From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 00:28:54 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:28:54 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200802291828.55039.kanzure@gmail.com> On Friday 29 February 2008, estropico wrote: > Italy (like any other country) is unique. Part of its "uniqueness" is > the presence of the Vatican and the power of catholic institutions. What power? Money? They certainly don't have supercomputers, they don't have massive research institutions, they don't have neurofarms, the only power they have is lots of listeners and a widely distributed mental program. What does this power have to do with transhumanism? > Is this an obstacle to the transhumanist project? Often it is > (embryonic stem cells), sometimes it isn't (genetically modified > crops). So, which is the best approach? I don't claim to know, but I The religious institutions are not doing ES cell nor GMO research. > see that all mainstream parties, on both the left and right, are > always very cautious not to upset the "catholic vote", and I see that > the most anti-catholic (in the political sense) parties are the small An unfortunate distinction to make ... has little relevance to the research and technology issues, except perhaps funding cost, but we're increasingly able to do research without financial cost (more "DIY"). > ones. I also see that Italians have a healty tendency to take the > Vatican's pronouncements with a pinch of salt. How else to explain > Italy's birthrates (among the lowest in the world), given the Vatican > stance on contraception? Am I the only one to think that twenty years > from now Italians will take the same pragmatic approach to > life-extension therapies? - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 00:31:51 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:31:51 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <580930c20802291055s1d21fdc0x28f2bce338c2493d@mail.gmail.com> References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20802291055s1d21fdc0x28f2bce338c2493d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200802291831.52012.kanzure@gmail.com> On Friday 29 February 2008, Stefano Vaj wrote: > According to various interesting polls, I believe it fair to say that > the country the most transhumanist by far in terms of popular > mentality is without any doubt India. I wonder if Ramanujan would have counted as a transhumanist. - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Mar 1 00:34:30 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:34:30 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <200802291828.55039.kanzure@gmail.com> References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <200802291828.55039.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20080229183221.0238eb28@satx.rr.com> At 06:28 PM 2/29/2008 -0600, Bryan Bishop wrote: >[estropico wrote:] > > Italy (like any other country) is unique. Part of its "uniqueness" is > > the presence of the Vatican and the power of catholic institutions. > >What power? Money? They certainly don't have supercomputers, they don't >have massive research institutions, they don't have neurofarms, the >only power they have is lots of listeners and a widely distributed >mental program. What does this power have to do with transhumanism? Uh oh. Have you never heard of Stalin's famous contemptuous taunt: "How many divisions does the Pope have?" Damien Broderick From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 00:49:04 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:49:04 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20080229183221.0238eb28@satx.rr.com> References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <200802291828.55039.kanzure@gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20080229183221.0238eb28@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200802291849.04618.kanzure@gmail.com> On Friday 29 February 2008, Damien Broderick wrote: > >What power? Money? They certainly don't have supercomputers, they > > don't have massive research institutions, they don't have > > neurofarms, the only power they have is lots of listeners and a > > widely distributed mental program. What does this power have to do > > with transhumanism? > > Uh oh. Have you never heard of Stalin's famous contemptuous taunt: > "How many divisions does the Pope have?" No, I hadn't, but what difference does it make how many the Pope has? - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 00:54:16 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:54:16 -0600 Subject: [ExI] [Bio, News] Alnylam says it has acheived RNAi first In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200802291854.16675.kanzure@gmail.com> On Friday 29 February 2008, Jef Allbright wrote: > Alnylam is seeking to develop novel technologies based on RNA > interference, or RNAi, a naturally occurring mechanism within cells > for selectively silencing and regulating specific genes; because many > diseases are caused by the inappropriate activity of specific cells, > the ability to silence genes selectively through RNAi is thought to > have great potential. http://www.scielo.cl/pdf/ejb/v6n1/a01.pdf http://idi.harvard.edu/pdfs/cbrbreakthrough_dec2006.pdf http://www.dharmacon.com/docs/siRNA%20Reading%20List_083105.pdf http://www.biochemsoctrans.org/bst/032/0952/0320952.pdf http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/36777/frontmatter/9780521836777_frontmatter.pdf - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sat Mar 1 04:31:44 2008 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:31:44 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <200802291828.55039.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: <625860.90409.qm@web30403.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- Bryan Bishop wrote: On Friday 29 February 2008, estropico wrote: >>Italy (like any other country) is unique. Part of >>its "uniqueness" is the presence of the Vatican and >>the power of catholic institutions. >What power? Money? They certainly don't have >supercomputers, they don't have massive research >institutions, they don't have neurofarms, the only >power they have is lots of listeners and a widely >distributed mental program. What does this power >have to do with transhumanism? What power do they have? The power to influence many people as much as any religion, race and/or language. Funny thing is that is any organization that wants to become a "fundamental" recognition has to understand that there will be followers and to understand the general thinking of others. This is so important it's beyond belief. You don't make a movement without a great cause. Whether the Vatican is involved or not should not be an issue. People lead not religion. Just an opinion Anna Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail. Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 04:44:34 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:44:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <625860.90409.qm@web30403.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <625860.90409.qm@web30403.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200802292244.34178.kanzure@gmail.com> On Friday 29 February 2008, Anna Taylor wrote: > What power do they have? ?The power to influence many > people as much as any religion, race and/or language. The unspoken portion here is probably "and they will want to stop us." Really? They haven't been stopping us yet, and we've been freezing people, doing brain-computer interfaces, making rockets, experimenting in nanotech, stem cells, etc. No matter how much they want it to not be true that stem cells don't exist, they in fact do exist, for example. - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sat Mar 1 05:07:51 2008 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 00:07:51 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <200802292244.34178.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: <746181.66790.qm@web30408.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- Bryan Bishop wrote: >The unspoken portion here is probably "and they will >want to stop us." Really? They haven't been stopping >us yet, and we've been freezing people, doing brain->computer interfaces, making rockets, experimenting >in nanotech, stem cells, etc. No matter how much >they want it to not be true that stem cells don't >exist, they in fact do exist, for example. My computer broke down the other day. I was petrified. What to do without my computer? I went to see the tech guy...I got a diagnostic..didn't tell me much...but poof my computer started working again. I don't know why. The point of the story is that technology is the wave of the future and i'm sure that many knowledgeable, intelligent, smart, and /or creative people are paying attention, it doesn't take a religion to confirm it and it doesn't take a an Atheist to believe it. Anna:) Get a sneak peak at messages with a handy reading pane with All new Yahoo! Mail: http://ca.promos.yahoo.com/newmail/overview2/ From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 05:50:20 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:50:20 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <746181.66790.qm@web30408.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <746181.66790.qm@web30408.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200802292350.20093.kanzure@gmail.com> On Friday 29 February 2008, Anna Taylor wrote: > My computer broke down the other day. ?I was > petrified. ?What to do without my computer? I went to > see the tech guy...I got a diagnostic..didn't tell me > much...but poof my computer started working again. ?I > don't know why. ?The point of the story is that > technology is the wave of the future and i'm sure that > many knowledgeable, intelligent, smart, and /or > creative people are paying attention, it doesn't take > a religion to confirm it and it doesn't take a an > Atheist to believe it. I can relate to that story, but I wonder what reading it must be like to those who just don't understand the feeling of anxiety that occurs when you start realizing your dx is way too low. - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Sat Mar 1 07:11:15 2008 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 02:11:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <200802292350.20093.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: <418536.78547.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> My apology Bryan. I thought I was writing for those that correctly understood my point of view. I'm on the Extropy List..I felt free to give my opinion. I've been here for at least (very minimum) 2 years, I apologize if I offended anybody. I didn't mean to confuse anybody. PS. I still don't understand what DX means? Anna:) --- Bryan Bishop wrote: > On Friday 29 February 2008, Anna Taylor wrote: > > My computer broke down the other day. ?I was > > petrified. ?What to do without my computer? I went > to > > see the tech guy...I got a diagnostic..didn't tell > me > > much...but poof my computer started working again. > ?I > > don't know why. ?The point of the story is that > > technology is the wave of the future and i'm sure > that > > many knowledgeable, intelligent, smart, and /or > > creative people are paying attention, it doesn't > take > > a religion to confirm it and it doesn't take a an > > Atheist to believe it. > > I can relate to that story, but I wonder what > reading it must be like to > those who just don't understand the feeling of > anxiety that occurs when > you start realizing your dx is way too low. > > - Bryan > ________________________________________ > Bryan Bishop > http://heybryan.org/ > _______________________________________________ > 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. Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca From stathisp at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 09:36:54 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 20:36:54 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Mindless Thought Experiments In-Reply-To: <005001c87afa$52c1bba0$45ef4d0c@MyComputer> References: <200802281006.02410.kanzure@gmail.com> <005201c87a8f$e9ea7d70$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <402e01e70802290723id16c225r11d0052ecef7ec91@mail.gmail.com> <005001c87afa$52c1bba0$45ef4d0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: On 01/03/2008, John K Clark wrote: > Somewhere in the universe there may be a language where this Email, > without changing a single character, expresses in perfect grammar the > instructions on how to operate a new type of can opener; but as neither > of us knows that language there is little danger of this conversation > being diverted into a discussion of can opener technology. It is true that this email provides can opener instructions in some possible language, but it is true only in a trivial sense. This is because the instructions are only useful if you know the language, and you can't "deduce" the language from random data unless you know what it says in the first place. Similarly, a random physical system such as atoms jostling each other in a gas might correspond to a member of the set of all possible computers simulating a can opener, but this is only useful if there is a means of decoding it: some sort of I/O device is needed, which would require a conventional computation containing at least all the information in the putative simulation to "reverse engineer". Now, what if the obscured computation at issue simulates an inputless virtual environment with conscious inhabitants? We on the outside once again will not be able to understand it or interact with it unless we do the whole computation from scratch using a conventional computer. But this should make no difference to the conscious inhabitants: they remain conscious, isolated in their virtual world. For all we know, we could be living in such a simulation, with no possibility of communication with the world "outside" our universe. -- Stathis Papaioannou From scerir at libero.it Sat Mar 1 10:23:57 2008 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 11:23:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <200802291828.55039.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: <000301c87b86$5db18bd0$de921f97@archimede> estropico wrote: > > Italy (like any other country) is unique. Part of its "uniqueness" is > > the presence of the Vatican and the power of catholic institutions. Bryan wrote: > What power? Money? They certainly don't have supercomputers, they don't > have massive research institutions, they don't have neurofarms, the > only power they have is lots of listeners and a widely distributed > mental program. What does this power have to do with transhumanism? An important connection, in the past, between the Vatican and a 'sort' of transhumanism, was the 'monitum' you can read in the following page http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/dechardin.txt A famous dictum says that the opposite of a profound belief may well be another profound belief. I tend to agree, with Fabio, in that the fight 'transhumanism vs. church' is not on the top of the reasonable priorities. As Amara wrote, in another thread, 67 physicists of Rome university 'La Sapienza' (and among them the Dirac medalist Parisi) wrote a letter about and against the Pope giving a speech in that university. Unfortunately the papers published that letter. The Pope did not go there. Popularity of prof. Ratzinger reached the top. s. From stathisp at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 10:49:22 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 21:49:22 +1100 Subject: [ExI] The subjectivity of entropy, the role of the observer...