[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 93, Issue 30

Tue Jun 21 20:29:47 UTC 2011

For me, I am not a libertarian, an anarchist or a singulartarian.  I  
am transhumanist and I support Extropy above all else.  I don't like  
Extropy tethered to other stuff that is not expressly focused on life  
expansion and well being.

Natasha

Quoting Kevin Haskell <kgh1kgh2 at gmail.com>:

> First post here, and look forward to more.  For now, I just wanted to drop a
> quick note for any in here on FB who consider themselves libertarian,
> anarchist, or generally small government types interested in H+ and AGI.
> The site can be found at : singulibertarians at groups.facebook.com
> If interested, just let me know, and I will bring you into the page.
>
> Also, I used to call myself "Extropian," went away from discussions for
> awhile, and when I got back into them, everyone was now called
> "Transhumanist."  Don't know why the terminology changed, but I just found
> it odd. Any ideas as to why that happened? Not a big deal, just curious.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM,   
> <extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org>wrote:
>
>> Send extropy-chat mailing list submissions to
>>        extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>
>> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>>        http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>>        extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org
>>
>> You can reach the person managing the list at
>>        extropy-chat-owner at lists.extropy.org
>>
>> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>> than "Re: Contents of extropy-chat digest..."
>>
>>
>> Today's Topics:
>>
>>   1. Re: Isn't Bostrom seriously bordering on the reactionary?
>>      (Stefano Vaj)
>>   2. The Japanese K Computer (john clark)
>>   3. Re: Isn't Bostrom seriously bordering on the reactionary?
>>      (Keith Henson)
>>   4. META - Subject line (was RE: Isn't Bostrom seriously
>>      bordering on the reactionary?) (Natasha Vita-More)
>>   5. subject line discipline: ...seriously bordering on the
>>      reactionary? (spike)
>>   6. Re: scale of the universe (Kelly Anderson)
>>   7. working memory implant! wow! (Will Steinberg)
>>   8. Re: AGI Motivation revisited [WAS Re: Isn't Bostrom seriously
>>      ...] (Stefano Vaj)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:17:14 +0200
>> From: Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>
>> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>> Subject: Re: [ExI] Isn't Bostrom seriously bordering on the
>>        reactionary?
>> Message-ID: <BANLkTinc-H_pKjiGdZhuECWOOBTTpXoaEg at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>> On 17 June 2011 16:50, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > 2011/6/17 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>:
>> > So true.  There is also the problem of identifying what is a risk.
>> >
>>
>> Exactly my point.
>>
>>
>> > One of the classic curses is "may you get what you ask for."  I could
>> > elaborate a long time on this, but Charles Stross has already done so.
>> >
>>
>> Certainly there is some tragic, in the Greek sense, in the adventure of
>> humankind and of life in general.
>>
>> But the big split has forever been between those who celebrate it ("amor
>> fati"), and those who consider that a curse.
>>
>> Speaking of transhumanism, at the bottom of it in my view there is the
>> explicitely or implicitely the Nietzschean idea that what we are worth
>> consists in our potential to overcome ourselves: "The 'conservation of the
>> species' is only a consequence of the growth of the species, that is
>> of a *victory
>> on the species*, in the path towards
>> a stronger species. [...] It is exactly with respect to every living being
>> that it could be best shown that it does everything that it can not to
>> protect itself, but t*o become more than what it is*." (Will to Power) "And
>> it is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of his course between
>> animal and Superman, *and celebrateth his advance to the evening as his
>> highest hope*: for it is the advance to a new morning. At such time will
>> the
>> down-goer bless himself, that he should be an *over-goer*; and the sun of
>> his knowledge will be at noontide." (Thus Spake Zarathustra).
>>
>> At a point in time, some transhumanists seem to have decided that after all
>> eternal becoming and transition(s) to posthumanity are not any more what
>> only can give a meaning to our presence in the world; on the contrary, it
>> would be something to be feared and shun, since it would obviously imply
>> that we would not "exist" anymore the way we currently do, as in "x-risk".
