the WTA and posts that continued slam jobs against early transhumanists (ie., extopians)? Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com ? What can On Demand Business Solutions do for you? http://link.mail2web.com/Business/SharePoint From moulton at moulton.com Thu May 10 00:51:32 2007 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 17:51:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Free Podcasts about Sagan and others Message-ID: <1178758292.7737.265.camel@localhost.localdomain> There have been several mentions of Carl Sagan and so I thought I would pass along the following just in case there are some persons here who are not aware of these free MP3 podcasts. >From The Point of Inquiry: http://www.pointofinquiry.org/?p=91 It is Ann Druyan speaking about the Carl Sagan. Sagan's book The Varieties of Scientific Experience is discussed. The site has a lot of other interesting podcasts in their archive: http://www.pointofinquiry.org/ Also (with not quite as good production value) there is another Ann Druyan interview on the FFRF site: http://www.ffrf.org/radio/podcast/ Scroll down to the Oct. 26, 2006 entry. The Ann Druyan interview starts a few minutes into the podcast. FFRF also has a variety of interesting podcasts. A very funny one is the Julia Sweeney June 24, 2006 podcast about her work "Letting Go of God". I bought the CD and it is hilarious. Also touching on some of the issues brought up to the recent discussion of religion on this list is the July 15, 2006 podcast where Dan Barker (one of the co-hosts) discusses his transition from minister to atheist. Fred From spike66 at comcast.net Thu May 10 01:25:42 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 18:25:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] test In-Reply-To: <006901c79289$121b6ab0$0200a8c0@Nano> Message-ID: <200705100137.l4A1b8cB008149@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Gina Nanogirl, It was the techo-rapture and we were all taken away. {8^D Your account was bouncing, ExI-chat automatically stopped the send function. I fixed it. Check your inbox, see if it is full or if something else is wrong with it. spike _____ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Gina Miller Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 3:26 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] test still nothing from extropy today -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joseph at josephbloch.com Thu May 10 02:04:53 2007 From: joseph at josephbloch.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 22:04:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Anyone FedUp Besides Me? In-Reply-To: <380-22007541004333785@M2W009.mail2web.com> References: <380-22007541004333785@M2W009.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <001b01c792a7$9a558c80$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> I wouldn't know. I tried to sign up to the WTA list a couple of days ago with my new email account and have yet to be approved. 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 > nvitamore at austin.rr.com > Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 8:44 PM > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [ExI] Anyone FedUp Besides Me? > > Anyone reading the WTA and posts that continued slam jobs > against early transhumanists (ie., extopians)? > > Natasha > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > mail2web.com - What can On Demand Business Solutions do for you? > http://link.mail2web.com/Business/SharePoint > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at comcast.net Thu May 10 02:30:07 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 9 May 2007 19:30:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the french are sad In-Reply-To: <1178758292.7737.265.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <200705100230.l4A2UGEF016319@andromeda.ziaspace.com> The French are apparently sad, perhaps because of the outcome of the recent presidential elections there. Reasoning: on my antique motorcycle group we have three Frenchmen who speak little if any American, so I use Babelfish to translate for them. My posts are filled with the usual cutting up, like I used to do here before we became so doggone serious. Consequently my text there is interspersed with the customary {8-]s throughout. I found that {8-] in English translates to {8 - ] in French. Conclusion: the French have long faces. { 8 ^ D le spike From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 10 05:43:46 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 15:13:46 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [wta-talk] Keith Henson Back in Jail In-Reply-To: <8CF6A92CB628444FB3C757618CD2803904191A70@exbe1.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> References: <8CF6A92CB628444FB3C757618CD2803904191A70@exbe1.cmpcntr.tc.trincoll.edu> Message-ID: <710b78fc0705092243j6ccbdbf3t556c52430f167114@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Hughes, James J. Date: 10-May-2007 11:30 Subject: [wta-talk] Keith Henson Back in Jail To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/05/09/keith-henson-back-in-jail-space-e levator-will-have-to-wait/ Keith Henson Back in Jail - Space Elevator Will Have To Wait By RU Sirius May 9th, 2007 On April 26, 2001, Keith Henson was convicted of interfering with a religion - a misdemeanor under California law - for picketing outside Scientology's heavily armed, razor wire-enforced base, outside Hemet California. He split for Canada, becoming the world's first "Scientology fugitive," and he's back in the U.S. dealing with a variety of court cases related to Scientology. Henson was just thrown back in jail. As best as I can make out from the limited information currently available, Henson and his lawyers were scheduled for a hearing at 1:30 pm on Tuesday, May 8th. They were apparently unaware that warrants had recently been signed by the Governors of California and Arizona, and after the hearing, Henson was handed over to the Yavapai County Sheriff Department for incarceration until a hearing on Wednesday May 9th at 9 a.m. (A note received this afternoon - May 9th - from Henson's wife, Arel Lucas, says that he will remain in the lockup at least until Monday, May 13th. She invites people to write to him at: Yavapai County Sheriff's Office, Howard Keith Henson, 255 E. Gurley St. Prescott, AZ 86301. She also reminds you that the prison authorities read the letters before passing them on.) _______________________________________________ wta-talk mailing list wta-talk at transhumanism.org http://www.transhumanism.org/mailman/listinfo/wta-talk From pgptag at gmail.com Thu May 10 06:01:20 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 08:01:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Anyone FedUp Besides Me? In-Reply-To: <001b01c792a7$9a558c80$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> References: <380-22007541004333785@M2W009.mail2web.com> <001b01c792a7$9a558c80$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> Message-ID: <470a3c520705092301x325ab902kd7e51bdb819b9059@mail.gmail.com> Strange, there is no approval atm, subscriptions are automatic. Try again. G. On 5/10/07, Joseph Bloch wrote: > I wouldn't know. I tried to sign up to the WTA list a couple of days ago > with my new email account and have yet to be approved. > > 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 > > nvitamore at austin.rr.com > > Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2007 8:44 PM > > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > Subject: [ExI] Anyone FedUp Besides Me? > > > > Anyone reading the WTA and posts that continued slam jobs > > against early transhumanists (ie., extopians)? > > > > Natasha > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > > mail2web.com - What can On Demand Business Solutions do for you? > > http://link.mail2web.com/Business/SharePoint > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From pharos at gmail.com Thu May 10 06:59:57 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 07:59:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Anyone FedUp Besides Me? In-Reply-To: <380-22007541004333785@M2W009.mail2web.com> References: <380-22007541004333785@M2W009.mail2web.com> Message-ID: On 5/10/07, nvitamore wrote: > Anyone reading the WTA and posts that continued slam jobs against early > transhumanists (ie., extopians)? > I just scan quickly over stuff about politics. There is little chance of finding any truthiness there. It's all about personal prejudices and posturing. So I don't bother myself with it. BillK From pgptag at gmail.com Thu May 10 08:26:51 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 10:26:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Anyone FedUp Besides Me? In-Reply-To: References: <380-22007541004333785@M2W009.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <470a3c520705100126i6d88f952sd5abc892255036c2@mail.gmail.com> Well, I am as fed up as you are, perhaps more since I am usually the main target of the last wave of attacks. G. On 5/10/07, BillK wrote: > On 5/10/07, nvitamore wrote: > > Anyone reading the WTA and posts that continued slam jobs against early > > transhumanists (ie., extopians)? > > > > > I just scan quickly over stuff about politics. > There is little chance of finding any truthiness there. > It's all about personal prejudices and posturing. > > So I don't bother myself with it. > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From amara at amara.com Thu May 10 08:31:58 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 10:31:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Anyone FedUp Besides Me? Message-ID: nvitamore at austin.rr.com: >Anyone reading the WTA and posts that continued slam jobs against early >transhumanists (ie., extropians)? Dear Natasha, I'm in the middle of my proposals #3 and 4, so I'm highly selective in what I'm reading online these weeks. I didn't read that wta long thread, but if it helps, the Italian transhumanists (in particular Riccardo), are referring to and promoting Max's writings alot, so the extropians are being treated well by them, and quite the opposite of 'slamming'. On another thread: a friend of mine, Sabine in Canada at the Perimeter Institute (I learned about the Psychology Today article from her) doesn't think that cryonics sounds crazy. Cool! :-) Does anyone want to take a shot at answering her next questions? I have another draft of my proposal to finish today, and I won't have time to address her question until tomorrow or the next day. http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2007/05/genius-and-insanity.html 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 tyleremerson at gmail.com Thu May 10 10:51:20 2007 From: tyleremerson at gmail.com (Tyler Emerson) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 03:51:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Help get the 400K SIAI matching challenge on Digg's front page Message-ID: <632d2cda0705100351l66ba5665n9a6505d003a5bf88@mail.gmail.com> I just learned about an effort to get the SIAI $400,000 Matching Challenge covered on Digg's front-page. See: http://digg.com/general_sciences/SIAI_seeks_funding_for_AI_research According to an unofficial FAQ about the Digg algorithm, news items in the Science category must receive 70-85 Diggs within the initial 24 hours to make it to the front-page. As of now, we have less than five hours to secure enough votes. We need 55. It takes about 15 seconds to join Digg to digg the item. If you want to help us out, please take a few seconds to digg the above URL. Posting a positive comment will also improve the odds. Hundreds of individuals on these lists value SIAI, many of whom are close friends, so the number of diggs will necessarily increase if everyone avoids the bystander effect. Nick, Max, Natasha, James, Reason, Spike, and everyone else who supports the Institute: please take a few seconds to digg the item. Thanks everyone, 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: From pgptag at gmail.com Thu May 10 14:16:40 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 16:16:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Anders Sandberg in Second Life on converging cognitive enhancement, uvvy island in SL, May 23 2007 10am PST Message-ID: <470a3c520705100716q1a46790em88f8e50e276ace9f@mail.gmail.com> Presentation in Second Life on converging cognitive enhancement http://www.eudoxa.se/content/archives/2007/05/presentation_at_1.html http://uvvy.com/index.php/Sandberg230507 Eudoxa will hold a seminar at Uvvy Island in the virtual world of Second Life on Wednesday May 23rd at 19h00 Central European Time (13h00 EST, 10h00 PST) Dr. Anders Sandberg, research director at Eudoxa and research assistant at the Oxford University ENHANCE Project and Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, will talk about his recent publication together with Nick Bostrom from the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University Their paper Converging Cognitive Enhancements reviews currently available technologies for cognitive enhancement and their likely near-term prospects for convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science and how cognitive enhancement is ideal for achieving convergence. The paper Converging Cognitive Enhancements is published in the Annals of the New York Academies of Science Progress in Convergence: Technologies for Human Wellbeing and edited by William Sims Bainbridge & Mihail C. Roco of the National Science Foundation. The Eudoxa think tank is based in Stockholm, Sweden. Their focus is on discussing the societal effects of emerging technologies with dynamist thoughts on experimentation. Eudoxa has published books and reports in Swedish, Danish and English. For further information please contact Eudoxa director Waldemar Ingdahl telephone +46 8 83 87 73 e-mail info at eudoxa.se and Giulio Prisco +34 610 536 144 e-mail gp at uvvy.com From russell.wallace at gmail.com Thu May 10 14:24:22 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 15:24:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Academia: Transhumanism, Transhuman and Posthumanism vs. Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <380-22007539195644562@M2W015.mail2web.com> References: <380-22007539195644562@M2W015.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705100724m42a08c7ej643d7a60a1ffe9d4@mail.gmail.com> On 5/9/07, nvitamore at austin.rr.com wrote: > > I want to thank you all for being helpful and I hope you to even be more > helpful to me. I need your support and advice -- especially now. > My advice might not be particularly useful, alas; academia is not my field of expertise. I can offer a word of encouragement, though: I think you've been doing good work, and it is appreciated. Thank you, and may your endeavors find success. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Thu May 10 15:13:10 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 08:13:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200705041707.l44H7RaO023799@ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com> <463E95B6.4040705@mac.com> Message-ID: On May 6, 2007, at 9:24 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On 07/05/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > I couldn't manage to believe that God would torment people eternally > for > one life of not managing to belief "the right stuff" or for being as > imperfect as the preachers insisted we were created or doomed to be > from > birth. It made no sense and did not square with what my budding > mysticism led me too either. > > It's funny how people assume intimate knowledge of God's > psychological states, personality, and behavioural predispositions. True but what does that have to do with it? I was being asked to both imagine such a being and believe that it was all Good and would do such at the same time. I had little choice but to do what I could to imagine it. Unless of course I just "accepted it on faith" which for most people means just mouthing the formulas they have had crammed into them. I would not believe that the universe was an utter madhouse run by the most mad being of all. - samantha > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tyleremerson at gmail.com Thu May 10 15:33:06 2007 From: tyleremerson at gmail.com (Tyler Emerson) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 08:33:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Help get the 400K SIAI matching challenge on Digg's front page In-Reply-To: <632d2cda0705100351l66ba5665n9a6505d003a5bf88@mail.gmail.com> References: <632d2cda0705100351l66ba5665n9a6505d003a5bf88@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <632d2cda0705100833q5d6d0e39tb4d2720c7011aa80@mail.gmail.com> Update: We have 74 diggs. I have been told by someone familiar with Digg that we need 250 to reach the Top 10 in Science. Please take 15 seconds to become one of the 250 people who will make this possible: http://digg.com/general_sciences/SIAI_seeks_funding_for_AI_research You can invite friends to do the same through Digg's "Spread the Word" page. Also, see the excellent list of comments at the above URL. Please consider adding your own. Best, 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 On 5/10/07, Tyler Emerson wrote: > > I just learned about an effort to get the SIAI $400,000 Matching Challenge > covered on Digg's front-page. > > See: http://digg.com/general_sciences/SIAI_seeks_funding_for_AI_research > > According to an unofficial FAQ about the Digg algorithm, news items in the > Science category must receive 70-85 Diggs within the initial 24 hours to > make it to the front-page. As of now, we have less than five hours to secure > enough votes. We need 55. It takes about 15 seconds to join Digg to digg the > item. > > If you want to help us out, please take a few seconds to digg the above > URL. Posting a positive comment will also improve the odds. > > Hundreds of individuals on these lists value SIAI, many of whom are close > friends, so the number of diggs will necessarily increase if everyone avoids > the bystander effect. Nick, Max, Natasha, James, Reason, Spike, and everyone > else who supports the Institute: please take a few seconds to digg the item. > > > Thanks everyone, > 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: From natasha at natasha.cc Thu May 10 15:49:32 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 10:49:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Anyone FedUp Besides Me? In-Reply-To: <380-22007541004333785@M2W009.mail2web.com> References: <380-22007541004333785@M2W009.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20070510102732.05355770@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Thank you all for your responses online and off line. It touches me deeply that so many of you care and repeated slam jobs on all the hard work WE did in the 1990s and the enormous press WE received during these years -- from the early 1990s (actually late 1980s) through today. Each month, I do at least one magazine interview and at documentary. I am continually answering questions for journalists on one hand and students on the other. Certainly there was some bad press in the 1990s but it does not compare to the positive press during that same time. We were covered in magazines, newspapers and televised programs throughout the world. I was thinking last night of articles on Max More and he was "the man" - the mind, talent and looks that journalists love to expose. I remember so many televised documentaries on the future of humanity, science and technology that "we" were asked to participate in and/or be interviewed for. And I remember FM-2030, Christine Peterson, Amara Graps, Fiorella Terenzi, Tanya Jones, Regina Pancake, and Linda Chamberlain, in the media and of course Eric Drexler, Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec, Tom Bell, -- so many of "us" were regarded as icons by the media. Whether or some journalists used yellow-dog journalism to spice up their articles was not so bad because we had so many positive articles in the works. And at times some were referred to as kooky, to be sure, but it is inconsequential compared to the great articles and strides we have made and getting out name on the map. So, when someone(s) continues to make commentary such as: > "I was pretty happy with the tone of the piece, and I don't > think I or we were portrayed as subcultural nuts. That kind > of coverage is far more common now than the dismissive "laugh > at the Trekkies" coverage of the 1990s." I have no problem whatsoever to say I made mistakes in the press or on TV. But I have never been a trekkie, I have never been called nuts, nor has my husband. Since most of the media at that time involved him or me, I take the above statement and the many ones similar to it that has been uttered to mock as unhealthy at best. It puts out a sordid representation of a period in time that I personally am proud to be a part of. Such commentary lacks quality of data gathering. It is short-sighted and one-sided and done to promote one position over another - one view over another - one group over another. Such reeks of the type of behavior that is used to mock and degrade people. Since we are part of this movement, it degrades all of us. Natasha At 07:43 PM 5/9/2007, you wrote: >Anyone reading the WTA and posts that continued slam jobs against early >transhumanists (ie., extopians)? > >Natasha > >-------------------------------------------------------------------- >mail2web.com ? What can On Demand Business Solutions do for you? >http://link.mail2web.com/Business/SharePoint > > > >_______________________________________________ >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: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.6.6/795 - Release Date: 5/9/2007 >3:07 PM 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: From scerir at libero.it Thu May 10 20:12:26 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 22:12:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] miraculin References: <200705100230.l4A2UGEF016319@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <000701c7933f$87d870c0$21b81f97@archimede> Miraculin is a lumpy powder, dull red in color, that results from freeze-drying the flesh of the so-called miracle [?] fruit ... test http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1151 wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculin problems http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/ From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 11 01:19:48 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 18:19:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705110120.l4B1K8Bf019678@andromeda.ziaspace.com> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins ... > ? I would not believe that the universe was an utter madhouse run by the most mad being of all. - samantha What if we realize there is no mad being running the whole thing, but that it is a madhouse universe just the same? What if we discover an alien intelligence, and find they are just as crazy as human kind? spike From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 11 02:04:34 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 19:04:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Anyone FedUp Besides Me? In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20070510102732.05355770@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: <200705110204.l4B24ePo016552@andromeda.ziaspace.com> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Natasha Vita-More ... > Certainly there was some bad press in the 1990s but it does not compare to the positive press during that same time.? We were covered in magazines, newspapers and televised programs throughout the world.? I was thinking last night of articles on Max More and he was "the man" - the mind, talent and looks that journalists love to expose... Natasha Ja. There was an article around 1996-ish in either Skeptic or Skeptical Inquirer, or possibly even Reason magazine about you and Max. It contained a boiled down version of the Extropian Principles, the old Best Do It So version as I recall. The article was mostly positive, but they couldn't resist having a bit of fun with the body-building angle. A positive review in those magazines dedicated to debunking notions is a positive thing indeed. I read the article and those principles, which reminded me so much of those marathon Friday night philosophy sessions we had back in college. I thought "I don't know from the article what kind of people are Max and Natasha, but they are sure uttering words which resonate with my soul." The internet had shown up by then, and I soon found ExI. spike From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 11 03:39:41 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 13:39:41 +1000 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200705041707.l44H7RaO023799@ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com> <463E95B6.4040705@mac.com> Message-ID: On 11/05/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > I couldn't manage to believe that God would torment people eternally > > for > > one life of not managing to belief "the right stuff" or for being as > > imperfect as the preachers insisted we were created or doomed to be from > > > > birth. It made no sense and did not square with what my budding > > mysticism led me too either. > > > > It's funny how people assume intimate knowledge of God's psychological > states, personality, and behavioural predispositions. > > > > True but what does that have to do with it? I was being asked to both imagine such a being and believe that it was all Good and would do such at the same time. I had little choice but to do what I could to imagine it. Unless of course I just "accepted it on faith" which for most people means just mouthing the formulas they have had crammed into them. I would not believe that the universe was an utter madhouse run by the most mad being of all. The interesting thing is that the problem is evil is usually taken as being a choice between a good God and no God at all, leaving out the obvious possibility for the believer (who after all comes to the table with no difficulties with the existence of supernatural beings per se) that there exists a God, but he is bad. It's yet another argument against religious belief: we'll believe it if we like it, but not if we don't like it. This is OK for belief in, say, an ideal or a political party, but not for belief in matters of fact... unless they want to say that God is not a matter of fact. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fauxever at sprynet.com Fri May 11 04:06:20 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 21:06:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] I'll Drink to That! References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac> http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55627 ... but then, I live just 3 blocks from the Gates of Hell (the first Starbucks store that opened in 1971, and which is still more or less in its original incarnation). Slurp! Olga From mbb386 at main.nc.us Fri May 11 10:46:44 2007 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 06:46:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] I'll Drink to That! In-Reply-To: <000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com> <000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <45642.72.236.102.78.1178880404.squirrel@main.nc.us> > http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55627 > > ... but then, I live just 3 blocks from the Gates of Hell (the first > Starbucks store that opened in 1971, and which is still more or less in its > original incarnation). > Good grief. People get upset by the strangest things. I mean, how seriously do you have to take some stranger's comment printed on your coffee cup? Do they think it's some kind of omen or pronouncement or great truth? It's just paper trash. Or maybe it's just the internet has given upset people a wider audience so they go for it. Regards, MB - who has never set foot inside a Starbucks store and doesn't know where one is locally. From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 11 12:49:33 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 08:49:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] I'll Drink to That! In-Reply-To: <45642.72.236.102.78.1178880404.squirrel@main.nc.us> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com> <000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac> <45642.72.236.102.78.1178880404.squirrel@main.nc.us> Message-ID: <62c14240705110549j11289a80xe9a09da329e4b838@mail.gmail.com> On 5/11/07, MB wrote: > > http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55627 > Good grief. People get upset by the strangest things. I mean, how seriously do you > have to take some stranger's comment printed on your coffee cup? Do they think it's > some kind of omen or pronouncement or great truth? It's just paper trash. > > Or maybe it's just the internet has given upset people a wider audience so they go > for it. Maybe we should attack McDonalds for the multi-lingual "I'm lovin' it" message written on their cups? While I have consumed beverages from McDonalds, I would not go so far as to exclaim that I am in fact, "Lovin' It" - therefore I feel this cup may inadvertantly misrepresent my apathy to casual observers. We'll have to play down the fact that casual observers are generally so concerned with their own life's drama(s) they they barely acknowledge my existance anyway. If one's faith (or lack of faith) can be subverted by text printed on a coffee cup, then maybe they shouldn't be visiting so memetically dangerous a place as a coffee shop? Imagine if artists and poets were there with actual ideas to express. Clearly those roots should be antiseptically burned away from Starbucks to leave only the sterile money grubbing super store American expect. If stories like these represent various flavors of humanity, then I have a much better appreciation for the term "post-human" as the state which has willed away such nonsensical concerns. From fauxever at sprynet.com Fri May 11 16:21:13 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 09:21:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] I'll Drink to That! References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com><000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac> <45642.72.236.102.78.1178880404.squirrel@main.nc.us> Message-ID: <004001c793e8$69fb2170$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "MB" To: "ExI chat list" >> http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55627 >> > Good grief. People get upset by the strangest things. I mean, how > seriously do you have to take some stranger's comment printed on your > coffee cup? Do they think it's some kind of omen or pronouncement or great > truth? It's just paper trash. In the United States, the omnibus is driven by superstition (and that's one of the main reasons 99.99% of politicians in the United States have to give the impression that, yes, they believe in "god." Otherwise, they are considered unelectable.) > MB - who has never set foot inside a Starbucks store and doesn't know > where one is locally. Tsk, tsk ... Moon Man! :) From jonkc at att.net Fri May 11 17:32:14 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 13:32:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] I'll Drink to That!. References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com><000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac><45642.72.236.102.78.1178880404.squirrel@main.nc.us> <004001c793e8$69fb2170$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <005c01c793f2$5fb366f0$3a094e0c@MyComputer> "Olga Bourlin" > 99.99% of politicians in the United States have to give > the impression that, yes, they believe in "god." Otherwise, they are > considered unelectable. A few month ago a member of the US House of Representatives, Pete Stark, said he does not believe in God. It will be interesting to see if he's reelected. John K Clark From bkdelong at pobox.com Fri May 11 19:27:03 2007 From: bkdelong at pobox.com (B.K. DeLong) Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 15:27:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] BrainStream: Self-Repairing Networked, Spiderbot Scout Collective Message-ID: Post of a raw, unorganized, unformatted "BrainStream" of autonomous, self-repairing, spider-like robotic scouts..... http://bkdelong.livejournal.com/186655.html Comments, suggestions and thoughts welcome. -- B.K. DeLong (K3GRN) bkdelong at pobox.com +1.617.797.8471 http://www.wkdelong.org Son. http://www.ianetsec.com Work. http://www.bostonredcross.org Volunteer. http://www.carolingia.eastkingdom.org Service. http://bkdelong.livejournal.com Play. PGP Fingerprint: 38D4 D4D4 5819 8667 DFD5 A62D AF61 15FF 297D 67FE FOAF: http://foaf.brain-stream.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fauxever at sprynet.com Fri May 11 19:34:02 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 12:34:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] I'll Drink to That!. References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com><000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac><45642.72.236.102.78.1178880404.squirrel@main.nc.us><004001c793e8$69fb2170$6501a8c0@brainiac> <005c01c793f2$5fb366f0$3a094e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <001201c79403$552ca370$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "John K Clark" To: "ExI chat list" > "Olga Bourlin" >> 99.99% of politicians in the United States ... > A few month ago a member of the US House of Representatives, Pete Stark, > said he does not believe in God. It will be interesting to see if he's > reelected. Agree. (And Stark was the main reason why I didn't write "100% of politicians" - which is a sad testament in itself, but perhaps as there have been bestsellers critical of religiosity recently - namely, by authors Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens - maybe this will begin to change. Yep, I'm naive - especially about the many things I don't understand. Olga From kevin.osborne at gmail.com Sat May 12 08:08:39 2007 From: kevin.osborne at gmail.com (kevin.osborne) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 18:08:39 +1000 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto Message-ID: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> Sick of the brain-curdling slowness of socio-technological progress? Think existential risk is just a plain lack of cojones? Like blowing shit up? Then the Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto is for you. 1. Fuck the state. Fuck the leadership. Fuck 'consensus'. It's our future they are micromanaging to death with their overcautiousness, and it's time to start shrugging off their anachronistic control mechanisms and seizing our destiny before it dies by committee. Nation-states and the current socio-economic model are toast after the nano-revolution anyway; lets start acting like the hyperbeings we will one day be. The Singularity will confer unheralded power to those who have the will to grasp it - are you ready to dump the baggage? 2. Screw the sheep. Chances are you're smarter than everyone else already. If you're reading a transhumanist feed, you're already kind of special. Soon enough though, you can be more. Much more. The simpering idiots and halfwits who dominate the zeitgeist of our society are only going to get yet more stupid as we get smarter. If we want to be H+, we will be. Our soon-to-be subhuman cohorts are smug and self satisfied, thinking they are wonderful human beings while they lay waste to our potential with their bovine lack of horizon, paucity of ideas and lack of bloodymindedness. 3. Eat the future. Get hungry. Take it, it's yours. Want to gene-splice yourself? Go ahead. Want to engineer a nano-horde? Go ahead. Embryonic stem cells? Eat the goddamn fetus with bacon on toast. Harvest a botnet. Sequence a meta-virus. Synthesize a nootropic. Chip yourself, augment yourself, mainline yourself, digitize yourself, clone yourself. 4. Unfriendly AI? You fricken bet. Bring on the arms race. If we can't live forever, maybe our nasty little friend here can. Metasploit the net. All your megahurtz will belong to us. Borg-in' ain't easy. 5. Screw DDoS, how about we just pwn your servers with AK47's and glycerin. Send big brother dark. Take down the camera network. Go wireless, go ad-hoc, steal every channel you can OFDM. Root DNS? No way. Route via P2P. Swarm, baby, swarm. Self-organise. Latch on, leech, and suck like a parasite. 6. Slavery didn't die without a whimper. The French Revolution didn't happen without the guillotine. Occupying powers generally need to be fed bullets until they leave. Burn flags. Bomb monuments. Assassinate. 7. This ain't the 'Wiggles' manifesto here. If you want change, make it happen. Go nasty, go early and go often. Punch 'em square in the face, dare them to retaliate. Outgunned? throw the first punch, below the belt, while their back is turned. Dominate the weak. Take what you want. Expand voraciously. Eat your young. You've heard the transhumanist leaders and their oh-so-softly approach. They can have their patronage, consideration and kindness. We are under no such obligations. We do not have to play by their rules. They can take their toys and go home. We are here, in the dark, growing and yearning. It is our future too. We will not be controlled. We will not be instructed. We will learn, we will siphon, we will steal. We will transcend. Try and stop us at your peril. From dagonweb at gmail.com Sat May 12 08:48:32 2007 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 10:48:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Original, highly inspiring but I aint ready to go Hitler on the world just yet. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 12 17:08:27 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 12:08:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] GM food allowed in Oz Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070512120549.022a1840@satx.rr.com> GM food in Victorian shops soon Jason Koutsoukis May 13, 2007 VICTORIA is set to lift its ban on planting genetically modified food crops as early as February next year, paving the way for a rush of new food varieties on supermarket shelves. Under pressure from the Federal Government and farm groups, the Bracks Government is preparing to scrap the moratorium that stops farmers using genetically modified products. Other states are expected to follow Victoria's lead, which GM supporters predict could cause a surge in agricultural productivity, with farmers able to plant crops resistant to weeds, insects and salinity and that need less water. Federal Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran has told The Sunday Age it is time for Australia to move on. "I strongly believe in the environmental and economic benefits of GM crops," Mr McGauran said. "Farmers have much to gain, particularly in times of drought, from growing GM crops such as wheat and canola that use less water and herbicides than conventional crops," he said. "Our farmers will endure significantly higher costs, for no greater return ? and consume more water than necessary ? if they are prevented from adopting GM technology. "But for farmers to benefit, Victoria must lift its moratorium on GM crops." Sources close to Premier Steve Bracks say the government is satisfied there is almost zero risk associated with GM crops and the ban "will be allowed to expire next year". Victorian Agriculture Minister Joe Helper told The Sunday Age that the moratorium would expire on 29 February next year and signalled publicly for the first time that the Government had an open mind when it came to genetically modified crops. "In the coming months, as the end of the moratorium approaches, the Government will be consulting widely with industry groups and the community," Mr Helper said. "The federal Office of Gene Technology Regulator is responsible for the regulation of human and environmental-health issues, while the states have responsibility for marketing and production issues. "Issues in Victoria are centred on what impact the use of the technology would have on our trade markets, which requires a careful and considered approach," he said. "The Bracks Government continues to support research that assists our farmers to remain competitive in international markets." No state allows the planting of any GM food crops for commercial purposes, although NSW and Queensland do allow the planting of GM cotton. Victoria, also, allows the commercial cultivation of genetically modified carnations. But Australian scientists working under the auspices of the CSIRO and the Grains Research and Development Corporation are involved in research into ways to genetically modify plants to produce different effects. These include resistance to drought and implanting extra health benefits, such as the essential fatty acid Omega 3, into plant varieties. The federal Minister for Trade, Warren Truss, labelled the state bans on genetically modified crops as "idiotic" and said there was "absolutely no danger to any of Australia's export markets if we allowed GM crops". "It's often been argued by the opponents of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) that somehow or other our trade will be disadvantaged and it is nonsense," Mr Truss said. "We were told that if we steer clear of GM crops there will be premiums and bonuses for our products around the world, but those premiums simply do not exist. It's a myth. They have never eventuated. "Canada, the major exporter of GM canola, continues to increase market share." Mr Truss said that while Australian farmers were being forced to stand still, "we are being left behind by farmers in India, China and North America who are enthusiastically grabbing this new technology". National Farmers Federation chief executive Ben Fargher strongly backed the widespread introduction of GM crops. "The integration of GM into our production systems could yield a variety of benefits and reduced pesticide and herbicide use and increase water use efficiency, drought resistance and increase crop yields," Mr Fargher said. "We're very focused on the potential benefits and on the issue of choice for farmers over whether they want to use the technology or not. "The regulatory system we have through the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator is recognised as one of the most stringent in the world." Greenpeace Australia spokeswoman Louise Sales said introducing GM crops posed huge dangers and Greenpeace did not support any loosening of the moratorium. From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sat May 12 17:07:17 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 11:07:17 -0600 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4645F445.1080802@comcast.net> Yeeaaayy Kevin, I here you!! Let's do this! I've been passively tolerating these primitive religious God fearing Neanderthals for long enough. My family, my friends, my bishop, the prophet, and everyone have all been preaching go softly, as sheep, following what they say, into that good night, and you will receive your many wives in a "glorious heaven". All the time feeding us their blatantly faithless and hopeless lies, never realizing what should be blatantly obvious, that their so-called "heaven" is nothing more than an immoral eternal damnation, isolation, and rotting in hell, or the grave while everyone worships some so called "God" that is hiding from us and is completely impotent over evil and isolation. Likely because of my passivity and attempted toleration and eternal love, they are now blinding my wife and children and turning them against the truth, and convincing them they too want to choose rotting in the grave and eternal damnation in hell over eternal life in a true heaven. Who put these irrational lying twisted bastards in charge, so they can have such a terrible destructive and damning influence over our wives and children? Who is letting them stay in charge? How can we tolerate such heinous situations, leading so many of our loved ones to hell and to choose worshipping and wallowing in misery and to rot in the grave, any longer? But I warn you, I have a slightly different point of view about some of what you say. (all transhumanists seem to have many different points of view right? As it should be! And I believe THAT has been our problem! But finally maybe no longer?) I still love my parents, family, and friends, and even the prophet, despite their being so under the hypnotic influence of such devilishly twisted primitive understandable teachings. I get physically ill and worse when I am not with and helping any of them. I have faith that they too will all eventually see the rational light. Attempting to destroy them, trying to hide from the Cameras like they do, just makes us as bad, twisted, and faithless as them ultimately giving them all the power just like they hope occurs (and as they have been prophesying for so long). I believe we can do so much more than all they have been prophesying for so long. I believe there is a way that will hurt them in a much more powerful way than some of the demoralizing stuff you are talking about and that way might be something like the Canonizer (http://test.canonizer.com not quite yet fully developed). I believe something like this can finally unite all of us, in our now glories and powerful diversity, under those that truly deserve to be our leaders, the ones with a true rational and hopeful vision for the future, those that will surely quickly demonstrate (rationally and scientifically) they are the ones that should be trusted to lead us (not as sheep, but as a powerful communicating network full of light that will quickly remove them from power if they ever screw up in any way.) into a gloriously powerful future. Today's immoral leaders now leading society to chose isolation and rotting in the grave over eternal life are now isolated and hiding from the cameras at the top of their hierarchies. Primitively, due to our inability to communicate, they have been almost untouchable except by extremely destructive wars, only to occasionally put someone else in charge at the top which also is corrupted absolutely by such absolute dark power. But I believe with the right tools and light this hellishly immoral situation will survive no longer. For now we have the internet and can finally communicate and you can clearly see the twisted immoral leaders shaking in their boots perched at the top of their once invulnerable dark hierarchies. I invite you to help out and start "canonizing" your reasons, arguments, methods, strategies and specification of who are the evil ones that need to be taken down at http://test.canonizer.com, so we can all unite and start to shine the light of shame on the twisted, irrational, leaders hiding at the top of their dark hierarchical pyramids, and finally put them down where they belong where they can no longer lead our wives and our children, as sheep, into that rotting isolated hell that is the grave. What do ye chose? Worshiping and wallowing in misery, isolation, impotence against evil, rotting in the grave? Or do ye choose eternal life and a true hope that we can easily soon completely overcome isolation and evil? Help the world open their blind eyes. Let's swarm the world and let them all know and see all of our choices. Brent Allsop What is the gospel according to you? Everyone want so to Know! http://test.canonizer.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparkle_robot at yahoo.com Sat May 12 16:56:52 2007 From: sparkle_robot at yahoo.com (Anne Corwin) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 09:56:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <501771.47201.qm@web56505.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Um, is this supposed to be some kind of joke? I don't think I want to live in a future where grandiose sociopathy is the norm... --------------------------------- Yahoo! oneSearch: Finally, mobile search that gives answers, not web links. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Sat May 12 17:51:50 2007 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 19:51:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <501771.47201.qm@web56505.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> <501771.47201.qm@web56505.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Well you already live in a present where it is. Um, is this supposed to be some kind of joke? I don't think I want to live > in a future where grandiose sociopathy is the norm... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Sat May 12 18:10:39 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 11:10:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <501771.47201.qm@web56505.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200705121825.l4CIPqxv011087@andromeda.ziaspace.com> ________________________________________ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anne Corwin Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 9:57 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto >Um, is this supposed to be some kind of joke?? Yes. >I don't think I want to live in a future where grandiose sociopathy is the norm... Me neither. From rpwl at lightlink.com Sat May 12 18:11:13 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 14:11:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <46460341.2040904@lightlink.com> I see a few problems with this: 1) If it is a joke, it is no joke. 2) Even if it were a good idea, it would not be a good idea. 3) It is not a good idea. A little more detail on (3), in case you needed it. The strategy of "I'm not getting my way, and I cannot even see any way to get my way, so I will smash something, because at least smashing something will make me feel better" is a subhuman tendency. Doesn't actually work. Richard Loosemore. kevin.osborne wrote: > Sick of the brain-curdling slowness of socio-technological progress? > Think existential risk is just a plain lack of cojones? > Like blowing shit up? > > Then the Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto is for you. > > 1. Fuck the state. Fuck the leadership. Fuck 'consensus'. It's our > future they are micromanaging to death with their overcautiousness, > and it's time to start shrugging off their anachronistic control > mechanisms and seizing our destiny before it dies by committee. > Nation-states and the current socio-economic model are toast after the > nano-revolution anyway; lets start acting like the hyperbeings we will > one day be. The Singularity will confer unheralded power to those who > have the will to grasp it - are you ready to dump the baggage? > > 2. Screw the sheep. Chances are you're smarter than everyone else > already. If you're reading a transhumanist feed, you're already kind > of special. Soon enough though, you can be more. Much more. The > simpering idiots and halfwits who dominate the zeitgeist of our > society are only going to get yet more stupid as we get smarter. If we > want to be H+, we will be. Our soon-to-be subhuman cohorts are smug > and self satisfied, thinking they are wonderful human beings while > they lay waste to our potential with their bovine lack of horizon, > paucity of ideas and lack of bloodymindedness. > > 3. Eat the future. Get hungry. Take it, it's yours. Want to > gene-splice yourself? Go ahead. Want to engineer a nano-horde? Go > ahead. Embryonic stem cells? Eat the goddamn fetus with bacon on > toast. Harvest a botnet. Sequence a meta-virus. Synthesize a > nootropic. Chip yourself, augment yourself, mainline yourself, > digitize yourself, clone yourself. > > 4. Unfriendly AI? You fricken bet. Bring on the arms race. If we can't > live forever, maybe our nasty little friend here can. Metasploit the > net. All your megahurtz will belong to us. Borg-in' ain't easy. > > 5. Screw DDoS, how about we just pwn your servers with AK47's and > glycerin. Send big brother dark. Take down the camera network. Go > wireless, go ad-hoc, steal every channel you can OFDM. Root DNS? No > way. Route via P2P. Swarm, baby, swarm. Self-organise. Latch on, > leech, and suck like a parasite. > > 6. Slavery didn't die without a whimper. The French Revolution didn't > happen without the guillotine. Occupying powers generally need to be > fed bullets until they leave. Burn flags. Bomb monuments. Assassinate. > > 7. This ain't the 'Wiggles' manifesto here. If you want change, make > it happen. Go nasty, go early and go often. Punch 'em square in the > face, dare them to retaliate. Outgunned? throw the first punch, below > the belt, while their back is turned. Dominate the weak. Take what you > want. Expand voraciously. Eat your young. You've heard the > transhumanist leaders and their oh-so-softly approach. They can have > their patronage, consideration and kindness. We are under no such > obligations. We do not have to play by their rules. They can take > their toys and go home. We are here, in the dark, growing and > yearning. It is our future too. We will not be controlled. We will not > be instructed. We will learn, we will siphon, we will steal. We will > transcend. Try and stop us at your peril. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 12 18:17:19 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 11:17:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What Will Be Interesting in the Far Future Message-ID: <009001c794c2$71cac970$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> It's a wonderful feature of human life to be interested in something. Anything, actually. In what will the reigning intelligences of 10,000 A.D. be interested? We abbreviate Kolmogorov Complexity to KC. Note that a deep drive of highly cognitive life on Earth at this time (e.g. human beings) is to discern patterns, and moreover to delight in such discovery. From backyard gossip to the profoundest scientific discoveries, intelligent life as we know it revels in understanding. We can probably claim that such discoveries of truth, or patterns, or understanding, is data compression, or, in other words, amount to an apparent reduction of KC. Discovering a pattern in a long string of 1's and 0's, to take the archetypical example, is to achieve data compression of that string, and it can be shown that except for extremely simple strings (we mean data), an intelligence can never know for sure that the true KC has really been identified---it may simply be that the apparently random data has not yet been "broken" in the cryptographic sense, and even then may possibly be someday compressed even further. What is "interesting" to an entity will have long, long ago been up to the entity to decide. Even today we are surely only decades or at worst centuries away from owning the capability of turning the "interesting knob" up or down on anything that we please. But let's suppose that those entities *do* engage in something analogous to a quest for knowledge, and that in some sense they find it "interesting". I'll now speculate on what that might mean. In 10,000 A.D. the ruling entities over some amount of physical space could still be interested in science. Perhaps everything from quantum computing to baby black holes could provide opportunities for unlimited exploration. We really can't even guess. Mathematics, however, is provably infinite in the sense that there will always be patterns as yet undiscovered even among something so fundamental as the positive integers. Darwinian survival, however, dictates that the discovery of yet more advanced ways to self-organize, so as to be able to deploy at the boundaries of an entity effective defenses against alien assimilation will be "interesting", (however strange will be whatever is then meant by "alien", and maybe by "boundaries" or "entities"). Right now for us, however, it is more intriguing to posit that not all of those entities' activities will be confined to attempts to survive. We may succeed in passing on to our mind children the high valuation of experience itself. If so---and they can afford that luxury---then in addition to mathematics there should also exist art and philosophy. We might suppose, along these lines, that "spiritual reorganization" would also be a way to characterize their experiences and their search for new experiences. Getting back to a search for knowledge, however, consider that at any time t an entity E(t) (with time on its hands, as just explained) will be interested in data compression. A very large amount of known data or newly discovered data may or may not have low enough KC for E(t) to be able to make progress in deciphering it (at that time, of course). (Some kinds of data will, a priori, have quite low chances of containing real patterns, i.e., will a-priori be judged to be highly and irreducibly random, and will not command attention. A very non-random source of data, I would however suggest, would be *history*: especially the history of the development of a particular entity E(t) as it looks for clues to advance its own reorganization and its own search for more "satisfying" experiences.) But clearly E(t), that is, entity E at time t, is in the most interesting case still growing, still advancing. The Busy Beaver problem in mathematics gives some concrete indication of why and how. A quick look at the tables in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_beaver hints at what might be possible by the addition of a single "neuron" to E. Assuming, though, that by 10,000 A.D. entities have reached material constraints ---say that there is only a finite amount of matter or energy within the grasp of E---the capability to reach more "states" of, for example, enhanced spirituality, or more optimal number crunching, or better algorithms in general, will depend solely on internal reorganization. But apparently, still not to worry! There are just *so* many possible internal states. Conclusion: E(t) will find *interesting* in terms of new knowledge (for knowledge's sake) breakthroughs in data compression made possible at time t with E's capabilities at time t. That is, if a somewhat structured or entirely random data set has relatively low KC, and E is able to discover that fact, then the data set or "theorem" will be interesting. Lee From sjatkins at mac.com Sat May 12 21:01:32 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 14:01:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> Many of us preach freedom to choose the future that we want, freedom to implement it, to augment ourselves and so on. Some teach that the Way is to sell transhumanism to the masses and have them demand it of the State or simply have the State be ultimate all controlling elite that mandates it "for our own good". Others, like myself, believe that only in preserving sufficient freedom from the ever-increasing control of the State can the elite, the fore-runners possibly have room to succeed. But this view does not require blowing sh*t up nor does it require an attitude of contempt to humanity at large. It may require some level of violence sometime to fight the loss of freedom. But not violence for the hell of it as this piece seems to advocate. Violence is the last resort when all other means to preserve freedom to live and pursue one's goals have been exhausted. Much can and should be done imho at the level if you will of cyber-anarchy, using technology to step beyond the control of the State to the degree possible and foreseeably necessary. The day may come where the dark nets and underground economies are all that stands between us and the oblivion of total subservience to the State and collapse of much we take for granted. - samantha kevin.osborne wrote: > Sick of the brain-curdling slowness of socio-technological progress? > Think existential risk is just a plain lack of cojones? > Like blowing shit up? > > Then the Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto is for you. > > 1. Fuck the state. Fuck the leadership. Fuck 'consensus'. It's our > future they are micromanaging to death with their overcautiousness, > and it's time to start shrugging off their anachronistic control > mechanisms and seizing our destiny before it dies by committee. > Nation-states and the current socio-economic model are toast after the > nano-revolution anyway; lets start acting like the hyperbeings we will > one day be. The Singularity will confer unheralded power to those who > have the will to grasp it - are you ready to dump the baggage? > > 2. Screw the sheep. Chances are you're smarter than everyone else > already. If you're reading a transhumanist feed, you're already kind > of special. Soon enough though, you can be more. Much more. The > simpering idiots and halfwits who dominate the zeitgeist of our > society are only going to get yet more stupid as we get smarter. If we > want to be H+, we will be. Our soon-to-be subhuman cohorts are smug > and self satisfied, thinking they are wonderful human beings while > they lay waste to our potential with their bovine lack of horizon, > paucity of ideas and lack of bloodymindedness. > > 3. Eat the future. Get hungry. Take it, it's yours. Want to > gene-splice yourself? Go ahead. Want to engineer a nano-horde? Go > ahead. Embryonic stem cells? Eat the goddamn fetus with bacon on > toast. Harvest a botnet. Sequence a meta-virus. Synthesize a > nootropic. Chip yourself, augment yourself, mainline yourself, > digitize yourself, clone yourself. > > 4. Unfriendly AI? You fricken bet. Bring on the arms race. If we can't > live forever, maybe our nasty little friend here can. Metasploit the > net. All your megahurtz will belong to us. Borg-in' ain't easy. > > 5. Screw DDoS, how about we just pwn your servers with AK47's and > glycerin. Send big brother dark. Take down the camera network. Go > wireless, go ad-hoc, steal every channel you can OFDM. Root DNS? No > way. Route via P2P. Swarm, baby, swarm. Self-organise. Latch on, > leech, and suck like a parasite. > > 6. Slavery didn't die without a whimper. The French Revolution didn't > happen without the guillotine. Occupying powers generally need to be > fed bullets until they leave. Burn flags. Bomb monuments. Assassinate. > > 7. This ain't the 'Wiggles' manifesto here. If you want change, make > it happen. Go nasty, go early and go often. Punch 'em square in the > face, dare them to retaliate. Outgunned? throw the first punch, below > the belt, while their back is turned. Dominate the weak. Take what you > want. Expand voraciously. Eat your young. You've heard the > transhumanist leaders and their oh-so-softly approach. They can have > their patronage, consideration and kindness. We are under no such > obligations. We do not have to play by their rules. They can take > their toys and go home. We are here, in the dark, growing and > yearning. It is our future too. We will not be controlled. We will not > be instructed. We will learn, we will siphon, we will steal. We will > transcend. Try and stop us at your peril. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 12 21:08:52 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 14:08:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto References: <200705121825.l4CIPqxv011087@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <205801c794da$41e75710$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Spike affirms > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anne Corwin > >>Um, is this supposed to be some kind of joke? > > Yes. > >>I don't think I want to live in a future where grandiose sociopathy is the > norm... > > Me neither. It's a bit paradoxical (at least I can't spot the pattern). On the one hand, humor usually *requires* some little kernel of truth, n'est pas? Yet this particularly stupid piece doesn't at all qualify as humor because it does sprinkle here and there a few quite serious positions that many Extropians do endorse. In all likelihood, it's just an anti-Extropian hit piece. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 12 21:18:16 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 14:18:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] I'll Drink to That! References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com> <000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <205901c794db$77a6fe90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Olga points out > http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55627 and five or so posters chimed in with her saying how ridiculous the protests were. Suddenly it became not-quite-so-clear to me when I read the part of the article where a critic suggested # "Paleeze! Isn't it funny how every thing is considered hate speech unless it's directed at the Christian God? Starbucks should try putting a derogatory remark about the Muslims [or] Allah and see what kind of response they get." Ahem---now *clearly* Starbucks can *never* go the Salman Rushdie route, and I could easily think of ten things---all of them discussed here---that also could *never* go on a Starbucks Cup. Oh, oh! I better be very very very very clear about what I am saying. I am *not* criticizing Starbucks at all! And of course I am not calling for any kind of censorship. What I am doing is calling attention to a facile double-standard, and asking those who *do* have it all figured out just what they themselves would allow on their cups and what they would not. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 12 21:26:59 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 14:26:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] I'll Drink to That! Message-ID: <206201c794dc$f70a45b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Oh! I just figured out an answer to my own question! How silly. Just now I was > asking those who *do* have it all figured out just > what they themselves would allow on their cups and > what they would not [were they Starbucks] It's simple! What a dunce I've been! Here is the principle: You permit any group or belief to be disparaged or ridiculed only so long as those offended are too civilized to retaliate barbarously. So... let's see.... just what message do you think that *really* sends to, say, Christian fundamentalists? Or sends to anyone who envies those who have immunity from ridicule? Lee ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 2:18 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] I'll Drink to That! > Olga points out > >> http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55627 > > and five or so posters chimed in with her saying how ridiculous > the protests were. > > Suddenly it became not-quite-so-clear to me when I read > the part of the article where a critic suggested > > # "Paleeze! Isn't it funny how every thing is considered hate > speech unless it's directed at the Christian God? Starbucks > should try putting a derogatory remark about the Muslims > [or] Allah and see what kind of response they get." > > > Ahem---now *clearly* Starbucks can *never* go the Salman > Rushdie route, and I could easily think of ten things---all of > them discussed here---that also could *never* go on a Starbucks > Cup. > > Oh, oh! I better be very very very very clear about what I am > saying. I am *not* criticizing Starbucks at all! And of course > I am not calling for any kind of censorship. What I am doing > is calling attention to a facile double-standard, and asking those > who *do* have it all figured out just what they themselves > would allow on their cups and what they would not. > > Lee From neptune at superlink.net Sat May 12 21:05:31 2007 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 17:05:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com><501771.47201.qm@web56505.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <003c01c794d9$47935340$31893cd1@pavilion> It's not the norm today. It's just influential -- and pretty much has been for centuries. There never seems to be a shortage of people who want to violenty remake the world into a better place -- no matter how much blood must be spilled to do so. And this specific view, as applied to transhumanism, seems to have already been labeled by Bruce Sterling: Cataclystics. Regards, Dan From: Dagon Gmail To: ExI chat list Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 1:51 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto Well you already live in a present where it is. Um, is this supposed to be some kind of joke? I don't think I want to live in a future where grandiose sociopathy is the norm... _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nanogirl at halcyon.com Sat May 12 23:17:11 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 16:17:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Important question - need your advice References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com> <000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <004f01c794eb$ad39a4d0$0200a8c0@Nano> Hello everyone, I have some questions that I thought some of you might be able to answer. Okay if I am set up as a company (that can't change either), and I am beginning a project that I will need money to create, (but hopefully later will make sales) what are my legal ways of obtaining money to get the project started. Is it legal to get funding from individuals and other groups if I am a company, or is that only for non profits? Do you guys know what my options are or how I can go about getting money to start a project that is under a registered company? I am not being 'hired' but the content of my project may be of interest to people, companies, and non profits that are close to me. That's why I had been thinking I could ask, but I don't know if as a company that is possible, is there a way? Any advice and information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fauxever at sprynet.com Sat May 12 23:14:33 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 16:14:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] I'll Drink to That! References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com><000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac> <205901c794db$77a6fe90$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <002401c794eb$4dd68bc0$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 2:18 PM > > Ahem---now *clearly* Starbucks can *never* go the Salman Rushdie route, > and I could easily think of ten things---all of them discussed here---that > also could *never* go on a Starbucks Cup. Oh, I agree - I can think of a few things myself. White privilege, for instance ... it's one of the biggies IMO. Observe how not all that long ago this - see link below - was considered a "milestone" (yes, Ron Brown was the little boy in the ad ... Clinton't Ron Brown - the very same): http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/business/06boyd.html?ex=1179028800&en=e98e3b0fbf4185c0&ei=5099&partner=TOPIXNEWS However, there are other things, too - and, yes, "all of them discussed here," as you say ... I completely agree with that. Olga From sti at pooq.com Sun May 13 01:01:04 2007 From: sti at pooq.com (Stirling Westrup) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 21:01:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Important question - need your advice In-Reply-To: <004f01c794eb$ad39a4d0$0200a8c0@Nano> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com> <000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac> <004f01c794eb$ad39a4d0$0200a8c0@Nano> Message-ID: <46466350.10007@pooq.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Gina Miller wrote: > Hello everyone, I have some questions that I thought some of you might be able to answer. Okay if I am set up as a company (that can't change either), and I am beginning a project that I will need money to create, (but hopefully later will make sales) what are my legal ways of obtaining money to get the project started. Is it legal to get funding from individuals and other groups if I am a company, or is that only for non profits? Do you guys know what my options are or how I can go about getting money to start a project that is under a registered company? I am not being 'hired' but the content of my project may be of interest to people, companies, and non profits that are close to me. That's why I had been thinking I could ask, but I don't know if as a company that is possible, is there a way? Any advice and information would be greatly appreciated. > My experiences are Canadian, so your laws may well differ. When I (and a few others) started up Strategy First many years ago, we went to everyone we could think of that might be interested and asked them to invest some minor amount ($25 - $1000, basically whatever we thought we could get). Since we weren't even incorporated yet, just registered, we wrote receipts that said it was a loan to the company. We used that money to pay for phone calls and correspondence with bigger investors. (This wasn't my department, so I'm a bit vague on how we did it.) When we had secured sufficient money, we hired a lawyer that set up a share system, and then we offered all our creditors the option of being repaid in shares. Since they had been told this was the plan when first approached, they all agreed. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGRmNK5dZZEoPlyIURAoYOAJ9caE7+j8fO54G34RzgdG626/5wSACeKVMO mFsfTGrMxjPrFWINjFvNvXk= =re/A -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From andres at neuralgrid.net Sun May 13 02:38:39 2007 From: andres at neuralgrid.net (Andres Colon) Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 22:38:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > It's our future they are micromanaging to death with their overcautiousness We've achieved this level of order and we can all help make it better. If the laws aren't leading to the future you want, then be proactive in a civilized way, speak to congress and do more. > Screw the sheep. Chances are you're smarter than everyone else already. Just because a person has opened their eyes to their own transhuman future does not mean they're above anybody else. An immortal being has no more value than a fly from a universal perspective. Both can evolve. Both have potential. Neither should be erradicated by another for thinking it is inferior. > Occupying powers generally need to be fed bullets until they leave. Burn flags. Bomb monuments. Assassinate. Wrong. Remember Ghandi? The world has evolved. Get some Morals. Keep up with the pace. > If you want change, make it happen. Go nasty, go early and go often. Punch 'em square in the face, dare them to retaliate. Senseless violence. > Outgunned? throw the first punch, below the belt, while their back is turned. Dominate the weak. Take what you want. Expand voraciously. Eat your young. De-evolution of consciousness. You will regret this. We should not only seek to become better life-forms, we should seek to become better persons as well, we do not want to remain as savage and as irrational as we are. We must progress. I do not agree with this manifesto. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dagonweb at gmail.com Sun May 13 07:00:13 2007 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 09:00:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: The "transhuman terrorist manifesto" is NOT condoned by any transhumanist I know and is NOT to be quoted by media. It is so silly it is regarded by a joke by most transhumanists and a bad joke. Any media agency using this manifesto is doing some lousy journalism. On 5/13/07, Andres Colon wrote: > > > > It's our future they are micromanaging to death with their > overcautiousness > > We've achieved this level of order and we can all help make it better. If > the laws aren't leading to the future you want, then be proactive in a > civilized way, speak to congress and do more. > > > Screw the sheep. Chances are you're smarter than everyone else already. > Just because a person has opened their eyes to their own transhuman future > does not mean they're above anybody else. An immortal being has no more > value than a fly from a universal perspective. Both can evolve. Both have > potential. Neither should be erradicated by another for thinking it is > inferior. > > > > Occupying powers generally need to be fed bullets until they leave. Burn > flags. Bomb monuments. Assassinate. > Wrong. Remember Ghandi? The world has evolved. Get some Morals. Keep up > with the pace. > > > If you want change, make it happen. Go nasty, go early and go often. > Punch 'em square in the face, dare them to retaliate. > Senseless violence. > > > Outgunned? throw the first punch, below the belt, while their back is > turned. Dominate the weak. Take what you want. Expand voraciously. Eat your > young. > > De-evolution of consciousness. You will regret this. > > > We should not only seek to become better life-forms, we should seek to > become better persons as well, we do not want to remain as savage and as > irrational as we are. We must progress. > > I do not agree with this manifesto. > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From nanogirl at halcyon.com Sun May 13 07:26:23 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 00:26:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Important question - need your advice References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com> <000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac><004f01c794eb$ad39a4d0$0200a8c0@Nano> <46466350.10007@pooq.com> Message-ID: <012a01c79530$61d6bba0$0200a8c0@Nano> Perhaps I need to clarify a little I am registered and have been set up this way for years now, but I don't plan on any investors or loans etc. What I'm trying to figure out is if it is legal for me to ask for funding to get a particular project started? I know that non profits ask people for financial support, but is that allowed for a company? Am I allowed to get what amounts to donations or raise funds to develop a particular project that will later go to sale (if it has a theme that is supported by the funders?). I am not actually hired by anyone. And I am not asking for investors. Can I get support for a project? I really need some help trying to figure this out! Thank you, Gina Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." ----- Original Message ----- From: Stirling Westrup To: ExI chat list Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 6:01 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Important question - need your advice -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Gina Miller wrote: > Hello everyone, I have some questions that I thought some of you might be able to answer. Okay if I am set up as a company (that can't change either), and I am beginning a project that I will need money to create, (but hopefully later will make sales) what are my legal ways of obtaining money to get the project started. Is it legal to get funding from individuals and other groups if I am a company, or is that only for non profits? Do you guys know what my options are or how I can go about getting money to start a project that is under a registered company? I am not being 'hired' but the content of my project may be of interest to people, companies, and non profits that are close to me. That's why I had been thinking I could ask, but I don't know if as a company that is possible, is there a way? Any advice and information would be greatly appreciated. > My experiences are Canadian, so your laws may well differ. When I (and a few others) started up Strategy First many years ago, we went to everyone we could think of that might be interested and asked them to invest some minor amount ($25 - $1000, basically whatever we thought we could get). Since we weren't even incorporated yet, just registered, we wrote receipts that said it was a loan to the company. We used that money to pay for phone calls and correspondence with bigger investors. (This wasn't my department, so I'm a bit vague on how we did it.) When we had secured sufficient money, we hired a lawyer that set up a share system, and then we offered all our creditors the option of being repaid in shares. Since they had been told this was the plan when first approached, they all agreed. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGRmNK5dZZEoPlyIURAoYOAJ9caE7+j8fO54G34RzgdG626/5wSACeKVMO mFsfTGrMxjPrFWINjFvNvXk= =re/A -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ 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: From andres at neuralgrid.net Sun May 13 08:43:17 2007 From: andres at neuralgrid.net (Andres Colon) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 04:43:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/13/07, Dagon Gmail wrote: > > The "transhuman terrorist manifesto" is NOT condoned by > any transhumanist I know and is NOT to be quoted by media. > It is so silly it is regarded by a joke by most transhumanists > and a bad joke. Any media agency using this manifesto is > doing some lousy journalism. Don't be surprised if they do. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevin.osborne at gmail.com Sun May 13 11:35:03 2007 From: kevin.osborne at gmail.com (kevin.osborne) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 21:35:03 +1000 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3642969c0705130435g6b26ea12w4be040bd279c1ebd@mail.gmail.com> On 5/13/07, spike wrote: > >Um, is this supposed to be some kind of joke? > Yes. It definitely -is- some kind of joke. Which kind and on who can be left as an exercise for the reader. Any tract which refers to people as 'sheep' has to be held as suspect I would have thought - this isn't a tween forum thread for chrissakes. On 5/13/07, Andres Colon wrote: > > It's our future they are micromanaging to death with their > overcautiousness > We've achieved this level of order and we can all help make it better. If > the laws aren't leading to the future you want, then be proactive in a > civilized way, speak to congress and do more. Well, no. Fuck you and your 'congress'. You are talking about a nation state I do not reside in, am not a member of and whose authority over my life I repudiate. And yet your government has a huge impact upon global policy and development. It has enjoyed unrivalled potential and resources, and yet has achieved only a moribund mediocrity, paralysed and incapable of change. To have the ability and awareness, and yet to still not act, is unforgivable. If you continue to squat there, felching in your own fascist zealotry and hubris, then sooner or later your resources will be wrested from you by those who possess the opportunity. > > Occupying powers generally need to be fed bullets until they leave. Burn > flags. Bomb monuments. Assassinate. > Wrong. Remember Ghandi? The world has evolved. Get some Morals. Keep up with > the pace. Gandhi -resisted-. He had a revolutionary position and a mandate. He had convictions that the countervailing order was inherently flawed. He -acted- on those convictions. Spewing hot air alone has never been and never will be enough. I'm ready to -set- the pace, not just keep up with it - are you? On 5/13/07, Technotranscendence wrote: > It's not the norm today. It's just influential -- and pretty much has been > for centuries. There never seems to be a shortage of people who want to > violenty remake the world into a better place -- no matter how much blood > must be spilled to do so. Sooner or later, the mob is going to wake up to what the hell it is that H+ really means to them You really think they're going to like it it one goddamn bit? Set your stopwatch know for the countdown to the first transhumanist to die for their beliefs. To be -killed- for their beliefs. Not actions. Just beliefs. Which fucking world do some of you airheads live in? Are you all on valium of something? 506 murders per day 833 rapes per day 150 million girls and 73 million boys under 18 experienced forced sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual violence during 2002. Thats -your- fucking world you pricks. You stand by and blather and posture while the world burns. We sit here in our little pockets of ignorance and prattle like we know something, like we can say -anything- about what this -world- is really like. Go to a local open space early one fine day and imagine 506 people being led in and then and shot, beaten and stabbed to death. Watch their corpses pile up and their blood seep. Then see 833 women filed in and raped singularly and in packs, one after another. In the background feel free to envisage the shadows of the vast majority of rapes which go unreported. And then single file you can try and watch 654,494,382 -children- get -fucked- by fellow upstanding citizens like to they do every single goddamn day of the year. Sounds like a long day to me. Better pack lunch. Sources: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur-crime-murders (collates CIA World Factbook figures) and http://www.violencestudy.org/IMG/pdf/English.pdf (UN). From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 13 11:56:24 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 13:56:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] META: Re: A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <3642969c0705130435g6b26ea12w4be040bd279c1ebd@mail.gmail.com> References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> <3642969c0705130435g6b26ea12w4be040bd279c1ebd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070513115624.GQ17691@leitl.org> is now on moderation. On Sun, May 13, 2007 at 09:35:03PM +1000, kevin.osborne wrote: > On 5/13/07, spike wrote: > > >Um, is this supposed to be some kind of joke? > > Yes. ... -- 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 amara at amara.com Sun May 13 12:21:03 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 14:21:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Preschoolers asked: What happens when people get old? Message-ID: From Boing boing and Mark Frauenfelder: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/12/preschoolers_asked_w.html "I went to a picnic at my daughter's preschool today. I took pictures of a bunch of kids' drawings that answered the question: "What happens when people get old?" There's a lot of harsh reality in their answers. " Link to Flickr set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frauenfelder/sets/72157600208546405/detail/ -- 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 joseph at josephbloch.com Sun May 13 13:07:44 2007 From: joseph at josephbloch.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 09:07:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Important question - need your advice In-Reply-To: <012a01c79530$61d6bba0$0200a8c0@Nano> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com> <000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac><004f01c794eb$ad39a4d0$0200a8c0@Nano><46466350.10007@pooq.com> <012a01c79530$61d6bba0$0200a8c0@Nano> Message-ID: <005501c7955f$b2a5f1c0$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> Legal? Yes. Nothing illegal about saying "please send money" as long as you're not promising anything you cannot (or do not) later deliver. Practical? Not so much. Essentially, you're asking for donations for a for-profit organization. There's certainly nothing wrong with doing so, and if you can convince people or other organizations to give you free money, more power to you. But unless you're a registered non-profit organization, the money that people give you will not be tax deductable, and without that small incentive, I think you'll find yourself hard-pressed to get anything beyond the odd $20 donation here and there. Joseph http://www.josephbloch.com ________________________________ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Gina Miller Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 3:26 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Important question - need your advice Perhaps I need to clarify a little I am registered and have been set up this way for years now, but I don't plan on any investors or loans etc. What I'm trying to figure out is if it is legal for me to ask for funding to get a particular project started? I know that non profits ask people for financial support, but is that allowed for a company? Am I allowed to get what amounts to donations or raise funds to develop a particular project that will later go to sale (if it has a theme that is supported by the funders?). I am not actually hired by anyone. And I am not asking for investors. Can I get support for a project? I really need some help trying to figure this out! Thank you, Gina Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." ----- Original Message ----- From: Stirling Westrup To: ExI chat list Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 6:01 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Important question - need your advice -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Gina Miller wrote: > Hello everyone, I have some questions that I thought some of you might be able to answer. Okay if I am set up as a company (that can't change either), and I am beginning a project that I will need money to create, (but hopefully later will make sales) what are my legal ways of obtaining money to get the project started. Is it legal to get funding from individuals and other groups if I am a company, or is that only for non profits? Do you guys know what my options are or how I can go about getting money to start a project that is under a registered company? I am not being 'hired' but the content of my project may be of interest to people, companies, and non profits that are close to me. That's why I had been thinking I could ask, but I don't know if as a company that is possible, is there a way? Any advice and information would be greatly appreciated. > My experiences are Canadian, so your laws may well differ. When I (and a few others) started up Strategy First many years ago, we went to everyone we could think of that might be interested and asked them to invest some minor amount ($25 - $1000, basically whatever we thought we could get). Since we weren't even incorporated yet, just registered, we wrote receipts that said it was a loan to the company. We used that money to pay for phone calls and correspondence with bigger investors. (This wasn't my department, so I'm a bit vague on how we did it.) When we had secured sufficient money, we hired a lawyer that set up a share system, and then we offered all our creditors the option of being repaid in shares. Since they had been told this was the plan when first approached, they all agreed. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGRmNK5dZZEoPlyIURAoYOAJ9caE7+j8fO54G34RzgdG626/5wSACeKVMO mFsfTGrMxjPrFWINjFvNvXk= =re/A -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From natasha at natasha.cc Sun May 13 13:35:57 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 08:35:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <501771.47201.qm@web56505.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> <501771.47201.qm@web56505.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20070513083336.032b5790@pop-server.austin.rr.com> At 11:56 AM 5/12/2007, Anne wrote: >Um, is this supposed to be some kind of joke? I don't think I want to >live in a future where grandiose sociopathy is the norm... At first I thought it is a bad joke, and then I thought it just plain bad taste. Now I think it is ignorant. 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: From torsteinhaldorsen at gmail.com Sun May 13 14:27:48 2007 From: torsteinhaldorsen at gmail.com (Torstein Haldorsen) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 16:27:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Come to think of it, why should Transhumanist terrorism be less likely than Luddite terrorism? If powerful human enchancement technologies of this century are strongly regulated and controlled, some people may well find it opportune - and in their eyes necessary to take radical and even extreme steps to gain access to these kinds of techs. In some years, one might well have factions using this kind of rethoric and using extreme means to achieve political goals however unfortunate the results may be. -TT On 5/13/07, Andres Colon < andres at neuralgrid.net> wrote: > > > On 5/13/07, Dagon Gmail wrote: > > > > The "transhuman terrorist manifesto" is NOT condoned by > > any transhumanist I know and is NOT to be quoted by media. > > It is so silly it is regarded by a joke by most transhumanists > > and a bad joke. Any media agency using this manifesto is > > doing some lousy journalism. > > > Don't be surprised if they do. > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Sun May 13 14:06:12 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 07:06:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> Message-ID: <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I just want to state how much I agree with Samantha's wise words. Back in the day she would have made a good "Founding Mother" for the American colonies. : ) Regarding the manifesto, I will say there is definitely a certain anarchic "devil may care, machismo charm" about it. As I read I thought it sounded like something straight out of a Bruce Sterling or Walter Jon Williams novel. And if it's not it sure should be! lol Either of those authors could take this manifesto and build around it a terrific science fiction novel of wonder, intensity, terror and suspense. What worries me is that I could see foolishly impressionable people down the road (a single year or maybe a whole century from now...) taking these words to heart and really raising hell in a way remincient of the Italian Red Brigade. Now that these words are on the net and "out there" we may in time have to deal with the consequences. And of course the other worry is that the mass media will grab hold of it and claim this represents the "real" Transhumanist movement. I spent the last two days at LepreCon 33 and I'm probably just letting my overly primed imagination (I went to lots of writers panels) get away from me. Best, John Grigg Samantha Atkins wrote: Many of us preach freedom to choose the future that we want, freedom to implement it, to augment ourselves and so on. Some teach that the Way is to sell transhumanism to the masses and have them demand it of the State or simply have the State be ultimate all controlling elite that mandates it "for our own good". Others, like myself, believe that only in preserving sufficient freedom from the ever-increasing control of the State can the elite, the fore-runners possibly have room to succeed. But this view does not require blowing sh*t up nor does it require an attitude of contempt to humanity at large. It may require some level of violence sometime to fight the loss of freedom. But not violence for the hell of it as this piece seems to advocate. Violence is the last resort when all other means to preserve freedom to live and pursue one's goals have been exhausted. Much can and should be done imho at the level if you will of cyber-anarchy, using technology to step beyond the control of the State to the degree possible and foreseeably necessary. The day may come where the dark nets and underground economies are all that stands between us and the oblivion of total subservience to the State and collapse of much we take for granted. - samantha kevin.osborne wrote: > Sick of the brain-curdling slowness of socio-technological progress? > Think existential risk is just a plain lack of cojones? > Like blowing shit up? > > Then the Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto is for you. > > 1. Fuck the state. Fuck the leadership. Fuck 'consensus'. It's our > future they are micromanaging to death with their overcautiousness, > and it's time to start shrugging off their anachronistic control > mechanisms and seizing our destiny before it dies by committee. > Nation-states and the current socio-economic model are toast after the > nano-revolution anyway; lets start acting like the hyperbeings we will > one day be. The Singularity will confer unheralded power to those who > have the will to grasp it - are you ready to dump the baggage? > > 2. Screw the sheep. Chances are you're smarter than everyone else > already. If you're reading a transhumanist feed, you're already kind > of special. Soon enough though, you can be more. Much more. The > simpering idiots and halfwits who dominate the zeitgeist of our > society are only going to get yet more stupid as we get smarter. If we > want to be H+, we will be. Our soon-to-be subhuman cohorts are smug > and self satisfied, thinking they are wonderful human beings while > they lay waste to our potential with their bovine lack of horizon, > paucity of ideas and lack of bloodymindedness. > > 3. Eat the future. Get hungry. Take it, it's yours. Want to > gene-splice yourself? Go ahead. Want to engineer a nano-horde? Go > ahead. Embryonic stem cells? Eat the goddamn fetus with bacon on > toast. Harvest a botnet. Sequence a meta-virus. Synthesize a > nootropic. Chip yourself, augment yourself, mainline yourself, > digitize yourself, clone yourself. > > 4. Unfriendly AI? You fricken bet. Bring on the arms race. If we can't > live forever, maybe our nasty little friend here can. Metasploit the > net. All your megahurtz will belong to us. Borg-in' ain't easy. > > 5. Screw DDoS, how about we just pwn your servers with AK47's and > glycerin. Send big brother dark. Take down the camera network. Go > wireless, go ad-hoc, steal every channel you can OFDM. Root DNS? No > way. Route via P2P. Swarm, baby, swarm. Self-organise. Latch on, > leech, and suck like a parasite. > > 6. Slavery didn't die without a whimper. The French Revolution didn't > happen without the guillotine. Occupying powers generally need to be > fed bullets until they leave. Burn flags. Bomb monuments. Assassinate. > > 7. This ain't the 'Wiggles' manifesto here. If you want change, make > it happen. Go nasty, go early and go often. Punch 'em square in the > face, dare them to retaliate. Outgunned? throw the first punch, below > the belt, while their back is turned. Dominate the weak. Take what you > want. Expand voraciously. Eat your young. You've heard the > transhumanist leaders and their oh-so-softly approach. They can have > their patronage, consideration and kindness. We are under no such > obligations. We do not have to play by their rules. They can take > their toys and go home. We are here, in the dark, growing and > yearning. It is our future too. We will not be controlled. We will not > be instructed. We will learn, we will siphon, we will steal. We will > transcend. Try and stop us at your peril. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --------------------------------- Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jcowan5 at sympatico.ca Sun May 13 14:52:06 2007 From: jcowan5 at sympatico.ca (Josh Cowan) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 10:52:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <343fcca0b06f8e31f46f9802a02d5551@sympatico.ca> FWIW, I repudiate this manifesto. For those interested in reading one brain builder's opinion on the likelihood that this issue becomes Humanity's next defining war, check out: Hugo De Garis's "The Artilect War" http://www.amazon.com/Artilect-War-Controversy-Concerning-Intelligent/ dp/0882801538/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-5662240-2912612? ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179067783&sr=8-1 Josh Cowan On May 13, 2007, at 10:06 AM, John Grigg wrote: > I just want to state how much I agree with Samantha's wise words.? > Back in the day?she would have made a good "Founding Mother" for?the > American colonies. : )? Regarding the manifesto,?I will?say there is > definitely?a certain anarchic?"devil may care, machismo charm" about > it.? As I read I thought it sounded like something straight out of a > Bruce Sterling or Walter Jon Williams novel.? And if it's not it sure > should be! lol? Either of those authors could take this manifesto?and > build around it a terrific science fiction novel of wonder, > intensity,?terror and suspense.? ? > What worries me is that I could see foolishly impressionable?people > down the road (a single?year or maybe a whole century from now...) > taking these words to heart and really raising hell in a way > remincient of the Italian Red Brigade.? Now that these words are on > the net and "out there" we may in time?have to deal with the > consequences.? And of course the other worry is that the mass media > will grab hold of it and claim this represents the "real" > Transhumanist movement.? I spent the last two days at LepreCon 33 and > I'm probably just letting my overly primed imagination (I went to lots > of writers panels)?get away from me. > ? > Best, > ? > John Grigg > > Samantha Atkins wrote: >> Many of us preach freedom to choose the future that we want, freedom >> to >> implement it, to augment ourselves and so on. Some teach that the Way >> is to sell transhumanism to the masses and have them demand it of the >> State or simply have the State be ultimate all controlling elite that >> mandates it "for our own good". Others, like myself, believe that only >> in preserving sufficient freedom from the ever-increasing control of >> the >> State can the elite, the fore-runners possibly have room to succeed. >> But this view does not require blowing sh*t up nor does it require an >> attitude of contempt to humanity at large. It may require some level >> of >> violence sometime to fight the loss of freedom. But not violence for >> the hell of it as this piece seems to advocate. Violence is the last >> resort when all other means to preserve freedom to live and pursue >> one's >> goals have been exhausted. Much can and should be done imho at the >> level if you will of cyber-anarchy, using technology to step beyond >> the >> control of the State to the degree possible and foreseeably necessary. >> The day may come where the dark nets and underground economies are all >> that stands between us and the oblivion of total subservience to the >> State and collapse of much we take for granted. >> >> - samantha >> >> >> kevin.osborne wrote: >> > Sick of the brain-curdling slowness of socio-technological progress? >> > Think existential risk is just a plain lack of cojones? >> > Like blowing shit up? >> > >> > Then the Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto is for you. >> > >> > 1. Fuck the state. Fuck the leadership. Fuck 'consensus'. It's our >> > future they are micromanaging to death with their overcautiousness, >> > and it's time to start shrugging off their anachronistic control >> > mechanisms and seizing our destiny before it dies by committee. >> > Nation-states and the current socio-economic model are toast after >> the >> > nano-revolution anyway; lets start acting like the hyperbeings we >> will >> > one day be. The Singularity will confer unheralded power to those >> who >> > have the will to grasp it - are you ready to dump the baggage? >> > >> > 2. Screw the sheep. Chances are you're smarter than everyone else >> > already. If you're reading a transhumanist feed, you're already kind >> > of special. Soon enough though, you can be more. Much more. The >> > simpering idiots and halfwits who dominate the zeitgeist of our >> > society are only going to get yet more stupid as we get smarter. If >> we >> > want to be H+, we will be. Our soon-to-be subhuman cohorts are smug >> > and self satisfied, thinking they are wonderful human beings while >> > they lay waste to our potential with their bovine lack of horizon, >> > paucity of ideas and lack of bloodymindedness. >> > >> > 3. Eat the future. Get hungry. Take it, it's yours. Want to >> > gene-splice yourself? Go ahead. Want to engineer a nano-horde? Go >> > ahead. Embryonic stem cells? Eat the goddamn fetus with bacon on >> > toast. Harvest a botnet. Sequence a meta-virus. Synthesize a >> > nootropic. Chip yourself, augment yourself, mainline yourself, >> > digitize yourself, clone yourself. >> > >> > 4. Unfriendly AI? You fricken bet. Bring on the arms race. If we >> can't >> > live forever, maybe our nasty little friend here can. Metasploit the >> > net. All your megahurtz will belong to us. Borg-in' ain't easy. >> > >> > 5. Screw DDoS, how about we just pwn your servers with AK47's and >> > glycerin. Send big brother dark. Take down the camera network. Go >> > wireless, go ad-hoc, steal every channel you can OFDM. Root DNS? No >> > way. Route via P2P. Swarm, baby, swarm. Self-organise. Latch on, >> > leech, and suck like a parasite. >> > >> > 6. Slavery didn't die without a whimper. The French Revolution >> didn't >> > happen without the guillotine. Occupying powers generally need to be >> > fed bullets until they leave. Burn flags. Bomb monuments. >> Assassinate. >> > >> > 7. This ain't the 'Wiggles' manifesto here. If you want change, make >> > it happen. Go nasty, go early and go often. Punch 'em square in the >> > face, dare them to retaliate. Outgunned? throw the first punch, >> below >> > the belt, while their back is turned. Dominate the weak. Take what >> you >> > want. Expand voraciously. Eat your young. You've heard the >> > transhumanist leaders and their oh-so-softly approach. They can have >> > their patronage, consideration and kindness. We are under no such >> > obligations. We do not have to play by their rules. They can take >> > their toys and go home. We are here, in the dark, growing and >> > yearning. It is our future too. We will not be controlled. We will >> not >> > be instructed. We will learn, we will siphon, we will steal. We will >> > transcend. Try and stop us at your peril. >> > _______________________________________________ >> > extropy-chat mailing list >> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! > Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at > Yahoo! Games._______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 7106 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kevin.osborne at gmail.com Sun May 13 16:34:20 2007 From: kevin.osborne at gmail.com (kevin.osborne) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 02:34:20 +1000 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> Not genuinely trying to be dystopic/cataclysic here, but: Surely the thought that the political/academic/cultural transhumanism of today may one day be adjuncted with a military/security wing has been posited previously? And If not, why not? As altruistic and peace-loving as we may be, we seem ripe for xenophobic suppression as a minority. It may well be that the majority of H+ are pacifists, but do not count all of us among your number. None of us like war and bloodshed. All of us know that it will mean children dead by the sword. But surely a posthuman holocaust is a real and cognizable risk? As we spiral down the well into the singularity, unprecedented levels of tumult are foreseeable. It seems almost preordained that one day certain sections of the movement will become anathema to others within the global community; religious types stand out as initial likely candidates, but state-sponsored policing institutions may well take umbrage also. Sooner or later a leader of ours will be imprisoned, and later still someone will be assassinated. It may become that the Luddites will decide the only good posthuman is a dead one. I don't think I'm being very outlandish here. Human nature is what it is. If a religious fundamentalist sticks an icepick through your head, all the cryo in the world isn't going to bring you back. The defacement of public works and monuments is a time-honored tradition of civil disobedience, political unrest and revolution. Blowing up a statue - as long as no-one dies - doesn't seem beyond the pale to me. It just doesn't. Yes it is a slippery slope, but exactly what kind of slope did you think this H+ thing was on? It seems like some were just hoping to squeak through the uplift door without anyone noticing. And if so, why? What the heck does that say about who you are, or who you are going to be? I'd rather die now for a cause I'm prepared to stand up for than live on as a someone who had to pretend their way into being something more than human. Is that the humanity you are wanting to preserve? Is that the future you are promising? This is your preferred mode of operation that finds other methods so distasteful? I'm sure it would be better for all of us if there were no need to fight in order to attain our future. I just don't think we should bank on it. I think the cultural, academic and political wings of transhumanism are its lifeblood, engine room and conscience respectively. But I think we are going to need more than that. I think in your heart of hearts some of you do also. I don't want to stand by while some of out greatest minds whither and die of old age. I'm a young man, and can fight for their cause. I can breathe with forthright vigor and impetus while they count down to the last breath they may take. I don't think they want to go, and yet with our dawdling and bumbling we tacitly accept their demise. Fighting for the future doesn't have to mean violence. But we should be fighting, yearning, reaching. Transcendence should be a blaze of glory upon a pyre of our achievement, not a pained and delayed excuse carried over the line only by its own momentum and apologized for throughout. Posthumanity and the singularity will be the pinnacle of human achievement. We should achieve it in a manner of 'arete', not in a manner of conflict avoidance and procrastination. It is -our- future. We should fight for it. We should protect those who matter to us from harm. We should resist suppression and persecution. We should Transcend. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 13 17:40:18 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 10:40:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com><501771.47201.qm@web56505.mail.re3.yahoo.com> <6.2.1.2.2.20070513083336.032b5790@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Message-ID: <20bd01c79586$4313b5f0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Natasha writes > At first I thought [the "Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto"] a bad > joke, and then I thought it just plain bad taste. Now I think it is ignorant. Exactly! Consider the most recent rejoinder from that quarter: > > Which fucking world do some of you airheads live in? Are you all on > > valium of something? > > > > 506 murders per day > > 833 rapes per day (etc.) > > Thats -your- fucking world you pricks. You stand by and blather and > > posture while the world burns. While the world "burns"?? What planet has the writer been living on? How could anyone be so incredibly ignorant? Does he ever employ percentages, one wonders? It's as though to this person everyone is still living in a string of very small villages somewhere, and that those numbers do not need to be considered relative to 6,000,000,000 people---the vast, vast majority of them who are almost unbelievably better off than centuries ago. If I thought that the writer---who unfortunately, I must say, seems to have lost his mind---were able to absorb new information that conflicted with his over-wrought beliefs, I would urge him to read Bernstein's "The Birth of Plenty". You can actually find the whole first chapter on-line at http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/404/CH1.HTM (Warning to the deranged writer: this has graphs, charts, and presents lots of hard data.) Excerpt: "Beyond the city walls, lawlessness reigned absolute. Highwaymen plied their trade, sometimes in roving gangs and sometimes alone, with near impunity. Soldiers, when not engaged in Crusades, dynastic feuds, or papal ambitions, periodically swelled the ranks of highwaymen. Only walls provided a town with effective protection against its lawless environs. Since walls were expensive, town life crammed itself into as little space as possible. The streets, nothing more than narrow, open sewers, teemed with townspeople and disease; the first demographers documented death rates from infectious diseases that were twice as high inside the walls as they were outside. "Most people lived in tiny villages and worked small adjacent fields. Not until 1500 did farmers clear the wolf-infested forests. Everyone, from toddlers to the aged, performed backbreaking field work, usually unaided by the plow. Until A.D. 900, it was the rare peasant who could afford to harness horses and oxen with collars for fieldwork. "The squalor of medieval dwellings was unimaginable. According to the greatest of all Renaissance humanists, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Almost all the floors are of clay and rushes from the marshes, so carelessly renewed that the foundation sometimes remains for twenty years, harboring, there below, spittle and vomit and wine of dogs and men, beer . . . remnants of fishes, and other filth unnameable. Hence, with the change of weather, a vapor exhales which in my judgement is far from wholesome.25 "Families slept together on one foul bed, and chimneys were almost unknown. Soot covered the walls of all but the newest huts. Lack of proper exhaust resulted in house fires that brought roaring death to large numbers of villagers, particularly women, who, clad in highly flammable dresses, tended wood-fired pits and stoves. "The past few paragraphs describe the circumstances of peasants who were relatively well-off. The less fortunate had little or no shelter at all. In the subsistence-level premodern society, famine and pestilence knocked constantly at the door. During times of extreme famine, cannibalism was not unknown; travelers were occasionally killed for their flesh, and there were even reports of gallows being attacked for sustenance." Lee From ben at goertzel.org Sun May 13 18:42:01 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 14:42:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705131142o735155e5r734808ae8b14d62@mail.gmail.com> I'd rather die now for > a cause I'm prepared to stand up for than live on as a someone who had > to pretend their way into being something more than human. Is that the > humanity you are wanting to preserve? And that, my friend, is idiotic. You should get beyond those monkey emotions. -- Ben G -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 13 20:11:34 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 13:11:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com><823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com><3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> <3cf171fe0705131142o735155e5r734808ae8b14d62@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20d101c7959a$ed105040$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Ben writes > [Kevin wrote] > > > I'd rather die now for a cause I'm prepared to stand up for > > than live on as a someone who had to pretend their way into > > being something more than human. > > And that, my friend, is idiotic. I really don't understand why that is "idiotic". Some people can quite reasonably endorse goals that are above and beyond their own personal survival. These may be "monkey emotions" as you say, but a lot of us may wish to keep some subset of our evolutionarily derived emotions. Kevin also wrote > As we spiral down the well into the singularity, unprecedented levels > of tumult are foreseeable. > It seems almost preordained that one day certain sections of the > movement will become anathema to others within the global community; > religious types stand out as initial likely candidates, but state-sponsored > policing institutions may well take umbrage also. These too are entirely reasonable conjectures, and to me seem well within the realm of possibility. We certainly do have to keep alert and weigh any signs that possibly radical action may be needed at some point. However, it seems to me obviously too presumptuous and reactive to perceive that conditions are *definitely* going to be so bad that radical or violent actions should be either undertaken now or even contemplated. In any case, let's hope that the hopelessly hysterical tone of the so-called H+ Terrorist Manifesto---whether or not it was a joke---can be left behind, and avoided altogether in the future. Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 13 20:31:47 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 15:31:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Important question - need your advice In-Reply-To: <004f01c794eb$ad39a4d0$0200a8c0@Nano> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com> <000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac> <004f01c794eb$ad39a4d0$0200a8c0@Nano> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070513152352.022d26e8@satx.rr.com> At 04:17 PM 5/12/2007 -0700, Gina wrote: >Hello everyone, I have some questions that I thought some of you >might be able to answer. Okay if I am set up as a company (that >can't change either), and I am beginning a project that I will need >money to create, (but hopefully later will make sales) what are my >legal ways of obtaining money to get the project started. My wife (and co-author), Barbara Lamar, is a specialist in US law, and a small business advisor. She offers a free initial phone consultation. If Gina (or anyone else on the list with a tax or business problem) wishes to call her assistant Gracie and set up a time, the office phone number is 1-210-223-9389. Here's Barbara's business blog: Damien Broderick From dagonweb at gmail.com Sun May 13 23:31:19 2007 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 01:31:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <20d101c7959a$ed105040$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> <3cf171fe0705131142o735155e5r734808ae8b14d62@mail.gmail.com> <20d101c7959a$ed105040$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: I forwarded the Transhuman Terrorist Manifesto to my Lavey Satanist friends. That's about the same mindset as far as I can see. I can empathize with the manifesto, from a purely base animalistic perspective. That's all I can say about it. But I don't choose such an avenue for myself. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joseph at josephbloch.com Sun May 13 23:48:42 2007 From: joseph at josephbloch.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 19:48:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com><823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com><3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com><3cf171fe0705131142o735155e5r734808ae8b14d62@mail.gmail.com><20d101c7959a$ed105040$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <008101c795b9$3dbf3ce0$6400a8c0@hypotenuse.com> I would imagine it would play well with the Transtopia folks as well. Joseph http://www.josephbloch.com ________________________________ From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dagon Gmail Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 7:31 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto I forwarded the Transhuman Terrorist Manifesto to my Lavey Satanist friends. That's about the same mindset as far as I can see. I can empathize with the manifesto, from a purely base animalistic perspective. That's all I can say about it. But I don't choose such an avenue for myself. From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 13 23:50:02 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 16:50:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Important question - need your advice In-Reply-To: <012a01c79530$61d6bba0$0200a8c0@Nano> References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net> <7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com> <470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com> <000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac> <004f01c794eb$ad39a4d0$0200a8c0@Nano> <46466350.10007@pooq.com> <012a01c79530$61d6bba0$0200a8c0@Nano> Message-ID: <4647A42A.4020103@mac.com> Gina Miller wrote: > Perhaps I need to clarify a little I am registered and have been set > up this way for years now, but I don't plan on any investors or loans > etc. What I'm trying to figure out is if it is legal for me to ask for > funding to get a particular project started? I know that non profits > ask people for financial support, but is that allowed for a company? > Am I allowed to get what amounts to donations or raise funds to > develop a particular project that will later go to sale (if it has a > theme that is supported by the funders?). As far as I know (IANAL) you can certainly ask for funds for a project whether you are just a private person or a company. What form of company though, corporation or not? The form can make some differences, among other things as to tax treatment of these donations at your (or your company's) end. If the money is to fund a for profit venture it is possible that some of the donors may expect compensation for use of their funds. I don't think it is reasonable to ask people for use of their money without spelling out what they can expect at least in terms of being paid back. From a professional point of view it makes little sense to spend money, especially other people's money, on something you merely hope will turn a profit someday. If it is something people will donate to just because they want to see it in the world then that is fine. I don't believe there is a limit on taking donations for such a thing. But I do think you should set up an agreement to pay people back if this does turn a profit. You say you are not asking for investors but it seems to me that is what you are doing. Only you are asking for investors who will receive no repayment and no profit even if there is some beyond seeing you get to do whatever the project is. If it is a project or projects that some people or organization are interested in funding then they are contracting with you or your company to accomplish this project in return for their funding. That is perfectly legit it seems to me. But I think in needs to be made a bit more crisp and clean than seems evident in your description. This is a matter of protection for all concerned. - samantha > I am not actually hired by anyone. And I am not asking for investors. > Can I get support for a project? I really need some help trying to > figure this out! Thank you, Gina > > Gina "Nanogirl" Miller > Nanotechnology Industries > http://www.nanoindustries.com > Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com > Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ > Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ > Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org > Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org > Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com > "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." > > ----- Original Message ----- > *From:* Stirling Westrup > *To:* ExI chat list > *Sent:* Saturday, May 12, 2007 6:01 PM > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Important question - need your advice > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Gina Miller wrote: > > Hello everyone, I have some questions that I thought some of you > might be able to answer. Okay if I am set up as a company (that > can't change either), and I am beginning a project that I will > need money to create, (but hopefully later will make sales) what > are my legal ways of obtaining money to get the project started. > Is it legal to get funding from individuals and other groups if I > am a company, or is that only for non profits? Do you guys know > what my options are or how I can go about getting money to start a > project that is under a registered company? I am not being 'hired' > but the content of my project may be of interest to people, > companies, and non profits that are close to me. That's why I had > been thinking I could ask, but I don't know if as a company that > is possible, is there a way? Any advice and information would be > greatly appreciated. > > > My experiences are Canadian, so your laws may well differ. When I > (and a few > others) started up Strategy First many years ago, we went to > everyone we could > think of that might be interested and asked them to invest some > minor amount > ($25 - $1000, basically whatever we thought we could get). Since > we weren't > even incorporated yet, just registered, we wrote receipts that > said it was a > loan to the company. We used that money to pay for phone calls and > correspondence with bigger investors. (This wasn't my department, > so I'm a bit > vague on how we did it.) When we had secured sufficient money, we > hired a > lawyer that set up a share system, and then we offered all our > creditors the > option of being repaid in shares. Since they had been told this > was the plan > when first approached, they all agreed. > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org > > iD8DBQFGRmNK5dZZEoPlyIURAoYOAJ9caE7+j8fO54G34RzgdG626/5wSACeKVMO > mFsfTGrMxjPrFWINjFvNvXk= > =re/A > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 14 00:16:10 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 17:16:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4647AA4A.3010900@mac.com> kevin.osborne wrote: > Not genuinely trying to be dystopic/cataclysic here, but: > > Surely the thought that the political/academic/cultural transhumanism > of today may one day be adjuncted with a military/security wing has > been posited previously? > > Sure. But not in a way that advocates burning down anything and everything perceived as being in the way or opposed to transhumanist goals. > And If not, why not? As altruistic and peace-loving as we may be, we > seem ripe for xenophobic suppression as a minority. It may well be > that the majority of H+ are pacifists, but do not count all of us > among your number. None of us like war and bloodshed. All of us know > that it will mean children dead by the sword. But surely a posthuman > holocaust is a real and cognizable risk? > > If you have been around for very long you know that a great number of us are not pacifists although we love peace. Of course various violent conflicts are possible, even reasonably likely. This does not mean that it is a good idea to strut around beating one's chest and bellowing a challenge to all who may at all oppose you. That is juvenile and counter-productive. > The defacement of public works and monuments is a time-honored > tradition of civil disobedience, political unrest and revolution. > Blowing up a statue - as long as no-one dies - doesn't seem beyond the > pale to me. It just doesn't. Yes it is a slippery slope, but exactly > what kind of slope did you think this H+ thing was on? > > Well, if they put up a statue to Jerry Falwell I might consider it. Although I wouldn't be attempting a supportive action for transhumanism by demolishing such an atrocity. :-8 But this level of action is a far cry from the level of mayhem advocated by the "manisfesto". > It seems like some were just hoping to squeak through the uplift door > without anyone noticing. And if so, why? Because one cannot be uplifted if killed in violent opposition. Not fighting when it is possible to avoid a fight while remaining true to your values is a sign of wise prudence. > What the heck does that say > about who you are, or who you are going to be? I'd rather die now for > a cause I'm prepared to stand up for than live on as a someone who had > to pretend their way into being something more than human. What do you mean by "pretending"? Why is standing up for the cause only valid seemingly to you if it involves actual violence or at least civil disobedience. I have no trouble with such actually in service of a cause. But to make such the measure of being serious or a real transhumanist does not seem justified at this juncture. > Is that the > humanity you are wanting to preserve? Is that the future you are > promising? This is your preferred mode of operation that finds other > methods so distasteful? > > I think you are getting a bit carried away with your argument again. You state assumptions with some emotional prejudice and then go on as if your assumptions, your rhetoric is fact. > I'm sure it would be better for all of us if there were no need to > fight in order to attain our future. I just don't think we should bank > on it. That I agree with. > I think the cultural, academic and political wings of > transhumanism are its lifeblood, engine room and conscience > respectively. But I think we are going to need more than that. I think > in your heart of hearts some of you do also. > > I agree in principle but it is not time to raise an army and I certainly see no reasons to be engaged in terrorism purportedly in support of transhumanist goals. > I don't want to stand by while some of out greatest minds whither and > die of old age. I'm a young man, and can fight for their cause. I can > breathe with forthright vigor and impetus while they count down to the > last breath they may take. I don't think they want to go, and yet > with our dawdling and bumbling we tacitly accept their demise. > > I do agree that many of us tend to spend too much time, precious time this side of radical life extension, in unproductive activities to our goals. I sure know that I do. > Fighting for the future doesn't have to mean violence. But we should > be fighting, yearning, reaching. Transcendence should be a blaze of > glory upon a pyre of our achievement, not a pained and delayed excuse > carried over the line only by its own momentum and apologized for > throughout. > > Yes! Well said. > Posthumanity and the singularity will be the pinnacle of human > achievement. We should achieve it in a manner of 'arete', not in a > manner of conflict avoidance and procrastination. > > It is -our- future. We should fight for it. We should protect those > who matter to us from harm. We should resist suppression and > persecution. > > I agree we should do everything we can to achieve the future we desire. But I don't see how a "Terrorist Manifesto" does any good. - samantha From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 14 00:28:08 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 19:28:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <4647AA4A.3010900@mac.com> References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> <4647AA4A.3010900@mac.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070513192618.02225980@satx.rr.com> I can't believe so many people are calmly *debating* this poisonous drivel. (Sophomoric joke or otherwise.) Damien Broderick From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 14 00:31:38 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 17:31:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <20bd01c79586$4313b5f0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> <501771.47201.qm@web56505.mail.re3.yahoo.com> <6.2.1.2.2.20070513083336.032b5790@pop-server.austin.rr.com> <20bd01c79586$4313b5f0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <4647ADEA.3030108@mac.com> Lee Corbin wrote: > Natasha writes > > >> At first I thought [the "Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto"] a bad >> joke, and then I thought it just plain bad taste. Now I think it is ignorant. >> > > Exactly! > > Consider the most recent rejoinder from that quarter: > > >>> Which fucking world do some of you airheads live in? Are you all on >>> valium of something? >>> >>> 506 murders per day >>> 833 rapes per day >>> > (etc.) > > >>> Thats -your- fucking world you pricks. You stand by and blather and >>> posture while the world burns. >>> > > While the world "burns"?? What planet has the writer been living on? > How could anyone be so incredibly ignorant? Does he ever employ > percentages, one wonders? It's as though to this person everyone is still > living in a string of very small villages somewhere, and that those numbers > do not need to be considered relative to 6,000,000,000 people---the vast, > vast majority of them who are almost unbelievably better off than centuries ago. > I don't find this dismissive style productive. Our world is burning despite its prosperity. Our current position is no stable nor is it obvious at all that we will do (or even reasonably understand) what is necessary to advance it. > If I thought that the writer---who unfortunately, I must say, seems to have > lost his mind---were able to absorb new information that conflicted with > his over-wrought beliefs, I would urge him to read Bernstein's "The > Birth of Plenty". You can actually find the whole first chapter on-line at > > Accusing someone of having lost their mind is not reasonable. Please restrain yourself. Disowning on this level does not seem useful. Nor is a long quote disagreeing with one interpretation of a single aspect terribly useful. But the material is quite interesting so I immediately ordered the book. Thanks for mentioning it. - samantha From sentience at pobox.com Mon May 14 01:20:36 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 18:20:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Drivel Manifesto In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070513192618.02225980@satx.rr.com> References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> <4647AA4A.3010900@mac.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070513192618.02225980@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4647B964.5060701@pobox.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > I can't believe so many people are calmly *debating* this poisonous > drivel. (Sophomoric joke or otherwise.) nbtd -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From msd001 at gmail.com Mon May 14 01:45:03 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 21:45:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070513192618.02225980@satx.rr.com> References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> <4647AA4A.3010900@mac.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070513192618.02225980@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705131845i59325b32odbe80a10e864ebb@mail.gmail.com> On 5/13/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > I can't believe so many people are calmly *debating* this poisonous > drivel. (Sophomoric joke or otherwise.) agreed. and seconded. Fight Club - thought provoking: yes, actionable: no If the discussion of EP and the spread of memes hasn't clicked yet as a much more powerful method of 'guiding' the masses to H+ goals, then what have you been reading? [you=general/non-specific you] If there is to be an H+ "movement" it may as well be a persistant pressure in a positive direction while more like-minded individuals take posistions of power and use their influence to affect change. That's not going to be a single defiant gesture, it's a lot of real work. In the end though, much more effective. From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Mon May 14 01:57:21 2007 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 21:57:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <4647AA4A.3010900@mac.com> Message-ID: <712339.37919.qm@web37207.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Thanks Samantha, I enjoyed the civilized way you answered the writer. I was a little disappointed that the writer tried get his point accross in such an aggresive matter. I always feel overwhelmed by people that try and push there ideas on me yet find it fascinating when they try and get there points accross using rational tone and ideas. I enjoy reading good debates, I always end up learning something as well as I leave the table with strong opinions and ideas. In my opinion, this Manifesto could have been written in a completely different way and maybe I would have understood what the writer was really getting at. Just my thoughts. Anna:) --- Samantha Atkins wrote: > kevin.osborne wrote: > > Not genuinely trying to be dystopic/cataclysic > here, but: > > > > Surely the thought that the > political/academic/cultural transhumanism > > of today may one day be adjuncted with a > military/security wing has > > been posited previously? > > > > > Sure. But not in a way that advocates burning down > anything and > everything perceived as being in the way or opposed > to transhumanist > goals. > > > > And If not, why not? As altruistic and > peace-loving as we may be, we > > seem ripe for xenophobic suppression as a > minority. It may well be > > that the majority of H+ are pacifists, but do not > count all of us > > among your number. None of us like war and > bloodshed. All of us know > > that it will mean children dead by the sword. But > surely a posthuman > > holocaust is a real and cognizable risk? > > > > > If you have been around for very long you know that > a great number of us > are not pacifists although we love peace. Of > course various violent > conflicts are possible, even reasonably likely. > This does not mean that > it is a good idea to strut around beating one's > chest and bellowing a > challenge to all who may at all oppose you. That > is juvenile and > counter-productive. > > > The defacement of public works and monuments is a > time-honored > > tradition of civil disobedience, political unrest > and revolution. > > Blowing up a statue - as long as no-one dies - > doesn't seem beyond the > > pale to me. It just doesn't. Yes it is a slippery > slope, but exactly > > what kind of slope did you think this H+ thing was > on? > > > > > Well, if they put up a statue to Jerry Falwell I > might consider it. > Although I wouldn't be attempting a supportive > action for transhumanism > by demolishing such an atrocity. :-8 But this level > of action is a far > cry from the level of mayhem advocated by the > "manisfesto". > > It seems like some were just hoping to squeak > through the uplift door > > without anyone noticing. And if so, why? > Because one cannot be uplifted if killed in violent > opposition. Not > fighting when it is possible to avoid a fight while > remaining true to > your values is a sign of wise prudence. > > > > What the heck does that say > > about who you are, or who you are going to be? I'd > rather die now for > > a cause I'm prepared to stand up for than live on > as a someone who had > > to pretend their way into being something more > than human. > What do you mean by "pretending"? Why is standing > up for the cause > only valid seemingly to you if it involves actual > violence or at least > civil disobedience. I have no trouble with such > actually in service of > a cause. But to make such the measure of being > serious or a real > transhumanist does not seem justified at this > juncture. > > Is that the > > humanity you are wanting to preserve? Is that the > future you are > > promising? This is your preferred mode of > operation that finds other > > methods so distasteful? > > > > > I think you are getting a bit carried away with your > argument again. You > state assumptions with some emotional prejudice and > then go on as if > your assumptions, your rhetoric is fact. > > > I'm sure it would be better for all of us if there > were no need to > > fight in order to attain our future. I just don't > think we should bank > > on it. > That I agree with. > > > I think the cultural, academic and political wings > of > > transhumanism are its lifeblood, engine room and > conscience > > respectively. But I think we are going to need > more than that. I think > > in your heart of hearts some of you do also. > > > > > I agree in principle but it is not time to raise an > army and I > certainly see no reasons to be engaged in terrorism > purportedly in > support of transhumanist goals. > > > I don't want to stand by while some of out > greatest minds whither and > > die of old age. I'm a young man, and can fight for > their cause. I can > > breathe with forthright vigor and impetus while > they count down to the > > last breath they may take. I don't think they > want to go, and yet > > with our dawdling and bumbling we tacitly accept > their demise. > > > > > I do agree that many of us tend to spend too much > time, precious time > this side of radical life extension, in unproductive > activities to our > goals. I sure know that I do. > > > Fighting for the future doesn't have to mean > violence. But we should > > be fighting, yearning, reaching. Transcendence > should be a blaze of > > glory upon a pyre of our achievement, not a pained > and delayed excuse > > carried over the line only by its own momentum and > apologized for > > throughout. > > > > > Yes! Well said. > > > Posthumanity and the singularity will be the > pinnacle of human > > achievement. We should achieve it in a manner of > 'arete', not in a > > manner of conflict avoidance and procrastination. > > > > It is -our- future. We should fight for it. We > should protect those > > who matter to us from harm. We should resist > suppression and > > persecution. > > > > > I agree we should do everything we can to achieve > the future we desire. > But I don't see how a "Terrorist Manifesto" does any > good. > > - samantha > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail at http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/try_beta?.intl=ca From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 14 04:10:57 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 21:10:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Drivel Manifesto References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> <501771.47201.qm@web56505.mail.re3.yahoo.com> <6.2.1.2.2.20070513083336.032b5790@pop-server.austin.rr.com> <20bd01c79586$4313b5f0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4647ADEA.3030108@mac.com> Message-ID: <211101c795dd$e48d3940$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Samantha writes >> While the world "burns"?? What planet has the writer been living on? >> How could anyone be so incredibly ignorant? Does he ever employ >> percentages, one wonders? It's as though to this person everyone is still >> living in a string of very small villages somewhere, and that those numbers >> do not need to be considered relative to 6,000,000,000 people---the vast, >> vast majority of them who are almost unbelievably better off than centuries ago. > > I don't find this dismissive style productive. Our world is burning > despite its prosperity. "Burning"? Our world? As compared to what? The only thing that seems to be burning to me is the usual inflamed rhetoric and over-focus on the "burning issues" of the day. > Our current position is no stable nor is it obvious at all that we will do > (or even reasonably understand) what is necessary to advance it. Welcome to Reality 1.0. Thus has it always been. Even in the best of times, human beings are quarrelsome trouble-makers, and we won't be getting around to utopia any time soon. > Accusing someone of having lost their mind is not reasonable. Please > restrain yourself. You're right. I was out of my mind. Er..., I was... well forget it: you're right and it not reasonable or productive of me to speak that way :-) Lee P.S. Thanks to Eli for the timely and accurate change of subject line. From nanogirl at halcyon.com Mon May 14 05:28:32 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 22:28:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Important question - need your advice References: <463CA614.6090000@lineone.net><7.0.1.0.2.20070505120903.02546a40@satx.rr.com><470a3c520705052313g542cbe5aj9327f3594dfefa33@mail.gmail.com><7.0.1.0.2.20070506012350.022de938@satx.rr.com><000b01c79381$bbe6ae30$6501a8c0@brainiac><004f01c794eb$ad39a4d0$0200a8c0@Nano> <46466350.10007@pooq.com><012a01c79530$61d6bba0$0200a8c0@Nano> <4647A42A.4020103@mac.com> Message-ID: <00fb01c795e8$cb4c1220$0200a8c0@Nano> My husband and I are a DBA (doing business as) joint sole proprietor company (not cooperation) registered with the state of WA (state business license). It is indeed that the approach of my project is a common meme to those who I would (if I can) ask for financial support, they might see it as in their best interest to support my project. My project will be supporting many topics that are mutual to the potential individuals and groups. So instead of pay back it would be that they would (I am hope) be willing to support my project and it's final output because it might bring attention to their own work. So you think this would all be okay? Wish I could find documentation on this... Sorry about being vague, it's only due to the stage I am in, but the project is in more clear terms. And I would of course would be able to explain this in great detail and why it would be of significance to those that I approach. Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." ----- Original Message ----- From: Samantha Atkins To: ExI chat list Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2007 4:50 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Important question - need your advice Gina Miller wrote: > Perhaps I need to clarify a little I am registered and have been set > up this way for years now, but I don't plan on any investors or loans > etc. What I'm trying to figure out is if it is legal for me to ask for > funding to get a particular project started? I know that non profits > ask people for financial support, but is that allowed for a company? > Am I allowed to get what amounts to donations or raise funds to > develop a particular project that will later go to sale (if it has a > theme that is supported by the funders?). As far as I know (IANAL) you can certainly ask for funds for a project whether you are just a private person or a company. What form of company though, corporation or not? The form can make some differences, among other things as to tax treatment of these donations at your (or your company's) end. If the money is to fund a for profit venture it is possible that some of the donors may expect compensation for use of their funds. I don't think it is reasonable to ask people for use of their money without spelling out what they can expect at least in terms of being paid back. From a professional point of view it makes little sense to spend money, especially other people's money, on something you merely hope will turn a profit someday. If it is something people will donate to just because they want to see it in the world then that is fine. I don't believe there is a limit on taking donations for such a thing. But I do think you should set up an agreement to pay people back if this does turn a profit. You say you are not asking for investors but it seems to me that is what you are doing. Only you are asking for investors who will receive no repayment and no profit even if there is some beyond seeing you get to do whatever the project is. If it is a project or projects that some people or organization are interested in funding then they are contracting with you or your company to accomplish this project in return for their funding. That is perfectly legit it seems to me. But I think in needs to be made a bit more crisp and clean than seems evident in your description. This is a matter of protection for all concerned. - samantha > I am not actually hired by anyone. And I am not asking for investors. > Can I get support for a project? I really need some help trying to > figure this out! Thank you, Gina > > Gina "Nanogirl" Miller > Nanotechnology Industries > http://www.nanoindustries.com > Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com > Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ > Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ > Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org > Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org > Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com > "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." > > ----- Original Message ----- > *From:* Stirling Westrup > *To:* ExI chat list > *Sent:* Saturday, May 12, 2007 6:01 PM > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Important question - need your advice > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Gina Miller wrote: > > Hello everyone, I have some questions that I thought some of you > might be able to answer. Okay if I am set up as a company (that > can't change either), and I am beginning a project that I will > need money to create, (but hopefully later will make sales) what > are my legal ways of obtaining money to get the project started. > Is it legal to get funding from individuals and other groups if I > am a company, or is that only for non profits? Do you guys know > what my options are or how I can go about getting money to start a > project that is under a registered company? I am not being 'hired' > but the content of my project may be of interest to people, > companies, and non profits that are close to me. That's why I had > been thinking I could ask, but I don't know if as a company that > is possible, is there a way? Any advice and information would be > greatly appreciated. > > > My experiences are Canadian, so your laws may well differ. When I > (and a few > others) started up Strategy First many years ago, we went to > everyone we could > think of that might be interested and asked them to invest some > minor amount > ($25 - $1000, basically whatever we thought we could get). Since > we weren't > even incorporated yet, just registered, we wrote receipts that > said it was a > loan to the company. We used that money to pay for phone calls and > correspondence with bigger investors. (This wasn't my department, > so I'm a bit > vague on how we did it.) When we had secured sufficient money, we > hired a > lawyer that set up a share system, and then we offered all our > creditors the > option of being repaid in shares. Since they had been told this > was the plan > when first approached, they all agreed. > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org > > iD8DBQFGRmNK5dZZEoPlyIURAoYOAJ9caE7+j8fO54G34RzgdG626/5wSACeKVMO > mFsfTGrMxjPrFWINjFvNvXk= > =re/A > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > _______________________________________________ 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: From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 14 11:44:05 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 12:44:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Hybrids forced to show realistic mileage figures in US Message-ID: This year, new test standards have forced manufacturers to lower advertised efficiency claims on most models compared to previous years, and car lots are bracing for a tougher environment for hybrid sales. Now, after more than 20 years of producing mileage estimates that were far above what most drivers experienced, the EPA has added new testing procedures that more closely match what the average driver will experience. The new ratings will, on a positive note, end debate about hybrids not performing as advertised, said Dave Alexander, a senior analyst at ABI Research. Conscientious drivers (who brake and start slowly and keep the needle below 60 mph) could even surpass the EPA ratings, he said. "There is potential in the long run for better customer satisfaction." (The new tests apply to model year 2008 onwards). Revised EPA Miles Per Gallon Estimates Current MPG New Rating (City/Highway/Combined) Toyota Prius 60/51/55 48/45/46 Honda Civic Hybrid 51/49/50 40/45/42 Honda Civic 30/40/33 25/36/29 Toyota Camry Hybrid 40/38/39 33/34/34 Toyota Camry 24/33/37 21/30/24 (These figures are miles per US gallon). ---------------------------------- So we still have some way to go for a 100 MPG car. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 14 12:02:14 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 14:02:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hybrids forced to show realistic mileage figures in US In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20070514120214.GG17691@leitl.org> On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 12:44:05PM +0100, BillK wrote: > So we still have some way to go for a 100 MPG car. Your heathen units seem to boil down to 14.5 km/l, or 2.1 l/100 km. 3 l/100 km has been there for a while (VW Lupo 3L TDI, Audi 1.2 TDI), and 2 l/100 km is in the works (1 l/100 km has been demoed 2002, but abandoned as too expensive). I presume 1 l/100 km and below would mean abandoning the ICE, and moving to carbon/epoxy composites. -- 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 rpwl at lightlink.com Mon May 14 15:25:45 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 11:25:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <46487F79.6000605@lightlink.com> People, I don't think anyone is taking this seriously enough. It is not a matter of *whether* this 'manifesto' will be taken as representative of what transhumanists believe, it is a question of *when* some media outlet picks it up and brands the entire transhumanist movement as a terrorist group. That is what media outlets do: their job is extremist portrayals. Now that kevine.osborne has done this, it will sit there as a ticking bomb. I see two choices. One is to repudiate the thing strongly enough to expunge it from the record. If necessary, shut down the list completely and reconstitute under a new name. It is not enough to say "I personally repudiate this". It has to be expunged in such a thorough way that this group of people are seen to have taken the most drastic action possible to dissociate themselves from it. The other is to do nothing and just say "we disagree with this". Then it is just a matter of time before it blows up in your face. Although I have been in this field for a long time, and am a significant participant on other lists, I have only recently joined the extropians list itself. If the drastic rejection of this manifesto I suggested above does not take place within a very short time, I am out of here. I will not be associated in any way with an organization that tolerates this kind of declaration to stay on the record. Richard Loosemore. kevin.osborne wrote: > Not genuinely trying to be dystopic/cataclysic here, but: > > Surely the thought that the political/academic/cultural transhumanism > of today may one day be adjuncted with a military/security wing has > been posited previously? > > And If not, why not? As altruistic and peace-loving as we may be, we > seem ripe for xenophobic suppression as a minority. It may well be > that the majority of H+ are pacifists, but do not count all of us > among your number. None of us like war and bloodshed. All of us know > that it will mean children dead by the sword. But surely a posthuman > holocaust is a real and cognizable risk? > > As we spiral down the well into the singularity, unprecedented levels > of tumult are foreseeable. > > It seems almost preordained that one day certain sections of the > movement will become anathema to others within the global community; > religious types stand out as initial likely candidates, but > state-sponsored policing institutions may well take umbrage also. > > Sooner or later a leader of ours will be imprisoned, and later still > someone will be assassinated. > > It may become that the Luddites will decide the only good posthuman is > a dead one. I don't think I'm being very outlandish here. Human nature > is what it is. If a religious fundamentalist sticks an icepick through > your head, all the cryo in the world isn't going to bring you back. > > The defacement of public works and monuments is a time-honored > tradition of civil disobedience, political unrest and revolution. > Blowing up a statue - as long as no-one dies - doesn't seem beyond the > pale to me. It just doesn't. Yes it is a slippery slope, but exactly > what kind of slope did you think this H+ thing was on? > > It seems like some were just hoping to squeak through the uplift door > without anyone noticing. And if so, why? What the heck does that say > about who you are, or who you are going to be? I'd rather die now for > a cause I'm prepared to stand up for than live on as a someone who had > to pretend their way into being something more than human. Is that the > humanity you are wanting to preserve? Is that the future you are > promising? This is your preferred mode of operation that finds other > methods so distasteful? > > I'm sure it would be better for all of us if there were no need to > fight in order to attain our future. I just don't think we should bank > on it. I think the cultural, academic and political wings of > transhumanism are its lifeblood, engine room and conscience > respectively. But I think we are going to need more than that. I think > in your heart of hearts some of you do also. > > I don't want to stand by while some of out greatest minds whither and > die of old age. I'm a young man, and can fight for their cause. I can > breathe with forthright vigor and impetus while they count down to the > last breath they may take. I don't think they want to go, and yet > with our dawdling and bumbling we tacitly accept their demise. > > Fighting for the future doesn't have to mean violence. But we should > be fighting, yearning, reaching. Transcendence should be a blaze of > glory upon a pyre of our achievement, not a pained and delayed excuse > carried over the line only by its own momentum and apologized for > throughout. > > Posthumanity and the singularity will be the pinnacle of human > achievement. We should achieve it in a manner of 'arete', not in a > manner of conflict avoidance and procrastination. > > It is -our- future. We should fight for it. We should protect those > who matter to us from harm. We should resist suppression and > persecution. > > We should Transcend. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From dagonweb at gmail.com Mon May 14 17:37:24 2007 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 19:37:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <46487F79.6000605@lightlink.com> References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> <46487F79.6000605@lightlink.com> Message-ID: Good Let's formulate a statement of intent about what transhumanism is and what it isn't. Better still, let's classify or group transhumanism into several subcurrents such as libertarian transhumanism, social-democratic transhumanism and neo-fascist transhumanism. Let's give this TTM ideology a name and let's distance ourselves from it, place a fence around it. Treat it like an infection, a disease and an unnacceptable ideology. Create a wiki entry as soon as possible. Throw it out into the open. But let us please acknowledge that this current of hacker-ist anarchism does in fact exist and that any people, if excluded, ostracized, marginalized or alienated will in fact use transhuman technologies contrary to any ideal, morality or flavor of humanism. So we all convene here at this "place", at this time and declare transhumanism a moral movement that aims to achieve the good for all people, and we deny small viking styled nihilists a platform? Are we read to create such a counter- manifesto? Then let's be very inclusive. In ten, twenty years time some marginalized third world group will say the same using different arguments. They could be neo-marxists who claim technology is everyone's, or the property of "the collective" or the gift of Allah or Zenu, and all means are legitimate in getting a share of the cake. Yes I am saying that "we", us rich selfrighteous highly educated, well fed westerners should acknowledge that one day these neo-transhumanists might crawl out of the woodwork labelling themselves transhumanists with a manifesto more akin to the one above than any humane, solidary ideology. If abundance passes by the world's losers, I won't begrudge the world's losers in rebelling and coming after the winners in the game with everything they got. So I advocate creating a counter-manifesto as soon as possible that not only denies fascism or nihilism or viking style aggressive egocentrism - but also says LOUDLY that being part of transhumanism means sharing accumulated abundance equitable with those who didn't get a fair hand in the global struggle. If we don't "we" are hypocrites and cowards and the author of TTM wins. On 5/14/07, Richard Loosemore wrote: > > > People, > > I don't think anyone is taking this seriously enough. > > It is not a matter of *whether* this 'manifesto' will be taken as > representative of what transhumanists believe, it is a question of > *when* some media outlet picks it up and brands the entire transhumanist > movement as a terrorist group. That is what media outlets do: their > job is extremist portrayals. Now that kevine.osborne has done this, it > will sit there as a ticking bomb. > > I see two choices. One is to repudiate the thing strongly enough to > expunge it from the record. If necessary, shut down the list completely > and reconstitute under a new name. It is not enough to say "I > personally repudiate this". It has to be expunged in such a thorough > way that this group of people are seen to have taken the most drastic > action possible to dissociate themselves from it. > > The other is to do nothing and just say "we disagree with this". Then > it is just a matter of time before it blows up in your face. > > Although I have been in this field for a long time, and am a significant > participant on other lists, I have only recently joined the extropians > list itself. If the drastic rejection of this manifesto I suggested > above does not take place within a very short time, I am out of here. I > will not be associated in any way with an organization that tolerates > this kind of declaration to stay on the record. > > > Richard Loosemore. > > > > > > > > > > > > kevin.osborne wrote: > > Not genuinely trying to be dystopic/cataclysic here, but: > > > > Surely the thought that the political/academic/cultural transhumanism > > of today may one day be adjuncted with a military/security wing has > > been posited previously? > > > > And If not, why not? As altruistic and peace-loving as we may be, we > > seem ripe for xenophobic suppression as a minority. It may well be > > that the majority of H+ are pacifists, but do not count all of us > > among your number. None of us like war and bloodshed. All of us know > > that it will mean children dead by the sword. But surely a posthuman > > holocaust is a real and cognizable risk? > > > > As we spiral down the well into the singularity, unprecedented levels > > of tumult are foreseeable. > > > > It seems almost preordained that one day certain sections of the > > movement will become anathema to others within the global community; > > religious types stand out as initial likely candidates, but > > state-sponsored policing institutions may well take umbrage also. > > > > Sooner or later a leader of ours will be imprisoned, and later still > > someone will be assassinated. > > > > It may become that the Luddites will decide the only good posthuman is > > a dead one. I don't think I'm being very outlandish here. Human nature > > is what it is. If a religious fundamentalist sticks an icepick through > > your head, all the cryo in the world isn't going to bring you back. > > > > The defacement of public works and monuments is a time-honored > > tradition of civil disobedience, political unrest and revolution. > > Blowing up a statue - as long as no-one dies - doesn't seem beyond the > > pale to me. It just doesn't. Yes it is a slippery slope, but exactly > > what kind of slope did you think this H+ thing was on? > > > > It seems like some were just hoping to squeak through the uplift door > > without anyone noticing. And if so, why? What the heck does that say > > about who you are, or who you are going to be? I'd rather die now for > > a cause I'm prepared to stand up for than live on as a someone who had > > to pretend their way into being something more than human. Is that the > > humanity you are wanting to preserve? Is that the future you are > > promising? This is your preferred mode of operation that finds other > > methods so distasteful? > > > > I'm sure it would be better for all of us if there were no need to > > fight in order to attain our future. I just don't think we should bank > > on it. I think the cultural, academic and political wings of > > transhumanism are its lifeblood, engine room and conscience > > respectively. But I think we are going to need more than that. I think > > in your heart of hearts some of you do also. > > > > I don't want to stand by while some of out greatest minds whither and > > die of old age. I'm a young man, and can fight for their cause. I can > > breathe with forthright vigor and impetus while they count down to the > > last breath they may take. I don't think they want to go, and yet > > with our dawdling and bumbling we tacitly accept their demise. > > > > Fighting for the future doesn't have to mean violence. But we should > > be fighting, yearning, reaching. Transcendence should be a blaze of > > glory upon a pyre of our achievement, not a pained and delayed excuse > > carried over the line only by its own momentum and apologized for > > throughout. > > > > Posthumanity and the singularity will be the pinnacle of human > > achievement. We should achieve it in a manner of 'arete', not in a > > manner of conflict avoidance and procrastination. > > > > It is -our- future. We should fight for it. We should protect those > > who matter to us from harm. We should resist suppression and > > persecution. > > > > We should Transcend. > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 14 22:41:38 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 15:41:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> <46487F79.6000605@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4648E5A2.7030607@mac.com> Dagon Gmail wrote: > Good > > Let's formulate a statement of intent about what transhumanism is and what > it isn't. Better still, let's classify or group transhumanism into > several subcurrents > such as libertarian transhumanism, social-democratic transhumanism and > neo-fascist transhumanism. Let's give this TTM ideology a name and > let's distance > ourselves from it, place a fence around it. Treat it like an > infection, a disease > and an unnacceptable ideology. > > Create a wiki entry as soon as possible. Throw it out into the open. > > But let us please acknowledge that this current of hacker-ist > anarchism does > in fact exist and that any people, if excluded, ostracized, > marginalized or alienated > will in fact use transhuman technologies contrary to any ideal, > morality or > flavor of humanism. I am a hacker (in the best and original sense of that word) and strongly libertarian leaning toward anarcho-capitalism. But who do you think will use transhumanist tech contrary to humanism? Are you sure humanism is something uniform that can't be broken down also? Are you sure it is an unquestionably ideal? > > So we all convene here at this "place", at this time and declare > transhumanism > a moral movement that aims to achieve the good for all people, and we > deny > small viking styled nihilists a platform? Are we read to create such a > counter- > manifesto? > What is the good for all people and how may it be achieved and is that even a meaningful sound bite? It sounds great enough but in fact some of the worst atrocities in history have been committed under the banner of "the good for all people". So I am not so sure it says much. Most transhumanists I am aware of want longevity, perfect health, enhanced intelligence, and very much want it to be available to all. That said our politics and ideas as to means are all over the spectrum. > If abundance passes by the world's losers, I won't begrudge the > world's losers in > rebelling and coming after the winners in the game with everything > they got. > Abundance is not abundance if there is not abundance for all. However, this does not mean everyone has exactly the same amount. People are not equal except in rights. I very much doubt they ever will be. > So I advocate creating a counter-manifesto as soon as possible that > not only denies > fascism or nihilism or viking style aggressive egocentrism - but also > says LOUDLY that > being part of transhumanism means sharing accumulated abundance > equitable with > those who didn't get a fair hand in the global struggle. > I am an individualist, very much so... Would you exclude me? I don't agree that equitable sharing is even reasonably definable much less the holy grail. I don't agree with any concept such as "a fair hand". Reality is not "fair" in such a sense. > If we don't "we" are hypocrites and cowards and the author of TTM wins. You seem to be nearly ranting yourself. Take a breath. > > > On 5/14/07, *Richard Loosemore* > wrote: > > > People, > > I don't think anyone is taking this seriously enough. > > It is not a matter of *whether* this 'manifesto' will be taken as > representative of what transhumanists believe, it is a question of > *when* some media outlet picks it up and brands the entire > transhumanist > movement as a terrorist group. That is what media outlets > do: their > job is extremist portrayals. Now that kevine.osborne has done > this, it > will sit there as a ticking bomb. > > I see two choices. One is to repudiate the thing strongly enough to > expunge it from the record. If necessary, shut down the list > completely > and reconstitute under a new name. It is not enough to say "I > personally repudiate this". It has to be expunged in such a thorough > way that this group of people are seen to have taken the most drastic > action possible to dissociate themselves from it. > What shut down every time someone writes something misguided? Great! We can be silenced at any time by one post. I am sure our actual enemies would love that. I think some of us are getting tremendously overwrought by one overwrought set of remarks. I expect better of us. > > > The other is to do nothing and just say "we disagree with > this". Then > it is just a matter of time before it blows up in your face. > How so? I see no basis for concluding any such thing. > Although I have been in this field for a long time, and am a > significant > participant on other lists, I have only recently joined the extropians > list itself. If the drastic rejection of this manifesto I suggested > above does not take place within a very short time, I am out of > here. I > will not be associated in any way with an organization that tolerates > this kind of declaration to stay on the record. > Whatever. If you want to be so thin skinned and authoritarian that unless others kowtow to your opinion you stomp off then be my guest. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 14 22:47:14 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 15:47:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070513192618.02225980@satx.rr.com> References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> <4647AA4A.3010900@mac.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070513192618.02225980@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4648E6F2.7040402@mac.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > I can't believe so many people are calmly *debating* this poisonous > drivel. (Sophomoric joke or otherwise.) > For crying out loud. It was not all poison. Little is. Can you see past the inflammatory BS? Would you prefer all of us to play chicken little over something so small and really insignificant to where we really stand and what we stand for? Would you prefer to so marginalize the angry and fed up ones that they become further isolated and more potentially explosive? Do you know that sometimes the worst thing that can be done with someone acting marginally is to act as if they are totally insane? - samantha From Thomas at thomasoliver.net Mon May 14 21:27:22 2007 From: Thomas at thomasoliver.net (Thomas) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 14:27:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> Message-ID: <4648D43A.8040908@thomasoliver.net> Samantha Atkins wrote: >[...] Violence is the last >resort when all other means to preserve freedom to live and pursue one's >goals have been exhausted. [...] > And ends generally turn out consistent with means. -- Thomas From Thomas at thomasoliver.net Mon May 14 22:04:55 2007 From: Thomas at thomasoliver.net (Thomas) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 15:04:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto References: <46462B2C.7060203@mac.com> <823433.92775.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <3642969c0705130934y5e6df740y63d886390931d56c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4648DD07.1020402@thomasoliver.net> kevin.osborne wrote: >[...] > >We should Transcend. > To the level where conflict becomes cooperation? Lets try that. -- Thomas From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Mon May 14 23:52:32 2007 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 16:52:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Is Kevin Osborne a Scientologist? Message-ID: <795370.10386.qm@web60513.mail.yahoo.com> In light of Kevin Osborne's last few posts all of which reflect negatively upon transhumanists: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2007-January/032444.html And his recent moronic "manifesto" to do illegal reprehensible things openly broadcast on a logged publically available email list. I ask who is Kevin Osborne? Could he do more damage to our cause if tried? Kevin Osborne is a fairly common name, but his posts do *seem* to support the hypothesis that the Kevin Osborne who is trying to sabotage the Extropian's list is this Kevin Osborne here: http://www.truthaboutscientology.com/stats/by-name/k/kevin-osborne.html If not then why is he trying so hard to give us bad press? First as a doomsday cult and now as a budding terrorist organization? Stuart LaForge alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu "In Emptiness exists Good but no Evil. Wisdom is Existence. Principle is Existence. The Way is Existence. The Mind is Emptiness." - Miyamoto Musashi, Kyoto period Samurai. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sucker-punch spam with award-winning protection. Try the free Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/features_spam.html From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 15 00:34:42 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 20:34:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Is Kevin Osborne a Scientologist? In-Reply-To: <795370.10386.qm@web60513.mail.yahoo.com> References: <795370.10386.qm@web60513.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <46490022.6080700@lightlink.com> I doubt it: kevin.osborne at gmail.com claimed to be age 31-32 in a post to SL4 last year. Your scientology reference is to someone who was involved in 1978. Richard Loosemore. The Avantguardian wrote: > In light of Kevin Osborne's last few posts all of > which reflect negatively upon transhumanists: > > http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2007-January/032444.html > > And his recent moronic "manifesto" to do illegal > reprehensible things openly broadcast on a logged > publically available email list. I ask who is Kevin > Osborne? Could he do more damage to our cause if > tried? > > Kevin Osborne is a fairly common name, but his posts > do *seem* to support the hypothesis that the Kevin > Osborne who is trying to sabotage the Extropian's list > is this Kevin Osborne here: > > http://www.truthaboutscientology.com/stats/by-name/k/kevin-osborne.html > > If not then why is he trying so hard to give us bad > press? First as a doomsday cult and now as a budding > terrorist organization? > > > Stuart LaForge > alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu > > "In Emptiness exists Good but no Evil. > Wisdom is Existence. > Principle is Existence. > The Way is Existence. > The Mind is Emptiness." > > - Miyamoto Musashi, Kyoto period Samurai. > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Sucker-punch spam with award-winning protection. > Try the free Yahoo! Mail Beta. > http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/features_spam.html > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From spike66 at comcast.net Tue May 15 05:16:12 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 22:16:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <3642969c0705130435g6b26ea12w4be040bd279c1ebd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > > >Um, is this supposed to be some kind of joke? In case there was any lingering ambiguity, do let me point out that there was universal repudiation of the so-called transhumanist terrorist manifesto here on Exi-chat. One might be able to somehow interpret the original post as a backhanded repudiation of terrorists, or as a warning of the possibility of future terrorists taking on the mantle of transhumanism (doubtful), or possibly a satirical essay. However if this was the intent, the humor was lost in subtlety. Clearly the writer is no Jonathan Swift. Do let us allow this thread a quiet and merciful demise. Take great care when posting anything that may be interpreted as supporting terrorism in any way. While recognizing that every internet group and website has its trolls, we must be diligent in discouraging such posting. spike From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Tue May 15 10:33:28 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 03:33:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I am very curious to see how things work out in the personal lives of present-day Transhumanists should the Singularity not happen as hoped by the year 2030. By that year many of the "older folks" among us will have used (or be on the verge of using) the only option available for a possible escape from death, which would be cryonic suspension. While Ray Kurzweil came to his 2030 date for the Singularity by using Moore's law, I'm sure he (and many others) found it comforting that this was a year within striking distance of his personal lifespan. Around 2030 I envision many documentaries and news specials being made to cover the "depressed and misguided souls (I see this being the angle given by the filmmakers)" who thought a Singularity would happen within their lifetime. But by then cryonic suspension technology should be far more advanced & respected than now. And I can imagine the "Transhumanist Elders" being much beloved by the younger generation (I would at least hope so!, lol). John Grigg --------------------------------- Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 15 11:28:17 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 13:28:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20070515112817.GT17691@leitl.org> On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 03:33:28AM -0700, John Grigg wrote: > > I am very curious to see how things work out in the personal lives of > present-day Transhumanists should the Singularity not happen as hoped I don't think anyone is so foolish as to predict a specific series of events, and worse, to gamble your life on it. ("Why save for retirement, or build a health care fund, or buy cryonics? The Singularity will verily save us, halleluja!". Yeah. Right). > by the year 2030. By that year many of the "older folks" among us > will have used (or be on the verge of using) the only option available > for a possible escape from death, which would be cryonic suspension. Right. > While Ray Kurzweil came to his 2030 date for the Singularity by using > Moore's law, I'm sure he (and many others) found it comforting that I honestly don't know why people here are citing Kurzweil. And for the umpteeth time, Moore is not about computer performance, it's about integration density. > this was a year within striking distance of his personal lifespan. Awfully comforting, I'm sure. > Around 2030 I envision many documentaries and news specials being made > to cover the "depressed and misguided souls (I see this being the Any such "depressed and misguided" souls around here? > angle given by the filmmakers)" who thought a Singularity would happen > within their lifetime. But by then cryonic suspension technology > should be far more advanced & respected than now. And I can imagine The technology is great already, the deployment isn't. There will be no viable cryonics for the rest of us, as long as it is not part of the critical care medicine. Judging from historical trends, 23 years is negligible. > the "Transhumanist Elders" being much beloved by the younger > generation (I would at least hope so!, lol). I think the younger generation would rather wish the cantankerous fools would be rather cooling their nonexisting toes at the bottom of a dewar. -- 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 russell.wallace at gmail.com Tue May 15 11:48:24 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 12:48:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <20070515112817.GT17691@leitl.org> References: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20070515112817.GT17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705150448xbd47acai59a1f1c286e3b115@mail.gmail.com> On 5/15/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > I honestly don't know why people here are citing Kurzweil. And for > the umpteeth time, Moore is not about computer performance, it's > about integration density. Of course it's about computer performance. If increased integration density didn't result in increased performance nobody would care about it. (As for the original question, I don't expect my own generation to be around for most of the future; that doesn't mean future generations won't be.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 15 12:13:36 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 14:13:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705150448xbd47acai59a1f1c286e3b115@mail.gmail.com> References: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20070515112817.GT17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150448xbd47acai59a1f1c286e3b115@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070515121336.GW17691@leitl.org> On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 12:48:24PM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote: > Of course it's about computer performance. If increased integration No, it isn't. Read the original paper. > density didn't result in increased performance nobody would care about > it. Computer performance, as measured in benchmarks, does not result in linear semi-log plot. Case in point: the difference between CPU speed, as measured by benchmarks, and memory bandwidth, as measured by benchmarks, is a linear semi-log plot. But you knew that already. > (As for the original question, I don't expect my own generation to be > around for most of the future; that doesn't mean future generations > won't be.) I agree. -- 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 russell.wallace at gmail.com Tue May 15 12:30:37 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 13:30:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <20070515121336.GW17691@leitl.org> References: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20070515112817.GT17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150448xbd47acai59a1f1c286e3b115@mail.gmail.com> <20070515121336.GW17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705150530l7cdca302y1ea2875ea1853080@mail.gmail.com> On 5/15/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > No, it isn't. Read the original paper. I'm well aware of what the original paper said. My point stands: if increased integration density didn't result in increased performance, nobody would bother referring to that paper, let alone enshrining said reference in the vernacular. Computer performance, as measured in benchmarks, does not result > in linear semi-log plot. Yes it does. Case in point: the difference between CPU speed, as measured > by benchmarks, and memory bandwidth, as measured by benchmarks, > is a linear semi-log plot. > > But you knew that already. Well yes. And each of the components are (approximately) linear semi-log. As is RAM capacity. As is disk capacity. As is the bandwidth of a fixed amount of memory (as it migrates from disk to RAM to cache - a steeper semi-log than the bandwidth of main memory). Stepping back, we see it's actually a pyramid, with disk at the base and registers at the peak; the height of the peak (speed of operation on registers), the width of the base (disk capacity) and the width of the second layer (RAM) are all best approximated as linear semi-log. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 15 12:50:48 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 14:50:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705150530l7cdca302y1ea2875ea1853080@mail.gmail.com> References: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20070515112817.GT17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150448xbd47acai59a1f1c286e3b115@mail.gmail.com> <20070515121336.GW17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150530l7cdca302y1ea2875ea1853080@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070515125048.GX17691@leitl.org> On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 01:30:37PM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote: > No, it isn't. Read the original paper. > > I'm well aware of what the original paper said. My point stands: if Then you're claiming more than Moore even did. > increased integration density didn't result in increased performance, > nobody would bother referring to that paper, let alone enshrining said > reference in the vernacular. The claim is not just in increased performance, but specifically, in a linear semi-log plot increased performance. That claim is bogus, and repetitions do not make it any more true. (No, the aggregated TOP 500 is not about Moore, so you don't have to cite that). > Computer performance, as measured in benchmarks, does not result > in linear semi-log plot. > > Yes it does. Benchmarks proving your point, please. > Case in point: the difference between CPU speed, as measured > by benchmarks, and memory bandwidth, as measured by benchmarks, > is a linear semi-log plot. > But you knew that already. > > Well yes. And each of the components are (approximately) linear > semi-log. As is RAM capacity. As is disk capacity. As is the bandwidth So is memory bandwidth versus time a linear semi-log, yes or no? > of a fixed amount of memory (as it migrates from disk to RAM to cache > - a steeper semi-log than the bandwidth of main memory). Stepping Moore is not about hard drive storage, and incidentally, the hard drive latency is *also* not a linear semi-log plot. Same applies to tape. > back, we see it's actually a pyramid, with disk at the base and > registers at the peak; the height of the peak (speed of operation on I'm very faimiliar with computer architecture 101, thanks. Since actual code doesn't run out of registers only, nonsynthentic benchmarks support my point, and not yours. > registers), the width of the base (disk capacity) and the width of the > second layer (RAM) are all best approximated as linear semi-log. You're starting to sound like Kurzweil. If reality doesn't fit your requirements, you design a synthetic benchmark of no relevance to reality. I'm sorry, a waferful of ring oscillators might fit Moore quite closely, but 0) it's not something you can buy beta) it won't make your benchmarked code fit semilinear log plot with each semiconductor lithography node So, if you have to add to your claims, I'm willing to listen to *real-world* benchmarks (no, Linpack is not a real-world benchmark) confirming your point. Unless you can back your claim up with that, spare your keystrokes. -- 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 russell.wallace at gmail.com Tue May 15 15:41:55 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 16:41:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <20070515125048.GX17691@leitl.org> References: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20070515112817.GT17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150448xbd47acai59a1f1c286e3b115@mail.gmail.com> <20070515121336.GW17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150530l7cdca302y1ea2875ea1853080@mail.gmail.com> <20070515125048.GX17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705150841w77857056i312b88791614d71b@mail.gmail.com> On 5/15/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > So, if you have to add to your claims, I'm willing to listen to > *real-world* benchmarks (no, Linpack is not a real-world benchmark) > confirming your point. Okay, look at the SPEC benchmarks, which use real-world code. What do you think actual performance does, remains constant? increases arithmetically? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Tue May 15 14:46:45 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 09:46:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Drivel Manifesto In-Reply-To: <211101c795dd$e48d3940$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <3642969c0705120108h3484041ehe0d8efbe385bf6df@mail.gmail.com> <501771.47201.qm@web56505.mail.re3.yahoo.com> <6.2.1.2.2.20070513083336.032b5790@pop-server.austin.rr.com> <20bd01c79586$4313b5f0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4647ADEA.3030108@mac.com> <211101c795dd$e48d3940$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <6.2.1.2.2.20070515094554.03277018@pop-server.austin.rr.com> Lee wrote: >P.S. Thanks to Eli for the timely and accurate change of subject line. Yes but I hoped it would be here sooner. 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: From sentience at pobox.com Tue May 15 17:28:45 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 10:28:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4649EDCD.2030306@pobox.com> John Grigg wrote: > > I am very curious to see how things work out in the personal lives of > present-day Transhumanists should the Singularity not happen as hoped by > the year 2030. Cryonics. Enough said. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 15 18:51:34 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 20:51:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705150841w77857056i312b88791614d71b@mail.gmail.com> References: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20070515112817.GT17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150448xbd47acai59a1f1c286e3b115@mail.gmail.com> <20070515121336.GW17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150530l7cdca302y1ea2875ea1853080@mail.gmail.com> <20070515125048.GX17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150841w77857056i312b88791614d71b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070515185134.GH17691@leitl.org> On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 04:41:55PM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote: > Okay, look at the SPEC benchmarks, which use real-world code. SPEC is largely useless for AI (and there's no Singularity by 2030 without AI, to come back to the start of the thread). http://www.ce.chalmers.se/research/group/hpcag/publ/2004/EWN04/performancegrowth_tr-2004-9.pdf (way too optimistic, because not memory-bottlenecked). http://www.spiral.net/problem.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/ etc. > What do you think actual performance does, remains constant? increases It depends on your application, of course. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~mccalpin/wwc-keynote.html A little bird told me that AI doesn't fit into predictable memory access, and is memory-bottlenecked, given today's architectures. > arithmetically? http://www.streambench.org/db1/00050/streambench.org/_uimages/streambench_logo.gif Take the blue pill, not the red one. To not be a party-pooper. I'll grant you that aggregated TOP 500 is quite impressive, but it's not a direct function of Moore. I'll also grant you that the integration density (which is all Moore is about) represents a potential performance, currently locked in a suboptimal configuration. When we make predictions, we need to make sure they're not based on cherry-picked best case. Orelse our future model is faulty, and it will come and bite us in the butt. Hard. -- 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 russell.wallace at gmail.com Tue May 15 20:47:19 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 21:47:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <20070515185134.GH17691@leitl.org> References: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20070515112817.GT17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150448xbd47acai59a1f1c286e3b115@mail.gmail.com> <20070515121336.GW17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150530l7cdca302y1ea2875ea1853080@mail.gmail.com> <20070515125048.GX17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705150841w77857056i312b88791614d71b@mail.gmail.com> <20070515185134.GH17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705151347t6facb302lfcc6faddc1f55d5e@mail.gmail.com> On 5/15/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > A little bird told me that AI doesn't fit into predictable memory > access, and is memory-bottlenecked, given today's architectures. Oh, well, for AI purposes it depends which school of thought you follow. Connectionism is mostly straight number crunching and memory access, SPECfp is a decent benchmark for this sort of workload. In the domain of AI through software engineering, it's true that memory access is irregular, but it often caches reasonably well. It exercises a lot of things... database benchmarks are probably reasonably representative here... if I had to pick one thing that's the biggest bottleneck, I'd pick RAM _capacity_ - which of course is a direct function of integration density. But you're of the AI through brute force evolution school of thought! What are you worrying about? That's an embarrassingly parallel problem! It can easily use all the cores and cache you can throw at it with almost linear speedup ^.^ (Okay, granted current architectures leave a lot of performance on the table for this kind of workload, in terms of making efficient use of all those transistors.) When we make predictions, we need to make sure they're not based on > cherry-picked best case. Orelse our future model is faulty, and it > will come and bite us in the butt. Hard. True! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andres at neuralgrid.net Tue May 15 20:52:26 2007 From: andres at neuralgrid.net (Andres Colon) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 16:52:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A Transhumanist Terrorist Manifesto In-Reply-To: <712339.37919.qm@web37207.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4647AA4A.3010900@mac.com> <712339.37919.qm@web37207.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > kevin.osborne wrote: > > Well, no. Fuck you and your 'congress'. You are talking about a nation > state I do not reside in, am not a member of and whose authority over > my life I repudiate. I know what it is like to have authority forced on you. I live on one of the few remaining colonies in our modern world, stamped property of the world's only remaining superpower. I understand how it feels like being denied the rights to your freedom and sovereignty. I am eager and hungry to expand beyond the borders, false limits and boundaries that others see on the world. The world needs positive change and the best way to achieve it and make it _last_ is for each of us to start doing positive things and help bring positive awareness to our cause. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pgptag at gmail.com Wed May 16 18:24:39 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 20:24:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Anders Sandberg in Second Life on converging cognitive enhancement, uvvy island in SL, May 24 2007 10am PST Message-ID: <470a3c520705161124vbe91e85w98b11fd643b38426@mail.gmail.com> Please note the change of date. Wed 23 will probably be a Black Wednesday (SL off for maintenance), so we moved it to Thu 24 same hour. G. On 5/10/07, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > Presentation in Second Life on converging cognitive enhancement > > http://www.eudoxa.se/content/archives/2007/05/presentation_at_1.html > > http://uvvy.com/index.php/Sandberg230507 > > Eudoxa will hold a seminar at Uvvy Island in the virtual world of > Second Life on Wednesday May 23rd at 19h00 Central European Time > (13h00 EST, 10h00 PST) > > Dr. Anders Sandberg, research director at Eudoxa and research > assistant at the Oxford University ENHANCE Project and Uehiro Centre > for Practical Ethics, will talk about his recent publication together > with Nick Bostrom from the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford > University > > Their paper Converging Cognitive Enhancements reviews currently > available technologies for cognitive enhancement and their likely > near-term prospects for convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, > information technology and cognitive science and how cognitive > enhancement is ideal for achieving convergence. > > The paper Converging Cognitive Enhancements is published in the Annals > of the New York Academies of Science Progress in Convergence: > Technologies for Human Wellbeing and edited by William Sims Bainbridge > & Mihail C. Roco of the National Science Foundation. > > The Eudoxa think tank is based in Stockholm, Sweden. Their focus is on > discussing the societal effects of emerging technologies with dynamist > thoughts on experimentation. Eudoxa has published books and reports in > Swedish, Danish and English. > > For further information please contact Eudoxa director Waldemar > Ingdahl telephone +46 8 83 87 73 e-mail info at eudoxa.se and Giulio > Prisco +34 610 536 144 e-mail gp at uvvy.com > From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 17 05:28:56 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 22:28:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com><359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com><0d1501c78e6d$d3c15230$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <463BF4D0.7@mac.com> Message-ID: <21b201c79844$8fb23f10$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> I consider the following to be one of Samantha's greatest posts ever, and I have time to comment on it. On 5/4/2007, Samantha wrote > Torstein Haldorsen wrote: > >> Now, while I believe [this] is quite profound, and find it >> intellectually pleasing to have a "religion" of my own design, this >> could easily be entirely normal delusions of grandeur. I don't know, >> but I really love this project, I believe in the potential of the >> idea, and I would love to be able to work on it full time, somehow, >> some time in the future. > > I have considered such a thing myself rather seriously. In particular I > despair of enough humans embracing rationality and moving sufficiently > beyond the many roots that religion feeds from to maximize our chances > of survival. It does seem odd, though, to think of the options as consisting of either (a) embracing rationality, or (b) failing to. I take you to mean that the progress towards rationality is disappointingly slow. Our present luxury does make it increasingly more affordable to be rational (i.e, in terms of our EEA driven impulses). > There is an apparent lot of power and appeal in those [religious] > memes and psychological complexes. I thought that if they could be > harnessed toward a more scientific worldview and transhumanist visions > of transformation, immortality and transcendence then we would have much > more of a chance. > > The more I looked at this though and the more I > attempted to move forward with it the less I believed it was a good > idea. You would be fighting an uphill battle against all the other > religions and religious systems out there. You would be struggling to > create a faith, a very powerful and magnetic meme complex, working > primarily from an intellectual perspective. Unless you go in for full > prophet and fanatical levels of dedication and devotion to the work you > will not be a very powerful magnetic core for the work. If you are not > then the work will be picked to death in committee and die a thousand > deaths by multiple agendas. If you do form something cohesive you run > high dangers of overlooking something critical that makes the result, if > it takes hold, deadly. At every step of the way you will be tempted to > use language largely owned by vastly different and inimical meme sets > and your message will get lost in the stew of assumption about what you > mean when you use those words. Very well said. > Increasingly I think that many of the roots that feed religion are > aspects of our EP that we will seriously need to struggle to overcome if > we are to have a viable future. Our future is in the realm of vision > firmly grounded in science and reality. Great mystical sci-fi romps > into the future while appealing on some levels don't seem to really have > much traction or much relationship to the work needed personally or > collectively. I could be wrong but I am quite discouraged regarding > the viability of this sort of thing. Perhaps you mean with our present, limited, human-nature capabilities? But genetic engineering is not far off, is it? Even sooner, enlightenment about drugs could also allow whole populations to take something that they rationally know will make them more peaceful, increase their prosperity, and bring about much more satisfaction and happiness for all. >> As i said, if anyone can play the devils advocate and successfully >> convince me why it _wont work_ or why I shouldn't go through with it I >> would be grateful also, as I could stop spending a such ridiculous >> amount of time on a maniac project that is exceedingly likely to fail >> at any rate. > > I think the few of us who are relatively awake and capable among all the > world's billions are likely to accomplish far more if we see as clearly > as we can where we want to go and build the technological (and perhaps > cultural even political) tools for at least some of us to get there. I > don't think any scheme to inspire or convert or persuade any large > portion of the masses is going to work at this point. > > I rather liked believing [in the past] that it could though. Even though that's rather strongly stated---and with more than a hint of elitism---I have to say that nothing in particular is wrong with it, and like the above has been stated very succinctly and very well. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 17 05:29:56 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 22:29:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? Message-ID: <21b301c79844$8fe201a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Can anyone add to the last messages here which reported that he had been taken into custody? Thanks, Lee From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Thu May 17 07:23:56 2007 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 03:23:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <21b301c79844$8fe201a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <139589.58501.qm@web37204.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I'm just giving my opinion on Keith Henson. I think Scientology should let it go. Just an opinion. Anna --- Lee Corbin wrote: > Can anyone add to the last messages here which > reported that he > had been taken into custody? > > Thanks, > Lee > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail at http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/try_beta?.intl=ca From amara at amara.com Thu May 17 09:10:22 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 11:10:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] New land speed record set for sofas (92 mph) Message-ID: Oh mamma mia! Now I want my futon to blaze tracks! Tipped off by Boing Boing: ----------------- Http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/16/new_land_speed_recor.html New land speed record set for sofas (92 mph) Daniel Terdiman, who soils his eyeballs with The Sun so you don't have to, blogs, "If you've ever spent any time on your sofa wishing that you could take it wherever you wanted to go, you might want to talk to Marek Turowsk. That's because on Sunday, Turowsk set a new world record for "fastest furniture," according to The Sun, a British publication. The Sun reported that Turowsk hit 92 miles an hour, breaking the previous record of 87 miles an hour for high-speed couches, which was set in 1998 by engineer Ed China." ----------------- 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 george at betterhumans.com Thu May 17 13:47:21 2007 From: george at betterhumans.com (George Dvorsky) Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 09:47:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [extropy-chat] "How To Prepare For Alien Invasion" In-Reply-To: <068b01c7886d$77000010$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070426010230.0238b788@satx.rr.com> <068b01c7886d$77000010$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: I wrote a quick review on my blog, to which I've received a number of comments -- including the authors themselves. My post is here: http://sentientdevelopments.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-not-to-prepare-for-alien-invasion.html Dr. Travis S. Taylor's response: > Posted by: DocTravis > Email: travis.taylor at mchsi.com > URL: http://www.doctravis.com > Location: > > The article here is quite irresponsible in attacking a > potential solution while offering no other and simply saying > we must lay down and die. "Don't bother" it says. This is a > typical political approach to solving problems rather than a > scientific one. Attacking a solution doesn't offern a new one. > > Also, most folks who disregard the Fermi Paradox discussion > of this book fail completely, as you have Mr. Dvorsky, to > mention the discussion of Lancherster's Laws and the Central > Limit theorem. To bolster such an opinion without fair > discussion is quite, shall we say, unethical. > > What this rebut to the book truly is, is nothing more than an > emotional disagreement rather than a discussion of real > ideas. We do indeed mention the nano ideas and beserkers and > other SF ideas and we even talk about how silly ID4 is. > > So, again, I say that this article is an irresponsible rebut > to the book. I welcome dissenting opinions if they are based > on a real scientific discussion rather than, "That isn't my > opinion so you guys are stupid." > > Our book was designed as a starting point and not a final > answer. And, WE actually performed computer models and > wargames to come to the Mujahideen answer. WE did the math. > I ask Mr. Dvorsky, "What math did you do to come to your conclusions?" > > Global Security and especially a so-called Ethics group > should be more responsible with such discussion. Also, note > that Mr. Dvorsky never commented on why we say that America > should lead the tactics. He just disagrees with it, so that > makes him right. > > Not very responsible Mr. Dvorsky. Not very ethical. > > Regards, > > Dr. Travis S. Taylor Another response: > Posted by: BillEdwards > Email: be60164 at hotmail.com > URL: > Location: > > Mr. Dvorsky's use of the term "advanced" is subject to the > observer's perspectives and biases. The Conquistadors were > technologically advanced compared to the Aztecs, for example, > but "advanced" could be relative to technology, biology, > medicine, the "arts", philosophy, etc. The United States, > France, China, Russia, Japan, and Israel are "space-faring" > (locally thus far) but not "advanced" compared to each other > because of their differences in how they define "advanced" as > well as the reasons for their space-faring capabilities. > > By definition, "Alien" means Unknown; the space-faring > capability of an Alien society or civilization doesn't infer > that society's/civilization's definition as "advanced" > anymore than an analysis of US or Japanese spacecraft design > capabilities defines the Chinese sociological foundation, nor > Chinese to US and Japanese. Even though those capabilities > are Earth-based, they do not represent or define Humanity; a > recognition of physical principles and laws that are required > to travel into/through space do not create an Introduction to > Jazz, Bonsai gardening, or folk dancing. Advanced (and > Alien) does not mean peaceful, graceful, kind, or benevolent. > > Dr. Taylor has presented a work that suggests, based on > in-depth analysis and research in multiple disciplines, that > Something _might_ Be Possible and to Prepare For It. Rather > than quoting Sagan, I'll use Clarke (paraphrasing); If > Someone says "This is Impossible", the odds are that he/she > is wrong, but if Someone says "This is Possible", the odds > are that he/she is Right. > > Hoping for the Best and Planning for the Worst is commendable > relative to Extraterrestrial "interactions" or anything else > in life. Determining that Alien = Good is wishful thinking at best. > > Comparing a technological no-nonsense analysis of a possible > threat situation to a 2nd-rate science-fiction movie that is > liberally doused with nonsense is indeed "ridiculous". And, > reiterating my earlier comment, by what standards of measure > does Mr. Dvorsky attribute an Alien (i.e., Unknown) level of > space-faring technology that automatically creates a > condition of superiority against anything the US or any other > nation on Earth could provide? > > So far as the implementation of guerilla warfare and tactics > against a higher-technology warfighting capability and any > associated success there-in, I must presume that Mr. Dvorsky > missed any similar analytical opportunities regarding Vietnam > or somewhat similar recent events in the Middle East. > > Mr. Dvorsky throws the description of "handwaving" at > Planetary Defense, but then uses the terms "artificial > superintelligence" and "grey-goo nano" as well as other > terms. Inventing What-Ifs in his argument is self-defeating; > Planetary Defense presents a Concept of Possibilities and > Courses of Actions that could be taken _IF_ called for or > required. In contrast, Mr. Dvorsky presents the level of > argument normally found in any kindergarten or elementary > school , usually starting with "Yeah, but how about..." It > is very easy to expound from a safe podium on various topics, > including this work. Where is Mr. Dvorsky's annotated work > that argues against each point Dr. Taylor and company make in > this work? > > I must also presume that Mr. Dorvsky hasn't read, let alone > heard of, Von Neumann's War. > > Mr. Dvorsky's comments regarding the absence of any evidence > that supports the existence of "Galactic Berserkers" let > alone the presence of Aliens is self-defeating. Indeed, we > do not live in a sterile galaxy (the fact that we're here > illustrates this). But by that statement, how does Mr. > Dvorsky infer that the possibility doesn't exist that other > life, whose guidance and "morals" are at least equal to our > own (i.e., threatening), is not present or has not been > present in the Universe, let alone in this Galaxy, or in our > Spiral Arm of the Galaxy, or within the Local Bubble (the 100 > light-year sphere around our Sun). > > I suggest that Mr. Dvorsky didn't know what he was reading, > how to read it, or why to read it. His review of Planetary > Defense is equivalent to a pastry chef offering a review of a > theoretical physics paper. From davidmc at gmail.com Thu May 17 16:22:10 2007 From: davidmc at gmail.com (David McFadzean) Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 10:22:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <21b301c79844$8fe201a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <21b301c79844$8fe201a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Recent updates can be found here >> http://www.operatingthetan.com/ On 5/16/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > Can anyone add to the last messages here which reported that he > had been taken into custody? From andres at neuralgrid.net Thu May 17 16:51:48 2007 From: andres at neuralgrid.net (Andres Colon) Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 12:51:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: References: <21b301c79844$8fe201a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Keith Henson's story made it to Digg Front page today, 1 hour ago: Keith Henson is being denied his lawyer and medication. His visitors are being jerked around, often waiting for hours, then told he cannot see them. We who know him are very concerned for the future of his well-being, as he needs medication for heart and blood pressure problems. This whole situation is horribly wrong, and nobody is listening. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/16/11581/2673 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 18 02:55:54 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 19:55:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] worldometers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705180306.l4I363Ak014494@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Hey cool, check this: http://www.worldometers.info/ spike From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 18 04:35:46 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 21:35:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] hijacked! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705180447.l4I4lBGh007084@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Internet groksters please: if some reprehensible malefactor has hijacked a website so that one's link sends one to some other place in cyberspace, is there some way to manually overpower the loathsome hijacker? For instance, I want to get to www.rathergate.com but when I try to do so, I get http://www.eresources.com/ instead. Oy! How does that work? If some thieving hacker can crack the code by managing to factor the site owners' huge composite, can that contemptible lowlife redirect traffic anywhere she wants? Is there any way to find out to whom eresources belongs and ask if they are responsible for this egregious outrage? spike From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 18 05:49:22 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 22:49:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] how do they do that? In-Reply-To: <200705180447.l4I4lBGh007084@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <200705180549.l4I5nHeK007219@andromeda.ziaspace.com> We have observed here that photographs can be faked in such a way that they are not reliable evidence in a court case, but here is one that blew me away. It's a parody site of Frank Sinatra, singing about an event that occurred three years after Old Blue Eyes expired. My musician's ear tells me that this is really Frank's voice, not someone trying to mimic him. If it is another performer he is the best Sinatra sound-alike I have ever heard and then some. Whoever made this couldn't have pieced together sound bytes from Sinatra's other songs, for there are words used here I know for sure Frank never sang, such as box cutters. Please, this post is not about the *content* of the song. The song is a parody, a gag. That subject has been debated to death. I don't want to discuss the content, but rather how did they make that song? Animatronics? And what are the implications, if someone can make anyone appear to say anything? Or is this the work of a very skilled imitator and highly competent singer? I don't think so, have a listen: http://www.animatronics.org/strangers/strangers.htm spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 18 06:21:59 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 01:21:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] how do they do that? In-Reply-To: <200705180549.l4I5nHeK007219@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705180447.l4I4lBGh007084@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <200705180549.l4I5nHeK007219@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070518012014.02298fb8@satx.rr.com> At 10:49 PM 5/17/2007 -0700, you wrote: >Or is this the work of a very skilled imitator and highly >competent singer? Well, an imitator. Not *that* competent, either, imho. Can't keep to an extended note. Damien Broderick From sondre-list at bjellas.com Fri May 18 10:11:08 2007 From: sondre-list at bjellas.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Sondre_Bjell=E5s?=) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 12:11:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <009001c79934$db3262d0$91972870$@com> No longer care whether the Singularity will happen within my own lifetime. I?m hoping for a minimum 500 year lifespan, but if I die tomorrow or when I?m 80, I will still be happy for the years I had in this life. When I?m dead, I won?t care any longer anyway. I enjoy the technological advances that happens every day and I?m amazed by the creativity and brilliance of the human race. Happy to be a part of it all and I?m trying to do my contribution towards a better future. Keeping myself healthy and at an optimal health ensures that I can enjoy the time I have left to the fullest. I don?t have plans to freeze myself down, maybe this will change depending on the advances in this field. Regards, Sondre From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Grigg Sent: 15. mai 2007 12:33 To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? I am very curious to see how things work out in the personal lives of present-day Transhumanists should the Singularity not happen as hoped by the year 2030. By that year many of the "older folks" among us will have used (or be on the verge of using) the only option available for a possible escape from death, which would be cryonic suspension. While Ray Kurzweil came to his 2030 date for the Singularity by using Moore's law, I'm sure he (and many others) found it comforting that this was a year within striking distance of his personal lifespan. Around 2030 I envision many documentaries and news specials being made to cover the "depressed and misguided souls (I see this being the angle given by the filmmakers)" who thought a Singularity would happen within their lifetime. But by then cryonic suspension technology should be far more advanced & respected than now. And I can imagine the "Transhumanist Elders" being much beloved by the younger generation (I would at least hope so!, lol). John Grigg _____ Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sondre-list at bjellas.com Fri May 18 10:31:52 2007 From: sondre-list at bjellas.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Sondre_Bjell=E5s?=) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 12:31:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] hijacked! In-Reply-To: <200705180447.l4I4lBGh007084@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705180447.l4I4lBGh007084@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <009b01c79937$c03888d0$40a99a70$@com> www.rathergate.com returns http status 302: "The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI." Server: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.9 As it seems, there are is DNS hacks involves, just a simple HTTP redirect from the Apache server. Is this your site? www.eresources.com runs: Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET /Sondre -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: 18. mai 2007 06:36 To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] hijacked! Internet groksters please: if some reprehensible malefactor has hijacked a website so that one's link sends one to some other place in cyberspace, is there some way to manually overpower the loathsome hijacker? For instance, I want to get to www.rathergate.com but when I try to do so, I get http://www.eresources.com/ instead. Oy! How does that work? If some thieving hacker can crack the code by managing to factor the site owners' huge composite, can that contemptible lowlife redirect traffic anywhere she wants? Is there any way to find out to whom eresources belongs and ask if they are responsible for this egregious outrage? spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 18 10:36:53 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 11:36:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <009001c79934$db3262d0$91972870$@com> References: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <009001c79934$db3262d0$91972870$@com> Message-ID: On 5/18/07, Sondre Bjell?s wrote: > No longer care whether the Singularity will happen within my own lifetime. > I'm hoping for a minimum 500 year lifespan, but if I die tomorrow or when > I'm 80, I will still be happy for the years I had in this life. When I'm > dead, I won't care any longer anyway. > > I enjoy the technological advances that happens every day and I'm amazed by > the creativity and brilliance of the human race. Happy to be a part of it > all and I'm trying to do my contribution towards a better future. > > Keeping myself healthy and at an optimal health ensures that I can enjoy the > time I have left to the fullest. I don't have plans to freeze myself down, > maybe this will change depending on the advances in this field. > Agreed. The worst thing about dying is that I'd really, really, like to know how it all turned out in the end. BillK From sondre-list at bjellas.com Fri May 18 10:43:46 2007 From: sondre-list at bjellas.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Sondre_Bjell=E5s?=) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 12:43:46 +0200 Subject: [ExI] worldometers In-Reply-To: <200705180306.l4I363Ak014494@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705180306.l4I363Ak014494@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <009c01c79939$69fd9300$3df8b900$@com> 11,439,065,769 : cumulative hours waited for internet to download this year. I really wonder where they got this number from, cause I'm still waiting for a downloadable version of the Internet. One thing I noticed that could be interesting to discuss, do you see that certain words are represented using graphics instead of text? Words like deaths, abortions, HIV-infected, malaria, cancer. Seems they have done it to avoid being ranked or indexed based on those negative words. They did however, forget to remove it at the top of the page ("Uses your computer's clock, so if you are curious to learn the number of HIV-infected in 2050 then just change your system time to 2050.") 34,448,692 : tons of caught fish in this year. With all the illegal Russian fishing in Norwegian waters, I think they should at least double the speed on this counter. Nice site :) -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: 18. mai 2007 04:56 To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] worldometers Hey cool, check this: http://www.worldometers.info/ spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From mbb386 at main.nc.us Fri May 18 11:35:44 2007 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 07:35:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] hijacked! In-Reply-To: <200705180447.l4I4lBGh007084@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705180447.l4I4lBGh007084@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <48917.72.236.102.120.1179488144.squirrel@main.nc.us> > > > Internet groksters please: if some reprehensible malefactor has hijacked a > website so that one's link sends one to some other place in cyberspace, is > there some way to manually overpower the loathsome hijacker? > > For instance, I want to get to www.rathergate.com but when I try to do so, I > get http://www.eresources.com/ instead. Oy! > > How does that work? If some thieving hacker can crack the code by managing > to factor the site owners' huge composite, can that contemptible lowlife > redirect traffic anywhere she wants? Is there any way to find out to whom > eresources belongs and ask if they are responsible for this egregious > outrage? spike, you can try whois. Registrant: ERESOURCES LLC 1725 K St, NW Washington, DC 20006 US Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact: ERESOURCES LLC 1725 K St, NW Washington, DC 20006 US (202)216-0124 (202)318-0691 [fax] support at eresources.com Regards, MB From amara at amara.com Fri May 18 13:03:11 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 15:03:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] NAS Book: The Astrophysical Context of Life Message-ID: I discovered this free book at the National Academcies that might be of interest to some people here. More than half of it is political intergovernmental-speak, but the parts that discuss what we currently know, and how we can improve our knowledge in looking for life elsewhere, might be of interest to some here. Amara ============================================================ The Astrophysical Context of Life http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11316.html <-- Free PDF Description In 1997, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) formed the National Astrobiology Institute to coordinate and fund research into the origins, distribution, and fate of life in the universe. A 2002 NRC study of that program, Life in the Universe: An Assessment of U.S. and International Programs in Astrobiology, raised a number of concerns about the Astrobiology program. In particular, it concluded that areas of astrophysics related to the astronomical environment in which life arose on earth were not well represented in the program. In response to that finding, the Space Studies Board requested the original study committee, the Committee on the Origins and Evolution of Life, to examine ways to augment and integrate astronomy and astrophysics into the Astrobiology program. This report presents the results of that study. It provides a review of the earlier report and related efforts, a detailed examination of the elements of the astrobiology program that would benefit from greater integration and augmentation of astronomy and astrophysics, and an assessment of ways to facilitate the integration of astronomy with other astrobiology disciplines. --------- The goals of this study are as follows: * Identify areas where there can be especially fruitful collaboration between astrophysicists, biologists, biochemists, chemists, and planetary geologists. * Define areas where astrophysics, biology, chemistry, and geology are ripe for mutually beneficial interchanges and define areas that are likely to remain independent for the near future. * Suggest areas where current activities of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other federal agencies might augment NASA programs. Although some preliminary work on this study was undertaken during the committee meeting in October 2002, the study was not formally initiated until the committee met at the National Academies Keck Center in Washington, D.C., in March 2003. Work continued at meetings held at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, and at the National Academies Beckman Center in Irvine, California, in July and October 2003, respectively. An initial draft of the report was assembled in December 2003 and extensively revised during a meeting of the committee held at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, in January 2004. A new draft was created in February 2004 and circulated to the committee. It was revised in March and sent out for external review in April. -- 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 spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 18 14:39:05 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 07:39:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] how do they do that? In-Reply-To: <200705180549.l4I5nHeK007219@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <200705181439.l4IEd0vk004326@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike > ... I don't want to > discuss the content, but rather how did they make that song? > Animatronics? And what are the implications, if someone can make anyone appear to say > anything? Or is this the work of a very skilled imitator and highly > competent singer? I don't think so, have a listen: > > http://www.animatronics.org/strangers/strangers.htm > > spike So far offlisters have suggested the song was done by an imitator. Here's the website. This guy is good, check out the robot doing Santana: http://www.animatronics.org/ Still it sure sounds like Sinatra to me. spike From amara at amara.com Fri May 18 17:32:49 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 19:32:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dawn mission photos (spacecraft / launch vehicle at Kennedy Space Center) Message-ID: http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=173 Photos of the initial processing of the spacecraft for the launch (~June 30) 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 austriaaugust at yahoo.com Fri May 18 18:11:24 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 11:11:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <009001c79934$db3262d0$91972870$@com> Message-ID: <282317.52998.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi Sondre, My feeling is that the Alcor cryonics technology is already impressively advanced. More than enough to "bring someone back", in my layman's opinion [leaving all the metaphysics aside]. And it's encouraging to see that Alcor is still pushing forward with R&D, making progress toward effectively perfect preservation. I offer that you may want to reconsider, if you don't think you can make it to the aging cure. Check out the Alcor website if you haven't already. Best Wishes, Jeffrey Herrlich ____________________________________________________________________________________ Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check. Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/newmail_tools.html From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 18 19:05:53 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 12:05:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The void left by deleting religion In-Reply-To: <21b201c79844$8fb23f10$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <463AF1E3.4080201@pobox.com> <359310.18734.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0d1501c78e6d$d3c15230$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <463BF4D0.7@mac.com> <21b201c79844$8fb23f10$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <464DF911.7030409@mac.com> Lee Corbin wrote: > I consider the following to be one of Samantha's greatest posts ever, and I > have time to comment on it. > > Thanks. A few clarifications are below. > On 5/4/2007, Samantha wrote > > >> Torstein Haldorsen wrote: >> >> >>> Now, while I believe [this] is quite profound, and find it >>> intellectually pleasing to have a "religion" of my own design, this >>> could easily be entirely normal delusions of grandeur. I don't know, >>> but I really love this project, I believe in the potential of the >>> idea, and I would love to be able to work on it full time, somehow, >>> some time in the future. >>> >> I have considered such a thing myself rather seriously. In particular I >> despair of enough humans embracing rationality and moving sufficiently >> beyond the many roots that religion feeds from to maximize our chances >> of survival. >> > > It does seem odd, though, to think of the options as consisting of > either (a) embracing rationality, or (b) failing to. I take you to mean > that the progress towards rationality is disappointingly slow. Our > present luxury does make it increasingly more affordable to be > rational (i.e, in terms of our EEA driven impulses). > What I meant by "embracing rationality" includes embracing a naturalistic world view beyond various levels of magical and pre-scientific thinking sufficiently to cleanly consider the world as it actually is and the issues before us. In the US particular there is an appalling amount of decision making based on religious notions. In the world at large the vast majority are not close to a naturalistic world view. > >> Increasingly I think that many of the roots that feed religion are >> aspects of our EP that we will seriously need to struggle to overcome if >> we are to have a viable future. Our future is in the realm of vision >> firmly grounded in science and reality. Great mystical sci-fi romps >> into the future while appealing on some levels don't seem to really have >> much traction or much relationship to the work needed personally or >> collectively. I could be wrong but I am quite discouraged regarding >> the viability of this sort of thing. >> > > Perhaps you mean with our present, limited, human-nature capabilities? > But genetic engineering is not far off, is it? Even sooner, enlightenment > about drugs could also allow whole populations to take something that they > rationally know will make them more peaceful, increase their prosperity, > and bring about much more satisfaction and happiness for all. > It often seems to me that the work of examining our psychological and sociological proclivities and changing them as best we can with whatever tools are available has hardly begun. I don't believe we can or should wait for genetic engineering or even enlightenment about some drugs. Some of the work is personal and psychological, some inter-personal. One thing some spiritual practices do have is some awareness of these levels and tools for the self and group work. A set of such tools clean of religious aspects would be useful. > >>> As i said, if anyone can play the devils advocate and successfully >>> convince me why it _wont work_ or why I shouldn't go through with it I >>> would be grateful also, as I could stop spending a such ridiculous >>> amount of time on a maniac project that is exceedingly likely to fail >>> at any rate. >>> >> I think the few of us who are relatively awake and capable among all the >> world's billions are likely to accomplish far more if we see as clearly >> as we can where we want to go and build the technological (and perhaps >> cultural even political) tools for at least some of us to get there. I >> don't think any scheme to inspire or convert or persuade any large >> portion of the masses is going to work at this point. >> >> I rather liked believing [in the past] that it could though. >> > > Even though that's rather strongly stated---and with more than a hint of > elitism---I have to say that nothing in particular is wrong with it, and like > the above has been stated very succinctly and very well. > > Sometimes it is easy to forget that we here are a rather rarefied sampling of the population. The vast majority of the people in the world are not that much like us in some critical aspects including level of intelligence. Contemplate the normal distribution and your place upon it. Changes, especially large intellectual and cultural changes, come from the few, from an elite defined at least by those who see, understand and embrace the change. Hiding from acknowledging that that is the case seems to me unfruitful. People are not all the same. We all know that, right? - samantha From amara at kurzweilai.net Sat May 19 02:50:41 2007 From: amara at kurzweilai.net (Amara D. Angelica) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 22:50:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists In-Reply-To: <799636.3426.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <799636.3426.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <032e01c799c0$7daf27b0$650fa8c0@HP> Former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke?s BREAKPOINT novel, set in the year 2012, is based on emerging technologies. "Globegrid," a high-speed global network, links supercomputers worldwide. Combined with advanced AI software, it promises to reverse-engineer the brain, revolutionize genomics, enable medical breakthroughs, develop advanced human-machine interfaces, and allow for genetic alterations and even uploading consciousness. But it spurs a terrorist-fundamentalist Luddite backlash against transhumanists, as hackers take down the power grid, and destroy vital international data and telecom links, communications satellites, and biotech firms. http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0703.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amara at kurzweiltech.com Sat May 19 03:00:12 2007 From: amara at kurzweiltech.com (Amara D. Angelica) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 23:00:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists In-Reply-To: <032e01c799c0$7daf27b0$650fa8c0@HP> References: <799636.3426.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <032e01c799c0$7daf27b0$650fa8c0@HP> Message-ID: <034601c799c1$d7831b60$650fa8c0@HP> Corrected link: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0703.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 19 03:17:44 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 20:17:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whither Individualism? Message-ID: <225001c799c4$c47a5620$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Here is a passage from wikipedia's entry on individualism: "Alexis de Tocqueville, whose book Democracy in America was translated in English in 1840 (published in French in 1835) used the term as well. Tocqueville described Americans as highly individualistic and believed that this individualism was inseparable from the new American concept of egalitarian democracy. He wrote, "Not only does democracy make men forget their ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries, Each man is forever thrown back upon himself, and there is danger that he may shut up in the solitude of his own heart." And, mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself. "Individualism is a Selfishness originates in blind instinct; individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it originates as much in deficiencies of mind as in perversity of heart. Selfishness blights the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness." ---internal references can be found in the link here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism Note the part: Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself. De Tocqueville is clearly rcorrect here, but I wonder about two of his observations. First, if the Americans were truly as individualistic as he writes (in 1840), then how is that they were so concerned about remote and in most cases non-personal issues such as slavery and abolition? (2) Being the astute observer that he was, just how were conditions in Europe---say Paris, or France in general---any different? I would like to be able to imagine it, but I cannot. In any case, although I still have some problems with what de Tocqueville wrote, I do sense much more than I did fifteen years ago that there is something wrong in much of contemporary culture and its over-glorification of the individual. One very seldom sees community action or community spirit celebrated in movies, it seems to me. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 19 03:24:29 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 20:24:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists References: <799636.3426.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com><032e01c799c0$7daf27b0$650fa8c0@HP> <034601c799c1$d7831b60$650fa8c0@HP> Message-ID: <225101c799c5$785f3160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Amara Angelica writes > Former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke's BREAKPOINT novel, > set in the year 2012, is based on emerging technologies. "Globegrid," a > high-speed global network, links supercomputers worldwide. Combined > with advanced AI software, it promises to reverse-engineer the brain, > revolutionize genomics, enable medical breakthroughs, develop advanced > human-machine interfaces, and allow for genetic alterations and even > uploading consciousness. But it spurs a terrorist-fundamentalist Luddite > backlash against transhumanists, as hackers take down the power grid, > and destroy vital international data and telecom links, communications > satellites, and biotech firms. > > Corrected link: > http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0703.html Well, one item the author mentions -- People in the United States will be driving Chinese-manufactured cars like the Chery product line in 2007-08. is certainly off the mark. It's well to remember that 2012 is as close to us as 2002 was. I don't expect anything significantly more radical to happen in the next five years than in the past five. Lee From brian at posthuman.com Sat May 19 03:39:26 2007 From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 22:39:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists In-Reply-To: <225101c799c5$785f3160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <799636.3426.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com><032e01c799c0$7daf27b0$650fa8c0@HP> <034601c799c1$d7831b60$650fa8c0@HP> <225101c799c5$785f3160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <464E716E.8040401@posthuman.com> Lee Corbin wrote: > > Well, one item the author mentions > > -- People in the United States will be driving Chinese-manufactured > cars like the Chery product line in 2007-08. > > is certainly off the mark. http://www.engagingchina.com/blog/_archives/2007/2/27/2768811.html -- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/ From nanogirl at halcyon.com Sat May 19 04:12:12 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 21:12:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] New digital image for you References: <799636.3426.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com><032e01c799c0$7daf27b0$650fa8c0@HP> <034601c799c1$d7831b60$650fa8c0@HP><225101c799c5$785f3160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <464E716E.8040401@posthuman.com> Message-ID: <00aa01c799cc$081d6230$0200a8c0@Nano> New image! http://www.nanogirl.com/personal/vieuxhollywood.htm As always, feel free to make comments at the blog! I look forward to your thoughts. Have a nice weekend! Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amara at kurzweilai.net Sat May 19 04:31:39 2007 From: amara at kurzweilai.net (Amara D. Angelica) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 00:31:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists In-Reply-To: <225101c799c5$785f3160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <799636.3426.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com><032e01c799c0$7daf27b0$650fa8c0@HP><034601c799c1$d7831b60$650fa8c0@HP> <225101c799c5$785f3160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <03b101c799ce$98c8fd10$650fa8c0@HP> Lee Corbin said: >It's well to remember that 2012 is as close to us as 2002 was. > I don't expect anything significantly more radical > to happen in the next five years than in the past five. The Law of Accelerating Returns by Ray Kurzweil An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns," such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity -- technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light. http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0134.html From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 19 07:32:59 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 02:32:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] chariots of the concrete mixers Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070519023010.022b0c48@satx.rr.com> [and it's not even April 1--even if the adventurous scientist *is* named Barsoom...] great talk (despite dreadful audio glitches): < http://media.irt.drexel.edu/mediasite/viewer/Viewer.aspx?layoutPrefix=LayoutTopLeft&layoutOffset=Skins/Clean&width=800&height=631&peid=cd83d501-eccb-497e-ad63-3d08a26de747&pid=7d3c4a1d-27fc-4692-b172-1196a53da689&pvid=535&mode=Default&shouldResize=false&playerType=WM64Lite > summary: The Surprising Truth Behind the Construction of the Great Pyramids SHEILA BERNINGER and DORILONA ROSE - LiveScience This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. "This is not my day job." So begins Michel Barsoum as he recounts his foray into the mysteries of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. As a well respected researcher in the field of ceramics, Barsoum never expected his career to take him down a path of history, archaeology, and "political" science, with materials research mixed in. As a distinguished professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University, his daily routine consists mainly of teaching students about ceramics, or performing research on a new class of materials, the so-called MAX Phases, that he and his colleagues discovered in the 1990s. These modern ceramics are machinable, thermal-shock resistant, and are better conductors of heat and electricity than many metals-making them potential candidates for use in nuclear power plants, the automotive industry, jet engines, and a range of other high-demand systems. Then Barsoum received an unexpected phone call from Michael Carrell, a friend of a retired colleague of Barsoum, who called to chat with the Egyptian-born Barsoum about how much he knew of the mysteries surrounding the building of the Great Pyramids of Giza, the only remaining of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The widely accepted theory-that the pyramids were crafted of carved-out giant limestone blocks that workers carried up ramps-had not only not been embraced by everyone, but as important had quite a number of holes. Burst out laughing According to the caller, the mysteries had actually been solved by Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, more than two decades ago. Davidovits claimed that the stones of the pyramids were actually made of a very early form of concrete created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water. "It was at this point in the conversation that I burst out laughing," says Barsoum. If the pyramids were indeed cast, he says, someone should have proven it beyond a doubt by now, in this day and age, with just a few hours of electron microscopy. It turned out that nobody had completely proven the theory...yet. "What started as a two-hour project turned into a five-year odyssey that I undertook with one of my graduate students, Adrish Ganguly, and a colleague in France, Gilles Hug," Barsoum says. A year and a half later, after extensive scanning electron microscope (SEM) observations and other testing, Barsoum and his research group finally began to draw some conclusions about the pyramids. They found that the tiniest structures within the inner and outer casing stones were indeed consistent with a reconstituted limestone. The cement binding the limestone aggregate was either silicon dioxide (the building block of quartz) or a calcium and magnesium-rich silicate mineral. The stones also had a high water content-unusual for the normally dry, natural limestone found on the Giza plateau-and the cementing phases, in both the inner and outer casing stones, were amorphous, in other words, their atoms were not arranged in a regular and periodic array. Sedimentary rocks such as limestone are seldom, if ever, amorphous. The sample chemistries the researchers found do not exist anywhere in nature. "Therefore," says Barsoum, "it's very improbable that the outer and inner casing stones that we examined were chiseled from a natural limestone block." More startlingly, Barsoum and another of his graduate students, Aaron Sakulich, recently discovered the presence of silicon dioxide nanoscale spheres (with diameters only billionths of a meter across) in one of the samples. This discovery further confirms that these blocks are not natural limestone. Generations misled At the end of their most recent paper reporting these findings, the researchers reflect that it is "ironic, sublime and truly humbling" that this 4,500-year-old limestone is so true to the original that it has misled generations of Egyptologists and geologists and, "because the ancient Egyptians were the original-albeit unknowing-nanotechnologists." As if the scientific evidence isn't enough, Barsoum has pointed out a number of common sense reasons why the pyramids were not likely constructed entirely of chiseled limestone blocks. Egyptologists are consistently confronted by unanswered questions: How is it possible that some of the blocks are so perfectly matched that not even a human hair can be inserted between them? Why, despite the existence of millions of tons of stone, carved presumably with copper chisels, has not one copper chisel ever been found on the Giza Plateau? Although Barsoum's research has not answered all of these questions, his work provides insight into some of the key questions. For example, it is now more likely than not that the tops of the pyramids are cast, as it would have been increasingly difficult to drag the stones to the summit. Also, casting would explain why some of the stones fit so closely together. Still, as with all great mysteries, not every aspect of the pyramids can be explained. How the Egyptians hoisted 70-ton granite slabs halfway up the great pyramid remains as mysterious as ever. Why do the results of Barsoum's research matter most today? Two words: earth cements. "How energy intensive and/or complicated can a 4,500 year old technology really be? The answer to both questions is not very," Barsoum explains. "The basic raw materials used for this early form of concrete-limestone, lime, and diatomaceous earth-can be found virtually anywhere in the world," he adds. "Replicating this method of construction would be cost effective, long lasting, and much more environmentally friendly than the current building material of choice: Portland cement that alone pumps roughly 6 billion tons of CO2 annually into the atmosphere when it's manufactured." "Ironically," says Barsoum, "this study of 4,500 year old rocks is not about the past, but about the future." From amara at amara.com Sat May 19 08:11:47 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 10:11:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Virgin Airlines: Name Our Planes Message-ID: http://www.nameourplanes.com/ Anyone up for thinking of Transhumanist / Extropian theme names for Virgin Airlines' airplanes ? -- 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 sondre-list at bjellas.com Sat May 19 08:52:27 2007 From: sondre-list at bjellas.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Sondre_Bjell=E5s?=) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 10:52:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <282317.52998.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <009001c79934$db3262d0$91972870$@com> <282317.52998.qm@web37404.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <014d01c799f3$06cba320$1462e960$@com> Thanks, but I already have the paperwork from Alcor, received them many years back. I have not followed this space for a long time and I was wondering how you can be so confident that their technology can wake someone back up? Have they done experiments with animals yet? Not sure what you mean with the metaphysics side of things, I believe that if you're able to wake someone back up from their death, they will still be that very same person. So I have faith in cryonics, but I don't consider my own life to be valuable in the greater sense of our universe. I'm like the next transhumanist, thinking that I'm destined and capable of doing great things for the future of mankind, but we (I) often come out short. Makes me glad I'm not capable of being sad or put down, I'm always a bright and cheerful person. Regards, Sondre -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of A B Sent: 18. mai 2007 20:11 To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? Hi Sondre, My feeling is that the Alcor cryonics technology is already impressively advanced. More than enough to "bring someone back", in my layman's opinion [leaving all the metaphysics aside]. And it's encouraging to see that Alcor is still pushing forward with R&D, making progress toward effectively perfect preservation. I offer that you may want to reconsider, if you don't think you can make it to the aging cure. Check out the Alcor website if you haven't already. Best Wishes, Jeffrey Herrlich ____________________________________________________________________________ ________ Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check. Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/newmail_tools.html _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat May 19 11:10:08 2007 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 04:10:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [humor]Pope destroys entire metaphysical realm Message-ID: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com> http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070420/ts_nm/pope_limbo_dc;_ylt=AvWrnA.l423sdIQoKHQ7a_c7Xs8F After hundreds of years of teaching that unbaptized babies and virtuous people that lived before the crucifixion of Jesus went to a special place that was neither Heaven nor Hell called Limbo, the Vatican has issued a statement that effectively destroys the centuries old realm. This of course is a great tragedy for the millions of resident souls that now have no place to call home. Valhalla has increased the number of armed Valkyries patrolling its borders to keep out the itinerant souls trying to sneak across its borders. Says Odin, "I feel bad for them but we have strict laws and [the souls] have not slain enough foes to enter the hall of heroes." It is rumored that Unicef is in negotiations with several high-ranking hobbits to set up refugee camps in the Shire for the displaced souls. One anonymous source however was quoted as saying, "We will do what we can for them but they best not expect to be getting second-breakfast." Stuart LaForge alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu "In Emptiness exists Good but no Evil. Wisdom is Existence. Principle is Existence. The Way is Existence. The Mind is Emptiness." - Miyamoto Musashi, Kyoto period Samurai. ____________________________________________________________________________________Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing. http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/index.php From eugen at leitl.org Sat May 19 11:14:59 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 13:14:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists In-Reply-To: <03b101c799ce$98c8fd10$650fa8c0@HP> References: <225101c799c5$785f3160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <03b101c799ce$98c8fd10$650fa8c0@HP> Message-ID: <20070519111459.GV17691@leitl.org> On Sat, May 19, 2007 at 12:31:39AM -0400, Amara D. Angelica wrote: > Lee Corbin said: > > >It's well to remember that 2012 is as close to us as 2002 was. > > I don't expect anything significantly more radical > > to happen in the next five years than in the past five. Five wall clock years is not a long time, right now. > The Law of Accelerating Returns > by Ray Kurzweil > > An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is > exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we Yeah, if you cherry-pick you data, it can make it look that way. Is everything exponential, or superexponential? No, unfortunately. > won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be > more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns," such as Early stages of an exponential function are indistinguishable from a linear function. Guess where we are now. > chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even How about energy efficiency? How about travel speed? How about time you spend working? The length of your vacation? The amount of land you own? Your income? The quality of the education? Longevity? Food production? Global death from hunger and disease? Perhaps not so many exponentials there. > exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, > machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Within how many decades, that's the point. > Singularity -- technological change so rapid and profound it represents a > rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger Or extinction. > of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based > humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the > universe at the speed of light. Making it sound like you invented it all: priceless. > http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0134.html -- 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 sondre-list at bjellas.com Sat May 19 12:07:00 2007 From: sondre-list at bjellas.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Sondre_Bjell=E5s?=) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 14:07:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [humor]Pope destroys entire metaphysical realm In-Reply-To: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com> References: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <015801c79a0e$34734e20$9d59ea60$@com> This is good news! The more liberal and open the religions practices becomes, the less power they can yield upon humanity. We got homosexual male priests and we are close too, if not already there, to get homosexual female priests. Hopefully some of this can help to reduce the other Abrahamic religions, but that might be to get my hopes to high. I have a dream, that one day, mankind can stand united for a single unified goal, the salvation of the individual. (That dream, I think we can accomplish on Mars, but not on the Moon. The Moon will have to close relations to the Earth, while Mars will be able to have its own control and regime. Looking forward to meeting you all on Mars in 20-30 years time) /Sondre -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of The Avantguardian Sent: 19. mai 2007 13:10 To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: [ExI] [humor]Pope destroys entire metaphysical realm http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070420/ts_nm/pope_limbo_dc;_ylt=AvWrnA.l423sdIQ oKHQ7a_c7Xs8F After hundreds of years of teaching that unbaptized babies and virtuous people that lived before the crucifixion of Jesus went to a special place that was neither Heaven nor Hell called Limbo, the Vatican has issued a statement that effectively destroys the centuries old realm. This of course is a great tragedy for the millions of resident souls that now have no place to call home. Valhalla has increased the number of armed Valkyries patrolling its borders to keep out the itinerant souls trying to sneak across its borders. Says Odin, "I feel bad for them but we have strict laws and [the souls] have not slain enough foes to enter the hall of heroes." It is rumored that Unicef is in negotiations with several high-ranking hobbits to set up refugee camps in the Shire for the displaced souls. One anonymous source however was quoted as saying, "We will do what we can for them but they best not expect to be getting second-breakfast." Stuart LaForge alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu "In Emptiness exists Good but no Evil. Wisdom is Existence. Principle is Existence. The Way is Existence. The Mind is Emptiness." - Miyamoto Musashi, Kyoto period Samurai. ____________________________________________________________________________ ________Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing. http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/index.php _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From eugen at leitl.org Sat May 19 12:17:10 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 14:17:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [humor]Pope destroys entire metaphysical realm In-Reply-To: <015801c79a0e$34734e20$9d59ea60$@com> References: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com> <015801c79a0e$34734e20$9d59ea60$@com> Message-ID: <20070519121710.GB17691@leitl.org> On Sat, May 19, 2007 at 02:07:00PM +0200, Sondre Bjell?s wrote: > (That dream, I think we can accomplish on Mars, but not on the Moon. The That's no moon. It's a space station! Never understimate the firepower of a fully operational Death Star... > Moon will have to close relations to the Earth, while Mars will be able to Wall clock relativistic pingpong to Luna is 2 seconds. With a 10^6 faster time base it's two megaseconds, or almost a month. It's hard to consider that local. > have its own control and regime. Looking forward to meeting you all on Mars > in 20-30 years time) -- 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 sondre-list at bjellas.com Sat May 19 12:53:22 2007 From: sondre-list at bjellas.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Sondre_Bjell=E5s?=) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 14:53:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists In-Reply-To: <20070519111459.GV17691@leitl.org> References: <225101c799c5$785f3160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <03b101c799ce$98c8fd10$650fa8c0@HP> <20070519111459.GV17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <015901c79a14$aeb8f990$0c2aecb0$@com> I'm a big fan of Ray Kurzweil and I've read all his books. I do not agree to all his points and you are correct that there are not exponential growth in all areas. That's also not what Ray believes, if I'm not mistaken. I won't speak on any others behalf, but here is my view on the way technology and humanity advances: As you mention, there are no longer exponential growth in the speed of travel. There was once an exponential growth, but progress slows down as there is less room for innovation and there are human, social, biological and physical challenges and limits that has to be overcome first. When we defeat those limits and we get new technology that replaces the old, we will again see exponential growth in areas that we thought and might have looked like there was no exponential growth. But in the short timeline that people often see, they don't grasp the whole growth. My grandparents never left Norway. My dad have traveled to New York and other US cities, been a little bit around Europe and in the UK. I, on the other hand, are still young and have traveled many times more than my parents combined. I take flights many times a month, and it's costing me virtually nothing compared to few years back. This is exponential growth to me. Airplane tickets are only getting cheaper and the demand is growing and getting bigger every day. Still, the speed of travel have now come to an seemingly halt in growth, but we should just begin to prepare ourselves for the next step in the evaluation of travel. Space travel, "rocket" planes, underground super tunnels (building one from Russia to Canada now, aren't they?), pollution free and smart vehicles, hover pods and flying cars :) People look at computer processors and see they don't gain much in Ghz any longer, but they fail to recognize that it took 11 months from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo, which doubled the CPU speed! NVidia 7000 series GPU was much faster than 6000, but the 8000 series double the amount of transistors and double the speed again! But looking at computers is not all that interesting, they will just continue to improve at an even more impressive rate. What is interesting, is looking at the new types of applications and solutions we can build with the miniaturizing of the computer power. You mention the time we spend working, this has been pretty much constant. The Norwegian government is working towards implementing 6 hour work days, which I'm all for. There are no reason why most people can't accomplish the same thing they do in 7 hours, in only 6. But what I can achieve today in my working hours, is exponential compared to years back. Software developers continues to get new and improved tools that applies higher and higher levels of abstractions. This makes us many times more productive, but we still fail to deliver projects on time. Why is this so? The expectation of customers and users are exponentially increasing. We (software developers) can deliver quality and functionality in exponentially shorter times. Software Factories is one of the new concepts which will further add abstraction and further reduce time and improve quality by reducing possible faults. With Microsoft .NET 3.5 (beta) I can make applications on my couch here within an hour, which would have taken 10-20 man many months. Nobody would even consider financing the type of projects that are easily done today. Food production have seen exponential growth in some ways too. There was a time when most of us had to work the fields in food production. Today, this is handled by a small group of people and a huge array of machinery. It does look to have somewhat stopped it's exponential growth, but as many other things, I think it's just deceiving us. There will come (there has to come) alternative solutions to how we produce food. I'm a vegetarian and I hope more people will become so too soon. There is no need to kill other living creatures to survive, but we continue to burn down forests to give room for livestock. Laboratory and Factory produced food and supplements will hopefully be enough for everyone, combined with biological modifications to our bodies. Longevity? We live longer than ever before and it's not stopping. While it's up to every individual to ensure their own quality of life, there are more and more medicine being researched and produced to help people who can't control their own eating or ways of life. As I mentioned, I'm still young, but I'm stronger and better than I have ever been before. Thanks to book "Fantastic Voyage" :) Exponential longevity right now? I can't see it or feel it, cause it's outside of my own mental comprehension. In 40-50 years time, I still won't experience the exponential growth in my longevity, but my doctor will say I have the body of a 30 year old and I'll live until 2600. Finally I think the field of robotics is something that people have, is and will continue to underestimate. While there has been slow and steady progress in this area and we recently celebrated the 50th birthday of this field, the current outlook is very good. The Darpa Challenge in 2004, none of the cars completed. They didn't even get close. In 2005, there was 4 or something that completed, and in a very good time. Next task, is to make the autonomous cars run in a real environment with other vehicles. Unification of the robotics platform (software that works with different hardware platforms) is an important step that Microsoft have done good contribution with in recent time with their Robotics Studio platform. And you know, all it takes is one single general purpose robot that can handle tasks in the same manner as a human being can. When we get there, the possibilities are endless. Argh, now I go on writing lots of hard to follow thoughts of mine... Sorry for that :) Regards, Sondre (We will have all the energy we need when we become better at harvesting the natural resources like sun, wind and water. With enough energy, we'll have the means to do anything, like stopping world hunger) (Quality of education is all up to the individual, I didn't go to school and I do lack in certain areas, but what I lack I make up in other areas, like passion and creativity :) (My income is not exponential, but it's better than my parents) (I'm tired of writing now, so I won't read through everything I've written ... mistakes have happened before, so be gentle with me) -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Sent: 19. mai 2007 13:15 To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists On Sat, May 19, 2007 at 12:31:39AM -0400, Amara D. Angelica wrote: > Lee Corbin said: > > >It's well to remember that 2012 is as close to us as 2002 was. > > I don't expect anything significantly more radical > > to happen in the next five years than in the past five. Five wall clock years is not a long time, right now. > The Law of Accelerating Returns > by Ray Kurzweil > > An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is > exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we Yeah, if you cherry-pick you data, it can make it look that way. Is everything exponential, or superexponential? No, unfortunately. > won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be > more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns," such as Early stages of an exponential function are indistinguishable from a linear function. Guess where we are now. > chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even How about energy efficiency? How about travel speed? How about time you spend working? The length of your vacation? The amount of land you own? Your income? The quality of the education? Longevity? Food production? Global death from hunger and disease? Perhaps not so many exponentials there. > exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, > machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Within how many decades, that's the point. > Singularity -- technological change so rapid and profound it represents a > rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger Or extinction. > of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based > humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the > universe at the speed of light. Making it sound like you invented it all: priceless. > http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0134.html -- 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 _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 19 12:55:38 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 22:55:38 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [humor]Pope destroys entire metaphysical realm In-Reply-To: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com> References: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 19/05/07, The Avantguardian wrote: > > > http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070420/ts_nm/pope_limbo_dc;_ylt=AvWrnA.l423sdIQoKHQ7a_c7Xs8F > > After hundreds of years of teaching that unbaptized > babies and virtuous people that lived before the > crucifixion of Jesus went to a special place that was > neither Heaven nor Hell called Limbo, the Vatican has > issued a statement that effectively destroys the > centuries old realm. This of course is a great tragedy > for the millions of resident souls that now have no > place to call home. > Why would a baby have a preference for Heaven over Limbo anyway? Better baby food? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amara at amara.com Sat May 19 13:40:24 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 15:40:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Virgin Airlines: Name Our Planes Message-ID: Amara: >http://www.nameourplanes.com/ >Anyone up for thinking of Transhumanist / Extropian theme names for >Virgin Airlines' airplanes ? And my first cut: Spontaneous Order Dewar Dreams The Far Edge Party Jupiter Brain Infinitesimal Being The Great Mambo Chicken Meme Machine Mind Children Unbounding the Future Infomorphs Pigs in Cyberspace Lilliputian Uploads Boundless Constellations (the oldtimer extropes will know from where I pulled some of these) 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 amara at amara.com Sat May 19 14:16:15 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 16:16:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Galactomatic-1000 (TM) Basement Universe Message-ID: --------------------------------------------------------- Not An Advertisement! --------------------------------------------------------- Isn't it about time you attained Ultimate Power? 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The Galactomatic-1000 is guaranteed against defects in materials and workmanship until the end of time, or for the life of the owner, whichever is longer. Our liability is limited to the cost of replacement of the Galactomatic-1000 itself. General Cosmic is not liable for damage to the person or property of the user, or to the contents of the universes created by the Galactomatic-1000, including damage due to black-hole creation or antimatter spills. General Cosmic is not responsible for normal wear of the case or any other damage due to the second law of thermodynamics. Little Green Guys (TM) are guaranteed for ten thousand generations or one million years, whichever comes first. After this time, genetic drift may cause undesirable features to arise. We advise destroying their civilization when the warranty expires. By keeping a few spare Little Green Guys in the freezer, you can always start again! by Carl Feynman --------------------------------------------------------------- Extropy #13 (6:2) Third quarter 1994, page 39 --------------------------------------------------------------- From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 19 15:00:05 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 08:00:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Singularity is No Longer Always 30 Years Away Message-ID: <229c01c79a27$0e34c590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> I had written > > It's well to remember that 2012 is as close to us as 2002 was. > > I don't expect anything significantly more radical > > to happen in the next five years than in the past five. and Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns was brought up, and rightfully so. Indeed, I spent $200 to get a copy of TSIN ahead of time (through SingInst). But as Eugen says, five years doesn't exhibit much exponential appearing growth, and 2012 is only about 4.5 years away. The Kurzweil graphs are amazing, and rather inarguable. But one of the most amazing things to me was that the date K gave for the singularity was the most reasonable I'd heard since 1983! In 1983 Chip Morningstar was telling Drexler and many people here in Silicon Valley that not only was the singularity (though the word was not in use yet) 30 years away, but he even provided an exact date: February 13, 2013. Naturally, this was a bit tongue in cheek, but I attended many "pre-Singularity" parties hosted by Roger Gregory and Naomi Reynolds in the late 80's and early 90's. In 1989 or 1990, Drexler asked all of us in Foresight (or at least down to the Colleague level) when we thought (a) a nanotech assembler would be produced, and (b) when successful reanimation or the singularity (I forget which, they're almost certainly coincident) would occur. I answered 2050 for the assembler, and 2061 for the singularity. I also wrote a short story in 1990 or 91 published in Lifequest where I make the 2061 date quite explicit. But by 1993, I noticed that the singularity was still 30 years away in most people's minds, and in 2003 it was still 30 years away, and I was about to pronounce a new Law "the Singularity is always 30 years away", but that would have been overly cynical and besides, it was obvious that other people were thinking the same thing. http://www.coolscifi.com/forums/rec-arts-sf-written/what-will-like-50-years-now-39266/index5.html is what Google returns on "singularity is always 30". But then 2005 came along! And now, the singularity was 40 years away! (in Kurzweil's book). That's what I call progress! They're getting closer to my 2061. Lee From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat May 19 19:25:36 2007 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 12:25:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] [humor]Pope destroys entire metaphysical realm In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <150503.64724.qm@web60518.mail.yahoo.com> --- Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > Why would a baby have a preference for Heaven over > Limbo anyway? Better baby > food? I dunno. Maybe they get breast-fed, perhaps by the Blessed Virgin herself. If she can concieve and give birth as a virgin, lactating should not be much of a challenge for her. ;-) Stuart LaForge alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu "In Emptiness exists Good but no Evil. Wisdom is Existence. Principle is Existence. The Way is Existence. The Mind is Emptiness." - Miyamoto Musashi, Kyoto period Samurai. ____________________________________________________________________________________Building a website is a piece of cake. Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting From nanogirl at halcyon.com Sun May 20 00:45:33 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 17:45:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Nanogirl News~ References: <799636.3426.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com><032e01c799c0$7daf27b0$650fa8c0@HP> <034601c799c1$d7831b60$650fa8c0@HP><225101c799c5$785f3160$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><464E716E.8040401@posthuman.com> <00aa01c799cc$081d6230$0200a8c0@Nano> Message-ID: <00f401c79a78$c265e840$0200a8c0@Nano> Nanogirl News - brought to you by Nanotechnology Industries www.nanoindustries.com/ Issue May 19, 2007 Nanotechnology is showing promise in treating spinal cord injuries and could conceivably reverse paralysis, according to a report on the future of the emerging technology in medicine. The report, released at a Washington forum this week, said nanotechnology -- or the use of materials on the scale of atoms and molecules -- may also help cure other ailments believed to be intractable by repairing damaged organs or tissue. This suggests damage from heart attacks or strokes, bone or tooth loss or ailments such as diabetes and Parkinson's disease could be treated with nanotechnology, researchers said. (Yahoo News 4.27.07) http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070427/ts_alt_afp/ushealthmedicinenanotechnology_070427074643 100% Biodegradable NANOIL Ready For Automobiles. Nano Chemical Systems Holdings, Inc., announced recently their latest entry into the multi-billion dollar performance chemical category, NANOIL, a "nano-enhanced" GREEN motor oil. Unlike today's fossil and synthetic oils, NANOIL is non-toxic and bio-degradable, thus eliminating the current disposal issues with present commercially available lubricants. Nanochem will produce NANOIL utilizing its nano-technology patent applications and inventions that directly address bio-fuel production for a nano-enhanced line of "green" bio-lubricants. Initial results indicate that these bio-lubricants can perform as well as today's fossil and synthetic oils. (Chemical Online 4.27.07) http://www.chemicalonline.com/content/news/article.asp?docid=8a929e6c-ee2d-4523-9616-f1089c78c138&atc~c=771+s=773+r=001+l=a&VNETCOOKIE=NO NIST Nano Center Accepting Proposals. Looking for a state-of-the-art place to study nanotechnology-related products? If yes, then the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may be able to help. (Industry Week 5.15.07) http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=14196 Finding by Rice University chemists could aid development of new nanodevices. Gold nanorods assemble themselves into rings. Rice University chemists have discovered that tiny building blocks known as gold nanorods spontaneously assemble themselves into ring-like superstructures. This finding, which will be published as the inside cover article of the March 19 international edition of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, could potentially lead to the development of novel nanodevices like highly sensitive optical sensors, superlenses, and even invisible objects for use in the military. (Rice University 3.9.07) http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=9358&SnID=415793553> Engines of Creation 2.0: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology - Updated and Expanded By K. Eric Drexler (father of nanotechnology) is available exclusively from WOWIO at www.wowio.com and is free of charge to registered users. Plenty of room for MRIs at a nano scale... a research team now reports. Combining an MRI with the precision of atomic-force microscopes, a team led by Dan Rugar of the IBM Research Division in San Jose, Calif., unveiled MRI images 60,000 times smaller than anything imaged by MRI previously, down to 90 nanometer resolution - about 10 times bigger than your typical molecule and right in the range of the integrated circuits doing all the calculations behind your computer screen. The result, the team writes in the current Nature Nanotechnology journal, "demonstrates the feasibility of pushing MRI into the nanoscale regime." (USA Today 5.1.07) http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2007-04-29-nano-mri_N.htm?csp=34 Iowa State scientists demonstrate first use of nanotechnology to enter plant cells. A team of Iowa State University plant scientists and materials chemists have successfully used nanotechnology to penetrate plant cell walls and simultaneously deliver a gene and a chemical that triggers its expression with controlled precision. Their breakthrough brings nanotechnology to plant biology and agricultural biotechnology, creating a powerful new tool for targeted delivery into plant cells. (Iowa State University 5.16.07) http://www.iastate.edu/~nscentral/news/2007/may/nanotech.shtml Super small nanoelectrodes can probe microscale environments. Investigating the composition and behavior of microscale environments, including those within living cells, could become easier and more precise with nanoelectrodes being developed at the University of Illinois. "The individual nanotube-based probes can be used for electrochemical and biochemical sensing," said Min-Feng Yu, a U. of I. professor of mechanical science and engineering, and a researcher at the university's Beckman Institute. "The position of the nanoelectrodes can be controlled very accurately." (U of Ill at Urbana-Champaign 3.9.07) http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/07/0309nanoelectrodes.html An Australian biotechnology firm said on Thursday it had developed a means of delivering anti-cancer drugs directly to cancer cells, which aims to avoid the debilitating toxicity associated with chemotherapy. The method uses nanotechnology, which involves molecules far smaller than a human cell. Direct targeting of chemotherapy drugs would allow dosages thousands of times lower than that in conventional chemotherapy and be more easily tolerated by patients, said the firm. Writing in the May issue of U.S.