==> Rational metaethics In-Reply-To: <402e01e70802290723id16c225r11d0052ecef7ec91@mail.gmail.com> References: <200802281006.02410.kanzure@gmail.com> <005201c87a8f$e9ea7d70$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <402e01e70802290723id16c225r11d0052ecef7ec91@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 01/03/2008, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote: > If you know the positions and speeds of all the elements in a system, > their motion stops looking like heat, and starts looking like a > spinning flywheel - usable kinetic energy that can be extracted right > out. What if all the atoms in a monoatomic gas started vibrating in the same axis? -- Stathis Papaioannou From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 12:05:45 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 06:05:45 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <418536.78547.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <418536.78547.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200803010605.45311.kanzure@gmail.com> On Saturday 01 March 2008, Anna Taylor wrote: > My apology Bryan. ?I thought I was writing for those > that correctly understood my point of view. ?I'm on > the Extropy List..I felt free to give my opinion. ? > I've been here for at least (very minimum) 2 years, I > apologize if I offended anybody. ?I didn't mean to > confuse anybody. Huh? I thought we were in agreement? > PS. I still don't understand what DX means? The token 'dx' refers to a differential, or rate of change. It's basically the limit of the distance between the two points of a secant line as it becomes a tangent line wrt another curve. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From pharos at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 13:37:01 2008 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 13:37:01 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <200803010605.45311.kanzure@gmail.com> References: <418536.78547.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200803010605.45311.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 12:05 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote: > The token 'dx' refers to a differential, or rate of change. It's > basically the limit of the distance between the two points of a secant > line as it becomes a tangent line wrt another curve. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate > Well, certainly that's one meaning. :) See: I count 16 meanings for dx. Your usage is grouped at the end, under 'Other'. As readers cannot read minds, cryptic comments in emails are often difficult to decode for readers who are not familiar with the writer's normal usage. Viz. Damien's reference to hungry dieties. ;) BillK From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 15:30:17 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 08:30:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <580930c20802291354k1c616efdn3402af387fe07cfd@mail.gmail.com> References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <000701c87ac2$c6cb1060$36961f97@archimede> <2d6187670802290648w6c218fbfxb4c267e918ae2dbd@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20802291055s1d21fdc0x28f2bce338c2493d@mail.gmail.com> <2d6187670802291117l1a55addejd6e2043eb323e78e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20802291354k1c616efdn3402af387fe07cfd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670803010730h43e12b1do9b0970c2ba2e2dbf@mail.gmail.com> Stefano Vaj wrote: Besides anedoctical evidence or personal inferences, and speaking of statistics, for instance, already in 1993, an international poll conducted by Daryl Macer, manager in Japan of the Eubios Ethics Institute, verified that the percentage of the general population in favour of the general availability of genetic engineering technology aimed at both preventing diseases and increasing physical and mental abilities inherited by their offspring ranged, if I am not mistaken, from 22% in Israel to 43% in the US to *83%* (!) in India. >>> I am mytified by the low numbers for Israel. I realize they have a vocal conservative population among them (as the U.S. does) but I thought on the whole it was a very technologically progressive nation. In fact, I've heard many anecdotes about how the typical Israeli is "adrift in a sea of modernity" and definitely not religiously devout. My take on Judaism (even the more orthodox and conservative forms) was that they would be much more open to "radical" biotech, etc. as compared to conservative American Evangelicals. Does anyone here know more about this matter? I considered the combination of a highly educated citizenry, the constant need to keep their already very high-tech economy competitive, the story of having been so unloved by God that they have no confirmed oil reserves on their land (as Golda Meir would joke!), and being a sliver of a country surrounded by potential enemies (and so advanced technology is key to defeating their numbers), that they would have a much more positive view of genetic engineering. I'd like to see a new poll taken to find out if the 22% positive rating has gone up significantly (since it was taken wayyyy back in 1993!, lol). And I want to have the reasons for/against also nailed down in this poll. I have a feeling that the political, military and business leaders of Israel will one way or another get the nation to invest heavily in genetic engineering so they can reap the full benefits as the technology matures. And the parents there will want their kids to have every competitive advantage available (when the gene tweaking to make humans smarter, healthier, longer lived, etc. becomes available) so the odds of personal success will be in their offspring's favor. It's hard for me to do, but I will leave out the Jewish mother jokes. : ) John Grigg -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20080301/c8b0ccae/attachment.html From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Mar 1 16:28:02 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2008 10:28:02 -0600 Subject: [ExI] gravity glitches Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20080301102523.021cce40@satx.rr.com> sample: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Mar 1 16:58:06 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2008 10:58:06 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: References: <418536.78547.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200803010605.45311.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20080301105414.02296e88@satx.rr.com> At 01:37 PM 3/1/2008 +0000, BillK wrote: >As readers cannot read minds, cryptic comments in emails are often >difficult to decode for readers who are not familiar with the writer's >normal usage. > >Viz. Damien's reference to hungry dieties. ;) I know, mea culpa. You start playing around with bad puns on misspelled deities and diets, and it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Damien Broderick From jef at jefallbright.net Sat Mar 1 17:35:26 2008 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:35:26 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20080301105414.02296e88@satx.rr.com> References: <418536.78547.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200803010605.45311.kanzure@gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20080301105414.02296e88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 8:58 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > I know, mea culpa. You start playing around with bad puns on > misspelled deities and diets, and it's all fun and games until > someone loses an eye. Wasn't lost; merely misplaced - Jef From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Mar 1 17:46:51 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 09:46:51 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Mindless Thought Experiments References: <200802281006.02410.kanzure@gmail.com><005201c87a8f$e9ea7d70$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677><402e01e70802290723id16c225r11d0052ecef7ec91@mail.gmail.com> <005001c87afa$52c1bba0$45ef4d0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <011001c87bc4$d06c3ce0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> John Clark writes > About a week ago I sent the following to Jaron Lanier, I did not receive a > reply: > > ========= > > I read your article "Mindless Thought Experiments" at: > http://www.jaronlanier.com/aichapter.html > > I have a few comments. > ... >> so is the rainstorm conscious? We have hashed that out so many times years and so many years ago. I suppose I'm proud to have been on the cutting edge so very long ago. Jason's comments and questions are really very, very old stuff here. As far as I know, the Extropian list, and then later Wei Dai's list and SL4, were the first forums in which all this was debated at length and at a very high level. >> AI proponents usually seize on some specific stage >> in my reducto [sic] ad absurdum to locate the point >> where I've gone too far. Yeah, right. "His" reductio. (Does he use a spell-checker for his published articles?) He's just now getting around to reading Moravec? Well, perhaps not, I don't know. But it sounds that way. > I believe if you're going to attempt a reducto ad absurdum proof care must > be taken to ensure that your conclusion is contradictory and not just odd. > Einstein also came up with a thought experiment, he thought it proved that > Quantum Mechanics must be wrong because otherwise things would be odd; > not illogical, not contradictory, just odd. In the last few years this > thought experiment (Bell's Inequality) was actually performed and now we > know that things are indeed odd. Well put. Now, of course, this is not to mean to say that all these very complex questions have been totally resolved. They haven't, and they won't be for a long time. Someday, even if it were thousands of years from now, barring catastrophe or collapse, uploaded entities who run however many copies of themselves whenever they want, and who have long ago left biological substrates, will no doubt consider these questions resolved. Meanwhile, what we have done is to practice thinking about what their answers will be. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Mar 1 18:03:52 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 10:03:52 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Ramanujan References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com><580930c20802291055s1d21fdc0x28f2bce338c2493d@mail.gmail.com> <200802291831.52012.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: <012201c87bc6$ebd38c70$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> > I wonder if Ramanujan would have counted as a transhumanist. Oh, certainly not. Now wikipedia says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan > Ramanujan's first Indian biographers describe him as rigorously orthodox. > Ramanujancredited his acumen to his family goddess, Namagiri, and looked > to her for inspiration in his work.[77] He often said, "An equation for me has > no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God."[78] [79] > G. H. Hardy cites Ramanujan as remarking that all religions seemed equally true > to him. Hardy further argued that Ramanujan's religiousness had been overstated > -- in the point of belief, not practice -- by his Indian biographers, and romanticised > by Westerners. At the same time, he remarked on Ramanujan's strict observance > of vegetarianism. Nonetheless, from reading Robert Kanigel's "The Man Who Knew Infinity" ---the best single biography I ever read---I think that Hardy was understating Ramanujan's religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices. Anyway, in my opinion, there is absolutely no correlation between mathematical genius and a tendency towards transhumanist beliefs. Or sensible philosophic beliefs at all. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Mar 1 18:21:07 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 10:21:07 -0800 Subject: [ExI] "Deities" and "Patents" References: <418536.78547.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com><200803010605.45311.kanzure@gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20080301105414.02296e88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <012e01c87bc9$08fb0290$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Damien writes > > Are the dieties of India "jealous gods?" > > Mostly jealous of each other's chow; they are certainly *hungry* > gods, those dieties. :-) Okay, we do know your posts should be read for such fun. But it would be nice if just in the subject line folks could be more careful. We've now had a very long thread on "Pattents". And, alas, one started on "Dieties", which did merit your witty scorn. I'm sure that many, many people noticed "Pattents" is misspelled. Why didn't even one of them correct it? Lee From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Mar 1 18:19:36 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2008 12:19:36 -0600 Subject: [ExI] i before e, except after god In-Reply-To: References: <418536.78547.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200803010605.45311.kanzure@gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20080301105414.02296e88@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20080301121205.024348c8@satx.rr.com> At 09:35 AM 3/1/2008 -0800, Jef wrote: > > I know, mea culpa. You start playing around with bad puns on > > misspelled deities and diets, and it's all fun and games until > > someone loses an eye. > >Wasn't lost; merely misplaced Yeah, had been going to say that, after an i.e., but just knew in me old bones that it would cause even more vexing confusion. A pun might be the shortest distance between two straight-lines, but it helps to have a laugh track of applauding old Monty Python ladies cued up, and I'm fresh out of them. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Sat Mar 1 18:30:20 2008 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2008 12:30:20 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "Deities" and "Patents" In-Reply-To: <012e01c87bc9$08fb0290$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <418536.78547.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200803010605.45311.kanzure@gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20080301105414.02296e88@satx.rr.com> <012e01c87bc9$08fb0290$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20080301122811.024bcc18@satx.rr.com> At 10:21 AM 3/1/2008 -0800, Lee wrote: >I'm sure that many, many people noticed "Pattents" is >misspelled. Why didn't even one of them correct it? Doesn't that mess up the threading? And to change it to "Patents (was: Pattents)", which I gather does retain the thread, might look insulting, perhaps? That's my excuse, anyway. Damien Broderick From estropico at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 18:48:54 2008 From: estropico at gmail.com (estropico) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 18:48:54 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists Message-ID: <4eaaa0d90803011048k62f8955axaad7f6ed7a96d79a@mail.gmail.com> > From: "Stefano Vaj" > > ...be the Nouvelle Droite > fascist or not, if I were a "representative" of the same... You might want to update your book's website, then: "responsabile italiano del S?cretariat Etudes et Recherches del Groupement de Recherche et Etudes pour la Civilisation Europ?enne (GRECE)": http://www.biopolitica.it/biop-autore.html On the "fascist or not" and its relationship with GRECE: Wikipedia on the "New Right" (Nouvelle Droite): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_Droite Wikipedia on GRECE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRECE Cheers, Fabio From amcmr2003 at yahoo.com.br Sat Mar 1 18:35:15 2008 From: amcmr2003 at yahoo.com.br (Antonio Marcos) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 15:35:15 -0300 (ART) Subject: [ExI] Fruits In-Reply-To: <012e01c87bc9$08fb0290$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <441364.70280.qm@web50611.