>> See not only Bostrom, but, eg, the last part of Stross's  Accelerando.
>>
>> Such POV is eminently respectable, not to mention largely predominant in
>> our
>> societies along the lines of the famous "anti trans-simianist" satire, but
>> I
>> wonder why it would require additional advocates
>>
>> --
>> Stefano Vaj
>> -------------- next part --------------
>> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
>> URL: <
>> http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20110620/d576a52f/attachment-0001.html
>> >
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 06:59:08 -0700 (PDT)
>> From: john clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>
>> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> Subject: [ExI] The Japanese K Computer
>> Message-ID: <652029.11217.qm at web82904.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>> A Japanese computer is the fastest in the world; called the "K Computer" it
>> is 3 times as fast as the previous champion, a Chinese machine crowned just
>> 6 months? ago.
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/technology/20computer.html
>>
>> ?John K Clark
>> -------------- next part --------------
>> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
>> URL: <
>> http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20110620/e40376f7/attachment-0001.html
>> >
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:03:01 -0700
>> From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
>> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>> Subject: Re: [ExI] Isn't Bostrom seriously bordering on the
>>        reactionary?
>> Message-ID: <BANLkTikp5xTNydV2eam4i55avvvKz7gr9Q at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>
>> 2011/6/20 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>:
>> > On 17 June 2011 16:50, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> 2011/6/17 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>:
>> >> So true. ?There is also the problem of identifying what is a risk.
>> >
>> > Exactly my point.
>> >
>> >>
>> >> One of the classic curses is "may you get what you ask for." ?I could
>> >> elaborate a long time on this, but Charles Stross has already done so.
>> >
>> > Certainly there is some tragic, in the Greek sense, in the adventure of
>> > humankind and of life in general.
>>
>> True.  A ten km asteroid ruined the day for the dinosaurs
>>
>> > But the big split has forever been between those who celebrate it ("amor
>> > fati"), and those who consider that a curse.
>>
>> We might not have a lot of control over out destinies, but trying to
>> do something positive seems like a good idea to me.
>>
>> > Speaking of transhumanism, at the bottom of it in my view there is the
>> > explicitely or implicitely the Nietzschean idea that what we are worth
>> > consists in our potential to overcome ourselves: "The 'conservation of
>> the
>> > species' is only a consequence of the growth of the species, that is of a
>> > victory on the species, in the path towards
>> > a stronger species. [...] It is exactly with respect to every living
>> being
>> > that it could be best shown that it does everything that it can not to
>> > protect itself, but to become more than what it is." (Will to Power) "And
>> it
>> > is the great noontide, when man is in the middle of his course between
>> > animal and Superman, and celebrateth his advance to the evening as his
>> > highest hope: for it is the advance to a new morning. At such time will
>> the
>> > down-goer bless himself, that he should be an over-goer; and the sun of
>> his
>> > knowledge will be at noontide." (Thus Spake Zarathustra).
>>
>> Nietzsche was not faced with the current prospects where we could, in
>> a generation, change as much or more than the distance between mice
>> and humans.  It's easy for us to imagine improvements, long (perhaps
>> open ended), disease free lives, physical attractiveness, even
>> modification so we have no blind spot.  However, once people are on
>> this slippery slope, where will they stop?
>>
>> I wonder what Nietzsche would say if he were up on the prospects of
>> AI/nanotechnology?
>>
>> Would he embrace it or go catatonic?
>>
>> > At a point in time, some transhumanists seem to have decided that after
>> all
>> > eternal becoming and transition(s) to posthumanity are not any more what
>> > only can give a meaning to our presence in the world; on the contrary, it
>> > would be something to be feared and shun, since it would obviously imply
>> > that we would not "exist" anymore the way we currently do, as in
>> "x-risk".
>> > See not only Bostrom, but, eg, the last part of Stross's? Accelerando.
>>
>> It's a side effect of playing with the gods, even in your imagination.
>>  Too many unknowns like the Fermi question and therefore scary.