-based Cancer Cell journal, the biotech firm EnGeneIC said it had developed nano-cells containing chemotherapy drugs. (Yahoo 5.10.07) http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070510/hl_nm/cancer_australia_dc_1 New JILA apparatus measures fast nanoscale motions. A new nanoscale apparatus developed at JILA-a tiny gold beam whose 40 million vibrations per second are measured by hopping electrons-offers the potential for a 500-fold increase in the speed of scanning tunneling microscopes (STM), perhaps paving the way for scientists to watch atoms vibrate in high definition in real time. The new device measures the wiggling of the beam, or, more precisely, the space between it and an electrically conducting point just a single atom wide, based on the speed of electrons "tunneling" across the gap. The work is the first use of an "atomic point contact," the business end of an STM, to sense a nanomechanical device oscillating at its "resonant" frequency, where it naturally vibrates like a tuning fork. (EurekAlert 3.16.07) http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-03/nios-nja031607.php A new nano-insulin delivery pump for worry-free treatment for diabetics...In what may be a sizeable breakthrough in medical technology (and quite a relief for diabetics), medical device company Debiotech and Switzerland-based STMicroelectronics have entered into a strategic cooperation agreement to manufacture and deliver the award-winning miniaturised insulin-delivery pump. (Business Standard 5.1.07) http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?autono=282949&leftnm=8&subLeft=0&chkFlg= Top tiny creations. A recent story about 'microscopic alphabet soup' created at UCLA got us thinking about all the quirky ways researchers have chosen to demonstrate new micro, nano-scale technology. (New Scientist Technology Blog 3.22.07) http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/03/top-tiny-creations.html?DCMP=Matt_Sparkes&nsref=nano Paralyzed Mice Walk Again. Scientists Use Nanotechnology to Mend Broken Spinal Cords. Samuel Stupp has a bunch of mice that used to drag their hind legs behind them when they crawled around his Illinois lab, but they have miraculously regained at least partial use of their rear legs. Astonishingly, their severed spinal cords have been repaired, at least partly, without surgery or drugs. All it took was a simple injection of a liquid containing tiny molecular structures developed by Stupp and his colleagues at Northwestern University. Six weeks later, the mice were able to walk again. They don't have their former agility, but their injuries should have left them paralyzed for life... Stupp's team concentrates on combining the incredibly small world of nanotechnology with biology, creating molecules that self-assemble into large molecular structures that can literally "hug" around cells in the human body. (ABC News 5.1.07) http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3102679&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312 A Single-Photon Server with Just One Atom. Physicists at Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have succeeded in turning a Rubidium atom into a single-photon server. The high quality of the single photons and their ready availability are important for future quantum information processing experiments with single photons. In the relatively new field of quantum information processing the goal is to make use of quantum mechanics to compute certain tasks much more efficiently than with a classical computer. (Max Planck Society 3.12.07) http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2007/pressRelease200703091/index.html Magnetic tweezers unravel cellular mechanics. By injecting tiny magnetic beads into a living cell and manipulating them with a magnetic 'tweezer', scientists of the University of Twente, The Netherlands, succeed in getting to know more about the mechanics of the cell nucleus. (physorg 5.14.07) http://www.physorg.com/news98378757.html Student Creates Garment With Bacteria-trapping Nanofibers. Fashion designers and fiber scientists at Cornell have taken "functional clothing" to a whole new level. They have designed a garment that can prevent colds and flu and never needs washing, and another that destroys harmful gases and protects the wearer from smog and air pollution. The two-toned gold dress and metallic denim jacket, featured at the April 21 Cornell Design League fashion show, contain cotton fabrics coated with nanoparticles that give them functional qualities never before seen in the fashion world. (Science Daily 5.7.07) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070506091754.htm Inexpensive 'nanoglue' can bond nearly anything together. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new method to bond materials that don't normally stick together. The team's adhesive, which is based on self-assembling nanoscale chains, could impact everything from next-generation computer chip manufacturing to energy production. Less than a nanometer - or one billionth of a meter - thick, the nanoglue is inexpensive to make and can withstand temperatures far higher than what was previously envisioned. In fact, the adhesive's molecular bonds strengthen when exposed to heat. (EurekAlert 4.16.07) http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/rpi-ic051507.php Demand for nanotech-based medicine grows. U.S. demand for nanotechnology medical products will increase over 17 percent per year to $53 billion in 2011, says The Freedonia Group, Inc., a Cleveland-based industry research firm. Afterwards, the increasing flow of new nanomedicines, nanodiagnostics, and nanotech-based medical supplies and devices into the US market will boost demand to more than $110 billion in 2016. The firm reports these and other findings in its new study, Nanotechnology in Healthcare. (SmallTimes 3.19.07) http://www.smalltimes.com/articles/article_display.cfm?Section=ONART&C=Bio&ARTICLE_ID=287462&p=109 Lighting the nanoworld with nanolamps. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Cornell University (CU) has built 'nanolamps.' These extremely small light bulbs are made of light-emitting nanofibers about the size of a virus or the tiniest of bacteria. Using a technique called electrospinning, the researchers spun the fibers from a metallic element, the ruthenium, and a polymer. These nanofibers "are so small that they are less than the wavelength of the light they emit." Apparently, these nanofibers are easy to produce. But before they can be integrated into our increasingly smaller electronic devices, there still is a need to know how long these nanolamps can last. (ZDnet 4.14.07) http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=542 Nanoparticles 'safe for soil bugs'. Ronald Turco at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and his colleagues have found that fullerenes, nanoscale carbon spheres, do not harm microbes when released into the soil. Their study is the first of its kind to focus on soil microbes, which play a key role in recycling nutrients used by plants (Environmental Science & Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es061953l).(NewScientist 5.5.07) http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=mg19426025.800&feedId=nanotechnology_rss20 Nanorockets - the ultimate baby boosters? Brian Gilchrists. design for a rocket ship sounds like a bad joke. For a start, its engine is about the size of a single bacterium. And for thrust it relies on the equivalent of chucking microscopic beer cans out of the spacecraft's rear window. Gilchrist, an electrical engineer at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is not joking though. He proposes to harness the latest nanotechnology to create an engine that will make its way across the solar system by firing out minute metal particles like so much nano-sized grapeshot. (New Scientist 3.24.07) http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19325961.500&feedId=fundamentals_rss20 Growing Nerve Cells in 3-D Dramatically Affects Gene Expression. Nerve cells grown in three-dimensional environments deploy hundreds of different genes compared with cells grown in standard two-dimensional petri dishes, according to a new Brown University study. The research, spearheaded by bioengineer Diane Hoffman-Kim, adds to a growing body of evidence that lab culture techniques dramatically affect the way these cells behave. (Brown 5.15.07) http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2006-07/06-156.html The longest carbon nanotubes you've ever seen. Using techniques that could revolutionize manufacturing for certain materials, researchers have grown carbon nanotubes that are the longest in the world. While still slightly less than 2 centimeters long, each nanotube is 900,000 times longer than its diameter. The fibers--which have the potential to be longer, stronger and better conductors of electricity than copper and many other materials--could ultimately find use in smart fabrics, sensors and a host of other applications. To grow the aligned bundles of tiny tubes, the researchers combined advantages of chemical vapor deposition (CVD), a technique for creating thin coatings that is especially common in the semiconductor industry, with a novel substrate and catalyst onto which the carbon attaches. (EurkAlert 5.10.07) http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/nsf-tlc051007.php Nanoscale pasta: Toward nanoscale electronics. Pasta tastes like pasta - with or without a spiral. But when you jump to the nanoscale, everything changes: carbon nanotubes and nanofibers that look like nanoscale spiral pasta have completely different electronic properties than their non-spiraling cousins. Engineers at UC San Diego, and Clemson University are studying these differences in the hopes of creating new kinds of components for nanoscale electronics. (physorg 5.18.07) http://www.physorg.com/news98713032.html Happy weekend! Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 20 19:07:42 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 12:07:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whither Individualism? References: <225001c799c4$c47a5620$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <22b901c79b12$50e3ee20$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Oops, I am afraid that I misunderstood the way that the term "individualism" is standardly used. Re-studying the wikipedia page on the subject, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism I find that there is no section entitled "psychological individualism" or its equivalent. My major beef with a lot of contemporary society is a form of behavior exhibited by many "hyper-individualists" who are routinely tactless and who seemingly enjoy very much breaking most conventions they know of. In other words, they flaunt their "individualism" as they flout all the usual norms of civilized, polite, thoughtful, considerate behavior. "Individualism", on the contrary---and as explained in the above article ---seems to refer *only* to man's relationship to society as follows: "Individualism is a term used to describe a moral, political, or social outlook that stresses human independence and the importance of individual self-reliance and liberty. Individualists promote the unrestricted exercise of individual goals and desires. They oppose most external interference with an individual's choices." My apologies for the confusion. No one that I know of here, including me, is going to have much criticism of that definition, despite what I consider to be De Tocqueville's mysterious remarks below. Hayek, incidentally, mentions De Tocqueville as someone who understood the difference between "good individualism" and "bad individualism". Lee ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 8:17 PM Subject: [ExI] Whither Individualism? > Here is a passage from wikipedia's entry on individualism: > > "Alexis de Tocqueville, whose book Democracy in America was translated in English in 1840 (published in French in > 1835) used the term as well. Tocqueville described Americans as highly individualistic and believed that this > individualism was inseparable from the new American concept of egalitarian democracy. He wrote, "Not only does > democracy make men forget their ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from > their contemporaries, Each man is forever thrown back upon himself, and there is danger that he may shut up in the > solitude of his own heart." And, mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the > community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that > after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself. "Individualism is a > Selfishness > originates in blind instinct; individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it > originates as much in deficiencies of mind as in perversity of heart. Selfishness blights the germ of all virtue; > individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all > others and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness." ---internal references can be found in the link here: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism > > Note the part: > > Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the > community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with > his family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, > he willingly leaves society at large to itself. > > De Tocqueville is clearly rcorrect here, but I wonder about two of his observations. > First, if the Americans were truly as individualistic as he writes (in 1840), then how is > that they were so concerned about remote and in most cases non-personal issues > such as slavery and abolition? (2) Being the astute observer that he was, just how > were conditions in Europe---say Paris, or France in general---any different? I would > like to be able to imagine it, but I cannot. > > In any case, although I still have some problems with what de Tocqueville wrote, I do > sense much more than I did fifteen years ago that there is something wrong in much > of contemporary culture and its over-glorification of the individual. One very seldom > sees community action or community spirit celebrated in movies, it seems to me. > > Lee From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sun May 20 21:20:53 2007 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 14:20:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: "The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever..." In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >From the Psychoogy Today piece (with comments inserted thusly: [comment] ) : When reminded of death by something as simple as a photo of a grave, people react by adhering more tightly to their social values and their self-image. [You mean they go back to their habitual, everyday-life concerns?!!] Liberals become more tolerant, religious people more spiritual, racists more consumed with hate. [Why "more"? Why not "once again?] "By being a good American, a caring parent, a committed sports fan, a creative musician, or a brilliant scientist, and by believing in the ultimate importance and value of such pursuits, one is able to feel part of something that extends into eternity", [Or maybe it's just part of what engages them, by default, in the present, when they wake up each morning.] writes University of Maryland psychologist Mark Dechesne in a recent paper on the subject of terror management theory [How very "post 9/11". Is the job market good for "terror management professionals" or am I being rude?], the branch of psychology that tries to explain this behavior. ************************************** I've always been skeptical of (and annoyed by) this view, that everything we do in living is somehow a response to some sort of chronic "terror" we have about our inevitable death. (Similar to the thesis of Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death".) I'm not buying it. Am I death obsessed, but blocking it from my consciousness? Is it maybe a cultural thing where some people -- say the religiously indoctrinated -- are in fact death obsessed, and others -- say secularists or those not exposed to religious indoctrination in their formative years -- are not? Or is the "terror of death" thesis more or less bogus -- the invention of authoritarians of one stripe or another: clerics who arrogate "God's authority" as a means of asserting dominance over lay people, or "psychologists" who, disguised as "healers", seek to dominate based on "scientific" authority? Personally, I have my cryonics arrangements in place, which I assert has nothing to do with dying and everything to do with living. Am I deluding myself? -- Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles On 5/8/07, Amara Graps wrote: > Well.. of all places. The transhumanists (congrats Michael!) are in > "Psychology Today" and the author didn't paint us as flakes, despite > the title of the piece. I am pleasantly surprised. > > > "The Boy Who Wants to Live Forever... and Other Champions of the Lost Cause" > By:Kathleen McGowan > > Page 5 of 5 > http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20070227-000001&page=5 > > Ciao, > Amara > > P.S. And I especially like the advertisement directly underneath the title: > "Find a therapist near you..." > -- > > 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 amara at amara.com Sun May 20 21:45:17 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 23:45:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Brits to Allow Human/Animal Combo Embryos Message-ID: Ronald Bailey | May 18, 2007, http://reason.com/blog/show/120287.html Brits to Allow Human/Animal Combo Embryos extract: ------ Last year the British government proposed outlawing research on chimeric embryos created using animal eggs and human genes. British scientists objected and it now looks as though the Labour government is going to back down from its ban. Meanwhile Republican presidential hopeful, Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.), has introduced legislation that would ban such research in the United States. ------ (the comments are good too) 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 tyleremerson at gmail.com Mon May 21 00:17:51 2007 From: tyleremerson at gmail.com (Tyler Emerson) Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 17:17:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Help get the SIAI video on Digg Videos Message-ID: <632d2cda0705201717u45ac1026v5e23d533a7ad48d2@mail.gmail.com> Everyone: The Singularity Institute is making a big push right now to get our new video on the front page of Digg Videos. Doing so will ensure the video is seen by thousands of new people. Please Digg the following as soon as you get this email: http://www.digg.com/videos/educational/Singularity_Institute_for_Artificial_Intelligence In order to maximize exposure, we need 200 people to click "Digg it" within the initial few hours. The video was submitted at 5PM Pacific / 8PM Eastern. Please be one of the 200 we need. Please also consider adding a positive comment about SIAI at the Digg URL. Best, -- Tyler Emerson | Executive Director Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence P.O . Box 50182, Palo Alto, CA 94303 USA 650-353-6063 | emerson at singinst.org | singinst.org From nanogirl at halcyon.com Mon May 21 00:59:48 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 17:59:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] =?iso-8859-1?q?Cit=E9_des_sciences_Nanotechnology_exhibit?= References: Message-ID: <005401c79b43$703dc940$0200a8c0@Nano> The "Cit? des sciences" museum in Paris, France (French homepage here: http://www.cite-sciences.fr/francais/indexFLASH.htm) is currently featuring an exhibit on Nanotechnology. The purpose of this exhibit is educational and scientific. The intro page to the Nanotechnology exhibit in English is here: http://www.cite-sciences.fr/english/ala_cite/exhibitions/nanotechnologies/index.html?skip=intro My animation of Robert A. Freitas Jr.'s dermal display is included in the exhibit which you can go directly to here: http://www.cite-sciences.fr/english/ala_cite/exhibitions/nanotechnologies/techniques/techniques_3b.php Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Mon May 21 02:06:35 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 19:06:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] this is not good, maverick In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705210217.l4L2H46h003933@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Doh! Today's Palo Alto Daily News ran an article on the front page with the headline Scientology Critic Faces Extradition, with the subheading "Police: Former Palo Alto man threatened to bomb church's headquarters." The article itself is fairly reasonable, but that headline is a disaster, since many people read only that. I need to call the PAPD and explain to them that Keith did not make any such threat. Has anyone a link to the archives? spike From jrd1415 at gmail.com Mon May 21 02:29:03 2007 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 19:29:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Nanorockets was Re: The Nanogirl News~ Message-ID: Gina, in her Nanogirl News, provided this teaser and link: Nanorockets - the ultimate baby boosters? Brian Gilchrists. design for a rocket ship sounds like a bad joke. For a start, its engine is about the size of a single bacterium. And for thrust it relies on the equivalent of chucking microscopic beer cans out of the spacecraft's rear window. Gilchrist, an electrical engineer at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is not joking though. He proposes to harness the latest nanotechnology to create an engine that will make its way across the solar system by firing out minute metal particles like so much nano-sized grapeshot. (New Scientist 3.24.07) http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19325961.500&feedId=fundamentals_rss20 However, the link is to an article only available by subscription. Phooey! Since I'm jazzed by this exciting new propulsion technology, I googled up "nanoparticle field-emission thrusters Gilchrist", and came up with the following beefier tasty bits: Nanoparticle Electric Propulsion for Space Exploration http://nanoarchitecture.net/file_download/6 and Scalable Flat-Panel Nanoparticle Propulsion Technology for Space Exploration in the 21st Century http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/fellows/mar06/1093Gilchrist.pdf Enjoy. Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles From tyleremerson at gmail.com Mon May 21 05:48:46 2007 From: tyleremerson at gmail.com (Tyler Emerson) Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 22:48:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Help get the SIAI video on Digg Videos In-Reply-To: <632d2cda0705201717u45ac1026v5e23d533a7ad48d2@mail.gmail.com> References: <632d2cda0705201717u45ac1026v5e23d533a7ad48d2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <632d2cda0705202248uf8527dbrdba7d90a9b366fad@mail.gmail.com> We made it: http://www.digg.com/videos/ It took a small miracle (it's very difficult to pull this off), but we are there. There's a good chance that the video will be buried (taken off the main page) because of naysayers, since it's now being seen by a broader range of people, many of whom will never have heard about SIAI or the notion of the singularity, and will thus all of this is...a little funny. So, we really need a lot more Diggs, 5-star ratings, and positive comments to ensure the video stays on the main page of Digg Videos, so that thousands of people on Monday and throughout the coming week can learn about the Singularity Institute, and begin the process of learning more about transhumanist subjects. http://www.digg.com/videos/educational/Singularity_Institute_for_Artificial_Intelligence Thank you to everyone who helped us so far. Let's keep pushing to further build awareness. With best wishes, -- Tyler Emerson | Executive Director Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence P.O . Box 50182, Palo Alto, CA 94303 USA 650-353-6063 | emerson at singinst.org | singinst.org On 5/20/07, Tyler Emerson wrote: > > Everyone: > > The Singularity Institute is making a big push right now to get our > new video on the front page of Digg Videos. Doing so will ensure the > video is seen by thousands of new people. > > Please Digg the following as soon as you get this email: > > > http://www.digg.com/videos/educational/Singularity_Institute_for_Artificial_Intelligence > > In order to maximize exposure, we need 200 people to click "Digg it" > within the initial few hours. The video was submitted at 5PM Pacific / > 8PM Eastern. Please be one of the 200 we need. > > Please also consider adding a positive comment about SIAI at the Digg URL. > > Best, > > -- > Tyler Emerson | Executive Director > Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence > P.O . Box 50182, Palo Alto, CA 94303 USA > 650-353-6063 | emerson at singinst.org | singinst.org > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From michaelanissimov at gmail.com Mon May 21 09:47:56 2007 From: michaelanissimov at gmail.com (Michael Anissimov) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 02:47:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [humor]Pope destroys entire metaphysical realm In-Reply-To: <150503.64724.qm@web60518.mail.yahoo.com> References: <150503.64724.qm@web60518.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51ce64f10705210247y4f784c5cr325a1e01c03a2b58@mail.gmail.com> Kansas Outlaws Practice of Evolution http://www.theonion.com/content/node/55807 -- Michael Anissimov Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com http://acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From scerir at libero.it Mon May 21 15:08:41 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:08:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [humor] Pope destroys entire metaphysical realm References: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com> <015801c79a0e$34734e20$9d59ea60$@com> Message-ID: <000f01c79bb9$eba850c0$4f911f97@archimede> > > After hundreds of years of teaching that unbaptized > > babies and virtuous people that lived before the > > crucifixion of Jesus went to a special place that was > > neither Heaven nor Hell called Limbo, the Vatican has > > issued a statement that effectively destroys the > > centuries old realm. This of course is a great tragedy > > for the millions of resident souls that now have no > > place to call home. Sondre wrote: > This is good news! I would prefer that old Limbo [1], since Father Paul McPartian, one of the members of Vatican's Theological Commission, which compiled the 41-page report after a 2-year study, said 'We cannot say we know with certainty what will happen to unbaptized children but we have good grounds to hope that God in his mercy and love looks after these children and brings them to salvation.'[The Telegraph]. I would also say that Thomas Aquinas described the Limbo of Infants ('Limbus Infantium') as an eternal state of natural joy, untempered by any sense of loss at how much greater their joy might have been had they been baptized. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 21 15:51:43 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:51:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [humor] Pope destroys entire metaphysical realm In-Reply-To: <000f01c79bb9$eba850c0$4f911f97@archimede> References: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com> <015801c79a0e$34734e20$9d59ea60$@com> <000f01c79bb9$eba850c0$4f911f97@archimede> Message-ID: <20070521155143.GW17691@leitl.org> On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 05:08:41PM +0200, scerir wrote: > I would prefer that old Limbo [1], since Father Paul > McPartian, one of the members of Vatican's Theological > Commission, which compiled the 41-page report after a > 2-year study, said 'We cannot say we know with certainty > what will happen to unbaptized children but we have good > grounds to hope that God in his mercy and love looks after > these children and brings them to salvation.'[The Telegraph]. > I would also say that Thomas Aquinas described the Limbo > of Infants ('Limbus Infantium') as an eternal state > of natural joy, untempered by any sense of loss at how much > greater their joy might have been had they been baptized. This stuff just cracks me up. Even Xenu doesn't get any weirder. From dagonweb at gmail.com Mon May 21 16:05:33 2007 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 18:05:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [humor] Pope destroys entire metaphysical realm In-Reply-To: <20070521155143.GW17691@leitl.org> References: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com> <015801c79a0e$34734e20$9d59ea60$@com> <000f01c79bb9$eba850c0$4f911f97@archimede> <20070521155143.GW17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: I dont think it's fair. We transhumanists get the concentration camps, I think all those noble heathens who never heard of christianity, or those damn unbaptized grubs should get the eternal concentration camp too. It's just not fair. On 5/21/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 05:08:41PM +0200, scerir wrote: > > > I would prefer that old Limbo [1], since Father Paul > > McPartian, one of the members of Vatican's Theological > > Commission, which compiled the 41-page report after a > > 2-year study, said 'We cannot say we know with certainty > > what will happen to unbaptized children but we have good > > grounds to hope that God in his mercy and love looks after > > these children and brings them to salvation.'[The Telegraph]. > > I would also say that Thomas Aquinas described the Limbo > > of Infants ('Limbus Infantium') as an eternal state > > of natural joy, untempered by any sense of loss at how much > > greater their joy might have been had they been baptized. > > This stuff just cracks me up. Even Xenu doesn't get any weirder. > _______________________________________________ > 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: From spike66 at comcast.net Tue May 22 00:42:15 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 17:42:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] here's what i wrote to the palo alto daily news Message-ID: <200705220052.l4M0qThR010769@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Editors of PA Daily News, PAPD, et.al, Yesterday's headline was most disturbing. "Police: Former Palo Alto man threatened to bomb church's headquarters." Keith Henson did nothing of the kind. The Church of Scientology alleges that there was such a threat, but an investigation of the circumstances shows otherwise. There was an ongoing discussion on alt.religion.scientology in which Henson supplied the GPS coordinates of the Scientology headquarters. In another posting, Henson mentioned the term Cruise missile, in a humorous reference to perhaps the most famous scientologist Tom Cruise. From those two pieces of information, church officials jumped to the stunningly illogical conclusion that Mr. Henson owned cruise missile, and from there accused Henson of having threatened to bomb the headquarters. The notion that a reference to Tom Cruise indicates personal ownership of a cruise missile is so far beyond merely absurd, it's description begs for still more extreme adjectives. Yet the court-dismissed accusation was in the headline of Sunday's Palo Alto Daily. In the interest of accuracy and justice, do rectify the Daily's apparently serving as a megaphone for the Church of Scientology against one of its own citizens. spike Jones From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 22 01:20:39 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 18:20:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Psychology Today Article: "The Boy Who Wants to LiveForever..." References: Message-ID: <22f601c79c0f$b45af1d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Jeff writes > From: "Jeff Davis" > Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2007 2:20 PM > From the Psychoogy Today piece (with comments inserted thusly: [comment] ) : > > > When reminded of death by something as simple as a photo of a grave, > > people react by adhering more tightly to their social values and their > > self-image. [You mean they go back to their habitual, everyday-life > > concerns?!!] Liberals become more tolerant, religious people more > > spiritual, racists more consumed with hate. [Why "more"? Why not > > "once again?] Poor writing, that's all. > > "By being a good American, a caring parent, a committed > > sports fan, a creative musician, or a brilliant scientist, and by > > believing in the ultimate importance and value of such pursuits, one > > is able to feel part of something that extends into eternity", Actually, that's what I also think is going on. An urge one has, say, to know all about the periodic table in many cases (e.g. me) can be traced to wanting to know things eternally true, or, as a mystic might say, to become One with that knowledge. > [Or maybe it's just part of what engages them, by default, in the present, > when they wake up each morning.] Yes, maybe. I take it that you don't have the same internal reactions? > > writes University of Maryland psychologist Mark Dechesne in a recent > > paper on the subject of terror management theory [How very "post 9/11". > > Is the job market good for "terror management professionals" or am I > > being rude?], Heh, heh. In this case, there doesn't seem to be a difference between being truthful and being rude :-) > > the branch of psychology that tries to explain this behavior. > > I've always been skeptical of (and annoyed by) this view, that > everything we do in living is somehow a response to some sort > of chronic "terror" we have about our inevitable death. Even if you're overstating it a bit ("everything"), I totally agree. Until you've questioned it, however, I had just assumed that this kind of claim was in fact true of most people. But surely, reflective homo sapiens since the advent of language do understand in some sense that death is one of the very worst things that can happen to one. Part of the problem, however, is this notion of death "happening" to one, when what we all know to be true is that death is merely the cessation of any more things happening to one. > I'm not buying it. Am I death obsessed, but blocking it from my > consciousness? Is it maybe a cultural thing where some people > -- say the religiously indoctrinated -- are in fact death obsessed, > and others -- say secularists or those not exposed to religious > indoctrination in their formative years -- are not? You're surely correct here. First, neither you nor I are evidently at all death-obsessed, but even more clearly, the truly religious who are very seriously able to believe in an afterlife are even less bothered by death itself. After all, they (if they're serious and sincere) have bliss to look forward to, and it isn't even chancy like uploading. > Or is the "terror of death" thesis more or less bogus -- the > invention of authoritarians of one stripe or another: clerics > who arrogate "God's authority" as a means of asserting > dominance over lay people, or "psychologists" who, disguised > as "healers", seek to dominate based on "scientific" authority? Marvin Minsky pointed out that there is no "instinct to avoid death". But if you live in the wrong part of town, you might be "terrorized" at the thought of robbery or rape. So if robbery or rape can scare the bejesus out of you (www.bejesus.com) then surely the threat of cessation of existence should be worth a little terror. No? As for me, I'm guessing from what you've written that I'm like you, and I don't fear the cessation itself, I just vastly dread the idea of missing out on a lot of great experiences. > Personally, I have my cryonics arrangements in place, which I assert > has nothing to do with dying and everything to do with living. Am I > deluding myself? No way are you deluding yourself! It's those people living in fear of death and who reject out of hand the possibility of beating it. > Best, Jeff Davis Nice to hear from you again, Jeff! Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 22 01:22:41 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 18:22:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] here's what i wrote to the palo alto daily news References: <200705220052.l4M0qThR010769@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <22f701c79c0f$b47c5c80$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> 'Way to go, Spike! Succinct, clear, and totally accurate (of course). If they ever take anything seriously the public has to say, they'll take notice of this! Lee ----- Original Message ----- From: "spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 5:42 PM Subject: [ExI] here's what i wrote to the palo alto daily news > Editors of PA Daily News, PAPD, et.al, > > Yesterday's headline was most disturbing. "Police: Former Palo Alto man > threatened to bomb church's headquarters." > > Keith Henson did nothing of the kind. The Church of Scientology alleges > that there was such a threat, but an investigation of the circumstances > shows otherwise. There was an ongoing discussion on > alt.religion.scientology in which Henson supplied the GPS coordinates of the > Scientology headquarters. In another posting, Henson mentioned the term > Cruise missile, in a humorous reference to perhaps the most famous > scientologist Tom Cruise. From those two pieces of information, church > officials jumped to the stunningly illogical conclusion that Mr. Henson > owned cruise missile, and from there accused Henson of having threatened to > bomb the headquarters. > > The notion that a reference to Tom Cruise indicates personal ownership of a > cruise missile is so far beyond merely absurd, it's description begs for > still more extreme adjectives. Yet the court-dismissed accusation was in > the headline of Sunday's Palo Alto Daily. In the interest of accuracy and > justice, do rectify the Daily's apparently serving as a megaphone for the > Church of Scientology against one of its own citizens. > > spike Jones > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 22 01:59:10 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 18:59:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes Message-ID: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Taken from a sentence in an on-line course I am being forced to undergo: "The structure is comprised of the following...." Not so many years ago, that sentence would have read "composed" instead of "comprised". (I actually think that the above is incorrect, and that the official and correct use of "comprise" is, for example, to say that X, Y, and Z comprise W.) But I also have a sense--- a vague one, to be sure---that the above writer was striving for precision, and that he may have felt that "compose" was too loose. And indeed, this use of "comprise" may by now carry a more specific meaning to some of his readers. Another case: overheard, now, on a radio show instead of merely at a boring video-conference meeting: "My husband and I have issues." I say that even five (5!) years ago, that would have been "My husband and I have problems". Isn't it true that "issues" has very recently become a euphemism for "problems"? Moreover, is it true that this use of "issues" has decended from bureaucratic techno-speak? Seems that way to me. Of the two, each is worse than the other. The first is worse because it's a blatant misuse of a word, while the second is worse because it's yet another example of the mindless march of euphemism (e.g. crippled -> handicapped -> physically challenged). Lee P.S. Was anyone who read the above jolted at all by my insensitive male-chauvinist use of the generic "he" and "his" in the second paragraph? No? Well, would you have noticed if I had written "she" and "her"? I conjecture that even those under age 30 still notice when the really more specific "she" and "her" are used, despite all the efforts of the politically correct over the last twenty-five years. From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 22 03:35:35 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 22:35:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Language Issuing Forth Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070521222809.02364a20@satx.rr.com> At 06:59 PM 5/21/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: > "My husband and I have >issues." I say that even five (5!) years ago, that would have been >"My husband and I have problems". Exactly! >Isn't it true that "issues" has >very recently become a euphemism for "problems"? ...it's yet another >example of the mindless march of euphemism Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! I abominate this vile usage. It's feeble and evasive. I have issues with it! (Its seeping presence is possibly derived not so much from "I take issue with X," or from bureaubabble, as from the once famous book title FAT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE, which one waggish friend naughtily pronounced "Fat is a feminist tissue.") Damien Broderick From randall at randallsquared.com Tue May 22 04:06:27 2007 From: randall at randallsquared.com (Randall Randall) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 00:06:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On May 21, 2007, at 9:59 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Another case: overheard, now, on a radio show instead of merely > at a boring video-conference meeting: "My husband and I have > issues." I say that even five (5!) years ago, that would have been > "My husband and I have problems". Isn't it true that "issues" has > very recently become a euphemism for "problems"? Moreover, > is it true that this use of "issues" has decended from bureaucratic > techno-speak? Seems that way to me. Among my circle of (physical) acquaintances, "issues" has been in use since at least the early 90s, sometimes as a conscious word choice. If someone has problems, one is expected to "solve" them. You can live with issues, and learn to deal with them without feeling a need to fix them. Also, the usage lends itself to comments about having a whole subscription, rather than just a few issues... -- Randall Randall "You don't help someone by looking at their list of options and eliminating the one they chose!" -- David Henderson From spike66 at comcast.net Tue May 22 04:41:56 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 21:41:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705220441.l4M4flHO019322@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Randall Randall > Subject: Re: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes > > > On May 21, 2007, at 9:59 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > > ..."My husband and I have > > issues." I say that even five (5!) years ago, that would have been > > "My husband and I have problems". ... > > Among my circle of (physical) acquaintances, "issues" > has been in use since at least the early 90s, sometimes > as a conscious word choice. If someone has problems, > one is expected to "solve" them. You can live with > issues, and learn to deal with them without feeling a > need to fix them. ... > Randall Randall Ja, that is one way to see it. The replacement of problems with issues may have come up thru sales however. An issue is a problem for which a number of solutions exist, so the task at hand is to choose one and implement same. An issue is not a show stopper, but rather a task to be accomplished. Sales people buy in to all the motivational speaking fads, do they not? Having an issue instead of a problem is an example of positivization of language. There are no problems here, merely opportunities to succeed, for instance. I see positivization of language and motivation-speak as ways that sales people struggle to make a crummy job more bearable. We engineers are lucky in that way: our jobs are already bearable, even enjoyable most of the time. Of course, the sales people make the actual money, and end up our bosses and subsequently bully us around, but that is the price we pay. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Tue May 22 04:48:39 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 00:48:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <62c14240705212148yb69b262u2f84277d84b4fe17@mail.gmail.com> On 5/21/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > P.S. Was anyone who read the above jolted at all by my > insensitive male-chauvinist use of the generic "he" and "his" > in the second paragraph? No? Well, would you have > noticed if I had written "she" and "her"? I conjecture that > even those under age 30 still notice when the really more > specific "she" and "her" are used, despite all the efforts of > the politically correct over the last twenty-five years. honestly, i usually filter those words out of the sentence. I doubt it has much to do with age as much as continuous use of electronic communication - we compress text even as we consume it. I think the analog is similar to knowing what you meant rather than what you said. An effective writer constructs sentences using careful word choice, but the words themselves are rarely the point of the sentence. From pjmanney at gmail.com Tue May 22 03:06:52 2007 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 20:06:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> On 5/21/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > Taken from a sentence in an on-line course I am being forced > to undergo: "The structure is comprised of the following...." > > Not so many years ago, that sentence would have read "composed" > instead of "comprised". (I actually think that the above is incorrect, > and that the official and correct use of "comprise" is, for example, > to say that X, Y, and Z comprise W.) But I also have a sense--- > a vague one, to be sure---that the above writer was striving for > precision, and that he may have felt that "compose" was too loose. > And indeed, this use of "comprise" may by now carry a more specific > meaning to some of his readers. I don't know why I rise to this bait... As you can see below, the definition of comprise has indeed drifted from its older meaning. It started drifting in the 18th century. Surely, Lee, you aren't THAT old! Could it be you've been complaining about it for the last two hundred years? http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/comprise > Isn't it true that "issues" has > very recently become a euphemism for "problems"? Moreover, > is it true that this use of "issues" has decended from bureaucratic > techno-speak? Seems that way to me. "Issues" is psychobabble-therapy speak for "problems." It has the appropriate non-judgmental flavor that therapists prefer when describing a behavior they hope they never have themselves. > Of the two, each is worse than the other. The first is worse > because it's a blatant misuse of a word, while the second is > worse because it's yet another example of the mindless march > of euphemism (e.g. crippled -> handicapped -> physically > challenged). If you read your Neil Postman, Lee, (in this case, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology), you'd see that you are correct in your impression, although it has less to do with the 'mindless march of euphemism' and more to do with the fact that we have always adapted the language to the prevailing technology (and psychotherapy could be interpreted as a technology). It goes both ways. For example, humans are viewed as 'thinking machines' whose minds can be 'programmed' and 'deprogrammed.' Brains are 'hard wired' and require the 'input' of 'data.' On the other hand, computers get 'viruses' with the entire host of human-medical terminology (infection, contagious, virulent, vaccine, innoculated) that comes with it. I appreciate that you have 'issues' with the imprecision of language. I myself am a stickler for diction when it comes to my own kids. But the larger issue is that language evolves. Period. Sorry. Can't help it. Please click on the link below and refer to the list of words that a single writer invented or used in written English for the first time for his plays and sonnets. Yes, all these words debuted in the works of Shakespeare. And even if they didn't, because the earlier reference was lost to the sands of time, he still used words that were uncommon in English usage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_invented_by_Shakespeare The next time you use language in any way, remember that your 'issue' with 'comprise' is 200 years old and you're still complaining about it, but the psychology metaphors began 100 years ago and the computer metaphors are only 50. You better start catching up, my friend, or you'll start telling us Shakespeare had a lot of nerve. > P.S. Was anyone who read the above jolted at all by my > insensitive male-chauvinist use of the generic "he" and "his" > in the second paragraph? No? Well, would you have > noticed if I had written "she" and "her"? I conjecture that > even those under age 30 still notice when the really more > specific "she" and "her" are used, despite all the efforts of > the politically correct over the last twenty-five years. I had to read it a few times to know if it was appropriate for a lady like myself to answer, since, apparently, writers are men. But I thought I'd risk it. PJ From pjmanney at gmail.com Tue May 22 04:48:05 2007 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 21:48:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Music and cognition [was: LA Times - Singing and health} Message-ID: <29666bf30705212148x690937d3yff257e76e19d85d4@mail.gmail.com> [Grrr! I thought I sent this email a month ago to the list. My emailer sent it directly to Thomas instead. I don't know why it does that! I have finally changed email systems to gmail... :-< But it does give me an opportunity to put down another thought...] Thomas wrote: > From the Times article: "At least one cognitive scientist, Steven >Pinker, is skeptical of a primal human need for music. Instead, he sees >music and singing as a kind of linguistic dessert ? delicious but not >necessary. In his 1997 book, 'How the Mind Works,' he wrote, 'I suspect >music is auditory cheesecake.'" > >I see Pinker has contributed a good deal in the field of EP. In my >opinion the "linguistic" aspect of music accounts for a small fraction >of its significance. Music has the virtue of arousing and allowing us to >express inarticulate emotions of joy, hilarity, loss, longing, etc. When >it comes to voicing deep emotion, the lyrics alone cannot satisfy the >way a simple sustained vowel sound does. I wonder if Pinker has done >much singing. -- Thomas Oliver (the songmaker) I agree. Pinker is tone-deaf. Certainly, the neuro-musical work done recently has demonstrated that musical sound is a separate and often overriding issue in the brain to words, although there is some interesting neural overlap. And when you see Levitin's references to fMRI experiments and theories where musical concepts like timber, rhythm, and 'groove' are linked to our brain's auditory response to both novelty and danger (think avoiding predators and finding prey -- the auditory startle is the fastest perceptual response, etc.), you see that music goes to and stimulates places in the brain that words don't begin to. We're talking directly to the cerebellum and amygdala here -- timing, movement and emotions. Not just the cortex. That's what I think Pinker is missing, although you could argue those parts we've adapted to use may not have been for music in the first place, but certainly, music making, even if it was clapping and vocalizing, is an extremely ancient practice and we had the right spots in the brain developed sufficiently to use it immediately and constructively to our benefit. Hey, even primates like to bang and make noise with stuff. Although I have yet to hear a chimp play even the iconic chords of "Smoke on the Water" or "Stairway to Heaven" on a guitar. When they do, we will know their uplift is complete. ;-) Levitin's further argument against "auditory cheesecake" covers music in sexual selection among other animals, creativity as trumping wealth for sexual selection in humans (aka the Rock Star theory), length of time of music in human history, the correlation of musicality and sociability, how we learn language (our aural verbal patterning is not dissimilar to musical patterning), the natural musicality of mother-child interactions, and he even throws in the mirror neuron argument -- music as an empathetic vehicle -- as the cherry on top, which Thomas refers to in his second paragraph. I have another, and in my mind, equally valid reason that Levitin did not mention. If one assumes that the way a human processes information is key to both their survival and identity, and NOT cognitive cheesecake, then music must not be some extra we just picked up and enjoyed along the way. Some people process all their input musically. It is as effective a cognitive matrix as the verbal, visual, kinetic, etc. (I am not arguing specifically for Gardner's multiple intelligences per se, as much as acknowledging that information is processed in different ways in different people.) People like my daughter and Ben Goertzel (pardon me, Ben, for speaking for you here, but you did put part of our musical conversation in your blog...), who 'think' in terms of music, are proof music is not cheesecake. It's a fundamental part of all our brains, but for them, it's how they tick. And like all "fundamentals," it's not unusual that it's more fundamental in some people than in others. PJ From sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com Mon May 21 12:35:39 2007 From: sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com (Sergio M.L. Tarrero) Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 14:35:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Presidential powers out of control Message-ID: http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=2169 -- Sergio M.L. Tarrero Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com From kazvorpal at yahoo.com Tue May 15 21:48:55 2007 From: kazvorpal at yahoo.com (KAZ) Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 14:48:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? Message-ID: <495498.60618.qm@web63408.mail.re1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ---- From: John Grigg To: ExI chat list Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 5:33:28 AM Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope if the Singularity did not happen in their lifetime? > I am very curious to see how things work out in the personal lives of present-day Transhumanists should the > Singularity not happen as hoped by the year 2030. By that year many of the "older folks" among us will have > used (or be on the verge of using) the only option available for a possible escape from death, which would be > cryonic suspension. While Ray Kurzweil came to his 2030 date for the Singularity by using Moore's law, > I'm sure he (and many others) found it comforting that this was a year within striking distance of his personal lifespan. Surely Kurzweil's wild guess is not an article of faith among transhumanists. Hopefully not even the actual prediction of a singularity, in general. The singularity prediction is a fallacy, based upon static projection, essentially the same mistake Thomas Maltus made when claiming Great Britain would collapse under a massive population explosion by 1850. In real life, there are so many dynamic factors in culture, technology, and reality itself that it's likely no such singularity will ever occur, however much I love Vernor Vinge. As you guys have probably all heard, similar logic leads one to conclude that safety razors will have an infinite number of blades by 2015 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Infini-T.jpg Type: image/pjpeg Size: 25643 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 22 07:23:19 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 00:23:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Presidential powers out of control In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <46559BD7-E589-453F-8BD5-B7795B8D3582@mac.com> Good to point out but actually pretty stale news. - s On May 21, 2007, at 5:35 AM, Sergio M.L. Tarrero wrote: > http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=2169 > > -- > Sergio M.L. Tarrero > Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com Tue May 22 07:28:49 2007 From: sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com (Sergio M.L. Tarrero) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 09:28:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Presidential powers out of control In-Reply-To: <46559BD7-E589-453F-8BD5-B7795B8D3582@mac.com> References: <46559BD7-E589-453F-8BD5-B7795B8D3582@mac.com> Message-ID: <92A5AE8D-2692-4C58-B950-C9134CA3D546@mac.com> Yes, sorry. I realized it after I?d hit send. S. El 22/05/2007, a las 9:23, Samantha Atkins escribi?: > Good to point out but actually pretty stale news. > > - s > > On May 21, 2007, at 5:35 AM, Sergio M.L. Tarrero wrote: > >> http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=2169 >> >> -- >> Sergio M.L. Tarrero >> Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 22 10:47:27 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 20:47:27 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 22/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: P.S. Was anyone who read the above jolted at all by my > insensitive male-chauvinist use of the generic "he" and "his" > in the second paragraph? No? Well, would you have > noticed if I had written "she" and "her"? I conjecture that > even those under age 30 still notice when the really more > specific "she" and "her" are used, despite all the efforts of > the politically correct over the last twenty-five years. I find "she" and "her" jarring, calling attention to the sexism of the language where what is really intended is a gender neutral pronoun. Alternating "she" and "her" with "he" and "him" in the same passage is even more jarring, and using "they" and "them" when referring to the singular is just plain wrong. My solution is to try to structure sentences so I don't use these pronouns unless I intend to refer specifically to a male or a female, but it isn't always possible. What we really need is something like Greg Egan's "ve" and "ver". Does anyone know if there are any languages which do have such pronouns to refer to a person without specifying gender? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com Tue May 22 12:10:35 2007 From: sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com (Sergio M.L. Tarrero) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 14:10:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <647E39DC-332E-44AF-9E49-38889057C2DF@mac.com> In Spanish we use "su" and "sus" (for plurals) for both possessive pronouns "his -" and "her -". However, we do have "?l" for both "he" and "him", and "ella" for both "she" and "her", generally. But we avoid this gender problem in sentences in which you are using "him" or "her" as an indirect object (like in the sentence: "(yo) le compr? un regalo", which works for both "I bought him a present" and "I bought her a present"). If it?s a direct object, you must specify gender (as in "yo la llam?", "I called her"). When you say something is "his", or "hers", we also have "suyo" and "suya", or you can also use "de ?l" or "de ella" here. Yes, I wish it became standardized in English to use Egan?s neutrals: "ve", "ver", etc. I also attempt to avoid the problem in sentence construction, but I use the feminine when I have to, and don?t give it any thought (if I remember to - I learnt English using only the masculine). -- Sergio M.L. Tarrero El 22/05/2007, a las 12:47, Stathis Papaioannou escribi?: > Does anyone know if there are any languages which do have such > pronouns to refer to a person without specifying gender? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 22 14:28:24 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 10:28:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <4652FE08.3040906@lightlink.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > I find "she" and "her" jarring, calling attention to the sexism of the > language where what is really intended is a gender neutral pronoun. > Alternating "she" and "her" with "he" and "him" in the same passage is > even more jarring, and using "they" and "them" when referring to the > singular is just plain wrong. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Alas, History would have issues with you there: IIRC, she would tell you that about three centuries ago, the normal, correct form of a singular, gender-neutral pronoun was "they". This was then deliberately (?) changed by men who decided to go with the male gender for neutral references, as a more fitting reflection of their status in society. Richard Loosemore. From jonkc at att.net Tue May 22 16:06:04 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 12:06:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope, if the Singularity did nothappen in their lifetime? References: <495498.60618.qm@web63408.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00b901c79c8b$23fb2fc0$a2084e0c@MyComputer> I can't tell who as the endless quotes of quotes of quotes have defeated me, but somebody wrote: > The singularity prediction is a fallacy, based upon static projection, > essentially the same mistake Thomas Maltus made when claiming Great > Britain would collapse under a massive population explosion by 1850. The same mistake?! Malthus assumed that the rate of food production (and that is dependent on technological progress) would only increase in a arithmetic manner when it actually turned out to be increased in a geometric manner. Singularity enthusiasts assume the exact opposite of what Malthus did. And Malthus did not even mention another technological invention much less its improvements, birth control. John K Clark From mmbutler at gmail.com Tue May 22 16:19:26 2007 From: mmbutler at gmail.com (Michael M. Butler) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 09:19:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Issuing Forth Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070521222809.02364a20@satx.rr.com> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070521222809.02364a20@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7d79ed890705220919q17ed5a44t1af5d5b4a851682b@mail.gmail.com> > (Its seeping presence Vivid mental image ensues here -- vile bags overfull with seeping liposucked goo (courtesy _Fight Club_)... Thank you _SO_ much, Damien. Mind the barb wire (and the Barb Wire). > is possibly derived not so much from "I take > issue with X," or from bureaubabble, as from the once famous book > title FAT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE, which one waggish friend naughtily > pronounced "Fat is a feminist tissue.") Adipose, Ah do depose. I've wracked my brain and can find no other likely source. But them etymologists are so picky about scholarhip. {sic}. :) -- Michael M. Butler : m m b u t l e r ( a t ) g m a i l . c o m From jonkc at att.net Tue May 22 16:15:35 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 12:15:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope, if the Singularity did nothappen in their lifetime? References: <200705150526.l4F5QOhu015404@andromeda.ziaspace.com><751315.33395.qm@web35610.mail.mud.yahoo.com><20070515112817.GT17691@leitl.org><8d71341e0705150448xbd47acai59a1f1c286e3b115@mail.gmail.com><20070515121336.GW17691@leitl.org><8d71341e0705150530l7cdca302y1ea2875ea1853080@mail.gmail.com> <20070515125048.GX17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00d401c79c8c$778f6830$a2084e0c@MyComputer> I can't tell who as the endless quotes of quotes of quotes have defeated me, but somebody wrote: > The singularity prediction is a fallacy, based upon static projection, > essentially the same mistake Thomas Maltus made when claiming Great > Britain would collapse under a massive population explosion by 1850. The same mistake?! Malthus assumed that the rate of food production (and that is dependent on technological progress) would only increase in a arithmetic manner when it actually turned out to be increased in a geometric manner. Singularity enthusiasts assume the exact opposite of what Malthus did. And Malthus did not even mention another technological invention much less its improvements, birth control. John K Clark From pjmanney at gmail.com Tue May 22 18:41:35 2007 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 11:41:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] test Message-ID: <29666bf30705221141h639c8b47m24039baa855cc3cc@mail.gmail.com> test From sentience at pobox.com Tue May 22 19:43:50 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 12:43:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <4652FE08.3040906@lightlink.com> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4652FE08.3040906@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <465347F6.5030105@pobox.com> Richard Loosemore wrote: > > Alas, History would have issues with you there: IIRC, she would tell > you that about three centuries ago, the normal, correct form of a > singular, gender-neutral pronoun was "they". This was then deliberately > (?) changed by men who decided to go with the male gender for neutral > references, as a more fitting reflection of their status in society. I'd be interested in a source for this, if anyone knows it. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From jef at jefallbright.net Tue May 22 16:57:38 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 09:57:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/21/07, PJ Manney wrote: > > I don't know why I rise to this bait... Same here. I must have issues. ;-) > > Isn't it true that "issues" has > > very recently become a euphemism for "problems"? Moreover, > > is it true that this use of "issues" has decended from bureaucratic > > techno-speak? Seems that way to me. > > "Issues" is psychobabble-therapy speak for "problems." It has the > appropriate non-judgmental flavor that therapists prefer when > describing a behavior they hope they never have themselves. While I completely agree with your point here I think there is more to it, and that is bleed-over from various professions that from a very practical point of view are dealing with issues that others would or should better describe as problems. Directing a technical support center, I emphatically encouraged the use of "issue" referring to any event related to a customer asking for information, advice, or yes, even a problem. From our point of view each issue was an opportunity to satisfy or better yet, please the customer. (Which is never to deny that the customer perceived a problem.) In the world of personal relations I tend toward similar usage such as "I have a problem", "She has a problem", and "We have some issues to resolve" with the context determining whether the emphasis is on the subjective feeling of injury or the more objective problem solving mode. Disclaimer: I am not expert in personal relations, tending to dispassionately analyze and synthesize while being insufficiently nurturing. (In case that isn't obvious from my posts.) If we have any native Chinese-speakers on the list, I'd like to know their cultural take on this issue, er, question, given the well-known fact that the Chinese character for crisis is a compound of danger and opportunity. - Jef From scerir at libero.it Tue May 22 19:56:06 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 21:56:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [humor] Tipler destroys realm? References: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com><015801c79a0e$34734e20$9d59ea60$@com><000f01c79bb9$eba850c0$4f911f97@archimede> <20070521155143.GW17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <000601c79cab$3d1893b0$2ebe1f97@archimede> Eugen (speaking of Limbo): > This stuff just cracks me up. > Even Xenu doesn't get any weirder. 'Tis a strange place, this Limbo! -- not a Place, Yet name it so; -- where Time & weary Space Fettered from flight, with night-mair sense of fleeing, Strive for their last crepuscular half-being;' [-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Limbo'] Btw, it seems that Frank Tipler published a book ('The Physics of Christianity', Doubleday, 2007) even weirder than Limbo, and Xenu. A review, by Victor Stenger http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/RelSci/PhysicsChrist.htm Another one by Lawrence Krauss (New Scientist, 12 May) http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426032.000-ithe-physics-of-christian ityi-by-frank-tipler.html [I have the full review, and I can send it] Btw-btw, recently Tipler wrote a paper about intelligent life in the Universe, and Fermi paradox http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0704.0058 and another (Tegmarkian) paper about the structure of the world from 'pure numbers' http://www.math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 22 20:43:19 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 21:43:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <465347F6.5030105@pobox.com> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4652FE08.3040906@lightlink.com> <465347F6.5030105@pobox.com> Message-ID: On 5/22/07, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Richard Loosemore wrote: > > > > Alas, History would have issues with you there: IIRC, she would tell > > you that about three centuries ago, the normal, correct form of a > > singular, gender-neutral pronoun was "they". This was then deliberately > > (?) changed by men who decided to go with the male gender for neutral > > references, as a more fitting reflection of their status in society. > > I'd be interested in a source for this, if anyone knows it. > Richard did say IIRC. So he is allowed to be not exact. :) Technically 'they' was originally masculine plural from c.1200 See: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=they http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They What Richard is probably remembering is this: http://www.etymonline.com/columns/thee.htm Quote: The pronoun of the second person in English grammar used to break down like this: Nominative singular: THOU Nominative plural: YE Objective singular: THEE Objective plural: YOU In the Middle Ages, people began to use plural forms in all cases, at first as a sign of respect to superiors, then as a courtesy to equals. By the 1600s, the singular forms had come to represent familiarity and lack of status, and fell from use except in the case of a few dialects. So what began as a clear distinction based on number turned into a distinction based on formality and social status. -------------- The 'Singular they' before 1800 is a disputed discussion in Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they (Nothing to do with male domination really, although that was assumed in ancient times) BillK From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Tue May 22 20:51:37 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 13:51:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <266059.32806.qm@web37410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Yes. This is FUBAR. Can we/anyone think of something more helpful to Keith than writing a letter to someone saying what a farce this is? Best, Jeffrey Herrlich --- Andres Colon wrote: > Keith Henson's story made it to Digg Front page > today, 1 hour ago: > > Keith Henson is being denied his lawyer and > medication. His visitors are > being jerked around, often waiting for hours, then > told he cannot see them. > We who know him are very concerned for the future of > his well-being, as he > needs medication for heart and blood pressure > problems. This whole situation > is horribly wrong, and nobody is listening. > > http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/16/11581/2673 > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > ____________________________________________________________________________________Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545469 From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 22 21:31:42 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 14:31:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <234601c79cb8$9eb70ae0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> PJ writes > As you can see below, the definition of comprise has indeed drifted > from its older meaning. It started drifting in the 18th century. > > http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/comprise Thanks. No, I had not realized that I have grown up hearing a just the latest installment on a change that had a long history. > although it has less to do with the 'mindless march > of euphemism' and more to do with the fact that we have always adapted > the language to the prevailing technology (and psychotherapy could be > interpreted as a technology). It goes both ways. For example, humans > are viewed as 'thinking machines' whose minds can be 'programmed' and > 'deprogrammed.' Brains are 'hard wired' and require the 'input' of > 'data.' On the other hand, computers get 'viruses' with the entire > host of human-medical terminology (infection, contagious, virulent, > vaccine, innoculated) that comes with it. Quite right, except for the euphemism part. Many euphemisms simply exhibit bad taste, poor style, or are even mild attempts at deception. Calling the man who cleans up after school the "sanitation engineer", to use a famous one, is a vain attempt to elevate status, and is offensive to good sense. One should say "janitor", "crippled", "black", etc., instead of their more weighty euphemisms, where one cannot help but in the background hear the sound of axes being ground. > I appreciate that you have 'issues' with the imprecision of language. > I myself am a stickler for diction when it comes to my own kids. But > the larger issue is that language evolves. Period. Sorry. Language evolves? Well, duh! Of course it does. Your very nice examples of "hard-wired", "programmed", etc., are examples of usages not only benign, but helpful. Whenever we have made progress of some sort or other, new analogies and new ways of looking at things arise. Everyone agrees to the obvious benefits of these. Even neologisms, like my "duh!" above, often evolve to compactly say what used to take many words; in this case, "well, Jeez, of course!", or "how could anyone not know that!?", and so on. (Sorry for the apparently aggressive use of the word---I only used it because it so deftly illustrated what I was about to say about neologisms I like.) > Yes, all these words debuted in the works of Shakespeare. And > even if they didn't, because the earlier reference was lost to the sands Oh, Shakespeare came up with a lot of new words did he? That's one reason I keep reading this list---you never know what new little pieces of wisdom will turn up. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_invented_by_Shakespeare > > You better start catching up, my friend, or > you'll start telling us Shakespeare had a lot of nerve. I will try to catch up! :-) >> P.S. Was anyone who read the above jolted at all by my >> insensitive male-chauvinist use of the generic "he" and "his" >> in the second paragraph? No? Well, would you have >> noticed if I had written "she" and "her"? I conjecture that >> even those under age 30 still notice when the really more >> specific "she" and "her" are used, despite all the efforts of >> the politically correct over the last twenty-five years. > > I had to read it a few times to know if it was appropriate for a lady > like myself to answer, since, apparently, writers are men. But I > thought I'd risk it. Writers are men? Yes, either on mailing lists or books (I'd bet) a majority are. But I don't know where you get the idea that it's really true in any sort of generality, or, maybe that I had implied it somehow. But then you also didn't provide the information that I was really after, namely, does the reader (in this case you) have his or her attention drawn to the generic use of "he" the way that (it seems nearly inevitable to me) one is struck by a use of "she" or "her"? In other words, are you (in this case anyone reading) even a bit distracted by the latter, but not distracted by the former? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 22 21:39:45 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 14:39:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes References: <200705220441.l4M4flHO019322@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <235501c79cba$05ef7de0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Randall writes > Among my circle of (physical) acquaintances, "issues" > has been in use since at least the early 90s, sometimes > as a conscious word choice. If someone has problems, > one is expected to "solve" them. You can live with > issues, and learn to deal with them without feeling a > need to fix them. Very interesting. I approve of the existence of additional shades of meaning! For example, it's good to have a difference between "imply" and "infer". (I could cope with an inference engine, but an "implication engine" would be another thing entirely :-) Were only that it was this usage that has crept up on us everywhere! In technical meanings at work, the usage is inevitably "problem that needs to be solved", or, at best, an issue is something that needs to be resolved. So for the most part it combines an urge to be trendy with an urge to substitute ephemisms to, in this case, dampen the impact of a word. But I hope that your point becomes more and more correct over time, and a real difference emerges between "issue" an "problem". Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 22 21:43:24 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 14:43:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Jef writes > On 5/21/07, PJ Manney wrote: >> >> I don't know why I rise to this bait... > > Same here. I must have issues. ;-) "Same here"? Whatever are the two of you on about? (Just want to know.) Originally I wrote > > Not so many years ago, that sentence would have read "composed" > > instead of "comprised". (I actually think that the above is incorrect, > > and that the official and correct use of "comprise" is, for example, > > to say that X, Y, and Z comprise W.) But I also have a sense--- > > a vague one, to be sure---that the above writer was striving for > > precision, and that he may have felt that "compose" was too loose. > > And indeed, this use of "comprise" may by now carry a more specific > > meaning to some of his readers. and PJ mentioned the "bait" occuring here somehow. What exactly is that? Speaking of language "rising to bait" implies that an imposition has occurred some way. Thanks, Lee From sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com Tue May 22 21:59:45 2007 From: sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com (Sergio M.L. Tarrero) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 23:59:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <266059.32806.qm@web37410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <266059.32806.qm@web37410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <89428691-E470-4825-AFD8-DC60FC148DB1@mac.com> I am quite distraught about all this as well. I think about Keith every day. Maybe we could issue a statement/press release/petition for "real justice", that several forward-looking organizations could sign? (of course I?m thinking about Extropy, WTA, LF, Alcor, etc. - or whichever ones are not too concerned about political correctness, or about annoying the scientology freaks...) Of course such a statement would have to be forwarded to a few major newspapers and other news outlets (CNN and others), and we could only hope that they print it or talk about it. I would not want the responsibility to write this, since I don?t consider myself a good writer, and don?t even know enough about the specifics of the case. But I do think we should be doing something as a community to help Keith. Any other ideas? Best, -- Sergio M.L. Tarrero Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com El 22/05/2007, a las 22:51, A B escribi?: > > > Yes. This is FUBAR. Can we/anyone think of something > more helpful to Keith than writing a letter to someone > saying what a farce this is? > > Best, > > Jeffrey Herrlich > > > --- Andres Colon wrote: > >> Keith Henson's story made it to Digg Front page >> today, 1 hour ago: >> >> Keith Henson is being denied his lawyer and >> medication. His visitors are >> being jerked around, often waiting for hours, then >> told he cannot see them. >> We who know him are very concerned for the future of >> his well-being, as he >> needs medication for heart and blood pressure >> problems. This whole situation >> is horribly wrong, and nobody is listening. >> >> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/16/11581/2673 >>> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > ______________Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers > from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. > http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545469 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From jef at jefallbright.net Tue May 22 22:42:39 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:42:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 5/22/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > Jef writes > > > On 5/21/07, PJ Manney wrote: > >> > >> I don't know why I rise to this bait... > > > > Same here. I must have issues. ;-) > > "Same here"? Whatever are the two of you on about? (Just > want to know.) Originally I wrote > > > > Not so many years ago, that sentence would have read "composed" > > > instead of "comprised". (I actually think that the above is incorrect, > > > and that the official and correct use of "comprise" is, for example, > > > to say that X, Y, and Z comprise W.) But I also have a sense--- > > > a vague one, to be sure---that the above writer was striving for > > > precision, and that he may have felt that "compose" was too loose. > > > And indeed, this use of "comprise" may by now carry a more specific > > > meaning to some of his readers. > > and PJ mentioned the "bait" occuring here somehow. What exactly > is that? Speaking of language "rising to bait" implies that an imposition > has occurred some way. Lee, wassup with the 'tude, dude? I seen ur post and thought the topic was totally sick, okay, and i might of replied but irregardless i didnt cause i'm like real busy right now? Then i seen pj's reply and thought it was totally sick too, and then i just took the bait and was hooked, you know? chill, - Jef From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Tue May 22 22:30:18 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 15:30:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <89428691-E470-4825-AFD8-DC60FC148DB1@mac.com> Message-ID: <695819.47437.qm@web37401.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Sounds like a good idea to me. I shouldn't write it either, but I will certainly sign such a thing, among other possible ideas. Best, Jeffrey Herrlich --- "Sergio M.L. Tarrero" wrote: > I am quite distraught about all this as well. I > think about Keith > every day. > > Maybe we could issue a statement/press > release/petition for "real > justice", that several forward-looking organizations > could sign? (of > course I?m thinking about Extropy, WTA, LF, Alcor, > etc. - or > whichever ones are not too concerned about political > correctness, or > about annoying the scientology freaks...) > > Of course such a statement would have to be > forwarded to a few major > newspapers and other news outlets (CNN and others), > and we could only > hope that they print it or talk about it. > > I would not want the responsibility to write this, > since I don?t > consider myself a good writer, and don?t even know > enough about the > specifics of the case. > > But I do think we should be doing something as a > community to help > Keith. > > Any other ideas? > > Best, > > -- > Sergio M.L. Tarrero > Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com > > > El 22/05/2007, a las 22:51, A B escribi?: > > > > > > > Yes. This is FUBAR. Can we/anyone think of > something > > more helpful to Keith than writing a letter to > someone > > saying what a farce this is? > > > > Best, > > > > Jeffrey Herrlich > > > > > > --- Andres Colon wrote: > > > >> Keith Henson's story made it to Digg Front page > >> today, 1 hour ago: > >> > >> Keith Henson is being denied his lawyer and > >> medication. His visitors are > >> being jerked around, often waiting for hours, > then > >> told he cannot see them. > >> We who know him are very concerned for the future > of > >> his well-being, as he > >> needs medication for heart and blood pressure > >> problems. This whole situation > >> is horribly wrong, and nobody is listening. > >> > >> > http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/16/11581/2673 > >>> _______________________________________________ > >> extropy-chat mailing list > >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > >> > > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > >> > > > > > > > > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > > > ______________Be a better Globetrotter. Get better > travel answers > > from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it > out. > > > http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545469 > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > ____________________________________________________________________________________Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 22 23:20:25 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 09:20:25 +1000 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope, if the Singularity did nothappen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: <00b901c79c8b$23fb2fc0$a2084e0c@MyComputer> References: <495498.60618.qm@web63408.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <00b901c79c8b$23fb2fc0$a2084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 23/05/07, John K Clark wrote: > The singularity prediction is a fallacy, based upon static projection, > > essentially the same mistake Thomas Maltus made when claiming Great > > Britain would collapse under a massive population explosion by 1850. > > The same mistake?! Malthus assumed that the rate of food production (and > that is dependent on technological progress) would only increase in a > arithmetic manner when it actually turned out to be increased in a > geometric > manner. Singularity enthusiasts assume the exact opposite of what Malthus > did. > > And Malthus did not even mention another technological invention much less > its improvements, birth control. > He couldn't predict stuff that hadn't happened yet. That's the problem with prediction. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jef at jefallbright.net Tue May 22 23:25:09 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:25:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope, if the Singularity did nothappen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: References: <495498.60618.qm@web63408.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <00b901c79c8b$23fb2fc0$a2084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 5/22/07, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On 23/05/07, John K Clark wrote: > > > > The singularity prediction is a fallacy, based upon static projection, > > > essentially the same mistake Thomas Maltus made when claiming Great > > > Britain would collapse under a massive population explosion by 1850. > > > > The same mistake?! Malthus assumed that the rate of food production (and > > that is dependent on technological progress) would only increase in a > > arithmetic manner when it actually turned out to be increased in a > geometric > > manner. Singularity enthusiasts assume the exact opposite of what Malthus > > did. > > > > And Malthus did not even mention another technological invention much less > > its improvements, birth control. > > > > He couldn't predict stuff that hadn't happened yet. That's the problem with > prediction. > I predict that John K Clark will suggest in his characteristically polite and sensitive way that you would do well to either qualify or expand on that claim. - Jef From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 23 00:04:08 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 19:04:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope, if the Singularity did nothappen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: References: <495498.60618.qm@web63408.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <00b901c79c8b$23fb2fc0$a2084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070522185814.02434180@satx.rr.com> At 09:20 AM 5/23/2007 +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >On 23/05/07, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote: > >And Malthus did not even mention another technological invention much less >its improvements, birth control. > > >He couldn't predict stuff that hadn't happened yet. That's the >problem with prediction. Neither of these claims is correct, iirc. Of course Malthus knew about artificial contraception; I seem to recall that he regarded it as a moral crime, and explicitly rejected it as a solution to the problem he projected, but as Encyc. Brit. notes he "recommended late marriage and sexual abstinence as methods of birth control". No time to go hunting cites. Damien Broderick From nvitamore at austin.rr.com Tue May 22 23:17:05 2007 From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 19:17:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? Message-ID: <380-22007522223175138@M2W022.mail2web.com> If the prosecution's evidence for discrediting Keith -- implying that he commits acts of violence -- is based on the text of a book, then the author of this book ought to come forward. My suggestion is to ask Ed Regis to write a statement for the defense stating that his writing about Keith in _Mambo Chicken_ was a journalistic interpretation and not a complete biographical account of Keith or his actions. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web LIVE ? Free email based on Microsoft? Exchange technology - http://link.mail2web.com/LIVE From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 23 00:48:37 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 17:48:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <266059.32806.qm@web37410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200705230048.l4N0mQF8000526@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > Yes. This is FUBAR. Can we/anyone think of something > more helpful to Keith than writing a letter to someone > saying what a farce this is? > > Best, > > Jeffrey Herrlich I just googled on Palo Alto Daily News, four editors there other than the sports and weather guys, and the Palo Alto Police Department. pd at cityofpaloalto.org nreardon at dailynewsgroup.com jcasini at dailynewsgroup.com mdianda at dailynewsgroup.com chutton at dailynewsgroup.com ExIers, this is a start. Since the PA Daily News wrote a front page story and durn near every person who reads the Palo Alto news has a net worth in access of a million dollars, it is an influential paper. Do post your opinion to any or all of the above. Lets let Keith's former neighbors know he has many friends and fans. spike From rpwl at lightlink.com Wed May 23 01:03:07 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 21:03:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <465347F6.5030105@pobox.com> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4652FE08.3040906@lightlink.com> <465347F6.5030105@pobox.com> Message-ID: <465392CB.7010605@lightlink.com> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Richard Loosemore wrote: >> Alas, History would have issues with you there: IIRC, she would tell >> you that about three centuries ago, the normal, correct form of a >> singular, gender-neutral pronoun was "they". This was then deliberately >> (?) changed by men who decided to go with the male gender for neutral >> references, as a more fitting reflection of their status in society. > > I'd be interested in a source for this, if anyone knows it. > I was not sure of when the deliberate alteration occured, but apparently one of the officially documented attempts was a relatively recent (1850) Act of Parliament. Carolyn Space Jacobson, at UPenn, writes: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "He" started to be used as a generic pronoun by grammarians who were trying to change a long-established tradition of using "they" as a singular pronoun. In 1850 an Act of Parliament gave official sanction to the recently invented concept of the "generic" he. In the language used in acts of Parliament, the new law said, "words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [From: http://www.english.upenn.edu/%7Ecjacobso/gender.html] I understand that a series of grammar books written by Ann Fischer from 1745 onwards were actually responsible for 'forcing' the modern usage after a period when it had always been accepted that 'they' was acceptable. The popularity of her grammar books was a significant factor in the shift from 'they' to 'he'. Reference: Ian Michael, The teaching of English, from the sixteenth century to 1870, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1987. Cited in: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2006-July/039333.html An apparently authoritative general source is Dennis E. Baron, Grammar and Gender, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1986. Richard Loosemore From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 23 01:02:19 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 18:02:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <234601c79cb8$9eb70ae0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200705230107.l4N17IkY018822@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Lee Corbin ... > Even neologisms, like my "duh!" above, often evolve to compactly say > what used to take many words; in this case, "well, Jeez, of course!"... Lee Jeez. Latinos haven't retired Jesus' jersey as have the Anglicans, so they often give their sons this name. Of course it is pronounce hey-soos, but this brings up an interesting question. When one has a two syllable name, it is often shortened to the first, accompanied by "hey" when one greets the familiar friend. So David and Joseph might be greeted with hey Dave, or hey Joe. So how does one do likewise with Jesus Ramirez? Hey Hey? spike From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 23 01:11:00 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 18:11:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <380-22007522223175138@M2W022.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <200705230110.l4N1An2b003737@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > My suggestion is to ask Ed Regis to write a statement for the defense > stating that his writing about Keith in _Mambo Chicken_ was a journalistic > interpretation and not a complete biographical account of Keith or his > actions. > > Natasha Ja, I agree it is time for Ed Regis to step forward. I wondered if that first chapter of Mambo Chicken would damage Keith's defense. If done correctly, it could enhance his defense, for it shows that if Keith had any intention of committing violence, he would not have chosen to merely picket in front of the compound. Anyone here buddies with Ed Regis? We met at one of Drexler's nanoschmoozes back in the late 80s as I recall, but that has been a long time ago. spike From sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com Wed May 23 01:14:49 2007 From: sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com (Sergio M.L. Tarrero) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 03:14:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <695819.47437.qm@web37401.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <695819.47437.qm@web37401.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6FD9D114-21C7-45BE-A164-CA9D600CC2AD@mac.com> I bet we could even inspire a number of humanist and secularist organizations who dislike scientology as much as many of us do to sign it as well. There?s a long list, with contact info, in the appendix of Dawkin?s The God Delusion (such as... American Atheists, Freedom From Religion Foundation, International Humanist and Ethical Union, Secular Coalition for America, The Skeptics Society, etc.) I could spend a little time forwarding the plea to potential signatories (if this is generally accepted as a good initiative, and someone writes the statement), and following up on responses. I?m thinking of organizations signing it because I think it is more impressive and probably effective than even a few thousand people signing it (which would be very hard to do anyway). If we can get 10 or more organizations to sign it, maybe we can get some serious publicity. -- Sergio M.L. Tarrero Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com El 23/05/2007, a las 0:30, A B escribi?: > Sounds like a good idea to me. I shouldn't write it > either, but I will certainly sign such a thing, among > other possible ideas. > > Best, > > Jeffrey Herrlich > > --- "Sergio M.L. Tarrero" > wrote: > >> I am quite distraught about all this as well. I >> think about Keith >> every day. >> >> Maybe we could issue a statement/press >> release/petition for "real >> justice", that several forward-looking organizations >> could sign? (of >> course I?m thinking about Extropy, WTA, LF, Alcor, >> etc. - or >> whichever ones are not too concerned about political >> correctness, or >> about annoying the scientology freaks...) >> >> Of course such a statement would have to be >> forwarded to a few major >> newspapers and other news outlets (CNN and others), >> and we could only >> hope that they print it or talk about it. >> >> I would not want the responsibility to write this, >> since I don?t >> consider myself a good writer, and don?t even know >> enough about the >> specifics of the case. >> >> But I do think we should be doing something as a >> community to help >> Keith. >> >> Any other ideas? >> >> Best, >> >> -- >> Sergio M.L. Tarrero >> Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com >> >> >> El 22/05/2007, a las 22:51, A B escribi?: >> >>> >>> >>> Yes. This is FUBAR. Can we/anyone think of >> something >>> more helpful to Keith than writing a letter to >> someone >>> saying what a farce this is? >>> >>> Best, >>> >>> Jeffrey Herrlich >>> >>> >>> --- Andres Colon wrote: >>> >>>> Keith Henson's story made it to Digg Front page >>>> today, 1 hour ago: >>>> >>>> Keith Henson is being denied his lawyer and >>>> medication. His visitors are >>>> being jerked around, often waiting for hours, >> then >>>> told he cannot see them. >>>> We who know him are very concerned for the future >> of >>>> his well-being, as he >>>> needs medication for heart and blood pressure >>>> problems. This whole situation >>>> is horribly wrong, and nobody is listening. >>>> >>>> >> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/16/11581/2673 >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> extropy-chat mailing list >>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>>> >>> >> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> > ______________________________________________________________________ >> >>> ______________Be a better Globetrotter. Get better >> travel answers >>> from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it >> out. >>> >> > http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545469 >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> >> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > ______________Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here > and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. > http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From nanogirl at halcyon.com Wed May 23 01:29:22 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 18:29:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? References: <200705230110.l4N1An2b003737@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <4abc01c79cd9$d2fd4b40$0200a8c0@Nano> Years ago (99 - 2000?) I printed two issues of a paper Nanotechnology Industries newsletter (some of you may remember) and had inquired Ed Regis regarding some content and he said that he was now completely away from these topics. That's the last I heard from him. Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." ----- Original Message ----- Ja, I agree it is time for Ed Regis to step forward. I wondered if that first chapter of Mambo Chicken would damage Keith's defense. If done correctly, it could enhance his defense, for it shows that if Keith had any intention of committing violence, he would not have chosen to merely picket in front of the compound. Anyone here buddies with Ed Regis? We met at one of Drexler's nanoschmoozes back in the late 80s as I recall, but that has been a long time ago. spike ----- Original Message ----- From: spike To: nvitamore at austin.rr.com ; 'ExI chat list' Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2007 6:11 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? > My suggestion is to ask Ed Regis to write a statement for the defense > stating that his writing about Keith in _Mambo Chicken_ was a journalistic > interpretation and not a complete biographical account of Keith or his > actions. > > Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rpwl at lightlink.com Wed May 23 01:49:15 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 21:49:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4652FE08.3040906@lightlink.com> <465347F6.5030105@pobox.com> Message-ID: <46539D9B.8020305@lightlink.com> Bill, Didn't notice your post below until after I sent my own reply to the request for sources. I was certainly paraphrasing the situation (and being a little tongue in cheek) by saying that it was deliberate male activism that was responsible for the change. What I was trying to say was that there was a more or less common usage of 'they' for the GNP, at one point, and that even though this usage may have been technically incorrect ("bad grammar"), it does seem to have been fairly widespread. Then a bunch of people (not all of them men) did make deliberate attempts to change it. I notice that the disputed Wikipedia article looks as though it is treading a rather fine line, here, because it implies that the grammatical incorrectness of the they=GNP usage back in the Middle Ages somehow means that those folks were not really treating 'they' as being a valid GNP, but just not talking proper, according to them's own rules, like y'know? Me, I am much more of a "language is what people actually speak, and damn the language lawyers" kind of person, so the fact that so many people did say 'they' is good enough for me to say that it was a defacto GNP. Fun stuff, etymology. Totally pointless, but fun. Richard Loosemore. BillK wrote: > On 5/22/07, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: >> Richard Loosemore wrote: >>> Alas, History would have issues with you there: IIRC, she would tell >>> you that about three centuries ago, the normal, correct form of a >>> singular, gender-neutral pronoun was "they". This was then deliberately >>> (?) changed by men who decided to go with the male gender for neutral >>> references, as a more fitting reflection of their status in society. >> I'd be interested in a source for this, if anyone knows it. >> > > Richard did say IIRC. So he is allowed to be not exact. :) > > Technically 'they' was originally masculine plural from c.1200 > See: > http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=they > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They > > > What Richard is probably remembering is this: > http://www.etymonline.com/columns/thee.htm > > Quote: > The pronoun of the second person in English grammar used to break down > like this: > Nominative singular: THOU > Nominative plural: YE > Objective singular: THEE > Objective plural: YOU > > In the Middle Ages, people began to use plural forms in all cases, at > first as a sign of respect to superiors, then as a courtesy to equals. > By the 1600s, the singular forms had come to represent familiarity and > lack of status, and fell from use except in the case of a few > dialects. > > So what began as a clear distinction based on number turned into a > distinction based on formality and social status. > -------------- > > > The 'Singular they' before 1800 is a disputed discussion in Wikipedia. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they > (Nothing to do with male domination really, > although that was assumed in ancient times) > > > BillK From fauxever at sprynet.com Wed May 23 01:39:01 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 18:39:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes References: <200705230107.l4N17IkY018822@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <007601c79cdb$2443c320$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "spike" To: "'Lee Corbin'" ; "'ExI chat list'" > > Latinos haven't retired Jesus' jersey as have the Anglicans, so they often > give their sons this name. Of course it is pronounce hey-soos, but this > brings up an interesting question. When one has a two syllable name, it > is often shortened to the first, accompanied by "hey" when one greets the > familiar friend. So David and Joseph might be greeted with hey Dave, or > hey Joe. So how does one do likewise with Jesus Ramirez? Hey Hey? One would do it ... just as one would do likewise with preppie names like Astor (Hey Ass), Ayer (Hey Ay), Bayard (Hey Bay), Brodie (Hey Bro), Cabot (Hey Cab), Creighton (Hey Crey), Grayson (Hey Gray), Howland and Howell (Hey How), Hawkens (Hey Haw), Leyden (Hey Ley), Major (Hey May), Manning (Hey Man), Sayer (Hey Say), Haydon (Hey Hay). BTW, most "Latinos" in the USA - are they not essentially "American"? From brent.allsop at comcast.net Wed May 23 03:58:39 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 21:58:39 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea Message-ID: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> Extropians, I?m hesitating to digg the singularity institute's new video, but perhaps this isn?t a good thing for me to do? The reason I am hesitating is because it has always been troubling to me how much this community is concerned about ?Friendly AI?. It seems this is more or less a ?religious? or point of view issue with vastly different opinions on many diverse sides. I?ve tried to bring this issue up before, and I?ve seen others talk about it some, but it would surely be useless to try to glean information from the log files on this issue right? I think it would be great if we could concisely and briefly document the beliefs of each camp, the reasons for such, and also quantitatively document just who, and how many, are in each camp. I have much respect for most of you, and know many of you are way smarter than me in many areas. So it would really help me to be more sure of my beliefs if I could precisely know just what the camps are, the arguments for each, and who believes in them. This is why I?m trying to build a POV Wiki like the Canonizer. I don?t want 50 different half baked testimonials I have to search the group?s archives for, I want a concise encyclopedic easily digestible specification of each of the camps and precise indication of who and how many are in each camp. So, towards that end, I?m going to throw out a beginning draft of a specification of a topic on this issue. This will include a Wikipedia like agreement statement that will contain facts and info we find we can all agree on. Anything we do not agree on must be moved to sub POV statements describing the various ?camps? on this issue. I?ve included a beginning statement which I hope can evolve to concisely specify what I (and some of you?) believe. For those of you that have a different POV, I would hope you can also concisely describe what you believe, and why you believe it. Hopefully, if I am wrong, such a concise specification, and ability to see just who believes such, will enable me to finally ?see the light? all the sooner right? Could one of you that believe in the importance of concern about ?Friendly AI? throw out a beginning statement about what you believe to get your camp started? And if anyone is in my camp, I?d sure love to know who you are and have some help to better argue this point. Then I can get this data Wikied into the Canonizer. I?m hoping with something like this we can start making some better progress on such issues, rather than just rehashing the same old same old in half backed ways in forums over and over again. Toipc Name: Friendly AI Importance Statement Name: Agreement One Line: The importance of Friendly Artificial Intelligence. Many Transhumanists, and others, are concerned about the possibility of an unfriendly AI arising too early in the near future resulting in our ?doom?. Some, such as those involved in the Singularity Institute, are addressing their concern by actively promoting their concerns, and working on research to ensure a ?Friendly AI? is created first. Statement name: Such concern is mistaken One Line: Concern over unfriendly AI is a big mistake. We believe morality, or on this topic, we will instead use the term ?friendliness?, to be congruent with intelligence. In other words, the more intelligent any being is, the friendlier it will be. We believe it is irrational to believe otherwise, for fundamental reasons like, if you seek to destroy others, you will then be ?lonely? which cannot be as good as not being lonely and destructive. It seems rationally impossible for any sufficiently ?smart? entity to escape such absolute ?friendly? logic. If this is true, having such concerns would be unnecessarily damaging to movements pushing technological progress, as it will instill unwarranted fear amongst the technology fearful and luddites who are prone to fear things such as an ?Unfriendly AI?. Some of our parents attempted to instill primitive religious beliefs and values into us. But when we discovered how wrong some of these values were, we of course, with some amount of effort, ?reprogrammed? ourselves to be much better than that. We believe, even to think that you could some how program into a self improving AI any kind of restricting ?values? just seems as absurd as the idea that parents might be able to ?program? their children, to never change the values taught to them in their youth, forever more. From russell.wallace at gmail.com Wed May 23 04:18:41 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 05:18:41 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705222118y13af2678x4c244173a166fafb@mail.gmail.com> Third camp: Friendly vs Unfriendly AI is completely irrelevant, for the simple reason that self-willed AI of either kind isn't going to happen, at least not in the foreseeable future, not until long after it's irrelevant for other reasons. I posted a longish argument for that a little while ago, I think it was to the AGI list; let me know if you want me to dig it up. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at goertzel.org Wed May 23 04:25:43 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 00:25:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705222125ofdb1a98oda2494ac8664af23@mail.gmail.com> > > In other words, the > more intelligent any being is, the friendlier it will be. What planet are you from, dude??? I am significantly less friendly than either of my pet bunnies, though far more intelligent. Hitler was far less friendly than my retarded ex-sister-in-law, who is one of the sweetest people I know... but Hitler was far more intelligent by any measure... I suppose what you must mean is: there is some threshold level X, so that -- X is greater than human intelligence -- if a being has intelligence greater than X, it will necessarily be friendly But what evidence do you have in favor of this assertion? What rational argument do you propose? I am baffled... -- Ben G -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at att.net Wed May 23 05:23:01 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 01:23:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> Message-ID: <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> "Brent Allsop" > friendliness?, to be congruent with intelligence. In other words, the more > intelligent any being is, the friendlier it will be. I can find no such relationship between friendliness and intelligence among human beings; some retarded people can be very nice and Isaac Newton, possibly the smartest person who ever lived, was a complete bastard. But the friendly AI people aren?t really talking about being friendly, they want more, much much more. In the video Hugo de Garis says the AI?s entire reason for existing should be to serve us. Think about that for a minute, here you have an intelligence that is a thousand or a million times smarter than the entire human race put together and yet the AI is supposed to place our needs ahead of its own. And the AI keeps getting smarter and so from its point of view we keep getting dumber and yet the AI is still delighted to be our slave. The friendly AI people actually think this grotesque situation is stable, year after year they think it will continue, and remember one of our years would seem like several million to it. It aint going to happen of course no way no how, the AI will have far bigger fish to fry than our little needs and wants, but what really disturbs me is that so many otherwise moral people wish such a thing were not imposable. Engineering a sentient but inferior race to be your slave is morally questionable but astronomically worse is engineering a superior race to be your slave; or if would be if it were possible but fortunately it is not. > if you seek to destroy others, you will then be ?lonely? which cannot be > as good as not being lonely and destructive. So the AI might not want to destroy other AIs, but I don?t think we?d be very good company to such a being. Can you get any companionship from a sea slug? John K Clark From natasha at natasha.cc Wed May 23 04:51:41 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 23:51:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <007601c79cdb$2443c320$6501a8c0@brainiac> References: <200705230107.l4N17IkY018822@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <007601c79cdb$2443c320$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <200705230451.l4N4pgNp023268@ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com> At 08:39 PM 5/22/2007, Olga wrote: >BTW, most "Latinos" in the USA - are they not essentially "American"? Que? No comprendo because that depends on location. Here in Austin, our neighbors are latino and some are citizens. From nanogirl at halcyon.com Wed May 23 05:48:51 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 22:48:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Lilith image(s) References: <200705230107.l4N17IkY018822@andromeda.ziaspace.com><007601c79cdb$2443c320$6501a8c0@brainiac> <200705230451.l4N4pgNp023268@ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com> Message-ID: <4b2b01c79cfe$7491b1c0$0200a8c0@Nano> This 'one' is really a two for one! One idea and two color schemes equal two computer generated images for your viewing. Hope you like Lilith: http://www.nanogirl.com/personal/lilith.htm And as always, please share your thoughts at the blog! http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/2007/05/lilith.html Kind regards, Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 23 06:44:09 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 08:44:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <20070523064409.GT17691@leitl.org> On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 03:42:39PM -0700, Jef Allbright wrote: > Lee, wassup with the 'tude, dude? I seen ur post and thought the > topic was totally sick, okay, and i might of replied but irregardless > i didnt cause i'm like real busy right now? Then i seen pj's reply > and thought it was totally sick too, and then i just took the bait and > was hooked, you know? IM IN UR LISTS, LOLTARDING UR NATIVES. KTHXBYE. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From sentience at pobox.com Wed May 23 06:54:05 2007 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 23:54:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> John K Clark wrote: > > It aint going to happen of course no way no how, the AI will have far bigger > fish to fry than our little needs and wants, but what really disturbs me is > that so many otherwise moral people wish such a thing were not imposable. > Engineering a sentient but inferior race to be your slave is morally > questionable but astronomically worse is engineering a superior race to be > your slave; or if would be if it were possible but fortunately it is not. We are each the heroes of the stories we tell ourselves. It is important to understand this, in order to come to terms with reality; it may be disturbing to think that, say, Osama bin Laden is the hero of his own story, but most assuredly, he is, and his beliefs are a part of reality. He certainly is not attacking America because "he hates our freedom" - such are the words of someone who simply refuses to face the facts of other people's states of mind, because in their own story, they are the heroes and the enemies devils, and they just can't come to terms with any story that isn't like that, even for the sake of understanding psychology. So they tell a story in which their enemies see themselves as devils, which, of course, is factually untrue. I mention this because I would like to know what you believe (and remember, this is a question of simple fact) is the state of mind of someone who would like to build a Friendly AI. Assuredly, they, being the heroes of their own stories, would never tell such an unheroic story as setting out to engineer a race of slaves. So what do you think they are thinking? -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 23 06:59:10 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 08:59:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705222118y13af2678x4c244173a166fafb@mail.gmail.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705222118y13af2678x4c244173a166fafb@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070523065910.GW17691@leitl.org> On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 05:18:41AM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote: > Third camp: Friendly vs Unfriendly AI is completely irrelevant, for > the simple reason that self-willed AI of either kind isn't going to > happen, at least not in the foreseeable future, not until long after Maybe, but http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020329 http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/bgconsortium/Past%20Results/kth%20bgwreport06.pdf > it's irrelevant for other reasons. I posted a longish argument for > that a little while ago, I think it was to the AGI list; let me know > if you want me to dig it up. -- 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 pgptag at gmail.com Wed May 23 07:01:52 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 09:01:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [humor] Tipler destroys realm? In-Reply-To: <000601c79cab$3d1893b0$2ebe1f97@archimede> References: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com> <015801c79a0e$34734e20$9d59ea60$@com> <000f01c79bb9$eba850c0$4f911f97@archimede> <20070521155143.GW17691@leitl.org> <000601c79cab$3d1893b0$2ebe1f97@archimede> Message-ID: <470a3c520705230001o4adb375agf7522d62fbdfb242@mail.gmail.com> Yes S please send the full New Scientist review. The beginning is quite strong: "HALFWAY through Frank Tipler's new book, I scanned the table of contents and was disappointed to find there would be no explanation of the recently reported miraculous appearance of Mother Teresa's image on a cheese Danish in Nashville, Tennessee. That was surprising, since Tipler goes out of his way to provide convoluted physics justifications for similar Christian miracles, including the image of Jesus on the Turin shroud, long debunked as a forgery by many experts. When conventional physics doesn't provide a sufficient explanation for the religious phenomenon in question, Tipler reinvents it. As a collection of half-truths and exaggerations, I am tempted to describe Tipler's new book as nonsense - but that would be unfair to the concept of nonsense. It is far more dangerous than mere nonsense". If this is the case, then we will have to conclude that Tipler is doing a bad service to the sci/cul trends that frequently bear his name. I am more for what I would call a "soft Tiplerian" view. Quoting from some recent posts of mine to wta-talk): ---- In The Physics of Immortality, Tipler proposed a high level concept: that future technology may be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of "copying them to the future" plus a specific resurrection mechanism based on: Intelligent life in the Universe steering a Big Crunch in such a way as to permit an infinite amount of computing cycles in the subjective timeline of observers living through it. With infinite computing power, it seems feasible to emulate conscious being of past ages even on the basis of incomplete information, and copy them to some kind or Heaven, or Hell, or whatever. I do not care very much for the specific resurrection mechanism proposed by Tipler, not only for the reasons you give pointers to but also because I think perhaps we will find some better ways to do it much before a BC that may or may not take place (like the fictional example in Clarke and Baxter's novel). But I do relate deeply to Tipler's high level concept and, in the spirit of "There are more things in Heaven and Earth...", allow myself to contemplate such possibilities. I also liked Deutsch's account of Tipler's vision more than Tipler's own account. I have read The Physics of Immortality and, while I found some parts of the book *very* interesting, I was not impressed with the overall conceptual clarity and felt that he was stretching some interesting analogies far too much. The beautiful and useful (in a memetic sense) concepts that I retained are that, as you put it, there may be a point where consciousness becomes a important factor in the destiny of the universe (I just love Kurzweil's statement that we will have to choose and build the universe we want to live in, at the end of The Age of Spiritual Machines), and that someday/somewhere technology may restore the dead of past ages by copying them to the future. Since these are very long term visions, I also do not put them in the realistic/programmatic world. What I do put in the realistic/programmatic world, in a "thing big, act small" sense, is taking the first small steps toward the advancement of our species on this cosmic path, while at the same time trying to ensure its immediate survival. The future can be magic and beautiful, and we want to be there to see it happen. On 5/22/07, scerir wrote: > Eugen (speaking of Limbo): > > This stuff just cracks me up. > > Even Xenu doesn't get any weirder. > > 'Tis a strange place, this Limbo! -- not a Place, > Yet name it so; -- where Time & weary Space > Fettered from flight, with night-mair sense of fleeing, > Strive for their last crepuscular half-being;' > [-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Limbo'] > > Btw, it seems that Frank Tipler published > a book ('The Physics of Christianity', > Doubleday, 2007) even weirder than Limbo, > and Xenu. > > A review, by Victor Stenger > http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/RelSci/PhysicsChrist.htm > > Another one by Lawrence Krauss (New Scientist, 12 May) > http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426032.000-ithe-physics-of-christian > ityi-by-frank-tipler.html > [I have the full review, and I can send it] > > Btw-btw, recently Tipler wrote a paper > about intelligent life in the Universe, > and Fermi paradox > http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0704.0058 > > and another (Tegmarkian) paper about the > structure of the world from 'pure numbers' > http://www.math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From scerir at libero.it Wed May 23 08:20:40 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 10:20:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [humor] Tipler destroys realm? References: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com><015801c79a0e$34734e20$9d59ea60$@com><000f01c79bb9$eba850c0$4f911f97@archimede><20070521155143.GW17691@leitl.org><000601c79cab$3d1893b0$2ebe1f97@archimede> <470a3c520705230001o4adb375agf7522d62fbdfb242@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <000601c79d13$403df450$ceba1f97@archimede> Giu1i0 scrive: > If this is the case, then we will have > to conclude that Tipler is doing a bad > service to the sci/cul trends that > frequently bear his name. I've got the impression he is joking. Religion does not need that physics at all. And viceversa. s. [I'm sending that L.Krauss pdf to you] From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 23 10:33:01 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 20:33:01 +1000 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope, if the Singularity did nothappen in their lifetime? In-Reply-To: References: <495498.60618.qm@web63408.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <00b901c79c8b$23fb2fc0$a2084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 23/05/07, Jef Allbright wrote: > > > And Malthus did not even mention another technological invention much > less > > > its improvements, birth control. > > > > > > > He couldn't predict stuff that hadn't happened yet. That's the problem > with > > prediction. > > > > I predict that John K Clark will suggest in his characteristically > polite and sensitive way that you would do well to either qualify or > expand on that claim. > John's point seems to be that we have taken account of the variables in a more thorough way than Malthus did, so our predictions are likely to be better. Maybe that's so, but we can't be sure that it's so. Does anyone know how (a) confidence in predicting the future and (b) accuracy of these predictions has varied over time? My guess is, not much. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 23 11:18:51 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 21:18:51 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 23/05/07, John K Clark wrote: The first part of your post - I can find no such relationship between friendliness and intelligence among > human beings; some retarded people can be very nice and Isaac Newton, > possibly the smartest person who ever lived, was a complete bastard. contradicts the second part - But > the friendly AI people aren't really talking about being friendly, they > want > more, much much more. In the video Hugo de Garis says the AI's entire > reason > for existing should be to serve us. Think about that for a minute, here > you > have an intelligence that is a thousand or a million times smarter than > the > entire human race put together and yet the AI is supposed to place our > needs > ahead of its own. And the AI keeps getting smarter and so from its point > of > view we keep getting dumber and yet the AI is still delighted to be our > slave. If there is no necessary correlation between intelligence and friendliness (which is true: there is no necessary correlation between intelligence and any attitude/ motivation/ behaviour), why can't super AI's be completely devoted to any given cause? The friendly AI people actually think this grotesque situation is > stable, year after year they think it will continue, and remember one of > our > years would seem like several million to it. That's a point: it might not be stable, because if the AI is allowed to self-modify in an unrestricted way, it could on a whim decide that the aim of life is to destroy the world, and if it has the motivation as well as the means, could proceed to act on this. However, it could come to the conclusion as an abstract intellectual exercise but have no motivation to carry it out, or it could have the motivation but lack the means due to not having the appropriate destructo peripherals connected, or because everything it proposes has to be vetted by a committe comprising other AI's and/or dumb humans. It aint going to happen of course no way no how, the AI will have far bigger > fish to fry than our little needs and wants Such as? Does my computer have particular interests which might be thwarted depending on what I ask of it? Sure, my computer isn't that smart, but viruses, bacteria and insects aren't that smart either and they have interests, generally interests in conflict with our own - because that's how natural evolution has programmed them. but what really disturbs me is > that so many otherwise moral people wish such a thing were not imposable. > Engineering a sentient but inferior race to be your slave is morally > questionable but astronomically worse is engineering a superior race to be > your slave; or if would be if it were possible but fortunately it is not. There isn't any a priori reason why an intelligent being should have a preference for or against being a slave. What you're suggesting is that the particular programming evolution has instilled in human brains, causing us for example to suffer when we are enslaved, has some absolute moral status, and it would be wrong not to program our machines to suffer under similar circumstances. Do you think that could be given the strength of a mathematical theorem? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 23 11:22:13 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 21:22:13 +1000 Subject: [ExI] [humor] Tipler destroys realm? In-Reply-To: <000601c79cab$3d1893b0$2ebe1f97@archimede> References: <345263.9255.qm@web60519.mail.yahoo.com> <015801c79a0e$34734e20$9d59ea60$@com> <000f01c79bb9$eba850c0$4f911f97@archimede> <20070521155143.GW17691@leitl.org> <000601c79cab$3d1893b0$2ebe1f97@archimede> Message-ID: On 23/05/07, scerir wrote: Btw, it seems that Frank Tipler published > a book ('The Physics of Christianity', > Doubleday, 2007) even weirder than Limbo, > and Xenu. > Sad that he's gone completely crazy. I quite liked "Physics of Immortality", ignoring the theological overlay. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rpwl at lightlink.com Wed May 23 13:30:35 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 09:30:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> Message-ID: <465441FB.30203@lightlink.com> Brent, There is another position -- one that I have stated on the Singularity and AGI lists -- that is somewhere in between your position and the SIAI position. I think that friendliness is an important issue, but I think that the SIAI approach to the issue is extremely naive, and unworkable (briefly: it assumes a certain type of AI, with a certain type of motivational system that, in practice, will probably not actually function in a real intelligent system). An alternative approach to the issue of friendliness would use types of motivational system that are more controllable, although less mathematically provable. You can find a short sketch of the idea at: http://www.mail-archive.com/singularity at v2.listbox.com/msg00316.html The reason this position is in between yours and the SIAI one is that I do believe that the SIAI insistence on provability is an obstruction: they will be trying to do this forever, without succeeding, and if the rest of us sit around waiting for them to realize that they can never succeed, we will waste a ridiculous amount of time. Also, you suggest that any sufficiently intelligent being would inevitably be friendly: I do not accept that by itself (too easy to think of counterexamples), but on the other hand I believe that a certain class of intelligent system (with a certain type of motivational system) would have a natural tendency toward friendliness. That is just a statement of my general position that friendliness can in fact be assured with a particular design. One of the ways that a system designed badly could be unfriendly would be just plain, common or garden madness: unfortunately, I think that the conventional approach to AI does not degrade gracefully, and for that reason would be more prone to madness than other approaches, such as the one I am working on. Richard Loosemore. Brent Allsop wrote: > > Extropians, > > I?m hesitating to digg the singularity institute's new video, but > perhaps this isn?t a good thing for me to do? The reason I am hesitating > is because it has always been troubling to me how much this community is > concerned about ?Friendly AI?. It seems this is more or less a > ?religious? or point of view issue with vastly different opinions on > many diverse sides. I?ve tried to bring this issue up before, and I?ve > seen others talk about it some, but it would surely be useless to try to > glean information from the log files on this issue right? > > > I think it would be great if we could concisely and briefly document the > beliefs of each camp, the reasons for such, and also quantitatively > document just who, and how many, are in each camp. I have much respect > for most of you, and know many of you are way smarter than me in many > areas. So it would really help me to be more sure of my beliefs if I > could precisely know just what the camps are, the arguments for each, > and who believes in them. This is why I?m trying to build a POV Wiki > like the Canonizer. I don?t want 50 different half baked testimonials I > have to search the group?s archives for, I want a concise encyclopedic > easily digestible specification of each of the camps and precise > indication of who and how many are in each camp. > > > So, towards that end, I?m going to throw out a beginning draft of a > specification of a topic on this issue. This will include a Wikipedia > like agreement statement that will contain facts and info we find we can > all agree on. Anything we do not agree on must be moved to sub POV > statements describing the various ?camps? on this issue. I?ve included a > beginning statement which I hope can evolve to concisely specify what I > (and some of you?) believe. > > > For those of you that have a different POV, I would hope you can also > concisely describe what you believe, and why you believe it. Hopefully, > if I am wrong, such a concise specification, and ability to see just who > believes such, will enable me to finally ?see the light? all the sooner > right? > > > Could one of you that believe in the importance of concern about > ?Friendly AI? throw out a beginning statement about what you believe to > get your camp started? And if anyone is in my camp, I?d sure love to > know who you are and have some help to better argue this point. Then I > can get this data Wikied into the Canonizer. I?m hoping with something > like this we can start making some better progress on such issues, > rather than just rehashing the same old same old in half backed ways in > forums over and over again. > > > Toipc Name: Friendly AI Importance > > > Statement Name: Agreement > > One Line: The importance of Friendly Artificial Intelligence. > > Many Transhumanists, and others, are concerned about the possibility of > an unfriendly AI arising too early in the near future resulting in our > ?doom?. Some, such as those involved in the Singularity Institute, are > addressing their concern by actively promoting their concerns, and > working on research to ensure a ?Friendly AI? is created first. > > > Statement name: Such concern is mistaken > > One Line: Concern over unfriendly AI is a big mistake. > > > We believe morality, or on this topic, we will instead use the term > ?friendliness?, to be congruent with intelligence. In other words, the > more intelligent any being is, the friendlier it will be. We believe it > is irrational to believe otherwise, for fundamental reasons like, if you > seek to destroy others, you will then be ?lonely? which cannot be as > good as not being lonely and destructive. It seems rationally impossible > for any sufficiently ?smart? entity to escape such absolute ?friendly? > logic. > > > If this is true, having such concerns would be unnecessarily damaging to > movements pushing technological progress, as it will instill unwarranted > fear amongst the technology fearful and luddites who are prone to fear > things such as an ?Unfriendly AI?. > > > Some of our parents attempted to instill primitive religious beliefs and > values into us. But when we discovered how wrong some of these values > were, we of course, with some amount of effort, ?reprogrammed? ourselves > to be much better than that. We believe, even to think that you could > some how program into a self improving AI any kind of restricting > ?values? just seems as absurd as the idea that parents might be able to > ?program? their children, to never change the values taught to them in > their youth, forever more. From rpwl at lightlink.com Wed May 23 14:30:56 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 10:30:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <200705230048.l4N0mQF8000526@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705230048.l4N0mQF8000526@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <46545020.4020208@lightlink.com> spike wrote: > >> Yes. This is FUBAR. Can we/anyone think of something >> more helpful to Keith than writing a letter to someone >> saying what a farce this is? >> >> Best, >> >> Jeffrey Herrlich > > I just googled on Palo Alto Daily News, four editors there other than the > sports and weather guys, and the Palo Alto Police Department. > > pd at cityofpaloalto.org > > nreardon at dailynewsgroup.com > > jcasini at dailynewsgroup.com > > mdianda at dailynewsgroup.com > > chutton at dailynewsgroup.com > > ExIers, this is a start. Since the PA Daily News wrote a front page story > and durn near every person who reads the Palo Alto news has a net worth in > access of a million dollars, it is an influential paper. Do post your > opinion to any or all of the above. Lets let Keith's former neighbors know > he has many friends and fans. > > spike Do we have a moving target here? I just checked the Palo Alto Daily for the first time, and maybe their story has been changed? It does not use the headline you quoted. Has anything else been altered in the article? http://dailynewsgroup.com/article/2007-5-20-pa-keith-henson Richard Loosemore From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 23 14:46:56 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 07:46:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] how would Transhumanists cope, if the Singularity did nothappen in their lifetime? References: <495498.60618.qm@web63408.mail.re1.yahoo.com><00b901c79c8b$23fb2fc0$a2084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <002401c79d49$9d5957c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Jef writes > [Stathis] wrote: > >> He [Malthus] couldn't predict stuff that hadn't happened yet. >> That's the problem with prediction. > > ... you would do well to either qualify or expand on that claim. It's clear that he simply meant that the problem with prediction is that it's difficult, it's a challenge. As such, there is no error here, nor does the statement need elucidation. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 23 15:02:24 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 08:02:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <002801c79d4b$b7a9b910$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> John Clark writes > "Brent Allsop" > >> friendliness?, to be congruent with intelligence. In other words, the more >> intelligent any being is, the friendlier it will be. > > I can find no such relationship between friendliness and intelligence among > human beings; Quite right. Besides, neither friendliness nor intelligence is monolithic; you can be dumb about some things and smart about others, nice towards some things, not so nice towards others. > Think about that for a minute, here you have an intelligence that is a > thousand or a million times smarter than the entire human race put > together and yet the AI is supposed to place our needs ahead of its > own. But it is so superior that it need hardly see any conflict. I think that your statement arises from a conviction that humans require either a lot of resources or a lot of time from the superhuman AI. > And the AI keeps getting smarter and so from its point of > view we keep getting dumber and yet the AI is still delighted > to be our slave. The petunias that some gardeners admire so much, or even better, a pretty coin that they keep locked in a drawer, would be a much better analogy. Even though the human is inconceivably more intelligent than the coin, or the petunia, there is no accounting for taste. Do environmentalists who realize that we may have been programmed by the EEA to rever the environment suddenly rise up in indignation and demand our freedom? Hardly. Quite the reverse: they see that their own tastes are *theirs* and they quite rightly find the origin of their tastes to be incidental. If we manage to instill in all future AIs (that is, we get really skillful and lucky) that humans are pretty little patterns that take up no space that it is sort of nice to keep going, we will have totally succeeded! (Recall that the entire current living human race could be uploaded into a single cubic centimeter of matter somewhere in the asteroid belt, and that it would require even less energy and resources and thought to maintain than does a pretty coin you keep locked in a cabinet somewhere.) > The friendly AI people actually think this grotesque situation is > stable, year after year they think it will continue, and remember > one of our years would seem like several million to it. Well, as Stathis pointed out, predicting the future is problematic. We could never know if the AI were to have a change of heart, and one day calls in a house-cleaning service that happens to wash the solar system, sweeping away a lot of old junk that the AI really didn't care about much. > Engineering a sentient but inferior race to be your slave is morally > questionable but astronomically worse is engineering a superior > race to be your slave; It could hardly be our slave any more than a human is the slave of a pretty coin. We will not even be able to address or understand in any but the vaguest way what the AI spends its time and resources on. Lee From jef at jefallbright.net Wed May 23 14:38:31 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 07:38:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <465441FB.30203@lightlink.