[ExI] Anti-transhumanist crap on Kuro5hin and related.

[spike]

________________________________________
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of giovanni
santost

>... if anybody can show me how to calculate the probability of survival of
a black bear in the artic versus a white one, let me know....I will like to
learn to do similar calculations...


As would we all, Giovanni.  If anyone knew how to accurately calculate this
kind of thing, we would be able to write reasonable simulations of
ecosystems, and then run them long enough to simulate evolution, a
scientific holy grail.  If we figure out how to write a high fidelity sim of
evolution, we are within minutes of the singularity, because it would be
able to sim the past, right through the present, arbitrarily far into the
future.  

Simulating evolution in software must therefore be inherently difficult, as
in solving a system of ill conditioned nonlinear dynamic equations, or
simulating chaotic systems.  Although it has its Lorenz attractors, life may
be analogous to Anosov diffeomorphism, chaotic everywhere, inherently ill
suited to being reduced to mathematical equations, thus holding us
maddeningly dependent upon verbiage in its description, suffering the
inescapable ambiguity of meaning associated with language.

Dammit.  {8-[ 

spike