>> Besides, you can't identify with gods so they don't make good
>> characters for a story.
>>
>> I suspect the best outcome we can work toward is that the things we
>> become will remember being us.'
>>
>> Actually I am not sure the would want to inflict that on them.  It
>> might be like your mom putting video on the net of you playing in mud
>> as a little kid.
>>
>> > Such POV is eminently respectable, not to mention largely predominant in
>> our
>> > societies along the lines of the famous "anti trans-simianist" satire,
>> but I
>> > wonder why it would require additional advocates
>>
>> I don't think "predominant" is the right word unless you are talking
>> about the tiny transhumanist society.  The larger society remains
>> unaware.
>>
>> Keith
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 4
>> Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:05:41 -0500
>> From: "Natasha Vita-More" <natasha at natasha.cc>
>> To: "'ExI chat list'" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>> Subject: [ExI] META - Subject line (was RE: Isn't Bostrom seriously
>>        bordering on the reactionary?)
>> Message-ID: <5A0C63B0EDEB48E292CD03C67FF2F742 at DFC68LF1>
>> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"
>>
>> Hi everyone -
>>
>> Please change the subject line of posts that have clearly strayed from or
>> introduce new ideas!
>>
>> Thank you!
>>
>> Natasha
>>
>> Natasha Vita-More
>>
>> Chair, Humanity+
>> PhD Researcher, Univ. of Plymouth, UK
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 5
>> Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:04:33 -0700
>> From: "spike" <spike66 at att.net>
>> To: "'ExI chat list'" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>> Subject: [ExI] subject line discipline: ...seriously bordering on the
>>        reactionary?
>> Message-ID: <00a301cc2f8d$a841f1d0$f8c5d570$@att.net>
>> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"
>>
>>
>> Do observe when a thread has wandered far from the original topic and feel
>> free to rename the subject.  Not specifically forbidden but often
>> discouraged is putting an actual person's name in the subject line, for the
>> reason that topics always wander.  Then we have a bunch of junk about a
>> specific person that doesn't apply.  Thanks.
>>
>> spike
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 6
>> Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:50:15 -0600
>> From: Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>
>> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>> Subject: Re: [ExI] scale of the universe
>> Message-ID: <BANLkTinyY-dxtzg0x45HCg3rtGY7=orQ0g at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>
>> Now, what would be interesting would be to put dollars and cents in
>> this picture... :-)
>>
>> $1 = 1 meter...
>>
>> The cost of a single byte of hard drive storage ($80 for a 2TB Drive)
>> is close to the size of a Helium atom.
>> A penny would be $0.01 dollars, where the grain of rice is...
>> A dollar would be where the meter is...
>> Half Dome would be around a week's salary... $420
>> A marathon would be a year's salary for a typical day laborer, $26,000
>> The diameter of the moon would represent $3,500,000, about what the
>> government spends in an hour and a half.
>> The largest lottery jackpot of all time $390,000,000 is about twice
>> the size of Jupiter.
>> The cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq together are nearly the
>> size of the sun.  $1,200,000,000,000
>> The 2012 budget of $3,700,000,000,000 is larger than the largest known
>> star, but smaller than the orbit of Pluto.
>> The Kuiper Belt is the current national debt... $15,000,000,000,000
>> The current gross world product is $30 trillion per year, is just a
>> third larger than the Homonculous Nebula.
>> The total unfunded liability of the US Government of
>> $144,000,000,000,000 is half the size of the Sting Ray Nebula!
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_Earth
>> According to Wikipedia, the replacement value of the entire earth is
>> the size of the Great Orion Nebula. $195,000,000,000,000,000
>> And here is a number to blow your mind... If you value electricity at
>> 10 cents per Kilowatt hour, the energy output of our sun in one second
>> is worth
>> $38,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
>> Which on the scale is the size of our Local Galactic Group.
>> The value of all the power of the sun for an entire year would be
>> approximately the Estimated Size of the Universe...