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Some time ago, I've seen an article at www.fantastic-voyage.net about scientists discovering why exactly fruits is good for health, i believe it was chinese or taiwan scientists... but I cant find the article anymore, I searched the archives, the internet archive, google.. to no avail.. could someone please help find it? Mark. Abra sua conta no Yahoo! Mail, o ?nico sem limite de espa?o para armazenamento! http://br.mail.yahoo.com/ From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Mar 1 19:19:00 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 11:19:00 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists Message-ID: <014c01c87bd1$bf8b7c30$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Estropico writes > On the "fascist or not" and its relationship with GRECE: Wikipedia on > the "New Right" (Nouvelle Droite): > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_Droite Well, I can certainly recognize (often) when it would take me years to get up to speed on something. No way I'm going to get a good understanding of what is being debated here. But that link has one interesting passage that really got my attention: "As Martin Lee explains, " By rejecting Christianity as an alien ideology that was forced upon the Indo-European peoples two millennia ago, French New Rightists distinguished themselves from the so-called New Right that emerged in the United States during the 1970s. Ideologically, [the European new Right group] GRECE had little in common with the American New Right, which [the European new Right ideologue] de Benoist dismissed as a puritanical, moralistic crusade that clung pathetically to Christianity as the be-all and end-all of Western civilization.[6]" Talk about mixed currents! It's as though the European coordinate system has been rotated 45 degrees from the American one. And, oh yes, the Nouvelle Droite throughout Europe does not hesitate to call into question "market practices", evidently. (Actually, I feel like apologizing for my ignorance, but I just wrote an email to someone telling them never to do that!) Lee From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 20:23:23 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 13:23:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] i before e, except after god In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20080301121205.024348c8@satx.rr.com> References: <418536.78547.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200803010605.45311.kanzure@gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20080301105414.02296e88@satx.rr.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20080301121205.024348c8@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670803011223lf861f02ia73fb0fe4582b93b@mail.gmail.com> Damien wrote: Yeah, had been going to say that, after an i.e., but just knew in me old bones that it would cause even more vexing confusion. A pun might be the shortest distance between two straight-lines, but it helps to have a laugh track of applauding old Monty Python ladies cued up, and I'm fresh out of them. >>> Yes, Damien's pun went right over my head, or around my head, or under my head, anyway..., it went somewhere! lol I grew up on Monty Python and so as a hapless American guy I need prompts such as applauding old ladies so I know when a well-educated subject of the Queen is displaying their fine sense of humor. I don't want to "look beyond the mark" and overcomplicate things. And to think just the other day I was listening to Spider Robinson's classic "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon," where in a fun scene the characters gathered together at the bar to celebrate "Punday." : ) John Grigg P.S. I can't wait to see Spamalot! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20080301/15a51755/attachment.html From pjmanney at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 20:42:32 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 12:42:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Time Magazine: Person of the Year: Putin Message-ID: <29666bf30803011242q76e9c7ceya425aef89e8a52af@mail.gmail.com> Back in December, there was much consternation on this list over Time Magazine's dubbing Vladimir Putin "Person of the Year". Now you will understand why he was chosen. BTW, it always helps to know where your media comes from. It usually comes from highly paid PR executives in the employ of the people or corporations they're shilling. PJ Published on Center for Media and Democracy (http://www.prwatch.org) Ketchum Caught "Man of the Year" Title for Putin Vladimir Putin and George Bush (July 2007 [1])Ketchum [2], the PR firm involved in the Armstrong Williams [3] "pundit payola" scandal, helped Vladimir Putin become Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2007. The firm also conducted "dozens of media briefings in Moscow, New York and Washington, D.C. for both the Russia [4]n Federation and its natural gas monopoly Gazprom [5]," reports O'Dwyer's. Ketchum was paid $845,000 for two months of work for the Russian Federation in early 2007, around the G8 [6] Summit and visits to Moscow by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice [7] and Defense Secretary Robert Gates [8]. Ketchum has a $250,000 per month contract with Gazprom; the gas company also pays the Gavin Anderson [9] firm $100,000 per month. In 2007, Ketchum's Gazprom work included "several press and think tank [10] briefings," and organizing "meetings as executives visited the U.S. in late November and early December." ________________________________ Source URL: http://www.prwatch.org/node/7021 Links: [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Vladimir_Putin_and_George_W._Bush.jpg [2] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ketchum [3] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Armstrong_Williams [4] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Russia [5] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gazprom [6] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=G8 [7] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Condoleezza_Rice [8] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Robert_Gates [9] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Gavin_Anderson [10] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=think_tank From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 21:03:48 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 22:03:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <4eaaa0d90803011048k62f8955axaad7f6ed7a96d79a@mail.gmail.com> References: <4eaaa0d90803011048k62f8955axaad7f6ed7a96d79a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20803011303w1f749a5ah1f79e7872217ad9@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:48 PM, estropico wrote: > > From: "Stefano Vaj" > > > > ...be the Nouvelle Droite > > fascist or not, if I were a "representative" of the same... > > You might want to update your book's website, then: "responsabile > italiano del S?cretariat Etudes et Recherches del Groupement de > Recherche et Etudes pour la Civilisation Europ?enne (GRECE)": > http://www.biopolitica.it/biop-autore.html Mere sloppiness or deliberate misinformation? The truncated quote of my bio thereing reads "gi? responsabile del...", meaning "former head of...". That S?cretariat in fact has not even existed for more than twenty-five years now. As for the quality of the work performed by the same, the number of Nobelists involved at that time in the publications of GRECE is a good enough testimony of what it could achieve before its deplorable conservative turn, which led on the other hand to Mr. de Benoist's regular invitations as a speaker by the Italian post-fascist environments supported by your friends and yourself. Stefano Vaj From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 21:14:35 2008 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 14:14:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Time Magazine: Person of the Year: Putin In-Reply-To: <29666bf30803011242q76e9c7ceya425aef89e8a52af@mail.gmail.com> References: <29666bf30803011242q76e9c7ceya425aef89e8a52af@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2d6187670803011314q2b5838ffq1d3c8bc2441eb7dd@mail.gmail.com> I personally think Putin was a good choice for the "Man of the Year" Time magazine title. Whether for good or bad, he has had a nearly overwhelming influence on modern Russia, one of the most powerful nations in the world. And not all the people who have gotten this title over the years have been saints. But the way this all came about is another story, entirely. My question is..., were any real laws broken during this successful effort to boost Putin's name? Or was this just global big business/public relations doing things "business as usual" in an ethical gray zone where spotlights are rarely brought to bear. I had no idea PR firm executives could make such large sums of money! lol And so I guess a Master's degree in public relations is on par with a law degree if your career takes the right trajectory. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20080301/ba432d4b/attachment.html From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 21:20:50 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 15:20:50 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Ramanujan In-Reply-To: <012201c87bc6$ebd38c70$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <200802291831.52012.kanzure@gmail.com> <012201c87bc6$ebd38c70$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200803011520.50729.kanzure@gmail.com> On Saturday 01 March 2008, Lee Corbin wrote: > Nonetheless, from reading Robert Kanigel's "The Man Who Knew > Infinity" ---the best single biography I ever read---I think that > Hardy was understating Ramanujan's religious beliefs, attitudes, and > practices. I never did read Kanigel's book all the way through (got distracted with "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers" half way through, you see), but I did pick up a few interesting quotes which I think illustrate some of the transhumanist mindset, for example: > His work was the work from which most of us would shrink. There's > admiration there, but maybe a wisp of derision, too--as if in wonder > that Ramanujan, of all people, could stoop so willingly to the realm > of the merely arithmetical. And yet, Ramanujan was doing what great > artists always do--diving into his material. He was building an > intimacy with numbers, for the same reason that the painter lingers > over the mixing of his paints, or the musician endlessly practices his > scales. And his insight profited. For him, it wasn't what his equation > stood for that mattered, but the equation itself, as pattern and form. > And his pleasure lay not in finding in it a numerical answer, but from > turning it upside down and inside out, seeing in it new possibilities, > playing with it as the poet does words and images, the artist color > and line, the philosopher ideas. Ramanujan's world was one in which > numbers had properties built into them. Chemistry students learn the > properties of the various elements, the positions in the periodic > table they occupy, the classes to which they belong, and just how > their chemical properties arise from their atomic structure. Numbers, > too, have properties which place them in distinct classes and > categories. Ramanujan was an artist. And numbers--and the mathematical > language expressing their relationship--were his medium ... > Ramanujan's was no cool, steady Intelligence, solemnly applied to the > problem at hand; he was all energy, animation, force. He had a > determination to succeed and to sacrifice everything in the attempt. > That could be a prescription for an unhappy life; certainly for a life > out of balance, sneering at timidity and restraint. Sometimes, as > Ramanujan sat or squatted on the pial, he'd look up to watch the > children playing in the street with what one neighbor remembered as 'a > blank and vacant look.' But inside, he was on fire. - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 21:23:47 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 15:23:47 -0600 Subject: [ExI] "Deities" and "Patents" In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20080301122811.024bcc18@satx.rr.com> References: <418536.78547.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <012e01c87bc9$08fb0290$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <7.0.1.0.2.20080301122811.024bcc18@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <200803011523.47665.kanzure@gmail.com> On Saturday 01 March 2008, Damien Broderick wrote: > Doesn't that mess up the threading? In some cases. I have my email client on maxium threadability, whatever that means. So sometimes I get completely new threads attached below a message somewhere. Maybe this is because somebody is replying to a previous message from the list instead of writing a new email? Or in some cases, Amara's messages are misplaced as new threads. Odd problems. - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 21:21:37 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 22:21:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <014c01c87bd1$bf8b7c30$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <014c01c87bd1$bf8b7c30$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <580930c20803011321o5ec4fbfdu7ee8fb9bd6c1a34a@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 8:19 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Talk about mixed currents! It's as though the European coordinate system > has been rotated 45 degrees from the American one. > > And, oh yes, the Nouvelle Droite throughout Europe does not hesitate > to call into question "market practices", evidently. (Actually, I feel like > apologizing for my ignorance, but I just wrote an email to someone > telling them never to do that!) All in all, what you say is basically correct. On the other hand, the French environment that is now known as the Nouvelle Droite has unfortunately picked up along the way many themes and attitudes that belong to the worst kind of neoluddite and technophobic New Left. Therefore, they may well have emphatically avoided being neocons or authoritarians or nazis, but at the same time have ended up being unpleasantly close to Mr. Rifkin's or Mr. N?ss's ideas. In fact, many intellectuals who used to belong to that area and were closer, often ante litteram, to transhumanist ideas, such as Yves Christen (Les ann?es Faust, ou, La science face au vieillissement) or Charles Champetier (http://www.lesmutants.com), simply left quite soon when the GRECE turned conservative and at the same time turned mostly its back to science and technology along "gauchiste" refrains. Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20080301/8c7f6eca/attachment.html From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 21:32:51 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 22:32:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <2d6187670803010730h43e12b1do9b0970c2ba2e2dbf@mail.gmail.com> References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <000701c87ac2$c6cb1060$36961f97@archimede> <2d6187670802290648w6c218fbfxb4c267e918ae2dbd@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20802291055s1d21fdc0x28f2bce338c2493d@mail.gmail.com> <2d6187670802291117l1a55addejd6e2043eb323e78e@mail.gmail.com> <580930c20802291354k1c616efdn3402af387fe07cfd@mail.gmail.com> <2d6187670803010730h43e12b1do9b0970c2ba2e2dbf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20803011332l1bb1d9d3ga8f98cfd6c2b71cf@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 4:30 PM, John Grigg wrote: > I am mytified by the low numbers for Israel. I realize they have a vocal > conservative population among them (as the U.S. does) but I thought on the > whole it was a very technologically progressive nation. In fact, I've heard > many anecdotes about how the typical Israeli is "adrift in a sea of > modernity" and definitely not religiously devout. My take on Judaism (even > the more orthodox and conservative forms) was that they would be much more > open to "radical" biotech, etc. as compared to conservative American > Evangelicals. Does anyone here know more about this matter? > While I suspect that Israel has its own fair share of religious fundamentalists, and that opposition to H+ ideas may not be limited to the same, I know for instance that Israel has, or used to have, special schools for, and research programmes on, "superdotati" (specially-endowed? super-intelligent? high IQ?) children, where such things have been unthinkable in Europe, and AFAIK not exactly the most politically correct idea in the US either, for a long while. Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20080301/f8f9472d/attachment.html From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Mar 1 21:46:38 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 13:46:38 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Ramanujan References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <200802291831.52012.kanzure@gmail.com> <012201c87bc6$ebd38c70$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <200803011520.50729.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: <015601c87be5$cdd7ac50$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Bryan writes > On Saturday 01 March 2008, Lee Corbin wrote: >> Nonetheless, from reading Robert Kanigel's "The Man Who Knew >> Infinity" ---the best single biography I ever read---I think that >> Hardy was understating Ramanujan's religious beliefs, attitudes, and >> practices. > > I never did read Kanigel's book all the way through (got distracted > with "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers" half way through, you see), but I > did pick up a few interesting quotes which I think illustrate some of > the transhumanist mindset, for example: All that (below) just seems really like anyone who loves his work, or is highly fascinated by something. There is nothing characteristically transhumanist (or even philosophical) that I can see. Lee >> His work was the work from which most of us would shrink. There's >> admiration there, but maybe a wisp of derision, too--as if in wonder >> that Ramanujan, of all people, could stoop so willingly to the realm >> of the merely arithmetical. And yet, Ramanujan was doing what great >> artists always do--diving into his material. He was building an >> intimacy with numbers, for the same reason that the painter lingers >> over the mixing of his paints, or the musician endlessly practices his >> scales. And his insight profited. For him, it wasn't what his equation >> stood for that mattered, but the equation itself, as pattern and form. >> And his pleasure lay not in finding in it a numerical answer, but from >> turning it upside down and inside out, seeing in it new possibilities, >> playing with it as the poet does words and images, the artist color >> and line, the philosopher ideas. Ramanujan's world was one in which >> numbers had properties built into them. Chemistry students learn the >> properties of the various elements, the positions in the periodic >> table they occupy, the classes to which they belong, and just how >> their chemical properties arise from their atomic structure. Numbers, >> too, have properties which place them in distinct classes and >> categories. Ramanujan was an artist. And numbers--and the mathematical >> language expressing their relationship--were his medium ... >> Ramanujan's was no cool, steady Intelligence, solemnly applied to the >> problem at hand; he was all energy, animation, force. He had a >> determination to succeed and to sacrifice everything in the attempt. >> That could be a prescription for an unhappy life; certainly for a life >> out of balance, sneering at timidity and restraint. Sometimes, as >> Ramanujan sat or squatted on the pial, he'd look up to watch the >> children playing in the street with what one neighbor remembered as 'a >> blank and vacant look.' But inside, he was on fire. > > - Bryan > ________________________________________ > Bryan Bishop > http://heybryan.org/ > From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 22:16:44 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 16:16:44 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Ramanujan In-Reply-To: <015601c87be5$cdd7ac50$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <200803011520.50729.kanzure@gmail.com> <015601c87be5$cdd7ac50$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200803011616.44698.kanzure@gmail.com> On Saturday 01 March 2008, Lee Corbin wrote: > All that (below) just seems really like anyone who loves his > work, or is highly fascinated by something. There is nothing > characteristically transhumanist (or even philosophical) that > I can see. Math, philosophy, logic, reason, numbers, these are all tightly intertwingled subjects, and I believe stepwise lead to transhumanism or at least futurism, context-exploration, and realizing the future by creating it. In this context, Ramanujan was an amazing journeyman in such explorations, able to map out more territory that should have been possible with the limiting circumstances he was born into, and isn't this transcension? - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20080301/9ae6dd86/attachment.html From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 22:26:26 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 23:26:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Basically, DNA is a computing problem Message-ID: <580930c20803011426x6d60f3d5x9651fa19f95c1cda@mail.gmail.com> Basically, DNA is a computing problem The revolution of genome sequencing has spawned a parallel revolution in computing, as scientists in Cambridge have found The computing resources of the Sanger Institute at Hinxton, near Cambridge, are almost unfathomable. Three rooms are filled with walls of blade servers and drives, and there is a fourth that is kept fallow, and for the moment full of every sort of debris: old Sun workstations, keyboards, cases and cases of backup tapes - even a dishwasher. But the fallow room is an important part of the centre's preparations. Things are changing so fast that they can have no idea what they will be required to do in a year's time. When Tony Cox, now the institute's head of sequencing informatics, was a post-doctoral researcher he could sequence 200 bases of DNA in a day (human DNA has about 3bn bases). The machines being installed today can do 1m bases an hour. What will be installed in two years' time is anyone's guess, but the centre is as ready as it can be. Invisible revolution Genome sequencing, which is what the centre excels at, has wrought a revolution in biology that many people think they understand. But it has happened alongside a largely invisible revolution, in which molecular biology - which even 20 years ago was done in glassware inside laboratories - is now done in silicon. A modern sequencer itself is a fairly powerful computer. The new machines being brought online at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute are robots from waist-height upwards, where the machinery grows and then treats microscopic specks of DNA in serried ranks so that a laser can illuminate it and a moving camera capture the fluorescing bases every two seconds. The lower half of each cabinet holds the computers needed to coordinate the machinery and do the preliminary processing of the camera pictures. At the heart of the machine is a plate of treated glass about the size of an ordinary microscope slide, which contains around 30m copies of 2,640 tiny fragments of DNA, all arranged in eight lines along the glass, and all with the bases at their tips being directly read off by a laser. To one side is a screen which displays the results. The sequencing cabinet pumps out 2MB of this image data every second for each two-hour run. With 27 of the new machines running full tilt, each one will produce a terabyte every three days. Cox was astonished when he did the preliminary calculations. "It was quite a simple back-of-the envelope calculation: right, we've got this many machines, and they're producing this much data, and we need to hold it for this amount of time and we sort of looked at it and thought: oh, shit, that's 320TB!" Think of it as the biggest Linux swap partition in the world, since the whole system is running on Debian Linux. The genome project uses open source software as much as possible, and one of its major databases is run on MySQL, although others rely on Oracle. "History has shown," says Cox, "that when we have created - it used to be 20TB or 30TB, maybe - of sequencing data, for the longer term storage, then you may need 10 times that in terms of real estate, and computational process, to analyse and compare and all the things that you want to do with it. So having produced something in the order of 100TB to 200TB of sequential data, then the layer beyond that, the scratch space, and the sequential analysis, and so on - to be honest, we are still teasing out what that means, but it's not going to be small." Down in the rooms where the servers are farmed you must raise your voice to be heard above the fans. A wall of disk drives about 3m long and 2m high holds that 320TB of data. In the next aisle stands a similarly sized wall of blade servers with 640 cores, though no one can remember exactly how many CPUs are involved. "We moved into this building with about 300TB of storage real estate, full stop," says Phil Butcher, the head of IT. "Now we have gone up to about a petabyte and a half, and the last 320 of that was just to put this pipeline together." This new technology is the basis for a new kind of genomics, with really frightening implications. The ballyhooed first draft of the Human Genome Sequence in 2000 was a hybrid of many people's DNA; like scripture, it is authoritative, but not accurate. Now the Sanger Institute is gearing up for its part in a project to sequence accurately 1,000 individual human genomes, so that all of their differences can be mapped. The idea is to identify every single variation in human DNA that occurs in 0.5% or more of the population sampled. This will require one of the biggest software efforts in the world today. Although it is only very rare conditions that are caused by single gene defects, almost all common conditions are affected by a complex interplay of factors along the genome, and the Thousand Genome Project is the first attempt to identify the places involved in these weak interactions. This won't be tied to any of the individual donors, who will all be anonymous. But mapping all the places where human genomes differ is the first necessary step towards deciding which differences are significant, and of what. There are three sorts of differences between your DNA - or mine, or anyone's - and the sequence identified in the human genome project. There are the SNPs, where a single base change can be identified; these are often significant, and are certainly the easiest things to spot. Beyond that are the changes affecting tens of bases at a time: insertions and deletions within genes; finally there are the changes which can affect relatively long strings of DNA, whole genes or stretches between genes, which may be copied or deleted in different numbers. The last of these are going to be extremely hard to spot, since the DNA must be sequenced in fragments that may be shorter than the duplications themselves. "It's a bit like one of those spot the difference things," Cox says. "If you have 1,000 copies, it's very much easier to spot the smallest differences between them." Genome me? All of the work of identifying these changes along the 3bn bases of the genome must be done in software and - since the changes involved are so rare - each fragment of every genome must be sequenced between 11 and 30 times to be sure that the differences the software finds are real and not just errors in measurement. But there's no doubt that all this will be accomplished. The project is a milestone towards genome-based medicine, in which individual patients could be sequenced as a matter of course. Once that happens, the immense volumes of data that the Sanger Institute is gearing up to handle will become commonplace. But the project is unique in that it must not just deal with huge volumes of data, but keep all of it easily accessible so different parts can quickly be compared with each other. At this point, the old sort of science is almost entirely irrelevant. "It now has come out of the labs and into the domain of informatics," Butcher says. The Sanger Institute, he says, is no longer just competing for scientists. It is about to embark on this huge Linux project just at the time that the rest of the world has discovered how reliable and useful it can be, so that they have to compete with banks and other employers for people who can manage huge clusters with large-scale distributed file systems. Perhaps the threatened recession will have one useful side effect, by freeing up programmers to work in science rather than the City. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/28/research.computing -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20080301/10f363c3/attachment-0001.html From pjmanney at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 22:27:04 2008 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 14:27:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Time Magazine: Person of the Year: Putin In-Reply-To: <2d6187670803011314q2b5838ffq1d3c8bc2441eb7dd@mail.gmail.com> References: <29666bf30803011242q76e9c7ceya425aef89e8a52af@mail.gmail.com> <2d6187670803011314q2b5838ffq1d3c8bc2441eb7dd@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <29666bf30803011427k3fcc943ekf5ba5abe12afb6a4@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 1:14 PM, John Grigg wrote: > But the way this all came about is another story, entirely. My question > is..., were any real laws broken during this successful effort to boost > Putin's name? Or was this just global big business/public relations doing > things "business as usual" in an ethical gray zone where spotlights are > rarely brought to bear. Business as usual. They will never be made illegal, because the people who benefit most are those most influencing our laws. > I had no idea PR firm executives could make such > large sums of money! lol And so I guess a Master's degree in public > relations is on par with a law degree if your career takes the right > trajectory. Honestly, if you're talented and high up the food chain, PR can make law salaries look like chump change. In our country, the really rich, successful PR execs morph into lobbyists and campaign strategists. And I can tell you they didn't make their fortunes lobbying on behalf of Greenpeace or Planned Parenthood. ;-) PJ From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Sat Mar 1 22:06:12 2008 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 22:06:12 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <939952.8409.qm@web27010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> I'm sorry if the following post sounds in anyway anti-Bryan, but his posts have been the most dismissive towards religious influence recently. I'm going to mention why I think we should pay attention to religion and how it views transhumanism. Bryan said " They certainly don't have supercomputers, they don't have massive research institutions, they don't have neurofarms, the only power they have is lots of listeners and a widely distributed mental program. What does this power have to do with transhumanism?" Well, if they decide that some transhumanist ideas or methods are incompatible with their code of ethics, they will use that mental program to try and influence as many people as possible. This includes many lapsed catholics without a particularly strong interest in science, who when pushed on a bioethical topic may go "I don't know! I guess it sounds a bit contrary to what I was taught as a child, so I suppose I'm a little bit against transhumanist technology X". Italy, like most developed countries, is a representative democracy. This means laws are made, and taxes spent, by people who's career depends on chasing votes. If enough Italian politicians decide that chasing the catholic vote is more important than letting some biological research facility or experimental medical clinic do what it wants, then transhuman progress in that country may be seriously held back. The US ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research didn't hold back the field as much as some feared, but the prospect of labs being banned from performing certain research is very real. Bryan also said "The religious institutions are not doing ES cell nor GMO research." This is true, but they *are* funding think tanks which comment on these lines of research and lobby politicians with their point of view on how these things should be licensed. Your ES cell or GMO research group would like to allowed to legally earn a living without risking jail or being closed down. Bryan also said "we're increasingly able to do research without financial cost (more "DIY")." DIY research still depends on being allowed to do it legally. If your research requires iodine, red phosphorous or hydrochloric gas you risk DEA investigation in the US, as the link below makes clear. http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/csa/872.htm If the war on terror becomes the war on bio-terror, anyone doing home biotech research risks being locked up without trial. I think it was in Greg Bear's "Quantico" where he painted a picture of a US filled with terrorism, where even vineyards were closely monitored for their biotech fermentation equipment, and the FBI was furiously trying to contain biotech. I must admit, I've always liked the idea of DIY biotech research, and would love to become a "wetware hacker" of sorts, but I think in the UK I'd be breaking a huge number of laws. I can imagine a future in which me and Bryan are sat in the Guantanamo Bay rehabilitation facility for suspected bioterrorists, being played lectures on Intelligent Design over and over again until we confess that genetics is a lie and god made the human race perfect, and please may we have a phone call? I was going to finish by commenting on remarks about Italy's low birthrate despite the catholic church's opinion on contraception, but as I was typing discovered there was no way I could do this without making a large number of potentially offensive remarks all based on a couple of highly dubious magazine articles which selectively reported statistics about sexual behaviour around the world. You have to love the British media, they'll use sex to sell anything, but I wouldn't want to rely on their statistics. Tom ___________________________________________________________ Rise to the challenge for Sport Relief with Yahoo! For Good http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/forgood/ From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 23:24:38 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 17:24:38 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists In-Reply-To: <939952.8409.qm@web27010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <939952.8409.qm@web27010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200803011724.38240.kanzure@gmail.com> On Saturday 01 March 2008, Tom Nowell wrote: > I'm sorry if the following post sounds in anyway > anti-Bryan, but his posts have been the most > dismissive towards religious influence recently. I'm > going to mention why I think we should pay attention > to religion and how it views transhumanism. Just to make sure, you do understand that I am not dismissive of religions at all, merely in terms of making "transhumanism" a reality, such as making futurist technologies realized, since *not* paying attention to religion does not influence the bottomline technicality of the technologies involved. Otherwise, it's an amazing cultural phenomena and much more. > Bryan said " They certainly don't have supercomputers, > they don't have massive research institutions, > they don't have neurofarms, the only power they have > is lots of listeners and a widely distributed > mental program. What does this power have to do with > transhumanism?" > Well, if they decide that some transhumanist ideas or > methods are incompatible with their code of ethics, > they will use that mental program to try and influence > as many people as possible. This includes many lapsed > catholics without a particularly strong interest in > science, who when pushed on a bioethical topic may go > "I don't know! I guess it sounds a bit contrary > to what I was taught as a child, so I suppose I'm a > little bit against transhumanist technology X". No matter how much they proclaim to be against a possibility does not determine that bottom line of feasability. Yes, they can protest, yes, they can try to stone us, they can try to burn us alive, but you see, we can diffuse the information over the internet, and good luck warring against the internet. It will route around the damage. > Italy, like most developed countries, is a > representative democracy. This means laws are made, > and taxes spent, by people who's career depends on > chasing votes. If enough Italian politicians decide > that chasing the catholic vote is more important than > letting some biological research facility or > experimental medical clinic do what it wants, then > transhuman progress in that country may be seriously > held back. The US ban on federal funding of embryonic > stem cell research didn't hold back the field as much > as some feared, but the prospect of labs being banned > from performing certain research is very real. Thought police fail, and so will fabrication police, it'd be like trying to control the whole sum of biological innovation occuring at the bacterial level, which is a near impossibility -- just like killing an evil man does not kill Satan (for the sake of brevity of point). So just because the State declares it "illegal", what does this mean? Really? > Your ES cell or GMO research group would like to > allowed to legally earn a living without risking jail > or being closed down. Yes, they'd like that. And what if they can't? Then I guess they, by definition, wouldn't be the ES/GMO research group then, right? Time to move in some more interested parties in performing that research ... > Bryan also said "we're > increasingly able to do research without financial > cost (more "DIY")." DIY research still depends on > being allowed to do it legally. If your research You are wrong. Look at the DIY malacious software industry. That's completely illegal. And it works. > requires iodine, red phosphorous or hydrochloric gas > you risk DEA investigation in the US, as the link > below makes clear. Hm, that's an interesting problem, but I think that we can come up with interesting ways of getting the chemicals we need -- after all, there must be a source for these chemicals and resources, right? > If the war on terror becomes the war on bio-terror, > anyone doing home biotech research risks being locked > up without trial. I think it was in Greg Bear's Writing certain words, thinking certain thoughts -- no, this is usually completely untraceable. It's when you start telling people, when you become "on the grid" (as I have); it's when you leave enough clues and a trail for some seriously intense detectives to trace everything back to you. Otherwise there's little risk. > "Quantico" where he painted a picture of a US filled > with terrorism, where even vineyards were closely > monitored for their biotech fermentation equipment, > and the FBI was furiously trying to contain biotech. I saw Greg Bear on television a few months ago, he was surprised that there wasn't more high school students doing biotech and related engineering yet, and he's right that it will probably change pretty soon. I should go get the book. Sounds interesting. > I must admit, I've always liked the idea of DIY > biotech research, and would love to become a "wetware > hacker" of sorts, but I think in the UK I'd be > breaking a huge number of laws. I can imagine a future Then are you also breaking the law by unknowingly increasingly applying selective pressures on germs and bacteria via applying chemicals to kill them (such as hand sanitizers, soap, etc.)? > in which me and Bryan are sat in the Guantanamo Bay > rehabilitation facility for suspected bioterrorists, http://biohack.sf.net/ <-- I am probably already on their list. > being played lectures on Intelligent Design over and > over again until we confess that genetics is a lie and > god made the human race perfect, and please may we > have a phone call? On that note, who the hell are you supposed to call if you get locked up in Gitmo? Not just any regular lawyer, surely. A super lawyer, perhaps? - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From kanzure at gmail.com Sat Mar 1 23:27:01 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 17:27:01 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Basically, DNA is a computing problem In-Reply-To: <580930c20803011426x6d60f3d5x9651fa19f95c1cda@mail.gmail.com> References: <580930c20803011426x6d60f3d5x9651fa19f95c1cda@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200803011727.01574.kanzure@gmail.com> On Saturday 01 March 2008, Stefano Vaj wrote: > A modern sequencer itself is a fairly powerful computer. The new > machines being brought online at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute > are robots from waist-height upwards, where the machinery grows and > then treats microscopic specks of DNA in serried ranks so that a > laser can illuminate it and a moving camera capture the fluorescing > bases every two seconds. The lower half of each cabinet holds the > computers needed to coordinate the machinery and do the preliminary > processing of the camera pictures. At the heart of the machine is a > plate of treated glass about the size of an ordinary microscope > slide, which contains around 30m copies of 2,640 tiny fragments of > DNA, all arranged in eight lines along the glass, and all with the > bases at their tips being directly read off by a laser. It is my understanding that it is a bit more complicated than that, not just fluorescent laser spectroscopy, but rather some sort of gel electrophoresis system where the DNA strands are ran down all at once and then you correlate massive datasets together to figure out where all of the DNA molecules were in synch or where they weren't, and stuff like that. I'd like to be wrong - I hope it's as easy as a laser reading each individual nucleotide reporter. - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sat Mar 1 23:26:59 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 15:26:59 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Ramanujan References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <200803011520.50729.kanzure@gmail.com> <015601c87be5$cdd7ac50$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <200803011616.44698.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: <018b01c87bf4$2c5c9200$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Bryan writes > On Saturday 01 March 2008, Lee Corbin wrote: > > All that (below) just seems really like anyone who loves his > > work, or is highly fascinated by something. There is nothing > > characteristically transhumanist (or even philosophical) that > > I can see. > > Math, philosophy, logic, reason, numbers, these are all tightly > intertwingled subjects, and I believe stepwise lead to > transhumanism or at least futurism, context-exploration, and > realizing the future by creating it. Well, there are many, many people who are totally into math, philosophy, logic, reason and number, but who abhor anything even remotely connected with longevity research, cryonics, expanding human capabilities, and---hold your breath--- technology (!). And I don't think that those things are as intertwined as you do. Lots of math fiends, for example, totally disdain anything philosophical. Now exactly how they can be like this beats me, but that's the way it is. One of the most shocking things that ever happened to me was that my bosom buddies who I knew between age 20 and 30, who lived in southern California, who were epitomes of philosophical erudition, good taste, interests in math and science---were completely uninterested when (when we were about 40) the new advent of cryonics, later ideas of David Pearce (www.hedweb.com), and talk of the singularity. I was baffled, and still am. > In this context, Ramanujan was an amazing journeyman in > such explorations, able to map out more territory that > should [not] have been possible with the limiting circumstances > he was born into, and isn't this transcension? He was totally amazing, all right, but only in the narrow area of pure math. I expect that if he'd been born in the West, or in India now, he would have turned into a much more conventional---but still tremendously, tremendously good --- regular mathematician. I think that Hardy thought so too. Lee From kanzure at gmail.com Sun Mar 2 00:16:35 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 18:16:35 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Ramanujan In-Reply-To: <018b01c87bf4$2c5c9200$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <200803011616.44698.kanzure@gmail.com> <018b01c87bf4$2c5c9200$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200803011816.35532.kanzure@gmail.com> On