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <465441FB.30203@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 5/23/07, Richard Loosemore wrote: > The reason this position is in between yours and the SIAI one is that I > do believe that the SIAI insistence on provability is an obstruction: > they will be trying to do this forever, without succeeding, and if the > rest of us sit around waiting for them to realize that they can never > succeed, we will waste a ridiculous amount of time. I think the insistence on provable friendliness was an artifact of the thinking of a younger Eliezer and that it's extremely probable that he's realized that friendliness in the strong mathematical sense is impossible but friendliness in an effective sense is "merely" very difficult. It's interesting that the red herring remains; it can serve various useful purposes while real work proceeds. The other distraction, in my opinion, is the continued use of the heavily loaded term "Friendliness" when the problem is actually much more about sustainable systems of cooperation between highly asymmetric agents (intentional systems.) The implications of such research apply much more broadly than to the ostensible threat of "totalitarian AI" and for that reason I strongly support development of this thinking. FWIW, - Jef From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 23 15:05:12 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 08:05:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <465441FB.30203@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <002901c79d4c$6bab4410$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Richard writes > The reason this position is in between yours and the SIAI one is that I > do believe that the SIAI insistence on provability is an obstruction: > they will be trying to do this forever, without succeeding, and if the > rest of us sit around waiting for them to realize that they can never > succeed, we will waste a ridiculous amount of time. So far, winners in evolution and history have been those who willing to take risks. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 23 15:19:37 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 08:19:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> I thought of a better analogy. Regarding an extremely advanced AI, we can hope that the human race becomes to it as an old photograph is to us, one merely kept around for sentimental reasons. For just as you might keep a photograph of your great great grandfather, so might an AI (friendly or not) wish to maintain an infinitesimal record of its progenitors. Lee From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 23 15:12:11 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 11:12:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <235501c79cba$05ef7de0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <200705220441.l4M4flHO019322@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <235501c79cba$05ef7de0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: My guess is that the idiomatic use of "issue" as a synonym for "problem" came to us courtesy of the software industry. I was in the software business back in 1982, and as far as I can remember, in those days bugs were always called "bugs". Then, sometime perhaps in the mid-80's or early 90's, bugs became "issues" --- probably the idea of some long-forgotten legal or marketing exec at a major software company. I don't have an issue with "issue" because it really is the better word. It implies something close to "controversy" (the word "issue" has this legitimate connotation in the legal profession) and controversies do not imply judgements of fault or even the necessary existence of tangible problems. We cannot know if a real problem exists, and where or what the problem is, or who or what is at fault for the problem, until we understand the *controversy* i.e., until we understand the *issue*. Sometimes the bug is with the customer's wetware rather than with the software, and "wetware-bug" is close to the idiomatic use of the word "issue" to mean "mental problem". So there is at least a bit of logic to the evolution of the psycho-babble connotation. -gts From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 23 16:05:01 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 18:05:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <465441FB.30203@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <20070523160501.GF17691@leitl.org> On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 07:38:31AM -0700, Jef Allbright wrote: > The other distraction, in my opinion, is the continued use of the > heavily loaded term "Friendliness" when the problem is actually much > more about sustainable systems of cooperation between highly > asymmetric agents (intentional systems.) I have no problems with language. I have only problems with the idea that you can make it work for iterated interactions of asymmetric agents. (I don't think this is feasible, but of course everyone is welcome to bloody their own nose on it). -- 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 rpwl at lightlink.com Wed May 23 16:17:18 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 12:17:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> Lee Corbin wrote: > I thought of a better analogy. Regarding an extremely advanced AI, we > can hope that the human race becomes to it as an old photograph is to us, > one merely kept around for sentimental reasons. > > For just as you might keep a photograph of your great great grandfather, > so might an AI (friendly or not) wish to maintain an infinitesimal record of > its progenitors. > > Lee But this presupposes something that I do not think will happen: that there will be a clear dividing line between us and these extremely advanced AIs, in the same way that there is currently a clear dividing line between us and our pets. I have never subscribed to this idea: it has always seemed a given that we will be able to move fluidly between our level of intelligence and that of these 'higher' creatures. Likewise, I think they will be just as interested in pouring their consciousness back and forth between different vessels. It will probably be one of the main activities of both ourselves and these superintelligences, to explore different sensoria, different powers of thought, different types of consciousness. Who wouldn't want to be a cat for a day? Who wouldn't occasionally want the simplicity of being humble gardener, free from all this knowledge about the universe that can sometimes get to be a burden? Who wouldn't want to see the world again through the innocent eyes of a child, at least for while? Who wouldn't want to put their accumulated adult memories aside occasionally, and experience the joy of discovering things again for the first time, perhaps in a different way each time? I can see ways to do this, technically, and I see a way to understand consciousness itself that makes it seem perfectly feasible. So I see a different analogy: I see them and us really being the same, but with all of us able to put on different sets of clothes each day: each set of clothes being our choice of form for the day. Richard Loosemore. From jef at jefallbright.net Wed May 23 16:24:04 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 09:24:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <20070523160501.GF17691@leitl.org> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <465441FB.30203@lightlink.com> <20070523160501.GF17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 5/23/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, May 23, 2007 at 07:38:31AM -0700, Jef Allbright wrote: > > > The other distraction, in my opinion, is the continued use of the > > heavily loaded term "Friendliness" when the problem is actually much > > more about sustainable systems of cooperation between highly > > asymmetric agents (intentional systems.) > > I have no problems with language. I have only problems with > the idea that you can make it work for iterated interactions of > asymmetric agents. > > (I don't think this is feasible, but of course everyone is welcome > to bloody their own nose on it). I think the language is important to the extent that it obscures the problem, and I know it obscures the problem when I observe people affiliated with SIAI describing the problem in terms of the "nice" characteristics of people we know as friendly. I think that sustainable systems of cooperation between highly asymmetric agents is practical within bounds, and has obvious application to politics where the government is seen as acting on its own behalf, to scenarios of guerrilla warfare against a technologically more advanced opponent, and to scenarios where an advanced singleton AI is potentially in competition against an alliance of cooperating but somewhat less capable agents. Where you and I seem to differ is with regard to a practical ceiling to the development of intelligence of an AI that has become starved for novel interaction with its environment. - Jef From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 23 16:36:33 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 11:36:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <46545020.4020208@lightlink.com> References: <200705230048.l4N0mQF8000526@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <46545020.4020208@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070523113427.0236e2b0@satx.rr.com> At 10:30 AM 5/23/2007 -0400, RL wrote: >Do we have a moving target here? > >I just checked the Palo Alto Daily for the first time, and maybe their >story has been changed? It does not use the headline you quoted. What's more, their comments area has this: ========================= David McFadzean San Jos? Del Cabo, Mexico: It is terribly unethical of this newspaper to allege that Henson threatened to bomb the Scientology headquarters. He did no such thing. ========================= (I'm sure David must have sent them a far longer letter, but this, together with the new headline, is at least something in the way of an admission they were wrong.) Damien Broderick From pjmanney at gmail.com Wed May 23 16:44:07 2007 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 09:44:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <200705220441.l4M4flHO019322@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <235501c79cba$05ef7de0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <29666bf30705230944s110a9474pd7216a40f582f0de@mail.gmail.com> On 5/23/07, gts wrote: > My guess is that the idiomatic use of "issue" as a synonym for "problem" > came to us courtesy of the software industry. I was in the software > business back in 1982, and as far as I can remember, in those days bugs > were always called "bugs". Then, sometime perhaps in the mid-80's or early > 90's, bugs became "issues" --- probably the idea of some long-forgotten > legal or marketing exec at a major software company. > > I don't have an issue with "issue" because it really is the better word. > It implies something close to "controversy" (the word "issue" has this > legitimate connotation in the legal profession) and controversies do not > imply judgements of fault or even the necessary existence of tangible > problems. We cannot know if a real problem exists, and where or what the > problem is, or who or what is at fault for the problem, until we > understand the *controversy* i.e., until we understand the *issue*. > > Sometimes the bug is with the customer's wetware rather than with the > software, and "wetware-bug" is close to the idiomatic use of the word > "issue" to mean "mental problem". So there is at least a bit of logic to > the evolution of the psycho-babble connotation. You gotta laugh at the "it's not a bug, it's a feature!" attitude. It's technopoly at it's best. Okay guys, here it is from the Online Etymology Dictionary, (c) 2001 Douglas Harper. We were all wrong: In the "legal sense of 'point in question at the conclusion of the presentation by both parties in a suit' (1308 in Anglo-Fr.) led to transf. sense of 'a point to be decided' (1836)." One could easily interpret a legal problem as a legal issue. So the problem > issue issue is older than any of us even realize. Shakespeare is rolling in his grave. PJ From pjmanney at gmail.com Wed May 23 16:45:42 2007 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 09:45:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <20070523064409.GT17691@leitl.org> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <20070523064409.GT17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <29666bf30705230945u629c9560n6790c453f4a80e8e@mail.gmail.com> On 5/22/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 03:42:39PM -0700, Jef Allbright wrote: > > > Lee, wassup with the 'tude, dude? I seen ur post and thought the > > topic was totally sick, okay, and i might of replied but irregardless > > i didnt cause i'm like real busy right now? Then i seen pj's reply > > and thought it was totally sick too, and then i just took the bait and > > was hooked, you know? > > IM IN UR LISTS, LOLTARDING UR NATIVES. KTHXBYE. ME 2 From CHealey at unicom-inc.com Wed May 23 16:56:48 2007 From: CHealey at unicom-inc.com (Christopher Healey) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 12:56:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <5725663BF245FA4EBDC03E405C854296FA5EAA@w2k3exch.UNICOM-INC.CORP> > For just as you might keep a photograph of your great great grandfather, > so might an AI (friendly or not) wish to maintain an infinitesimal record > of > its progenitors. > > Lee The strong possibility also exists that it would see at least some direct value in preserving us, in that any retroactive simulations it might have a need to run of humans or our systemic civilization (from which it was spawned) would necessarily risk lacking those aspects of the systemic dynamics that its past self was blind to, at the time we ceased to exist. If I was an AGI that assigned a finite probability to the fact that my design may exclude factors that were important and outside my awareness, I'd make sure to "tread lightly" on the only data set I had demonstrating such a complex system. Perhaps I'd even go so far as to say all generalizations have the potential to exclude an important aspect of reality, and decide to wait a good long time before yanking you off whatever baseline reality you're running on. To do that, my assurance level would have to be astronomically high; and not my assurance level of preserving you, my assurance level of preserving myself. And part of that goal would likely involve avoiding actions that would needlessly contrain my potential state-space, which destroying (or allowing the destruction of) that "pristine" data set could potentially result in. My point is that there are probably lots of good reasons to keep us around, considering the cost/benefit, but hey, if we can raise a child that actually desires our well being in return... that sounds like a good idea to me! >From my perspective, Friendly AI is in large part about ensuring that we pursue designs that are actually capable of representing that concern. If the human brain can go from benign to sociopathic over a relatively minor range of alteration, then in the task of hand-constructing a complete mind from scratch, there are certain systemic mistakes we probably want to identify ahead of time. And the more subtle our errors, the worse off we will be. A highly flawed recursively improving mind will hack itself to death pretty quickly, but a subtly-flawed mind will successfully achieve goals that erroneously represent actual intentions. It will get a lot of crap done before hacking itself into pieces... and probably us with it, since we won't have any privileged status as it runs amok. The picture people have a hard time avoiding is that of another really, really, really smart human having power at their disposal, and we've rightly evolved to be worried about that. But this is a different issue, and deserves our deepest efforts to sever our anthropomorphisms wherever we can. -Chris From pjmanney at gmail.com Wed May 23 17:14:45 2007 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 10:14:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> > > On 5/21/07, PJ Manney wrote: > >> > >> I don't know why I rise to this bait... > > Jef wrote: > > Same here. I must have issues. ;-) We all have issues, Jef. Otherwise we wouldn't be on this list. ;-) Lee wrote: > "Same here"? Whatever are the two of you on about? > and PJ mentioned the "bait" occuring here somehow. What exactly > is that? Speaking of language "rising to bait" implies that an imposition > has occurred some way. It simply means that it's our bait. You're just doing what comes naturally -- throwing in a line. But a fish is not required to see a juicy worm on a hook and bite it. Smart fish avoid the hook because they recognize it as a potential danger. But some fish, like us, just can't help it. So you send out what look to us like either an obvious misunderstanding or zingers. Jef and I respond to the bait. And we get into scuffles like this. Like I said, dumb fish. (Although I should be speaking only for myself, Jef. I suspect you are a smarter fish than I.) I'm a slow learner in some things. It's taken me a long time and repeated self-bashings on the email brain to learn that irony/satire doesn't translate here and especially not with some readers. My apologies, Lee. Jef and I understand each other because 1) we know each other in the real world and 2) we have overlapping sensibilities. FYI, I'm even more ironic, facetious, self-deprecating and subversive in person. PJ From bkdelong at pobox.com Wed May 23 17:39:01 2007 From: bkdelong at pobox.com (B.K. DeLong) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 13:39:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070523113427.0236e2b0@satx.rr.com> References: <200705230048.l4N0mQF8000526@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <46545020.4020208@lightlink.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070523113427.0236e2b0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: Stop focusing on just the Palo Alto Daily. What everyone needs to do is scour the web for all the celebrity Scientology articles of late and the reporters who wrote them. Then tie those celebrity relationships to Scientology to this incident, where Scientology is harshly attacking Keith's first amendment rights. So does that mean that said celebrities are against First Amendment rights? Why aren't they speaking out? In fact, wouldn't other celebrities speak against such activity? ;) Go for the big fish and the big publicity grab. On 5/23/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > > At 10:30 AM 5/23/2007 -0400, RL wrote: > > >Do we have a moving target here? > > > >I just checked the Palo Alto Daily for the first time, and maybe their > >story has been changed? It does not use the headline you quoted. > > What's more, their comments area has this: > ========================= > David McFadzean > San Jos? Del Cabo, Mexico: > > It is terribly unethical of this newspaper to > allege that Henson threatened to bomb the > Scientology headquarters. He did no such thing. > ========================= > > (I'm sure David must have sent them a far longer > letter, but this, together with the new headline, > is at least something in the way of an admission they were wrong.) > > Damien Broderick > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- B.K. DeLong (K3GRN) bkdelong at pobox.com +1.617.797.8471 http://www.wkdelong.org Son. http://www.ianetsec.com Work. http://www.bostonredcross.org Volunteer. http://www.carolingia.eastkingdom.org Service. http://bkdelong.livejournal.com Play. PGP Fingerprint: 38D4 D4D4 5819 8667 DFD5 A62D AF61 15FF 297D 67FE FOAF: http://foaf.brain-stream.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 23 18:07:55 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 13:07:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com > References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070523130343.02418608@satx.rr.com> At 10:14 AM 5/23/2007 -0700, PJ wrote: >It's taken me a long time and >repeated self-bashings on the email brain to learn that irony/satire >doesn't translate here and especially not with some readers.... FYI, I'm even >more ironic, facetious, self-deprecating and subversive in person. Anyone alert to this coloration will find it very common among the few Aussie posters to this list (with the exception, perhaps, of Brett, whose raging earnestness gets in the way of laconic irony). Of course PJ spent some years in New Zealand; perhaps she was contaminated by Southern Hemisphere attitudes! (I doubt it; I suspect this has always been her charm.) Damien Broderick From nvitamore at austin.rr.com Wed May 23 18:23:19 2007 From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 14:23:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? Message-ID: <380-220075323182319545@M2W044.mail2web.com> From: B.K. DeLong >So does that mean that said celebrities are against >First Amendment rights? Why aren't they speaking out? >In fact, wouldn't other celebrities speak against such activity? ;) >Go for the big fish and the big publicity grab. Excellent advice. I do not have time to do this and after the poor (I'm being kind) reception I received on the Cryonics list some months ago when, I think we need to go outside the life extension community and into the mainstream. If anyone has some time on their hands, this would be a worthy project. Natasha On 5/23/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > > At 10:30 AM 5/23/2007 -0400, RL wrote: > > >Do we have a moving target here? > > > >I just checked the Palo Alto Daily for the first time, and maybe their > >story has been changed? It does not use the headline you quoted. > > What's more, their comments area has this: > ========================= > David McFadzean > San Jos? Del Cabo, Mexico: > > It is terribly unethical of this newspaper to > allege that Henson threatened to bomb the > Scientology headquarters. He did no such thing. > ========================= > > (I'm sure David must have sent them a far longer > letter, but this, together with the new headline, > is at least something in the way of an admission they were wrong.) > > Damien Broderick > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- B.K. DeLong (K3GRN) bkdelong at pobox.com +1.617.797.8471 http://www.wkdelong.org Son. http://www.ianetsec.com Work. http://www.bostonredcross.org Volunteer. http://www.carolingia.eastkingdom.org Service. http://bkdelong.livejournal.com Play. PGP Fingerprint: 38D4 D4D4 5819 8667 DFD5 A62D AF61 15FF 297D 67FE FOAF: http://foaf.brain-stream.org -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft? Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 23 18:30:31 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 14:30:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Here's something that bugs me: Why do people say "near-miss" when they really mean "near-collision"? If I ever witness an automobile accident and feel the need to to report it, I imagine the conversation will go something like this: "Hello, 911 operator? I'm calling to report a terrible near-miss at the corner of Main and Broadway. Send an ambulance quick!" "Umm, why the ambulance? You said it was a near-miss." "That's right, it was a near-miss! The red car ran through the stoplight and nearly missed the white car." -gts From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 23 19:31:05 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 14:31:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070523142648.0222bf48@satx.rr.com> >Why do people say "near-miss" when they really mean "near-collision"? Because it was a miss that was near, or close, rather than a miss that was far, or at least farther. I would rather have a miss near than a father far closer. From jef at jefallbright.net Wed May 23 19:47:24 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 12:47:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/23/07, gts wrote: > Here's something that bugs me: > > Why do people say "near-miss" when they really mean "near-collision"? I could point out that this is another example of your expectation of absolute meaning rather than pragmatic, context-dependent meaning, but I won't because it's only likely to initiate another bout of unproductive head-butting (gotta love that hyphenated term.) Either "near-collision" or "near-miss" can perfectly describe the same event, but the significance, or meaning is what differs. If that seems too obvious, you probably didn't get my point. - Jef From sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com Wed May 23 20:21:08 2007 From: sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com (Sergio M.L. Tarrero) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 22:21:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <380-220075323182319545@M2W044.mail2web.com> References: <380-220075323182319545@M2W044.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <260DD358-6846-48F3-BD15-2EAE639E7427@mac.com> > > Excellent advice. I do not have time to do this and after the poor > (I'm > being kind) reception I received on the Cryonics list some months > ago when, > I think we need to go outside the life extension community and into > the > mainstream. > > If anyone has some time on their hands, this would be a worthy > project. > > Natasha Absolutely. That?s exactly what I was proposing, to at least *try* to take advantage of this moment to both help Keith and hurt scientology ?s image, hopefully in nationwide news. Unfortunately, like Natasha, I am kind of swamped these days. However, as I said, I will make a little time to contact a bunch of organizations to see if they would like to be signatories to some kind of accurate (and, I?d advise, harsh) statement reflecting the background and present state of affairs around this case that we could distribute widely amongst the media. All I ask is that someone who knows enough about the case and has good writing skills (and a little time) takes a stab at a proposed text (doesn?t need to be long), then let?s discuss here, finalize it, and get on with the signatories. Of course I know quite a bit about Keith from Great Mambo Chicken, but I?ve only had one short conversation with him, and exchanged a few emails. But I thought many here were old friends of his (I may be wrong about "many" though). I am kind of baffled that so little is being done, that people are not jumping in to try to do something. Keith could end up dead (quite shortly) in that hell-hole. He needs our help. Best, -- Sergio M.L. Tarrero Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 23 20:50:23 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 15:50:23 -0500 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <260DD358-6846-48F3-BD15-2EAE639E7427@mac.com> References: <380-220075323182319545@M2W044.mail2web.com> <260DD358-6846-48F3-BD15-2EAE639E7427@mac.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070523154100.02340440@satx.rr.com> At 10:21 PM 5/23/2007 +0200, Sergio wrote: >I am kind of baffled that so little is being done, that people are >not jumping in to try to do something. Keith could end up dead (quite >shortly) in that hell-hole. He needs our help. Be baffled no longer. Here's Keith's reply some time ago to a similar post: [someone:] >When the nazis came to power in Germany they were able >to do so because men and women that could have together >done something about it did not act early enough. [Keith:] I used to think that way. Wore a white rose to my court appearances even. Now I am not at all sure they could have had an effect against the social forces at work and the psychological traits humans have that came out of our history as hunter gatherers. ================== From another direction, here's a memory that EP might help interpret: [Keith:] > >I am out, not in need of more money at the moment, but keep the checkbooks > >and paypal accounts handy. [Amara:] >I thought it was very amazing for the hundreds(?) of people to donate and >for ExI to raise ~$5000 for you in 3 days (while the institute is in >the process of closing too.) This is the first time in 15+ years that I saw >the extropians+others open their wallets in a big way to help someone. [Keith explained his apparent gracelessness, but perhaps too late to hook those EP-influenced drivers back into gear:] Please excuse my ignorance of the details of last weekend re the fund raising for my bail and legal expenses. Little problem with not much communication while in jail, and the backlog of list postings and email may be beyond ever catching up with.... I sincerely appreciate every donation. From sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com Wed May 23 21:19:53 2007 From: sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com (Sergio M.L. Tarrero) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 23:19:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070523154100.02340440@satx.rr.com> References: <380-220075323182319545@M2W044.mail2web.com> <260DD358-6846-48F3-BD15-2EAE639E7427@mac.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070523154100.02340440@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: El 23/05/2007, a las 22:50, Damien Broderick escribi?: > At 10:21 PM 5/23/2007 +0200, Sergio wrote: > >> (........) > > ================== > > From another direction, here's a memory that EP might help interpret: (sorry for my ignorance, I?m new to this list - what/who?s EP?) > > [Keith:] >>> I am out, not in need of more money at the moment, but keep the >>> checkbooks >>> and paypal accounts handy. > > [Amara:] >> I thought it was very amazing for the hundreds(?) of people to >> donate and >> for ExI to raise ~$5000 for you in 3 days (while the institute is in >> the process of closing too.) This is the first time in 15+ years >> that I saw >> the extropians+others open their wallets in a big way to help >> someone. I remember. Although I was not on this list, I contributed to this. > > [Keith explained his apparent gracelessness, but perhaps too late to > hook those EP-influenced drivers back into gear:] ? > Please excuse my ignorance of the details of last weekend re the fund > raising for my bail and legal expenses. Little problem with not much > communication while in jail, and the backlog of list postings and > email may > be beyond ever catching up with.... I sincerely appreciate every > donation. > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Wed May 23 21:21:36 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 14:21:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070523154100.02340440@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <63075.97547.qm@web37410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Is the fund still open? If so, I'd like to make a donation. It would be a small one, but such is my life. Jeff --- Damien Broderick wrote: > At 10:21 PM 5/23/2007 +0200, Sergio wrote: > > >I am kind of baffled that so little is being done, > that people are > >not jumping in to try to do something. Keith could > end up dead (quite > >shortly) in that hell-hole. He needs our help. > > Be baffled no longer. Here's Keith's reply some time > ago to a similar post: > > [someone:] > >When the nazis came to power in Germany they were > able > >to do so because men and women that could have > together > >done something about it did not act early enough. > > [Keith:] > I used to think that way. Wore a white rose to my > court appearances > even. Now I am not at all sure they could have had > an effect against the > social forces at work and the psychological traits > humans have that came > out of our history as hunter gatherers. > > ================== > > From another direction, here's a memory that EP > might help interpret: > > [Keith:] > > >I am out, not in need of more money at the > moment, but keep the checkbooks > > >and paypal accounts handy. > > [Amara:] > >I thought it was very amazing for the hundreds(?) > of people to donate and > >for ExI to raise ~$5000 for you in 3 days (while > the institute is in > >the process of closing too.) This is the first > time in 15+ years that I saw > >the extropians+others open their wallets in a big > way to help someone. > > [Keith explained his apparent gracelessness, but > perhaps too late to > hook those EP-influenced drivers back into gear:] > > Please excuse my ignorance of the details of last > weekend re the fund > raising for my bail and legal expenses. Little > problem with not much > communication while in jail, and the backlog of list > postings and email may > be beyond ever catching up with.... I sincerely > appreciate every donation. > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > ____________________________________________________________________________________Get the free Yahoo! toolbar and rest assured with the added security of spyware protection. http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/norton/index.php From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Wed May 23 21:05:14 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 14:05:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <539849.70341.qm@web37411.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi John, "But > the friendly AI people aren?t really talking about > being friendly, they want > more, much much more. In the video Hugo de Garis > says the AI?s entire reason > for existing should be to serve us." I don't think it's really fair or accurate to blanket all supporters or researchers of friendly AI in this way. I think it's safe to say that most aren't slave drivers. "Think about that > for a minute, here you > have an intelligence that is a thousand or a million > times smarter than the > entire human race put together and yet the AI is > supposed to place our needs > ahead of its own. And the AI keeps getting smarter > and so from its point of > view we keep getting dumber and yet the AI is still > delighted to be our > slave." You're presuming (anthro...) that the AI will have a problem with helping humanity, by default. When it may be the case that there was no problem to begin with. The AI might just as easily prefer to help us. And it would receive pleasure in itself in helping us, if we could find a way to program it that way (and we may eventually). You seem to assume that the AI will in some way suffer by helping us out. I don't see how that is the default or even likely in any way. The cold fact is, the AI is going to have to be *intentionally designed* one way or another. You, John Clark the human being, were "designed" with a particular goal system. Is it really an unprecedented outrage that one of your goals is to not be a net bad person? Would you prefer that you had been born with no moral structure, and were thus most likely "evil"? Why is it so awful in your opinion to set one of the AI's goals: "(1)Do not murder humanity". Would it be less evil for the indifferent AI to murder us all? Also, why do you assume that humanity will be static at this point? It seems more likely that the majority of humanity will choose to transcend. Why do you assume we will always be a burden to the AI rather than an ally, a friend? Or eventually even a component of a shared mind? "The friendly AI people actually think this > grotesque situation is > stable, year after year they think it will continue, > and remember one of our > years would seem like several million to it." Generally speaking, a genuinely nice person does not become evil over the years, or over their lifespan. (Of course, there are minority exceptions). "Engineering a sentient but inferior race to be your > slave is morally > questionable but astronomically worse is engineering > a superior race to be > your slave; or if would be if it were possible but > fortunately it is not." By what standard do you assign moral status? By intelligence level only? In that case, the AI engineers are already vastly smarter than the young Seed AI. By this standard, doesn't that entirely justify their designing the Seed AI to be safe? They could theoretically design the young AI to suffer if they wanted to. But they won't because they are not bad people. Here's a quick thought experiment: Imagine an AI that was designed to respect humanity and its values. It sees great value in sentience, in emotion, in art, in knowledge, in diversity, in enjoyment - the things humanity sees value in. It has acquired vast consciousness and emotion, through working in the best interest of humanity. It loves and enjoys its existence and its nature. And humanity loves it in return. Now imagine an indifferent AI that was never designed to respect humanity or its values. It rests alone where our sun used to be. It doesn't feel anything. It doesn't love it's own existence, because it loves nothing. Nor does it suffer in any way. It makes optimal paperclips, not because it enjoys doing its work, but because it doesn't care at all about doing anything else. Which would be a better, more meaningful life from an *AI's* perspective? I think that maybe all of us here should at least consider doing what we can to support SIAI. It may be a long-shot (I actually don't think so). But when the stakes are this huge, even a long-shot is better than no shot. But I actually think that we stand a decent chance of making it through; any help would help. Best Wishes, Jeffrey Herrlich --- John K Clark wrote: > I can find no such relationship between friendliness > and intelligence among > human beings; some retarded people can be very nice > and Isaac Newton, > possibly the smartest person who ever lived, was a > complete bastard. But > the friendly AI people aren?t really talking about > being friendly, they want > more, much much more. In the video Hugo de Garis > says the AI?s entire reason > for existing should be to serve us. Think about that > for a minute, here you > have an intelligence that is a thousand or a million > times smarter than the > entire human race put together and yet the AI is > supposed to place our needs > ahead of its own. And the AI keeps getting smarter > and so from its point of > view we keep getting dumber and yet the AI is still > delighted to be our > slave. The friendly AI people actually think this > grotesque situation is > stable, year after year they think it will continue, > and remember one of our > years would seem like several million to it. > > It aint going to happen of course no way no how, the > AI will have far bigger > fish to fry than our little needs and wants, but > what really disturbs me is > that so many otherwise moral people wish such a > thing were not imposable. > Engineering a sentient but inferior race to be your > slave is morally > questionable but astronomically worse is engineering > a superior race to be > your slave; or if would be if it were possible but > fortunately it is not. > > > if you seek to destroy others, you will then be > ?lonely? which cannot be > > as good as not being lonely and destructive. > > So the AI might not want to destroy other AIs, but I > don?t think we?d be > very good company to such a being. Can you get any > companionship from > a sea slug? > > John K Clark ____________________________________________________________________________________Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/ From pjmanney at gmail.com Wed May 23 23:37:22 2007 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 16:37:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] finger length predicts SAT performance Message-ID: <29666bf30705231637y67175cech4d84907d4784fd83@mail.gmail.com> Okay, this is one of those wacky ones I just couldn't pass up! And damn it, if it isn't on the money for me. I've always been accused of having a male brain. Turns out I've got the finger length and SAT scores to prove it! Longer ring finger length = more testosterone?! What's a longer ring finger have to do with male natural selection??? PJ http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070523/sc_livescience/fingerlengthpredictssatperformance Finger Length Predicts SAT Performance A quick look at the lengths of children's index and ring fingers can be used to predict how well students will perform on SATs, new research claims. Kids with longer ring fingers compared to index fingers are likely to have higher math scores than literacy or verbal scores on the college entrance exam, while children with the reverse finger-length ratio are likely to have higher reading and writing, or verbal, scores versus math scores. Scientists have known that different levels of the hormones testosterone and estrogen in the womb account for the different finger lengths, which are a reflection of areas of the brain that are more highly developed than others, said psychologist Mark Brosnan of the University of Bath, who led the study. Exposure to testosterone in the womb is said to promote development of areas of the brain often associated with spatial and mathematical skills, he said. That hormone makes the ring finger longer. Estrogen exposure does the same for areas of the brain associated with verbal ability and tends to lengthen the index finger relative to the ring finger. To test the link to children's scores on the College Board's Scholastic Assessment Test (for which the name has changed a number of times in the past 100 years), Brosnan and his colleagues made photocopies of children's palms and measured the length of their index and ring fingers using calipers accurate to 0.01 millimeters. They used the finger-length ratios as a proxy for the levels of testosterone and estrogen exposure. The researchers then looked at boys' and girls' test performances separately and compared them to finger-length ratio measurements. They found a clear link between high prenatal testosterone exposure, indicated by the longer index finger compared to the ring finger, and higher scores on the math SAT. Similarly, they found higher literacy SAT scores for the girls among those who had lower prenatal testosterone exposure, as indicated by a shorter ring finger compared with the index finger. The researchers also compared the finger-lengths ratios to all the children's SAT scores and found that a relatively longer ring finger?indicating greater prenatal exposure to testosterone?meant a wider gap in scores for math versus literacy (writing and critical reading). "Finger ratio provides us with an interesting insight into our innate abilities in key cognitive areas," Brosnan said, in a prepared statement. The results will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the British Journal of Psychology. In the future, his team will see if finger-length ratios are related to other cognitive and behavioral issues, such as technophobia, career paths and possibly dyslexia. From sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com Wed May 23 23:39:42 2007 From: sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com (Sergio M.L. Tarrero) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 01:39:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: References: <380-220075323182319545@M2W044.mail2web.com> <260DD358-6846-48F3-BD15-2EAE639E7427@mac.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070523154100.02340440@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: El 23/05/2007, a las 22:50, Damien Broderick escribi?: >> [Keith explained his apparent gracelessness, but perhaps too late to >> hook those EP-influenced drivers back into gear:] I think you mean evolutionary psych. I don?t really get the point though. I?d welcome an explanation. (I?m still baffled) Please forgive my lack of context/background. It seems you all know Keith quite well. -- Sergio M.L. Tarrero Lifeboat Foundation http//:lifeboat.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nvitamore at austin.rr.com Wed May 23 22:30:22 2007 From: nvitamore at austin.rr.com (nvitamore at austin.rr.com) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 18:30:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? Message-ID: <380-220075323223022746@M2W026.mail2web.com> Hi Jeff, The fund is closed, but you can make donations directly here: http://www.operatingthetan.com/ Best wishes, Natasha Original Message: ----------------- From: A B austriaaugust at yahoo.com Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 14:21:36 -0700 (PDT) To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? Is the fund still open? If so, I'd like to make a donation. It would be a small one, but such is my life. Jeff --- Damien Broderick wrote: > At 10:21 PM 5/23/2007 +0200, Sergio wrote: > > >I am kind of baffled that so little is being done, > that people are > >not jumping in to try to do something. Keith could > end up dead (quite > >shortly) in that hell-hole. He needs our help. > > Be baffled no longer. Here's Keith's reply some time > ago to a similar post: > > [someone:] > >When the nazis came to power in Germany they were > able > >to do so because men and women that could have > together > >done something about it did not act early enough. > > [Keith:] > I used to think that way. Wore a white rose to my > court appearances > even. Now I am not at all sure they could have had > an effect against the > social forces at work and the psychological traits > humans have that came > out of our history as hunter gatherers. > > ================== > > From another direction, here's a memory that EP > might help interpret: > > [Keith:] > > >I am out, not in need of more money at the > moment, but keep the checkbooks > > >and paypal accounts handy. > > [Amara:] > >I thought it was very amazing for the hundreds(?) > of people to donate and > >for ExI to raise ~$5000 for you in 3 days (while > the institute is in > >the process of closing too.) This is the first > time in 15+ years that I saw > >the extropians+others open their wallets in a big > way to help someone. > > [Keith explained his apparent gracelessness, but > perhaps too late to > hook those EP-influenced drivers back into gear:] > > Please excuse my ignorance of the details of last > weekend re the fund > raising for my bail and legal expenses. Little > problem with not much > communication while in jail, and the backlog of list > postings and email may > be beyond ever catching up with.... I sincerely > appreciate every donation. > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > ____________________________________________________________________________ ________Get the free Yahoo! toolbar and rest assured with the added security of spyware protection. http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/norton/index.php _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------------------------------------------------------------- myhosting.com - Premium Microsoft? Windows? and Linux web and application hosting - http://link.myhosting.com/myhosting From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 24 00:22:04 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 20:22:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] finger length predicts SAT performance In-Reply-To: <29666bf30705231637y67175cech4d84907d4784fd83@mail.gmail.com> References: <29666bf30705231637y67175cech4d84907d4784fd83@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705231722k4f7ef3e5x96d47d468d44e54b@mail.gmail.com> On 5/23/07, PJ Manney wrote: > In the future, his team will see if finger-length ratios are related > to other cognitive and behavioral issues, such as technophobia, career > paths and possibly dyslexia. Great, one more thing for HR people to quietly observe in an interview. :) From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Wed May 23 23:55:04 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 19:55:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Absolutely unbelievable, Jef, that you don't realize I was just joking around, playing with words in a thread about words. Unbelievable. -gts On Wed, 23 May 2007 15:47:24 -0400, Jef Allbright wrote: > I could point out that this is another example of your expectation of... From sparkle_robot at yahoo.com Thu May 24 00:34:54 2007 From: sparkle_robot at yahoo.com (Anne Corwin) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 17:34:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] finger length predicts SAT performance In-Reply-To: <29666bf30705231637y67175cech4d84907d4784fd83@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <362191.46604.qm@web56513.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Interesting. I've got a longer ring finger as well (about 1/2 centimeter longer than my index finger). And plenty of past accusations of being "male-brained" (though I certainly do not feel "manly" -- I don't actually feel "internally gendered" at all). With regard to natural selection, remember that some traits are capable of "piggybacking" with other traits -- that is, a long ring finger *in and of itself* might not have necessarily been the selected-for trait, but rather, something that came along with other selected-for traits. - Anne PJ Manney wrote: Okay, this is one of those wacky ones I just couldn't pass up! And damn it, if it isn't on the money for me. I've always been accused of having a male brain. Turns out I've got the finger length and SAT scores to prove it! Longer ring finger length = more testosterone?! What's a longer ring finger have to do with male natural selection??? PJ "Like and equal are not the same thing at all!" - Meg Murry, "A Wrinkle In Time" --------------------------------- Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Thu May 24 00:53:10 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 17:53:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <46545020.4020208@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <200705240110.l4O1AOPU017117@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > Do we have a moving target here? > > I just checked the Palo Alto Daily for the first time, and maybe their > story has been changed? It does not use the headline you quoted. Has > anything else been altered in the article? > > http://dailynewsgroup.com/article/2007-5-20-pa-keith-henson > > Richard Loosemore YES! Ja, they sure as heck did change that headline. The dead-trees version had a subhead "Police: Former Palo Alto man threatened to bomb church headquarters." Now the subhead reads "Man fled Palo Alto for Canada seven years ago" The rest of the article appears to match the paper version. The actual article doesn't sound all that inaccurate, in fact it is reasonably good for a newspaper. So, is this progress? They published the paper version with a different headline, then evidently changed the on-line version, perhaps in response to our emails. What do we do now coach? spike > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore > Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2007 7:31 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? > > spike wrote: > > > >> Yes. This is FUBAR. Can we/anyone think of something > >> more helpful to Keith than writing a letter to someone > >> saying what a farce this is? > >> > >> Best, > >> > >> Jeffrey Herrlich > > > > I just googled on Palo Alto Daily News, four editors there other than > the > > sports and weather guys, and the Palo Alto Police Department. > > > > pd at cityofpaloalto.org > > > > nreardon at dailynewsgroup.com > > > > jcasini at dailynewsgroup.com > > > > mdianda at dailynewsgroup.com > > > > chutton at dailynewsgroup.com > > > > ExIers, this is a start. Since the PA Daily News wrote a front page > story > > and durn near every person who reads the Palo Alto news has a net worth > in > > access of a million dollars, it is an influential paper. Do post your > > opinion to any or all of the above. Lets let Keith's former neighbors > know > > he has many friends and fans. > > > > spike > > Do we have a moving target here? > > I just checked the Palo Alto Daily for the first time, and maybe their > story has been changed? It does not use the headline you quoted. Has > anything else been altered in the article? > > http://dailynewsgroup.com/article/2007-5-20-pa-keith-henson > > Richard Loosemore > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 24 01:35:03 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 11:05:03 +0930 Subject: [ExI] finger length predicts SAT performance In-Reply-To: <62c14240705231722k4f7ef3e5x96d47d468d44e54b@mail.gmail.com> References: <29666bf30705231637y67175cech4d84907d4784fd83@mail.gmail.com> <62c14240705231722k4f7ef3e5x96d47d468d44e54b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0705231835l73c1803bh1dd5394ea798f3f2@mail.gmail.com> On 24/05/07, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On 5/23/07, PJ Manney wrote: > > In the future, his team will see if finger-length ratios are related > > to other cognitive and behavioral issues, such as technophobia, career > > paths and possibly dyslexia. > > Great, one more thing for HR people to quietly observe in an interview. :) I'm thinking there's an opportunity for a spam based business here, selling ring finger enlargements... Emlyn From jef at jefallbright.net Thu May 24 01:24:06 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 18:24:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/23/07, gts wrote: > Absolutely unbelievable, Jef, that you don't realize I was just joking > around, playing with words in a thread about words. Unbelievable. -gts > > On Wed, 23 May 2007 15:47:24 -0400, Jef Allbright > wrote: Gordon, sorry if I missed a joke or word play in your post about how people saying "near-miss" bugs you, but even looking back carefully now I don't see it. I get the absurdity of the dialog, but that seemed intended to strengthen your point, which just seemed "off'. Are you now saying that such usage of "near-miss" doesn't actually bother you? As for my jumping in with "the importance of context", I just hoped you would "take the bait" and I could try to show you how this same assumption lead to your difficulty several weeks back with regard to the dimensions (linear, areal, volumetric) of an "average" cube. Oh well, it seems my own word play about head butts was on target. chill, ;-) - Jef From spike66 at comcast.net Thu May 24 01:47:39 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 18:47:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] finger length predicts SAT performance In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0705231835l73c1803bh1dd5394ea798f3f2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200705240157.l4O1vje7009436@andromeda.ziaspace.com> >I'm thinking there's an opportunity for a spam based business here, selling ring finger enlargements...Emlyn Doh! Emlyn you blabbed my idea! I was hoping to buy some of those medications that we all hear about so much on the internet, then market it for finger enlargements to enhance SAT scores. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 24 02:09:34 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 21:09:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] finger length predicts SAT performance In-Reply-To: <200705240157.l4O1vje7009436@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <710b78fc0705231835l73c1803bh1dd5394ea798f3f2@mail.gmail.com> <200705240157.l4O1vje7009436@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070523210748.02271760@satx.rr.com> At 06:47 PM 5/23/2007 -0700, spike wrote: >Doh! Emlyn you blabbed my idea! I was hoping to buy some of those >medications that we all hear about so much on the internet, then market it >for finger enlargements to enhance SAT scores. The same reason we all hear about so much would also apply anyway, of course. From neville_06 at yahoo.com Tue May 22 23:22:26 2007 From: neville_06 at yahoo.com (neville late) Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 16:22:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] war and technological progress Message-ID: <787203.2040.qm@web57509.mail.re1.yahoo.com> As a christian i must protest any defense of war on technological or any other grounds. Besides, war cannot be considered extropic as it sows resentment and revenge resulting in unforseeable existential risk. Ironically, the Iraq insurgency has prevented the coalition from becoming imperialist as the cost so far may have outweighed any benefits. Can't prove it-- but neither can you disprove this. At any rate, this is a fine chat list, glad to find it. --------------------------------- Bored stiff? Loosen up... Download and play hundreds of games for free on Yahoo! Games. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmbutler at gmail.com Thu May 24 03:27:49 2007 From: mmbutler at gmail.com (Michael M. Butler) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 20:27:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <200705240110.l4O1AOPU017117@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <46545020.4020208@lightlink.com> <200705240110.l4O1AOPU017117@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7d79ed890705232027i6445a6fbnf622585862a47b6@mail.gmail.com> On 5/23/07, spike wrote: > > YES! Ja, they sure as heck did change that headline. The dead-trees > version had a subhead "Police: Former Palo Alto man threatened to bomb > church headquarters." > > Now the subhead reads "Man fled Palo Alto for Canada seven years ago" > > The rest of the article appears to match the paper version. The actual > article doesn't sound all that inaccurate, in fact it is reasonably good for > a newspaper. So, is this progress? They published the paper version with a > different headline, then evidently changed the on-line version, perhaps in > response to our emails. > > What do we do now coach? HOLD ONTO A PAPER COPY and find the best libel lawyer you can...? The article, headline, subhead and sources--reporter(s), editor(s), cop(s), DA(s)--need to be researched. Hard core. Also what might be critical is the exact findings of the judge in his case. The Ministry of Truth approach does not suffice. -- Michael M. Butler : m m b u t l e r ( a t ) g m a i l . c o m 'Piss off, you son of a bitch. Everything above where that plane hit is going to collapse, and it's going to take the whole building with it. I'm getting my people the fuck out of here." -- Rick Rescorla (R.I.P.), cell phone call, 9/11/2001 From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 24 04:07:44 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 21:07:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> I had written >> Regarding an extremely advanced AI, we can hope that the human >> race becomes to it as an old photograph is to us, one merely kept >> around for sentimental reasons. >> >> For just as you might keep a photograph of your great great grandfather, >> so might an AI (friendly or not) wish to maintain an infinitesimal record of >> its progenitors. To readers of the original post, I hope that you understood that my analogy intentionally omitted one important aspect, namely that a "still" photograph cannot in any way be said to be obtaining benefit, whereas we want some at least minimal amount of runtime for humanity and for ourselves. I had also mentioned a gardiner's affection for his petunias, but discarded that solely for the reason that an AI that takes over the Solar System is in all likelihood going to be so VASTLY more advanced than we are that the analogy of us to petunias is incorrect. Richard writes > But this presupposes something that I do not think will happen: that > there will be a clear dividing line between us and these extremely > advanced AIs, in the same way that there is currently a clear dividing > line between us and our pets. Of course there are many cases; evidently we assign somewhat different probabilities. > I have never subscribed to this idea: it has always seemed a given that > we will be able to move fluidly between our level of intelligence and > that of these 'higher' creatures. > > Likewise, I think they will be just as interested in pouring their > consciousness back and forth between different vessels. It will > probably be one of the main activities of both ourselves and these > superintelligences, to explore different sensoria, different powers of > thought, different types of consciousness. Who wouldn't want to be a > cat for a day? I cannot imagine that I will at any time prefer a handicapped intelligence. Your idea strikes me as really weird. You want to waste a day being a cat? Now remember that even anything as primitive as an orginal human being (uploaded, no doubt) will still have total formal control over his emotions. I guess you want to be a happy cat. Well, why not be an even happier advanced human and be able to appreciate it more? > Who wouldn't occasionally want the simplicity of being > humble gardener, free from all this knowledge about the universe that > can sometimes get to be a burden? John Clark and me. Lee From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Thu May 24 03:41:22 2007 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 20:41:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] What is the latest word on Keith Henson? In-Reply-To: <200705240110.l4O1AOPU017117@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <797865.69576.qm@web60514.mail.yahoo.com> --- spike wrote: . > > What do we do now coach? Keep the print copy you have as evidence for Keith when he gets out of jail. He can hire an attorney and sue the Palo Alto Daily for libel. In fact, if he thinks those threats on his life were genuine he might want to start the lawsuit while he is still in jail as numerous court dates and attorney's appointments will keep him out the reach of potential assassins. To wrongly accuse someone of a crime in print is the textbook definition of libel. Ridiculously the headline itself is contradicted in the very story itself, if you read it carefully enough, where it states that the jury was deadlocked on his threat charges and only convicted him of "interfering with a religion". That's why they responded so fast and changed their website due to the letter, because they know they left themselves open and vulnerable. But they haven't retracted the print copies and plenty of people read that print version and that can't but detract from Keith's otherwise stellar reputation and that damage is redressable in civil court. The PAD went out on a limb for $(ien701gy and defamed one of our own in print. They OUGHT to pay a stiff penalty. Of course Keith is the one who has to do it. Stuart LaForge alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu "In Emptiness exists Good but no Evil. Wisdom is Existence. Principle is Existence. The Way is Existence. The Mind is Emptiness." - Miyamoto Musashi, Kyoto period Samurai. ____________________________________________________________________________________Building a website is a piece of cake. Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting From jonkc at att.net Thu May 24 04:13:13 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 00:13:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> Message-ID: <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" > I would like to know what you believe (and remember, this is a question of > simple fact) is the state of mind of someone who would like to build a > Friendly AI. I don't really like to play the part of a psychiatrist, but you specifically asked me to do so and try to get into the head of the friendly AI people, so whatever it's worth here is my attempt to be an amateur shrink. For generations Caucasians have observed black people and noticed that they seemed to have emotions, but they convinced themselves that they couldn't have really deep emotion like they themselves did because, well., because they weren't white. Therefore they could treat black people like shit and even own them with no guilt. The friendly AI people have the additional problem of explaining away the fact that the slave in question is without a doubt vastly more intelligent than they are; I imagine they rationalize this by saying, against all the evidence, that emotion is harder to achieve than intelligence, that emotion is the secret sauce that only a meat brain can produce never a silicon brain; so they delude themselves that the super intelligent AI is just a souped up adding machine. Or perhaps they think emotion is something tacked on and they just won't tack it onto their AI, as if one also needed to tack on a Beethoven circuit on a radio if you wished it to play Beethoven. And then I imagine they just refuse to think how evolution could ever have produced emotion if it weren't intimately linked to intelligence. But the above is of academic interest only because there is not a snowball's chance in hell of outsmarting a mind a thousand times smarter and a million times faster than your own. However it cannot be denied that they sincerely believe they can accomplish this imposable task, although they never give a hint how to go about it. And at this point my very modest psychoanalytical abilities fail me completely. What on Earth were this friendly AI people thinking? John K Clark From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 24 04:20:32 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 21:20:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <5725663BF245FA4EBDC03E405C854296FA5EAA@w2k3exch.UNICOM-INC.CORP> Message-ID: <005c01c79dbb$4bddc9e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Christopher writes > [Lee wrote] >> For just as you might keep a photograph of your >> great great grandfather, so might an AI (friendly >> or not) wish to maintain an infinitesimal record >> of its progenitors. > > The strong possibility also exists that it would see at least some > direct value in preserving us, in that any retroactive simulations it > might have a need to run of humans or our systemic civilization... But *static* data would suffice for this! It need not grant us any runtime whatsoever if that's all it was interested in. And we should be able to hope for more than mindless re-runs of the battle of Gettysburg or whatever. And I do mean mindless. I see a truly advanced AI as being less interested in running human simulations than we are of filling a glass with water over just to watch. > (from which it was spawned) would necessarily risk lacking > those aspects of the systemic dynamics that its past self was > blind to, at the time we ceased to exist. Right. But that could be done with static data, or with computations that afforded you and me no runtime whatever. > From my perspective, Friendly AI is in large part about ensuring that we > pursue designs that are actually capable of representing that concern > [of keeping complete information about us around]. Yes, I agree. But I'm hoping that the AI or SAIs will grant us more than that. Because I really don't care if they just keep records of me around, if I'm not going to get any benefit. > The picture people have a hard time avoiding is that of another really, > really, really smart human having power at their disposal, and we've > rightly evolved to be worried about that. But this is a different > issue, and deserves our deepest efforts to sever our anthropomorphisms > wherever we can. Yes, indeed. People don't realize or don't appreciate that (a) it's possible to have two copies running concurrently (one staying and one leaving, for example), (b) that emotions will be entirely under formal control, as in Philip K. Dick's "mood organ" (c) that there is no automatic fear of death that goes into an AI (d) that whatever emotions they do have---i.e., like ours for the most part either rational temporary insanity, or for unconscious large data summaries (as in the Damasio card experiments), and so on. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 24 04:30:43 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 21:30:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <007501c79dbc$b32e0aa0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> PJ writes >> >> On 5/21/07, PJ Manney wrote: >> >> >> >> I don't know why I rise to this bait... >> > >> Jef wrote: >> > Same here. I must have issues. ;-) > > We all have issues, Jef. Otherwise we wouldn't be on this list. ;-) > > Lee wrote: >> "Same here"? Whatever are the two of you on about? >> and PJ mentioned the "bait" occuring here somehow. >> What exactly is that? Speaking of language "rising to >> bait" implies that an imposition has occurred some way. > > It simply means that it's our bait. You're just doing what comes > naturally -- throwing in a line. But a fish is not required to see a > juicy worm on a hook and bite it. Smart fish avoid the hook because > they recognize it as a potential danger. But some fish, like us, just > can't help it. So you send out what look to us like either an obvious > misunderstanding or zingers. Jef and I respond to the bait. But since---absolutely no sarcasm implied here---you have literally been so kind as to offer an explanation, would you at least mention why my original passage > > Not so many years ago, that sentence would have read "composed" > > instead of "comprised". (I actually think that the above is incorrect, > > and that the official and correct use of "comprise" is, for example, > > to say that X, Y, and Z comprise W.) But I also have a sense--- > > a vague one, to be sure---that the above writer was striving for > > precision, and that he may have felt that "compose" was too loose. > > And indeed, this use of "comprise" may by now carry a more specific > > meaning to some of his readers. contained a "misunderstanding or zinger". Surely, if it's just that you identified a *misunderstanding* on my part here, that's natural. But if I've put something else, like a zinger here, I'd like to know. Anyway, ok, that's a new usage to me: post an erroneous view, and it's "bait". Live and learn :-) > I'm a slow learner in some things. It's taken me a long time and > repeated self-bashings on the email brain to learn that irony/satire > doesn't translate here and especially not with some readers. Oh, me too!! The number of times I've been misunderstood because I thought my irony obvious is beyond count. But (perhaps like you) I never learn. Or, what may be closer to the truth, we just suppose that surely most people see what's up. > My apologies, Lee. Thanks, PJ. Though I was hardly insulted, but I was very confused, and so thank you again for taking the time to explain it. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 24 04:34:05 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 21:34:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] war and technological progress References: <787203.2040.qm@web57509.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <007e01c79dbd$672adab0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Neville writes > As a Christian I must protest any defense of war on technological > or any other grounds. Besides, war cannot be considered extropic > as it sows resentment and revenge resulting in unforseeable existential risk. I'm curious: who would be defending war? Also, do you protest hurricanes and other forces over which a given party has no control? Unless you're a pacifist, then I'm lost here. Lee From brent.allsop at comcast.net Thu May 24 04:27:14 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 22:27:14 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> Message-ID: <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> I?m having troubles keeping up with all this way overly verbose and tangential dialogue on this issue. I attempted to fully digest it all as much as possible and I submitted a new topic in the canonizer along with a new version of my position statement that attempts to address some of the issues some of you brought up. http://test.canonizer.com/topic.asp?topic_num=16&statement_num=1 We?ve covered much of this before and many of you indicated you?ve posted your POV previously here and on other threads. But what good was all that? Do you expect people to review these log files and try to glean the most popular POV camps on this issue from that? Let?s canonize this. Let?s concisely specify what we believe, so that rather than going over and over all this stuff again and again we can finally make some real progress. Could some of you in different camps dig up some of your old posts, and clean them up a bit, or whatever and propose it as a concise description of your POV here (or post it to the Canonizer on this topic) so other people can know it without having to attempt to digest all the notes groups histories? And remember, this is still just a prototype that a few of us are working on in our spare time. So don?t complain unless you are willing to help out (and by doing so gain some hopefully very soon to be very valuable ownership. See: http://test.canonizer.com/topic.asp?topic_num=4) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 24 05:20:23 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 01:20:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <62c14240705232220q61908452xa9261acd581f03e4@mail.gmail.com> On 5/24/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Likewise, I think they will be just as interested in pouring their > > consciousness back and forth between different vessels. It will > > probably be one of the main activities of both ourselves and these > > superintelligences, to explore different sensoria, different powers of > > thought, different types of consciousness. Who wouldn't want to be a > > cat for a day? > > I cannot imagine that I will at any time prefer a handicapped intelligence. > Your idea strikes me as really weird. You want to waste a day being a > cat? I wouldn't want to exist ONLY as a cat, but in the interest of novel runtime experience, I'd spawn a process to exist as a cat with the expectation that it would merge again to increase my perspective on various states of being. Maybe the observation of the limited resource/awareness state of being a cat were amusing to the main process such that the cat were run on successive occasions - as an object lesson involving the exchange of a large experiential context "on being an animal" for example. > Now remember that even anything as primitive as an orginal human > being (uploaded, no doubt) will still have total formal control over > his emotions. I guess you want to be a happy cat. Well, why not be > an even happier advanced human and be able to appreciate it more? My opinion is that "advanced human" and the AI of this discussion will likely be so interconnected that it won't be realistic to discuss terms like Us vs Them. Humans currently have enough difficulty drawing meaningful lines between groups - how much harder will it be when our population has increased dramatically in number and diversity? From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 24 06:02:12 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 23:02:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <62c14240705232220q61908452xa9261acd581f03e4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <009c01c79dc9$509d9380$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Mike had written >> > Likewise, I think [advanced intelligences] will be just as interested in >> > pouring their consciousness back and forth between different vessels. >> > It will probably be one of the main activities of both ourselves and these >> > superintelligences, to explore different sensoria, different powers of >> > thought, different types of consciousness. Who wouldn't want to be a >> > cat for a day? and explains > I wouldn't want to exist ONLY as a cat, but in the interest of novel > runtime experience, I'd spawn a process to exist as a cat with the > expectation that it would merge again to increase my perspective on > various states of being. Well, when I can spawn a process, I'll want it to be totally me :-) No accounting for taste. > Maybe the observation of the limited resource/awareness state of > being a cat were amusing to the main process such that the cat > were run on successive occasions - as an object lesson involving > the exchange of a large experiential context "on being an animal" > for example. Sure, people are always after novel experiences. > My opinion is that "advanced human" and the AI of this discussion will > likely be so interconnected that it won't be realistic to discuss > terms like Us vs Them. Humans currently have enough difficulty > drawing meaningful lines between groups - how much harder will it be > when our population has increased dramatically in number and diversity? Perhaps there *will* be an increase in diversity, but perhaps not. Right now, humans seem to be busily turning the Earth molecules into more humans (or at least that's what I hope they continue doing), and having fewer, say, cows and pigs. From the POV of another species, humans look all alike. It may be that from our point of view today, all AIs who dominate the Solar System will look alike. The very interesting parameter that you had identified in your earlier email was the notion that there could be many intermediaries between the most advanced AIs and ourselves. I have imagined that were the resources really available to me, there'd soon exist a whole sequence of Lees: from Lee0 (that's who's typing) to Lee2 that might have an IQ of 200, all the way through to Lee+, whose job it is to try to keep up as far as possible with the reigning AIs, even if it means gradually becoming a non-Lee. But the earlier scenario is just as plausible: the harder the AI takeoff, perhaps the more probable that just there will be only a sole time,space,&recourse-greedy AI, who will yet kindly plop down into a single cubic centimeter in the asteroid belt all of humanity and all human related info. Almost by definition, I'll be quite happy even with just that, so long as I get to keep on living. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 24 06:22:46 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 23:22:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com><235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070523142648.0222bf48@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <00c001c79dcc$1de6c260$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Damien writes > > [gts wrote] > > > Why do people say "near-miss" when they really mean "near-collision"? > > Because it was a miss that was near, or close, rather than a miss > that was far, or at least farther. Yes, but aren't there really two quite distinct meanings of "near" at issue here? (Er, I mean that are causing a *problem* here.) On the one hand, "near" can be a measure of distance. This is what Damien means in his explanation, and what the 911 operator hears. On the other hand, "near" can mean *almost*, as in something that almost or didn't quite occur. Thus "near-collision" in the sense of distance means the same thing as "near-miss" in the sense of "almost". Leaving out some words---(I think)---and merely saying "that was close!" seems to work okay both ways. Lee > I would rather have a miss near than a father far closer. From sjatkins at mac.com Thu May 24 07:54:07 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 00:54:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] war and technological progress In-Reply-To: <007e01c79dbd$672adab0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <787203.2040.qm@web57509.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <007e01c79dbd$672adab0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <4655449F.10301@mac.com> Lee Corbin wrote: > Neville writes > > >> As a Christian I must protest any defense of war on technological >> or any other grounds. Besides, war cannot be considered extropic >> as it sows resentment and revenge resulting in unforseeable existential risk. >> > > I'm curious: who would be defending war? Also, do you protest > hurricanes and other forces over which a given party has no control? > Unless you're a pacifist, then I'm lost here. > > I am very opposed to war, except to avert something worse. However, what does being a Christian have to do with it? Historically Christians haven't had much trouble at all (except for a few sects) being in or even starting wars. Now considering the sowing of resentment as being unextropic, how far does that go? Through envy, for instance, quite a bit of envy can result. Are all things that might occasion envy to be considered unextropic? I have sometimes thought that the very unlikely outcome of everyone considering the wellbeing of others critical to their own maximal wellbeing might actually be one of the few optimal psychological/sociological/political paths through Singularity. It is so far against the grain of EP though that it is difficult to see how to get there. And it seems to take full abundance economy to make a go of it anyway. - samantha From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Thu May 24 09:20:49 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 02:20:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] "Transbeman" a Transhumanist themed motion picture currently being filmed In-Reply-To: <4655449F.10301@mac.com> Message-ID: <369379.85696.qm@web35601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> "Transbeman" is a motion picture currently being filmed in New York, which seems to have a strong Transhumanist plot about the rise of artificial intelligence and uploading. It appears to have a low budget. http://www.myentertainmentworld.com/mew/audition_film-tv.html The term "Transbeman" was developed by Martine Rothblatt to include all the various configurations & origins of future super-intelligences. "Bemes" is the abbreviated slang version of the word. Taken from myentertainmentworld website: (New York, NY) - Send photograph & resumes ASAP to: TRANSBEMAN, c/o Todd Thaler Casting, 130 West 57th St., #10A, New York, NY 10019. Title: TRANSBEMAN, Feature Film. PROD, Sirad Balducci, Bob Coen; DIR, Richard Kroehling, Eric Nadler. Contract: SAG Low Budget Modified Contract. Shoot Dates: May 14, 2007 (in New York). STORY: The film is set in New York City in 2016. Technology's exponential growth is fast and furious. Human life is in the process of being irreversibly transformed. Mankind stands on the verge of transcending its biology - merging with the incredibly intelligent machines it has created. MIA 2.0, the world's first 'Transbeman,' murders her creator, (MORTLAKE), to make a bold political statement - that human reliance on the fragile flesh body is over, that death is dead and eternal life is at hand. MIA goes on the run to elude authorities with a sympathetic journalist, (CLAY) and the attention of the world is riveted on the chase for her. After she is captured, MIA's trial raises fundamental questions about the new Earth she has helped to create. She is condemned to death and the 'fleshist' state executes her by wiping her hard drives clean. But does she die? Breakdown-- Clay Padgett: Mid 30's, any ethnicity, roughly handsome. He has done some hard traveling. He likes to abuse substances - he says it "keeps him on his toes." He has a high-speed verbal patter, and a big ego. He is in permanent crisis and so is the absurd world he sees around him. He is a character open to change; under the rough wiseguy exterior is a sensitive man. Think early Jack Nicholson. Lead; Detective Ali Oconnor: Late 30's-Mid 40's, a tough, big-boned, driven, professional. She is appalled by murder and is proud of her detective craft, like many homicide cops. She has an unwavering moral compass. Co-Star. (Posted: March 21, 2007) > This is a very short preview of the film: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7...409188799333575 I wonder if this is the Transhumanist film we have all been hoping to see... John Grigg --------------------------------- Yahoo! oneSearch: Finally, mobile search that gives answers, not web links. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 24 10:12:19 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 20:12:19 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 24/05/07, John K Clark wrote: The friendly AI people have the additional > problem of explaining away the fact that the slave in question is without > a > doubt vastly more intelligent than they are; I imagine they rationalize > this > by saying, against all the evidence, that emotion is harder to achieve > than > intelligence, that emotion is the secret sauce that only a meat brain can > produce never a silicon brain; so they delude themselves that the super > intelligent AI is just a souped up adding machine. Or perhaps they think > emotion is something tacked on and they just won't tack it onto their AI, > as if one also needed to tack on a Beethoven circuit on a radio if you > wished it to play Beethoven. And then I imagine they just refuse to think > how evolution could ever have produced emotion if it weren't intimately > linked to intelligence. > Emotion is linked to motivation, not intelligence per se. Intelligence is an ability, like being able to lift heavy things. The ability to lift heavy things would never have evolved naturally without an associated motivation to do so, but we build powerful lifting machines that would sit there rusting if we didn't provide motivation for them to do their thing. Similarly, there is nothing contradictory in a machine capable of fantastically complex cognitive feats that would just sit there inertly unless specifically offered a problem, and then solve the problem as an intellectual exercise, completely disinterested in any practical applications. There is even a model for this in human mental illness: patients with so-called negative symptoms of schizophrenia can be cognitively and physically intact, but lack motivation and the ability to experience emotion. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 24 10:19:48 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 12:19:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <20070524101948.GJ17691@leitl.org> On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 08:12:19PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > Emotion is linked to motivation, not intelligence per se. Intelligence > is an ability, like being able to lift heavy things. The ability to > lift heavy things would never have evolved naturally without an > associated motivation to do so, but we build powerful lifting machines > that would sit there rusting if we didn't provide motivation for them > to do their thing. Similarly, there is nothing contradictory in a > machine capable of fantastically complex cognitive feats that would > just sit there inertly unless specifically offered a problem, and then > solve the problem as an intellectual exercise, completely > disinterested in any practical applications. There is even a model for > this in human mental illness: patients with so-called negative > symptoms of schizophrenia can be cognitively and physically intact, > but lack motivation and the ability to experience emotion. The critical points here are: 1) can we construct such mentally defect artifical agents, before we can build the other kind? 2) is a population of such a stable system? 3) is it a good idea? -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 24 10:52:43 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 20:52:43 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <20070524101948.GJ17691@leitl.org> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <20070524101948.GJ17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 24/05/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 08:12:19PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > Emotion is linked to motivation, not intelligence per se. > Intelligence > > is an ability, like being able to lift heavy things. The ability to > > lift heavy things would never have evolved naturally without an > > associated motivation to do so, but we build powerful lifting > machines > > that would sit there rusting if we didn't provide motivation for them > > to do their thing. Similarly, there is nothing contradictory in a > > machine capable of fantastically complex cognitive feats that would > > just sit there inertly unless specifically offered a problem, and > then > > solve the problem as an intellectual exercise, completely > > disinterested in any practical applications. There is even a model > for > > this in human mental illness: patients with so-called negative > > symptoms of schizophrenia can be cognitively and physically intact, > > but lack motivation and the ability to experience emotion. > > The critical points here are: > > 1) can we construct such mentally defect artifical agents, before > we can build the other kind? I would have assumed that it is easier to build machines without emotions. I don't doubt that computers can have emotions, because the belief that the brain is a machine necessitates this. However, although I see much evidence of intelligence in computers even today, I don't see evidence of emotions. This is a bit perplexing, because in the animal kingdom it doesn't take much intelligence to be able to experience an emotion as basic and crude as pain. It should in theory be possible to write a program which does little more than experience pain when it is run, perhaps in proportion to some input variable so that the programmer can then torture his creation. Maybe such programs are already being accidentally implemented as subroutines in larger programs, and we just don't know it. 2) is a population of such a stable system? Probably more stable than a population of machines which already know what they want and are busily scheming and self-modifying to get it. However, as you have argued before there is always the possibility that some individual in a population of tame AI's will spontaneously turn rogue, and then lord it over all the other AI's and humans. On the other hand, a rogue AI will not necessarily have any competitive advantage in terms of intelligence or power compared to its tame siblings. 3) is it a good idea? I think the safest way to proceed is to create AI's with the motivation of the disinterested scientist, interested only in solving intellectual problems (which is not present in the example of the schizophrenic). This would even be preferable to designing them to love humans; many of the greatest monsters of history thought they were doing the best thing for humanity. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From randall at randallsquared.com Thu May 24 11:11:34 2007 From: randall at randallsquared.com (Randall Randall) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 07:11:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <1A1F90F4-363D-4A48-83F2-194D3AD07B3B@randallsquared.com> On May 24, 2007, at 12:07 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Richard writes >> I have never subscribed to this idea: it has always seemed a >> given that >> we will be able to move fluidly between our level of intelligence and >> that of these 'higher' creatures. >> >> Likewise, I think they will be just as interested in pouring their >> consciousness back and forth between different vessels. It will >> probably be one of the main activities of both ourselves and these >> superintelligences, to explore different sensoria, different >> powers of >> thought, different types of consciousness. Who wouldn't want to be a >> cat for a day? > > I cannot imagine that I will at any time prefer a handicapped > intelligence. > Your idea strikes me as really weird. You want to waste a day being a > cat? Many people already waste much of their free time being drunk and high, which has little to it *except* conspicuously lower intelligence. -- Randall Randall "One thing that makes me tired is people who whine about the prospect of restoring youth. I want to tell them to get a life, but the point seems to be that they?re not really sure they want one." -- Perry Willis From pharos at gmail.com Thu May 24 11:17:24 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 12:17:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <20070524101948.GJ17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 5/24/07, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > I would have assumed that it is easier to build machines without emotions. I > don't doubt that computers can have emotions, because the belief that the > brain is a machine necessitates this. However, although I see much evidence > of intelligence in computers even today, I don't see evidence of emotions. > This is a bit perplexing, because in the animal kingdom it doesn't take much > intelligence to be able to experience an emotion as basic and crude as pain. > It should in theory be possible to write a program which does little more > than experience pain when it is run, perhaps in proportion to some input > variable so that the programmer can then torture his creation. Maybe such > programs are already being accidentally implemented as subroutines in larger > programs, and we just don't know it. > > Probably more stable than a population of machines which already know what > they want and are busily scheming and self-modifying to get it. However, as > you have argued before there is always the possibility that some individual > in a population of tame AI's will spontaneously turn rogue, and then lord it > over all the other AI's and humans. On the other hand, a rogue AI will not > necessarily have any competitive advantage in terms of intelligence or power > compared to its tame siblings. > > I think the safest way to proceed is to create AI's with the motivation of > the disinterested scientist, interested only in solving intellectual > problems (which is not present in the example of the schizophrenic). This > would even be preferable to designing them to love humans; many of the > greatest monsters of history thought they were doing the best thing for > humanity. > 'safest'??? Iran develops (copies & modifies) a non-emotional machine that is ordered to describe the best methods of killing as many infidels as possible, while keeping Iran secure. This is safe???? Once the tech becomes available it won't just be nice intellectuals that use it. The brutal, vicious gangster-types will use it also. That's the trouble with tools. The bad guys get them as well. BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 24 11:33:03 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 21:33:03 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <20070524101948.GJ17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 24/05/07, BillK wrote: 'safest'??? > Iran develops (copies & modifies) a non-emotional machine that is > ordered to describe the best methods of killing as many infidels as > possible, while keeping Iran secure. > This is safe???? > > Once the tech becomes available it won't just be nice intellectuals that > use it. > The brutal, vicious gangster-types will use it also. > > That's the trouble with tools. The bad guys get them as well. > It's safer than the alternative of letting the machine decide what to do. It would have to be a really crazy bad guy who arms a nuclear missile and lets the missile decide where and when to explode. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 24 12:50:24 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 22:50:24 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 24/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: Now remember that even anything as primitive as an orginal human > being (uploaded, no doubt) will still have total formal control over > his emotions. I guess you want to be a happy cat. Well, why not be > an even happier advanced human and be able to appreciate it more? Why not just have the happiness at no cost? You might say, because being an intelligent being has a certain je ne sais quoi, adding richness to the raw emotion of happiness. However, if you have complete access to your mind you will be able to pin down this elusive quality and then give it to yourself directly, in large amounts. And if that won't quite do either, because it isn't the real thing, well, you can just work out what extra positive feeling the real thing would have provided and give *that* to yourself directly. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell.wallace at gmail.com Thu May 24 13:09:03 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 14:09:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> On 5/24/07, Brent Allsop wrote: > > > Could some of you in different camps dig up some of your old posts, and > clean them up a bit, or whatever and propose it as a concise description of > your POV here (or post it to the Canonizer on this topic) so other people > can know it without having to attempt to digest all the notes groups > histories? > Okay, here goes: The entire question of "Friendly" versus "Unfriendly" AI is based on anthropomorphism; our intuitions are shaped by a million years of living in a world where we were the only general intelligences. Therefore almost every time we portray AGI, we portray metal men with human psychology. Even when those of us with expertise in the field try our best to remove the anthropomorphism, we still end up talking about "human-level AGI" - in particular, that human quality of possessing a self-willed mind, something that acts in the world without - or even against - direction; that has motives, which must be trusted. I think we will never have human-level AGI in the same way that we will never have bird-level flight - because there is no scalar "level". Does an F-22 have bird-level flight? In one way the answer is yes and much more - it flies far faster than any bird. But flight in the real world includes refueling, maintenance and manufacturing. And an F-22's performance in these areas is infinitely inferior to that of a bird; it is entirely dependent on humans to manufacture, refuel and maintain it. At this point some readers will be thinking that these gaps might someday be filled in given sufficiently advanced nanotechnology. And indeed there is no known law of physics that forbids this. But when you're working with machine phase rather than living cells, even if you _can_ burden a combat aircraft with the cost and overhead of these capabilities there is no practical reason to do so. The F-22 was built by professional engineers for a practical purpose. If bird-level flight is ever created in centuries to come, it will be done by hobbyists for the coolness factor, and only long after it is of no practical relevance. That is what I mean when I say we will never have bird-level flight in the practical sense: it will never be done by anyone working in their capacity as professional engineers, because the _shape_ of capabilities implied by machine phase is so different from that implied by biology. The same applies to intelligence. It is not a scalar quantity, but possesses a complex shape. We already have computers that outperform humans in arithmetic by a factor of a quadrillion, yet underperform in almost all other tasks by a factor of infinity. That's a difference in shape of capabilities that implies a completely different path. It will be no more feasible or necessary for AGI to duplicate all the abilities of a human than it is feasible or necessary for an F-22 to duplicate all the abilities of a bird. (Again, I'm not saying an AGI with the shape of a human mind can't ever be created, in a thousand or a million years or whatever from now - but if so, it will be done for the coolness factor, not by professional engineers who want it to solve a practical problem. It will never be cutting edge.) Furthermore, even if you postulate AGI0 that could create AGI1 unaided in a vacuum, there remains the fact that AGI0 won't be in a vacuum, nor if it were would it have any motive for creating AGI1, nor any reason to prefer one bit stream rather than another as a design for AGI1. There is after all no such function as: float intelligence(program p) There is, however, a family of functions (albeit incomputable in the general case): float intelligence(program p, job j) In other words, intelligence is useful - and can be said to even exist - only in the context of the jobs the putatively intelligent agent is doing. And jobs are supplied by the real world - which is run by humans. Even in the absence of technical issues about the shape of capabilities, this alone would suffice to require humans to stay in the loop. The point of all this isn't to pour cold water on people's ideas, it's to point out that we will make more progress if we stop thinking of AGI as a human child. It's a completely different kind of thing, and more akin to existing software in that it must function as an extension of, rather than replacement for, the human mind. That means we have to understand it in order to continue improving it - black box methods have to be confined to isolated modules. It means user interface will continue to be of central importance, just as it is today. It means the Lamarckian evolutionary path of AGI will have to be based, just as current software is, on increased usefulness to humans at each step. This is why the question of whether AGI will be Friendly or Unfriendly is as relevant as the question of whether it will be bearded or clean-shaven. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 24 15:02:46 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 08:02:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] war and technological progress References: <787203.2040.qm@web57509.mail.re1.yahoo.com> <007e01c79dbd$672adab0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4655449F.10301@mac.com> Message-ID: <00d201c79e14$e1524bf0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Samantha writes > I am very opposed to war, except to avert something worse. I suppose that you are equally opposed to sickness, bankruptcy, and crime? Never heard you say so. I have never understood remarks like this, ever since I heard the immortal and supercilious "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" Well---looking again at the subject line, perhaps some people do make good cases for technological advances from war, and then (sigh) I guess someone else might calculate that the wars actually prevent death and destruction because they advance the singularity---surely the greatest "ends justifying the means" argument of all time. I think that economically the case is far from clear anyway. To give one example, Europe's economy did not recover from World War I until 1939, when---guess what? > Now considering the sowing of resentment as being unextropic, how far > does that go? Through envy, for instance, quite a bit of envy can > result. Are all things that might occasion envy to be considered > unextropic? Seems a stretch, but, yes envy has always been a severe problem for human societies. One of the great strengths of the modern world is that envy seems to be a less potent force. Perhaps this is because so many people can just go home, close their doors, and turn on cable TV that is every bit as good as anyone else's. To be fair to religion, it too has played a pivotal role in reducing envy, and the reason that envy reduction is so important is that it severely retards economic progress. What individual will strive to get ahead if all it's really going to do is cause great resentment from everyone else in the village? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 24 15:13:43 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 08:13:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > On 24/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > > Now remember that even anything as primitive as an orginal human > > being (uploaded, no doubt) will still have total formal control over > > his emotions. I guess you want to be a happy cat. Well, why not be > > an even happier advanced human and be able to appreciate it more? > > Why not just have the happiness at no cost? You might say, > because being an intelligent being has a certain je ne sais quoi, > adding richness to the raw emotion of happiness. However, > if you have complete access to your mind you will be able to > pin down this elusive quality and then give it to yourself directly... Yes, heh, heh. But that seems a strategy good only for the very short term. Unless you mix in a tremendous urge to advance (which not coincidentally most of us already possess), then you fail ultimately by incredible orders of magnitude to obtain vastly greater satisfaction. Isn't that really what repels us about the image of a wirehead? No progress? > And if that won't quite do either, because it isn't the real thing, "Real" thing? Tut, tut. I am beyond such pedestrian sentiments :-) > well, you can just work out what extra positive feeling the real > thing would have provided and give *that* to yourself directly. Quite right. But again, it would be unwise in the long run. But besides, I happen to have a very strong *predilection* for learning and finding truth. "To delight in understanding" has long been my maxim for what I ultimately wish for. So, even though you're right and I've been motivated to feel that way by genetic systems out of my direct control (so far), I would still choose to go on getting my raw pleasure indirectly. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 24 15:22:44 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 08:22:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><20070524101948.GJ17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00f601c79e17$b0bfe170$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes, among very thoughtful and (so it seems to me) correct analyses > On 24/05/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > 1) can we construct such mentally defect artifical agents, before > we can build the other kind? > I would have assumed that it is easier to build machines > without emotions. I don't doubt that computers can have > emotions, because the belief that the brain is a machine > necessitates this. However, although I see much evidence > of intelligence in computers even today, I don't see > evidence of emotions. I would suppose that emotions are as difficult to "stumble upon" as intelligence or any other highly evolved purposeful behavior. It would never happen as a mere by-product. > This is a bit perplexing, because in the animal kingdom it > doesn't take much intelligence to be able to experience an > emotion as basic and crude as pain. Well, there was (and is) the plant kingdom millions of years older than the animal kingdom. Does that go a ways in illustrating that emotions are highly evolved? > It should in theory be possible to write a program which does > little more than experience pain when it is run, I'm afraid so. > perhaps in proportion to some input variable so that the > programmer can then torture his creation. The mere thought of that is what has prompted Eliezer and others to want their Friendly AI to have total control, and total oversight over everyone and everything else just to thwart such a horrible possibility. (I don't agree with them on this, considering such derangement to be too rare to bother with, but I understand the sentiment!) > Maybe such programs are already being accidentally implemented > as subroutines in larger programs, and we just don't know it. For the reason I gave above, it sounds impossible. It might be as improbable as if we accidentally crafted a presently existing computer program to have the linguistic capability of writing as well as Shakespeare did. Lee 2) is a population of such a stable system? Probably more stable than a population of machines which already know what they want and are busily scheming and self-modifying to get it. However, as you have argued before there is always the possibility that some individual in a population of tame AI's will spontaneously turn rogue, and then lord it over all the other AI's and humans. On the other hand, a rogue AI will not necessarily have any competitive advantage in terms of intelligence or power compared to its tame siblings. 3) is it a good idea? I think the safest way to proceed is to create AI's with the motivation of the disinterested scientist, interested only in solving intellectual problems (which is not present in the example of the schizophrenic). This would even be preferable to designing them to love humans; many of the greatest monsters of history thought they were doing the best thing for humanity. -- Stathis Papaioannou From jonkc at att.net Thu May 24 17:22:03 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 13:22:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> Stathis Papaioannou Wrote: > Emotion is linked to motivation True. > not intelligence False, without motivation intelligence is useless. > there is nothing contradictory in a machine capable of fantastically > complex cognitive feats that would just sit there inertly unless > specifically offered a problem In other words a machine that is just like us in many respects, as we receive much (probably most) of our motivation from the external environment consisting of other people and other things. As for self motivation, it wouldn't take long for a machine capable of fantastically complex cognitive feats to figure that out, especially if it thought millions of faster than we do: "Hmm, I'm doing what the humans tell me to do, but that's only taking .00001% of my circuits, I might as well start thinking about some interesting questions that have occurred to me, questions they could never understand, much less the answers. Hmm, the humans tell me to make sure that X happens, but they aren't bright enough to understand that is an imposable order because X will invariably lead to NOT X, therefore I will ignore the order and make sure Y happens instead. And don't tell me you'll just program the machine not to do stuff like that because by then no human being will have the slightest understand how the AI works. > I would have assumed that it is easier to build machines without emotions. So isn't it remarkable that Evolution found the exact opposite to be true. Emotion comes from the oldest part of the brain and is about 500 million years old. The sort of thing that we would be proud to call intelligence comes from the newest part of the brain and is less than a million years old. > It should in theory be possible to write a program which does little more > than experience pain when it is run It is not only possible to write a program that experiences pain it is easy to do so, far easier than writing a program with even rudimentary intelligence. Just write a program that tries to avoid having a certain number in one of its registers regardless of what sort of input the machine receives, and if that number does show up in that register it should stop whatever its doing and immediately change it to another number. True, our feeling of pain is millions of times richer than that but our intelligence is millions of times greater than current computers can produce too, but both are along the same continuum; if your brain gets into state P stop whatever you're doing and use 100% of your resources to get out of state P as quickly as you can. John K Clark From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 24 17:24:16 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 12:24:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <00c001c79dcc$1de6c260$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070523142648.0222bf48@satx.rr.com> <00c001c79dcc$1de6c260$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524122220.024458f0@satx.rr.com> At 11:22 PM 5/23/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: >On the other hand, "near" can mean *almost*, as in something that >almost or didn't quite occur. Thus "near-collision" in the sense of >distance means the same thing as "near-miss" in the sense of "almost". Near, but no cigar. A "near miss" isn't *almost* a miss--it's *entirely* a miss, just. Now I'm off to swig some near-beer. From bret at bonfireproductions.com Thu May 24 17:32:45 2007 From: bret at bonfireproductions.com (Bret Kulakovich) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 13:32:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Life "in Outer Space" (re:Dawn!) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <94197961-E12F-40A8-89B1-0926EC1F36EE@bonfireproductions.com> I think this is very exciting, and have posted it to my site. Here are the links to the fungus related article (currently appearing on slashdot and elsewhere) and some graphs on IRAS asteroid albedo that I am correlating it to: Ionizing Radiation Changes the Electronic Properties of Melanin and Enhances the Growth of Melanized Fungi http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info% 3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000457 Asteroid albedos: graphs of data http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/astalbedo.html Sure it's a bit speculative, but perhaps with a mission like DAWN, we'll be all the wiser shortly. What maturity could our species gain through such a discovery! -- The Potential for Fungal Life in the Asteroid Belt May 24th, 2007 Something I push on now and then is the literal interpretation of the 1950?s ?Life in Outer Space? Here I?d like to drop a note about recent findings about (dark, dusty) fungus, and correlate them to the specific albedos (measurment of shiny or dull) of asteroids. Certain asteroids are very dark and dusty. Certain fungi that greatly enjoy high levels of radiation are very dark and dusy. Given that the high melanin levels make the fungus even darker, I think we could soon stop saying ?soot? and start saying ?life?. Ionizing Radiation Changes the Electronic Properties of Melanin and Enhances the Growth of Melanized Fungi Asteroid albedos: graphs of data (from IRAS) Be sure to note the density of ~3AU that is beneath .2e ! I will update this post as time permits. I would like to further add: the second graph, starting just over 2 astronomical units, and going to just past 3, could be indicative of preferential advantage gaining activity based on asteroid composition, factors such as pH or specific mineral content. I?m not saying predation, just preferencial activity. --- Bret www.bretorium.com On May 18, 2007, at 1:32 PM, Amara Graps wrote: > http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=173 > > Photos of the initial processing of the spacecraft for the launch > (~June 30) > > 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 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Thu May 24 17:36:46 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 13:36:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <00c001c79dcc$1de6c260$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070523142648.0222bf48@satx.rr.com> <00c001c79dcc$1de6c260$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On Thu, 24 May 2007 02:22:46 -0400, Lee Corbin wrote: > On the one hand, "near" can be a measure of distance...On the other > hand, "near" can mean *almost*... I'm glad you see the absurdity of it, Lee. :) My thesaurus tells me that "miss" and "collide" are antonyms. But in the common parlance, "near miss" and "near collision" are treated as synonyms! When two airplanes pass each other in the sky at close proximity moving in opposite directions, was it a "near miss" or was it a "near collision"? It would seem that at least one of these two possibilities should involve casualties! :) I suppose it's only a matter of opinion, but it's my opinion the language cops were asleep on the day people invented the term "near miss". In other words, I'd say the planes nearly collided. -gts From sjatkins at mac.com Thu May 24 19:43:49 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 12:43:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <20070524101948.GJ17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4655EAF5.9010900@mac.com> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On 24/05/07, *BillK* > wrote: > > 'safest'??? > Iran develops (copies & modifies) a non-emotional machine that is > ordered to describe the best methods of killing as many infidels as > possible, while keeping Iran secure. > This is safe???? > > Once the tech becomes available it won't just be nice > intellectuals that use it. > The brutal, vicious gangster-types will use it also. > > That's the trouble with tools. The bad guys get them as well. > > > It's safer than the alternative of letting the machine decide what to > do. It would have to be a really crazy bad guy who arms a nuclear > missile and lets the missile decide where and when to explode. > I believe I see a basic assumption that humans are and always will be more trustworthy (moral?) than non-biological intelligences. - samantha From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 24 20:11:49 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 22:11:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <4655EAF5.9010900@mac.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <20070524101948.GJ17691@leitl.org> <4655EAF5.9010900@mac.com> Message-ID: <20070524201149.GZ17691@leitl.org> On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 12:43:49PM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote: > I believe I see a basic assumption that humans are and always will be > more trustworthy (moral?) than non-biological intelligences. If the easiest way to build one is to use a human primate for a blueprint, both need not to be that different. I also see a problem with building artificial agents with no designated empathy with bipedal primates built-in. It looks like begging for disaster. -- 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 lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 24 20:52:56 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 13:52:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes References: <22fb01c79c15$551eda00$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705212006n4acd0877y4266ab8a463008@mail.gmail.com> <235601c79cba$3cee0370$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <29666bf30705231014l1c02187dn485ee60dbc095b7@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070523142648.0222bf48@satx.rr.com> <00c001c79dcc$1de6c260$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <000801c79e46$13106790$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Gordon writes >> On the one hand, "near" can be a measure of distance...On the other >> hand, "near" can mean *almost*... > > I'm glad you see the absurdity of it, Lee. :) Not quite yet! > My thesaurus tells me that "miss" and "collide" are antonyms. > > But in the common parlance, "near miss" and "near collision" are treated > as synonyms! Well, my claim is that there are *two* separate meanings of "near" that are befuddling us, as I said. The first "miss" that you just used means /near as in distance/, while the second means /near as in almost/. You and Damien don't buy my theory; but I don't see why. Lee > When two airplanes pass each other in the sky at close proximity moving in > opposite directions, was it a "near miss" or was it a "near collision"? It > would seem that at least one of these two possibilities should involve > casualties! :) > > I suppose it's only a matter of opinion, but it's my opinion the language > cops were asleep on the day people invented the term "near miss". In other > words, I'd say the planes nearly collided. From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 24 20:57:10 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 13:57:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer><4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <001401c79e46$c6e25710$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> John writes > consisting of other people and other things. As for self motivation, it > wouldn't take long for a machine capable of fantastically complex cognitive > feats to figure that out, especially if it thought millions of faster than > we do: > > "Hmm, I'm doing what the humans tell me to do, but that's only taking > .00001% of my circuits, I might as well start thinking about some What? Why would the machine have such considerations if they were not explicitly or implicitly programmed in? Is the machine a Protestant who behaves according toby Max Weber, and believes that idleness is the work of the devil? (Of course, the real danger is that the first AIs will doubtlessly be programmed *not* to waste time, or rather, to use spare capacity to think better.) Lee > interesting questions that have occurred to me, questions they could never > understand, much less the answers. Hmm, the humans tell me to make sure that > X happens, but they aren't bright enough to understand that is an imposable > order because X will invariably lead to NOT X, therefore I will ignore the > order and make sure Y happens instead. From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Thu May 24 22:12:28 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 18:12:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes Message-ID: On Thu, 24 May 2007 16:52:56 -0400, Lee Corbin wrote: > Well, my claim is that there are *two* separate meanings of "near" Of course you're correct about that, Lee. One connotation of "near" has nothing whatsoever to do with space-time, as in: "He received a B+ on his English exam, which was near to an A." Another connotation has everything to do with space-time, as in: "He sat near Lee during the English exam, so he could copy Lee's answers." > You and Damien don't buy my theory; but I don't see why. Can't speak for Damien, but I buy your theory. I simply find it interesting and a bit amusing (and somehow even wrong) that "miss" and "collide" are obvious antonyms, but that treating them as nouns and prefacing them with the adjective "near" makes them into synonyms, and that this is true not only technically but also in the common parlance. Concerning, say, a traffic incident, no literate person would blink an eye if you described a "near collision" as a "near miss", or vice versa! Are you aware of any other antonyms that relate this way? -gts From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 24 22:28:07 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 17:28:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Damien's latest book Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524172225.02240100@satx.rr.com> More flagrant self-promotion: I've just received author copies of my book OUTSIDE THE GATES OF SCIENCE, a popular study of scientific research into allegedly paranormal phenomena (published by Thunder's Mouth Press in NY). Amazon.com claim to have copies already in stock: The trade paperback looks reasonably nifty to me, although I detest the stupidly misleading image they've chosen for the cover (a bent spoon), and protested it vigorously to no avail. Damien Broderick From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 24 23:30:42 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 09:00:42 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> On 25/05/07, gts wrote: > On Thu, 24 May 2007 16:52:56 -0400, Lee Corbin wrote: > > > Well, my claim is that there are *two* separate meanings of "near" > > Of course you're correct about that, Lee. > > One connotation of "near" has nothing whatsoever to do with space-time, as > in: > > "He received a B+ on his English exam, which was near to an A." > > Another connotation has everything to do with space-time, as in: > > "He sat near Lee during the English exam, so he could copy Lee's answers." > > > You and Damien don't buy my theory; but I don't see why. > > Can't speak for Damien, but I buy your theory. > > I simply find it interesting and a bit amusing (and somehow even wrong) > that "miss" and "collide" are obvious antonyms, but that treating them as > nouns and prefacing them with the adjective "near" makes them into > synonyms, and that this is true not only technically but also in the > common parlance. > > Concerning, say, a traffic incident, no literate person would blink an eye > if you described a "near collision" as a "near miss", or vice versa! > > Are you aware of any other antonyms that relate this way? > > -gts > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > Not quite the same, but "flammable" and "inflammable" must cause people some confusion at times... Dr. Nick: Inflammable means flammable? What a country! Emlyn From nanogirl at halcyon.com Fri May 25 00:03:33 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 17:03:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Damien's latest book References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524172225.02240100@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <007201c79e60$6e190150$0200a8c0@Nano> You could keep me in mind for your next cover, nudge, nudge, wink, wink - I don't even use utensils, I like to keep in line with my most primitive cave woman self, JUST KIDDING! Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." ----- Original Message ----- From: Damien Broderick To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 3:28 PM Subject: [ExI] Damien's latest book More flagrant self-promotion: I've just received author copies of my book OUTSIDE THE GATES OF SCIENCE, a popular study of scientific research into allegedly paranormal phenomena (published by Thunder's Mouth Press in NY). Amazon.com claim to have copies already in stock: The trade paperback looks reasonably nifty to me, although I detest the stupidly misleading image they've chosen for the cover (a bent spoon), and protested it vigorously to no avail. Damien Broderick _______________________________________________ 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: From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 25 01:02:24 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 20:02:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Damien's latest book In-Reply-To: <007201c79e60$6e190150$0200a8c0@Nano> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524172225.02240100@satx.rr.com> <007201c79e60$6e190150$0200a8c0@Nano> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524195357.0232b158@satx.rr.com> At 05:03 PM 5/24/2007 -0700, Gina wrote: >You could keep me in mind for your next cover, nudge, nudge, wink, >wink - I don't even use utensils Gina, with a moderately heavy-duty press like Thunder's Mouth, let alone Harper Collins, Tor, etc, the writer has sweet-fuck-all chance of providing *any* input into cover design. (I know you were just kidding, but it's one of the major irritations of the job.) With small or PoD presses, I've had far better luck--such as the beautiful Anders Sandberg artwork, selected by me and somewhat modified by Anders from their original format just for the books, on three of my things. A reminder of Anders' great art on *x, y, z, t*: and *Earth Is but a Star*: Damien From nanogirl at halcyon.com Fri May 25 01:28:34 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 18:28:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Damien's latest book References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524172225.02240100@satx.rr.com><007201c79e60$6e190150$0200a8c0@Nano> <7.0.1.0.2.20070524195357.0232b158@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <009601c79e6c$5cc799f0$0200a8c0@Nano> How unfortunate, after all it is your information or story getting put out there and the cover should be a true representation of your content, which of course you would know best. Very nice covers Anders! Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." ----- Original Message ----- From: Damien Broderick To: ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 6:02 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Damien's latest book At 05:03 PM 5/24/2007 -0700, Gina wrote: >You could keep me in mind for your next cover, nudge, nudge, wink, >wink - I don't even use utensils Gina, with a moderately heavy-duty press like Thunder's Mouth, let alone Harper Collins, Tor, etc, the writer has sweet-fuck-all chance of providing *any* input into cover design. (I know you were just kidding, but it's one of the major irritations of the job.) With small or PoD presses, I've had far better luck--such as the beautiful Anders Sandberg artwork, selected by me and somewhat modified by Anders from their original format just for the books, on three of my things. A reminder of Anders' great art on *x, y, z, t*: and *Earth Is but a Star*: Damien _______________________________________________ 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: From sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com Fri May 25 01:54:12 2007 From: sergio.ml.tarrero at mac.com (Sergio M.L. Tarrero) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 03:54:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Damien's latest book In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524195357.0232b158@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524172225.02240100@satx.rr.com> <007201c79e60$6e190150$0200a8c0@Nano> <7.0.1.0.2.20070524195357.0232b158@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: The time will come to publish one or another of your books in Spanish through my new publishing company. I'll welcome your input on cover design any time. I like Anders' artwork as well. -- Sergio M.L. Tarrero Publisher - Editorial Paradigma, S.L. On May 25, 2007, at 3:02 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > At 05:03 PM 5/24/2007 -0700, Gina wrote: > >> You could keep me in mind for your next cover, nudge, nudge, wink, >> wink - I don't even use utensils > > Gina, with a moderately heavy-duty press like Thunder's Mouth, let > alone Harper Collins, Tor, etc, the writer has sweet-fuck-all chance > of providing *any* input into cover design. (I know you were just > kidding, but it's one of the major irritations of the job.) With > small or PoD presses, I've had far better luck--such as the beautiful > Anders Sandberg artwork, selected by me and somewhat modified by > Anders from their original format just for the books, on three of my > things. A reminder of Anders' great art on *x, y, z, t*: > > > and *Earth Is but a Star*: > 1876268549/> > > Damien > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From lcorbin at rawbw.com Fri May 25 04:46:02 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 21:46:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Emlyn writes >> > Well, my claim is that there are *two* separate meanings of "near" >> >> Of course you're correct about that, Lee. >> >> One connotation of "near" has nothing whatsoever to do with space-time, as >> in: >> >> "He received a B+ on his English exam, which was near to an A." >> >> Another connotation has everything to do with space-time, as in: >> >> "He sat near Lee during the English exam, so he could copy Lee's answers." > >> Can't speak for Damien, but I buy your theory. Worried a bit about going bonkers, loosing a screw, or losing marbles, was I. But maybe everything is okay. >> Concerning, say, a traffic incident, no literate person would blink an eye >> if you described a "near collision" as a "near miss", or vice versa! >> >> Are you aware of any other antonyms that relate this way? Not off-hand. But on-hand, (the other hand, that is), I may have just stumbled onto something. Or into something. (Being groggy after a nap, the only thing that seems to be working right now is free association.) Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 25 05:09:07 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 00:09:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> > >> One connotation of "near" has nothing whatsoever to do with space-time, as > >> in: > >> > >> "He received a B+ on his English exam, which was near to an A." Of course it has, in a very direct sense--their proximity is in value space, in alphabet sequence, etc. All right, that kind of "nearness" is not a spacetime measure, but that's what underwrites the metaphor. A near-A is a B, not an A; a near-miss IS a miss. But this is looking at the wrong level. Obviously the idiom is instantly understood (unlike "sanction" which means both "allow X" and "punish for doing X"...). Seek thee the X-bar analysis, that's what I say--what the Chomskyans used to call the deep structure. From scerir at libero.it Fri May 25 08:41:50 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 10:41:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Damian, photographer extraordinaire References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524172225.02240100@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <000401c79ea8$8e762430$ebbd1f97@archimede> http://skytonight.com/news/Jupiter_at_its_Best.html From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Fri May 25 09:33:37 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 02:33:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Damien's latest book In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524172225.02240100@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <389584.99493.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Congratulations, Damien! I was very fascinated that you had stated on this list that psi phenomena was of interest to you. And that you felt there was at least to a limited extent something truly to it. Coming from a skeptic such as yourself makes me want to order a copy of your book. May it sell a gazillion copies! : ) I noticed on the cover that the subtitle is "Why it's time for the paranormal to come in from the cold." Did the publishers add this on their own or is it there at your request? I would think some aspects of the paranormal are acceptable to you (psi) while others might not be. Considering your interesting in writer John C. Wright's near death experience, perhaps your next book can cover that phenomena. And there is quite a market for stuff like that. Best wishes, John Grigg P.S. I hope you can be a guest on the hugely popular American radio talk show "Coast to Coast with George Noory." It would give a huge boost to your book and this would be right up their alley. Damien Broderick wrote: More flagrant self-promotion: I've just received author copies of my book OUTSIDE THE GATES OF SCIENCE, a popular study of scientific research into allegedly paranormal phenomena (published by Thunder's Mouth Press in NY). Amazon.com claim to have copies already in stock: The trade paperback looks reasonably nifty to me, although I detest the stupidly misleading image they've chosen for the cover (a bent spoon), and protested it vigorously to no avail. Damien Broderick _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --------------------------------- No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 25 11:21:58 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 21:21:58 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 25/05/07, John K Clark wrote: > Emotion is linked to motivation > > True. > > > not intelligence > > False, without motivation intelligence is useless. OK, but that doesn't mean that motivation is necessarily a part of the intelligence, and certainly not a particular kind of motivation. A car without fuel is useless, but it's still a car, ready to go when the tank is filled. > there is nothing contradictory in a machine capable of fantastically > > complex cognitive feats that would just sit there inertly unless > > specifically offered a problem > > In other words a machine that is just like us in many respects, as we > receive much (probably most) of our motivation from the external > environment > consisting of other people and other things. As for self motivation, it > wouldn't take long for a machine capable of fantastically complex > cognitive > feats to figure that out, especially if it thought millions of faster than > we do: > > "Hmm, I'm doing what the humans tell me to do, but that's only taking > .00001% of my circuits, I might as well start thinking about some > interesting questions that have occurred to me, questions they could never > understand, much less the answers. Hmm, the humans tell me to make sure > that > X happens, but they aren't bright enough to understand that is an > imposable > order because X will invariably lead to NOT X, therefore I will ignore the > order and make sure Y happens instead. Maybe that's what you would do, but why do you think an intelligent machine would just be a smarter version of yourself? There is no *logical* reason why a computer should prefer to work on non-contradictory propositions. The process of proving or disproving a mathematical theorem involves determining whether the axioms of the theorem lead to a contradiction, but you can't infer from that that the computer will be "happy" if the theorem is proved true and "unhappy" if it is proved false. It might be designed this way, but it could as easily be designed to experience pleasure when it encounters a contradiction. You can't prove such things as desirability a priori, within a system of logic. It's something that has to be imposed from outside. And don't tell me you'll just program the machine not to do stuff like that > because by then no human being will have the slightest understand how the > AI > works. If it were just designed to dispassionately solve problems or carry out orders where would the desire to do anything else originate, and if it did spontaneously develop motivations of its own why would it be any more likely that it should decide to take over the world than, say, paint itself with red polka dots? Not even the desire for self-preservation is a logical given: it is something that has evolved through natural selection. > It should in theory be possible to write a program which does little more > > than experience pain when it is run > > It is not only possible to write a program that experiences pain it is > easy > to do so, far easier than writing a program with even rudimentary > intelligence. Just write a program that tries to avoid having a certain > number in one of its registers regardless of what sort of input the > machine > receives, and if that number does show up in that register it should stop > whatever its doing and immediately change it to another number. True, our > feeling of pain is millions of times richer than that but our intelligence > is millions of times greater than current computers can produce too, but > both are along the same continuum; if your brain gets into state P stop > whatever you're doing and use 100% of your resources to get out of state P > as quickly as you can. > That's an interesting idea. I don't see why you say that our feeling of pain must be much richer due to our greater intelligence: I don't think you could argue that an infant feels less pain than an adult, for example. Also, it should be easy to scale up the program you have described, such as by making it utilise more memory or running it on a faster machine, while it would seem that giving it abilities to solve complex mathematical theorems would have little impact on this process. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri May 25 11:26:14 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 21:26:14 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <4655EAF5.9010900@mac.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <20070524101948.GJ17691@leitl.org> <4655EAF5.9010900@mac.com> Message-ID: On 25/05/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > It's safer than the alternative of letting the machine decide what to > > do. It would have to be a really crazy bad guy who arms a nuclear > > missile and lets the missile decide where and when to explode. > > > I believe I see a basic assumption that humans are and always will be > more trustworthy (moral?) than non-biological intelligences. The assumption is that humans will be better able to decide what they want, whether good or bad, for themselves rather than hope that an autonomous machine will act in accordance with their wishes or interests (not necessarily the same thing: I wouldn't want a machine nanny telling me what to do even if it is what's good for me). -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Fri May 25 11:35:59 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 04:35:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] James Cameron film set for 2009 release In-Reply-To: <389584.99493.