>> $3,283,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
>>
>> If nothing else, that gives you quite a bit of respect for the power
>> of the sun! Hopefully, I haven't messed up the math too badly; it's
>> hard to get these big numbers exactly right. YMMV on some of the
>> numbers, but the order of magnitude is right... :-)
>>
>> -Kelly
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 11:17 PM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
>> > I have some problems with the animation. It includes preons, which are
>> > completely hypothetical and have no real support. It gives a size for the
>> > neutrino, which I have a hard time understanding - they are believed to
>> be
>> > pointlike, and if that is the spread of a wave packet it is too short.
>> And
>> > the center of the universe thing is just a mistake.
>> >
>> > Still, it remains one of the better animations in this genre despite the
>> > simple graphics. There are more nice-looking ones out there, but this one
>> > has a nice sense of presence by being fairly densely filled in.
>> >
>> >
>> > Mike Dougherty wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I discussed with a coworker the nearly unimaginable bigness of space.
>> >> His comment sums it up nicely: ?"I have enough difficulty judging what
>> >> size Tupperware ideally fits dinner leftovers, I'm not prepared to
>> >> imagine the volume of space-time"
>> >>
>> >
>> > Isn't that one of the saddest things? Worse, most people think the
>> > tupperware is more important.
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Anders Sandberg,
>> > Future of Humanity Institute
>> > Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > extropy-chat mailing list
>> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 7
>> Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 02:14:59 -0400
>> From: Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com>
>> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>> Subject: [ExI] working memory implant! wow!
>> Message-ID: <BANLkTin=yc=B5G=7zoAJrDz+eFhV6nbkeA at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>> http://iopscience.iop.org/1741-2552/8/4/046017
>> -------------- next part --------------
>> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
>> URL: <
>> http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20110621/f31eab6b/attachment-0001.html
>> >
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 8
>> Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:10:40 +0200
>> From: Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>
>> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>> Subject: Re: [ExI] AGI Motivation revisited [WAS Re: Isn't Bostrom
>>        seriously       ...]
>> Message-ID: <BANLkTikQNOYckLdXg5qk41bwvmu2fhgy4g at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>> On 17 June 2011 17:28, Richard Loosemore <rpwl at lightlink.com> wrote:
>>
>> > If I had time I would extend this argument:  the basic conclusion is that
>> > in order to get a really smart AGI you will need the alternate type of
>> > motivation system I alluded to above, and in that case the easiest thing
>> to
>> > do is to create a system that is empathic to the human race .... you
>> would
>> > have to go to immense trouble, over an extended period of time, with many
>> > people working on the project, to build something that was psychotic and
>> > smart, and I find that scenario quite implausible.
>> >
>>
>> It is not entirely clear to me what you think of the motivations of
>> contemporary PCs, but I think you can have arbitrarily powerful and
>> intelligent computers with exactly the same motivations. According to the
>> Principle of Computational Equivalence, beyond a very low threshold of
>> complexity,  there is nothing more to "intrinsic!" intelligence than
>> performance.
>>
>> As to Turing-passing beings, that is beings which can be performant or not
>> in the task but can behaviourally emulate specific or generic human beings,
>> you may have a point that either they do it, and as a consequence cannot be
>> either better or worse than what the emulate, or they do not  (and in that
>> event will not be recognisable as "intelligent" in any anthropomorphic
>> sense).
>>
>> As to empathy to the "human race" (!), I personally do no really feel
>> anything like that, but I do not consider myself more psychotic than
>> average, so I am not inclined to consider seriously any such rhetoric.
>>
>> Sure, you may well hard-code in a computer behaviours aimed at protecting
>> such a dubious entity, and if this work to operate the power grid you will
>> end up without electricity the first time you have to perform an abortion.
>> Do we really need that?
>>
>> --
>> Stefano Vaj
>> -------------- next part --------------
>> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
>> URL: <
>> http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20110621/2f5de4f1/attachment-0001.html
>> >
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
>>
>> End of extropy-chat Digest, Vol 93, Issue 30
>> ********************************************
>>
>