Saturday 01 March 2008, Lee Corbin wrote: > Bryan writes > > On Saturday 01 March 2008, Lee Corbin wrote: > > > All that (below) just seems really like anyone who loves his > > > work, or is highly fascinated by something. There is nothing > > > characteristically transhumanist (or even philosophical) that > > > I can see. > > > > Math, philosophy, logic, reason, numbers, these are all tightly > > intertwingled subjects, and I believe stepwise lead to > > transhumanism or at least futurism, context-exploration, and > > realizing the future by creating it. > > Well, there are many, many people who are totally into math, > philosophy, logic, reason and number, but who abhor anything > even remotely connected with longevity research, cryonics, > expanding human capabilities, and---hold your breath--- > technology (!). And I don't think that those things are as > intertwined as you do. Lots of math fiends, for example, > totally disdain anything philosophical. Technology, when broken down to its elemental forms, can mean anything from the integral symbol to the device that brings back the (nearly) dead. Is the mathematician not an inventer of technologies, just as the longevitist, the cryonicist, the programmer or logician? If they want to refute the well-studied connections between philosophy and mathematics, and computation (i.e., pick self-representation), they may try, of course, and they may despise it, yes, but how does that make it any less true or false whether they give their support or not? Lee, are you making an argument from authority? > Now exactly how they can be like this beats me, but that's Oh, are you claiming that since they reject technologies, they are not transhumanist? Since they have such a specialized niche that they cut themselves off? Arguably, the transhumanist problem space can be mapped to other niches and environments in ideaspace, and therefore there are other representations of transhumanists than simply those who verbally reject technology (no matter how much they like their own biological technology, *ahem* self-replication?). > the way it is. One of the most shocking things that ever > happened to me was that my bosom buddies who I knew > between age 20 and 30, who lived in southern California, > who were epitomes of philosophical erudition, good taste, > interests in math and science---were completely uninterested > when (when we were about 40) the new advent of cryonics, > later ideas of David Pearce (www.hedweb.com), and talk > of the singularity. I was baffled, and still am. I am reminded of the shock levels mentioned on sl4.org, perhaps an ontology of transhumanists can be developed, such that there are certain transhumanist-journeymen who can handle a certain shock level? Wasn't this the idea of "levels of transcension" in Orion's Arm? > > In this context, Ramanujan was an amazing journeyman in > > such explorations, able to map out more territory that > > should [not] have been possible with the limiting circumstances > > he was born into, and isn't this transcension? > > He was totally amazing, all right, but only in the narrow area > of pure math. I expect that if he'd been born in the West, > or in India now, he would have turned into a much more > conventional---but still tremendously, tremendously good > --- regular mathematician. I think that Hardy thought so too. I am not saying that he would have otherwise transcended via technological replacement of his body or anything like that, I know I can't make that argument nor do I want to. But instead I am suggesting that there is some commonality in the problem space that he worked in, and it is that which makes him somewhat transhumanist. - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Mar 2 01:03:56 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 17:03:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Ramanujan References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <200803011616.44698.kanzure@gmail.com> <018b01c87bf4$2c5c9200$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <200803011816.35532.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: <019601c87c01$4dac2d00$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Bryan writes >> Well, there are many, many people who are totally into math, >> philosophy, logic, reason and number, but who abhor anything >> even remotely connected with longevity research, cryonics, >> expanding human capabilities, and---hold your breath--- >> technology (!). And I don't think that those things are as >> intertwined as you do. Lots of math fiends, for example, >> totally disdain anything philosophical. > > Technology, when broken down to its elemental forms, can mean anything > from the integral symbol to the device that brings back the (nearly) > dead. Is the mathematician not an inventer of technologies, just as the > longevitist, the cryonicist, the programmer or logician? It seems to me that you are using some words very non-standardly. Pure math, for example, is never considered technology. You should not use "technology" to > mean anything from the integral symbol to the device that brings > back the (nearly) dead. on pain of simply being misunderstood by practically everybody. > If they [some people] want to refute the well-studied connections > between philosophy and mathematics, and computation The people who love math and despise philosophical activity are hardly interested in *refuting* any such thing. That would be philosophy, after all. And as a subject, philsophy is so broad, that many philosophers simply are totally uninterested in math or technology (beyond, as you say, that it serves them well enough to keep the electricity flowing so that they can read). > ...and they may despise it, yes, but how does that make it > any less true or false whether they give their support or not? I agree. Relationships and truth, of course, do not depend on anyone's support, recognition, or agreement. >> Now exactly how they can be like this beats me, but that's > > Oh, are you claiming that since they reject technologies, they are not > transhumanist? Since they have such a specialized niche that they cut > themselves off? Yes, and yes. > Arguably, the transhumanist problem space can be mapped > to other niches and environments in ideaspace, and therefore there are > other representations of transhumanists than simply those who verbally > reject technology (no matter how much they like their own biological > technology, *ahem* self-replication?). I suppose that anything can be mapped to anything. The play Hamlet can probably be mapped to fourier analysis in one way or another. And I would not be completely shocked if someone who was an expert on Hamlet and also really, really loved fourier analysis spoke of connections he saw. But that would be merely a reflection of how his own brain mapped things. In high school I loved math and chess, and I swear, I used the very same neurons for both. I simply could not understand how some people could be very good in one, and be terrible, try as they might, in the other. But for me to have said that chess is very mathematical would have been a mistake. >> He was totally amazing, all right, but only in the narrow area >> of pure math. I expect that if he'd been born in the West, >> or in India now, he would have turned into a much more >> conventional---but still tremendously, tremendously good >> --- regular mathematician. I think that Hardy thought so too. > > I am not saying that he would have otherwise transcended via > technological replacement of his body or anything like that, I know I > can't make that argument nor do I want to. But instead I am suggesting > that there is some commonality in the problem space that he worked in, > and it is that which makes him somewhat transhumanist. The commonality you see between Ramanujan's math on the one hand, and transhumanist concerns and investigations on the other, really, I contend, just reflect the way *you* think. There is no real commonality. Except maybe the very, very common human urges to understand and to create, which typify intelligent people everywhere (and even some not so intelligent ones). Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Mar 2 01:25:03 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 17:25:03 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Electronic Circuit Question (Emitter Follower) Message-ID: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> I have a question for people who know about transistor circuits. On page 56 of Horowitz and Hill's classic "The Art of Electronics", there is a nice description of the emitter follower circuit. The following is used as an example: The bottom of the diagram is at -10 volts and the top is at +10 volts (i.e. a 20volt supply somewhere). Just above the -10 volts is a 1K resistor, and above that the emitter of an NPN transistor. There is no resistor between the collector and the +10 volts. The experiment is to let the base voltage (input) vary between +10 and -10. The output is taken (hence "emitter-follower") at the top of the 1K resistor. Because the base-emitter voltage is always around .6 volts, the output naturally follows the input, but at .6 volts less. But the book says that when the input voltage drops down to -4.4 volts, the base-emitter junction gets back-biased, (and the transistor turns off?). I don't understand why the voltage on the base cannot keep going down, say to -6V, with the output voltage continuing to keep in step, say at -6.6. Even at -6 volts, there seems to me to be plenty of leeway between that and the -10V source below it. Here is their explanation: "The output can swing to within a transistor saturation voltage drop of VCC (about +9.9v) but it cannot go more negative than -5 volts. That is because on the extreme negative swing the transistor can do no more than turn off, which it does at -4.4 volts input (-5V output). Further netgative swing at the input results in back-biasing of the base-emitter juntion, but no further change in output." I still don't see why the base could not be at, say, -6v and the output .6 lower. Why should the base-emitter junction be back-biased when there is still a big voltage difference between the base and the -10 volts at bottom? Thanks, Lee From jef at jefallbright.net Sun Mar 2 02:58:04 2008 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 18:58:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Electronic Circuit Question (Emitter Follower) In-Reply-To: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > I have a question for people who know about transistor > circuits. On page 56 of Horowitz and Hill's classic "The Art > of Electronics", there is a nice description of the emitter > follower circuit. The following is used as an example: > > The bottom of the diagram is at -10 volts and the top is at > +10 volts (i.e. a 20volt supply somewhere). Just above the > -10 volts is a 1K resistor, and above that the emitter of an > NPN transistor. There is no resistor between the collector > and the +10 volts. The experiment is to let the base voltage > (input) vary between +10 and -10. The output is taken > (hence "emitter-follower") at the top of the 1K resistor. > > Because the base-emitter voltage is always around .6 volts, > the output naturally follows the input, but at .6 volts less. > > But the book says that when the input voltage drops down > to -4.4 volts, the base-emitter junction gets back-biased, > (and the transistor turns off?). I don't understand why the > voltage on the base cannot keep going down, say to -6V, > with the output voltage continuing to keep in step, say at > -6.6. Even at -6 volts, there seems to me to be plenty > of leeway between that and the -10V source below it. > > Here is their explanation: > > "The output can swing to within a transistor saturation > voltage drop of VCC (about +9.9v) but it cannot go > more negative than -5 volts. That is because on the > extreme negative swing the transistor can do no more > than turn off, which it does at -4.4 volts input (-5V > output). Further netgative swing at the input results in > back-biasing of the base-emitter juntion, but no further > change in output." > > I still don't see why the base could not be at, say, -6v > and the output .6 lower. Why should the base-emitter > junction be back-biased when there is still a big voltage > difference between the base and the -10 volts at bottom? > Lee - You didn't mention the value of the load impedance, but if it were equal to the emitter resistor value, then you would in effect have a voltage divider putting the emitter at approximately -5V, and (when the transistor is forward-biased) the base at approximately -4.4. Wow, this takes me back more than a few years. Does this answer your question? Does this topic belong on the Extropy list? - Jef From kanzure at gmail.com Sun Mar 2 03:24:08 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 21:24:08 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Electronic Circuit Question (Emitter Follower) In-Reply-To: References: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200803012124.08718.kanzure@gmail.com> On Saturday 01 March 2008, Jef Allbright wrote: > Does this topic belong on the Extropy list? If not, there's piclist. - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From kanzure at gmail.com Sun Mar 2 03:25:55 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 21:25:55 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Electronic Circuit Question (Emitter Follower) In-Reply-To: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200803012125.55457.kanzure@gmail.com> On Saturday 01 March 2008, Lee Corbin wrote: > But the book says that when the input voltage drops down > to -4.4 volts, the base-emitter junction gets back-biased, > (and the transistor turns off?). ?I don't understand why the > voltage on the base cannot keep going down, say to -6V, > with the output voltage continuing to keep in step, say at > -6.6. ?Even at -6 volts, there seems to me to be plenty > of leeway between that and the -10V source below it. I was recently brushing up on my understanding of transistor tech, and while my understanding isn't of the same nature that Jef portrays, it was my interpretation that transistors throw off because of the restriction to the amount of electrons that can flow through due to the field effect generated by the incoming electrons from the base. If its voltage was to drop, I think that would mean that the field would become inverted, thus not allowing anything to travel through any of the doped material. But this is my layman interpretation. Consult Jef. - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From jef at jefallbright.net Sun Mar 2 03:30:03 2008 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 19:30:03 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Electronic Circuit Question (Emitter Follower) In-Reply-To: <200803012124.08718.kanzure@gmail.com> References: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <200803012124.08718.