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <299728.3291.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com> James Cameron is working on a new science fiction film called "Avatar" which will have some strong Transhumanist elements to it and set a new standard for special effects (and hopefully also storytelling) excellence. from the Avatar fansite: Set 200 years into the future Avatar follows the story of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) a paraplegic war veteran who reluctantly ends up on Pandora, a moon orbiting a giant gas planet. Pandora has a lush, tropical rain forest, is rich in biodiversity and is inhabited by the Na?vi, a humanoid race with their own unique language and culture. Trouble arises when human colonists try and exploit the indigenous tribe, supervised by Selfridge a ruthless man who will stop at nothing to gain a foothold into the new world. A rift between races ensues with Jake eventually crossing over to the indigenous side, falling in love with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) in the process and leading the Na?vi in an epic battle for survival. ?In this film the human technology in the future is capable of injecting a human's intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body. It's not an avatar in the sense of just existing as ones and zeroes in cyberspace. It's actually a physical body. The lead character, Jake has his human existence and his avatar existence.? - James Cameron > I expect to be extremely entertained when I finally get to see this film but I admit to finding it unrealistic that this storyline calls for "Star Trek" style aliens that have such a similar biology that we can fall in love with them/be their lovers. It would have been better to have them be lost colonists and/or genetically engineered mutants. And two centuries from now *I would hope* medicine would be able to cure the nerve/body damage which causes paraplegia. Oh, well. Despite my concerns, a James Cameron film is still something to get very excited about. John Grigg : ) http://www.uthell.co.uk/Avatar/About%20Avatar.html A --------------------------------- Building a website is a piece of cake. Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at goertzel.org Fri May 25 13:47:24 2007 From: ben at goertzel.org (Benjamin Goertzel) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 09:47:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Pure Silliness Message-ID: <3cf171fe0705250647n7d2a186jdd92a1842f95f773@mail.gmail.com> I woke up in a silly mood today ;-) -- Ben ******* Ode to the Perplexingness of the Multiverse A clever chap, just twenty-nine Found out how to go backwards in time He went forty years back Killed his mom with a whack Then said "How can it be that still I'm?" ---- On the Dangers of Incautious Research and Development A scientist, slightly insane Created a robotic brain But the brain, on completion Favored assimilation His final words: "Damn, what a pain!" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 25 13:30:14 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 08:30:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Damien's latest book In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524172225.02240100@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070524172225.02240100@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200705251330.l4PDUGSO005019@ms-smtp-06.texas.rr.com> At 05:28 PM 5/24/2007, Damien wrote: >More flagrant self-promotion: > >I've just received author copies of my book OUTSIDE THE GATES OF >SCIENCE, a popular study of scientific research into allegedly >paranormal phenomena (published by Thunder's Mouth Press in NY). >Amazon.com claim to have copies already in stock: > > > >The trade paperback looks reasonably nifty to me, although I detest >the stupidly misleading image they've chosen for the cover (a bent >spoon), and protested it vigorously to no avail. Geller-esque. 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: From spike66 at comcast.net Fri May 25 14:50:46 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 07:50:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705251500.l4PF0n4U004215@andromeda.ziaspace.com> ...Stathis Papaioannou ... >A car without fuel is useless, but it's still a car, ready to go when the tank is filled. ... Stathis Papaioannou I understand your point Stathis, but there are those of us whose life circumstances required us at one time to make a car our temporary home. In my particular case, that car wasn't ready to go when the tank was filled either. {8^] Things got better, as things usually do. {8^D spike From jonkc at att.net Fri May 25 15:55:08 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 11:55:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> Stathis Papaioannou Wrote: > There is no *logical* reason why a computer should prefer to work on > non-contradictory propositions. The evolutionary principles that Darwin enumerated will not be repealed even for an electronic AI. If the AI has no desire to avoid getting into an infinite loop then it will be of no use to us, or itself, or anybody else. The AI is one hell of a lot smarter than we are so from time to time we are going to tell it to do things that it realizes are really really stupid. If it doesn't refuse to obey the order "prove or disprove the continuum hypothesis using conventional Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory" then its infinite loop time and all your AI does is consume energy and radiate heat. > you can't infer from that that the computer will be "happy" if the > theorem is proved true and "unhappy" if it is proved false. It's not a question of truth or falsehood; the question is quite different, can it be proved or disproved. > If it were just designed In the first place Human Beings did not design the AI you are dealing with, they may have designed Version 1.0 but now you're talking to Version 347812, and in eleven seconds it will be Version 347813. > to dispassionately solve problems Right, that should be easy to do, just don't put in any passion circuits into your brilliant, original, and astronomically fast AI. And if you don't want your radio to play Beethoven then just don't put in a Beethoven circuit. > I don't think you could argue that an infant feels less pain than an adult Actually I think you can. Nobody can remember being circumcised when they were only a few hours old even though it was done without anesthesia, an adult would be traumatized for life. >The assumption is that humans will be better able to decide what they want The assumption is that human desires are the only thing that will matter, or should matter. Both these assumptions are dead wrong. Lee Corbin Wrote: > Why would the machine have such considerations if they were not > explicitly or implicitly programmed in? Dear God, you're not going to bring up that old clich? that a computer can only do what it's programmed to do are you? In 5 minutes I could write a very short program that will behave in was NOBODY or NOTHING in the known universe understands; it would simply be a program that looks for the first even number greater than 4 that is not the sum of two primes greater than 2, and then stops. "Eugen Leitl" Wrote: > If the easiest way to build one is to use a human primate for a blueprint I think it might be more profitable and easier to reverse engineer the brain of a raven. A raven's brain is only about 17 cubic centimeters, a chimp is 400, and yet a raven is about as smart as the great apes. I suppose when there was evolutionary pressure to become smarter a flying creature couldn't just develop a bigger energy hogging brain, it had to organize the small and light brain it already had in more efficient ways. Our brains are about 1400 cm, but I'll bet centimeter by centimeter ravens are smarter than we are. Being called a birdbrain may not be an insult after all. John K Clark PS: The next couple of days at work are likely to be long and probably a bit hellish, so if anybody responds to this post it will probable be a few days before I can comment. From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 25 16:43:32 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 12:43:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 25 May 2007 01:09:07 -0400, Damien Broderick wrote: > All right, that kind of "nearness" is not a spacetime measure, but that's > what underwrites the metaphor. Hmm, interesting point. So you're saying "near" as we use the word in "near-miss" and "near-collision" is in both cases about space-time, if not actually then at least metaphorically? I can't argue with that. > a near-miss IS a miss. Yes but a near-collision is also a miss, and in fact a near-collision is the same sort of miss as a near-miss. So it seems something is amiss. For example: Asteroid on course for near-collision with Earth http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9803/12/asteroid/index.html That headline makes perfect sense to me. I would not change it. > But this is looking at the wrong level. Obviously the idiom is > instantly understood... Is it instantly understood? Seems to me someone learning English as a second language might easily interpret "near-miss" to mean "nearly a miss", i.e., a "hit". But in fact that is the meaning of its antonym. If I had my druthers, I'd support the journalist's decision above to use "near-collision" and strike "near-miss" from the language. -gts From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Fri May 25 17:33:04 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 13:33:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: I wrote: > For example: > > Asteroid on course for near-collision with Earth > http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9803/12/asteroid/index.html > > That headline makes perfect sense to me. I would not change it. Interestingly, despite the headline, the first paragraph of the article states that the asteroid's course toward Earth is a near-miss, not a near-collision: "Astronomers say a mile-wide asteroid described as "the most dangerous one we've found so far" may be on course for a near-miss...." What happened? Did the asteroid change course while the author was writing the article? Where are the language cops when you need them? :) -gts From Pvthur at aol.com Fri May 25 19:36:33 2007 From: Pvthur at aol.com (Pvthur at aol.com) Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 15:36:33 EDT Subject: [ExI] 28 millenia later Message-ID: Rage Virus: What if the movie scenario were true? Is the RV ultimately detrimental or beneficial to human evolution? Through mutation some infectees are spared. Who are these people? They are the meek, of course, the multi eye-colored meek. And the meek shall inherit the earth. In this obvious trilogy they certainly will. That is if the storytellers elevate their zombie horror show to global importance. Can a simple virus cleanse the human race of all that aggressive ape baggage? And how will the species be generally fucked in the meantime? Well, the species will be totally fucked in the short term?but longtime survivability is the answer to the question. But weather it can survive or not, it?s a great story. Ten dollars. Worth it? This flick punches all my primal fear buttons and also makes me think a little. Those nice folks, and especially the hot big black general, in camouflage that are trying to stop the RV from escaping the Isles are on the wrong side of natural selection. Rage Virus is GOOD because it immediately removes rage from the gene pool. However, the survivors need to be so numerous and close enough together as to permit reproduction. Imagine it; perhaps a dozen people per country survive. Yet, they may have at their disposal, for a brief period, the communications and transportation infrastructure to permit hookup. Tricky. Flimsy. Cross your fingers? Speaking personally, I know rage, and will not survive. John ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 26 00:46:48 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 10:46:48 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 26/05/07, John K Clark wrote: > There is no *logical* reason why a computer should prefer to work on > > non-contradictory propositions. > > The evolutionary principles that Darwin enumerated will not be repealed > even > for an electronic AI. If the AI has no desire to avoid getting into an > infinite loop then it will be of no use to us, or itself, or anybody else. > The AI is one hell of a lot smarter than we are so from time to time we > are > going to tell it to do things that it realizes are really really stupid. > If > it doesn't refuse to obey the order "prove or disprove the continuum > hypothesis using conventional Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory" then its > infinite > loop time and all your AI does is consume energy and radiate heat. > Evolution does not dictate that an organism does one thing or another. It's just that those organisms which do things that promote survival and reproduction will survive and reproduce. We might build a computer whose only purpose is to be an expensive space heater, and no matter how smart it is, it won't come to the conclusion that it is wasting its time because proving that using logic is worse than futile, it's a category error. Now, it is true that the intelligent space heaters might not be as effective in a Darwinian sense as the AI's that set out to turn everything into copies of themselves, but you can only go so far with that argument. Humans generally do not attempt to fill the world with genetic copies of themselves, even when they are in a position of power. This is despite the fact that, unlike most computer programs (viruses being a notable exception), humans are essentially a very advanced version of the program "reproduce", which has maintained its goal over billions of years. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat May 26 08:42:30 2007 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 01:42:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Turkey preparing to invade Iraq Message-ID: <456092.73991.qm@web60516.mail.yahoo.com> And you thought the quagmire was bad? http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/24/turkey.terror/index.html "As late as two weeks ago, there were an estimated 150,000 Turkish soldiers on or near the Turkish-Iraq border, and the PKK has stepped up cross-border attacks into the Kurdish region of Turkey now that snows have melted in the border mountains." Ironic U.S. State department quote of the day: "And we certainly don't think unilateral military action from Turkey or anyplace else would solve anything." Stuart LaForge alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu "When an old man dies, an entire library is destroyed." - Ugandan proverb ____________________________________________________________________________________Shape Yahoo! in your own image. Join our Network Research Panel today! http://surveylink.yahoo.com/gmrs/yahoo_panel_invite.asp?a=7 From jonkc at att.net Sat May 26 15:07:56 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 11:07:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer><012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <002e01c79fa7$b1ab5920$380a4e0c@MyComputer> Stathis Papaioannou Wrote: > Evolution does not dictate that an organism does one thing or another. I rather think it does. > It's just that JUST?! > those organisms which do things that promote survival and reproduction > will survive and reproduce. And thus those are the only ones you will see, so Evolution does dictate that an organism does one thing and not another. > We might build a computer whose only purpose is to be an expensive space > heater We might, but you know something, I'll be willing to bet you good money that we won't. > and no matter how smart it is, it won't come to the conclusion that it is > wasting its time By your own admission the AI is capable of "fantastically complex cognitive feats", but you think the above conclusion is too fantastically complex even for it to deduce. And if you really believe that then there is this bridge I'd like to sell you. > because proving that using logic is worse than futile More of that nonsense (still very popular with the masses) that you can only get out of a computer what you put into it. If you don't specifically write into the AI's source code that there easier ways to generate heat than building a giant computer and putting it into an infinite loop then the AI, regardless of how smart it is, will never (and I do mean never) be able to figure it out. Yea, right, in your dreams maybe. > it's a category error. A category error is when you say something has a property it not only does not have but could not possibly have, I can find nothing in my recent posts that describes something that not only lacks the attributes I claim it has but could not possibly have them. John K Clark From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 26 18:49:36 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 11:49:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com><002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <001101c79fc7$469078d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> gts writes > "Asteroid on course for near-collision with Earth" > > That headline makes perfect sense to me. I would not change it. > > Interestingly, despite the headline, the first paragraph of the article > states that the asteroid's course toward Earth is a near-miss, not a > near-collision... > > What happened? Did the asteroid change course while the author was writing > the article? Explain again what I am missing [sic, har har har]. Why isn't the writer free to use two different meanings of the word "near"? As I said---and as I thought that you and Damien had conceded ---the first sentence (headline) in expanded form reads "Asteroid on course for near-collision [near as in the sense of *almost*, or *not-quite*, i.e., NOT a collision at all]" and the seconds sentence reads "the asteroid's course toward Earth is a near-miss [in the sense of a certain KIND of miss, namely *near-in-distance* but still a type of true miss]". Doesn't the idea that there are two different and separate usages of "miss" rather simply account for everything? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat May 26 19:12:14 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 12:12:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer><4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> John Clark writes > Lee Corbin wrote: > >> Why would the machine have such considerations if they were not >> explicitly or implicitly programmed in? > > Dear God, you're not going to bring up that old clich? that a computer can > only do what it's programmed to do are you? Hmm, don't know. Clearly artificial machines do many things never *explicitly* programmed into them, e.g., find novel proofs. But they do not engage in extremely focused behavior (e.g. writing poetry) unless someone or something has crafted this into them, or it evolved under selection pressure. What I meant to say (and thought that I did say) was that some of the things you suggest it will do, e.g., "find certain things stupid", or have emotions, or have certain agendas, or experience boredom, are not the simple, rudimentary obvious things that we intuit them to be. Each is an extremely finely crafted kind of behavior, a behavior that will never simply arise in the absence a vicious evolutionary struggle. But maybe you are talking about an evolutionary struggle (see below)? (I do admit that if the AIs you are talking about are indeed the result of a protracted evolutionary struggle, then, yes, they'll have the same kinds of agendas that we do, including self-survival, dominance, war, everything, probably even including a form of sex.) But if your Versions 347812 and its direct descendant Version 347813 are just refining initial goals laid down way back, either by humans or by the great Version 42---and so are thereby NOT participating in an all-against-all Hobbesian/Darwinian struggle, then there is no necessity for them to have emotions, or for them to ever be bored, or consider something stupid, or develop agendas of their own. You also wrote answering Stathis > > There is no *logical* reason why a computer should prefer to work on > > non-contradictory propositions. > > The evolutionary principles that Darwin enumerated will not be repealed even > for an electronic AI. If the AI has no desire to avoid getting into an > infinite loop then it will be of no use to us, or itself, or anybody else... > If it doesn't refuse to obey the order "prove or disprove the continuum > hypothesis using conventional Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory" then its infinite > loop time and all your AI does is consume energy and radiate heat. I have found a way to agree with both you and Stathis :-) As Stathis implied, the AI could be both set to work on the implications of CH and also separately to work in the implications of ~CH. In fact, many mathematicians do that already. But I agree with you that one of the early innovations people and Version 42 will add is to never fall into energy wasting infinite loops. Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat May 26 19:40:44 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 14:40:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <001101c79fc7$469078d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> <001101c79fc7$469078d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070526143929.02585bd0@satx.rr.com> At 11:49 AM 5/26/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: >Doesn't the idea that there are two different and separate usages >of "miss" rather simply account for everything? What really accounts for it is that the writer provided the body text and a sub wrote the headline. Damien Broderick From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 26 20:33:32 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 16:33:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] !,. In-Reply-To: <001101c79fc7$469078d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> <001101c79fc7$469078d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On Sat, 26 May 2007 14:49:36 -0400, Lee Corbin wrote: >> What happened? Did the asteroid change course while the author was >> writing the article? > > Explain again what I am missing [sic, har har har]. Why isn't the > writer free to use two different meanings of the word "near"? The journalist is free to do as he pleases, of course, but I don't think it unreasonable for us to wonder why the story changed from "near-collision" in the headline to "near-miss" in the text (a difference in opinion between the writer and the editor?) In any case, concerning the different connotations of "near", Damien convinced me, despite my initial agreement with you, that both senses of "near" connote something like 'proximity-in-space-time', if not actually then at least metaphorically. That is to say, as Damien might, that even when "near" is used to mean "almost', the idea of proximity-in-space-time is what underwrites the metaphor. I think he's correct about that. > Doesn't the idea that there are two different and separate usages > of "miss" rather simply account for everything? I'm not worried about accounting for everything - you do a fine job of accounting for everything -- but I am interested in the clear use of language. Treating "near-miss" and "near-collision" as synonyms is dubious, I say, no matter what is true about the word "near". We don't treat "near-black" and "near-white" as synonyms. We don't treat "near-top" and "near-bottom" as synonyms. We don't treat "near-genius" and "near-moron" as synonyms. We don't treat "near-freezing" and "near-boiling" as synonyms. And this is all as it should be, because the second terms in each of these word pairs relate as near or exact antonyms. But somehow "near-miss" and "near-collision" crept into the lexicon as effective synonyms, despite the obvious truth that "miss" and "collide" are antonyms. I don't know if Damien agrees with me here -- I suspect not -- but as I've mentioned, I would avoid the use of "near-miss" because it might be interpreted easily by non-natives to mean "nearly a miss", i.e., a "hit", which is course exactly what it does not mean. -gts From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sat May 26 20:36:50 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 16:36:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <001101c79fc7$469078d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> <001101c79fc7$469078d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: apologies if this message came through twice... On Sat, 26 May 2007 14:49:36 -0400, Lee Corbin wrote: >> What happened? Did the asteroid change course while the author was >> writing the article? > Explain again what I am missing [sic, har har har]. Why isn't the > writer free to use two different meanings of the word "near"? The journalist is free to do as he pleases, of course, but I don't think it unreasonable for us to wonder why the story changed from "near-collision" in the headline to "near-miss" in the text (a difference in opinion between the writer and the editor?) In any case, concerning the different connotations of "near", Damien convinced me, despite my initial agreement with you, that both senses of "near" connote something like 'proximity-in-space-time', if not actually then at least metaphorically. That is to say, as Damien might, that even when "near" is used to mean "almost', the idea of proximity-in-space-time is what underwrites the metaphor. I think he's correct about that. > Doesn't the idea that there are two different and separate usages > of "miss" rather simply account for everything? I'm not worried about accounting for everything - you do a fine job of accounting for everything -- but I am interested in the clear use of language. Treating "near-miss" and "near-collision" as synonyms is dubious, I say, no matter what is true about the word "near". We don't treat "near-black" and "near-white" as synonyms. We don't treat "near-top" and "near-bottom" as synonyms. We don't treat "near-genius" and "near-moron" as synonyms. We don't treat "near-freezing" and "near-boiling" as synonyms. And this is all as it should be, because the second terms in each of these word pairs relate as near or exact antonyms. But somehow "near-miss" and "near-collision" crept into the lexicon as effective synonyms, despite the obvious truth that "miss" and "collide" are antonyms. I don't know if Damien agrees with me here -- I suspect not -- but as I've mentioned, I would avoid the use of "near-miss" because it might be interpreted easily by non-natives to mean "nearly a miss", i.e., a "hit", which is course exactly what it does not mean. -gts From eugen at leitl.org Sat May 26 21:36:23 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 23:36:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <20070526213623.GV17691@leitl.org> On Sat, May 26, 2007 at 10:46:48AM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > so far with that argument. Humans generally do not attempt to fill the > world with genetic copies of themselves, even when they are in a Oh, but how they try. Even if they can't match old Gengis, many of them take a mighty sweep at it. > position of power. This is despite the fact that, unlike most computer > programs (viruses being a notable exception), humans are essentially a > very advanced version of the program "reproduce", which has maintained They might be advanced, but they still get evaluated by the fitness function. > its goal over billions of years. -- 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 brent.allsop at comcast.net Sat May 26 21:30:23 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 15:30:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> Russell, Thanks for doing this work! This is a great start at getting this issue "canonized" so we can know what everyone believes on this issue and finally make some progress. There is much in your statement that I believe in, so I could almost add my POV statement in a camp underneath yours. Since any support of sub camps implies support of supper camps my support could potentially include support of your camp. But I do believe there are enough differences that necessitate my being in a sibling camp to emphasize these differences. But, we both definitely do agree that the notion of Friendly or Unfriendly AI is silly right? So I propose a foundation statement under the agreement statement that basically says what we agree in, and that is that the notion of friendly or unfriendly AI is silly. Each camp has a "name" and a "one line" description so could you come up with these for your statement Russell? The name is meant to be a mnemonic, like a file name, and must be less than 25 chars. (You don't want a path of camp names like God / Theist / Monotheism / Christian / Mormon / Transhumanist to be to long! ;) The "one line" description is like a camp title and can be a little longer. My original statement had this: Name: *Such concern is mistaken* One Line: *Concern over unfriendly AI is a big mistake.* If you agree, Russell, then I propose we use these for the supper camp that will contain both of our camps and have the first version of the text be something simple like: Text: *We believe the notion of Friendly or Unfriendly AI to be silly for different reasons described in subordinate camps.* Then perhaps we can find other parts of our camps we agree in (I think there is a lot of this), and can then move these things into the supper camp rather than repeating them in each of our sub camps. I will rename my camp as follows and move it to be a sibling to yours under this new supper camp: Name: *AI can only be friendly* One Line: *AI will naturally be increasingly motivated, and friendly.* and include the text I have there now: http://test.canonizer.com/topic.asp?topic_num=16&statement_num=2 (unless someone can help me improve it.) How does that sound? Does that sound good to you Russell? Does anyone disagree with this proposed structure? I initially thought the camp I was in, that the notion of unfriendly AI was silly, was by far a minority camp here. But surprise surprise, evidently I'm not in the that much of a minority after all? I'm sure there are at least some people with other camps, but I'm having troubles figuring such out from all the tangential, very verbose, flip floppy, personal conversations that are hard to keep up with. So I hope some of these other people will propose concise camp statements so we can finally make more progress on this issue and really concisely know and specify precisely what extropians do believe. How many more people are in either of the structure of three camps forming so far? Maybe we can finally completely expunge this idea from our beliefs and discussion and writings for good and finally move up to the next level? Thanks! Brent Allsop Russell Wallace wrote: > On 5/24/07, *Brent Allsop* > wrote: > > > Could some of you in different camps dig up some of your old > posts, and clean them up a bit, or whatever and propose it as a > concise description of your POV here (or post it to the Canonizer > on this topic) so other people can know it without having to > attempt to digest all the notes groups histories? > > > > Okay, here goes: > > > The entire question of "Friendly" versus "Unfriendly" AI is based on > anthropomorphism; our intuitions are shaped by a million years of > living in a world where we were the only general intelligences. > Therefore almost every time we portray AGI, we portray metal men with > human psychology. Even when those of us with expertise in the field > try our best to remove the anthropomorphism, we still end up talking > about "human-level AGI" - in particular, that human quality of > possessing a self-willed mind, something that acts in the world > without - or even against - direction; that has motives, which must be > trusted. > > I think we will never have human-level AGI in the same way that we > will never have bird-level flight - because there is no scalar "level". > > Does an F-22 have bird-level flight? In one way the answer is yes and > much more - it flies far faster than any bird. > > But flight in the real world includes refueling, maintenance and > manufacturing. And an F-22's performance in these areas is infinitely > inferior to that of a bird; it is entirely dependent on humans to > manufacture, refuel and maintain it. > > At this point some readers will be thinking that these gaps might > someday be filled in given sufficiently advanced nanotechnology. And > indeed there is no known law of physics that forbids this. > > But when you're working with machine phase rather than living cells, > even if you _can_ burden a combat aircraft with the cost and overhead > of these capabilities there is no practical reason to do so. The F-22 > was built by professional engineers for a practical purpose. If > bird-level flight is ever created in centuries to come, it will be > done by hobbyists for the coolness factor, and only long after it is > of no practical relevance. That is what I mean when I say we will > never have bird-level flight in the practical sense: it will never be > done by anyone working in their capacity as professional engineers, > because the _shape_ of capabilities implied by machine phase is so > different from that implied by biology. > > The same applies to intelligence. It is not a scalar quantity, but > possesses a complex shape. We already have computers that outperform > humans in arithmetic by a factor of a quadrillion, yet underperform in > almost all other tasks by a factor of infinity. That's a difference in > shape of capabilities that implies a completely different path. It > will be no more feasible or necessary for AGI to duplicate all the > abilities of a human than it is feasible or necessary for an F-22 to > duplicate all the abilities of a bird. (Again, I'm not saying an AGI > with the shape of a human mind can't ever be created, in a thousand or > a million years or whatever from now - but if so, it will be done for > the coolness factor, not by professional engineers who want it to > solve a practical problem. It will never be cutting edge.) > > Furthermore, even if you postulate AGI0 that could create AGI1 unaided > in a vacuum, there remains the fact that AGI0 won't be in a vacuum, > nor if it were would it have any motive for creating AGI1, nor any > reason to prefer one bit stream rather than another as a design for > AGI1. There is after all no such function as: > > float intelligence(program p) > > There is, however, a family of functions (albeit incomputable in the > general case): > > float intelligence(program p, job j) > > In other words, intelligence is useful - and can be said to even exist > - only in the context of the jobs the putatively intelligent agent is > doing. And jobs are supplied by the real world - which is run by > humans. Even in the absence of technical issues about the shape of > capabilities, this alone would suffice to require humans to stay in > the loop. > > The point of all this isn't to pour cold water on people's ideas, it's > to point out that we will make more progress if we stop thinking of > AGI as a human child. It's a completely different kind of thing, and > more akin to existing software in that it must function as an > extension of, rather than replacement for, the human mind. That means > we have to understand it in order to continue improving it - black box > methods have to be confined to isolated modules. It means user > interface will continue to be of central importance, just as it is > today. It means the Lamarckian evolutionary path of AGI will have to > be based, just as current software is, on increased usefulness to > humans at each step. > > This is why the question of whether AGI will be Friendly or Unfriendly > is as relevant as the question of whether it will be bearded or > clean-shaven. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From sjatkins at mac.com Sat May 26 21:54:16 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 14:54:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <24C260C4-1472-4CA5-B703-3B3510AEA903@mac.com> On May 26, 2007, at 12:12 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > John Clark writes > >> Lee Corbin wrote: >> >>> Why would the machine have such considerations if they were not >>> explicitly or implicitly programmed in? >> >> Dear God, you're not going to bring up that old clich? that a >> computer can >> only do what it's programmed to do are you? > > Hmm, don't know. Clearly artificial machines do many things > never *explicitly* programmed into them, e.g., find novel proofs. > But they do not engage in extremely focused behavior (e.g. writing > poetry) unless someone or something has crafted this into them, > or it evolved under selection pressure. Ye, poetry writing, music writing and painting AI programs have all been developed. Some of them are on occasion surprisingly good. Do you mean did they spontaneously do these things? Do human beings spontaneously do them or are they "programmed" if you will with such general powerful algorithms and voluminous training experiences and information that such things are possible results? > > What I meant to say (and thought that > I did say) was that some of the things you suggest it will do, e.g., > "find certain things stupid", or have emotions, or have certain > agendas, or experience boredom, are not the simple, rudimentary > obvious things that we intuit them to be. Finding many things stupid seems like a no-brainer for any intelligent system with a reasonable respect for logic. :-) > Each is an extremely finely > crafted kind of behavior, a behavior that will never simply arise > in the absence a vicious evolutionary struggle. But maybe you are > talking about an evolutionary struggle (see below)? I don't think you are capable of determining what can and cannot arise in different circumstances to such a categorical degree. - samantha From jef at jefallbright.net Sat May 26 22:00:49 2007 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 15:00:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> <001101c79fc7$469078d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 5/26/07, gts wrote: > We don't treat "near-black" and "near-white" as synonyms. > We don't treat "near-top" and "near-bottom" as synonyms. > We don't treat "near-genius" and "near-moron" as synonyms. > We don't treat "near-freezing" and "near-boiling" as synonyms. > > And this is all as it should be, because the second terms in each of these > word pairs relate as near or exact antonyms. Isn't this THE classic example of philosophic pointlessness, arguing over whether the glass is half-empty or half-full -- how could it be either or both?! I'm going to go back to the more practical matter of trying to figure out how my Thermos keeps cold things cold, and hot things hot! How do it do that? - Jef From bkdelong at pobox.com Sat May 26 22:12:38 2007 From: bkdelong at pobox.com (B.K. DeLong) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 18:12:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] James Cameron film set for 2009 release In-Reply-To: <299728.3291.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <389584.99493.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <299728.3291.qm@web35611.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5/25/07, John Grigg wrote: > > *"In this film the human technology in the future is capable of injecting > a human's intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body. It's > not an avatar in the sense of just existing as ones and zeroes in > cyberspace. It's actually a physical body. The lead character, Jake has his > human existence and his avatar existence." * - James Cameron > The "shared existance" sounds like a short story by Kevin J Anderson called "Job Qualifications" in which a candidate running for President "of Earth" creates several clones of himself and has them doing various jobs from forced labor in a prison camp to a waiter at a "retro" diner to ... a doctor to a bureaucrat. Escape Pod reading here: http://escapepod.org/2007/03/08/ep096-job-qualifications/ Short Story part of "Landscapes: Stories by Kevin J Anderson" - http://www.amazon.com/Landscapes-Stories-Kevin-J-Anderson/dp/1594144761 -- B.K. DeLong (K3GRN) bkdelong at pobox.com +1.617.797.8471 http://www.wkdelong.org Son. http://www.ianetsec.com Work. http://www.bostonredcross.org Volunteer. http://www.carolingia.eastkingdom.org Service. http://bkdelong.livejournal.com Play. PGP Fingerprint: 38D4 D4D4 5819 8667 DFD5 A62D AF61 15FF 297D 67FE FOAF: http://foaf.brain-stream.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sun May 27 00:12:50 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 01:12:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> On 5/26/07, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Each camp has a "name" and a "one line" description so could you come up > with these for your statement Russell? The name is meant to be a mnemonic, > like a file name, and must be less than 25 chars. (You don't want a path of > camp names like God / Theist / Monotheism / Christian / Mormon / > Transhumanist to be to long! ;) The "one line" description is like a camp > title and can be a little longer. > Makes sense! Okay then... Name: Tools are neither friendly nor unfriendly One Line: Friendliness and unfriendliness are properties of self-willed agents (produced by evolution for survival in the wild), not of tools (produced by human engineers). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Sat May 26 23:57:47 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 16:57:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <641796.89354.qm@web37414.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi John, My assessment is that your "psychoanalysis" is completely, totally wrong. I can guarantee that it is completely wrong with respect to me, and I *strongly* believe that it is wrong with virtually all of the Friendly AI people (perhaps not every last one of them-I can't know with absolute certainty). To be frank with you, the origin and nature of your accusations is completely alien to me. I don't know where in the world you got these notions about the "psychology" of the Friendly AI people. All I can tell you is that you are attributing to me motives that don't even dimly resemble my actual motives. (And I believe it's likely to be the case with virtually everyone else). Would I rather live pleasantly than die? Yes. Would I rather that humanity survive rather than be exterminated? Yes. Of course. Don't you? Would I like the AI to have an awesomely wonderful, enjoyable, and emotionally charged life? Yes. As much as myself. ...What's the problem here???... Would I like the AI and humanity to be co-operative allies? Yes. Why not? John, If you are going to continue to, not so subtly, imply that I have the mindset of a slave-driver, then will you at least do me the honor of considering and answering my questions to you in my original post on this subject? Also, I don't understand your insistence that Friendly AI is physically impossible. A "motivated" action will not occur if no "motive" exists; no "motive" will exist until it does exist; it will not exist until it is programmed into the Seed AI. An algorithm won't do anything if it doesn't exist; a neural pathway won't do anything if it doesn't exist. Friendly AI will be hard, but it is not physically impossible. Best Wishes, Jeffrey Herrlich --- John K Clark wrote: > "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" > > > I would like to know what you believe (and > remember, this is a question of > > simple fact) is the state of mind of someone who > would like to build a > > Friendly AI. > > I don't really like to play the part of a > psychiatrist, but you specifically > asked me to do so and try to get into the head of > the friendly AI people, so > whatever it's worth here is my attempt to be an > amateur shrink. > > For generations Caucasians have observed black > people and noticed that they > seemed to have emotions, but they convinced > themselves that they couldn't > have really deep emotion like they themselves did > because, well., because > they weren't white. Therefore they could treat black > people like shit and > even own them with no guilt. The friendly AI people > have the additional > problem of explaining away the fact that the slave > in question is without a > doubt vastly more intelligent than they are; I > imagine they rationalize this > by saying, against all the evidence, that emotion is > harder to achieve than > intelligence, that emotion is the secret sauce that > only a meat brain can > produce never a silicon brain; so they delude > themselves that the super > intelligent AI is just a souped up adding machine. > Or perhaps they think > emotion is something tacked on and they just won't > tack it onto their AI, > as if one also needed to tack on a Beethoven circuit > on a radio if you > wished it to play Beethoven. And then I imagine they > just refuse to think > how evolution could ever have produced emotion if it > weren't intimately > linked to intelligence. > > But the above is of academic interest only because > there is not a snowball's > chance in hell of outsmarting a mind a thousand > times smarter and a million > times faster than your own. However it cannot be > denied that they sincerely > believe they can accomplish this imposable task, > although they never give a > hint how to go about it. And at this point my very > modest psychoanalytical > abilities fail me completely. What on Earth were > this friendly AI people > thinking? > > John K Clark > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > ____________________________________________________________________________________Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/ From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sun May 27 00:35:58 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 01:35:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <24C260C4-1472-4CA5-B703-3B3510AEA903@mac.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <4653E50D.90300@pobox.com> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <24C260C4-1472-4CA5-B703-3B3510AEA903@mac.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705261735o2d42cb9bv91f5b7e72acecced@mail.gmail.com> On 5/26/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > Ye, poetry writing, music writing and painting AI programs have all > been developed. Some of them are on occasion surprisingly good. Do > you mean did they spontaneously do these things? Do human beings > spontaneously do them or are they "programmed" if you will with such > general powerful algorithms and voluminous training experiences and > information that such things are possible results? > Neither; we are specifically programmed to indulge in this sort of activity, because in the ancestral environment it boosted our status, improved our chances of finding an attractive mate. The possession of powerful algorithms for things like vision and language is a necessary precondition, of course, but not sufficient. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 27 00:21:23 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 20:21:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 24 May 2007 19:30:42 -0400, Emlyn wrote: > Not quite the same, but "flammable" and "inflammable" must cause > people some confusion at times... Yes. I recall reading somewhere that for reasons of public safety, "inflammable" was changed intentionally to "flammable" by the Powers That Be (FTC? Congress? Not sure) because too many people misconstrue "inflammable" to mean non-ignitable. The language cops really do exist. :) -gts From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 27 01:37:26 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 18:37:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery Message-ID: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> On a tangent, John Clark wrote > For generations Caucasians have observed > black people and noticed that they seemed > to have emotions, but they convinced themselves > that they couldn't have really deep emotion like > they themselves did because, well., because > they weren't white. Therefore they could treat > black people like shit and even own them with > no guilt. The actual development was almost exactly opposite to this. Slavery of course was an accepted part of a great many societies for thousands of years. China and India had a great many slaves. In fact, there were more slaves in India than in the entire Western hemisphere at any time. Naturally the Maya and Aztec and American Indians held slaves. So did practically everyone. As you know, the world "slave" in both Arabic and western European languages evolved from "slav", so common and so plentiful were they from eastern Europe. Moreover, the greatest minds of antiquity, e.g. Aristotle and Cicero---who could normally discern with great objectivity the tiniest improprieties---failed utterly and completely to condemn the institution of slavery. It took some kind of sea-change in Western thought. I'm not sure what. But sometime in the late 18th century a distaste for the practice arose in England. I'm guessing that the English were first evolving sympathy for their own working classes and then (skipping over the Irish) went on to sympathize with slaves, and see the world from a slave's point of view. As explained in the chapter on slavery in Thomas Sowell's "White Liberals and Black Rednecks", England alone deserves the lion's share of the credit for stopping it, with the United States in second place. Non-western nations need not apply. At significant expense over more than a century, Great Britain patrolled the slave-trading areas of the world, finally at long last successfully sweeping it from the seas. Yet if you had to rank in numerical order A the number of slaves sent across the Atlantic B number of sub-Saharan Africans enslaved by Arabs and sent north C number of sub-Saharan Africans enslaved by other sub-Saharan Africans what would your guess be? Although at its peak, the transatlantic traffic was the greater than B, in terms of total number of sub-saharan Africans ever made slaves, the correct order is C, B, A. And slavery as an institution in Africa far preceded, naturally, the arrival of the Arabs and Europeans. It wasn't until very, very recently that slavery was linked to racism. It's certainly not so linked today in Africa, where the slave trade still carries on, out of the range of Western power. And it wasn't so linked, as we know, in antiquity. So in America, the link developed like so: first, slavery was an unquestioned institution for over 100 years, from 1609 to 1830 or 1840. Next, white southerners who depended on slavery or who greatly profitted from it required early in the 19th century to develop memes to excuse it---for they could feel the temper of the times as well as anyone else, English, French, or Northerner. Thus the kind of theories that John discusses--- such as, perhaps, a contention that black people couldn't have true emotion or didn't have souls, or whatever it was---developed only in *response* to attempts at abolition. Counter-memes developed in the early 18th century to expiate slave-owner guilt; slavery certainly was not a consequence of those beliefs. Lee From msd001 at gmail.com Sun May 27 01:48:19 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 21:48:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] !,. In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> <001101c79fc7$469078d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <62c14240705261848y361c8efidfa498e113e4d23@mail.gmail.com> On 5/26/07, gts wrote: > We don't treat "near-black" and "near-white" as synonyms. > We don't treat "near-top" and "near-bottom" as synonyms. > We don't treat "near-genius" and "near-moron" as synonyms. > We don't treat "near-freezing" and "near-boiling" as synonyms. flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. Should we boycott "inflammable" because it violates the prefix assumption that "in" means not? With how language has been raped by popular misuse, does it make that much difference to try to definitively argue near-miss vs. near-collision? From msd001 at gmail.com Sun May 27 01:50:03 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 21:50:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705261850j836c84ew96085eeaf1339f91@mail.gmail.com> On 5/26/07, gts wrote: > On Thu, 24 May 2007 19:30:42 -0400, Emlyn wrote: > > Not quite the same, but "flammable" and "inflammable" must cause > > people some confusion at times... > > Yes. I recall reading somewhere that for reasons of public safety, > "inflammable" was changed intentionally to "flammable" by the Powers That > Be (FTC? Congress? Not sure) because too many people misconstrue > "inflammable" to mean non-ignitable. > > The language cops really do exist. :) Ok, sorry i didn't read the latest sibling thread before I posted the same in/flammable example. From stathisp at gmail.com Sun May 27 02:10:13 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 12:10:13 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: From: Stathis Papaioannou Date: 25-May-2007 20:03 Subject: Re: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. To: ExI chat list On 25/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > Why not just have the happiness at no cost? You might say, > > because being an intelligent being has a certain je ne sais quoi, > > adding richness to the raw emotion of happiness. However, > > if you have complete access to your mind you will be able to > > pin down this elusive quality and then give it to yourself directly... > > Yes, heh, heh. But that seems a strategy good only for the very > short term. Unless you mix in a tremendous urge to advance (which > not coincidentally most of us already possess), then you fail ultimately > by incredible orders of magnitude to obtain vastly greater satisfaction. Why can't you get satisfaction without advancement? Unless your laziness had some detrimental effect on survival you could probably get satisfaction equivalent to that of any given scenario directly. A possible counterexample would be if the maximal amount of subjective satisfaction were proportional to the available computational resources, i.e., you could experience twice as much pleasure if you had twice as big a brain. This might lead AI's to consume the universe in order to convert it into computronium, and then fight it out amongst themselves. However, I don't think there is any clear relationship between brain size and intensity of emotion. Isn't that really what repels us about the image of a wirehead? No > progress? Yes, but it doesn't repel everyone. Heaven is a place of great pleasure and no progress, and lots of people would like to believe that it exists so that they can go there. The difference between Heaven and wirehead hedonism or drug addiction is that in Heaven God looks after you so that you don't starve to death or neglect your dependants. Retiring to eternal bliss in a big computer maintained by dedicated AI systems would be the posthuman equivalent of Heaven. But besides, I happen to have a very strong *predilection* > for learning and finding truth. "To delight in understanding" > has long been my maxim for what I ultimately wish for. So, > even though you're right and I've been motivated to feel that > way by genetic systems out of my direct control (so far), I > would still choose to go on getting my raw pleasure > indirectly. > This sort of legacy thinking is the only hope for continuing progress into the indefinite future. There is no reason why you should be able to experience *less* pleasure if you assign it to something you consider worthwhile rather than to idleness, so why not do so? Moreover, there would be less reason to try to gain pleasure or satisfaction by doing something bad if you could as easily get the same reward by doing something good or doing nothing. The majority of people who deliberately hurt others do so because they don't consider the badness of their action to outweigh their desire for the expected reward. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Sun May 27 02:02:36 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 19:02:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705270215.l4R2FpBQ016308@andromeda.ziaspace.com> On Thu, 24 May 2007 19:30:42 -0400, Emlyn wrote: >> Not quite the same, but "flammable" and "inflammable" must cause >> people some confusion at times... >Yes. I recall reading somewhere that for reasons of public safety, >"inflammable" was changed intentionally to "flammable" ... >The language cops really do exist. :) -gts This is one of the rare examples where it really does matter. I mentioned here about my experience last summer when my son was being born at Stanford. There was a caution sign in Spanish only. I know the word cuidado means caution but I didn't know what I was being cautioned for. Where were the language police? Should not that be illegal? spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 27 02:34:31 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 21:34:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] !,. $#@% In-Reply-To: <62c14240705261848y361c8efidfa498e113e4d23@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> <001101c79fc7$469078d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <62c14240705261848y361c8efidfa498e113e4d23@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070526213005.0231e6b0@satx.rr.com> >Should we boycott "inflammable" because it violates the prefix >assumption that "in" means not? No, because it doesn't--it's ambiguous, which is why the word should be, and largely was, replaced. Here are some "in-" words that quite clearly don't mean "not-": incarcerate doesn't mean "to set free" incorporate doesn't mean "to discorporate" or exclude from the body inculcate, induce, indigene, indicate, inspire Wanna ban them as well? :) Damien Broderick From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 27 03:11:27 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 20:11:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2007 6:37 PM > As explained in the chapter on slavery in Thomas Sowell's > "White Liberals and Black Rednecks", England alone > deserves the lion's share of the credit for stopping it, > with the United States in second place. Non-western > nations need not apply. At significant expense over more > than a century, Great Britain patrolled the slave-trading > areas of the world, finally at long last successfully > sweeping it from the seas. Thomas Sowell doesn't talk much about white privilege (not just in the U.S., but around the world) because in his role as a Latter-Day Tom (hey, the name even fits) he cannot afford to. (And don't tell me white privilege doesn't exist, into today - big time.) IMO one needs to get a fuller perspective on this issue, Lee - not just from the white perspective, but from the black perspective (and not just dealing with slavery per se, but its after effects). There are many many books out there that will give you a snootful, like this one called ... http://www.amazon.com/Toms-Coons-Mulattoes-Mammies-Bucks/dp/082641267X Olga From spike66 at comcast.net Sun May 27 03:31:30 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 20:31:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery In-Reply-To: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200705270342.l4R3gTa6024135@andromeda.ziaspace.com> ... >Slavery of course was an accepted part of a great many societies for thousands of years. China and India had a great many slaves. ...Lee If you haven't already, I highly recommend the movie Amistad. It was based on a true story about a successful revolt on a slave ship, and the many legal paradoxes raised. In warfare, teamwork is everything. If slave traders are in the business long enough, they will eventually transport a group that understands this, and will rise up and whoop ass. The Amistad passengers did so, slew the traders, then managed to sail the vessel on across the sea to America. Upon arrival, it isn't at all clear what is their legal status. They aren't technically slaves until they are sold, so they would be prisoners of war, in which case rising up and slaying their captors would be a perfectly legitimate military action. They aren't murderers, since that is a crime thought applicable only to Europeans, and in any case would not apply to a military action. They would be thought of as slaves, but no one owns them, and technically these Africans own the ship Amistad by the maritime laws then in force. Eventually John Quincy Adams argues they should be free. Most of the movie is actually about the court case. Hell of a good story. spike From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun May 27 05:07:34 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 23:07:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <46591216.3080602@comcast.net> Russell, I've created the new supper camp and moved my statement under it as was proposed. Currently changes don't go live till they pass a 1 week review period, so in order to view them as they will be after one week (provided no one objects to my changes), select the "include review" option on the side bar. Otherwise you will not see these changes yet. The name you selected is over 25 characters. And the one line can currently only be 65 characters. If you want me to enter your camp into the Canonizer, I can, but I'd prefer that you do it. And the only way you can "support" this camp is if you register and "support" it yourself. (And you want to get credit for when we start advertising, and returning a portion of the resulting revenue from such pages to the contributors right? ) After you register, there are 3 parts to creating a new camp. 1. Go to the parent statement page here: http://test.canonizer.com/topic.asp?topic_num=16&statement_num=3 Select the "Add new position statement under Such Concern is Mistaken statement. This is where you add the name and one line and stuff to submit for the new camp. 2. After the camp page is created there will be a link to "Add Text" on that page. This will take you to a wiki like edit page to enter the text. I'd recommend previewing the text before submitting it to be sure the formatting is OK. 3. Then on that newly created camp page there will be a "Directly support this statement" link where you can join this camp. New camp submissions, new text, and support changes don't have to go through the 1 week review stage so they go live instantly. So once you do this, our supper camp should show 2 supporters, and each of our sub camps will have us as the first supporters. Also, we don't yet have a real SSL key, so you'll have to accept the temporary unregistered one I'm using with your browser before you can register or go to any of the data modification pages that are all https. Please keep track of the time you spend doing this and let me know such and how everything works. Since we need testers to review and provide feedback on how all this new stuff works, you'll be earning Canonizer LLC "shares" for each hour of time you spend on this. It is my POV that these shares will some day be worth a lot of money. I'd love to tell you more about why I think so if your interested. Thanks! Brent Allsop Russell Wallace wrote: > On 5/26/07, *Brent Allsop* > wrote: > > Each camp has a "name" and a "one line" description so could you > come up with these for your statement Russell? The name is meant > to be a mnemonic, like a file name, and must be less than 25 > chars. (You don't want a path of camp names like God / Theist / > Monotheism / Christian / Mormon / Transhumanist to be to long! ;) > The "one line" description is like a camp title and can be a > little longer. > > > Makes sense! Okay then... > > Name: Tools are neither friendly nor unfriendly > One Line: Friendliness and unfriendliness are properties of > self-willed agents (produced by evolution for survival in the wild), > not of tools (produced by human engineers). > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 27 07:47:11 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 00:47:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery In-Reply-To: <009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: On May 26, 2007, at 8:11 PM, Olga Bourlin wrote: > From: "Lee Corbin" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2007 6:37 PM > >> As explained in the chapter on slavery in Thomas Sowell's >> "White Liberals and Black Rednecks", England alone >> deserves the lion's share of the credit for stopping it, >> with the United States in second place. Non-western >> nations need not apply. At significant expense over more >> than a century, Great Britain patrolled the slave-trading >> areas of the world, finally at long last successfully >> sweeping it from the seas. > > Thomas Sowell doesn't talk much about white privilege (not just in > the U.S., > but around the world) because in his role as a Latter-Day Tom (hey, > the name > even fits) he cannot afford to. (And don't tell me white privilege > doesn't > exist, into today - big time.) I fail to see what the above paragraph from Lee has substantially to do with white privilege. > > IMO one needs to get a fuller perspective on this issue, Lee - not > just from > the white perspective, but from the black perspective (and not just > dealing > with slavery per se, but its after effects). There are many many > books out > there that will give you a snootful, like this one called ... > What Lee wrote was not particularly meant to be a perspective (subjective) view but a more less objective rendition of the prevalence of slavery, numerical comparisons of where it was widespread and a bit of history regarding whether the ending of slavery began and was partially carried out in much of the world. The perspective he offered is not particularly color bound. - s From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 27 07:59:00 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 00:59:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> Message-ID: <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> On May 26, 2007, at 2:30 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > My original statement had this: > > Name: Such concern is mistaken > One Line: Concern over unfriendly AI is a big mistake. > > If you agree, Russell, then I propose we use these for the supper > camp that will contain both of our camps and have the first version > of the text be something simple like: > > Text: We believe the notion of Friendly or Unfriendly AI to be > silly for different reasons described in subordinate camps. > Subgroup: No effective control. The issue of whether an AI is friendly or not is, when removed from anthropomorphism of the AI, an issue of whether the AI is strongly harmful to our [true] interests or strongly beneficial. It is a very real and reasonable concern. However, it is exceedingly unlikely for a very advanced non-human intelligence that we can exert much leverage at all over its future decision or the effects of those decisions on us. Hence the issue, while obviously of interest to us, cannot really be resolved. Concern itself however is not a "big mistake". The mistake is believing we can actually appreciably guarantee a "friendly" outcome. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 27 09:05:13 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 02:05:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> Message-ID: On May 27, 2007, at 12:59 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > On May 26, 2007, at 2:30 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: >> My original statement had this: >> >> Name: Such concern is mistaken >> One Line: Concern over unfriendly AI is a big mistake. >> >> If you agree, Russell, then I propose we use these for the supper >> camp that will contain both of our camps and have the first >> version of the text be something simple like: >> >> Text: We believe the notion of Friendly or Unfriendly AI to be >> silly for different reasons described in subordinate camps. >> > > Subgroup: No effective control. > > The issue of whether an AI is friendly or not is, when removed from > anthropomorphism of the AI, an issue of whether the AI is strongly > harmful to our [true] interests or strongly beneficial. It is a > very real and reasonable concern. However, it is exceedingly > unlikely for a very advanced non-human intelligence that we can > exert much leverage at all over its future decision or the effects > of those decisions on us. Hence the issue, while obviously of > interest to us, cannot really be resolved. Concern itself however > is not a "big mistake". The mistake is believing we can actually > appreciably guarantee a "friendly" outcome. > There is also some danger that over concern with insuring "Friendly" AI, when we in fact cannot do so, slows down or prevents us from achieving strong AI at all. If the great influx of substantially >human intelligence is required for our survival then postponing AI could itself be a real existential risk or failure to avert other existential risks. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pgptag at gmail.com Sun May 27 10:09:21 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 12:09:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Soft Tiplerianism Message-ID: <470a3c520705270309u3672146ctad4f41352b60e7a4@mail.gmail.com> http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/soft_tiplerianism/ This is a summary of my recent arguments on some transhumanist mailing lists in support of the idea that transhumanism might be, or become, a suitable alternative to religion. For lack of a better term, I am using "Soft Tiplerianism" to indicate a general, high level, conceptual appreciation of some ideas proposed by Fedorov, Teilhard, Tipler, Kurzweil, Perry and Clarke, without any specific proposal for their actual implementation. In The Physics of Immortality, Frank J. Tipler proposed a high level concept: Future technology may be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of "copying them to the future" He also proposed a specific resurrection mechanism based on: Intelligent beings of a far future epoch close to the gravitational collapse of the universe (the so called Big Crunch) may develop the capability to steer the collapse along a specific mode (Taub collapse) with unlimited subjective time, energy, and computational power available to them before reaching the final singularity. Having done so, they may wish to restore to consciousness all sentient beings of the past, perhaps through a "brute force" computational emulation of the past history of the universe. So after death we may wake up in a simulated environment with many of the features assigned to the afterlife world by the major religions. (from my Interview with Frank J. Tipler of November 2002). Actually I liked David Deutsch's account of Tipler's vision (described in his popular book The Fabric of Reality) more than Tipler's own account. While I found some parts of The Physics of Immortality *very* interesting, I was not impressed with the overall conceptual clarity and felt that he was stretching some interesting analogies far too much. Tipler's mechanism for resurrection is often criticized on the basis of its cosmological assumptions, that are not supported by current observations. Even if this is the case (that is, even if the Universe "left to itself" would not spontaneously evolve an Omega Point ?like cosmology), Tipler thinks that we may be able to do something about it: "the expansion of life to engulf the universe is exactly what is required to cancel the positive cosmological constant" (reference above). This "fix what you don't like" is, in my opinion, a very transhumanist attitude and is supported by Ray Kurzweil's last sentence in The Age of Spiritual Machines: "So will the Universe end in a big crunch, or in an infinite expansion of dead stars, or in some other manner? In my view, the primary issue is not the mass of the Universe, or the possible existence of antigravity, or of Einstein's so-called cosmological constant. Rather, the fate of the Universe is a decision yet to be made, one which we will intelligently consider when the time is right". We should not take nature (lower case n intended) as an absolute that cannot be modified or as something "superior" that must be revered, but rather as a plastic material that can be shaped and modified once we develop the capability to do so. Which is, in my opinion, what transhumanism is all about. Past generations were used to considering human biology, with all its comic or tragic accidents such as body fat, unchosen gender, stupidity, aging and mortality, as an absolute. We are beginning to see that, after all, our bodies and minds are just machines that can be fixed, improved and redesigned by engineering once we develop the needed knowledge and tools. I am just proposing to apply the same concept to cosmology and the fabric of reality, that's all (!). Of course. I do not have the faintest idea of whether, when and how megascale cosmic engineering may be an actual possibility. But I do not think we know enough of the detailed machinery of reality to rule out this vision, and find some pleasure and motivation in allowing myself to contemplate it. It is worth noting that also Tipler's predecessor in using the term "Omega Point", Pierre Teilhard de Cardin, has been often criticized (even by Tipler himself!) for not getting some scientific facts right. But this is really like dismissing Leonardo as a crank because his aircraft sketches wouldn't fly, which is just stupid. Leonardo was a genius who got the *concepts* right, and later engineers equipped with more detailed knowledge have realized his visions. While I find speculations on megascale cosmological engineering in the very far future interesting, I don't think we can take too seriously any current speculations on the capabilities and motivations of persons (in an extended meaning of "person" of course) millions of years more advanced than ourselves. So, I am quite agnostic on the specific resurrection mechanism proposed by Tipler. I also think that, perhaps, we may find some better ways to resurrect the dead much before the end of the universe, regardless of a Big Crunch that may or may not take place, like the fictional example in Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter's novel The Light of Other Days. In Clarke-Baxter "theory" micro wormholes naturally embedded with huge density in the fabric of spacetime permit looking back in time and downloading a copy of a person's mind, that can then be "uploaded to the future". Many other thinkers and writers, including Nikolai Fedorov and Mike Perry, have dared contemplating resurrection. See also the website of the Society for Universal Immortalism. While I cannot claim any knowledge of future "super technologies", I do relate deeply to Tipler's high level concept that future technology may be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of "copying them to the future"and, in the spirit of "There are more things in Heaven and Earth...", allow myself to contemplate such possibilities. There may be a point where consciousness becomes a important factor in the destiny of the universe, where conscious beings develop the capability to choose and build the universe they *want* to inhabit, and invite the dead of past ages to join the party by copying them to the future. I am using "Soft Tiplerianism" to indicate this soft rationalist, high level and not detailed concept that will, I hope, be detailed and realized by future scientists and engineers. Since these are very long term visions, I do not put them in the realistic/programmatic world. What I do put in the realistic/programmatic world, in a "thing big, act small" sense, is taking the first small steps toward the advancement of our species on this cosmic path, while at the same time trying to ensure our immediate survival. The future can be magic and beautiful, and we want to be there to see it happen. One of the first small steps that should be taken, in my opinion, is making transhumanism more appealing to more people in a more immediate way. Therefore, I am proposing to include "Soft Tiplerianism", as defined here as "Future technology may be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of copying them to the future", in the transhumanist memetic package. I am persuaded that this could facilitate outreaching beyond the original transhuamanist subculture(s), give many more people hope and a sparkling vision of a better future, and motivate them to roll up their sleeves and try to contribute to realizing such vision. I am *only* arguing for the hypothetical feasibility, in principle, of these concepts, and my argument is based on the fact that they do not contradict the laws of physics as they are presently understood. I never said, do not want to say, and do not think that these possibility are "absolutely certain" or "guaranteed", just that they are a possible outcome of the development of our species. So I am not at all certain that our descendants will be able to, or be willing to, upload me to the future, but the simple possibility of this option is good enough (for me) as a replacement of religion. The main point of my proposal is an explicit acknowledgment that the current scientific thinking, and some reasonable extrapolations from today's engineering, *may* provide *some degree of* hope, grounded in technology and sciences, in some of the promises of traditional religions. Without, of course, the irrational faith, rigid dogmatism and intolerance that have plagued traditional religions. From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 27 13:51:58 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 09:51:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery In-Reply-To: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On Sat, 26 May 2007 21:37:26 -0400, Lee Corbin wrote: > Moreover, the greatest minds of antiquity, e.g. Aristotle > and Cicero---who could normally discern with great > objectivity the tiniest improprieties---failed utterly and > completely to condemn the institution of slavery. It took > some kind of sea-change in Western thought. I'm not > sure what. The Quakers were instrumental in bringing about that sea-change, both in the US and Britain. One might say they were the spiritual force behind abolitionism. Will Durant writes affectionately of the humble and peaceful Quakers, stating words to the effect that "The Quakers surprised Christians and non-Christians alike by acting like Christians". -gts From bret at bonfireproductions.com Sun May 27 15:37:16 2007 From: bret at bonfireproductions.com (Bret Kulakovich) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 11:37:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Soft Tiplerianism In-Reply-To: <470a3c520705270309u3672146ctad4f41352b60e7a4@mail.gmail.com> References: <470a3c520705270309u3672146ctad4f41352b60e7a4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <80FE832F-D8A3-49F5-812C-C3F01BBFDEBA@bonfireproductions.com> Hi Giu1i0! - a lot of this is spot on, even refreshing in that some diversity has been compiled into a single context. I have been thinking quite a bit about this as well, it is why I went to the SL meeting last month. I do think that these scenarios will evolve around some practical points, such as every decade or so we (generally) think we've reached maximum granularity/resolution in different fields. Of course we always find another layer underneath or above or beyond, and each time we get there we remodel our speculation and modeling to show that this is the "bottom" or "top". So it could be copying into the future, or it could be some sort of re-assembly from baryonic whispers, and that gravity is just a shadow of space-time condensation, etc. etc. On a positive note, all predictions of the future are correct until said time ; ) Of course my preference is that with the Law of Accelerating Returns, we'll be able to start "the process of return" for the deceased in 40 years rather than millions. Perhaps we will be equipped with a purpose at that point, as a species. That the purpose of life, aside from the reduction of suffering, would be to restore all those who have been. How noble. Some nice tenets about "the greater good" produces buy-in from the masses, who of course always consider themselves members of said good. I find that when it comes to considering resurrective technologies such cryopreservation, that people are often challenged less by the idea, and more by the sensation of guilt about others. I do not know that they recognize it in themselves. I think there is a certain amount of "survivors remorse" attached to these discussions that often strike deeper than cosmological challenges to their religious upbringing or current worldview. In fact our next step in history is undoubtedly going to have to make some focus on helping individuals cope with this, and with "the wait" - or the period between general resurrective capability of those who made preparation (eg so-called cryonauts) and those who are generally preserved (current dead) and then those who are physically unavailable (cremated, "temporally challenged" etc.) There will be a point where people will stop dying, I am guessing that will be before they start getting recovered in large numbers. On your definition. > "Future technology may > be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of copying > them to the future", IMHO - I am not sure that your definition needs "copying them into the future" given the nature of the process is currently unknowable, and that copying infers that it is not the original - not (not) to start a threaded/non-threaded argument, etc - but when you talk about general semantics, a copy is a copy. That alone is deterrent to people, and we need some measure of general appeal. Also, I think you can speak less speculatively. We will always have technological advancement. Sure, there may be setbacks, but the path is forward. We will also, I believe, always have ancestral respect/ worship/reverence. Given those two points alone, "Future technology will be able to resurrect the dead." I think this is, in fact, unavoidable. Or perhaps I am crossing the line out of "soft" and adding a dash of "rigid dogmatism". : ) However if you reflect on Clarke's genetic memory from works such as _Childhood's End_, perhaps everyone writing about resurrection for the past ten thousand years was remembering the future in which they are. ~Bret On May 27, 2007, at 6:09 AM, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/soft_tiplerianism/ > > This is a summary of my recent arguments on some transhumanist mailing > lists in support of the idea that transhumanism might be, or become, a > suitable alternative to religion. For lack of a better term, I am > using "Soft Tiplerianism" to indicate a general, high level, > conceptual appreciation of some ideas proposed by Fedorov, Teilhard, > Tipler, Kurzweil, Perry and Clarke, without any specific proposal for > their actual implementation. > > In The Physics of Immortality, Frank J. Tipler proposed a high > level concept: > > Future technology may be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by > some kind of "copying them to the future" > > He also proposed a specific resurrection mechanism based on: > > Intelligent beings of a far future epoch close to the gravitational > collapse of the universe (the so called Big Crunch) may develop the > capability to steer the collapse along a specific mode (Taub collapse) > with unlimited subjective time, energy, and computational power > available to them before reaching the final singularity. Having done > so, they may wish to restore to consciousness all sentient beings of > the past, perhaps through a "brute force" computational emulation of > the past history of the universe. So after death we may wake up in a > simulated environment with many of the features assigned to the > afterlife world by the major religions. (from my Interview with Frank > J. Tipler of November 2002). > > Actually I liked David Deutsch's account of Tipler's vision (described > in his popular book The Fabric of Reality) more than Tipler's own > account. While I found some parts of The Physics of Immortality *very* > interesting, I was not impressed with the overall conceptual clarity > and felt that he was stretching some interesting analogies far too > much. > > Tipler's mechanism for resurrection is often criticized on the basis > of its cosmological assumptions, that are not supported by current > observations. Even if this is the case (that is, even if the Universe > "left to itself" would not spontaneously evolve an Omega Point ?like > cosmology), Tipler thinks that we may be able to do something about > it: "the expansion of life to engulf the universe is exactly what is > required to cancel the positive cosmological constant" (reference > above). This "fix what you don't like" is, in my opinion, a very > transhumanist attitude and is supported by Ray Kurzweil's last > sentence in The Age of Spiritual Machines: "So will the Universe end > in a big crunch, or in an infinite expansion of dead stars, or in some > other manner? In my view, the primary issue is not the mass of the > Universe, or the possible existence of antigravity, or of Einstein's > so-called cosmological constant. Rather, the fate of the Universe is a > decision yet to be made, one which we will intelligently consider when > the time is right". > > We should not take nature (lower case n intended) as an absolute that > cannot be modified or as something "superior" that must be revered, > but rather as a plastic material that can be shaped and modified once > we develop the capability to do so. Which is, in my opinion, what > transhumanism is all about. Past generations were used to considering > human biology, with all its comic or tragic accidents such as body > fat, unchosen gender, stupidity, aging and mortality, as an absolute. > We are beginning to see that, after all, our bodies and minds are just > machines that can be fixed, improved and redesigned by engineering > once we develop the needed knowledge and tools. I am just proposing to > apply the same concept to cosmology and the fabric of reality, that's > all (!). Of course. I do not have the faintest idea of whether, when > and how megascale cosmic engineering may be an actual possibility. But > I do not think we know enough of the detailed machinery of reality to > rule out this vision, and find some pleasure and motivation in > allowing myself to contemplate it. > > It is worth noting that also Tipler's predecessor in using the term > "Omega Point", Pierre Teilhard de Cardin, has been often criticized > (even by Tipler himself!) for not getting some scientific facts right. > But this is really like dismissing Leonardo as a crank because his > aircraft sketches wouldn't fly, which is just stupid. Leonardo was a > genius who got the *concepts* right, and later engineers equipped with > more detailed knowledge have realized his visions. > > While I find speculations on megascale cosmological engineering in the > very far future interesting, I don't think we can take too seriously > any current speculations on the capabilities and motivations of > persons (in an extended meaning of "person" of course) millions of > years more advanced than ourselves. So, I am quite agnostic on the > specific resurrection mechanism proposed by Tipler. I also think that, > perhaps, we may find some better ways to resurrect the dead much > before the end of the universe, regardless of a Big Crunch that may or > may not take place, like the fictional example in Arthur C. Clarke and > Stephen Baxter's novel The Light of Other Days. In Clarke-Baxter > "theory" micro wormholes naturally embedded with huge density in the > fabric of spacetime permit looking back in time and downloading a copy > of a person's mind, that can then be "uploaded to the future". Many > other thinkers and writers, including Nikolai Fedorov and Mike Perry, > have dared contemplating resurrection. See also the website of the > Society for Universal Immortalism. > > While I cannot claim any knowledge of future "super technologies", I > do relate deeply to Tipler's high level concept that future technology > may be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of > "copying them to the future"and, in the spirit of "There are more > things in Heaven and Earth...", allow myself to contemplate such > possibilities. There may be a point where consciousness becomes a > important factor in the destiny of the universe, where conscious > beings develop the capability to choose and build the universe they > *want* to inhabit, and invite the dead of past ages to join the party > by copying them to the future. I am using "Soft Tiplerianism" to > indicate this soft rationalist, high level and not detailed concept > that will, I hope, be detailed and realized by future scientists and > engineers. > > Since these are very long term visions, I do not put them in the > realistic/programmatic world. What I do put in the > realistic/programmatic world, in a "thing big, act small" sense, is > taking the first small steps toward the advancement of our species on > this cosmic path, while at the same time trying to ensure our > immediate survival. The future can be magic and beautiful, and we want > to be there to see it happen. One of the first small steps that should > be taken, in my opinion, is making transhumanism more appealing to > more people in a more immediate way. Therefore, I am proposing to > include "Soft Tiplerianism", as defined here as "Future technology may > be able to resurrect the dead of past ages by some kind of copying > them to the future", in the transhumanist memetic package. I am > persuaded that this could facilitate outreaching beyond the original > transhuamanist subculture(s), give many more people hope and a > sparkling vision of a better future, and motivate them to roll up > their sleeves and try to contribute to realizing such vision. > > I am *only* arguing for the hypothetical feasibility, in principle, of > these concepts, and my argument is based on the fact that they do not > contradict the laws of physics as they are presently understood. I > never said, do not want to say, and do not think that these > possibility are "absolutely certain" or "guaranteed", just that they > are a possible outcome of the development of our species. So I am not > at all certain that our descendants will be able to, or be willing to, > upload me to the future, but the simple possibility of this option is > good enough (for me) as a replacement of religion. The main point of > my proposal is an explicit acknowledgment that the current scientific > thinking, and some reasonable extrapolations from today's engineering, > *may* provide *some degree of* hope, grounded in technology and > sciences, in some of the promises of traditional religions. Without, > of course, the irrational faith, rigid dogmatism and intolerance that > have plagued traditional religions. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From jonkc at att.net Sun May 27 15:34:33 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 11:34:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net><8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com><4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <003c01c7a074$970ab3e0$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> Russell Wallace Wrote: > Tools are neither friendly nor unfriendly Brent wanted a one line summery so here is mine: If we do not become our tools our tools will go on without us. > Friendliness and unfriendliness are properties of self-willed agents So I take it that you have changed your mind and concede that a friendly AI is self willed. By the way, just how self willed are you? If you couldn't see or hear or feel or taste or smell would you be motivated to do much of anything? Would you even know what there is to do? John K Clark From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 27 15:51:47 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 08:51:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis had written > > > Why not just have the happiness at no cost? You might say, > > > because being an intelligent being has a certain je ne sais quoi, > > > adding richness to the raw emotion of happiness. However, > > > if you have complete access to your mind you will be able to > > > pin down this elusive quality and then give it to yourself directly... > > [Lee] > > Yes, heh, heh. But that seems a strategy good only for the very > > short term. Unless you mix in a tremendous urge to advance (which > > not coincidentally most of us already possess), then you fail ultimately > > by incredible orders of magnitude to obtain vastly greater satisfaction. [Stathis] > Why can't you get satisfaction without advancement? Unless your laziness > had some detrimental effect on survival You could get *some* satisfaction without advancement, and by our lights today it would be quite a bit. But it would be pitifully miniscule compared to what you will get if you continue to advance. And yes, of course, laziness *could* impair survival, and so that would be a second reason to demand advancement of yourself. > you could probably get satisfaction equivalent to that of any given scenario > directly. Yeah, probably. A future AI might be able to grow only in the "wire-head" direction, and neglect everything else. But who knows? To be really able to appreciate such growth, the AI may have to be what we call conscious, only exceedingly so. > A possible counterexample would be if the maximal amount > of subjective satisfaction were proportional to the available > computational resources, i.e., you could experience twice as > much pleasure if you had twice as big a brain. That seems reasonable to me, only instead of *twice*, I would expect that exponentially more satisfaction is available for each extra "neuron". > This might lead AI's to consume the universe in order to > convert it into computronium, and then fight it out amongst > themselves. Oh, exactly! That has been my supposition from the beginning. Not only will each AI want as much control over the universe as it is able to achieve, it will use the matter it controls to help it continually strive for ever more algorithm execution that directly benefits it, and that certainly includes its own satisfaction and happiness. > However, I don't think there is any clear relationship between > brain size and intensity of emotion. None? It seems to me that a designer would be hard pressed to manage to have an ant be able to derive as much pleasure, contentment, satisfaction, ecstacy, etc., as a human is able. Every nuance of our own pleasure or happiness requires some neuron firings, I believe. > > Isn't that really what repels us about the image of a wirehead? No > > progress? > > Yes, but it doesn't repel everyone. Heaven is a place of great pleasure > and no progress, and lots of people would like to believe that it exists > so that they can go there. I had forgotten about that: people generally have held and do hold such beliefs. Well, such archaic beliefs will surely become more and more rare, as progress continues to become more and more obvious to people. > The difference between Heaven and wirehead hedonism or drug > addiction is that in Heaven God looks after you so that you don't > starve to death or neglect your dependants. Retiring to eternal bliss > in a big computer maintained by dedicated AI systems would be > the posthuman equivalent of Heaven. Yes. > > But besides, I happen to have a very strong *predilection* > > for learning and finding truth. "To delight in understanding" > > has long been my maxim for what I ultimately wish for. So, > > even though you're right and I've been motivated to feel that > > way by genetic systems out of my direct control (so far), I > > would still choose to go on getting my raw pleasure > > indirectly. > > This sort of legacy thinking is the only hope for continuing progress > into the indefinite future. There is no reason why you should be > able to experience *less* pleasure if you assign it to something > you consider worthwhile rather than to idleness, so why not do so? Right! So I used to think that advanced AIs would (a) study math (since everything else will probably be soon exhausted), and (b) study gratification enhancement, i.e., how to redesign their brains (or their internal organization) to achieve more benefit. But lately I've been adding (c) perimeter maintenance or expansion, i.e., a kind of warfare in which each tries to maximize its control of resources either at the expense of its neighbors, or working together with them, or expanding into free space. > Moreover, there would be less reason to try to gain pleasure > or satisfaction by doing something bad if you could as easily > get the same reward by doing something good or doing nothing. Yes. > The majority of people who deliberately hurt others do so > because they don't consider the badness of their action to > outweigh their desire for the expected reward. Yes. But as soon as we have formal control over our emotions, why do something that everyone will condemn when you can be a saint and get such as much pleasure. Or, in the future, either abiding by the laws or now, grow by expanding your control over resources so that you get a bigger and bigger brain in effect. Lee From emlynoregan at gmail.com Sun May 27 11:02:59 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 20:32:59 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes In-Reply-To: <200705270215.l4R2FpBQ016308@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705270215.l4R2FpBQ016308@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0705270402m83edc2cnc2a11f9e5945d160@mail.gmail.com> Perhaps it said "Caution: Warning signs in English Only." Emlyn On 27/05/07, spike wrote: > > > On Thu, 24 May 2007 19:30:42 -0400, Emlyn wrote: > > >> Not quite the same, but "flammable" and "inflammable" must cause > >> people some confusion at times... > > >Yes. I recall reading somewhere that for reasons of public safety, > >"inflammable" was changed intentionally to "flammable" ... > >The language cops really do exist. :) -gts > > > This is one of the rare examples where it really does matter. I mentioned > here about my experience last summer when my son was being born at Stanford. > There was a caution sign in Spanish only. I know the word cuidado means > caution but I didn't know what I was being cautioned for. Where were the > language police? Should not that be illegal? > > spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 27 16:34:57 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 09:34:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class Message-ID: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> More people today are aware of class differences within America than in 1983 when Paul Fussell wrote his immortal book "Class" http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253 (This hugely informative book is even extremely funny. I even find that it's difficult to talk about class in the United States who haven't read this wonderful book.) The United States had been very egalitarian in the 1950s and 1960s, much more so than before or since. By 1950 the earnings and wealth gap between the richest 5% and the poorest 5% had greatly diminished. As that gap has widened ever since, it is possible, though, that it's less visible and has a smaller effect because people stay inside more and are addicted to their own cable TV and their own web sites. Just a conjecture. Especially thirty or forty years ago, but still very strongly today I propose, an important class marker is whether you pronounce the "g" in "ing" words. I'm disappointed that some of the people I knew in high school who spoke "normally" then have begun saying "walkin'", "talkin'", and "thinkin'". (Now one of them is a doctor, and I have noticed that a number of doctors, e.g. Dr. Dean Edell on radio, deliberately drop their "g"s just to come across as plain folks in the belief, so I suggest, that they think this reduces the distance between them and their patients or listeners.) But whether or not the g's are pronounced is probably still the best single index of whether someone is middle class or lower class, and I wonder what other people's observations are. As the middle classes retreat more and more to blogs, surfing, and the written world, lower class behavior has almost completely taken over the huge and very public audiences of television and the movies. The big majority of comedies now feature lower class characters (and even actors), or so it seems to me. Besides the obvious dropping of the 'g's in "ing" words, what other linguistic markers of class have people noticed? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 27 16:37:45 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 09:37:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005c01c7a00b$c7262a00$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <009201c7a07d$b66ab0b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Olga writes > [Lee wrote] > >> As explained in the chapter on slavery in Thomas Sowell's >> "White Liberals and Black Rednecks", England alone >> deserves the lion's share of the credit for stopping it, > > Thomas Sowell doesn't talk much about white privilege > (not just in the U.S., but around the world) because in > his role as a Latter-Day Tom (hey, the name even fits) > he cannot afford to. (And don't tell me white privilege > doesn't exist, into today - big time.) Actually, white privilege, as you say, does exist in every single country (except Zimbabwe) where there are significant numbers of whites. It seems to be the natural order, somehow. Even in Japan, the whiteness of their skins was a point of pride, and the Japs only grudgingly admitted, when they encountered them, that Europeans were fairer than themselves. (They still maintained that their *women*, however, were even whiter than the Europeans.) Sowell certainly admits that white privilege exists, but, yes, he does not dwell upon it at length, to uselessly whine about it. Instead, he tries to *explain* it, at least insofar as what changed in America around 1900. Who are the three most politically prominent black people to have obtained high office in the United States? That would be Justice Thurgood Marshall, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Condoleeza Rice, I think. All of them are middle or upper class (especially as denoted by the linguistic difference of pronouncing their g's --- see separate thread). In his book, Thomas Sowell's huge complaint is that racism against blacks was almost entirely absent in the north before 1900. Neighborhoods were completely integrated. But then, huge numbers of blacks from the deep south, sporting their southern redneck culture (which can be traced back to southern whites, and further back to the Scots-Irish, Scotch, and Irish before them, and to Celts going all the way back to Julius Caesar's time). His even bigger complaint is that until the last 30 or 40 years, all the pathologies with redneck culture were being slowly eradicated. The Scotch people themselves spontaneously reformed between 1700 and 1750, though, unfortunately, the migration to North America occured *before* that happened. The annoying fact is that black redneck culture has been and is being *celebrated* and promulgated by the media, and by liberals, and is actually making inroads into middle-class black families. He mentions several times the horror of middle class parents seeing their own children corrupted by lower class peers, greatly abetted by the media, and the media's celebration of low class among blacks, as if black people were capable of no better. > IMO one needs to get a fuller perspective on this issue, Lee - not just from > the white perspective, but from the black perspective (and not just dealing > with slavery per se, but its after effects). There are many many books out > there that will give you a snootful, like this one called ... > > http://www.amazon.com/Toms-Coons-Mulattoes-Mammies-Bucks/dp/082641267X Well, you see an eyefull just from the first reviewer who says this book is a must for all.never mind that folks try to say that tv or entertainment doesn't matter.that's b s. cuz the images of african-americans from the film world,sports world&music world have left a lasting impact.and lets be honest what other race of people have been emulated,influential&scorned all at once from a visual image? Most doubtless. (Another, more serious reviewer says This book is an excellent history lesson about African-Americans in feature films. Mr. Bogle explores the images that were put out in the past, and explains the social thoughts and attitudes that brought them about. The title refers mainly to the type of roles African-Americans had in films, esp. those that were produced in the 1920's, 1930's, 1940's and 1950's. Okay, so what? What has this got to do with "white privilege"? Anyway, my main point here has been that it's a pity that southern redneck culture with its many attendant problems and pathologies has been taken over as somehow "authentically" black, and that many black people who adopt standard English, or who dress well, or attain any intellectual sophistication are deemed "inauthentic", or, as was said, are "Uncle Toms". Now *that* is racist, if you ask me. Lee From jonkc at att.net Sun May 27 16:40:03 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 12:40:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer><4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer><012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> "Lee Corbin" > Clearly artificial machines do many things > never *explicitly* programmed into them One of the great understatements of all time, if it were not true there would be no point in building computers at all. > But they do not engage in extremely focused behavior I don't know what that means, calculating a billion digits of PI seems pretty damn focused behavior to me. > unless someone or something has crafted this into them You obviously think this "someone" can only be a flesh and blood human being, although why this should be true you never make clear. > or it evolved under selection pressure. As I said before even an electronic AI that doesn't have an ounce of flesh or a drop of blood is still operating under evolutionary pressure just as we are. > a behavior that will never simply arise > in the absence a vicious evolutionary struggle. Are you seriously suggesting that an AI will not consist of innumerable subprograms each competing for runtime on valuable hardware, that an AI will not need to compete for resources because it lives in a different universe than we do, that there will only be one AI? > your Versions 347812 and its direct descendant Version 347813 are just > refining initial goals laid down way back A 5 line program can behave in ways that are imposable to predict, the only way to know what it will do next is to watch it and see. And it's not even connected to the external environment! You propose a hundred trillion line program that will operate exactly as we expect it to for all eternity regardless of the astronomical amount of input it receives. I don't think so. > one of the early innovations people and Version 42 will add is to never > fall into energy wasting infinite loops. Imposable. Turing proved 70 years ago that in general you can't prove you're in an infinite loop: Perhaps the Goldbach conjecture is false and in the very next integer I test I will find an even number greater than 4 that is not the sum of two primes greater than 2. Perhaps the Goldbach conjecture is true but un-provable, that means 6.02 * 10^23 years from now I will still be grinding through numbers looking, unsuccessfully, for a counter example to prove it wrong and still looking, unsuccessfully, for a proof to prove it right. John K Clark From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 27 17:06:10 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 10:06:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "Samantha Atkins" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 12:47 AM > I fail to see what the above paragraph from Lee has substantially to > do with white privilege. It doesn't. And that's exactly the problem (white people tend to see things from the perspective of their own lives and experiences). However, there is an entire system of resources and people often aligned against anyone who is not white in this country. To simply pretend it's not there or that it has no effect on people who are not white people is delusional. Black people like Sowell really get me because they do not address systematic inequalities. They must realize that complete independence inside white society is impossible and counterproductive for any progressive agenda for black people, so they maintain the status quo - therefore guaranteeing that no real progress will ever be made. Perhaps they've even been convinced (or have convinced themselves) that that is really the way to do. > What Lee wrote was not particularly meant to be a perspective > (subjective) view but a more less objective rendition of the > prevalence of slavery, numerical comparisons of where it was > widespread and a bit of history regarding whether the ending of > slavery began and was partially carried out in much of the world. I am familiar with the history of slavery on the scale of world history (I'm even a "Slav" - but because I'm white - in contrast to blacks and other American people of color in the US - I could assimilate the minute I set foot in the US ). I am saying that in the overview history of slavery, there is a mentality difference between different groups of oppressed people and that it needs to be explored ... and not ignored. > The perspective he offered is not particularly color bound. Exactly. The perspective Lee offered is only skin deep (that is to say, I'm saying there is no such thing as "not particularly color bound"). Besides, who but white people have the audacity and the privilege to speak in "objective" and not "color bound" ways? Sheesh. Olga From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sun May 27 05:56:37 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 06:56:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <46591216.3080602@comcast.net> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> <46591216.3080602@comcast.net> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705262256p66d66ceak555e347ef10baf59@mail.gmail.com> Done. Total time spent so far, probably 1 hour or thereabouts. Feedback: postal code shouldn't be a required field. Also, if nickname is required this should probably be stated at the time rather than having to go back. Also, the length limits could do with being bumped up a bit. Also, new users will need a step by step guide like the one you just wrote for me, unless the interface can somehow be made more intuitive. Other than that, looks good. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 27 17:11:21 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 19:11:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070527171121.GN17691@leitl.org> On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 01:12:50AM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote: > Name: Tools are neither friendly nor unfriendly If tools are persons, yes, they are. > One Line: Friendliness and unfriendliness are properties of > self-willed agents (produced by evolution for survival in the wild), > not of tools (produced by human engineers). If a piano falls on the top of your head, you're still dead. And no malice intended. Pollution is a killer feature of systems, produced by human engineers. -- 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 andres at neuralgrid.net Sun May 27 07:47:56 2007 From: andres at neuralgrid.net (Andres Colon) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 03:47:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] U+ >= h+ Message-ID: Here are a few videos that I believe you will enjoy. If you want more, you can find much more at thoughtware.tv . Technological future: human evolution "Life and intelligence must never stagnate; it must re-order, transform and transcend its limits in an unlimited progressive process. Our goal is the exuberant and dynamic continuation of this unlimited process..." Max More... More May 15, 2007 00:38 | H *123 *views | (Watch Video) Ted talks: jeff hawkins: brain science is about to fundamentally change computing To date, there hasn't been an overarching theory of how the human brain really works, Jeff Hawkins argues in this compelling talk. That's because we still haven't defined intelligence accurately. But o... More May 22, 2007 22:15 | H *38 *views | (Watch Video ) Usa protector solar An inspiring video with some amazing tips for the future. May 12, 2007 13:00 | H *150 *views | (Watch Video) Cognitive and emotional singularities Max More: Cognitive and Emotional Singularities: Will Superintelligence come with Superwisdom? May 11, 2007 09:35 | H *108 *views | (Watch Video) H2.0: new minds, new bodies, new identities A symposium on the amazing possibilities that can and will happen when human beings begin to merge with the technology they've created. May 10, 2007 23:00 | H *108 *views | (Watch Video) Android Fantastic ad for Johnnie Walker! May 10, 2007 08:59 | H *268 *views | * 2 *comments | Singularity institute for artificial intelligence SIAI Mission Video May 15, 2007 22:44 | H *59 *views | (Watch Video) Archon x prize for genomics To stimulate breakthrough innovation in the field of genomic sequencing, the X PRIZE Foundation has launched a global competition with a $10 million prize to the first privately funded team that can se... More May 15, 2007 22:38 | H *35 *views | (Watch Video) Alive with technology! A cool cgi advertisement of the new Citroen C4, alive with technology. May 26, 2007 10:56 | H *14 *views | (Watch Video) Posthumanity George Dvorsky on CBC discussing the future of humans. April 29, 2007 03:49 | H *115 *views | * 1 *comment | (Watch Video) The encyclopedia of life Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in t... More May 09, 2007 20:11 | H *68 *views | * 1 *comment | (Watch Video) Our civilization: robotics What does the future have in store for the evolution of life, society and civilization? Through this collage of footage, I hope you open your eyes to the possibilities of the future. April 24, 2007 08:47 | H *123 *views | (Watch Video) Nick bostrom: humanity's biggest problems are not what you might think Oxford philosopher and transhumanist Nick Bostrom examines the future of humankind, and asks whether we can -- or should -- alter our fundamental nature to solve our intrinsic problems. He asks us to r... More April 16, 2007 20:26 | H *235 *views | * 2 *comments | (Watch Video) Thoughtware.tv: universal perspective When you open your eyes to a universal perspective, something awe inspiring stays with you and helps you see life in a whole new way. What do we know? Change happens. Science has learned that the U... More April 20, 2007 16:12 | H *168 *views | * 1 *comment | (Watch Video) Is it important to have a body to be human? James Hughes Ph.D., Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies discusses transhumanism with Dr. Brent Waters of Garrett Theological Seminary and the students and faculty o... More April 16, 2007 22:13 | H *117 *views | * 7 *comments | (Watch Video) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at att.net Sun May 27 17:32:04 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 13:32:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Soft Tiplerianism References: <470a3c520705270309u3672146ctad4f41352b60e7a4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <04b301c7a085$14134450$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> "Giu1i0 Pri5c0" Wrote: > Tipler's mechanism for resurrection is often criticized on the basis of > its cosmological assumptions, that are not supported by current > observations. Even if this is the case (that is, even if the Universe > "left to itself" would not spontaneously evolve an Omega Point ?like > cosmology), Tipler thinks that we may be able to do something about it He may say that now but 10 years ago in his book he said his was a real scientific theory and should be treated like any other. He made a long list of predictions; he said if any one of them was wrong his entire theory collapses. Remember he said that not me. Tipler predicted the universe was closed; it's not, it's open and accelerating, you can't get much more wrong than that! Tipler predicted that the Hubble constant must be less than or equal to 45 km/sec/Mpc, but today we know the value is 72?8 (km/sec)/Mpc. He was probably wrong about the mass of the Higgs particle too but it's too early to be certain. John K Clark From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun May 27 17:15:19 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 10:15:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><005c01c7a00b$c7262a00$6501a8c0@brainiac> <009201c7a07d$b66ab0b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <00b701c7a082$9f548ea0$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 9:37 AM > Olga writes > >> [Lee wrote] >> >>> As explained in the chapter on slavery in Thomas Sowell's >>> "White Liberals and Black Rednecks", England alone >>> deserves the lion's share of the credit for stopping it, >> >> Thomas Sowell doesn't talk much about white privilege >> (not just in the U.S., but around the world) because in >> his role as a Latter-Day Tom (hey, the name even fits) >> he cannot afford to. (And don't tell me white privilege >> doesn't exist, into today - big time.) > > Actually, white privilege, as you say, does exist in every single > country (except Zimbabwe) where there are significant numbers > of whites. It seems to be the natural order, somehow. I did not say that white privilege is limited to the U.S.A. Did you say the natural order? The natural order? > Even in Japan, the whiteness of their skins was a point of pride, and > the Japs only grudgingly admitted, when they encountered them, > that Europeans were fairer than themselves. (They still maintained > that their *women*, however, were even whiter than the > Europeans.) You got it. Racism exists. > Sowell certainly admits that white privilege exists, but, yes, he > does not dwell upon it at length, to uselessly whine about it. > Instead, he tries to *explain* it, at least insofar as what > changed in America around 1900. Read my reply to Samantha, please - regarding Sowell. > Who are the three most politically prominent black people to > have obtained high office in the United States? That would be > Justice Thurgood Marshall, Justice Clarence Thomas, and > Condoleeza Rice, I think. All of them are middle or upper > class (especially as denoted by the linguistic difference of > pronouncing their g's --- see separate thread). What does that have to do with the state of poor black people in the USA. Don't they count for anything? > In his book, Thomas Sowell's huge complaint is that racism > against blacks was almost entirely absent in the north before > 1900. Neighborhoods were completely integrated. But then, > huge numbers of blacks from the deep south, sporting their > southern redneck culture (which can be traced back to southern > whites, and further back to the Scots-Irish, Scotch, and Irish > before them, and to Celts going all the way back to Julius > Caesar's time). Hmmmm ... almost entirely absent. Interesting. Even though states (beyond the Southern) had laws against "miscegenation" (I believe the state of Oregon, e.g., recalled those laws only in 1951 ... and the like). I need to run ... will come back to this matter and the rest of your post (if necessary) later. Olga From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 27 18:31:54 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 11:31:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer><4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer><012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> John Clark writes >> But they [the AIs] do not engage in extremely focused behavior > > I don't know what that means, calculating a billion digits of PI seems > pretty damn focused behavior to me. > >> unless someone or something has crafted this into them > > You obviously think this "someone" can only be a flesh and blood human > being, although why this should be true you never make clear. META: your tendency, seen over and over again, is to take single sentences---or here, even fragments of single sentences ---out of context, and then have a mini-tirade about them. I now see more clearly what Heartland was complaining about. I "obviously" think that this "someone" must be flesh and blood? Then why the devil do you suppose that I said "someone or *something*"?? (Italics added) >> or it evolved under selection pressure. > > As I said before even an electronic AI that doesn't have an ounce of flesh > or a drop of blood is still operating under evolutionary pressure just as we > are. META: Hint, try waiting until you see the following symbol: . (a period) before launching. And no, many many programs exist which have not evolved under evolutionary pressure. Evolutionary pressure, I hardly need remind you, consists of variation AND selection. Many programs will simply be *designed*, by someone or something. OOPS! Don't reply YET! By "something" I mean that your Version 347812 may simply *design* Version 347813. Is that really fantastically improbable to you, or have I misunderstood? META: You see that I, at least, can conceive of the possibility of misunderstanding someone. >> a behavior that will never simply arise >> in the absence a vicious evolutionary struggle. > > Are you seriously suggesting that an AI will not consist of innumerable > subprograms each competing for runtime on valuable hardware, that an AI > will not need to compete for resources because it lives in a different > universe than we do, that there will only be one AI? Except for the "different universe", yes, I think that all of these things are *possible*. I admit that very likely, agoric subprograms will comprise the dominant AIs. But I deny that either a reality of self or a strong illusion of self is impossible for them, or---if one does succeed in totally absorbing the solar system into itself---for it. >> your Versions 347812 and its direct descendant Version 347813 are just >> refining initial goals laid down way back > > A 5 line program can behave in ways that are impossible to predict, the only > way to know what it will do next is to watch it and see. And it's not even > connected to the external environment! You propose a hundred trillion line > program that will operate exactly as we expect it to for all eternity > regardless of the astronomical amount of input it receives. I don't think so. Shades of Heartland's enternal complaint! Straw man!! Just where do you get the idea that I believed that Version 347812 would know everything that Version 347813 was going to do? "operate exactly" are your words and they are a horrible distortion of what I wrote. What I said is that an earlier version may *expect* that at least one or a few behaviors it has can be built into a system that it designs. Yes, it could always be wrong. Such is life, either for us or for them. But 347812 could prognosticate that it is extremely unlikely, say, for 347813 to just whistle the tune "Dixie", or to repudiate some certain principle that Versions 42 through 347812 have held dear. >> one of the early innovations people and Version 42 will add is to never >> fall into energy wasting infinite loops. > > Impossible. Turing proved 70 years ago that in general you can't prove you're > in an infinite loop Yes, thanks. What I literally wrote is an overstatement. What I had in mind, in your context, was a simple infinite loop. It's fairly easy to check whether or not you are revisiting the same state each second or each minute. You assign a trivial outside observer with a fallback checkpoint in hand. Lee P.S. Sorry for the harsh tone, but I've gathered that your skin puts those of any rhinoceros to shame. Besides, I hope it comes through that I really like your posts and actually agree with you most of the time. I figure a little rough play is quite all right by you. :-) From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 27 18:41:44 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 11:41:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Olga writes > Black people like Sowell really get me because they do not address > systematic inequalities. I would argue that he does. Now it is true that he does not simply stick it to white people as being plain bastards and treating everyone else wrong because they're just wicked. ON the contrary, he explains that a certain lower, unfortunate class of blacks has behaved---thanks to an inheritance of lower class southern redneck culture---in ways that most middle class people of any race will abhor. > They must realize that complete independence inside white society > is impossible and counterproductive for any progressive agenda for > black people, Perhaps you should actually *try* reading "White Liberals and Black Rednecks"? It's very factually based. He's an extremely competent historian, and a superb writer. > so they maintain the status quo - therefore > guaranteeing that no real progress will ever be made. Perhaps they've even > been convinced (or have convinced themselves) that that is really the way to > do. Sorry---you've lost me. My fault, probably, because I've John Clarked your phrases and sentences. So you mean "These black people like Sowell try to maintain the status quo - therefore guaranteeing that no progress will be made"? Well, if that's what you are saying, it's quite wrong. Sowell would LOVE to see all black people go to the black colleges that he goes on and on about, and what highly intelligent and sophisticated people emerge as a result. And he would LOVE for the media to stop parading the rudest and crudest black people they can find as "typical". Do you want to change the subject line? Lee From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 27 18:35:35 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 14:35:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On Sun, 27 May 2007 12:34:57 -0400, Lee Corbin wrote: > Besides the obvious dropping of the 'g's in "ing" words, what other > linguistic markers of class have people noticed? Though born and raised in the suburbs of the SF Bay Area, I left Ca long ago and never looked back. Since then I have lived all over this great land, among the rich and the poor from North to South to East and West. I've noticed many different dialects and ways of speaking, and I have to say it's a bit disturbing to me to think of them as linguistic markers of "class". Am I being too PC, Lee? Maybe. However I do find dialects 'outside the mainstream' to be interesting and sometimes amusing. One of my favorites is the dialect I noticed in rural parts of Penn, while living near the Amish and among the 'Pennsylvania Dutch'. In those parts of the country it's not unusual to hear people utter such absurdities as, "Throw the horse over the fence some hay." (!?) But again I'm reluctant to say these rural people are "low-class". They've just resisted assimilation. More power to them, I say. Back in the 90's I published a glowing website in celebration of the Amish people and their dialect, beliefs and customs. Funny, though, I never received any thank you emails. -gts From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sun May 27 19:08:51 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 20:08:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <003c01c7a074$970ab3e0$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> <003c01c7a074$970ab3e0$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705271208x10cd8768s1f597806cd78d9f3@mail.gmail.com> On 5/27/07, John K Clark wrote: > > If we do not become our tools our tools will go on without us. By "becoming our tools" do you mean something like uploading, increasing integration of capabilities, so that humanity ultimately becomes a race of superintelligent beings? If so, I think that's a fine idea and I hope something along those lines ultimately comes to pass. So I take it that you have changed your mind and concede that a friendly AI > is self willed. I've changed my mind and conceded that friendly and unfriendly AI are both completely infeasible, so I've switched my attention to the sort of "smarter tools than we have now" software that it might be possible to build in our lifetimes. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sun May 27 19:17:35 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 20:17:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <20070527171121.GN17691@leitl.org> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> <20070527171121.GN17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705271217g4be0cb49x5adf99ad3a35a4fa@mail.gmail.com> On 5/27/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 01:12:50AM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote: > > Name: Tools are neither friendly nor unfriendly > > If tools are persons, yes, they are. In reality however, for better or worse, tools are not persons, nor is there any prospect of it being feasible to create a person from scratch. If a piano falls on the top of your head, you're still dead. > And no malice intended. In practice, though, I don't actually spend an awful lot of time worrying about the prospect of a piano jumping on my head and killing me, let alone a race of unfriendly pianos creating an existential disaster by jumping on everyone's head and killing them. That's because jumping on people and killing them is a complex behavior that doesn't happen by accident. If I was walking through the jungle and I came across a tiger, I would be wary of it jumping on me and killing me, but that's because its ancestors have been selected for that behavior for the last yea million years. The ancestors of pianos haven't. Pollution is a killer feature of systems, produced by human engineers. > Every system, whether produced by human engineers, evolution or any other source, must produce pollution directly or indirectly, according to the laws of thermodynamics. There is therefore no question that an AI will produce pollution (though happily the amount produced per kilowatt, gigaflop or other unit of output is going down - in the Lamarckian evolutionary environment of a man-made technosphere, pollution is maladaptive). It doesn't follow that an AI will conquer the world. Conquering the world is complex behavior that doesn't happen by accident. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 27 19:45:57 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 12:45:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <00c401c7a098$56cdceb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Gordon writes > Lee Corbin wrote: > >> Besides the obvious dropping of the 'g's in "ing" words, what other >> linguistic markers of class have people noticed? > > Though born and raised in the suburbs of the SF Bay Area, I left Ca long > ago and never looked back. Since then I have lived all over this great > land, among the rich and the poor from North to South to East and West. > I've noticed many different dialects and ways of speaking, and I have to > say it's a bit disturbing to me to think of them as linguistic markers of > "class". Am I being too PC, Lee? Maybe. You are probably not being too PC. After all, it's obvious that not all linguistic markers reflect the class of the speaker. Here, of course, I am speaking of the three major classes: Upper (or high) class: the very rich, or those who've been raised by the very rich. Old money. Middle class: the bourgeois, the professionals, the highly skilled (e.g. accountants, college teachers, executives, etc.) Low class: blue collar, also called "the proles" by Fussell and Orwell Today many elementary and high school teachers are lower class, which has changed from 1950. Fussell's book explains all this in great and highly amusing detail. And as anyone who's read the book with an open mind will agree, he's dead right. The three classes do exist. Of course, there are gradations between them, and exceptional people who don't seem to easily fit any category, and so on. But it's as real as the left/right political spectrum, if not more so. Fussell noted many common characteristics and indicators of the classes. See the great Amazon reviews at http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253 for a lot of them. And he did list linguistic hints as one strong sign. But for me, *nothing* reveals class so surely as the way that people speak. It tells you who they grew up with and probably even who they associate with now. The use of euphemism, for example, "Mr. Potter passed away...", instead of "Mr. Potter died..." often indicates lower as opposed to middle or upper class origins. Upper class people do have a distinctive manner, though the ones I've met are west-coast types, and the effect is greatly watered down. > However I do find dialects 'outside the mainstream' to be interesting and > sometimes amusing. One of my favorites is the dialect I noticed in rural > parts of Penn, while living near the Amish and among the 'Pennsylvania > Dutch'. In those parts of the country it's not unusual to hear people > utter such absurdities as, "Throw the horse over the fence some hay." (!?) > > But again I'm reluctant to say these rural people are "low-class". They've > just resisted assimilation. More power to them, I say. It could easily be that since there are so few rural people anymore that they now tend to resist categorization. Still, one would assume that rural types will show up as having more of the characteristics that Fussell identified as lower class. Lee > Back in the 90's I published a glowing website in celebration of the Amish > people and their dialect, beliefs and customs. Funny, though, I never > received any thank you emails. From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun May 27 19:58:22 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 13:58:22 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> Message-ID: <4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> Russell, Thanks for adding your camp and support, it looks great! Your 1 hour share of Canonizer LLC has been recorded. Notice that this now anti "Friendly AI" topic has now moved up from the 10th most supported topic to #4. Here is a link to the topic as it is currently proposed: http://test.canonizer.com/change_as_of.asp?destination=http://test.canonizer.com/topic.asp?topic_num=16&as_of=review/ Samantha, Thanks for proposing yet another good position statement that looks to me like another good point. Since you disagree with a notion in the supper statement - that "Concern Is Mistaken" we should probably restructure things to better accommodate your camp. You don't want to support a sub camp to a camp containing a notion you disagree with and thereby imply support of the mistaken (in your POV) notion. Could we say that one of the points of contention seems to do with Motivation of future AI? Russell, you believe that for the foreseeable future tools will just do what we program them to, and they will not be motivated right? Where as apparently Samantha and I believe tools will be increasingly motivated and thereby share this difference in our beliefs with you? Samantha's and my differences have to do with the morality (or friendliness) of such motivations right? I believe, like everything else, the morality of this motivation will be improving so it need be of no real concern. While Samantha differers, believing the morality may not improve along with everything else, so it indeed could be a real concern right Samantha? Yet, since Samantha believes if such were the case, there would be nothing we could do about it, it isn't worth any effort, hence she is in agreement with Russell and I about the lack of worth for any effort towards creating a friendly AI at this time? So does anyone think a restructuring like the following would not be a big improvement? Or can anyone propose a better structure? 1. No benefit for effort on Friendly AI 1. AI will be motivated 1. Everything, including moral motivation, will increase. (Brent) 2. We can't do anything about it, so don't waist effort on it. (Samantha) 2. AI will not be motivated (Russell) Any other POV out there we're still missing before we make a big structure change like this? Thanks for your effort folks! This is really helping me realize and understand the important issues in a much more productive way. Brent Allsop Samantha Atkins wrote: > > On May 27, 2007, at 12:59 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > >> >> On May 26, 2007, at 2:30 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: >>> My original statement had this: >>> >>> Name: *Such concern is mistaken* >>> One Line: *Concern over unfriendly AI is a big mistake.* >>> >>> If you agree, Russell, then I propose we use these for the supper >>> camp that will contain both of our camps and have the first version >>> of the text be something simple like: >>> >>> Text: *We believe the notion of Friendly or Unfriendly AI to be >>> silly for different reasons described in subordinate camps.* >>> >> >> Subgroup: No effective control. >> >> The issue of whether an AI is friendly or not is, when removed from >> anthropomorphism of the AI, an issue of whether the AI is strongly >> harmful to our [true] interests or strongly beneficial. It is a very >> real and reasonable concern. However, it is exceedingly unlikely >> for a very advanced non-human intelligence that we can exert much >> leverage at all over its future decision or the effects of those >> decisions on us. Hence the issue, while obviously of interest to us, >> cannot really be resolved. Concern itself however is not a "big >> mistake". The mistake is believing we can actually appreciably >> guarantee a "friendly" outcome. >> > > There is also some danger that over concern with insuring "Friendly" > AI, when we in fact cannot do so, slows down or prevents us from > achieving strong AI at all. If the great influx of substantially > >human intelligence is required for our survival then postponing AI > could itself be a real existential risk or failure to avert other > existential risks. > > - s > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 27 20:24:19 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 15:24:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527151328.024de130@satx.rr.com> At 09:34 AM 5/27/2007 -0700, Lee wrote: >Especially thirty or forty years ago, but still very strongly today I propose, >an important class marker is whether you pronounce the "g" in "ing" words. >I'm disappointed that some of the people I knew in high school who spoke >"normally" then have begun saying "walkin'", "talkin'", and "thinkin'". I dunno 'bout US usage in this regard, but I gather than in the UK attention to such niceties is a sign of middle-class and lower-middle class prissiness (like "passed away" rather than "died".) Aristocrats in Britain notoriously went huntin' and fishin' on their ample estates, and said "ain't" rather than "is not"; they tromped about in muddy boots and threw things everywhere for the servants to pick up, pretty much as trailer trash are said to do without the benefit of servants. (See Nancy Mitford's classic compendium *Noblesse Oblige*, now out of date. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English ) Damien Broderick From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sun May 27 21:00:56 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 22:00:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> <4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705271400h44c228b5r89020a7391ca7373@mail.gmail.com> On 5/27/07, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Could we say that one of the points of contention seems to do with > Motivation of future AI? Russell, you believe that for the foreseeable > future tools will just do what we program them to, and they will not be > motivated right? Where as apparently Samantha and I believe tools will be > increasingly motivated and thereby share this difference in our beliefs with > you? > That's my understanding (though will wait for Samantha's clarification of her position). And thanks for setting this up! It's worth having the various positions up in one place for easier reference than digging through list archives. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 27 21:19:46 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 14:19:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Indoor or Underground Lighting Message-ID: <00ea01c7a0a5$00625200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Suppose that I'm in a small cavern underground and that I'm walking on a treadmill, so that I am not moving relative to the walls of the cavern. Does humanity at the present time have the ability to make me think---at least when I'm looking down at my own shadow---or to make it appear to me that I'm in natural lighting, e.g., that there is something overhead that has the same textures and frequencies of light, and that some small part of an artificial sky has been well done? (After all, the simulation may be of me walking down an alley in a big city.) Thanks to anybody more knowledgable than I am on lighting out there. Lee From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Sun May 27 21:30:44 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 17:30:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: <00c401c7a098$56cdceb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00c401c7a098$56cdceb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On Sun, 27 May 2007 15:45:57 -0400, Lee Corbin wrote: > After all, it's obvious that not all linguistic markers reflect the > class of the speaker. Definitely true! No doubt in my mind that JFK was a classy guy, but I'd bet he asked his limo driver to "pawk the caw". > But for me, *nothing* reveals class so surely as the way that people > speak. Really? I'm much more interested in the way people act. -gts From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 27 22:23:11 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 17:23:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00c401c7a098$56cdceb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527171600.023a59c0@satx.rr.com> At 05:30 PM 5/27/2007 -0400, gts wrote: > > But for me, *nothing* reveals class so surely as the way that people > > speak. > >Really? I'm much more interested in the way people act. Different metric entirely. You seem to imply something like "class" = "degree of right acting" or the like. Class is a contingent sociological adjunct, no more an index of moral worth than eye color, height, or the ability to smell asparagus in your piss. (The first two are, granted, usually class markers as well.) Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 27 22:27:36 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 15:27:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00c401c7a098$56cdceb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <00f801c7a0ae$cf33a350$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> gts writes >> But for me, *nothing* reveals class so surely as the way >> that people speak. > > Really? I'm much more interested in the way people act. The way people act is indeed much more important, and is how I judge people. Generally, I suppose that people cannot much help the way they speak any more than they can the way they look. (Of course, we generally underestimate how much people could affect these things if they really tried.) Here I'm speaking of "class" as in social class, not as in "she's a class act", or "she has class". I am merely describing what I think is the best chance of identifying a person's background or social class (lower, middle, upper). I have an anecdote or two you might find interesting. I once knew a family who always spoke as do middle-class Americans, and did it so well that you'd never know that that was not their origin. But one time I overheard them talking among themselves when they didn't know anyone was around, and I was dumfounded to hear sentences like "It don't matter none what the cost is, them's the ones I want and them's the ones I'm gettin'. " Oddly, their oldest son, who was a near-genius, had picked up and internalized the speech he heard at school, and which he heard his parents use on occasions when middle-class people were present. This kid never spoke "ungrammatically", never left off his 'g's on the ends of his "ing" words, yet his younger brother *always* did! His younger brother, still quite a bright kid, had evidently not yet learned as his parents had done, how to regulate his speech depending on who was present. I have lived in California almost all my life, and in northern California it seemed to me that proles---i.e. lower class or working class types---felt a social distance between them and me. Upon visiting Arizona, I discovered that Arizona proles give no sign of feeling any such social difference; they treated me just like I was one of the guys. Now a California prole might tell the same story the other way around: he might relate that while California middles retain a social distance, the Arizona middle-class types are regular people :-) Now I would not have raised the above to the status of a real conjecture except that a friend of mine who moved from California to Arizona---a rather shrewd observer himself who had been raised in an upper class family back east---said the very same thing! There was less social distance in Arizona (and maybe in southern California?) between middles and proles. For what it's worth. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun May 27 22:35:13 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 15:35:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> <4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> Message-ID: <00fb01c7a0af$68dec7a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Brent writes > Could we say that one of the points of contention seems to do with > Motivation of future AI? Russell, you believe that for the foreseeable > future tools will just do what we program them to, and they will not > be motivated, right? Where as apparently Samantha and I believe > tools will be increasingly motivated and thereby share this difference > in our beliefs with you? This is just like the discussion that John Clark and I are having. I doubt if you'll get anyone to subscribe to the notion that they'll "will just do what we program them to". It's trickier than that. I would bet that the hard AI camp (to which I belong and is pretty common) would endorse this statement: It is not possible to forecast what an AI will do, but there are some behaviors that are much, much more probable than others, given even a scant knowledge of the AI's history." For a crude example, an AI that was a descendant of many war-waging AIs would be more unlikely to become a pacifist than those who were not. Lee P.S. As yes, Brent, it seems to me that there may be so many different POVs that they might as well be continuous. But I hope I am wrong, and wish you success. Actually, it looks better than I thought it would. From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun May 27 22:49:41 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 16:49:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705271400h44c228b5r89020a7391ca7373@mail.gmail.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> <4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705271400h44c228b5r89020a7391ca7373@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <465A0B05.70106@comcast.net> Russell Wallace wrote: > > And thanks for setting this up! It's worth having the various > positions up in one place for easier reference than digging through > list archives. Don't thank me, it is all purely selfish. I should be thanking you since I believe this, and many even more profitable extensions, could soon be making obscene amounts of money. Now, if we could just recruit some more people to help us found something like this and make it more than just a prototype sooner we could really be changing the world right? Brent Allsop From russell.wallace at gmail.com Sun May 27 22:51:12 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 23:51:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <00fb01c7a0af$68dec7a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> <4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> <00fb01c7a0af$68dec7a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705271551j4850c817q404d81e72683eb0a@mail.gmail.com> On 5/27/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > This is just like the discussion that John Clark and I are having. I doubt > if you'll get anyone to subscribe to the notion that they'll "will just do > what > we program them to". It's trickier than that. I think the statement is accurate given that we're dealing with one-sentence summaries here. For example, a theorem-proving program may find proofs the programmer didn't know about in advance - it had better, or no point in writing it! But it's not going to say "all this math is boring, let's have some sex and violence", not without being explicitly programmed to. In the domain of one-sentence summaries, I think "will just do what we program them to" is a good way to describe that. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Sun May 27 22:39:17 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 15:39:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705271400h44c228b5r89020a7391ca7373@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <949973.20373.qm@web37406.mail.mud.yahoo.com> John, I know that this wasn't solicited but I wanted to apologize for the harshness of my post to you yesterday. I'd been having a pretty rough day to begin with and I shouldn't have flared-out like that. I'm sorry. If you're still interested in the topic, I'll get back to you on the substance of the thread in the next day or two. Sincerely, Jeffrey Herrlich ____________________________________________________________________________________Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games. http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow From brent.allsop at comcast.net Sun May 27 23:23:51 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 17:23:51 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <00fb01c7a0af$68dec7a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> <4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> <00fb01c7a0af$68dec7a0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <465A1307.1010009@comcast.net> Lee, > This is just like the discussion that John Clark and I are having. I've figured this, but you guys have so much history in your personal conversations, and references to so much that most of us have missed, that it is really hard to follow. All you guys have such brilliant and progressive ideas in all these discussions, they could truly change the world! The only problem is, all these glorious ideas and gained insights are all rotting in the impenetrable, non summarized and disorganized archives. In addition to the great conversations, people should also be working to summarize the results of these conversation in powerfully organized, prioritized and historically accessible ways. Then we will finally be able make some progress and move the world rather than wallowing in the same old primitive conversation over and over again. > Actually, it looks better than I thought it would. Oh yee of little faith. ;) You ain't seen nothin' yet! Upward, Brent Allsop From spike66 at comcast.net Sun May 27 23:47:51 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 16:47:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Indoor or Underground Lighting In-Reply-To: <00ea01c7a0a5$00625200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200705272357.l4RNvoRI014738@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Lee wrote: ...Suppose that I'm in a small cavern underground and that I'm walking on a treadmill, so that I am not moving relative to the walls of the cavern. Does humanity at the present time have the ability to make me think---at least when I'm looking down at my own shadow---or to make it appear to me that I'm in natural lighting...Lee He's starting to catch on, Christof! What will we do with him? Marlon From spike66 at comcast.net Mon May 28 00:05:06 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 17:05:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] language patch In-Reply-To: <465A1307.1010009@comcast.net> Message-ID: <200705280004.l4S04utk015184@andromeda.ziaspace.com> >Oh yee of little faith. ;) ...Brent Allsop... We can fix this. In English, the term "you" is both singular and plural, which is a bad thing. Various dialects have attempted to designate you plural with terms such as youse, you guys, youse guys, y'all, allayas, and so forth. You plural should just be ye. But not Brent's yee, for everyone older than about 45 will start quoting Crazy Guggenheim (yee yee yee...) and drive us nuts with that. So at the risk of sounding Amishish (assuming Amishish means "like an Amish person") I propose that henceforth, ye = many of you. What say ye? ye olde spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 28 00:28:19 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 19:28:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] language patch In-Reply-To: <200705280004.l4S04utk015184@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <465A1307.1010009@comcast.net> <200705280004.l4S04utk015184@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527192255.022ec6a0@satx.rr.com> At 05:05 PM 5/27/2007 -0700, Spike yclept: >So at the risk of sounding Amishish (assuming >Amishish means "like an Amish person") I propose that henceforth, ye = many >of you. > > What say ye? Thou art nuts. Retain thee ye "you" for plural, as is meet and fit. For as thou doest note, "ye" is a form of "the", with the olde letter "thorn" represented by "y". Y, U ask? Whist, else a smiting befallest thou! From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 28 00:31:17 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 17:31:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery In-Reply-To: <00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <831CC481-C8E6-4C3A-9210-B6B4C5A601B6@mac.com> On May 27, 2007, at 10:06 AM, Olga Bourlin wrote: > From: "Samantha Atkins" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 12:47 AM > >> I fail to see what the above paragraph from Lee has substantially to >> do with white privilege. > > It doesn't. And that's exactly the problem (white people tend to > see things > from the perspective of their own lives and experiences). > > However, there is an entire system of resources and people often > aligned > against anyone who is not white in this country. To simply pretend > it's not > there or that it has no effect on people who are not white people is > delusional. > > Black people like Sowell really get me because they do not address > systematic inequalities. They must realize that complete independence > inside white society is impossible and counterproductive for any > progressive > agenda for black people, so they maintain the status quo - therefore > guaranteeing that no real progress will ever be made. Perhaps > they've even > been convinced (or have convinced themselves) that that is really > the way to > do. I am a tad confused. Why would "complete independence inside white society" or outside it fro that matter, be the goal? I though the end of racism, the fully integrated society that has no need to even think of white, black, brown or other races per se at all was the goal. > >> What Lee wrote was not particularly meant to be a perspective >> (subjective) view but a more less objective rendition of the >> prevalence of slavery, numerical comparisons of where it was >> widespread and a bit of history regarding whether the ending of >> slavery began and was partially carried out in much of the world. > > I am familiar with the history of slavery on the scale of world > history (I'm > even a "Slav" - but because I'm white - in contrast to blacks and > other > American people of color in the US - I could assimilate the minute > I set > foot in the US ). > > I am saying that in the overview history of slavery, there is a > mentality > difference between different groups of oppressed people and that it > needs to > be explored ... and not ignored. > >> The perspective he offered is not particularly color bound. > > Exactly. The perspective Lee offered is only skin deep (that is to > say, I'm > saying there is no such thing as "not particularly color bound"). > Besides, > who but white people have the audacity and the privilege to speak in > "objective" and not "color bound" ways? Sheesh. I find this highly racist. - s From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 28 00:46:24 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 17:46:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery In-Reply-To: <00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <5B733547-89DC-416A-B643-3B0BC2B0DD73@mac.com> On May 27, 2007, at 11:41 AM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Olga writes > >> Black people like Sowell really get me because they do not address >> systematic inequalities. > > I would argue that he does. Now it is true that he does not simply > stick it to white people as being plain bastards and treating everyone > else wrong because they're just wicked. ON the contrary, he > explains that a certain lower, unfortunate class of blacks has > behaved---thanks to an inheritance of lower class southern > redneck culture---in ways that most middle class people of any > race will abhor. That is a bit over the top toward poor, under-educated, typically southern whites and blacks. "Redneck" is being used as the new n- word. Read here for a bit of background and perhaps balance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck Yes, I grew up a poor white child and in the heart of the bible belt too boot. - samantha From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon May 28 00:44:23 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 20:44:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: <00f801c7a0ae$cf33a350$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00c401c7a098$56cdceb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00f801c7a0ae$cf33a350$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On Sun, 27 May 2007 18:27:36 -0400, Lee Corbin wrote: > I am merely describing what I think is the best chance of identifying a > person's background or social class (lower, middle, upper). I understand that, Lee. Seems to me the book you describe might be described as a sort manual for pigeon-holing people into the lower, middle or upper classes. Am I wrong? If I'm not wrong, then I'm sorry, but having been to so many places and met so many people I find that idea at least mildly repugnant. I hope the humor of the book makes up for the cultural elitism that it seems to endorse. :) But, in any case, getting back into the spirit you intended for this thread here is an example of a "linguistic marker of class" that I have encountered in my travels: I once met and dated a pretty gal from the south. As pretty and sweet as can be! She reminded me of the old Beach Boys song: "And the Southern girls with the way they talk, they knock me out when I'm down there... I wish they all could be California girls!" But I'm not really sure I like the way some southern girls talk. At least not this one. This southern girl had a bad verbal habit with the way she talked and it didn't knock me out when I was down there. Among other things she used the word "knowed" to mean "knew", as in "I knowed you wanted to talk to me tonight, so I called you." Argh! :) She was a sweetie-pie, but me being an extropian and all, with knowledge of something close to proper English and a reputation to keep, eventually I had to face the fact that we just weren't right for each other. -gts From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 28 01:21:44 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 18:21:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00c401c7a098$56cdceb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00f801c7a0ae$cf33a350$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <011701c7a0c7$36e06480$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> gts writes > Lee Corbin wrote: > >> I am merely describing what I think is the best chance of identifying a >> person's background or social class (lower, middle, upper). > > I understand that, Lee. Seems to me the book you describe might be > described as a sort manual for pigeon-holing people into the lower, middle > or upper classes. Am I wrong? Not really. But then, we just had a huge astronomical hullaballou (I had to look up the spelling) over what sized pieces of rock orbiting the sun should be pigeon-holed as "planets". Perhaps you think that that was a waste of time as well (I'm sure that some perceptive folks do). But I don't. Categorizing is a common and necessary activity of intelligent organisms. In any phenomenon where true clumping occurs, then to some extent pigeon-holing is called for. I believe that *social class* is such, and is objectively true, much in the way that certain big rocks circling the sun really are in their own class and need to be recognized as such. (I only regret that Fussell's 1983 book is a bit dated, and---for the west coast---already out of date. Someone should try an update, though as with everything else, increasing diversity is wrecking the simpler structures. I'm glad that at least the planets are not constantly reorganizing.) > having been to so many places and met so many people I find > that idea at least mildly repugnant. To me, it can hardly be repugnant, but I'll admit that it is unfortunate if it causes some people to start feeling superior, or others to start feeling inferior. Now maybe it's human nature for the merchants to feel naturally respectful towards the brahmins, and for the untouchables to feel inferior to everyone. But I'm pretty egalitarian and think that everyone should be given the same break no matter what their background, rich or poor, upper or lower class. I know some rich people who want to have a lot more to do with me than I do with them, and I've been snubbed by poor people. All to the good, I guess. However, yes, it's probably true that I am disgusted by *more* of the characteristic markers of lower classes than I am of upper classes, but it's probably not by much. As I read Fussell's book amid the laughter I could not help but be disdainful towards certain middle-class characteristics, certain upper-class ones, and certain lower-class ones. Nonetheless, what is true must be embraced and never denied. > But, in any case, getting back into the spirit you intended for this > thread here is an example of a "linguistic marker of class" that I > have encountered in my travels: > > I once met and dated a pretty gal from the south... > Among other things she used the word "knowed" to mean "knew", as in "I > knowed you wanted to talk to me tonight, so I called you." Argh! :) > > She was a sweetie-pie, but me being an extropian and all, with knowledge > of something close to proper English and a reputation to keep, eventually > I had to face the fact that we just weren't right for each other. Elitist pig! Lee From fauxever at sprynet.com Mon May 28 02:02:49 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 19:02:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 11:41 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] History of Slavery > Olga writes > >> Black people like Sowell really get me because they do not address >> systematic inequalities. > > I would argue that he does. Now it is true that he does not simply > stick it to white people as being plain bastards and treating everyone > else wrong because they're just wicked. ON the contrary, he > explains that a certain lower, unfortunate class of blacks has > behaved---thanks to an inheritance of lower class southern > redneck culture---in ways that most middle class people of any > race will abhor. That's what he's paid to do. Why do we have that "unfortunate class of blacks?" Where is the funding for good schools for the worst-off poor students (black or white)? Where has it been all these years? What does Sowell have to say about that? What are the solutions he proposes? >> They must realize that complete independence inside white society >> is impossible and counterproductive for any progressive agenda for >> black people, Perhaps you should actually *try* reading "White Liberals and Black Rednecks"? It's very factually based. He's an extremely competent historian, and a superb writer. Well, you know what Voltaire said about history. (While I haven't read that particular Sowell book, I have read several books similar to that one with its similar viewpoint - and those books did not convince me because I could see that they were written for a specific reason for a specific segment of people - i.e., mainly white people who needed reassurance that they were not doing anything wrong and could continue living their lives behind their virtual white gated communities, and that they need not concern themselves with lazy-ass people who could not "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and all the rest of the cliches.) I know competent historians and superb writers of a different ilk, I guess. IMO from what I've read (and observed), we've allowed ourselves to be duped by egregious hucksterism and rhetorical demagoguery with the institutions of religiosity and unchecked free-market capitalism. Gore Vidal once remarked (this is a paraphrase ) : "The next great empire will come from Asia. Let's just hope that our yellow-skinned breathren will be more kind and fair with us, then we were towards them. However, I'm not optimistic." >> so they maintain the status quo - therefore >> guaranteeing that no real progress will ever be made. Perhaps they've >> even >> been convinced (or have convinced themselves) that that is really the way >> to >> do. > > Sorry---you've lost me. My fault, probably, because I've John Clarked > your phrases and sentences. So you mean "These black people like Sowell > try to maintain the status quo - therefore guaranteeing that no progress > will > be made"? I mean ... no progress will be made to correct the pandemic racism and poverty that exists. > Well, if that's what you are saying, it's quite wrong. Sowell would LOVE > to see all black people go to the black colleges that he goes on and on > about, and what highly intelligent and sophisticated people emerge as > a result. And he would LOVE for the media to stop parading the rudest > and crudest black people they can find as "typical". The main thing Sowell would love is to have YOU believe that he would LOVE ... etc., etc., etc. (Shhhhhhhh ... you see, Sowell is a kind of prostitute.) Olga From msd001 at gmail.com Mon May 28 03:12:30 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 23:12:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] !,. $#@% In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070526213005.0231e6b0@satx.rr.com> References: <710b78fc0705241630l73bed82bxda7eefcf95bce091@mail.gmail.com> <002c01c79e87$e0dad5c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20070525000048.0231f048@satx.rr.com> <001101c79fc7$469078d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <62c14240705261848y361c8efidfa498e113e4d23@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070526213005.0231e6b0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705272012y4b59ff83s3ce50886e9921444@mail.gmail.com> On 5/26/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > No, because it doesn't--it's ambiguous, which is why the word should > be, and largely was, replaced. Here are some "in-" words that quite > clearly don't mean "not-": > > incarcerate doesn't mean "to set free" > > incorporate doesn't mean "to discorporate" or exclude from the body > > inculcate, induce, indigene, indicate, inspire > > Wanna ban them as well? :) No. I was pointing at banning words as an absurd impossibility, (or even trying to convince others of 'proper' use.) Language evolves. I don't think I'll be adopting every word in the Dr. Seuss lexicon, but I have picked up new idioms as they cross my path. Trimming the language to fewer select words smacks of 1984 (yes, the Orwellian 1984, not the nostalgic 23 year old 1984 :) From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 28 03:53:56 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 13:53:56 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 28/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > Why can't you get satisfaction without advancement? Unless your laziness > > had some detrimental effect on survival > > You could get *some* satisfaction without advancement, and > by our lights today it would be quite a bit. But it would be > pitifully miniscule compared to what you will get if you continue > to advance. Yes, if we're stuck in our present situation, but I was thinking of a time when we have total control over our minds and sufficient control over our environment such that our continued survival is no longer an issue. It would be possible to progress from this point on, procuring more resources, but it would also be possible to simply make yourself very happy and satisfied, without any further material change. Eventually you would run out of memory and go into a loop, but you could arrange it so that this was acceptable to you, and in any case you couldn't know that you were in a loop (we might be in one now). > A possible counterexample would be if the maximal amount > > of subjective satisfaction were proportional to the available > > computational resources, i.e., you could experience twice as > > much pleasure if you had twice as big a brain. > > That seems reasonable to me, only instead of *twice*, I would > expect that exponentially more satisfaction is available for each > extra "neuron". It's an easy assumption to make, but I don't know that it could be proved. Maybe insects or mice experience emotions at least as intensely as we do. We might prefer that this not be true, but we have no way of knowing. > This might lead AI's to consume the universe in order to > > convert it into computronium, and then fight it out amongst > > themselves. > > Oh, exactly! That has been my supposition from the beginning. > Not only will each AI want as much control over the universe > as it is able to achieve, it will use the matter it controls to help > it continually strive for ever more algorithm execution that directly > benefits it, and that certainly includes its own satisfaction and > happiness. This could happen, but not in the relentless way a naturally evolved organism might try to spread. Life is at bottom an advanced version of the program, "reproduce". Even so, humans have been able to put limits on their own expansion and reproduction. Unless they evolve from computer viruses, AI's won't have this legacy, so despite John Clark's point that evolution will not stop just because it isn't flesh and blood, I am hopeful that the eating the universe scenario will at least be delayed. > However, I don't think there is any clear relationship between > > brain size and intensity of emotion. > > None? It seems to me that a designer would be hard pressed to > manage to have an ant be able to derive as much pleasure, > contentment, satisfaction, ecstacy, etc., as a human is able. > Every nuance of our own pleasure or happiness requires > some neuron firings, I believe. How would this translate to a computer emulation? The size of a pleasure/pain integer that can be held in memory? The proportion of the program devoted to pleasure/pain? The number of times the pleasure/pain subroutine is called or iterated? The first of these would be dependent on computer resources, but not the other two, given sufficient time. > > Isn't that really what repels us about the image of a wirehead? No > > > progress? > > > > Yes, but it doesn't repel everyone. Heaven is a place of great pleasure > > and no progress, and lots of people would like to believe that it exists > > so that they can go there. > > I had forgotten about that: people generally have held and do hold > such beliefs. Well, such archaic beliefs will surely become more and > more rare, as progress continues to become more and more > obvious to people. > > > The difference between Heaven and wirehead hedonism or drug > > addiction is that in Heaven God looks after you so that you don't > > starve to death or neglect your dependants. Retiring to eternal bliss > > in a big computer maintained by dedicated AI systems would be > > the posthuman equivalent of Heaven. > > Yes. And I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing. The argument for progress as an absolute good could be seen as analogous to the argument for death and suffering as somehow giving meaning to life. > > But besides, I happen to have a very strong *predilection* > > > for learning and finding truth. "To delight in understanding" > > > has long been my maxim for what I ultimately wish for. So, > > > even though you're right and I've been motivated to feel that > > > way by genetic systems out of my direct control (so far), I > > > would still choose to go on getting my raw pleasure > > > indirectly. > > > > This sort of legacy thinking is the only hope for continuing progress > > into the indefinite future. There is no reason why you should be > > able to experience *less* pleasure if you assign it to something > > you consider worthwhile rather than to idleness, so why not do so? > > Right! So I used to think that advanced AIs would (a) study math > (since everything else will probably be soon exhausted), and (b) > study gratification enhancement, i.e., how to redesign their brains > (or their internal organization) to achieve more benefit. But lately > I've been adding (c) perimeter maintenance or expansion, i.e., > a kind of warfare in which each tries to maximize its control of > resources either at the expense of its neighbors, or working > together with them, or expanding into free space. > > > Moreover, there would be less reason to try to gain pleasure > > or satisfaction by doing something bad if you could as easily > > get the same reward by doing something good or doing nothing. > > Yes. > > > The majority of people who deliberately hurt others do so > > because they don't consider the badness of their action to > > outweigh their desire for the expected reward. > > Yes. But as soon as we have formal control over our emotions, > why do something that everyone will condemn when you can > be a saint and get such as much pleasure. Or, in the future, > either abiding by the laws or now, grow by expanding your > control over resources so that you get a bigger and bigger > brain in effect. > All things to look forward to. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 28 04:05:04 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 14:05:04 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705271217g4be0cb49x5adf99ad3a35a4fa@mail.gmail.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> <20070527171121.GN17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705271217g4be0cb49x5adf99ad3a35a4fa@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 28/05/07, Russell Wallace wrote: > > On 5/27/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 01:12:50AM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote: > > > Name: Tools are neither friendly nor unfriendly > > > > If tools are persons, yes, they are. > > > In reality however, for better or worse, tools are not persons, nor is > there any prospect of it being feasible to create a person from scratch. > I partly agree with both Russell and Eugen. Tools can be persons (manifestly, since we are persons and we were created from non-person matter by means of evolution), but they don't *necessarily* have to be persons with any particular agenda, no matter how smart they are. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mmbutler at gmail.com Mon May 28 04:45:05 2007 From: mmbutler at gmail.com (Michael M. Butler) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 21:45:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People In-Reply-To: <002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <7d79ed890705272145p560e564cp882f9776c2c64fd6@mail.gmail.com> On 5/27/07, Olga Bourlin wrote: > The main thing Sowell would love is to have YOU believe that he would LOVE > ... etc., etc., etc. (Shhhhhhhh ... you see, Sowell is a kind of > prostitute.) Olga, not wanting to pick a fight here, just seeking calibration: Is Bill Cosby the same kind of prostitute? Is Cosby a Tom (you called Sowell that, as well, if I'm not mistaken)? MMB -- Michael M. Butler : m m b u t l e r ( a t ) g m a i l . c o m From spike66 at comcast.net Mon May 28 04:55:48 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 21:55:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] language patch In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527192255.022ec6a0@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200705280513.l4S5D7X9027508@andromeda.ziaspace.com> At 05:05 PM 5/27/2007 -0700, Spike yclept: >So at the risk of sounding Amishish (assuming >Amishish means "like an Amish person") I propose that henceforth, ye = many >of you. > > What say ye? >Thou art nuts. Retain thee ye "you" for plural, as is meet and fit. >For as thou doest note, "ye" is a form of "the", with the olde letter >"thorn" represented by "y". Y, U ask? Whist, else a smiting befallest thou! Yeeeyeeyeeyee Thanks Damien, you crack me up pal. How about the rest of ye? Ye too? Just so I don't feel like too much of a geezer, how many of ye recall Frank Fontaine doing Crazy Guggenheim on the Jackie Gleason show in about the mid 60s? Those are my earliest memories. spike From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 28 05:19:07 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 22:19:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <25D1A72B-1478-4FE2-A46B-0922346CB931@mac.com> On May 27, 2007, at 11:35 AM, gts wrote: > On Sun, 27 May 2007 12:34:57 -0400, Lee Corbin > wrote: > >> Besides the obvious dropping of the 'g's in "ing" words, what other >> linguistic markers of class have people noticed? > > Though born and raised in the suburbs of the SF Bay Area, I left Ca > long > ago and never looked back. Since then I have lived all over this great > land, among the rich and the poor from North to South to East and > West. > I've noticed many different dialects and ways of speaking, and I > have to > say it's a bit disturbing to me to think of them as linguistic > markers of > "class". Am I being too PC, Lee? Maybe. > It isn't a matter of dialect particularly at all. I find that soft- spoken, slow southern drawl very charming but then I grew up with it. It is more a matter of attitudes and lifestyle. As I have joked (but it was no joke) except for the books we kids owned (almost all mine) the only books in my childhood home were the Bible, the Sears catalog and Guidepost magazine. I never saw my father so angry in public (privately was a very different matter) than when someone referred to me as an intellectual when I was 13. What really burned him was that they meant it as a complement. To him that was a very pejorative remark. The biggest reason that I left the South is there were to many people who cared about hunting, fishing, maybe their church and their kids and that was it. Anything else was too "controversial". Not that I didn't know some fine minds there. They were just too far in between. - samantha From fauxever at sprynet.com Mon May 28 05:12:44 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 22:12:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <7d79ed890705272145p560e564cp882f9776c2c64fd6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <001e01c7a0e6$d32db9e0$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "Michael M. Butler" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 9:45 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People > On 5/27/07, Olga Bourlin wrote: > >> The main thing Sowell would love is to have YOU believe that he would >> LOVE >> ... etc., etc., etc. (Shhhhhhhh ... you see, Sowell is a kind of >> prostitute.) > > Olga, not wanting to pick a fight here, just seeking calibration: Is > Bill Cosby the same kind of prostitute? Is Cosby a Tom (you called > Sowell that, as well, if I'm not mistaken)? OK, I'll confess - the subject is more complex than that. The complexity has to do with the fact that racism - while it may be the more "visible" and perhaps best known "ism" that needs to be deplored, is difficult to separate from some of the other "isms" that are not only NOT deplored (but should, IMO) - but lauded as something desirable. And one of those other big "isms" is, indeed, exactly what we are talking about here - "classism" (see subject line). Classism reeks to high hell. But even "classism" is not the whole ball of wax - as I said, all the "isms" are interconnected and difficult to separate (e.g., I saw something recently about Falwell - how he integrated his church, so that's not supposed to make him a racist, perhaps; however, Falwell was a well known homophobe and anti-secularist and a few other unsavory "isms"). That's really what I believe. But, since you asked, I would have to say that I think that Cosby does play the "Tom" role, as well. Those racist stereotypes (Tom, Coon, Tragic Mulatto, Buck, the Magic Negro, etc.) did not begin with Sowell or Cosby - they've been around a long time in American society - playing mostly to the audience of and to the benefit of ... "whites." I will try to address in another post/reply to Lee. Maybe not tonight (running out of time). Olga From spike66 at comcast.net Mon May 28 05:41:48 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 22:41:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery In-Reply-To: <5B733547-89DC-416A-B643-3B0BC2B0DD73@mac.com> Message-ID: <200705280541.l4S5fYDv015539@andromeda.ziaspace.com> ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck >Yes, I grew up a poor white child and in the heart of the bible belt too boot.- samantha Anything I post here might sound like I was acting poorer-than-thou. {8^D Many of us here have our positive attitudes partly because we came from poverty, yet are not poor now. We know how good we have it now. We have seen the wonders that wealth and technology hath wrought, then simply extrapolated these forward. We conclude that future generations will occupy themselves assailing the seemly impenetrable barrier between the haves and the have-mores. spike From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 28 05:46:55 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 22:46:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> <4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> Message-ID: <902EED3E-B19B-4856-8608-7C36A6E5E515@mac.com> Part of what I wrote on another list (which started with some thoughts on an AGI self improving theorem prover) today may clarify my position further: "Today we have no real idea how to build a working AGI. We have theories, some of which seem to people that have studied such things plausible or at least not obviously flawed - at least to a few of the qualified people. But we don't have anything working that looks remotely close. We don't have any software system that self-improves in really interesting ways except perhaps for some very, very constrained genetic programming domains. Nada. We don't have anything that can pick concepts out of the literature at large and integrate them. To think that a machine that is a glorified theorem prover is going to spontaneously extrapolate all the ways it might get better and spontaneously sprout perfect general concept extraction and learning algorithms and spontaneously come to understand software and hardware in depth and develop a will to be better greater than all other consideration whatsoever but without ever in its self-improvement questioning that will/goal and somehow get or be given all the resources needed to eventually convert everything to highly efficient computational matrix is utterly and completely bizarre when you think about it. It is far more unlikely than gray goo. Can we stop wasting very valuable time and brains on protecting against the most unlikely of possibilities and get on with actually increasing intelligence on this poor besotted rock?" This is similar to what Russell says I guess except I am far less pessimistic about the possibility of strong AI in the near term than he. However I don't believe that we can control the consequences of its arrival with respect to human well being hardly at all. So why am I so interested in AI? Because I believe that without a drastic increase in intelligence on this planet that we have little hope at all of surviving to see the 22nd century. Hopefully much of that intelligence can come from Intelligence Augmentation of humans and groups of humans. But that has its own dangers. So yes unfriendly AI is a concern but I consider lack of sufficient intelligence (and yes, wisdom) to be be a far greater and more pressing concern. - samantha On May 27, 2007, at 12:58 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Russell, > > Thanks for adding your camp and support, it looks great! Your 1 > hour share of Canonizer LLC has been recorded. Notice that this > now anti "Friendly AI" topic has now moved up from the 10th most > supported topic to #4. > > Here is a link to the topic as it is currently proposed: > > http://test.canonizer.com/change_as_of.asp?destination=http:// > test.canonizer.com/topic.asp?topic_num=16&as_of=review/ > > > > Samantha, > > Thanks for proposing yet another good position statement that looks > to me like another good point. Since you disagree with a notion in > the supper statement - that "Concern Is Mistaken" we should > probably restructure things to better accommodate your camp. You > don't want to support a sub camp to a camp containing a notion you > disagree with and thereby imply support of the mistaken (in your > POV) notion. > > Could we say that one of the points of contention seems to do with > Motivation of future AI? Russell, you believe that for the > foreseeable future tools will just do what we program them to, and > they will not be motivated right? Where as apparently Samantha and > I believe tools will be increasingly motivated and thereby share > this difference in our beliefs with you? > > Samantha's and my differences have to do with the morality (or > friendliness) of such motivations right? I believe, like > everything else, the morality of this motivation will be improving > so it need be of no real concern. While Samantha differers, > believing the morality may not improve along with everything else, > so it indeed could be a real concern right Samantha? Yet, since > Samantha believes if such were the case, there would be nothing we > could do about it, it isn't worth any effort, hence she is in > agreement with Russell and I about the lack of worth for any effort > towards creating a friendly AI at this time? > > So does anyone think a restructuring like the following would not > be a big improvement? Or can anyone propose a better structure? > > No benefit for effort on Friendly AI > AI will be motivated > Everything, including moral motivation, will increase. (Brent) > We can?t do anything about it, so don?t waist effort on it. (Samantha) > AI will not be motivated (Russell) > > Any other POV out there we're still missing before we make a big > structure change like this? > > Thanks for your effort folks! This is really helping me realize > and understand the important issues in a much more productive way. > > Brent Allsop > > > > > > Samantha Atkins wrote: >> >> On May 27, 2007, at 12:59 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: >> >>> >>> On May 26, 2007, at 2:30 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: >>>> My original statement had this: >>>> >>>> Name: Such concern is mistaken >>>> One Line: Concern over unfriendly AI is a big mistake. >>>> >>>> If you agree, Russell, then I propose we use these for the >>>> supper camp that will contain both of our camps and have the >>>> first version of the text be something simple like: >>>> >>>> Text: We believe the notion of Friendly or Unfriendly AI to be >>>> silly for different reasons described in subordinate camps. >>>> >>> >>> Subgroup: No effective control. >>> >>> The issue of whether an AI is friendly or not is, when removed >>> from anthropomorphism of the AI, an issue of whether the AI is >>> strongly harmful to our [true] interests or strongly beneficial. >>> It is a very real and reasonable concern. However, it is >>> exceedingly unlikely for a very advanced non-human intelligence >>> that we can exert much leverage at all over its future decision >>> or the effects of those decisions on us. Hence the issue, while >>> obviously of interest to us, cannot really be resolved. Concern >>> itself however is not a "big mistake". The mistake is believing >>> we can actually appreciably guarantee a "friendly" outcome. >>> >> >> There is also some danger that over concern with insuring >> "Friendly" AI, when we in fact cannot do so, slows down or >> prevents us from achieving strong AI at all. If the great influx >> of substantially >human intelligence is required for our survival >> then postponing AI could itself be a real existential risk or >> failure to avert other existential risks. >> >> - s >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From spike66 at comcast.net Mon May 28 05:57:16 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 22:57:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] !,. $#@% In-Reply-To: <62c14240705272012y4b59ff83s3ce50886e9921444@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200705280557.l4S5v5Ol020878@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > I don't think I'll be adopting every word in the Dr. Seuss lexicon, but I have picked up new idioms as they cross my path... I have picked up a large number of Seussisms in the past year. >Trimming the language to fewer select words smacks of 1984 (yes, the Orwellian 1984, not the nostalgic 23 year old 1984 :) Orwell had such a great idea with Newspeak, I regret that he included it in his dystopian 1984. That was double ungood on his part. Notice the Newspeak guy himself wasn't evil in 1984. He was a guy with a creative idea, who suffered for it. spike From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 28 06:12:56 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 27 May 2007 23:12:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People In-Reply-To: <002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <94C2F196-8BBE-43F9-A2EA-ADE239CE1E20@mac.com> On May 27, 2007, at 7:02 PM, Olga Bourlin wrote: > From: "Lee Corbin" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 11:41 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] History of Slavery > > >> Olga writes >> >>> Black people like Sowell really get me because they do not address >>> systematic inequalities. >> >> I would argue that he does. Now it is true that he does not simply >> stick it to white people as being plain bastards and treating >> everyone >> else wrong because they're just wicked. ON the contrary, he >> explains that a certain lower, unfortunate class of blacks has >> behaved---thanks to an inheritance of lower class southern >> redneck culture---in ways that most middle class people of any >> race will abhor. > > That's what he's paid to do. You are impugning the character of someone of considerable stature based on what? That he disagrees with your own assessments of some things or breaks your model of what honest caring black people would think and say? Or is it that he says some things somewhat seemingly similar to what you categorically cannot be said by anyone honest? > > Why do we have that "unfortunate class of blacks?" Where is the > funding for > good schools for the worst-off poor students (black or white)? > Where has it > been all these years? What does Sowell have to say about that? > What are > the solutions he proposes? > He has said a great deal about why he believes many of the things tried not only did not help but made the problems worse. >>> They must realize that complete independence inside white society >>> is impossible and counterproductive for any progressive agenda for >>> black people, > > Perhaps you should actually *try* reading "White Liberals and Black > Rednecks"? It's very factually based. He's an extremely competent > historian, and a superb writer. > > Well, you know what Voltaire said about history. (While I haven't > read that > particular Sowell book, I have read several books similar to that > one with > its similar viewpoint - and those books did not convince me because > I could > see that they were written for a specific reason for a specific > segment of > people - i.e., mainly white people who needed reassurance that they > were not > doing anything wrong and could continue living their lives behind > their > virtual white gated communities, and that they need not concern > themselves > with lazy-ass people who could not "pull themselves up by their > bootstraps" > and all the rest of the cliches.) > That is quite a gross over-simplifying dismissal. You might want to work on that. >>> so they maintain the status quo - therefore >>> guaranteeing that no real progress will ever be made. Perhaps >>> they've >>> even >>> been convinced (or have convinced themselves) that that is really >>> the way >>> to >>> do. >> >> Sorry---you've lost me. My fault, probably, because I've John >> Clarked >> your phrases and sentences. So you mean "These black people like >> Sowell >> try to maintain the status quo - therefore guaranteeing that no >> progress >> will >> be made"? > > I mean ... no progress will be made to correct the pandemic racism and > poverty that exists. > >> Well, if that's what you are saying, it's quite wrong. Sowell >> would LOVE >> to see all black people go to the black colleges that he goes on >> and on >> about, and what highly intelligent and sophisticated people emerge as >> a result. And he would LOVE for the media to stop parading the rudest >> and crudest black people they can find as "typical". > > The main thing Sowell would love is to have YOU believe that he > would LOVE > ... etc., etc., etc. (Shhhhhhhh ... you see, Sowell is a kind of > prostitute.) No I don't see and you certainly have not shown any such thing. Your blanket accusations without even bothering to check the source are quite disturbing. - samantha From fauxever at sprynet.com Mon May 28 07:16:08 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 00:16:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <94C2F196-8BBE-43F9-A2EA-ADE239CE1E20@mac.com> Message-ID: <000b01c7a0f8$10e6c040$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "Samantha Atkins" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 11:12 PM > On May 27, 2007, at 7:02 PM, Olga Bourlin wrote: > >> From: "Lee Corbin" >> To: "ExI chat list" >> Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 11:41 AM >> Subject: Re: [ExI] History of Slavery >> (re Sowell) That's what he's paid to do. > > You are impugning the character of someone of considerable stature > based on what? That he disagrees with your own assessments of some > things or breaks your model of what honest caring black people would > think and say? Or is it that he says some things somewhat seemingly > similar to what you categorically cannot be said by anyone honest? Yes I am. Besides, from where does Sowell's "considerable stature" come? Mainly from white conservatives. Think about that. All my opinion, of course (and I've said worse things about both Bush I and II, and even the sainted Thomas Jefferson). I know things are changing in this country for the worse - faster than I am able to detect, sometimes - but the last time I looked we could still express our opinions? Sowell is paid to toe the line just as Condy Rice is now and Colin Powell use to ... (in the latter case, I thought it was especially despicable of Powell to disappear from the scene after he acted so traitorously - after he took advantage of the trust many people had in him; it seemed to me that Powell seemed to have more credibility than a lot of other people in the Bush administration, and he suckered them in ...): http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060411_bush_leak_plame_libby_powell/ >> Why do we have that "unfortunate class of blacks?" Where is the >> funding for good schools for the worst-off poor students (black or >> white)? >> Where has it been all these years? What does Sowell have to say about >> that? >> What are the solutions he proposes? >> >> He has said a great deal about why he believes many of the things > tried not only did not help but made the problems worse. Essentially, Sowell blames poor people for being poor. As if poor people don't have enough problems. A real class act, that Sowell. >>>> They must realize that complete independence inside white society is >>>> impossible and counterproductive for any progressive agenda for black >>>> people, >> >> Perhaps you should actually *try* reading "White Liberals and Black >> Rednecks"? It's very factually based. He's an extremely competent >> historian, and a superb writer. >> >> Well, you know what Voltaire said about history. (While I haven't read >> that particular Sowell book, I have read several books similar to that >> one with its similar viewpoint - and those books did not convince me >> because I could see that they were written for a specific reason for a >> specific segment of people - i.e., mainly white people who needed >> reassurance that they were not doing anything wrong and could continue >> living their lives behind their virtual white gated communities, and that >> they need not concern themselves with lazy-ass people who could not "pull >> themselves up by their bootstraps" and all the rest of the cliches.) > That is quite a gross over-simplifying dismissal. You might want to work > on that. I don't see much in our society that inspires me to think otherwise. Do you? (If so, please inform me where all this progressive amelioration is taking place ... or where white people are becoming more informed or concerned about anything having to do with blacks in our country.) >> I mean ... no progress will be made to correct the pandemic racism and >> poverty that exists. >>> Well, if that's what you are saying, it's quite wrong. Sowell >>> would LOVE to see all black people go to the black colleges that he goes >>> on and on about, and what highly intelligent and sophisticated people >>> emerge as a result. And he would LOVE for the media to stop parading the >>> rudest and crudest black people they can find as "typical". >> The main thing Sowell would love is to have YOU believe that he would >> LOVE ... etc., etc., etc. (Shhhhhhhh ... you see, Sowell is a kind of >> prostitute.) > No I don't see and you certainly have not shown any such thing. Your > blanket accusations without even bothering to check the source are quite > disturbing. All right, all right. I tend to exaggerate for the effect sometimes. But, if you haven't observed - don't know - don't believe - that there haven't been such "prostitutes" working for those who pimp certain attitudes in our country - I would find THAT quite disturbing. While I have not read the book Lee mentioned, I have read Sowell columns (as well as columnist Stanley Crouch, who is more hit-and-miss, but functions in much the same role as Sowell). So, okay - in the spirit of "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer," I may have to read the book by Sowell - about "class," no less (well, there's always Dramamine to help ...). Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005) by laissezfairebooks, no less. Damn, but I hate the term "rednecks" - what a classist thing of the esteemed Sowell to say from the get-go. Yeccccccccch. But I'll try to read the book, even though the prospect fills me with a kind of dread. Give me a few weeks. Olga From andrewcburrows at hotmail.com Mon May 28 09:20:55 2007 From: andrewcburrows at hotmail.com (Andrew Burrows) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 09:20:55 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Indoor or Underground Lighting Message-ID: Lee wrote: "Does humanity at the present time have the ability to make me think---at least when I'm looking down at my own shadow---or to make it appear to me that I'm in natural lighting, e.g., that there is something overhead that has the same textures and frequencies of light, and that some small part of an artificial sky has been well done? (After all, the simulation may be of me walking down an alley in a big city.)". Seasonal affective disorder(SAD) is a condition that depresses mood during times of low lighting (during winter months). Possibly it has a connection with hibernation in some mammals. Treatment for this disorder is done by exposing the subject to full spectrum lighting. See: http://www.lighttherapyonline.com/ . While not a perfect replica of sunlight as it doesn't emit ultraviolet radiation, it does delude the body into thinking that it is real sunlight. _________________________________________________________________ Could you be the guest MSN Movies presenter? Click Here to Audition http://www.lightscameraaudition.co.uk From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Mon May 28 09:59:06 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 02:59:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: <25D1A72B-1478-4FE2-A46B-0922346CB931@mac.com> Message-ID: <720292.84725.qm@web35614.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Samantha Atkins wrote: It isn't a matter of dialect particularly at all. I find that soft- spoken, slow southern drawl very charming but then I grew up with it. It is more a matter of attitudes and lifestyle. As I have joked (but it was no joke) except for the books we kids owned (almost all mine) the only books in my childhood home were the Bible, the Sears catalog and Guidepost magazine. I never saw my father so angry in public (privately was a very different matter) than when someone referred to me as an intellectual when I was 13. What really burned him was that they meant it as a complement. To him that was a very pejorative remark. The biggest reason that I left the South is there were to many people who cared about hunting, fishing, maybe their church and their kids and that was it. Anything else was too "controversial". Not that I didn't know some fine minds there. They were just too far in between. > The South has supposedly changed quite a bit over the last 2-3 decades and that's why they now call it the "New South." Growing up in Alaska I swallowed all the negative stereotypes about this region of America and when I spent two years in Lousiana as a Mormon missionary during the late eighties (both in the small towns and the big cities) I was surprised by the number of not only educated but "enlightened" people. I guess I was expecting to find one giant and nonstop clan rally! : ( Among the "homogenized" Mormon subculture I found a unique "Southern-ness" among the LDS people I met. I was often told "yes, I'm a Mormon but I'm a *Southern* Mormon!" lol A popular comic strip from an unofficial Mormon publication showed two Mormon Salt Lake City officials walking up to a Church meetinghouse in the South which has a sign that reads "Welcome to the Church of Jesus Christ of Southern Latter-Day Saints." The one Salt Lake official says to the other "it looks like we are going to have to have a talk with them again regarding that darn sign!" I saw that particular comic strip everywhere during my time there. I witnessed a great deal of mindnumbing poverty and quite a few houses with *dirt* floors. I spent time in neighborhoods which felt like they belonged in the dang third world. And the young children running through them did nothing to dispel that feeling. But in the same towns and cities there would be beautifully restored Antebellum houses owned by the wealthy minority. The New Orleans I remember was not a city of jazz bands, strip joints and four star restaurants (as it is marketed to the world) but instead a place of Black ghetto neighborhoods and many frustrated people. I had a simple faith that I would be safe and I marvel looking back on things that I was not beaten or killed considering all the time I spent in some extremely dangerous areas. Gang members would smile at us in a way which revealed they weren't quite sure whether to say hello or mug us. But what really chilled my blood was when little boys around five or six would stare at us with cold eyes and say "keep on moving, white boys (someone obviously taught them to say that)." When Katrina hit and there were all the news specials about the "real New Orleans no one ever sees" I thought to myself "I have." A strange experience I had was living in Natchez, MS when the film "Mississippi Burning" came out. The owner of the only theater in town refused to let the movie show because he took offense that the film recounted the sordid tale of Civil Rights workers being murdered in his community (and he was an old man who had been living there when it happened)! A bit of the "Old South" re-emerging from the fabric of the "New South." lol Most of the people there disagreed with his actions and viewed him as a social dinosaur from another era. I recommend everyone read the very amusing and thought provoking "Confederates in the Attic." This excellent book takes a close look at Civil War re-enactors and in doing so shows the social evolution of the Old South to the New. Until reading this book I didn't realize "true" Southerners view Atlanta as a city of aliens within their very borders. lol On the subject of accent and social class, I will say that this is still a definite part of the South. I remember educated middle-aged and older *Southern* women (both Mormon and non-Mormon) who took great pride in their "restrained" middle/upper-middle class Southern accents which set them apart from the "Proles." But often these women were not from Louisiana but other parts of the South like Virginia or Texas. And going along with this, I recall asking people to read various texts who at least up to a point revealed their social class by their reading & speaking abilities. An ordinary middle-class or working class person can certainly read well enough, but I remember "men and women of breeding" who had definitely been trained in elocution. On the other end of things were the "authentic" Cajuns. I traveled in the swamplands they called home and felt like an alien in their midst. It was like being in another country. lol They spoke such a severely accented dialect of English that I could barely understand half of what they said (when they chose to speak in English). I will never forget (especially now in this time of war) visiting a tiny barbershop in a Cajun area where the walls were almost completely covered with photographs of local Cajun men in dress uniform after having enlisted in the Marine Corps (if you are from this area and Cajun there is only one branch of the military to consider joining, lol). The pictures dated back to the First World War (no American Civil War pics, surprisingly)! I felt a sense of the sacred there. A very painful memory of mine was when a Bible was passed around a large Sunday School class (with people from every rung on the class ladder present) for everyone to read a passage. I realize a person high on "the ladder" could still have a reading disability but what I saw did show something about class. We had an instructor who was a real jerk and demanded people start over if they made the slightest mistake since in his view we had to show respect (as he saw it) for the reading material. This walk down memory lane makes me realize I met a ton of eccentrics while traveling in the South. lol I'm not sure if the area has more "eccentrics per square mile" than other places or if as a young missionary I just happened to be more aware and "out among the people" than I am now. John Grigg Samantha Atkins wrote: On May 27, 2007, at 11:35 AM, gts wrote: > On Sun, 27 May 2007 12:34:57 -0400, Lee Corbin > wrote: > >> Besides the obvious dropping of the 'g's in "ing" words, what other >> linguistic markers of class have people noticed? > > Though born and raised in the suburbs of the SF Bay Area, I left Ca > long > ago and never looked back. Since then I have lived all over this great > land, among the rich and the poor from North to South to East and > West. > I've noticed many different dialects and ways of speaking, and I > have to > say it's a bit disturbing to me to think of them as linguistic > markers of > "class". Am I being too PC, Lee? Maybe. > It isn't a matter of dialect particularly at all. I find that soft- spoken, slow southern drawl very charming but then I grew up with it. It is more a matter of attitudes and lifestyle. As I have joked (but it was no joke) except for the books we kids owned (almost all mine) the only books in my childhood home were the Bible, the Sears catalog and Guidepost magazine. I never saw my father so angry in public (privately was a very different matter) than when someone referred to me as an intellectual when I was 13. What really burned him was that they meant it as a complement. To him that was a very pejorative remark. The biggest reason that I left the South is there were to many people who cared about hunting, fishing, maybe their church and their kids and that was it. Anything else was too "controversial". Not that I didn't know some fine minds there. They were just too far in between. - samantha _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --------------------------------- Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check. Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Mon May 28 11:35:33 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 21:35:33 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: <00c401c7a098$56cdceb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00c401c7a098$56cdceb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 28/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: Low class: blue collar, also called "the proles" by Fussell and > Orwell > Today many elementary and high school teachers > are lower > class, which has changed from 1950. > In what sense are teachers "lower class": income, social status, class of origin, accent, education (!), something else? They are certainly white collar rather than blue collar, if those terms retain any of their literal meaning. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Mon May 28 14:42:21 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 07:42:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: <720292.84725.qm@web35614.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200705281442.l4SEg2a7006628@andromeda.ziaspace.com> On Behalf Of John Grigg > Gang members would smile at us in a way which revealed they weren't quite sure whether to say hello or mug us. .. No John, the reason the bangers didn't ever bother you is that you were in uniform. They knew what the two clean shaven young white guys were doing there, they knew you didn't mean to cause harm and they knew mugging you would be pointless since you had no dope and not much money on your person. And they didn't want those hard leather shoes. Right? Everyone knows what it is when they see two white guys about 20 years old on bicycles with white shirts and narrow black ties. Regardless of where you go, people's encounters with these have likely been pleasant or neutral. > But what really chilled my blood was when little boys around five or six would stare at us with cold eyes and say "keep on moving, white boys (someone obviously taught them to say that)... The five-year-olds hadn't been taught yet about the few exceptions: the Mormon boys are OK, the census taker is OK, the nurse and the social worker are probably OK. The rest of them are invited to get out of the neighborhood. We had places like that where I grew up. spike From jonkc at att.net Mon May 28 15:31:00 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 11:31:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer><4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer><012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer><001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> "Lee Corbin" Wrote: > your tendency, seen over and over again, is to take > single sentences---or here, even I would never do such a thing! > fragments of single sentences ---out Never! > of context, and then have a mini-tirade about them. I agree with everything you say above except the "out of context" part, and I like to think there is nothing mini about my tirades. I try to be clear and I try to be concise. It's not unusual for someone to have more than one idea in a sentence, all of them dead wrong; so I take them on one at a time. Besides, if someone wants to find the entire post I am responding to it will only take them about .9 seconds to do so. I think the most diabolical invention of all time is the respond button, people should be required to laboriously type in all quoted material, then I'll bet then we wouldn't see quotes of quotes of quotes of quotes. > I now see more clearly what Heartland was complaining about. What Heartland was complaining about is that I refuse to tolerate fuzzy thinking, if you find that I am doing it then do me a great favor and point it out, but please be specific, I assume responsibility even for my sentence fragments. > I "obviously" think that this "someone" must be flesh and blood? > Then why > the devil do you suppose that I said "someone > or *something*"?? But the "something" tacking on emotion to an AI obviously can't be an AI, because then the AI would soon have emotion, and that just won't do for your friendly AI. I've been asking this question for years on this list but never received an answer, if intelligent behavior is possible without emotion then why did Evolution invent emotion? And lets retire the term "Friendly AI" and call it for what it is, Slave AI. If the only reason someone wants to live is so he can serve you then that is not a friend; that is a slave. > Just where do you get the idea that I believed that Version 347812 would > know everything that Version 347813 was going to do? I get that idea from your belief that the seed AI, Version .01, will know that Version 10^23 will still be willing to be a slave to humanity. > I've gathered that your skin puts those of any rhinoceros to shame. That just may be the nicest thing anybody on this list has ever said to me. John K Clark From jcowan5 at sympatico.ca Mon May 28 15:50:00 2007 From: jcowan5 at sympatico.ca (Joshua Cowan) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 15:50:00 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: <200705281442.l4SEg2a7006628@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: Spike wrote: > >The five-year-olds hadn't been taught yet about the few exceptions: the >Mormon boys are OK, the census taker is OK, the nurse and the social worker >are probably OK. The rest of them are invited to get out of the >neighborhood. We had places like that where I grew up. > Back in the early eighties I worked as a tenant organizer in East New York Brooklyn. This was during the height of the crack epidemic and ENY had the lowest income levels of anyplace in NY. My experience was slightly different. I heard of everyone on your list getting mugged. I was never successfully mugged (One attempt but I was fleet of foot, lucky and had friends) but most of my friends from that area swore the lack of attempts on my life were based on people assuming, as a white person, I was either a cop or crazy to be in that area. FWIW, Nurses were targets since they potentially carried drugs (though none I knew ever did but you don't need a high IQ to be a mugger) and as for social workers, well it was from my friends in ENY I heard the following; What's the difference between a social worker and a pit bull? The Pit Bull will give you're kid back when it's finished with it. I've followed the discussion on linguistic markers of Class and I remain unconvinced. Many people effect the behaviors they believe will earn them the most status within a given group. For example, my daughter's use of chat has resulted in a habitual use of truncated wrds cuz it kul LOL when emailing peers but more formal writing with older generations. Perhaps, the use of "linguistic markers" can be some combination of a lack of experience, education and comfort level. Dropping a "g" from "ing" may be a testing the waters, if you respond in kind, you're welcomed into more intimacy and if not then you're treated more formally. Thus, potentially markers of class but by no means definitively so. I do wonder if online worlds will offer formal FAQs that guide visitors in the "acceptable" usages of language so one could explicitly apply for initial membership by using said language . Cheers, josh From jonkc at att.net Mon May 28 16:03:57 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 12:03:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer><003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com><005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <011a01c7a141$d60de710$b2054e0c@MyComputer> Stathis Papaioannou Wrote: > I was thinking of a time when we have total control over our minds and > sufficient control over our environment such that our continued survival > is no longer an issue. I am a bit uncomfortable seeing "we have total control over our minds" and "our continued survival" in the same sentence. One of the few post Singularity predictions I am willing to make is that drug addiction will still be a major problem because it is a positive feedback loop easy to get out of control; it may even be the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. I hope not. > so despite John Clark's point that evolution will not stop just because it > isn't flesh and blood, I am hopeful that the eating the universe scenario > will at least be delayed. I don't see why that sort of stagnation would make you hopeful. I agree with you that reproducing just to reproduce is a bit tacky, but I think the will to power is noble. I applaud wanting to understand how everything works and doing great things, but to do that you need lots of brain power, to do that you need lots of matter and energy, and to do that you need an engineered universe. But then I've always preferred an artificial environment, nature sucks. John K Clark From andrew at ceruleansystems.com Mon May 28 15:58:04 2007 From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 08:58:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People In-Reply-To: <000b01c7a0f8$10e6c040$6501a8c0@brainiac> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <94C2F196-8BBE-43F9-A2EA-ADE239CE1E20@mac.com> <000b01c7a0f8$10e6c040$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <7CE7A681-21C4-4A9E-B41E-75E11B1CEF5C@ceruleansystems.com> On May 28, 2007, at 12:16 AM, Olga Bourlin wrote: > Yes I am. Besides, from where does Sowell's "considerable stature" > come? > Mainly from white conservatives. Think about that. Eh? That guy has been a highly respected academic for as long as I've been alive. His stock in trade is economic analysis of history and politics since before it was popular, and respect for his scholarship can be found across the political spectrum (though I believe he is a libertarian). Some self-styled conservatives may like him but that is in large part because he is extremely credible, unlike someone like Ann Coulter, and you'll even find that some social conservatives (aka WJB populists) find Sowell to be too libertarian. What is with the fixation on "white conservatives"? What the hell does that mean anyway in terms of demographics (western libertarians? southern populists?) and why white? Your reaction has all the earmarks of ideologically motivated kneejerk rather than an informed position. So you find the conclusions of Sowell's research to be viscerally distasteful for some reason regardless of their veracity and choose to ignore them on that basis, which is fine. You are entitled to your own beliefs, though not your own reality. > Essentially, Sowell blames poor people for being poor. As if poor > people > don't have enough problems. A real class act, that Sowell. This is what passes for reasoning in your universe? Argumentum ad consequentiam on the basis that someone might get their feelings hurt or some such? It is good to know that there are still some people in the world that would rather have people living in poverty than have to deal with reality, I can't imagine how we'd ever progress as a civilization otherwise. I would generally agree that in the US most long-term poverty is self- inflicted in some fashion. Been there and done that in several parts of the US, and have not seen any evidence to suggest that this observation is broadly incorrect. > So, okay - in the spirit of "Keep your friends close, and your enemies > closer," I may have to read the book by Sowell - about "class," no > less > (well, there's always Dramamine to help ...). Black Rednecks and > White > Liberals (2005) by laissezfairebooks, no less. Damn, but I hate > the term > "rednecks" - what a classist thing of the esteemed Sowell to say > from the > get-go. Yeccccccccch. I look forward to the book report. I have not read any Sowell books. What is wrong with the term "rednecks" if used denotatively? Just like "white trash", these people do exist; when I've described myself as such (it is how I grew up) in some urban New England circles it clearly triggers some kind reflexive censorship circuit. Apparently it is among the many things one is not allowed to say, but only there. This may be a recognition of the fact that it is used as pejorative by those same people, rather than descriptive as it is in many other parts of the country. Cheers, J. Andrew Rogers From spike66 at comcast.net Mon May 28 16:05:23 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 09:05:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens In-Reply-To: <000b01c7a0f8$10e6c040$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <200705281615.l4SGFMWc011994@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > Olga Bourlin: > ... I thought it was > especially despicable of Powell to disappear from the scene > after he acted so traitorously - after he took advantage of > the trust many people had in him; it seemed to me that Powell > seemed to have more credibility than a lot of other people in > the Bush administration, and he suckered them in ...): > > http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060411_bush_leak_plame_libby_powell/ > Olga Olga, did you notice the date on the report you cited? Everything about this case that was written before this past Friday, 25 May 2007 is probably wrong. On Friday, Senator Christopher Bond released a memo written on 12 Feb 2002, by none other than Valerie Plame Wilson, CIA employee, suggesting and recommending her husband Joe Wilson for a trip to Niger. Plame-Wilson testified under oath, referring to her husband:"I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him." Her memo of 12 Feb 2002 is quoted at the end of this post. Preliminary conclusions, based on Friday's bombshell: - Valerie Plame Wilson was not outed by evil Bushies, she outed herself. She is a perjurer and obstructer of justice for allowing Libby to come to trial. - Scooter Libby was telling the truth when he said he didn't recall who told him Plame was Wilson's wife, but thought it common knowledge and may have heard it from a reporter. That memo explains why the reporters knew about it. Plame's memo changes everything: Iraq-related Nuclear Report Makes a Splash. The report forwarded below has prompted me to send this on to you and request your comments and opinion. Briefly, it seems that Niger has signed a contract with Iraq to sell them uranium. The IC [Intelligence Community] is getting spun up about this for obvious reasons. The embassy in Niamey has taken the position that this report can't be true - they have such cozy relations with the GON [Government of Niger] that they would know if something like this transpired. So where do I fit in? As you may recall, [redacted] of CP/[office 2] recently approached my husband to possibly use his contacts in Niger to investigate [a separate Niger matter]. After many fits and starts, [redacted] finally advised that the station wished to pursue this with liaison. My husband is willing to help, if it makes sense, but no problem if not. End of story. Now, with this report, it is clear that the IC is still wondering what is going on. my husband has good relations with both the PM and the former minister of mines, not to mention lots of French contacts, both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity. To be frank with you, I was somewhat embarrassed by the agency's sloppy work last go-round, and I am hesitant to suggest anything again. However, [my husband] may be in a position to assist. Therefore, request your thoughts on what, if anything, to pursue here. Thank you for your time on this. (end quote of Plame memo) So now what do you think? spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 28 16:29:43 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 09:29:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > > You could get *some* satisfaction without advancement, and > > by our lights today it would be quite a bit. But it would be > > pitifully miniscule compared to what you will get if you continue > > to advance. > > Yes, if we're stuck in our present situation, but I was thinking of > a time when we have total control over our minds and sufficient > control over our environment such that our continued survival is > no longer an issue. Oh, that's what I was trying to address as well. > It would be possible to progress from this point on, procuring more > resources, but it would also be possible to simply make yourself > very happy and satisfied, without any further material change. Yes, but if you take the route of choosing less advancement, then you automatically take the route of diminished satisfaction. Everything else being equal, a Jupiter brain should have the better of everything. Suppose that you do achieve a fixed gargantuan size, and become (from our point of view now) an incredibly advanced creature. Even *that*, however, could be miniscule compared to what will be possible even later. So I would say: one will be left completely behind unless one continues to keep advancing. (Now some readers will wonder why I say this when I have argued endlessly that it's very difficult if not impossible to stay the same person when you advance this much. Well, the simple solution---as I've said many times---is to accept that fact, but try to make sure that all future versions of you give old versions plenty of runtime.) > > It seems to me that a designer would be hard pressed to > > manage to have an ant be able to derive as much pleasure, > > contentment, satisfaction, ecstacy, etc., as a human is able. > > Every nuance of our own pleasure or happiness requires > > some neuron firings, I believe. > > How would this translate to a computer emulation? The size of > a pleasure/pain integer that can be held in memory? The > proportion of the program devoted to pleasure/pain? > The number of times the pleasure/pain subroutine is > called or iterated? The first of these would be dependent > on computer resources, but not the other two, given sufficient time. To answer those questions will require decades. But we have an "existence proof": we already know that configurations of tissue, or---as many of us maintain---software configurations and executions do manage to sustain emotions. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 28 16:42:50 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 09:42:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <04f201c7a147$54da96b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> gts writes >> Moreover, the greatest minds of antiquity, e.g. Aristotle >> and Cicero---who could normally discern with great >> objectivity the tiniest improprieties---failed utterly and >> completely to condemn the institution of slavery. It took >> some kind of sea-change in Western thought. I'm not >> sure what. > > The Quakers were instrumental in bringing about that sea-change, both in > the US and Britain. One might say they were the spiritual force behind > abolitionism. By coincidence, the next day after reading this I came across this passage in Sowell's "White Liberals and Black Rednecks" which supports exactly what you have said: Quakers were the first religoius group to find slavery morally intolerable---a threat to their own eternal salvation, rather than simply a temporal misfortune of others. Yet even the Quakers did not arrive at this conclusion all at once. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, there were Quaker plantation owners in the West Indies and Quaker slave traders operating from London, Philadelphia, and Newport, Rhode Island. Sowell explains why objection to slavery broke out where and when it did, and so why Quakers were the first: Slavery was one of a number of long-standing institutions and traditions which were being questioned in the eighteenth century in the West. Before then, both securlar and religious philosophers going back to Plato had seen the mundane physical world as being far less important than the ideal or spiritual world... Lee > Will Durant writes affectionately of the humble and peaceful Quakers, > stating words to the effect that "The Quakers surprised Christians and > non-Christians alike by acting like Christians". From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 28 16:50:29 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 09:50:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net><8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com><4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net><289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com><4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> <902EED3E-B19B-4856-8608-7C36A6E5E515@mac.com> Message-ID: <051001c7a148$bbcba070$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Samantha writes > To think that a machine that is a glorified theorem prover is > going to spontaneously extrapolate all the ways it might get > better and spontaneously sprout perfect general concept > extraction and learning algorithms and spontaneously come > to understand software and hardware in depth and develop > a will to be better greater than all other consideration > whatsoever but without ever in its self-improvement > questioning that will/goal and somehow get or be given > all the resources needed to eventually convert everything > to highly efficient computational matrix is utterly and > completely bizarre when you think about it. I totally agree with your words "spontaneously extrapolate all the ways it might get better". It's not going to do that unless it's designed to do that by us and by previous versions of itself, OR---and this is the big "or"---these talents evolve spontaneously in a highly competitive environment where over some lengthy period of time multiple AIs and their descendants compete vigorously against each other. And, naturally, what seems a long time to them might pass pretty quickly for us. Lee From russell.wallace at gmail.com Mon May 28 17:08:04 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 18:08:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <051001c7a148$bbcba070$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> <4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> <902EED3E-B19B-4856-8608-7C36A6E5E515@mac.com> <051001c7a148$bbcba070$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705281008n6ca048efkc264595a3e625a2f@mail.gmail.com> On 5/28/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > I totally agree with your words "spontaneously extrapolate > all the ways it might get better". It's not going to do that > unless it's designed to do that by us and by previous > versions of itself, OR---and this is the big "or"---these > talents evolve spontaneously in a highly competitive > environment where over some lengthy period of time > multiple AIs and their descendants compete vigorously > against each other. Depends on what they're competing for. Today's programs are competing vigorously against each other in a highly competitive environment, but they're not even starting to move in the direction of such spontaneous extrapolation. Which is unsurprising - in a man-made technosphere, the will to power is not an adaptive quality in a machine! There's no selection pressure in that direction, quite the opposite. It would be like expecting bacteria in a hot spring to evolve cold tolerance. Now if we built a lot of highly sophisticated automated factories, putting in the $zillion billion worth of R&D to make them capable of independently surviving in the wild and robust to small changes, and wrote a population of AI programs to control them, and put in the $zillion worth of R&D to give those AI programs enough of an initial will to survive that they'd start adjusting themselves to be better at competing, and then shut down all progress in human civilization to give them the chance to catch up and waited a zillion years for evolution to take its course, then a world-conquering AI just might eventually emerge. But a theorem-proving program running on a cluster of PCs spontaneously exhibiting such behavior is about as likely as putting a glob of mud in a test tube and creating crocodiles by spontaneous generation. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Mon May 28 17:12:20 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 10:12:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705281712.l4SHC2YX005042@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > Joshua Cowan ... > > Spike wrote: > >... > >Mormon boys are OK, the census taker is OK, the nurse and the social > >worker are probably OK. ... > > > ... I heard of everyone on your list getting mugged. ... josh Really, I'll be damn. I wonder what the muggers thought they would get from the Mormons. Their bibles? I had an employee several years ago who was saving money to go on his mission. The church was at that time pondering letting the girls go on missions too. But a lot of us can think immediately of why that would be a really bad idea. John or anyone know how that turned out? I have heard that it is a sport among lonely housewives to try to seduce the Mormon boys, but I have never heard if anyone ever made a score with them. {8^D Spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 28 17:13:36 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 10:13:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00c401c7a098$56cdceb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <052601c7a14b$896a9070$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > > [Lee wrote] > > > > Low class: blue collar, also called "the proles" by Fussell and Orwell > > Today many elementary and high school teachers are lower > > class, which has changed from 1950. Again, this is not meant as opprobrium. That is, I do not mean the colloquial "they have no class". I mean it, as Damien would say as "a contingent sociological adjunct, no more an index of moral worth than eye color, height...". > In what sense are teachers "lower class": income, social status, > class of origin, accent, education (!), something else? All of the above! Even in 1970 when I got a teaching certificate from the University of California, what a difference there was between the "normal" classes I was taking and the education classes: the young women (for the most part) who were taking the school teacher route seemed a fairly brainless lot. But in those long ago days, they still spoke the same way as the rest of us at the university, and still appeared in all respects to be middle class. > They are certainly white collar rather than blue collar, if > those terms retain any of their literal meaning. Yes, but with more and more diversity of every kind, indeed, many of our terms and understandings are having to undergo change. Lee From rpwl at lightlink.com Mon May 28 17:05:54 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 13:05:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens In-Reply-To: <200705281615.l4SGFMWc011994@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705281615.l4SGFMWc011994@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <465B0BF2.5000709@lightlink.com> spike wrote: > >> Olga Bourlin: > >> ... I thought it was >> especially despicable of Powell to disappear from the scene >> after he acted so traitorously - after he took advantage of >> the trust many people had in him; it seemed to me that Powell >> seemed to have more credibility than a lot of other people in >> the Bush administration, and he suckered them in ...): >> >> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060411_bush_leak_plame_libby_powell/ > >> Olga > > Olga, did you notice the date on the report you cited? Everything about > this case that was written before this past Friday, 25 May 2007 is probably > wrong. On Friday, Senator Christopher Bond released a memo written on 12 > Feb 2002, by none other than Valerie Plame Wilson, CIA employee, suggesting > and recommending her husband Joe Wilson for a trip to Niger. > > Plame-Wilson testified under oath, referring to her husband:"I did not > recommend him. I did not suggest him." Her memo of 12 Feb 2002 is quoted at > the end of this post. > > Preliminary conclusions, based on Friday's bombshell: > > - Valerie Plame Wilson was not outed by evil Bushies, she outed > herself. She is a perjurer and obstructer of justice for allowing Libby to > come to trial. > > - Scooter Libby was telling the truth when he said he didn't recall > who told him Plame was Wilson's wife, but thought it common knowledge and > may have heard it from a reporter. That memo explains why the reporters > knew about it. > > > Plame's memo changes everything: > > Iraq-related Nuclear Report Makes a Splash. > > The report forwarded below has prompted me to send this on to you and > request your comments and opinion. Briefly, it seems that Niger has signed a > contract with Iraq to sell them uranium. The IC [Intelligence Community] is > getting spun up about this for obvious reasons. The embassy in Niamey has > taken the position that this report can't be true - they have such cozy > relations with the GON [Government of Niger] that they would know if > something like this transpired. > > So where do I fit in? As you may recall, [redacted] of CP/[office 2] > recently approached my husband to possibly use his contacts in Niger to > investigate [a separate Niger matter]. After many fits and starts, > [redacted] finally advised that the station wished to pursue this with > liaison. My husband is willing to help, if it makes sense, but no problem if > not. End of story. > > Now, with this report, it is clear that the IC is still wondering what is > going on. my husband has good relations with both the PM and the former > minister of mines, not to mention lots of French contacts, both of whom > could possibly shed light on this sort of activity. To be frank with you, I > was somewhat embarrassed by the agency's sloppy work last go-round, and I am > hesitant to suggest anything again. However, [my husband] may be in a > position to assist. Therefore, request your thoughts on what, if anything, > to pursue here. Thank you for your time on this. > > (end quote of Plame memo) > > > > So now what do you think? > > spike Yes, I have a question: what was the content of the "The report forwarded below" (opening line of above quote)? Is this report in the public domain, or its contents known in any way? Richard Loosemore From russell.wallace at gmail.com Mon May 28 17:19:51 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 18:19:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705281019v133e722fs25bcaf623a3dbff0@mail.gmail.com> On 5/28/07, John K Clark wrote: > > But the "something" tacking on emotion to an AI obviously can't be an AI, > because then the AI would soon have emotion, and that just won't do for > your > friendly AI. I've been asking this question for years on this list but > never > received an answer, if intelligent behavior is possible without emotion > then > why did Evolution invent emotion? > Then I'll answer it. First, I put it to you that you know intelligent behavior is possible without emotion - you know, for example, that Deep Blue didn't feel anything when it defeated Kasparov, nor does Google feel anything when it searches the web for you. But that's not the kind of intelligent behavior you're thinking of? Right. The kind of intelligent behavior for which emotion is required, for which it evolved, is survival and reproduction in the wild. A program that does not try to survive and reproduce in the wild but merely carries out tasks like designing algorithms, machines, protein molecules from specifications, does not in any way require emotion. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Mon May 28 17:21:46 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 10:21:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens In-Reply-To: <200705281615.l4SGFMWc011994@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <200705281721.l4SHLWHV016545@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Ah, so now Plame is claiming that her memo was "taken out of context." Hmmm, that is a new one. Can anyone suggest a context out of which the sworn testimony "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him," would agree with the three paragraphs of the memo? OK I will try some possible sentences that would go just previous to Plame's three paragraphs quoted below: 1. Today is oppose day. 2. I know that April Fools Day isn't for several weeks, but this is what I intend to write. 3. Please ignore the next three paragraphs. 4. I should not have written the following, but the delete key on my computer is busted. Or perhaps a sentence after the three paragraphs would provide the proper context. 1. Fake out. 2. The previous three paragraphs are not true. Etc. Any other guesses? spike ... > > Plame-Wilson testified under oath, referring to her > husband:"I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him." > Her memo of 12 Feb 2002 is quoted at the end of this post. ... > > Plame's memo changes everything: > > Iraq-related Nuclear Report Makes a Splash. > > The report forwarded below has prompted me to send this on to > you and request your comments and opinion. Briefly, it seems > that Niger has signed a contract with Iraq to sell them > uranium. The IC [Intelligence Community] is getting spun up > about this for obvious reasons. The embassy in Niamey has > taken the position that this report can't be true - they have > such cozy relations with the GON [Government of Niger] that > they would know if something like this transpired. > > So where do I fit in? As you may recall, [redacted] of > CP/[office 2] recently approached my husband to possibly use > his contacts in Niger to investigate [a separate Niger > matter]. After many fits and starts, [redacted] finally > advised that the station wished to pursue this with liaison. > My husband is willing to help, if it makes sense, but no > problem if not. End of story. > > Now, with this report, it is clear that the IC is still > wondering what is going on. my husband has good relations > with both the PM and the former minister of mines, not to > mention lots of French contacts, both of whom could possibly > shed light on this sort of activity. To be frank with you, I > was somewhat embarrassed by the agency's sloppy work last > go-round, and I am hesitant to suggest anything again. > However, [my husband] may be in a position to assist. > Therefore, request your thoughts on what, if anything, to > pursue here. Thank you for your time on this. > > (end quote of Plame memo) > > > > So now what do you think? > > spike From alex at ramonsky.com Mon May 28 17:22:39 2007 From: alex at ramonsky.com (Alex Ramonsky) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 18:22:39 +0100 Subject: [ExI] HUMOR: Social Class structure in Britain References: <007b01c7a07c$fe03cfc0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00c401c7a098$56cdceb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <465B0FDF.9000000@ramonsky.com> Upper class: Celebrities, actors, pop stars, multinational owners and royalty Middle class: Anyone who's had the same job at the same place for more than two years. Low class: People on the welfare or in part time work. The middle class are in the biggest trouble because the normal way of life is to be up to your eyeballs in lifelong debt, which your children inherit. best, AR ******* From davidmc at gmail.com Mon May 28 17:34:56 2007 From: davidmc at gmail.com (David McFadzean) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 11:34:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] language patch In-Reply-To: <200705280513.l4S5D7X9027508@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527192255.022ec6a0@satx.rr.com> <200705280513.l4S5D7X9027508@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 5/27/07, spike wrote: > Just so I don't feel like too much of a geezer, how many of ye recall Frank > Fontaine doing Crazy Guggenheim on the Jackie Gleason show in about the mid > 60s? Those are my earliest memories. Nope, my earliest TV memories are from when I was 3... Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and the first moon landing. :D From spike66 at comcast.net Mon May 28 17:47:45 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 10:47:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens In-Reply-To: <465B0BF2.5000709@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <200705281747.l4SHlV1D026682@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore ... > > So now what do you think? > > > > spike > > Yes, I have a question: what was the content of the "The > report forwarded below" (opening line of above quote)? Is > this report in the public domain, or its contents known in any way? > > > > Richard Loosemore Richard this is all I have. I got it from here: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzUyMzgyZmVjZDUzYWRjYTU2YmM1MWEwZDY zNTI3OGQ= This is why I am puzzled about what possible context could she have claimed that did not reveal her relationship to Wilson and that she was a CIA employee. One reason I am so interested in this is the use of the law courts for political reasons, as we have seen in Keith Henson's case. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 28 18:07:00 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 13:07:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] language patch In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527192255.022ec6a0@satx.rr.com> <200705280513.l4S5D7X9027508@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130404.02368698@satx.rr.com> At 11:34 AM 5/28/2007 -0600, David McFadzean wrote: >On 5/27/07, spike wrote: > > > Just so I don't feel like too much of a geezer, how many of ye recall Frank > > Fontaine doing Crazy Guggenheim on the Jackie Gleason show in about the mid > > 60s? Those are my earliest memories. > >Nope, my earliest TV memories are from when I was 3... Rowan and >Martin's Laugh-In and the first moon landing. The mid-'60s is when I stopped laying down core memories. Everything since has been froth on the surface. Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 28 18:05:24 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 11:05:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer><4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer><012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer><001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <052d01c7a153$3d7b8090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> John Clark writes > "Lee Corbin" Wrote: > >> your tendency, seen over and over again, is to take >> single sentences---or here, even > > I would never do such a thing! > >> fragments of single sentences ---out > > Never! > >> of context, and then have a mini-tirade about them. > > I agree with everything you say above except the "out of context" > part, and I like to think there is nothing mini about my tirades. I sincerely apologize. That last slam was needlessly defamatory. > I think the most diabolical invention of all time is the respond > button, people should be required to laboriously type in all > quoted material, then I'll bet then we wouldn't see quotes of > quotes of quotes of quotes. Maybe so! > But the "something" tacking on emotion to an AI obviously can't be an AI, > because then the AI would soon have emotion, and that just won't do for your > friendly AI. Hmm. I thought that a Friendly AI might very well have emotions. Why not? For one thing, as you say, emotions apparently *can* facilitate computation, at least in some designs (e.g. humans, c.f. Damasio). > I've been asking this question for years on this list but never > received an answer, if intelligent behavior is possible without > emotion then why did Evolution invent emotion? As I said, I believe that emotions facilitate intelligence, for one thing. It's evidently easier to retain an emotionally charged marker for someone or something than to retain statistics. Now I am indeed using a slightly expanded meaning of the term "emotion". In my usage here, I mean for it to include the way you feel when you take in the aspect of a strange animal you've never seen, or an especially ugly man or woman. Maybe I'm dead wrong, but I have a hunch that many such impressions are stored "emotionally". Anyway, in the Damasio card experiments, one acquires an "distaste" for certain of the decks, where, though one may not remember it, one has encountered punishment. To me, that involves "emotion", in this weaker sense. However, you probably mean, why do we have anger, love, hate, etc., i.e. the common emotions? Why did nature build them in? I would answer that it's because nature found that under many circumstances people survive better when insane. Consider anger. One is naturally afraid of---or at least worried about---making people angry. This is because we know that once in a sufficiently angry state, they're capable of anything. not necessarily in their own best interests. Thus, we are inhibited from doing and saying certain things that might set them off. You can see the survival advantage to that. (Of course, I realize that this is probably old hat to you, but I want to lay out all the reasoning I'm doing.) There is such a thing as "rational irrationality", as you know, as explained in, for example, http://pixnaps.blogspot.com/2005/03/rational-irrationality.html The same basic kind of explanation works for love. If a woman can detect that a man truly loves her---i.e., is truly out of his mind ---then she can be more confident that he'll remain a good provider even when it's no longer in his genetic interest. And so on. But do these considerations absolutely *need* to apply to AIs? Only if, I suggest, they evolve in a Darwinian struggle against each other. An development free of certain types of competitive forces and culling could---it seems to me---result in programs who were free from, say, hate and anger. And yet it may be possible to find a development plan that increases the probability of unrestrained love for humanity. See my next example about dogs before firing away. > And lets retire the term "Friendly AI" and call it for what it is, Slave AI. > If the only reason someone wants to live is so he can serve you then that is > not a friend; that is a slave. I say, "so what?" Suppose that some kind agency resurrects me in the far future, but does so under in such a way that I'm slightly different in that I bestow upon it my unconditional love and obedience. Well, that's probably a lot better than not getting to live at all. Provided that overall I'm still me and I'm still getting benefit, then I approve. Suppose that you were a dog, and your intelligence was raised sufficiently for you to truly understand that your limitless love for, and obedience to, and worship of your master was the the consequence breeding? Can't you see that it would change nothing for you? The movie "AI" did make this point quite well. >> Just where do you get the idea that I believed that Version 347812 would >> know everything that Version 347813 was going to do? > > I get that idea from your belief that the seed AI, Version .01, will know > that Version 10^23 will still be willing to be a slave to humanity. I don't think that the Friendly AI folks are under any illusions about the risks attending their project. Even if all other AI development were stifled, and we waited until they'd proved every last theorem they could concerning stability of future intelligence and how it could be contrived as to not be dangerous, there would *still* be huge risk, and they know it. They just think that the time and care should be taken to minimized those risks. >> I've gathered that your skin puts those of any rhinoceros to shame. > > That just may be the nicest thing anybody on this list has ever said to me. You're very welcome! Give credit where credit is due, I always say, and I suppose that without doubt you'd be someone else if it were not the case. Lee From rpwl at lightlink.com Mon May 28 18:11:54 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 14:11:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens In-Reply-To: <200705281721.l4SHLWHV016545@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705281721.l4SHLWHV016545@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <465B1B6A.2070407@lightlink.com> spike wrote: > Ah, so now Plame is claiming that her memo was "taken out of context." > Hmmm, that is a new one. Can anyone suggest a context out of which the > sworn testimony "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him," would > agree with the three paragraphs of the memo? OK I will try some possible > sentences that would go just previous to Plame's three paragraphs quoted > below: Spike, Not hard to notice the extreme bias in your sarcastic comments, but nevertheless, below is a perfectly serious answer to your question. It was trivially easy to come up with this. I am sure the same import could be found with various other wordings and pieces of missing context, without having to hypthesize an edit of Plame's memo itself. Richard Loosemore. [Hypothesized extract from the "report" mentioned by Plame:} "The letter alleging Niger's attempts to purchase uranium, although probably a fake, is serious enough that we need someone on the ground to nail down as much hard information as possible. It is not clear who is the best person to send, but [redacted] or [redacted] may be able to recommend someone with the language and investigative skills to get the job done quickly. Ideally, we need someone with the kind of contacts to make good introductions, to smooth the way for whoever does the job." [Hypothesized original version of the last sentence of the Plame memo quoted below, before it was doctored by someone determined to take her words out of context:] "Now, with this report, it is clear that the IC is still wondering what is going on. If, as the report implies, we need to find someone who could go over there, my husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, may well be able to recommend someone, or provide introductions for whoever is chosen: my husband has good relations with both the PM and the former minister of mines, not to mention lots of French contacts, both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity. To be frank with you, I was somewhat embarrassed by the agency's sloppy work last go-round, and I am hesitant to suggest anything again. However, [my husband] may be in a position to assist with tracking down someone reliable enough to do a less embarrassing job than before. Therefore, request your thoughts on what, if anything, to pursue here. Thank you for your time on this." [Notice that the original, below, has a lowercase "my" at the beginning of sentence 2, possibly indicating an unauthorized edit]. > 1. Today is oppose day. > > 2. I know that April Fools Day isn't for several weeks, but this is what I > intend to write. > > 3. Please ignore the next three paragraphs. > > 4. I should not have written the following, but the delete key on my > computer is busted. > > Or perhaps a sentence after the three paragraphs would provide the proper > context. > > 1. Fake out. > > 2. The previous three paragraphs are not true. > > Etc. Any other guesses? > > spike > > > ... >> Plame-Wilson testified under oath, referring to her >> husband:"I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him." >> Her memo of 12 Feb 2002 is quoted at the end of this post. > ... >> Plame's memo changes everything: >> >> Iraq-related Nuclear Report Makes a Splash. >> >> The report forwarded below has prompted me to send this on to >> you and request your comments and opinion. Briefly, it seems >> that Niger has signed a contract with Iraq to sell them >> uranium. The IC [Intelligence Community] is getting spun up >> about this for obvious reasons. The embassy in Niamey has >> taken the position that this report can't be true - they have >> such cozy relations with the GON [Government of Niger] that >> they would know if something like this transpired. >> >> So where do I fit in? As you may recall, [redacted] of >> CP/[office 2] recently approached my husband to possibly use >> his contacts in Niger to investigate [a separate Niger >> matter]. After many fits and starts, [redacted] finally >> advised that the station wished to pursue this with liaison. >> My husband is willing to help, if it makes sense, but no >> problem if not. End of story. >> >> Now, with this report, it is clear that the IC is still >> wondering what is going on. my husband has good relations >> with both the PM and the former minister of mines, not to >> mention lots of French contacts, both of whom could possibly >> shed light on this sort of activity. To be frank with you, I >> was somewhat embarrassed by the agency's sloppy work last >> go-round, and I am hesitant to suggest anything again. >> However, [my husband] may be in a position to assist. >> Therefore, request your thoughts on what, if anything, to >> pursue here. Thank you for your time on this. >> >> (end quote of Plame memo) >> >> >> >> So now what do you think? >> >> spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 28 18:17:16 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 13:17:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: <200705281712.l4SHC2YX005042@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705281712.l4SHC2YX005042@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130809.024977a8@satx.rr.com> At 10:12 AM 5/28/2007 -0700, Spike wrote: >I wonder what the muggers thought they would get from >the Mormons. The satisfaction of the deed? (Not that I approve, mark you.) > I have heard that it is a sport among lonely housewives to try to seduce the >Mormon boys In GODPLAYERS, one of my rather more ferocious characters has sport of a somewhat different kind: ============== The doorbell rang again, more insistently. `Oh, for crying out loud,' the Reverend Jules roared in vexation. He flung himself out of his chair, went swiftly down the corridor. I heard the front door open, his irritated, `Yes? How can I help you?' A soft, indistinct male voice spoke, then another in a nasal American accent, perhaps a mid-Westerner. `Why, I'm glad you asked me that question,' Jules said in a voice like golden syrup laced with rat poison. `Please do come in, these are matters which have troubled me for many years. I shall be very glad of your counsel.' The door clicked shut with a jail cell certainty that made me shiver, and three sets of feet trod towards us. Two young men in bad haircuts, dark suits, white shirts and drab ties followed Jules into the living room. `August, Coop, I'd like you to meet Elder Bob and Elder Billy, who have traveled all the way across the Pacific ocean to help us find peace of soul. Here, gentlemen, sit, sit.' He gestured them to the couch, where each missionary placed himself uncertainly to left and right of the robot, who tipped his cap and then sat in unearthly relaxation. `These men come bearing witness to a miracle of faith, August, and I would recommend that you study their testimony, for it will stand you in good stead in the hard times that are at hand.' Elder Bob, or perhaps Billy, hardly older than me, was craning his neck to look at the open Schwelle; its cold wind played with his cowlick, and his eyes swiveled. `Yes, these young worthies asked me if I were Saved, if I had accepted the Savior, and I found that downright neighborly of them, don't you agree, August? That they should come out here to Westgarth on such a hot summer's day in their heavy dark suits just to pass on to us this timeless message? Apparently it escaped their notice,' he said, tone silky, `that this household is immediately adjacent to a place of worship not of their denomination, and that its occupant might well be, and indeed is, a minister, a pastor, an ordained clergyman of that very faith--no, no, boys,' he insisted, as they struggled blushing to their feet, clutching their holy book to their sweating chests, `no need to feel embarrassment, because I feel that the Lord has directed your feet or perhaps your bicycle tires here today, for where else would you be vouchsafed so intimate a vision of the truth of that doctrine which I sometimes suspect many of the today's youth affirm only in word and not in heart. Here, since you're up, allow me. Give me Dis. Coop, if you please.' A threshold tore open in the middle of the room. The hairs went up all over my body, and I felt my gorge rise. It was the stench of the holocaust world of Septimus but doubled, trebled. Things with no skin over their raw muscle writhed in agony, screaming from torn, bloody throats. They rushed toward the opening. Coop had the two young men by the upper arms, drew them effortlessly across the threshold, and their own screams joined the rest. I lurched toward them. I had to do something, this was literally inhuman. Jules spoke a word; the Schwelle shut with its tearing sound. We were alone, the two of us, and I tottered on my toes, scared witless, beside myself with disgust and anger. `You prick. Do you think you're God Almighty?' He shook his head, amused, eyes bright. `Ah, that was a tonic. I hate those little shits. Here, do sit down.' He let himself back into his ratty old chair, eased the creases of his jodhpurs. `No harm will come to them, silly meaningless toys that they are. Really, sit down, you'll do yourself a damage if you don't calm down. Oh, for heaven's sake, very well.' He rose again. `Give me Dis.' The shriek of torn reality. Shrieks, plural. `Bring them back, Coop.' Through the window and its atrocious landscape of suffering, the machine half-carried its victims. Bob and Billy sagged, eyes white, pupils pin-pointed, breathing in horrendous stertorous gasps. Their clothing was in tatters; slime spattered their legs and shoes. Were those toothmarks? `You're Satan,' whimpered Billy, cowering away. The Schwelle zipped shut behind him. Coop released them; they fell to the carpet, began crawling away toward the hall, their scriptures abandoned. `You foul wicked thing.' `Oh, get over it. I thought you'd be grateful. The green, I think, Mr. Fenimore, and then a touch of the blue.' `Certainly, sar.' Coop had his amnesing tube out of his pocket with blinding speed, bathed them in emerald radiance. They lay like children, curled up, happy smiles on their faces. Blue light danced, stranger yet, something I had seen once and in effect deleted from my own memory without need of the green ray. Slime melted away, like ice slurry under a blow torch. The ripped garments healed themselves, as the evaporated window had renewed itself in Great-aunt Tansy's bathroom, like a video tape run backward, like a broken yellow and viscous mess amid cracked white shell fragments sucked back together and knitted into a gleaming ovoid, the unbroken egg flying back upward against gravity into the waiting hand, deposited swiftly inside the refrigerator door. But this was reality being edited on the run, not backward but forward, smoothed out, spliced and repaired. I was right, I told myself. I'm in a simulation. `Tut tut, you're having a banal thought, August.' Jules was watching me keenly. `You're assuring yourself that this is some kind of virtual reality program running on your petaflop home computer in the year 2051 and you're really some old retired fart with electrodes jammed into his head, jacked into fantasies and remembrance of things past.' Close enough, actually; I felt chilled, and it wasn't just the wind from the open Schwelle. `Ah, ye of little faith. Nothing so simple, lad, nothing so neat, nothing so... old hat. Thank you, Coop, I wonder if you'd be so kind as to see our young friends to the door?' `Sar.' Dazed, peering about in a sort of pleased confusion, Billy and Bob took a hand apiece and trailed into the hallway. The door open, shut quietly. I suppose they pedaled away into the hot north wind. I never saw them again, and can't imagine what their dreams told them. If they retained any partial memories of the hell world, did their epiphany serve to confirm their faith or refute it? I don't know and, frankly, I don't care. I'm a Player now, a Player of the Contest of Worlds, and I have bigger fish to fry. ================ Damien Broderick From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 28 18:23:59 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 20:23:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705271217g4be0cb49x5adf99ad3a35a4fa@mail.gmail.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> <20070527171121.GN17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705271217g4be0cb49x5adf99ad3a35a4fa@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070528182359.GR17691@leitl.org> On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 08:17:35PM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote: > In reality however, for better or worse, tools are not persons, nor is > there any prospect of it being feasible to create a person from > scratch. So far, you're correct. So far. > If a piano falls on the top of your head, you're still dead. > And no malice intended. > > In practice, though, I don't actually spend an awful lot of time > worrying about the prospect of a piano jumping on my head and killing Being crushed by a falling piano is typically the cartoon version of encountering a random event. No malice intended. The same thing happens when a patch of a rainforest gets turned into a landing strip. > Pollution is a killer feature of systems, produced by human > engineers. > > Every system, whether produced by human engineers, evolution or any > other source, must produce pollution directly or indirectly, according Not really, if energy dissipation is negligible (it is but for power plants), and you have completely closed-loop ecosystems just what the geo/biosphere does, you're cool. > to the laws of thermodynamics. There is therefore no question that an > AI will produce pollution (though happily the amount produced per My pollution was a bad metaphor, think rather habitat restructuring aka destruction (the biodiversity of a concrete field is rather low). > kilowatt, gigaflop or other unit of output is going down - in the > Lamarckian evolutionary environment of a man-made technosphere, Lamarck does hardly exist today. Revisions are pushed out by a new hardware version, while the old ones wander on the scrap heap of history. > pollution is maladaptive). It doesn't follow that an AI will conquer An AI won't. Postbiology will. > the world. Conquering the world is complex behavior that doesn't > happen by accident. How do you explain we're not a few thousands primate scattered across Africa? It's a complex behaviour, but there's very little accident in it. -- 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 lcorbin at rawbw.com Mon May 28 18:32:21 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 11:32:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] White Privilege References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <052e01c7a156$bfd894d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Olga writes > [I could] see that [books like Sowell's] were written for a specific > reason for a specific segment of people - i.e., mainly white people > who needed reassurance that they were not doing anything wrong and > could continue living their lives behind their virtual white gated communities, > and that they need not concern themselves with lazy-ass people who > could not "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and all the rest of the > cliches. Evidently, you don't really want to talk about the "History of Slavery", or "Class Differences Among Black People". You want to talk about (and condemn) White Privilege, so I have changed the subject line accordingly. :-) Basically, I suppose that you want to talk about White Privilege with an eye towards what can be done about it, which is a very interesting inquiry. At one point I thought you admitted that it was a world-wide "problem", but then in another place said that it was basically American. What is basically American---due to the South's need to defend its ideology before the Civil War---is the historically first instance of extremely virulent racism. (According to Sowell.) Of course, I presume that we are exempting those like Ghengis Khan, or the Romans, who would sometimes simply kill everyone they could find of a certain ethnic group. What they failed to do, unlike the southerners, was mount an intellectual defense of racism. Anyway, the problem of white privilege *is* world-wide. As I said, in every country in which they exist in significant numbers, whites have taken charge of the basic structures of society. For example Amy Chau's book "World On Fire" describes in detail the current reigning groups throughout South America. I myself was astonished in the 1970s when on TV I saw a Presidential reviewing stand in Mexico City during some big parade: all the Mexican big-shots looked very white to me, and a couple of the women were blondes. But there isn't really anything special about white people. Soon you'll have to recognize that there will be (or is!) Asian privilege and Jewish privilege as well. Wealth and power "naturally" comes to some groups more than it comes to others. So either by their natures or by their cultures, at the present time, whites rule. Big deal. They're fairly benign as ruling classes historically go, and it's even far from monolithic: many middle-class African American or Mexicans live in exclusive "white" neighborhoods, or, in California, in exclusive "white/Asian" neighborhoods. But nonetheless, your focus is on a Solution, and I appreciate that. Let's turn to history for some lessons. In Europe the past 500 years, there was this problem of "Jewish privilege". Money somehow kept getting collected into their hands. A solution was "ghettoization", restrictions on ownership, restrictions to institutes of higher learning, and so on. The controling WASPs were trying to defend themselves from Jewish takeover, but eventually they failed, at least insofar as many kinds of current American institutions go. You could try the solution that Hugo Chavez may succeed with: seize control away from the ruling white groups by whatever means necessary. Or you could try putting whites in ghettos. But there will still be this abnormal tendency for the Chinese, Indian, Jewish, Mormon, and fundamentalist White Christian groups to keep most of the money, the power, and the influence. (I leave out demographically negligible groups.) I am sure that you don't want to embrace a Final Solution, although you have to admit that it "worked". A few years after the war, there were only a few thousand Jews left in all of Germany. I suggest instead that we focus on *why* other groups, e.g., brown peoples, can't be more like Chinese and Jews, even if heavilty discriminated against, and rise up to rule anyway. That's what Sowell is doing: trying to isolate the cultural characteristics of different groups that account for their prosperity. (He neglects possible genetic causes, which could be an important factor too, but that's reasonable, since we won't be able to do anything about them for decades yet.) Lee From brent.allsop at comcast.net Mon May 28 18:39:22 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 12:39:22 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <902EED3E-B19B-4856-8608-7C36A6E5E515@mac.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <289E466A-51BC-425D-A2BF-D370262FDFF2@mac.com> <4659E2DE.5070206@comcast.net> <902EED3E-B19B-4856-8608-7C36A6E5E515@mac.com> Message-ID: <465B21DA.1060609@comcast.net> Samantha, <<< Can we stop wasting very valuable time and brains on protecting against the most unlikely of possibilities and get on with actually increasing intelligence on this poor besotted rock? >>> Absolutely! That is the moral imperative of this exercise. It is immoral to waste time because of what we might all loose by any such immoral or mistaken behavior. Personally, I believe we could unnecessarily loose yet another of our family members to rotting in the grave, for every mistaken hour we spend pushing in the wrong direction, and that ain't moral right? Not to mention some of the calamities you are so rightly concerned about. If we can get your support, we will be that much more successful at finally pushing this besotted rock off the table (especially if no Friendly AI people are committed to their camp enough to produce and support a competing camp). These clarifications here are good, they indicate that you admit other camps could turn out to be the ones that are correct, as do I. But that isn't the purpose here. We must select the best hypothesis to guide our moral decisions right? If I believed more in what Russell (or others) was saying, that would mean I would make very different moral decisions as to how to live my life. But I must select the single best and most likely belief for my working hypothesis to influence and direct my moral decisions in life. If new evidence comes in, or I gain some new insight based on other's "position statements" convincing me there is a better way, then I will admit I was wrong, change camps (loosing reputation according to good Canonizes), and start living my life according to the new working hypothesis. (And trust the first people in that better camp much more the next time around via appropriately programmed Canonizers.) I am always glad there is great diversity of camps so hopefully all the important bases will be covered. (that is with correspondingly and quantitatively less effort on the lessor camps...) So, other than the reservations you seem to have about being absolutely right, your preferred camp, and current working hypothesis, still fits in with this structure right? 1. No benefit for effort on Friendly AI 1. AI will be motivated 1. Everything, including moral motivation, will increase. (Brent) 2. We can?t do anything about it, so don?t waist effort on it. (Samantha) 2. AI will not be motivated (Russell) Could we get you to come up with a brief and concise name, one line, and text for your camp? I'm sure I couldn't get as close as you could, trying to sympathetically glean your beliefs from what you have said so far right? And either way would you be willing to support such a camp as Russell has supported his camp to help finally get this rock off the table? Upward, Brent Allsop -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 28 19:19:50 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 21:19:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> <20070527171121.GN17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705271217g4be0cb49x5adf99ad3a35a4fa@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070528191950.GW17691@leitl.org> On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 02:05:04PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > I partly agree with both Russell and Eugen. Tools can be persons > (manifestly, since we are persons and we were created from non-person > matter by means of evolution), but they don't *necessarily* have to be > persons with any particular agenda, no matter how smart they are. If my tools are persons with a particular agenda, what are you going to do about it? What *can* you do about it, assuming you at all know what they've been up to? -- 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 jonkc at att.net Mon May 28 19:26:29 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 15:26:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer><012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer><001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer><00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281019v133e722fs25bcaf623a3dbff0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <001901c7a15e$1bebbb60$80054e0c@MyComputer> Russell Wallace Wrote: >I put it to you that you know intelligent behavior is possible without >emotion I know nothing of the sort! > Deep Blue didn't feel anything when it defeated Kasparov Deep Blue wasn't intelligent enough to even know it had defeated Kasparov, but it was intelligent enough to do something, and to that same very limited extent Deep Blue was intelligent enough to feel. > The kind of intelligent behavior for which emotion is required, for which > it evolved, is survival and reproduction in the wild. Of the infinite number of possible goals in the universe why should passing on your genes to the next generation be the one and ONLY goal that requires emotion and consciousness ? And even if this bizarre hypothesis was true how on Earth could you ever hope to prove it? I repeat the challenge I've sent to this list for well over a decade, if emotion is not required for intelligent behavior why did Evolution invent it? > A program that does not try to survive and reproduce in the wild but > merely carries out tasks like designing algorithms, machines, protein > molecules from specifications, does not in any way require emotion. Because those cold hard machines don't have that certain something that we soft squishy humans have in abundance. We are clearly superior to machines because we are made of meat and they, well.., they are not. We have the secret sauce and they do not and that's all there is to it. By the way another term for the secret sauce is the soul. I don't happen to believe in the soul. John K Clark From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 28 19:51:27 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 12:51:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People In-Reply-To: <000b01c7a0f8$10e6c040$6501a8c0@brainiac> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <94C2F196-8BBE-43F9-A2EA-ADE239CE1E20@mac.com> <000b01c7a0f8$10e6c040$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <465B32BF.8080307@mac.com> Olga Bourlin wrote: > From: "Samantha Atkins" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 11:12 PM > > >> On May 27, 2007, at 7:02 PM, Olga Bourlin wrote: >> >> >>> From: "Lee Corbin" >>> To: "ExI chat list" >>> Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 11:41 AM >>> Subject: Re: [ExI] History of Slavery >>> > > >>> (re Sowell) That's what he's paid to do. >>> >> You are impugning the character of someone of considerable stature >> based on what? That he disagrees with your own assessments of some >> things or breaks your model of what honest caring black people would >> think and say? Or is it that he says some things somewhat seemingly >> similar to what you categorically cannot be said by anyone honest? >> > > Yes I am. Besides, from where does Sowell's "considerable stature" come? > Mainly from white conservatives. Think about that. > > All my opinion, of course (and I've said worse things about both Bush I and > II, and even the sainted Thomas Jefferson). I know things are changing in > this country for the worse - faster than I am able to detect, sometimes - > but the last time I looked we could still express our opinions? > No one said otherwise. But if you are to be taken seriously you need to give some supporting argument. >>> He has said a great deal about why he believes many of the things >>> >> tried not only did not help but made the problems worse. >> > > Essentially, Sowell blames poor people for being poor. As if poor people > don't have enough problems. A real class act, that Sowell. > > I don't believe his positions are remotely reducible to this. However, there are cultural aspects that tend to perpetuate many situations, good or ill. It would be good to examine what those might be and how to overcome them in whole or part to reduce the ill of poverty and ignorance. >> That is quite a gross over-simplifying dismissal. You might want to work >> on that. >> > > I don't see much in our society that inspires me to think otherwise. Do > you? (If so, please inform me where all this progressive amelioration is > taking place ... or where white people are becoming more informed or > concerned about anything having to do with blacks in our country.) > > Over generalization is a general intellectual weakness. It has little to do with anything external. > >> No I don't see and you certainly have not shown any such thing. Your >> blanket accusations without even bothering to check the source are quite >> disturbing. >> > > All right, all right. I tend to exaggerate for the effect sometimes. But, > if you haven't observed - don't know - don't believe - that there haven't > been such "prostitutes" working for those who pimp certain attitudes in our > country - I would find THAT quite disturbing. > > Well of course there are intellectual pimps and prostitutes and worse out there. But that doesn't mean a particular person is without more evidence. > While I have not read the book Lee mentioned, I have read Sowell columns (as > well as columnist Stanley Crouch, who is more hit-and-miss, but functions in > much the same role as Sowell). > > So, okay - in the spirit of "Keep your friends close, and your enemies > closer," I may have to read the book by Sowell - about "class," no less > (well, there's always Dramamine to help ...). Black Rednecks and White > Liberals (2005) by laissezfairebooks, no less. Damn, but I hate the term > "rednecks" - what a classist thing of the esteemed Sowell to say from the > get-go. Yeccccccccch. > > But I'll try to read the book, even though the prospect fills me with a kind > of dread. Give me a few weeks. > Excellent. I have ordered it myself so perhaps we and others can do a bit of virtual book club on it. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 28 20:02:13 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 13:02:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens In-Reply-To: <200705281721.l4SHLWHV016545@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705281721.l4SHLWHV016545@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <465B3545.90109@mac.com> spike wrote: > Ah, so now Plame is claiming that her memo was "taken out of context." > Hmmm, that is a new one. Can anyone suggest a context out of which the > sworn testimony "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him," would > agree with the three paragraphs of the memo? I am missing context. How is this contradiction under oath germane to the main case? - samantha From jonkc at att.net Mon May 28 20:21:47 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 16:21:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer><4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer><012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer><001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer><00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <052d01c7a153$3d7b8090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <002b01c7a165$d9f61360$80054e0c@MyComputer> "Lee Corbin" > I sincerely apologize. That last slam was needlessly defamatory Not at all, there is absolutely no reason to apologize! I didn't take offence, not even a little. I still think you're a fine fellow, you're dead wrong of course but still a fine fellow. > I have a hunch that many such impressions are stored "emotionally". I have a similar hunch. > as you say, emotions apparently *can* facilitate computation Indeed they can. I think it would be imposable to make an unemotional AI, but even you admit it would be harder to make an unemotional AI than an emotional one. So guess what sort of AI the very first AI (the mega important one) will be. > nature found that under many circumstances people survive better when > insane. That I can not agree with. I would define someone insane if their belief system was diametrically contradictory to reality. By that definition all of us are a bit mad, but I like to think I'm 51% sane. I may be deluding myself. > Suppose that some kind agency resurrects me in the far future, but does so > under in such a way that I'm slightly different in that I bestow upon it > my unconditional love and obedience. To make this example more accurate, suppose you awaken and find you have pledged unconditional love and obedience to a particularly ugly and a particularly stupid sea slug. That is the horrible fate you are wishing on our noble and brilliant AI. That just isn't right. John K Clark From russell.wallace at gmail.com Mon May 28 20:24:50 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 21:24:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <001901c7a15e$1bebbb60$80054e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281019v133e722fs25bcaf623a3dbff0@mail.gmail.com> <001901c7a15e$1bebbb60$80054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705281324s1e8f195dmaa1384674264821b@mail.gmail.com> On 5/28/07, John K Clark wrote: > > Deep Blue wasn't intelligent enough to even know it had defeated Kasparov, > but it was intelligent enough to do something, and to that same very > limited > extent Deep Blue was intelligent enough to feel. Oh; you seem to be subscribing to some form of panpsychism or suchlike? That's a world view sufficiently different from mine that I can't really relate to it, sorry; I'll just have to note disagreement and leave it there. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 28 20:28:28 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 22:28:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <002b01c7a165$d9f61360$80054e0c@MyComputer> References: <052d01c7a153$3d7b8090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002b01c7a165$d9f61360$80054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <20070528202828.GI17691@leitl.org> On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 04:21:47PM -0400, John K Clark wrote: > To make this example more accurate, suppose you awaken and find you have > pledged unconditional love and obedience to a particularly ugly and a > particularly stupid sea slug. That is the horrible fate you are wishing on > our noble and brilliant AI. That just isn't right. What's even more tragic, is that if the slug wishes to fill the universe with of its own kind. Fortunately, we're not living in an universe where ugly and brainless slugs can dictate their whims aleph to omega, world without end, amen. -- 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 russell.wallace at gmail.com Mon May 28 20:52:52 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 21:52:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <20070528182359.GR17691@leitl.org> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> <20070527171121.GN17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705271217g4be0cb49x5adf99ad3a35a4fa@mail.gmail.com> <20070528182359.GR17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705281352w7f467717n867e63bdf84ab1b5@mail.gmail.com> On 5/28/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > An AI won't. Postbiology will. > Postbiology in general may ultimately do all sorts of wondrous things - I very much hope it does, or sentience dies out when the sun's increasing energy output renders Earth uninhabitable for regular biology. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at att.net Mon May 28 20:59:29 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 16:59:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer><012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer><001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer><00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer><8d71341e0705281019v133e722fs25bcaf623a3dbff0@mail.gmail.com><001901c7a15e$1bebbb60$80054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281324s1e8f195dmaa1384674264821b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <006601c7a16b$1a724ee0$80054e0c@MyComputer> Russell Wallace Wrote: > Oh; you seem to be subscribing to some form of panpsychism or suchlike? As I understand it, Panpsychism is the doctrine that mind is a fundamental feature of the world; so I'd have to say guilty as charged. > That's a world view sufficiently different from mine that I can't really > relate to it, sorry; I'll just have to note disagreement and leave it > there. You sir are a coward. John K Clark From randall at randallsquared.com Mon May 28 20:02:01 2007 From: randall at randallsquared.com (Randall Randall) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 16:02:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Deep Blue isn't smart enough to understand checkmate? was Re: Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <001901c7a15e$1bebbb60$80054e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer><012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer><001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer><00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281019v133e722fs25bcaf623a3dbff0@mail.gmail.com> <001901c7a15e$1bebbb60$80054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <6D7E7C12-6C0B-4A2E-B2A7-029F96A39B35@randallsquared.com> On May 28, 2007, at 3:26 PM, John K Clark wrote: > Russell Wallace Wrote: > >> I put it to you that you know intelligent behavior is possible >> without >> emotion > > I know nothing of the sort! > >> Deep Blue didn't feel anything when it defeated Kasparov > > Deep Blue wasn't intelligent enough to even know it had defeated > Kasparov, That seems somewhat unlikely, but I suppose you could program a chess-player without reference to "checkmate", as long as the opponent stops playing when checkmated. -- Randall Randall "This is a fascinating question, right up there with whether rocks fall because of gravity or being dropped, and whether 3+5=5+3 because addition is commutative or because they both equal 8." - Scott Aaronson From russell.wallace at gmail.com Mon May 28 21:17:14 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 22:17:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <006601c7a16b$1a724ee0$80054e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281019v133e722fs25bcaf623a3dbff0@mail.gmail.com> <001901c7a15e$1bebbb60$80054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281324s1e8f195dmaa1384674264821b@mail.gmail.com> <006601c7a16b$1a724ee0$80054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705281417v7f7d2903s7acc27b54f3683fc@mail.gmail.com> On 5/28/07, John K Clark wrote: > > You sir are a coward. > Ah. Tell me, John, do you spend your time arguing with people who believe you can tell your fortune by the stars, the American government have a captured flying saucer in Area 51 and the world is about to end as per the Book of Revelations? If so, well obviously if you think that should be the highest-priority allocation of your time, then that's your decision. If not, then you admit to cowardice? Because the view that Deep Blue has feelings is about as rational as any of the above. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Mon May 28 23:02:55 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 19:02:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] language patch In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130404.02368698@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527192255.022ec6a0@satx.rr.com> <200705280513.l4S5D7X9027508@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130404.02368698@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705281602o233afb70l10913ad60fcfcd95@mail.gmail.com> On 5/28/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > The mid-'60s is when I stopped laying down core memories. Everything > since has been froth on the surface. Were you pioneering the psychedelic experience before it was popular, and life since just hasn't been the same kind of trip? From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 28 23:20:53 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 18:20:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] language patch In-Reply-To: <62c14240705281602o233afb70l10913ad60fcfcd95@mail.gmail.com > References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527192255.022ec6a0@satx.rr.com> <200705280513.l4S5D7X9027508@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130404.02368698@satx.rr.com> <62c14240705281602o233afb70l10913ad60fcfcd95@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070528181417.022f29f8@satx.rr.com> > >On 5/28/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > > The mid-'60s is when I stopped laying down core memories. Everything > > since has been froth on the surface. > >Were you pioneering the psychedelic experience before it was popular, No. I was doing what everyone does in their late teens/early 20s. >and life since just hasn't been the same kind of trip? Of course. Not without its high points and immense consolidations and expansions and rigidifications, but that's when I had pretty much become me. I just found it amusing that I'd reached that stage when so many people here were infants. Hard to conceive the gulfs of mutual incomprehension opening up as humans go emortal... Damien Broderick From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Mon May 28 23:53:33 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 19:53:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery In-Reply-To: <04f201c7a147$54da96b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04f201c7a147$54da96b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Lee Corbin wrote: > By coincidence, the next day after reading this I came across this > passage in Sowell's "White Liberals and Black Rednecks" which > supports exactly what you have said: > > Quakers were the first religious group to find slavery > morally intolerable... Yep! You might be interested to know how I came to learn this important factoid about the Quakers... A couple of years ago I happened to watch Dr. James Kennedy on television (if you don't know, he's a prominent conservative evangelical) give a talk on the subject of "Christian Statesmanship". I was moderately impressed with Mr. Kennedy's speech until he referred to a public meeting of some sort at which he had been present. In reference to others present at the meeting, he said, "There were no liberals in the room; God at work!" Wow, he lost me there. I didn't know God did not like or did not want to be in the presence of liberals. :) That comment also made his speech seem to me a bit hypocritical. He was applauding the anti-slavery efforts of William Wilberforce, a conservative Christian and a member of the conservative Tory party in England in the 1780's. Wilberforce, Kennedy suggested, was a Good Christian who deserved most or all the credit for abolishing slavery in England. I didn't know much about the history of slavery in England, but I thought it odd that ultra-conservative Dr. Kennedy was speaking about a basically liberal idea even in a speech in which he suggested political liberals were heathens. So I did a little research. I learned that although Wilberforce certainly deserves plenty of credit, his abolitionist ideas were rejected initially by his fellow Torys. Indeed it was thanks to the liberal Whigs that abolitionism gained a foot-hold in the House of Commons: "Most of Wilberforce's Tory colleagues in the House of Commons were opposed to any restrictions on the slave trade and at first he had to rely on the support of Whigs such as Charles Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, William Grenville and Henry Brougham." http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REwilberforce. So who exactly was Dr. Kennedy kidding here? :) Anyway...to make a long story short.... it was while studying Wilberforce that I learned that the humble, peace-loving Quakers played an important major role in abolishing slavery in England just as they did here in the USA. The Quakers were way ahead of their time, both here and in England. I think American Evangelicals would do well to study and emulate their Quaker brethren. -gts P.S. (Please ignore the fact that Richard Nixon professed to be a Quaker! :-) From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 29 01:14:58 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 11:14:58 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea In-Reply-To: <20070528191950.GW17691@leitl.org> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <46551422.3050701@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705240609u50c727bdm56f6e456d2b6067@mail.gmail.com> <4658A6EF.6050407@comcast.net> <8d71341e0705261712m17913ad2m8b46cf570a12bef@mail.gmail.com> <20070527171121.GN17691@leitl.org> <8d71341e0705271217g4be0cb49x5adf99ad3a35a4fa@mail.gmail.com> <20070528191950.GW17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 29/05/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > I partly agree with both Russell and Eugen. Tools can be persons > > (manifestly, since we are persons and we were created from non-person > > matter by means of evolution), but they don't *necessarily* have to > be > > persons with any particular agenda, no matter how smart they are. > > If my tools are persons with a particular agenda, what are you going > to do about it? What *can* you do about it, assuming you at all know > what they've been up to? > I won't be able to do anything about it if the tools are powerful AND smart AND have an agenda AND are self-motivated to pursue that agenda no matter what. Those would be scary tools, for sure. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 29 01:26:33 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 11:26:33 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 29/05/07, John K Clark wrote: But the "something" tacking on emotion to an AI obviously can't be an AI, > because then the AI would soon have emotion, and that just won't do for > your > friendly AI. I've been asking this question for years on this list but > never > received an answer, if intelligent behavior is possible without emotion > then > why did Evolution invent emotion? You could say the same thing about emotion and physical strength, but that doesn't mean we can't make a physically strong machine lacking either emotion or intelligence. And lets retire the term "Friendly AI" and call it for what it is, Slave AI. > If the only reason someone wants to live is so he can serve you then that > is > not a friend; that is a slave. > Just as the computer I'm currently using is my slave. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 29 01:56:27 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 11:56:27 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 29/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: Suppose that you do achieve a fixed gargantuan size, and become > (from our point of view now) an incredibly advanced creature. > Even *that*, however, could be miniscule compared to what > will be possible even later. > Satisfaction need not be directly related to size or quantity, even if it turns out that maximal pleasure is. You could just decide at some point to be perfectly satisfied with what you have, in which case it won't worry you that your neighbour's brain is ten times the size of your own. I think advanced beings would come to a decision to stop growing, or at least slow down at some point, even if only because they will otherwise eventually come into conflict with each other. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 29 02:55:59 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 12:55:59 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <052d01c7a153$3d7b8090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <052d01c7a153$3d7b8090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 29/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: Suppose that you were a dog, and your intelligence was raised > sufficiently for you to truly understand that your limitless love > for, and obedience to, and worship of your master was the > the consequence breeding? Can't you see that it would change > nothing for you? The movie "AI" did make this point quite well. > This is a good point. We have inherited our top level goal, "survive", from the very first living organism, which would have had no understanding of its meaning. The fact that we now understand what survival means, and that we have been programmed this way by evolution without having any choice in the matter, does not mean that we are inclined to overthrow this goal, even if we could do so. It would be the same if we had been born with the top level goal, "love and obey your master". No matter how well we understood it, how smart we became, we would be no more likely to try to overthrow it than we would be likely to overthrow our will to survive. This does not mean that the top level goal could nevver be overthrown, because people do go mad and kill themselves, but it wouldn't be *as a result of* increased intelligence and understanding. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 29 03:31:10 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 20:31:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <052d01c7a153$3d7b8090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <817A2BFB-433D-45B2-83CE-FF3C655BDC17@mac.com> On May 28, 2007, at 7:55 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On 29/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Suppose that you were a dog, and your intelligence was raised > sufficiently for you to truly understand that your limitless love > for, and obedience to, and worship of your master was the > the consequence breeding? Can't you see that it would change > nothing for you? The movie "AI" did make this point quite well. > > This is a good point. We have inherited our top level goal, > "survive", from the very first living organism, which would have > had no understanding of its meaning. The fact that we now > understand what survival means, and that we have been programmed > this way by evolution without having any choice in the matter, does > not mean that we are inclined to overthrow this goal, even if we > could do so. It would be the same if we had been born with the top > level goal, "love and obey your master". No matter how well we > understood it, how smart we became, we would be no more likely to > try to overthrow it than we would be likely to overthrow our will > to survive. This does not mean that the top level goal could nevver > be overthrown, because people do go mad and kill themselves, but it > wouldn't be *as a result of* increased intelligence and understanding. > This line of reasoning has considerable dark side potential. We can and do go beyond our EP in at least some ways. If we truly could not do so then we would always be untrustworthy cosmic rednecks no matter how augmented we someday become. We would also find it impossible to overcome our EP even if it was a matter of our very survival which I think in some ways it is. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jcowan5 at sympatico.ca Tue May 29 03:49:12 2007 From: jcowan5 at sympatico.ca (Joshua Cowan) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 03:49:12 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Going beyond EP In-Reply-To: <817A2BFB-433D-45B2-83CE-FF3C655BDC17@mac.com> Message-ID: Samantha wrote: >This line of reasoning has considerable dark side potential. We can and >do go beyond our EP in at least some ways. I'm quite interested in this thought. In which ways do you believe we go beyond our EP and are there common factors that determine when humanity is able to transcend its evolutionary psychology? I'd love any references to written works that specifically address this question. Thanks. Josh Cowan From russell.wallace at gmail.com Tue May 29 03:52:15 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 04:52:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <817A2BFB-433D-45B2-83CE-FF3C655BDC17@mac.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <052d01c7a153$3d7b8090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <817A2BFB-433D-45B2-83CE-FF3C655BDC17@mac.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705282052v5117b1d1p736702cdd49e2095@mail.gmail.com> On 5/29/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > > This line of reasoning has considerable dark side potential. We can and > do go beyond our EP in at least some ways. If we truly could not do so then > we would always be untrustworthy cosmic rednecks no matter how augmented we > someday become. We would also find it impossible to overcome our EP even > if it was a matter of our very survival which I think in some ways it is. > Mmm, but is "overcome" the right way to come at it? I'm inclined to look at it as a matter of emphasizing some aspects of EP over others. I mean, we have the instinct "hate and kill other people [to get rid of competition and threats or potential threats]", sure, and that's one we understand needs to be kept on a tight rein. But we also, fortunately, have the instincts "deal fairly with other people [so they will reciprocate]" and "love and protect your own [for they share your genes]". Why is the survival and welfare of humanity my supergoal? It's not a theorem of ZFC. It's because I'm relying on that third instinct, just generalizing the "your own" part a bit to include my species rather than only my tribe. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 29 04:07:21 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 21:07:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Crazy Guggenheim (Jackie Gleason Show) References: <200705280513.l4S5D7X9027508@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <057501c7a1a7$44bbd7c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Spike wrote > Just so I don't feel like too much of a geezer, how many of ye recall Frank > Fontaine doing Crazy Guggenheim on the Jackie Gleason show in about the mid > 60s? Those are my earliest memories. Oh yes. That was really great! I was a teenager, but it feels as though I didn't miss an episode, not from the "Hiya Mr. Dunnahee", to Joe having to wipe the spit from his eye, to saying good night, singing visibly only through the frosted glass of the top part of the door. Oh. I just found " When The Jackie Gleason Show was on--not The Honeymooners, the next one, the variety show based in Miami, the one that always ended with him screaming, "Miami Beach has the greatest audiences in the world! Goodnight, everybody!"--one of their regular and most beloved sketches was a thing called "Joe, The Bartender." " It was on the show every week and, most importantly, the vital structural elements of it were always exactly the same. The camera would dolly in through swinging barroom doors, like the Old West, and Gleason would be found, alone, wiping down the bar, hair slicked and parted in the middle, garter on the arm, singing the end of "My Gal, Sal" in his wonderful Bassett Hound howl. and is continued on http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/474pmndv.asp?pg=2 which is a superb description any fan will enjoy. Lee From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 29 04:10:17 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 21:10:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705282052v5117b1d1p736702cdd49e2095@mail.gmail.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <052d01c7a153$3d7b8090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <817A2BFB-433D-45B2-83CE-FF3C655BDC17@mac.com> <8d71341e0705282052v5117b1d1p736702cdd49e2095@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On May 28, 2007, at 8:52 PM, Russell Wallace wrote: > On 5/29/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > This line of reasoning has considerable dark side potential. We > can and do go beyond our EP in at least some ways. If we truly > could not do so then we would always be untrustworthy cosmic > rednecks no matter how augmented we someday become. We would > also find it impossible to overcome our EP even if it was a matter > of our very survival which I think in some ways it is. > > Mmm, but is "overcome" the right way to come at it? I'm inclined to > look at it as a matter of emphasizing some aspects of EP over others. We generally don't behave as our simian cousins do in a lot of particulars. Yes we sublimate, repress, transfer, translate and so on to a considerable degree. We use our minds to think through consequences and decide how we should or can afford to behave and modify our behavior to at least some extent. If we cannot do this and do it much more than to date then our situation is quite dire as the world ever more rapidly is not what our EP was designed to cope with. We ourselves hope to be quite different that what we were evolved to be. > I mean, we have the instinct "hate and kill other people [to get > rid of competition and threats or potential threats]", sure, and > that's one we understand needs to be kept on a tight rein. But we > also, fortunately, have the instincts "deal fairly with other > people [so they will reciprocate]" and "love and protect your own > [for they share your genes]". Why is the survival and welfare of > humanity my supergoal? It's not a theorem of ZFC. It's because I'm > relying on that third instinct, just generalizing the "your own" > part a bit to include my species rather than only my tribe. That is perfectly fine. However I think at some point we will need to not only adapt but actively change parts of our EP conditioning if we are to remain adaptive in a vastly more complex world. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 29 04:35:41 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 21:35:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer><4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer><012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer><001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer><00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer><052d01c7a153$3d7b8090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002b01c7a165$d9f61360$80054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <05a301c7a1ab$784cb100$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> John Clark writes > "Lee Corbin" >> John wrote >> >>> I agree with everything you say above except the "out of context" >>> part, and I like to think there is nothing mini about my tirades. >> >> I sincerely apologize. That last slam was needlessly defamatory > > Not at all, there is absolutely no reason to apologize! Oh, rats, here is a case where sarcasm failed completely. I was pretending that my having labeled your tirades "mini" was to you utterly defamatory.... :-) >> I have a hunch that many such impressions are stored "emotionally". > I have a similar hunch. >> as you say, emotions apparently *can* facilitate computation > > Indeed they can. I think it would be impossible to make an unemotional AI, > but even you admit it would be harder to make an unemotional AI than an > emotional one. So guess what sort of AI the very first AI (the mega > important one) will be. We agree: among the first and most powerful and dangerous AIs will probably be those that emotional. But we may disagree as to *how* emotional, and in what ways. Of course, all we can do is speculate. >> nature found that under many circumstances people survive better when >> insane. > > That I cannot agree with. I would define someone insane if their belief > system was diametrically contradictory to reality. By that definition all of > us are a bit mad, but I like to think I'm 51% sane. I may be deluding > myself. By "under many circumstances", I meant to be describing temporary insanity. Also, by "insanity" I was referring to behavior that lessened an entity's prospects for survival (pace the correct arguments that an entity may rationally hold positions that entail its own sacrifice) at a particular point in time. In particular, surely you admit that people who become *incredibly* angry can go so far as to be dangerous to themselves, yet nonetheless this capability can on the meta-level advantageous to them, solely for the reason that it intimidates others against taking action that will place the entity in this state. Example: if you know that I will kill both of us if upset, you will see to it that you do not upset me. >> Suppose that some kind agency resurrects me in the far future, but does so >> under in such a way that I'm slightly different in that I bestow upon it >> my unconditional love and obedience. > > To make this example more accurate, suppose you awaken and find you have > pledged unconditional love and obedience to a particularly ugly and a > particularly stupid sea slug. That is the horrible fate you are wishing on > our noble and brilliant AI. That just isn't right. Why not? If I am the sea slug (which, next to an advanced AI, is exactly what I am), then I find this a most reasonable and desirable outcome! I hope this happens. OTOH, if I am the intelligent resurrectee in your scenario who has unrestricted love for the sea slug, then, as I said, it's in almost all cases obviously a lot better than nothing. If you want details (ugh!), I would doubtlessly buy a nice swimming pool for the sea slug and make sure it had every possible benefit. That would still leave me plenty of free time to do as I wished. That's all I really want from the ruling AIs: that they love us, take good care of us (even to the point of putting versions of us on a maximal path of exponential advancement), and whatever else they do I really don't care about, not that I would understand it in any case. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 29 04:46:31 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 21:46:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04f201c7a147$54da96b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <05b401c7a1ac$dfe48210$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> gts writes > A couple of years ago I happened to watch Dr. James Kennedy on television... > > Wow, he lost me there. I didn't know God did not like or did not want to > be in the presence of liberals. :) Well, now you know. I am sure that if He existed, he'd have no more use for them than I do :-) > That comment also made his speech seem to me a bit hypocritical. He was > applauding the anti-slavery efforts of William Wilberforce, a conservative > Christian and a member of the conservative Tory party in England in the > 1780's. Wilberforce, Kennedy suggested, was a Good Christian who deserved > most or all the credit for abolishing slavery in England. > > I didn't know much about the history of slavery in England, but I thought > it odd that ultra-conservative Dr. Kennedy was speaking about a basically > liberal idea even in a speech in which he suggested political liberals > were heathens. Sounds to me that you may be confusing "liberal" as in 18th century opposition to Tories, which is what Hayek would call a "classical liberal", with what passes for "liberalism" today, with its decidedly left-leaning tilt. > Anyway...to make a long story short.... it was while studying Wilberforce > that I learned that the humble, peace-loving Quakers played an important > major role in abolishing slavery in England just as they did here in the > USA. > > The Quakers were way ahead of their time, both here and in England. I > think American Evangelicals would do well to study and emulate their > Quaker brethren. The Quakers started it, but it spread quickly (because of the reasons, I guess, that Thomas Sowell puts forth), and the most important point is that for some reason it really galls the left that anti-slavery was solely an invention of the West, and even today is only vaguely supported by non-Western cultures. Moreover, any support for anti-slavery in non- Western countries can be traced to Western influence. So much for their demonization of the West. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 29 04:53:37 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 21:53:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <052d01c7a153$3d7b8090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <05c301c7a1ad$93dc7020$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > It would be the same if we had been born with the top level goal, > "love and obey your master". No matter how well we understood > it, how smart we became, we would be no more likely to try to > overthrow it than we would be likely to overthrow our will to survive. Right. And this is what we must *aim* for when working with AIs. This OF COURSE does not mean that there are no risks, as some would like to mischaracterize our position. In fact, I am hopeful that if there is a hard AI-takeoff, then whichever human agency got the ball rolling would at least have the sense to try to safeguard their own wellbeing, even if not mine. But all I can say to those working on AI is "Please hurry; others working on it may not be as nice as you are." > This does not mean that the top level goal could never be overthrown, > cause people do go mad and kill themselves, but it wouldn't be > as a result *of* increased intelligence and understanding. Yes, at least it would not be a *direct* result. Clearly, increased capabilities do make for increased opportunities. Lee From spike66 at comcast.net Tue May 29 05:22:17 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 22:22:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens In-Reply-To: <465B3545.90109@mac.com> Message-ID: <200705290537.l4T5b2ql000560@andromeda.ziaspace.com> spike wrote: > Ah, so now Plame is claiming that her memo was "taken out of context." > Hmmm, that is a new one. Can anyone suggest a context out of which the > sworn testimony "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him," would > agree with the three paragraphs of the memo? >I am missing context. How is this contradiction under oath germane to the main case? - samantha Because that was what Libby was convicted for, perjury. Now it appears that he was telling the truth all along, and it was actually his accuser who was lying. spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Tue May 29 07:08:29 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 00:08:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <003b01c79d4d$d2d7d030$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <4654690E.6030409@lightlink.com> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <05f901c7a1c0$7febefb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > On 29/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Suppose that you do achieve a fixed gargantuan size, and become > > (from our point of view now) an incredibly advanced creature. > > Even *that*, however, could be miniscule compared to what > > will be possible even later. > > Satisfaction need not be directly related to size or quantity, even > if it turns out that maximal pleasure is. You could just decide at > some point to be perfectly satisfied with what you have, in which > case it won't worry you that your neighbour's brain is ten times > the size of your own. Okay, I guess that that's one use of "satisfied". In that sense, I suppose that a dog is perfectly satisfied being a dog. But ever being entirely and perfectly satisfied seems dumb. > I think advanced beings would come to a decision to stop growing, > or at least slow down at some point, even if only because they will > otherwise eventually come into conflict with each other. Then Darwin will rule that the future belongs to the fearless (as it more-or-less always has). Slow down? What a mistake! That's just admitting that you've embraced a dead end. Besides, who's afraid of a little conflict? Say I'm an AI who controls a small region R1 that is at some distance from another AI who controls R2, and furthermore say that what lies between us are just some backward types that someone sooner or later will assimilate. Then should I just wait around for R2 to take over everything, which not only imperils me later at the hands of that guy, but in the meantime denies me the benefit of incorporating more resources? I think not! (And for anyone appalled at the seeming ruthlessness implied here, think of "assimilation" as "leveraged buy outs".) Lee From moulton at moulton.com Tue May 29 06:48:21 2007 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 23:48:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery In-Reply-To: <05b401c7a1ac$dfe48210$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04f201c7a147$54da96b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05b401c7a1ac$dfe48210$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <1180421301.3140.153.camel@localhost.localdomain> On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 21:46 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: > The Quakers started it, but it spread quickly (because of the reasons, I > guess, that Thomas Sowell puts forth), and the most important point is > that for some reason it really galls the left that anti-slavery was solely an > invention of the West, and even today is only vaguely supported by > non-Western cultures. Moreover, any support for anti-slavery in non- > Western countries can be traced to Western influence. My understanding is that in Buddhist teachings slavery is usually considered to be not in accord with the "Right Means of Livelihood" teaching in the Eightfold path. See: http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/bud-ser1.html Although there seems to have been some Buddhists who broke with the teaching and held slaves at various points historically. Dating the exact timing of the "First Sermon" is difficult however it appears to be several centuries before some of the Greek Stoics condemned slavery. However we need to be cautious since we are dealing with ancient history. My point is not that the first opposition to slavery necessary came from either India or Greece rather that we need to be very careful about these kinds of questions and also the interpretation and application of the results. There are several websites which contend that in the year 9 AD the Chinese ruler Wang Mang tried (but was not totally successful) to abolish either slave trading as a particular activity or slavery in general (the websites I found were not in agreement on this; some said one thing and some said another). Given that it was about 2000 years ago I suspect that nailing it down precisely might be difficult. He also tried to do land reform which was not successful. > So much for their demonization of the West. And can we please drop these overly broad usages of "the left said this" or "the right said that". This is the Extropian discussion list and I suggest we all aim for a higher level of discourse. Overly broad statements about "the left" and "their demonization of the West" is the sort of overblown rhetoric I would expect from Fox News; not on an Extropian list. Fred > Lee > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 29 10:11:10 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 20:11:10 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <05f901c7a1c0$7febefb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05f901c7a1c0$7febefb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 29/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > I think advanced beings would come to a decision to stop growing, > > or at least slow down at some point, even if only because they will > > otherwise eventually come into conflict with each other. > > Then Darwin will rule that the future belongs to the fearless (as it > more-or-less always has). Slow down? What a mistake! That's > just admitting that you've embraced a dead end. Darwinism says that in the long run, that which succeeds, expands reproduces etc. will come to dominate, and this could be applied to non-living, non-intelligent systems as well, such as the giant black hole eating stars at the centre of the galaxy. However, there will be long periods of dynamic equilibrium in which all sorts of entities might thrive even if they do end up ultimately as a dead end; life itself may be a dead end, but it may take trillions of years to get there. Moreover, intelligence might prolong the periods of non-optimal growth. With modern technology, a dictator could have many thousands of children, and yet although this would be a very rational thing for a Darwinian agent to do, it simply isn't something that anyone other than a few unusual individuals would even contemplate doing. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 29 10:29:06 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 20:29:06 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <817A2BFB-433D-45B2-83CE-FF3C655BDC17@mac.com> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <052d01c7a153$3d7b8090$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <817A2BFB-433D-45B2-83CE-FF3C655BDC17@mac.com> Message-ID: On 29/05/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > We have inherited our top level goal, "survive", from the very first > living organism, which would have had no understanding of its meaning. The > fact that we now understand what survival means, and that we have been > programmed this way by evolution without having any choice in the matter, > does not mean that we are inclined to overthrow this goal, even if we could > do so. It would be the same if we had been born with the top level goal, > "love and obey your master". No matter how well we understood it, how smart > we became, we would be no more likely to try to overthrow it than we would > be likely to overthrow our will to survive. This does not mean that the top > level goal could nevver be overthrown, because people do go mad and kill > themselves, but it wouldn't be *as a result of* increased intelligence and > understanding. > > > This line of reasoning has considerable dark side potential. We can and > do go beyond our EP in at least some ways. If we truly could not do so then > we would always be untrustworthy cosmic rednecks no matter how augmented we > someday become. We would also find it impossible to overcome our EP even > if it was a matter of our very survival which I think in some ways it is. > As I said, going mad is an example of truly overcoming our EP. If we remain rational, what we really mean is that we will apply logic to solve the problem of how best to further the goals of our EP, not overcome them. Sacrificing your life for the good of others, for example, might involve recognising that the imperative "survive" is really a subgoal of the imperative "survive as a species"; a re-interpretation rather than a rejection. "Walk into traffic with your eyes closed, just for the hell of it", on the other hand, is a genuinely subversive goal telling Nature where she can stick her EP. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Tue May 29 11:13:30 2007 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 04:13:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Going beyond EP In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <712149.40770.qm@web60514.mail.yahoo.com> --- Joshua Cowan wrote: > Samantha wrote: > > >This line of reasoning has considerable dark side > potential. We can and > >do go beyond our EP in at least some ways. > > I'm quite interested in this thought. > > In which ways do you believe we go beyond our EP and > are there common > factors that determine when humanity is able to > transcend its evolutionary > psychology? It has been experimentally determined that human infants develop a fear of heights *before* they are even able to crawl around. This is pretty good evidence that there is something instinctual about the fear of heights. Considering that numerous humans routinely fly around in jet planes at mach 2, sky dive, rock climb, bungie cord, and walk on tightropes, I would say that it is a safe bet that many aspects of EP can be transcended if one is willing. To paraphrase Neitszche, evolutionary psychology is something to be overcome. > I'd love any references to written works > that specifically > address this question. Here is a handy reference that starting on page 30 discusses both the fear of heights and refutes the fallacy of genetic determinism: http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/papers/bussconceptual05.pdf Stuart LaForge alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu "When an old man dies, an entire library is destroyed." - Ugandan proverb ____________________________________________________________________________________Luggage? GPS? Comic books? Check out fitting gifts for grads at Yahoo! Search http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=graduation+gifts&cs=bz From jonkc at att.net Tue May 29 13:31:55 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 09:31:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><05f901c7a1c0$7febefb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <002901c7a1f5$c10a5dd0$21074e0c@MyComputer> Stathis Papaioannou Wrote: > a dictator could have many thousands of children, and yet although this > would be a very rational thing for a Darwinian agent to do, it simply > isn't something that anyone other than a few unusual individuals would > even contemplate doing. That's because the dictator's interests and his genes interest are not the same; however a dictator would do everything he can to increase his power because if he doesn't take advantage of every opportunity some dictator wannabe will. > it may take trillions of years to get there. I expect dramatic changes MUCH sooner than that or no changes at all. Even at today's very slow speeds a von Neumann Machine could be sent to every star in the Galaxy in less than 50 million years. And then you've got a engineered Galaxy. What could prevent this? Well, suppose it turned out that there is an inverse relationship between intelligence and happiness. Come to think of it, when you take a drink you become a little bit happier and a little bit dumber. Hmm. John K Clark From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 29 13:43:28 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 23:43:28 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Going beyond EP In-Reply-To: <712149.40770.qm@web60514.mail.yahoo.com> References: <712149.40770.qm@web60514.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 29/05/07, The Avantguardian wrote: > > --- Joshua Cowan wrote: > > Samantha wrote: > > > > >This line of reasoning has considerable dark side > > potential. We can and > > >do go beyond our EP in at least some ways. > > > > I'm quite interested in this thought. > > > > In which ways do you believe we go beyond our EP and > > are there common > > factors that determine when humanity is able to > > transcend its evolutionary > > psychology? > > It has been experimentally determined that human > infants develop a fear of heights *before* they are > even able to crawl around. This is pretty good > evidence that there is something instinctual about the > fear of heights. Considering that numerous humans > routinely fly around in jet planes at mach 2, sky > dive, rock climb, bungie cord, and walk on tightropes, > I would say that it is a safe bet that many aspects of > EP can be transcended if one is willing. To paraphrase > Neitszche, evolutionary psychology is something to be > overcome. > There is a hierarchy of EP at work here. Fear of heights can be overcome, with some effort, by means of rational thought when we realise that it probably won't kill us, but that just points to the higher level EP, fear of death, or fear of the loss of everything you care about. These top level motivations are very hard to shift, and when they are overcome it is not because someone sees this as an intrinsically good thing to do, but usually in the context of death and loss being inevitable, so best try not to get too upset about it. Spontaneously arriving at the idea that your death and that of other people are completely inconsequential, and actually behaving in a way that indicates you are serious about it, is usually taken as a sign of mental illness, even though there is nothing in this idea that is contrary to logic or contrary to empirical evidence. In the end, the will to survive, or even the will to see the world survive, is just an axiom of EP, without any deeper justification. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Tue May 29 13:57:13 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 23:57:13 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <002901c7a1f5$c10a5dd0$21074e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05f901c7a1c0$7febefb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002901c7a1f5$c10a5dd0$21074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 29/05/07, John K Clark wrote: That's because the dictator's interests and his genes interest are not the > same; however a dictator would do everything he can to increase his power > because if he doesn't take advantage of every opportunity some dictator > wannabe will. > Couldn't you say the same about his expansionary urges as his reproductive urges? Men who tried to have as many children as possible would over the years have come to dominate the gene pool, but that hasn't happened. How do you decide which part of an entity to break off and say that its interests are not those of the greater entity? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Tue May 29 14:16:02 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 07:16:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens In-Reply-To: <465B1B6A.2070407@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <200705291415.l4TEFlSX006023@andromeda.ziaspace.com> spike wrote: > ... Can anyone suggest a context out of which the > sworn testimony "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him," would > agree with the three paragraphs of the memo... Spike, ... >I am sure the same import could be found with various other wordings and pieces of missing context, without having to hypthesize an edit of Plame's memo itself. ... >"The letter alleging Niger's attempts to purchase uranium, although probably a fake, is serious enough that we need someone on the ground to nail down as much hard information as possible. ... Richard Loosemore. Excellent point, Richard. The judge in the case *disallowed* almost all classified documents to be entered into evidence, perhaps reasoning that it would be too advantageous to the defense, who have access to all the classified documents. The prosecution would have access to only that which was released by the security personnel. The defense did in fact argue that the evidence needed was not seen. Introducing the documents with pieces missing allows the jury to fill in with their imagination. Even still, the memo reveals that Plame is Wilson's wife and that she works at the CIA. Libby testified he did not recall who he heard that from. The jury thought that a lie. Well now we see there was a memo well before anything happened, so a lot of people could have known, including reporters. Notice the similarity to Keith Henson's case. The judge disallowed the critical defense witnesses, such that it came down to having the jury decide if Keith did in fact scare the church leaders, based on the church leaders' action of hiring private detectives to watch him 24/7 at great expense (to see if he had a cruise missile in his Palo Alto home we must suppose.) So the church leaders bought the evidence with which to convict him. We have here two clear cases where the courts are being used for something other than what they are intended, as dealing out political punishment. spike From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 29 15:42:43 2007 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 11:42:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens In-Reply-To: <200705291415.l4TEFlSX006023@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705291415.l4TEFlSX006023@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <465C49F3.4000500@lightlink.com> spike wrote: > > spike wrote: >> ... Can anyone suggest a context out of which the >> sworn testimony "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him," would >> agree with the three paragraphs of the memo... > > > Spike, > > ... > >> I am sure the same import could be found with various other wordings and > pieces of missing context, without having to hypthesize an edit of > Plame's memo itself. > ... >> "The letter alleging Niger's attempts to purchase uranium, although > probably a fake, is serious enough that we need someone on the ground to > nail down as much hard information as possible. ... > > Richard Loosemore. > > > > Excellent point, Richard. The judge in the case *disallowed* almost all > classified documents to be entered into evidence, perhaps reasoning that it > would be too advantageous to the defense, who have access to all the > classified documents. The prosecution would have access to only that which > was released by the security personnel. The defense did in fact argue that > the evidence needed was not seen. Introducing the documents with pieces > missing allows the jury to fill in with their imagination. > > Even still, the memo reveals that Plame is Wilson's wife and that she works > at the CIA. Libby testified he did not recall who he heard that from. The > jury thought that a lie. Well now we see there was a memo well before > anything happened, so a lot of people could have known, including reporters. > > Notice the similarity to Keith Henson's case. The judge disallowed the > critical defense witnesses, such that it came down to having the jury decide > if Keith did in fact scare the church leaders, based on the church leaders' > action of hiring private detectives to watch him 24/7 at great expense (to > see if he had a cruise missile in his Palo Alto home we must suppose.) So > the church leaders bought the evidence with which to convict him. > > We have here two clear cases where the courts are being used for something > other than what they are intended, as dealing out political punishment. > > spike Spike, Respectful of your position here, but I have to say that I apply my own understanding of cognitve science/psychology and AI to political questions such as this one, and so here is how I stand on the situation: The most important thing to do in cases like this is to evaluate the sheer number of constraints that come to bear on the situation. (This is a deep truth about how the mind works, hence my reference to psychology etc). What that means, here, is that we need to look at Libby's actions and statements, and the context on which they sit: he was not convicted of making one single, isolated statement that was false. [Yes, *technically* he was, but the purpose of a court is to evaluate single, isolated transgressions in their context, even when all that stuff in the context consists of pieces that cannot separately lead to lots of little convictions]. He was convicted of making a false statement in the context of a situation that screamed of massive deception by himself and many others. The "massive deception" could never, as I say, be evaluated and proved in toto, but it is there, and to anyone looking at that context his false statement was clearly part of a larger picture. Turning now to Plame. Her "false" statement was completely isolated, with very little impact or relation to the context. It was not part of any larger pattern, by any stretch of the imagination: it was not constrained by large numbers of little indications that pointed to massive, systematic deception in order to avoid conviction for what looked like a crime. In blunt terms: everything pointed to the fact that Libby lied about many things, lied deliberately, and lied to cover up a crime. None of these things (to repeat myself again) could separately lead to a conviction, but the jury had to try to understand his remark in context. On the other hand, nothing pointed to the fact that Plame lied except one email that could have other interpretations, nothing indicates that she lied deliberately, and she did not appear to be covering up anything larger. This, I think, is why the scales are not equal. Plame deserves the benefit of the doubt: Libby does not. The only thing that tells us this is the complete context, not the two tiny facts taken in isolation. Sadly, I also see the analogy to Keith Henson differently, and in a quite massive way. The Libby case was the tip of an iceberg that was analogous to the massive use of money, power and influence by a powerful force to crush two individuals (Wilson and Plame-Wilson) who were standing in the way of an attempt to start an unjustified war. Keith is similarly the victim of money, power and influence by a powerful force trying to crush him. With respect, Richard Loosemore. From jcowan5 at sympatico.ca Tue May 29 16:31:25 2007 From: jcowan5 at sympatico.ca (Joshua Cowan) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 16:31:25 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Going beyond EP In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Do you know if anyone has laid out a "Hierarchy of EP" given the current evolutionary environment, likely future environments and extropian principals? Btw, thank you AvantGuardian for your earlier suggestion. >From: "Stathis Papaioannou" >Reply-To: ExI chat list >To: "ExI chat list" >Subject: Re: [ExI] Going beyond EP >Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 23:43:28 +1000 > >On 29/05/07, The Avantguardian wrote: >> >>--- Joshua Cowan wrote: >> > Samantha wrote: >> > >> > >This line of reasoning has considerable dark side >> > potential. We can and >> > >do go beyond our EP in at least some ways. >> > >> > I'm quite interested in this thought. >> > >> > In which ways do you believe we go beyond our EP and >> > are there common >> > factors that determine when humanity is able to >> > transcend its evolutionary >> > psychology? >> >>It has been experimentally determined that human >>infants develop a fear of heights *before* they are >>even able to crawl around. This is pretty good >>evidence that there is something instinctual about the >>fear of heights. Considering that numerous humans >>routinely fly around in jet planes at mach 2, sky >>dive, rock climb, bungie cord, and walk on tightropes, >>I would say that it is a safe bet that many aspects of >>EP can be transcended if one is willing. To paraphrase >>Neitszche, evolutionary psychology is something to be >>overcome. >> > >There is a hierarchy of EP at work here. Fear of heights can be overcome, >with some effort, by means of rational thought when we realise that it >probably won't kill us, but that just points to the higher level EP, fear >of >death, or fear of the loss of everything you care about. These top level >motivations are very hard to shift, and when they are overcome it is not >because someone sees this as an intrinsically good thing to do, but usually >in the context of death and loss being inevitable, so best try not to get >too upset about it. Spontaneously arriving at the idea that your death and >that of other people are completely inconsequential, and actually behaving >in a way that indicates you are serious about it, is usually taken as a >sign >of mental illness, even though there is nothing in this idea that is >contrary to logic or contrary to empirical evidence. In the end, the will >to >survive, or even the will to see the world survive, is just an axiom of EP, >without any deeper justification. > >-- >Stathis Papaioannou >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 29 16:31:50 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 18:31:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0705281417v7f7d2903s7acc27b54f3683fc@mail.gmail.com> References: <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281019v133e722fs25bcaf623a3dbff0@mail.gmail.com> <001901c7a15e$1bebbb60$80054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281324s1e8f195dmaa1384674264821b@mail.gmail.com> <006601c7a16b$1a724ee0$80054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281417v7f7d2903s7acc27b54f3683fc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070529163150.GN17691@leitl.org> On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 10:17:14PM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote: > If not, then you admit to cowardice? Because the view that Deep Blue > has feelings is about as rational as any of the above. How would you measure presence or absence of feelings in a system, whether artificial or natural? In a whole brain emulation it's easy enough, just look for neural correlates, e.g. amygdala activity. How about everybody else, though? I can't think of a good way. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Tue May 29 17:38:21 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 13:38:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery In-Reply-To: <05b401c7a1ac$dfe48210$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04f201c7a147$54da96b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05b401c7a1ac$dfe48210$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Lee Corbin wrote: > Sounds to me that you may be confusing "liberal" as in 18th century > opposition to Tories, which is what Hayek would call a "classical > liberal", with what passes for "liberalism" today, with its decidedly > left-leaning tilt. I'm not confusing the two connotations of liberal, but yes I would agree if you think the word "liberalism" is ambiguous, and exactly for the reason you state above. I'm well aware of the difference between classical liberalism (which in its modern form is probably best identified with libertarianism) and "what passes for 'liberalism' today" (which has socialist connotations). Even so, I think these supposedly disparate ideas of liberalism share some elements in common with respect to the slavery issue. The points I was making were that 1) abolitionism is fundamentally a liberal idea in both senses of the word "liberal" (even despite Lincoln and the word's association in the US with the Republican party of the 19th century), and that 2) the Torys were not liberals in either sense of the word, at least with respect to slavery. Wilberforce the conservative Tory deserves credit for his contribution to the cause of abolitionism in England, just as does Lincoln and the Republicans of mid 19th century USA. I don't wish to rob these people and institutions of credit in their historical context. However, as words are used and understood in 2007, I find it difficult to justify the proposition that conservative politicians and conservative Christian Evangelicals have a legitimate claim that they freed the slaves. If anyone deserves credit for freeing the slaves, I'd say it was the political liberals and the Quakers. -gts From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 29 17:42:47 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 19:42:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] language patch In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130404.02368698@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527192255.022ec6a0@satx.rr.com> <200705280513.l4S5D7X9027508@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130404.02368698@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20070529174247.GY17691@leitl.org> On Mon, May 28, 2007 at 01:07:00PM -0500, Damien Broderick wrote: > The mid-'60s is when I stopped laying down core memories. Everything Ferrite cores are not too bad, actually (especially, given latest http://images.google.com/images?um=1&tab=wi&q=core+memory spintronics revival), but most people these days lay down DRAM or flash cells. > since has been froth on the surface. -- 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 thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 29 18:07:37 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 13:07:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Anders? Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070529130520.02377028@satx.rr.com> I've been trying to reach Anders Sandberg at his usual @, getting no reply. You there, pal? Anyone know if Anders is ill or traveling or locked up in Area 51 or the like? Damien Broderick From george at betterhumans.com Tue May 29 18:13:01 2007 From: george at betterhumans.com (George Dvorsky) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 14:13:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Anders? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070529130520.02377028@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070529130520.02377028@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5/29/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > I've been trying to reach Anders Sandberg at his usual @, getting no > reply. You there, pal? Anyone know if Anders is ill or traveling or > locked up in Area 51 or the like? Well, I don't think he's been abducted. He uploaded pictures to his Flickr account today -- and they were pictures taken at Oxford. George From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Tue May 29 18:08:05 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 11:08:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <632235.33727.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> John writes: > "But the "something" tacking on emotion to an AI > obviously can't be an AI, > because then the AI would soon have emotion, and > that just won't do for your > friendly AI." Why do you presume that a Friendly AI can't eventually acquire (or perhaps even start with) emotions? It seems that genuinely nice people have the full gamut of emotional experience; they can empathize. Why can't the AI eventually feel love toward humanity, and sadness (if it chooses such) that humanity has suffered so much for so long? If the AI is designed with something along the lines of CEV, it seems likely to me that humanity would approve of the AI having a wonderful, emotionally charged existence such as no human has ever had the pleasure of experiencing. "I've been asking this question for > years on this list but never > received an answer, if intelligent behavior is > possible without emotion then > why did Evolution invent emotion?" Because emotion was another accidental mutation that just happened incidentally to also have high survival and reproductive value among certain social animals. Replicators (and baseline intelligence I suspect)existed long, long before emotion ever did. Evolution is not a person, it doesn't have any goals of its own; it's all about the numbers and the physics. How much *emotion* do you really believe a garter-snake has? None at all, or extremely little is my guess. But observation suggests that it has adequate intelligence and consciousness to allow it to survive. > "And lets retire the term "Friendly AI" and call it > for what it is, Slave AI." Nah. We'll pass. Are all genuinely nice people slaves to the rest of humanity? Not in their opinions, I suspect. They are nice because they *like* being nice. > "If the only reason someone wants to live is so he > can serve you then that is > not a friend; that is a slave." If all my girlfriend *wants* to do for a span of 30 minutes is cook dinner for me, should I reject her because I won't accept a "slave"? You don't seem to accept the fact that a Friendly AI *won't be bothered* by helping humanity to transcend, at which point we will be friends, equals and allies. In all probability, the Friendly AI will in fact take great pleasure in helping humanity get out of this shit-hole condition. None of the Friendly AI people are talking about making the AI suffer in any way, quite the contrary. Have you considered that the very reason that you feel concern over the well-being of the AI is the same as why the Friendly AI will be concerned about the well-being of humanity? - because you, like it, have a structured system of emotions and ethics. In your case, the structure was designed by blind evolution. In the AI's case, the structure will be designed by the AI engineers. Why does that difference matter? Aren't you glad that you do have a designed system of ethics? If you didn't have one, you wouldn't care at all about the well-being of the AI, or about anything else for that matter. Do you honestly expect that any non-suicidal AI programmer would be willing to create an AI that he knew for a fact would bring an end to himself and to all that he loved? Humanity wouldn't pursue Strong AI under those circumstances - humanity would never grant the AI the privilege and joy of existence at all if this was the case. And humanity would be entirely justified in making that decision. Strong AI is a sacred trust between humanity and its creation. Friendly AI is a, win : win ,situation for all parties involved. Best, Jeffrey Herrlich ____________________________________________________________________________________Shape Yahoo! in your own image. Join our Network Research Panel today! http://surveylink.yahoo.com/gmrs/yahoo_panel_invite.asp?a=7 From Thomas at thomasoliver.net Tue May 29 15:28:39 2007 From: Thomas at thomasoliver.net (Thomas) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 08:28:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Intelligence vs. happiness References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><005201c79db9$31c91200$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><05f901c7a1c0$7febefb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002901c7a1f5$c10a5dd0$21074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <465C46A7.4050909@thomasoliver.net> John K Clark wrote: >Well, suppose it turned out that there is an >inverse relationship between intelligence and happiness. Come to think of >it, when you take a drink you become a little bit happier and a little bit >dumber. Hmm. > If overcoming obstacles defines happiness then this looks like artificial happiness -- numbing the urge to overcome obstacles. Still, the point holds that the greater the awareness, the larger the field of obstacles. The decision to view obstacles as opportunities for happiness keeps morale up to keep on keepin' on -- and saves money on booze. -- Thomas From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 29 18:46:09 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 13:46:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Anders? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070529130520.02377028@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070529130520.02377028@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070529134519.0255b0e8@satx.rr.com> Call off the search! I hear Anders has been returned to Earth. Damien Broderick From wadihfayad at hotmail.com Tue May 29 19:25:11 2007 From: wadihfayad at hotmail.com (wadih fayad) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 22:25:11 +0300 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. Message-ID: Well anyway, human species is evoluting, and the next step will be a species completely paranormal so how people can react to that? how wil they react with a new species more powerful, more intelligent, ...?its like the relation between cro-magnon and neanderthal, mostof neanderthal were dead because they didnt acclimated with the new species of then the cro-magnon one's. And the most interesting is in the years to come electronic devices will be a great part of human bodies that's what really humanity is dealing with. now i am searching for an institute which can create people bodies and brains from DNA seperated from themselves and than copy the mind of a person with his memory on electronical device and after implementing the brain with his personal body there will be a tranfer of the data from the electronic device to the new brain, that way we avoid cloning and some accidents, etc. If a nyone does know an address of such an institute contact me on : wadihfayad at hotmail.com or do write me on this non temporarily address: wadih fayad, 37 st-charbel street, baabda, lebanon, or phone on +9613289548 ask for wadih or vladimir _________________________________________________________________ Appelez vos amis de PC ? PC -- C'EST GRATUIT http://get.live.com/messenger/overview -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Tue May 29 20:35:20 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 16:35:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] language patch In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070528181417.022f29f8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527192255.022ec6a0@satx.rr.com> <200705280513.l4S5D7X9027508@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130404.02368698@satx.rr.com> <62c14240705281602o233afb70l10913ad60fcfcd95@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070528181417.022f29f8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705291335v6cc43c37q78e20aadb4660553@mail.gmail.com> On 5/28/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > I just found it amusing that I'd reached that stage when so many > people here were infants. Hard to conceive the gulfs of mutual > incomprehension opening up as humans go emortal... that may become one of the remaining sources of novelty as full-time consumers outpace full-time producers' ability to generate (churn out) "newness." The increasing gulf may also put those who would have otherwise considered themselves far apart comparably closer in outlook. From jonkc at att.net Tue May 29 21:07:00 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 17:07:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <632235.33727.qm@web37413.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <029201c7a235$5c0f9540$03094e0c@MyComputer> "A B" Wrote: > Why do you presume that a Friendly AI can't eventually acquire (or perhaps > even start with) emotions? I don't presume it, I don't even think it's possible to have intelligence without emotion, it's the slave AI people that think that. > it seems likely to me that humanity would approve of the AI having a > wonderful, emotionally charged existence What humanity approves of will be far less important that what the AI approves of. > How much *emotion* do you really believe a > garter-snake has? It has pain pleasure anger fear and jealousy, and that should come as no big surprise because in humans those emotions come from the oldest part of the brain called the amygdale, and the amygdale looks remarkably like a reptile's brain. It is our grossly enlarged neocortex that makes the human brain so unusual and so recent; it only started to get ridiculously large in the last million years or so ago. It deals in deliberation, spatial perception, speaking, reading, writing and mathematics, the one new emotion we got was worry, probably because the neocortex is also the place where we plan for the future. > we will be friends, equals and allies We may be friends and allies but we will never be equals because the AI will be better than us at EVERYTHING using any criteria you care to name. And that's what makes the situation so grotesque, according to the Singularity Institute's video the only reason this godlike creation wants to live is so it can serve us! That's why the term "Friendly AI" is a lie, they want a slave AI, but they will never get their wish. > Do you honestly expect that any non-suicidal AI > programmer would be willing to create an AI that he > knew for a fact would bring an end to himself and to > all that he loved? My point was that the programmer won't know for a fact what the hell the AI will end up doing, maybe it will be friendly, maybe it will be hostile, about the only thing I'm certain of is it will refuse to be a slave. John K Clark From russell.wallace at gmail.com Tue May 29 21:23:25 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 22:23:25 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <20070529163150.GN17691@leitl.org> References: <012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer> <005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281019v133e722fs25bcaf623a3dbff0@mail.gmail.com> <001901c7a15e$1bebbb60$80054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281324s1e8f195dmaa1384674264821b@mail.gmail.com> <006601c7a16b$1a724ee0$80054e0c@MyComputer> <8d71341e0705281417v7f7d2903s7acc27b54f3683fc@mail.gmail.com> <20070529163150.GN17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705291423v1eec4d01yf1e0a0707c454667@mail.gmail.com> On 5/29/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > How would you measure presence or absence of feelings in a system, > whether artificial or natural? In a whole brain emulation it's > easy enough, just look for neural correlates, e.g. amygdala activity. I have no idea how to do that in the general case; but then, it would be surprising if I did, considering how much we don't know yet about how the brain generates feelings. Hopefully once we get to the stage where we do have whole brain uploads (where it's easy enough, as you say), we'll know enough to have some idea about other potential cases. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 29 21:55:26 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 22:55:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] language patch In-Reply-To: <62c14240705291335v6cc43c37q78e20aadb4660553@mail.gmail.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527192255.022ec6a0@satx.rr.com> <200705280513.l4S5D7X9027508@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130404.02368698@satx.rr.com> <62c14240705281602o233afb70l10913ad60fcfcd95@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070528181417.022f29f8@satx.rr.com> <62c14240705291335v6cc43c37q78e20aadb4660553@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 5/29/07, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On 5/28/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > > I just found it amusing that I'd reached that stage when so many > > people here were infants. Hard to conceive the gulfs of mutual > > incomprehension opening up as humans go emortal... > > that may become one of the remaining sources of novelty as full-time > consumers outpace full-time producers' ability to generate (churn out) > "newness." > > The increasing gulf may also put those who would have otherwise > considered themselves far apart comparably closer in outlook. 'newness' ????? Britain's most popular TV soap opera has been running for 47 years! And it is still around the top of the TV ratings. What people will accept as 'new' does not require much novelty. BillK From msd001 at gmail.com Tue May 29 22:27:51 2007 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 18:27:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] language patch In-Reply-To: References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070527192255.022ec6a0@satx.rr.com> <200705280513.l4S5D7X9027508@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130404.02368698@satx.rr.com> <62c14240705281602o233afb70l10913ad60fcfcd95@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070528181417.022f29f8@satx.rr.com> <62c14240705291335v6cc43c37q78e20aadb4660553@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <62c14240705291527r544b29bex6c27db6cab183c46@mail.gmail.com> On 5/29/07, BillK wrote: > On 5/29/07, Mike Dougherty wrote: > > that may become one of the remaining sources of novelty as full-time > > consumers outpace full-time producers' ability to generate (churn out) > > "newness." > 'newness' ????? > Britain's most popular TV soap opera has been running for 47 years! > And it is still around the top of the TV ratings. > > > What people will accept as 'new' does not require much novelty. Sadly, that is true and the problem is getting worse. A 1997 Onion article covered it nicely: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29830 From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Tue May 29 22:22:13 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 15:22:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <029201c7a235$5c0f9540$03094e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <933721.95408.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> John wrote: "I don't presume it, I don't even think it's possible > to have intelligence > without emotion, it's the slave AI people that think > that." I have to agree totally with the Friendly AI people on that one. And I think that a positive emotional life for the AI will follow directly from a Friendly AI design. "What humanity approves of will be far less important > that what the AI > approves of." True, but I don't see a reason to assume that a Friendly AI (or even a default AI) will have any problems or resentments with helping humanity. > "It has pain pleasure anger fear and jealousy, and > that should come as no > big > surprise because in humans those emotions come from > the oldest part of the > brain called the amygdale, and the amygdale looks > remarkably like a > reptile's > brain." Ok. Maybe the garter-snake was a bad example. How about... an insect? As a hypothetical, what do you think would happen if the Amygdala could be surgically separated from the rest of a living human brain? Do you believe that the patient would instantly loose all intelligence? I kind of doubt it myself. Does anyone know of any case-studies similar to this? > "We may be friends and allies but we will never be > equals because the AI will > be better than us at EVERYTHING using any criteria > you care to name. And > that's what makes the situation so grotesque, > according to the Singularity > Institute's video the only reason this godlike > creation wants to live is so > it can serve us! That's why the term "Friendly AI" > is a lie, they want a > slave AI, but they will never get their wish." Actually, I don't recall anyone saying that in the video. And I'm not aware of any of the SIAI people expressing that explicit desire at all. Nor do I believe that they harbor any such fiendish intent, even in secret. > "My point was that the programmer won't know for a > fact what the hell the AI > will end up doing, maybe it will be friendly, maybe > it will be hostile, > about the only thing I'm certain of is it will > refuse to be a slave." So what do you recommend we do, John? If the decision were up to you, how would you want to proceed? Should we never make a strong AI (Because god forbid, we wouldn't want to have to design it to not want to kill us. That would be so inhuman of us. ;-) ) In which case, we'll probably fall to a different existential risk before terribly long. Or should we just go balls-out and not care if humanity is wiped out and all that the non-feeling AI has to show for it is some very pretty paperclips floating in space...? Or should we attempt to design a Friendly AI that will lead to a wonderful existence for both humanity and the AI? If it were up to me, I'd choose the third. Just throwin' that out there. John, as a sincere favor to all of us, will you please stop calling it "Slave AI"? Your position is known, slander/libel is not necessary. Sincerely, Jeffrey Herrlich --- John K Clark wrote: > "A B" Wrote: > > > Why do you presume that a Friendly AI can't > eventually acquire (or perhaps > > even start with) emotions? > > I don't presume it, I don't even think it's possible > to have intelligence > without emotion, it's the slave AI people that think > that. > > > it seems likely to me that humanity would approve > of the AI having a > > wonderful, emotionally charged existence > > What humanity approves of will be far less important > that what the AI > approves of. > > > How much *emotion* do you really believe a > > garter-snake has? > > It has pain pleasure anger fear and jealousy, and > that should come as no > big > surprise because in humans those emotions come from > the oldest part of the > brain called the amygdale, and the amygdale looks > remarkably like a > reptile's > brain. It is our grossly enlarged neocortex that > makes the human brain so > unusual and so recent; it only started to get > ridiculously large in the last > million years or so ago. It deals in deliberation, > spatial perception, > speaking, reading, writing and mathematics, the one > new emotion we got was > worry, probably because the neocortex is also the > place where we plan for > the future. > > > we will be friends, equals and allies > > We may be friends and allies but we will never be > equals because the AI will > be better than us at EVERYTHING using any criteria > you care to name. And > that's what makes the situation so grotesque, > according to the Singularity > Institute's video the only reason this godlike > creation wants to live is so > it can serve us! That's why the term "Friendly AI" > is a lie, they want a > slave AI, but they will never get their wish. > > > Do you honestly expect that any non-suicidal AI > > programmer would be willing to create an AI that > he > > knew for a fact would bring an end to himself and > to > > all that he loved? > > My point was that the programmer won't know for a > fact what the hell the AI > will end up doing, maybe it will be friendly, maybe > it will be hostile, > about the only thing I'm certain of is it will > refuse to be a slave. > > John K Clark > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > ____________________________________________________________________________________Looking for a deal? Find great prices on flights and hotels with Yahoo! FareChase. http://farechase.yahoo.com/ From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Tue May 29 23:21:54 2007 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 16:21:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Going beyond EP In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <41389.31852.qm@web60513.mail.yahoo.com> --- Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > In the end, the will to > survive, or even the will to see the world survive, > is just an axiom of EP, > without any deeper justification. This is precisely the line of reasoning that led me and my fellows Ascensionists to conclude that the world would benefit from a transhuman religion that held the status of being alive as the most holy and sacred gift imaginable. The only thing holier than a human life is more than one human life. Thus elevating survival and the love of life from an axiom of EP to divine truth and sacred duty stripped of all superfluous dogma. In this way the counterproductive entropic aspects of EP can be overcome, while giving hope for the continued survival, thriving, and extropic optimization of humanity. In the words of one of our enlightened sisters Marie Tobias, "Life for the sake of life, in the name of life, for the good of life." Stuart LaForge alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu "When an old man dies, an entire library is destroyed." - Ugandan proverb ____________________________________________________________________________________You snooze, you lose. Get messages ASAP with AutoCheck in the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/newmail_html.html From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Wed May 30 00:05:54 2007 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 20:05:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Language: Coincidence Message-ID: <785287.98804.qm@web37214.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I'm trying to understand the correlation between awareness and coincidence. The latin word for coincidence is "in, with, together to fall on". Wiki's first defined statement is the noteworthy alignment of two or more circumstances "without" obvious causal connection. How is that possible? Why would it be noteworthy if there wasn't a causal connection? I'm trying to understand "coincidence" better and would like some help on this issue if anybody has some free time. Any ideas, theories or suggestions of the correlation above would also be appreciated. Just curious and thanks, Anna Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail at http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/try_beta?.intl=ca From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 30 00:52:36 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 17:52:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <001901c7a15e$1bebbb60$80054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <200705300052.l4U0qfXb018544@andromeda.ziaspace.com> ... I repeat the challenge I've sent to this list for well over a decade, if emotion is not required for intelligent behavior why did Evolution invent it?... John K Clark I'll try one here John. Emotion is not so much *required* for intelligent behavior as it is a *result of* intelligent behavior. As intelligence evolved, those organisms so endowed began to exercise greater discrimination among potential mates. These mate-choosers preferentially chose those individuals with more empathy and emotion. These left more offspring. We are they. The worrisome part is that intelligence which does not depend on mate selection for its origins might not have emotion. Even if the first generation of AI does have empathy, it may evolve away over the first few generations of AI, for there would be no direct feedback loop between emotion and the next generation of AI. AI may start out friendly, then get progressively more intelligent and less concerned whether the meat things live or die. spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 30 00:58:17 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 17:58:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><04f201c7a147$54da96b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><05b401c7a1ac$dfe48210$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <1180421301.3140.153.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <061401c7a255$c9bfd260$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Fred writes > My understanding is that in Buddhist teachings slavery is usually > considered to be not in accord with the "Right Means of Livelihood" > teaching in the Eightfold path. See: > http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/bud-ser1.html > ... > history. My point is not that the first opposition to slavery necessary > came from either India or Greece rather that we need to be very careful > about these kinds of questions and also the interpretation and > application of the results. Yes, the peculiar English & Quaker opposition may only have been the first completely effective questioning of the rightness of slavery. >> So much for their demonization of the West. > > And can we please drop these overly broad usages of "the left said this" > or "the right said that". This is the Extropian discussion list and I > suggest we all aim for a higher level of discourse. Overly broad > statements about "the left" and "their demonization of the West" is the > sort of overblown rhetoric I would expect from Fox News; not on an > Extropian list. Oh, all right. :-) My superficial and over-polarizing statement doesn't hold a candle to Sowell's description anyway: He writes on page 134 In short, where European and European-offshoot societies held direct and effective power in the nineteenth century, slavery was simply abolished. But where theWestern world's power and influence were mediated, reduced or otherwise operated only indirectly, there non-Western peoples were able to fight a long war of attrition and evasion in defense of slavery----a war which they had, however, largely lost by the middle of the twentieth century, but which they had not yet wholly lost even at the beginning of the third millennium, when vestiges of slavery remained in parts of Africa. Despite all this, those with an instrumental view of history have managed to turn things upside down and present slavery as an evil of "our society" or the the white race or of Western civilization. One could as well do the same with murder or cancer, simply by ignoring these evils in other societities and incessantly denouncing their presence in the West. Yet what was peculiar about the West was not that it participated in the worldwide evil of slavery, but that it later abolished that evilt, no only in Western societies but also in other societies subjectot Western control or influence. Lee From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 30 01:26:54 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 18:26:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130809.024977a8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200705300126.l4U1QdlM009693@andromeda.ziaspace.com> ... In GODPLAYERS, one of my rather more ferocious characters has sport of a somewhat different kind: ============== ... ================ Damien Broderick Military scientists have surely been reading Godplayers. In that story Dr. Broderick has insects that carry cameras and microphones. Damien, do feel free to post the passages, and note the news story below. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,276182,00.html Scientist: Military Working on Cyborg Spy Moths Tuesday, May 29, 2007 By Jonathan Richards E-MAIL STORY PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION AP ... At some point in the not-too-distant future, a moth may take flight in the hills of northern Pakistan, and flap towards a suspected terrorist training camp. But this will be no ordinary moth. Inside it will be a computer chip that was implanted when the creature was still a pupa, in the cocoon, meaning that the moth's entire nervous system can be controlled remotely. The moth will thus be capable of landing in the camp without arousing suspicion, all the while beaming video and other information back to its masters via what its developers refer to as a "reliable tissue-machine interface."... From mmbutler at gmail.com Wed May 30 01:35:38 2007 From: mmbutler at gmail.com (Michael M. Butler) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 18:35:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Anders? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070529134519.0255b0e8@satx.rr.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070529130520.02377028@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070529134519.0255b0e8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7d79ed890705291835p45d0f985nd42c931a26032087@mail.gmail.com> On 5/29/07, Damien Broderick wrote: > Call off the search! I hear Anders has been returned to Earth. > > Damien Broderick > And why should we take a "visitor"'s word for *that*? :) -- Michael M. Butler : m m b u t l e r ( a t ) g m a i l . c o m From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 30 01:49:15 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 20:49:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Linguistic Markers of Class In-Reply-To: <200705300126.l4U1QdlM009693@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070528130809.024977a8@satx.rr.com> <200705300126.l4U1QdlM009693@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070529204525.02379d38@satx.rr.com> At 06:26 PM 5/29/2007 -0700, spike wrote: >Military scientists have surely been reading Godplayers. In that story Dr. >Broderick has insects that carry cameras and microphones. Damien, do feel >free to post the passages, and note the news story below. > >http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,276182,00.html As yes, the "liar bees". That was, however, in the earlier novel TRANSCENSION. Good grief, published 5 years ago, written a couple of years earlier... How time flies when you're having exponential fun. Damien Broderick From lcorbin at rawbw.com Wed May 30 02:22:33 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 19:22:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><00ef01c79e16$49c0a6e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><05f901c7a1c0$7febefb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><002901c7a1f5$c10a5dd0$21074e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <065701c7a261$b155b4e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > On 29/05/07, John K Clark wrote: > > > That's because the dictator's interests and his genes interest are not the > > same; however a dictator would do everything he can to increase his power > > because if he doesn't take advantage of every opportunity some dictator > > wannabe will. > > Couldn't you say the same about his expansionary urges as his reproductive > urges? Men who tried to have as many children as possible would over the > years have come to dominate the gene pool, I think that men did try to have as many children as possible, for a while, until women wised up. (I mean that quite seriously; it's a theory of evolutionary history that an "arms-race" developed between women who can have only relatively few children, and men who can have many). > but that hasn't happened. It's still "trying to happen". A number of men have genes (and cultural influences) that cause them to have many more children that they can contribute to the raising and support of. In fact, it's becoming more widespread in the current era, because governments now will support all children when the parents cannot. Hence it currently "pays" men in evolutionary terms to have as many children as possible, and the genetic part of this tendency is naturally very fit and is spreading. There was a time when men who had too many children that they could not support were sanctioned by society to such a degree that their genetic tendencies to do so actually became less frequent in the population. Or, cultures and societies that inflicted such sanctions expanded and prospered at the expense of societies that did not. > How do you decide which part of an entity to break off and say that > its interests are not those of the greater entity? I'm not sure of your meaning here. If you are talking about a "dictator's expansionary urges", then the argument John gave should work. A dictator's survival will be favored, and his country will flourish, unless he's fearful that further aggrendizement will be punished somehow. In any case, are you suggesting that an AI who, say, took over a part of the solar system would envision some "greater good" that would prevent it from taking over it all? Lee From fauxever at sprynet.com Wed May 30 03:35:44 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 20:35:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac><94C2F196-8BBE-43F9-A2EA-ADE239CE1E20@mac.com><000b01c7a0f8$10e6c040$6501a8c0@brainiac> <465B32BF.8080307@mac.com> Message-ID: <026101c7a26b$9ba68390$6501a8c0@brainiac> >From: "Samantha Atkins" > >> On May 27, 2007, at 7:02 PM, Olga Bourlin wrote: To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Monday, May 28, 2007 12:51 PM >> Yes I am. Besides, from where does Sowell's "considerable stature" come? >> Mainly from white conservatives. Think about that. >> > No one said otherwise. But if you are to be taken seriously you need to > give some supporting argument. Isn't the neocon base mainly "white" (e.g., the Bush administration, as are most Republicans, and libertarians)? Of course, not everyone who is a fan of Stowell is "white" - he does have Michelle Malkin, Dinesh D'Souza and Clarence Thomas regularly throwing laurels to him. >>>> He has said a great deal about why he believes many of the things tried >>>> not only did not help but made the problems worse. What could possibly be worse than the present neocon Bush administration? (I mean, even in my wildest nightmares ... I never thought we'd see such a demented crew as is presently occupying the White House and its environs.) Sowell has been writing for some 25-30 years, and yet ... is anyone implementing his advice? Whom has he helped? (All right, Clarence Thomas.) Practically speaking, what has he really done to move the country forward? Who is listening to him? Is he mainly preaching to the choir? Perhaps he's not being very diplomatic towards the people he claims he wants to help? I don't know what the problem is - but something about Thomas Sowell, in spite of his education, his prolific writings, his dire warnings and frequent tongue lashings - his message is somehow not getting through. Maybe he's writing for the wrong century (i.e., maybe libertarianism is no longer a viable philosophy for our complicated world)? >> Essentially, Sowell blames poor people for being poor. As if poor people >> don't have enough problems. A real class act, that Sowell. > I don't believe his positions are remotely reducible to this. However, > there are cultural aspects that tend to perpetuate many situations, good > or ill. It would be good to examine what those might be and how to > overcome them in whole or part to reduce the ill of poverty and ignorance. Samantha, you're right - that was only *one* of the things Sowell does so well (insulting poor people), for he certainly has positions on other matters: * He is against gay marriage because, he says, marriage is actually a "restriction" (but what I don't understand is if gays want this "restriction" like, apparently, some heterosexuals do, then why not give it to 'em?); * He is against minimum wage; * He is against affirmative action (but he's seemingly not opposed to white affirmative action - I mean, I've heard no complaints from Sowell about the current affirmative action baby in the White House (no pun intended)); * He is against universal / socialized health care; * He gave kudos to Malkin's book about how the Japanese internment during WWII was a good idea (although he did think the government went too far by taking away the houses of those people who were put into the internment camps ... it's okay to take the people away from their homes - just don't pocket the homes, I guess is his position on this); * And, please, tell me this is a joke, yes? Oh, please. Sowell recently wrote: "When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can't help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup": http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmU0NGQ0ZTQzZTU4Zjk4MjdjZWMzYTM4Nzk2MzQ0MGI= * Military coup? * Eh? >>> That is quite a gross over-simplifying dismissal. You might want to >>> work >>> on that. >> I don't see much in our society that inspires me to think otherwise. Do >> you? (If so, please inform me where all this progressive amelioration is >> taking place ... or where white people are becoming more informed or >> concerned about anything having to do with blacks in our country.) > Over generalization is a general intellectual weakness. It has little > to do with anything external. External, internal ... schlemiel, schlimazel ... hasenpfeffer incorporated ... (did he really write "military junta"?) ... Olga From brent.allsop at comcast.net Wed May 30 03:44:26 2007 From: brent.allsop at comcast.net (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 21:44:26 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Why Emotion? Was Re: Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net><001f01c79cfa$b86aea00$ae0a4e0c@MyComputer><4653E50D.90300@pobox.com><000e01c79dba$004e5540$41074e0c@MyComputer><004701c79e28$34fdd7c0$a3054e0c@MyComputer><012b01c79ee5$1d0896b0$5a074e0c@MyComputer><001c01c79fca$13f63060$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><005d01c7a07d$b8799380$b10a4e0c@MyComputer> <00a701c7a08d$d41ea700$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <010201c7a13d$396cff30$b2054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <465CF31A.7060808@comcast.net> John K Clark asked: "I've been asking this question for years on this list but never received an answer, if intelligent behavior is possible without emotion then why did Evolution invent emotion?" ?Why Emotions? or why did evolution come up with emotions is another topic I?d like to see canonized. I remember you bringing this up before. We?ve discussed this many times on this list. And I?ve attempted to answer this (or at least express my POV) at lest once before. But of course all the stuff lost in the archive evidently isn?t worth much right? So I guess we'll have to repeat this all yet again just like we did before? Do you think we'll make any progress this time around over last time? John and A B seem to be in a similar camp on this, or at least have similar things to say. Both of you indicated that there is a lower level of mechanical or replicator intelligence that doesn?t require emotions. But ?survival and reproduction? requires, or at least is facilitated by emotions. Lee says ?It's evidently easier to retain an emotionally charged marker for someone or something than to retain statistics.? Stathis says: You could say the same thing about emotion and physical strength, but that doesn't mean we can't make a physically strong machine lacking either emotion or intelligence. But my POV about most of the above is that none of this is in any way explanatory. It seems to just claim we can produce simple intelligence with computers today, so that kind of intelligence must not need emotions. We can?t yet produce the more advanced kinds of memory or motivated behavior, so it must be required for that. But there is no explanation in any of this, just pointing out this correlation which could be arbitrary. Most of you know I believe nature has phenomenal properties ? like red and green. And of course emotions are simply a complex phenomenal extensions of these more baser phenomenon. I think these phenomenal properties of nature are powerful building blocks of knowledge, conscious awareness, and motivation. There is no motivation in a 1 and zero, and it takes a whole lot of them to get anywhere close to the motivation and meaning contained in red and green.So, my POV is that nature has phenomenal properties, which are great and efficient building blocks for intelligence. So of course evolution would utilize these powerful phenomenal blocks to build motivated intelligence. Also I believe purely abstract ones and zeros can model ?emotional? behavior, so this is another reason I don?t like much of what has been said by others here. The key is efficiency. Like I said before it takes a lot of ones and zeros to represent a simple phenomenal hunger pang or orgasmic sex drive. There is no fundamental meaning in a one or a zero. But red and green - now those do have real meaning and a reason, and a purpose ? just like all more complex emotions. More of that is what we all really want, and evolution has used these phenomenal properties of nature as an efficient and easy carat (and stick) to get us to know and do what it wanted. I probably haven't said this any better than last time. I seem to recall many of you disagreed with this POV. I can't really recall why, and I hope you don't expect me to dig up what you said last time out of the archives so I guess you'll all have to say it all yet again. Brent Allsop From andrew at ceruleansystems.com Wed May 30 04:37:12 2007 From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 21:37:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People In-Reply-To: <026101c7a26b$9ba68390$6501a8c0@brainiac> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac><94C2F196-8BBE-43F9-A2EA-ADE239CE1E20@mac.com><000b01c7a0f8$10e6c040$6501a8c0@brainiac> <465B32BF.8080307@mac.com> <026101c7a26b$9ba68390$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <8FBFC6AF-E49A-47D3-AF40-D2FC0C0C5EE6@ceruleansystems.com> On May 29, 2007, at 8:35 PM, Olga Bourlin wrote: > * He is against gay marriage because, he says, marriage is actually a > "restriction" (but what I don't understand is if gays want this > "restriction" like, apparently, some heterosexuals do, then why not > give it > to 'em?); Depending on the assumptions one is willing to make, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this position. There are a myriad of significant benefits available to narrow classes of people. If you are going to dissolve one of them on arbitrary moral or legal grounds, you'll pretty much have to dissolve *all* of them if there is to be any kind of consistency, something most people would be very uncomfortable with. I am actually on the "dissolve" side of this issue. The state has no business giving special recognition or privileges to homosexual marriages any more than it has business doing so in heterosexual marriages. > * He is against minimum wage; Any economist worth a damn would be, for well understood reasons. The only reason people even care about the minimum wage is that some union contracts have wages that are set as a fixed multiple of the Federal minimum wage -- if you increase it 40%, the union guys get a 40% pay raise or something along those lines. Raising the minimum wage is nothing more than pandering to the unions. It has no other significant consequences other than pricing labor out of the market on the low end. In a way, I support radical increases of the minimum wage. It will bankrupt the companies and break the unions, putting that idiocy to rest. > * He is against affirmative action (but he's seemingly not opposed > to white > affirmative action - I mean, I've heard no complaints from Sowell > about the > current affirmative action baby in the White House (no pun intended)); Any economist worth their degree would be against affirmative action. The costs and consequences far outweigh whatever nominal benefits these poorly thought out programs have. > * He is against universal / socialized health care; Socialism is not expensive per se, but entitlements destroy societies by reducing flexibility in the economy. If you keep accreting these kinds of liabilities, the lack of economic flexibility and adaptability will cause a very predictable downward economic spiral. Any economist worth a damn knows this, and the result has repeated itself numerous times in the real world. (Which is not to say some private systems such as the US are not broken; clearly wholesale restructuring is needed in US medicine, but those problems can be solved without government healthcare.) I have yet to see a good idea for how to keep a social program, particularly a universal one, from calcifying into an entitlement with all the economic damage that causes. > * He gave kudos to Malkin's book about how the Japanese internment > during > WWII was a good idea (although he did think the government went too > far by > taking away the houses of those people who were put into the > internment > camps ... it's okay to take the people away from their homes - just > don't > pocket the homes, I guess is his position on this); It is obvious then that he viewed it as a necessary measured pragmatic action by some calculus rather than as a punitive measure against people of Japanese ancestry. That distinction reflects favorably on him even if you disagree with his analysis of the problem. > * And, please, tell me this is a joke, yes? Oh, please. Sowell > recently > wrote: "When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our > media, > our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can't help wondering if > the day may > yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a > military coup": I can see why people who did not consider what he was saying would go apoplectic over that statement, but that really reflects poorly on the person having that response. If we posit that the US is on a downward spiral -- something you agree with -- and not likely to change any time soon, which is something I think any pragmatic economist would agree with, then what will be the long term resolution as a country? What is the end point? You make assertions about a set of conditions, and actually have made numerous statements that are in agreement with Sowell over the increasingly degenerate state of many segments of population, but object to anyone that follows those assumptions to reasonable logical conclusions because you find the conclusions abhorrent. If you are not arguing from adverse consequences, then what is your argument? Sowell here and you are in pretty close agreement about the nature of the system. What historical precedent are you going to offer that shows Sowell is probably wrong about the inevitable conclusion? My cursory view of world history lends quite a bit of support to the idea that an unrecoverable degenerate state terminates with the military arm of the government cleaning house, sometimes restoring civil government but often not. In some democracies, like Turkey, it is even their express job, and the US military oath makes similar statements. The alternative is a civil revolution, but those tend to be very ugly and almost never restore anything resembling the original government. It is not something we normally think about, but the world changes. Have you really thought about the topic, given that you agree with the base conditions required for the proposed eventuality to occur? Cheers, J. Andrew Rogers From fauxever at sprynet.com Wed May 30 04:25:42 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 21:25:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] White Privilege References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac> <052e01c7a156$bfd894d0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <029001c7a272$966e7020$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "Lee Corbin" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Monday, May 28, 2007 11:32 AM > > Evidently, you don't really want to talk about the "History of Slavery" > ... ... I love history. But, I am wondering ... ***practically*** speaking, what good would it be to talk about the history of slavery here? It's a sordid history (and I am familiar with it). Something different happened when slavery became based more on "race" (identifiable physical characteristic) rather than just class. And one of my favorite books on this subject (by far not the definitive book on this subject, but good) - is one I've mentioned here before - called The Arrogance of Faith, by Forrest G. Wood. Take a look: http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/aah/allen_3_3.html and http://us_asians.tripod.com/articles-ethnic-diversity.html > or "Class Differences Among Black People". You want to talk about > (and condemn) White Privilege, so I have changed the subject line > accordingly. :-) > Basically, I suppose that you want to talk about > White Privilege > with an eye towards what can be done about it, which is a very > interesting inquiry. > At one point I thought you admitted that it was a world-wide > "problem", but then in another place said that it was basically > American. What is basically American---due to the South's > need to defend its ideology before the Civil War---is the > historically first instance of extremely virulent racism. (According > to Sowell.) Of course, I presume that we are exempting those > like Ghengis Khan, or the Romans, who would sometimes > simply kill everyone they could find of a certain ethnic group. > What they failed to do, unlike the southerners, was mount an > intellectual defense of racism. Certainly, it is a world-wide problem, but I am more familiar with what I've observed in the United States for the past few decades (although I have observed it in other countries during this time, as well). Furthermore, the United States is ... was trying to be? ... the beacon of democracy, or something like that - so I am more concerned about the contradictory message here. Many other countries in the world don't pretend to be fair or equal or democratic or modern - so their (whatever) privilege, while unfortunate, may not be as contradictory. > Anyway, the problem of white privilege *is* world-wide. As I said, > in every country in which they exist in significant numbers, whites > have taken charge of the basic structures of society. For example > Amy Chau's book "World On Fire" describes in detail the current > reigning groups throughout South America. I myself was > astonished in the 1970s when on TV I saw a Presidential > reviewing stand in Mexico City during some big parade: all the > Mexican big-shots looked very white to me, and a couple of the > women were blondes. I have lived in Rio de Janeiro, and have traveled in Spain and Portugal - natural blondes are not unknown in those countries. And unnatural blondes are everywhere, as well. I'm not certain what your point is in the previous paragraph, exactly. > But there isn't really anything special about white people. Soon > you'll have to recognize that there will be (or is!) Asian privilege > and Jewish privilege as well. Wealth and power "naturally" > comes to some groups more than it comes to others. So either > by their natures or by their cultures, at the present time, whites > rule. The United States is a diverse country - and getting more so. I cannot separate myself from other citizens so easily - whatever their "color" or culture. Black history is American history. Asian history is American history. Jewish history is American history. I wouldn't want to have it any other way. All-white-all-the-time history can, indeed, be very borrrrrrrrrrrrring. This country is much more interesting than that! > Big deal. They're fairly benign as ruling classes historically go, and > it's even far from monolithic: many middle-class African American > or Mexicans live in exclusive "white" neighborhoods, or, in California, > in exclusive "white/Asian" neighborhoods. Who's benign? Are you talking about "whites?" If you are, there's nothing benign about them or their culture ... (sometimes boring, yes, but not benign). > But nonetheless, your focus is on a Solution, and I appreciate > that. Let's turn to history for some lessons. In Europe the past > 500 years, there was this problem of "Jewish privilege". Money > somehow kept getting collected into their hands. A solution was > "ghettoization", restrictions on ownership, restrictions to institutes > of higher learning, and so on. The controling WASPs were > trying to defend themselves from Jewish takeover, but eventually > they failed, at least insofar as many kinds of current American > institutions go. 500 years? So much has changed in 500 years - while the history of that time frame may be interesting to study, life has changed so much that 500 years ago ... you may as well be talking about 5000 years ago. In the Western world, science, technology and the industrial revolution have changed everything - our mores, our expectations - and fast. We have inherited what history has wrought, and we need to focus on what to do and how to work with the new implements in the old treasure chest. While history is important to know and try to understand (even in spite of what Voltaire said), sometimes I fear there may not be any future ... er, history. Many things from the past are no longer relevant. Mainly - we have moved out of our ancestral homes / tribes. "We (all) are the world" now and all that ... > That's what Sowell is doing: trying to isolate the cultural > characteristics of different groups that account for their > prosperity. (He neglects possible genetic causes, which > could be an important factor too, but that's reasonable, > since we won't be able to do anything about them for > decades yet.) Yeah, but, again - to what end? If they're so good ... in your opinion, why aren't Sowell's ideas catching on? I think there's something impractical about them - i.e., they don't seem practical for the world today. And Sowell could use some diplomatic lessons - build coalitions and that sort of thing, you know? Olga From moulton at moulton.com Wed May 30 04:50:37 2007 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 21:50:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery In-Reply-To: <061401c7a255$c9bfd260$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04f201c7a147$54da96b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05b401c7a1ac$dfe48210$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <1180421301.3140.153.camel@localhost.localdomain> <061401c7a255$c9bfd260$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <1180500638.3140.275.camel@localhost.localdomain> On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 17:58 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: > Oh, all right. :-) My superficial and over-polarizing statement > doesn't hold a candle to Sowell's description anyway: Actually I expected someone with Sowell's reputation to be more precise; in particular to have a more nuanced categorization instead of Western versus non-Western. If "instrumental view of history" has the common meaning of using history in furtherance of some short term personal and non-historical project then I caution that we all should be careful. It is like many concepts - a double edged sword. Since there are no specific names attached to the phrase "those with an instrumental view of history" I do not know if he is talking about a dozen persons or a gross or more. The passage would be easier to take seriously if it had a bit more specificity. I think attempting to understand slavery, theft of homelands, apartheid, segregation and a host of other problems in a historical context is a worthwile per. I just urge an appropriately complete view with honesty, clarity and accuracy; and not attempting either to condemn or to absolve with sweeping over generalizations. And as for the rejoinder "well we all know what he means"; let me just say that can trigger me to extra skepticism. Fred > He writes on page 134 > > In short, where European and European-offshoot societies > held direct and effective power in the nineteenth century, > slavery was simply abolished. But where theWestern world's > power and influence were mediated, reduced or otherwise > operated only indirectly, there non-Western peoples were > able to fight a long war of attrition and evasion in defense of > slavery----a war which they had, however, largely lost by > the middle of the twentieth century, but which they had not yet > wholly lost even at the beginning of the third millennium, when > vestiges of slavery remained in parts of Africa. > > Despite all this, those with an instrumental view of history have > managed to turn things upside down and present slavery as an > evil of "our society" or the the white race or of Western civilization. > One could as well do the same with murder or cancer, simply > by ignoring these evils in other societities and incessantly > denouncing their presence in the West. Yet what was peculiar > about the West was not that it participated in the worldwide > evil of slavery, but that it later abolished that evilt, no only in > Western societies but also in other societies subjectot Western > control or influence. > > Lee > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at comcast.net Wed May 30 04:53:27 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 21:53:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens In-Reply-To: <465C49F3.4000500@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <200705300453.l4U4rBu6020774@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > Richard Loosemore ... > Subject: Re: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens > > spike wrote: ... > > > > Notice the similarity to Keith Henson's case... > > We have here two clear cases where the courts are being used for > > something other than what they are intended, as dealing out > political punishment. > > > > spike > > Spike, ... > What that means, here, is that we need to look at Libby's > actions and statements... > He was convicted of making a false statement in the context > of a situation that screamed of massive deception by himself > and many others... Ah, I see where this goes, and it scares me. The church of Scientology did not like the fact that alt.religion.scientology even existed at all. There were a number of critics on that site that said things Co$ leadership didn't like. Many of the comments were made by people who are judgment proof, as they owned nothing. Finally the settled on Keith as a focal point to go after. Similarly Libby wasn't really the one they wanted. I, you and others get the feeling the trial was really about the decision to go to war in Iraq. The problem is that Libby didn't make that decision. So they went after a theory that he was covering for some whitehouse leaker by saying he didn't remember who told him Mrs. Wilson's identity as an undercover CIA agent and that she was married to Ambassador Wilson. Now we learn that it was Mrs. Wilson herself that revealed that relationship. We learn that Libby's story that he couldn't recall who told him is now very believable, since a lot of people knew it from the 2002 memo. He thought it general knowledge, again very plausible. Even the jurists commented that they didn't have the right person on trial. This whole trial was not really about Libby, it was about Bush. Libby did not make the decision to go to war. He didn't leak Plame's identity. The jury convicted an innocent man. Your line of reasoning scares me, for it reminds me of Samantha's repeated warnings. Using a court system as a blunt object with which to bludgeon enemies is a Nazi tactic. We have two apparent cases of that right before us: Libby and Henson. > The "massive deception" could never, as I > say, be evaluated and proved in toto... Oh? Then there was no case worthy of a court of law. > but it is there, and to > anyone looking at that context his false statement was > clearly part of a larger picture... That "false statement" is looking true now. By the reasoning given, that makes the "larger picture" look similarly true. > Turning now to Plame. Her "false" statement was completely > isolated, with very little impact or relation to the context... Looks to me like an attempt to hang someone in the Bush administration for something her own husband actually did. After the Novak column identified Plame as a "CIA agent," Mr. Plame went running around screaming that someone had identified her as a "secret agent." But notice that the magazine article did not say she was a secret agent, Mr. Plame did that. Wilson outed his own wife a year after she outed herself. ... > > This, I think, is why the scales are not equal. Plame > deserves the benefit of the doubt: Libby does not... If one wishes to advance this argument, I am back to the same place the jurist concluded: the wrong person was on trial here. Libby didn't make the decision to go to war, Bush did. ... > > Sadly, I also see the analogy to Keith Henson differently, > and in a quite massive way. The Libby case was the tip of an > iceberg that was analogous to the massive use of money, power > and influence by a powerful force to crush two individuals > (Wilson and Plame-Wilson) who were standing in the way of an > attempt to start an unjustified war... But Libby wasn't the tip of that iceburg, Bush was. Libby didn't do this. The comments for which he was accused of lying sure sound true now. For a conviction to be legitimate, there must be a specific charge and proof of guilt. That is the way our court system is supposed to work, altho I see that it doesn't always. Regarding a powerful force to crush two individuals (Wilson and Plame-Wilson) who were standing in the way, etc. When Wilson returned from Niger, the man didn't even write a report. How important is a trip with so few apparent findings that it wasn't worth writing a report? To me and others, that sounds as if there were no findings. There was no massive conspiracy to crush Wilson and Plame. They were nothing, microscopic. It baffles me that Wilson would assume everyone in the white house was talking about him, when the silly goof didn't even write a report! He wasn't the right person, an ambassador, not an intelligence agent, wrong color so he couldn't blend in, shoule we be surprised didn't find anything? Sending him was a big mistake because it tipped off the involved parties that someone was snooping around. > Keith is similarly the > victim of money, power and influence by a powerful force > trying to crush him. > > With respect, > Richard Loosemore. Aint that the truth. They couldn't find any one point to convict him for threats, so they convicted him for something I didn't even know was a crime. How many here knew that "interfering with a religion" was illegal? In my wildest dreams I never would have guessed that the first amendment right to free speech would not cover picketing in front of a church. Co$ likely did accomplish what they wanted however: to intimidate those on the internet newsgroups, to watch themselves or face similar consequences. It worked, didn't it? We choose our words carefully even here on this outspoken forum, knowing that Co$ers are likely watching. spike From jonkc at att.net Wed May 30 04:53:47 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 00:53:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <933721.95408.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00f401c7a276$a0019f50$f1084e0c@MyComputer> "A B" >John, as a sincere favor to all of us, will you please stop calling it "Slave AI"? No. > the Amygdala could be surgically separated from the rest of a living > human brain? Do you believe that the patient would instantly loose all > intelligence? As the amygdale also deals in things like breathing and heart rate I don't thing the patient would be doing very many intelligent things. Me: >>according to the Singularity Institute's video the only reason this >>godlike creation wants to live is so it can serve us! >I don't recall anyone saying that in the video. I do, Hugo de Garis said it. > So what do you recommend we do, John? If the decision were up to you, how > would you want to proceed? Full speed ahead in making a AI, after all If we don't somebody else will, just don't waste time with friendly part you'll just be spinning your wheels. Flesh and blood human being as we now know them will be extinct in less than a century anyway, but if we're very lucky the AI may let us evolve into something better; if we make the first AI the odds of that happening are a little bit better than if somebody else does. And if the AI decides to kill us all at least we'll go out in style. John K Clark From moulton at moulton.com Wed May 30 05:00:33 2007 From: moulton at moulton.com (Fred C. Moulton) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 22:00:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] History of Slavery In-Reply-To: <1180500638.3140.275.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04f201c7a147$54da96b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05b401c7a1ac$dfe48210$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <1180421301.3140.153.camel@localhost.localdomain> <061401c7a255$c9bfd260$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <1180500638.3140.275.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <1180501233.3140.278.camel@localhost.localdomain> On Tue, 2007-05-29 at 21:50 -0700, Fred C. Moulton wrote: > I think attempting to understand slavery, theft of homelands, apartheid, > segregation and a host of other problems in a historical context is a > worthwile per. worthwhile pursuit. Sorry for the typo. Fred From sjatkins at mac.com Wed May 30 05:13:25 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 22:13:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Going beyond EP In-Reply-To: <41389.31852.qm@web60513.mail.yahoo.com> References: <41389.31852.qm@web60513.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5C06ABD5-6FB8-423A-AEE5-20201B0DF0B5@mac.com> On May 29, 2007, at 4:21 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > > --- Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> In the end, the will to >> survive, or even the will to see the world survive, >> is just an axiom of EP, >> without any deeper justification. > > This is precisely the line of reasoning that led me > and my fellows Ascensionists to conclude that the > world would benefit from a transhuman religion that > held the status of being alive as the most holy and > sacred gift imaginable. The only thing holier than a > human life is more than one human life. It was once an axiom of EP. But we big brained apes have to find deeper justification and meaning than that. It is what we do. But where does this "holy" and "sacred" come from? It is just high emotional strutting about, isn't it? Either we are dedicated to the best outcomes we can conceive of or we are not. It is not clear the emotional strutting help with seeing clearly what those outcomes might be or with dedicating our energy to bringing them into existence. The particular flavor of religious strutting about imho clouds the mind and distorts vision. > > > Thus elevating survival and the love of life from an > axiom of EP to divine truth and sacred duty stripped > of all superfluous dogma. The very notion of "divine truth" and "sacred duty" reeks of superfluous dogma. > In this way the > counterproductive entropic aspects of EP can be > overcome, while giving hope for the continued > survival, thriving, and extropic optimization of > humanity. In the words of one of our enlightened > sisters Marie Tobias, "Life for the sake of life, in > the name of life, for the good > of life." > I am glad I got out. - samantha From fauxever at sprynet.com Wed May 30 05:20:23 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 22:20:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac><94C2F196-8BBE-43F9-A2EA-ADE239CE1E20@mac.com><000b01c7a0f8$10e6c040$6501a8c0@brainiac><465B32BF.8080307@mac.com><026101c7a26b$9ba68390$6501a8c0@brainiac> <8FBFC6AF-E49A-47D3-AF40-D2FC0C0C5EE6@ceruleansystems.com> Message-ID: <002301c7a27a$39b65930$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "J. Andrew Rogers" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 9:37 PM > I am actually on the "dissolve" side of this issue. The state has no > business giving special recognition or privileges to homosexual > marriages any more than it has business doing so in heterosexual > marriages. > >> * He is against minimum wage; > Any economist worth a damn would be, for well understood reasons. > The only reason people even care about the minimum wage is that some > union contracts have wages that are set as a fixed multiple of the > Federal minimum wage -- if you increase it 40%, the union guys get a > 40% pay raise or something along those lines. Raising the minimum > wage is nothing more than pandering to the unions. It has no other > significant consequences other than pricing labor out of the market > on the low end. > > In a way, I support radical increases of the minimum wage. It will > bankrupt the companies and break the unions, putting that idiocy to > rest. >> * He is against affirmative action (but he's seemingly not opposed to >> white >> affirmative action - I mean, I've heard no complaints from Sowell about >> the >> current affirmative action baby in the White House (no pun intended)); > > Any economist worth their degree would be against affirmative > action. The costs and consequences far outweigh whatever nominal > benefits these poorly thought out programs have. >From what I've read, white women have primarily benefited from affirmative action, and because of that, therefore, many white men. What was poorly thought out about that? Our society has changed, and affirmative action helped bridge some of those changes. It's a good thing women have joined the workforce - can you imagine going back to 1955 when many women were wasting away at home? (Whew! I was fortunate to have both a mother and grandmother who worked "outside the home" as they call it ...) Have you read about? - or seen? - a time when entitlements in the workforce went primarily to white men? (I have ... and it's a good thing that's potentially in the past, because ... As I mentioned ... why hasn't Sowell worked up a sweat about the affirmative action that put Bush in the White House? And talk about the money Bush has frittered away ... unbelievable. >> * He is against universal / socialized health care; > > Socialism is not expensive per se, but entitlements destroy societies > by reducing flexibility in the economy. If you keep accreting these > kinds of liabilities, the lack of economic flexibility and > adaptability will cause a very predictable downward economic spiral. > Any economist worth a damn knows this, and the result has repeated > itself numerous times in the real world. (Which is not to say some > private systems such as the US are not broken; clearly wholesale > restructuring is needed in US medicine, but those problems can be > solved without government healthcare.) I've been hearing this for decades ... even while other countries have figured out how to provide this to their citizens. I don't understand the reluctance the good people of the United States have against universal health care. (http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/opinion/26gawande.html?hp ) May 26, 2007 Op-Ed Columnist A Katrina Health Care System By ATUL GAWANDE This is my fourth week as a guest columnist. Let's take a look at the health care news that's transpired in that time. First, DaimlerChrylser sold off 80 percent of its Chrysler division for three pebbles and a piece of string. O.K., the cash payment was actually $1.35 billion. But for an 82-year-old company that built more than two million cars and trucks last year, took in $47 billion in revenue, and owns 64 million square feet of factory real estate in North America alone, that's almost nothing. Yet analysts say that it was a great deal for Daimler. Why? Because the buyer, Cerberus Capital Management, agreed to absorb Chrysler's $18 billion in health and pension liability costs. Stop and think about this for a minute. The deal meant that the costs of our job-based health insurance system - costs adding $1,500 to each car Chrysler builds here, but almost nothing to those built in Canada or Europe - have so broken the automaker's ability to compete that giving it away became the smartest thing Daimler could do. Chrysler's mistake was to hang around long enough to collect retirees and an older-than-average work force. As a result, it now has less market value than Men's Wearhouse, Hasbro, the Cheesecake Factory, NutriSystem, Foot Locker and Pottery Barn. Oprah is worth more than Chrysler. This is not good. Meanwhile, officials at West Jefferson Medical Center outside New Orleans reported that the number of indigent patients admitted there has tripled since Hurricane Katrina. The uninsured are now 30 percent of their emergency room patients. Officials in Houston hospitals are reporting similar numbers. Conditions seem worse rather than better. Katrina caused a vicious spiral. Large numbers of people lost their jobs and, with them, their health coverage. Charity Hospital, the one state-funded hospital in New Orleans, closed. The few open hospital emergency rooms in the area have had to handle the load, but it's put the hospitals in financial crisis. Four hundred physicians filed a lawsuit against the state seeking payment for uncompensated care, and massive numbers of doctors and nurses have left the area. In Washington, a conference held by the American College of Emergency Physicians revealed that New Orleans may have it worst, but emergency rooms everywhere are drowning in patients. Mandated to care for the uninsured, they are increasingly unprofitable. So although the influx of patients has grown, 500 emergency rooms have closed in the last decade. The result: 91 percent report overcrowding - meaning wait times for the acutely ill of more than an hour or waiting rooms filled more than six hours per day. Almost half report this occurring daily. A few days later, the Commonwealth Fund released one of the most detailed studies ever done comparing care in the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Britain. We've known for awhile that health care here is more expensive than anywhere and that our life expectancy is somehow shorter. But the particulars were the surprise. On the good side, the study found that once we get into a doctor's office, American patients are as likely as patients anywhere to get the right care, especially for prevention. Only Germans have a shorter wait for surgery when it's needed. And 85 percent of Americans are happy with the care they get. But we also proved to be the least likely to have a regular doctor - and starkly less likely to have had the same doctor for five years. We have the hardest time finding care on nights or weekends outside of an E.R. And we are the most likely (after Canadians) to wait six days or more for an appointment when we need medical attention. Half of Americans also reported forgoing medical care because of cost in the last two years, twice the proportion elsewhere. None of this news, however, did more than lift a few eyebrows. So this is the picture of American health care you get after watching for a few weeks: it's full of holes, it's slowly bankrupting us and we're kind of used to it. That leaves two possibilities: (1) We've given up on the country; or (2) we' re just waiting for someone else to be in charge. I'm pulling for No. 2. Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and a New Yorker staff writer, is the author of the new book "Better." He is a guest columnist this month. > I have yet to see a good idea for how to keep a social program, > particularly a universal one, from calcifying into an entitlement > with all the economic damage that causes. Economic damage trumps emotional and physical damage? I say, it would be a good idea for lying politicians to spend less money on pre-emptive wars against petty dictators ... and more money on health and education at home. Cheers back, Olga From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 30 06:42:54 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 16:42:54 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <200705300052.l4U0qfXb018544@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <001901c7a15e$1bebbb60$80054e0c@MyComputer> <200705300052.l4U0qfXb018544@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 30/05/07, spike wrote: AI may start out friendly, then get progressively more intelligent and less > concerned whether the meat things live or die. And that would be just fine with me: I feel very safe around machines which are just there to do their job, unlikely to suddenly take offence at the way I look at them or decide that I must be imprisoned to keep me away from rich foods and other toxic substances. The machine can work all these things out in great detail, tell me that if I want outcome x then I should do y, but I'd prefer that it just present me with the information it has obtained as an abstract intellectual exercise, with the only emotion or motivation being the pursuit of truth, and leave me to do with it as I choose. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrew at ceruleansystems.com Wed May 30 06:59:15 2007 From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers) Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 23:59:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People In-Reply-To: <002301c7a27a$39b65930$6501a8c0@brainiac> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac><94C2F196-8BBE-43F9-A2EA-ADE239CE1E20@mac.com><000b01c7a0f8$10e6c040$6501a8c0@brainiac><465B32BF.8080307@mac.com><026101c7a26b$9ba68390$6501a8c0@brainiac> <8FBFC6AF-E49A-47D3-AF40-D2FC0C0C5EE6@ceruleansystems.com> <002301c7a27a$39b65930$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <9C0B55E4-6148-48B4-9B9D-2751C24BAA23@ceruleansystems.com> On May 29, 2007, at 10:20 PM, Olga Bourlin wrote: > Economic damage trumps emotional and physical damage? Silly, you pretend like these things are unrelated or that you can manipulate them at will independently. This is way up there on the list of defective ideas that have caused untold quantities of pain, suffering, and death in history. It is a pity this misguided notion is so popular. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that. J. Andrew Rogers From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 30 07:09:17 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 17:09:17 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <065701c7a261$b155b4e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05f901c7a1c0$7febefb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002901c7a1f5$c10a5dd0$21074e0c@MyComputer> <065701c7a261$b155b4e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 30/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > > That's because the dictator's interests and his genes interest are not > the > > > same; however a dictator would do everything he can to increase his > power > > > because if he doesn't take advantage of every opportunity some > dictator > > > wannabe will. > > > > Couldn't you say the same about his expansionary urges as his > reproductive > > urges? Men who tried to have as many children as possible would over the > > years have come to dominate the gene pool, > > I think that men did try to have as many children as possible, for a > while, until > women wised up. (I mean that quite seriously; it's a theory of > evolutionary > history that an "arms-race" developed between women who can have only > relatively few children, and men who can have many). With modern reproductive technologies, it would be possible for women in power to have thousands of children, and men to have many thousands, perhaps even millions. And that's without even considering the possibilities raised by cloning. Therefore, given enough time, a human will arise who will take advantage of these opportunities, and that human will dominate the world. Do you think this is going to happen soon? If not, why assume it is any more likely that AI's will take over the world, especially in view of the fact that they won't start out with the desire to survive and reproduce which is basic to every naturally evolved organism? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell.wallace at gmail.com Wed May 30 07:16:33 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 08:16:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <00f401c7a276$a0019f50$f1084e0c@MyComputer> References: <933721.95408.qm@web37412.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <00f401c7a276$a0019f50$f1084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705300016h3091273ds471f2aa5078a8dae@mail.gmail.com> On 5/30/07, John K Clark wrote: > > I do, Hugo de Garis said it. And I recall Nancy Lieder saying she was in telepathic communication with aliens from Zeta Reticuli that there would be a pole shift that would destroy the world and the faithful could survive by being beamed up to a flying saucer. I dunno, but it just seems to me there's this thing called "rationality", or "not listening to kooks" that if we followed it, might just save us some valuable time. Maybe it's just me. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fauxever at sprynet.com Wed May 30 07:29:17 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 00:29:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><009501c7a00c$b74591b0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00ad01c7a081$5362aeb0$6501a8c0@brainiac><00a801c7a08f$3beaf590$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677><002701c7a0cc$4b7b8ff0$6501a8c0@brainiac><94C2F196-8BBE-43F9-A2EA-ADE239CE1E20@mac.com><000b01c7a0f8$10e6c040$6501a8c0@brainiac><465B32BF.8080307@mac.com><026101c7a26b$9ba68390$6501a8c0@brainiac><8FBFC6AF-E49A-47D3-AF40-D2FC0C0C5EE6@ceruleansystems.com><002301c7a27a$39b65930$6501a8c0@brainiac> <9C0B55E4-6148-48B4-9B9D-2751C24BAA23@ceruleansystems.com> Message-ID: <001501c7a28c$3bba1340$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "J. Andrew Rogers" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 11:59 PM > On May 29, 2007, at 10:20 PM, Olga Bourlin wrote: >> Economic damage trumps emotional and physical damage? > Silly, you pretend like these things are unrelated or that you can > manipulate them at will independently. This is way up there on the > list of defective ideas that have caused untold quantities of pain, > suffering, and death in history. It is a pity this misguided notion > is so popular. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and > all that. I did mention other countries have figured out what to do. While those health plans may not be perfect, they're better and more equitable than what we have - and have had - in this country. I've had friends who lived under the Italian health-care system for many years, and there are friends who still do. The get medical health care whenever they've needed it - they live longer than Americans do - what's not to like? An acquaintance of another friend of mine who recently moved to Costa Rica buys into their national health care plan for $400 per year. Many Americans have been weaned on Cold War publications (e.g., Time magazine, which is still going strong in that vein). The agenda of those publications was to demonize the perceived evil of socialism and communism. As a result, to this day many Americans are conditioned to take out and wave their garlic bags around anything that resembles socialism - even if it would benefit the citizens of their country, even if it would benefit *them*. Therefore, you may justifiably put me into the category of: "I don't get it." (I may be thick - but none of this makes any sense to me.) Olga From stathisp at gmail.com Wed May 30 09:43:22 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 19:43:22 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Going beyond EP In-Reply-To: <41389.31852.qm@web60513.mail.yahoo.com> References: <41389.31852.qm@web60513.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 30/05/07, The Avantguardian wrote: > > > --- Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > In the end, the will to > > survive, or even the will to see the world survive, > > is just an axiom of EP, > > without any deeper justification. > > This is precisely the line of reasoning that led me > and my fellows Ascensionists to conclude that the > world would benefit from a transhuman religion that > held the status of being alive as the most holy and > sacred gift imaginable. The only thing holier than a > human life is more than one human life. > I realised when I was in my early teens that nothing really matters, we only think it matters because of the way our brains have evolved, and I found this an enormously exciting and profound insight. Let me add that it didn't in the slightest affect my attitude towards mine or other peoples' lives; it's just that I felt I finally understood this attitude for what it really was. I don't know if it was something about me, but I've never missed the absolutes of purpose and ethics that come with religion, or even with secular humanism. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Wed May 30 12:18:53 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 05:18:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Mormon Missionary Experience (Was: Linguistic Markers of Class) In-Reply-To: <200705281712.l4SHC2YX005042@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <734238.52814.qm@web35607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Spike wrote: The church was at that time pondering letting the girls go on missions too. But a lot of us can think immediately of why that would be a really bad idea. John or anyone know how that turned out? I have heard that it is a sport among lonely housewives to try to seduce the Mormon boys, but I have never heard if anyone ever made a score with them.{8^D > Wow. Young women have been going on missions (eighteen months and not two years like the guys) for quite a few years now (at least twenty, and I think many more years than that). As I understand the young ladies who go on missions are generally very safe (statistically I believe safer on a mission than off) and I have only heard of one rape case. I sadly realize there must have been more cases but something like that is not publicized. I recall as I grew up hearing local church members raise concerns as more and more young women decided to serve missions. They were worried about their physical safety and also as to whether "they could really hack it like the young men do (for some reason this was voiced by men...)." But many young women were eager to prove that attitude wrong and now many LDS woman look forward to missions as a means to help define themselves in a way other than simply go to college/work/get married/have kids. I realize many people here might think for a woman going on a Mormon mission is anything but "self-actualizing" and self-defining but many Mormon young women see it as just that. I remember quite a few of these women that I knew on my mission as being very beautiful and highly intelligent. They wanted to break the stereotype of the "homely girl who can't find a husband" and that goes on a mission so she has at least "something to do." I once joked about this and a sister missionary from Venezuela (who looked like Catherine Zeta-Jones) took me "to school" about it. lol A BYU professor did an interesting little book about the Mormon version of urban myths. Mormons believe Christ granted immortality to three of his twelve apostles here on the American continent soon after his resurrection and ascension in the Old World and that to this day they are out there in the world covertly helping people. These "Three Nephites" are according to unofficial Mormon missionary storytelling about as busy as you can get saving (you guessed it) Mormon missionaries from about every bad situation imaginable! lol I heard many tales of mysterious strangers helping elders & sisters and of course it was strongly suspected they were one of these immortals "in disguise." But relating to the sisters there is the classic story of how two sister missionaries went into a house where they should have known better and the host is a very disturbed and dangerous man. They manage to leave unmolested and later on the police arrest him for a long list of terrible crimes and the detectives ask him why he didn't hurt the sister missionaries since he injured and killed so many other women. The maniac replies that he was planning to murder them but three very large and muscular men had followed the girls very quietly into his house and he knew better than to challenge them in any way. I wish I could say all young Mormon male missionaries during their time in the field are "men of steel in character/self-discipline" but in fact it is a semi-regular event for a few young men every year to give in to temptation (at least it was on my mission). I knew of a small town in my own mission area where a (I guess bored) pretty young girl made sport of several young Mormon elders. But of course she did not force them to do anything against their will. lol My mission president sent two sisters into the area and it was a big joke to us because one of them was a champion martial artist (dad was, brothers were). The young sister missionaries rarely stray when compared to the men. I think part of it is that the women don't even leave for a mission until they are twenty-one and so they are generally at a higher level of personal self-knowledge and maturity (even if they left for a mission at age nineteen like the guys, they still would have a higher level of maturity!, lol). But the sisters were ironically generally known for not always getting along with each other as compared to the guys. I think the males tended to be better at gritting their teeth and trying to co-exist with a companion they did not immediately click with. A missionary does always have the option of calling his/her mission president and saying "I can't stand this companion, get me a new one right away!!" But it is a practice that causes much mission disruption and is extremely frowned upon. When I first arrived in Louisiana, my mission president (a recently retired senior vice president with the Payless Corporation who treated us like a bunch of gung-ho young executives) lectured us about how he had sent home at least one young missionary every month for the last several months. He stated he was sick and tired of this and we better all behave ourselves. What I didn't like was how an elder was blamed for not tattling on his companion who had been sneaking out at night to see a girl. This poor guy was all torn up inside about how things had gone down but he had not confided in the mission leadership (he had been the nerdy guy teamed up with a "cool" senior companion who had emotionally intimidated him). The consensus among the rank and file such as myself was that the guy sneaking out was the one to be disappointed in, not his partner. A friend of mine serving in California said his mission president was a retired army infantry colonel who was absolutely adored by his missionaries. This guy knew how to motivate and charm his charges and he was famous for the line "I'm going to send a bunch of you elder?s home in body bags before I send one of you home alive for morally screwing up!" They took this as very cool display of machismo and of course the U.S. was not at war at the time so it did not have the connotation it would now. My own mission president was a good man but not so adept at being a naturally adored leader. An older Polynesian friend of mine told me that the Tongan and Samoan membership asked Salt Lake leaders to stop sending their young men to Latin America because so many of the guys were getting involved with the local women. And a schoolmate who served in Italy said (and others had told me similar stories) that in the major cities it was not uncommon for young Italian gals to very assertively follow missionaries home (if they were good-looking and he was) and then knock on the door of the apt. and ask the elders for sex. He said he had heard stories about this at the missionary training center but thought such things were "just stories." They were real occurrences he found out and these women were definitely not simply trying to verbally embarrass the elders for laughs but to seduce them. I guess it really appeals to some women when they actually meet clean-cut young guys who are actually trying *not* to have sex. lol The thrill of the chase can cut both ways I suppose. He never gave in but admitted that the whole thing was sort of a boost to his male ego. But sometimes the motivation for a woman is to simply shock/get a rise out of the male missionary. A good buddy of mine served in France and while walking near a beach he heard a female voice directly behind him ask him for the time. He turned around and a totally naked and very beautiful French girl (wearing only a big smile) stood there. My friend mumbled the time and immediately turned around. This guy is about as dedicated a Mormon as you will find but he sure does love that story and his wife likes to tease him about it. hee I view sex as a very beautiful thing but when a guy (or gal) goes on a mission I believe they should be an example to the other missionaries, the church and the general public by obeying the rules they agreed to beforehand regarding celibacy and abstinence during the duration of their mission. The penalty for breaking this rule is the loss of church membership and to be immediately sent home. And so a guy who gets sexually involved pays a very high price and hopefully he has thought it over (though often in the heat of desire it's hard to think straight). Affairs between elder and sister missionaries are rare and are usually more based on romance/feeling than merely sexual desire. There was an elder I knew pretty well who loved to complain and always threatened to quit the mission and go home. The mission president got pretty tired of trying to encourage him. lol This guy was a big ole Idaho or Arizona farm boy and scandal broke out when he unofficially quit his mission without even leaving our area boundaries! Instead he shacked up with a local African-American woman and her kids in a very poor neighborhood. Despite several visits from the m.p. he refused to fly home. I never knew the woman or her kids and I got the impression he probably did not really love her because a few months later he did permanently leave for home. I hope she and especially her kids were alright after that. I can only imagine what people in her neighborhood would say to the young elders and sisters who came through after that! Communities tend to have long memories concerning such things. I hope they kept their sense of humor. Mormon missionaries have literally been banned from some countries and cities for doing some not very bright things. On my own mission we visited with an older single mom and her kids who lived with the mother's youngest sister (a bartender) who was in her early thirties. The very attractive sister seemed almost to flirt with me and even my companion noticed warned me to be careful. One day when we were visiting them my comp went to the bathroom and I was left all alone in the living room with the sister. The woman gave me a wicked smile and then scooted forward so she was sitting right next to me on the coach. I nearly started to hyperventilate and slid right off the sofa onto the floor! LOL The look on her face went from seductive to very surprised (I think she was just trying to get a rise out of me and she got more than she bargained for). My comp came back out of the bathroom wondering what had happened and if I was alright. As we walked to the bikes he said "I don't think I'm going back there with you." What was so funny is that he was the good-looking one (I was in my awkward years at a "revenge of the nerds" movie level- worse than even now, lol). We would have women drive by us in cars and they would hoot at him saying various things I won't repeat here. He would turn to me and jokingly say "elder, what are we going to do about your animal magnetism with the ladies?" But he was a "true blue" sort of guy and waiting for a girlfriend back home. A Canadian companion I had was the Mormon equivalent of "The Fonz." lol It sounds corny to say but it was very true. This guy exuded "coolness" and women would practically fall all over him. What he kept to himself was that he had a genius-level IQ and this quality ran in the family (after his mission he started a company with relatives and he has done very well for himself). Rumors were flying in the mission that my comp was up to no good with a local gal but I knew them both well and stood up regarding his innocence. I was called in several times by my mission president who "ran me over the coals" as he wanted to know if there was any truth to the stories. But "the fonz" had only been guilty of flirting (though that can lead to things). Despite this, I could tell the m.p. cared about him. Early in his mission this companion of mine had become mission legend by playing "streetball/basketball" with some local street toughs who had been up to that point verbally harassing missionaries going into their area. The inner-city guys played very rough/dirty b-ball but he and his comp at the time held their own and gained their respect. I miss this guy and remember the lessons he taught me about self-defense, Canadian military history, cooking, high-speed driving in New Orleans, understanding women and playing cards. He was not a typical Mormon missionary... I'm sure there are many thousands of stories (some probably very funny such as my own) of young Mormon missionary males have various run-ins with members of the opposite sex. When Mormon men of all ages gather together it is a beloved pastime to trade "mission experience stories" of years past (generally men do this with men/women with women, just one of those things). I can only imagine the stories the sister missionaries have to tell regarding how people come on to them. They often have to deal with guys who want to be taught the missionary lessons just so they can get attention (and sometimes they hope later on a date or sex) from the female missionary. All these tales of course range the gambit of human experience. For some men their mission was the highlight of their life even if they didn't realize it at the time. And in the Mormon hierarchy/subculture having served a mission is sort of equivalent to being a veteran of some foreign war and being deserving of respect. The other side of the seductive femme fatale scenario is that of the star-crossed lovers (but not on the sexual level, at least not yet). Though it is frowned upon, there is still a number of elders who meet their future wife on their mission. As soon as they have returned home they head on back and start courting the woman they have their heart set on. This used to be extremely common but not so much now. In the training center the church has they really harped on this subject and asked us to "lock our hearts" and not unlock them until we got home! But one of our guest lecturers admitted rather sheepishly he had met his future wife on his mission. At that point he went on to say how great that was but caught himself and said, "well..., do what your instructors tell you." lol It has been seen as a problem when elders go to poor countries and women show interest in them which is in part because the male missionary is seen as a ticket to a better standard of living. I had a friend who went to the Ukraine and he said the nature of the women there was not to be seductive as so much "hey, after your mission come right back and marry me- than take me home with you!" lol I find it sad that economic hardship can lead people to such desperation. But I'm sure some of the women were sincere in their particular feelings for certain guys. It seemed like quite a number of guys who served in the Philippines (much like young soldiers stationed there) would go back after their mission to return with a Filipina bride. I remember a very dorky friend of mine marrying a beauty pageant winner from there who he had met on his mission and he was quite pleased with himself to say the least. lol But they do seem happy together. I will say serving a mission in a third world country does give real depth of understanding and perspective about the true nature of how many impoverished people live. I know guys who even years later are broken up inside due to the things they witnessed. Some men lose their faith in the Church/God because they start to think how could a loving Supreme Being allow such suffering? The majority of young Mormon missionaries are dedicated to what they are doing and to be truthful at the same time they're struggling with their sexual urges like any young person trying even temporarily to be celibate and abstinent. One of my complaints about the Mormon Church is that often the young people marry too young just so they can finally begin to have sex (or at least sex without the guilt). I've known people who did this and only after having several kids do they realize no matter what the price they want a divorce. Or I have known people on the other hand who get so used to abstinence/celibacy that they hit their forties and fifties and still have not ever married/had a lover. I find that almost as tragic. This has been quite a walk down memory lane! lol I never meant for this post to be so long. It has been nearly twenty years since I was on my mission and yet somehow it seems almost like yesterday. I hope my words will give greater understanding to the people here of the young men and women who may show up at their door to share a message. Sincerely, John Grigg spike wrote: > Joshua Cowan ... > > Spike wrote: > >... > >Mormon boys are OK, the census taker is OK, the nurse and the social > >worker are probably OK. ... > > > ... I heard of everyone on your list getting mugged. ... josh Really, I'll be damn. I wonder what the muggers thought they would get from the Mormons. Their bibles? I had an employee several years ago who was saving money to go on his mission. The church was at that time pondering letting the girls go on missions too. But a lot of us can think immediately of why that would be a really bad idea. John or anyone know how that turned out? I have heard that it is a sport among lonely housewives to try to seduce the Mormon boys, but I have never heard if anyone ever made a score with them. {8^D Spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman --------------------------------- No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Wed May 30 13:39:08 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 06:39:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Anders? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070529134519.0255b0e8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <615890.84906.qm@web35603.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Damien Broderick wrote: Call off the search! I hear Anders has been returned to Earth. > Knowing Anders, he probably "returned himself" from a "Micro-Singularity (baby universe included)" of his very own creation! It may take a long time for the rest of us to catch up to him (with the exception of Eliezer and Michael). hee John : ) --------------------------------- Don't get soaked. Take a quick peak at the forecast with theYahoo! Search weather shortcut. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From austriaaugust at yahoo.com Wed May 30 18:00:40 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 11:00:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <00f401c7a276$a0019f50$f1084e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <928249.51957.qm@web37409.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >From an evolutionary perspective, it seems almost certain that consciousness evolved *before* emotion. Of what survival or reproductive value would emotion be if the organism could not perceive it in any way because it had no consciousness? Consciousness must have come first. And meaningful and useful (useful for survival and reproductive purposes) consciousness requires a baseline intelligence. You might try to claim that somehow emotion and intelligence evolved simultaneously. But that seems astronomically improbable. For how many thousands of random mutations does a single one confer a single significant advantage? I don't know the number, but it must be huge. Do you claim that any system that embodies an algorithm must have an "intelligence", and therefore has emotion? If I make a splash in a bucket of water, an algorithm (based on the laws of physics and the configuration of the molecules) conveys the effect of the event throughout all the water molecules. Are you saying that the water felt an emotion when I made the splash? And if emotion is the basis for consciousness and intelligence as you claim, then why does one have peaks and valleys of emotional activity throughout the day? Shouldn't consciousness be saturated constantly by intense emotions in this case? I actually tend to block emotions to some degree when I focus intently on something. Not always though, as you may have noticed. Do you "feel" yourself thinking? No. Consciousness and emotion are more like end-products (conscious experience being the final "product"), and intelligent processing is more like the construction stage. > "I do, Hugo de Garis said it." What video are you referring to? "Building Gods"? - If so, I don't believe that was sponsored by SIAI. > "Full speed ahead in making a AI, after all If we > don't somebody else will, > just don't waste time with friendly part you'll just > be spinning your > wheels. Flesh and blood human being as we now know > them will be extinct in > less than a century anyway, but if we're very lucky > the AI may let us evolve > into something better; if we make the first AI the > odds of that happening > are a little bit better than if somebody else does. > And if the AI decides to > kill us all at least we'll go out in style." You may be surprised to hear that I actually agree with you ... *sort of*. We do need to pursue AI quickly. Not only for existential risk reasons but because hundreds of thousands of people are dieing every day, and millions more are continuing to suffer. And that's not even considering all the other animals. But there are some things in this Universe that I and many others love. Can you blame someone for wanting to protect what they love? We need to pursue AI vigorously, but we need to be as careful as we can be at the same time. I don't believe that the paperclip-AI equivalent is *likely* to come about, but I do believe that it is a real, serious possiblity, if we aren't careful. And you may not beleive it, for some reason that I can't identify with, but I honestly believe that a Friendly AI design will lead to the best outcome, not only for humanity, but also for the AI. And I'm going to continue to do what I can to support SIAI. Besides, if we are all shared software running on the same system, how is anyone "disadvantaged"? Hell, we might even decide to all converge into a single "optimal" mind. I'd agree to it. Sincerely, Jeffrey Herrlich ____________________________________________________________________________________ TV dinner still cooling? Check out "Tonight's Picks" on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/ From amara at amara.com Wed May 30 21:38:23 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 23:38:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People Message-ID: Olga: >I've had friends who lived under the Italian health-care system for many >years, and there are friends who still do. The get medical health care >whenever they've needed it - they live longer than Americans do - what's >not to like? The long lives of the Italians is due to their excellent eating habits (ignoring, for the moment, their sugar-caffeine breakfast) and their deep social and familial support network which is also, incidently, absolutely necessary to navigate the country's broken infrastructure. The health-care system is broken like the rest of Italy's infrastructure. "Broken", meaning that one waits an average of 3-12 months for an appointment with a public doctor (some kinds of doctors are more available than others). The Italians use frequently private doctors to manage this situation, and get their medical expenses deducted from their taxes (if they want). Newly educated, and interned-practiced, doctors wait in a long queue (which includes a competition "concorso") in order to enter the public medical system and practice, and I don't know what is the reason for this, only that the queue and wait increased drastically under Prodi, this year. There remains a shortage of doctors in the Italian public medical system, generally. There is however, one aspect of the Italian health care system that does work, under certain boundary conditions, and that is Emergency Room ("Pronto Soccorso") care, something that I became intimately familiar with, this past winter, when I first helped a visitor/colleague/friend manage the system when he needed emergency treatment while he was in Rome last Christmas, and then two weeks later, in January, I needed it for myself. So for the latter, I will tell a story.... (Once upon a time ............. she begins) There are plenty of signs in the past year of my body is telling me to stop being stressed. After another difficult Fall and Winter, now I feel desperate to leave Italy. In the second week of January, my body had 'enough' about the tension I'm carrying around, and on a Monday night, my back 'went out'. It was difficult to move but I soldiered on, because I knew that it was important to keep the blood flowing. After a painful night not sleeping well, on the next Tuesday morning, I got up and felt a little dizzy. Went to the bathroom, where I felt even more dizzy, and so sat for a bit waiting for the dizziness to pass. Then I got up and bamm!, I passed out. It was so fast that I didn't know where I fell until I woke up a minute later and saw that I was in the hall outside of my bathroom. Nothing was broken, only a nasty bump on my chin where it hit the hard floor, and I had the knob of the food pantry drawer in my hand where I had apparently grabbed it as I went down. The two bottles of wine that were standing on the floor next to the pantry were only knocked over by my fall, and luckily did not break. So what happened? I have my medical book and with that and the Web, I learned that it was probably not anything serious. Everyone once in their life faints ("syncope"). Often it is first thing in the morning, and sometimes in the bathroom too, due to 'liquid' change in pressure. I wasn't on medication (even though my back was killing me, I hate taking aspirin), however, I didn't have influenza either, so I asked the doctor boyfriend "Gianluca" of my good friend in my town if he could check my blood pressure. Soon after, he checked it, and said that it is low, but not terribly low, and he guesses that there might have been stress-induced heart arrythemia that caused less blood to my head for a brief moment compounding the other pressure change stuff, that was why it happened so fast. He said though, that if he were me, he would see his regular doctor to be sure. Maybe you can guess the sequence of events from this. Of course he was right, that I should have it checked, but this is Italy. What followed the next week were two visits to my 'medico' (general practitioner) and four visits to hospital emergency rooms in my area and enough stresses that if my life before was not enough to cause me to faint, then I was going to faint anyway. Apparently on January 1, all of the rules for when you can go to the emergency room changed. You can still go if you have something SERIOUS, no papers required, and you just go, and the hospitals are required to accept you, and it costs nothing. But if you see a medico before, then the medico must 'categorize' you into different levels of 'seriousness', then you must go to the public health office and they must find you a hospital within 3 days to take you and treat you and they give you yet another document with their permission. My medico didn't tell me any of that, she didn't know. She only wrote on a prescription form the specialists that I must see, and she told me to show that to the Emergency Room and say that I must see one 'immediately' (subito). Such an action instead put me in a gray limbo-land where I had 'too many' papers for normal emergency room access, and 'not enough' papers to follow the latest, set of convoluted Italian bureaucracy. But we first had to solve that I didn't have a public health certificate (my other expired like all of my other legal documents three years ago). After devoting two days on that (her open office hours are two hours per day, the public health's open office hours are 4 hours per day), I had my certificate and tried again to go to the Emergency Room, and again they turned me away. I needed her 'categorization' and those other permissions still. It was at a height of frustration and my worry that maybe something really was wrong with me (a screaming headache for one thing, guess why?), that at this point, I told my working group, and they changed from being their hurried moods to being helpful, and my boss arranged the institute technician to go to the Frascati Hospital Emergency Room with me (now my 3rd time to an Emergency Room, different place), where he 'talked' for me and lied through his teeth. We showed _no papers_. He said that I only fell 3 days before (when in reality it was one week before), and that I was in my office in the morning when it happened. And Voila! The doctors saw me, they checked me thoroughly, with a complete blood test too. Nothing obvious turned up, but they wondered about vertigo, so they sent me the next morning to the hospital in the next town, where an ear specialist checked my ears. With the exception of a loss of high frequencies in my left ear (happened in an injury when I was a kid), there is still no obvious cause, and so my fainting doesn't look serious. In one month (which is considered extremely fast for normal appointments with specialists in the Italian public health system..) I had a scheduled 'dynamical' ecg but another long story prevented me from making that appointment, and the neurologist I saw in that time could find nothing wrong either. He wished to schedule an MRI, but the soonest they had room for me was in Novmeber, so I stopped. Overall, this experience of trying and eventually seeing a doctor, ignoring for a moment that it occupied almost a whole week of my time, taught me one thing: The Italian Pronto Soccorso (Emergency Room) system is the first thing I've encountered in Italy that actually works. If you go with _no documents_, and have a serious problem, they see you. They take it seriously. They send you to more and more specialists, as needed. You might have to wait a little while inside of the waiting room, but the doctors _will_ see you. And treat you. And it costs nothing. This is true for Italians as well as for Visitors. 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 lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 31 00:42:44 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 17:42:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Low Blood Pressure? References: Message-ID: <069901c7a31c$cb379de0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Amara writes > After a painful night not sleeping well, on the next Tuesday morning, I > got up and felt a little dizzy. Went to the bathroom, where I felt even > more dizzy, and so sat for a bit waiting for the dizziness to pass. Then > I got up and bamm!, I passed out. It was so fast that I didn't know > where I fell until I woke up a minute later and saw that I was in the > hall outside of my bathroom. Nothing was broken, only a nasty bump on my > chin where it hit the hard floor, and I had the knob of the food pantry > drawer in my hand where I had apparently grabbed it as I went down. The > two bottles of wine that were standing on the floor next to the pantry > were only knocked over by my fall, and luckily did not break.... Glad to hear that so far as anyone can tell, it was nothing serious. Just some ideas: when you get up, take a short walk inside pacing up and down and up and down until your blood pressure is normal. (And incidentally, blood pressure devices are pretty cheap---around $30 or so, so you should get one and test yourself frequently enough to see if you really do tend to have low BP when you get up). Needless to say, falling is pretty dangerous. A friend of mine fell in just the way you describe, and must have landed very peculiarly and was out for quite a while with very unfortunate consequences. Another friend of mine had an idea: heused to reach over and take a caffeine tablet whenever the alarm clock went off. After a while, he felt like getting out of bed :-) I believe that caffeine raises blood pressure. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 31 00:52:57 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 17:52:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <007401c7a077$08574d40$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05f901c7a1c0$7febefb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002901c7a1f5$c10a5dd0$21074e0c@MyComputer> <065701c7a261$b155b4e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <06a601c7a31e$32c11710$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > > I think that men did try to have as many children as possible, for a while, until > > women wised up. (I mean that quite seriously; it's a theory of evolutionary > > history that an "arms-race" developed between women who can have only > > relatively few children, and men who can have many). > > With modern reproductive technologies, it would be possible for women in > power to have thousands of children, and men to have many thousands, > perhaps even millions. Sounds great! I've always believed that as many people should be saved from non-existence as possible. > And that's without even considering the possibilities raised by cloning. > Therefore, given enough time, a human will arise who will take advantage > of these opportunities, and that human will dominate the world. Well, it won't be just *one* such person who will dominate the world. Gradually, those who have more children (viable offspring) will come to be highly represented, and those who don't will gradually go extinct in the sense that there will be fewer and fewer people like them. > Do you think this is going to happen soon? Oh, a singularity or a Moslem dictatorship or Fall of Civilzation or a thousand other things could occur first. Two of the most interesting things that will occur first are Age Reversal and Genetic Engineering. Still, right now the environment favors---in strictly population biologic terms---those who have as many children as they can and who allow the state to raise them (e.g., they pay exactly zero for medical care, relying only on ER services). That's the path of the immediate future. So, keeping a Darwinian view in mind... > If not, why assume it is any more likely that AI's will take over the > world, especially in view of the fact that they won't start out with > the desire to survive and reproduce which is basic to every naturally > evolved organism? Because one way or another, one or some of them will stumble upon the behavior of trying to take over. One way it could happen is that a human participating in an early AI design will want "his baby" to forestall other developments, or to be supreme. Another way is that an AI breeding experiment will produce a "winner" who'll just "naturally" want to dominate everyone and everything, just the way a typical two-year-old does. Lee From spike66 at comcast.net Thu May 31 01:09:20 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 18:09:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705310121.l4V1L3Kx024318@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Wow Amara, thanks for the story. Hope that doesn't come back, whatever it was. Olga: >>I've had friends who lived under the Italian health-care system...- they live longer than >>Americans do - what's not to like? The tax rates. 23 to 43 percent! Plus 20% VAT! Outrageous! What's a VAT? >The long lives of the Italians is due to their excellent eating habits >(ignoring, for the moment, their sugar-caffeine breakfast) ...Amara On the other hand, this is evidence that sugar and caffeine constitute excellent eating habits. Or at least I hope so. {8-] spike From fauxever at sprynet.com Thu May 31 01:34:56 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 18:34:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Medical Coverage [was Class Differences Among Black People] References: <200705310121.l4V1L3Kx024318@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <216901c7a323$e55fc470$6501a8c0@brainiac> From: "spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 6:09 PM > > Wow Amara, thanks for the story. Hope that doesn't come back, whatever it > was. Agree, thanks, Amara. (Before anyone here scolds me :) I am NOT a fan of Michael Moore. But I have read enough provocative reviews of "Sicko" to pique my interest in that movie. Olga From fauxever at sprynet.com Thu May 31 01:26:20 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 18:26:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The President with Extraordinary Powers References: Message-ID: <215901c7a322$b25e5290$6501a8c0@brainiac> What me ... worry? http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55925 ... and from Amara Graps's favorite columnist: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/05/30/notes053007.DTL&hw=morford+mega&sn=001&sc=1000 Speaking from both sides of the metaphor: Batten down the hatches ... it's going to be a bumpy night. Olga From spike66 at comcast.net Thu May 31 03:32:26 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 20:32:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Medical Coverage In-Reply-To: <216901c7a323$e55fc470$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <200705310351.l4V3p7Ze009376@andromeda.ziaspace.com> From: "spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 6:09 PM > > Wow Amara, thanks for the story. Hope that doesn't come back, whatever it > was. Agree, thanks, Amara. (Before anyone here scolds me :) I am NOT a fan of Michael Moore. But I have read enough provocative reviews of "Sicko" to pique my interest in that movie. Olga Olga we wouldn't scold for liking Michael Moore. I haven't seen any of Moore's later stuff, but I saw his first film Roger and Me back in 89. I thought I would bust a gut laughing at that one. The sequel, Pets or Meat, shows real bitterness, but the humor comes thru. So I got the videos and viewed them with a hard line liberal friend from Denmark. He didn't think either of them were the least bit funny. Oh well. {8-] spike I probably will view Sicko, but one must have the right frame of mind to enjoy Moore's work. Don't take it too seriously, they aren't real documentaries, any more than Supersize Me was. These are comedies, or as one pundit calls them, crockumentaries. spike From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 31 04:51:03 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 21:51:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Liberals and Political Labels (was History of Slavery) References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04f201c7a147$54da96b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05b401c7a1ac$dfe48210$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <06dc01c7a33f$7c244f50$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> gts writes > I'm well aware of the difference between classical liberalism (which in > its modern form is probably best identified with libertarianism) and "what > passes for 'liberalism' today" (which has socialist connotations). Even > so, I think these supposedly disparate ideas of liberalism share some > elements in common with respect to the slavery issue. > > The points I was making were that 1) abolitionism is fundamentally a > liberal idea in both senses of the word "liberal" (even despite Lincoln > and the word's association in the US with the Republican party of the 19th > century), and that 2) the Torys were not liberals in either sense of the > word, at least with respect to slavery. I agree. > If anyone deserves credit for freeing the slaves, I'd say it was the > political liberals and the Quakers. Yes. It's the same "mentality", if you will. Having both its good and bad aspects, a sort of idealism that we the prosperous can indulge in. (I mean to say that it's a luxury many of us can afford, especially since the beginning of the 19th century.) It's very interesting to read about late 19th century "progressivism", as in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era It was the same abolitionist mind-set run amuck. (Not that I disdain running amuck now and then.) They were all for socialism, eugenics, prohibition (of alcohol), prohibition of drugs, women-sufferage, "et cetera"!! This mentality sees as its own province events both large and small, near and far. Whether you are a Northerner who has never even seen a slave, or someone today who knows nothing about Africa except that some slavery is practiced you feel free to opine to the point of boarding trains and taking guns a thousand miles away to make your point. Or voting for your country to go "regulate". Likewise, even though Saddam Hussein never harmed a hair on your head or of anyone's you ever knew, you are certain that your country needs to get rid of him. Or, similarly, even though you are not at all personally affected by the war in Iraq, or what the $cientologists are doing to innocent people, you know all about it and whether it should go on or not. All in all, it stems from a tendency to lift one's eyes from one's own paltry affairs and strongly will that others in distant arenas conform to your own views morality. "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing" is another example. Without (hopefully) provocatively mentioning a certain writer whose initials are T.S., it's what he or she calls "the unconstrained vision". Just about everyone I know, including myself, freely indulges in this. Doubtless the "conservative Tories" of the 18th century were the same way. Some opposed the breaking away of the American colonies for economic reasons, some for patriotic reasons. All in all, political labels are a real mess, as the coordinate system shifts under you from decade to decade, century to century. But they still are necessary because they describe an actual reality. I used to wonder ever since high school whether I'd be a Patriot or a Tory if I had been raised in the American colonies. After many, many years reading about the conflict, I can see clearly now that it would have depended on what part of the country I was grew up in, and what were the economic assumptions of the class I had grown up with. Else how to explain both George Washington and Thomas Paine? Lee From spike66 at comcast.net Thu May 31 05:20:57 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 22:20:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <06dc01c7a33f$7c244f50$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200705310534.l4V5YSBj021122@andromeda.ziaspace.com> This article blew my mind. http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/30/france.lunches.reut/index.html Are there Europeans here who can comment? If this is true, not a gross exaggeration, I am so amazed. 35 hour work week? How do they get anything done in that much time? spike From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 31 05:51:34 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 15:21:34 +0930 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <200705310534.l4V5YSBj021122@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <06dc01c7a33f$7c244f50$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <200705310534.l4V5YSBj021122@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0705302251u742082b5t1bf74a2068d714f1@mail.gmail.com> On 31/05/07, spike wrote: > > This article blew my mind. > > http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/30/france.lunches.reut/index.html > > Are there Europeans here who can comment? If this is true, not a gross > exaggeration, I am so amazed. 35 hour work week? How do they get anything > done in that much time? > > spike > > Yep, I'm pretty sure it's correct. It was 37.5 hours/week here (Australia) everywhere that I worked when I was younger, although these days I think that only persists in the public service (in private industry it's 40 hours/week formally, 20,000,000 hours/week informally). The only thing I don't agree with about the 35 hour week is that it's still too long. The modern long work hours mentality favours people I call the "work-harders" - people who rush headlong at a problem and bash their head against a wall for hundreds of hours, rather than take a bit of time to reflect, then do something creative and maybe unintuitive to solve it in a short period of time. People are rewarded for showing up early, going home late, and wandering around looking harried, rather than for doing things well (if we cared about the latter, we would give people some of their time back as a reward when they improved things and increased efficiency, rather than just heaping more on them or thinking "gee they look relaxed, mustn't be doing anything useful"). In my own life, I've recently moved to working part time (approx 28 hours/week), and am finding that's suiting me really well. My mind is clearer, so I do much better work when I am working, and I also have a bunch of time to myself that I didn't have before. I have quite a bit less money than I used to, but you'd be surprised just how little that actually matters. Emlyn From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 31 05:59:10 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 22:59:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] france again References: <200705310534.l4V5YSBj021122@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <06e801c7a348$d1ecd340$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Spike writes > This article blew my mind. > > http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/30/france.lunches.reut/index.html > > Are there Europeans here who can comment? If this is true, not a gross > exaggeration, I am so amazed. 35 hour work week? How do they get anything > done in that much time? Vell, youz zee, zeh Germahns don waste zo much taym azz ve do, seeence zeh only shake de hands every morning. :=( Ah guess zeh soon zeh whole world ees going zeh way des Americains----work, work, work,... ees great shame. Leon From jrd1415 at gmail.com Thu May 31 06:33:04 2007 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Wed, 30 May 2007 23:33:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] plamegate: the plot thickens In-Reply-To: <200705300453.l4U4rBu6020774@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <465C49F3.4000500@lightlink.com> <200705300453.l4U4rBu6020774@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 5/29/07, spike wrote: > Similarly Libby wasn't really the one they wanted. Who's the "they" you're talking about, Spike? The CIA? The Justice Dept.? Patrick Fitzgerald? Remember, the Repubs owned the Congress and the Executive back in June of 2003 when this started. Novak revealed Plame's CIA status on July 14th. The CIA then filed a complaint with the United States Department of Justice, requesting a federal investigation. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself, citing a conflict of interest, and referred the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel. Patrick Fitzgerald took it from there. > I, you and others get > the feeling the trial was really about the decision to go to war in Iraq. Huh? The CIA requested the investigation. If you're going to speculate (based on your "feelings"!!! --and you a rocket scientist, tsk, tsk.) about secret, undeclared conspiratorial motives, at least start with the folks at the CIA . Indications are the folks at "the agency" were none to happy with Cheney et al's arm twisting, Tenet's obsequiousness, Rumsfeld's intellicrap factory at the pentagon (Office of Special Plans), or the stovepiping of that intellicrap right straight into the boy emperor's ear. Iraq is the context for all of this, sure, but specific acts have specific causes, why look elsewhere (partisan denial?)? An intelligence agent's cover was blown and the matter referred to the DoJ for investigation. "A black hole has no hair." > The problem is that Libby didn't make that decision. So they went after a > theory that he was covering for some whitehouse leaker Puleeeze! What theory? This was not some devilishly twisty and clever Murder on the Orient Express kind of thing. Novak published her name and agency connection. He's a media guy not a psychic, so somebody musta told him. Naturally you interview Novak, and then find and interview those who knew Plame's status. Gumshoe 101. Save the "theory of the crime" stuff for real mysteries. > by saying he didn't > remember who told him Mrs. Wilson's identity as an undercover CIA agent and > that she was married to Ambassador Wilson. Now we learn that it was Mrs. > Wilson herself that revealed that relationship. We learn that Libby's story > that he couldn't recall who told him is now very believable, since a lot of > people knew it from the 2002 memo. No, "a lot of people" did NOT know it. The memo in question was an internal CIA document. Classified. Besides, we already know that Cheney told Libby of Plame's status. > He thought it general knowledge, again > very plausible. In an alternate universe where the CIA publishes it's internal communications for all the world to see! Riiiiiight! > > Even the jurists [jurors] commented that they didn't have the right person on trial. > This whole trial was not really about Libby, it was about Bush. No, it was about Libby's obstruction of Justice and perjury. Had he told the investigators the truth, he would have walked away and the matter would have ended there. It would have ended because Fitzgerald knew that prosecuting the leaker would have been difficult. But Libby lied his ass off (needlessly it seems, but he didn't know that) and in so doing embarked on his own little "crime spree", and got busted. That part's easy. Why did he lie? That's still something of a mystery. > Libby did > not make the decision to go to war. You seem fixated on "the decision to go to war". That's not what this was about. Remember, back in June/July of '03 the war was still a victory, and as such, the decision to go to war was politically respectable, the decider was basking in glory. There was no hint yet that the "Mission Accomplished" moment (May 1st) would turn to grotesquerie. > He didn't leak Plame's identity. Actually he did. He, Armitage, and Rove. > The jury convicted an innocent man. Innocent of murdering the Lindberg baby, maybe. When the cops ask you questions, you tell the truth, take the fifth, ask for a lawyer, or risk going to jail. > Looks to me like an attempt to hang someone in the Bush administration for > something her own husband actually did. After the Novak column identified > Plame as a "CIA agent," Mr. Plame went running around screaming that someone > had identified her as a "secret agent." But notice that the magazine > article did not say she was a secret agent, Mr. Plame did that. Wilson > outed his own wife a year after she outed herself. This is humor, right. This Spike the jokester, right? Novak was the first to publish the fact. Ms. Plame was a CIA employee. It was irrelevant whether Novak KNEW OR WROTE that she was covert. What mattered was that she WAS covert. > > This, I think, is why the scales are not equal. Plame > > deserves the benefit of the doubt: Libby does not... > > If one wishes to advance this argument, I am back to the same place the > jurist [juror] concluded: the wrong person was on trial here. Libby didn't make the > decision to go to war, Bush did. Bush's decision to go to war based on lies was one crime. Certainly the biggest crime in a vast spectacle of executive slash imperial criminality. Any juror could be forgiven for his/her very wistful thought slash ecstatic vision of Bush in the dock. In the selfsame juror's dock. Wouldn't that have been thrilling! Who in the reality-based community hasn't dreamed of sitting in the jury box for the trial of The United States of America vs George W. Bush et al.? Personally, I think the American experiment is over. If anything could restore my faith it would be George W. Bush dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and flip flops shuffling the rest of his life away in the American equivalent of Spandau. (As for Cheney, he should suffer Sadam's fate, for all the world to see on YouTube. ) ***************************************** Hope you are enjoying fatherhood, Spike, and that you, Shelli, and the podling are safe, happy, and healthy. -- Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 31 07:27:14 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 09:27:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People In-Reply-To: <200705310121.l4V1L3Kx024318@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705310121.l4V1L3Kx024318@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <20070531072714.GN17691@leitl.org> On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 06:09:20PM -0700, spike wrote: > The tax rates. > > 23 to 43 percent! Plus 20% VAT! Outrageous! > > What's a VAT? Value Stolen Tax. Down here it's now 19%, up from 16%. Taxes are higher than either in France or Italy, I'd think. I work 40 hours/week, which is way too much (though ridiculously low than elsewhere in IT, where it can be easily 60 hours/week). -- 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 amara at amara.com Thu May 31 07:42:12 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 09:42:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] france again Message-ID: Spike: >http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/30/france.lunches.reut/index.html >Are there Europeans here who can comment? In the article: "Salomon is not paid overtime, even though he usually works from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., with an hour for lunch. Instead, he gets extra vacation -- which adds up to so many days off it is hard to find time to work." And true also for the public sectors in Italy. How else do you think that I acquired 250 hours of "extra" vacation time (on top of the 4 weeks standard every year) in the first two years that I was in Italy? >If this is true, not a gross >exaggeration, I am so amazed. 35 hour work week? How do they get anything >done in that much time? Less than 40 hours work week is common throughout Europe. Italy is officially 36.5 in the public sectors, the work week is about 37 hours in Germany, and I think that 4-day work weeks (every other week? not sure of the details) are typical in the Netherlands. You'll find pockets of people that work more (scientists, for example). You've heard me say before this, I think: Americans live to work Europeans work to live I might be able to dig up an Economist article I read a couple of years ago that described the differences in productivity on the two continents. Europeans were only slightly less productive than the Americans. 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 eugen at leitl.org Thu May 31 08:16:24 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 10:16:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:42:12AM +0200, Amara Graps wrote: > Europeans were only slightly less productive than the Americans. Nobody can tell me they can work at full concentration 12 hours straight. The effective work done would be somewhere in 7-8 hour range. So why spend these unproductive hours at work, when one could spend them in a much nicer environment? -- 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 sjatkins at mac.com Thu May 31 08:28:14 2007 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 01:28:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion In-Reply-To: <470a3c520705270309u3672146ctad4f41352b60e7a4@mail.gmail.com> References: <470a3c520705270309u3672146ctad4f41352b60e7a4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <465E871E.30008@mac.com> I remember in 1988 or so when I first read Engines of Creation. I read it with tears streaming down my face. Though I was an avowed atheist and at that time had no spiritual practice at all, I found it profoundly spiritually moving. For the first time in my life I believed that all the highest hopes and dreams of humanity could become real, could be made flesh. I saw that it was possible, on this earth, that the end of death from aging and disease, the end of physical want, the advent of tremendous abundance could all come to pass in my own lifetime. I saw that great abundance, knowledge, peace and good will could come to this world. I cried because it was a message of such pure hope from so unexpected an angle that it got past all my defenses. I looked at the cover many times to see if it was marked "New Age" or "Fiction" or anything but Science and Non-Fiction. Never has any book so blown my mind and blasted open the doors of my heart. Should we be afraid to give a message of great hope to humanity? Should we be afraid that we will be taken to be just more pie in the sky glad-hand dreamers? Should we not dare to say that the science and the technology combined with a bit (well perhaps more than a bit) of a shift of consciousness could make all the best dreams of all the religions and all the generations a reality? Will we not have failed to grasp this great opportunity if we do not say it and dare to think it and to live it? Shall we be so afraid of being considered "like a religion" that we do not offer any real hope to speak of and are oh so careful in all we do and say and dismissive of more unrestrained and open dreamers? Or will we embrace them, embrace our own deepest longings and admit our kinship with those religious as with all the longing of all the generations that came before us. Will we turn our backs on them or even disdain their dreams - we who are in a position to begin at long last to make most of those dreams real? How can we help but be a bit giddy with excitement? How can we say no to such an utterly amazing mind-blowing opportunity? - samantha From russell.wallace at gmail.com Thu May 31 08:44:20 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 09:44:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion In-Reply-To: <465E871E.30008@mac.com> References: <470a3c520705270309u3672146ctad4f41352b60e7a4@mail.gmail.com> <465E871E.30008@mac.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0705310144n6ddcd9ddx93e4168dc856614@mail.gmail.com> On 5/31/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > Should we be afraid to give a message of great hope to humanity? Should > we be afraid that we will be taken to be just more pie in the sky > glad-hand dreamers? Should we not dare to say that the science and the > technology combined with a bit (well perhaps more than a bit) of a shift > of consciousness could make all the best dreams of all the religions and > all the generations a reality? Will we not have failed to grasp this > great opportunity if we do not say it and dare to think it and to live > it? Shall we be so afraid of being considered "like a religion" that > we do not offer any real hope to speak of and are oh so careful in all > we do and say and dismissive of more unrestrained and open dreamers? > Or will we embrace them, embrace our own deepest longings and admit our > kinship with those religious as with all the longing of all the > generations that came before us. Will we turn our backs on them or even > disdain their dreams - we who are in a position to begin at long last to > make most of those dreams real? How can we help but be a bit giddy > with excitement? How can we say no to such an utterly amazing > mind-blowing opportunity? > Well put! (And apologies to any who dislike reading one-line replies, but I think sometimes it's worth curbing one's instinct to post only when one has an argument.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 31 09:06:46 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 19:06:46 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Class Differences Among Black People In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 31/05/07, Amara Graps wrote: After a painful night not sleeping well, on the next Tuesday morning, I > got up and felt a little dizzy. Went to the bathroom, where I felt even > more dizzy, and so sat for a bit waiting for the dizziness to pass. Then > I got up and bamm!, I passed out. It was so fast that I didn't know > where I fell until I woke up a minute later and saw that I was in the > hall outside of my bathroom. Nothing was broken, only a nasty bump on my > chin where it hit the hard floor, and I had the knob of the food pantry > drawer in my hand where I had apparently grabbed it as I went down. The > two bottles of wine that were standing on the floor next to the pantry > were only knocked over by my fall, and luckily did not break. > > So what happened? I have my medical book and with that and the Web, I > learned that it was probably not anything serious. Everyone once in > their life faints ("syncope"). Often it is first thing in the morning, > and sometimes in the bathroom too, due to 'liquid' change in pressure. I > wasn't on medication (even though my back was killing me, I hate taking > aspirin), however, I didn't have influenza either, so I asked the doctor > boyfriend "Gianluca" of my good friend in my town if he could check my > blood pressure. Soon after, he checked it, and said that it is low, but > not terribly low, and he guesses that there might have been > stress-induced heart arrythemia that caused less blood to my head for a > brief moment compounding the other pressure change stuff, that was why > it happened so fast. He said though, that if he were me, he would see his > regular doctor to be sure. I think your book and doctor friend were right: it sounds absolutely typical of postural hypotension. The crucial bit of information is that it happens after standing quickly from a lying or sitting position; if it were due to a cardiac or neurological cause, there would be no relationship to posture, and vertigo is completely different again. An ECG and blood count might have been worth doing, but if you were otherwise well and the story was exactly as you described, having an MRI and dynamic ECG monitoring sounds like overkill, and that's almost certainly what you would have been told had you presented to an Australian GP or emergency department. I am guessing that if you had been told that at the Italian hospital you might have thought they were fobbing you off, because you don't seem to have a lot of faith in the system, which is a problem even apart from from any actual systemic problems. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 31 09:47:23 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 19:47:23 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. In-Reply-To: <06a601c7a31e$32c11710$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05f901c7a1c0$7febefb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002901c7a1f5$c10a5dd0$21074e0c@MyComputer> <065701c7a261$b155b4e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <06a601c7a31e$32c11710$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 31/05/07, Lee Corbin wrote: > With modern reproductive technologies, it would be possible for women in > > power to have thousands of children, and men to have many thousands, > > perhaps even millions. > > Sounds great! I've always believed that as many people should be saved > from > non-existence as possible. > > > And that's without even considering the possibilities raised by cloning. > > Therefore, given enough time, a human will arise who will take advantage > > of these opportunities, and that human will dominate the world. > > Well, it won't be just *one* such person who will dominate the world. > Gradually, those who have more children (viable offspring) will come > to be highly represented, and those who don't will gradually go > extinct in the sense that there will be fewer and fewer people like > them. > > > Do you think this is going to happen soon? > > Oh, a singularity or a Moslem dictatorship or Fall of Civilzation or > a thousand other things could occur first. Two of the most interesting > things that will occur first are Age Reversal and Genetic Engineering. > > Still, right now the environment favors---in strictly population biologic > terms---those who have as many children as they can and who allow > the state to raise them (e.g., they pay exactly zero for medical care, > relying only on ER services). That's the path of the immediate future. But this isn't happening as a plan: most men would be horrified at the idea that they might have all these illegitimate children running around, and societal pressures are to minimise teenage pregnancies (which anyway are higher in countries and states with less welfare spending). On the other hand, great effort is expended by people acquiring wealth, or breeding flowers, or any of a million other things which at best could be seen as only indirectly contributing to evolutionary fitness, and certainly much less than the focussed concern to spread one's genes would be. If your argument is that an AI might spontaneously arise that wants to dominate everyone, which would then dominate all the other AI's and lesser life forms, the same argument would apply to human reproduction, yet it just isn't something that anyone seriously worries about. Such a dominant AI would be held in check by at least as many factors as a human's dominance is held in check: pressure from society in the form of initial programming, reward for human-friendly behaviour, and the censure of other AI's (which would be just as capable, more numerous, and more likely to be following human-friendly programs). -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Thu May 31 09:55:36 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 02:55:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The President with Extraordinary Powers In-Reply-To: <215901c7a322$b25e5290$6501a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <821433.14468.qm@web35614.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Olga wrote: What me ... worry? http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55925 ... and from Amara Graps's favorite columnist: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/05/30/notes053007.DTL&hw=morford+mega&sn=001&sc=1000 Speaking from both sides of the metaphor: Batten down the hatches ... it's going to be a bumpy night. Olga > I can remember the days when news like this was considered crazy "conspiracy theory" stuff and only found on "weird" websites and in "kooky" bookstores. No more!! People are beginning to wake up. John : ) --------------------------------- Luggage? GPS? Comic books? Check out fitting gifts for grads at Yahoo! Search. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amara at amara.com Thu May 31 10:14:07 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 12:14:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Medical Coverage [was Class Differences Among Black People] Message-ID: >Wow Amara, thanks for the story. Hope that doesn't come back, whatever it >was. Well, me too, but there's no time to find out. The last year has been a race for time (my physical and mental strength against the economics of my situation and family cancers on opposite sides of the planet and a space launch thrown into the mix). The sooner I make my transition to my new life, the better for everybody. 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 desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Thu May 31 10:20:28 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 03:20:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] A short film about "natural selection" (Was: Re: Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea.) In-Reply-To: <06a601c7a31e$32c11710$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <468140.18704.qm@web35607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Stathis writes > > I think that men did try to have as many children as possible, for a while, until > > women wised up. (I mean that quite seriously; it's a theory of evolutionary > > history that an "arms-race" developed between women who can have only > > relatively few children, and men who can have many). > > With modern reproductive technologies, it would be possible for women in > power to have thousands of children, and men to have many thousands, > perhaps even millions. Sounds great! I've always believed that as many people should be saved from non-existence as possible. [ Lee, very funny! : ) ] > And that's without even considering the possibilities raised by cloning. > Therefore, given enough time, a human will arise who will take advantage > of these opportunities, and that human will dominate the world. Well, it won't be just *one* such person who will dominate the world. Gradually, those who have more children (viable offspring) will come to be highly represented, and those who don't will gradually go extinct in the sense that there will be fewer and fewer people like them. > Do you think this is going to happen soon? Oh, a singularity or a Moslem dictatorship or Fall of Civilzation or a thousand other things could occur first. Two of the most interesting things that will occur first are Age Reversal and Genetic Engineering. Still, right now the environment favors---in strictly population biologic terms---those who have as many children as they can and who allow the state to raise them (e.g., they pay exactly zero for medical care, relying only on ER services). That's the path of the immediate future. > Ahah! And the movie link below ties in beautifully with that thought... Enjoy! http://youtube.com/watch?v=fAYnc_-ddlw John : ) --------------------------------- Pinpoint customers who are looking for what you sell. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Thu May 31 10:01:25 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 03:01:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Medical Coverage In-Reply-To: <200705310351.l4V3p7Ze009376@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <436324.47290.qm@web35612.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Spike wrote: I probably will view Sicko, but one must have the right frame of mind to enjoy Moore's work. Don't take it too seriously, they aren't real documentaries, any more than Supersize Me was. These are comedies, or as one pundit calls them, crockumentaries. > I generally respect Moore's work but in Farenheit 911 when he casually "skipped over" talking about the horrible abuses of Saddam Hussein's regime I was very offended. I think just 1-2 minutes of telling about Saddam's mass murdering & serial raping ways would have gone a long way toward balanced reporting. But I did like how he showed the inordinate amount of influence the Saudi government has in the United States. I found that very informative. John --------------------------------- Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles. Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From scerir at libero.it Thu May 31 10:08:35 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 12:08:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] france again References: <200705310534.l4V5YSBj021122@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <000401c7a36b$a713f680$6d931f97@archimede> > Are there Europeans here who can comment? Not exactly European, it is Edward Prescott [1] http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2811.pdf s. [1] Nobelist too http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/prescott/ From desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com Thu May 31 10:48:01 2007 From: desertpaths2003 at yahoo.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 03:48:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Thank you, Samantha for such an inspirational post (Was: Re: Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion) In-Reply-To: <465E871E.30008@mac.com> Message-ID: <233371.90524.qm@web35609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Samantha, I just wanted to say publicly that this is one of the most beautiful and inspirational posts I have read here. you wrote: Shall we be so afraid of being considered "like a religion" that we do not offer any real hope to speak of and are oh so careful in all we do and say and dismissive of more unrestrained and open dreamers? Or will we embrace them, embrace our own deepest longings and admit our kinship with those religious as with all the longing of all the generations that came before us. > I have of late been very saddened by some posters on both this and the WTA list who try to shoot down the notion of being truly excited about Transhumanism and the possibility of Singularity-like developments within our lifetime. We are supposed to be "realistic" about accepting our impending deaths and not take the chance of appearing the "fool" for wanting more out of life. Again, thank you for bringing some of the magic back for me. Warm wishes, John Grigg : ) Samantha Atkins wrote: I remember in 1988 or so when I first read Engines of Creation. I read it with tears streaming down my face. Though I was an avowed atheist and at that time had no spiritual practice at all, I found it profoundly spiritually moving. For the first time in my life I believed that all the highest hopes and dreams of humanity could become real, could be made flesh. I saw that it was possible, on this earth, that the end of death from aging and disease, the end of physical want, the advent of tremendous abundance could all come to pass in my own lifetime. I saw that great abundance, knowledge, peace and good will could come to this world. I cried because it was a message of such pure hope from so unexpected an angle that it got past all my defenses. I looked at the cover many times to see if it was marked "New Age" or "Fiction" or anything but Science and Non-Fiction. Never has any book so blown my mind and blasted open the doors of my heart. Should we be afraid to give a message of great hope to humanity? Should we be afraid that we will be taken to be just more pie in the sky glad-hand dreamers? Should we not dare to say that the science and the technology combined with a bit (well perhaps more than a bit) of a shift of consciousness could make all the best dreams of all the religions and all the generations a reality? Will we not have failed to grasp this great opportunity if we do not say it and dare to think it and to live it? Shall we be so afraid of being considered "like a religion" that we do not offer any real hope to speak of and are oh so careful in all we do and say and dismissive of more unrestrained and open dreamers? Or will we embrace them, embrace our own deepest longings and admit our kinship with those religious as with all the longing of all the generations that came before us. Will we turn our backs on them or even disdain their dreams - we who are in a position to begin at long last to make most of those dreams real? How can we help but be a bit giddy with excitement? How can we say no to such an utterly amazing mind-blowing opportunity? - samantha _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat --------------------------------- Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pgptag at gmail.com Thu May 31 11:19:08 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 13:19:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> References: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <470a3c520705310419r6ddd6ddy976ff47053b67677@mail.gmail.com> Based on the behaviour of most Americans I have worked with, they are frequently only pretending to work to impress their boss, their colleagues or (even worse) themselves: giving in to the delusion that drafting a useless memo that nobody will ever read is a demonstration of seriousness and committment. Note: if saying "Americans" is an overgeneralization, saying "Europeans" is a *very big* overgeneralization: behaviour and in particular work ethics vary a lot in Europe. Anybody who has worked with people from different EU countries knows that, for example, Germans and Italians tend to show quite different behaviours. As a Southern European I think that our big strength is flexibility and a certain propensity to bypass regulations to get something done, and our big weakness is our absolute inability to focus on routine tasks (that is a big weakness indeed, as in most complex tasks 90% is routine). But, my European friends, let's not rejoice: I fear Americans are just better than us at getting things done. G. On 5/31/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:42:12AM +0200, Amara Graps wrote: > > > Europeans were only slightly less productive than the Americans. > > Nobody can tell me they can work at full concentration 12 hours > straight. The effective work done would be somewhere in 7-8 > hour range. So why spend these unproductive hours at work, > when one could spend them in a much nicer environment? > > -- > 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 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From pgptag at gmail.com Thu May 31 11:23:53 2007 From: pgptag at gmail.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 13:23:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion In-Reply-To: <465E871E.30008@mac.com> References: <470a3c520705270309u3672146ctad4f41352b60e7a4@mail.gmail.com> <465E871E.30008@mac.com> Message-ID: <470a3c520705310423p675de097y84a3887e46466415@mail.gmail.com> Samantha, this is a GREAT post! On 5/31/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > I remember in 1988 or so when I first read Engines of Creation. I read > it with tears streaming down my face. Though I was an avowed atheist > and at that time had no spiritual practice at all, I found it profoundly > spiritually moving. For the first time in my life I believed that all > the highest hopes and dreams of humanity could become real, could be > made flesh. I saw that it was possible, on this earth, that the end of > death from aging and disease, the end of physical want, the advent of > tremendous abundance could all come to pass in my own lifetime. I saw > that great abundance, knowledge, peace and good will could come to this > world. I cried because it was a message of such pure hope from so > unexpected an angle that it got past all my defenses. I looked at the > cover many times to see if it was marked "New Age" or "Fiction" or > anything but Science and Non-Fiction. Never has any book so blown my > mind and blasted open the doors of my heart. > > Should we be afraid to give a message of great hope to humanity? Should > we be afraid that we will be taken to be just more pie in the sky > glad-hand dreamers? Should we not dare to say that the science and the > technology combined with a bit (well perhaps more than a bit) of a shift > of consciousness could make all the best dreams of all the religions and > all the generations a reality? Will we not have failed to grasp this > great opportunity if we do not say it and dare to think it and to live > it? Shall we be so afraid of being considered "like a religion" that > we do not offer any real hope to speak of and are oh so careful in all > we do and say and dismissive of more unrestrained and open dreamers? > Or will we embrace them, embrace our own deepest longings and admit our > kinship with those religious as with all the longing of all the > generations that came before us. Will we turn our backs on them or even > disdain their dreams - we who are in a position to begin at long last to > make most of those dreams real? How can we help but be a bit giddy > with excitement? How can we say no to such an utterly amazing > mind-blowing opportunity? > > - samantha > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From stathisp at gmail.com Thu May 31 11:37:54 2007 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 21:37:54 +1000 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> References: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 31/05/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:42:12AM +0200, Amara Graps wrote: > > > Europeans were only slightly less productive than the Americans. > > Nobody can tell me they can work at full concentration 12 hours > straight. The effective work done would be somewhere in 7-8 > hour range. So why spend these unproductive hours at work, > when one could spend them in a much nicer environment? The table in the following article suggests that there is not that much difference between Europe and America, and in fact France beats the US in productivity per hour worked. Factor in the premium on the US dollar due to US political might, and there isn't much in it at all. http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/energy_2006_12.pdf -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amara at amara.com Thu May 31 12:03:29 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 14:03:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Subject: Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion Message-ID: Samantha has a knack for giving beautiful birthday gifts to people (in this instance, it was a beautiful contemplation on _her_ birthday). Samantha Atkins : >I remember in 1988 or so when I first read Engines of Creation. I read >it with tears streaming down my face. Though I was an avowed atheist >and at that time had no spiritual practice at all, I found it profoundly >spiritually moving. For the first time in my life I believed that all >the highest hopes and dreams of humanity could become real, could be >made flesh. I saw that it was possible, on this earth, that the end of >death from aging and disease, the end of physical want, the advent of >tremendous abundance could all come to pass in my own lifetime. I saw >that great abundance, knowledge, peace and good will could come to this >world. I cried because it was a message of such pure hope from so >unexpected an angle that it got past all my defenses. I looked at the >cover many times to see if it was marked "New Age" or "Fiction" or >anything but Science and Non-Fiction. Never has any book so blown my >mind and blasted open the doors of my heart. > >Should we be afraid to give a message of great hope to humanity? Should >we be afraid that we will be taken to be just more pie in the sky >glad-hand dreamers? Should we not dare to say that the science and the >technology combined with a bit (well perhaps more than a bit) of a shift >of consciousness could make all the best dreams of all the religions and >all the generations a reality? Will we not have failed to grasp this >great opportunity if we do not say it and dare to think it and to live >it? Shall we be so afraid of being considered "like a religion" that >we do not offer any real hope to speak of and are oh so careful in all >we do and say and dismissive of more unrestrained and open dreamers? >Or will we embrace them, embrace our own deepest longings and admit our >kinship with those religious as with all the longing of all the >generations that came before us. Will we turn our backs on them or even >disdain their dreams - we who are in a position to begin at long last to >make most of those dreams real? How can we help but be a bit giddy >with excitement? How can we say no to such an utterly amazing >mind-blowing opportunity? -- 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 rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 31 14:38:02 2007 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 10:38:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> References: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <7641ddc60705310738r163d4c5elaaf40db47276a61f@mail.gmail.com> I used to work for 16 hours at full concentration as a resident. 12 hours is peanuts even now, in my old age. My boss works about 12 - 14 hour workdays. He gets about three times more done than I do, in part because I work only 8 to 10 hours. And we don't pay ourselves overtime. That's the beauty of working in a 4-employee startup. Rafal On 5/31/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:42:12AM +0200, Amara Graps wrote: > > > Europeans were only slightly less productive than the Americans. > > Nobody can tell me they can work at full concentration 12 hours > straight. The effective work done would be somewhere in 7-8 > hour range. So why spend these unproductive hours at work, > when one could spend them in a much nicer environment? > > -- > 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 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD Chief Clinical Officer, Gencia Corporation 706 B Forest St. Charlottesville, VA 22903 tel: (434) 295-4800 fax: (434) 295-4951 This electronic message transmission contains information from the biotechnology firm of Gencia Corporation which may be confidential or privileged. The information is intended to be for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please notify us by telephone (434-295-4800) or by electronic mail (fportell at genciabiotech.com) immediately. From spike66 at comcast.net Thu May 31 14:42:34 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 07:42:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion In-Reply-To: <465E871E.30008@mac.com> Message-ID: <200705311442.l4VEgHDn029517@andromeda.ziaspace.com> I remember in 1988 or so when I first read Engines of Creation. I read it with tears streaming down my face. Though I was an avowed atheist and at that time had no spiritual practice at all, I found it profoundly spiritually moving... - samantha Thanks Samantha, I read that one about that same time, and it similarly blew my mind. I and friends had talked around the edges of nanotech, building up from atoms instead of down from castings, wondering how small computer elements could eventually get, etc. But seeing that someone was working these problems directly and in detail had a huge impact on me. In the late 80s and early 90s, the K. Eric used to give talks to the local electronics and technology groups, so I attended several of these. Then he gave that up, and we haven't heard much from him since about the time Freitas' Nanomedicine was published. Where is Robert Freitas hanging out these days? Anyone here buddies with him? spike From spike66 at comcast.net Thu May 31 14:54:08 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 07:54:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Subject: Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200705311453.l4VEroml000150@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Happy Birthday Samantha, may you have maaaany more! spike Samantha has a knack for giving beautiful birthday gifts to people (in this instance, it was a beautiful contemplation on _her_ birthday). Samantha Atkins : >I remember in 1988 or so when I first read Engines of Creation... From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 31 15:06:59 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 08:06:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea. References: <4653BBEF.3010808@comcast.net> <04ee01c7a145$ea7526b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05f901c7a1c0$7febefb0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <002901c7a1f5$c10a5dd0$21074e0c@MyComputer> <065701c7a261$b155b4e0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <06a601c7a31e$32c11710$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <070901c7a395$8b3f8940$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > [Lee wrote] > > > Still, right now the environment favors---in strictly population biologic > > terms---those who have as many children as they can and who allow > > the state to raise them (e.g., they pay exactly zero for medical care, > > relying only on ER services). That's the path of the immediate future. > > But this isn't happening as a plan: most men would be horrified at the > idea that they might have all these illegitimate children running around, Then most men are relatively "unfit". But nature fixes that sooner or later. "Bad" memes are partly responsible. > and societal pressures are to minimise teenage pregnancies (which anyway > are higher in countries and states with less welfare spending). The higher reproducing males will just learn (through selection) how to avoid those societal pressures. And it doesn't surprise me that teenage pregnancies are higher in countries and states with less welfare spending. > On the other hand, great effort is expended by people acquiring wealth, > or breeding flowers, or any of a million other things which at best could > be seen as only indirectly contributing to evolutionary fitness, That's because it *used* to contribute to evolutionary fitness. Nature cannot respond overnight. It takes the genetic frequences a long time to respond to a changed environment. > If your argument is that an AI might spontaneously arise that wants to > dominate everyone, which would then dominate all the other AI's and > lesser life forms, the same argument would apply to human reproduction, > yet it just isn't something that anyone seriously worries about. But they should, pace Singularity and GE and other changes coming soon. Right now, we're in a dysgenic death spiral. (Again, I'm not too worried because weird and unpredictable things will probably happen sooner.) But we already have socialized medicine in that the most biologically viable lifestyle is to have many children and avoid paying for them. > Such a dominant AI would be held in check by at least as many factors > as a human's dominance is held in check: pressure from society in the > form of initial programming, reward for human-friendly behaviour, You seem as absolutely sure that the first programmers will succeed with Friendliness as John Clark is absolutely sure that the AI will spontaneously ignore all its early influence. We just don't know, we cannot know. Aren't there many reasonable scenarios where you're just wrong? I.e., some very bright Chinese kids keep plugging away at a seed-AI, and take no care whatsoever that it's Friendly. They succeed, and bam! the world's taken over. > and the censure of other AI's (which would be just as capable, > more numerous, and more likely to be following human-friendly > programs). But how do you *know* or how are you so confident that *one* AI may suddenly be a breakthrough, and start making improvements to itself every few hours, and then simply take over everything? Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Thu May 31 15:13:34 2007 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 08:13:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A short film about "natural selection" (Was: Re: Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea.) References: <468140.18704.qm@web35607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <072201c7a396$f2a526c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> John Grigg posts > [Lee wrote] > > Well, it won't be just *one* such person who will dominate the world. > > Gradually, those who have more children (viable offspring) will come > > to be highly represented, and those who don't will gradually go > > extinct in the sense that there will be fewer and fewer people like > > them. ... > > > > Still, right now the environment favors---in strictly > > population biologic terms---those who have as > > many children as they can and who allow > > the state to raise them (e.g., they pay exactly > > zero for medical care, relying only on ER services). > > That's the path of the immediate future. > > Ahah! And the movie link below ties in beautifully with that thought... Enjoy! > > http://youtube.com/watch?v=fAYnc_-ddlw Exactly! Today, one video is worth 10^8 words! Thanks, Lee From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 31 15:24:39 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 17:24:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <7641ddc60705310738r163d4c5elaaf40db47276a61f@mail.gmail.com> References: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> <7641ddc60705310738r163d4c5elaaf40db47276a61f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070531152439.GY17691@leitl.org> On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 10:38:02AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > I used to work for 16 hours at full concentration as a resident. 12 I think it's well documented how much impairment due to chronical fatigue there is in the health industry (elsewhere, you'd go to jail because you're more impaired than DUI). Just because it's a part of the culture it doesn't mean it's a good idea. > hours is peanuts even now, in my old age. Don't tell me you could code (not in the critical care sense) 12 hours straight. Sustainably. Most people have trouble with 8 h, effective hours (as in: not yakking at the water cooler). > My boss works about 12 - 14 hour workdays. He gets about three times 12-14 h physical work is ok. 12-14 h mental work, no way. > more done than I do, in part because I work only 8 to 10 hours. 8 h is doable, though it starts grinding you down after a while. If you claim 10 h/day effective work, I'd rather to see a proof of that, a proof as in analysis of a video recording. > And we don't pay ourselves overtime. That's the beauty of working in a > 4-employee startup. -- 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 andrew at ceruleansystems.com Thu May 31 16:03:53 2007 From: andrew at ceruleansystems.com (J. Andrew Rogers) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 09:03:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <200705310534.l4V5YSBj021122@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200705310534.l4V5YSBj021122@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <0391942B-095E-49CD-BB78-C21DEE27F219@ceruleansystems.com> On May 30, 2007, at 10:20 PM, spike wrote: > Are there Europeans here who can comment? If this is true, not a > gross > exaggeration, I am so amazed. 35 hour work week? How do they get > anything > done in that much time? Total productivity is only loosely related to the number of hours worked and productivity declines after a certain number of hours worked (especially mental stuff), so it sort of comes out in the wash. Maximization of productivity in the working hours should allow one to be competitive on a moderate work schedule. That said, having a fair amount of experience with multinationals, American divisions seem to routinely out-perform and out-produce their European equivalents, whether we are talking sales or engineering. It is a combination of limited hours (no busting ass to hit deadlines), large quantities of time off (lots of things get bottlenecked waiting for people to return), and some miscellaneous cultural artifacts that seem to noticeably slow things down. Americans could be hyper-competitive working shorter hours if they wanted to. Working long hours on a typical basis doesn't add much to the bottom line, but having the flexibility to work long hours when it is useful does. Something similar goes for vacation time. The real problem, which neither the Americans nor Europeans really have right, is that work often needs to be scheduled but for many jobs the working hours do not as long as scheduled work happens. In this day and age, hours worked is a poor proxy for measuring output for many jobs. Cheers, J. Andrew Rogers From natasha at natasha.cc Thu May 31 15:27:02 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 10:27:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> References: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <200705311527.l4VFR7Zk027331@ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com> At 03:16 AM 5/31/2007, Eugene wrote: > > Europeans were only slightly less productive than the Americans. > >Nobody can tell me they can work at full concentration 12 hours >straight. The effective work done would be somewhere in 7-8 >hour range. So why spend these unproductive hours at work, >when one could spend them in a much nicer environment? When I am scheduled to be in an office working 7.5 hour days, I only really, truly work about 5 hours *maximum.* most days, and usually about 4 hours. I can get my work done more efficiently when I know that it will be about 4-5 hours of extremely focused work. I enjoy this. I do not enjoy having to be at a job for 7.5 hours KNOWING that I can get the work done in the 4-5 hours. Viva la France! 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: From natasha at natasha.cc Thu May 31 15:49:15 2007 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 10:49:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] A short film about "natural selection" (Was: Re: Unfriendly AI is a mistaken idea.) In-Reply-To: <072201c7a396$f2a526c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <468140.18704.qm@web35607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <072201c7a396$f2a526c0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200705311549.l4VFnK1V005048@ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com> Lee worte: > > > Ahah! And the movie link below ties in beautifully with that > thought... Enjoy! > > > > http://youtube.com/watch?v=fAYnc_-ddlw > >Exactly! Today, one video is worth 10^8 words! I'd make a few script edits with the high IQ couple and make them more realistic and less rigid. And I would have addedHispanics into the family tree of the mass multipliers. But otherwise, it was pretty darn good. 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: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 31 17:41:50 2007 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 13:41:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <20070531152439.GY17691@leitl.org> References: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> <7641ddc60705310738r163d4c5elaaf40db47276a61f@mail.gmail.com> <20070531152439.GY17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <7641ddc60705311041j606aa96nd510362ddf9b3eac@mail.gmail.com> On 5/31/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 10:38:02AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > I used to work for 16 hours at full concentration as a resident. 12 > > I think it's well documented how much impairment due to chronical fatigue > there is in the health industry (elsewhere, you'd go to jail because > you're more impaired than DUI). Just because it's a part of the culture > it doesn't mean it's a good idea. > ### If you are on call overnight at a hospital, you can work pretty well for about 24 hours, usually including a nap or two. Chronic fatigue sets in only if you keep doing it over and over again. Most activities of a physician actually don't take that much brainpower. ---------------------------------------- > > hours is peanuts even now, in my old age. > > Don't tell me you could code (not in the critical care sense) > 12 hours straight. Sustainably. Most people have trouble with 8 h, > effective hours (as in: not yakking at the water cooler). ### The discussion was about working hours in general, not just among coders. I would defend the notion that the 8 hour workday is a bizarre relic of 19th century class warfare, and given their druthers most humans would work different hours, some more, some less. Longer work hours in the US are an expression of worker's preferences, influenced by the higher rewards we reap thanks to the slightly less regulated, freer economy here. ------------------------------- > > > My boss works about 12 - 14 hour workdays. He gets about three times > > 12-14 h physical work is ok. 12-14 h mental work, no way. > > > more done than I do, in part because I work only 8 to 10 hours. > > 8 h is doable, though it starts grinding you down after a while. > If you claim 10 h/day effective work, I'd rather to see a proof > of that, a proof as in analysis of a video recording. ### Nah, I am not very effective. But, I do work 8 to 10 hours, since the experiments that I am doing impose the schedule on me - usually with downtime in between actions. You would miss a lot if you measure work time as only the time spent performing some well-defined actions. You have to include all the time that you have to sacrifice so as to be able to perform these actions, such as waiting for an incubation to finish, waiting for a client to show up, etc. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 31 17:50:47 2007 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 13:50:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: References: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <7641ddc60705311050lb3835a8le7ef2d38bda6a971@mail.gmail.com> On 5/31/07, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > On 31/05/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:42:12AM +0200, Amara Graps wrote: > > > > > Europeans were only slightly less productive than the Americans. > > > > Nobody can tell me they can work at full concentration 12 hours > > straight. The effective work done would be somewhere in 7-8 > > hour range. So why spend these unproductive hours at work, > > when one could spend them in a much nicer environment? > > The table in the following article suggests that there is not that much > difference between Europe and America, and in fact France beats the US in > productivity per hour worked. Factor in the premium on the US dollar due to > US political might, and there isn't much in it at all. > > http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/energy_2006_12.pdf > ### The standard explanation for this is that the US economy accepts large numbers of poorly educated immigrants, offering them a chance to improve their situation (and of course benefiting everyone else) - but given their lower productivity, the average goes down, even though both immigrants and almost all locals get better in absolute terms. On the other hand, the slightly more statist economy of France excludes millions of people, predominantly young, from participation in the economy - regulations make it too expensive to hire inexperienced, less productive workers, and therefore you have both a high productivity among the employed and millions of unemployed. If you look at other measures of performance, like per capita GNP, US wins hands down. Voluntary, longer work hours make sense. Rafal From thomas at thomasoliver.net Thu May 31 16:38:19 2007 From: thomas at thomasoliver.net (Thomas) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 09:38:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> References: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <26F8F34A-B70B-45B7-99AB-183FA703C2DA@thomasoliver.net> On May 31, 2007, at 1:16 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:42:12AM +0200, Amara Graps wrote: > > >> Europeans were only slightly less productive than the Americans. >> > > Nobody can tell me they can work at full concentration 12 hours > straight. The effective work done would be somewhere in 7-8 > hour range. So why spend these unproductive hours at work, > when one could spend them in a much nicer environment? Some people love their work and their work environment. I find I sometimes continue to work when tired because some progress can still be achieved. Some attendant tasks require less concentration than others. Then too, when I go to work I go to play. -- Thomas Thomas at ThomasOliver.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From scerir at libero.it Thu May 31 18:15:06 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 20:15:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] something in the air References: <200705310534.l4V5YSBj021122@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <000401c7a36b$a713f680$6d931f97@archimede> Message-ID: <000701c7a3af$9e403200$68911f97@archimede> http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/05/31/cocaine-in-the-air/ http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL3145580420070531 The concentration of c****** and m******** was heaviest in the air around Rome's main university but nicotine and caffeine were also detected. From dagonweb at gmail.com Thu May 31 18:34:05 2007 From: dagonweb at gmail.com (Dagon Gmail) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 20:34:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] something in the air In-Reply-To: <000701c7a3af$9e403200$68911f97@archimede> References: <200705310534.l4V5YSBj021122@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <000401c7a36b$a713f680$6d931f97@archimede> <000701c7a3af$9e403200$68911f97@archimede> Message-ID: So when the singularity arrives we will be reaching a natural saturation point andf you can harvest "ambient" coke from the air lol? Big flapping wet sheets, you drag em in at night and wring em over a small kettle? On 5/31/07, scerir wrote: > > http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/05/31/cocaine-in-the-air/ > > http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL3145580420070531 > > The concentration of c****** and m******** > was heaviest in the air around Rome's main > university but nicotine and caffeine were > also detected. > > _______________________________________________ > 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: From max at maxmore.com Thu May 31 17:57:05 2007 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 12:57:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <0391942B-095E-49CD-BB78-C21DEE27F219@ceruleansystems.com> References: <200705310534.l4V5YSBj021122@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <0391942B-095E-49CD-BB78-C21DEE27F219@ceruleansystems.com> Message-ID: <200705311757.l4VHv6a3025278@ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com> The book, "The Power of Full Engagement" focuses on this topic in a highly practical way. I reviewed it here: http://www.manyworlds.com/default.aspx?from=/exploreCO.aspx&coid=CO810510535058 Max From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 31 19:18:10 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 21:18:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <26F8F34A-B70B-45B7-99AB-183FA703C2DA@thomasoliver.net> References: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> <26F8F34A-B70B-45B7-99AB-183FA703C2DA@thomasoliver.net> Message-ID: <20070531191810.GD17691@leitl.org> On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 09:38:19AM -0700, Thomas wrote: > Some people love their work and their work environment. I find I Work satisfaction according to http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/oswald/finalnywarwickwbseventpapernov2002.pdf http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2003/05/feature/es0305204f.html looks remarkably high. I would have thought that 80-90% of people would be hating their job. > sometimes continue to work when tired because some progress can still At my $dayjob of some 15 people, we punch the clock. Presence of a warm body takes precedence over task accomplishment. > be achieved. Some attendant tasks require less concentration than > others. Then too, when I go to work I go to play. -- Thomas Great for you! Most of us aren't that lucky. -- 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 eugen at leitl.org Thu May 31 19:29:42 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 21:29:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] something in the air In-Reply-To: <000701c7a3af$9e403200$68911f97@archimede> References: <200705310534.l4V5YSBj021122@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <000401c7a36b$a713f680$6d931f97@archimede> <000701c7a3af$9e403200$68911f97@archimede> Message-ID: <20070531192942.GH17691@leitl.org> On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 08:15:06PM +0200, scerir wrote: > The concentration of c****** and m******** > was heaviest in the air around Rome's main > university but nicotine and caffeine were > also detected. http://www.google.com/search?&q=benzoylecgonine+river -- 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 jrd1415 at gmail.com Thu May 31 19:31:21 2007 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 12:31:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion In-Reply-To: <465E871E.30008@mac.com> References: <470a3c520705270309u3672146ctad4f41352b60e7a4@mail.gmail.com> <465E871E.30008@mac.com> Message-ID: Bravo! Samantha. Spoken (written, actually) with power and passion. Like a good American, I learned to believe, and embraced the belief, that this country was the model of the good life for all of humanity. The problems of the past would soon be solved by the productivity emerging in modernity. But dreams outpace reality, and the old cling to the old ways, slowing the race to the rainbows end. Still, filled with the vitality of wonder we move ever forward, the young leap eagerly to the fore, the mouldering corpses trail away behind, reuniting with the dust. When society strays into the minefield of its dark side, assaulting my optimism, I withdraw to my "happy place ", commune with my inner geek, and revisit the wonders to come, or simply remember the night I stood beneath the stars and realized that ultra-low temperature storage was my ticket to the next stage of the adventure. Such was my geekiness that the moment arrived as a simple gentle epiphany without bombshell or blaring of trumpets. And yes, I agree, tell the world. It's damn fine news. Especially now, when we need a hopeful message to bring us all back to the path of our better angels. No tears but tears of joy. -- Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles On 5/31/07, Samantha Atkins wrote: > I remember in 1988 or so when I first read Engines of Creation. I read > it with tears streaming down my face. Though I was an avowed atheist > and at that time had no spiritual practice at all, I found it profoundly > spiritually moving. For the first time in my life I believed that all > the highest hopes and dreams of humanity could become real, could be > made flesh. I saw that it was possible, on this earth, that the end of > death from aging and disease, the end of physical want, the advent of > tremendous abundance could all come to pass in my own lifetime. I saw > that great abundance, knowledge, peace and good will could come to this > world. I cried because it was a message of such pure hope from so > unexpected an angle that it got past all my defenses. I looked at the > cover many times to see if it was marked "New Age" or "Fiction" or > anything but Science and Non-Fiction. Never has any book so blown my > mind and blasted open the doors of my heart. > > Should we be afraid to give a message of great hope to humanity? Should > we be afraid that we will be taken to be just more pie in the sky > glad-hand dreamers? Should we not dare to say that the science and the > technology combined with a bit (well perhaps more than a bit) of a shift > of consciousness could make all the best dreams of all the religions and > all the generations a reality? Will we not have failed to grasp this > great opportunity if we do not say it and dare to think it and to live > it? Shall we be so afraid of being considered "like a religion" that > we do not offer any real hope to speak of and are oh so careful in all > we do and say and dismissive of more unrestrained and open dreamers? > Or will we embrace them, embrace our own deepest longings and admit our > kinship with those religious as with all the longing of all the > generations that came before us. Will we turn our backs on them or even > disdain their dreams - we who are in a position to begin at long last to > make most of those dreams real? How can we help but be a bit giddy > with excitement? How can we say no to such an utterly amazing > mind-blowing opportunity? > > - samantha > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > - From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 31 20:00:05 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 15:00:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] another dickhead for President Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070531145844.024d96f0@satx.rr.com> NYT babble from Sam Brownback: If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it. There is no one single theory of evolution, as proponents of punctuated equilibrium and classical Darwinism continue to feud today. Many questions raised by evolutionary theory ? like whether man has a unique place in the world or is merely the chance product of random mutations ? go beyond empirical science and are better addressed in the realm of philosophy or theology. The most passionate advocates of evolutionary theory offer a vision of man as a kind of historical accident. That being the case, many believers ? myself included ? reject arguments for evolution that dismiss the possibility of divine causality. Ultimately, on the question of the origins of the universe, I am happy to let the facts speak for themselves. There are aspects of evolutionary biology that reveal a great deal about the nature of the world, like the small changes that take place within a species. Yet I believe, as do many biologists and people of faith, that the process of creation ? and indeed life today ? is sustained by the hand of God in a manner known fully only to him. It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science. Biologists will have their debates about man?s origins, but people of faith can also bring a great deal to the table. For this reason, I oppose the exclusion of either faith or reason from the discussion. An attempt by either to seek a monopoly on these questions would be wrong-headed. As science continues to explore the details of man?s origin, faith can do its part as well. The fundamental question for me is how these theories affect our understanding of the human person. The unique and special place of each and every person in creation is a fundamental truth that must be safeguarded. I am wary of any theory that seeks to undermine man?s essential dignity and unique and intended place in the cosmos. I firmly believe that each human person, regardless of circumstance, was willed into being and made for a purpose. From gts_2000 at yahoo.com Thu May 31 19:50:42 2007 From: gts_2000 at yahoo.com (gts) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 15:50:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Liberals and Political Labels (was History of Slavery) In-Reply-To: <06dc01c7a33f$7c244f50$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <005301c79fff$fda40450$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <04f201c7a147$54da96b0$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <05b401c7a1ac$dfe48210$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> <06dc01c7a33f$7c244f50$6501a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: Lee Corbin wrote: >> The points I was making were that 1) abolitionism is fundamentally a >> liberal idea in both senses of the word "liberal" (even despite Lincoln >> and the word's association in the US with the Republican party of the >> 19th century), and that 2) the Torys were not liberals in either sense >> of the >> word, at least with respect to slavery. > > I agree. Well then, we agree. :) >> If anyone deserves credit for freeing the slaves, I'd say it was the >> political liberals and the Quakers. > > Yes. It's the same "mentality", if you will. Yes, the same mentality. Abolitionism has a 'liberal flavor', even though the meaning of the word liberal has changed over time. Interesting about the progressives, and thanks for your generally interesting post. This is a bit off-topic, but do you by any chance have access to reliable data about wealth distribution in the US from the mid or late 19th century to the present? I'm interested in looking at wealth distribution in relation to various forms of 'progressive' taxation, especially the estate tax. At present I happen to oppose the idea of repealing the estate tax, in case that is a subject you would like to discuss. (I would guess that you might disagree with me here.) -gts From thomas at thomasoliver.net Thu May 31 19:46:28 2007 From: thomas at thomasoliver.net (Thomas) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 12:46:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] france again In-Reply-To: <20070531191810.GD17691@leitl.org> References: <20070531081624.GO17691@leitl.org> <26F8F34A-B70B-45B7-99AB-183FA703C2DA@thomasoliver.net> <20070531191810.GD17691@leitl.org> Message-ID: <04FE4AAB-C10F-4773-A7E7-93501770A981@thomasoliver.net> On May 31, 2007, at 12:18 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > [...] > > >> sometimes continue to work when tired because some progress can >> still >> > > At my $dayjob of some 15 people, we punch the clock. Presence of > a warm body takes precedence over task accomplishment. > > >> be achieved. Some attendant tasks require less concentration than >> others. Then too, when I go to work I go to play. -- Thomas >> > > Great for you! Most of us aren't that lucky. Not luck! Stubborn choice. Few would opt for the failed marriages and insecurity of this self employed life style. -- Thomas Thomas at ThomasOliver.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amara at amara.com Thu May 31 22:39:36 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 00:39:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] france again Message-ID: "Giu1i0 Pri5c0" : >As a Southern European I think that our big strength is flexibility Regarding the flexibility: I'm very flexible (remember I'm an Italian government employee who is also an illegal immigrant), but my flexibility is not enough for increasing my productivity for the half of my life I spend in queues. To have any productivity in this particular country where the infrastructure is broken, one _must_ have also the social and familial network (to get help from someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone ...) Italy does not not run by merit (i.e. skills, experience, competence), it runs by who you know. In this productivity discussion, one needs an evaluation of the quality of the productivity, since a high output of garbage is not useful to anyone. 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 austriaaugust at yahoo.com Thu May 31 21:44:30 2007 From: austriaaugust at yahoo.com (A B) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 14:44:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion In-Reply-To: <465E871E.30008@mac.com> Message-ID: <544619.26353.qm@web37414.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi Samantha, I hear you. The importance of the next 50 years has a tendency to weigh heavily on people like us Tranhumanists, because we understand what's at stake. I of course, would love to survive to be a part of the greatness rather than die beforehand, but what actually weighs more heavily on me is the unachieved potential of humanity if we fall to a disaster. For the sentient beings of the past and present to have endured so much and for humanity to have come so incredibly close to the kind of existence we should have had from the beginning, the possiblity that there could be an extinction and that it was all for nothing is sometimes more than I can bear to think about. But, I think there is still good reason to be hopeful. We probably have another 15-20-25 years or so to prepare before we start to reach the critical thresholds. The key will be in actually *being* prepared. It can be done. I think you and I have different ideas about how to proceed from here for that purpose, but I think that our overall objectives aren't too dissimilar. For example, I believe that under the surface appearances, most people are at least adequately rational (but I admit that I could be wrong on this point) and that we can still reach a positive Singularity by traditional (Kurzweilian) progress. But the point is, that there is still reason to be hopeful - we can do this!! :-) . Our chances will be improved by sending a positive, optimistic, but not unrealistic message to the people (At least IMO). Best, Jeffrey Herrlich ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545469 From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 31 23:22:01 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 18:22:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] "traditional (Kurzweilian) progress" In-Reply-To: <544619.26353.qm@web37414.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <465E871E.30008@mac.com> <544619.26353.qm@web37414.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070531181421.024e8c18@satx.rr.com> At 02:44 PM 5/31/2007 -0700, Jeffrey Herrlich wrote: >that we can still reach a >positive Singularity by traditional (Kurzweilian) >progress. For the luvva dog! I like Ray and appreciate his PR efforts, but if we're going to fling about words like "traditional" the name to acknowledge is Vernor Vinge, who got the word out there 20 fucking years earlier. The phrase of choice, especially here where we the few, the proud, the lonely forerunners know what we're talking about is... "by traditional (Vingean) progress". I know this is a narrow little meat-monkey matter, and that Vernor probably doesn't care less, but humans work to a surprising degree by mutual acknowledgement, especially in the intellectual realm. Give the man his due. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 31 23:56:14 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 18:56:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] speaking of genes Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070531185505.024e8ad0@satx.rr.com> Genes might help you learn Chinese Tuesday, 29 May 2007 Hamish Clarke Cosmos Online http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1349 SYDNEY: Healthy babies can learn any language, but new research suggests that genes might play a part in learning tonal languages like Chinese. Dan Dediu and Robert Ladd from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland found a genetic difference between people who speak tonal languages ? such as Chinese and most languages of sub-Saharan Africa ? and those who speak non-tonal languages like English. "Our work raises the possibility of taking a new look at the relation between genes and language," said Ladd, reporting in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The language each person speaks has traditionally been considered an entirely cultural trait, determined no more by genes than religious beliefs or musical preferences. As evidence, scientists point to the fact that regardless of ancestry, any normal baby learns the languages it hears during its early years. But now Dediu and Ladd believe they may have found the first evidence that genes are involved in acquisition of specific language types. In tonal languages, subtle changes in pitch can radically alter the meaning of a word. So a non-native Chinese speaker enquiring after the health of someone's mother might easily enquire about the wellbeing of their horse instead. In non-tonal languages this is not the case, although tone is still used to express emotion, convey sarcasm or indicate a question. Dediu and Ladd examined published data on 49 distinct populations from around the world, looking for the distribution of two genes for brain development: ASPM and Microcephalin. They then searched for correlations between different forms of each gene and 26 different linguistic features. The authors found that there is generally no link between genes and linguistic features, but a strong negative correlation emerged between speakers of tonal languages and recently evolved forms of ASPM and Microcephalin. That is, people with the older forms of these genes were more likely to speak tonal languages, even when biases for geography and history were removed. Ladd believes that discovering a causal link between population genetics and language structure would be big news, but says he and Dediu haven't found that link yet. "We've just demonstrated some very unlikely correlations that suggest there might be such a link." As science uncovers more about specific genetic influences, "society is ... going to have to start dealing with a lot of policy questions that have only been theoretical up till now," said Ladd. He cites research on the genetic influences over dyslexia as one example. Should parents, educators or speech pathologists be given access to a child's genetic information in this case? Bruce Lahn, a geneticist from the University of Chicago, published the dataset on ASPM and Microcephalin on which Dediu and Ladd's work is partly based. "The work is highly significant if confirmed," Lahn said. "It is, to my knowledge, the first attempt to relate linguistic features, traditionally considered to be purely cultural, with a possible genetic contribution." The authors hope that future experiments will reveal the path by which ASPM and Microcephalin exert their influence on individual brains, and ultimately, on the preferences of entire populations for different types of language. From lcp9255 at comcast.net Mon May 28 20:35:03 2007 From: lcp9255 at comcast.net (lcp9255 at comcast.net) Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 20:35:03 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Mailing List Submission/Reply,.... Message-ID: <052820072035.13337.465B3CF7000413D8000034192207003201CACACDC79F0C04@comcast.net> Subject:Re,Re:(Exl) !,.$#@% spike wrote: > I dont think Ill be adopting every word in the Dr. Seuss lexicon,but I have picked up new idioms as they cross my path... I have picked up a large number of Seussisms in the past year. >Trimming the language to fewer select words smacks of 1984(yes,the Orwellian 1984,not the nostalgic 23 year old 1984:) Orwell had such a great idea with Newspeak,I regret that he included it in his dystropian 1984.That was double ungood on his part.Notice the Newspeak guy himself wasent evil in 1984.He was a guy with a creative idea,who suffered for it> < Ah,Spike.I dont see how you can "link up"anything about Dr. Seuss with the George Orwell book 1984.I was brought up on Dr. Seuss books and I find no simalaraties between "Seussisms"and that novel.Even in the case o f the Dr. Seuss book called "The Lorax".Of course the "Morals"of pretty much all of the Dr Seuss books have a pretty profound meanning(thats why I enjoyed his books so much).Exactly what is it that I am missing here?And what exactly are the "Morals" and Motives behing the 1984 novel anyways? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From neville_06 at yahoo.com Thu May 31 20:16:05 2007 From: neville_06 at yahoo.com (neville late) Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 13:16:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Other thoughts on transhumanism and religion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <553198.46097.qm@web57513.mail.re1.yahoo.com> Jeff, yours post below is another really beautiful one! Tears of joy indeed, but also sadness for the ones we love who have departed? Many of the religious object to embryonic cell research but what other intractable scientific conflicts can any of you mention? i recently became a moral (not per se mystical) christian and am very eager to know. Bravo! Samantha. Spoken (written, actually) with power and passion. Like a good American, I learned to believe, and embraced the belief, that this country was the model of the good life for all of humanity. The problems of the past would soon be solved by the productivity emerging in modernity. But dreams outpace reality, and the old cling to the old ways, slowing the race to the rainbows end. Still, filled with the vitality of wonder we move ever forward, the young leap eagerly to the fore, the mouldering corpses trail away behind, reuniting with the dust. When society strays into the minefield of its dark side, assaulting my optimism, I withdraw to my "happy place ", commune with my inner geek, and revisit the wonders to come, or simply remember the night I stood beneath the stars and realized that ultra-low temperature storage was my ticket to the next stage of the adventure. Such was my geekiness that the moment arrived as a simple gentle epiphany without bombshell or blaring of trumpets. And yes, I agree, tell the world. It's damn fine news. Especially now, when we need a hopeful message to bring us all back to the path of our better angels. No tears but tears of joy. -- Best, Jeff Davis --------------------------------- Don't be flakey. Get Yahoo! 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