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:24 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote: > On Saturday 01 March 2008, Jef Allbright wrote: > > Does this topic belong on the Extropy list? > > If not, there's piclist. I saw the question as directly relevant to the typical disconnect between Lee and me: it's another example of blindness to the importance and ubiquity of context (any description of the behavior of a system is incomplete without accounting also for its environment.) But as a question of basic transistor circuit theory I fail to see its relevance to this list. - Jef From jef at jefallbright.net Sun Mar 2 03:34:20 2008 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 19:34:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Electronic Circuit Question (Emitter Follower) In-Reply-To: <200803012125.55457.kanzure@gmail.com> References: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <200803012125.55457.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:25 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote: > > I was recently brushing up on my understanding of transistor tech, and > while my understanding isn't of the same nature that Jef portrays, it > was my interpretation that transistors throw off because of the > restriction to the amount of electrons that can flow through due to the > field effect generated by the incoming electrons from the base. If its > voltage was to drop, I think that would mean that the field would > become inverted, thus not allowing anything to travel through any of > the doped material. But this is my layman interpretation. Note that the example was of an emitter-follower using not an FET but a silicon junction transistor. > Consult Jef. Please don't. Transistor circuits ceased to be of much interest to me 30 years ago. - Jef - Jef From kanzure at gmail.com Sun Mar 2 03:55:40 2008 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 21:55:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Ramanujan In-Reply-To: <019601c87c01$4dac2d00$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <200803011816.35532.kanzure@gmail.com> <019601c87c01$4dac2d00$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <200803012155.40909.kanzure@gmail.com> On Saturday 01 March 2008, Lee Corbin wrote: > > Technology, when broken down to its elemental forms, can mean > > anything from the integral symbol to the device that brings back > > the (nearly) dead. Is the mathematician not an inventer of > > technologies, just as the longevitist, the cryonicist, the > > programmer or logician? > > It seems to me that you are using some words very non-standardly. > Pure math, for example, is never considered technology. You should > not use "technology" to > > > mean anything from the integral symbol to the device that brings > > back the (nearly) dead. > > on pain of simply being misunderstood by practically everybody. Wikipedia: > Technology is a broad concept that deals with a species' usage and > knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability > to control and adapt to its environment. > > Arguably, the transhumanist problem space can be mapped > > to other niches and environments in ideaspace, and therefore there > > are other representations of transhumanists than simply those who > > verbally reject technology (no matter how much they like their own > > biological technology, *ahem* self-replication?). > > I suppose that anything can be mapped to anything. The play > Hamlet can probably be mapped to fourier analysis in one > way or another. And I would not be completely shocked if > someone who was an expert on Hamlet and also really, really > loved fourier analysis spoke of connections he saw. But > that would be merely a reflection of how his own brain > mapped things. In high school I loved math and chess, > and I swear, I used the very same neurons for both. I > simply could not understand how some people could be > very good in one, and be terrible, try as they might, in > the other. But for me to have said that chess is very > mathematical would have been a mistake. Chess *is* very mathematical. Certainly you are aware of the problem solving mathematics for chess, but I am talking about the basis of chess itself. It is a graph, it is a topology in particular, one where you can describe, what, 10^50 possible state spaces, with various 'moves' or translations from one state to another, making it essentially an operator algebra of one kind or another (ooh, maybe a cellular automata can be used to model it). Not necessarily a Lie group, but that's getting close. What would the binary operations be? That gets complex, there's probably a better entity to use as a prototype to represent the game of chess. This is why you are able to play chess with DNA molecules, or with electrons in your computer. There are some seriously intense mathematicians out there that can show you how those electronic circuits in a processor directly correlate to graph theoretic "topological conversions" (speaking extremely loosely) to the algebras. Now, these same sorts of conversions do not always work (assume the same coherency in processing), so that's why not anything can be mapped to anything, that's why I cannot be mapped immediately to my death. And so what if it's "merely" showing how his brain mapped things? Not all maps are useless (and in this case, there must be a coherency to these wild mappings that the man makes, whether Hamlet, Dark Prince of Denmark, or Oedipus, or Godot). > > I am not saying that he would have otherwise transcended via > > technological replacement of his body or anything like that, I know > > I can't make that argument nor do I want to. But instead I am > > suggesting that there is some commonality in the problem space that > > he worked in, and it is that which makes him somewhat > > transhumanist. > > The commonality you see between Ramanujan's math on the > one hand, and transhumanist concerns and investigations on > the other, really, I contend, just reflect the way *you* think. How could it do otherwise? > There is no real commonality. Except maybe the very, very > common human urges to understand and to create, which > typify intelligent people everywhere (and even some not > so intelligent ones). What is transhumanism but the urge to self-create? - Bryan ________________________________________ Bryan Bishop http://heybryan.org/ From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Mar 2 04:08:53 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 20:08:53 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Electronic Circuit Question References: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <01c301c87c1b$263e7dd0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Yeah, this is pretty off-topic, and I do apologize to the list. But it was a quiet Saturday afternoon, and I thought it might provide some interest---besides, I was getting damn sick staring at the circuit diagram. :-) Jef writes > You didn't mention the value of the load impedance, It didn't say. The circuit is supposed to have high output impedance, so I thought it wouldn't matter---and I'm pretty sure that that's what the authors are trying to communicate. > but if it were equal to the emitter resistor value, then you would in effect have a > voltage divider putting the emitter at approximately -5V, and (when > the transistor is forward-biased) the base at approximately -4.4. Hopefully I have "drawn" the circuit intelligibly for you. A load impedance (load resistor) that you are describing would be parallel to the 1K resistor I described, right? If so, I don't see any voltage divider. Besides, in this example, the base is at the whim of the investigator, the emitter is therefore .6 volts below that. The resulting voltage draws amps from the 1K resistor (and definitely not from anything else). Did I communicate that properly? > Wow, this takes me back more than a few years. Thanks for your kindly assistance, Lee >> The bottom of the diagram is at -10 volts and the top is at >> +10 volts (i.e. a 20volt supply somewhere). Just above the >> -10 volts is a 1K resistor, and above that the emitter of an >> NPN transistor. There is no resistor between the collector >> and the +10 volts. The experiment is to let the base voltage >> (input) vary between +10 and -10. The output is taken >> (hence "emitter-follower") at the top of the 1K resistor. >> >> Because the base-emitter voltage is always around .6 volts, >> the output naturally follows the input, but at .6 volts less. >> >> But the book says that when the input voltage drops down >> to -4.4 volts, the base-emitter junction gets back-biased, >> (and the transistor turns off?). I don't understand why the >> voltage on the base cannot keep going down, say to -6V, >> with the output voltage continuing to keep in step, say at >> -6.6. Even at -6 volts, there seems to me to be plenty >> of leeway between that and the -10V source below it. >> >> Here is their explanation: >> >> "The output can swing to within a transistor saturation >> voltage drop of VCC (about +9.9v) but it cannot go >> more negative than -5 volts. That is because on the >> extreme negative swing the transistor can do no more >> than turn off, which it does at -4.4 volts input (-5V >> output). Further netgative swing at the input results in >> back-biasing of the base-emitter juntion, but no further >> change in output." >> >> I still don't see why the base could not be at, say, -6v >> and the output .6 lower. Why should the base-emitter >> junction be back-biased when there is still a big voltage >> difference between the base and the -10 volts at bottom? From jef at jefallbright.net Sun Mar 2 04:16:16 2008 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 20:16:16 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Electronic Circuit Question In-Reply-To: <01c301c87c1b$263e7dd0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <01c301c87c1b$263e7dd0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 8:08 PM, Lee Corbin wrote: > Yeah, this is pretty off-topic, and I do apologize to the list. > But it was a quiet Saturday afternoon, and I thought it might > provide some interest---besides, I was getting damn sick > staring at the circuit diagram. :-) > > Jef writes > > > You didn't mention the value of the load impedance, > > It didn't say. The circuit is supposed to have high output impedance, > so I thought it wouldn't matter---and I'm pretty sure that that's what > the authors are trying to communicate. The defining characteristic of an emitter-follower circuit is its **low** output impedance, capable of driving higher-current loads. > > but if it were equal to the emitter resistor value, then you would in effect have a > > voltage divider putting the emitter at approximately -5V, and (when > > the transistor is forward-biased) the base at approximately -4.4. > > Hopefully I have "drawn" the circuit intelligibly for you. A load > impedance (load resistor) that you are describing would be > parallel to the 1K resistor I described, right? If so, I don't see > any voltage divider. Yes, the load would be in parallel with the emitter resistor, and ideally of approximately equal value for efficient coupling (energy transfer.) - Jef From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Mar 2 04:25:00 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 20:25:00 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Ramanujan References: <4eaaa0d90802290223m380491efh371e692566978a8d@mail.gmail.com> <200803011816.35532.kanzure@gmail.com> <019601c87c01$4dac2d00$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <200803012155.40909.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: <01c701c87c1d$662c8a70$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Bryan writes >> It seems to me that you are using some words very non-standardly. >> Pure math, for example, is never considered technology. You should >> not use "technology" to >> >> > mean anything from the integral symbol to the device that brings >> > back the (nearly) dead. >> >> on pain of simply being misunderstood by practically everybody. > > Wikipedia: >> Technology is a broad concept that deals with a species' usage and >> knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability >> to control and adapt to its environment. Well, "tools and crafts" doesn't include math on most people's usage of these terms. Mind, there is no *right* and *wrong* meaning to be ascribed to any given word, except what it conveys in the common parlance. Sure, math is a tool in some ways, but that is not what the wikipedia meant. No one could call Smale, Wiles, and Kolmogorov (rest his soul) "leaders of technology". It's just a vocabulary and concept mismatch. >> and I swear, I used the very same neurons for both. I >> simply could not understand how some people could be >> very good in one, and be terrible, try as they might, in >> the other. But for me to have said that chess is very >> mathematical would have been a mistake. > > Chess *is* very mathematical. Certainly you are aware of the problem > solving mathematics for chess, but I am talking about the basis of > chess itself. It is a graph, it is a topology in particular, one where > you can describe, what, 10^50 possible state spaces, with Well, no one, at least no one until recently, approached it as a math problem. It's a game, or an art. People can be very good at it who are lousy at math. Others can be very good at math but can't play chess for the life of them. They're really separate talents. >> The commonality you see between Ramanujan's math on the >> one hand, and transhumanist concerns and investigations on >> the other, really, I contend, just reflect the way *you* think. > > How could it do otherwise? Take N. F. Fyodorov, for example. His concerns really did relate to cryonics and hence to transhumanism. Other writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries also clearly expressed transhumanist ideals. Ramanujan? No way. If you want to say he did, then you are reduced to claiming that every mathematician is a transhumanist, and other equal absurdities. >> There is no real commonality. Except maybe the very, very >> common human urges to understand and to create, which >> typify intelligent people everywhere... > > What is transhumanism but the urge to self-create? Wikipedia says: Transhumanism (sometimes symbolized by >H or H+),[1] a term often used as a synonym for "human enhancement", is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human mental and physical abilities and aptitudes, and ameliorate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as stupidity, suffering, disease, aging and involuntary death. Transhumanist thinkers study the possibilities and consequences of developing and using human enhancement techniques and other emerging technologies for these purposes. But what I referred to, namely the urge "to create", applies especially to musicians, poets, artists, novelists, web-designers, and can characterize the thinking, often, of scientists, mathematicians, engineers, business leaders, and so on. Your term "self-create" seems a tad ambiguous. Lee From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Mar 2 04:35:49 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 20:35:49 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Electronic Circuit Question References: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677><01c301c87c1b$263e7dd0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <01d301c87c1e$e9210ea0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Jef writes >> It didn't say. The circuit is supposed to have high output impedance, >> so I thought it wouldn't matter---and I'm pretty sure that that's what >> the authors are trying to communicate. > > The defining characteristic of an emitter-follower circuit is its > **low** output impedance, capable of driving higher-current loads. Oops. Thanks for the correction. Yes, I meant low output impedance. > Yes, the load would be in parallel with the emitter resistor, and > ideally of approximately equal value for efficient coupling (energy > transfer.) Hmm. Well, I still doubt it would matter any what the load is, because, as you say, the point is to provide a low impedance signal to the next stage. Do you think that maybe the transistor needs a certain amount of *current* to keep going? It might happen then that if the base went down to -4.4V, the current it drew (i.e. over the 1K, about 5.6 milliamps) wouldn't be enough. But I can't remember reading anything like that. Thanks, Lee From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Mar 2 05:00:41 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 16:00:41 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Mindless Thought Experiments In-Reply-To: <011001c87bc4$d06c3ce0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <200802281006.02410.kanzure@gmail.com> <005201c87a8f$e9ea7d70$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <402e01e70802290723id16c225r11d0052ecef7ec91@mail.gmail.com> <005001c87afa$52c1bba0$45ef4d0c@MyComputer> <011001c87bc4$d06c3ce0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 02/03/2008, Lee Corbin wrote: > We have hashed that out so many times years and so many years > ago. I suppose I'm proud to have been on the cutting edge > so very long ago. Jason's comments and questions are really > very, very old stuff here. > > As far as I know, the Extropian list, and then later Wei Dai's list and > SL4, were the first forums in which all this was debated at length and > at a very high level. Hilary Putnam discussed this idea in his 1988 book "Representation and Reality". > Now, of course, this is not to mean to say that all these very complex > questions have been totally resolved. They haven't, and they won't be > for a long time. Someday, even if it were thousands of years from now, > barring catastrophe or collapse, uploaded entities who run however > many copies of themselves whenever they want, and who have long > ago left biological substrates, will no doubt consider these questions > resolved. Meanwhile, what we have done is to practice thinking about > what their answers will be. One possible answer could be that it's true and it isn't incompatible with functionalism. Let me define another philosophical position: Addition Functionalism. This is the theory that addition is multiply realisable, on widely varying substrates. Thus, addition can be implemented on your fingers, in your head, on an abacus, and so on. It is also being implemented by accident in any arbitrary physical system with enough complexity, even though no-one is around to recognise it. But this is absurd; so either Addition Functionalism is false, or some rule must be added to stop the accidental implementations. Right? -- Stathis Papaioannou From lcorbin at rawbw.com Sun Mar 2 05:23:39 2008 From: lcorbin at rawbw.com (Lee Corbin) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 21:23:39 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Addition Functionalism (was Mindless Thought Experiments) References: <200802281006.02410.kanzure@gmail.com> <005201c87a8f$e9ea7d70$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <402e01e70802290723id16c225r11d0052ecef7ec91@mail.gmail.com> <005001c87afa$52c1bba0$45ef4d0c@MyComputer> <011001c87bc4$d06c3ce0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: <01dd01c87c25$9a7bd4e0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Stathis writes > Let me define another philosophical position: Addition Functionalism. > This is the theory that addition is multiply realisable, on widely > varying substrates. Thus, addition can be implemented on your fingers, > in your head, on an abacus, and so on. It is also being implemented by > accident in any arbitrary physical system with enough complexity, even > though no-one is around to recognise it. But this is absurd; so either > Addition Functionalism is false, or some rule must be added to stop > the accidental implementations. Right? Okay, I'll bite :-) I would say "right", and that Addition Functionalism is correct. My proviso: the key factor is how explicit it is. If two planetoids gently collide, their masses are explicitly added, but if Van Maanen's Star and S Doradus each emit a certain but different number of photons in a given second, then the addition is highly implicit (or hidden). At a different, higher level, an intelligent entity (from a crow to an advanced AI) may map these environmental additions, but mostly only explicit ones, into mental sums or feelings of numerical quantity. Lee From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Mar 2 05:31:05 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 16:31:05 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Basically, DNA is a computing problem In-Reply-To: <200803011727.01574.kanzure@gmail.com> References: <580930c20803011426x6d60f3d5x9651fa19f95c1cda@mail.gmail.com> <200803011727.01574.kanzure@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 02/03/2008, Bryan Bishop wrote: > It is my understanding that it is a bit more complicated than that, not > just fluorescent laser spectroscopy, but rather some sort of gel > electrophoresis system where the DNA strands are ran down all at once > and then you correlate massive datasets together to figure out where > all of the DNA molecules were in synch or where they weren't, and stuff > like that. I'd like to be wrong - I hope it's as easy as a laser > reading each individual nucleotide reporter. That's so: the laser and computer automate the reading out and analysis of DNA fragments separated according to length by electrophoresis. I remember 20 years ago doing it all by hand on big glass plates, squinting at autoradiographs to read off a few hundred nucleotides at a time. -- Stathis Papaioannou From spike66 at att.net Sun Mar 2 06:37:50 2008 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 22:37:50 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Electronic Circuit Question (Emitter Follower) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200803020704.m2274Xbc010099@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > Jef Allbright ... > > If not, there's piclist. > > I saw the question as directly relevant to the typical > disconnect ... But as a question of > basic transistor circuit theory I fail to see its relevance > to this list. > > - Jef Do you guys remember the Muppet Show? Whenever needed, someone would call out for the Royal Smart Person. We are among friends here. It is considered legitimate use the ExI-chat list as one's personal collection of RSPs, so long as the privege is not abused and people don't get too bored. Technical discussions can always be taken offlist. I found Lee's transistor question interesting, altho I struggled in electronics theory class myself and didn't have the answer. Thanks Jef for serving as the local electronics RSP. spike From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Mar 2 08:32:32 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 19:32:32 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Electronic Circuit Question In-Reply-To: <01d301c87c1e$e9210ea0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <019c01c87c04$44fd1810$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <01c301c87c1b$263e7dd0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <01d301c87c1e$e9210ea0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 02/03/2008, Lee Corbin wrote: > Do you think that maybe the transistor needs a certain amount > of *current* to keep going? It might happen then that if the > base went down to -4.4V, the current it drew (i.e. over the > 1K, about 5.6 milliamps) wouldn't be enough. But I can't > remember reading anything like that. It does sound like that's what the authors are saying, since on the next page it says "Possible solutions to this problem [i.e. the clipping on the negative voltage swing] involve... decreasing the emitter resistor...", which would have the effect of increasing the emitter current and hence the base current for a given emitter voltage. Note that at this point the *emitter* current would be 5mA, but the base current would be about 5mA/Hfe. -- Stathis Papaioannou From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Mar 2 08:34:53 2008 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 19:34:53 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Addition Functionalism (was Mindless Thought Experiments) In-Reply-To: <01dd01c87c25$9a7bd4e0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> References: <200802281006.02410.kanzure@gmail.com> <005201c87a8f$e9ea7d70$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <402e01e70802290723id16c225r11d0052ecef7ec91@mail.gmail.com> <005001c87afa$52c1bba0$45ef4d0c@MyComputer> <011001c87bc4$d06c3ce0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> <01dd01c87c25$9a7bd4e0$6401a8c0@homeef7b612677> Message-ID: On 02/03/2008, Lee Corbin wrote: > Stathis writes > > > Let me define another philosophical position: Addition Functionalism. > > This is the theory that addition is multiply realisable, on widely > > varying substrates. Thus, addition can be implemented on your fingers, > > in your head, on an abacus, and so on. It is also being implemented by > > accident in any arbitrary physical system with enough complexity, even > > though no-one is around to recognise it. But this is absurd; so either > > Addition Functionalism is false, or some rule must be added to stop > > the accidental implementations. Right? > > Okay, I'll bite :-) I would say "right", and that Addition Functionalism > is correct. My proviso: the key factor is how explicit it is. If two planetoids > gently collide, their masses are explicitly added, but if Van Maanen's Star > and S Doradus each emit a certain but different number of photons in a > given second, then the addition is highly implicit (or hidden). > > At a different, higher level, an intelligent entity (from a crow to an advanced > AI) may map these environmental additions, but mostly only explicit ones, > into mental sums or feelings of numerical quantity. There's not much practical difference between saying addition is not implemented unless someone observes it, or addition is implemented but is of no interest unless someone observes it. But if the physical process in question has associated with it consciousness, you would have to say that the consciousness still happens, unless you claim that it is somehow contingent on being observed by another conscious entity. -- Stathis Papaioannou From estropico at gmail.com Sun Mar 2 09:40:18 2008 From: estropico at gmail.com (estropico) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 09:40:18 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Neo-fascist transhumanists? WAS: Manifesto of Italian transhumanists Message-ID: <4eaaa0d90803020140v11ab8884tdd9d9e5505e1e24@mail.gmail.com> Another few clarifications seem to be necessary to clarify Stefano's "accusations". I have never voted for, never mind supported, the Italian politcal party called Alleanza Nazionale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Alliance_(Italy), nor is my site (www.estropico.com) in any way connected with that party. I actually have some serious issues with their former Agriculture minister who was against genetically modified crops, and I'm far from keen on their statalism, but I started dropping my *fundamental* prejudices against them from the moment they became, and it took them decades, a **post** fascist party, despite their historical roots. From the Alleanza Nazionale Wikipedia entry: "When Gianfranco Fini visited Israel in late November 2003 in the function of Italian Deputy Prime Minister, he labeled the racial laws issued by the fascist regime in 1938 as "infamous". He also referred to the RSI as belonging to the most shameful pages of the past, and considered fascism part of an era of "absolute evil". Is that why Stefano seems to hate this party so much? Does he see them as "traitors"? The problem I have with Stefano Vaj and his personal brand of transhumanism is that, despite his continuos denials of never having had anything to do with the far right, his name keeps popping up over and over again on the websites of a certain Italian political side, which is difficult to label and that is been called different things by different people: Nouvelle droite? Far right? "Ethno-identitarian"? "Antagonistic" right? Alternative right? Anti-globalisation fascist? Pagan neo-fascist? Plain neo-fascist? Take your pick. One thing they are not, I suspect, is **post** fascists... Here's a Google translation of a (longish) article where I provide some background on this strange fringe of the neo-fascist microcosm, the emergenge, from it, of a "transhumanist" sub-fringe, its impact on the Italian Transhumanist Association, and why www.estropico.com has found it necessary to publish such an article to distantiate itself from their brand of "transhumanism". http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.estropico.com%2Fid314.htm&langpair=it%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 Cheers, Fabio > From: "Stefano Vaj" > Subject: Re: [ExI] The Manifesto of Italian Transhumanists > To: "ExI chat list" > Message-ID: > <580930c20803011303w1f749a5ah1f79e7872217ad9 at mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:48 PM, estropico wrote: > > > From: "Stefano Vaj" > > > > > > ...be the Nouvelle Droite > > > fascist or not, if I were a "representative" of the same... > > > > You might want to update your book's website, then: "responsabile > > italiano del S?cretariat Etudes et Recherches del Groupement de > > Recherche et Etudes pour la Civilisation Europ?enne (GRECE)": > > http://www.biopolitica.it/biop-autore.html > > Mere sloppiness or deliberate misinformation? > > The truncated quote of my bio thereing reads "gi? responsabile > del...", meaning "former head of...". That S?cretariat in fact has > not even existed for more than twenty-five years now. As for the > quality of the work performed by the same, the number of Nobelists > involved at that time in the publications of GRECE is a good enough > testimony of what it could achieve before its deplorable conservative > turn, which led on the other hand to Mr. de Benoist's regular > invitations as a speaker by the Italian post-fascist environments > supported by your friends and yourself. > > Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Mar 2 12:23:31 2008 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2008 13:23:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Neo-fascist transhumanists? WAS: Manifesto of Italian transhumanists In-Reply-To: <4eaaa0d90803020140v11ab8884tdd9d9e5505e1e24@mail.gmail.com> References: <4eaaa0d90803020140v11ab8884tdd9d9e5505e1e24@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <580930c20803020423q59479029k7156aabed9df7a48@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Mar 2, 2008 at 10:40 AM, estropico wrote: > Another few clarifications seem to be necessary to clarify Stefano's > "accusations". My only "accusations" concern you deliberate lies and half-truths aimed at deliberately sabotaging, usually through me, the AIT's action. > > I have never voted for, never mind supported, the Italian